"Fiddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... loved my little sister Anna, too. But what did they do to her behind those marble walls? Did you fiddle for her? What was she when they let her go? My pretty little Anna! The fires of hell for those damned green stones of yours, Stefani! She heard of them and wanted to see them, and ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... gentleman. But no words could do justice to the conditions of life on Samburan. A desert island was nothing to it. Moreover, when you were cast away on a desert island—why, you could not help yourself; but to expect a fiddle-playing girl out of an ambulant ladies' orchestra to remain content there for a day, for one single day, was inconceivable. She would be frightened at the first sight of ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... "Fiddle-fiddle," cried the old man. "Don't bring sentimental women into this, Davy. As I was saying, Victor ought to be punished for the way he's been stirring up idle, lazy, ignorant people against the men that runs the community and gives 'em jobs and food for their children. But maybe it ain't wise ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... our little stock of flour and dried meat with them as fairly as possible and decided we would try the trail. When our plans were settled we felt in pretty good spirits again, and one of the boys got up a sort of corn-stalk fiddle which made a squeaking noise and in a little while there was a sort of mixed American and Indian dance going on in which the squaws joined in and we had a pretty jolly time till quite late at night. We were well pleased ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... self-sufficient, especially Taberner, Phipps, and Church, who, as I am informed, have, in violation of my sub-dean's and chapter's order in December last, at the instance of some obscure persons unknown, presumed to sing and fiddle at ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... strings of the old fiddle will tighten up a good deal, if I abstain from attempting to play upon the instrument at present—but that a few jigs now will ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... Bott to notify the police of the theft, but the old man was prostrated with grief, and it was the wife who, with Ellen Clancy, finally accompanied Flechter to Police Headquarters. The police had no idea who had taken the old fellow's fiddle, and did not particularly care anyway. Later they cared a ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... "Wounded? A fiddle-stick's end!" said the doctor. "No more wounded than you or I. The man has had a stroke, as I warned him.—Now, Mrs. Hawkins, just you run up-stairs to your husband, and tell him, if possible, nothing about it. For my part, I must do my best to save this fellow's trebly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... came after a certain miracle on May-day. The Major had taken Chad to the festival where the dance was on sawdust in the woodland—in the bottom of a little hollow, around which the seats ran as in an amphitheatre. Ready to fiddle for them stood none other than John Morgan himself, his gray eyes dancing and an arch smile on his handsome face; and, taking a place among the dancers, were Richard Hunt and—Margaret. The poised bow fell, a merry tune ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... interesting "belongings." Anticipating a treasure, Mr. Mickley sent for some violin-connoisseurs to enjoy with him a first sight of the precious instrument. On opening the express-package a very worthless "fiddle" was revealed. After the laugh had gone round, he said dryly, "I think the value of this must be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... they hear a fiddle, are forced to turn over on their backs and howl; some are unmoved by music. So some men are tortured by every violation of symmetry, while some cannot discern a straight line. I belong to the former class, and ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... poor, landlocked country, highly dependent on foreign aid, farming and livestock raising (sheep and goats), and trade with neighboring countries. Economic considerations have played second fiddle to political and military upheavals during more than two decades of war, including the nearly 10-year Soviet military occupation (which ended 15 February 1989). During that conflict, one-third of the population fled the country, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... something like order, the first week commonly passes in reconnoitring, cool civilities, and cautious concessions, to yield at length to the never-dying charities; unless, indeed, the latter may happen to be kept in abeyance by a downright quarrel, about midnight carousals, a squeaking fiddle, or some ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... through the camp Sucatash followed the girl. They came at last to a long, dim bulk, glowing with light from a height of about six feet and black below that level. From this place surged a raucous din of voices, cursing, singing and quarreling. A squeaky fiddle and a mandolin uttered dimly heard notes which were tossed about in the greater turmoil. Stamping feet made a ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... Disparaging comparisons were made with Nebuchadnezzar's idolatrous concert of cornet, flute, dulcimer, sackbut, and psaltery; and the ministers, from their overwhelming store of Biblical knowledge, hurled text after text at the "fiddle-players." ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... you remember Abraham? He was the man who had the future. When we were students he beat me all along the line. He got the prizes and the scholarships that I went in for. I always played second fiddle to him. If he'd kept on he'd be in the position I'm in now. That man had a genius for surgery. No one had a look in with him. When he was appointed Registrar at Thomas's I hadn't a chance of getting on the staff. I should have had to become a G.P., and you know what likelihood ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... Dora sawed away at the kite line, which was as taut as a string on a bass fiddle. Suddenly there was a loud snap and the cord parted. Sam and Dick fell back from the edge of the cliff, while the entangled kites soared away for ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... are grouped, the hero himself, a comic servant with a red nose and a fiddle, an open trunk, and a young lady in travelling costume, viz. white satin shoes, paste diamonds, ball-dress, and lace veil. The tips of her fingers rest in the gloved hand of her assailant, whose voice comes deep and mellow through ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... handkerchief, and a well-chalked countenance, did Mr. Horatio Fitzharding Fitzfunk, at or about the hour of half past eight—being precisely sixty minutes behind the period announced, in consequence of the non-arrival of the one fiddle and ditto flute comprising, or rather that ought to have comprised, the orchestra—made his debut, and a particularly nervous bow to the good folks there assembled, "as and for" the character "of Hamlet, the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... had something to bear, Braney, when you fell on him,' said Potts, and murmured aside: 'He can be smartish. Hears me call Braney Rufus, and says he, like a fellow-chin on his fiddle—"Captain Mountain, Rufus Mus'. Not bad, for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... trip I 'd have taken you. It was just what you needed—a week of lolling around a deck in the hot sun with the sea winds blowing over your face. That's what you want to do—get out under the blue sky and soak it in. If you don't believe it, look at me. Fit as a fiddle; strong as a moose. You said you wanted to sprawl in the sunshine,—why the devil don't you take a week ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... eccentricity. He had a passion for violins, and ran himself into debt because he bought so many and such good ones. Once, when visiting his father's house at Ipsden, he shocked the punctilious old gentleman by dancing on the dining-table to the accompaniment of a fiddle, which he scraped delightedly. Dancing, indeed, was another of his diversions, and, in spite of the fact that he was a fellow of Magdalen and a D.C.L. of Oxford, he was always ready to caper and to display ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... to great straits and had to live after the Indian fashion. A party of Loyalists who came before us late in the spring, had gone up the river further, but they were no better off than those at St. Ann's. The men caught fish and hunted moose when they could. In the spring we made maple sugar. We ate fiddle heads, grapes and even the leaves of trees to allay the pangs of hunger. On one occasion some poisonous weeds were eaten along with the fiddle heads; one or two died, and Dr. Earle had all he could do to ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... knew Mr. Joseph Spence,(387) I do not think I should have been so much delighted as Dr. Kippis with reading his letters. He was a good-natured, harmless little soul, but more like a silver penny than a genius. It was a neat, fiddle-faddle, bit of sterling, that had read good books and kept good company, but was too trifling for use, and only ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... barefooted, stoop-shouldered, stuttering, yet with a chord of natural rhetoric in his high fiddle-string of a windpipe, stood looking after them till they passed down the thoroughfare under the jib-sail, and Joe Johnson did not say a word till some marsh brush intervened between them, he being apparently under a remnant of that panic which had seized ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... "You would never hang about the house, worrying mother about eating and fiddle-faddles, instead of doing any one ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... inches long; joints are shorter than the spikelets, excavate on one side and with a pore which is hidden by the sessile spikelet. The sessile spikelet consists of four glumes. The first glume is somewhat fiddle-shaped, dilated above the middle into an orbicular wing, and towards the base into two auricles joined by a transverse ridge, scaberulous, 5-nerved. The second glume is somewhat membranous, ovate, acute and 3-nerved. ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... a cable from our Paris office just before I left. It seems that M. Theophile d'Aurelle plays the fiddle in the orchestra of the Cafe de Paris. He played as usual to-night, so that it is manifestly impossible that he should also be lying in the New York morgue. Moreover, none of his friends, so far as he knows, is in America. No doubt he may be able to identify the photograph of the dead man, ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... a little Italian boy, who lives in Chicago. When I first knew him, he was roaming about from house to house, playing on the fiddle, and singing. ...
— The Nursery, No. 107, November, 1875, Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... As a fiddle and tambourine band were sitting among the company, Quickear suggested why not strike up? 'Ah, la'ads!' said a negro sitting by the door, 'gib the jebblem a darnse. Tak' yah pardlers, jebblem, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... the Dutch mercer of New York had clad him. De Catinat had also put on the dark coat of civil life, and he and Adele were busy preparing all things for the old man, who had fallen so weak that there was little which he could do for himself. A fiddle was screaming in the forecastle, and half the night through hoarse bursts of homely song mingled with the dash of the waves and the whistle of the wind, as the New England men in their own grave and stolid fashion ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this, or rather that I had died ere I had seen it; why didst not make me acquainted when thou wert first resolv'd to be a whore, I would have seen thy hot lust satisfied more privately: I would have kept a dancer and a whole consort of musicians in my own house only to fiddle thee. ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... whanging of the piano in the saloon beneath had attained to an even greater pitch of discord than was normally the case. To it was added the excruciating rasp of a fiddle. ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... pleased at having arrived at this long wished for spot, and in order to add in some measure to the general pleasure which seemed to pervade our little community, we ordered a dram to be issued to each person; this soon produced the fiddle, and they spent the evening with much hilarity, singing & dancing, and seemed as perfectly to forget their past toils, as they appeared regardless of those to come. in the evening, the man I had sent up the river this morning returned, and reported that he ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... played upon his fiddle All through that leafy June, He always played hey-diddle-diddle, And ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... probably lose his license. On a given day about three hundred or four hundred of these forlorn outcasts were bundled wholesale into the streets, and they formed up in a large body, many of them with only a shift and a petticoat on, and with a lot of drunken men and boys with a fife and fiddle they paraded the streets for several days. They marched in a body to the workhouse, but for many reasons they were refused admittance.... These women wandered about for two or three days shelterless, and it was felt that the remedy was very much worse than ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Jean tuned his fiddle afresh, and placing it with a knowing jerk under his chin, and with an air of conceit worthy of Lulli, began to sing and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... lied about Pan, because they listened to the haunting music of his pipes. It calls sweetly, but does not satisfy. How many Pan has called and left them sitting among the rocks with mindless eyes and hands that fiddle with emptiness!... Pan is so sad and level-eyed. He does not explain. He does not promise—too wise for that. He lures and enchants. He makes you pity him with a pity that is red as the lusts ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... hubbub was Carlisle city that day; yet, as the two entered the courtyard of the castle, James was aware of another sound, rising clear above the tumult of the town—strains of music, surely, that came from a fiddle. As they stepped under the inner gateway and approached the Norman Keep, the fiddler himself came in sight playing with might and main, under a barred window about six feet from the ground. By the fiddler's side, urging him on, was a huge, burly man with a red face. ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... a born artist and musician. Music, tone, sound, colour, vibrate in every page of your romances. Had your parents taught you harmony, the piano, and the fiddle, your music would have burst forth along its normal lines. As they merely taught you the alphabet and grammar, your creative faculty turned to literature; you wrote romances full of music, instead of composing music full of romance. It is ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... sportsman from a very early age. Their grandfather's ship was sailing for Europe once when the boys were children, and they were asked, what present Captain Franks should bring them back? George was divided between books and a fiddle; Harry instantly declared for a little gun: and Madam Warrington (as she then was called) was hurt that her elder boy should have low tastes, and applauded the younger's choice as more worthy of his name and lineage. "Books, papa, I ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... knows that we see little enough of our women folks, and, when we have the chance to see them, and feel the touch of their hands, we waste our time like a lot of fools making military guesses. If I'm not too old to dance to the tune of the shells I'm not too old to dance to the tune of the fiddle and the bow. That's a glorious air floating in from the ballroom. I think I can show some of these youngsters like Kenton here how to shake ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... her and says she is right as a fiddle. I'm the young fellow that telephoned the Police for you. I got back word, early this morning, that your folks finally got home, without any harm to anyone. And say! Maybe there wasn't some joy when they heard you two ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... close to the smells of the earth. They learned the ways of birds and bugs, why birds have wings, why bugs have legs, why the gladdywhingers have spotted eggs in a basket nest in a booblow tree, and why the chizzywhizzies scrape off little fiddle songs all summer long while the summer ...
— Rootabaga Stories • Carl Sandburg
... humped herself up over a green fiddle that she had under her cloak, and nearly deafened them ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... hale be your fiddle, Lang may your elbuck jink diddle, To cheer you thro' the weary widdle O' war'ly cares; Till barins' barins kindly ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... fiddle," he replied, assuming a spirit he did not possess, "but you are marvelous. ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... and excitement leads the crow to investigate any unusual sight or sound that catches his attention. Hide anywhere in the woods, and make any queer sound you will—play a jews'-harp, or pull a devil's fiddle, or just call softly—and first comes a blue jay, all agog to find out all about it. Next a red squirrel steals down and barks just over your head, to make you start if possible. Then, if your eyes ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... neighbours is levity, ours heaviness. In the ancient bass-fiddle, Europe, the thickest string is the German, with deep tone and heavy vibration; but once in vibration, it hums as if it would go on humming for an eternity. Our primitive ancestors deliberated on every thing twice—in drunkenness, and in sobriety; and then they acted. But we, with the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... "A fiddle-stick! It is I who have cause to complain of you, not you of me! You throw dust in my eyes by accusing where you should stand otherwise accused. And you ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... the whole village went round and round and round under the low ceiling in the valse, young and old, rich and poor, high and low, the sound of their laughter and the scraping of their feet cut now and again by an agonized squeak from Zeron's fiddle. From time to time a staggering, panting couple would fling themselves out, help themselves liberally to pink sirop from the bowl on the side table, and then fling themselves in once more, until Zeron stopped from sheer exhaustion, to tune up for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... accept your honourable proposals with pleasure. Indeed, for myself, I desire nothing better! I will go on turning sour; I will go on giving music lessons and growing imbecile in this hole of a town.... You will fiddle away, turn women's heads, travel, be rich, famous and happy—and every four or six weeks I may hope to be taken for one night to some shabby room where you entertain your women of the street.... It was shameful, ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... the frontier was primarily vocal—the singing of hymns and, possibly, folk songs. Instrumental music was confined to the fiddle, which one Fair Play settler felt valuable enough to mention in his will.[51] The fiddle also provided the musical background for the rollicking reels and jigs which the Scotch-Irish enjoyed so much.[52] That it was ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... compared by Mr Paton to that of the Scotch Highlander; and it is not without strong points of resemblance. "He is brave in battle, highly hospitable; delights in simple and plaintive music and poetry, his favourite instruments being the bagpipe and fiddle; unlike the Greek, he shows little aptitude for trade; and, unlike the Bulgarian, he is very lazy in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... in the end, doesn't it? You did not want to play second fiddle; you didn't want Rudd to appear to have scored. You wanted to be the central figure. Much the same, isn't it? The love ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... Brandan kneeled down on his knees and wept for joy, and made his praise devoutlie to our Lord God, to know what these birds meant. And then anon one of the birds flew from the tree to St. Brandan, and he with the flickering of his wings made a full merrie noise like a fiddle, that him seemed he never heard so joyful a melodie. And then St. Brandan commanded the foule to tell him the cause why they sat so thick on the tree and sang so merrilie. And then the foule said, some time we were angels in heaven, but when our master, ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... well if nineteen could make a woman to her mind. If tailors were men indeed well furnished, but with more moral principles, they would disdain to be led about like apes by such mimic marmosets. It is a most unworthy thing for men that have bones in them to spend their lives in making fiddle-cases for futilous women's fancies; which are the very pettitoes of infirmity, the giblets of perquisquilian toys.... It is no little labor to be continually putting up English women into outlandish casks; who if they be not shifted anew once in a few months grow too sour for ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... long, slow afternoons, and whispered words of love, and light conversations at dusk, and all that sort of rot. And all the while, outside his door the guns were booming; at the gates of the world a perilous storm had broken. The earth was on fire; but while Rome burned, he, like Nero, played a fiddle—and was content. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... HIM," he says, "whatever you do! He's only a poor young chap from the country, and butter wouldn't melt in his mouth!" However, they - ha, ha, ha! - they took me, and pretended to search my bedroom, where nothing was found but an old fiddle belonging to the landlord, that had got there somehow or another. But, it entirely changed the landlord's opinion, for when it was produced, he says, "My fiddle! The Butcher's a purloiner! I give him into custody for the robbery of ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... certain gentleman, remarkable for his probity, decorum, and extreme sensitiveness. Well, A., the wag, and B., the victim, landed together, but selected, in the general overflow and hurly-burly, different lodgings. Next morning, A. finds B. stowed away in ——'s Hotel, fine as a fiddle, snug as a bug, in a good room, and doing about as well as could be expected. A. had had indifferent luck, and the quarters he had lit upon were any thing but comfortable, the inmates of the Hotel being ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... said Miss Panney. "The young man and that Cicely Drane of yours have agreed to marry each other, and I suppose the old lady will live with them, and Miriam will have to get down from her high horse and agree to play second fiddle, or go to school again. She is too young ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... for the first time was beaded. He wanted silver wire. He would have accepted catgut. He had neither. For one moment, in agony himself, he looked about; then a look of joy came to his face. An old fiddle was lying in the window. A moment, and he had ripped off a string. In two strides he was back at the dripping table, where lay one marble figure, stood a ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... hot weather. Our mess-room leads out into a sort of terrace with a wild garden all round. It must have been very pretty before the war, even in its deserted state it is very nice; forget-me-nots and bits of lake and stream everywhere. I feel as fit as a fiddle and am as brown ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... to help her pick over berries for canning the following day. It was a sacrifice to make, too, with the midsummer evening calling to them in all its varied orchestral tones: Katydids and peep frogs, the swish of the wind through the big Norway pines on the terraces, and the scrape of Shad's old fiddle from the back porch. It was Friday evening, and Mr. and Mrs. Robbins had driven over to the Judge's to attend a community meeting, the latter being one of Cousin Roxy's ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... that better than you can tell me, Tony, but 'tis such an easy way to get a living; I could enjoy such glorious indolence; could fish, and hunt, and shoot, and play the fiddle, and attend feasts and merry-makings, with such a happy consciousness of being found in the path of duty, that it would give a double zest to enjoyment. Now don't be envious, my dear demure cousin, and forestall me in ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... wan morning, an' de pilot geev us warning, "W'en you come on Rapide Cuisse, ma frien', keep raf' she's head on shore, If you struck beeg rock on middle, w'ere le diable is play hees fiddle, Dat's de tam you pass on some place, you don't ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... took out a little fiddle and began playing on it. When the bear heard the music he could not help dancing, and after he had danced some time he was so pleased that he said to the tailor, 'I say, is fiddling difficult?' 'Mere child's play,' ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... entrance into the wood, he dismissed him and his attendants, though much against their will, and proceeded on his journey unarmed; from too great a presumption of security, preceded only by a minstrel and a singer, one accompanying the other on the fiddle. The Welsh awaiting his arrival, with Iorwerth, brother of Morgan of Caerleon, at their head, and others of his family, rushed upon him unawares from the thickets, and killed him and many of his followers. Thus it appears how incautious and ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... it—and if that zone is impenetrable, I'll bet they'll be able to dope out something just as good. Relieved? That doesn't half tell it, guy—I feel as if I had just pitched off the Old Man of the Sea who's been sitting on my neck! What say you girls get your fiddle and guitar and we'll sing us a little song? I feel kind of relieved—they had me worried some—it's the first time I've felt like singing since ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... it is not serious," Saunders said. "I have seen him break down before. He is too intense, too strenuous; whatever he does he does with every nerve in his body drawn as taut as a fiddle- string." ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... from the table. The Duke sat like a rock in his place and finished what he was saying, though no one noticed it. Miss Skeat clutched her silver fruit-knife till her knuckles shone again, and she set her teeth. Mr. Barker, who had a glass of wine in the "fiddle" before him, took it out when the sea struck and held it up steadily to save it from being spilled; and Lady Victoria, who was not the least ashamed ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... were shown the scene of one of these neighborhood vengeances. It is a low house at the side of a ravine, down whose steep slope the beech forest steps persistently erect, as if distrusting gravitation. Thirty Confederates had gathered in that house at a country-side frolic, and the fiddle sang deep in the night. The mountain girls are very pretty, having dark, opalescent eyes, with a touch of gold in them at a side glance, slight, rather too fragile figures, and the singular purity of complexion peculiar ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... must be told how Fiddle Mord took a sickness and breathed his last; and that was thought great scathe. His daughter Unna took all the goods he left behind him. She was then still unmarried the second time. She was very layish, and ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... hear, or read another man's act of genius; but he will not pay with his whole life and soul to become a mere virtuoso in literature, exhibiting an accomplishment which will not even make money for him, like fiddle playing. Effectiveness of assertion is the Alpha and Omega of style. He who has nothing to assert has no style and can have none: he who has something to assert will go as far in power of style as its momentousness and his conviction will carry him. Disprove his assertion after it is ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... will tell thee. Five nights ago I did on raiment of the fashion of them beyond Deepdale, and I had with me a fiddle, and was in the manner of a minstrel, and thou wottest that I am not so evil a gut-scraper, and that I have many tales and old rhymes to hand, though I am no scald as thou art. Well, I got out a-gates a night-tide by the postern on the nook of the south-east ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... established in this great Western country; in the days when Indian "Sun" dances, and other barbarous functions were held. In the days of the Red River Jig, when a good fiddler of the same was held to be a man of importance; when the method of tuning the fiddle to the necessary pitch for the playing of that curious dance was a secret known only to a privileged few. Some might call them the "good" old days. "Bad" is the adjective ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... Heart of a Man is deprest with Cares, The Mist is dispell'd when a Woman appears; Like the Notes of a Fiddle, she sweetly, sweetly Raises the Spirits, and charms our Ears, Roses and Lilies her Cheeks disclose, But her ripe Lips are more sweet than those. Press her, Caress her, With Blisses, Her Kisses Dissolve us in Pleasure, and ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... off at right angles from his tune, and winding up with a grand flourish on the guttural notes. Behind him, led by his little boy, came the blind fiddler, his honest features glowing with all the hilarity of a rustic bridal, and, as he stumbled along, sawing away upon his fiddle till he made all crack again. Then came the happy bridegroom, drest in his Sunday suit of blue, with a large nosegay in his button-hole; and close beside him his blushing bride, with downcast eyes, clad in a white robe and slippers, and wearing a wreath of white roses in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... Helen, "what a business woman you are getting to be. Your career has really begun—and so promisingly. While I can't do a thing but play the fiddle a little, daub a ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... him at it. Or he will cite his avocations to prove he is not included. But he plays golf fretfully with his eye always on the score. He drives his motor furiously to hold a schedule. Yet in his youth many of these prosperous fellows learned to play upon a fiddle, and they dreamed on college window-seats. They had time for friendliness before they became so busy holding this great world by ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... where there are large, separate estates, marriages are generally managed through agents, who find out accurately the relative circumstances of the prospective couples, and arrange everything beforehand. When a marriage of this kind had been brought about, Crappy Zachy used to play the fiddle at the wedding, for he had quite a reputation in the region as a fiddler; moreover, when his hands were tired from fiddling, he could play the clarionet and the horn. In fact, he ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... if so the Bible is wrong. The fact is that the "blessed book," instead of being woman's best friend, is her worst enemy. The Tenth Commandment makes her domestic property, and Paul winds up by telling her that her sole duty is to play second fiddle in ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... "I fiddle a little. I try to learn something different for them every time. The last time I learned to do conjuring tricks. They'd get tired of me if I didn't bring something new. I'm thinking of learning the penny whistle before ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... wife so much any more, but transferred all his love to little Giglio. So did everybody love him as long as he had the ring; but when, as quite a child, he gave it to Angelica, people began to love and admire HER; and Giglio, as the saying is, played only second fiddle. ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... commented on the cat's behaviour to some friends who had also been to the Folies-Bergere on different nights. "But," said the first friend, "the evening I went, that cat did wonderful things; came down the ladder on her ball, played the fiddle, and stood ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... superciliously or pityingly at their poor amusements; they were far too much absorbed in the dancing which was going on busily—I can't say gaily—in the two hollow squares. In one of these an elderly, pinched little man who looked almost half-witted, was monotonously scraping a battered fiddle, for two solemn couples to dance round and round, always on the same axis. But the other "dancing salon" was more lively. There a man dressed like a buffoon, with a tall hat, a lobster claw for a nose, a uniform ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... saloons; they leaned joking over the bars, they sat behind their cards at the tables, they strolled to the post-trader's to buy presents for their easy sweethearts their boots were keeping audible time with the fiddle at Mrs. Slaghammer's. From the multitude and vigor of the sounds there, the dance was being done regularly. "Regularly" meant that upon the conclusion of each set the gentleman led his lady to the bar and invited her to choose ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... when Rome was burning," Abe replied. "He's got nothing on you. You would fiddle if Rome, Watertown, and Ogdensburg ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... and read a scene from Gogol, this time without evoking a single token of approbation. The flute-player flitted past once more; again the pianist thundered; a young fellow of twenty, pomaded and curled, but with traces of tears on his cheeks, sawed out some variations on his fiddle. It might have appeared strange that in the intervals between the recitations and the music the abrupt notes of a French horn were wafted, now and then, from the artists' room; but this instrument was not used, nevertheless. It afterward came out that the ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... help himself. These E's would fiddle around in places where human beings shouldn't have gone. Most of the time they weren't allowed even one mistake. He was lucky, sure, but part of it might be because he'd never been sent out with the ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... cried one or two eager voices, while several heads leaned forward in the direction of the fiercely- moustached man who sat next to Lotys. "Where have you been with your fiddle? Do you arrive among us to-night infected by the pay, or the ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... fiddle up under his chin. He drew the bow over the strings and began a gentle melody that reminded one of rain ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... very convenient for that purpose because of its size. Early next morning the festivities began. Commissary whisky was provided in abundance. "Sport" (William Harris) furnished music for the occasion, which he extracted from an old fiddle procured from some unexplainable source. The ball opened with a good pull all around from the canteen. Ordinary forms of entertainment and social enjoyment soon became stale and they concluded to try the mazy dance. Our tent was floored with puncheons, and the racket which they kicked up ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... the Captain shrieked, finding his voice at last. 'MILLE DIABLES! Are you aware, sir, that I am in possession of this house, and that no one harbours here without my permission? Guest? Hospitality? Bundle of fiddle-faddle! Lieutenant, call the guard! Call the guard!' he continued passionately. 'Where is ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... be open as to treatment and this will be as the temperament of the restorer will suggest or the exigencies of the moment may demand. Temporary alleviation of symptoms—how to make the thing go somehow—when there is no fiddle physician within beck or call, is a problem frequently arising and very annoying, necessity then being the mother of invention, often of a most curious sort, as most professional repairers who have ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... between his separate players, as the conductor does between the instruments in his orchestra. If he does not bring them entirely under his influence, if he (because, like the conductor of a pot-house band, he himself is the first fiddle) does not subordinate himself as carefully to the requirements of the composition, the result will be worthless as a whole, no matter what individual talents may glitter out of it. What should we say if the first fiddle insisted on having a cadenza to himself in the course of every dozen ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... narrer channels, then more broad ones. By Fiddler's Elbow, named Heaven knows for what purpose, for no fiddle nor no elbow wuz in sight, nothin' but island and water and rock all crowned with green verdure. Mebby it dates back to the time we read of when the stars sung together, and if stars sing, why shouldn't islands dance, and if islands dance it stands to reason they must ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... a girl had a right to want was a good husband. She was quite satisfied with her own lot in that respect, but she was anxious enough on behalf of Kate. And when a young man did come, who might make matters so pleasant for them, Harry quarreled with him because he was a free-selector. "A free fiddle-stick!" she had once said to Kate—not, however, communicating to her innocent sister the ambition which was already filling her own bosom. "Harry does take things up so—as though people weren't to live, some in one ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... The idea existed in his own day, and is abroad yet, that "the devil guided his hand," for the thought that the devil is more powerful than God has ever been held by the majority of men—more especially if a fiddle is concerned. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... now; but as you have not, fortunately for me, and unfortunately for yourself, the dozen men at hand, I am to hold the fiddle while you play upon it, as I have seen a couple of negro ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... ground they seem to throw an almost straight track, neither splayed nor in-toed, and to set their feet down with a gentle forward pressure, rather like the Australian's stealthy footfall. Talking among themselves, or waiting for friends, they did not drum with their fingers, fiddle with their feet, or feel the hair on their faces. These things seem trivial enough, but when breeds are in the making everything is worth while. A man told me once—but I never tried the experiment—that each of our Four Races light and handle fire ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... frigate saw all this, and he beheld at the same time the clusters of happy sailors, sauntering with light step and pleasant faces up and down the waist and gangways; and he heard, too, the scraping of a fiddle on the forecastle, the shuffling, dancing feet, and the least notion of a jovial sea-song coming up from the gun-deck. Yes, it must have been a glorious pride with which that gallant officer gazed around him from the quarter-deck of the ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... said, was well-grown, and strong enough to work the land; but the father was old and frail and knew nothing about farming. He was a weaver by trade; had been a skilled workman on tapestries and upholstery materials. He had brought his fiddle with him, which would n't be of much use here, though he used to pick up money ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... old bard who shaped the character of Volker the Fiddler in the Nibelungen Lay, had a glowing vision of the power of music and of the violin. Players on the videl, or fiddle, abounded in the days of chivalry, but Volker, glorified by genius, rises superior to his fellow minstrels. The inspiring force of his martial strains renewed the courage of way-worn heroes. His gentle measures, pure and melodious as a prayer, ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... it, then, but for your majesty to call for a fiddle, and amuse yourself, like Nero, while your city is burning," ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... fiddle-stick, Lindsay," replied his wife. "Calamity! yes; perhaps you may have a headache to-morrow, for which the world must be prepared by a storm of thunder and lightning, and a shower of blood. The head that reels over night with an excess ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... projected twenty great poems, and finished only one or two; who spent his life in commenting upon Plato and studying botany, and in writing letters to his friend Mason; and who with a real touch of Pindar in his nature, was content to fiddle-faddle away his life. He died at last of a most unpoetical gout in the stomach, leaving behind him a cartload of memoranda, and fifty fragments of fine things; and yet I, a stranger from a far distant shore, was about to make a little ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... rapidly, imitating each time he repeats the verse some one action characteristic of the members of a band. For instance, the first time he may go through the pantomime of playing a fife; the next time, without any pause between, he may imitate the beating of a drum; the next, playing a fiddle, trombone, flute, cymbals, triangle, imitate the drum major, etc. All of the other players ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... only just left school, and he feels he can't laugh, and talk, and tell you stories about foreign countries, as this young fellow can, and having been so long accustomed to have you to himself, he naturally would not like the playing second fiddle ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... I had nearly died of starvation, when Jack Dawson gave me a footing on the stage, where I would play the part of a hero in one act, a lacquey in the second, and a merry Andrew in the third, scraping a tune on my fiddle to ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... 'Zat fust-rate 'otel, ze Fiddle House; ze landlord he maks var' big fuss over ze grand persons as come zere—var' big fuss. Mamselle GRANDROSE she var splendid danseuse, she 'ave ze grande attentions: Madame COLSON she grande chanteuse ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... expected to defer to the brother from the time she can walk or talk. In America this difference of training is constantly tending to the vanishing point. The American woman has never learned to play second fiddle. The American girl, as Mr. Henry James says, is rarely negative; she is either (and usually) a most charming success or (and exceptionally) a most disastrous failure. The pathetic army of ineffective spinsters clinging apologetically to the skirts of gentility is conspicuous by its absence in America. ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... upward on the "light fantastic toe." On that eve, such an impulse had inspired the limbs of the Mormon emigrants. Scarcely had the debris of the supper been removed, ere a space was cleared midway between the blazing fires; music swelled upon the air—the sounds of fiddle, horn, and clarionet—and half a score of couples, setting themselves en quadrille, commence treading time to the tune. Sufficiently bizarre was the exhibition—a dance of the true "broad-horn" ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... sleep very well last night; I never do in a strange bed. I feel a little indigestion, which one must expect at this time of the year. Carrie and I returned to Town in the evening. Lupin came in late. He said he enjoyed his Christmas, and added: "I feel as fit as a Lowther Arcade fiddle, and only require a little more 'oof' to feel as fit as a 500 pounds Stradivarius." I have long since given up trying to understand Lupin's slang, or asking him ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... right," said Burns, smiling back. "It's a land of musicians. The fiddle's a good ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... himself would undoubtedly have said, 'fit as a fiddle,' or 'right as rain.' His cheeks were rosy, his eyes sparkling. He had his arms akimbo, and his feet planted wide apart. His grey bowler rested on the back of his head, to display a sleek coating of hair plastered down over his brow. In his white satin tie shone a dubious ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... friends one sunny morning up the winding hill-path to the little gray chapel whose walls were hidden in ivy, and whose sorrowful Christ looked down through the open porch across the blue and hazy width of the river. Georges, the baker, whose fiddle made merry melody at all the village dances, played before them tunefully; little children, with their hands full of wood-flowers, ran before them; his old blind poodle smelt its way faithfully by their footsteps; their priest led the way upward with the cross held erect against ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... said Meggy, looking pityingly after him. "We let him try to help us because it seems to amuse him, but he really doesn't know how to work with his hands. His fingers were made for the fiddle." ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... ye want o' pay?" Solomon answered. "Ain't ye willin' to fight fer yer own liberty without bein' paid fer it? Ye been kicked an' robbed an' spit on, an' dragged eround by the heels, an' ye don't want to fight 'less somebody pays ye. What a dam' corn fiddle o' ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... officers resolved to celebrate the event by giving a ball. "This was an enterprise of a desperate character;—building a brig hundreds of miles from a ship-yard was a trifle to giving a ball in the wilderness. True, one fiddle and half a dozen officers were something; refreshments and a military ball-room might be hoped for; but where, pray, were the ladies to come from?" They would not think of dancing with each other, and ladies must be found. Vigorous efforts were made by sending boats ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... of the grief of the bookmaking host At the sound of the summons to go to the post— For down to the start with her thorough-bred air As fit as a fiddle pranced ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... you, I should say it was wearing your nerves to fiddle-strings. Ever take anything ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... old story—none the worse for being true—regarding a fine young Irish gentleman, who being asked if he could play the fiddle, replied he had no doubt he could, but he couldn't exactly say, for certain, because he had never tried. This is not inapplicable to my uncle and his fencing. He had never had a sword in his hand before, except once when he played Richard the Third at a private theatre, upon which occasion it was ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... passed into popular legend. When Sir Herbert Tree revived the play, he repaired the poet's omission by means of an inserted tableau. Even Shakespeare had not the hardihood to let Caesar fall without saying, "The Ides of March are come" and "Et tu, Brute!" Nero is bound to fiddle while Rome burns, or the audience will know the reason why.[4] Historic criticism will not hear of the "Thou hast conquered, Galilean!" which legend attributes to Julian the Apostate; yet Ibsen not only makes him say it, but may almost be said to find in the phrase the keynote of his world-historic ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... southern wall an old fiddle squeaked dolefully, and from beyond the stockade came the drowsy call of a bird deep ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... cleverness, had nearly disconcerted the poor boy; however, he was naturally resolute, and replied, "If I can do nothing else I can snuff candles, or deliver a message, or do anything that young lads do." "You can indeed?" "Yes, sir, and I can do more, I can play the fiddle and sing a good song." "A good song! I dare say—but d——d badly I'll answer for it." "Won't you give me a fair trial, sir?" "Fair trial indeed!" repeated the old man laughing, and walking on a step—"fair trial! a pretty trial truly—however," said he, turning ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... show that he meant Si Lee; "sounds like a Chinese laundry. I guess that's the only thing he isn't. He can do any mortal thing but get on in life. He's been a soldier an' a undertaker an' a cook He plays a fiddle he made himself; it's a rotten bad one, but it's away ahead of his playing. He stuffs birds—that Owl in the parlour is his doin'; he tempers razors, kin doctor a horse or fix up a watch, an' he does it in about the same way, too; bleeds a horse ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... hospitable and kind hearted de Robeck on Triad. The Navy are still divided. Some there are who would wish me to urge the Admiral to play first fiddle in the coming attack. This I will not do. I have neither the data nor the technical knowledge which would justify me to my ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... goggled him. He blurted finally, "Like hell you will. There's not enough money in the system to fiddle with the awarding of the Medal of Honor. There comes a point, Demming, where even your dough can't carry ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... he heard Bower's smooth, well rounded accents through the half-open door. "Nothing I should like better," he was saying. "Are you tired? If not, bring your friend to my rooms now. Although I have been in the train all night, I am fit as a fiddle." ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... gazed a moment in silence, and then rushed en masse upon the intruder, the landlord bringing up the rear, and sounding a charge upon his fiddle. But, as they drew nigh, the black cloak began to assume a familiar look; the hat, also, was an old acquaintance; and, these being removed, from beneath them shone forth the reverend face and form ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
