"Pedal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... way to learn to write is to sit down and write, just as the best way how to learn to ride a bicycle is to mount the wheel and pedal away. Write first about common things, subjects that are familiar to you. Try for instance an essay on a cat. Say something original about her. Don't say "she is very playful when young but becomes ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... wheels were: ten rims broken, seven tires punctured, twenty spokes, two bearings, a handle-bar, and a pedal broken. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 41, August 19, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... with his hands; but they won't do if you're depending on your head or your feet. If one end of you gets tangled, so does the other. That's why beer and cigarettes don't hurt piano players and picture painters. But you've got to cut 'em out if you want to do mental or pedal work. Now, have a cracker, and then we'll ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... acidities of evaporating perfume; the sugary sweetness of the blondes, the salt flavours of the brunettes, and this allegro movement of odours was interrupted suddenly by the garlicky andante, deep as the pedal notes of an organ, that the perspiring armpits of a ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... won't; we'll settle it now. You began it, and I want it finished now," I added, cracking the whip once more in the neighborhood of his pedal extremities. ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... farthing on the organ. Not a penny on the Father Smith, clear and sweet-voiced as a mountain brook. Oh," he cried, "it's too bad! The naturals are worn down to the quick, you can see the wood in the gutters of the keys, and the pedal-board's too short and all to pieces. Ah well! the organ's like me—old, neglected, worn-out. I wish I was dead." He had been talking half to himself, but he turned to Westray and said: "Forgive ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... with an average ear, however uncultivated, strike the C low down on a good piano-forte, keeping his foot on the loud pedal. At first he will hear nothing but the rich fundamental ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... placed an ear-piece over his head, giving me another connected with it. We listened eagerly. There were no foreign noises in the machine, no grating or thumping sounds, as he controlled the running off of the steel wire by means of a foot-pedal. ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... to low, with a great many shades between the extremes. With all these notes available there is no excuse for offending the ears and taste of your audience by continually using the one note. True, the reiteration of the same tone in music—as in pedal point on an organ composition—may be made the foundation of beauty, for the harmony weaving about that one basic tone produces a consistent, insistent quality not felt in pure variety of chord sequences. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... he has," retorted Joe. "But when it's that kind of opinion he ought to put on the soft pedal. Any one has a right to have a club foot or a hunched back or cross eyes, but he doesn't usually go ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... way in a clump of bushes, he drew out a bicycle and prepared to mount. He was in the act of driving the gear around with his foot for the purpose of getting the opposite pedal in position, when he heard the thud of a heavy body that landed lightly and evidently on its feet. He did not wait for more, but ran, with hands on the handles of his bicycle, until he was able to vault astride the saddle, catch the pedals, and start a spurt. Behind he could hear the quick ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... patter through the echoing aisles. There is a hush of expectation. A few quiet worshippers assemble; the western light grows low, and lights spring to life, one after another, in the misty choir. Then murmurs a voice, an Amen rises in full concord, and as it dies away the slumberous thunder of a pedal note rolls on the air; the casements whirr, the organ speaks. That fills, as it were, to the brim, as with some sweet and fragrant potion, the cup of beauty; and the dreaming, inquiring spirit sinks content into the flowing, the aspiring tide, satisfied ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... seemed as if it filled half the room. Then Frank spread a beauteous wine coloured cover all embroidered in pink roses with green leaves over it, and the stylish man opened a lid, sat down and spread out his hands. Frank said: "Soft pedal! Mighty soft!" So he smothered it down, and tried only enough to find that it had not been hurt coming, and then he went away on the wagon. Father and the boys gathered up every scrap, swept the walk, and put ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... frame hung on the chimneypiece; an easy chair covered in black leather on the hearth; a neat stool and bench, with vice, tools, and a mortar and pestle in the corner to the right. Near this bench stands a slender machine like a whip provided with a stand, a pedal, and an exaggerated winch. Recognising this as a dental drill, you shudder and look away to your left, where you can see another window, underneath which stands a writing table, with a blotter and a diary on it, and a chair. Next the writing table, towards the door, is a leather covered ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... Universalist gentleman, but was not ready for the opening. It is to fill the recess behind the spacious platform, and is described as containing pneumatic wind-chests throughout, and having an AEolian attachment. It is of three-manual compass, C.C.C. to C.4, 61 notes; and pedal compass, C.C.C. to F.30. The great organ has double open diapason (stopped bass), open diapason, dulciana, viola di gamba, doppel flute, hohl flute, octave, octave quint, superoctave, and trumpet,—61 pipes each. The swell organ has bourdon, open ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... appetite. Then Esther mounted the platform where the band had been seated, and played a last waltz, and a very last waltz, and "really the last waltz of all." The squire's son played a polka with two fingers, and a great deal of loud pedal, and the fun grew faster and more uproarious with every moment. Even Rosalind threw aside young ladylike affectations and pranced about without thinking of appearances, and when at last the others left ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... to the posterior angles of the pedal bone. They are flattened from side to side, and the portion that projects above the coronary cushion may be felt by pressing on the skin that covers it. The plantar cushion is a wedge-shaped piece of tissue formed by interlacing connective-tissue ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... weave cloth after freedom. Used to give a brooch (hank) or two to weave at night. I'se sometimes thread de needle for my Ma, or pick out de seed out de cotton, an' make it into rolls to spin. Sometimes I'd work de foot pedal for my Ma. Den dey'd warp de thread. If she want to dye it, she'd dye it. She'd get indigo—you know dat bush—an' boil it. It was kinder blue. It would make good cloth. Sometimes, de cloth wuz kinder strip, one strip of white, an' one of blue. I remember how dey'd ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... cooling water bathes the hot walls of the cylinders—a thing of nerves, and ganglions, and tireless muscles is panting eagerly at your service. You move this lever, you press your foot lightly on this pedal; the engine transfers its power to the wheels; you move. The carriage with you and your friends is borne at railway speed across continents. You can hurl yourself at sixty miles an hour along the great highroads, you can crawl like a worm through ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... intensified; and although naturally the decreasing amplitude of the vibration may in itself tend to create a diminuendo, yet it is possible to make up for this in some degree by causing the air-blast to increase in force, through the use of any suitable means, modified by an extra pedal as ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... why I think you're in the same jam, Judge," I said. "You'll look great running for office, with your opposition telling the public how a Psi foozled your vision. They'll stomp on the loud pedal about how you let her get away with it and wangle a 'Not Guilty' verdict when she was guilty ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett
... characteristic utterance of her old friend Mrs. Yellett. The matriarch had sustained a breakdown, and arrived, in consequence, when the dance was half over, but she was philosophical, as always, in the face of misfortune, and loudly attested her pleasure in the renowned pedal feats of ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... we heard him splitting wood in the cellar beneath, and indulging in some very hard language with his soft pedal down, Mrs. Keyser being the object of his objurgations. After a while he came into the parlor again, took his seat, wiped the moisture from his brow, put his handkerchief in his hat, his hat on the floor, ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... below to the accompaniment of a very soft, deep-throated drum. Vezin was very sensitive to music, knew about it intelligently, and had even ventured, unknown to his friends, upon the composition of quiet melodies with low-running chords which he played to himself with the soft pedal when no one was about. And this music floating up through the trees from an invisible and doubtless very picturesque band of the townspeople wholly charmed him. He recognised nothing that they played, and it sounded as ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... thinking. He was great in the manner in which he attunes nature to a human mood, in which he gives you the sunlight muffled, in some way, like the sunlight during a partial eclipse, and keys turbulence down to quietude, like the soft pedal that falls on a noisy street when ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... Brice," he said. "Good night. Keep hold of Bobby Burns's collar, till I'm well on my way. He may try to follow me. Good-by, old chap," he added, bending down and taking the collie's silken head affectionately between his hands. "You're a good dog, and a good pal. But put the soft pedal on the temperamental stuff, when you're near Simon Cameron. That's the best recipe for avoiding a scratched nose. By the way, Miss Standish, don't encourage him to roam around in the palmetto scrub, on your outings with him. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... did as they were bidden, and, as each heavy brogan was fitted to the pedal extremity of some one of the darkies, the newly-shod individual sprang to his feet, and commenced dancing about as if he were the happiest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... we don't drift the way we ought to," said Harry, pressing on his clutch pedal and ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... nuts—nuts extra. Suppose you lose a nut, and your pedal comes off; what you going to ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... pedal and bent over the wheel as if urging the machine to its utmost. Then there was jolt—a roar! a bang! Cora ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... was particularly interested by the circumstance, and Emma could not help being amused at her perseverance in dwelling on the subject; and having so much to ask and to say as to tone, touch, and pedal, totally unsuspicious of that wish of saying as little about it as possible, which she plainly read in the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... subdominant key, Where melody mellow-like Singing so 'cello-like Rises and falls in a wild ecstasy. Scarce is this finished When chords all diminished Break loose in a patter that comes down like rain, A pedal-point wonder Rivaling thunder. Now all is mad agitation again. Like laughter jolly Begins the finale; Again does the 'cello its tones seem to lend Diminuendo ad molto crescendo. Ah! Rubinstein only ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... automobile has nothing to do but watch his steering-wheel, and be ready to touch a pedal when he wishes to slow up or go faster or stop. If he makes a curve he does not have to bank his machine owing to his comparatively slow speed; but the aviator, traveling much faster through the air, must do this, bringing his airplane to ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... up lazily to the little group in the open window, as the smoke of their pipes and cigars floated up lazily to the ceiling above. The gentle hum of the traffic made a pleasant accompaniment to their conversation, as the holding down of a soft pedal fills in and supports dreamy organ music. But for the six young men in the bow window the room was untenanted, save for a waiter who had just brought some fresh drinks, and who was now clearing away empty ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... silence he asked again: "What was there before the world was born?" That was an easy one; so I said in a tone of finality: "There wasn't anything." Then I went on with my meditations, thinking I had used the soft pedal effectively. Silence reigned supreme for some minutes, and then was rudely shattered. His thumb flew from his mouth, and he laughed so lustily that he could be heard throughout the house. When his laughter had spent itself somewhat, I asked ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... at him with one quick turn of the head and made no answer. But she played the air over again—the girls sing it to this day over their household work at Farlingford to other words—with her foot on the soft pedal. The Marquis hummed it between his teeth at the other end ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... precipitated. 2. Tendered him a banquet. 3. At the witching hour of midnight. 4. The devouring element was checked. 5. Piscatorial sport. 6. Pedal extremities. 7. Fraught with tremendous possibilities. 8. Amid the plaudits of the multitude. 9. Caudal extremity. 10. Passed to his long home. 11. Dissected the Thanksgiving bird. 12. Presided at the organ. 13. Finger of scorn pointed at him. 14. Wended his way. 15. The green eyed monster. ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... been elongating my pedal extremity for the last month or so; I don't see why I should kick if he pulls his own for a while. You see," he says, "it's ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... vibrations, and we know no better than to make the whole series leading up to them. It is as though, in order to sound some little shrill octave of pipes in an organ, we are obliged to depress every key and every pedal, and to blow ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... or hand key-boards, and two pedals, or foot key-boards, command these several systems,—the solo organ, the choir organ, the swell organ, and the great organ, and the piano and forte pedal-organ. Twelve pairs of bellows, which it is intended to move by water-power, derived from the Cochituate reservoirs, furnish the breath which pours itself forth in music. Those beautiful effects, for which the organ is incomparable, the crescendo and diminuendo,—the gradual ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... he spent on Sweet Sorrow laid over anything that the town had ever seen for sadness. Put 'em through every stage of grief from the snuffles to the snorts. Doc always was a pretty noisy preacher, but he began work on that head with soft-pedal-tremolo-stop preaching and wound up with a peroration like a steamboat explosion. Started with his illustrations dying of consumption and other peaceful diseases, and finished up with railroad wrecks. He'd been at it two hours when he got through burying the victims of his last illustration, ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... Learned men would have considered it below their dignity to take any pains to verify his story, so sure were they of its impossibility. Galvani, however, had noticed that the maximum effect was produced when a metallic arc, of tin and copper, was brought into contact with the lumbar nerves and pedal extremities of a frog. Then the animal would be violently convulsed. The observer believed this came from a nervous fluid, and so he lost the advantage of his observations. It was reserved for ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... The word idled is the hopeless part of this criticism, or rather of this uncritical remark. To ask this kind of a man, who plays all the "choice gems from celebrated composers" literally, always literally, and always with the loud pedal, who plays all hymns, wrong notes, right notes, games, people, and jokes literally, and with the loud pedal, who will die literally and with the loud pedal—to ask this man to smile even faintly at Thoreau's humor is like casting a ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... calmly, "but not the way you did it. Kissing should be done upon the soft pedal mon ami, adagio, con amore. Your technique is rusty. Is it a wonder ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... suddenly stammered out something about the necessity of changing his boots, and limped off accordingly for that purpose. He was not gone more than five minutes, but in that time had contrived not only to supply his pedal deficiency, but also to take a drink by way of calming himself; and after the drink he took a turn with Miss Friskin, and whirled her about the room, till he knocked over two or three innocent bystanders, all of which tended very much to compose ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... platitude about the beautiful Indian summer weather and labored out a ponderous joke or two about such a bad-tempered man having such a good-looking wife—for which I despised them all. But I could see that even if my intrusion had put the soft pedal on their talk it had also left everything uncomfortably tentative and non-committal. For some reason or other this was a man's fight, one which had to be settled in a man's way. So I decided to retire with outward dignity even if with inward embarrassment. But I resented their ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... mention this to any one, Minnie. If it got out it might precipitate matters, and then the whole business would tumble down like a house of cards. As it is, I may be able to pull him out. But I've put the soft pedal ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... he came in, darkly suspicious, thought he had me all right, but he found a wreck that melted him. His wife sent me a bunch of violets next morning. For my part I don't like the Faculty for intimate friends," and Pellams played "Comrades" with the soft pedal down. ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... first, with the soft pedal down. The instrument had never known a strong masculine hand before, having been fumbled and friveled over by softly incompetent, feminine fingers. But presently it began to thrill under the passionate hand of its lover, and carried away ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... tears," and "breath," and "smiles," and "Eden zephyrs," "sighs of seraph lovers," and "lyres of slumbering cherubs," dancing away to "the Pedal Harp!" How strange it is that Thomson, in his stanzas on the AEolian lyre (see the 'Castle of Indolence'), never dreamed of such things, but left all these prettinesses to the last ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... can tell it,—that what we wanted was two crescendos meeting somewhere near the middle; a crescendo passing into a diminuendo from whichever end you moved to the other—a swell. We saw that our loud-pedal effect should come upon "Middle Hall." So there, on its lucky bit of Greek porch, we bestowed the purple wistaria for spring, and for late summer that fragrant snowdrift, the clematis paniculata, so adapted as to festoon and chaplet, ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... at him as he started to speak, and Jack's finger shot out to the forbidden wheel on the instant. Elizabeth saw it at a point when she could not control the pedal with her foot. Mother love brought a scream to her lips, and to save the child she gave him a shove with her hand. Jack fell on the floor in a heap, striking his head on the bedpost as he ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... abandoned for another. If the right hand thrusts the flute, it is the duty of the left to see that the alternate and the limiting threads of the warp are properly lifted. First comes a pressure of the foot on a long, lath-like pedal which is attached to the bar holding in turn the loops which ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... that Oncle Jazon overreached himself. He was so delighted at Kenton's luck that he broke forth giggling and thereby drew against his own ribs a considerable improvement of Long-Hair's pedal applications. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... had bulldozed out for it years before, the first year they had arrived on Baron IV. Slowly Pete turned Mario's words over in his mind, allowing himself to worry a little. There had been rumors of trouble back on Earth, persistent rumors he had taken care to soft-pedal, as mayor of the colony. There were other things, too, like the old newspapers and magazines that had been brought in by the lad from Baron II, and the rare radio message they could pick up through their atmospheric disturbance. Maybe something was going wrong back home. But ...
— Image of the Gods • Alan Edward Nourse
... then, but very clearly, very concisely, the Senior Surgeon called out to the White Linen Nurse just how every lever, every pedal should be manipulated to start ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... her mattress, and a rose-leaf her coverlid. There she lay at night, but in the day-time she used to play about on the table; here the woman had put a bowl, surrounded by a ring of flowers, with their stalks in water, in the middle of which floated a great tulip pedal, and on this Thumbelina sat, and sailed from one side of the bowl to the other, rowing herself with two white horse-hairs for oars. It was such a pretty sight! She could sing, too, with a voice more soft and sweet than ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... one cried: "Halt!" in tones that were meant to be stern, but which seemed to Tom, to tremble somewhat. The young inventor was so surprised that he did not open the gasolene throttle, nor switch on his spark. As a consequence his motor-cycle lost momentum, and he had to take one foot from the pedal and touch the ground, to prevent himself ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... be absolutely erect, but leaning slightly forward, so as to allow the weight to be distributed between the handle-bars, the pedal, and the saddle. This slightly inclined attitude also maintains the proper and harmonious relation of the internal organs, so that the bowels do not crowd down on ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... that this one wants a little "animation," that one "sings out of tune." Miss So-and-So plays the piano "with faultless manipulation, the only drawback being a slight preponderance of pedal," and so on. He generally has as good an ear for music as a parish priest who only knew two tunes: one of which was "God save the Queen," and the other wasn't. And once, when a brass band was playing a selection ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... the cloud of steam risen from the bath, when Mackay once more gripped the hoe, and moving to his grindstone placed his foot on the pedal and set the edge of the hoe against the whirling stone. The sparks flew high. A murmur came from the Uganda chiefs ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... starter on his bug; he had in his embarrassment to get out and crank. He did it quietly, not looking at her. She could see that his hand trembled on the crank. When he did glance at her, as he drove off, it was apologetically, miserably. His foot was shaking on the clutch pedal. ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... with a sigh, "they're just about thinking of waking up. And look at the time I'm routed out of bed! Say, Hartmann, I wish you would give Oom Peter a hint to oil his shoes. Every morning he wakes me up at five o'clock, creaking down the stairs. It's a sort of pedal alarm clock. Creak! Creak! Creak!—Ach, Gott! Even yet I can hardly keep one eye open. If ever it pleases Providence to give me my heritage, the first thing I'll do will be to sleep till noon. And then ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... on the starting pedal energetically. Current from the storage batteries flowed through the motor, saturating it almost instantly. Ned's foot was pressed upon the cut-out lever, and the resultant roar from the engines precluded absolutely the possibility ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... to try it so until to-night, when Dwight was gone. Her long wrist was curved high, her thin hand pressed and fingered awkwardly, and at her mistakes her head dipped and strove to make all right. Her foot continuously touched the loud pedal—the blurred sound seemed to accomplish more. So she played "How Can I Leave Thee," and they managed to sing it. So she played "Long, Long Ago," and "Little Nell of Narragansett Bay." Beyond open doors, Mrs. Bett listened, sang, it ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... the control pedal at his foot and the small ship shot out into the black void of space. Ahead of them, thousands of yards away, he could see the gleaming ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... Solo, and Pedal Organ (except the two stops Bourdon and Bass Flute of the last) are placed in four bays of the north triforium of the nave; the choir organ and the two Pedal stops are in the first bay of the north aisle, and the Console in the second bay behind the stalls. ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... wrote admitting that much which he did not like on paper seemed in place when the work was sung, and some of it "moved me much." Some time afterwards he played some of his music to Wagner, who found it muddled, as if the sustaining pedal was held down all the time—and I have no doubt it was. Another gentleman who saw the score was Hanslick, then a young man looking around for some one to attach himself to—a peripatetic barnacle. Later, he found Brahms, as all the world soon found out, and revised his early notions of ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... side of the deep gully, across the road that was slippery with snow, slid Mr. Brown's automobile. Bunny and Sue's father's hands held tightly to the steering wheel, and he pressed his foot down hard on the brake pedal. ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... head. "Put those under your ears dear," she ordered, "my pillows aren't unpacked yet and you may find Neddie's last year tacks in that burlap. There now, you look almost human. But the wistful whimper lingers. Jane, what has happened? You are simply smothered in the soft pedal. Tell your Judy all ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... side. Each press performed a different piece of work—cut wick holes, fitted or clamped parts together, shaped the cones, and what not, but with only two general types of operation so far as the foot part went. One type took a long, firm, forward swing on the pedal; the other a short, hard, downward "kick." With the end of the pressure the steel die cut through the thin brass cone, or completed whatever the job was. As the pedal and foot swung back to position the girl removed the brass part, dropping it in a large box at her right. She ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... interesting and even deeply moving: the relics of Enrico Toti, an artist who, having only one leg, joined the Bersaglieri Ciclisti as a volunteer at the beginning of the war, and rode up mountain tracks on a bicycle with a single pedal, and died, after acts of the greatest heroism and after sustaining for many hours grave wounds, crying with his last breath "Avanti Savoia!", upon whose dead body and brave departed spirit was conferred the most ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... motion. Rick dropped into the seat next to Scotty and his pal pushed the gas pedal all the way. The nose lifted and the stern ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... pink-and-white chaps, Jarvis was, with nice blue eyes and ashes-of-roses hair. There was a lot of him, and it was well placed. He had sort of a soothing, easy way of talking, too, like a church organ with the soft pedal on. ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... voice like that," he said, putting on the husky conversational pedal, "I was naturally trusted. And I knew what ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... “He raised his voice in that act! Why, it’s a scene to be played with the soft pedal down! This is the way it should be done!” Dropping into a chair in the middle of the room my host began miming the gestures and expression of Robespierre as the phantoms (which, after all, are but the figments of an over-wrought brain) gather ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... fat leg over the backbone and put a ponderous foot on one pedal, while the drops of perspiration began to stand out on ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... age are rendered possible by being taken on a drone or pedal of cant, common form and conventionality. This drone is, as it were, the flour and ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... according to the thickness and quality of the material before commencing to hammer it. The hammer weighs 15 lb., and has a stroke variable from 21/2 in. to 91/2 in., and makes 250 blows per minute. The driving shaft, A, is fitted with fast and loose belt pulleys, the belt fork being connected to the pedal, P, which when pressed down by the foot of the workman, slides the driving belt on to the fast pulley and starts the hammer; when the foot is taken off the pedal, the weight on the latter moves the belt quickly on to the loose pulley, and the hammer is stopped. The flywheel on ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... observant spinster to do with that quaintly ironic ruffler, that romantic cynic, that rowdy Don Quixote, that impossible Enriquez? Presently she ceased playing. Her slim, narrow slipper, revealing her thin ankle, remained upon the pedal; her delicate fingers were resting idly on the keys; her head was slightly thrown back, and her narrow eyebrows prettily knit toward the ceiling ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... to the piano, and began softly playing, with the hush-pedal on. The two women drew close around her. Suddenly she released the pedal, and lifted her hands from the keys, as if they burned her. One string was still faintly singing which she had not touched, the string of the key ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... of the Barons" was a term applied to an implement used by the ancient shoemakers. The pedal members of the old English barons were of a peculiar aristocratic conformation, and lasts were made expressly for them. This is a curious ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... it? Never fear," added Pa, in a good-humored voice, "that sort of thing won't happen to any of you Woolley-legs; a good Irish stew is better than a kick of the pedal, eh?" ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... all who may venture to speak after her. She will play various kinds of music upon the piano with a uniform vigour that would serve well for the beating of carpets, and will express much scorn for the feeble beings who use the soft pedal, or indulge in the luxury ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 29, 1890 • Various
... be remembered, did not speak English; hence it was that he resorted to the expressive language of manual (and pedal) signs.] ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... its face value, so this natural outlet for his irritation was denied him. Instead, therefore, of replying in words, he merely glanced sourly at the half-open door, through which issued the whirring noise of the little dressmaker at her sewing. Now and then, in the intervals when her feet left the pedal, she could be heard humming softly to herself with her mouth ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... follow his course after he left the field he would soon have known that Frank was rather heading for town than intending to pedal in the direction of his own house, which was situated on the ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... and the masterwork appears in the orchestration which surrounds it; at times even this maintains an archaic simplicity. Thus in the coda of the vivace of the Seventh Symphony, a simple melody is reiterated eleven times in succession, with no other orchestration than the pedal-point on E by the ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... by sight an' started in to give you the tip to put the soft pedal on the wiggle stuff, when, zowie! I guess you didn't reach out an' soak me—a cop!" He tapped the bandage upon ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... the young lady who played it was a pupil of that celebrated Italian musician. When the male portion of the guests entered, the air was being played in the bass with a great deal of power (that is, the loud pedal was down), and with a perpetual rattle of treble notes, trying with all their shrill might to drown ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... up early this morning, and, as the road out there seemed so hard and firm, the snow being packed down solid, I just jumped on my wheel, and took a little run up in that direction. It wasn't so easy, once I struck in on that side road, but I managed to pedal along somehow." ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... and Repairing the Reed Organ. Cleaning. Stops. Examination. Sticking Keys. Leaks. Pedal Defects. Sympathetic Vibrations. Tuning, ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... smiled a little and immediately burst into energetic melody. There was a great deal more clapping when she finished, and when this was over, as an encore, she gave a piece which imitated the sea; there were little trills to represent the lapping waves and thundering chords, with the loud pedal down, to suggest a storm. After this a gentleman sang a song called Bid me Good-bye, and as an encore obliged with Sing me to Sleep. The audience measured their enthusiasm with a nice discrimination. Everyone was applauded till he gave an encore, and so that there might ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... in the distance, where some unlucky burgher had found his way into a group of students and was being made the butt of a good-humoured jest. And beneath the high, laughing tones, the perpetual hum of a thousand talking voices neither rose nor fell, but droned unceasingly like the long pedal in a fugue, whose full deep note stands still amidst the strife of moving sounds, as the sun stood while the battle was fought out in Ajalon. The very life of the multitude seemed to produce a sound of its own, in the breathing of a thousand pairs of strong ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... several important innovations in writing for bass brass instruments, requires an octave bass trombone in B flat; an octave lower than the tenor one, in the "Nibelungen." The fundamental tones of the trombone are called "pedal" notes. They are difficult to get and less valuable than harmonics because, in all wind instruments, notes produced by overblowing are richer than the fundamental notes in tone quality. Valve trombones do not, however, find favor, the defects of intonation ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... Polly's character came out in his reply. "Not much," he said. "Pedal got a bit loose in Stamton, O' Man. Couldn't ride it. So I looked up ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... 'companies' where you sat around and were bored until somebody proposed playing 'The Prince of Paris Lost his Hat' or some game like that. When the old folks went to bed, our hostess would find a pack of cards—authors, most likely—or play a waltz on the soft pedal for two couples to dance. Wholesome but ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... surging and rolling together; can only particularize them by race, tribe, and language. Nationalities from the uttermost parts of Asia here meet those from the Atlantic edge of Europe for the first and last time. By noon the sound becomes a loud droning, uninterrupted and breve-like, as from the pedal of an organ ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... and its peculiar registers; the Teutonic muse alone can execute these solemn airs which must be played with the soft pedal. For more than an hour Gilbert exhausted himself in vain attempts, and at last, disheartened, he contented himself with reciting aloud the poem which he despaired of translating. He uttered the first part with the fire of enthusiasm; but his voice fell as he pronounced ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... chirps, for we have disturbed the young red-wings down in the sedge who are taking their first lessons in flying. The catbird's nest, with four greenish-blue eggs, is in a wild gooseberry bush and the catbird is up among the shad-trees feasting on the ripening June berries. The gentle notes of soft pedal music come floating sweetly down. Did you ever stop long enough to listen to the full song of the catbird? First, the brilliant, ringing strains, often softening into a subdued sympathetic melody, and then, just as the music seems ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... when it happened. "Get out of the way!" a voice shrieked "out of the way, out of the way, OUT OF THE WAY!" Her heart lurched, her stomach twisted convulsively, and there was a brassy taste in her mouth. Instinctively, she stamped down on the brake pedal, swerved sharply into the outer lane. By the time she had topped the rise, she was going a cautious 50 miles an hour and hugging the far edge of the freeway. Then, and only then, she heard the squeal of agonized tires and saw the cumbersome semitrailer coming from the ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant
... second time. He was still able to sustain, if it were necessary, a quavering, imperfect phrase. But John delivered the second repetition without a mistake, singing easily from the chest. The master put his foot upon the soft pedal. Nobody was watching him. Had any one done so, he would have seen the perspiration break upon the musician's forehead. The piano purred its accompaniment. Then, in the middle of the phrase, the master lifted his hands and held ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... But these shoes were only for show. The ladies walked painfully about in the unaccustomed leather. They seemed to have innumerable corns, to wrestle with bunions huge and dire, to suffer from unknown pedal infirmities. Outside the town the ladies put on their shoes. Outside the town, after the fair, they took them off again, sitting on the roadside, stripping their shapely feet, bundling the obnoxious, crippling abominations into Isabella-colour handkerchiefs, which they tucked under their arms ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... matters. The girl had promised nothing positive for the future. She kept him on the brittle edge of nervous expectation. The opposition of the dancer had been successfully met by threats of dismissal; Hugh continued to lose flesh and gain in vocal and pedal agility. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... tiny little things like leeches," responded Kate. "I believe they develop into mosquitoes later on, bad 'cess to them. What Mr. Nash would call my pedal extremities are simply being devoured by the brutes. Ugh! I believe the bottom of this creek is all soft mud. We may have to drive—no, as I'm a living, wiggler-haunted human being, here's firm bottom. Hurrah, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... with lovely fancies. They do their work so well as to entrance, not only Faust, but all who hear their strains, The instrumental ballet is a fairy waltz, a filmy musical fabric, seemingly woven of moonbeams and dewy cobwebs, over a pedal-point on the muted violoncellos, ending with drum taps and harmonics from the harp—one of the daintiest and most original orchestral effects imaginable. So dainty is the device, indeed, that one would think that nothing could come between it and the ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Shakspear's delineations of aerial beings, while others denied it. By no violent transition, Ariel and his songs were introduced, and a lady, celebrated for her musical skill, was solicited to accompany her pedal harp with the song of "Five fathom deep thy father lies"... She was known to have set, for her favourite instrument, ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... represented on Greek vases of a turtle shell with side pieces like horns, an instrument having but little effective resonance. The later form was the so-called cithara, the most common shape of which is that made familiar to all by the pedal piece of the square pianoforte. This instrument rarely had more than six strings, and as it had no finger board it could have had no more notes than strings. Chappell, the English historian, attempts to demonstrate that certain ones of these ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... you were working the pedal and I was sailing around very fast," said Raggedy Andy, "and all of a sudden ...
— Raggedy Andy Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... these things! "That she has nothing left for anything else? Of course she hasn't. To whom do you say it? High-strung? Don't I spend my life, for them, jamming down the pedal? I see moreover how it has ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... right of hospitality about half to three-quarters of an hour too soon. Out of the tail of my eye I sees him reaching in his pocket for the educated pasteboards and I gives him the high sign to soft pedal, but he don't mind me. Out ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... the gate repeat the gesture; then a big bicycle corps, four abreast, guns on their backs, slid round the corner and came gliding down the hill. There was not a sound, not the rattle of a chain or a pedal. ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... broken by only two or three old engravings in ancient frames. Lucette, under her mother's direction, was putting the finishing touches to a piece of needle work, and, on the rather worn-out piano, I was playing, with the soft pedal down, one of Rameau's dances; the old-fashioned music sounded exquisite to me as it mingled with the noise of ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... Colour. This desideratum of varied tone-colour is sought even by instrumentalists. Nay, the instrument itself is sometimes constructed with this object in view. Witness the invention of the "soft" pedal, which is intended not solely to reduce the intensity of tone in the pianoforte—that may be accomplished by a modification of force in striking the note—but to give the tones a darker, more sombre quality, or colour. To vary the tone-colour, a violinist or 'cellist draws ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... morning, and the most beautiful melody of bells I ever heard is toning through the air. They are the bells of S. Michael's church, and I am told that the musician plays them by a set of pedal keys, and works himself into a mighty heat and flurry in the operation. But we cannot think of the wild manner and mad motions of the player in connection with those beautiful sounds, so clear and melodious; that half plaintive music so sweetly measured. They ring thus every morning, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... At that time a few cycling beginners used the circle for practice, and their alarming performances were gradually depleting the number of equestrians. One of these novices came down the hill, having an arm round the neck of his instructor, and one leg on the pedal, the other in mid air. He was unable to steer the machine, and as I cantered up, the performer's hat, which had been over one eye, fell off, disclosing the features of Professor Bryce. The next moment the machine, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... some serious damage is likely enough to occur within an incredibly short space of time, particularly if he does not take into account the tremendous force and power which he controls merely by the moving of a tiny lever, or by the depressing of a pedal. ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... When he approached a passing vessel he presented the illusion, not of walking, but of sitting on the water, for the float was almost completely submerged. If it became necessary for his wife to attend him on his marine excursions, she was towed behind, and used her own pedal power. Possibly this primitive raft is the pathetic expression of man's first struggle against ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... loom is sitting, Throws his shuttle to and fro; Foot and treadle, Hand and pedal, Upward, downward, Hither, thither, How the weaver makes them go! As the weaver wills they go. Up and down the web is plying, And across the woof is flying; What a rattling! What a battling! What a shuffling! What a ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... door between her and me before she could reply to that, and the next instant I had my bicycle on the road and my leg over the saddle, and was hesitating before I put my foot to the pedal. What did Nance Maguire want of me? Had she any news of Maisie? It was odd that she should come down—had I better not ride up the town and see her? But I reflected that if she had any news—which was highly improbable—she would give it to the police; ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... not content with refusing to be ruled, must needs set up as a ruler, and manifested a determination to keep, not only his sisters, but his governess in order, by violent manual and pedal applications; and, as he was a tall, strong boy of his years, this occasioned no trifling inconvenience. A few sound boxes on the ear, on such occasions, might have settled the matter easily enough: but as, in that case, he might make up some story to his ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... verse may drop its initial short syllable, and still be iambic, still be measured as before, is not only to take a single long syllable for a foot, not only to recognize a pedal caesura at the beginning of each line, but utterly to destroy the only principles on which iambics and trochaics can be discriminated. Yet Hiley, of Leeds, and Wells, of Andover, while they are careful to treat separately of these two orders of verse, not only teach that any order may take ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... before a small steel stake, having a cavity, into which one half of the intended head will fit; immediately above is a steel die, having a corresponding cavity for the other half of the head: this latter die can be raised by a pedal moved by the foot. The weight of the hammer is from seven to ten pounds, and it falls through a very small space, perhaps from one to two inches. The cavities in the centre of these dies are connected with the edge of a small groove, to admit of the body of the pin, which is thus prevented ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... and lay flat on the pedal; but immediately there arose such a rumbling in the box that all the fishes hastily ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... divans and prayer rugs, on which nobody ever prayed. Lord Reggie and Mr. Amarinth both played the piano in an easy, tentative sort of way, making excess of expression do duty for deficiencies of execution, and covering occasional mistakes with the soft rather than with the loud pedal. Lord Reggie played a hymn of his own, which he frankly acknowledged was very beautiful. He described it as a hymn without words, which, he said softly, all hymns should be. There was archaic simplicity, ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... and white diagonals and by the little sentry hut half hidden behind the other car that it marked the frontier. A man with a rifle on his shoulder stood there. They drew up to it fast, but his foot automatically eased up on the floorboard pedal until ...
— Double Take • Richard Wilson
... man a pedal impulse—in plain language, he wants to kick something. Rage flows from the toes as freely as gunpowder ran out of the great Panjandrum's boots when he played "Catch who catch can" on the immortal occasion of the gardener's ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... convenience of work the blowpipe should be mounted on a special table connected up with cylindrical bellows operated by a pedal. That figured (Fig. 12) is made by mounting a teak top 60 cm. square upon the uprights of an enclosed double-action concertina bellows (Enfer's) and provided with ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... isna," replied Mr. Goyte. He spoke very slowly and deliberately, quietly, as if the soft pedal were always down in his voice. He looked at his daughter-in-law as she crouched, flushed and dark, before the peacock, which would lay its long blue neck for a moment along her lap. In spite of his grey moustache and thin grey hair, the elderly man had a face young and almost delicate, ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... walked his head went back on his shoulders, and his hat went back on his head; his long arms dangled, pendulum-like, by his sides, while his lanky legs, dragging along anyhow, were ever lagging behind one another. But when he opened the piano and put hands and feet to keys and pedal, he was not the same individual. He would turn on nerve and muscle-power, and would hurl avalanches of music and torrents of notes at his audience till he, in his turn, was overwhelmed with thunders of applause. And those were the days, we must remember, ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... see her turn pale, and clutch the banisters; he was racing out of the hotel. He ran to the coach-house, wheeled his bicycle into the courtyard, mounted, and rode down the street. He went at a moderate pace through the town, but once on the Corniche road, he drove the machine as hard as he could pedal. ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... slid on to the music-stool again, put his foot on the soft pedal, lightly touched the familiar chords, and began ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie |
