"Tune" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tune he did play and sing, Binnorie, O Binnorie! Was, 'Farewell to my father the king,' By the bonny mill-dams ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... of the singing started it too low. The tune began high, and ran down to the bottom of the scale by the time it reached the end of the first line. When the congregation had got two-thirds of the way down, they found they could go no farther, not even those who sang bass. The leader, ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... Forrest, although nearly within rifle shot, did not charge. Their bugle sang again, but Dick did not know what the tune meant. Then they melted away into the deep forest on their flank, and some of the troop thought they had gone, daunted by the ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... authorities, that the cuckoo was a very odd kind of bird which sung only at certain seasons of the year, and assured them that whenever the proper time arrived, all the cuckoos they had purchased would once again "tune their melodious throats." After this it would only be fair to allow the Chinese sometimes to trick the European purchaser with a wooden ham instead ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... and, being dissatisfied with their work, threw hand-grenades into the mansion and applied a lighted torch to the concierge's humble dwelling. They were very merry and sang lustily—the concierge thought they had been drinking; they sang thus, "comme ca!" and the concierge mournfully hummed a tune, a tune he had never heard before, but which he would remember all his life. I recognised it. It was ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... at her chapels, thus giving Horace Walpole occasion to remark, "It will be a great acquisition to the Methodist sect to have their hymns set by Giardini." Tomaso Giordani, another Italian, composed at her request the old familiar tune "Cambridge," for the hymn in the Countess's book commencing, "Father, how ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... own natural voice, so some of our opposites, who have been but erst prating somewhat of the language of Canaan against us, finding themselves pressed and perplexed in such a way of reasoning, have quickly changed their tune, and begin to talk to us of warrants of another nature nor of the word of God. I am therefore to digress with them. And I perceive, ere we know well where they are, they are passed from Scripture to custom. For if ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... drops of tune, from oceans infinite Of melody, sipped off the thin-edged wave And trickling down the bank, discourses brave Of serious matter that no man may guess, Good-fellow greetings, cries of light distress; All these but ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... Lucia because she loved his nephew so, his health improved, as well as his temper. He could even tolerate "Red's" harmonica; in fact, he often begged him to play it when the latter came over to midday dinner, and his legs had so improved that he could actually jiggle them to some merry tune. ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... and some good rough Soul who works the Boat and chews his Tobacco in peace. An Aldbro' Sailor talking of my Boat said—'She go like a Wiolin, she do!' What a pretty Conceit, is it not? As the Bow slides over the Strings in a liquid Tune. Another man was talking yesterday of a great Storm: 'and, in a moment, all as ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... at the restaurant Susan seated herself in a quiet corner and proceeded to learn the words of the song and to get some notion of the tune. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... down the stairs with Charles Merchant beside her; he kept looking straight ahead, biting his lips, and this made her wonder. She began to hum a gay little tune, and the first bar made the man start. So she kept on. She was bubbling with apparent good nature when Charles, all gravity, opened the ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... refused to marry him why don't I go home?" Denham thought to himself. But he went on walking beside Rodney, and for a time they did not speak, though Rodney hummed snatches of a tune out of an opera by Mozart. A feeling of contempt and liking combine very naturally in the mind of one to whom another has just spoken unpremeditatedly, revealing rather more of his private feelings than he intended to reveal. ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Bayard with the spur, and the good horse started at a gallop—a rollicking gallop and in the very tune of his master's mood; and if all Port Nassau had not been at its devotions, the chins of its burghers might have tilted themselves in wonder at the apparition—a Centaur, enlarged upon ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... not get over the wonder of having him there. Strangely, he had not changed. Even his speech had the old neighborly tang. Whether he had returned to it as to a never-forgotten tune, she could not know; but it was in her ears, awakening touches of old harmony. Yet these things she dared not dwell upon. She put them aside in haste to live with after he ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... doubt your voluntary statement, Hawkehurst," answered the stockbroker. "No; I shall not withdraw my confidence. And if your researches should ultimately lead to the advancement of my stepdaughter, there will be only poetical justice in your profiting more or less by that advancement. In the mean tune we cannot take matters too quietly. I am not a sanguine person, and I know how many hearts have been broken by the High Court of Chancery. This grand discovery of yours may result in nothing but disappointment and waste of money, or it may end as pleasantly as my brother and you seem to expect. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... water! Like King Richard's pierced coffin, once in, it soon found the way to the bottom. Uncle John could scarcely restrain his inclination to laugh aloud; however, he contrived to assume an air of indifference, and whistled part of a tune. ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... which I drew from its delicious melodies did me good by showing me a source of pleasure to which I was as susceptible as ever. The good, however, was much impaired by the thought that the pleasure of music (as is quite true of such pleasure as this was, that of mere tune) fades with familiarity, and requires either to be revived by intermittence, or fed by continual novelty. And it is very characteristic both of my then state, and of the general tone of my mind at this period of my life, that I was seriously tormented by the thought of the exhaustibility ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... memories, it quickens association, it opens and unites the hearts of men more surely than any other appeal can, and in this respect it aids recruiting perhaps more than any other agency. I wonder whether I should say this—the tune that it employs and the words that go with that tune are sometimes very remote from heroism or devotion, but the magic and the compelling power is in them, and it makes men's souls realize certain truths ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... is called, a hydroplane; because it can be navigated on the water as well as in the air. And if you'll please stand back, so as not to bother with anything, because the least handling may put the whole machine out of tune, I'll be glad to tell you something about how we manage to use ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... from some children's gaiety; a dance most likely, for the lovely little creature was daintily decked out in soft, snowy muslin; and her fairy feet tripped along by her nurse's side as if to the measure of some tune she ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... is a branch of our profession which I have for some time renounced—my fortunes have put me out of tune for jesting." ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... sung.[31] At this period he often resorted, in his botanical rambles, to the wooded and sequestered banks of the Kelvin, about two miles north-west of Glasgow;[32] and in consequence, he was led to compose for his favourite tune the words of his beautiful song, "Kelvin Grove." "The Harp of Renfrewshire" was now in the course of being published, in sixpence numbers, under the editorship of his college friend and professional brother, John Sim, and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... I should say they are set up by the vast number of whirling particles of which its encircling rings are composed. The wave form propagated is of a characteristic that is in tune with those portions of the brain which control the savage impulses. We may certainly expect to find superstition-ridden ignorance and all manner of vice prevalent in the ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... he declares it "a suspicion only that the blacks are inferior in the endowments of body or mind,"—that "in memory they are equal to the whites,"—that "in music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for time and tune." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... sweet, sweet 's her voice, As a low warbled tune; And sweet, sweet her lips, Like the rose-bud of June. She looks to sea, and sighs, As the foamy wave flows, And treads on men's strength, As ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... good variety, that I cannot be more pleased almost in a comedy. Only the seamen's part a little too tedious." Finally, Pepys praised the richly-embellished Tempest without any sort of reserve, and took "pleasure to learn the tune of the seamen's dance." ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... in a ring and sang all the songs we knew. None of us were trained,—we had never seen a sheet of music—but some of us could sing any tune that was ever heard in Polotzk, and the others followed half a bar behind. I enjoyed these singing-bees. We had Hebrew songs and Jewish and Russian; solemn songs, and jolly songs, and songs unfit for children, but harmless enough on our innocent lips. I enjoyed the play of moods in these songs—I ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon. This sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like springing flowers— For this, for everything, we are out of tune. It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be A pagan suckled in a creed outworn, So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, Or hear old ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... most part, were not Prussian, but miscellaneous Foreign spirits of uncertain fealty: roving fellows, of a fighting turn, attracted by Friedrich's fame, and under a Captain who had the art of keeping them in tune. Wunsch has been soldiering, in a diligent though dim miscellaneous way, these five-and-twenty years; fought in the old Turk Wars, under disastrous Seckendorf,—Wunsch a poor young Wurtemberg ensign, visibly busy there (1737-1739)) as was this same ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... strikes a stranger most peculiarly is their style of singing. They run on, in a low, guttural, monotonous sort of chant, their lips and tongues seeming hardly to move, and the sounds modulated solely in the throat. There is very little tune to it, and the words, so far as I could learn, are extempore. They sing about persons and things which are around them, and adopt this method when they do not wish to be understood by any but themselves; and it is ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... natural indications of a peculiar consciousness and peculiar feelings—invented and celebrated, a higher choir, as it were, which in its own lofty language answers to the appealing voice. But not only, so to speak; for as such a discourse is music without tune or measure, so there is also a music among the Holy, which may be called discourse without words, the most distinct and expressive utterance of the inward man. The Muse of Harmony, whose intimate relation with religion, although ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... that required the greatest armies for their defence, were taken entirely under his own command. Over these he assumed the government for ten years only, leaving the people still in hopes of regaining their ancient freedom; at the same tune, however, laying his measures so well, that his government was renewed every ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... a great taste for music. There was one tune in particular that he was very fond of; and, when it was played on the piano, he would begin to make a whining noise, which would grow louder and louder, until it ended in sharp, quick barks, keeping time with the music. Walter ...
— The Nursery, April 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... a chime, Out of tune, out of time. Oh, the jangling and the wrangling Of ten thousand ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... run her head into a swarm o' bees. I ain't so prejudiced ez wut you spose: I hev thought England was the best thet goes; Remember, (no, you can't,) when I was reared, God save the King was all the tune you heerd: But it's enough to turn Wachuset roun', This stumpin' fellers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... guitar. Isn't she a beaut? Dad sent it to me for a birthday present!" Pole sat down on the bed, struck a few chords, and started a tune. "This place hasn't been stirred by any real music this year and I decided to ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... swallow-tail coat (with an overgrown chrysanthemum in the buttonhole), a red necktie, and a pink-and-silver liberty cap of tissue-paper. He was scraping a fiddle "like old times come again," and the tune he played was, "Oh, my Liza, po' gal!" My feet shuffled to it ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... consider a Horse as a piece of animated machinery (for it is in reality no other); let us set this piece of machinery going, and strain the works of it; if the works are are** not analogous to each other, will not the weakest give way? and when that happens, will not the whole be out of tune? But if we suppose a piece of machinery, whose works bear a true proportion and analogy to each other, these will bear a greater stress, will act with greater force, more regularity and continuance of time. If it be ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer
... barrister, are, I think, a wholesome corrective of that which is too soft in our conventional thought about our Saviour. Despite a false or partial note here and there, they are nearer to Him than the thought underlying the first verse of the hymn—a great favourite among the men owing to its tune—"Jesu, Lover of my Soul." At any rate they suggest the right association of ideas in which our Lord should live in the mind of ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... tune? (Goes over to the piano.) It is all the rage now. I heard it all over Germany. (Begins to play and sing, but breaks off suddenly.) I will go and fetch the music, while I think of it! (Goes into his room and comes out again with the music. Sits down and begins to play and sing again. ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... back a little, and kicked his left foot with his right. Then pushed forward by the eager Terror, to whom Erebus had chanted the song before lunch, he stepped forward and in his dear shrill treble, sang, slightly out of tune: ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... "should have rested upon his shoulders was carried before him on the pommel of the saddle. His terror rose to desperation. He rode for death and life. The strange horseman sped beside him at an equal pace. He fell into a walk. The strange horseman did the same. He endeavored to sing a psalm-tune, but his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. If he could but reach the bridge Ichabod thought he would be safe. Away then he flew in rapid flight. He reached the bridge, he thundered over the resounding planks. Then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... found by direct seeking, but by setting our faces toward the things from which it flows; and so we must climb the mount if we would see the vision, we must tune the instrument if we would ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... dagum Iudea cynincges, waes sum sacred on naman Zacharias, of Abian tune: and his wif waes of Aarones dohtrum, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... sight of the house by the clump of oaks on the hillside. Last week I should have moped and fumed here, and cursed my luck in being bound to a log on a day like this. Now I turned my face to the sunlight and drank in the keen air. Now I whistled as merry a tune as I knew. ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... "harp of a thousand strings," which are intended to harmonize. If one of them is out of tune, it is likely to cause discord throughout, while to tune up one ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... ten pianos here, and folks play on them all the while. It sounds pretty. You can't tell what tune they play 'most always. Mr. Wiseman has an noffice, and that's where you have to go when you want to do things. Sometimes you have to go when you don't want to do things. He sits in a chair and his legs go under the table. There's a square hole where his legs go. It has a slate on it, and he writes ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... lover and a musician he had brought with him: the former stood looking up at the window with his hat off, and the musician, after singing two very beautiful airs, concluded with the delicious and popular Arietta "Buona notte, amato bene!" to which the lover whistled a second, in such perfect tune, and with such exquisite taste, that I was enchanted. Rome is famous for serenades and serenaders; but at this season they are seldom heard. I remember at Venice being wakened in the dead of the night by ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... reached a spot on the shore where a ship was being unloaded of its cargo of granite blocks from Syene. Black and brown slaves were dragging them to land. An old blind man was piping a dismal tune on a small reed flute to encourage them in their work, while two men of fairer hue, whose burden had been too heavy for them, had let the end of the column they were carrying sink on the ground, and were being mercilessly flogged by the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... think. He cannot always drown thought or memory. He may, and does, fly for false solace to the drink, and may stun his enemy in the evening, but it will rend him like a giant in the morning. A flower, or half-remembered tune, a child's laughter, will sometimes suffice to flood the victim with recollections that either madden him to excess or send him crouching to his miserable room, to sit with face buried in his hands, while the hot, thin tears trickle over ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... there was a tremendous noise of music in the market-place, and another procession was formed, which marched off round the town, and at last stopped before the door of a house. Here they remained for a long time. There was a great deal of cheering, and the band played tune after tune, finishing up with the Belgian National Anthem. And what do you think it was all about? A boy whose parents lived in the house had gained a prize at school. That was all; but it was an excuse for a procession, music, and ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Belgium • George W. T. Omond
... medicine-chest. One of the memories that comes to me from those days is of Crean singing at the tiller. He always sang while he was steering, and nobody ever discovered what the song was. It was devoid of tune and as monotonous as the chanting of a Buddhist monk at his prayers; yet somehow it was cheerful. In moments of inspiration Crean would attempt "The Wearing ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... themselves under the surveillance of a number of "discreet persons." The leader chosen to conduct the services, would in some cases read a passage from the Scriptures and "line a hymn," which the slaves took up in their turn and sang in a tune of their own suitable to the meter. In case they had present no one who could read, or the law forbade such an exercise, some exhorter among the slaves would be given an opportunity to address the people, basing his ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... former minister, speaking for the Canadian Labor Party, exclaims: "The Church—a class institution—what does the Church do to help me and those like me? The Church supported by the wealthy, yes, 'He who pays the piper calls the tune.' The well-groomed parson, with his soft tones prophesying smooth things, well, I'm glad I'm not ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... monotonous chant in which only two tones were used, accompanied with a rattling of split sticks and stamping on a hollow slab. The second day the dance was more lively on the part of the men, the music was better, employing airs which had a greater range of tune and the women generally joined in the chorus. The dress of the women was not so beautiful as they appeared in ordinary calico. The third day if observed in accordance with Indian custom the dancing was still more lively and the proceedings more gay just as the coming home from ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... In the market-place the tanned old women chattered briskly with their customers. He wandered on and on in growing wonder and perturbation. Suddenly his trouble ceased, a burst of wonderful melody came to him; there was not only a joyful tune, but other tunes seemed to blend with it, melting his heart with unimaginable rapture; he gave chase to the strange sounds, drawing nearer and nearer, and at last he emerged unexpectedly upon an immense square bordered by colonnades, under which beautifully dressed ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... greatly increased from knowing that other people are enjoying it as I am. Then again, you can't eat the same loaf of bread twice: but you can return a hundred times to the same song, poem, or picture, and like them better the hundredth time than the first. A pathetic old tune does not lose anything in being sung by generation after generation. It is always as good as new. Like the widow's cruise of oil, it can be used without being consumed. These facts show that works of art—good books, good poems, good music—are, in a certain sense, immortal ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... foot and then on another, but keeping its unearthly green eyes fixed on Polly all the time. The witch kept muttering strange words like those which had thrown the spell on Polly; while her companion moved in time if not in tune. ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... his fingers rings carefully suited to the season; as his hands were too delicate to carry his heavier jewels in the warm weather. At the supper tables of the rich, the Alexandrian singing boys were much valued; the smart young Roman walked along the Via Sacra humming an Alexandrian tune; the favourite comic actor, the delight of the city, whose jokes set the theatre in a roar, was an Alexandrian; the Retiarius, who, with no weapon but a net, fought against an armed gladiator in the Roman forum, and came off conqueror ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... success; everybody was puzzled, players, spectators, and the gentlemen of the press; not one even guessed at the true meaning of the performance; though a few 'men of wicked spirits' would try to peep behind the curtain. But they never found him out; they all danced to Cromwell's tune, but none discovered that the pipe they heard was in their Protector's mouth. Even Ludlow, with all the proverbial opportunities of a bystander, though most anxious to know his great opponent's game, never guessed that he had patched up the Insurrection of March ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... sober-looking citizens, who had just sat themselves down to pipes and the journal, started to their feet like so many pieces of clockwork; but no sooner had Don Saltero, with a degage air of graceful melancholy, actually launched into what he was pleased to term a tune, than a universal irritation of nerves seized the whole company. At the first overture, the three citizens swore and cursed, at the second division of the tune, they seized their hats, at the third they ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him the music by all means," said Miss Brown, expecting to enjoy his blundering attempts to sing what was far beyond him. "There, I will play the accompaniment. It's not the tune of Old Hundred that you are to sing now, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... increased compass, which, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, led the Broadwoods, of London, to attempt a grand piano with six octaves' compass. But they found that the wrest plank (in which the tuning strings are placed), was so weakened by the extension that the treble would not stand in tune. In order to strengthen the instrument, he introduced the iron tension bar. This, like nearly all of the English improvements of the piano during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, was in the direction of greater solidity, and better ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... for quite thirty-three times, it sang the same tune and yet was not tired. The courtiers would have liked to hear it again even, only the Emperor said "No, it's the real bird's turn now, let us ask ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... O how I love to ride On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide, When every mad wave drowns the moon, Or whistles aloft his tempest tune, And tells how goeth the world below, And why the sou'west blasts ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the clashing of brass was shaking the very walls of the city of Benton. A steam calliope, shrieking a tune mechanically above the music of the band and the roar of carts, was frightening farmers' horses to the point of frenzy. Handsome, sleek horses, stepping proudly, were bearing their gaily dressed riders in cavalcade. And the rumble of the heavy, gilded ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... dell I went, at that time, daily; and daily the knife-grinder and I (for as long as his tent continued pleasantly to interrupt my little wilderness) sat on two stones, and smoked, and plucked grass, and talked to the tune of the brown water. His children were mere whelps, they fought and bit among the fern like vermin. His wife was a mere squaw; I saw her gather brush and tend the kettle, but she never ventured to address her lord while I was present. ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... catch a bit o' breath, 'Land's End next stop!' gasped I. 'O, but this is the Land's End! This is what the Land's End oughter been all the time, an' never was yet. O, for the Lord's sake,' says I, 'stop beamin', and pick up your concertina an' pitch us a tune!' ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hard,' he says, in some autobiographical notes found among his treasures after the massacre, 'it was raining hard, but I started; and on arriving at the bottom of the stairs I listened whilst they sang "All people that on earth do dwell" to the tune "Old Hundred," and I thought I had never heard such singing before—so solemn, yet so joyful. I ascended the steps and entered. There was a large congregation and all intensely in earnest. The younger ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... discussion to a close. One of its neglected aspects, however, may be indicated within the present context, by remarking upon the feeling of incompleteness that would at this stage, be left in the mind of the hearer, if I should make an end, abruptly, like a phonograph stopped in the middle of a tune. My discourse would inevitably be left at loose ends, owing to the persistency of a number of questions which have been raised, agitated, but not fully set at rest. These would continue to act as so ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... epidemic of courts-martial and inquiries, some of which were still smouldering when the war ended. And Stoughton, the principal victim, found scant sympathy. President Lincoln, when told that the rebels had raided Fairfax to the tune of one general, two captains, thirty men and fifty-eight horses, remarked that he could make all the generals he wanted, but that he was sorry to lose the horses, as he couldn't make horses. As yet, there was no visible re-enforcement of the cavalry ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... the fruit of good example which it bears is not sound, and endures but a short time. I say it again and again, let our self-respect be ever so slight, it will have the same result as the missing of a note on the organ when it is played,—the whole music is out of tune. It is a thing which hurts the soul exceedingly in every way, but it is a pestilence in the ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... was said, so many years were struck off from the penal period. Two priests were sometimes to be seen muttering away at the opposite ends of the same altar, like a couple of musical boxes playing different parts of the same tune at the same time. It made no difference. The upper powers had what they wanted. If they got the masses, and the priests got the money, all parties concerned ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... strictly the dancing portion. Stephen sat down on a bench that faced the inner portion, with the determination of a man who was not to be moved from his seat. At the other side of the room was a low raised platform, where some very seedy-looking musicians were sawing out a jerky tune from their feeble violins. The room was fairly full, and a more heterogeneous collection of human beings Stephen thought he had never seen. There were miners in the roughest and thickest clothing, labourers, packers, ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... Helen, O Wonder of the World, Shall I come for thee?" Her tender words came soft As dropping rose petals on garden croft Down from the wall's sheer height—"Come soon, come soon." And homing to the lines those drummed his tune. ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... Greatheart, 'was one that played upon the bass. Some say that the bass is the ground of music. The first string that the musician touches is the bass, when he intends to put all in tune. God also plays upon this string first, when He sets the soul in tune for Himself. Only here was the imperfection of Mr. Fearing: he could play upon no other music but this, ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... glances and Lucile cried, merrily, "Perhaps you'll change your tune in a little while," and just as the girls were about to demand the meaning of this strange remark, she added, "Here come the rest of them now," and ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... back to her chair, humming a little tune almost inaudibly; and in passing lightly brushed his forehead with her hand—the ghost ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... have ever heard her sing this hymn will probably remember it as long as they remember her. The hymn, the tune, the style, are each too closely associated with to be easily separated from herself, and when sung in one of her most animated moods, in the open air, with the utmost strength of her most powerful voice, must have ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... young fellow and carried a light heart, as one could tell from the smile in his eyes and the merry tune he whistled as he strode along. And he had reason to be happy, for on the next day at sunset he was to be married to the fairest girl in all ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... crooned a little tune, for wee Dollie was never long unhappy. She had almost forgotten how vexed she had been, and she laughed as she saw small bubbles sailing, sailing away to the meadow. Softly she hummed, and then little words, describing what she saw, fitted ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... one of the most pleasant incidents of my entire tour, to hear a company of sailors chime in one evening and sing "Kiss Me Mother, Kiss Your Darling." I had heard little English speaking for months, and now to hear that old familiar tune, five thousand miles away from home, made me feel as if America could after all not be so very far off! There were no storms, nor was their any cool night air upon that "summer seat." I slept one night on deck, ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... listened to the voice of the siren who walked by his side, "while the sweet wind did gently kiss the flowers and make no noise," and the strains of "flute, violin, bassoon," and the sounds of the "dancers dancing in tune," coming to them on the still air of night, seemed like the sounds from another and a far-off world,—listened, listened, listened, while his silver-tongued enchantress builded castles in the air, or beguiled his thought, enthralled his heart, his soul and fancy, through ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... reed instrument, not unlike the pipe which Pan in the hills of Greece played to the dryads, and he piped a weird, monotonous tune. The stiffness broke away from the snake suddenly, and it lifted its head and raised its long body till it stood almost on the tip of its tail, and it swayed slowly to ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... sentiment, and the occasional brilliancy of his wit, were not easily imitated, yet many authors, by dint of a good ear, and a fluent expression, learned to command the unaltered sweetness of his melody, which, like a favourite tune, when descended to hawkers and ballad-singers, became disgusting as it became common. The admirers of poetry then reverted to the brave negligence of Dryden's versification, as, to use Johnson's simile, the eye, fatigued with the uniformity ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... nowadays they come back to me, and I would give very much to hear the like again. So full of music, too. Voices untrained by art, but gifted by nature; melodious and powerful; that took different parts in the tune, and carried them through without the jar of a false note or a false quantity; and a love both of song and of the truth which made the music mighty. It was the greatest delight to me that singing, whether I joined them or only listened. One,—the thought of it comes ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the absolute power of officials and the limited power of the laity. No Church can expect to make much progress unless its institutions are in tune with the institutions of the country. For good or for evil, England was growing democratic; and, therefore, the Moravian Church should have been democratic too. But in those days the Moravian Church was the reverse of democratic. In theory each congregation had the power ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... could not be crushed out. His mother had familiarized him from the beginning with the songs and ballads of which the country was full, and though he is said at first to have had so little ear for music that he could scarcely distinguish one tune from another, he soon began to compose songs (words) of his own as he followed the plough. In the greatness of his later success his debt to the current body of song and music should not be overlooked. He is only the last of a long succession of ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... oldest songs would serve to-day as airs de vaudeville. The French national music has mostly grown out of civil dissensions and party conflicts. What scenes do the "Carillon," the atrocious "Carmagnole" and the "Marseillaise" bring up! The "Carillon" had been Marie Antoinette's favorite tune: it pursued her from her palace to her prison, startled her on her way to her trial, and was probably the last sound she heard as she lay bound ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... quarrels, but this was her first experience of a prolonged estrangement. It had been all very well to box Ellen's ears as a child, and have her shins kicked in return, and then an hour or two later be nursing her on her lap to the tune of "There was an Old Woman," or "Little Boy Blue".... But this dragged out antagonism wore down her spirits into a long sadness. It was the wrong start for that happy home she had planned, in which Ellen, the little sister, was to absorb that overflowing ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... harp, though; but a remarkably dirty fellow in the procession seemed to be making up for the lack of one stringed instrument by bringing another,—the Scotch fiddle!—on which he perpetually played the tune of "God bless the gude Duke of Argyle!" There were harps with one, two, and three sets of strings,—harps with gold strings, silver strings, brass strings,—strings of cat-gut and brass,—strings red, and brown, and white. I looked sharp for the "harp of a thousand strings," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... the torch straightway, In honour of Odin and Thor,— And the blazing night is as bright as the day As a gift to the gods of war; For down to the melting sand And over each flaring mast Those fifty and five they have burnt as they stand To the tune of the ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Here the tune became undecided; and, a chance word recalling another context to her mind, she drifted suddenly into a hymn, and sang it with the same religious fervour as she had sung the other, her fair head flung back, and her hazel eyes gazing ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... tune often sung by country people in Lancashire at funerals; and, if I remember right, the same melody is cut upon Leech's gravestone in the old Wesleyan Chapel-yard, at Rochdale. I saw a company of minstrels of the same class going through ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... at the west end of the church where the choir and organ were situated so that during the musical portions of the services the congregation turned towards the west to face the choir. About fifty years ago the leader who started the tune with a trumpet was James Ruddock "a bedstuffer." An old pitch-pipe used for starting the tunes was recently discovered by Mr J. Grant ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... back for the four midday hours dear to the oxen. The rest of the column came in at dusk. A warm night. Every night in camp you may hear deep-throated choruses swelling up from the prisoners' laager. The first time I heard it I was puzzled to know what they were singing; the tune was strangely familiar, but I could not fix it. It was not till the third night that I recognized the tune of "O God, our help," but chanted so slowly as to be difficult to catch, with long, luxurious rests on the ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... grant that their punishment be not so long delayed as to involve a great and innocent family, who, though they share not the guilt, will most likely participate in the atonement." Sir George Saville followed, and in his speech likened the crown and parliament to dancers in a minuet, to a tune composed by the cabinet—the crown led off one way, the parliament to the opposite corner; and they then joined hands, when the dance ended as it began. He also compared ministers to the Spartan, (it was an Athenian,) who, in an engagement by sea, seized the stern with his right hand, which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... game of the Maynards. Father Maynard had a knack of turning off verses, and they usually sang them to some well-known air, or perhaps made up a little crooning tune of their own. ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... to the villa a little before noon on the following day. Hilaire, who was in the library, heard his voice in the hall calling the dogs, heard him whistling some little song tune as he opened and shut all the doors one ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... dedicated to the worship of the true God by singing the old but always new, one hundredth Psalm. The Lam-si-hoan were not very good singers. They had not much idea of tune. They had less idea of just when to start, and there was very little to be said about the harmony of those hundreds of voices. But in spite of it all, Kai Bok-su had to confess that never in the music of his homeland or in the more finished harmonies of Europe, had he heard anything ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... think I can safely say that, but it was in a rather quiet way. We very, very seldom played the piano; we played the flute and the clarinet together, and made good music, too, what there was of it, but we always played the same old tune; it was a very pretty tune —how well I remember it—I wonder when I shall ever get rid of it. We never played either the melodeon or the organ except at devotions—but I am too fast: young Albert did know ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... laugh, looking not at me, but at the fire. Our silent companion continued to embroider. "That girl," my hostess resumed, "and her discreditable father played on my nephew's youth and chivalry to the tune of—well, you have ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... hence appeal To the dear Christian Church, that we may do Our Father's business in these temples mirk Thus, swift and steadfast; thus, intent and strong; While, thus, apart from toil, our souls pursue Some high, calm, spheric tune and prove our work The better for the ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various |
