"Vocal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... worry, and, if you will pardon me, too selfish. If, instead of giving vent to that fear, worry, dread, you exercised your reason and faith a little more, and then self-denial, and refused to give vocal expression to your worry, you could then claim unselfishness in the interest of your child. But to put your fears and worries, your dreads and anxieties, around a young child, destroying his exuberance and joy, surrounding him with the mental and spiritual fogs that beset your own life is neither ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... from which I am sending this magnetic message. They remain for hours, even days and weeks in these halls listening in a sort of stupor or trance to beautiful music; for music is the one great recreation of the Martians, and is spontaneous, appearing as a vocal gift in beings who have never ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... famous and best paid—singers never care much about music, except as a vanity, and never understand it. A singer means a person born with a certain shape of mouth and throat, a certain kind of vocal chords. The rest may be natural or acquired. It's the instrument that makes the ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... long carry, and with nothing to weight him down, his feet felt light as feathers. He trudged briskly along the smooth highway, every sense alive to the delights of the forest. All about him the woods were vocal with the calls of birds. The wind whispered and sighed in the pine tops. And sometimes, when the air in the bottom was still as sluggish water, Charley could hear the wind roaring among the trees far up on the hillsides. ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... notches, five feet asunder, on the bark of the trees, and he saw the smoke of fires. He inferred that they possessed some unusual method of climbing, or that their stature was gigantic. In the sound, the colonist recognises the vocal cooey of the aborigines, and learns from the steps "to the birds' nests," that they then hunted the opossum, and employed that method of ascent, which, for agility and daring has never been surpassed. Thus, during more than 150 years, this country was forgotten; ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... from four quarters It will not be advised, It will not be without advice. It commences its journey Above the marble rock. {136} It is sonorous, it is dumb, It is mild, It is strong, it is bold, When it glances over the land. It is silent, it is vocal, It is clamorous, It is the most noisy On the face of the earth. It is good, it is bad, It is extremely injurious. It is concealed, Because sight cannot perceive it. It is noxious, it is beneficial; It is yonder, it is here; It will discompose, But will not repair the injury; It will not suffer ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... those who never weary Bearing suffering and wrong; Though the way is long and dreary It is vocal with their song, While their spirits in God's furnace, Bending to His gracious will, Are fashioned in a purer mold By His loving, ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... (sati) control himself from being tempted by avoiding to think of its tempting side and by thinking on such aspects of it as may lead in the right direction. Khantisa@mvara is that by which one can remain unperturbed in heat and cold. By the proper adherence to sila all our bodily, mental and vocal activities (kamma) are duly systematized, organized, stabilized (samadhanam, upadhara@na@m, pati@t@tha) ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... ganglia and flush your whole nervous system with new life! Finally, there is the plunge and the wallow and the splash, with a feeling of kinship to the porpoise in its joy, under the influence of which the most silent man becomes vocal and makes the walls of the narrow ghoosulkhana resound with amorous, or patriotic, song. A flavour of sadness mingles here, for you must come out at last, but the ample gaol towel receives you in its warm embrace and a glow of contentment pervades your frame, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... endless bravura passages introduced at haphazard irrespective of the dramatic situation, that recurrent crescendo that Rossini brought into vogue, are now an integral part of every composition; those vocal fireworks result in a sort of babbling, chattering, vaporous mucic, of which the sole merit depends on the greater or less fluency of the singer and ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... the effective interpretation of instrumental music exist. Some of them, by acknowledged and competent authorities, have thrown valuable light on a most important element of musical art. Had I not believed that a similar need existed in connection with singing, this addition to vocal literature ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... immanent Divinity. I find no meaning in mechanical explanations. Newton's hypothesis of an ether filling the heavenly spaces does not, I confess, help my conceptions. I will, and the muscles of my vocal organs shape my speech. God wills, and the universe articulates His power, wisdom, and goodness. That is all I know. There is no bridge my mind can throw from the "immaterial" cause to the ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... just left, and I stood still and listened. Arletta had evidently set the orchestral mechanism in motion again, and was accompanying it by tenderly singing her own requiem. With tremulous modulation, her vocal chords produced sounds such as I had never heard before, and of which I am powerless to give the faintest description. Like a statue, I stood and listened to the almost supernatural melody, and inwardly ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... area representing any group depending upon the character and complexity of the movements performed by the muscles, rather than upon the amount of muscular tissue that is governed by the centre—for example, the centre for the mouth, tongue, and vocal cords is larger than that for ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... being hurled at him from every quarter. At his side was Lilas Lynn, very dark, very striking, very expensively gowned, and elaborately bejeweled. The room was dinning with the strains of an invisible orchestra and the vocal uproar; topping the confusion came shrieks from the excitable peacocks; the wild birds twittered and beat themselves affrightedly ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... victuals coming toward me in little old Bagdad-on-the-Subway. I strike the asphalt three times with my forehead and get ready to spiel yarns for my supper. I claim descent from the late Tommy Tucker, who was forced to hand out vocal harmony for his ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... and manifest public opinion." He concluded that he would be far more useful as a private citizen who could express his views freely and publicly than he was as a War Department employee, bound to conform to official policy. Quitting the department, Hastie joined the increasingly vocal black organizations in a sustained attack on the Army's segregation policy, an attack that was also being translated into political action by the major civil rights organizations. In 1943, a full year before the national elections, representatives of twenty-five civil rights groups met and formulated ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... surely then, if he set his mind to the task, he could make himself more than a mere string of words over a telephone. Heretofore he had been working wholly with his fingers, his ear-drums, and his vocal cords; he determined henceforth to exercise his intelligence, if he had any. It was indeed high time, for Miss Harris was undoubtedly slipping away, lured by luxuries no clerk could afford, and, moreover, he, Mitchell, was ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... letters not admitted therein but borrowed from other Aryan tongues. My host looked on with some interest whilst I did this, and bent his head as if in approval. Here then was the alphabet of the Martial tongue—an alphabet not arbitrary, but actually produced by the vocal sounds it represented! The elaborate machinery modifies the rough signs which are traced by the mere aerial vibrations; but each character is a true physical type, a visual image, of the spoken sound; the voice, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... savage race; And trees unrooted left their place, Sequacious of the lyre; But bright Cecilia rais'd the wonder higher: When to her organ vocal breath was given, An angel heard, and straight appear'd Mistaking Earth ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... was produced on the stage of the Royal Dresden theatre on the twelfth of October 1889 and was received with great applause. This surprising success is due firstly to the great popularity, which Forster enjoyed as former Director of the renowned "Liedertafel" (Society for vocal music) and as teacher, and then to the numerous pretty melodies intermixed with national airs, in which particularly the old "Dessauer march" is skilfully interwoven, then the wellknown student air "Was kommt dort ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... may think this but an ill Return, for the soft things he has said of the Ladies, but I think it Gratitude at least to make the Return, by doing Justice to the Gentlemen. I will not contradict the Relation of the ingenious Experiment of his vocal Ladies, tho' I could give him some Instances to the contrary, in my Experience of those, whose Writings abound with Consonants; where Vowels must generally be understood, and appear but very rarely. Perhaps ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob
... is in a way as much to us a picture of the idea as of the sound; but the difference of procedure is radical. The glyph is related to the idea directly, the spelled word only through the formal combination of symbols for single vocal speech-elements, meaningless when separate. The relation of spoken sound to glyph is wholly adventitious; the relation of the idea to the spelled word is equally adventitious. The ascent, if we so call it, of written speech from the ideographic to the alphabetic, is the descent of the thought ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... ripen into evil deed), and then permitting them to become deeper and more significant and thrilling as the man grows old in crime and haggard and convulsed in self-conflict and misery. But it was less with vocal excellence that the auditor was impressed than with the actor's identification with the part and his revelation of the soul of it. When first presented Gloster was a mocking devil. The murder of King Henry was done with malice, ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... is true of speech. That speech is a quantity is evident: for it is measured in long and short syllables. I mean here that speech which is vocal. Moreover, it is a discrete quantity for its parts have no common boundary. There is no common boundary at which the syllables join, but each is separate ...
— The Categories • Aristotle
... as a composer he has talent, though he will never attain to the first rank. Without Rossini, without Meyerbeer, he might perhaps have been taken for a man of genius. He has one advantage over those men,—he is in vocal music what Paganini is on the violin, Liszt on the piano, Taglioni in the ballet, and what the famous Garat was; at any rate he recalls that great singer to those who knew him. His is not a voice, my friend, it ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... pink hundred-franc notes behind him, like a running boy dropping paper in the English game; and he kept showers of gold louis dancing in the air about him, so that when we entered the various cafes or "American bars" a cheer (not vocal but to me of perfect audibility) went up from the hungry and thirsty and borrowing, and from the attendants. Ah, how tired I was of it, and how I endeavoured to discover a means to draw him to the museums, and to Notre Dame ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... enough to laugh at her and ridicule the idea of her ever learning to sing correctly. This rudeness made such an impression on her girlish mind that, although she forgave the offense and continued to love the offender, she could never be induced again to try her vocal powers before me. All through her school and college days she devoted some attention to music, and while I heard from others much about her advancement and the extraordinary quality of her voice, she ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... olive-mill, where they can neither discourse, distinguish, nor be distinguished; while the other half are drinking hot water, under the denomination of tea, till nine or ten o'clock at night, to keep them awake for the rest of the evening. As for the orchestra, the vocal music especially, it is well for the performers that they cannot be heard distinctly. Vauxhall is a composition of baubles, overcharged with paltry ornaments, ill conceived, and poorly executed; without any unity of design, or propriety of disposition. It is an ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... voice, good, bad, and indifferent, joined in. Singing is supposed to have a soothing effect on cattle, though I will vouch for the fact that none of our Circle Dots stopped that night to listen to our vocal efforts. The herd was traveling so nicely that our foreman hardly noticed the passing hours, but along about midnight the singing ceased, and we were nodding in our saddles and wondering if they in the lead were never going ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... prevailed in the hall; and the attention of the guests was captivated by the vocal harmony, which revived and perpetuated the memory of their own exploits; a martial ardor flashed from the eyes of the warriors, who were impatient for battle; and the tears of the old men expressed their generous despair, that they could no longer partake the danger and glory of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... between 1850 and 1860. He enjoyed a pension from the State of 2400 francs; but what relief from misery could mitigate a quarter of a century of darkness for a man who had looked out at the world with such vivifying eyes? His father had followed the trade of a glazier, but was otherwise vocal than in the emission of the rich street-cry with which we used all to be familiar, and which has vanished with so many other friendly pedestrian notes. The elder Daumier wrought verses as well as window-panes, and M. Champfleury has disinterred a small volume published by him in 1823. ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... hear you," whimpered Harper. "Your lungs and vocal cords are in the other dimension. Here, I'll have you completely returned." He reached a hand toward the cutout, the torso of which still bulged upward ...
— The 4-D Doodler • Graph Waldeyer
... Langford, after one well-satisfied survey from the door, bent their steps homeward, looking forward to the pleasure with which grandpapa and Aunt Mary would see it to-morrow. As they went in the deepening twilight, the whole village seemed vocal: children's voices, shrill and tuneless near, but softened by distance, were ringing out here, there, and ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... moment, from these unlikely quarters there rises a diapason of liberty-loving eloquence which contrasts very discordantly with the habitual language of five years ago. To-day the friends of Freedom are strangely numerous and admirably vocal. Our Lady of Liberty, one thinks, must marvel at the number and the energy of her new worshippers. Lapses from grace are not unknown in the after-history of revivals, but we must, in charity, assume the conversion ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... through the ear; in the decorative and pictorial arts, through the eye. Generally, the meaning that we find in such productions, the appeal that they make to the understanding or feelings, is as great a source of interest to us as their intrinsic beauty. Poetry and vocal music are greatly dependent for their effect upon the meaning they convey in words; painting and sculpture, upon the ideas or sentiments they suggest. In all four, however, and most decidedly in music unaccompanied by words, the appeal ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... but; only a ghost, alas! Only that. In his first visit Soames was a creature of flesh and blood, whereas the creatures among whom he was projected were but ghosts, I take it—solid, palpable, vocal, but unconscious and automatic ghosts, in a building that was itself an illusion. Next time that building and those creatures will be real. It is of Soames that there will be but the semblance. I wish I could think him destined to revisit the world ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... room adjoining, a French lesson is going on; in that, German; in this, penmanship. Still higher up we find the "Tech" Glee Club practising, and this large room adjoining is filled with those who are learning vocal music. The building seems a very hive—something ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... the purpose, into your mouth, and, instead of causing pain, irritation and difficulty in swallowing, it will relieve these symptoms if they exist, cool and calm the membrane, soothe the irritation, and give tone and strength to the vocal chords. ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... spoke of Mariana as the future schoolmistress; the deacon (who had been appointed supervisor of the school), a man of strong athletic build, with long waving hair, bearing a faint resemblance to the well-groomed tail of an Orlov race courser, quite forgetting his vocal powers, gave forth such a volume of sound as to confuse himself and frighten everybody else. Soon after this the clergy took ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... frontier was primarily vocal—the singing of hymns and, possibly, folk songs. Instrumental music was confined to the fiddle, which one Fair Play settler felt valuable enough to mention in his will.[51] The fiddle also provided the musical background for ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... priest. She slipped from her man's arms, hung over him wonderfully, lightly kissed his forehead without disturbing his deep sleep. Then she went to bathe herself in the pool, and to bind up her hair. The woodland was jewelled with dew, it went in misty green and yellow, all vocal of the joy she had. She was loved! ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... building contained, and then to go straight up, splitting the ugly roof, and out into the sky. Otherwise this hymn would have left one no space to breathe in. Dale felt a sudden rush of blood to the head, as if the pressure of vocal sound were about to produce suffocation; and at the same time he had the fantastic but almost irresistible idea that the whole congregation were singing solely at him, that they and their pastor had ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... place of publick amusement, Vauxhall Gardens, which must ever be an estate to its proprietor, as it is peculiarly adapted to the taste of the English nation; there being a mixture of curious show,—gay exhibition,—musick, vocal and instrumental, not too refined for the general ear;—for all which only a shilling is paid[906]; and, though last, not least, good eating and drinking for those who choose to purchase that regale[907]. Mr. Thomas Tyers was bred to the law; but having a handsome fortune, vivacity ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... melodist of the mind created and set vibrating with music, as a flower shakes out its perfume or a star shakes out its light. Only listen, and they soothe all care, as though the silken-soft leaves of poppies had been made vocal and poured ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... a little pause, "you may feel somewhat musical. There is to be a vocal and instrumental concert to-night. What say you to going there? I think I could enjoy ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... first away, her decks crammed with soldiers bound for Central Asia. They treated us to a vocal concert as the ship left port, and I paced the moonlit deck for some time, listening to the sweet sad airs sung with the pathos and harmony that seems born in every Russian, high or low. I retired to rest with the "Matoushka Volga," a boat-song popular the length and breadth of Russia, ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... respiration, and incisiveness of delivery. I must study; study again; study always. It was not an easy thing to put these precepts into practice. Very often I forgot them, carried away by excitement, or by the superabundance of my vocal powers; indeed, until I had reached an age of calmer reflection I was never able to get my artistic chronometer perfectly regulated; it would always gain a few minutes every ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... took their place at a table in front of the birds, with bits of chalk in their hands; mine host stood by as referee in case of disputes; time was called; and silence reigned supreme for a quarter of an hour, broken only by the vocal performances of the Bermondsey and Walworth champions respectively. If a hapless human being did so far forget himself as to cough or tread incontinently upon a nutshell, he was called to silence with curses ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... on one side, he rolled out on the other, and made for the door, only to be ignominiously caught up by the tail of his little toga and put back again, which lively performance was kept up till the young man's strength gave out, when he devoted himself to roaring at the top of his voice. This vocal exercise usually conquered Meg, but John sat as unmoved as the post which is popularly believed to be deaf. No coaxing, no sugar, no lullaby, no story, even the light was put out and only the red ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... jay dons an engaging attire, not much can be said in the way of eulogy for his vocal talents or acquirements. Many of his calls are harsh, penetrating, and even raucous. Frequently, too, he indulges in a great to-do over nothing, fairly splitting your ears with his noisy cries. I have said it is a to-do over nothing, though Mr. Jay may think he has the ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... unfamiliar; this, in turn, distracts the choir, who flounder hopelessly, until the schoolmaster drags them back by putting full steam on the harmonium and singing at the top of his voice. Every Sunday afternoon, at least, he was obliged to display his vocal prowess in this manner. After every one of the commandments read out by the parson the prisoners chanted the response, "Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law." Nine times they chanted thus, gathering momentum as they went ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... degrees of Bachelor and Doctor of Music, on which occasion he presided at the performance of his exercise for these degrees. This consisted of an anthem, with an overture, solos, recitatives and choruses, accompanied by instruments, besides a vocal anthem in eight parts, which was not performed. In 1769 he published An Essay towards a History ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... argument. Ferdinand glided in unobserved by the fair performer. Miss Temple not only possessed a voice of rare tone and compass, but this delightful gift of nature had been cultivated with refined art. Ferdinand, himself a musician, and passionately devoted to vocal ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... a curious shy charm, the sensitiveness inseparable from the artist nature—all these, and more, Baroni's experienced eye read in Diana's upturned face, but it yet remained for him to test the quality of her vocal organs. ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... he was sent to Dakota Territory as a missionary among the Ponka Indians. Characterized by an amiability that quickly won the confidence of the Indians, possessed of unbounded enthusiasm, and gifted with remarkable aptitude in discriminating and imitating vocal sounds, he at once took up the study of the native language, and, during the ensuing two years, familiarized himself with the Ponka and cognate dialects; at the same time he obtained a rich fund of information concerning the arts, institutions, traditions, and beliefs ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey
... so weak that it is barely appreciable to the human hand. To this unexpected stimulus even the male usually responds by a sudden squeak. There can be no doubt, then, of the possession of a voice by both males and females. The males may be either less sensitive or less given to vocal expression, but they are quite able to squeak when favorable conditions are presented. The possession of a voice by an animal is presumptive evidence in favor of a sense of hearing, but it would scarcely be safe to say that the mice must be able ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... incense: not that these particular developments are necessary, but some such development must take place. We shall not be content to think reverential thoughts, but we shall say, or even sing, great things of God's greatness and our indebtedness and duty: such a vocal exercise is psalmody. We shall represent in symbolic action our dependence on the Lord of life and death, and also our sinfulness, for which He might justly strike us dead: such a representation ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... singular figure was called the 'dance for the dead' It was known as the O-he-wa. It was danced by the women alone. The music was entirely vocal, a select band of singers being stationed in the center of the room. To the songs for the dead which they sang the dancers joined in chorus. It was plaintive and mournful music. This dance was usually separate from all councils and the only dance of the occasion. It commenced ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... and as the combination of these four consonants would give no more indication for any sort of enunciation than the combinations Dr. or Mr. give in our language, the Jew, being ignorant of what vocal sounds were to be supplied, was unable to pronounce the word, so that its true pronunciation was in time lost to the masses of ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... born in other lands have not entertained with sufficient intensity and affection the American ideal. But the number of such is, I am sure, not large. Those who would seek to represent them are very vocal, but they are not very influential. Some of the best stuff of America has come out of foreign lands, and some of the best stuff in America is in the men who are naturalized citizens of the United States. I would not be afraid upon the test of "America first" to take a ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... down now - where the opera was always preceded by a vaudeville, in which (as usual) everybody, down to the little old man with the large hat and the little cane and tassel, who always played either my Uncle or my Papa, suddenly broke out of the dialogue into the mildest vocal snatches, to the great perplexity of unaccustomed strangers from Great Britain, who never could make out when they were singing and when they were talking - and indeed it was pretty much the same. But, the caterers in the way ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... Campbellite Church for the reason that it was the furthest from the Baptist belief, so she claimed. Alfred always believed down deep in his heart that Lin had allied herself with that particular denomination for the reason that her vocal abilities were appreciated in the little congregation and for the further reason that ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... moss-covered and ivy-decked towers of perishing churches, and the sight of them has tilled our hearts with melancholy, as we thought of what had been, and of the changes that had swept over the fair, valiant and pious throngs whose laughter, bravery and prayers once made these scenes so gay and vocal. All is hushed now, and the silence is broken only by the hoot and screech of the owl, or by the rustle of the nightbat's leathern wing. But how much sadder is the form of the mighty spirit, who once sat regnant among ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... but especially the women, are fond of music, both vocal and instrumental. Some of them might be said to be passionately so, removing their hair from off their ears, and bending their heads forward, as if to catch the sounds more distinctly, whenever we amused them in this manner. Their own music is entirely vocal, unless, indeed, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... the corresponding systems of nerves, and one conspicuous connection by which this is provided is the "vagus" nerve. This nerve passes out of the cerebral region as a portion of the voluntary system, and through it we control the vocal organs; then it passes onwards to the thorax sending out branches to the heart and lungs; and finally, passing through the diaphragm, it loses the outer coating which distinguishes the nerves of the voluntary system and becomes ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... strict rules of conversation that one waits until the other has finished: rather they all talk at once, one interrupting the other, until finally he who has commenced some thrilling refrain hands over the leadership to all: the song becomes general, and each one is convinced from hearing his own vocal powers, that nowhere on earth can ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... here heard to make a jumble of sounds, being still too excited to get his vocal cords in decent working order. He kept pointing at a nail that had been driven into the ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... by Alex. Graham Bell, a native of Scotland, and Professor of Vocal Physiology in the Boston University, and Elisha ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... Adriance, though he was ten years the elder, and though his hair was streaked with silver, had the face of a boy of twenty, so mobile that it told his thoughts before he could put them into words. A contralto, famous for the extravagance of her vocal methods and of her affections, had once said to him that the shepherd boys who sang in the Vale of Tempe must certainly have looked like young Hilgarde; and the comparison had been appropriated by a hundred shyer ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... hands. Under these circumstances they began to take something more than a professional interest in their neighbours opposite. The curiosity was reciprocated. Items of news, more or less mendacious, were exchanged when the trenches were near enough to permit of vocal intercourse. Curious conventions grew up, and at certain hours of the day and, less commonly, of the night, there was a kind of informal armistice. In one section the hour of 8 to 9 A.M. was regarded as consecrated to ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... holiness and sublimity of its doctrines. They felt themselves stimulated by them to imitate the heroic acts of virtue and constancy which they placed before their eyes, and to rely on the assistance of heaven when their own hour of trial should arrive. Thus the vocal blood of the martyrs was a powerful exhortation, both to induce the infidel to embrace the faith of Christ, and to incite the faithful to the practice of its precepts. The church, therefore, always recommended the frequent ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... on a pivot. The drawing-room had not only been transformed into a study; it had been rechristened 'the study.' And in speaking of the apartment to each other or to Sarah, Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie employed a vocal inflection of peculiar impressiveness. Sarah entered the study with awe, the ladies with pride. Henry sat in it nearly every night and laboured hard, with no result whatever. If the ladies ventured to question him ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... instrumental music generally, I would observe, that some of the vocal airs have a very pleasing effect when accompanied by the Patola. This is an instrument made in the fantastic shape of an alligator; the body of it is hollow, with openings at the back, and three strings ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... a four-footed shape running along the top of the bank, giving tongue. It was then joined by a larger and even more vocal companion. The dogs drew even with Ross, who wondered dully if the animals could sight him in the shadows below, or whether they only scented his presence. Had he been able, he would have climbed over the log and taken his chances in ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... who shared its perils,—alike of Prescott and Putnam and Warren, the chiefs of the day, and the colored man, Salem, who is reported to have shot the gallant Pitcairn, as he mounted the parapet. Cold as the clods on which it rests, still as the silent heavens to which it soars, it is yet vocal, eloquent, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... stayed with George as the fisherman drove his car out of the garage and along a highway. The day was sunny and warm. There was a slight wind and the green trees sighed delicately in it. The birds were pleasantly vocal ...
— The Inhabited • Richard Wilson
... polyphonic writers were pouring out their most glorious and living stuff, in the first lame, crude fugues the medium was being prepared for the triumphs of Handel and Bach; and in the same way, while Bach was writing the G minor and A minor fugues (I am not speaking of vocal music) some smaller men were working at what was destined to grow into the symphony, sonata and quartet. These terms are used here in their present-day signification. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such words as ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... which he means vocal prayer not in set words, belongs to the second part of contemplation. "It is very wasting to the body of him who uses it much, wounding the soul with the blessed sword of love." "The most vicious or carnal man on earth, were he once strongly touched with this sharp ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... down the corridor. He had been vain of his love that, in Yaque as in America, remained the thing it was, supreme and vital. But had not the simplicity of Rollo taken the leap in experience, and likewise without changing? For a moment, as he went down the silent corridors, lofty as the woods, vocal with faint inscriptions on the uncovered stone, the old human doubt assailed him. The very age of the walls was a protest against the assumption that there is a touchstone that is ageless. Even if there is, even if love is unchanging, the very temper ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... each taking turns in bolding the string. This was a happy place for us, and especially in the spring time, when the happy looking cows grazed along the pathway which winds around the elm to the stream where Kate and I used to sail my little boat. All summer long this place was vocal with the songs of birds, which built their nests in safety among the tall trees of the grove in the rear of the farm. We had also the music of the running brook, and the pleasant hum of my father's cotton mill, which brought us in our daily bread. Haying time was always a happy season ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... suspended, and then resolves itself in a perfect chord. Her voice is like a thing detachable from herself, a thing which she takes in her hands like a musical instrument, playing on the stops cunningly with her fingers. Prose, when she speaks it, becomes a kind of verse, with all the rhythms, the vocal harmonies, of a kind of human poetry. Her whisper is heard across the whole theatre, every syllable distinct, and yet it is really a whisper. She comes on the stage like a miraculous painted idol, all nerves; she runs through the gamut of the sex, and ends a child, when ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... Notes that wing their heavenly ways To mend the choirs above. Orpheus could lead the savage race, And trees uprooted left their place Sequacious of the lyre: But bright Cecilia raised the wonder higher: When to her Organ vocal breath was given An angel heard, and straight appear'd— Mistaking Earth ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... my professional position and place, where I see the undercurrent of life. I hear groans that come from smiling faces. I witness tears that when others look upon the face are all swept away, as the rain is when one comes after a storm. Not most vocal are our deepest sorrows. Oh, the sufferings of wives for husbands untrue! Oh, the sufferings of mothers for sons led astray! Oh, the sufferings of sisters for sisters gone! Oh, the sufferings of companions for companion-women desecrated! And I hold it to be ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... had hitherto failed to take part in the music of its fellows, but henceforward will chime in. Probably there is also a subsidiary, but in its context not less prominent meaning—namely, that, while the several poets (such as Chatterton, Sidney, and Lucan) had each a vocal sphere of his own, apposite to his particular poetic quality, the sphere which Keats is now to control had hitherto remained unoccupied because no poet of that special type of genius which it demanded had as yet appeared. Its affinity was ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... in differing degrees and combination. Dulness of varying extent up to complete absence of resonance on one side, often accompanied in the incomplete cases by well-marked skodaic resonance anteriorly. Loss of vocal resonance, and fremitus; oegophony, tubular respiration over the root of the lung or at the upper limit of the dulness, and more or less extensive displacement of the heart. Obvious increase in girth, fulness of the intercostal spaces, ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... she mov'd her vocal lips; thus far "Her lyre her voice attended: then they call "For our Aoenian song. But that to hear, "Perchance your leisure suits not; pressing deeds "Unlike our songs must more your time demand." Pallas replies;—"be ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... the attendance of such a large number. Mr. Agneau, the chaplain, was invited to take a part in the service, and as Mrs. Kendall, Mrs. Shuffles, and many of the ship's company were good singers, the vocal music was better ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... use of the word," I remarked. "But then it is not an ordinery situation. We have met and we have not. Our eyes have spoken, if not our vocal chords." Seeing his eyes on me I added, "if you do not beleive that Soul can cry unto Soul, Carter, I shall go ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... His idea was to run until nearly morning when the chances of finding a suitable place to rest would be more favorable. After nightfall as he was moving rapidly along, singing at the top of his voice, the glow of a fire ahead claimed his attention and stilled his vocal efforts. He was debating whether friend or foe was nears when a gruff ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... feel toward higher things is born in the unlost image of God which is planted in our nature "like the tree of Life in Eden." He pleads in our hearts by His inner Word; He reveals the goodness of Himself in His vocal opposition to all that would harm and spoil us, and He labours unceasingly to be born in us and to bring forth His love and His spiritual kingdom in the domain of our own spirits. The way of life is to die to the flesh and ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... More than 90 per cent of the seamen are native-born, and on any ship may be heard the Southern drawl, the picturesque vernacular of the lower East or West side of New York City, the twang of New England, the rising intonation of the Western Pennsylvanian, and that indescribable vocal cadence that comes only ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... supreme! high-throned all height above! O great Pelasgic, Dodonaean Jove! Who 'midst surrounding frosts, and vapours chill, Presid'st on bleak Dodona's vocal hill: (Whose groves the Selli, race austere! surround, Their feet unwash'd, their slumbers on the ground; Who hear, from rustling oaks, thy dark decrees; And catch the fates, low-whispered in the breeze;) Hear, as of old! Thou gav'st, at Thetis' prayer, Glory to me, and to the Greeks ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... his heart and in his intellect, marking alike the excellence and the limits of them both. His laugh, which on light occasions was ready and frequent, had in it no great depth of gayety, or sense for the ludicrous in men or things; you might call it rather a good smile become vocal than a deep real laugh: with his whole man I never saw him laugh. A clear sense of the humorous he had, as of most other things; but in himself little or no true humor;—nor did he attempt that side of things. To call him deficient in ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... without giving any tokens of approbation, for it is very uncommon for the Indian to bestow such upon an orator. When he had finished his speech, their wild dances commenced by the striking up of their instrumental and vocal music. The instruments were a gong made of a large keg, over one of the ends of which was stretched a skin which was struck by a small stick, and an instrument consisting of a stick of firm wood, notched like a saw, over the teeth of which a smaller stick ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... said, looking about him, "I reckon the next move is to stop these gents frum any vocal exercise, and ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... performance is to be light, gay, rapid, suggestive and delicate—without a trace of the license of current musical farce. The suggestiveness must naturally arise from the innocent freedom of village life. The whole idea is a travesty of sentimental grand opera, the vocal characters being transposed so far as their fate and ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... hers. "I'm going to tell you as much as I dare," she informed him soberly. "You have a right to know, and you're too nice to ask questions. So I'll not leave you to the agonies of doubt and curiosity. You see, honey dear, father Brent wanted me to have vocal and piano lessons, and to do that I had to go to Seattle once a week, and the railroad-fare, in addition to the cost of the lessons, was prohibitive until your father was good enough to secure me a position in the railroad-agent's office in Port Agnew. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... unawares—a throb of the heart made vocal. It roused her to reality, to the fact that she had been standing rigidly in the middle of the room,—how long she knew not,—seeing nothing, hearing nothing, but the voice of her ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... shrinking coolie second-story man, "mon, do you t'ink dis the time to sleep? What toughts have you in your bosom, dat you delay de Professor's household?" And then a chanty would rise, the voice of the leader quavering with that wild rhythm which had come down to him, a vocal heritage, through centuries of tom-toms and generations of savages striving for emotional expression. But the words were laughable or pathetic. ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... and as this implied the ability to hear, the ear, hitherto dead to all sounds, must be impressed. For this purpose, sound was communicated by speaking trumpets or other instruments, which should force and fix the attention. The lips and vocal organs were then moulded to imitate these sounds. The process was long and wearisome, often occupying months, and even years; but in the end it was successful. The eye was trained by the attraction of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... all," the younger clergyman answered, in a languid tone, with a kind of habitual half-querulousness which belonged to it,—the vocal expression which we meet with now and then, and which says as plainly as so many words could say it, "I am a suffering individual. I am persistently undervalued, wronged, and imposed upon by mankind and the powers of the universe generally. But I endure ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... shaven priest and a songstress of Amen in a series of spirited vignettes; while on the back of the same sheet are sketched various serio-comic scenes, in which animals parody the pursuits of civilised man. An ass, a lion, a crocodile, and an ape are represented in the act of giving a vocal and instrumental concert; a lion and a gazelle play at draughts; the Pharaoh of all the rats, in a chariot drawn by dogs, gallops to the assault of a fortress garrisoned by cats; a cat of fashion, with a flower on her head, has come to blows ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... about the season of nidification much diversified, as I have been often assured by a curious observer of Nature, who long resided at Gibraltar, where eagle abound. The notes of our hawks much resemble those of the king of birds. Owls have very expressive notes; they hoot in a fine vocal sound, much resembling the vox humana, and reducible by a pitch-pipe to a musical key. This note seems to express complacency and rivalry among the males; they use also a quick call and a horrible scream: and can snore and hiss when they mean to menace. Ravens, besides ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... yells" of the United States and Canada offer an inviting field for study in linguistic atavism and barbaric vocal expression. The New York World Almanac for 1895 contains a list of the "yells" of some three hundred colleges and universities in the United States. Out of this great number, in which there is a plenitude of "Rah! rah! rah!" ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... darkeys came down it, tuning their voices to our native ragtime. Or a balladist, man or woman, took the centre, and sang towards our compassionate windows. Or a musical husband and wife placed their portable melodeon on the opposite sidewalk, and trained their vocal and instrumental attack upon the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... trembling tendons That twine about the heart, Are chords that yield a music Unknown to vocal art. ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... Christian hymnology of India is already a rapidly growing power. Every important vernacular has one or more Protestant Christian hymn books, which reveal to what a large extent our faith has inspired and made vocal the praises of Zion in that land. Nearly all of these Christian hymns in South India and many in North India are the compositions of native Christians and manifest considerable poetic power and ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... special sermons before the House in St. Margaret's, Westminster. The day was wound up by a noble dinner in Whitehall, to which the whole House had been invited by the Protector, followed by a concert, vocal and instrumental, in the part of the Palace called ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... now sufficiently distended, greeted the story with a yawn from ear to ear; his lordship, blinking madly, burst into that remarkable laugh which seemed to reveal the absence of certain vocal cords requisite to perfect harmony; and Siward smiled in his listless, pleasant way, and turned off down his corridor, unaware that the Sagamore pup was following close at his heels until he heard Quarrier's even, colourless voice: ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the house" with their thumping on the wooden desks as an accompaniment to the "big bass drum," whilst a certain youngster's rendering of a juvenile ditty, known as "The Muffin Man," is calculated to make one remember his vocal efforts whenever the hot and juicy muffin is put on the breakfast table. Little Mary still trips it neatly. She can't quite forget the days and nights when she used to accompany her mother round the public-houses ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... your greatest progress in speech culture. Reading aloud, properly done, compels you to pronounce the words, instead of skimming over them as in silent reading. It gives you the additional benefit of receiving a vocal impression of the rhythm ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... to-day was transfigured by the misty glow; cows and horses could be faintly seen, ricks burnt with a dim fire. Somewhere dripping water falling on to stone gave a vocal spirit to the obscurity. The warm air seemed to radiate about the house like a flame that is obscured ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... An English traveller, Mr. Wilkinson, has discovered the secret of the vocal Memnon. There was a cavity in which a person was concealed, and struck a stone, which gave a ringing sound like brass. The Arabs, who stood below when Mr. Wilkinson performed the miracle, described sound just as the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... showers of diamonds into the current, and giant bamboos creak in the spicy wind, redolent of gardenia and clove. The hills, scaled by green rice-terraces, each with tiny rill and miniature cascade, are vocal with murmuring waters. Lilac plumbago, red hybiscus, and golden allemanda mingle with pink and purple lantana, yellow daisies, and hedges of scarlet tassels, enclosing wicker huts in patches of banana ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... 'em. Balmy breezes, blow yer mildest! Sun an shaars yer blessins shed! Thrush an blackburd pipe yor wildest Skylarks trill heigh ovverheead! Robin redbreast,—little linnet, Sing yor little songs wi' glee; Till wi' melody each minnit, Makin vocal bush an tree. Wild flaars don yer breetest dresses, Breathe sweet scents on ivvery gale; Stately trees wave heigh yer tresses, Flingin charms o'er hill an dale. Dew fall gently,—an sweet Luna, Keep thy lovin ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... what made my voice so melodious?" said a celebrated vocal performer, of awkward manners, to Charles Bannister. "No," replied the other. "Why, then, I'll tell you: when I was about fifteen, I swallowed, by accident, some train oil." "I don't think," rejoined Bannister, "it would have done you any harm if, at the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various
... black cat with a long red dress comes out and murders the same pieces the prima donnas have sung. We have seen a colored girl attempt a selection from some organ-grinder opera, and she would howl and screech, and catch her breath and come again, and wheel and fire vocal shrapnel, limber up her battery and take a new position, and unlimber and send volleys of soprano grape and cannister into the audience, and then she would catch on to the highest note she could reach and hang to it like a dog to a root, till you would think they would have to throw a ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... the Most High King, avenged the wounds wherefrom issued the blood sold by Judas, I was fatuous enough on earth with the name which lasts longest, and honors most,"[1] replied that spirit, "but not as yet with faith. So sweet was my vocal spirit, that me of Toulouse Rome drew to itself, where I deserved to adorn my temples with myrtle. Statius the people still on earth name me. I sang of Thebes, and then of the great Achilles, but I fell on ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... would," mocked Ursula. "But if you had tried to say the words your lungs would have collapsed, your vocal chords snapped and ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... the Opera House, London; and presided at the harpsichord in the orchestra (piano-fortes not being then known). His embellishments were so masterly, that the attention of the audience was frequently diverted from the singing to the accompaniment, to the frequent mortification of the vocal professors. A pompous Italian singer was, on a certain occasion, so chagrined at the marked attention paid to the harpsichord, in preference to his own singing, that he swore, that if ever Handel played him a similar trick, he would jump ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... laughter of the pleasant-faced hostess (though always followed by the words "Pray do not tease him any more") and the cheerful candle-light, and the cricket chirping in a corner, and the glass door, and the spring night which, laying its elbows upon the tree-tops, and spangled with stars, and vocal with the nightingales which were pouring forth warbled ditties from the recesses of the foliage, kept glancing through the door, and ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... and physics and their metaphysical background, for which I need only mention the names of Descartes, who died in 1650, and Gassendi, who died in 1655. And then there was also the new methodological approach, that critical empiricism whose most vocal exponent was Francis Bacon, which led directly to the founding of the Royal Society in 1660 and its subsequent incorporation. These phases of seventeenth-century thought and activity I do not intend ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... species the hyoids are simple, consisting of a chain of slender, long, cylindrical bones connecting the basi-hyoid with the skull, while the pharynx is short, and the larynx shallow with feebly developed vocal cords, and guarded by a short pointed epiglottis. In the African epauletted bats, Epomophorus, the pharynx is long and capacious, the aperture of the larynx far removed from the fauces, and, opposite to it, opens a canal, leading from the nasal chambers, and extending along the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... we heard the grand Ristori render a part of Dante's Inferno and a selection from Joan of Arc. Of course I couldn't understand a word she said, but her voice, her gestures, her expression told the whole story. Then the music, vocal and instrumental, was the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... when we acquire a foreign language we find it very difficult, and often impossible, to master some of the new sounds. Our ears do not catch them exactly, or we unconsciously substitute for the foreign sound some sound from our own language. Our vocal organs, too, do not adapt themselves readily to the reproduction of the strange sounds in another tongue, as we know from the difficulty which we have in pronouncing the French nasal or the German guttural. Similarly English differs somewhat ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... free novel-fashion, with a Venetian church, a famous maestro (Porpora), a choir of mostly Italian girls, and the little Spanish gipsy Consuelo, the poorest, humblest, plainest (as most people think) of all the bevy, but the possessor of the rarest vocal faculties and the most happiness-producing-and-diffusing temper. There is nothing in the least milk-soppy or prudish about Consuelo, though she is perfectly "pure"; nor is there anything tractified about her, though she is pious and generous. The contrast between her and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... but it possesses no decoration worthy of notice. It cannot even be compared with the common tea-gardens in the vicinity of London. On one side of it are warm and cold baths, for the accommodation of the inhabitants. During summer, vocal and instrumental concerts are performed here, and some of the singers from the theatre are engaged for the season. The situation and climate of Charleston are, however, by no means adapted for entertainments ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... as to climate; "The rain," he says, "here comes down heartily, and is frequently succeeded by clear bright weather, when every brook is vocal, and every torrent sonorous; brooks and torrents which are never muddy even in the heaviest floods. Days of unsettled weather, with partial showers, are very frequent; but the showers, darkening or brightening ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... sounds are probably largely pleasure in muscle patterns. We all know that a child uses first his large muscles,—arm, leg and back,—and that he early enjoys any regular recurrent use of these muscles. So at the time when the vocal muscles tend to become his means of expression, he enjoys repeating the same sounds over and over. And soon he gets enjoyment from listening to repetitions or rhythmic language,—a vicarious motor enjoyment. Surely ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... in poetic effusions, in which, from constant habit, some of them have become such adepts, that they with facility speak extempore poetry; those who are unable to 206 converse in this manner are less esteemed. Their evening amusements consist in dancing and music, vocal and instrumental. Generally, throughout all the Arab provinces, but particularly in Suse, among the Mograffra Arabs, the Woled Abbusebah, and Woled Deleim, the whole country is in a blaze of light of a summer's evening; music, dancing, and rejoicing, is heard in every ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... over the pampas, ranging as far south as the Rio Colorado in Patagonia. In the breeding season it congregates in pools, and one is then struck by their extraordinary vocal powers, which they exercise by night. The performance in no way resembles the series of percussive sounds uttered by most batrachians. The notes it utters are long, as of a wind instrument, not unmelodious, and so powerful as to make themselves ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... driving at?" I asked in a passion. I put my hat on my head (he never offered a seat to anybody), and as he seemed for the moment struck dumb by my irreverence, I turned my back on him and marched out. His vocal arrangements blared after me a few threats of coming down on the ship for the demurrage of the lighters, and all the other expenses consequent upon the delays arising ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... emphatically the month of the Robin. In large numbers they scour the fields and groves. You hear their piping in the meadow, in the pasture, on the hillside. Walk in the woods, and the dry leaves rustle with the whir of their wings, the air is vocal with their cheery call. In excess of joy and vivacity, they run, leap, scream, chase each other through the air, diving and sweeping among the trees with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... one. Contrary to what they had ever before experienced, in jaunts of this length through the woods, not a single hunting adventure occurred, to enliven the tedium of the way. For, although the heavens above were made vocal with the screams of wild geese, still pouring along in their hurried flight to the south, to escape the elemental foe behind, like the rapidly succeeding detachments of some retreating army, yet not a living creature, biped or quadruped, was anywhere to be heard or seen in the forest beneath. ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... words, and do not need it, since they can only be isolated in thought from each other by a distance greater than that which any vocal sound can traverse; but their organs of voice and hearing are far more complex and perfect than ours, and their atmosphere infinitely more conductive ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... a complete elocutionary manual comprizing numerous exercises for developing the speaking voice, deep breathing, pronunciation, vocal expression, and gesture; also selections for practise from masterpieces of ancient and modern eloquence. It is intended for students, teachers, business men, lawyers, clergymen, politicians, clubs, debating societies, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... things that I know of) gives great [Greek text] to the Societa Armonica: especially this season, as the Directors seem determined to replace Donizetti and Mercadante by Mozart and Rossini, in the vocal department. A good change doubtless. I hear no music now: except that for the last week I have been staying with Spring Rice's mother in-law Mrs. Frere, {58} one of the finest judges of Music I know. She was ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... [Ernest has left the door open. The harmonium breaks forth again, together with vocal accompaniment as before.] What's ...
— Fanny and the Servant Problem • Jerome K. Jerome
... the first speaker, bursting out with a very good imitation of Punch in one of his vocal efforts, and supplementing it with a touch of the terpsichorean, tripping along in step with a suggestion of a ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... up to a certain time of night, but as the tide serves, the whole port awakes, all the fishing vessels get ready to start. The quays become vocal with shouts, yells, calls, whistles, and the most stupid din and hubbub confounds the night, utterly destructive of sleep. This chorus was in full cry about two o'clock A.M. Soon great luggers came splashing along with shrieks from the crews, and sails flapping, chains ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... obligingly produced a black plug of smoking tobacco, and Mr. Batcheldor bit off two-thirds and returned the balance. After adjusting the morsel so that it might interfere in the least degree with his vocal machinery, he drawled: ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... hero enjoyed the sensation of riding. The road was a pleasant one, the day was bright with sunshine and the air vocal with the songs of birds. For a time houses were met at rare intervals, but after a while it became evident that they were approaching ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... several successive summers, that wet weather took place just as the Vauxhall season commenced, Tom Lowe, Tyers's principal vocal performer, accidentally meeting the proprietor, expressed an anxious desire to know when he meant to open his gardens. "Why are you so particular, Mr. Lowe?" said Jonathan. "I have a very good reason, sir, and should like to know the very day." "Why, why?" reiterated Tyers, impatiently. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... frowned while he tried to lay hold of the memory. It was the high-keyed wailing of this same man-child wanting his bottle, but it eluded Bud completely. There was a tantalizing sense of familiarity with the sound, but the lungs and the vocal chords of Lovin Child had developed amazingly in two years, and he had ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... really do exist, in the past or in the future, and that the present is just a moving knife-edge that separates the two. You can't even indicate the present. By the time you make up your mind to say, 'Now!' and transmit the impulse to your vocal organs, and utter the word, the original present moment is part of the past. The knife-edge has gone over it. Most people think they know only the present; what they know is the past, which they have already experienced, or read about. The difference ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... mesa twilights have their vocal note in the love call of the burrowing owl, so the desert spring is voiced by the mourning doves. Welcome and sweet they sound in the smoky mornings before breeding time, and where they frequent in any great ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... Catherine smiled and asked me to tell her about the conversation I had had with this monarch, and I did so to the best of my ability. She was then kind enough to say that she had never seen me at the Courtag, which was a vocal and instrumental concert given at the palace, and open to all. I told her that I had only attended once, as I was so unfortunate as not to have a taste for music. At this she turned to Panin, and said ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... consciousness. It is really robbing an audience of its rights, to pass so quickly from one point to another that the mind must lose a new one if it lingers to take in the old. Every vital point in a tale must be given a certain amount of time: by an anticipatory pause, by some form of vocal or repetitive emphasis, and by actual time. But even more than other tales does the funny story demand this. It ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... He drew a short breath. How different she looked! She radiated a subtle promise of perfect companionship. Price Ruyler did what all men will do until the end of time. He made up his mind that he had found his woman and without vocal assistance. ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... subjects in the country youths so well brought up, so lively, so capable; and I never was better pleased with any conversation than yours; but it is time now we should relax our minds with some diversion; and as nothing is more capable of enlivening the mind than music, you shall hear a vocal and instrumental concert which may not ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... lifting his head. Erect, happy, smiling, the girl was looking straight past him, and he felt like one of the yellow grains of dust about her horses' feet. And then within him a high, shrill little yell rose above the laughter and vocal hum going on around him—there was John Burnham coming up the walk, the school-master, John Burnham—and Jason sprang to meet him. Immediately Burnham's searching eyes fell upon him, and he stopped—smiling, ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... The larynx is found at various stages of development in the Amphibia, and comparative anatomists are in a position to trace the progressive growth of this important organ from the rudimentary structure of the lower Amphibia up to the elaborate and delicate vocal apparatus that we have in the larynx of ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... in the performance of two works by composers of that interesting race—Messrs. Dabcik and Ploffskin—of which it may suffice to say that the temperamental peculiarities of the Bohemian genius were elicited with conspicuous brilliancy under the inspiring direction of Sir Henry Peacham. In a vocal item from Siegfried, Mr. Orlo Jimson evinced a sympathetic appreciation of the emotional needs of the situation which augurs favourably for his further progress, and the powerful support furnished him by the orchestra was an important factor in the enjoyment of his praiseworthy efforts. An ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... other day, and some of the good folks told me, with a grave smile peculiar to that region, that when Rab came to them in print he was so good that they wouldn't believe he was the same Rab I had delivered in the school-room,—a testimony to my vocal powers of impressing the ...
— Rab and His Friends • John Brown, M. D. |
