"Chorister" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... farm sang from every corner. In the evening, Pierre invented games and related stories of his regiment. On Sunday Agathe made cakes for the girls. Marie knew some canticles, which she sang like a chorister. She looked like a saint, with her blond hair falling on her neck and her ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... soar and sing higher and higher, intoxicated with the joy of his own song until he came in the way of an exploding shell. Then the beautiful song would be cut short and all that would be left of the spring-time chorister would be a bunch of feathers in the ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... their peculiar customs, they imitated that of the see of Rouen, in the annual election of a boy-bishop upon Innocents'-day; a practice prevalent in many churches in Spain and Germany, and notoriously in England at Salisbury. The young chorister took the crozier in his hands, during the first vespers, at the verse in the Magnificat, "He has put down the mighty from their seats, and has exalted the humble and meek;" and he resigned his dignity at the same verse in the second vespers.—The ceremony ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... fellow," standing in the corner behind the door so that he could hardly be seen, was a country lad of about fifteen, and taller than any of us. His hair was cut square on his forehead like a village chorister's; he looked reliable, but very ill at ease. Although he was not broad-shouldered, his short school jacket of green cloth with black buttons must have been tight about the arm-holes, and showed at the opening of the cuffs red wrists accustomed to being bare. His legs, in ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... these breaches of decorum as grave offences, which were not to be passed over and not to be allowed. What! a black monk stalking along with a bull-pup at his heels, and a jackdaw, worse than the Jackdaw of Rheims, using bad words in the garth, and showing an evil example to the chorister boys, with his ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... sanctity, they have, to these, Their curious copes and surplices Of cleanest cobweb, hanging by In their religious vestery. They have their ash-pans and their brooms, To purge the chapel and the rooms; Their many mumbling mass-priests here, And many a dapper chorister. Their ush'ring vergers here likewise, Their canons and their chaunteries; Of cloister-monks they have enow, Ay, and their abbey-lubbers too:— And if their legend do not lie, They much affect the papacy; And since the last is dead, there's hope Elve Boniface shall ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... place to an assistant, and betake himself to chant a requiem from a stall in the church of which on Sundays he is the fairest ornament, where his is the most imposing voice, where he distorts his huge mouth with energy to thunder out a joyous Amen. So is he chorister. At four o'clock, freed from his official servitude, he reappears to shed joy and gaiety upon the most famous shop in the city. Happy is his wife, he has no time to be jealous: he is a man of action rather than of sentiment. His mere arrival spurs the young ladies at the counter; their bright ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... church, and colder; and if people then staid at home on Sunday afternoons, they had a better excuse for doing so than their successors can muster. The chorister, even, was frequently among the missing, but was charitably supposed to be subject to the ague. Efforts were made to prevail upon the elderly part of the parish to permit the introduction of stoves with long funnels. They scorned the enervating luxury! Their ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... side of things immediately crumpled his brown face into its attractive smile. "Say, aren't we going to be the immaculate little lads? I can't think of a single bad habit we can acquire in this place. No smokes, no drinks, few if any eats—and not a chorister in sight. Let's organize the Robinson Crusoe Purity ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... to Michael Kelly, who was a friend of Attwood and a pupil of Mozart at the time. [Thomas Attwood was an English musician, born in 1765. He was chorister of the Chapel Royal at the age of nine, and at sixteen attracted the attention of the Prince of Wales, afterward George IV., who sent him to Italy to study. He studied two years in Naples and one year in Vienna ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... civil and ecclesiastical authority. He taught the children, I will not say the Catechism, but the Rosary; he rang the bells to amuse himself; and impelled by ardent zeal for the service of the church, he sometimes used his chorister's wand in a manner not very agreeable to ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... remains all night praying by the side of the dead body, and on the following day the friends of the deceased come to close up the coffin, and inter the corpse. On this occasion, after the evening service had been performed, every one retired from the church: and the priest, with the young chorister, withdrew to supper; but soon returned, and the former commenced the usual prayers. What was his astonishment, when he beheld the dead body rise from the coffin, and advance towards him. Terrified in the extreme, the priest flew to the ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... little; for he was a homely creature, content to crawl about in the dark underground, or under wood and leaves, where nobody saw him and nobody cared. But the Nightingale's case was really quite too pitiful! Fancy the sweetest singer among all the birds, the favorite chorister, going about with but one eye, while every one else, even the tiniest little Humming Bird ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... very fine voice and correct ear for music, I was selected to be brought up as a chorister in a Dominican convent of great reputation. At the age of ten years, I was placed under the charge of the leader of the choir. Under his directions, I was fully occupied receiving my lessons in singing, or at other times performing the ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... had many schools scattered through the towns. In New York, during the Dutch period, it was customary for the schoolmaster, in order to increase his earnings, to ring the church-bell, dig graves, and act as chorister and town clerk. In the English period, some of the schools were kept by Dutch masters, who taught English as an accomplishment. As early as 1702, an act was passed for the "Encouragement of a Grammar Free School in the City of New York." In ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... round in vain for Goriot's two daughters or their husbands. Christophe was his only fellow-mourner; Christophe, who appeared to think it was his duty to attend the funeral of the man who had put him in the way of such handsome tips. As they waited there in the chapel for the two priests, the chorister, and the beadle, Rastignac grasped Christophe's hand. He could not utter a ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... chaplain deaconing out the hymn in their favorite way. This ended, he announced his text,—"This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and delivered him out of all his trouble." Instantly, to my great amazement, the cracked voice of the chorister was uplifted, intoning the text, as if it were the first verse of another hymn. So calmly was it done, so imperturbable were all the black countenances, that I half began to conjecture that the chaplain ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... boyhood days may assist the reader to make my acquaintance. In my early teens I was, for one year, a member of a boy choir. Barring my voice, I was a good chorister, and, like all good choir-boys, I was distinguished by that seraphic passiveness from which a reaction of some kind is to be expected immediately after a service or rehearsal. On one occasion this reaction in me manifested itself in a fist ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... neither was my connection with it; and my apostles were no better appreciated, for they were soon after whitewashed over, and disappeared like a dream. Sometimes, in damp weather, they were still to be seen "craning" their necks as heretofore (much to the amusement of the chorister boys) though with a kind of veil upon them. Doubtless, in a future generation, when the plaster begins to blister, some antiquarian will discover this "wonderful mediaeval fresco," and call the attention of the ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... a sudden hush, everybody scuffled back into their places. The best man put his nose out of the vestry door, and the "Wedding March" struck up. Then came a procession of chorister boys down the church, each bearing a small bouquet of fern and white flowers. They ranged themselves on either side of the porch, and the bride and bridegroom ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... forced from his father's house when a little boy, and driven like a POSTING HORSE, being impressed to sing as a chorister, at Wallingford College; his miseries there, and the stale bread they gave him; the fifty-three stripes the poor lad received at Eton, when learning Latin; his happy transfer to Trinity College, which to him seemed a removal from hell to heaven; ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... to extol the toleration which united the singers in the production of this work of art, for not only the Catholic and the Evangelical but also the Reformed community was split into two bodies—those speaking German and those speaking French. The French chorister was not daunted by the Lottchen, but, as my uncle maintained, sang his part, spectacles on nose, in the finest falsetto that ever proceeded forth from a human breast. Now there was amongst us (I mean in the town) a spinster named Meibel, aged about fifty-five, who subsisted ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... short service she kept stealing glances across the aisle, but Mrs. Marvin did not turn again. The sight of the bright child face had stirred the memory of an earnest little chorister who used sometimes to smile at her over his book as he passed, and she did not want to remember those old days; she wished ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... not an ill Call. And when we have discussed our neat Repast, thou, Ned, shalt touch the Theorbo, and let us hear thy balmy Voice. Time was, when thou didst sing like a young Chorister." ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... only a burial of a very poor description," said Planchet, disdainfully; "the officiating priest, the beadle, and only one chorister boy, nothing more. You observe, messieurs, that the defunct lady or gentleman could not have been of ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 1780 and 1814 were all of one pattern, and the one which Gourdon composed upon the Cup-and-Ball will give an idea of them. They required a certain knack or proficiency in the art. "The Chorister" is the Saturn of this abortive generation of jocular poems, all in four cantos or thereabouts, for it was generally admitted that six ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... Grace the Duke of Wellington (who, by the way, is an excellent musician) entered the Royal Chapel "booted and spurred," and was, of course, called upon for the fine. But His Grace calling upon the youngest chorister to repeat his GAMUT, and the "little urchin" failing, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 30. Saturday, May 25, 1850 • Various
... Cromwell's soldiers (who certainly were quartered in the chapel), and that the rest of the glass was taken out and concealed inside the organ screen. Another, which appears in a small book called "The Chorister," is that all the glass was taken down and buried in pits in the college grounds in one night by a man and a boy. Both these stories are entirely fictitious. The best answer to the question may be found in the words ...
— A Short Account of King's College Chapel • Walter Poole Littlechild
... with more brilliancy, more tremolo in the execution, the song of the Common Black Cricket. Indeed the mistake would certainly be made by any one who did not know that, by the time the very hot weather comes, the true Cricket, the chorister of spring, has disappeared. His pleasant violin has been succeeded by another more pleasant still and worthy of special study. We shall return to him at ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... lamely and irregularly until they came to a chorus beginning "Now let us sing with one accord," which seemed to be a signal for parting company: all became discord and confusion; each shifted for himself, and got to the end as well, or rather as soon, as he could, excepting one old chorister in a pair of horn spectacles bestriding and pinching a long sonorous nose; who, happening to stand a little apart, and being wrapped up in his own melody, kept on a quavering course, wriggling his head, ogling his book, ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... The bass chorister was a very amusing man. His voice was sepulchral but his conversation skittish. Eileen's repartees smote him to almost the only serious respect of his life, and one day he said: "Why, there's a future in you. Why don't you go on ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... always showed great kindness to me; and I spent many hours with him at the convent. It was through him that I became chorister in the Capuchin church, and was allowed to carry ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... qualities (she being especially remarked as a singer), and who was also of a musical family. Soon after his arrival at New Haven, Mr. Luca, having acquired by this time quite a fine knowledge of music, and being an excellent vocalist, was chosen chorister of a Congregationalist church. In a short time his choir was considered the equal of any in the city; which was high but well-deserved praise. Some time previously to the formation of what was called professionally the "Luca family," the subject of this sketch organized a quartet ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... formed, by which there might be singing regularly at the close of school. It was then proposed that a number of singing-books be obtained, and one of the scholars, who was well acquainted with common tunes, be appointed as chorister. Her duty should be to decide what particular tune may be sung each day, inform the teacher of the metre of the hymn, and take the lead in the exercise. This plan, being approved of by the scholars, was adopted, and put into ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... strange world, Rafael had caught a glimpse, barely, during the few days he had spent in Milan. His companion, the canon, had run across a former chorister from the cathedral of Valencia, who could find nothing to do but loiter night and day about the Gallery. Through him Brull had learned of the life led by these journeymen of art, always on hand in the "marketplace", waiting for ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that is of the time which we call the present day, are very seldom seen, and such as there are do not come within the scope of this work. There is one in West Wickham Churchyard devoted to a chorister, and sculptured with a representation of the church organ-pipes. Memorials to deceased Freemasons are perhaps the most frequent of late carvings, as in the sketch from Lydd in ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... each individual chorister could do, shook his head, and began to tell the boy from Malta for what good reason the master preferred the two sick youths; but little Hannibal interrupted by exclaiming, in tones of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of a powerful mangonel, whose mighty beam, swinging high, hurled aloft the bulging wine-skin, the which, bursting in mid-air, deluged with water all below—prior and monk, acolyte and chorister; whereat from all Belsaye a shout went up, that swelled to peal on peal of mighty laughter, the while, in stumbling haste, the dripping Prior was borne by dripping monks back to Duke Ivo's mighty camp. And lo! ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... been sung, the monks retired, but one lingered, for he was blind and walked slowly, led by a little chorister. As he drew near, Prince Henry started back ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... declaring that no one but himself, Charles Incledon, knew how to sing a British ballad: and it must be admitted, that "The Storm" and "Black-eyed Susan," as sung by Incledon, produced a deep impression on the public mind. He was a native of Cornwall, and the son of a medical gentleman. As a chorister, under the tuition of Jackson, in Exeter Cathedral, Incledon acquired his knowledge of music; for when he was fifteen he entered the Royal Navy, in which he served in the West Indies from 1779 to 1783, when he abandoned the naval profession, and joined ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... David and the Minstrels; executed by Mr. Oliphant, from designs by W.R. Dyce, Esq., R.A.: the gift of Mr. Thomas Ingram, Professor of Music, formerly a Chorister and ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... he writes: "That liquid tinkle of theirs is the true fountain of youth if one can only drink it with the right ears, and I always date the New Year from the day of my first draught. Messer Roberto di Lincoln, with his summer alb over his shoulders, is the true chorister for the bridals of earth and sky. There is no bird that seems to me so thoroughly happy as he, so void of all arriere pensee about getting a livelihood. The robin sings matins and vespers somewhat conscientiously, it seems to me—makes a business of ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... fever and chilled again to her queer absence of spirit.... There was a chorister at the end of the line near her, a pale young man with a spiritual face who chanted his part with shining rapt eyes. While he sang he slipped his hand under his white surplice and took out his watch. Still singing "Glory be to the Father, the Son, and ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... born about 1520, and at an early age was a boy chorister at St. Paul's. After his voice changed, he played the organ at Waltham Abbey, and some time later was chosen organist royal to Queen Elizabeth. His pecuniary returns for his talent did not make him rich, ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth |
