"Fiddling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... trouble which the farmers experience in getting native labour, and so forth, and so on; but we must not derive from all this peripatetic fustian the erroneous impression that His Honour has been vacuously fiddling on the eve of a conflagration. The real business which took him to Lydenburg and Middelburg has no doubt been satisfactorily accomplished. Boer sentiment has been tested in secret, and the usual professions of fervid patriotism ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... girl's body by a couple of pen-strokes, and had he been older that might have contented him: as it was, what he wanted was to rouse the look her eyes had borne in Chartres orchard that tranquil morning, and this one could not readily secure by fiddling with seals and parchments. You see his position: this high-spirited young man now loved the Princess too utterly to take her on lip-consent, and this marriage was now his one possible excuse for ceasing from victorious warfare. So he blustered, ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... read: "Everything is looking much more settled than when I was formerly here, and I do really think that the Government, from the conciliatory measures wisely adopted, will stand their ground against the adherents of Buonaparte. We are to have a great rejoicing to-morrow. All Paris will be dancing, fiddling, and singing. They are a light-hearted people. I wish I could join in their fun. I was hopeful that I should; but the cursed recollection of the injustice that has been done to me is never out of my mind; so ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... tiger-rush Locasto threw himself on his man. There was no preliminary fiddling here; they were out for blood, and the sooner they wallowed in it the better. Right and left he struck with mighty swings that would have felled an ox, but the Jam-wagon was too quick for him. Twice ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... strolled in from the kitchen. Little Fuzzy jumped up on the armchair and switched on the viewscreen. Fiddling with the selector, he got the Big Blackwater woods-burning. Mike and Mitzi shrieked delightedly, like a couple of kids watching a horror show. They knew, by now, that nothing in the screen could get out ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... inhabits; and you would not fancy there was a green or habitable spot in a universe thus awfully lighted up. And yet it is by the blaze of such a conflagration, to which the fire of Rome was but a spark, that we do all our fiddling, and hold domestic tea-parties ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as they walked over the snowy moors in the semi-darkness between tea and dinner, had been speaking to him about the practical results obtainable by sound-vibrations (what he already knew for that matter), and how it is possible by fiddling long enough upon a certain note to fiddle down a bridge and split it asunder. From that he passed on to the scientific fact that the ultimate molecules of matter are not only in constant whirring motion, but that also they ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... Ford, "if you'll only not neglect everything else while you're doing it. I don't believe in girls fiddling away their time with such things, and not knowing how to make good cheese and butter. But I wouldn't hinder you from making a present to Miss Preston, for she has been a good ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... century, of the church of her youth: "After awhile there was a bass-viol Introduced and brought into meeting and did not suit the Old people; one Old Gentleman got up, took his hat off the peg and marched off. Said they had begun fiddling and there would be dancing soon." Another church-member, in derisive opposition to a clarinet which had been "voted into the choir," brought into meeting a fish-horn, which he blew loud and long to the complete rout of ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... writing. Rather melancholy, but pleasant all the same, for the element of hope kept all sweet. And at night a huge bonfire was lit; it was cold of nights, and officers and men gathered round it for a sing-song. And there was a platform of barrels and planks on which various performances, fiddling, a hornpipe, recitations, nigger melodies, took place, the highest in command enjoying themselves as heartily as the humblest. And there was a tot of rum, not enough to hurt the weakest head indeed, but still a taste, for every one to drink to absent ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... key in your cashbox this morning, uncle," said Helen, glancing up from a book, "while you were fiddling with your safe in ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... accordingly proclaimed a 'bee' or rustic gathering, whereupon all his neighbors hurried to his aid like faithful allies; attacked the task with the desperate energy of lazy men eager to overcome a job; and, when it was accomplished, fell to eating and drinking, fiddling and dancing for very joy that so great an amount of labor had been vanquished with so ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... were together in the cool shade of their terrace. Outside, it was very hot, for the morning breeze did not yet stir the brown linen curtains which kept out the glare of the sea, and myriads of locusts were fiddling their eternal two notes without pause or change of pitch, in every garden from Massa to Scutari point, which latter is the great bluff from which they quarry limestone for road making, and which shuts off the amphitheatre of Sorrento from the view of Castellamare to eastward. The ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... universe as the 'Musical Cornucopia,' late of the sunny South, and now a resident of this metropolis, will delight this company by singing one of those soul-moving plantation melodies which have made his name famous over two hemispheres. Mr. 'Pussy Me-ow' Simmons, the distinguished fiddling pianist, late of the Bowery, very late, I may remark, and now on the waiting list at Wallack's Theatre—every other month, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... gazed across the river, his hands under the tails of his frock, and the perturbation of his mind expressed by the frequent flapping of those somber woolen wings. To the little man who watched him, there was a faint resemblance to a fiddling cricket. ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... cut down to the quick, it is a shrewd sign that the man is a mechanic, to whom long nails would be troublesome, or that he gets his bread by fiddling; and if they are longer than his fingers ends, and encircled with a black rim, it foretells he has been laboriously and meanly employed, and too fatigued to clean himself: a good apology for want of cleanliness in a mechanic, but the ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... to Redclyffe, to have an interview with his father. Unhappily, Sir Guy was giving a dinner to the hunt, and had been drinking. He not only refused to see him, but I am afraid he used shocking language, and said something about bidding him go back to his fiddling brother in-law. The son was waiting in the hall, heard everything, threw himself on his horse, and rushed away in the dark. His forehead struck against the branch of a tree, and he was killed ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are under no apprehension; and presently they sees the good-looking officer of militia, in his greens and Lincolns, get up and give me a wink, and I go out with him abroad, into the dark night perhaps; well, my batu and coko goes on fiddling, just as if I were six miles off asleep in the tent, and not out in the dark street with the local officer, with his Lincolns ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... trench and trod upon a wounded man who screamed beneath his heel, and climbed out on the further side. The air was musical with hooting shell and singing shot and hissing bullet as if a whole diabolic orchestra were fiddling and bugling. Polson found the fallen body of his foe, and hugged it in his arms, and raced back as hard as he could tear. He tumbled into the trench of the first parallel almost anyhow; but he gripped the man he hated, and in his soul was a great rejoicing. He tore up the ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... conscious of an Eastern clash in them which no Scot could or would have given. Again: eighteen months ago I found a camp of English gypsies in the Rocky Mountains a little beyond Golden. One man was leaning against a tree fiddling negro melodies to the birds, but negro melodies with the flavor of the tent instead of the cabin. At my request he played "Yankee Doodle," and imparted to it a revolutionary dash, a piquant mocking defiance, which convinced me that he knew its history and was interpreting it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... remarked, as he leaned back in his chair with an air of lazy content, "that I am being accused of fiddling while ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this reporter was traveling, as a non-fiddling, non-tooting member of the Philadelphia Orchestra, on a train that carried the organization on ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... republic banishing and murdering their best and ablest citizens, dissipating the public treasure with the most senseless extravagance, and spending their whole time, as spectators or actors, in playing, fiddling, dancing, and singing, does it not, my lord, strike your imagination with the image of a sort of complex Nero? And does it not strike you with the greater horror, when you observe, not one man only, but a whole city, grown drunk with pride and power, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... stopped short at the railings, and grinned up in return, and threw out his arms to express surprise, and then snapped his fingers, and cut a little caper, as though he would say—'Now, you're come back—we'll have fun and fiddling again.' And forthwith he began to bawl his enquiries and salutations. But Devereux called him up peremptorily, for he wanted to hear the news—especially all about the Walsinghams. And up came Toole, and they had a great shaking of hands, and the doctor ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the crevices or windows of the Shian, and sounds of revelry came forth, among which fiddling was conspicuous. The tune played at that moment ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... in the evenings with our French confreres, (whom I have mentioned as "nondescripts," from the circumstance of their being under no regular engagement with the Company,) playing cards or fiddling and dancing. We were on one occasion engaged in the latter amusement en pleine midi—our Deputy Bourgeois being one of the party, and all of us in the highest possible glee, when lo! in the midst of our hilarity, the hall door flew open and the great man stood sternly before us. The ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... five books, and only five, by him, I have heard it said. When he had finished one of these, and finished it completely, he gave it away, and bought another. I do not recommend that, but I do recommend the principle of thorough reading on which it is founded. Do not be fiddling over too many books ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... was an early friend and companion of Jefferson. He was a jovial young fellow noted for mimicry, practical jokes, fiddling and dancing. Jefferson's holidays were sometimes spent with Henry, and the two together would go off on hunting excursions of which each was passionately fond. Both were swift of foot ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... graduate, with no questions asked as to his family, fortune or business, would be rated socially as on an equal footing with the owner of a L10,000 estate, though this might be discounted one-half if he were unfashionably ignorant of dancing, boxing, fencing, fiddling and cards.[15] He was attracted by the buoyancy, the good breeding and the cordiality of those whom he met, and particularly by the sound qualities of Colonel and Mrs. Carter with whom he dwelt; but as a budding Presbyterian preacher he was a little shocked at first by the easy-going ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... and that this I had indeed learned well, but on the cobbler's bench. "Surely Yvon has told you, mademoiselle, of our good shoemaker, and how he taught me his trade, that I might practise it at times when there is no fiddling needed?" I spoke cheerfully, but let it be seen that I was not in jest. A little pale, she looked from one of us to the other, ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey of the bustling place. There is a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing, and fiddling: there are bullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the lookout, quacks (other quacks, plague take them!) bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... is the first object of an editor; then such notes as explain difficult or obscure passages; and lastly, which is much less important, notes pointing out authors to whom the Poet has been indebted, not in the fiddling way of phrase here and phrase there (which is detestable as a general practice), but where he has had essential obligations either as to ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... decided that all your deeds need not be deeds of valour,' said Mr. Noah, fiddling with a pen. 'The strange labours of Hercules, you remember, were some of them dangerous and some merely difficult. I have decided that difficult things shall count. There are several things that really need doing,' he went on ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... her eyes fascinated. And her saying was equally true. He was such a demure boy-angel, bright-haired, long and shapely in the limb, as the painters and carvers loved to set in Madonna's court, careful about her throne, or below the dais fiddling, or strumming lutes to charm away her listlessness. Moreover, Angioletto was the name he went by, though he had been christened Dominick. And he came from Borgo San Sepolcro—far cry from windy Chioggia—a ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... door, old Bob rose, turned in after them, and, still fiddling, played the procession and himself ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... not, alas, The barrier overpass That screens him in those Mournful Meads hereunder, Where no fiddling can be heard In the glades Of silentness, no bird Thrills the shades; Where no viol is touched for songs or serenades, No bowing wakes a ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... casting down my eyes, and fiddling uneasily with one of the buttons of his coat, "it is hardly a question of 'like,' is it? I do not imagine that you like it much yourself?—one cannot always be ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... away from the gate, back where she could not see him, and stood fiddling with his cinch a bit, although it required no attention ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... that 'he had, he feared, disagreeable news to announce, viz., that Mr. Newman was elected Fellow of Oriel, and that his immediate presence was required there,' the person addressed merely answered, 'Very well,' and went on fiddling. This led the man to ask whether, perhaps, he had not gone to the wrong person, to which Mr. Newman replied that it was all right. But, as may be imagined, no sooner had the man left than he flung down his instrument and dashed downstairs."[12] And again, "With a half-malicious intent ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... souls for gain, that your heirs may squander and buy a hot place in hell! I am not one of your fashionable fine spoken mealy mouthed preachers: I tell you the plain truth. What are your pastimes? Cards and dice, fiddling and dancing, guzzling and guttling! Can you be saved by dice? No! Will the four knaves give you a passport to heaven? No! Can you fiddle yourself into a good birth among the sheep? No! You are goats, and goat ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... of some strong pine with shut-winged butterflies and merry, fiddling creatures of the wood. Runnels of rain water from the glacier-slips swirl through the pine needles into rivulets; the streams froth and rise in their banks. The sky is white with cloud; the sky is gray with rain; the sky is clear. The ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... and began to settle nearby, and there was Van Artevelde leaning over its rail and fiddling frantically with whatever it was that stuck up on it—a weird, angled contraption of pipes and belts topped by a whirring blade. A boy stood at his shoulder and tried to help him. As the platform descended to a few meters above ground, the Dutchman slashed at the contraption, the cut ...
— Wind • Charles Louis Fontenay
... fiddling with his chin, a trick he had when undecided. "I don't zactly know; fine day, you see; want to see that hedge grubbed; want to fill up the gaps; want to go over to the wood meads; ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... desolation they bring in their wake overshadows anything I have suffered completely. If he had lived six months more I should have known him for what he was born to be. It was in the blood of him. His father and grandfather before him were fiddling, dancing people; but I was certain of him. I thought we could leave Ohio and come out here alone, and I could so love him and interest him in his work, that he would be a man. Of all the fool, fruitless jobs, making anything of a creature ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... could achieve on such short notice, she glanced with an admirably casual air about her to see that the gesture had not been observed. Nobody looked at her. Her father and the two brothers were watching Reuben, Ezra preserved his old attitude, Ferdinand was fiddling with his eye-glass, and moving his hand and one foot in time to the music, and Rachel's strangely youthful eyes were bright with tears. As the girl looked at her a shining drop brimmed over from each eye and dropped upon the neat mantle of black silk she ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... pairs of slippers at the Christmas dance, but she had never achieved her stocking feet in the first round until now, and she was in high glee over it. If she had been admired before, she was looked upon as a raving, tearing beauty to-night—and so she was. Fortunately 'Pollo had his fiddling to do, and this saved him from any conspicuous folly. But he kept his eyes on her, and when she grew too ravishingly lovely to his fond vision, and he couldn't stand it a minute longer in silence, he turned to the man next him, ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... and his sister touched the harp and sang, the ale circulated, and the villagers, assembling, gazed in a crowd into the hall. Then the girl danced solo, just as I have seen her sisters do in Egypt and in Russia, to her brother's fiddling. Even so of old, Syrian and Egyptian girls haunted gardens and taverns, and danced pas seul all over the Roman empire, even unto Spain, behaving so gypsily that wise men have conjectured that they were gypsies in very truth. And who shall say they were ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... too!" the newcomer continued. "You've had all the chance in the world. How do you expect to make a living, fiddling about here all day with pencil and paper, and talking Socialist rot at night? Leave that chair alone and ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... better now; that glass was warming.— You rascal! limber your lazy feet! We must be fiddling and performing For supper and bed, or starve in the street.— Not a very gay life to lead, you think? But soon we shall go where lodgings are free, And the sleepers need neither victuals nor drink:— The sooner, the ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... I surely," quoth the minstrel, and through the palace he went a-fiddling, his stout sword ringing often in his hand. Great thanks were tendered by the warriors from the Rhine. Bold Folker spake to Dankwart: "Great discomfiture have ye suffered to-day, therefore your brother bade ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... fell to thinking. Many things that had been dark to her suddenly became light. She seemed to see Royal Lee fiddling while the world was in travail, but beside him rose a vision of David in sailor's blue, ready to do his whole duty for ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... him, Baas?—shall I shoot him?" asked the one-eyed Hendrik, smacking his lips at the thought, and fiddling with the rusty lock of ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... that it is best to get the stroke done with notwithstanding. In such circumstances it is almost certain to be a failure, and you will wish then that you had taken a fresh stance, as you knew you ought to have done, and made a proper job of it, even at the risk of annoying your partner by fiddling ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... blessing, and kissing and singing, And they were all merry; why not, to be sure, That O'Hanlon got inside of Phadrig Crohoore; And they all talked and laughed, the length of the table, Aiting and drinking while they were able— With the piping and fiddling, and roaring like thunder, Och! you'd think your head fairly was splitting asunder; And the priest shouted, "Silence, ye blabblers, agin," And he took up his prayer-book and was going to begin, And they all held their funning, and jigging, and bawling, So silent, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... "Most everlastingly hanged! Wonder what they think this is? A somnolent kindergarten show? Talk about fiddling while ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... polished our party off, and found us on board of the ferry-boat; none of your little fiddling things, where a donkey-cart and an organ-boy can hardly find standing-room, but a good clear hundred-feet gangway, twelve or fourteen feet broad, on each side of the engine, and a covered cabin outside each gangway, extending half the length of the vessel; ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... as the spot where they appear he nears, Surprised at these unwonted signs of idling, He hears—alas! no music of the spheres, But an unhallow'd, earthly sound of fiddling! A melody which made him doubt his ears, The cause being past his guessing or unriddling; A pipe, too, and a drum, and shortly after, A most unoriental roar ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... gypsy tune. This had the invariable effect of bringing Mr. Edward Drury, passionately fond of music, down to his books and his friend, and, coffee having been prepared, the long day of talking, reading, and fiddling ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... Odin was bailing water from the boat, and Gunnar was fiddling with the motor that had conked out again, the dwarf looked back at the cliff. It was shadowy now. Dust was still rising as it shook loose an occasional, ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... would draw up around the camp-fire, to smoke and sing and "swap yarns" for an hour. There were only three musical instruments in the length and breadth of the Bad Lands, the Langs' piano, a violin which "Fiddling Joe" played at the dances over Bill Williams's saloon, and Howard Eaton's banjo. The banjo traveled in state in the mess-wagon of the "Custer Trail," and hour on hour, about the camp-fire on the round-up, Eaton ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... He ceased, fiddling absently with the dull-colored weapon on his knee; and for a while they remained silent, not looking at each other. And when Drene spoke again he was still ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... the foam off a crock of suds, but when he felt in his pocket he found himself discharged for lack of evidence. Somebody had disturbed his change during the commotion. So we sat, dry, upon the stools, listening to the Dagoes fiddling on deck. If anything, Tobin was lower in spirits and less congenial with his misfortunes ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... theatres to be opened, though they felt the pangs of hunger now. They {214} retorted readily when there was some speech of Nero fiddling while Rome burned. Their city was not yet on fire, they said, and Napoleon, the Nero of the catastrophe, could not fiddle because he had no ear for music! The Cirque National was opened on October 23rd, though fuel was running short and the cold ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... Persia, Hungary, Spain, America, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, South Africa, Germany, or France, in bands of from, say two to fifty men, women, and children, in a most wretched; miserable condition, doing little else but fiddling upon the national conscience and sympathies, blood-sucking the hardworking population, and frittering their time away in idleness, pilfering, and filth, I expect, and justly so, the inhabitants would begin to "kick," ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... in. My companion and I wondered greatly who and what he could be. It was fair-time in Chateau Landon, and when we went along to the booths we had our question answered; for there was our friend busily fiddling for the peasants to caper to. He ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... orchestration is going on while Xerxes is possibly in an Apocalyptic hell, and his hosts either bearing him company or wandering aimlessly about in the same stupid, stolid, unmoral, unspiritual condition in which they were the moment they were engulfed in those blue waters. Why, Nero fiddling while Rome was burning is a ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... are millions and you will not speak. I dare not know the moment the messenger will come for me. I will cover the glass. [He covers it and brings it to the desk, and the FOOL, is sitting by the door fiddling with some flowers which he has stuck in his hat. He has begun to blow a dandelion head.] What are ...
— The Hour Glass • W.B.Yeats
... as if I was bound to have a rum shop and a sailor's boarding-house under my nose. There'll be a crowd of men hanging round and fiddling and carousing half the night. I don't see what's getting into Boston! Places that were good enough twenty year ago are only fit for tramps, and decent people have to get out of the way, whether they ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... although unawares, by the new idea of giving perfectly modern versions of biblical stories, Bassano introduced into nearly every picture he painted episodes from the life in the streets of Bassano, and in the county just outside the gates. Even Orpheus in his hands becomes a farmer's lad fiddling ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... Oct. 24. First concert of the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra, organized by Julius Dyhrenfurth. (On Feb. 2, 1853, the Legislature of Illinois incorporated the Society by an act entitled "An Act to Encourage the Science of Fiddling.") ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... plaster of the wall, but we didn't think about that at the time; for over our heads, sailing very comfortably through the windy stars, was the ship that had passed the summer in landlord's field. Her port-holes and her bay-window were blazing with lights, and there was a noise of singing and fiddling on her decks. "He's gone!" shouted landlord above the storm, "and he's taken half the village with him." I could only nod in answer, not having lungs ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... for some purpose or other, or maybe just to look neat, we had some fight to get it torn away, but at last we succeeded. I had turned about for a jug, and the wife was rummaging for the screw, while Benjie was fiddling away with his fingers at the cork—Save us! all at once it gave a thud like thunder, driving the cork over poor Benjie's head, while it squirted there-up in his eyes like a fire-engine, and I had only just time to throw down the jug, and up with the bottle ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... erected, and where shooting at targets with wooden darts, sham railway-trains and riding-horses, confectionery of every kind, beer of every name, strength, and colour, pipes, cigars, toys, gambling, organ-grinding, fiddling, dancing, &c., goes on incessantly. The great attraction, however, is the shooting at the bird, which occupies the attention of every Saxon, and is looked upon as the consummation of human invention and physical science. A great pole, nearly 80 feet high, is erected with a wooden bird, about the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... day in my life. Can't read neither write nor figure. I went to church. Our first preacher was name Prince Jones. The biggest games I played was ball and card. I was one of the best dancers. We danced the old juland dance, swing your partner, promonate. Danced by fiddling. The fiddlers could beat the fiddlers of today. Get your partners, swing them to the left and to the right, hands up four, swing corners, right hands up four promonate all around all the way, git your partners boys. I shoot dice, drink, I got drunk and ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... handsome, but very melancholy: nor did any body speak to her, or she so much as smile or speak to any body. I followed them up into White Hall, and into the Queene's presence, where all the ladies walked, talking and fiddling with their hats and feathers, and changing and trying one another's by one another's heads, and laughing. But it was the finest sight to me, considering their great beautys, and dress, that ever I did see in all my life. But, above all, Mrs. Stewart ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... his sister, if you want to know,' said the stranger, looking astonished in her turn. 'He wrote to me to come up. And I lent the letter to uncle to read—that's his uncle—and he went and lost it somehow, fiddling about the fields while I was putting my things together. And then we couldn't think of the proper address there was in it—only the name of a man Purcell, in Half Street, that David said he'd been with for two years. So we went there to ask; and, my!—weren't they rude to us! There was an ugly ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... on the judge's bench, was furtive, scared, nervous, fiddling with his papers and clearing his throat ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... The door had been left open, and as she lay in her bed she could hear the fiddlers fiddling away and the tramp of ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... fiddling thro' the town. And danced awa wi' th' Exciseman; And ilka wife cried 'Auld Mahoun, [every, Mahomet (Devil)] I wish you luck o' ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... a nephew of Fiddling Bob Taylor of Tennessee met with several friends on hallowed ground in that State, not for a patriotic celebration but merely for the joy of roaming in the great out-of-doors. The ex-governor's kinsman, like his forbears, had been born on ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... for ever employed in doubtful business," said Marie, crossly. "I do not like your fiddling with Prince John. You may be sure that Richard will succeed to the throne; and then we shall see where ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... was no young man of fashion merely, but likewise a young man of ideas. That he had written, or at least was going to write, or else that he painted or was about to paint, was quite manifest. The indications, however, were not sufficiently pronounced to permit one to suspect him of fiddling, or even of being about ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... thru the grammar grades, and get the first string—the little E string. The trouble is so many of these human fiddles think they are an orchestra right away. They want to quit school and go fiddling thru life on ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... world with a fiddle in his hand," says Mrs. Warrington, with a toss of her head. "I am sure I hated the harpsichord when a chit at Kensington School, and only learned it to please my mamma. Say what you will, dear sir, I can not believe that this fiddling is work ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... along with that which will shatter them to pieces—as if he said, 'Oh, yes! go on, talk your fill about making the best of this world, and rejoicing and doing as you like, dancing on the edge of a precipice, and fiddling, like Nero, whilst a worse fire than that of Rome is burning'? Well, I do not think that is the meaning of it. Though there is irony to be found in the Bible, I do not think that fierce irony like that which might ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... death, I determined to give a portion of my worldly goods toward the building of a light-house on the Norway coast, for which purpose, I heard it averred, this man's performances were given; and I went to the building where the fiddling was to be, to see if it were done with fidelity ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... when people and priest alike seemed utterly degenerate and godless. The voice of Walter Bute (1372) rang true for the religion of Jesus in its purity. Brave John Oldcastle, the martyr, (1417) clung to the gospel he learned at the foot of the cross. William Wroth, clergyman, saved from fiddling at a drunken dance by a disaster that turned a house of revelry into a house of death, confessed his sins to God and became the "Apostle of South Wales." The young vicar, Rhys Pritchard (1579) rose from the sunken level of his profession, ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... o' the woods becomes a needcessity, if I might say sae. D'ye ken the greatest trouble I find in towns? Trying to sleep on a civilised bed. I canna do't, that's the fact; nor be sitting to civilised dinners, whar the misguided folk spend thrice the time that's needfu', fiddling with a fork an' spune. I like to eat an' be done ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... she take gun, basket, rod or violin? If I know whether she's gone shooting berrying, fishing or fiddling, it may give me a clue—or ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... by no means a weak man, and his mind counted the cost even while his imagination hummed. He had almost decided to bid Dona Ignacia an abrupt good-night, pleading fatigue, which his pallor indorsed, when the door of the dining-room was thrown open to the liveliest of fiddling, and a white hand with a singular suggestion of tenacity both in appearance and clasp took possession of ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... we are never in the room with the queen! that's the drawing-room, beyond, where the queen sits; we go no farther than the fiddling-room. As to the queen, we don't see her week after week sometimes. The king, indeed, comes there to us, between whiles, though that's all as it happens, now Price is gone. He used to play at ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... oxen; a wife in butternut-colored clothing riding in the wagon, holding a butternut baby, and seventeen butternut children running promiscuously about the establishment; all are barefooted, dusty, and smell unpleasantly. (All these circumstances are expressed by pretty rapid fiddling for some minutes, winding up with a puff from the orpheclide played by an intoxicated Teuton with an atrocious breath—it is impossible to misunderstand the description.) Now rises o'er the plains, in mellifluous accents, the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... precisely who was related to whom, by blood or marriage or business; knew where offence might with safety be risked, and where it would do him harm. She had also a woman's tact in smoothing things over. A born doctor's wife, declared Mahony in grateful acknowledgment. For himself he could not keep such fiddling details in his head for ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... suitability for wife-beating; that we should ask if an egg is good enough for practical poultry-rearing before we decide that the egg is bad enough for practical politics. But I know that this primary pursuit of the theory (which is but pursuit of the aim) exposes one to the cheap charge of fiddling while Rome is burning. A school, of which Lord Rosebery is representative, has endeavored to substitute for the moral or social ideals which have hitherto been the motive of politics a general coherency ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... musical criticisms. The fiddling did not suit him at all. It was too quick, or else it was too slow. He failed to perceive how any one could tolerate such music even in the infernal regions, and he expressed himself in plain words to that effect. In fact, he damned the performance without ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... to know that it isn't right to neglect the boy that's come to do a day's work with you. (Going to the door) Many's the day I put in with the scythe in Ireland, and in England too; I did more than stroll with the fiddle, and I saw more places than where fiddling brought me. (Brian MacConnell comes to the door) I was just going out to you, Brian. I was telling the girl here that it's not right to neglect the boy that's giving you a day's work out of ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... attained the sufficing happiness of a student eager and engrossed. At the end of ten minutes he would be gaping across the table, and wondering what they were doing at the Howff. "Will Logan be singing 'Tam Glen'? Or is Gillespie fiddling Highland tunes, by Jing, with his elbow going it merrily? Lord! I would like to hear 'Miss Drummond o' Perth' or 'Gray Daylicht'—they might buck me up a bit. I'll just slip out for ten minutes, to see what they're doing, and be back directly." He came ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... between us, and said, 'What shall I do? What shall I do? Tell me what to do, you fellows.' We didn't take much notice; but his pony tried to bite me in the leg, and I said, 'Pull out a bit, old man, till we've settled the attack.' He kept edging in, and fiddling with his reins and his revolvers, and saying, 'Dear me! Dear me! Oh, dear me! What do you think I'd better do?' The man was in a deadly funk, and ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... speech, one he had recited year after year, and every Lord Chairman of the Presidium before him. The splendid traditions. The glories of the Masterly race. The all-conquering Space Vikings. The proud heritage of the Sword-Worlds. Lanze was fiddling with the control knobs, stepping up magnification and focusing on the speaker's head and shoulders. Then everybody laughed; Nikkolon had a small plug in one ear, with a fine wire running down to vanish under his collar. Degbrend ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... flicked at, and streaked across, the canvas she stood idly watching him. He was in paint-smeared, baggy trousers and a soft shirt whose open collar gave a glimpse of a deep chest matted with hair and whose rolled-up sleeves revealed forearms that seemed absurdly large to be fiddling with those slender sticks. A crowbar would have seemed more in harmony. He was unromantically old—all of thirty-five Maggie guessed; and with his square, rough-hewn face and tousled, reddish hair he was decidedly ugly. But for the fact that he really did work—though ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... more's the pity, for it carried her to Mediterranean ports, and there she took up with the fiddler. He was a Chevalier or something, and could look a woman through and through. What money he had was made, the Lord knows where, not out of fiddling, I'll be bound, for his was no music to set the tongue lilting. He'd been in the Pacific a while, they say, and was a Jack-of-all-trades in America. That's how he came across these islands, you may imagine—slap in the sea-way to Yokohama as they are. There's been many a good ship ashore on ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... humour; but then he had neither wife nor child, kith nor kin. He had tried his luck in all parts of England and in several other countries; casual wards had known him, and he had gained a supper by fiddling in the streets. Many a beginning had he made, but none led to anything; he seemed, in truth, to enjoy a haphazard existence. If Cheeseman had possessed literary skill, the story of his life from his own hand would have been invaluable; it is a misfortune that the men who are richest in 'material' ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... urgent entreaties, he was induced to unite his music with Carlo's, for the benefit of the cabin occupants; but this was only twice or thrice: for this fiddler deemed himself considerably elevated above the other steerage-passengers; and did not much fancy the idea of fiddling to strangers; and thus wear out his elbow, while persons, entirely unknown to him, and in whose welfare he felt not the slightest interest, were curveting about in famous high spirits. So for the most part, the gentlemen and ladies were fain to ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... a doodle doo! My dame has lost her shoe; Master's broke his fiddling stick, And don't know ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... fiddle roused Forester from his reverie; he looked up, and saw a thin, pale man fiddling to a set of dancing dogs, that he was exhibiting upon the flags, for the amusement of a crowd of men, women, and children. It was a deplorable spectacle; the dogs appeared so wretched, in the midst of the merriment of the spectators, that Forester's ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... Boulogne; tho I confess it sometimes gave me a momentary uneasiness to see my rustic throne beneath the oak usurped by a noisy group of girls, the silence and decorum of my imaginary realm broken by music and laughter, and, in a word, my whole kingdom turned topsy-turvy with romping, fiddling, and dancing. But I am naturally, and from principle, too, a lover of all those innocent amusements which cheer the laborer's toil, and, as it were, put their shoulders to the wheel of life, and help the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... anything about true military tactics, and wishing to learn,—and not too proud to learn, being born with disdain of conventionalities and precedents,—entered the regiment as drummer, in sight of his own subjects, who perhaps looked upon the act as a royal freak,—even as Nero practised fiddling, and Commodus archery, before the Roman people. From drummer he rose to the rank of corporal, and from corporal to sergeant, and so on ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... granting them—his mistress in good-natured tolerance acceding to requests which promised many forgetful hours at a time when the land was shadowed by war. So it happened that Jeff was often at the more pretending residences of the neighborhood, sometimes fiddling in the detached kitchen of a Southern mansion to the shuffle of heavy feet, again in the lighted parlor, especially when Confederate troops were quartered near. It was then that his strains took on their most inspiring and elevated character. He gave wings to the dark-eyed ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... falling off the ladder, but by a row in the fair, I was obliged to give it up, for how could I run up the ladder with a patten on my foot, which they put on to make my broken leg as long as the other. Well your hanner, being obliged to give up my bricklaying, I took to fiddling, to which I had always a natural inclination, and played about the streets, and at fairs, and wakes, and weddings. At length some Orange men getting acquainted with me, and liking my style of playing, invited me to ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... of yesterday's disasters, and longing more than ever to do everything in his power to please the lady of the castle. But in spite of his good-will, the sheep strayed away as before, and he spent a toilsome day in vainly running after them, and fiddling away to no purpose. As before they seemed to merge into mist at the close of the day, and it was with a heavy heart he presented himself at the foot of the hill where the lady was awaiting him. Again she gave him a draught of the delicious wine, and again took the fiddle and drew the bow across ...
— Up! Horsie! - An Original Fairy Tale • Clara de Chatelaine
... wife, or at least the wife of his twin image? This thought blinded him for a moment to the fact that a flunkey—they seemed as numerous as flies in May—was at his elbow with a menu, whilst another flunkey, who seemed to have sprung from the floor, was fiddling at the sideboard which contained cold edibles, tongue, ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... some more. I've had a frightful row with Dora. She says I've been fiddling with her things. It's all because she's so untidy. As if her things could interest me. Yesterday she left her letter to Erika lying about on the table, and all I read was: He's as handsome as a Greek god. I don't know who "he" was for she came in at that moment. It's ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... short of my hero in other ways. He looked like a fat man and his fiddling was only middling, therefore, notwithstanding his prowess with the axe and the maul, he remained subordinate to David, and though they never came to a test of strength we were perfectly sure that David was the finer man. His supple grace and his ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... over with Baron Castine to America, what would the whole line of ancestors, from the crusaders down, say to see their descendant in such a place as this? He has always held his head high, though he has earned his bread by fiddling, varied by shoemaking in the winter-time. He has always kept good company, he would tell you, and would rather go hungry any day than earn a dinner among people who do not regard the decencies of life. Even in this place, people come to feel ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... come to the door and ring, instead of fiddling out there in the cold!" demanded Burns. "Do you think we're heathen, to shut anybody out on a ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... "The fiddling ex-Emperor Nero," said Bacon, loudly enough to be heard all about the room, "is mistaken when ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... spider-work of leafless decaying branches and creepers against the moonlit sky—a sad sight: but music enough we had to cheer us on our way. We did not hear the howl of a monkey, nor the yell of a tiger-cat, common enough on the mountains which lay in front of us; but of harping, fiddling, humming, drumming, croaking, clacking, snoring, screaming, hooting, from cicadas, toads, birds, and what not, there was a concert at every step, which made the glens ring again, as the Brocken might ring ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... world to believe of it along with him. Unhappy Dryasdust, thrice-unhappy world that takes Dryasdust's reading of the ways of God! But what else was possible? They that could have taught better were engaged in fiddling; for which there are good wages going. And our damage therefrom, our DAMAGE,—yes, if thou be still human and not cormorant,—perhaps it will transcend all Californias, English National Debts, and show itself incomputable ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... it was furnished by two very old men, relics of the days when there were contests in fiddling; a stout fellow of middle age, with cheeks swelled almost to bursting as he thundered out terrific blasts on a slide trombone; a youth who rattled two sticks on an overturned dish-pan in lieu of a drum, and ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... morning, I suppose it was, I dreamed of the various scenes I had gone through since I came to sea, among others of the earthquake at Savannah, and then I was looking out into the barrack-yard, and there was Larry fiddling away, with soldiers and blacks dancing to his music,—everything seemed so vivid that I had no doubt about its reality. Then Mr Talboys and Lucy and Captain Duffy came in and joined in the dance. I thought ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... would; blithe they were all therefore; up they came to Grumesby. That heard soon the highest of this land, and to the queen came tiding of Arthur the king, that he was come in safety, and his folk in prosperity. Then were in Britain joys enow! Here was fiddling and song, here was harping among, pipes and trumps sang there merrily. Poets there sung of Arthur the king, and of the great honour, that he had won. Folk came in concourse of many kind of land; wide and far the folk was in prosperity. All ...
— Brut • Layamon
... for whom is our baron showing off—for whom? Our baron with the soiled tie and the made-up eyes, fiddling coldly, elaborately for a handful of annoyed flappers, amused shoe clerks and bored home lovers sitting stolidly in the dark, waiting stolidly and ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... there may be hope in Literature. If Literature dwindle, as is probable, into mere merry-andrewism, windy twaddle, and feats of spiritual legerdemain, analogous to rope-dancing, opera-dancing, and street-fiddling with a hat carried round for halfpence, or for guineas, there will be no hope in Literature. What if our next set of Souls'-Overseers were to be silent ones very mainly?—Alas, alas, why gaze into the blessed continents ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... cries out, 'Where done at 3/4ths?' 'Here—there, there, there!' Mr. Doubleface, going out at the door, meets Mr. Ambush, a brother bear, with a wink, 'Sir, they are 3/4ths, I believe, sellers; you may have L2,000 thereat, and L10,000 at 5/8ths.' This is called fiddling: it is allowable to jobbers thus to bring the turn to 1/16th, or a 32nd, but not to brokers, as thereby the public would not be fleeced 1/8th, to the house benefit. 'Sir, I would not take them at 1/4th,' replies Mr. Ambush. 'Offered at 3/4ths and 5/8ths,' bawls out an urchin scout, holding ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... came fiddling out of a barn, With a pair of bagpipes under her arm; She could sing nothing but "Fiddle de dee, The mouse has married ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... fanatic who does the work; and the poet, if he tries to do it, is certain to put down his spade every five minutes, to look at the prospect, and pick flowers, and moralise on dead asses, till he ends a Neron malgre lui-meme, fiddling melodiously while Rome is burning. And perhaps this is the secret of Raleigh's failure. He is a fanatic, no doubt, a true knight-errant: but he is too much of a poet withal. The sense of beauty enthrals him at every step. Gloriana's ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... the doctor, quickly. "It is my business to keep my wits about me—not to go fiddling about with ghosts ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... another case of The Blackport Beacon but a case of the very opposite. The proprietor, the great Mr. Bousefield, had approached him precisely because his name, which was to be on the cover, didn't represent the chatty. The whole thing was to be—oh, on fiddling little lines of course—a protest against the chatty. Bousefield wanted him to be himself; it was for himself Bousefield had picked him out. Wasn't it beautiful and brave of Bousefield? He wanted literature, he saw the great reaction coming, ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... Rondolitier was a celebrated ichthyologist and sportsman of the old school; and those desirous of further information respecting the capture of fish by "fiddling to them," may be referred to his work ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... of a magic fiddle and a wonderworking fiddler was strongly rooted in the popular imagination of many peoples, through many ages. Typical illustrations are the Wonderful Musician of Grimm's Fairy Tales, whose fiddling attracted man and beast, and the lad of Norse folk-lore who won a fiddle that could make people dance to any tune he chose. In Norway the traditional violin teacher is the cascade-haunting musical genius Fossegrim, who, when suitably propitiated, seizes the right hand of one ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... thirty men and women were making the ground quake and the woods ring with their unrestrained jollity. Marc Antony was rattling away at the bones, Nero fiddling as if Rome were burning, and Hannibal clawing at a banjo as if the fate of Carthage hung on its strings. Napoleon, as young and as lean as when he mounted the bridge of Lodi, with the battle-smoke still on his face, was moving his legs even faster than in the Russian retreat; ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... fiddling tunes, young man?' Friedrich Wilhelm was roaring at the shrinking Erbprinz. 'Just like my fool of a son. He blows squeaks on a tube which he calls my beloved flute' (the King gave a rough imitation of his son's refined speech). 'No good at ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... to succeed? All right; let your fiddling be up to the mark, and I answer for the public. It's all between you and me; you needn't say who is doing the job for you. Ada Wellington comes off on May the 10th; I shall put you down for a fortnight later. That gives you nearly four months to prepare. Don't overdo ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... shoulders most of the laundering. Osborn said "Clever kid" when he knew, but it did not impress him much; his feeling about it was vague. Did he not work all day himself? All this fiddling donkey-work with which women occupied themselves at home—he dismissed it. Always, when he returned, by the dining-room fire, in an easy chair and a decent frock, sat Marie, sweet and leisured. It was evident that her household ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... of working on his father's farm. As he grew older he liked sport too much and work too little to make a living. He tried store-keeping and failed through neglect of his business. He married a wife whose father gave him a farm, but he failed with this, too, fishing and fiddling when he should have been working, and in two years the farm was sold. Then he went back to store-keeping, and with the same result. The trouble was his love for the fiddle and the fishing-line, which stood very much in the way of business. He was too lazy and fond of good company and a good time ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... and stole quickly and softly after the boots and the spur-clank. He peeped into the upper room. The man was there—and it was Jakin, all dripping with moat-water, and he was fiddling about with the machinery which Robert felt sure worked the drawbridge. Robert banged the door suddenly, and turned the great key in the lock, just as Jakin sprang to the inside of the door. Then he tore downstairs and into the little turret at the foot of the ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... must show your zeal, Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole, And nip each softling of a wee white mouse, 10 Weke, weke, that's crept to keep him company! Aha, you know your betters! Then, you'll take Your hand away that's fiddling on my throat, And please to know me likewise. Who am I? Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friend 15 Three streets off—he's a certain ... how d'ye call? Master—a ... Cosimo of the Medici, I' the house that caps the corner. Boh! you were best! Remember and tell me, the day you're ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... The eyes of the Romany were burning. An idea had just come into his brain. Was it through his fiddling that he was going to find a way to deal with this Gorgio, who had come ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... which some students will devote to fiddling is almost incredible. We have known a clever man to practise every waking hour in the day, rising early and sitting up late, and sparing hardly one hour in the twenty-four for meals, for two years together, in the hope of qualifying himself for the leadership in a provincial orchestra; ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... The fiddling, dancing and "jubilee beating," was going on in all directions. This latter performance is strictly southern. It supplies the place of a violin, or of other musical instruments, and is played so easily, that almost every farm has its "Juba" ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... for me. My situation was similar to that of the master who went into a far country and expected on his home coming to find everything as he left it. But returning he found his servants giving a party. Confusion was rampant. There was fiddling and dancing and the babble of many tongues, so that the voice of the master could not be heard. Though he shouted and beat upon the ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... for me, either, but there's such a thing as havin' what you've said misjudged by wimmen. Where the wimmen ain't strong-headed, you know." He hesitated for a time, fiddling his forefinger under his nose. "There was just one woman I made talk to in my life such as a gent shouldn't have made without backin' it up. If she'd been stronger in her head I reckon she'd have realized that bein' sick, like I was, ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... adopt at once a comprehensive code of game laws, and clean her house in one siege, instead of fiddling and fussing with all these matters one by one, through a series of ten long, weary years. The time for puttering with game protection has gone by. It is now time to make short cuts to comprehensive results, and save the game before it ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... themselves from the million-eyed world. In a few days the Court came down upon them from London. "Mamma" came with them—and I hope that she, at least, was welcome. Then followed show and ceremony, and amusements of the common, unpoetic, unparadisiacal, Courtly order. There were "fiddling and dancing every night," and feasting, and full-dressing, and all that. Still nothing seems to have interfered much with the Queen's happiness and content, for Lady Lyttleton wrote of her about this time,—"I understand ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... here things would assume a rubbishing and littered aspect compared with the quays at Liverpool or at Hull, yet it must be admitted, for the credit of Gallico-Norman commerce, that the quays of Havre make a very respectable appearance. You see men fiddling, dancing, sleeping, sitting, and of course talking a pleine gorge, in groups without end—but no drunkenness!.. not even an English oath saluted my ear. The Southampton packets land their crews at Havre. I saw the arrival of one of these packets; and ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... coddled and pampered it; if ever he had any nerve, frittered it away among cooks, and tailors, and barbers, and furniture-mongers, and opera dancers. What muscle would not grow flaccid in such a life—a life that was never strung up to any action—an endless Capua without any campaign—all fiddling, and flowers, and feasting, and flattery, and folly? When George III was pressed by the Catholic question and the India Bill, he said he would retire to Hanover rather than yield upon either point; and he would have done what he ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stages of your journey have been reached, be great gala-days. Recollect that a savage cannot endure the steady labour that we Anglo-Saxons have been bred to support. His nature is adapted to alternations of laziness and of severe exertion. Promote merriment, singing, fiddling, and so forth, with all your power. Autolycus ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... knees fiddling with the lock of the French window in an effort to discover why Marion had found it so difficult to open and shut, when she saw through the lacquer of reflection which the lit room painted on the uncurtained glass that a dark mass had ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... talk and can lead to nothing, fair sir," said he, turning away and fiddling with the keys of his strong boxes. "Yet I have no wish to be hard on you. Take my outside price, ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... thought—perhaps some latent association suggested what seemed a thing so unlikely—of a fine print in my portfolio from Vandyke's noble picture of Belisarius. Idly I traced with my pencil, as I leaned back, on an envelope that lay upon the table, this little inscription. It was mere fiddling; and, absurd as it looked, there was nothing but an honest meaning in it:—'20,000l. Date Obolum Belisario!' My dear father had translated the little Latin inscription for me, and I had written it down as a sort of exercise of memory; and also, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... which have been bent, and endless other odd matters, are constantly turning up; and on these, in the absence of a blowpipe, I have often seen men spend hours instead of minutes. Things which need a blowpipe are usually most awkward to do without one; and men will go fiddling about and tumbling over each other without seeing really what they intend to do. They are content, as it all counts in the day's work; that it comes off the profits is not their concern. It will, perhaps, be new to many of you that blowpipes can easily be made in a form which admits of any special ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... bring a great and flourishing estate, to ruin and decay. And certainly whose degenerate arts and shifts, whereby many counsellors and governors gain both favor with their masters, and estimation with the vulgar, deserve no better name than fiddling; being things rather pleasing for the time, and graceful to themselves only, than tending to the weal and advancement of the state which they serve. There are also (no doubt) counsellors and governors ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... the year were, Election,—General Election on Wednesday, and Artillery Election on the Monday following, at which time lilacs were in bloom and 'lection buns were in order; Fourth of July, when strawberries were just going out; and Commencement, a grand time of feasting, fiddling, dancing, jollity, not to mention drunkenness and fighting, on the classic green of Cambridge. This was the season of melons and peaches. That is the way our boyhood chronicles events. It was odd that the literary festival should be turned into a Donnybrook fair, but so it ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... boy tore hastily through the brush in the direction of the music. The moon had come up, and he could see quite well, but he did not pause to pick his way. As he stepped from the thicket out into an open space the fiddling ceased. It was bright moonlight there, too, and as Bosephus took in the situation his ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine
... now fiddling with all their might & as the peeple didn't understan anything about it they applaudid versifrusly. Presently old Ed cum out. The play was Otheller or More of Veniss. Otheller was writ by Wm. Shakspeer. The seene is laid in Veniss. Otheller was a likely ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... Hollingsworth was fast going mad; and, as with other crazy people (among whom I include humorists of every degree), it required all the constancy of friendship to restrain his associates from pronouncing him an intolerable bore. Such prolonged fiddling upon one string—such multiform presentation of one idea! His specific object (of which he made the public more than sufficiently aware, through the medium of lectures and pamphlets) was to obtain funds for the construction ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his fiddling with the pipes and the ball-cock a little. Then we went down. All chance of further banditry was at an end. Next day was Sunday. The leak was noticed then. It was slow, but steady, and the plumber was sent for ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... chains across the street, so that the street itself was almost as bright as day, and Dorothy thought she recognized it as a place she had once read about where nobody but astrologers lived. There was a confused sound of fiddling going on somewhere, and as Dorothy walked along she could hear a scuffling noise inside the houses as if the inhabitants were dancing about on sanded floors. Presently, as she turned a corner, she came upon a number of storks who were dancing a sort of solemn ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... face and turn my back upon her, and suffer her to leave my rooms as though she's a charwoman detected in prigging silver from my cash-box! [Clasping his brow and groaning.] Oh—! [In sudden fury at seeing ROOPE thoughtfully examining his hat.] Damn it, Robbie, stop fiddling with your hat ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... second was an extraordinary musical aptitude, which led him to sing expressively and perfectly in tune the airs he heard his father and mother sing. Mathias, by the way, accompanied himself on the harp; and Joseph, long before he had a fiddle of his own, imitated the fiddling of his elders with two bits of wood, so the family orchestra was complete. The last accident was the arrival of one Frankh, a distant relative. This was long before the magical feats of the baby Mozart had set every grasping parent staring for signs of musical precocity in his ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... or in a calm, Sir, what have we to do but to twiddle our thumbs, and practice fiddling with them? A lively tune is what I like, and a-serving of the guns red-hot; a man must act according to what nature puts upon him. And nature hath taken one of my legs from me with a cannon-shot from the French line-of-battle ship—Rights of ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... are now in a musical country [Italy], where singing, fiddling, and piping are not only the common topics of conversation but almost the principal objects of attention, I cannot help cautioning you against giving in to those—I will call them illiberal—pleasures, though music is commonly reckoned one of the liberal arts, to the degree ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... on the merits of the horse he sold Lord Bearwarden in the Park. Of course half the party are talking of hunting, the other half of racing, soldiering, and women. "He'd have been thrown away on most of the fellows we know. He wants a good man on his back, for if you keep him fiddling behind, it breaks his heart. I always said you ought to have him—you or Mr. Stanmore. He's just the sort for both of you. I'm sorry to hear yours are all coming up at Tattersall's," adds Tom, with a courteous bow to the ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... man, with a genius for being inconspicuous. He has told us that his usual method in a poor man's cabin was to make them forget that he was there, but in Aran on these visits he always tried to add to the fun, and to his personal prestige with conjuring tricks, fiddling, piping, taking photographs, etc. Some of the Islanders were much attached to him. I suppose that their main impression was that he was a linguist who had committed a crime somewhere and ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... officers. On this occasion, with appearances so against him, perplexed but not convinced, after looking for a few moments he went below and sought communion with his beloved instrument; nor did the fading of the phantasm interrupt his fiddling. When announced, he listened absently, and continued his aria unmoved by such trivialities. Cape Flyaway, as counterfeits like this are called, had lasted so long and looked so plausible that the order was given to raise steam; and when ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... trembled for her chandeliers; so thought Babette, who had begun to yawn before the last song, and who had tired herself more with laughing at it; so thought they all, and they sallied forth out of the Lust Haus, with Jemmy Ducks having the advance, and fiddling to them the whole way down to the boat. Fortunately, not one of them fell into the canal, and in ten minutes they were all on board; they were not, however, permitted to turn into their hammocks without the important information being ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the sound of his voice made the little girl look at him more closely, and she saw that he had been crying, though he turned away quickly and began fiddling at the pony's harness as an excuse for hiding his face. But Miss Mouse was not going to ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth |
