"Guitar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out something just as good. Relieved? That doesn't half tell it, guy—I feel as if I had just pitched off the Old Man of the Sea who's been sitting on my neck! What say you girls get your fiddle and guitar and we'll sing us a little song? I feel kind of relieved—they had me worried some—it's the first time I've felt like singing since we cut that ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... saw the sacred dance with which that great god is propitiated. In a booth two stories high, in front of the temple, was a small stage upon which sat three old priests. One beat a drum, the second played a flute, while the third fingered a guitar. To this music a very pretty young daughter of a priest, gorgeously arrayed in sacred robes, postured with a fan, keeping time to the music. This was all. But, like the tom-tom beating of the Buddhist which ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... again," said Rolf: "we'll come for you on August fifteenth; but remember you should bring your guitar and your spectacles." ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... my eyes, so I must have led 'em up across the boulevard and into the tent colony, for after a while we were rolling around among tent-pegs and tangling up in guy-ropes, and all the time our audience was growing. Dave, those tent-ropes sounded like guitar strings." ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... shot an uneasy glance aft towards the cabin top where Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer sat amicably side by side, he conning a part while she mended a broken string on her guitar. Beyond them, stretched on the after deck with 'Dolph for company, Arthur Miles leaned over the gunwale, apparently studying the boat's reflection in the water. "Between you an' me," Sam confessed, "I can't get ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... children will be found in pairs on the streets, consisting of a boy with a small harp, and a girl with a violin; or sometimes two girls; one with an old, broken guitar, and the other with a tambourine; or, again, of two boys, with harp and violin. Their music, at the best, is but worthless, and their voices have a cracked, harsh, monotonous cadence, but they also possess a sadness which rarely fails to bring a penny or two into the outstretched ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... in deep armchairs on the long wide veranda that fronts the whole hotel. The evening sea-breeze came and wafted in on us the very scents of Araby; the night sounds that whisper of wilderness gave the lie to a tinkling guitar that somewhere in the distance spoke of civilized delights. The surf crooned on coral half a mile away, and very good cigar smoke (from a box that Monty had sent ashore with our belongings) supplemented coffee and the other aids to physical contentment. Then, limping ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... the hour arrived, however, when the serenader made his appearance, dressed in the pink of fashion; and, placing himself under his lady's window, proceeded to play the guitar in the best style. The performance hadn't ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... visited her called upon her, instead of finding her in the kitchen or the cellar, they found her lying upon the sofa with a book or her guitar in her hands, or perhaps playing with her little boy, and the amiable ones among them explained it by her pale face and delicate air, but the severer ones said that such idleness was the Italian custom and they pitied ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... from another was holding forth to the graver part of the crowd, the joys and terrors of another life; and yet farther on, a motley groupe were listening to a blind beggar, who was singing to the music of a sort of rude guitar. Here and there curtains, hanging from a slight frame of wood-work, veiled a small square from the eyes of all, except those who paid a nail for admittance. Some of these curtained boxes contained jugglers—some tumblers—some libidinous pictures—and others again, strange birds, beasts, and other ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... more mutilated. The left figure has a flowing mantle, the only leg remaining being bare from the thigh downwards; the foot and the head are gone. The figure on the right is fully draped, the head is lost, and the right hand much mutilated; a musical instrument, like a guitar,[24] or rather a mandolin, rests against the left breast, held in position by the left hand. The fourth fragment has the honeysuckle on both sides, with the flower well carved on one of them. It is a great pity that so little of this superb ...
— The Excavations of Roman Baths at Bath • Charles E. Davis
... State of Qatar conventional short form: Qatar local short form: Qatar note: closest approximation of the native pronunciation falls between cutter and gutter, but not like guitar local long form: ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... a note of music and played as he pleased) who repaired drums, and C.C. Keene, maker of accordeons, in former days much played, Professor Wm. T. Ferrer, the guitarist, lately deceased, came here in early days from Mexico with his family and made a place for himself as a guitar and mandolin teacher. His family were all talented, Annita Ferrer was a beautiful soprano singer and sang in concert and church. She occupied the place as soloist in Calvary Church for a while when the choir was composed of Harry Gates, tenor, Fred Borneman, bass, M.R. ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... to me when I think of those days. There was a Cuban journalist, who was satisfactorily dirty, of whom Bonafoux used to say that he not only ate his plate of soup but managed to wash his face in it at the same time. There was a Catalan guitar player, besides some girls from Madrid who walked the tight rope, whom we used to invite to join us at the cafe from time to time. And then there was a whole host of other persons, all more or less shabby, down ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... been fitted up as a medium's seance parlor, with black hangings on the walls, while at one side there was a square cabinet of black cloth, with a guitar lying ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... occupied by a variety of reflections: but at any rate highly pleased and gratified by the agreeable family which had performed the part of guides on the occasion. In the evening, a professor of music treated us with some pleasing tunes upon the guitar—which utterly astonished the Count—and it was quite night-fall when we returned homewards, towards our quarters at the hotel ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... believe Tom Newcome married her," sly Mr. Binnie used to say, "in order that he might have permission to pay her milliner's bills;" and in this way he was amply gratified until the day of her death. A feeble miniature of the lady, with yellow ringlets and a guitar, hung over the mantelpiece of the Colonel's bedchamber, where I have often seen that work of art; and subsequently, when he and Mr. Binnie took a house, there was hung up in the spare bedroom a companion portrait to the ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sombrero, and, secure in his knowledge of Spanish and Mexican, he now advanced boldly through the more populous and better lighted parts of the city. He even lingered a little while in front of a cafe, where men were playing guitar and mandolin, and girls were dancing with castanets. The sight of light and life pleased the boy who had been so long in prison. These people were diverting themselves and they smiled and laughed. They seemed to have kindly feelings for everybody, but he ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and be as impertinent as ever my Lady Churchill was; but, as I dread being ridiculous, I shall give my Lord Bute no uneasiness. My Lady Maynard, who divides the favour of this tiny court with me, supped with us. Did you know she sings French ballads very prettily? Lord Rochford played on the guitar, and the Prince sung; there were my two nieces, and Lord Waldegrave, Lord Huntingdon, and Mr. Morrison the groom, and the evening was pleasant; but I had a much more agreeable supper last night at Mrs. Clive's, with Miss West, my niece Cholmondeley, and Murphy, the writing actor, who is very ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... the last quarter of a century, there were strait-laced Baptist preachers (my own blood kin among them) who would not permit an organ in the church. But today it is quite the vogue for young evangelistic couples to hold forth with piano-accordion and guitar. "It peps up the joiners," the evangelist says. On the other hand, in remote churches, where preachers still hold that note-singing and hymn books with notes are the works of the Devil, these same fellows will play up the hysteria of the audience with the "Holy ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... trees; a soft, dark-green turf, and a stream which ran swiftly through its midst, invited to repose. In this place were pitched from fifteen to twenty tents, to the stakes of which were fastened camels and fine horses: from one of these tents distinctly sounded the melody of a guitar, blended with two fine manly voices. It seemed to my brother as if people who had chosen so blithesome a resting-place, could have no evil intentions towards himself; and accordingly, without apprehension, he obeyed the ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... her father. She is distressed at the way her piano is treated; she has no opportunity of playing her air; but she hopes to make up for it by singing a romance, which one of their old neighbours is going to accompany on the guitar. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... appeared a window with a lamp burning in it, and behind the white curtain appeared Zara in a lovely blue and silver dress, waiting for Roderigo. He came in gorgeous array, with plumed cap, red cloak, chestnut lovelocks, a guitar, and the boots, of course. Kneeling at the foot of the tower, he sang a serenade in melting tones. Zara replied and, after a musical dialogue, consented to fly. Then came the grand effect of the play. Roderigo produced a rope ladder, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... reception, and the steward was busy enough; at half-past two the little fleet appeared, and the guests arrived on board, where they were served with refreshments. They talked, laughed, joked, played the guitar, and sang, until near sunset, when the air grew cooler. Then the seats and benches were cleared away; the old people betook themselves, with their wine, to the cabin, and the young ones danced until they were called ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... likely to go unappreciated in such a place. A land operator, engaged in vast speculations, a favorite in the select circles of New York, in correspondence with brokers and bankers, intimate with public men at Washington, one who could play the guitar and touch the banjo lightly, and who had an eye for a pretty girl, and knew the language of flattery, was welcome everywhere in Hawkeye. Even Miss Laura Hawkins thought it worth while to use her fascinations ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... was her little bookcase, taken bodily from her old home in Nonootch. Scattered about here and there were other things that brought her memory painfully back to him; that hurt him with their familiarity; that caused him to lift them up and hold them with a sort of despairing wonder: her guitar, her worn, lock-fast desk; the old gilt photograph album he remembered so well. He sat down at the table and buried his face in his hands. What a fool he had been! What a ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... lingered, seated on the latticed balcony that encircles an inner court where cabaret features are held—suggestive of a bull ring. One rather piquant Spanish girl, playing her accompaniment on a guitar, gazed softly up at Tommy while singing about some wonderful Nirvana, an enchanted island that floated in a sea of love. It was a pretty song, even if more intense than temperate, and pleased with it he tossed her a coin; whereupon she tilted her chin and raised ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... Shakspeare, not by the actors of them upon the stage. Four grim figures were stirring the cauldrons incessantly, with a sort of humming incantation, the others dancing around. In one of their dances they used a sort of small kettle-drum, with a guitar-like handle to it. But after a while, the evening dances seemed to vary from the devotional to the complimentary and to the diverting; but the daylight ones were altogether devotional. Apotheola led one of the less lofty order, and he is one ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... thousand suggestions of prudence, the thousand calculations of doubt and caution with which timidity seeks to avoid precipitating a crisis. She could listen and endure no longer. The spirit of the improvisatrice was upon her. Was it also that of fate and a higher Providence? She seized the guitar, of which she was the perfect mistress, and sung even as her soul counseled and the exigency of the event demanded. Our translation of her lyrical overflow is necessarily a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... partitions, feeble voices, seemingly numerous, are talking in low tones. Then rises the sound of a guitar, and the song of a woman, plaintive and gentle in the echoing sonority of the bare house, in the melancholy ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... the famous contrabandier Ramon da Cordova, who sang like an angel and played the guitar better than ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... I might, in these days, first have felt the force during a stay, just earlier, with a friend at Sorrento—a friend who had good-naturedly "had in," on his wondrous terrace, after dinner, for the pleasure of the gaping alien, the usual local quartette, violins, guitar and flute, the musical barber, the musical tailor, sadler, joiner, humblest sons of the people and exponents of Neapolitan song. Neapolitan song, as we know, has been blown well about the world, and it is late in the day ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... San Francisco then; and there was nothing else to call San Francisco but the Mission. Down at Yerba Buena, where the Americans flaunt themselves, there was but a Battery that could not give even a dance. But we had dances at the Presidio; day and night the guitar tinkled and the fiddles scraped; for what did we know of care, or old age, or convents or death? I was many years younger than Rafaella and did not go to the grand balls, but to the little dances, yes, many and many. When the Russians ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... and biscuits were to be the order of the evening, followed by as many songs, dances, and games as time permitted. Squatting on the grass, the girls made a circle round their council-fire. Marjorie Earnshaw, one of the Sixth, had brought her guitar, and struck the strings every now and then as an earnest of the music she intended to bring from it later on. Everybody was in a jolly mood, and inclined to laugh at any pun, however feeble. Mrs. Arnold, always bright and animated, surpassed herself, ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... were of polished satin-wood, cushioned with delicate azure silk shot and starred with silver. A luxurious number of silken cushions lay upon the couch, chairs, and even on the floor; for two or three were heaped against the pedestal, on which a basket of flowers stood, and upon them lay a guitar, with its broad, pink ribbon hanging loose. Every table was loaded with some exquisitely feminine object of use or beauty, till the very profusion was oppressive, light and graceful as ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... down the tiny stream. Now and then birds moved in the undergrowth, and the man, who was struggling all the time with a deadly faintness, felt the silence grow more and more oppressive. He began even to wonder where he was. He closed his eyes. Was that really the tinkling of a guitar, the perfume of almond and cherry blossom, floating to him down the warm wind? He began to lose himself in dreams until he realized that actual unconsciousness was close upon him. Then he set his teeth tight and clenched his hands. Away in the distance a faint, long-expected sound came ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... these children, had incurred the displeasure of her father, a wealthy Englishman, by marrying her music teacher, whose dark eyes had played the mischief with her heart, while his fingers played its accompaniment on the guitar. Humbly at her father's feet she had knelt and sued for pardon, but the old man was inexorable, and turned her from his house, cursing the fate which had now deprived him, as it were, of his only remaining daughter. Late in life he had married a youthful widow who after the lapse of a ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... penny type of ditties, which become popular in England and America, in these savage African songs, nor are they in the least like Chinese or Indian music. The instruments are rudimentary; simple zithers, rattles, bells and a kind of guitar, but it is probable that all these, except the bells, have been introduced by ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... round which was sufficient to assure me that I was in the favoured abode of beauty. A table littered with a variety of those flimsy trifles which ladies are wont to dignify with the name of "work" occupied the centre of the room, a harp stood in one corner and a guitar in another, an easel supporting an unfinished sketch in water-colours stood by one of the two windows which lighted the room, and a small bookcase filled with elegantly-bound books occupied a niche in one ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... rancho down in Sonora, a Mexican of the better class, well educated as education went in those days, a good dancer as every girl in the section could bear witness, pleasure-loving, easy-going, and able to play the guitar very prettily. Sometimes—and more often as the weeks went by—he played and sang at the home of Reyes Feliz, a packer in his father's employ; and Rosita, the packer's daughter, liked his music well enough to encourage ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... happening as I felt it was happening. I just tell how it felt. . . . Farrell and I were ranging arm-in-arm through a quarter that had mysteriously hushed and hidden itself at our approach. There were pianos tinkling from upper storeys: there were muffled choruses with banjo or guitar accompaniments humming up from the bowels of the earth: there were chinks of light between blinds, under doorways, down areas. There was even a flare of light, now and again, blaring to gramophone accompaniment across the street from a gin-palace or a corner ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sisters and brothers all lived together; but we had a distaste for wholesome books. Among my brothers, some were partial to verses; others had a weakness for blank poetical compositions; and there were none of such works as the 'Western side-House,' and 'the Guitar,' even up to the hundred and one books of the 'Yuean' authors, which they hadn't managed to get. These books they stealthily read behind our backs; but we, on our part, devoured them, on the sly, without their knowing it. Subsequently, our father came to get wind ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... good reason, seeing that she has always shown herself a daughter to me—that she has all kinds of good qualities, and several accomplishments, knowing something of conchology, more of botany, drawing capitally in the Dutch style, and playing remarkably well on the guitar—not the trumpery German thing so-called—but the real ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... met processions consisting of a man carrying a rat in a cage, and shouting out, "Catch this rat!" followed by a perfect stampede of wild creatures, all yelling, "Catch that rat!" at the top of their voices. The twanging of the guitar is heard everywhere, accompanied by the high nasal voices of the natives, in various strains of monotony. In some spots the music is more lively, accompanied by the shaking of a gourd filled with dry seeds, which is called ghiera, and whose "chick-a-chick, chick-chick" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... far journey; only an afternoon's drive through the woods and by the river, in an April, long ago; Miss Betty's harp carefully strapped behind the great lumbering carriage, her guitar on the front seat, half-buried under a mound of bouquets and oddly shaped little bundles, farewell gifts of her comrades and the good Sisters. In her left hand she clutched a small lace handkerchief, with which she now and then touched her eyes, brimmed ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... thoughtfully, and when Pancho finished he sighed a little and made a soft little "ting-ting-a-ting-ting" on his guitar-strings. Then he jumped up and began to sing and dance, playing the guitar all the while. It was a song about the little dwarfs, and the children ...
— The Mexican Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... his arrival in Rome, Mr. Gavin Hamilton, the painter, to whom he had been introduced by Mr. Robinson, took him to a coffee-house, the usual resort of the British travellers. While they were sitting at one of the tables, a venerable old man, with a guitar suspended from his shoulder, entered the room, and coming immediately to their table, Mr. Hamilton addressed him by the name of Homer.—He was the most celebrated Improvisatore in all Italy, and the richness of expression, and nobleness ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... washerwomen leaning over it with bare arms, and dogs wading where rushes and dams break the current, and the hay blowing breast-high along the banks, and the students chasing the girls through it, and every now and then upon the wind the music of a guitar, light and dancing, or sad and slow, according as goes the heart of the player that tunes it. At this season Bavaria grows green, and all is fresh and radiant. Outside the town all the country is a sheet of cherry-blossom and of clover. Night and day, carts full of merrymakers ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... into its pattern for a while, held the guitar out at arm's length; and, holding it so, broke into a short laugh—at the thought that this thing had been ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... and the superior, aware of this circumstance, allowed me every indulgence, with the hopes of my being persuaded to remain. The money which I retained for my own exigencies enabled me to make friends with the porter, and I obtained egress or ingress at any hour. I was a proficient on the guitar; and incongruous as it may appear with my monastic vows, I often hastened from the service at vespers to perform in a serenade to some fair senhora, whose inamorata required the powers of my voice to ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... of the inhabitants of the villa. When he succeeded to his perfect satisfaction, he was wont to indulge in immoderate fits of laughter; and we, who were in the adjoining room, would run in to know his reason, when he showed us his spirited sketches. He drew a caricature of me with a guitar, one of Carmini (the painter), and one of the Guarda Roba, who was lame of the gout; and of the Sub-guarda Roba, a most ridiculous figure—to prevent our being offended, he caricatured himself. These portraits are now preserved by Signor ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... she noticed a guitar hanging on the wall. She begged for it very earnestly. As it was an old and almost worthless instrument, it was given her. A little later it was reported that the dilapidated guitar had been purchased by a well-known gentleman for a thousand ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... discriminative flow of language, fit him out to be the best of talkers; so perhaps he is with some, not quite with me—proxime accessit,[23] I should say. He sings the praises of the earth and the arts, flowers and jewels, wine and music, in a moonlight, serenading manner, as to the light guitar; even wisdom comes from his tongue like singing; no one is, indeed, more tuneful in the upper notes. But even while he sings the song of the Sirens, he still hearkens to the barking of the Sphinx. Jarring Byronic notes interrupt the flow of his Horatian humours. ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... strange manifestations began in the room without. There were rappings, some faint, some loud—coming apparently from all quarters. Invisible fingers swept gently across the strings of a guitar. Then came the soft clangor of a gong—once, twice, ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... must needs order a guitar, and begin to sing. He was said to compose his own songs—words and music—but those who have read Lord Campobello's "Lives of the Lord Chancellors" are aware that there was a person by the name of Blondel, who, in fact, did all the musical part of the King's ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... revealed it in his "History of Modern Love." Feudal tyranny then held the whole sex in the sternest slavery. One day, the wife, or the young daughter, confined in the upper story of the walled fortress, sees, passing by the castle, a poor youth with a guitar suspended from his neck, humming a languishing air. She gazes on him; she hearkens to his song; she thanks him with a gesture and a smile. He has brought a momentary relief to the weariness of her sad captivity. Cast a glance on this roaming singer, this houseless ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... domestic regulations of the establishment. The three friends found that they had not only all of their old freedom, but a charming female voice to accompany them in their songs, and on the piano or guitar, and a capital fourth hand at whist, and a beautiful reader, and an ever-cheerful companion. "If I could find such a wife, now!" Marcus and Maltboy would say. "But you can't," Overtop would answer. "There's not another like her in this world." There was a little Fayette Overtop, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... khalyf down to Boabdil, the courts of Granada, of Cordova and of Seville were peopled with poets, or, as they were termed, with makers of Ghazels. It was they who gave us the dulcimer, the hautbois and the guitar; it was they who invented the serenade. We are indebted to them for algebra and for the canons of chivalry as well.... It was from them that came the first threads of light which preceded the Renaissance. Throughout mediaeval Europe they were the only ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... old Florentine lady whom Victor Emmanuel had loved when he was Duke of Savoy. For thirty years she had not once gone out of her palace on the Arno, where, she painted, and wearing a wig, she played the guitar in her spacious white salon. She received the best society of Florence, and Miss Bell often called on her. At table this recluse, eighty-seven years of age, questioned the Countess Martin on the fashionable world of Paris, whose movement was familiar to her through the journals. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... and waves them about. "Alors quoi? Ah, if I had hold of the mongrel that did it! Talk about breaking his jaw—I'd stave in his bread-pan, I'd—there was a whole Camembert in there, I'll go and look for it." He massages his stomach with the little sharp taps of a guitar player, and plunges into the gray of the morning, grinning yet dignified, with his awkward outlines of an invalid in a dressing-gown. We hear him ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... Ha, what's this? Do tell, what tricks they're up to! In the boat! Hugging each other! How tender that is! Just like a picture! You ought to have thought to take a guitar along and sing love-songs!... They're kissing each other! Very good! Delightful! Again! Excellent! What could be better? Phew, what an abomination! It's disgusting to look at! Well, my dears, you will remember me. Now I have nothing ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... looking about her fanciful apartment. She had dozens of birds of all gay colors,—paroquets from Brazil, cockatoos, ring-doves, and canaries; fresh flowers, in vases on the mantel-pieces, and a blue-ribboned guitar in the corner. No books, no pictures. A great many scarfs, bonnets, and drapery generally, fell about on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... it's only natural—how could he possibly help it?—he has fallen in love with Miss Waring. These music-masters and Italian teachers are such silly fellows. I know all about it, thought Mr. Newt; and now he lies there forlorn, but picturesque and very handsome, singing sweetly to his guitar, and reciting Petrarch's sonnets with large, melancholy eyes. His manners refined and fascinating. His age? About thirty. Poor Amy! Of course common humanity requires her to come and see that he ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... returning with my mother from a visit in Trastevere, we found a crowd in the Piazza di Trevi, listening to a man singing to a guitar—not songs like those which I had so often heard, but about things around him, of what we saw and heard, and we ourselves were in the song. My mother told me he was an improvisatore; and Federigo, our artist lodger, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... or six young fellows, all musicians, as well as handy painters, and we used to capture the towns with our music. One fellow could whistle like a nightingale, another sang like an angel, and another played the banjo. I scuffled with the violin and guitar. ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... have something much more valuable than money; my perfect knowledge of this town and its needs. You can appear as the owner; we will make a monthly division of profits. Besides, concerning a question that interests us both very much, namely, your social improvement, it occurs to me that you play the guitar quite well. In view of the recommendations I could give you and in view of your training as well, you might easily be admitted as a member of some fraternal order; there are several here which would bring you ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... hour I could not get a newspaper at the cafe. The horrible brass band in the meantime had quitted the place, and now, to amuse the Ghent citizens, a couple of little boys came to the cafe and set up a small concert: one played ill on the guitar, but sang, very sweetly, plaintive French ballads; the other was the comic singer; he carried about with him a queer, long, damp-looking, mouldy white hat, with no brim. "Ecoutez," said the waiter to me, "il va faire l'Anglais; c'est tres drole!" The little rogue mounted ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with the assistance of "sufficient advice;" while the more profitable, but less honourable operations upon the hair of the head and beard, were briefly and gravely announced. Within was the well-worn leather chair for customers, the guitar, then called a ghittern or cittern, with which a customer might amuse himself till his predecessor was dismissed from under Benjamin's hands, and which, therefore, often flayed the ears of the patient metaphorically, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... would have said, Mary; but we must go in, and practise the new air for the guitar which Henry brought us from Montreal. We promised him that we would. Here comes Alfred to spend ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... him some time previously at Schlesinger's office, where we used to meet occasionally. I had presented him with a copy of my Two Grenadiers, but could, however, never learn any more from him concerning what he really thought of it than the fact that as he could only strum a little on the guitar, he was unable to play the music of my composition to himself on the piano. During the previous winter I had often heard his grand instrumental pieces played under his own direction, and had been most favourably impressed ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... out, postponements of outdoor frolics, when, still the centre, he sat and drowsed in the big chair, waking, at times, in that unexpected queer, bright way of his, to roll a cigarette and call for his ukulele—a sort of miniature guitar of Portuguese invention. Then, with strumming and tumtuming, the live cigarette laid aside to the imminent peril of polished wood, his full baritone would roll out in South Sea hulas and sprightly ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... by the window, a cigar between his lips, and the pleasant distraction of the homely scents and sounds of the garden in his senses. Allusion having been made again to the morning performance of the organ, he was implored by Hannibal to diversify his talent by exercising it on an old guitar which had passed into that retainer's possession with certain clothes of his master's when they separated. Mr. Hamlin accepted it dubiously; it had twanged under his volatile fingers in more pretentious but less innocent halls. But presently he raised his tenor voice and ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... perfectly safe. But he was not the one to indulge long in gloomy thoughts without a cause, and in order to drive them away, he lighted his lamp, and, drawing his easy-chair upon the porch, amused himself until nine o'clock with his guitar. The music not only served to soothe his troubled feelings, but also had the effect of banishing his suspicions to a great extent, and left him in a much more cheerful ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... of thing cannot go on for ever), one might curl one's hair and dye it black, and cock a dirty slouch hat over one ear and take a guitar and sit on a flat stone by the roadside and cross one's legs, and, after a few pings and pongs on the strings, strike up a ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... too, which she had learned from the young person who had taught her dancing, and Dick enlarged her vocabulary with a few soft phrases, and would sing her a song sometimes, touching the air upon an ancient-looking guitar they had found with the ghostly things in the garret,—a quaint old instrument, marked E. M. on the back, and supposed to have belonged to a certain Elizabeth Mascarene, before mentioned in connection with a work of art,—a fair, dowerless lady, who smiled and sung and faded away, unwedded, a hundred ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the Cowles flat, Ray's stories about Plato and business, and the sentimental things Gertie played on the guitar. He suddenly determined to go off some place and fly an aeroplane; as suddenly knew that he was not yet ready to return to the game. He read the Evening Telegram and cheerlessly peered out of the window at the gray snow-veil ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... following day, as I was going to the stables (which were a few hundred yards below the house) I found my picturesque Italian in the back garden, singing a barcarole to the accompaniment of a guitar. But as he had complied with the condition of which I had informed him, I made no objection. So far from that I gave him a shilling, and as the maids (who were greatly taken with his appearance) got up a collection for him and gave him a feed, he ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... him frequently to disappear from the public gaze for long periods, throughout his career. With the fair sex he had more than one romantic episode. At one time a lady of high rank fell in love with him and led him captive to her castle in Tuscany. Here the lovers solaced themselves with duets on the guitar, and the violinist attained a proficiency, on that instrument, equal to the expression of the tenderest passion. This adventure brought retribution in after days, and in a most unexpected manner, for as his genius began to excite the wonder of ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... satisfied look upon every face, showed that these men confided the care of their defence wholly to their chief. At the entrance to the tent lay a man, like a dog watching over his master; and from his long hair and the guitar by the side of his rifle, it was easy to recognise Oroche. His time seemed to be divided between the contemplation of a heaven glittering with stars, and the care of keeping up a fire of green wood, the smoke ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... "trig" quite as well as, and history, geography and grammar far better than, most of the young West Pointers; a girl who spoke her own tongue with accuracy and was not badly versed in French; a girl who performed fairly well on the piano and guitar, but who sang full-throated, rejoiceful, exulting like the lark—the soulful music that brought delight to her ageing father, half crippled by the wounds of the war days, and to the mother who so devotedly loved and carefully planned for her. Within a month ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... found it impossible to leave Bunbury out of my subject, and said of this artist: "He supplied the engraver with some charming drawings, mostly of English girls in simple country dress—such as the 'Sophia and Olivia,' drawn for Goldsmith's 'Vicar of Wakefield,' where one of the girls touches a guitar and the other holds a roll of music; or, again, that very lovely print, a copy of which is in the Victoria and Albert collection, where three young girls dance hand in hand to the strain which a country lad seated ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... are, enlivened by the presence of the almes or dancing-girls, whose ancestors may have danced the same wild and wanton dances before Cleopatra. The singing-girls, monotonously chanting the same dolorous and drowsy tunes, with imitation guitar accompaniment on the saab were also wont to wound the drowsy ear of night for the diversion of the guests. Drowsier and more sleep-compelling still were the interminable tales spun out by the professional story-teller, giving ragged versions of the Arabian Nights' ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... says beggar, and who says beggar evokes the completest type of filth and laziness. But with what an extraordinary combination of gestures, with what attitudes in the management of the long-stringed guitar, with what acrobatic swingings of the body do they accompany their singing of their legends and poetry which could not be more profane. The instinct of the old actor was awakened in Caterna. He could not keep still; it ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... of twilight. Living groups lay peacefully about the river bottom, gambling, Torrance knew. For the moment the orchestra was resting. But snatches of hideous sound came wafting on the evening air as music; concertina, fiddle, mouth-organ, with here and there a cornet, a mandolin, a guitar, many breathing individual melody, merged into one vast harmony. Rasping voices lifted themselves in song. No laughter, no shouting—only the sounds of men whose memories are more sensitive than their feelings, who live in the past or the future, never in the present. Evening was fluttering ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... speaks, in his West Indian travels, of another musical instrument, very popular among the Martinique slaves of his time—"a sort of guitar" made out of a half-calabash or cou, covered with some kind of skin. It had four strings of silk or catgut, and a very long neck. The tradition or this African instrument is said to survive in the modern ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... master and worked industriously, also picked up all the Andalusian we could, which is as much like pure Castilian as wold-Yorkshire is to English. I also took lessons on the guitar. Thus prepared, I imitated my friend and adopted the ordinary costume of the Andalusian peasant: breeches, ornamented with rows of silvered buttons, gaiters, a short jacket with a red flower-pot and blue lily on the back, and elbows with green and scarlet patterns, a ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... cannot judge; the French are never natural in England, nor the English in France. Frenchmen in England are stupid and cross, trying to be dignified; and when the English come to France, it's all guitar playing and capering, in trying ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to the feelings of Senhor Letotti to convey his guests to the drawing-room, and there gratify their palates with excellent coffee, while the graceful, and now clothed, Azinte brought a Spanish guitar to the Senhorina Maraquita, whose sweet voice soon charmed away all thoughts of the cruel side of slavery. But duty ere long stepped in to call the guests ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... with girlish curiosity. 'Not that it's any use settling. I always thought I would marry a marquis's younger son, because it is such a pretty title, and that he should play on the guitar. But he must not be an officer, Phoebe; we have ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had a little conversation but for the most part drank tea, smoked pipes and talked sometimes to our host, a Russianised Finn or to the pedlar who used to hang about the battery selling "fi-ine oranges and lemons," a charming and lively person who in addition to other talents could play the guitar and used to tell us of the unhappy love which he cherished in his young days for the daughter of a policeman. Now that he was older, this Don Juan in a gay cotton shirt had no experience of unsuccessful love affairs. Before the doors of our barn stretched a wide plain gradually ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... of the landlord's office, off the main hall, I had seen a guitar hanging. It belonged to his son, a romantic-looking young fellow, whose sympathetic soul delighted in lending the national aid to courtship, without asking a ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... modern usurpers from the house. Large antlers, bows and arrows, and rusty fowling-pieces against the wall, intimated that the descendants of the grim warrior had exercised their valor in the chase; while a guitar with blue ribbon, in the corner, told that gentler days had come, and spoke of peace, domestic ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... even now as I write, the Spanish woman with cruel painted face, sitting at the open casement of an old house near the Spanish church, thrumming her guitar, and beneath her, by the roadside, a beggar clad, like the patriarch of old, in a garment of many colours, that made his black face seem blacker than any I have seen in Africa. Then Dar el Baida sinks behind the water-port gate, the ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... suddenly, halting in front of the little glass door of the cupboard, "what do you think has happened? That dear little china man with the guitar has tumbled over and broken ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... the back wall is represented, in the same precious stones, and in a graceful attitude, a European in a kind of Spanish costume, playing upon his guitar, and in the character of Orpheus charming the birds and beasts which he first taught the people of India so well to represent in this manner. This I have no doubt was intended by Austin de Bordeaux for himself. The man from Shiraz, Amanat Khan, who designed all the noble Tughra characters ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... about 1749, Paris. M. Chouquet, in his "Catalogue Raisonne" of the instruments at the Paris Conservatoire, described a Guitar by this maker, made for a ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... know; she wrote to me about it. King Cophetua is the name, isn't it? I am very curious indeed, for I have set Tennyson's ballad to music myself. I sing it to the guitar, and if life were not so hurried I should have sent it to you. However—however, we are all going home to-morrow. I have promised to take charge of Cecilia, and Mrs. Scully is going to ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... After it was shown to the sitters that he was utterly helpless, the curtain was drawn. The manager now placed an ordinary kitchen table in front of the door of the cabinet, so that it stood away from it about two feet. The table contained no drawer. On the table was laid writing materials, a guitar, and small bell. The manager seated himself close to one side of the cabinet entrance, and started a large Swiss music box. Before it had finished the first air the lamp was shut entirely off, making the room ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne |
