"Hurdy-gurdy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shrieking and running at games. Fat mothers and babies along the curb, bargaining with pushcart men. A wheezing hurdy-gurdy, with every other note gone to the limbo of lost chords, rasped and leaked jerky tunes. All the shops had foreign names on the windows—not even an "English spoken here" sign. The fresh wind blew down the dirty street, and peppered everything with dust. Newspapers ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... nervous currents. It is not everybody that enters into the soul of Mozart's or Beethoven's harmonies; and there are vital symphonies in B flat, and other low, sad keys, which a doctor may know as little of as a hurdy-gurdy player of the essence of those divine musical mysteries. The Doctor knew the difference between what men say and what they mean as well as most people. When he was listening to common talk, he was in the habit of looking over his spectacles; if he lifted ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... I've been here before," said he, when they got out of the taxi in a short, untidy, indeterminate street that was a cul-de-sac. The prospect ended in a garage, near which two women chauffeurs were discussing a topic that interested them. A hurdy-gurdy was playing close by, and a few ragged children stared at the hurdy-gurdy, on the end of which a baby was cradled. The fact that the street was midway between Curzon Street and Piccadilly, and almost within ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... something different for him to report. He had gone into a courtyard off Holborn, drawn by the sound of a hurdy-gurdy. Four or five little girls were dancing, and some older women stood looking on. For a few moments he looked on too, probably with an effect of aloof and amused patronage. But patronage was not for ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... was one of the most important in my life. I was standing wistfully by my fireplace, listening to a broken-winded hurdy-gurdy, with the most mournful attention, stationed opposite to my window, when Bedos announced Sir Reginald Glanville. It so happened, that I had that morning taken the miniature I had found in the fatal field, from the secret place ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... job. I was maid of honor. Honest I was. Don't it sound funny? And I carried her bouquet as the bridal party marched up the hall to the office of the justice of the peace. Just as he was about to pronounce the last sad rites a hurdy-gurdy started playing 'Don't Get Married Any More, Ma,' with variations. Well, it made Mamie so nervous. You know she always was a hysterical creature. It made her so nervous that she had to have Wilbur—that's her husband—go out and put a bug on the Ginny before she would allow the flag to drop. ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... there, motionless, a pathetic figure of utter despondency. The minutes might have lengthened into hours, when suddenly a hurdy-gurdy in the street below started to play a popular air. Often the most trivial and commonplace incident will change the entire current of our thoughts. It was so in this instance. The cheap music had the effect of instantly galvanizing ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... other posture-master; but the quality of this true humourist was to laugh and make laugh, though always with a secret kindness and tenderness, to perform the drollest little antics and capers, but always with a certain grace, and to sweet music—as you may have seen a Savoyard boy abroad, with a hurdy-gurdy and a monkey, turning over head and heels, or clattering and piroueting in a pair of wooden shoes, yet always with a look of love and appeal in his bright eyes, and a smile that asks and wins affection and protection. Happy they who have that sweet gift ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rather cold and gray, with steely sunlight. Spring breathed in the air, but the women passing along Fifty-seventh Street wore furs and wraps. She heard the distant clatter of an L train and then the hum of a motor car. A hurdy-gurdy jarred into the interval ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... or three notes ground into one monotony. The voices of the congregation rise and sink above it. These southern people, like the Arabs, the Apulians, and the Spaniards, seem to find their music in a hurdy-gurdy swell of sound. The other day we met a little girl, walking and spinning, and singing all the while, whose song was just another version of this chant. It has a discontented plaintive wail, as if it came from some vast age, and were ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds |
