"Musical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seen his daughters there. Nell has played the organ at times, fer she's mighty musical. My, ye should hear her play the fiddle! She makes it ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... from the need for further speech by the sudden fortissimo of drums and trumpets and fifes, bursting into the breadth of the piazza in a grand storm of sound—a roar, a blast, and a whistling, well befitting a city famous for its musical instruments, and reducing the members of the closest group to ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... Brave lads in olden musical centuries Sang, night by night, adorable choruses, Sat late by alehouse doors in April Chaunting in joy as the moon ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of information on these topics were the literary supplement of the London Times, the Literary Digest, and the literary, dramatic, and musical columns of the Athenaeum, The Spectator, and the ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... first time, as deaf persons are said to hear well in the noise of a crowded street, or in a rail-car, so did I hear in the musical tumult, for the first time, the words of Herbert. They had been whispered, and I had heard, but not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... sprouts from the grass and blossoms from flower and tree! In waves of diaphanous moonlight and mist, In fugue upon fugue of gold and of amethyst, Around me, above me it spirals; now slower, now faster, Like symphonies born of the thought of a musical master.— O music of Earth! O God, who the music inspired! Let me breathe of the life of thy breath! And so be fulfilled and attired In resurrection, triumphant o'er ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... Lamb Tavern, and occupied the site of the building for several years known as the Melodeon. In 1835 the tavern was converted into the Lion Theatre, which had a short-lived existence. It was then purchased by the Handel and Haydn Society, and occupied for musical purposes, lectures, and other entertainments. Rev. Theodore Parker began lecturing there soon after the famous South Boston sermon upon the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... were the license commissioners, anyway? Why, look at the license system they had in Sweden; yes, and in Finland and in South America. Or, for the matter of that, look at the French and Italians, who drink all day and all night. Aren't they all right? Aren't they a musical people? Take Napoleon, and Victor Hugo; drunk half the time, and ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... They adore Ibsen as a playwright and despise Goldsmith and Sheridan; they worship Gauguin, and the school of Impressionists, and have little appreciation nowadays for pre-Raphaelitism. They are intensely and truly musical, and it is amazing, taking into consideration their extraordinary lack of humour, that they should be such accomplished students of Shakespeare, but of real wit or humour the German possesses not an atom. Take, for instance, the modern novels of Suderman, of Rudolph Herzog, of Rudolph Stratz, ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... seemed to retard our way in such an exasperating fashion. On the contrary, with the sheet eased well off and the lug boomed out with the boathook so that the yard swung square across the length of the boat, we went sliding smoothly away to leeward with a long, easy, buoyant motion, a pleasant, musical gurgling of water along our bottom planking, and a swift gliding past us of tiny air bubbles and occasional morsels of weed that told us we were now travelling at the rate of ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... singing in the First Church choir now for a year. She was well paid. Up to that Sunday two weeks ago she had been quite satisfied with herself and with her position. She had shared her mother's ambition, and anticipated growing triumphs in the musical world. What possible career was before her except the ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... to reconcile musical science with musical art, made maestro di capella by Pope ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... hours when I am so far from being sensitive that if the house were burning I should not move. Am I about to send you a page of comic lamentations? Ah, when one has not the gift of rendering one's grief superbly and transforming it into literary or musical passages which weep magnificently, the best thing is to keep ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... father and Aunt Maria in the drawing-room. Then, also, poor Polly was expected to "give us a little music," and dutifully went through some performances which were certainly a remarkable example of how much can be acquired in the way of mechanical musical skill where a real feeling for the art is absent. After politely offering to turn over the leaves of her music, which Polly always declined (it was the key-note of her energetic character that she "liked to do everything herself"), my father generally fell asleep. I whiled away the time by playing ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... called Pekila, guided us, and was remarkable as almost the only one of the population left with any spirit in him. The depressing effect which the slave-hunting scourge has upon the native mind, though little to be wondered at, is sad, very sad to witness. Musical instruments, mats, pillows, mortars for pounding meal, were lying about unused, and becoming the prey of the white ants. With all their little comforts destroyed, the survivors were thrown still further ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... from the Drachenfels and its six brother felsen, eastward, trending to the north, there runs and spreads a straggling company of gnarled and mysterious craglets, jutting and scowling above glens fringed by coppice, and fretful or musical with stream; the crags, in pious ages, mostly castled, for distantly or fancifully Christian purposes;—the glens, resonant of woodmen, or burrowed at the sides by miners, and invisibly tenanted farther, underground, by gnomes, and above by forest and other demons. ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... our souls when we read in the Nya Pressen, the day before leaving for the musical festival at Sordavala, the following: "Sordavala has only thirteen hundred inhabitants, and some ten thousand people have arrived for the Juhla. They are sleeping on floors and tables, and any one who can get even a share in a bed must be more ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... Miss Monroe was commissioned by Mayor LaGuardia to devote her efforts to the cause of music for the Office of Civilian Defense. Whereupon she outlined a four-point program: 1. To visit large plants and industrial centers connected with defense work to give musical programs and to suggest that the plants begin each day's activities with playing the Star-spangled Banner—to tell the men what they are working for. 2. To conduct community sings in large cities. 3. To collect phonograph records for the boys in army camps, establishing central ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... was interrupted by some one softly whistling a theme from the overture to Masaniello, popular at the college in the form of an arrangement for six pianofortes and twelve hands. There was only one student unladylike and musical enough to whistle; and Miss Wilson was ashamed to find herself growing nervous at the prospect of an encounter with Agatha, who entered whistling sweetly, but with a lugubrious countenance. When she saw in whose presence she stood, she begged pardon politely, and ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... of advice to the Admiral. Do not talk so much when you go motor boating with pretty young musical comedy girls. You see, Admiral, I made it my business to see those young ladies in Glasgow. What an interest they took in you—a great Admiral! It is you, Admiral, whom I thank for aiding me in securing the right persons from whom the ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... the bird reminds me of the musical snuff-box of the late Empress!' said an old courtier. 'Ah, yes, it is the ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... accosted me—a very quiet and very musical key of voice—in a language of which I could not understand a word, but it served to dispel my fear. I uncovered my face and looked up. The stranger (I could scarcely bring myself to call him man) surveyed me with an eye that seemed to read to the very depths of my ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... peremptory demand for the release of my prisoner, my name-daughter stood her ground with her cohorts, who had been scrambling around and over and through the shrubbery, massed behind her. There were Mikey of the red head, small James, the musical wee Susan, Maudie Burns and Jennie Todd, besides several more of the Burns family, a few Sprouls and Paynes and a very ragged young Jones, and they all looked at me with hostile and accusing eyes as Charlotte hurled a final invective at me. "You are wicked ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of the river of life—the washing of the waves of life—how well one recalls, from Arnold's broken and not always musical stanzas, references to that sound—to the sound so like the sound of those real sea-tides that "Sophocles, long ago, heard in the Aegaean," and listened, thinking of many things, as we listen and think of ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... or brigades, of two or three thousand men each, only one of which proceeds to battle at a time, all the rest waiting the result of this charge before they proceed to join battle. While marching to give battle, it passes all imagination to conceive the prodigious noise made by innumerable musical instruments after their fashion, which fill the ears of their soldiers and encourage them to fight; while in the mean time a great number of men run before with artificial fireworks[114]. At last they give the onset with such fury and outcry, that two or three thousand of them are often ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... remains with me is the cadence of their speech. Whilst I was breakfasting, two women stood at gossip on a near balcony, and their utterance was a curious exaggeration of the Neapolitan accent; every sentence rose to a high note, and fell away in a long curve of sound, sometimes a musical wail, more often a mere whining. The protraction of the last word or two was really astonishing; again and again I fancied that the speaker had broken into song. I cannot say that the effect was altogether ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... but in reality is sheer idealization. These Greeks whom you call so "noble" have been long since exposed. Anthropology has turned its searchlights upon them. It is not only their ploughs, their weapons, their musical instruments, and their painted idols that resemble those of the savages; it is everything else about them. Many of them were sunk in the most degrading superstitions: many practised unnatural vices: in times of great fear some were apt to think that ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... this most energetic and most harmonious of all poets, it is neither my purpose nor my wish, should I be found deficient in either, or in both, to shelter myself under an unfilial imputation of blame to my mother-tongue. Our language is indeed less musical than the Greek, and there is no language with which I am at all acquainted that is not. But it is musical enough for the purposes of melodious verse, and if it seem to fail, on whatsoever occasion, in energy, the blame is due, not to itself, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... world of beauty and truth opens up before one. He sees objects that once were hid to him; he hears sounds that once were silent; he enjoys odors that once retained their fragrance. His whole being becomes a part of the living musical world about him, when he has his senses opened to appreciate it and to become attuned to it. One should read some science throughout his life, in order to remain at the source of all true knowledge. Here he learns to appreciate the language ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... was of a classical and recondite character—feasts of melody, at which long-buried and forgotten sonatas of Gluck, or Bach, or Chembini were introduced to a discriminating public for the first time; and to these Mrs. Pallinson and Theobald conducted poor Adela Branston, whose musical proclivities had never yet soared into higher regions than those occupied by the sparkling joyous genius of Rossini, and to whom the revived sonatas, or the familiar old-established gems of classical art, were as unintelligible as so ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... plumping his feet on Mam Widger's lap; then brought himself into the vocal mood with a long rigmarole that he used to recite with the Mummers at Christmas time. Soon we were humming, whistling and singing "Sweet Evelina," whose sole musical merit is that her chorus goes with a swing. The fire crackled and burnt blue. The fragrant steam of the grog rose to the ceiling and settled on the window. We leaned right ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... deepens into an almost musical intensity occasionally in Decamps, whose oriental landscapes and figures, far less important intellectually, far less magistrales in conception, have at times, one may say perhaps without being too fanciful, a truly symphonic quality that renders them unique. "The Suicide" ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... this diminutive hound is somewhat obscure. There is evidently much of the harrier and of the old southern, connected with a considerable decrease of size and speed, the possession of an exceedingly musical voice, and very great power of scent. Beagles are rarely more than ten or twelve inches in height, and were generally so nearly of the same size and power of speed, that it was commonly said they might be covered with a sheet. This close running is, however, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... stories supposed to have been invented for the purpose of illustrating some moral; or real anecdotes, capable of being so applied. The lai, according to Le Grand, chiefly differed from the fabliau, in being interspersed with musical interludes; but I suspect they were generally translations from the British. The word is said to be derived from leudus; but laoi seems to be the general name of a class of Irish metrical compositions, as "Laoi na ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... properly committed by Mr. Fang to the House of Correction for one month; with the appropriate and amusing remark that since he had so much breath to spare, it would be more wholesomely expended on the treadmill than in a musical instrument. He made no answer: being occupied mentally bewailing the loss of the flute, which had been confiscated for the use of the county: so Nancy passed on to the next ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... closely attentive to the minor duties of social life, if duties they be; he was a strict observer of the etiquette of calls, and on some afternoons he notes that he made a dozen or fourteen of them. He frequented musical parties, where his fine voice, now reasonably well trained, made him a welcome guest, and he goes to public concerts where he finds Pasta and Schroeder splendid. His irrepressible desire to expand himself in writing ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... conception, the human body may be likened to a musical instrument—an organ—the keyboard of which is composed of the various receptors, upon which environment plays the many tunes of life; and written within ourselves in symbolic language is the history of our evolution. The skin may be the ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... Forthwith, As clock, that calleth up the spouse of God To win her bridegroom's love at matin's hour, Each part of other fitly drawn and urg'd, Sends out a tinkling sound, of note so sweet, Affection springs in well-disposed breast; Thus saw I move the glorious wheel, thus heard Voice answ'ring voice, so musical and soft, It can be known ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... could not resist the temptation of halting on it to prepare our lunch. Our surprise was great when we set foot on the beach to hear shrill whistles beneath us. The beach was formed of whistling—or singing—sand. The reason the sand was musical was because some large insects had bored thousands of holes of great depth into its moistened mass, which allowed the holes to retain their form. When the sand was trodden the pressure drove the warmish air ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... himself introduced the subject, I led him to consider Mary's future prospects in life, and said that Stephen and Richard being now provided with situations, we ought to think of their sister. Her musical education had now reached such a point that no teaching afforded by Autun could be of any value to her, and it was my desire that she might have the advantage of instruction and direction in her studies from one of the best professors at the Conservatoire ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... green hill" and "Christ who once amongst us." They have gone wrong, I fear, so many years that the task of getting them to go right is almost an impossible one. We tried a chant, but they seemed to think, as it was not the one taught by Mr. Dodgson, it could not be right. They say he was very musical and could sing any part. The men are anxious to sing in parts themselves. After the service we took Rob for a run, then three of the men turned up and did not depart till after six o'clock. We usually have ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... the black-headed oriole (Oriolus melanocephalus), which is the only note uttered by the bird in the colder months, is occasionally replaced in February by the summer call of the species—a liquid, musical peeho. In the latter half of the month the Indian robin (Thamnobia cambayensis) begins to find his voice. Although not the peer of his English cousin, he is no mean singer. At this time of year, however, his notes are harsh. He ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... may mean a musical recital, whether monotone or inflected, can be inferred from the rubric of the lessons which existed in the Prayer-Book from 1549 to 1604. "Then shall be read two Lessons distinctly with a loud voice, that the people may hear. . . . And, to the end that the people may better ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown
... little Mayfair Street was the haunt of much voluntary minstrelsy. Bands of cockney darkeys came down it, tuning their voices to our native ragtime. Or a balladist, man or woman, took the centre, and sang towards our compassionate windows. Or a musical husband and wife placed their portable melodeon on the opposite sidewalk, and trained their vocal and instrumental attack upon the same ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... for your art, not as a mannikin. You are almost in the front rank of musical comedy. I have seen you occasionally at the theater, and I thought you were the best ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... know no beast in England whose voice I do not account musical save and except always the braying of an ass. The notes of all our birds and fowls please me without one exception. I should not indeed think of keeping a goose in a cage, that I might hang him up in the parlour for the sake of his melody, but a goose upon a common, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... terms of familiarity during that incarnation. Perhaps I am the only person now alive who has shaken hands with a man (Lachner) who shook hands with Beethoven and heard his voice; all of which may appear when I come to indite my musical memoirs. I have written a sonata in four movements, opus 643, hitherto unpublished, and played the organ during divine service to a crowded congregation. Furthermore I performed, not at my own suggestion, his insipid Valse Caprice to the great Antoine Rubinstein, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... drove them to Saint Mary's Church, which stands in the quaint village of Warwick. Its old tower holds ten bells, and these play every four hours. There is a different tune for each day, which is always changed at midnight. The Warwick towns-people, living near their church, must have an enviable musical education, for they have continually dinned in their ears all sorts of tunes, from the "Easter Hymn" to "The Blue ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... down at the shimmering white folds near his feet. "In earlier days my environment was not exactly a musical one." ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... arranged; his part of these vocal gymnastics being very pleasant to hear, for he had a flexible, rich voice. I shudder to recall how largely my own performances partook of the grotesque. But in the forest where were no musical persons (I supposed) to take hurt from whatever noise I made, I would let go with all the lungs I had; he followed the horrid sounds to their origin, and we would ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... cannibals, we were not without our fears that we had been preserved to grace a feast! Our apprehensions, however, were dissipated, when we saw them commence a dance, of which we will endeavour to give the reader some idea. The only musical instrument we saw, was a rude kind of drum; and the choristers were all females, say twenty or thirty, each having one of these drums. The music commenced with the women, who began upon a very low key, gradually raising the ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... her relations on a promise that they shall see the foreigner's bedroom and "little iron tailor,"[11] hear the musical box, and be allowed to inspect the enormous saucepan in which the school food is made, ending up with a visit to the rooms where the women ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... gray sky like embers swaddled by ashes. The birds were waking; there were occasional scurryings in tree-tops and outbursts of peevish twittering to attest as much; and presently came a singing, less musical than that of many a bird perhaps, but far more grateful to the girl who heard it, heart in mouth. A lute accompanied ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... Heart of all the LAGERS; where his Prussian Majesty, and his Polish ditto, with their respective suites, are lodged. Kinglike wholly, in extensive green palaces ready gilt and furnished; such drawing-rooms, such bedrooms, "with floors of dyed wicker-work;" the gilt mirrors, pictures, musical clocks; not even the fine bathing-tubs for his Prussian Majesty have been forgotten. Never did man or flunky see the like. Such immense successful apparatus, without and within; no end of military ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... the tympanum of the ear vibrates mechanically, when exposed to audible sounds, like the strings of one musical instrument, when the same notes are struck upon another. Nor is this opinion improbable, as the muscles and cartilages of the larynx are employed in producing variety of tones by mechanical vibration: so the muscles and bones of the ear ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... similar, it will be remembered, is told of Tennyson. "One evening," says F. T. Palgrave of the poet, "he read out, offhand, Pindar's great picture of the life of Heaven, in the Second Olympian, into pure modern prose splendidly lucid and musical." Let who will decide which tour de force was ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sleight-of-hand, in juggling, or as an illusionist. His tricks are as "old as my unpaid bills" and from time immemorial have been performed with the same monotonous patter and the irritating drone of the "bean" or so called musical instrument. I may here say that this musical torture is used to disguise movements of the showman's hand in the same way as the European uses his magic wand, an instrument that does not appeal to me at all, ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... hard to earn money, Mr. Gilsum," said the musical and plaintive voice, but have been disappointed. Next week I am sure I ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... reason than that Handel had formerly made splendid thunder in that way, and with the stale confectionery, mostly too would-be pious to be even cheerfully toothsome, of Spohr and Mendelssohn, Stainer and Parry, which spread indigestion at our musical festivals until I publicly told Parry the bludgeoning truth about his Job and woke him to conviction of sin. Compare Flaxman and Thorwaldsen and Gibson with Phidias and Praxiteles, Stevens with Michael Angelo, Bouguereau's Virgin with Cimabue's, or the best operatic ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... now or withdraw her hands from his. Why should she? Had he not come to Cloudy Mountain to woo her? Was she not awaiting his coming? To her it seemed but natural that the conventions should be as nothing in the face of love. His voice, low and musical, charged ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... organist in Hereford cathedral, he joined the Chapel Royal in 1585, and in the next year became a Mus. Bac. of Oxford. In 1591 he was appointed organist in Queen Elizabeth's chapel in succession to Blitheman, from whom he had received his musical education. In 1592 he received the degree of doctor of music at Cambridge University; and in 1596 he was made music professor at Gresham College, London. As he was unable to lecture in Latin according to the foundation-rules of that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... newcomer's refined and musical voice breathed the very soul of affability. "I am an individual who is so unfortunate as to be in want of ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... has grown to be a great university, a musical festival, a zoological garden, an art institute, an agricultural college and a ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... you keep steady company with him? He's a musical soup eater," her relatives said to her. And she answered, "It's a power—I ...
— Rootabaga Stories • Carl Sandburg
... daughters, having a talent for drawing, was learning the art of engraving on wood. The youngest, being passionately fond of flowers, and possessed of great artistic genius, was a regular apprentice in an artificial-flower manufactory. Miss Effie, the eldest, had had her musical talent so cultivated under a competent master, that she was now qualified to act as organist in a church, or to teach a class of pupils at the piano; but not satisfied with this, she had insisted on being ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... she herself called very fond of music. Musical strains, well rendered, had a way of evoking pictures in her mind. She sometimes liked to sit in the room of mornings when Madame Ratignolle played or practiced. One piece which that lady played Edna had entitled "Solitude." ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... and withdraw yourselves; Be not offended, gracious Marian. [Exeunt music. Under the upper heaven nine goodly spheres Turn with a motion ever, musical; In palaces of kings melodious sounds Offer pleasures to their sovereigns ears. In temples, milk-white-clothed quiristers Sing sacred anthems, bowing to the shrine; And in the fields whole quires of winged clerks Salute the[518] ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... sentiment, but consists in vague, exalted emotion. Music, of all the arts, produces the vaguest and most "indefinite" pleasure; consequently verse forms should be chosen with the greatest possible attention to musical effect. Poetry must be purely a matter of feeling. "Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the Conscience it has ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... taste and feeling, and with a respect to the sense of what she uttered, that might be proposed in example to ladies of much superior musical talent. Her natural good sense taught her, that if, as we are assured, "music must be married to immortal verse," they are very often divorced by the performer in a most shameful manner. It was perhaps owing to this sensibility to poetry, and combining its expression ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... herself thus deserted by her companions, Shoofly began a low, musical hum of a wail and walled large eyes up at Everett, at whose feet she was seated. In instant sympathetic response he applied the toe of his shoe to the small of the whimpering tot's back and proceeded ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... musicians were known as "Bachs," even when there were no longer any members of the family in the town. Sebastian Bach thus inherited the artistic tradition of a united family whose circumstances had deprived them of the distractions of the century of musical fermentation which in the rest of Europe ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... wants the fire of Homer. There is nothing in his Parnassus which struck me, but the ludicrous impropriety of Apollo's playing upon a fiddle, for the entertainment of the nine muses. [Upon better information I must retract this censure; in as much, as I find there was really a Musical Instrument among the antients of this Figure, as appears by a small statue in Bronze, to be still seen in the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... haunches and brushing the ground with his tail, with a rapid motion, from side to side, nose in the air, eyes fixed upon the bell, and throat sending out a prolonged howl so long as the ringing continued. The din was deafening, and far from musical, but it was a comical sight, vastly enjoyed by the young Travillas, who saw it ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... listened to the same piece, and even then they had not learnt it, for it was rather difficult. But the music-master praised the bird in the highest degree, and even asserted that it was better than a real nightingale, not only in its dress and the beautiful diamonds, but also in its musical power. "For you must perceive, my chief lord and emperor, that with a real nightingale we can never tell what is going to be sung, but with this bird everything is settled. It can be opened and explained, so that people may understand ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Cabinet Minister, and a poet whose name is a household word wherever the English tongue is spoken. And for two hours we sat and listened to a wicked-looking little woman who from the boards of a Bowery music-hall had worked her way up to the position of a star in musical comedy. Education, as she observed herself without regret, had not been compulsory throughout the waterside district of Chicago in her young days; and, compelled to earn her own living from the age ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... makes a sign to me to ring the bell. I first touch the great lips with my hand very lightly; and a musical murmur comes from them. Then I set the beam swinging strongly; and a sound deep as thunder, rich as the bass of a mighty organ—a sound enormous, extraordinary, yet beautiful—rolls over the hills and away. Then swiftly follows another and lesser and sweeter billowing of tone; then another; ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... daughter, who spent three years at a very superior school at Dresden, receiving wonderful instruction in sciences, arts and tongues, and who, taking a different line from Leolin, was to be brought up wholly as a femme du monde. The girl was musical and philological; she made a specialty of languages and learned enough about them to be inspired with a great contempt for her mother's artless accents. Greville Fane's French and Italian were droll; the imitative faculty had ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... produced a ceaseless murmur like the gushing of a mountain stream. The voices of the sentinels too, as they relieved one another on the decks, and the occasional splash of oars, as a solitary boat rowed backwards and forwards to the Admiral's ship for orders, sounded peculiarly musical in the perfect stillness of a calm night. Though I am far from giving the preference, in all respects, to a sailor's life, it must nevertheless be confessed that it has in it many moments of exquisite enjoyment, and the present seemed to me to be of ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... PHILOSOPHY! Not harsh, and crabbed, as dull Fools suppose, But Musical as is Apollo's lute, And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets, Where no crude surfeit ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... her company as well as anybody's in the world, because she was so refreshingly childlike and natural. Every chord of feeling answered so true and clear to the touch, that to talk with her was like playing on a musical instrument, only far more delightful. Arthur had looked forward to walks and talks with Amy as among the jolliest treats of his vacation. She tried her best now to seem light-hearted, and to entertain him with the local gossip, for which he always depended on ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... his island and his lonely cell;[9] or by the aid of a fiddle dexterously thrown in, in an interval of speaking, to make us believe that we hear those supernatural noises of which the isle was full:—the Orrery Lecturer at the Haymarket might as well hope, by his musical glasses cleverly stationed out of sight behind his apparatus, to make us believe that we do indeed hear the chrystal spheres ring out that chime, which if it were to inwrap our ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... greeted this remark and the laugh resolving itself into a low, musical voice that bade him enter, Mr. Middleton found himself in a small boudoir of oriental magnificence, facing a young man in the costume of the Moslem nations, who sat cross-legged upon a divan smoking a narghileh. He was of perhaps twenty-six, somewhat slight, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... tiresome duties which came in very often as provoking interruptions to the great business of life, namely eating, drinking, dining out, giving dinners, or attending the endless succession of at-homes, dances, musical evenings, amateur theatricals, by which Greyshot people tried to ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... prisoner so accommodated was in many respects quite a free person. His meals were served to him in his room, if he wished. He could read or play cards, or receive guests; and if he had any favorite musical instrument, that was not denied him. There was just one rule that had to be complied with. If he were a public character, and any newspaper men called, he had to be brought down-stairs into the private interviewing room in order that they might not know that he was not confined ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... not discern the musical note, or the acknowledgment of the "Old German God." Yet, ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... how well her mother had, played, and it was plain to her that Mrs. Bouverie was noticing her for her mother's sake. She looked down and coloured as she replied, 'Both my sisters are musical, and Helen is said to be likely to sing very well. I believe the history of my want of music to be,' added she, with a bright smile, 'that I was too naughty to learn; and now, I am afraid—I am not sorry for it, as it ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... once one of the charms of this woman. Her voice was deliciously soft and musical. The words seemed to leave her lips slowly, almost lingeringly, and she spoke with the precision and slight accent of a well-educated foreigner. Her eyes seemed to be wandering all over me and my possessions, yet her interest, if it ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... punished with great severity a famous poet and musician, for adding three strings to the harp; grounding their sentence upon a principle universally assented to among them, that the softness of musical sounds produced effeminacy among the people. Of the truth of their proposition in the abstract, there can be little doubt; it is in the rigid application and extreme extension of it the fault lies. Music has certainly a powerful ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... a reception at four, which lasted until six-thirty, and this was followed by a dance at nine, with music by a famous stringed orchestra of Chicago, a musical programme by artists of considerable importance, and a gorgeous supper from eleven until one in a Chinese fairyland of lights, at small tables filling three of the ground-floor rooms. As an added fillip to the occasion Cowperwood had hung, not only the important pictures which he had purchased abroad, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... lost with the Corisande on Durendal, but he kept us from starving a few times on Flamberge by painting pictures and selling them. My hyperspatial astrogator, Guatt Kirbey, composes music; he tries to express the mathematics of hyperspatial theory in musical terms. I don't care much for it, myself," he admitted. "I study history. You know, it's odd; practically everything that's happened on any of the inhabited planets happened on ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso is the reverent possessor of a genuine Cremona. He consents to take as his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for technique, but not the soul of the artist. The youth has ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... syllables, dwelling with pleasure on the first three little letters—Pia. Oh, it was right, it was utterly and entirely right. Every other possibility vanished before it into the remotest background, unthinkable in the face of what was. Pia di Donatello! Again he repeated the musical syllables. And yet—and yet—he'd have sworn she was English. There wasn't the faintest trace of a foreign accent in her speech. If anything, there was a hint of Irish,—the soft intonation of the Emerald Isle. Her colouring, too, was Irish, the blue-black hair, the dark violet eyes—he had ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... opposite side of the altar she halted, and the chanting ceased. The priests and priestesses knelt before her, while with wand extended above them she recited a long and tiresome prayer. Her voice was soft and musical—Tarzan could scarce realize that its possessor in a moment more would be transformed by the fanatical ecstasy of religious zeal into a wild-eyed and bloodthirsty executioner, who, with dripping knife, would be the first to drink her victim's red, warm blood from the little golden ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... manager evidently could not. "I am going there myself to-morrow," he said. "You can ride behind. The pony can carry both of us." I looked at my new-found friend. He had deep blue eyes, a noble face, a musical and kindly voice. He looked like the people I had known in England. I was drawn to him at once in confidence and friendship. He went on to tell me later that he had been in the Black Hawk War; that he had been spending some time in Chicago ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... was so genuinely an artist that he could not do the thing ill. Any one of these stories will prove his capacity: the first, for instance, about that princess on the "bare, brown, lonely moor" who was "as sweet and as fresh as an opening rosebud, and her voice was as musical as the whisper of a stream in the woods in the hot days of summer." There is not a flaw in it. It is so filled with simple beauty and tenderness, and there is so much of the genuine word-magic in its language, that one is carried away as by the spell ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... meditation, the peach leaves brushing her proud head—caressingly, it seemed to him. Later she came nearer in a brand-new mood. She smiled now, and her voice was musical and thrilled with wonder. "But what a poet Heaven had locked inside this little parasite! It used to puzzle me." She laughed, and ever so lightly. "Eh, and did you never understand why by preference I talked with you at evening from my balcony? It was because I could ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... embarrassment I confess that I was terrified, that I clung to the ropes with a clutch which frayed my gloves, while Poor Jr. leaned back against the side of the basket and gazed upward at the great swaying ball, with his hands in his pockets, humming the strange ballad that was his favourite musical composition: ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... of very wonderful records, and for more than an hour the girls sat entranced as, one by one, Joe produced for their enjoyment, the greatest artists of the musical world. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... new system of musical notation, wrote to me and suggested that a magazine article from me, contrasting the absurdities of the old system with the simplicities of his new one, would be sure to make a "rousing hit." He shouted ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Warburton, Fielding and his sister, etc.; with the historic Frascati vase of Lady Miller at Batheaston, which stirred the ridicule of Horace Walpole, and is still, it is said, to be seen in a local park. The dosing pages treat of Bath—musical, artistic, scientific—of its gradual transformation as a health resort—of its eventual and foredoomed decline and fall as the one fashionable watering-place, supreme and single, for ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... immense. On the 2nd of August I am going away on a tour of some four months in England, Ireland, and Scotland. I shall read, during that time, not fewer than four or five times a week. It will be sharp work; but probably a certain musical clinking will come of it, which ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... uncle's departure, I had found another mode of obtaining knowledge, and applause. He was musical, and a few persons of the like turn, scattered through the neighbouring hamlets, used occasionally to meet at his house; where they exercised themselves in singing, from the works of Croft, Green, Boyce, Purcell, Handel, and such authors as they possessed. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... changing the government of Gruyere has left the people strangely unaltered. In spite of the injunctions of the Lutheran Bernois, they still danced and sang, and until the dawn of the present century still spoke their musical patois. The chateau, long used as the residence of a prefet of Fribourg, was offered for sale when in the middle of the 19th century the prefecture was transferred to Bulle. For a long time left to decay, it was finally ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... vision, or felt within herself that a sacrifice was the thing needful to give the bell its true tone. And so she resolved to give herself to save her father, and with rare fortitude one night she plunged into the great pot of molten metal. And the tone of the bell was so sweet and musical that the king was delighted. And the maker, instead of being killed, was highly honoured. So ran the simple bit ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... Mr. Arnold says: "He had a great love for poetry and eloquence, and his taste and judgment were excellent. Next to Shakespeare among the poets, his favorite was Burns. There was a lecture of his upon Burns full of favorite quotations and sound criticisms." His musical tastes, says Mr. Brooks, who knew him well, "were simple and uncultivated, his choice being old airs, songs, and ballads, among which the plaintive Scotch songs were best liked. 'Annie Laurie,' 'Mary of Argyle,' and especially 'Auld Robin Gray,' never lost their charm ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... going upon the cream- white surfaces as the ship rolled with the regularity of a swinging pendulum. Every inch of our running gear was as taut as a harp-string, and through it the wind piped and sang as though the whole ship had been one gigantic musical instrument; while over all arched the blue dome of an absolutely cloudless sky, in the very zenith of which blazed the sun with a fierceness that made all of us eager to seek out such small patches of fugitive shadow as were cast by the straining canvas. The sun was so nearly vertical ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... "Cymbeline," receiving the gratitude and applause of the ladies, to whose repeated entreaties he also read an extract from "King Lear," commencing with the line "No, I will be the pattern of all patience." Guy Trevelyan's voice was full, soft and musical, having the power of soothing the listener; but when required for dramatic readings, could command a versatility that was surprising. Miss Douglas archly proposed to Lady Douglas her wish to join in a game of whist. Thus engaged, ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... reached home between ten and eleven o'clock. When they entered the house, they heard sounds of music from the drawing-room. Peter Dale was playing fragments from the latest musical comedy, with a whistled accompaniment on the drawing-room piano. There seemed to be nothing else audible in the house, in spite of the large party it contained. Amid the general hush, unbroken by a voice or a laugh, the "funny bits" that Peter was defiantly ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... noise at the Front!" said her husband. "Possibly I've got used to artillery preparation; anyhow, it strikes me as a small thing compared to my trio when they get going with assorted musical instruments. How is your small family, ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... the beast in a musical, coaxing tone. The animal sat grim as a statue. Luke thrust his hand into his pocket. As he withdrew it he rested his fingers on the ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... Reynolds eagerly. "I am sure President Morton would let us have Greek Hall. We could give different kinds of entertainments. One month we could give a Shakespearean play and the next a Greek tragedy; then we could act a scenario, or have a musical revue or whatever we liked. We could make posters to advertise each one and state frankly on them that the proceeds were to go to the Harlowe House Club Reserve Fund. We wouldn't ask any one for anything. We wouldn't even ask them to come. We'd just have the tickets on sale as they do at ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... account, but on account of the effect which it produced. From somewhere in the centre of the room there commenced ringing, softly at first, and afterwards with a greater volume, a gong, something like the siren of a motor-car, but much softer and more musical. Instantly a dead silence seemed to fall upon the place. Conversation was broken off, laughter was checked, even the waiters stood still in their places. The eyes of every one seemed turned towards the door. One or two of the men rose, ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... three large roses (circular windows); two at the extremities of the transept and the other above the organ. Of these three windows the western is by far the finest. In the centre of it, the Eternal Father is represented as surrounded by a multitude of angels having each different musical instruments, around it are ten figures of angels, each holding an instrument of ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet
... it," she said with a musical laugh, "although at this place I rust and grow dull like an unused sword. Now you would rest. Go—all of you. To-morrow you and I will talk alone. Fear nothing for your safety; you are watched by my slaves and I watch my slaves. Until to-morrow, then, farewell. Go now, ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... to Mrs. Tewksbury's, five years ago, and from the outset he showed a fatherly interest in me—an interest which this quaking stripling of an organist appreciated, I can assure you. Being one of the pillars of St. Luke's—the church I play at, you remember—and an esteemed musical critic withal, his hearty approval of me as a performer was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... pews and pulpit, contains a closely-packed congregation, as different in dress, as they are opposed in manner, to that we have just quitted. The hymn is sung—not by paid singers, but by the whole assembly at the loudest pitch of their voices, unaccompanied by any musical instrument, the words being given out, two lines at a time, by the clerk. There is something in the sonorous quavering of the harsh voices, in the lank and hollow faces of the men, and the sour solemnity of the women, which bespeaks this a strong-hold of intolerant ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... I heard a burst of musical voices so close that they might as well have been inside the house instead of just outside; so I asked them inside, hoping that they might then seem farther away. Then I realised that they were the Christmas Mummers, who come every year in country parts to enact ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... lovely children, was domiciled at Cherokee Springs, three miles distant, was also a delightful addition to our little circle. She was thoroughly accomplished, of charming manners, although perfectly frank and outspoken. Her musical talent was exceptional, and her lovely voice, coined into Confederate money, was freely given in aid of all charitable objects. She was a frequent visitor at my office, walking into town in the evening to ride out with ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... the screen and loitered a moment in the doorway, looking out into the night. Before him stretched the river; so near was it that he could hear the musical lappings of its waters among the tall grasses that bordered the stream. From the ground, matted thickly with pine needles, rose a warm, ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... was born at Edinburgh on the 17th February 1811. He is employed as a journeyman cabinetmaker in that city. As a musical composer he has attained considerable eminence. The following popular songs from his pen are published with ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... spirits; my heart fluttered at the question, and my imagination glowed with a thousand fond presages. I answered in the affirmative; and we met by accident at the ball. I could nut behold him without emotion: when he accosted me, his well-known voice made my heart vibrate, like a musical chord, when its unison is struck. All the ideas of our past love, which the lapse of time and absence had enfeebled and lulled to sleep, now awoke, and were reinspired by his appearance; so that his artful excuses ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... or for ornamental work—pine,cypress, yew, cedar, and oak,* musical instruments,** helmets, leathern jerkins covered with metal scales, weapons of bronze and iron,*** chariots,**** dyed and embroidered stuffs,^ perfumes,^^ dried cakes, oil, wines of Kharu, liqueurs from Alasia, Khati, Singar, Naharaim, Amurru, and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... gave a loud laugh that rang through the yard and ended in a soft, queer little whoop that was musical. Crittenden smiled but, instead of answering, raised his hand warningly and, as he approached the portico, he stepped from the gravel-walk to the thick turf and began to tiptoe. At the foot of the low flight of stone ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... KASSIAN (Der tapfere Kassian); a musical comedy in one act, with music by Oscar Straus; ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... The musical skeleton rattled his bones against the ivory in a very one, two, three, four symphony; the poet ran his fingers through his hair, pulled up his collar, gave his head a jaunty ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover |
