"Prelude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... With this prelude, he took a few seeds and began to coax the bird, until it, in point of fact, performed various tricks, on the stage, clasping in its beak a mask and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... that had gone hurtling through the air with its hoarse, ponderous scream. All the slope up to the Ridge was merged in the blanket of night. Out of it came the regular flashes of guns for a while as the prelude to the unloosing of the ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... of the experiences of the Hebrews in Egypt is briefly outlined as the prelude to the traditional institution of the feast of the passover. Sinai, however, is the great goal of the priestly narratives, for about it they group all their laws. It is their concrete method of proclaiming the antiquity and divine origin of Israelitish legislation. ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... in a hurry; but I was thinking how I could best begin without startling you. But I may as well get it out without any prelude. Miss Challoner, to Mrs. Williams I am only Mr. Dancy; but my real name ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... prelude of some moments a clear and sweet voice accompanied the instrument, and the words of the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... duke, "no matter; stay with me a while. I wish your counsel about some affairs that concern me nearly." He then told Valentine an artful story, as a prelude to draw his secret from him, saying that Valentine knew he wished to match his daughter with Thurio, but that she was stubborn and disobedient to his commands, "neither regarding," said he, "that she is my child, nor fearing me as if I were her father. And ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... union with, those of Homer and Virgil; or because they do not observe the custom of invocation, or because they weave one history or tale with another, or because they finish the song with an epilogue on what has been said and a prelude on what is to be said, and many other kinds of criticism and censure, from whence it seems they would imply that they themselves, if the fancy took them, could be the true poets; and yet in fact they are no other than worms, that know not how to do anything well, but are born ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... Island's bold scenery as a contrast to that of the head of the Chesapeake, whence Herman had ridden. He could, besides, more reasonably swim the Kills than the North River with a horse, as a gentle prelude ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... reptile. To carry to such a people the divine word, to call them together for sacred instruction, to introduce amongst them a pure and heavenly worship, and to lead them to the observance of a Sabbath on earth, as the preparative and prelude to a state of endless perfection, was surely a work worthy for a Saviour to command, and becoming a christian people ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... and observed in an historic spirit, where shall we find an illustration more impressive than in Abraham Lincoln, whose life, career and death might be chanted by a Greek chorus as at once the prelude and the epilogue of the most ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... thick with recollections and regrets, deepening into a horror of loss and darkness, and then slowly brightening into the calm prelude of a day of farewell. The birds began to chirp and twitter in the ivy; the thrush uttered her long-drawn notes, sweetly repeated and sustained in the dusky bushes. That sound was much connected in my mind with Aveley. To be awakened thus in the summer ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of this, abbe, Lyodot and D'Eymeris at Vincennes are a prelude of ruin for my house. I repeat it—I arrested, you will be imprisoned—I imprisoned, you ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to make an Inscription Two-fold, for the Dead, for the Living—for the Dear Poet, for the Beloved Mother! The linking of their names together, under this Spray of Kentucky Pine—culled by a hand most loving—is like unto finding the other half of a broken Chord, in some Prelude Elusive: for James Whitcomb Riley, deeply endeared himself, to the Dear Lady Here, while he and her son were a long while away, on their Reading Tour. Out of sheer Kindliness, out of Goodness of Heart, he often wrote to her, delightful Letters of Good Cheer, filled ...
— A Spray of Kentucky Pine • George Douglass Sherley
... ear was suddenly invaded with the sound of some few, solemn notes, issuing from the organ which seemed to feel the impulse of an invisible hand ... reason shrunk before the thronging ideas of his fancy, which represented this music as the prelude ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... us here, and every jom as it passed only brought it nearer. True, we were treated with the utmost kindness, we lived in royal splendor, we had enormous retinues; but all this was a miserable mockery, since it all served as the prelude to our inevitable doom. For that doom it was hard indeed to wait. Anything was better. Far better would it be to risk all the dangers of this unusual and amazing flight, to brave the terrors of that drear isle of fire, Magones; better to perish ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... songs, in elegiac measure, are variations on the themes of love and friendship (for Menalcas sings of Milon, Daphnis of Nais), and of nature. Daphnis is the winner,- it is his earliest victory, and the prelude to his great renown among nymphs and shepherds. In this version the strophes are arranged as in Fritzsche's text. Some critics take the poem to be a ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... windless in the fetching about of a boat. In The Angel in the House, and other earlier poems, Mr. Coventry Patmore used the octosyllabic stanza perfectly, inasmuch as he never left it either heavily or thinly packed. Moreover those first poems had a composure which was the prelude to the peace of the Odes. And even in his slightest work he proves himself the master—that is, the owner—of words that, owned by him, are unprofaned, are as though they had never been profaned; the capturer of an art so quick and close that it is the voice less of a poet than ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... thoughts, sir," said the Earl; "proceed. You have as yet spoken of yourself only—an important and worthy subject doubtless, but which, perhaps, does not altogether so deeply concern me that I should postpone my repose to hear it. Spare me further prelude, sir, and speak to the purpose if indeed you have aught to say that concerns me. When you have done, I, in my turn, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... began. The constant rains had long ago reduced them to a state of paste, and although some attempt had been made to stiffen them with a filling of dried cocoanut-husks, the sucking sound made by the ponies' hoofs was but a prelude to our final floundering in the mud. There was a narrow ridge on one side near a thorny hedge, and, balancing ourselves on this, we made slow progress, meanwhile tearing our clothes to shreds. Skim had considerable difficulty ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... leaves of the "Court Almanac," but his thoughts were far away, and the book did not produce its usual effect upon him. My mother was knitting in silence, and from time to time a furtive tear dropped upon her work. Marie, who was sewing in the same room, without any prelude declared to my parents that she was obliged to go to St. Petersburg, and begged them ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... meagre expression, while the philosopher, who renounces dramatic representation, is condemned to be avowedly inadequate. Love, to the lover, is a noble and immense inspiration; to the naturalist it is a thin veil and prelude to the self-assertion of lust. This opposition has prevented philosophers from doing justice to the subject. Two things need to be admitted by anyone who would not go wholly astray in such speculation: one, that love ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... tell me that he was here at the founding of this Institution. [Laughter.] But instead of bringing those volumes of Bancroft's here, and reading them to you on this occasion, I will let the reporters publish them as the prelude to what I ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... required painful effort; to recall and comprehend them was even worse. Reflecting upon them now, with unstrung nerves, made them seem a hundred-fold more terrible than when they were the spontaneous offspring of hot blood. With the reflection came the thoguhts that this was but a prelude—an introduction—to an infinitely horrible saturnalia of violence and blood, through which he was to be hurried until released by his own destruction. This became a nightmare that threatened to stagnate the blood in his veins. He gasped, turned his back to the ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... them to appear unconscious of it. A great crowd was slowly filling the room and an orchestra in a balcony on the left of the dais began to make delightful music on instruments the strangers had never before seen. After an entrancing prelude a sound of singing was heard, and far up in a grand dome, lighted like the one the captives had just admired over the central court of the palace, they saw a bevy of maidens, robed in white, moving about in ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... listening evidently to what was an opening prelude, for several different subjects were introduced and only partially ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... a sequel to his questionings on the subjects of reality and truth, the Author was asking himself "What is death?" and the query serves as a prelude to the first of the many breezy dialogues with that gipsy cousin-german ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... back to me even now. If I could properly train up a number of dogs, tigers and other ferocious beasts, and put a few lines of these on the field of battle, that, I thought, would serve very well as an inspiriting prelude. With our personal prowess let loose thereafter, victory should by no means be out of reach. And, as the picture of this wonderfully simple strategy waxed vivid in my imagination, the victory of my side became ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... all the externals of deep humility; although, very probably, they were at the moment calculating in their minds the profits on the last adventure from Kingston. One custom particularly struck me as being very beautiful. As the night shuts in, after a noisy prelude on all the old pots in the different steeples throughout the city, there is a dead pause; presently the great bell of the cathedral tolls slowly, once or twice, at which every person stops from his employment, whatever ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... and nocturne, prelude and polonaise Clamour and wander and wail on the opiate air, Piercing our hearts with echo of passionate days, Peopling a top front lodging with shapes of care. And as our souls, uncovered, would shamefully hide away, The radiant hands light up the enchanted gloom With the ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... through the crannies at his back; how his body tingled all over with warmth, and it began to dawn upon him, with a sort of slow surprise, that the country was beautiful, the heather purple, and the far-away hills all marbled with sun and shadow. Wordsworth, in a beautiful passage of the "Prelude," has used this as a figure for the feeling struck in us by the quiet by-streets of London after the uproar of the great thoroughfares; and the comparison may be turned the other way with as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thing, its use will come. I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes.' He laugh'd, and I, tho' sleepy, like a horse That hears the corn-bin open, prick'd my ears; 45 For I remember'd Everard's college fame When we were Freshmen: then at my request He brought it; and the poet little urged, But with some prelude of disparagement, Read, mouthing out his hollow oes and aes, 50 Deep-chested music, ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... triumphant. All the inhabitants of Europe, he said, sympathised with the French and wished them success, regarding them as men struggling with tyranny and despotism. Sheridan seconded this amendment, and Burke opposed it, affirming "that to send an ambassador to France would be a prelude to the murder of our own sovereign." Fox had said, in the course of his speech, that the republic of this country was readily acknowledged by European courts in the time of Cromwell, after the execution of Charles I.; but Burke shattered this argument, in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... more vital hold upon his intellectual and imaginative life. In this sense, but only in this sense, his fervid words to her (February 1846)—"I mean to ... let my mind get used to its new medium of sight, seeing all things as it does through you; and then let all I have done be the prelude and the real work begin"—were not unfulfilled. No deep hiatus, such as this phrase suggests, divides the later, as a whole, from the earlier work: the "dramatic" method, which was among the elements of his art most foreign ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... as far as the statues is taken from the Upper Rangitata district, with some alterations; but the walk down from the statues into Erewhon is reminiscent of the Leventina Valley in the Canton Ticino. The great chords, which are like the music moaned by the statues are from the prelude to the first of Handel's Trois Lecons; ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... scribblers. In the pit, they exerted themselves with great spirit and vivacity; called out for the tunes of obscene songs, talked loudly at intervals of Shakespeare and Jonson, played on their catcalls a short prelude of terrour, clamoured vehemently for a prologue, and clapped with great dexterity at the first entrance of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... barrels were discharged, along with a sharper cracking of small arms. Pandemonium broke loose in Glidden's gang. No doubt, at least, of the effectiveness of the shot-guns! A medley of strange, sharp, enraged, and anguished cries burst upon the air, a prelude to a wild stampede. In a few seconds that lighted spot where the I.W.W. had grouped was vacant, and everywhere were fleeing forms, some swift, others slow. So far as Kurt could see, no one had been fatally injured. But many had been hurt, and that fact augured well ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... share in the great "moralities," although they did not have a role in the action. Their function was to interject comical comments from time to time. The comments aimed to be witty, but were generally gross, coarse, and obscene. Late in the fifteenth century, in France, a buffoon recited a prelude containing licentious jests to an edifying ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... were commenced by a few women, or men in women's clothes, at the palace gates of Versailles. The guards refused them entrance, from an order they had received to that effect from La Fayette. The consternation produced by their resentment was a mere prelude to the horrid ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... early next day summoned to attend my uncle in his private room, which lay in a corner turret of the old building; and thither I accordingly went, wondering all the way what this unusual measure might prelude. When I entered the room, he did not rise in his usual courteous way to greet me, but simply pointed to a chair opposite to his own. This boded nothing agreeable. I sat down, however, silently waiting until he should ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... about slave-revolts in ancient Egypt and Greece; or quoting Strindberg and Stirner, or reciting a scene from Synge, or narrating how he had astounded the family of some lonely farm-house by playing Rachmaninoff's "Prelude" ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... mysterious way. All this time, from early dawn until noon, have we been talking about laws in this charming retreat: now we are going to promulgate our laws, and what has preceded was only the prelude of them. Why do I mention this? For this reason:—Because all discourses and vocal exercises have preludes and overtures, which are a sort of artistic beginnings intended to help the strain which is to be performed; lyric measures and music of every other ...
— Laws • Plato
... of surrender, Ingoldsby and Streater advanced, Ingoldsby ready to charge with his horse, but Streater marching the foot first with beat of drum to try the effect of a close approach. There was the prelude of a few shots, which hurt one or two of Lambert's troopers; but the orders were that the general fire should be reserved till the musketeers should see the pikemen already within push of the enemy. Then it was not necessary. Lambert's men had been wavering all the while; ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... described seemed to be a prelude to the ceremonies. The bonzes, fifteen in number, left the vestry to the sound of shrill, noisy music. They took their stations before the altar, where they made many genuflexions and gestures. They then presented to the high-priest, who had no distinguishing mark, many meats which were ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... explained by the mixture of pleasure and pain which he must have felt at that moment—pleasure at becoming a peer, and distress at not being able to share this pleasure with his comrades? Are they not a prelude of the sacrifice of himself which he afterward made by actually placing himself in the wrong, in order that at the time of his greatest triumph his rivals might not be ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... prelude to real disaster: the fleet arrived safe at Panormus, where they remained a short time. On their departure for Italy, the wind and weather were favourable till they reached Cape Palinurus; here a dreadful ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... With this general prelude let us turn to what Mr. Williams has to say about the industries connected with iron and steel. He opens by referring to a visit of the English Iron and Steel Institute ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox
... There was the merest prelude, and then the theme, which appeared, disappeared and re-appeared again and again to be woven about every emotion, at once ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... "righteousness exalteth a nation." Relative to this intermingling of former foes, whatever our estimate of the results of human action may be, we cannot unerringly divine impurity of motive; hence respect for honest conviction must be the prelude to that unity of patriotism which is ever the safeguard to the integrity of ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... thing, a first fault draws many others in its train. As an impalpable flake is the beginning of an avalanche, so an imprudence is often the prelude to ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... language, and are sadly at a loss for a common interpreter between them. Perhaps the Ordinary of Newgate bids as fair for this office as any one. What should Mr. Bentham, sitting at ease in his arm-chair, composing his mind before he begins to write by a prelude on the organ, and looking out at a beautiful prospect when he is at a loss for an idea, know of the principles of action of rogues, outlaws, and vagabonds? No more than Montaigne of the motions of his cat! If sanguine and tender-hearted philanthropists ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... these portals stood a washstand, surmounted by a china basin and pitcher—a declaration of affluence. From the interior of the house came the sounds of fiddling, though these strains of "Turkey in the Straw" were only by way of prelude. Lescott felt, though he could not say just what concrete thing told him, that under the shallow note of merry-making brooded the major theme of a troublesome problem. The seriousness was below the surface, but insistently ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Gunter's father; to which Mr. Gunter replied that his father was to the full as respectable as Mr. Noddy's father, and that his father's son was as good a man as Mr. Noddy, any day in the week. As this announcement seemed the prelude to a recommencement of the dispute, there was another interference on the part of the company; and a vast quantity of talking and clamoring ensued, in the course of which Mr. Noddy gradually allowed his feelings ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... a long story short—for it must be remembered that what I am telling you is only the prelude to all the extraordinary things that will have to be told later on—the day of sailing came. I went down to the boat on the morning of her departure, and got my baggage safely stowed away in my cabin ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... man what to do to become an orator, I can tell him a few things not to do. There should be no introduction to an oration. The orator should commence with his subject. There should be no prelude, no flourish, no apology, no explanation. He should say nothing about himself. Like a sculptor, he stands by his block of stone. Every stroke is for a purpose. As he works the form begins to appear. When the statue is finished the workman ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... than the Countess, less capable of looking a situation in the face and of advancing to it, such an evening would have marked the prelude to one of those nights of insomnia when the mind exhausts in advance all the agonies of probable danger. Countess Steno did not know what weakness and ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... They were fearful of compromising their revenues by permitting to New South Wales the preponderance of members. These objections, not indeed without weight, and, still more, the jealousy of the conservatives of an organisation which seemed but a prelude to independence, despoiled the measure of a provision which, however modified, must be ultimately restored. A reduction of the franchise of the bill from L20 to L10, nearly equal to household suffrage, was, however, the most considerable change. It was suggested by Mr. R. Lowe, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... from the state to the Church, and to make it not only safer, but more profitable to be a great ecclesiastic than a successful soldier. A violent competition, for the chief offices was the consequence—a competition, the prelude of that still greater one ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... note first, in this passage, the prelude, including verses 1, 2, and 3. We need not discuss the grammatical connection of these verses, nor the relation of verses 2 and 3 to the following section. However that be settled, the result, for our present ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... increase: this word, which is Homeric, is of foreign origin. Blaberon is to blamton or boulomenon aptein tou rou—that which injures or seeks to bind the stream. The proper word would be boulapteroun, but this is too much of a mouthful—like a prelude on the flute in honour of Athene. The word zemiodes is difficult; great changes, as I was saying, have been made in words, and even a small change will alter their meaning very much. The word deon is one of these disguised ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... silver vases; the floods of dazzling light, the masses of unknown flowers of which the hot-houses had been despoiled, and which were redundant with all the luxuriance of unequaled beauty; the perfect harmony of everything which surrounded them, and which indeed was no more than the prelude of the promised fete, more than charmed all who were there, and who testified their admiration over and over again, not by voice or gesture, but by deep silence and rapt attention, those two languages of ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... of gentlemen stood by, to supply the ladies with arrows. Three ladies shot, but widely from the mark; a fourth tried her skill, but no applause ensued; a fifth came forward, a striking figure, elegantly dressed, who, after a prelude of very becoming diffidence, drew her bow, and took aim in the most ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... laborers who were too busy to come in person. Nine sacks, each containing fifty gallons of flour, were emptied by two sturdy miller's men into an immense tub. The family being an old Roman Catholic one, a religious ceremony was the prelude of the distribution. The domestic chaplain offered up a short prayer, and after invoking the blessing of Heaven on the gift, sprinkled the flour with holy water in the form of a cross. It was no uncommon thing for one person to carry away three or four gallons of flour: the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... of those wonder-doing demigods—those Magi of the Civil Service office—was most oppressive to him. When he got to the board, he was always treated with a deference which he knew was but a prelude to barbaric tortures. They would ask him to sit down in a beautiful new leathern arm-chair, as though he were really some great man, and then examine him as they would a candidate for the Custom House, smiling always, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... visited; we pored over books; we laid the experience of our friends under contribution; and when at last we had agreed upon certain essentials we called an architect to our aid, and fondly imagined that now the prelude of discussion and delay was over, we should find unalloyed delight in seeing our imaginary home swiftly take form and become a thing of reality. Alas for our hopes! Expense followed fast upon expense and delay upon delay. There were endless troubles with masons ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... had to struggle, suffer, and endure, to keep myself in, and progress in this condition; but my sufferings, struggles, and endurances, being for love and in love and because of love, were and are in themselves beautiful, and leave in the recollection nothing inharmonious. They are the difficult prelude ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... but a prelude to a much more decisive victory, which the king himself gained a few days after. Preparing to enter Bohemia, at a distance from any of the corps commanded by his generals, he made a movement as if he had intended to march towards Egra. The enemy, deceived by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... letter I ever wrote to him. During the history of the next ten years of my life, I shall have frequently to record circumstances that have occurred between the Baronet and myself; it is, therefore, but justice to myself, as well as to the reader, to make the above declaration, as a prelude to that part of my Memoirs, as it may save the Rump the trouble of circulating a great number of falsehoods, of which they will ultimately, with many other base transactions, stand convicted. When I say I was never indebted to or solicited any loan from the Baronet, I mean to include all his family ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... my dear Mr. Hartel, to make known to you, as a kind of curiosity, a very long piece I composed last winter on the chorale "Ad Nos" from the "Prophete." If by chance you should think well to publish this long Prelude, followed by an equally long Fugue, I could not be otherwise than much obliged to you; and I shall take advantage of the circumstance to acquit myself, in all reverence and friendship, of a dedication to Meyerbeer, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... will London congregations understand that the singing-psalms are not set apart exclusively for charity-children? When shall Bishop Kenn's 'Awake my soul,' cease to be our noonday exhortation; and a literal invocation for sweet sleep to close our eye-lids no longer be the ill-considered prelude to an afternoon discourse? Take some trouble to improve and educate, or get rid of, if possible, your generally vulgar, illiterate, ill-conditioned clerk; insist upon his v's and h's: let him shut up his shoe-stall; and raise in the scale ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... broken by the sound of a few chords struck very lightly and softly upon a guitar. The sound came from the clump of trees, the shadows of which Agnes had just been admiring; and she supposed they were the prelude to a serenade. Her heart whispered to her who the musician might be, for though she had never heard him, with whom her thoughts had been busy, touch the guitar, yet with his ardent love for music, she did not doubt that ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... expect you will at some time, be agonized and distressed, let me, who have some reason to speak with judgment on the subject, beseech you to ascribe it to the causes I have mentioned, and not to some false and ruinous suggestion of the devil." This forms the prelude to an ingenious and affectionate argument in which he labors to convince Speed of the loveliness of his betrothed and of the integrity of his own heart; a strange task, one would say, to undertake in behalf of a young and ardent lover. ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... became the scholar of Isocrates, and he was the hearer of Plato. Under those masters his progress was such, that at the age of seventeen he was able to conduct a suit against his guardians. The young orator succeeded so well in that prelude to his future fame, that the plunderers of the orphan's portion were condemned to refund a large sum. It is said that Demosthenes, afterwards, released the ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... music and gymnastic is wholly inadequate. We must proceed first to the science of numbers, then of geometry, then of astronomy. And after astronomy, there is the sister science of abstract harmonics—not of audible sounds. All of which are but the prelude to the ultimate supreme science of dialectic, which carries the intelligence to the contemplation of the idea of the good, the ultimate goal. And here to attempt further explanation would be vanity. This is the science of the pure reason, ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the height This perfection,—succeed, with life's dayspring, death's minute of night? Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul, the mistake, {280} Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now,—and bid him awake From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set Clear and safe in new light and new life,—a new harmony yet To be run and continued, and ended—who knows?—or endure! The man taught enough by life's dream, of the rest to make sure; By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... vague, loud-sounding phrases of philosophic liberalism he had a most profound contempt. "Attend to your military duties," he was wont to say to his officers before his accession; "don't trouble your heads with philosophy. I cannot bear philosophers!" The tragic event which formed the prelude to his reign naturally confirmed and fortified his previous convictions. The representatives of liberalism, who could talk so eloquently about duty in the abstract, had, whilst wearing the uniform of the Imperial Guard, openly disobeyed the repeated ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Anima' ('The Spiritual Comedy of the Soul'), printed at Siena, without date, in which there are near thirty personifications, besides Saint Paul, Saint John Chrysostom, two little boys who repeat a kind of prelude, and the announcing angel, who always speaks the prologue in these old mysteries. He is called l'angelo che nunzia, and his figure is almost always given in a wooden cut on the title-page of printed copies. Here, among the interlocutors, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... unpleasant companions; they are full of repentance (IV.). Good-will is different from friendship; it is a sudden impulse of feeling towards some distinguished or likeable quality, as in an antagonist. It has not the test of longing in absence. It may be the prelude to friendship (V.). Unanimity, or agreement of opinion, is a part of friendship. Not as regards mere speculation, as about the heavenly bodies; but in practical matters, where interests are at stake, such as the ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... Colonel Mapleson provided a prelude to the Metropolitan season of 1896-97 with a short season of Italian opera of the archaic sort at the Academy of Music. The doughty manager could no longer fly his old London colors, so he appeared as the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the fall of the Caesars. It had been a singular privilege, arrogated by the people of Rome, to confer upon their citizens the order of knighthood. Twenty years before, a Colonna and an Orsini had received this popular honour. Rienzi, who designed it as the prelude to a more important ceremony, claimed from the Romans a similar distinction. From the Capitol to the Lateran swept, in long procession, all that Rome boasted of noble, of fair, and brave. First went horsemen ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of the piece, given in the Preface, is variously corroborated, and has not been called in question by any critic. Perhaps this brief ode was sung as a prelude to the dance, or it may be that the seven lines are only a fragment. This, indeed, is most likely, as we have several odes in the next decade, all said to have been ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... a kind of prelude," I resumed, "for Bottazzi apparently proved that the invisible hand of Eusapia's invisible arm could not penetrate a cage of wire mesh that covered the telegraphic key in the cabinet. 'How, then, can we consider it to be a spirit hand—an immaterial hand—when a wire-netting ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... Delarayne's occasional affectation of valetudinarian peevishness, alleged ill-health as a fact. As a rule it was the prelude to the request for a favour on a grand scale, and being a man of very great wealth, and therefore somewhat tight-fisted, he was always rendered unusually solemn by his friend's fits ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... monomania, and asked whether he was doing so. Some members cried "Yes! Yes!"; others shouted "No! he is establishing the fact." The wrangling was at last brought to an end by the Speaker's declaration, that the petition must lie over for the present. But the scene had been only the prelude to one much longer, fiercer, and more exciting. No sooner was the document thus temporarily disposed of than Mr. Adams rose and presented the petition of forty-five citizens of Haverhill, Massachusetts, praying ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... of made mustard, rub smooth and add one-half teaspoonful of vinegar, one tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce and the juice of one small lime. Lay the tripe in this sauce as soon as it is removed from the fire. Serve with buttered toast. An excellent prelude to this dish is ...
— Joe Tilden's Recipes for Epicures • Joe Tilden
... stones his bed, And feeds on prickly leaf and pointed rush, And proves himself, and butting at a tree Learns to fling wrath into his horns, with blows Provokes the air, and scattering clouds of sand Makes prelude of the battle; afterward, With strength repaired and gathered might breaks camp, And hurls him headlong on the unthinking foe: As in mid ocean when a wave far of Begins to whiten, mustering from the main Its rounded breast, ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... Andante in binary form, while two bars of Adagio lead to another Allegro of similar structure. No. 2 is of a similar kind. The binary form is of the later type, i.e. there is a return to the principal theme in the second section. No. 3 opens with a Prelude, and a note states that "in this and other Preludes, which are meant as extempore touches before the Lesson begins, neither the composer nor performer are oblig'd to a Strictness of Tune." The pleasing Allegro which follows shows the influence of Scarlatti-Handel. The sonata concludes with an ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... entrance to the bridge. We lingered on for the sunset, which first appeared as a flaming ball of fire, succeeded by myriad shades of rainbow hues, these fading into softer tints and later into those more delicate tones that prelude the twilight. Then silence seemed to brood over the wonderful river, ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... precipitate rush across the room and out of the door was followed by a tinkle of laughter from Sylvia. Morrison looked around at her over his shoulder, with a flashing smile of mutual understanding, but he finished the prelude before he spoke. Then, without turning around, as he pulled out another sheet from the music heaped on the piano, he remarked: "If that French philosopher was right when he said no disease is as contagious as love-making, we may expect soon ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... already laid. It was Cissy's turn next. Ever since it had been so summarily arranged by Mrs Wade that the children were to stay the night at the King's Head, Cissy had been looking preternaturally solemn. Now, when she was desired to say her prayers, as a prelude to going to bed, Cissy's lip quivered, and her eyes filled ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... period shall be free, is to introduce the principle and the notion of liberty into the heart of slavery; the blacks whom the law thus maintains in a state of slavery from which their children are delivered, are astonished at so unequal a fate, and their astonishment is only the prelude to their impatience and irritation. Thenceforward slavery loses, in their eyes, that kind of moral power which it derived from time and habit; it is reduced to a mere palpable abuse of force. The Northern States had nothing to fear from the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... was a boy. This lad, instead of being committed to a common jail, would be sent to the asylum at South Boston, and there taught a trade; and in the course of time he would be bound apprentice to some respectable master. Thus, his detection in this offence, instead of being the prelude to a life of infamy and a miserable death, would lead, there was a reasonable hope, to his being reclaimed from vice, and becoming a worthy ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... a possible peering into the things of coming time, has such a charm! Especially with them to whom the past is but a prelude and beginning, and for whom the great, voluminous Future holds enwrapped the whole ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the way, we may hear as it were a first faint prelude of the great proclamation to come—the hymn of praise and thanksgiving for the coronation day of King Gaster; whose laureate, we know, was as lovingly familiar with the Polyphemus of Euripides as Shakespeare with his own Pantagruel.) In Sancho we come upon a creature capable ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... be difficult to describe my thoughts and emotions as I went home. The soul cannot at once translate itself perfectly in words, and there are "thoughts without words," which in every man are the prelude of supreme joy and suffering. It was neither joy nor pain, only an indescribable bewilderment which I felt; thoughts flew through my innermost being like meteors, which shoot from heaven towards earth but are extinguished before ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... we may quote an actual instance. A teacher writes:—"A young pupil (age 14) came for a lesson, playing Farjeon's 'Prelude and Pavane.' She had learnt the 'Prelude,' and had had one lesson, a fortnight before, on the 'Pavane.' We went through the technique, and I told her a little about the 'Pavane'—when it was danced, the derivation of the name, and so on. When she played it, she played it ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... Catholicism as an irreconcileable foe. Even on the papal side there was a learned and active party, a party headed by Contarini and Pole, whose theological sympathies went in many points with the Lutherans, and who looked to the winning back of the Lutherans as the needful prelude to any reform in the doctrine and practice of the Church; while Melancthon was as hopeful as Contarini that such a reform might be wrought and the Church again become universal. In his proposal of a Council to carry on the double work of purification and reunion ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... that, after all, she was a woman, and alone with him in the place. She had sunk back against the altar that was behind her. Her eyes were closed, her face a white mask of anguish; she looked as though about to swoon. Bough hailed the symptoms as favourable. Fainting was the prelude to caving in, with the women he knew. But when he stirred, her eyes were wide and preternaturally bright, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... half-hour preceding dinner, the dining-room was the scene of another struggle, only a little less desperate than that which had been the prelude to lunch, and again an appeal to the head of the house was found necessary. Muscular activity and a liberal imitation of the jeremiads once more subjugated the rebel—and the same rebellion and its suppression in a like manner took place the following morning before breakfast. But ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... date, that the calm, silent policemen with their helmets in their hands, the earnest, energetic divisional surgeon, and his confrere the sergeant, even the dead man himself, were but the merest supers in the prelude to adventure. Moira and I were the only ones who were real, the only actors that were something more than mummers. Yet even I failed to see that what had happened that night was something more than a queer insoluble ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... this time by both Erland of Jura and Sweyn of Colonsay — vassals both of Hakon of Norway — was shown in the conversation that was the prelude to the murder of the good Earl Hamish of Bute. Of the attitude held by these two island kings towards Scotland, Kenric, however, knew nothing, and though it may be that he was eager enough to meet Earl Sweyn the Silent in mortal combat, yet he did ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... as he had not laughed in many a day; but it was laughter that did not jar the silence of the room—such laughter as formed a fit prelude for words like these: ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... distribution of power between the commissioners of the whole confederacy and among the separate governments of the colonies, and showing that it combined the same identical principles with those which gathered and united the thirteen English colonies as the prelude to the Revolution which severed them forever from their national connection with Great Britain; and that the New England Confederacy of 1643 was the model and prototype of the ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... "Why on this day the forum's strife should end Only in part."—"The cause," said he, "I will explain; attend. The young year's starting day I made but partial holiday, Lest labourless begun, the year might run to the end in play; Each cunning hand on Janus' feast makes prelude to his trade, Of all the rest a timely test on New-Year's day is made." Then I, this further—"Tell me why, when I bring frankincense To Jove or any other god, with thee I still commence?" "Because of things in heaven and earth I hold the sacred key, The first approach to all the gods ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... "Phoebus, arise" William Drummond Hymn of Apollo Percy Bysshe Shelley Prelude to "The New Day" Richard Watson Gilder Dawn on the Headland William Watson The Miracle of the Dawn Madison Cawein Dawn-angels A. Mary F. Robinson Music of the Dawn Virginia Bioren Harrison Sunrise on Mansfield ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... morning meal makes a delicious prelude to our comfortable dejeuner a la fourchette at one o'clock, when the Little Genius, if not absorbed in some unusually exacting piece of work, joins us and gives zest to the repast. Her own breakfast, she explains, is a dejeuner a la thumb, the sort enjoyed by the peasant who carves a bit of bread ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... signatures which comprised Patrick O'Shea, Annie Rooney, Spotted Tail, etc. This petition was followed by two others of similar character, bearing Indian names of such significance as the wit of the opposition could invent. After this dignified prelude the House discussed the measure at length, and defeated it by a vote of 38 ayes, 39 noes. A reconsideration was moved and the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... his back to the wall. He vanishes in the shining cloud of a witty abstraction when cornered. His prose is full of winged neologisms, his poetry heavy with the metaphysics of ennui. Remy de Gourmont speaks of his magnificent work as the prelude to an oratorio achieved in silence. Laforgue, himself, called it an intermezzo, and in truth it is little more. His intellectual sensibility and his elemental soul make for mystifications. As if he knew the frailness of his tenure on life, he sought azure ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... of the door were noiselessly drawn, and that of the lock forced back; then the two little parties stole out, in the order in which they had been directed. The guerillas had just begun to fire heavily, as a prelude, Terence had no doubt, to a serious attack upon the church. Fortunately there were no houses at the back of the church, and no shout indicated that the party were seen. They therefore kept together, until fifty or sixty yards from the door; ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... the silent, brooding forest witnessed a like gathering, nor its dark mysterious depths re-echoed with such unfamiliar sounds. But that camp-fire scene was merely a prelude to the tide of progress already setting, when unnamed rivers, hidden lakes, crouching valleys, lofty hills, and secret woodland depths would know those sounds, and rejoice in ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... so strong that he declares to Curio that he does not think that the welfare and fortunes of one man were ever so dear to another as now were those of Milo to him. Milo's success is the only object of interest he has in the world. This is interesting to us now as a prelude to the great trial which was to take place in the next year, when Milo, instead of being elected Consul, was ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... shadowed with noble boughs, he came to a hamlet which had always been one of his favourite resorts, so peacefully it lay amid the exquisite rural landscape. The cottages were all closed and silent; hark for the reason! From the old church sounded an organ prelude, then the voice of the congregation, joining in ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... Hencastle" is not mine. It is a free translation from the German of Victor Bluethgen, by Major Yeatman-Biggs, R.A., to whom I am indebted for permission to include it in my volume, as a necessary prelude to "Flaps." The story took my fancy greatly, but the ending seemed to me imperfect and unsatisfactory, especially in reference to so charming a character as the old watch dog, and I ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... which fell to the ground. While we were marveling at this display of refinement, Menelaus rushed up, "He is the one with whom you will rest upon your elbow," he panted, "what you see now, is only a prelude to the dinner." Menelaus had scarcely ceased speaking when Trimalchio snapped his fingers; the eunuch, hearing the signal, held the chamber-pot for him while he still continued playing. After relieving his bladder, he called ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... somehow or another, a very interesting scene occurred, which I have no time just now to describe. It ended, however, somehow or another, in the parties plighting their troth. As I said before, love and murder are very good friends; and a chop from a tomahawk was but a prelude for the descent of Love, with "healing ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... blown up by the fire, riderless horses dashed hither and thither, the dead lay in heaps, and throngs of wounded streamed to the rear. Every man lay down and sought what cover he could. It was evident that the Confederate cannonade was but a prelude to a great infantry attack, and at three o'clock Hunt ordered the fire to stop, that the guns might cool, to be ready for the coming assault. The Confederates thought that they had silenced the hostile artillery, and for a few minutes their firing continued; ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... earning power, the property and prospects of either party, insisting upon due insurances, ensuring private incomes for each partner, securing the welfare of the children, and laying down equitable conditions in the event of a divorce or separation. Such a treaty ought to be a necessary prelude to the issue of a licence to marry. And given such a basis to go upon, then I see no reason why, in the case of couples who remain childless for five or six years, let us say, and seem likely to remain childless, the Shaw-esque divorce at the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... fight against the impending general European revolution, the more candid publicists of Social-Revolutionary tendencies are already expressing unceremoniously their hope that the Russian movement of hostility to the Government only presents a prelude to that general European upheaval which, among other things, is to destroy utterly the monarchical order of contemporary Europe. When one places oneself on this standpoint, one cannot help perceiving in everything said above nothing else but partial manifestations of a general ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... round when he was not quite prepared for it. "I have no money here," said he to his soldiers; "but yonder," pointing to a French column, "is a present worthy of you and of me." This address was a prelude to one of the most successful attacks, made during the pursuit, on ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... the King in reply was not heard, but those habituated to read his countenance in its very faint varieties of expression, might have seen that it conveyed reproof; and its purport soon became practically known, when a lugubrious prelude was heard from a quarter of the hall, in which sate certain ghost-like musicians in white robes—white as winding-sheets; and forthwith a dolorous and dirgelike voice chaunted a long and most tedious ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a long while there exchanging disagreeable opinions of one another, and Casey was even obliged to climb the steep bank and whip the driver of the Ford because he had applied a word to Casey which had never failed as automatic prelude to a Casey Ryan combat. Casey was frankly winded when he finally mounted one of his horses and led the other three, and so proceeded to Lund as mad as he had ever ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... is wont to take with the names of eminent persons, the readiness the multitude always display to attribute light morals to grave men, and the infrequency of the cases where a dissolute youth is the prelude to a manhood of strenuous industry and an old age of honor—the cautious reader will require conclusive testimony before he accepts Popham's connection with 'the road' as one of the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the surface of the lake were little boats, painted and gilt, so pretty and dainty that the princess challenged the ambassadors to a voyage. None hesitated to do so, for they thought it was all a gay pastime, and a merry prelude to the marriage festivities. But no sooner had they embarked than boats, fountains, and lake vanished, and the frogs were frogs ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... fingers were dancing over the keys in a delightful prelude. Then Lancy's voice filled the room as he sang the well-known song, accompanied by the exquisite notes of the southern mocking bird, and the continuous warble that poured from Dexie's throat during the chorus made her listeners start as if a veritable bird were concealed ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... part of this country, Mister?" asked Uncle Nathan, who seemed to make the question a prelude to other inquiries. ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... it might be Constantine following her up; when a gust of wind flung the stinging sand in her face, or the storm-flash threw a lurid light on the sky, her heart stood still, for was not this the prelude to the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lead; lead the way, lead the dance; be in the vanguard; introduce, usher in; have the pas; set the fashion &c. (influence) 175; open the ball; take precedence, have precedence; have the start &c. (get before) 280. place before; prefix; premise, prelude, preface. Adj. preceding &c. v.; precedent, antecedent; anterior; prior &c. 116; before; former; foregoing; beforementioned[obs3], abovementioned[obs3], aforementioned; aforesaid, said; precursory, precursive[obs3]; prevenient[obs3], preliminary, prefatory, introductory; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... was a pause, a moment which seemed the prelude to a sarcastic outbreak from one or other of those she had wilfully irritated in that intolerance which so often goes hand in hand with a spirit of self-sacrifice. But ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... I will say is that you are a remarkable young woman," answered Mrs. Zane, who saw plainly that Betty's violent outburst was a prelude to a storm of weeping. "I don't believe a word you have said. I don't believe you hate ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... somewhat upon her dignity, peeping round the hedge at the bottom of the walk, and exchanging nods and smiles with the barber, who twice or thrice looked over his shoulder for that purpose. I could conceive no announcement to which these appearances could be the prelude, unless it were that they had married ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... years of schooling for this child of the "common people," whose father was a struggling teamster and farmer; no prelude of careless, laughing childhood before the ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... my devotions were a little distracted by the gradual approach of a churchwarden for my threepenny-bit, which was hot with three verses of expectant fingering. Then, to my relief, he took it, and the bee-master's contribution, and I felt calmer, and listened to the little prelude which it was always the custom for the organist to play before the final verse of a hymn. It was also the custom to sing the last verse as loudly as possible, though this is by no means invariably appropriate. It fitted the present ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... overlooked the irony which the subject naturally suggested: the great lord, who is driven by idleness and ennui to deceive a poor drunkard, can make no better use of his situation than the latter, who every moment relapses into his vulgar habits. The last half of this prelude, that in which the tinker, in his new state, again drinks himself out of his senses, and is transformed in his sleep into his former condition, is from some accident or other, lost. It ought to have followed at the end of the larger piece. The occasional remarks of the tinker, during the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... a short period on the crest of the Revolutionary wave. Men are mad with the joy over the new thought of universal brotherhood. Little do Danton and the other Utopians realize that the Pageant of Brotherhood is but the prelude of a new Despotism. ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... the fundamental laws of Holland at the very moment at which he was drawing the sword against his father in law for violating the fundamental laws of England. The violent subversion of one free constitution would have been a strange prelude to the violent restoration of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... usually closed these frolics, I hastened to order tea under the awning on deck, while I betook myself to a hammock which was slung on the main boom. Just as I fell off into pleasant dreams, I was roused from my nap by a prelude to the opera. Madame gave her lord the lie direct. A loaf of bread, discharged against her head across the table, was his reply. Not content with this harmless demonstration of rage, he seized the four corners of the table-cloth, and ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... Haro! was an old Norman cry for redress or aid. The "Clameur de Haro" was lately raised, under peculiar circumstances, as the prelude to a legal protest, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... decision, saved the rich from the inevitable results of their own timid counsels. Most of the judges of the royal court of justice, and most of the opulent citizens, advocated a surrender of Nismes to Joyeuse, which must have been the prelude to a ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... this beginning, as it was generally the prelude to something disagreeable. But she was learning, also, to submit to disagreeable things. She only said, meekly, ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... his credulity, Odo tossed the invitation to Cantapresto; but a moment later, recalling the glance of the pretty girl in the market-place, he began to wonder if the billet might not be the prelude to a sufficiently diverting adventure. It at least offered a way of passing the evening; and after a hurried supper he set out with Cantapresto for the Philodramatic Academy. It was late when they entered their box, and several masks were already capering ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... merely proves, that regarding one object with both eyes is only an acquired habit. But when the child has come to that age when the eyes are by habit directed to the same object, and afterwards it loses that power, this circumstance alone may be looked upon as a frequent prelude to disease ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... asked very few questions. Nothing fresh was solicited. Mrs. Rickett repeated her story, and the letter from the murdered woman, which the prisoner admitted having lost, was put in evidence. The proceedings being merely a prelude to a higher court, the jurors rendered an undecisive verdict. They found that the deceased had been murdered by a person or persons unknown, but that suspicion strongly pointed to her husband, John Vernon. They advised, moreover, that the police should try to find the stranger whom the accused ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... fled wounded from the rout of Trasimene. Silius succeeds in making one of the noblest stories in history lifeless and dull. The narration opens with the description of a melodramatic struggle between Regulus and a monstrous serpent in Africa, scarcely an harmonious prelude for the simple and solemn climax of the hero's life, his return to his home to fix 'the Senate's wavering will', his departure unmoved to Carthaginian captivity, with the certainty of death and torture ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... Think you, dear Barbara, that death would come easier by means of yonder bed-cord, or of those great scissors dangling at thy waist? Or, perhaps, if thou couldst play Othello to my Desdemona, it might seem a gentler prelude to the grave. How heavy is a lie, good dame? Think you it would drag a soul to hell? If so, I need not to go alone; for if I lied to Melinza, he also lied to me—and Dona Orosia also"—then a strong shudder shook my ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... his mind, when, first one and then another, with every variety of pace and voice—one deep as the bell from a cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz—the clocks began to strike the hour of ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... find my music. The stool is a kettle of water with a board over it. A stream of water comes from the organ. There is a horse near which kicks or bites me. Again:—I play on the piano to a friend who is a German scholar the opening theme of the Tristan and Isolde Prelude. My friend tells me the pronunciation of the title of the opera and it sounds to me like Froebel. That the name of the world-famous music drama, the apotheosis of passion, should be transformed to that of the notable child educator is nonsense ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... silence, crept the first dew-clear notes of Chopin's F Sharp Major Nocturne. The liquid beauty of the last bars had scarcely died away, when the unseen piano gave forth, tragically exultant, the glorious chords of the Twentieth Prelude—climbing higher and higher in a mournful triumph of minor chords and sinking at last into the final solemn splendor of the closing measures. The old gentleman turned on the piano-stool to find Kirk weeping passionately and silently ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... woman's courage that her voice tremble never so slightly. It seemed to St. George that he loved her a thousand times the more for that mere persuasive wavering of her words. And, while he listened to what he felt to be the prelude of her message, it seemed to him that he loved her another thousand times the more—what heavenly ease there is in this arithmetic of love—for the tender meaning which, upon her lips, her father's name took on. When, speaking with simplicity and directness of the subject that lay uppermost ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... creature she is! Hand me my lute, child," she said to her granddaughter; and having adjusted the blue ribbon over her shoulder, and twisted the tuning-pegs, and thrummed upon the wires for some time, she made a prelude and cleared her throat to sing "The lass with the delicate air," when the loud whirring of the clock-wheels interrupted her, and she looked up with great delight at a little door in the top of the clock, which suddenly sprang open, and out popped a ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... tell the truth? His home should be her home, if she would come to him,—not as his wife. That idea of some half-valid morganatic marriage had again been dissipated by the rough reproaches of the priest, and could only be used as a prelude to his viler proposal. And, though he loved the girl after his fashion, he desired to wound her by no such vile proposal. He did not wish to live a life of sin, if such life might be avoided. If he made his proposal, it would be but for ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... Newspaper," "The Song of the Negro Boatmen," and "Our Orders" will reproduce for another generation the fervid feelings of to-day. But the pathetic warnings exquisitely breathed in the writings before us will then come to their place as a deep and tender prelude to the voices heard in this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various |
