"Tuning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vision as if he had never seen it before. "If I live," he exclaimed, "I will build me a higher tower, with a more spacious platform, and a staircase better fitted for an old fellow's scrambling." The piper was heard re-tuning his instrument below, and he called to him for Lochaber no More. John of Skye obeyed, and as the music rose, softened by {p.280} the distance, Scott repeated in a low key the melancholy words of the song ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... invaded the poor girl. Not hers the hovering sense of marriage bells Tuning the air with fragrance of sweet sound; But the low dirge that ever rose and died, Recurring without pause or any close, Like one verse chaunted aye in sleepless brain. Down to the shore it drew ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... children. Mary Ann's eyes were as big as saucers, and little Nancy was crying at the top of her lungs, with the baby tuning in, so we knew it was time to stop. But stopping wasn't ending; and folks can look ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... other hand, the Service points out that listeners have a wide choice of broadcast programmes, advertised well in advance, and it assumes that listeners will be selective in tuning in their sets, and restrictive in not allowing their children to listen after 7 p.m. when programmes specially suited for them cease. This assumption, however, is not well founded. Once switched on, the radio frequently stays on, and children are then allowed to continue listening ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.
... Typewriting, dictaphone, switchboard operating, telegraphy, osteopathy, massage, and salesmanship are to be taught to those who are fitted for these branches; and trades and occupations, including piano tuning, winding coils for armatures used in electric motors, joinery, mat and mattress making, broom and basket making, rug weaving, and shoe cobbling are to be taught to those who are not fitted for the professions. ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... disposing his limbs more conventionally; also in the tuning of his voice to something ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... tolerated in a sort of appendix to the more important subject of the "Treble, Tenor, and Bass Viols." It consists chiefly of various methods of ensuring accuracy in tuning the fifths, and the question of bowing is ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... stranger had paused in tuning his violin, but when uncle Nat drew a deep breath, after repairing the mischief already done, out came a gush of music that made him start again, and threw the strong-minded woman into a fit of excitement, quite startling. She seized uncle Nat's moist ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... Quadruple receive four messages at once and record them separately; while the harmonic telegraph of Elisha Gray can receive as many as eight simultaneously, by means of notes excited by the current in eight separate tuning forks. ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... subjects have been selected with which it behoves every one to be acquainted: such, for example, as relate to what may be called our HOUSEHOLD INSTRUMENTS, namely, the Thermometer, the Barometer, and Vernier; the Hydrometer, the Hygrometer; the Tuning-Fork, Musical Glasses and Music generally; the Compass; the Prism, the Telescope, and the Sun-Dial. These subjects, and those in immediate connexion with them, are treated of extensively; as also their application to Science, Art, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... meaning while he is picking off his outside sentences. He may make as great a blunder as that simple prince who praised the conductor of his orchestra for the piece just before the overture; the musician was too good a courtier to tell him that it was only the tuning of ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... that your brain reeled in confusion. There were ten men in there, naked to the waist as all the rest had been, and every single one of them had the intelligent look of an alert bird with its head to one side. They were sitting on mats on the floor in no apparent order, and each man had a row of tuning forks in front of him, pretty much like any other tuning forks, except that there were eight of them to each ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... and prepared for dancing. The staging at the upper end, which had been appropriated to the use of the examining committee, was now occupied by a band of six negro musicians, headed by the Professor of Odd Jobs. They were seated all in a row, engaged in tuning their instruments under the instructions of Morris. The room wore a gay, festive, and inviting aspect. It was brightly lighted up; its white walls were festooned with wreaths of flowers; its oak floor was polished and chalked for the dancers; and its windows ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... sorrow and sickness, but glorified with the joy of the music. He is like one who has been four days dead, to whose body the music has recalled the soul. Down by his knee he holds a violin, fashioned like those of the orchestra within; which, as he listens, he is tuning to their pitch. ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... fingers on the capstan after the manner of a tuning-fork, and, holding them gravely to his ear as if to get the right pitch, began in a really fine manly voice ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... program. Harry had a fine baritone voice, while George could take a high note and sustain it as well as most sopranos. When all the preliminaries had been arranged, the instrument was produced, and after a little preliminary tuning, George ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... I often heard my favourite music played by Zillmann's Town Band, as I thought, exceedingly well. The mysterious joy I felt in hearing an orchestra play quite close to me still remains one of my most pleasant memories. The mere tuning up of the instruments put me in a state of mystic excitement; even the striking of fifths on the violin seemed to me like a greeting from the spirit world— which, I may mention incidentally, had a very real meaning for me. When I was still almost a baby, the sound of these ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... conversation, is when he expatiates on the Greek tragedians (not that he is not well acquainted, when he pleases, with the epic poets, or the philosophers, or orators, or historians of antiquity)—on the subtle reasonings and melting pathos of Euripides, on the harmonious gracefulness of Sophocles, tuning his love-laboured song, like sweetest warblings from a sacred grove; on the high-wrought, trumpet-tongued eloquence of AEschylus, whose Prometheus, above all, is like an Ode to Fate, and a pleading with Providence, his thoughts being let loose as his body is chained on his solitary ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... by Roderick Ray, who had the Covenanters' blood in his veins. He carried a tuning-fork with him always, and fitted the psalm tunes to the hymns, carrying them through in a rolling baritone, and swinging his whole body ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... (under Signor R.) it was her custom of an afternoon to lock herself up alone with a tuning-fork in a large garret and practise, as she was shy of singing exercises ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... That very evening, when tuning in for the concert, they caught another of those mysterious, stuttering messages in the ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... their pleasure by arriving early, flannel-shrouded instruments under their arms. Doctor Churchill came in just as they were tuning. Since Lanse had been away, Andy, who was something of a violinist had taken up Lanse's viola, and was now able to occupy his brother-in-law's place. Celia, however, had been chosen to fill the vacant role ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... Because of the crystal glint of duranium they were invisible to earth dwellers at that height. Then we used a suction draft at night, drawing the talc from the earth, filling one drum after another. This is done by tuning in a certain selective attraction that attracts only talc. It draws it right out of your ground in tiny particles and assembles it in the transportation drums as pure talc. On the earth, if noticed at all, it would have been called ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... Thompson more remarkable than during this hour dedicated to the tuning and exalting of the souls of these girls. Several told me that she held their hearts in her hands when she talked and that they would follow her straight to the battlefield. She, herself, assumed her most serious and ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... maintain his assumed character while the servants were removing the table, was tuning his harp when the Earl of Gloucester entered the room. The earl told Bruce the king had required the attendance of the border minstrel, and that after searching over the castle, the royal seneschal had at ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... remarks were made whilst he was tuning his harp, for when he once more began to play, not a word was uttered. He seemed pleased by their simple exclamations of wonder and delight, and, eager to amuse his young audience, he played now a gay and now a pathetic air, to suit their ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... myself as well as my ship and crew. For during the whole of this time the Yakumo, with several other cruisers, and our four battleships, had been lying at anchor at our rendezvous at the Elliot Islands, not idle by any means, but, like the Yakumo, "tuning up" for a certain eventuality, the approach of which we all seemed to sense in ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... Early it was; the sun not more than half an hour high, and taking his work coolly, like one who meant to do a great deal before the day was ended. A faint dewy sparkle on the grass and the sweetbriars; the song sparrows giving good-morrow to each other and tuning their throats for the day; and a few wood thrushes now and then telling of their shyer and rarer neighbourhood. The river was asleep, it seemed, it ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... the Moodus witches, who used white magic, in a cave beneath Mount Tom, and fought them in the light of a great carbuncle that was fastened to the roof. The noises recurred in 1888, when houses rattled in witch-haunted Salem, eight miles away, and the bell on the village church "sung like a tuning-fork." The noises have occurred simultaneously with earthquakes in other parts of the country, and afterward rocks have been found moved from their bases and cracks have been discovered in the earth. One sapient editor said that the pearls in the mussels in Salmon and ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... "I can't tell one tune from another. I don't know Home, Sweet Home from God Save the King. I can't tell whether a man is tuning a violin or playing ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... the corruptions of nature. In the issue of this contest heaven and hell are interested; the one, that you should fail; the other, that you should come off "more than conquerors." Angels are waiting on the shores of immortality to see the final result, and are already tuning their harps to sound your victory through the universe. The ascended Saviour addresses you from the skies: "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... most important thing in life. As a man thinketh in his heart so is he. Just as a tuning fork near a piano will respond with a vibration when a key of the same pitch is struck on the piano nearby, so likewise do the bodies of men respond to proper stimulus and become in tune. By right thinking man can re-harmonize himself, can achieve ...
— The Silence • David V. Bush
... would yield a delightful twang when played upon with the forefinger. He could also fashion an interesting musical instrument in his desk by means of spools and catgut and bits of broken glass. The chief joy of his life was an old tuning-fork that the teacher of the singing-school had given him, but, owing to the degrading and arbitrary censorship of pockets that prevailed, he never dared bring it into the schoolroom. There were ways, however, of evading inexorable law and circumventing base injustice. ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... windes were husht, no leafe so small At all was scene to stirre: Whilst tuning to the waters fall, The small ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... opened and shut, letting in all who were outside: they pressed forward expectantly. On his left, a row of girls tried to start a round of applause and tittered nervously at their failure. Schilsky had come down the platform and commenced tuning. He bent his long, thin body as he pressed his violin to his knee, and his reddish hair fell over his face. The accompanist, his hands on the keys, waited for the signal ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... were empty of guests, the floors were covered with canvas, and the walls decorated with fern leaves. In a window recess one of the caterer's men was setting out two punch bowls and a multitude of glass cups; three or four musicians were gathered about the piano, tuning up, and one heard the subdued note of a cornet; the air was heavy with the smell of pinks and of La ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... "Old Joshway," as he is irreverently called by his neighbours, is in a state of simmering indignation; but he has not yet opened his lips except to say, in a resounding bass undertone, like the tuning of a violoncello, "Sehon, King of the Amorites; for His mercy endureth for ever; and Og the King of Basan: for His mercy endureth for ever"—a quotation which may seem to have slight bearing on the present occasion, but, as with every other anomaly, adequate knowledge ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... tuning excitedly back and forth about a certain, or uncertain, wave length, which ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... with his big fiddle and Pliny Waterhouse with his smaller one would try to get in accord with Humphrey Baker and his clarionet. All went well when Humphrey was there to give the sure key-note, but in his absence Jed Morrill would use his tuning-fork. When the key was finally secured by all concerned, Jed would raise his stick, beat one measure to set the time, and all joined in, or fell in, according to their several abilities. It was not always ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... spacious vistas stretched away from an equally spacious hallway, where a wide and graceful staircase curved up to a low gallery, smothered in flowers and palms and vines; and even so early the musicians were taking their places and tuning their instruments. On the floor above, where room after room shone in beauty, with costly furnishings, and perfect harmonies, white-capped maids flitted about, putting last touches to dressing tables and pausing to gossip ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... second serenade. But he was too well acquainted with the human passions to indulge this their desire. It was his interest to inflame their impatience, rather than to gratify their expectation; and therefore he tantalised them for some hours, by tuning his violin, and playing some flourishes, which, however, produced nothing to ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... opposition to the flood of soft light emanating from the lovely planet overhead, and which turned all it fell on, whether tree, or tower, or stream, to beauty, was the artificial glare caused by the torches near the pavilion; while the discordant sounds occasioned by the minstrels tuning their instruments, disturbed the repose. As they went on, however, these sounds were lost in the distance, and the glare of the torches was excluded by intervening trees. Then the moon looked down lovingly upon them, and the only music that reached their ears ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... exposed. It is a fact of course that a man must be of a low caliber to be influenced by low thoughts, and that it is as impossible to incite a person of benevolent character to do murder—unless we put him into a hypnotic sleep—as to make a tuning fork which vibrates to C sing by striking another attuned to the key of G, but the thoughts of both living and dead constantly surround us, and no man ever thought out a high spiritual philosophy under the influence ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... my love was sitting in a grove, Tuning her smiles unto the chirping songs, But straight she spied where two together strove, Each one complaining of the other's wrongs. Cupid did cry lamenting of the harm; Jove's messenger, thou wrong'st me too too far; Use thou thy rod, rely upon the charm; Think not by speech my force thou canst ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... down in the Tuning Fork trench system at the present moment," said I. "The Babe and the grooms are digging him out. If you hurry ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... refined proprieties—I do not mean proprieties of the essential kind—cannot endure between man and maid cast alone in a wilderness. They become frail, insipid; and mar, rather than perfect, the harmony of existence. Contraversely, their absence adds a deeper luster, strikes the tuning-fork that hums with the true note of life. Sorry the man who does not feel a sympathetic vibration! A woman is not exactly at her best when bathing her face above a porcelain bowl, and to be the constant, daily witness of such ablutions would, ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... with native bronze, lo! Henley stands, Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands, How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue! How sweet the periods, neither said ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... mightest bring her within the bond of thy covenant; this was the sum and substance of all my askings for her. I witnessed the time of her second birth, saw the tears of conviction and remorse. I witnessed thy loosing her bonds, and tuning her heart and tongue to praise redeeming love. I witnessed the teaching of thy Spirit, and the enlightening of her eyes, and the taste thou gavest her of thy salvation; I thought her mountain stood strong, and she would not be easily moved; ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... compartments of this roof is painted a standing angel, playing or tuning musical instruments—most graceful and beautiful figures. Below are seated the four Evangelists and four Fathers of the Church, against a gold background, who seem, in their impressive grandeur to be prototypes of the prophets and sybils of Michelangelo's ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... at the head of the lagoon. She could hear the trumpeter geese tuning up in shrill cornet-like notes and the discordant shriek of native-companions, as the long-legged grey birds stalked consequentially at the water's edge. She disturbed a flock of parrots in the white cedar tree, and a covey of duck rose with a whirring ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... could discover no structural basis for deafness, Panse (23 p. 140) expressed himself as unwilling to believe that the mice are deaf, and this despite the fact that he observed no responses to the sounds made by a series of tuning forks ranging from C5 to C8. He believes rather that they are strangely irresponsive to sounds and that their sensitiveness is dulled, possibly, by the presence of plugs of wax in the ears. Since another investigator, Kishi, has observed the presence of similar plugs of wax in ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... far behind us; we were both far away in that Utopia where mind penetrates mind, heart understands heart. We heard neither the squeaking of a swing beneath us, nor the shouts of laughter along the promenades, nor the sound of a band tuning up in a neighboring pavilion. Our eyes, raised to heaven, failed to see the night descending upon us, vast and silent, piercing the foliage with its first stars. Now and again a warm breath passed over ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... clarionet, a double bass, a bassoon, and a flute: also a tenor voice which "set the tune". The carpenter, to whom the tenor voice belonged, had a tuning-fork which he struck on his desk and applied to his ear. He then hummed the tuning-fork note, and the octave below, the double bass screwed up and responded, the leader with the tuning-fork boldly struck out, everybody following, ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... sense-perceptions, sound is unique in making itself perceptible in two quite different ways - via the ear as a direct sense experience and via the eye (potentially also via the senses of touch and movement) in the form of certain mechanical movements, such as those of a string or a tuning fork. Hence the world-spectator, as soon as he began to investigate acoustic phenomena scientifically, found himself in a unique position. In all other fields of perception, with the exception of the purely mechanical processes, the ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... tuning of a fiddle was marvellous enough to produce a startling effect upon a much less enthusiastic listener than the little boy. It was given in perfect good faith, but the serious expression on the old man's face was so irresistibly comic that the child laughed until the tears ran down his face. Uncle ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... including Pianoforte, Organ, Violin, and all Orchestral and Band Instruments, Voice Culture and Singing, Harmony, Theory and Orchestration, Church Music, Oratorio and Chorus Practice, Art of Conducting; also, Tuning and Repairing Pianos and Organs. All under the very best teachers, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... melody they're tuning Has the sweet and sleepy crooning That the mother hums the baby at her breast, Till the world forgets its sorrow And the cares that haunt the morrow, And is sinking, hushed and happy, to its rest Sometimes bubbling o'er with gladness, ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... about his fiddle, and besides he was not in a mood for it; his father's words had rasped him. It took the united persuasions of Billy Jack and Jessac and Hughie to get the fiddle into Thomas' hands, but after a few tuning scrapes all shyness and moodiness vanished, and soon the reels and strathspeys were dropping from Thomas' flying fingers in a way that set Hughie's blood tingling. But when the fiddler struck into Money Musk, Billy Jack signed Jessac to him, and whispering to her, set her out ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... With the tuning key of his matchless genius he struck the chords of sorrow to their inmost tone and played on the heart strings of joy with the tender vibrations of an aeolian harp, trembling with melodious echoes among the wild ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... and rain battered at the orchard blossoms the next day and the next. Kenny found a tuning outfit in a closet and spent his days with Joan tuning the Craig piano. He was grateful in the gloom of dark wood and dust for the fantastic thing of lavender she wore. It was like a bit of iris in a bog, he told her, and was sorry when he saw her glance with ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... his spurs caught and twanged like tuning- forks. "War's declared at midnight. Pedantics be sugared! Buy ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... down 'Fairy Green Lane,' just above the farmstead of Cefn Cloddiau, and to banish fear, which he felt was gradually obtaining the mastery over him, instead of whistling, drew out from the skirt pocket of his long-tailed great coat his favourite instrument. After tuning it, be commenced elbowing his way through his favourite air, Aden Ddu'r Fran (the Crow's Black Wing). When he passed over the green sward where the Tylwyth Teg, or Fairies, held their merry meetings, he heard something rattle in his fiddle, and this something continued ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... the full explanation, the Sergeant's cheerfulness returned. The company of officers and guests had already filed out through the hall; he could hear voices laughing and talking in the street, and the band tuning up their instruments across in the dance hall. He would go over and make certain of her presence, then his mind would be at ease. He passed out through the deserted hallway, and glanced in at the dining-room, ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... to be in the way. I shall hope to be dismissed presently. I can hear you are tuning up, Charles. Ah, well, I shall have a clown for a husband. What more should a married woman wish for? And plenty of time to catch the roses and the sighs wafting up from my gardens. But Charles, where ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... his father's study of the vocal organs as they form sounds. Examines the Helmholtz method for the analysis and synthesis of vocal sounds. Suggests the electrical actuation of tuning-forks and the electrical transmission of their tones. Distinguishes intermittent, pulsatory and undulatory currents. Devises as his first articulating telephone a harp of steel rods thrown into vibration by electro-magnetism. ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... eyes alone love Nature in March. Every other sense hies abroad. My tongue hunts for the last morsel of wet snow on the northern root of some aged oak. As one goes early to a concert-hall with a passion even for the preliminary tuning of the musicians, so my ear sits alone in the vast amphitheatre of Nature and waits for the earliest warble of the blue-bird, which seems to start up somewhere behind the heavenly curtains. And the scent of spring, is it not the first lyric of the ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... hardly necessary to say, neither the foregoing remarks nor any others about music, except those that may be found in every text book, can be of the smallest use. Handel knew this and no man ever said less about his art—or did more in it. There are some semi-apocryphal {128} rules for tuning the harpsichord that pretend, with what truth I know not, to hail from him, but here his theoretical contributions to music begin and end. The rules begin "In this chord" (the tonic major triad) "tune the fifth pretty flat, and the third considerably too sharp." There is an absence of fuss about ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... upon a stone thrown into the air, giving it translatory motion, would, if spent upon a tuning fork, make it sound, but not move it from its place; while if spent upon a top, would enable the latter to stand upon its point as easily as a person stands on his two feet, and to do other surprising things, which otherwise it could not ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... the Never-ending Quest, And Minstrel of the Unfulfilled Desire; For ever tuning thy frail earthly lyre To some unearthly music, and possessed With painful passionate longing to invest The golden dream of Love's immortal fire With mortal robes of beautiful attire, And fold perfection ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... did not expect much from our swarthy friend, whose only garment was his trousers of cotton cloth, tucked up above his knees; and we were therefore all the more surprised, when, after some preliminary tuning of the instrument, he pressed the bow on its strings with a firm and practised hand, and led us, with masterly touch, through some of the finest melodies of our best operas. Very few amateurs of any country, with all their advantages of instruction, could equal the skill of that poor dweller on the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... The tuning of instruments began just then, and the rasping sound tore at him, dragging him back to a consciousness of externals. Then, as his eyes rested again on the stalls, he drew right back instinctively into the shadow of his box. For he had ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... large dinner bell is rung, its motion or vibration may be felt on touching it with the finger. If a tuning fork is made to give forth sound by striking it against the knee, or hitting it with a rubber hammer, and is then touched to the surface of water, small sprays of water will be thrown out, showing that the prongs of the fork are in rapid ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... in this great Western country; in the days when Indian "Sun" dances, and other barbarous functions were held. In the days of the Red River Jig, when a good fiddler of the same was held to be a man of importance; when the method of tuning the fiddle to the necessary pitch for the playing of that curious dance was a secret known only to a privileged few. Some might call them the "good" old days. "Bad" is the adjective which ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... her his arm. "They are tuning up. We won't lose a minute. I always like a clear floor, ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... 'What is sound?' Amid the grosser phenomena of acoustics the mind was first disciplined, conceptions being thus obtained from direct observation, which were afterwards applied to phenomena of a character far too subtle to be observed directly. Sound we know to be due to vibratory motion. A vibrating tuning-fork, for example, moulds the air around it into undulations or waves, which speed away on all sides with a certain measured velocity, impinge upon the drum of the ear, shake the auditory nerve, and awake in the brain the sensation of sound. When sufficiently near a sounding body ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... now—ah, there, sir, is a brilliant specimen of Irish mirthfulness—what a 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 ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... at church, it must be in vain to ask you to imagine our delight when we heard the tuning of a bass-viol in the gallery just before service. We pressed each other's hands most tenderly, looked up at the singers' seats, and then trusted ourselves to look at each other. It was more than we had hoped for. There were also a violin and sometimes a flute, and a choir of men and women singers, ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... edition, first published in 1975, is a republication of the work originally published in Philadelphia in 1907. The following sections have been omitted from the present edition because they were out-of-date: Practical Application of Piano Tuning as a Profession, Business Hints, Ideas in Advertising, and Charges for Services. This edition is reprinted by special arrangement with Theodore Presser Company, Presser Place, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, publisher ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... her brougham, the sharp rhythm of her horses' hoofs tuning her thoughts, she quietly endeavored to raise that cherished mental spectre, but could not, until by hazard she remembered the portrait of her husband hanging in ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... and struck a sharp blow on the table. "There you have a single blow," he said, "just one isolated noise. Now if I strike this tuning fork you have a vibrating note. In other words, a succession of blows or wave vibrations of a certain kind affects the ear and we call it sound, just as a succession of other wave vibrations affects the retina ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... visitors. I am putting Philip and Chick over in the west wing, far removed from the nursery, for I don't want them imagining they are kept awake by the night thoughts of my child. And, I must confess, Fleurette has a way of tuning up in the wee, small hours! However, we had the nursery walls muffled, so I don't think you'll be disturbed. Isn't this ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... tuning notes were sounded, and then the violinist began to play. Her skill was undoubted, but the feeling and pathos which she threw into the long-drawn sighing notes were more remarkable even than her skill. ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... gentlemen seriously damaged the cases in their anxiety to present them. Then, there was a very interesting production of three little keys for the aforesaid cases, and a melodramatic expression of horror at finding a string broken; and a vast deal of screwing and tightening, and winding, and tuning, during which Mrs. Briggs expatiated to those near her on the immense difficulty of playing a guitar, and hinted at the wondrous proficiency of her daughters in that mystic art. Mrs. Taunton whispered to a neighbour that ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... arrived early at the Opera House and was looking about while the fiddles were tuning up. I wore my pearls and a scarlet crepe-de-chine dress and a black cloth cape with a hood on it, which I put on over my head when I walked home in the rain. I was having a frank stare at the audience, when ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... family off to bed. Mrs. Mayow, putting forth unexpected strength, carried the tubs out to the back-yard, and poured the soapy water into the harbour. Hester, having borrowed a touzer,[A] tucked up her sleeves and fell to tidying the kitchen. Mr. Mayow went on tuning his fiddle. It was against his principles to work on a ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... ornaments or flowers; this was by her mother's wish. She feared that she had betrayed herself by coming so early, and remained alone in a side room; she did not appear until the rooms had been fully lighted, and the perfume, the buzz of voices, and the tuning of instruments lured her in. Ella was so short, that when she came into the crowd, she had not seen Aksel Aaroe when she heard several whispers of "There he is," and some one added, "He is coming towards us." It was Fru ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... see if you can sing, and then what part you can sing, whether it's tribble, or counter, or bass, or tenor. The best way for us to find out is to have you sing the scale—the notes of music. Now these are the notes of music." And without recourse to tuning fork ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... the guests who wanted to see the young people gather. There were four colored musicians, and they began to tune their instruments out on the rustic settee at the side of the front garden, where the beautiful drooping honey locusts hid them from sight and made even the tuning seem enchanting. Girls in white gowns trooped up the path, young men in the height of fashion carried fans and nosegays for them; there was laughing and chattering and floating back and ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... 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 ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... from the box, and put in the front room. While its owner was tuning it, I put up a couple of rude box bedsteads in the attic, and filled them with clean hay. The cooking-stove was put up in the rear apartment, and the whole building looked as though it had never been disturbed, ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... Battista da Conigliano, by whose hand is a panel on the altar of S. Pietro Martire in the aforesaid Church of the Nuns of the Corpus Domini, containing the said Saint, S. Nicholas, and S. Benedict, with landscapes in perspective, an angel tuning a cithern, and many little figures more than passing good. And if this man had not died young, it may be believed that he would have equalled ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... [ringing in the ears] tinnitus[Med]. [devices which make a resonating sound] bell, doorbell, buzzer; gong, cymbals (musical instruments) 417. [physical resonance] sympathetic vibrations; natural frequency, coupled vibration frequency; overtone; resonating cavity; sounding board, tuning fork. [electrical resonance] tuning, squelch, frequency selection; resonator, resonator circuit; radio &c. @2.3.1.6.8. [chemical resonance] resonant structure, aromaticity, alternating double bonds, non-bonded resonance; pi clouds, unsaturation, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and the statement was greeted by the audience with great and prolonged applause, that, after a little adjustment of the "Sympathetic Transmitter," it was found that by the sounding of one of the small English tuning forks I had brought with me from the other side of the Atlantic, upon the said "Transmitter," I could myself start the vibrodyne, and cause it to revolve rapidly, without Mr Keely's intervention, and ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... cowered involuntarily, and looked in each other's eyes with a wild surmise, for a shock came which made the vessel quiver like a tuning-fork in every fibre; the very pannikins on the cabin floor rattled, and all the things in the pantry went like rapidly chattering teeth. It was not like an ordinary blow of the sea. The skipper rushed aft, hoping to get on deck through Ferrier's cabin, but he met a cataract ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... us to understand this theory of Radiation and Absorption, it will be well for us if we look at a similar effect in the sphere of music and sound. Let us suppose that we have two tuning-forks of the same pitch, placed on a table at a distance of a foot from each other. If we set one of the forks vibrating, the waves which it radiates through the air will fall upon the other one, and will also set ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... evening of June: silver reaches of Isis and Cher; meadows pied with moon daisies and clover, and the rose madder bloom of ripe grasses; the trill of unseen birds tuning up for evensong; the passing and repassing of boats and canoes and punts, gay with cushions and summer frocks; all bathed in the level radiance that steals over earth like a presence in the last hours of a ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... lost itself in a mist of faintness; she was screwing herself up to a purpose of her own, and it hurt almost to anguish, and the whole place, around her, was a blur and swim, through which she heard the tuning of fiddles. Before she knew it she had said to him, 'Why have ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... brilliant light, by which every object, from a human form to a marble acanthus leaf, cast sharp-edged shadows, I soon discovered my violin on a tangle of flowering clematis, and began tuning its strings. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... were tuning their instruments when the party from the house entered the rosy-lighted mess-hall. Jo started forward with an air of assurance to claim Pen. When he beheld her, he stopped abruptly, lost in admiration of the daintily clad young person whose Castle-cut locks had been lured to ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... regular depth on this and not deeper at the top (diagram 9). When all is ready for the stringing up, a soft lead pencil may be used for blackleading the grooves, they are otherwise liable to arrest the progress of the string towards the pegs when tuning up and suddenly letting them go with a click, making the tuning uncertain and difficult; if the wood is rather obstinate—it is not always alike—a touch of beeswax of the size of a pin's head where the lead is placed will be ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... horrible operation. One cannot help thinking that a cockerel brought up without any companions of his own sex and age would not often crow, but in this instance there were no fewer than ten of them to encourage each other in the laborious process of tuning thejr harsh throats. Heard subsequently in the quiet of the early morning, these first tuning efforts suggested some reflections to my mind, which may not prove entirely without interest to fanciers who aim at something beyond a mere ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... actual hostility. I affected not to notice the change, and dipped my hand uninvited in the pot to satisfy my hunger, and smoked and dozed away the sultry hours in my hammock. Then I got my guitar and spent the rest of the day over it, tuning it, touching the strings so softly with my finger-tips that to a person four yards off the sound must have seemed like the murmur or buzz of an insect's wings; and to this scarcely audible accompaniment I murmured in an equally low ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... hall there was light and bustle; people were already arriving from the other hotels and chalets, their costumes hidden beneath many wraps. Groups of men in evening dress stood about smoking, talking "snow" and "ski-ing." The band was tuning up. The claims of the hotel-world clashed about him faintly as of old. At the big glass windows of the verandah, peasants stopped a moment on their way home from the cafe to peer. Hibbert thought laughingly of that conflict he used to imagine. ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... of fatigue deeply marked in his face could impeach his air of authority. There was something to him not quite accountable under any of the categories John was in the habit of applying. So much John had conceded from the first; from that morning in this very room when he had found him tuning the Circassian grand and had gone away, shutting the door over yonder, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... downstairs, and thought the big rooms looked very inviting with their white floors; the folding-doors had been rolled back, and the parlour and dining-room made an immense sweep. The vases on the mantels were full of flowers. In the distance she heard the tuning of a fiddle. ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... I set off to Beauport Lake; sailed across, caught a nice trout but no other fish, and were only allowed to use the line. A great quantity of raspberries, and there had been many strawberries. His income at one time had been 25 dollars per week. He had received 100 dollars for tuning the organ ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... identified with music as an art for many years that a word about their present activities may be of interest. Mr. McCurrie went into Eastern piano factories and interested himself in the technical makeup of pianos and the art of tuning and returning settled and still lives in Alameda, Calif., where he has written several successful operettas and collections of songs for children. Selections from the latter are in daily use in the ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... the wood." And others said, "We wish some one would tell out gold into our laps but for so long a time as he shall be in drawing of that string." But when he had spent some little time in making proof of the bow, and had found it to be in good plight, like as a harper in tuning of his harp draws out a string, with such ease or much more did Ulysses draw to the head the string of his own tough bow, and in letting of it go, it twanged with such a shrill noise as a swallow makes when it sings through the air: ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Good and True upon it. It is because we are at once actor and spectator that we find no fault with blinking sight and slothful thought. We are finite branded and content, except during the shrill, undermining moments when the orchestra is tuning ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... their vows, by the expressive language of the eyes; he had even declared himself in some tender ejaculations which had been softly whispered in her ear, when he could snatch an opportunity of venting them unperceived; nay, he had upon divers occasions gently squeezed her fair hand, on pretence of tuning her harpsichord, and been favoured with returns of the same cordial pressure; so that, instead of accosting her with the fearful hesitation and reserve of a timid swain, he told her, after the exercise of the doux-yeux, that he was come to confer with her upon a subject that nearly concerned ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... elder in his Sabbath "blacks," his solemn face surrounded by a fringe of sandy whisker. The pews were very narrow and very high, shut in a box-like seclusion by wooden doors; the minister, in his pulpit, was just giving out the number of the psalm, and the precentor, after tapping his tuning-fork and holding it to his ear, burst forth into wailing notes of surprising strength and volume. Margot rose automatically to her feet, to subside in confusion, as the seated congregation gazed ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... tall, well-dressed man of whom his father had thought so highly. Charles Benton, in spite of his hair tuning grey, was a handsome man, and moved in a very good circle of society. Nobody knew his source of income, and nobody cared. In these days clothes make the gentleman, and a knighthood ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... sang, with a heart that knocked to the notes of the old madrigal like the precentor's tuning-fork to ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... compensation," said the girl ironically; and she added, with the kind of repellent lure with which women know how to leave men the responsibility of any reciprocal approach, "I don't know whether it won't need tuning first." ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... "now-you-see-what-you've-joined" expression, or nudged each other reminiscently, until the live-oaks in the pasture almost blended with the long shadows under them, and hoarse-throated frogs were tuning up in the irrigating ditches. Then they formed four abreast and went down for the mail, humming a march song and lifting their hats in concert to Professor Stillwell and his wife, smiling from their porch. At the post-office the lines broke and the entire body, except the alumni, ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... their way through the enthusiasts who swept down on them, Frank and Harry Chester, the Boy Aviators, who had just concluded a tuning up flight for the Hempstead Plains Cup—the contest for which was to take place in a week's time—entered the shed and, making their way to a screened-off room in the corner, shed their leather coats and woolen caps and removed the grime from their hands and faces. Their ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... them. For just as in your orchestra you must tune the instruments to a single note, so must you tune your various bodies in order that harmoniously they may allow the spiritual force to come through from the higher to the lower plane. It is a real tuning, a real making of harmonious vibrations; and the difference between the vibrations that are harmonious and the vibrations that are discordant, from this point of view, is this: when all the bodies vibrate together, all the particles and their spaces correspond, so that you get ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... that his request should then be granted. The Youth desired no better, since it was not to eat Soup that He presented himself at the Convent. He thanked the Porteress for her permission, retired from the Door, and seating himself upon a large stone, amused himself in tuning his Guitar while the ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... excitedly to tumble into his uniform. It was one of the few that at all approached fitting, and Paul thought it very becoming—though he knew the tight, straight coat accentuated his narrow chest, about which he was exceedingly sensitive. He was always excited while he dressed, twanging all over to the tuning of the strings and the preliminary flourishes of the horns in the music-room; but tonight he seemed quite beside himself, and he teased and plagued the boys until, telling him that he was crazy, they put him down on the ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... Groups of persons, gayly dressed, are in conversation in different parts of the ball-chamber. More are constantly coming in. The musicians, who for some time have been tuning their instruments, enter, and take their place. Partners are selected, the circle is formed, and the dancing begins. A scene of hilarity ensues. During the intervals, the merry laugh is heard, wine is drunk, and the glee becomes general. Sparkling eyes ...
— Charles Duran - Or, The Career of a Bad Boy • The Author of The Waldos
... the gaping silence, the three ladies listened to the melancholy harper and the lachrymose fiddlers who, on the estrade in the far corner, sat tuning their instruments. At last the people began to come in. The first were a few stray blackcoats, then feminine voices were heard in the passages, and necks and arms, green toilettes and white satin shoes, were seen passing and taking seats. Two Miss Duffys, the fattest of ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... of the occupant's love of the sweet science; for there were a tuning-fork, a pitch-pipe, and a metronome on the chimney-piece, a large musical-box on the front of the book-case, some nondescript pipes, reeds, and objects of percussion; and, to show that other tastes were cultivated to some extent, there were, besides, several ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... companion had caught the first sounds of the tuning of the instruments, and here we were, before the invitation to dance, a customed observance at Moldwarp Hall, had begun to play. In a few minutes thereafter, the door of the drawing-room opened; when, pair after pair, the company, to the number of over a hundred and fifty, I should ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... messages, but because of the more romantic character of their new motives and surroundings. Even the multitude of static interferences that swarmed the atmosphere on this, the first oppressively hot day of the season, were combatted with tuning coil, condenser, and detector, so confidently, although with poor success, that Mr. Perry pronounced them all ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... the gate, were gathered a rustic company: brown-faced village lads and lasses, toothless graybeards, cackling old wives. Above the barred gate swung a festoon of ivy, whilst from within the court came the squeaking of pipes, the tuning of citharas, and shouted orders—signs of a mighty bustling. Then even while the company grew, a half-stripped courier flew up the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... instruments (an A and a B-flat—the C clarinet being almost obsolete, and the E-flat being used only in military bands); but in playing upon the brass wind instruments the same instrument may be tuned in various keys, either by means of a tuning slide or by inserting separate shanks or crooks, these latter being merely additional lengths of tubing by the insertion of which the total length of the tube constituting the instrument ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... she was requested, and shortly afterwards the tuning of three fiddles was heard. Which process having been protracted as long as it was supposed that the patience of the audience could possibly bear it, was put a stop to by another jerk of the bell, which, being the signal to begin in earnest, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... her child, will tell my story And fright her crying babe with Tarquin's name; The orator, to deck his oratory, Will couple my reproach to Tarquin's shame: Feast-finding minstrels, tuning my defame, Will tie the hearers to attend each line, How Tarquin ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... not died away Ere Roy Montaine came seeking me to say The band was tuning for our waltz, and so Back to the ball-room bore me. In the glow And heat and whirl, my strength ere long was spent, And I grew faint and dizzy, and we went Out on the cool moonlighted portico, And, sitting there, Roy drew my languid head Upon the shelter of his breast, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the heroic quality of the verses that our little sensualist in a periwig chose out to marry with his own mortal strains. Some gust from brave Elizabethan times must have warmed his spirit, as he sat tuning his sublime theorbo. "To be or not to be. Whether 'tis nobler"—"Beauty retire, thou dost my pity move"—"It is decreed, nor shall thy fate, O Rome";—open and dignified in the sound, various and majestic in the sentiment, it was no inapt, as it was certainly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... alterations in shape, in sounde, and also in sence, sometime by way of surplusage, sometime by defect, sometime by disorder, or mutation, & also by putting into our speaches more pithe and substance, subtilitie, quicknesse, efficacie or moderation, in this or that sort tuning and tempring them, by amplification, abridgement, opening, closing, enforcing, meekening, or otherwise disposing them to the best purpose whereupon the learned clerks who haue written methodically of this Arte in the two master languages, Greeke and Latine, haue sorted ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... worthless; indeed the Stimmung of a picture can deepen and purify that of the spectator. Such works of art at least preserve the soul from coarseness; they "key it up," so to speak, to a certain height, as a tuning-key the strings of a musical instrument. But purification, and extension in duration and size of this sympathy of soul, remain one-sided, and the possibilities of the influence of art are not exerted ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... express-speed modifications of manner as those which divide, let us say, the latest piano pieces of Brahms (1893) and the latest of Scriabin (1914). It is possible, indeed, that our standard system of keyboard tuning may require modification in the not very distant future. Once again, as three hundred years ago, music seems to be in the throes of a new birth. On the former occasion, the process of convalescence lasted rather more than a century, from Monteverde ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... other alterations of intellectual insight and spiritual taste that will come to you with your open eyes, there will be your new taste, not only for your Bible, but also for spiritual and experimental preaching. The spiritual preachers of our day are constantly being blamed for not tuning their pulpits to the new themes of our so progressive day. Scientific themes are prest upon them and critical themes and social themes and such like. But your new experience of your own sinfulness and of God's salvation: your new need and your new taste ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... suggested reasons for looking upon physical life as a mode of frequency, akin to Light, Electricity, Magnetism, Chemical Action, the Vibration of a Tuning Fork, or the Swing of a Pendulum, and therefore a transient phenomenon having to do only with the Race; Life can under these conditions only be looked upon as a reality in the same sense in which all other forms ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... a smile. "I am very unsociable to-night," he said, tuning his face to the place where he knew Angela sat. "I have ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... placed upon the stage, rose from orchestra to dome. A gigantic Colosseum of a cup, lined in stacks and stacks of faces. From the door of his dressing-room, leaning out, Leon Kantor could see a great segment of it, buzzing down into adjustment, orchestra twitting and tuning into it. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... pain, and half furtive unacknowledged joy. Men whose conscious thoughts are mostly projected outward, on the world of external activities, may be more moved by such a touch on the feelings than those who are perpetually testing and tuning their emotional chords. Amherst had foreseen from the first that Mrs. Ansell might mean to speak of his wife; but though he had intended, if she did so, to cut their talk short, he now felt himself irresistibly constrained ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... to the music-room. Forgetting Ward's advice, she trips laughingly and carelessly up the stairs to the room, from which proceed faint sounds of music, increasing to quite an olla podri-da of sound as the apartment is reached—for the musicians are tuning up. The beautiful duchess is soon recognized, and as soon in deep gossip with her friends. But who is that gentlemanly man leaning over the chamber-organ? That is Sir Roger L'Estrange, an admirable performer on the violoncello, and a great lover of music. He is watching the subtile ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... on the lady, "it hasn't been tuned for four years or more. Mr. Scrutite went about the country for many a year tuning pianos; but he got old, and the last time he came he left his tuning key, or whatever you call it, saying he'd be round again if he could; but he never came. It's such an expensive thing, you know, to bring a man twenty miles to do it, that I've been putting it off, and putting it ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... was, the United States has been thinking and planning and doing for the greatness to be. Her captains of industry and kings of finance have toiled and sweated at organizing and consolidating production and transportation. But this has been merely the developmental stage, the tuning-up of the orchestra. With the twentieth century rises the curtain on the play,—a play which shall have much in it of comedy and a vast deal of tragedy, and which has been well named The Capitalistic Conquest of Europe by America. Nations ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... box and began moving the metal switch arms back and forth, thus tuning in more perfectly as indicated by the increased and clearer sound and the absence of interference from other broadcasting stations, noticed at first by a low buzzing. In a moment the music came clear and sweet, the stirring tune of "America." When the sound of the ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... she was full of by this time was a girl named Arabella Jones. She got in quite a lot while he was vainly trying to remember where he had last seen the damned girl. He had just succeeded in getting back to his own topic when the Cuddiford girl from next door dashed in without a hat to borrow a tuning-fork. It had been quite a business finding the tuning-fork, and when she was gone they had to begin all over again. They had quarrelled about the drawing-room carpet; about her sister Florrie's birthday present; and the way he drove the motor-car. It had taken them over ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... were gone now that had been conducive to thought at Christmas in this same room when we heard the two girls count four so often, but Sally could pull an azalea flower to pieces over her cogitations, and did so, instead of tuning up forthwith. Laetitia was preoccupied—couldn't take an interest in other people's fathers, nor her own for that matter. She tuned up, though, and told Sally to look alive. But while Sally looks alive she backs ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... in the middle of the floor, thinking of what I had just read, and listening—listening for something less loud than the sound of carriages now beginning to roll up in front or the stray notes of the band tuning up below?—less loud, but meaning what? A step into the empty closet yawning so near—an effort with a drawer—a—a— Do not ask me to recall it. I did not shudder when the moment came and I stood there. Then I was cold as marble. But I shudder now in thinking of it till ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... speaking of Vesey Street. It looks down to the water, and the soft music of steamship whistles comes tuning on a cold, gusty air. Thoroughly mundane little street, yet not unmindful of matters spiritual, bounded as it is by divine Providence at one end (St. Paul's) and by Providence, R. I. (the Providence Line pier) at the other. Perhaps it is the presence of the graveyard ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... absolutely a genius of the first water, when it came to tuning pianos. Whether his talent as a composer ran to any such lengths as that she, of course, didn't know. If what he had played for her had been his own, any of it, it was awfully modern and interesting, at least. You could tell that even though it kept him swearing at ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... make all melodies our care, That no false discords may offend the Sun, Music's great master—tuning everywhere All pastoral sounds and melodies, each one Duly to place and season, so that none May harshly interfere. We rouse at morn The shrill sweet lark; and when the day is done, Hush silent pauses for the bird forlorn, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... After frozen seconds, she sighed and went to open it. The curtains billowed, and a babble of conversation blew in from the terrace of the Keith mansion. With the sound came the occasional brassy discord of a musician tuning his instrument. She clutched the window-sash as if she wished to slam it ...
— Death of a Spaceman • Walter M. Miller
... like a tomato when it is time to pass the dulces and wines? And think no more of thy lover until he can come out of prison and marry thee." She drew herself away as the woman attempted to clutch her skirts. "Go," she said. "The musicians are tuning." ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... Lust Haus is now lighted up, the company are assembling fast; Babette is waddling and trotting like an armadillo from corner to corner: Babette here, and Babette there, it is Babette everywhere. The room is full, and the musicians have commenced tuning their instruments; the party run from the table to join the rest. A general cheer greets the widow as she is led into the room by the corporal—for she had asked many of her friends as well as the crew ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... here I hope in eight days; but Graun and Quantz will certainly not—"The king paused and listened attentively. It seemed to him as if he heard the sound of a violin in the adjoining room, accompanied by the light tones of a flute. Yes, it was indeed so; some one was tuning a violin and the soft sound of the flute mingled with the violoncello. A flush of rosy joy lighted the king's face—he cast a questioning glance upon the marquis, who nodded smilingly. With a joyful cry the king crossed the room—an ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... (a tuning of instruments is heard in the dancing-hall) the tall figure of the accommodation man is seen, in company of the venerable Judge, passing hurriedly into a room on the right of the winding stairs before described. "Judge!" he exclaims, closing the door quickly after ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... the way, was said to have become immensely rich in Alaska while Lane's paper was running into bankruptcy in Tacoma. But Lane's misadventure was not wholly due to his civic virtue. He had "bought in" at just the moment when the instruments were tuning up for the prelude to the great panic crash of 1893. Tacoma, and the whole Northwest, had been mainly developed by casual investments of speculative Eastern capital, and this capital, sensitive to change, ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... terror-stricken? His desultory mental queries suddenly stopped as he raised his eyes to the far corner of the room, for there, covered with an old shawl, he made out the lines of a piano. He opened the keyboard and struck a chord. It wasn't so bad—a little tuning—he could do ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs |
