"Falsetto" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by little however, it became apparent to me that for some reason I had become a mark for their amusement; more than once I caught them exchanging looks, or regarding me from the corners of their eyes in such fashion as set my ears a-tingling. The Captain was possessed of a peculiarly high-pitched, falsetto laugh, which, recurring at frequent intervals (and for no reason as I could see), annoyed me almost beyond bearing. But I paid no heed, staring straight before me and meditating upon a course of action which had been in my ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... a broken nose and a falsetto voice was led by his mate who carried a 'cello. An interrupted wedding party followed, and school-children with their professors, sick people out of the hospital with doctors and nurses to help them, and a rabble of water-sellers, ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... instincts, not from any conscious thirsting for fame and for consequent Carnegie medals. However, the average visitor could not be expected to be aware of that; and therefore he would be more than likely to feel it incumbent upon him to say gracious things in a tremulous falsetto voice. In the present case, the question concerned itself with the problem whether or not Scott Brenton would prove to be ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Mrs. Romulus in shrill falsetto; "say rather loaves of plaster and alum crumbed into bowls of chalk-mixture! This is the sort of bread and milk furnished by your barbarous civilization! But the beginning of the end of this priestridden world has at length come. A new era is dawning upon earth. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... seeds into their fruits. Why then may not Shakespeare's idea have been so to order things that the full strength of the man should not appear in the play, as it did not in fact, till after his fall? This view will both explain and justify the strange disguise—a sort of falsetto ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... his courage warranted. His thickness of wit was never a bar to the success of his irony. For the irony of the ignorant Scot is rarely the outcome of intellectual qualities. It depends on a falsetto voice and the use of a recognized number of catchwords. "Dee-ee-ar me, dee-ee-ar me;" "Just so-a, just so-a;" "Im-phm!" "D'ye tell me that?" "Wonderful, serr, wonderful;" "Ah, well, may-ay-be, may-ay-be"—these be words of potent irony when uttered ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... you would run away?" But Smerdyakov did not deign to reply. After a moment's silence the guitar tinkled again, and he sang again in the same falsetto: ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... sake!" grumbled Vic, stooping reluctantly to pick up the old hoe-handle he used for a staff. "What ridge?" He paused to thunder up at her, his voice unexpectedly changing to a shrill falsetto on the last word, as frequently happens to rob a mancub of his dignity just when he needs ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... man with a grayish beard threw branches on the fire, which was enveloped in thick, whitish smoke. The damp branches, falling on the fire, crackled and rustled plaintively, and the accordion teasingly played a lively tune, while the falsetto of the singer reinforced and completed its ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... falsetto seemed to hang muffled in upper space, above the fog that settled low on the water, like a dense and milky sediment of the air. The moonlight fell into it strangely. We seemed to breathe at the bottom of a shallow ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... steps so nearly simultaneous the movement was like a leap—and he had the wrist of the other's armed hand in his grip. Words can convey no idea of the outburst attending the assault—it was the hoarse inarticulate falsetto of a dumb man signalizing a triumph. If the reader can think of a tiger standing over him, its breath on his cheek, its roar in his ears, something approximate to ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... book was born, as all good books, because its mother could not help it. Behind every page and between the lines you see the fevered toss of human emotion and hot ambition—these women were rivals. There were digs and scratches, bandied epithets in falsetto, and sounds like a piccolo played by a man in distress, before all this; and these are not explained, so you have to fill them in with your imagination. But the Bernhardt is the bigger woman of the two. She goes her splendid ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... are the kind of people an artist must work with!" He lifted his arms to heaven, calling upon the high gods for pity; then, with a sudden turn of fury, ran to the back of the stage and came mincing forward evidently intending saturnine mimicry, repeating the ingenue's speech in a mocking falsetto: "Now what are you two good people conspiring about?" After that he whirled upon her, demanding with ferocity: "You've got something you can think with in your head, haven't you, Missmiss? Then what do ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... different aspect from that under which we are wont to think of him. By them he was regarded as an illustrious declaimer, in an age when declamation was the most valued of all accomplishments. It was true that there was a sort of "tinkle," a certain falsetto tone in his style, which offended men of robust and severe taste; but this meretricious resonance of style was a matter of envy and admiration when affectation was the rage, and when the times were too enervated and too corrupt for the manly conciseness and ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... her books down upon a chair, and opened some pages of scrawled manuscript, talking hurriedly in a thin falsetto. ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... Marguerite' (I suppose you mean 'We were apart' and not 'Yes! in the sea') I had paused over, but my instinct was to strike it out, and now your suggestion comes to confirm this instinct, I shall act upon it. The same with 'Second Best.' It is quite true there is a horrid falsetto in some stanzas of the 'Gipsy Child'—it was a very youthful production. I have re-written those stanzas, but am not quite satisfied with the poem even now. 'Shakespeare' I have re-written. 'Cruikshank' ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... fighting the battle of the recoverers of our great seventeenth century writers against the devotees of "correctness," and that in the very same context he makes the unpardonable assertion that Gibbon's manner is "the worst of all," and that Tacitus "writes in falsetto as compared to Tully." This is to "fight a prize" in the old phrase, not to judge from the catholic and universal standpoint of impartial criticism; and in order to reduce Coleridge's assertions to that standard we must abate nearly as much from his praise of ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... the benefits for actors. It was indeed a delight: loads of incense were burned, there were plenty of Latin chants, large quantities of holy water were expended, and Padre Irene, out of regard for his old friend, sang the Dies Irae in a falsetto voice from the choir, while the neighbors suffered real ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... whole, an artificial writer, while the best parts of Ossian are natural. He allowed himself therefore to see distinctly and to characterise severely the bad things in the book—where it sunk into the bathos or soared into the falsetto,—but ignored its beauties, and was obstinately blind to those passages where it rose into real sublimity ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... make sure that the constable and his wife were in the bedroom the other side of the flimsy wall, complied, and in a voice that rose gradually to a piercing falsetto told Mr. Grummit things that had been rankling in her mind for some months. She raked up misdemeanours that he had long since forgotten, and, not content with that, had a fling at the entire Grummit family, beginning with her mother-in-law ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... of the door the mystery of the thumping noise which he and the Backslid Baptist had heard was explained. In a low falsetto the parrot was repeating the two military commands ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... execrable, being a high, nasal falsetto, and the dancing, or rather swaying on their tiny feet while waving overhead a dirty cloth in their beautifully-shaped hands, is feeble in the extreme. A band of musicians is usually engaged, after protracted haggling, to enliven the proceedings. Two or ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... fleering, jigging and singing, talking loud, horse-laughing, and hungrily eyeing the girls and women that passed by, who tried hard to seem, as they went, not self-conscious and stiff-stepping because of our observation ... and sometimes we whistled after them or called out to them in falsetto voices. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... his broadcloth, and, turning up the whites of his eyes, uttered a despairing groan. "Oh, that child! that child! that child!"—his voice running up into a wild falsetto howl. ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... see him more frequently, and then she brought him a hymn-book, so as to utilize his voice. Then he might be seen sitting up in bed, for he was beginning to be able to move, singing the praises of the Almighty and of Mary, in a falsetto voice, while the kind, stout sister stood by him and beat time with her finger. When he could walk, the Superior offered to keep him for some time longer to sing in chapel, to serve at Mass and to fulfill the duties of sacristan, and he accepted. For a whole ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... came down out of the northwest, like a cloudburst. It hummed and sang, and then it whined, and then it screamed, screamed in a high falsetto that made you think poor old Mother Earth was in her last throes! The snow was fine and hard, really minute particles of ice, and not snow at all, as we know it in the East, little sharp-angled diamond-points that stung the skin like fire. It came in almost horizontal lines, driving flat across ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... seemed pleased with her dress. And not only young ladies, but old ladies, and old gentlemen, and everybody, ought to make their dress a concord and not a discord. But Saratoga is pitched on a perpetual falsetto, and stuns you. One becomes sated with an interminable piece de resistance of full dress. At the sea-side you bathe; at the mountains you put on stout boots and coarse frocks and go a-fishing; but Saratoga never "lets up,"—if I may be pardoned the phrase. Consequently you see ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... former ore vein. This alone was enough to get hopelessly lost in, even without its many blind-alley branches. Now and then we came upon another shaft-opening that seemed a bottomless hole a few feet in diameter in the solid rock, from far down which came up the falsetto voices and the stinking sweat of peons, and the rap, rap of heavy hammers on iron rock-bars. But we had only started. Far back in the gallery we took another hoist and descended some two hundred feet ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... Maryanne's tone as she rebuked her father. Then Mrs. Jones had joined them, and the battle had raged still more furiously. The voice of the old man, too, was heard from time to time. When roused by suffering to anger he would forget to speak in his usual falsetto treble, and break out in a few natural words of rough impassioned wrath. At about ten, Mr. Brown came down into Robinson's room, and, seating himself on a low chair, remained there for awhile without moving, and almost ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... Evangelical but also the Reformed community was split into two bodies—those speaking German and those speaking French. The French chorister was not daunted by the Lottchen, but, as my uncle maintained, sang his part, spectacles on nose, in the finest falsetto that ever proceeded forth from a human breast. Now there was amongst us (I mean in the town) a spinster named Meibel, aged about fifty-five, who subsisted upon the scanty pension which she received ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... cheeks, high forehead shaded by coarse dark hair which Jay Allison had slicked down now heavily rumpled. I still didn't think I looked anything like the doctor. Our voices were nothing alike either; his had been pitched rather high, falsetto. My own, as nearly as I could judge, was a full octave deeper, and more resonant. Yet they issued from the same vocal chords, unless Forth was having a ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... faltered he. "No, I don't believe you, but I hold no honors and will turn up my cards." He quite forgot that he was in the public street, and was talking at the top of his shrill falsetto voice, and gesticulating violently. ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... objection. His face at once assumed a different expression, his features wearing a mingled air of impudence, conceit, and irony. He caught up a ruler that was lying on the magistrate's desk, and, flourishing it wildly, began as follows, in a shrill falsetto voice: "Silence, music! And you, big drum, hold your peace! Now is the hour, now is the moment, ladies and gentlemen, to witness the grand, unique performance of these great artists, unequaled in the world for their feats upon the trapeze ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... house, Jacoba was waiting for him. She was a woman of more than fifty years of age, of portly form and demeanour. She moved with difficulty, for her breath was short, from her extreme fatness, and she always spoke in a falsetto voice. She was discretion itself, a sealed book. The count and Amalia had never had any other confidante. Nobody else in the world was acquainted with their love affair, and she had served them wonderfully through ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... prepare the hypodermics," directed the chemist. He had to repeat this in a falsetto voice before June understood. "Make one ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... two years there was an excursion to Oxford to attend a reunion of a Greek-letter society, and perhaps twice in the winter certain ancient cronies came, drank musty ale, and smoked long clay pipes, and sang college songs in cracked falsetto. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... of cookies and wine passed by the black dwarf, Selena. This small creature, after fulfilling her part in the social amenities, seated herself upon a small stool, joined in the conversation, and when amused (which was often) broke into a high falsetto laugh. In the last years of these two ladies she gained a most unholy influence over her charges and took cruel ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... and long-drawn note, varying with the motion of the windlass. This requires a high voice, strong lungs, and much practice, to be done well. This fellow had a very peculiar, wild sort of note, breaking occasionally into a falsetto. The sailors thought it was too high, and not enough of the boatswain hoarseness about it; but to me it had a great charm. The harbor was perfectly still, and his voice rang among the hills, as though it could have ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... seven relatives were still beginners—but likewise treated everything so derisively and possessed a heart so full of tricks and surprises that there was no dependence to be placed upon him. The eternal smile hovering around his temples and thick lips, and the mocking falsetto voice, impaired the good impression that might otherwise have been made by his nobly cut face and a pair of large hands, from which New Year's presents, benefit performances, and gratuities were continually falling. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Mademoiselle de Corandeuil, in a falsetto voice full of terror; she rushed to one of the windows ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... mirror directed backwards, others, wearing scarlet aprons, carry brooms and with slow and mystic movements sweep widely on either side with the intent of gathering up the wandering soul. Meanwhile crackers are fired to the weird sound of a minor, falsetto lilting. After a considerable journey over the countryside they return to prove the success of their venture. For this the clothes of the sick man must be reweighed to see whether the weight of the spirit has been added to that of ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... There is a troop train just behind us that they may be potting at, or some gunners in the village, or the R.E. camp. There have been two aeroplanes over us this afternoon. You hear the shell coming a long way off, rather like a falsetto motor-engine, and then it bursts (twice in the trees of this wood where we are standing). There is an endless line of French horse transport winding up the wood on the other side, and now some French cavalry. The R.T.O. is now having the train moved ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... direction being my object for the moment, Otty, I rejoiced in a clear thoroughfare and let her rip for Putney Bridge. There was a communication tube in the taxi, and for some while it had been whistling in my ear, with calls and outcries in high falsetto interjected between the blasts. 'Funny dog's ventriloquising,' thought I, and paid no further attention to the noises. Our pace was such, I couldn't be distracted from the steering. . . . I was quite sober by this time: sober, ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... red flag at an already exasperated bull. The president got upon his feet, and his shrill falsetto cut ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... quite ready to sail so soon as they should have clambered aboard and swung the long boat to its davits. Presently the attention of every man was drawn from his dreaming or his gossiping to the northern bank of the river. There, screaming at them in a cracked falsetto and with skinny arms outstretched, stood a strange ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... characteristically undemonstrative crowd that assembled on the wharf, a crowd content to wait an hour or more without a murmur after the ship had dropped anchor in midstream for the captain's gig to be lowered from the davits. The shrill falsetto of the boatswain's whistle suddenly informed those on shore of what was taking place on the starboard side, and in a few minutes the gig came sweeping across the blue water, with James Dutton seated in the stern-sheets and looking very pale. He sat there, from time to time pulling ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... know that, my de-ar," came in sweet, falsetto tones from Phil. "We ought to have no end of sport, ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... ship!" now resounded through the ship as it was repeated in the variety of basses of the boatswain and his mates, at either hatchway—one of the youngsters of the watch running down at the same time to acquaint the officers, in his shrill falsetto, with that which had been roared out loud enough to startle even the deaf purser. The first-lieutenant, followed by the master, brushed by him, and was up the ladder before his supererogatory ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... their Excellencies, and of the persons they most desired to avoid, before coming forward. Suddenly, just as Signor Strillone had reached a high note and was preparing to bellow upon it before letting his voice die away to a pathetic falsetto, the crowd at the door parted a little. A lady entered the room alone, and stood out before the rest, pausing till the singer should have passed the climax of his song, before she proceeded upon her way. She was a very striking woman; every ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... interpreted their own way, and also the fact that she had come from Duluth,—probably of "ordinary" people. Surely not a girl's girl, nor a woman's woman! But one to be reckoned with when it came to men. Isabelle was conscious of her old reserve as she listened to Conny's piping, falsetto voice,—such a funny voice to come from that large person through ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... steam-whistlings and organ-wailings against a drum-and-trombone band, while these distinct strata of sound were cut across by an outcropping of graphophones and megaphones. Upon an open-air platform, a minstrel troupe, by dint of falsetto inarticulateness, futile banjoes, and convulsive dancing, demonstrated how little of art one might obtain for a dime. Always out of sympathy with such displays, but now more than ever repelled by them, Grace and Gregory hurried away to find themselves penned ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... companionable than a mountain brook? It has its moods both grave and gay, and is as fickle as a schoolgirl. At times it chuckles at you in a musical undertone as you walk along its banks, and again it seems to warn you from trespassing on its preserves, scolding in a shrill falsetto as it dodges under the roots of a fallen tree, or dives among the lilypads, as if to hide from your sight. But when it swirls down the eddy, and comes to rest by an overhanging rock, where the shadows are dark and the water deep, its song is hushed, as if in fear ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... to know in advance that some brave answer was forthcoming. The man on the table with his hands behind him surveyed the crowd again with the gaze of simple dignity, looked down on the commandant, and raised his voice. It was an unexpected, high, almost falsetto note, that in the silence carried ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... project sound quite simple and straightforward, but I can remember how narrowly he watched us and how, when he attempted to laugh at our objections, his voice cracked into shrill falsetto, under pressure of his excitement. I would have argued with him, explained, tried to dissuade him, but Jasper scorned my temporizing and would have had none of it. His sense of justice blazed high within him and his words leaped forth, ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... Latin and sums by a—a female, was enough to make my hair stand on end. How they would laugh and wax merry at my expense! How they would draw pictures of me in the book covers with long curls and petticoats! How they would address me as "Jemima," and talk to one another about me in a high falsetto voice! How they would fall into hysterics when they met me, and weep copiously, and ask me to lend them hairpins and parasols! I knew what it would be like only too well, and I quaked ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... of a child somewhere in the forest pricked our ears, the clear falsetto of its fright silencing the singer and leaving his mouth agape. I began drawing on my moccasins, but before I could finish a wonderful transformation had taken place in the clearing. As if the cry had been a prearranged signal, six of the young ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... himself a gifted young attorney. I knew him intimately, as for six years he was a close neighbor and we were associated in lodge-work. He was an effeminate little fellow: height, 5 feet 2 inches; weight, 105 pounds; very near-sighted; and he had a light voice, not a treble or falsetto, but still a voice that detracted materially from the beautiful rhetoric that flowed from his lips. He had served his country as its representative in the Legislature and had received the nomination for senator, over a hard-fought political battle. The last canvass and speeches were made at ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... win many friends in the land of his mother's kin. The other proved to be at once a rudder to guide him over the uncharted future of his life, and an outlet for the pent-up passion within him. His voice was totally untrained, and as yet it broke into all manner of distressing falsetto fragments. Nevertheless, it gave him a cause for living, and it enabled him, the descendant of a taciturn race, to give utterance to the doubts and questionings which accompanied his growth to manhood. Bereft of his mother ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... hand that extracted the neatly folded bills from the leather case shook and the voice rose to a ludicrous falsetto—"I've got you beat, and if I had any more money with me I'd come ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... longer come between him and his ends. He was completely and finally humiliating her. He was breaking her. He was converting her into something corrupt. . . . Then his pendulous throat choked with a falsetto gasp of wonder. He was ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... patched with. Creaking, groaning, with wabbling of wheels, grumble of inside passengers, cracking of whip and long strings of oaths from the driver, the coach lurched out of town and across a fat plain full of gurgle of irrigation ditches, shrilling of toads, falsetto rustle of broad leaves of the sugar cane. Occasionally the gleam of the soaring moon on banana leaves and a broad silver path on the sea. Landwards the hills like piles of ash in the moonlight, and far away a cloudy inkling ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... scrambled up on the stone, and stood there, her scanty and patched garments fluttering in the bitter breeze, as, with face sharpened with want, and eyes fierce with misery, she began, in a querulous, 'scornful falsetto: ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... A very tall, old, white-headed man came, shading a candle, at the summons. He had been of great strength in his time, and of a handsome countenance; but now he was fallen away, his teeth were quite gone, and his voice when he spoke was broken and falsetto. ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... voice rose to an excited falsetto. "She is awfully pretty—extravagantly, preposterously pretty. And she'll have ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... cook sings in the kitchen— Is love also her head turning? In falsetto she now screameth, That with rage my ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... the preceding bars where Siegfried first hears the bird." Ritter began softly, half speaking, half singing the words in his deep voice, taking the tenor notes falsetto. "Now—on the F. The bird must be heard far away in the branches, and you must move your head so—as it flutters from leaf ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... eunuchoid constitution. They called them the Mujerados. Their method consisted in making a healthy man ride horseback constantly, until an irritable weakness of the reproductive organs ensued, and a paralytic impotence followed. The exhausted testes would then atrophy, and the voice ring falsetto, muscular tone and energy diminish, inclinations and habits become feminine. The Mujerado lost his position in society as a man, assumed female clothing, manners and customs, and to all intents and purposes was treated as a woman. Their large ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... complete. Think of the range of sounds made by the Japanese, the gipsy, the Chinese, the Spanish folk-singers. The newest composer may ask for shrieks, squeaks, groans, screams, a thousand delicate shades of guttural and falsetto vocal tones from his interpreters. Why should the gamut of expression on our opera stage be so much more limited than it is in our music halls? Why should the Hottentots be able to make so many delightful noises that we are incapable of producing? Composers up to date have ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... trembling with excitement, slammed and locked the door and pointed to a heavy sideboard. "Drag it here!" he shrieked in a high falsetto. "The street is crammed with men belonging to the Seventh Regiment, and they have a short way with Kings they don't like. The instant they see how they have been tricked they will be after you like a pack of wolves. I have sent ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... thoughtful, was always the same as he rolled through the streets and lanes, for he sat "as though carved in stone." His love of children was marked. "He would address them in his small, high-pitched falsetto voice, and if their answers pleased him he would reply; and occasionally, lifting them on to a chair or table, he would measure their heads with his broad hand, as though reading character, and mentally prognosticating their ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... a-goin' to be pretty late agin to-night, Jim," he remarked in a squeaky falsetto. "S'pose it's ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... the Romeo of the tall young surgeon, singing falsetto like a fat German angel dressed in loose-fitting khaki, with his belt undone. There were charades in the tent. The boy from Barts' did remarkable imitations of a gamecock challenging a rival bird, of a cow coming through a gate, of a general addressing his troops (most comical of all). ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... mate, and his agent are the acme of politeness. The Chinese in the third class are good-natured and funny. Yesterday a Chinaman sat on the deck and sang something very mournful in a falsetto voice; as he did so his profile was funnier than any caricature. Everybody looked at him and laughed, while he took not the slightest notice. He sang falsetto and then began singing tenor. My God, what a voice! It was like the bleat ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... rival; and whether in singing a simple ballad, in oratorio, or in the grandest dramatic music, the largeness and nobility of his style were matched by a voice which in its prime was almost peerless. His compass extended over nineteen notes, and his falsetto from D to A was so perfect that it was difficult to tell where the natural voice ended. When Weber composed his opera "Oberon" for the English stage in 1826, Braham ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... Gallery, pray keep it up: Your song recalls my Villiam's "Auld Lang Syne," What time he came and (like an amorous bird That struts before the female of its kind, Warbling to cave her down the bank) piped high His cracked falsetto out of reach. Enough— Now let's to business. Nellibrac, sweet child, St. Cloacina's future devotee, The time is ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... made in our day comes from the pen of Mr. John Morley,[59] who describes as follows his position as a man of letters. 'He handled the great and difficult instrument of written language with such freedom and copiousness, such vivacity and ease, that in spite of much literary foppery and falsetto, he ranks in all that musicians call execution, only below the three or four highest masters of English prose. Yet of all the characters in our history Bolingbroke must be pronounced to be most of a charlatan; of all the writing in our ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... face of Moses afflicted the Jews at Mount Sinai. His audible prayers were made kneeling with clasped hands and upturned face. His eyes were closed tightly, his features were painfully contracted, and his voice was a falsetto squeak. I fancy the Governor must have sighed at the performance. The doctor never ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... violins wailing despairing love. And Isidro, seated on the bamboo ladder of his house, went through an independent performance. He sang "Good-night, Ladies," the last song given to the school, sang it in soft falsetto, with languorous drawls, and never-ending organ points, over and over again, till it changed character gradually, dropping into a wailing minor, an endless croon full of obscure melancholy of ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... deposit the baby on the snow with its head downwards by mistake, whereat it began to scream vociferously. This scream was accomplished by Davie Summers creeping below the stage and putting his mouth to a hole in the flooring close to which the baby's head lay. Davie's falsetto was uncommonly like to a child's voice, and the effect was quite startling. Of course Whackinta tried to soothe it, and failing in this she whipped it, which caused it to yell with tenfold violence. Thereafter losing all patience, she covered its face and stuffed ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... just outside the waggon came the wild crying of an owl: and then, at that instant, a banging of guns and pistols. A voice cried out: "The horses. Save the horses." Some one screamed "Help! help!" in a falsetto. More guns banged and cracked, and I heard a rush of hoofs as the drove of horses stampeded. The gipsies in the waggon rushed out as one man to save the precious horses. I rushed out after them, and there was ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... have patience, it appears, with people made like that. Ah, tiens, here she comes. How could you keep ces dames waiting like this? It is shameful, shameful!" cried the woman, as she half shook the panting girl, in anger. "If ces dames will enter,"—her voice changing at once to a caressing falsetto, as the door flew open, opened by Augustine's trembling fingers—"they will find ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... luke how I du wark yit. Yif I'd 'a give up my wark, I shude 'a bin in the churchyard along o' the idlers, that 'a shude." He chuckled and winked. "I du be a turble vunny man," quavered the thin falsetto voice. "They be niver a dune a laughin' along o' my jokes. An' I du remember Zur Timothy's vather zo well as Zur Timothy hisself, though 'ee bin dead nigh sixty year. Lard, 'ee was a bad 'un, was y' ould squire. An old devil. That's ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... tone of falsetto, Constance, and speak seriously to each other. I have come to you for help in this crisis of our lives. Sit down. ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... cares for that! 'No, thank you!' said the cat, when they gave her frozen milk. Honouring is cold love-making. And now you have proved that you don't go the right way about it. 'Mademoiselle,'"; and Villon minced a melancholy falsetto, "'I respect you deeply; mademoiselle, I honour you humbly from a distance; you are the highest star in the heavens, and I a worm of the earth! Permit me to kiss your venerated finger-tips.' Honour! Bah! get ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... she did not despise. He was a barbarian. He would kill what he loved; he would have his way with what he loved, whether or not it was the way of law or custom or right. Outside, the wedding song still made musical the night. Women's voices, shrill, and with falsetto notes, made the trees ring with it; low, bass voices gave it a kind of solemnity. The view which the encampment took of her captivity was clear. Where was the woman that brought her to the tent—whose tent it was? She seemed kind. Though her face had a hard look, surely she meant to be friendly. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Frenchman burst in with an entirely different time and key. Then one of the oar girls began a queer little melody on four notes only, and all the four women joined, one end of the boat answering the other. They sang through their noses, and high up in the falsetto. By shutting one's eyes one could imagine a great ox waggon drawn uphill by four bullocks and one of the wheels ungreased. Yet it was not unpleasing, this queer shrill, recurrent rhythm, the monotonous creak and splash of the oars, the mystery of feeling one's way in the blue gloom, ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... said to her, and repeated it with outstretched finger, "Tip, tip, Pete!" He spoke in a falsetto voice. Did he mean Peter? Did he take her for a man? Behind him on a pillow lay something hairy; it was a toupet; she now saw that he was bald on the crown. "Tip, tip, Pete!" she heard as she ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... less terror, to answer to the caressing name. Towards evening he had grown so familiar with his perilous position that he was half in love with its dangers, and his companion was so far tamed that she had caught the habit of turning to him when he called, in falsetto tones, "Mignonne!" ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... I have become resigned. I was born under an unlucky star, and the uninvited bad fairy at my christening, after the others had given me beauty, riches, and wit, hopped in malevolently upon her crutch and shouted in a disagreeable falsetto: 'He shall have all these, to be sure, but he shall have a poor digestion and the gout!' and whirled away on the evening ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... he asked in a drawling falsetto, looking at me out of grey eyes and smiling with ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... that day In all our drunken crew. 'Come along, Kit,' Cried Puff, 'we'll all be friends now, all take hands, And dance—ha! ha!—the shaking of the sheets!' Then Archer, shuffling a step, raised his cracked voice In Kit's own song to a falsetto tune, Snapping one hand, thus, over his ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... as he is called, of Roads and Bridges was my principal companion. He was generally intelligent, and could have spoken more or less falsetto on any of the trite topics; but it was his specialty to have a generous taste in eating. This was what was most indigenous in the man; it was here he was an artist; and I found in his company what I had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hardly the word. He was banging on the door like a wild man. "Police! Murder! Help!" he shouted in a high falsetto. ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... heartless, contemptuous air of a boy who scorns tears and girls, Job stood there; and, posing dramatically, sang in a falsetto voice: ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... progenitors, whose dust now mouldered in many churchyards. There was about her an amplitude of curve which, joined to a certain luxuriance of moulding, betrayed her sex even to a careless observer. And when she spoke, it was often with a fetishistic utterance in a monotheistic falsetto which almost had the effect of startling her relations ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... the family with falsetto-thunderous barks of challenge as they came down the drive from the highway. But he would frisk out in joyous welcome to meet and fawn upon tramps or peddlers who sought to invade The Place. He could scarce learn his own name. He could hardly be taught to obey the simplest ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... subjected. With regard to tenors, however, the great evil is, that with very few exceptions, such as the celebrated Frenchman, Roger, they disregard, or at any rate did disregard for a considerable period, the falsetto register, singing everything, however high, in chest voice. I am afraid it cannot be said even that they have been beguiled into this serious mistake by the imperceptible rise of pitch just mentioned, but the truth is that they have committed this fatal blunder knowingly and wilfully, because ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... that we yelled, and the figure dipped into the hollow, till, with a crash of rending grass, the lost one strode up to the light of the fire, and disappeared to the waist in a wave of joyous dogs! Then Learoyd and Ortheris gave greeting, bass and falsetto together, both swallowing a ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... at her back, with her arms straight out, and her toes turned in, but with a sweet smile upon her waxen face. They were evidently engaged in earnest conversation, for Susie kept speaking in her own voice for herself, and using a very shrill falsetto for Arabella, who, by the bye, appeared to reply only ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... high C if you were in ordinary health, but that your voice has been ill-used by a recent fever? It was Nina he was thinking of. Don't I remember how I used to hear him coming along the garden-paths in the Villa Reale—if there were few people about you could hear his vile falsetto a mile ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... wrong," he was saying in a shrill falsetto. "Stap me, the way of it was this! I have it on the best of authority and it comes direct, rot me if it doesn't! Sir Robert's man, Watkins, told Madame Bellevue's maid, from whom it came straight to Lord Pam's fellow and through him ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... sun he go down," spoke up one whose thin falsetto voice Joan recognized as belonging to Cosse, one of ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... aphony^, aphonia^; dumbness &c adj.; obmutescence^; absence of voice, want of voice; dysphony^; cacoepy^; silence &c (taciturnity) 585; raucity^; harsh voice &c 410, unmusical voice &c 414; falsetto, childish treble mute; dummy. V. keep silence &c 585; speak low, speak softly; whisper &c (faintness) 405. silence; render mute, render silent; muzzle, muffle, suppress, smother, gag, strike dumb, dumfounder; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... his stature, his limbs compose the least part of it. His hands and feet, forming some compensation by their ample proportions, with short, thick fins, vulgarly called a cobbler's thumb. His voice varying in cadence from a deep barytone, to a high falsetto, maintains throughout the distinctive characteristic of a Dublin accent and pronunciation, and he talks of the "Veel of Ovoca, and a beef-steek," with some price of intonation. What part of the Island he ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... of heavy ammunition boots outside on the stone step, followed by a cough that I believe I could recognize among a thousand. Narayan Singh coughs either of two ways—once, deep bass, for all's well; twice, almost falsetto, for a hint of danger. This time it was the single deep bass cough. But it was followed after half a minute by the two high-pitched barks, and Grim held up a hand for silence. At the end of perhaps a minute there came ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... solemnity handed them the pistols, which both the two young men received quietly. They were pale, but perfectly steady. The Major then asked them, "Gentlemen, are you ready?" whilst at the omnious sound George Washington's voice in tremulous falsetto, struck in, ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... heard an old friend of my mother’s murmur. ‘Her voice used to be so nice, and now it’s all gone!’ Taking in the situation at a glance, I threw my voice well up into my nose and started off on a well-known provincial song, in the shrill falsetto of our peasant women. The effect was instantaneous! Long before the end the performance was drowned in thunders of applause. Which proves that to be popular a singer must ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... A high falsetto voice from the gathering' audience cried: 'Oh, ye bad boy, come here till I skelp ye!'—and there was a general laugh, in which the hapless object did ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... in it for you, your reputation stands or falls on your decision! This is a public charge! The people rely upon you! If you won't, for some reason of your own, come to the rescue now, when you are publicly called upon, you'll be a ruined man!" The voice of the Boss ascended in a shrill falsetto of remonstrance. ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... "keeping it, I should say. Just imagine!" he added, pointing to the vinegar on the plate from which Lucia had been eating her artichoke, "pickling that falsetto of hers!" ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... to some inward monition of danger, of responsibility. "I be enough of a dead shot ter stop all that dad-burned talk of yourn!" he drawled in a languid, falsetto, spiritless voice, but with an odd intimation of a deadly intention. "Ye both done the deed the same ez ef ye hed pulled the trigger; ye holped ter plan it, an' kem along ter see it done an' lend a hand ef needed. Ye both done the deed the same ez me—that's the law, an' ye know it. ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... in ecstasy). Eh, lass, yer du keep us old 'uns in order. (He bursts into a falsetto chuckle, loses the note, blushes and buries ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... Mancini disagrees with Tosi and names only two. "Voices ordinarily divide themselves into two registers which are called, one of the chest, the other of the head, or falsetto." His method was to exercise the voice at first in the chest register, and then gradually to extend the compass of the voice upward. "Every student can for himself with perfect ease recognize the difference between these two separate registers. It will suffice therefore to commence by singing ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... sitting. The others had almost forgotten them in the darkness and exchanged frightened glances when they heard a voice that scarcely one of them knew, and the man with the glazed eyes and uncertain gestures, a marionette with broken joints, began to speak hastily in a falsetto like the ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... interrupted a voice, which began in a shrill falsetto and ended in a gruff bass, as a flushed, dusty, long-legged boy burst in, with a bleeding hand obligingly ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... sing comes he, knowing only the old refrains of the mountain, intones in an Arabic falsetto voice the complaint of the linen weaver; and then Ramuntcho, who had sung it the day before in the autumn twilight, sees again the darkened sky of yesterday, the clouds full of rain, the cart drawn by oxen going down into a sad and closed valley, toward a solitary farm—and ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... replenished when it began to dwindle by a band of workers in the moonlight beyond the open windows. In his effort to keep warm somebody had started a hymn, which was vigorously accompanied by a beating of numbed feet on the scattered husks on the floor. Above the volume of sound old Adam's quavering falsetto could be heard piping on like a ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... triumphant: and that English literature would be seriously impoverished without it. Certainly never was there a style which more fully justified the definition given by Buffon, in Sterne's own time, of style as "the very man." Falsetto, "faking," vamping, shoddy—all manner of evil terms may be heaped upon it without the possibility of completely clearing it from them. To some eyes it underlies them most when it is most ambitious, as in the Le Fevre story and the diatribe against critics. It leaves the court with all manner ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... council of the company were in high consultation concerning the most proper manner of opening a communication with the mysterious stranger; and the voice of Mr. Winterblossom, whose tones, originally fine, age had reduced to falsetto, was calling upon the whole party for "Order, order!" So that the bucks were obliged to lounge in silence, with both arms reclined on the table, and testifying, by coughs and yawns, their indifference to the matters in question, while the rest of the company debated ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... which Macleod was familiar, but a grand apartment, filled with old armor, and pictures, and cabinets, and showing glimpses of a balcony and fair gardens beyond. There were two figures in this hall, and they spoke—in the high and curious falsetto of the stage. Macleod paid no more heed to them than if they had been marionettes. For one thing, he could not follow their speech very well; but, in any case, what interest could he have in listening to this old lawyer explaining to the stout lady that the family ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... high falsetto voice and with greater deliberation than ever] was mad, how did he know that the boy asked questions? Nobody can go and whisper secrets to a mad bull. I don't believe ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... more honest, proceeds by direct attack; Dreiser is to be disposed of by a moral attentat. Its leaders are two more professors, Stuart P. Sherman and H. W. Boynton, and in its ranks march the lady critics of the newspapers, with much shrill, falsetto clamour. Sherman is the only one of them who shows any intelligible reasoning. Boynton, as always, is a mere parroter of conventional phrases, and the objections of the ladies fade imperceptibly into a pious indignation which is indistinguishable ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... concluding word would be nu—bla—do, and so on, according to the weather. From all the streets, from all over the town, the long-drawn calls would float to my listening ears, with infinite variety in the voices—the high and shrill, the falsetto, the harsh, raucous note like the caw of the carrion crow, the solemn, booming bass, and then some fine, rich, pure voice that soared heavenwards above all the others and was like the pealing notes of ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... fallen into a more sentimental strain; hints of "The Mocking Bird" might be heard struggling for utterance in the strings. In this ambitious attempt the pitch would get lower and lower, and then recover itself with a queer falsetto effect. Charley Leroy, the crack "bronco-buster" of the region, was caller-out this time. He was less inventive than the curly-headed boy, but he gave out his commands in the same chanting measure, and the tramp, tramp of the feet was as rhythmic ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... I sitting in the middle, and a Mrs. Samuel sitting in the stern. Mrs. Samuel was a powerful, pretty lady, and a conscientious and continuous paddler. Mr. S. was none of these things, but an ex-Bible reader, with an amazing knowledge of English, which he spoke in a quaint, falsetto, far-away sort of voice, and that man's besetting sin was curiosity. "You be Christian, ma?" said he. I asked him if he had ever met a white man who was not. "Yes, ma," says Samuel. I said "You must have been ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the diddling drone of Piqueur's quavering voice. In the clear sweetness of the May morning above the twittering of the birds it raised itself, the quaint measures delighting her ears. Even in Piqueur's thin falsetto the old melody sang itself—tender, graceful, spirited, never lagging—he was dropping pea seeds into the trench that Margot had prepared in the kitchen dooryard, he was always content when he ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... preliminary coquetry, after the manner of tenors. First he feared he was hoarse; then struck a note or two on the piano, and tried his falsetto; then asked for a glass of water; and finally begged that one of the young ladies would be so ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... intentness and was pointing upward at the overhanging boughs of a tree above their heads. A squirrel was poised thereon, gazing down motionless. Then, suddenly—a frightful thing happened. The creature seemed to speak. A strange falsetto voice, such as might befit so eerie a chance, sounded on the air—loud, distinct, heard far up the slope, and electrifying the assemblage near at hand that was gathering about the stand and awaiting ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... ecstasies, and I wish I could only give an idea of the helmsman's musical method. This latter worthy had easy steering to do, so he joined in; he was fond of variety, and he sang some lines in a high falsetto which sounded like the whistling of the gaff (with perhaps a touch of razor-grinding added); then just when you expected him to soar off at a tangent to Patti's topmost A, he let his voice fall to his boots, and emitted a most bloodcurdling ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... add confidence, audacity, and effrontery; as for diffidence, equity, moderation, and shame, you will please leave them at home; they are not merely needless, they are encumbrances. The loudest voice you can come by, please, a ready falsetto, and a gait modelled on my own. That exhausts the real necessaries; very often there would be no occasion for anything further. But I recommend bright colours or white for your clothes; the Tarentine stuff that lets the body show through is best; for shoes, wear either ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... come next Thanksgiving," replied the old man, promptly, in a thin asthmatic falsetto. "I recollect your mother used to say it dated from the time your Aunt Hannah was ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... do as he liked with it!" said a mild, piping falsetto; "And so far, he has made it beau-ti-ful!—beau-ti-ful!" carved with traceries of natural fruit and foliage, which were scarcely injured by the devastating mark of time. But rough and sacrilegious hands had been at work to spoil and deface ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... hand upon the stage, for the poor fellow was feeble, the moment he got himself erect with his face to the audience, he plunged into his song, if song it could be called, executed in a cracked and strained falsetto. The result, enhanced by the nature of the song, which was extremely pathetic and dubiously moral, must have been excruciation to every good ear and every sensitive nature. Long before the relief of its close arrived Hester ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... was not pleasant to think, and I tried not to think, what Mr. Jaffrey's condition would be if the weather did not mend its manners by noon; but so far from clearing off at noon, the storm increased in violence, and as night set in the wind whistled in a spiteful falsetto key, and the rain lashed the old tavern as if it were a balky horse that refused to move on. The windows rattled in the worm-eaten frames, and the doors of remote rooms, where nobody ever went, slammed ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... like two angry meteors; but she merely bowed and laughed; and the laugh was echoed by the dwarf in his shrillest falsetto. ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... a God that Hidest Thyself," there is an abundance of fictitious emotion and spurious rhetoric. From beginning to end there is a painful strain that never relaxes, reminding us of singers who pitch their voices too high and have to render all the upper notes in falsetto. An attempt is made to employ poetical imagery, but it ludicrously fails. The heaven of the Book of Revelation, with its gold and silver and precious stones, is nothing but a magnified jeweller's shop, and a study of it has influenced ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote |
