"Fiddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Jaybird died wid de Whoopin' Cough, De Bluebird died wid de Measles; 'Long come a Nigger wid a fiddle on his back, 'Vitin' Crows fer ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... haven't turned a hair. We are as fit as a fiddle," they exclaimed, and looked anything ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... sate on a garden gate And a snapdog fared beneath; Careless and free was his mien, and he Held a fiddle-string ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... sound of banjo and fiddle, as one by one the dusky musicians from the cabins ranged themselves along the wall of the big room, which had been cleared of its furnishings, and young feet came hurrying in when the old Virginia reel sounded through, the low rooms, calling ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... Middleton had become calm, he proceeded to enumerate to Mr. Miller the many good qualities of Mr. Wilmot. Said he, "He was a capital feller; allus just so. Lively as a cricket; none of your stuck-up, fiddle-faddle notions. And then he was such a good boarder—not a bit particular what he eat; why, he was the greatest kind of a man—eat corn bread, turnip ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... bullfrog's croak, the craft that Sam Williams had lately mastered to inspiring perfection. This sonorous accomplishment Penrod had determined to make his own. At once guttural and resonant, impudent yet plaintive, with a barbaric twang like the plucked string of a Congo war-fiddle, the sound had fascinated him. It is made in the throat by processes utterly impossible to describe in human words, and no alphabet as yet produced by civilized man affords the symbols to vocalize it to the ear of imagination. "Gunk" is the poor makeshift ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... derelict in the streets of a far city,—those two atoms shaken into contact while the gods affected to be engaged with weightier matters,—the cultured widow of that derelict recalled the name of a gentleman in the East who was accustomed to buy tall clocks and fiddle-backed chairs, in her native New England, paying prices therefor to make one, in that conservative locality, rich beyond the dreams ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... to the cheek; how sweet the music of maiden voices rising upon the wintry air, and the tumbling of glossy curls underneath the hoods and sealskin caps as they sped through the delightful hours. Tullie Wasson was out there with his string band—Tullie with his old black fiddle, and Jim Grey with his cornet, and his son with his wondrous bass violin, and Tullie knew all the good old tunes, and a few fancy waltzes and polkas, but he was at his best in the Virginia Reel, and it was a pretty sight to see the joyous couples ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... into the meadows and woods a half day's journey for our disport, how then? For that once, said Sir Aymeris, I should bid them disobey their lady. Said Birdalone: And how if they disobeyed thee, and obeyed me? Quoth Sir Aymeris: If they bring thee back safe, they may chance to sing to the twiggen fiddle-bow, that they may be warned from such folly; but if they come back without thee, by All-hallows the wind of wrath shall ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... shot-silk quality, and is all the finer for that. When people talk of a horse as an ugly animal I think of its beautiful moments, but when I hear a flow of indiscriminate praise of its beauty I think of such an aspect as one gets for example from a dog-cart, the fiddle-shaped back, and that distressing blade of the neck, the narrow clumsy place between the ears, and the ugly glimpse of cheek. There is, indeed, no beauty whatever save that transitory thing that comes and comes again; all beauty is really the beauty of expression, is really kinetic and momentary. ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... manor; and we must not forget Don Saltero and his famous coffee-house, the oddities of which Steele pleasantly sketched in the Tatler. The Don was famous for his skill in brewing punch and for his excellent playing on the fiddle. Saltero was a barber, who drew teeth, drew customers, wrote ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... as sweet as a dream And the fiddle that climbs to the sky, With head 'neath the curtain she stares out—O hark! The music so ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... "Fiddle-fiddle," cried the old man. "Don't bring sentimental women into this, Davy. As I was saying, Victor ought to be punished for the way he's been stirring up idle, lazy, ignorant people against the men that runs the community and gives 'em ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... ribbons on her hat, the little gold curls on her temples, in a pretty many-coloured turmoil about her. When she got to Burwood she shut herself into the room which was peculiarly hers, the room which had been a stable. Now it was full of artistic odds and ends—her fiddle, of course, and piles of music, her violin stand, a few deal tables and cane chairs beautified by a number of chiffons, bits of Liberty stuffs with the edges still ragged, or cheap morsels of Syrian embroidery. On the tables stood photographs of musicians and friends—the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... time. The other musical instrument (if either of them deserve that name) was a hollow vessel of wood, like a platter, combined with the use of two sticks, on which one of our gentlemen saw a man performing. He held one of the sticks, about two feet long, as we do a fiddle with one hand, and struck it with the other, which was smaller, and resembled a drum-stick, in a quicker or slower measure; at the same time beating with his foot upon the hollow vessel that lay inverted upon the ground, and thus producing ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... should have thought that you knew him better than that, Manutoli. To him a woman is a voice, and nothing else. If the same sounds could be got out of a flute or a fiddle he would like it much better, and think it far more convenient. I don't think my uncle Lamberto ever knew whether a woman was pretty or plain. I wish to heaven he would get caught for once in his life; it would suit my book very well. ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... recollect the Chinaman wolfing his right out of the can and tipping it cornerwise to drink the ile. Bar Coe, he was the coolest customer of the lot, which was the more remarkable, as he was a mild-mannered man ordinarily, given to playing the China fiddle to himself, and very obliging if you wanted fresh yeast or the way he curried pigeon. Rau, the Belgian, with his hairy arms and stubby figure, struck one somehow as being more in his element in so wild ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... when the audience, late in the evening, had suddenly demanded a popular song from Mr. Nokes, he (Triplet), seeing the orchestra thinned by desertion, and nugatory by intoxication, had started from the pit, resuscitated with the whole contents of his snuff-box the bass fiddle, snatched the leader's violin, and carried Mr. Nokes triumphantly through; that thunders of applause had followed, and Mr. Nokes had kindly returned thanks for both; but that he (Triplet) had hastily retired to evade the manager's acknowledgments, ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... sitting in a window, facing each other. He looked out toward the west, and presently was lost in thought. He folded his arms tightly across his breast, and his eyes were a hundred miles away. The sound of a fiddle in the long alley which led from the house to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... his hostelry were frequently entertained with music from that instrument. The virginal (a small rectangular spinet without legs) was the most common of instruments known to have been in possession of the colonists, while they also owned and played the fiddle, both small and large, the cornet, the recorder (a flageolet or old type of flute), the flute and the hautboy. These instruments in the hands of music lovers, frequently self-taught for the most part, entertained the planters' ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... through the cattle-dealer's thick head that he was the man to get hold of. When they had driven the red man into a corner, so that he couldn't lie himself out of it, he turned against Jost, and declared that Jost had planned the whole thing and that he himself had only played second-fiddle. Which can lie the worst, no one can tell, but that they are both reaping what they have sown, is certain enough. And now we're to have a wedding, are we? and our Dietrich is going to settle down into regular ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri
... comes the Times and eleven strikes (it does) already, and I have to go to Town, and I have no alternative but that this story of the Critic and Poet, 'the Bear and the Fiddle,' should 'begin but break off in the middle'; yet I doubt—nor will you henceforth, I know, say, 'I vex you, I am sure, by this lengthy writing.' Mind that spring is coming, for all this snow; and know ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... silver-plated wedding ring. The nuns had presented a supply of skim-milk and butter. Mr. Spear provided jam, pickles, and coal-oil for the lamps. The Mounted Police contributed two dollars to pay for the "band"—the fiddle and the concertina—and ammunition enough for the feu de joie. The friends and relations had given a plentiful store of fresh, dried, and pounded fish; and had also furnished a lavish supply of moose, caribou, ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... used in the musical accompaniment of the hula ku'i are the guitar, the uku-lele,[501] the taro-patch fiddle,[501] or the mandolin; the piano also lends itself effectively for this purpose; or a combination of these ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... with a dream, And I hear the tones from voices like the murmur of a stream; And oh, the heart seems young again and from its anguish free When I gaze upon these pictures that are ever dear to me; Then I see the darkies dancing, I can hear the fiddle ring As they gathered in the cabin and they cut the pigeon-wing; I can smell the 'possum roasting, I can see the cider flow, When memory takes me back again to scenes I used ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... in a dress of state, part of which consisted of a swallow-tail coat (with an overgrown chrysanthemum in the buttonhole), a red necktie, and a pink-and-silver liberty cap of tissue-paper. He was scraping a fiddle "like old times come again," and the tune he played was, "Oh, my Liza, po' gal!" My feet shuffled to it in ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... sampled: had tramped through Ireland with a fiddle; through Scotland with a lecture on Palestine, assisted by dissolving views; had been a billiard-marker; next a schoolmaster. For the last three months he had been a journalist, dramatic and musical ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... gave chase again. He ran and ran, but this time he couldn't catch the fox up; so he returned home and wept bitterly, because he was now all alone. At last, however, he dried his tears and got him a little fiddle, a little fiddle-bow, and a big sack, and went to the fox's hole and ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... have two sweethearts, then—one from the city and one from the country, a married woman and this poor girl," said he, in a jeering tone; "does little Reine know that she is playing second fiddle?" ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... little smile play about the corners of his thin pale lips. Obligingly he gave Dan lessons, and often the young man would accompany him, in the songs his mother had known and loved in her youth, when old Peter had come wooing with fiddle ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... not very well-devised beginnings. At the fifth Sir Richmond was suddenly conclusive. "It's no use," he said, "I can't fiddle about any more with ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... "'Fiddle-de-dee!' I replied to this fine speech. 'What you call duty, I call curiosity. I am ravenously hungry, and I wish you would finish dressing and let us ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... shamefaced and downcast. Next came the aged parents; the father too was only a servant about the farm, and the hovel, the furniture, and the clothing, all bore witness that their poverty was extreme. A dirty, squinting musician followed the train, who kept grinning and screaming, and scratching his fiddle, which was patched together of wood and pasteboard, and instead of strings had three bits of pack-thread. The procession halted when his honour, their new master, came up to them. Some mischief-loving servants, young lads and girls, tittered ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... sa, like a fiddle, and hope a please you when we get you through sa. Old 'ooman at home sa:' chuckling very much. 'Outside gentleman sa, he often remember old 'ooman at ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... song. Then he says, pointing to one of the players, "and the first violin played this simple melody," whereupon the two sing the verse over again, the player imitating with his arms the movements of a violin player, and with his voice the sound of a squeaking fiddle. Then the conductor says, pointing to another player, "and the big trombone played this simple melody." Then the three sing together, the second player imitating the sound of a trombone and the appearance of a trombone player. This ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... mill-house all the children of the village sang and laughed, and ate the big round cakes of Dijon and the almond gingerbread of Brabant, and danced in the great barn to the light of the stars and the music of flute and fiddle. ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)
... is a low house at the side of a ravine, down whose steep slope the beech forest steps persistently erect, as if distrusting gravitation. Thirty Confederates had gathered in that house at a country-side frolic, and the fiddle sang deep in the night. The mountain girls are very pretty, having dark, opalescent eyes, with a touch of gold in them at a side glance, slight, rather too fragile figures, and the singular purity of complexion peculiar ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... forgotten most of it, but I remember one fact: that certain students of theology came to ask him whether he believed in free will, and, if so, how he could reconcile it with necessity. On hearing the question St. Francis's follower reflected a little while and then seized a fiddle and began capering and dancing about the garden, playing a wild tune and generally expressing a violent and invigorating indifference. The tune is not recorded, but it is the eternal chorus of mankind, that modifies all the arts ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... looked at Dr Lefevre in puzzled inquiry; but the doctor was considering the electrical apparatus before him, and the young man set off on his errands. When he returned with the fiddle-bow and the tuning-fork, he saw Lefevre had placed the machine ready, with ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... down to write my story for you, the life-story of old Rosin the Beau, your friend and true lover. Some day, not far distant now, my fiddle and I shall be laid away, in the quiet spot you know and love; and then (for you will miss me, Melody, well I know that!) this writing will be read to you, and you will hear my voice still, and will learn to know me better ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... reminds me to tell you, that I am not the author of the book called the Scottish Fiddle, which I have barely seen. The name alone, if you had known me, would have convinced you that I could not have been the author. I had made quite mistakes enough about Sir Walter, not to have to answer for this too. I took him for a mere courtier and political ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... circumspect walk hereafter, Satan could take little advantage by what was come and gane. And, indeed, my gudesire, of his ain accord, lang forswore baith the pipes and the brandy—it was not even till the year was out, and the fatal day past, that he would so much as take the fiddle or ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... a small chamber set apart for music practice, the only furniture it contained being a piano, a chair, some fiddle-cases, and music-stands, while on the mantelpiece, in the place of a clock, was a metronome that had something wrong with the works. Jack, however, had no eye for these details; his attention was centred in a group of boys who were struggling under the single gas-jet, ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... is going to church on Sunday morning and betting on where the veteran soprano in the choir is going to hang on to the key or skid on the high turns. You laugh at me because I can't eat down-town unless I am encouraged by a bull fiddle, and because I gulp at free concert tickets like a young robin swallowing worms. But if most of your life had been spent listening to Mrs. Sim Estabrook jumping for middle C about as successfully as a dog jumps for a squirrel ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... a Man is deprest with Cares, The Mist is dispell'd when a Woman appears; Like the Notes of a Fiddle, she sweetly, sweetly Raises the Spirits, and charms our Ears, Roses and Lilies her Cheeks disclose, But her ripe Lips are more sweet than those. Press her, Caress her, With Blisses, Her Kisses Dissolve us in Pleasure, ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... "I wish they would not say anything kind and pleasant and cheap. At college they praised my verses, and the theatres stole my music for the Pudding play, and the girls giggled over my sketches. And now, at twenty-six, I don't know whether I want to fiddle, or to write an epic, or to model, or to paint. I am a victim of ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... "Fiddle!" cried the iron pillars of the deep, dark hold. "Who ever heard of curves? Stand up straight; be a perfectly round column, and carry tons of good solid weight—like that! There!" A big sea smashed on the deck above, and the pillars stiffened ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... those noble sciences. He becomes a compleat connoisseur in dressing hair, and in adorning his own person, under the hands and instructions of his barber and valet de chambre. If he learns to play upon the flute or the fiddle, he is altogether irresistible. But he piques himself upon being polished above the natives of any other country by his conversation with the fair sex. In the course of this communication, with which he is indulged from his tender years, he learns like a parrot, by rote, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... to do in life besides feeding lions," he said; and taking up his fiddle he became interested in it. He played it all the way across the Atlantic, and everyone said there was no reason why he should not play in the opera house. But an interview with the music conductor dispelled illusions. Ned ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... the Finola," said Conroy, "is no earthly good to me. What I want is something that will put me into a nervous sweat, the same as I was when I was up against Ikenstein and the railway bosses. My nerves were like damned fiddle strings for a fortnight when I didn't know whether I was going to come out a pauper or the owner of the biggest pile mortal ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... you for a pumpkin, no one would contradict her. You puff and blow like a seal when you come upstairs; your paunch rises and falls like the diamond on a woman's forehead! It is pretty plain that you served in the dragoons; you are a very ugly-looking old man. Fiddle-de-dee. If you have any mind to keep my respect, I recommend you not to add imbecility to these qualities by imagining that such a girl as I am will be content with your asthmatic love, and not look for youth and good looks and pleasure ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... pickaninny found a swamp blackbird's nest, and showed her how strangely it was made; then they climbed down the chimney of the school-house, and he showed her how the chimney swallow glued her nest together; and he coaxed a katydid to fiddle with his wings, that she might see that. At last they entered ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... young prince as I find him, coz: a Julian, or a Caracalla: a Constantine, or a Nero. Then, if he will play the fiddle to a conflagration, he shall play it well: if he must be a disputatious apostate, at any rate he shall understand logic and men, and have the habit of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... pityingly after him. "We let him try to help us because it seems to amuse him, but he really doesn't know how to work with his hands. His fingers were made for the fiddle." ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... looks of you, I should say it was wearing your nerves to fiddle-strings. Ever take ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... yet completed. The feet remained to be "preserved," and the mode of curing these was entirely different. That was a secret known only to Swartboy, and in the execution of it the Bushman played first fiddle, with the important air of a chef de cuisine. He proceeded ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... nothing to do but exist as cheerfully as might be until the weather improved. The wet had shrunk canvas and rope gear till the tent-guys were as taut as fiddle-strings; and as it did not seem to have occurred to any of the servants to attend to this, an immediate tour of the camp had to be undertaken, in "rubbers" and waterproofs, to slack off guys and inspect the drainage system, as we had no wish to have our earthen floor—already sufficiently ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... As a fiddle and tambourine band were sitting among the company, Quickear suggested why not strike up? 'Ah, la'ads!' said a negro sitting by the door, 'gib the jebblem a darnse. Tak' yah ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... "Fiddle-de-dee! Do give over snuffing and snivelling and sobbing, and tell me if you want your warm petticoat in the saddle-bag. You'd make a saint for to swear!" More sobs, and one or two disjointed words, were all that came in answer. The sobbing sister, who ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... with shade trees and gardens, and the sloping lawns blazed with flowers. My mother said it was much prettier than Kaskaskia; not crowded with traffic; not overrun with foreigners. Everybody seemed to be making a fete, to be visiting or receiving visits. At sunset the fiddle and the banjo began their melody. The young girls would gather at Barbeau's or Le Compt's or Pensonneau's—at any one of a dozen places, and the young men would follow. It was no trouble to have a dance every evening, and on feast days ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Spectator; the first was Bowman's, in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill. Lloyd's, in Lombard Street, was dear to Steele and Addison. At Don Saltero's, by the river at Chelsea, Mr. Salter exhibited his collection of curiosities and delighted himself, and no one else, by playing the fiddle. At the "Smyrna" Prior and Swift were wont to receive their acquaintances. From the "St. James's," the last house but one on the south-west corner of St. James's Street, the Tatler dated its foreign and domestic news, and conferred fame on its waiter, Mr. Kidney, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Cockrell saw this salty relic of the Spanish Main among the crew which had disported itself on the tavern green at Charles Town,—the old man sitting aside with a couple of stray children upon his knees while his head nodded to the lilt of the fiddle. And again there had been a glimpse of him trudging in the column which had followed Stede Bonnet, with trumpet and drum, to attack the hostile Indians. Jack's heart warmed to Trimble Rogers and also to young Bill Saxby. They would find some way out ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... vibration going There in your heart, and that is you. And if the people find you can fiddle, Why, fiddle you must, for all your life. What do you see, a harvest of clover? Or a meadow to walk through to the river? The wind's in the corn; you rub your hands For beeves hereafter ready for market; Or else you hear the rustle of skirts Like the girls ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... households of the absent soldiery quite willing to be consoled and comforted. There were bright lights, therefore, further along the edge of the steep, beyond those of the hospital, and the squeak of fiddle and drone of 'cello, mingled with the plaintive piping of the flute, were heard at intervals through the silence of the wintry night. No tramp of sentry broke the hush about the little rift between the heights—the ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... as yet too early to light the fire or go for the cows. Ted crept softly to a corner in the garret and took from the wall an old brown fiddle. It had been his father's. He loved to play on it, and his few rare spare moments were always spent in the garret corner or the hayloft, with his precious fiddle. It was his one link with the old life he had lived in a little cottage far away, with ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... out of memory is a commentary on my memory; just the same, a character as well named as Chip should, if he have substance beyond his name, leave an impression even on weak memories. B. M. Bower was a woman, Bower being the name of her first husband. A Montana cowpuncher named "Fiddle Back" Sinclair was her second, and Robert Ellsworth Cowan became the third. Under the name of Bud Cowan he published a book of reminiscences entitled Range Rider (Garden City, N. Y., 1930). B. M. Bower wrote a slight introduction to it; neither ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... in her sole charge, she would doubtless have done her duty to him but to stand by and see another doing it? No! a thousand times no! That part, insignificant in itself, and yet often one of the very sweetest and most useful in life's harmonies, familiarly called "second fiddle," was a part impossible to be ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... thought this very doubtful, but added proudly: "Powerful as their force may be, they shall not with impunity make any great attacks. Mine is compact, theirs must be unwieldy, and although a very pretty fiddle, I don't believe that either Gravina or Villeneuve know how to play upon it." On the 9th he for the first time got accurate information. An official letter from Dominica[102] announced that eighteen ships-of-the-line, with smaller ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... gallipots of the Athenian apothecaries; the grotesque figures of owls and apes were painted on their exterior, but they contained within precious balsams. The man of genius amidst many a circle may exclaim with Themistocles, "I cannot fiddle, but I can make a little village a great city;" and with Corneille, he may be allowed to smile at his own deficiencies, and even disdain to please in certain conventional manners, asserting that "wanting all these things, he was ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... love me?" questioned Lottie Drugg, returning the embrace. "I wish I could hear you. But I can't hear father any more—nor his fiddle; only when he makes it quiver. Then I know it's crying. Did you know a fiddle could cry? You come home with me. Father will play the fiddle for you, ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... giving lessons on the flute, on the guitar, and in teaching French during the day, and at night was engaged as second violin in the orchestra of the Opera House; so that he had many strings to his bow, besides those of his fiddle. His wife, a pretty little lively woman, taught young ladies to make flowers in wax, and mended lace in the evenings. They were a very amiable and amusing couple, always at good-natured warfare with each other, and sparring all day long, from the time they met until they parted. Their ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... But—that kind a' stuff!—it takes a mighty deal of cross-cornered swearing to turn it into property. The only way ye can drive the peg in so the lawyers won't get hold on't, is by sellin' out to old Graspum-Norman, I mean—he does up such business as fine as a fiddle. Make the best strike with him ye can—he's as tough as a knot on nigger trade!—and, if there's any making property out on 'em, he's just the tinker ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... darling! (God! it went through my flesh as thrilling sound Must shake a fiddle when the strings are snatcht! Will she make the life in me all a slave Of my kist body,—a trembling, eager slave? It ran like a terror to my heart, the sense, The shivering delight upon my skin, Of her lips touching me.) My beloved,— It may be it were wise, that we took care ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... miles away, it was odd that he should be wandering aimlessly about thus. Besides, he had on his new Prince Albert, and there was a suspicion of a formal call in the smoothly oiled hair and tallowed boots. He carried his fiddle, too. There was to my mind every evidence that the visit had been preconceived, and to this point had been carried out with an eye on every detail. Had the contrary been true, there would have been no cause for Perry ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... sigh within their graves, waiting for the day of judgment. In one place there is a story that on a hill at Garun people used to hear very beautiful music. This was played by the elves, or hill folk, and any one who had a fiddle, and went there, and promised the elves that they should be saved, was taught in a moment how to play; but those who mocked them, and told them they could never be saved, used to hear the poor elves, inside the hill, ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... that better than you can tell me, Tony, but 'tis such an easy way to get a living; I could enjoy such glorious indolence; could fish, and hunt, and shoot, and play the fiddle, and attend feasts and merry-makings, with such a happy consciousness of being found in the path of duty, that it would give a double zest to enjoyment. Now don't be envious, my dear demure cousin, and forestall me in my project. I am sure to gain my father's consent. ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... The 'fiddle' immediately put his instrument under his arm, and, touching the brim of his napless hat, scraped a sort of bow, and smilingly asked the cook to name any ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life," in order to get into the presence of his father's winter-worn locks, and spread a humid veil of darkness around his expectations; but he was always promptly sent back to the cold charity of the combat again; he learned to play the fiddle, and made a name for himself in that line; he had dwelt among the wild tribes; he had philosophized about the despoilers of the kingdoms of the earth, and found out—the cunning creature —that they refer their differences to the learned ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... will but do something all day long Either do not think, or do not love to think Equally forbid insolent contempt, or low envy and jealousy Even where you are sure, seem rather doubtful Every virtue, has its kindred vice or weakness Fiddle-faddle stories, that carry no information along with them Flattery of women Forge accusations against themselves Forgive, but not approve, the bad. Frank, open, and ingenuous exterior, with a prudent interior Gain the affections as well as the esteem Generosity often runs into profusion Go ...
— Widger's Quotations from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son • David Widger
... 'All I tell you is, that you are twenty-three years old, and I won't tell you anything, nor assist your unwholesome desire to be second fiddle.' ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... summer, my child! Who can say how rich we shall be next summer? A party could be given in this barn with mother to play the piano and Mr. Popham the fiddle. The refreshments would be incredibly weak lemonade, and I think we might 'solicit' the cake, as they do ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... yer might as well talk of a popgun a holding its own with a Krupp. 'Ow the brains and the ochre got fust ladled hout is a bit beyond me, But to fancy as them as has got 'em will part is dashed fiddle-de-dee. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... Seaton had been caught near his home by a sudden shower while on horseback, and had dashed in for shelter. While the rain beat outside and while Shiro was preparing one of his famous suppers, Crane had suggested that she pass the time by playing his "fiddle." Dorothy realized, with the first sweep of the bow, that she was playing a Stradivarius, the like of which she had played before only in her dreams. She forgot her listeners, forgot the time and the place, and poured out in her music all ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... of nothing, and began to swear at the virtuous fits of that silly Republic, which, in his opinion, rendered all government impossible. To think of such foolish fiddle-faddle stopping a man of his acumen and strength! How on earth can one govern men if one is denied the use of money, that sovereign means of sway? And he laughed bitterly; for the idea of an idyllic country where all great enterprises would be carried ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... can only work in one way, it can only produce one kind of result (genetic character), but the particular form or quality (Lamarckian "acquired character") of the result will depend upon the hand that works the machine (environment), just as the quality of the sound produced by a fiddle depends entirely upon the hand which plays upon it. It would be improper to apply the term "mutation" to those genetic characters which are not new characters or new variants of old characters, but such genetic characters are of the same nature as those characters to which the term mutation ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... in him till being persuaded to play the fiddle he sat in the "social room," and sawed away on "Honest John," "The Devil's Dream," "Haste to the Wedding," and "The Fisher's Hornpipe." He lost all sense of being a millionnaire, and returned to ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... trees torn out by the roots, from which keel boat and pirogues sheered safely off. For the first time in history the Missouri resounded to the Fourth of July guns; and round camp-fire the men danced to the strains of a voyageur's fiddle. Usually, among forty men is one traitor, and Liberte must desert on pretence of running back for a knife; but perhaps the fellow took fright from the wild yarns told by the lonely-eyed, shaggy-browed, ragged trappers who came floating down the Platte, down the Osage, ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... the sofa, on which he sprawled at length. "My good child, your nerves are like fiddle-strings after a frost. Remind me to make you up a tonic when we get back! Did ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... improve acquaintance in the open air; but towards nightfall the wind freshened, the rain began to fall, and the sea rose so high that it was difficult to keep one's footing on the deck. I have spoken of our concerts. We were indeed a musical ship's company, and cheered our way into exile with the fiddle, the accordion, and the songs of all nations. Good, bad, or indifferent—Scottish, English, Irish, Russian, German or Norse,—the songs were received with generous applause. Once or twice, a recitation, very spiritedly rendered in a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his teacher Orphy falls upon hard times, but eventually his talent is recognized by a professor of music who takes him to Europe, and there, under peculiar circumstances, he plays on his home-made gourd fiddle before no less a personage ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... Ruth," sighed Helen, "what a business woman you are getting to be. Your career has really begun—and so promisingly. While I can't do a thing but play the fiddle a little, daub a little at batik, ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... and offered to do business with me at a fiddle.{6} "Tush, tush," said Peter Principal to the increasing multitude which now barred our passage, "we are only come to take a look, and watch the operation of the market." "Dividend hunters{7} I suppose," said a knowing looking fellow, sarcastically, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... favour with him, chuckled at his cleverness, had nearly disconcerted the poor boy; however, he was naturally resolute, and replied, "If I can do nothing else I can snuff candles, or deliver a message, or do anything that young lads do." "You can indeed?" "Yes, sir, and I can do more, I can play the fiddle and sing a good song." "A good song! I dare say—but d——d badly I'll answer for it." "Won't you give me a fair trial, sir?" "Fair trial indeed!" repeated the old man laughing, and walking on a step—"fair ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... face in his hands. "That was ignorance, an' I'm payin' for it by havin' you turn away an' snap my future like a fiddle string! Oh, how could my hand a-struck yoh ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... them muttered. Each of them thought far more than he uttered. One crow asked the other crow a riddle. One crow asked the other crow a riddle: The muttering crow Asked the stuttering crow, "Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle? Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle?" "Bee-cause," said the other crow, "Bee-cause, B B B B B B B B B B B B ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... of it in his address. His grandfather had married a French lady, and although this union had not sensibly diluted the Westcote blood, Endymion would refer to it to palliate a youthful taste for playing the fiddle. He spoke French fluently, with a British accent which, when appointed Commissary, he took pains to improve by conversation with the prisoners, and was fond of discussing heredity with the two most distinguished of them—the Vicomte ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of Paris, in time of war, and in thousands of other rooms, whose window-curtains were drawn to veil their light from hostile aircraft, the people who come to Paris as the great university of intellect and emotion, continued their studies and their way of life, with vibrations of fiddle-strings and scraping of palettes and adventures ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... there was his wife, and the slip of a girl who bowled over Blake there, and half a dozen ragged brats; and a fellow on a tramp, not a gipsy—some runaway apprentice, I take it, but a jolly dog—with no luggage but an old fiddle on which he scraped away uncommonly well, and set Blake making rhymes as we sat in the tent. You never heard any of his songs. Here's one for each of us; we're going to get up the characters and sing them about the country;—now for a ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... well attested stories of some Negroes flinging themselves at the feet of an European playing on a fiddle, entreating him to desist, unless he had a mind to tire them to death; it being impossible for them to cease dancing, while he continued playing. Such is the irresistible ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... at the corn-shucking; In Virginia, the planter's son returning after a long absence, joyfully welcomed and kissed by the aged mulatto nurse. On rivers, boatmen safely moored at nightfall, in their boats, under shelter of high banks, Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle—others sit on the gunwale, smoking and talking; Late in the afternoon the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal Swamp-there are the greenish waters, the resinous odour, the plenteous moss, the cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree. —Northward, young men of ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... fiddle;—not in the concerts—but every where else, and the company would not spare me twenty minutes together. Sunday I dedicated to the drawing up my sketch of education, which I meant to publish, to try to get a school!" He speaks of "the thrice lovely valley of Ilam; a vale hung with beautiful woods ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... can manage this thing without help. He only wanted to open your eyes a little, and get you ready for your day's work. You fellows who fiddle around with a few goods need waking up occasionally. Now, Toll, go off and let the General get up. I must have a railroad before night, or I shall not be able to ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... Sat the Parliament-house, To hatch the royal gull; After much fiddle-faddle The egg proved addle, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... circular picture in chiaroscuro among the arabesques of the cappella nova in the cathedral at Orvieto. It represents the youthful Orpheus crowned with the laureate wreath playing before Pluto and Proserpine upon a fiddle or crowd of antique pattern. At his feet lies Eurydice, while around are spirits of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Applebite, about ten o'clock on the following evening, was seated on a sofa, between Mrs. Greatgirdle and Mrs. Waddledot (the two mamas deputed to open the campaign), each with a cup of very prime Mocha coffee, and a massive fiddle-pattern tea-spoon. On the opposite side of the room, in a corner, was a very large cage, in the sole occupancy of a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... country-sides of the world human nature beats with exactly the same pulse. If a change come, it comes slowly and it changes all together, so that all are still alike. In the small towns novel-reading has been considered about as contemptuously as playing the fiddle, though admitted to be less dangerous than family card-playing. It was estimated that a novel-reader was confirming his indolence, and in danger of coming to the poor-house; a fiddler was prophesied to get ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... very comfortable here,—listening to that d——d monologue, which elderly gentlemen call conversation, and in which my pious father-in-law repeats himself every evening—save one, when he played upon the fiddle. However, they have been very kind and hospitable, and I like them and the place vastly, and I hope they will live many happy months. Bell is in health, and unvaried good-humour and behaviour. But we are ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... he was using Dryfoos, when Dryfoos was using him, and he may have supposed he was not afraid of him when he was very much so. His courage hadn't been put to the test, and courage is a matter of proof, like proficiency on the fiddle, you know: you can't tell whether you've got it ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... said severely, addressing the unseen musician, "you are spoiling your fiddle and breaking your promise. You said you wouldn't be silly. Go to bed now ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... suited to Teniers, a cluster of out-of-door customers of the Rose, old benchers of the inn, who sit round a table smoking and drinking in high solemnity to the sound of Timothy's fiddle. Next, a mass of eager boys, the combatants of Monday, who are surrounding the shoemaker's shop, where an invisible hole in their ball is mending by Master Keep himself, under the joint superintendence of Ben Kirby and Tom Coper, Ben showing much verbal respect and outward deference ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... for the fine arts; and the sordid spirit of a money-amassing philosophy would meet any proposition for the fostering of art, in a genial and extended sense, with the commercial maxim,—Laissez faire. Paganini, indeed, will make a fortune, because he can actually sell the tones of his fiddle at so much a scrape; but Mozart himself might have languished in a garret for any thing that would have been ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... a disguise, and abuse the women and affront the men whom he met, and sometimes to beat them, and sometimes to be beaten by them. This was one of his imperial nocturnal pleasures; his chiefest in the day was to sing and play upon a fiddle, in the habit of a minstrel, upon the public stage; he was prouder of the garlands that were given to his divine voice (as they called it then) in those kind of prizes, than all his forefathers were of their triumphs ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... Mr Carr's deviation to the left was a triumph of smiling composure; nevertheless, Pixie's sharp eyes had seen and understood, and her heart felt a natural girlish pang. At twenty it is hard to accept with resignation the part of second fiddle, and Pixie's generosity had its limits—as whose has not? She had looked at Honor's pretty face and costly gown, had heard of her wealth and independence with the purest and most ungrudging pleasure, but when it became a case of ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... I look as bad as that?" laughed the other. "If I do, looks are deceitful, for I feel fit as a fiddle. I need only one thing to make a complete new man ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... all its saints! I think you are right, Clement Maldon," he muttered. "Beneath that black dress of yours you are a man like the rest of us, are you not? You have a heart, you have members, you have a brain to think with; you are a fiddle for God to play on, and however much your superstitions mask and alter it, out of those strings now and again will come some squeak of truth. Well, I am another fiddle, of a more honest sort, mayhap, though I do not lift two fingers of my right hand and ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... Gardener's Lane. I was wondering in which of these miserable huts my odd friend might live. I had completely forgotten the number; moreover it was impossible to make out any signs in the darkness. At that moment a man carrying a heavy load of vegetables passed me. "The old fellow is scraping his fiddle again," he grumbled, "and disturbing decent people in their night's rest." At the same time, as I went on, the soft, sustained tone of a violin struck my ear. It seemed to come from the open attic window of a hovel a short distance away, which, being low and without ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... horns she is playing A tune with a nourish or two! No cow-herd am I but my staying To play second fiddle won't do. Singing (to myself)—With my tol de rol tol-e-rate ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... in fact interrupted by a blatant noise which rose behind them, in which the voice of the preacher emitted, in unison with that of the old woman, tones like the grumble of a bassoon combined with the screaking of a cracked fiddle. At first, the aged pair of sufferers had been contented to condole with each other in smothered expressions of complaint and indignation; but the sense of their injuries became more pungently aggravated as they communicated with each ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... when upon this discourse he said if ever there was another Dutch war they should not find a Secretary; "Nor," said I, "a Clerk of the Acts, for I see the reward of it; and, thank God, I have enough of my own to buy me a book and a good fiddle, and I have a good wife;"—"Why," says he, "I have enough to buy me a good book, and shall not need a fiddle because I have never a one of your good wives." This morning the House is upon a Bill, brought in to-day by Sir ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... Babbitts and Rieslings sat doubtfully on stone-hard brocade chairs in the small living-room of the flat, with its mantel unprovided with a fireplace, and its strip of heavy gilt fabric upon a glaring new player-piano, till Mrs. Riesling shrieked, "Come on! Let's put some pep in it! Get out your fiddle, Paul, and I'll try to make ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... with its thin old walls, vibrates at night like a great dry fiddle; the slightest noises grow great in it, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... littlest chile ter de oldest man er woman wud clean dey selves up en put on dey best clo's for ter "go befo de King", dats whut us called it. All wud gather in bak of de big house under de big oak trees en Marse Tom he wud cum out wid he fiddle under he arm, yo kno Marse Tom he war a grete fiddler, en sot hisself down in de chere whut Uncle Joe done fotched fer im, en den he tell Uncle Joe fer ter go git de barrel er whiskey en he wud gib em all er gill er two so's dey cud all feel rite good, en den Marse Tom he start dat ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... git the fiddle. That's the only song I can remember. They used to sing it in the little white meetin' house with the steeple a-p'intin' straight up. Wish I could remember more, but ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... fields we till, And the homes of ancient stories, the tombs of the mighty dead, And the wise men seeking out marvels and the poet's teaming head. And the painter's hand of wonder, and the marvellous fiddle-bow, And the banded choirs of music—all those that do and know. For all these shall be ours and all men's, nor shall any lack a share Of the toil and the gain of living in the days when the ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... and a glow of pleasure suffused her face. "There's going to be fun there, they say, for Jacob the miller is going to ask Neddy 'Pandy' to dance the 'candle dance,' and Robin Davies the sailor will play the fiddle for him. Hast ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... Gallery? Can anything be less interesting? Here and there the portrait of a General! But such portraits! One veteran warrior is actually shown in the act of playing upon a fiddle! As for the pictures of the victories, there is scarcely anything new worth looking at. Same good old Inkermann, by Lady BUTLER, as of yore; and the same good old recollections of Egypt from past Academies. For the rest, the room contains some comfortable chairs. They ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 17, 1890. • Various
... he said to himself—"it always leaves you keyed up like a fiddle or a woman. I'll get over it after a while or I'll die trying," and he closed his teeth upon each other with a nervous twist that ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... Bob the fiddler is the pride O' chaps an' maidens vur an' wide; They can't keep up a merry tide, But Bob is in the middle. If merry Bob do come avore ye, He'll zing a zong, or tell a story; But if you'd zee en in his glory, Jist let en have a fiddle. ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... Irish songs were sung, while Pat played upon the fiddle, and Betty and Mat enlivened the company ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... use is a man who dawdles away his time on a fiddle; of what benefit is he to mankind? Do fiddlers build cities? Do they delve into the earth for precious metals? Do they sow the seed and harvest the grain? No, no; they are drones—the ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... 'Oh, fiddle-de-dee!—every woman, unless she is a fool, knows intuitively what flirtation means, and can put it in practice. But it struck me last night that Aunt Margaret rather encouraged George to pay attention to Gladys. Of ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... he takes with him is an old sheepskin jacket, in which he finds the wishing-box, which had been, unknown to him, the cause of his father's prosperity. When the "slave" of the box appears, the hero merely asks for a fiddle that when played upon makes everybody who hears it to dance.[FN388] He hires himself to the King, whose daughter gives him, in jest, a written promise to marry him, in exchange for the fiddle. The King, when the hero claims the princess, insists on her keeping her promise, and they are married. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Turpentine, and Myrrh or Frankincense of temper and imagination, which may be typified by it, producible in Germany; especially if we think how the more delicate uses of Rosin, as indispensable to the Fiddle-bow, have developed themselves, from the days of St. Elizabeth of Marburg to those of St. Mephistopheles ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... warmly. "Slept like a turnip through the beastly parts, and woke up for the bit from Dumbarton on. I also had the luck to remember what you said about the breakfast and took the precaution of wiring for it. Here I am, and as fit as a fiddle." ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... been a long time since the merry sound of the fiddle had been heard in the village of Brunen. The throne was surrounded by little boys and girls listening with wondering delight at the gay music. But the grown girls stood afar off and did not look even once at the enticing fiddler, but hid themselves timidly behind the mothers, who ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... at length the provost raised his drooping crest, and spoke in a cheerful tone. 'Come, sit down to your glass, Mr. Fairford; we have laid our heads thegither, and you shall see it will not be our fault if you are not quite pleased, and Mr. Darsie Latimer let loose to take his fiddle under his neck again. But Summertrees thinks it will require you to put yourself into some bodily risk, which maybe you may not ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... of playing excellent jigs, reels, and hornpipes? And, besides this, there was a grand band hired from Rosseter, who, with their wonderful wind-instruments and puffed-out cheeks, were themselves a delightful show to the small boys and girls. To say nothing of Joshua Rann's fiddle, which, by an act of generous forethought, he had provided himself with, in case any one should be of sufficiently pure taste to prefer dancing to a ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... the mountains, and monumental stones are erected over warriors, who "buckled on their belts," and fell in single combat. From Hallingdal went forth the national Polska (the Halling), and only the Hardanger-fela (the Hallingdal fiddle) can rightly give its wild, extraordinary melody. Most beautiful are the flowers of remembrance which the Christian antiquity exhibits, and the eternal snow upon the crowns of the ancient mountains is not more imperishable than these innocent roses at their feet. So ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... fiddle," announced the little woman. "There's another craft cut acrost her bows. If you ask me who 'tis I can ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... modern painters, who mistake some of our great masters; because they sometimes put in some of those round characters of clouds, they must do the same; but if you look at any of their skies, they either assist in the composition or make some figure in the picture—nay, sometimes play the first fiddle.... ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... "Fiddle ends!" Rebecca interrupted. "I've heard that talk fifty-leven times an' I'm pinin' fer relief. Mr. Droop, would you mind tellin' us what the time o' year is now. Seems to me that sun has whirled in an' out ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... for it, then, but for your majesty to call for a fiddle, and amuse yourself, like Nero, while your city is burning," ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... av doors till I get rid av this cough," he answered. "And ye know I can do a stunt in the band. Don't take giants to fiddle and fife. Little runts can do that. Who do you reckon come to Springvale ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... 'em, Peter. Look at 'em," laughed the captain. "It's a most noble sight! Watch the old fellow playing the fiddle, and I'll lay my eyes that in a half minute or so you'll have some of ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... bright fancy. But he was fluent in speech, and his words, though not chosen, were usually appropriate. The captain had no powers of invention whatever. He used to say, when asked to tell a story, that he "might as well try to play the fiddle with a handspike." But this was no misfortune, for he had read much, and his memory was good, and supplied him with an endless flow of small-talk on almost every subject that usually falls under the observation of sea-captains, and on many subjects besides, ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... gloomy hiding-place, dim-lit by flickering lanthorn, I passed many weary hours, while all about me was a stir and bustle, a confused sound made up of many, as the never-ending tread of feet, the sound of hoarse voices now faint and far and anon clear and loud, the scrape of a fiddle, snatches of rough song, the ceaseless ring and tap of hammers—a very babel that, telling of life and action, made my gloomy prison the harder to endure. And here (mindful of what is to follow) I do think it well to describe in few ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... dancers out upon the lawn, and then they managed to go through one quadrille. But it was found that it did not answer. The music of the single fiddle which Crosbie had hired from Guestwick was not sufficient for the purpose; and then the grass, though it was perfect for purposes of croquet, was not pleasant to the ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... deserved it, I'm afraid— You that had never learned the trade, But just some idle mornin' strayed Into the schuele, An' picked the fiddle up ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... diddle diddle, The voters we'd fiddle With Free Education—that "boon." But Wisbech birds laugh At such plain party "chaff," And the "Dish"—at ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... the slope of a wooded hill, sawed logs and built two huts, one for Rothsay, and one for old Scythia. They were finished before night. And then the settlers had a house-warming, which was a breakdown dance to the music of the one fiddle in the settlement, and a supper of such eatables and drinkables as the ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Bargetown it might have been called; it was a veritable floating colony of French and Swede, Irish and Scotch, jabbering and smoking by day and lying quietly at night under the stars, save for the occasional jig and scrape of the fiddle of some active Milesian. Here, had I fully known it, was my chance for observation, but I was ignorant at that time of the ways of these people and did not venture among them. But the man in the velvet ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... wrings, Your cry politely cease, And fret your hearts to fiddle-strings That Van may die ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... has one more word which seems to me quite as good a candidate as any of the others, viz. roteur, a player on the rote, i.e. the fiddle used by the medieval minstrels, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... out at last). You're surprised! Surprised! You would be. You've never stopped to think what other people are thinking; you take it for granted that they all love you, and that's all you care about. Do you think I liked playing second fiddle to you all my life? Do you think I've never had any ambitions of my own? I suppose you thought I was quite happy being one of the crowd of admirers round you, all saying, "Oh, look at Gerald, isn't ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... greater part of them, yet let our admiration be [Transcriber's Note: superfluous 'be'] "be screwed to its sticking place," when we think upon the wonderous genius of the aforesaid Thomas Britton; who, in the midst of his coal cellars, could practise upon "fiddle and flute," or collate his curious volumes; and throwing away, with the agility of a harlequin, his sombre suit of business-cloths, could put on his velvet coat and bag-wig, and receive his concert visitors, at the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... tricks, who dare perform that which no sober man will attempt: they do indeed rather deserve themselves to be laughed at, than their conceits. For what can be more ridiculous than we do make ourselves, when we thus fiddle and fool with our own souls; when, to make vain people merry, we incense God's earnest displeasure; when, to raise a fit of present laughter, we expose ourselves to endless wailing and woe; when, to be reckoned wits, we prove ourselves stark wild? Surely to this case we may accommodate ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... held his fiddle, and tuned it upon an arm not quite so stout, I should have known without being told that he was the man who had played in the Saint-Michel cabin while Annabel de Chaumont ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... shuffling feet, of tinkling piano and whining fiddle, gave notice in advance that the dancers were on the floor. Clanton took the precaution to ease the guns in their holsters in order to make sure of a ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... mostly men decked in a preponderance of red, white, and blue, and usually accompanied by a tableau arrangement on a cart. Every twenty yards they stopped, went through a series of antics, supposed to be country dances, to the tune of the cornet and a fiddle, and then brought round the hat, frequently embracing any woman who objected to ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... friendship struck up between Frohman and Stoddart, who, in a way, was a character. He played the violin, and when business was bad and the company got in the dumps Stoddart added to their misfortunes by playing doleful tunes on his fiddle. But that fiddle had a virtue not to be despised, because it was Stoddart's bank. In its hollow box he secreted his modest savings, and in more than one emergency they were drawn on for company bed and board. When the organization reached Memphis Charles had so ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... the dancing sisters, out of breath, and laughing gaily, threw herself upon a bench to rest. The other leaned against a tree hard by. The music, a wandering harp and fiddle, left off with a flourish, as if it boasted of its freshness; though the truth is, it had gone at such a pace, and worked itself to such a pitch of competition with the dancing, that it never could have held on, half a minute longer. The apple- pickers on the ladders raised a hum and murmur ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens |
