"Pedal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it all, like a throbbing pedal note, ran his need of this girl. He would do anything, suffer anything, make any sacrifice, momentary or lifelong, if he could but see her again, hold her hand for one instant, look into her eyes mysterious with the secret of death. He had but three or four words to say to her, just to secure ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... Dick dismounted, and Mark climbed into the saddle. He began to pedal, and then threw in the gasolene and spark. The ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... organs, and capable of being played alone or in connection with each other. Four manuals, or hand key-boards, and two pedals, or foot key-boards, command these several systems,—the solo organ, the choir organ, the swell organ, and the great organ, and the piano and forte pedal-organ. Twelve pairs of bellows, which it is intended to move by water-power, derived from the Cochituate reservoirs, furnish the breath which pours itself forth in music. Those beautiful effects, for which the organ is incomparable, the crescendo ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... magnet flashes its sparks to ignite it, the cooling water bathes the hot walls of the cylinders—a thing of nerves, and ganglions, and tireless muscles is panting eagerly at your service. You move this lever, you press your foot lightly on this pedal; the engine transfers its power to the wheels; you move. The carriage with you and your friends is borne at railway speed across continents. You can hurl yourself at sixty miles an hour along the great highroads, you can crawl like a worm through ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... They put the soft pedal on me. They 'muted' me," he amended, in deference to her own ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... Amarinth both played the piano in an easy, tentative sort of way, making excess of expression do duty for deficiencies of execution, and covering occasional mistakes with the soft rather than with the loud pedal. Lord Reggie played a hymn of his own, which he frankly acknowledged was very beautiful. He described it as a hymn without words, which, he said softly, all hymns should be. There was archaic simplicity, not to say baldness, about it which sent Mrs. Windsor into ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... women and children. Each operator sits before a small steel stake, having a cavity, into which one half of the intended head will fit; immediately above is a steel die, having a corresponding cavity for the other half of the head: this latter die can be raised by a pedal moved by the foot. The weight of the hammer is from seven to ten pounds, and it falls through a very small space, perhaps from one to two inches. The cavities in the centre of these dies are connected with the edge of a small groove, to admit of the body ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... superiority of the Kranich & Bach Small Grand. Although only 5'4" long it produces, in a manner almost unbelievable, all the magnificent qualities of tone that make "grands" infinitely more satisfying than "upright" pianos. With its new full-tone scale and the marvelous "Isotonic Pedal," this superb instrument IS the Small Grand leader of ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... he did not like on paper seemed in place when the work was sung, and some of it "moved me much." Some time afterwards he played some of his music to Wagner, who found it muddled, as if the sustaining pedal was held down all the time—and I have no doubt it was. Another gentleman who saw the score was Hanslick, then a young man looking around for some one to attach himself to—a peripatetic barnacle. Later, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... seemed to float up lazily to the little group in the open window, as the smoke of their pipes and cigars floated up lazily to the ceiling above. The gentle hum of the traffic made a pleasant accompaniment to their conversation, as the holding down of a soft pedal fills in and supports dreamy organ music. But for the six young men in the bow window the room was untenanted, save for a waiter who had just brought some fresh drinks, and who was now clearing away empty ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... Polly's character came out in his reply. "Not much," he said. "Pedal got a bit loose in Stamton, O' Man. Couldn't ride it. So I looked up the cousins ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... surprise to the audience, and when they recognized him the demonstration was tremendous. The audience rose in a body, and men and women shouted at the very top of their voices. Handkerchiefs waved, the organist even opened every forte key and pedal in the great organ, and the noise went on unabated for minutes. It took some time for the crowd to get down to listening, but when they did subside, as Mark stepped to the front, the silence was as impressive as ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... in surprise at her own feet, and I observed the slight roughening of the side of the sole caused by the friction of the edge of the pedal. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Jane's head. "Put those under your ears dear," she ordered, "my pillows aren't unpacked yet and you may find Neddie's last year tacks in that burlap. There now, you look almost human. But the wistful whimper lingers. Jane, what has happened? You are simply smothered in the soft pedal. Tell your Judy all ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... you by sight an' started in to give you the tip to put the soft pedal on the wiggle stuff, when, zowie! I guess you didn't reach out an' soak me—a cop!" He tapped the bandage upon ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... it was the same!" she cried, so loud that I had half to drown it in the pedal. "He's taken to following the sea, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... from the vibration of solid objects which she is touching: the floor, or, what is more evident, the case of the piano, on which her hand rests. But she seems to feel the pulsation of the air itself. When the organ was played for her in St. Bartholomew's, the whole building shook with the great pedal notes, but that does not altogether account for what she felt and enjoyed. The vibration of the air as the organ notes swelled made her sway in answer. Sometimes she puts her hand on a singer's ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... down the pedal of the washing basin in which he had been sousing his healthy red neck. "Impossible!" he cried, at the news that Laura had flung over Fertinghof and had made up to Mileev. "And is he as stupid and pleased as ever? ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... the brake-pedal, and for ten seconds the released car shot down the slope unhindered. Then he checked the speed and ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... settle it now. You began it, and I want it finished now," I added, cracking the whip once more in the neighborhood of his pedal extremities. ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... patter through the echoing aisles. There is a hush of expectation. A few quiet worshippers assemble; the western light grows low, and lights spring to life, one after another, in the misty choir. Then murmurs a voice, an Amen rises in full concord, and as it dies away the slumberous thunder of a pedal note rolls on the air; the casements whirr, the organ speaks. That fills, as it were, to the brim, as with some sweet and fragrant potion, the cup of beauty; and the dreaming, inquiring spirit sinks content into the flowing, the aspiring tide, satisfied as ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was about to shout aloud in actual terror at the disaster that seemed unavoidable, there was a sharp "click" as Frank closed the circuit with his emergency foot pedal and the engine ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... am doomed to counterchord Her notes no more In those old things I used to know, In a fashion, when we practised so, "Good-night!—Good-bye!" to your pleated show Of silk, now hoar, Each nodding hammer, and pedal and key, For dead, dead, dead, you ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... own feet. When at last a stray musician with a worn face, long hair, and an eyeglass stuck into his contorted eyebrow sat down to the grand piano and flinging his hands with a sweep on the keys and his foot on the pedal, began to attack a fantasia of Liszt on a Wagner motive, Aratov could not stand it, and stole off, bearing away in his heart a vague, painful impression; across which, however, flitted something incomprehensible to him, but ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... the starting pedal energetically. Current from the storage batteries flowed through the motor, saturating it almost instantly. Ned's foot was pressed upon the cut-out lever, and the resultant roar from the engines precluded absolutely the possibility ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... attached to the posterior angles of the pedal bone. They are flattened from side to side, and the portion that projects above the coronary cushion may be felt by pressing on the skin that covers it. The plantar cushion is a wedge-shaped piece of tissue formed by interlacing connective-tissue fibres ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... laziness and shirking his duty, and had just been adding to his reputation for such, a battalion adjutant, a tall and handsome fellow with a slight partiality for legs, came dashing up on a native pony. His knees were bent and elevated toward his chin in order that his pedal extremities might not collide with the frail ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... infernal miracle as holiness is the supernal. Now and then it is raised to such a pitch that we entirely fail to suspect its existence; it is like the note of the great pedal pipes of the organ, which is so deep that we cannot hear it. In other cases it may lead to the lunatic asylum, or to still stranger issues. But you must never confuse it with mere social misdoing. Remember how the Apostle, speaking of the "other side," distinguishes between "charitable" ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... All your janglings now; Notes false-chorded, slithering slaps, Pedal-aided row! Where is Minx, we wonder? Ah! those scrambling skips! Back she's come to torture us With ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... safe miles out to sea. When he approached a passing vessel he presented the illusion, not of walking, but of sitting on the water, for the float was almost completely submerged. If it became necessary for his wife to attend him on his marine excursions, she was towed behind, and used her own pedal power. Possibly this primitive raft is the pathetic expression of man's first struggle against ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the only sentence really which she made out. She shook her head negatively, and in desperation put on the loud pedal, but she could not make the sound of the piano cover his ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Mrs. Yellett. The matriarch had sustained a breakdown, and arrived, in consequence, when the dance was half over, but she was philosophical, as always, in the face of misfortune, and loudly attested her pleasure in the renowned pedal feats of ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... What do you mean? Are you one of those people who can't keep a tune, and step on the pedal when their sentiment ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... during this last visit to Asolo Browning suffered some inconvenience from shortness of breath in climbing hills, but the discomfort passed away. He looked forward to an early return to England, spoke with pleasant anticipation of the soft-pedal piano which his kind friend Mrs Bronson desired to procure at Boston and place in his study in De Vere Gardens, and he dreamed of future poetical achievements. "Shall I whisper to you my ambition and my hope?" he asked his hostess. "It is ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... quick motion to the steering wheel. Then he shoved the levers over, and pressed down the pedal that cut out the muffler and slightly relieved the strain on the motor. Fritsch's car shot ahead. Larry steered it directly in front of the green machine, and kept just far enough in ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... morning, and the most beautiful melody of bells I ever heard is toning through the air. They are the bells of S. Michael's church, and I am told that the musician plays them by a set of pedal keys, and works himself into a mighty heat and flurry in the operation. But we cannot think of the wild manner and mad motions of the player in connection with those beautiful sounds, so clear and melodious; that half ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... their dignity to take any pains to verify his story, so sure were they of its impossibility. Galvani, however, had noticed that the maximum effect was produced when a metallic arc, of tin and copper, was brought into contact with the lumbar nerves and pedal extremities of a frog. Then the animal would be violently convulsed. The observer believed this came from a nervous fluid, and so he lost the advantage of his observations. It was reserved for Volta ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... does not watch the conducting-stick has no conductor. Often, after a pedal-point for instance, the conductor is obliged to refrain from marking the decisive gesture which is to determine the coming in of the orchestra until he sees the eyes of all the performers fixed upon him. ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... not get as far as the pigs at Lockyer's farm; the rectory gate was painted a dull unobtrusive green, but it had been white a year or two ago, and the Brogue never forgot that he had been in the habit of making a violent curtsey, a back-pedal and a swerve at this particular point of the road. Subsequently, there being apparently no further call on his services, he broke his way into the rectory orchard, where he found a hen turkey in a coop; later visitors to the orchard found the coop almost intact, ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... and they formed the theme of his conversation by day. His sister, who was the oldest of the children, had been the happy possessor of three pairs of shoes, and she often discussed knowingly the good qualities of pedal coverings and of their advantages in travelling through brambles or over stones. Often as he contemplated his scratched, chapped and bruised feet, the child had asked himself if it were possible that he should ever be able to afford ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... have lain thus when the fact, that if I laid much longer I would actually freeze to death, would come over me with such overpowering force as to break the icy spell, and starting to my feet, I would endeavour to go through the combined manual and pedal exercise to restore the circulation. The first fling of my benumbed arm generally struck me in the face, instead of smiting my chest, its true destination. But in these cases one's ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... every age are rendered possible by being taken on a drone or pedal of cant, common form and conventionality. This drone is, as it were, the flour and suet of a ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... beautiful while it lasted. Then eight o'clock would come and I would be at Edward Everett Hale's. This sturdy old man, with his towering form, rugged face and echoing bass voice, would open up the stops and give his blessed "Mesopotamia" like a trumpet call. He never worked the soft pedal. His first words always made me think of "Boots and Saddles!" Be a man—do something! Why stand ye here all ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... flash of Methuselah at the age of 64 taking Tango lessons from Baldy Sloane up at Weisenfeffer's pedal parlors? And then having to survive for 850 years with the dance bug ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... be impossible to pass before the whole long line had gone by, I crossed over and now saw that the Scots Grays would soon find friends. I called Leon and pulling out a card, told him to pedal back and dig out a bottle of champagne I had hidden in our hay cart, and to present it to our soldier friends as a bracer and a souvenir. ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... trousers, and boots, not forgetting his stockings; and then deliberately planting his chair in the open entry of the door, and gathering up one foot on the seat thereof, was amusing himself by cutting and picking the horny excrescences of his pedal digits, for the benefit of the passengers in the gentlemen's saloon; and, unfortunately, you could not be sure that his hands would be washed before he sat next to you at breakfast in the morning,—for I can testify that I have, over and over again, sat next to people, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... placed an ear-piece over his head, giving me another connected with it. We listened eagerly. There were no foreign noises in the machine, no grating or thumping sounds, as he controlled the running off of the steel wire by means of a foot-pedal. ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... out a tune or two with the soft pedal on?' I asks Marilla. 'Uncle Cal has begged you so often. It would please him a good deal to hear you touch up the piano he's bought for you. Don't you ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... with measles complicating, pulled them to one side and burned the bridge. They afterward drew tight down on the sounding board, so that now when I talk the rickety buzz is like that of a horse-fiddle played with the tremolo and the soft pedal. An aeolian harp made of rubber bands on a bicycle, aroused by the wind as the machine moves swiftly, gives the same soft ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... footsteps, we have been routed night after night from our warm quarters, in the dead of winter, to kindle fires and fill frosty kettles from water-pails thickly crusted with ice, that we might get the writhing pedal extremities of our little heir into a tub of water as quickly as possible. But lately we have learned that all this work and exposure is needless. We simply wring a towel from salted water—a bowl of it standing in our sleeping room, ready for such an emergency—wrap ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... carat. caudle, caudal. choler, collar. compliment, complement. lumber, lumbar. lesson, lessen. literal, littoral. marshal, martial. minor, miner. manor, manner. medal, meddle. metal, mettle. missal, missel (thrush). orphan, often. putty, puttee. pedal, peddle. police, pelisse. principal, principle. profit, prophet. rigour, rigger. rancour, ranker. succour, sucker. sailor, sailer. cellar, seller. censor, censer. surplus, surplice. symbol, cymbal. skip, skep. tuber, tuba. whirl, ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... and summarize his meaning in a phrase amusing through its homely contrast. But humor based on ponderous diction is too often wearisome. Better say simply "He died," or colloquially "He kicked the bucket," than "He propelled his pedal extremities with violence against the wooden pail which is customarily employed in the transportation of the ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... pleasing and well made. The so-called "Alberti" bass should be played in such a manner as to minimize the motion of the sixteenths, and to intensify the chord feeling. This will be done by playing softly with the left hand, bearing down a little, and using the pedal with every chord, except where it will mix ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... modern editions is the abuse of the pedal. Mozart never indicated the pedal. As purity of taste is one of his great qualities, it is probable that he made no abuse of the pedal. Beethoven indicated it in a complicated and cumbersome manner. ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... it seemed as if it filled half the room. Then Frank spread a beauteous wine coloured cover all embroidered in pink roses with green leaves over it, and the stylish man opened a lid, sat down and spread out his hands. Frank said: "Soft pedal! Mighty soft!" So he smothered it down, and tried only enough to find that it had not been hurt coming, and then he went away on the wagon. Father and the boys gathered up every scrap, swept the walk, and put all the things ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... afternoon's trip is one on which I like to put the soft pedal when harking back in memory. And happy for us then that we did not know what it was going to end in. The sky behind us had turned inky black and it became evident that the storm which was coming would be no ordinary one. A wind sprang up that increased ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... usual in the parlor. The young woman from the notion counter had company; and one of her guests was playing "He sut'nly was Good to Me" on the pianola with loud and steady tread of pedal. ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... weave cloth after freedom. Used to give a brooch (hank) or two to weave at night. I'se sometimes thread de needle for my Ma, or pick out de seed out de cotton, an' make it into rolls to spin. Sometimes I'd work de foot pedal for my Ma. Den dey'd warp de thread. If she want to dye it, she'd dye it. She'd get indigo—you know dat bush—an' boil it. It was kinder blue. It would make good cloth. Sometimes, de cloth wuz kinder strip, one strip of white, an' one of blue. I remember how dey'd warp de thread ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... looks and sighs, and the notings down of the titles of books that conducted the pilgrim on the Way. Perhaps as they softly assembled for departure, a little music would be suggested to round off the evening, and she saw herself putting down the soft pedal as people rustled into their places, for the first movement of the "Moonlight Sonata." Then at the end there would be silence, and she would get up with a sigh, and someone would say "Lucia mia"! and somebody else "Heavenly Music," and perhaps the Guru would say "Beloved lady," as he had apparently ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... desegno. pause : halteti, pauxzi. pave : pavimi. paw : piedego. pawn : garantie doni; (chess) soldato. pay : pagi; salajro. pea : pizo. peace : paco. peach : persiko. peacock : pavo. peak : pinto. pear : piro. pearl : perlo. pedal : pedalo. pedestal : piedestalo. peel : sxelo, sensxeligi. pen : plumo, skribilo. pencil : krajono, ("slate"—) grifelo; ("hair"—) peniko. pendulum : pendolo. penetrate : penetri peninsula : duoninsulo. pension : pensio. people : homoj, (a—) popolo. pepper : pipro. percentage : ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... very clearly, very concisely, the Senior Surgeon called out to the White Linen Nurse just how every lever, every pedal should be manipulated to start ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... of an automobile has nothing to do but watch his steering-wheel, and be ready to touch a pedal when he wishes to slow up or go faster or stop. If he makes a curve he does not have to bank his machine owing to his comparatively slow speed; but the aviator, traveling much faster through the air, must do this, bringing his airplane to a steep angle if he makes ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... Observing copious signs of affluence upon every side he gets ambitious and would abuse the sacred right of hospitality about half to three-quarters of an hour too soon. Out of the tail of my eye I sees him reaching in his pocket for the educated pasteboards and I gives him the high sign to soft pedal, but he don't mind me. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... kind-hearted and musical, was particularly interested by the circumstance, and Emma could not help being amused at her perseverance in dwelling on the subject; and having so much to ask and to say as to tone, touch, and pedal, totally unsuspicious of that wish of saying as little about it as possible, which she plainly read ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... aching with dusty odour of poudre de riz, and the many acidities of evaporating perfume; the sugary sweetness of the blondes, the salt flavours of the brunettes, and this allegro movement of odours was interrupted suddenly by the garlicky andante, deep as the pedal notes of an organ, that the perspiring armpits of a fat chaperon ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... "angels' tears," and "breath," and "smiles," and "Eden zephyrs," "sighs of seraph lovers," and "lyres of slumbering cherubs," dancing away to "the Pedal Harp!" How strange it is that Thomson, in his stanzas on the AEolian lyre (see the 'Castle of Indolence'), never dreamed of such things, but left all these prettinesses to the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... the curious effect of a man stumping about on his heels! To overcome this difficulty the heels of the feet were made to project almost as much behind as the toes did in front somewhat after the pattern of Ebony's pedal arrangements, as Rosco remarked when they were being fitted on for another trial. At last, by dint of perseverance, the wooden legs were perfected, and Rosco re-acquired the art of walking to such perfection, that he was to be seen, almost at all times and in all weathers, stumping about ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Do you then think, Herr Stein, that I am likely to run wild on the organ?" "Oh! you!"—When we came to the organ-loft, I began a prelude, when he laughed. A fugue followed. "I can now quite understand why you like to play the organ," said he, "when you can play in this manner." At first the pedal was a little awkward for me, as it was without the breaks, beginning with C, then D E in one row, whereas with us D and E are above, just where E flat and F sharp are here; but I ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... laughter arose in the distance, where some unlucky burgher had found his way into a group of students and was being made the butt of a good-humoured jest. And beneath the high, laughing tones, the perpetual hum of a thousand talking voices neither rose nor fell, but droned unceasingly like the long pedal in a fugue, whose full deep note stands still amidst the strife of moving sounds, as the sun stood while the battle was fought out in Ajalon. The very life of the multitude seemed to produce a sound of its own, in the breathing of a thousand pairs of strong young lungs, in the beating ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... luggage to be called for later, and pushed off on his bicycle. He always took his bicycle when he went into the country. It was part of the theory of exercise. One day one would get up at six o'clock and pedal away to Kenilworth, or Stratford-on-Avon—anywhere. And within a radius of twenty miles there were always Norman churches and Tudor mansions to be seen in the course of an afternoon's excursion. Somehow they never ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... is like a pedal-point in music; it must support the whole fabric, whether you are planning a house, a room or ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... sign to her son, who placed himself in such a way as to press with his foot the pedal which filled the bellows; and then the invalid, whose fingers had for the time recovered all their strength and agility, raising her eyes to heaven like Saint Cecilia, played the "Prayer of Moses in Egypt," which her ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... there is a hundred pounds of male rheumatism to every square inch of cold female foot, and the Philadelphia doctor should be thanked by men of rheumatic tendencies as well as by women of arctic pedal extremities for this timely discovery. There is no woman who enjoys seeing her husband in the throes of rheumatic pains, and now that they know that their cold feet have brought about so much suffering, we trust they will try ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... appears both ingenious and correct. Roger North shrewdly conjectured that the "rude and gross" Gothic Fiddle "used to stir up the vulgar to dancing, or perhaps to solemnise their idolatrous sacrifices." In the Dark Ages dancing may have been regarded as bi-pedal trembling. I have remarked in another place,[19] "In the early ages of mankind dancing or jigging must have been done to the sound of the voice, next to that of the pipe, and, when the bow was discovered, to that of a stringed instrument ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... and the masterwork appears in the orchestration which surrounds it; at times even this maintains an archaic simplicity. Thus in the coda of the vivace of the Seventh Symphony, a simple melody is reiterated eleven times in succession, with no other orchestration than the pedal-point on E by the ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... to pedal and to guide a tricycle in about three lessons. He caught the two ideas almost instantly, and soon brought his muscles under control sufficiently to ride successfully, even under ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... lifted a fat leg over the backbone and put a ponderous foot on one pedal, while the drops of perspiration began to stand ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... a motor with a man once. I said to him: 'What would happen if you trod on that pedal thing instead of that other pedal thing?' He said, 'I couldn't. One's the foot-brake, and the other's the accelerator.' 'But suppose you did?' I said. 'I wouldn't,' he said. 'Now we'll let her rip.' So he stamped on the accelerator. Only it turned out to be the foot-brake after all, and we ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... Nationalities from the uttermost parts of Asia here meet those from the Atlantic edge of Europe for the first and last time. By noon the sound becomes a loud droning, uninterrupted and breve-like, as from the pedal of ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... "Soft pedal, Phonzie! You know I'd break a date with any one of 'em any day in the week for a ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... straggling down the sidewalk—not many, for few had business with the front end of the waiting trains. Bud pushed the throttle up a little. His fingers dropped down to the gear lever, his foot snuggled against the clutch pedal. ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... motor shuddered; then they dodged through an opening where the mud-guards missed by an inch and were whirling west toward Broadway. At 109th Street a bicycle officer stared in amazement at the dwindling number beneath the rear axle, then ducked his head and began to pedal. He overhauled the speeding machine as it throbbed before the doors of Mercy Hospital, to be greeted by a grinning chauffeur who waved him toward the building and ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... of the men; hence in every well-commanded Battalion frequent feet inspections are held—in many instances daily. This simple preventive, coupled with a copious supply of socks sent out by the people at home, has helped the great majority of 'Tommies' to keep their pedal extremities ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... old arquebus! ten year old codfish! old spider that spins no more! old death with open eyes! old devil's cradle! vile lantern of an old town-crier too! Old wretch whose look kills! old moustache of an old theriacler! old wretch to make dead men weep! old organ-pedal! old sheath with a hundred knives! old church porch, worn out by the knees! old poor-box in which everyone has dropped. I'll give all my future to be quit of thee!" As he finished these gentle thoughts the pretty bride, who ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... as the French say, but did not reply. He never gives a direct answer to a direct question. "Ah," said I, "you won't tell." He smiled and then immediately played the passage. It was a long arpeggio, and the effect he made was, as I had supposed, a pedal effect. He kept the pedal down throughout, and played the beginning of the passage in a grand sort of manner, and then all the rest of it with a very pianissimo touch, and so lightly, that the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... replied Mr. Goyte. He spoke very slowly and deliberately, quietly, as if the soft pedal were always down in his voice. He looked at his daughter-in-law as she crouched, flushed and dark, before the peacock, which would lay its long blue neck for a moment along her lap. In spite of his grey moustache and thin grey hair, the elderly man had a face young ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... to see an immediate outbreak; but, as if recollecting himself, he suddenly stammered out something about the necessity of changing his boots, and limped off accordingly for that purpose. He was not gone more than five minutes, but in that time had contrived not only to supply his pedal deficiency, but also to take a drink by way of calming himself; and after the drink he took a turn with Miss Friskin, and whirled her about the room, till he knocked over two or three innocent bystanders, all of which tended very much to compose his feelings. Ashburner ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... down the pedal and bent over the wheel as if urging the machine to its utmost. Then there was jolt—a roar! a bang! ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... piro. Pear-tree pirarbo. Pearl perlo. Pearl, mother of perlamoto. Peasant vilagxano, kamparano. Peat torfo. Pebble marsxtono, sxtoneto. Peccadillo peketo. Peculiar stranga. Pecuniary mona. Pedagogue pedagogo. Pedagogy pedagogio. Pedal pedalo. Pedant pedanto. Peddler kolportisto. Peddle kolporti. Pedestal piedestalo. Pedestrian piediranto. Pedigree deveno, genealogio. Pediment fruntajxo. Peel (fruit, etc.) sxelo. Peel sensxeligi. Peep rigardeti. Peer ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Duncan told him in the same quiet voice, "what I've got to say if you'll just put the soft pedal on and tell me the amount ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... Suppose you were making a bicycle,—in which of the following places would you want to increase the friction, and in which would you want to decrease it? Handle grips, axles, pedals, tires, pedal cranks, the sockets in which the handle bar turns, the nuts that hold ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... event in his life, and henceforward Italy and Handel were always present at the bottom of his mind as a kind of double pedal to every thought, word, and deed. Almost the last thing he ever asked me to do for him, within a few days of his death, was to bring Solomon that he might refresh his memory as to the harmonies of "With thee th' unsheltered moor I'd trace." ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... the most subtle art, as Chester, who had a keen eye for such matters and a fastidious taste, could readily recognize. From the crown of her dark head to the toe of the blue slipper with which she pressed the pedal of the great piano which she had brought from her old home in the South, she was a picture to feast one's ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... the house door between her and me before she could reply to that, and the next instant I had my bicycle on the road and my leg over the saddle, and was hesitating before I put my foot to the pedal. What did Nance Maguire want of me? Had she any news of Maisie? It was odd that she should come down—had I better not ride up the town and see her? But I reflected that if she had any news—which was ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... and green water, in an unknown dungeon. My part shall be to discover her imprisonment. Sounds of strange music attract my attention to a part of the castle which I have not before frequented. There I shall distinctly hear a female voice chaunting the 'Bridesmaids' Chorus,' with Erard's double pedal accompaniment. By the aid of the confessors of the two families, two drinking, rattling, impertinent, most corrupt, and most amusing friars, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... old sites and buildings may be here mentioned. The County Court occupies what was then a tinker's shop and a farm-yard behind; the pedal stone of the ancient Cross, now in the Institute garden, was then at the back entrance to the Bull Yard, near Mr. Innes' shop, having been removed from the Cross a few years before; the market place could only be approached from the High Street, through the inn yards. Of the ponds of Royston, ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... look at the time I'm routed out of bed! Say, Hartmann, I wish you would give Oom Peter a hint to oil his shoes. Every morning he wakes me up at five o'clock, creaking down the stairs. It's a sort of pedal alarm clock. Creak! Creak! Creak!—Ach, Gott! Even yet I can hardly keep one eye open. If ever it pleases Providence to give me my heritage, the first thing I'll do will be to sleep till noon. And then ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... forces under General von Beseler. I happened to perform the clog dancing at a critical moment during a trip on a Scheldt River barge, thus diverting the attention of the river sentries from my lack of proper papers. While the pedal acrobatics were in progress my temporary friend, Mons. le Conducteur, reinforced the already genial pickets with many glasses of the ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... foot on the soft pedal and played the old love song, and as he played his mother wandered over hills he had never seen, through fields he had never known, and heard a voice in the song he might never hear, even in his dreams. When he finished, she stood beside him ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... there were candy-pullings, and 'companies' where you sat around and were bored until somebody proposed playing 'The Prince of Paris Lost his Hat' or some game like that. When the old folks went to bed, our hostess would find a pack of cards—authors, most likely—or play a waltz on the soft pedal for two couples to dance. Wholesome but ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... canoe," lively and—to the lookers-on—mirth-provoking exercises ensue. When you stick your hand under to make a stroke your feet decline to stay anywhere but on top; and when, after an exciting tussle with your refractory pedal extremities, you again get them beneath the surface, your hands fly out with the splash and splutter of a half-dozen flutter wheels. If, on account of your brains being heavier than your heels, you chance to turn a somersault, and your head goes under, ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... in the hearth. The other philosophers were crouched in odd shapes on the sofa and table and chairs, and one, who was a little bored, had crawled to the piano and was timidly trying the Prelude to Rhinegold with his knee upon the soft pedal. The air was heavy with good tobacco-smoke and the pleasant warmth of tea, and as Rickie became more sleepy the events of the day seemed to float one by one before his acquiescent eyes. In the morning he had read Theocritus, whom he believed to be the greatest of Greek poets; ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... clear track to the lib'ry, and if you're servin' after-dinner coffee and frosted green cordials, so much the better. Reporters are almost human, you know. It would help too if you'd happen to be just startin' for the op'ra, with all your pearl ropes on. And whisper,—soft pedal on Djickyns here, but heavy on his ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... be remembered, did not speak English; hence it was that he resorted to the expressive language of manual (and pedal) signs.] ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... flute-like notes. The master played the same bars for the second time. He was still able to sustain, if it were necessary, a quavering, imperfect phrase. But John delivered the second repetition without a mistake, singing easily from the chest. The master put his foot upon the soft pedal. Nobody was watching him. Had any one done so, he would have seen the perspiration break upon the musician's forehead. The piano purred its accompaniment. Then, in the middle of the phrase, the master lifted ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Universalist gentleman, but was not ready for the opening. It is to fill the recess behind the spacious platform, and is described as containing pneumatic windchests throughout, and having an aeolian attachment. It is of three-manual compass, C.C.C. to C.4, 61 notes; and pedal compass, C.C.C. to F.30. The great organ has double open diapason (stopped bass), open diapason, dulciana, viola di gambi, doppel flute, hohl flute, octave, octave quint, superoctave, and trumpet,—65 pipes each. The swell organ has bourdon, open diapason, ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... the uproar that its own activities have brought about, will welcome the soft pedal that Sir Hiram Maxim, inventor of the gun silencer, is preparing to put on the hubbub in which every great urban community has condemned ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... having seen them kiss one day—"when it rained." Thereafter it is heard repeatedly in varying forms to the end of the scene, at times underlying a persistent triplet-figure which has the effect of an inverted pedal-point. A tumultuous and agitated crescendo passage brings the ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... his letter first. I censored the tender parts, spun out the padding and served it up like cold-hash. Then I set to work on 'Erbert. I got the tremolo stop out and the soft pedal on and made a symphony of it. I made it a stream of trickling melody—blue skies, yellow sunshine and scent of roses, with Georgette perched like a sugar goddess on a silver cloud and 'Erbert trying ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... completes as grand bass, the other members being the oboe, cor anglais, and bassoon. The contrafagotto corresponds to the double bass in strings, to the contrabass tuba in the brass wind, and to the pedal clarinet in the single reed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... not content with refusing to be ruled, must needs set up as a ruler, and manifested a determination to keep, not only his sisters, but his governess in order, by violent manual and pedal applications; and, as he was a tall, strong boy of his years, this occasioned no trifling inconvenience. A few sound boxes on the ear, on such occasions, might have settled the matter easily enough: but as, in that case, he might make up some story to his mother which she ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... individual eyed the stockman rather narrowly, as though he expected a few words of reproach, or something worse; but in this he was mistaken; for Hardum contented himself with expressing surprise at the length of his pedal extremities, and wanted to know if he was not sired by a kangaroo—an expression which our new acquaintance laughed at, as he wished to conciliate the ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... happened. "Get out of the way!" a voice shrieked "out of the way, out of the way, OUT OF THE WAY!" Her heart lurched, her stomach twisted convulsively, and there was a brassy taste in her mouth. Instinctively, she stamped down on the brake pedal, swerved sharply into the outer lane. By the time she had topped the rise, she was going a cautious 50 miles an hour and hugging the far edge of the freeway. Then, and only then, she heard the squeal of agonized tires and saw the cumbersome semitrailer ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant
... quality of the material before commencing to hammer it. The hammer weighs 15 lb., and has a stroke variable from 2 in. to 9 in., and makes 250 blows per minute. The driving shaft, A, is fitted with fast and loose belt pulleys, the belt fork being connected to the pedal, P, which when pressed down by the foot of the workman, slides the driving belt on to the fast pulley and starts the hammer; when the foot is taken off the pedal, the weight on the latter moves the belt quickly on to the loose pulley, and the hammer is stopped. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... we don't drift the way we ought to," said Harry, pressing on his clutch pedal and trying ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... the handle brake and at the one worked by the foot pedal. Both were off, for Bunker had released them when he left the car, since it stood on a level bit of ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... to-night, when Dwight was gone. Her long wrist was curved high, her thin hand pressed and fingered awkwardly, and at her mistakes her head dipped and strove to make all right. Her foot continuously touched the loud pedal—the blurred sound seemed to accomplish more. So she played "How Can I Leave Thee," and they managed to sing it. So she played "Long, Long Ago," and "Little Nell of Narragansett Bay." Beyond open doors, Mrs. Bett listened, sang, ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... the piano downstairs, I wonder? With the soft pedal down, some one is trying over that gavotte of Rameau's, so full of bewitching melancholy, that I was playing just now. Who can it be? Francesca came up ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... mattress, and a rose-leaf her coverlid. There she lay at night, but in the day-time she used to play about on the table; here the woman had put a bowl, surrounded by a ring of flowers, with their stalks in water, in the middle of which floated a great tulip pedal, and on this Thumbelina sat, and sailed from one side of the bowl to the other, rowing herself with two white horse-hairs for oars. It was such a pretty sight! She could sing, too, with a voice more soft and sweet than had ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... preferably near the foot of the pilot or observer. This receptacle is fitted with a bottom moving in the manner of a trap-door, and is opened by pressing a lever. The aviator has merely to depress this pedal with his foot, when the box is opened and the whole of the contents are released. The fall at first is somewhat erratic, but this is an advantage, as it enables the darts to scatter and to cover a wide area. As the rotary motion of the arrows increases during the fall, the direct ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... for fear of outrunning my companion; the wise little beast, for her part, seemed to rise to the occasion, and to understand that we were pursued; for she stepped out bravely. On the other hand, in spite of the low seat and the short crank of a woman's machine, I could pedal up the slope with more force than Hilda, for I am a practised hill-climber; so that in both ways we gained, besides having momentarily disconcerted and checked the enemy. Their ponies were tired, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... Father lived in a big White House, with Evergreen Trees and whitewashed Dornicks in front of it, and a Wind-Pump at the rear. Father was a good deal the same kind of a Man as David Harum, except that he didn't let go of any Christmas Presents, or work the Soft Pedal when he had a chance to apply a Crimp to some Widow who had seen Better Days. In fact, Daughter was the only one on Earth who could induce him to ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... another. If the right hand thrusts the flute, it is the duty of the left to see that the alternate and the limiting threads of the warp are properly lifted. First comes a pressure of the foot on a long, lath-like pedal which is attached to the bar holding in turn the loops which ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... inalterable Mind. This gift of his was naturally very much a matter of temperament, and accordingly by far the greater part of his finer product belongs to the period of his prime, ere Time had set his lumpish foot on the pedal that deadens the nerves of animal sensibility.[355] He did not grow as those poets do in whom the artistic sense is predominant. One of the most delightful fancies of the Genevese humorist, Toepffer, is the poet Albert, who, having had his portrait drawn by a highly idealizing hand, does his ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... and Pedal Organ (except the two stops Bourdon and Bass Flute of the last) are placed in four bays of the north triforium of the nave; the choir organ and the two Pedal stops are in the first bay of the north aisle, and the Console in the second bay behind the stalls. There are 68 speaking stops ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... in the struggling years of his career, once showed great presence of mind, which saved the entire breakdown of a performance of 'Faust.' In the midst of the church scene, the wire connecting the pedal under Costa's foot with the metronome stick at the organ, broke. Costa was the conductor. In the concerted music this meant disaster, as the organist could hear nothing but his own instrument. Quick as thought, while he was playing ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... to bear too hard on this pedal. It is easier to look at things from the commonplace standpoint. One thing or another prevented any of my companions in the jail from doing what it was desirable to do, and circumstances quite unforeseen opened a way for me to do it. What I have said above was with a view of showing how difficult ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... crash or peal of thunder. But its chief characteristic was its extraordinary depth, as if it were almost too low to be heard. According to one observer, it was a low rumbling sound, much lower than the lowest thunder; and another compared it to the pedal notes of a great organ, only of a deeper pitch than can be taken in by the human ear, a noise more felt than heard. It will be seen presently how the sound, from its very depth, was inaudible ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... about it, Mr. Trimmins," the young girl said, with her eyes on the road ahead and her foot on the gas pedal. "I hope you will make a good thing out ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... revolves around a horizontal axle supported by a cast iron frame similar to that of a sewing machine. Motion is communicated to it by a double pedal, which actuates a connecting rod and a system of pulleys. The external surface of the brush contains three channels in which the foot gear to be polished is successively placed. In the first of these the dust and mud are removed, in the second the blacking is spread on, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... had been acting decidedly uncivil. They ventured a platitude about the beautiful Indian summer weather and labored out a ponderous joke or two about such a bad-tempered man having such a good-looking wife—for which I despised them all. But I could see that even if my intrusion had put the soft pedal on their talk it had also left everything uncomfortably tentative and non-committal. For some reason or other this was a man's fight, one which had to be settled in a man's way. So I decided to retire with outward dignity even if with inward embarrassment. ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... that a woman sobbed, but his eyes, used by now to the obscurity, told him that it was neither Mrs. Bruce nor Barbara. The piano burst into a storm of sound, under cover of which Rose, still at her post, torn with jealousy, continued to pedal at the direction of her lord and master, and sobbed as if her heart would break. Devils filled the room, whirling in mad dances; they screamed and yelled; the souls of the damned screeched in torment; and the face of him who invoked the inferno, swollen, ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... is placed in a position differing from that of most others in England, although not unusual in Continental Cathedrals. The pedal and swell organs have been placed in the triforium on the north side, and the great organ, with the choir organ beneath it, project in front of the third bay, resting upon an over-hanging chamber ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... loom is sitting, Throws his shuttle to and fro; Foot and treadle, Hand and pedal, Upward, downward, Hither, thither, How the weaver makes them go! As the weaver wills they go. Up and down the web is plying, And across the woof is flying; What a rattling! What a battling! What a shuffling! What ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... fixed her eyes upon the dominant figure in the corn-straw dress that the glare of light fell shimmering on. The sweet voice was still rising, and she longed that the accompanist would force the tone to cover it a little, and put the loud pedal on. He, however, was gazing at his music, and played on quietly until, with startling ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... Joe. "But when it's that kind of opinion he ought to put on the soft pedal. Any one has a right to have a club foot or a hunched back or cross eyes, but he doesn't usually go ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... went, the machine flying noiselessly along and gathering pace every yard. I had nearly reached the bottom and was just getting ready to pedal, when all of a sudden, I caught sight of something that almost paralyzed me. Right ahead, in the centre of the village square, stood a prison warder. His back was towards me and I could see the moonlight gleaming on the ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... he spent on Sweet Sorrow laid over anything that the town had ever seen for sadness. Put 'em through every stage of grief from the snuffles to the snorts. Doc always was a pretty noisy preacher, but he began work on that head with soft-pedal-tremolo-stop preaching and wound up with a peroration like a steamboat explosion. Started with his illustrations dying of consumption and other peaceful diseases, and finished up with railroad wrecks. He'd been at it two hours when he got ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... th top and come down jes so in what we call shickle. She'd have a bench so high. The loom was high as dis door and my ma would set on the bench and her foots wuz on somethin like a bicycle and when she put her foots on de pedal dat shickle would come open and make a blum blum an that would make a yard of cloth, an she'd mash the pedal agin and another yard of cloth. Jes so we'd make eight and ten yards of cloth in one day. An when hit wuz made we would carry hit to de white fokes. Dey would make us clo'es ...
— 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
... himself in his words, he began to talk hurriedly of an important order. Sidonie had disappeared after exchanging a few unmeaning words with the impassive Frantz. Madame Dobson continued her tremolos on the soft pedal, like those which accompany critical situations ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Telemetacarpals, in which the splint is far from the carpus, and articulated with the digital phalanges. All the known species of deer can be classified under these two heads; and it is a significant fact that this pedal division is borne out by certain cranial peculiarities discovered by Professor Garrod, and also, to a certain extent, by an arrangement of hair-tufts on the tarsus and metatarsus. In the Old World deer, which are with few exceptions Plesiometacarpi, those which have these tufts have them ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... sharp. Wagner, who has made several important innovations in writing for bass brass instruments, requires an octave bass trombone in B flat; an octave lower than the tenor one, in the "Nibelungen." The fundamental tones of the trombone are called "pedal" notes. They are difficult to get and less valuable than harmonics because, in all wind instruments, notes produced by overblowing are richer than the fundamental notes in tone quality. Valve trombones do not, however, find favor, the defects ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... him with one quick turn of the head and made no answer. But she played the air over again—the girls sing it to this day over their household work at Farlingford to other words—with her foot on the soft pedal. The Marquis hummed it between his teeth at the other end of ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... presented to us for adoration, but as we did not seem to "ad," he withdrew his pedal attachment and talked about ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... that Joe Harris raved at this announcement, might be too strong a word. But it is not too much to say that her springy foot (Joe had not the proverbially "little" one of the novelists, but a very well-shaped pedal of the Arab pattern, under the sole of which water could have run with as much freedom as under the Starucca Viaduct or the High Bridge), patted the hall floor with vexation, impatience and "botheration." There was not much use in blurting out her vexation before a servant, but she ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... twice tired, dirty stragglers, lying at the roadside, raised a cheer as they recognized the small American flag that fluttered from our taxi's door; and once we gave a lift to a Belgian bicycle courier, who had grown too leg-weary to pedal his machine another inch. He was the color of the dust through which he had ridden, and his face under its dirt mask was thin and drawn with fatigue; but his racial enthusiasm endured, and when we dropped him he insisted on shaking hands with all of us, and offering us a drink out of a very ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... the fibres of Crotolaria juncea, was steeped repeatedly in limewater, and then exposed to the air by spreading it on the grass; it was also repeatedly pounded by the dhenki or pedal, and when sufficiently reduced by this process to make a pulp, it was mixed in a gumla with water, so as to make it of the consistence of thick soup. The frames with which the sheets were taken up were made of mat of the ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... He was too gentle and considerate to quote Voltaire and Rousseau at inopportune times, and she sustained and encouraged his mental independence. All of which is here voiced with one foot on the soft pedal, and with no thought of putting forth an argument to the effect that young gentlemen with liberal views should marry ladies who ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... you were working the pedal and I was sailing around very fast," said Raggedy Andy, "and all of ...
— Raggedy Andy Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... instrument, and was built in 1809, by the late Mr. Allen, of Sutton Street, Soho. It has within the last few years been much improved and enlarged. It contains forty-eight stops, viz.:—twelve in the great organ, twelve in the swell, ten in the choir, eight in the pedal organ, and six couplers. These improvements were made by H. P. Gates, Esq., of the Vineyard, and are commemorated by a brass plate on the south side of the organ, inscribed as follows: "To the praise and glory of God and memory ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... should not be absolutely erect, but leaning slightly forward, so as to allow the weight to be distributed between the handle-bars, the pedal, and the saddle. This slightly inclined attitude also maintains the proper and harmonious relation of the internal organs, so that the bowels do not crowd down ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... calmly, "but not the way you did it. Kissing should be done upon the soft pedal mon ami, adagio, con amore. Your technique is rusty. Is it a wonder that ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... under whisper of a very soft pedal, some one, probably a waiting pupil, was playing the indomitable pianoforte composition, "Melody in F." Staring at her daughter, an old conceit of Lilly's girlhood came flowing back. It seemed to her that a proscenium arch of music was forming over ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... engine in front of him woke into life deafeningly and, waving away the mechanics holding the wings, he pressed the clutch pedal and moved ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... steering wheel, panting, fighting back his weakness; then he thrust forward his control lever and the car began to move. The motion, the kindly touch of the cool night air against his head, stimulated him; he stepped on the gas pedal and the car leaped forward as though eager for ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland |
