"Fiddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Cambridge University by the scholarships and prizes which he had won. One beautiful little dark-eyed daughter of seven was playing in a West End Theatre as the dormouse in "Alice in Wonderland." She was second fiddle to Alice herself, also, and could sing all her songs. Her pay was some five pounds a week, poor enough for the attraction she proved, but more than all the rest of the family put together earned. At that time I never went to theatres. Acquaintances had ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... hotelled at the 'Royal Edinburgh,' and enjoyed once more the restful calm of a quasi-tropical night, broken only by the Christmas twanging of the machete (which is to the guitar what kit is to fiddle); by the clicking of the pebbles on the shore, and by the gentle murmuring of the waves ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... her fiddle-case with her; and to offer to carry it for her seemed an easy way out of my difficulty; but she would not surrender it for a while. I asked her if she had been playing at a concert, or if she were coming from a lesson. No; well, then, why had ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... going," said the doctor. "You two can chat for a while. Don't tire yourself out, young man, and in a day or two you will be fit as a fiddle. Wish I had your physique! That system of yours is a natural shock absorber. We run across them once in a long while—half-killed one day and back the next hunting ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... Cornwall, May-day seems to have been known by the name of Furry Day. Perhaps a corruption of "Flora's Day." People wore hawthorn in their hats, and danced hand-in-hand through the town to the sound of a fiddle. This particular performance was ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... gazed a moment in silence, and then rushed en masse upon the intruder, the landlord bringing up the rear, and sounding a charge upon his fiddle. But, as they drew nigh, the black cloak began to assume a familiar look; the hat, also, was an old acquaintance; and, these being removed, from beneath them shone forth the reverend face ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reader may have observed that the second fiddle is generally a little louder and more sharp set than the first. On this occasion that instrument was played upon by the worthy deputy, to the amazement of all the connoisseurs in that species of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... no storm-door, and the interior of the chateau—at least, the wing in which I found myself—was almost as cold as the outside. I stood still, hesitating which way to take. A fiddle was being played somewhere, and the bursts of noisy laughter ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... himself relate. That he did never come to deliver any letters from his master, but ever he was placed in the lobby; the hangings being turned towards him, where he might see the queen dancing to a little fiddle; which was to no other end than that he should tell his master, by her youthful disposition, how likely he was to come to the possession of the crown he so much thirsted after: for you must understand, the wisest in that kingdom did believe the king ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... 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
... Earth;' the fifth, 'The Bones of all People;' till the dance really begins in the sixth. Death, a skeleton, as seen through the rest of the designs, sometimes playing on a guitar or lute, sometimes carrying a drum, bagpipes, a dulcimer, or a fiddle, now appearing with mitre on head and crozier in hand to summon the Abbot; then marching before the parson with bell, book, and candle; again crowned with ivy, when he seizes the Duke, claims his partners, beginning with ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... few weeks back, all the critics have spoken of "A Ballad of a Nun," and admitted its surprising strength and beauty. They have left me in the plight of that belated fiddle in "Rejected Addresses," or of the gentleman who had to be content with saying "ditto" to Mr. Burke. For once they seem unanimous, and for once they are right. The poem is beautiful ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it is not serious," Saunders said. "I have seen him break down before. He is too intense, too strenuous; whatever he does he does with every nerve in his body drawn as taut as a fiddle- string." ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... the sun, in 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 me ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... met two hackney coaches driving very rapidly. The first of them contained one of our boatswain's mates and the coxswain of the launch with their delicate ladies. On the roof was another of our men playing the fiddle. I expected to see him fall off every moment, but, like a true sailor, he had learnt to hold fast. The second coach contained the men's hats and their ladies' bonnets. As they were not allowed to go farther than Plymouth, they had been driving from Dock to that place ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... Dan, returning the gift with precision. "Ef you don't like my music, git out your fiddle. I ain't goin' to lie here all day an' listen to you an' Long Jack arguin' 'baout candles. Fiddle, Tom Platt; or I'll learn Harve here ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... interview with a woman if she is putting on new gloves! She is perfectly free to seem occupied or not, as suits her convenience; and she can, by wrestling with the gloves, interrupt him without speech, distract his attention, fiddle his thoughts, give him a sense of imbecile futility, and all the time offer him no cause for resentment against her. He himself seems in the wrong; she is merely ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... too, are welcome as the flowers in May for their own sake; some of them may have a human voice; some may have that magic which transforms a wooden box into a song-bird, and what we jeeringly call a fiddle into what we mention with respect as a violin. From that grinding lilt, with which the blind man, seeking pence, accompanies the beat of paddle wheels across the ferry, there is surely a difference rather of kind than of degree ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... men to considerations of speculative truth became conceivable. The way in which the axioms of sages slip off from multitudes, as mere vague "glittering generalities," good enough for cherishers of the "intuitions" to lisp of by moonlight, but sheer fiddle-dee-dee to firmly built men,—the commentary of the able lawyer upon Emerson's lecture, "I don't understand it, but my girls do!"—all this appears in a new light. Are not most men working along some cliff, financial or other, after a bird? And do they not honestly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... Nation familiar to our childhood proved a poor migr who gained a precarious livelihood as a dancing-master, cook, teacher, or barber, who was profuse of smiles, shrugs, bows, and compliments, prided himself on la belle France, played the fiddle, and took snuff. A more dignified view succeeded, when we read "Tlmaque," so long an initiatory text-book in the study of the language, blended as its crystal style was in our imaginations with the pure and noble character of Fnelon. Perhaps the next link in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... hearty manner. "Exercise, old boy! You ought to try it. Greatest thing in the world. Just took a row to the end of the piers and back, and I'm as fit as a fiddle!" ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... for you," said Mother Gaillarde, "for it is commonly to waste time over some sort of fiddle-faddle that I despise. You are heartily welcome to it, I can tell you! Now, come, Sister Ada, don't be silly and set a bad example. It is all nonsense, and you ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... Scot, a Highlander of the Isles, sat upon a barrel-head sawing at a fiddle, and the shrill scream of it filled the barn. Tone he did not aspire to, but he played with Caledonian verve and swing, and kept the snapping time. It was mad, harsh music of the kind that sets the blood tingling and the feet to move in rhythm, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... the slaves were grouped so as to give occasion for a general frolic. Thus Daniel R. Tucker in 1858 sent a general invitation over the countryside in central Georgia to a sextuple wedding among his slaves, with dinner and dancing to follow.[2] On the whole, the fiddle, the banjo and the bones were ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... you go not away so, 705 But wait until the fiddle come, O wait until you hear the drum, Then how to move you'll scarcely know So dead with ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... Hayes, who has returned from lumbering in Canada to make a living at home. The motif of the tale is the unconscious competition of the two friends, of whom Andy is very willing to play "second fiddle," did not character and brains force him to the front. The young squire of Halton is too selfish and capricious to succeed, and in spite of his loyalty to friendship, Andy finds himself driven to take his place both in love and ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... occasion in his own life, when he was most affected by the emotions of the sublime was when he stood upon one of the summits of the Cordillera, and surveyed the magnificent prospect all around. It seemed, as he quaintly observed, as if his nerves had become fiddle strings, and had all taken to rapidly vibrating. This remark was only made incidentally, and the conversation passed into some other branch. About an hour afterwards Mr. Darwin retired to rest, while I sat up in the smoking-room with one of his sons. We continued ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... 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. ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... He was jealous of her! Sally laughed almost scornfully. Fancy a big fellow like Toby being jealous of a little thing like her. Men! They were all alike. All right as long as they were playing first fiddle! That was it: Toby didn't want her to have a chance at all. He wanted her always to be number two. Sally shook her ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... Wylie. Dat come 'bout on de second pay day. De other nigger gals say her marry me for my money but I never have believed it. White ladies do dat 'kalkilating' trick sometime but you take a blue-gum nigger gal, all wool on de top of her head and lak to dance and jig wid her foots, to pattin' and fiddle music, her ain't gonna have money in de back of her head when her pick out a man to marry. Her gonna want a man wid muscles on his arms and back and I had them. Usin' dat pick and shovel on de railroad just give me what it took to git Mary. ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... assailed by the faintly pungent scent of the shrubs in the plantation. Higher and higher they climbed, sensible with each step of a greater isolation, of a rarer, clearer air. Above them, in one of the higher houses in the rue Mueller, some one was playing a fiddle, and the piercing sweet sounds came through the night like a human voice, adding the poignancy, the passion and pathos of human things to the aloofness ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... the Bailie, "you're welcome to a tune on your ain fiddle; but see if I dinna gar ye dance ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... isolation, and found, as is not utterly uncommon, quite a few maids and matrons among the 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 ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... were thrown open to the company. We had refreshments in abundance and great variety, and at a certain hour, we were astounded by the clamor of tamborine and fiddle giving due notice to the dancers. Among my few social accomplishments, this of dancing had never been included. Naturally, I should, perhaps, be considered an awkward man. I was conscious of this awkwardness ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... abundance of wood, fires were lighted, provisions cooked, and the shipwrecked crew prepared to make themselves as happy as they could. Some, indeed, when they had knocked off work, amused themselves by playing leapfrog on the sands, and running races; and the black cook, who had brought his fiddle, beginning to scrape away, set the whole dancing. At last they were ordered to turn in, and though it was not likely that any enemy was near, sentries were stationed round the camp, ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... they tormented him a lot," admitted her husband. "He's a great hand at the fiddle and likes company. He goes to the harbour a good deal. But they say he takes sulky spells when he hasn't a word to throw to a dog. 'Twouldn't be any wonder, living with the Gordons. They're all as ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... hearing of music is always attended with movements, however imperceptible, in the throat, which, being true, would prove that, in a fashion, we perform the melodies which we think we only hear; living echoes, nerves vibrating beneath the composer's touch as literally as does the string of the fiddle, or its wooden fibres. A very delicate instrument this, called the Hearer, and, as we all know, more liable to being out of tune, to refusing to act altogether, than any instrument (fortunately for performers) hitherto made by the hand of man. Thus, in ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... were in fact too many for her,—and that her efforts to overcome them, and to face the realities of the world, had exhausted her. This was, of course, not said openly, at the town-cross of Exeter; but such was the opinion which Mr. Martin gave in confidence to the mother. "Fiddle-de-dee!" said Camilla, when she was told of feelings, susceptibilities, and hysterics. At the present moment she had a claim to the undivided interest of the family, and she believed that her sister's ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... of the frigate saw all this, and he beheld at the same time the clusters of happy sailors, sauntering with light step and pleasant faces up and down the waist and gangways; and he heard, too, the scraping of a fiddle on the forecastle, the shuffling, dancing feet, and the least notion of a jovial sea-song coming up from the gun-deck. Yes, it must have been a glorious pride with which that gallant officer gazed around him from the quarter-deck of the ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... Wentworth was the "great buck" of his day, and was wont to fiddle at Stoodley's far into the morning for sheer love of fiddling and revelry. Stoodley's has now fallen indeed! It is the brick building marked "custom-house," and it stands at the corner ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... he buried his 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 ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... former. As I knew Mr. Joseph Spence,(387) I do not think I should have been so much delighted as Dr. Kippis with reading his letters. He was a good-natured, harmless little soul, but more like a silver penny than a genius. It was a neat, fiddle-faddle, bit of sterling, that had read good books and kept good company, but was too trifling for use, and only fit ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... didn't want to make bombs or automatic bankrobbers; he just wanted to fiddle with the stack, see what it would do. He turned it over in his hands a couple of times, then shrugged, got up, went over to his closet, and put the thing away. There wasn't anything he could do ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... handfuls. Why, he told me to my face that I was a-getting old; old indeed! there's not a woman in London knows my age except Mrs Davis down in the Old Kent Road, and beyond a haricot vein in one of my legs I'm as young as ever I was. Old indeed! There's many a good tune played on an old fiddle. I hate his ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... "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, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... from his own lips about what he had done and said. He was still the unaffected countryman, seemingly careless, happy and indolent. It was on the occasion of one of these family gatherings that a contemporary saw him and wrote: "In mock complaint he exclaimed, 'How can I play the fiddle with two babies on each knee ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... LADY G. Fiddle-faddle, silly man! And so you said before. If you thought so, you take the way, (don't you?) to mend the matter, by dancing and capering about, and putting yourself into all manner of disagreeable attitudes; and even sometimes being ready to foam at the ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... at her from 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! ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... crossing, we were astonished to see a man seated in a sulky in the middle of the river and playing for his life on a fiddle. The horse was up to his middle in water, and it seemed as if the flimsy vehicle was ready to be swept away by the current. Still the fiddler fiddled on composedly as if his life had been insured. We thought ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... plays the fiddle fit to tear the heart out of your body, and reads big books till God knows what hour in the mornin'. His father, he says he don't know what to do with him ... There's a big, bad devil of a Polack down to the ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... the fiddle, Its strings loudly giggled, The bailiff's man wriggled Ahead for a spree. "Hold!" shouted Ola And tripped him to tumbling, The bailiff's man humbling, To maidens' ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... 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 for settlement; he had achieved a vast ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... who came before us late in the spring, had gone up the river further, but they were no better off than those at St. Ann's. The men caught fish and hunted moose when they could. In the spring we made maple sugar. We ate fiddle heads, grapes and even the leaves of trees to allay the pangs of hunger. On one occasion some poisonous weeds were eaten along with the fiddle heads; one or two died, and Dr. Earle had all he could ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... scarabs," she laughed, "while beneath you Caracuna riots and revolutes and massacres foreigners. Nero with his fiddle ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... had died ere I had seen it; why didst not make me acquainted when thou wert first resolv'd to be a whore, I would have seen thy hot lust satisfied more privately: I would have kept a dancer and a whole consort of musicians in my own house only to fiddle thee. ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... furnace-blaze, or 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. ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... name because he always smiled over a crust of bread, even when he was a baby. Now that he was a little lad of ten with a great flock of ewes and lambs to tend and drive through sun and storm, he had smiles and kind words for all, and he played his fiddle all day long until its sweet tunes ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... Fielding's. Even at that time, libertine as it was in some ways, and sentimental as it was in others, people had not failed to notice that Pamela's virtue is not quite what was then called "neat" wine—the pure and unadulterated juice of the grape. The longueurs and the fiddle-faddle, the shameless and fulsome preface-advertisements and the rest lay open enough to censure. So Fielding saw the handles, and gripped them at once by starting a male Pamela—a situation not only offering "most excellent differences," ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... alert to solve the frequent riddle, To judge if Jones should have his train-fare free, Whether the band requires another fiddle, And which is senior, Robinson or me? Who shall indite such circulars as his To Officers Commanding Companies About their musketry, or why it is So many men take ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... back my Frost, or put a locked clasp on Arvine, my career must be extinguished. Give me back Frost, and, if life and health are spared, I will write another dozen of volumes yet before I hang up my fiddle—if so serious a confusion of metaphors may be pardoned. I know from long experience how kind and considerate both the late and present superintendents of the reading-room were and are, but I doubt how far either ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... perseverance. In his eighth year, under the superintendence of his father, he had written a sonata, which, however, along with many other juvenile productions, he lately destroyed; and as he played about three times a week in the churches and at private musical parties, upon a fiddle nearly as large as himself, he soon began to make himself known among his townsmen. At this time he received much benefit from one Francesco Gnecco, who died in 1811, and whom he always ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... is an extremely poor, landlocked country, highly dependent on farming (wheat especially) and livestock raising (sheep and goats). Economic considerations have played second fiddle to political and military upheavals during more than 16 years of war, including the nearly 10-year Soviet military occupation (which ended 15 February 1989). Over the past decade, one-third of the population fled the country, with Pakistan ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... "Precisely the fiddle-stick, Mr Forster! you did mean it, and you do mean it, and this is all the return that I am to expect for my kindness and anxiety for your welfare—slaving and toiling all day as I do; but you're incorrigible, Mr Forster: ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... replied; "he's dreadfully inclined to music since he had a drum, and I want the fiddle to see if I can't make another Pickaninny or an Old Bull of him. Jews-harps is simple, though I can't see how King David played on one of 'em, and sung his psalms at the same time; but the fiddle is best, because genius can show itself plainer on it ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... 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
... of the Bible in syllabic characters; and the minister had given the 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, and bear meat; as ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... "Orlando Innamorato" of poor Ferrarese Boiardo. Moreover, Ariosto has many qualities unknown to Boiardo; wit, malice, stateliness, decided eloquence and power of simile and apostrophe; he is a symphony for full orchestra, and Boiardo a mere melody played on a single fiddle, which good authorities (and no one dare contest with Italians when they condemn anything not Tuscan as jargon) pronounce to be no Cremona. All these advantages Ariosto certainly has; and I do not quarrel with those who ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... Panney. "The young man and that Cicely Drane of yours have agreed to marry each other, and I suppose the old lady will live with them, and Miriam will have to get down from her high horse and agree to play second fiddle, or go to school again. She is too ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... And as technique determines the design of a boat, or of a waggon, or of a plough-share, so it controls absolutely the fashioning of tools, and is responsible for any beauty of form they may possess. Of all tools none, of course, is more exquisite than a fiddle-bow. But the fiddle-bow never could have been perfected, because there would have been no call for its tapering delicacy, its calculated balance of lightness and strength, had not the violinist's technique reached such ...
— Progress and History • Various
... ain't a better judge of musical instruments in the whole world than what I am. I had an uncle,' says he, 'that was a partner in a piano-factory, and I've seen thousands of 'em put together. I know all about musical instruments from a pipe-organ to a corn-stalk fiddle. There ain't a man lives, sir, that can tell me any news about any instrument that has to be pounded, blowed, scraped, grinded, picked, or wound with ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... sort of terrace with a wild garden all round. It must have been very pretty before the war, even in its deserted state it is very nice; forget-me-nots and bits of lake and stream everywhere. I feel as fit as a fiddle and am ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... Hotspur could be bright, and he was proud of being bright. With this woman he was always subdued, always made to play second fiddle, always talked like a boy; and he knew it. He had loved her once, if he was capable of loving anything; but her mastery over him wearied him, even though he was, after a fashion, proud of her cleverness, and he wished that she were,—well, dead, if ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... the wheel with the right hand and slapped his leg. "I thought so. Do you know who that young man with the fiddle ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... evening, Macora provided a varied entertainment for his guests. It included a grand feast, with songs and dancing, the latter done to the sounds of the tom-tom drum, and one-stringed African fiddle. ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... 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 ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... terribly aggravated by a private who had been standing next to me having overprimed his musket, with the consequence that when he fired, my face being so close, the powder flew up and caught my wound, which though only originally a slight one soon made me dance for a time without a fiddle. ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... half-breeds sauntered about, flashing bright teeth and wicked dark eyes at whom it might concern; the traders gazed stolidily over their little black pipes, and uttered brief sentences through their thick black beards. Everywhere was gay sound—the fiddle, the laugh, the song; everywhere was gay color—the red sashes of the voyageurs, the beaded moccasins and leggings of the metis, the capotes of the brigade, the variegated costumes of the Crees and Ojibways. Like the wild roses around the edge of the ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... There will be woe indeed, lords; the sly whoresons Have got a speeding trick to lay down ladies. A French song and a fiddle has ...
— The Life of Henry VIII • William Shakespeare [Dunlap edition]
... of something that had once been beautiful with life, whose utter sorrow and hopelessness pierced one at the sight. And so he stood and looked at Elder Harricutt, who shot him one glance and then looking down began to fiddle with his watch chain, halting ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... every faculty was as if enthralled by the swinging iteration of the sweet melancholy melody, rendered with a breadth of effect, an inspiration, it might almost have seemed, incongruous with the infirmities of the crazy old fiddle. He was like a creature under the sway of a spell, and apparently drawn by this dulcet lure of the enchantment of sound was the odd procession that trailed silently after him through these ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... his separate players, as the conductor does between the instruments in his orchestra. If he does not bring them entirely under his influence, if he (because, like the conductor of a pot-house band, he himself is the first fiddle) does not subordinate himself as carefully to the requirements of the composition, the result will be worthless as a whole, no matter what individual talents may glitter out of it. What should we say if the first fiddle insisted on having ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... grow soft, a dreamy look would steal into them, and a happy 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 in hand. ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... her, uttering fearful curses. If he caught her praying, he said, he would "give her hell." Mary was a member of the Methodist Church in Washington. There were several pious people in the company; and at night, when the driver found them melancholy and disposed to pray, he had a fiddle brought, and made them dance in their chains, whipping them till they complied. Mary at length became so weak that she really could travel on foot no further. Her feeble frame was exhausted, and sank beneath accumulated sufferings. She was seized with a burning fever; and the diabolical trader—not ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... turned my head, or, more definitely—a violin. I bought a fiddle on my own account. Of course my father saw the instrument; if I could keep it out of his sight I could not very well keep it out of his hearing. Then, besides, little boys should not be deceptive. He says: "What are you going to do with ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... did, a little, and that in a very amateurish way I also played the fiddle. I may as well frankly confess that in my inmost heart I rather prided myself upon my musical accomplishments, music being a perfect passion with me. I had often been complimented upon the quality ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... black fellow, with white teeth and bright eyes, and he could play the fiddle and pick the banjo, and knock the bones and cut the pigeon-wing, and, besides all that, he was the best hoe-hand, and could pick more cotton than any other negro on the plantation. He had amused himself by courting and flirting ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... went with you; one side looks on to the street, that is rather dull; but the other looks on to St. James's Park, where I go to walk with Aunt Barbara. We went to the Abbey last Sunday; it reminded me of the churches abroad, and the singing was so beautiful. In Cornwall there was only a fiddle and a cracked flute, and everybody sang out of tune; I did not like going to church there at all. Please write to me soon, Monsieur Horace, and tell me where you are, and what you are doing; I fancy it all to myself—the big ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... contrabands, some with bundles on their backs, some with chairs, buckets and wash-tubs on their heads, others with the family table on their heads. There was an interesting group of three—two male and one female member of the African family. One of the former had brought his banjo, the other his fiddle. The female had a tub well down on her head. These poor frightened people came trotting into the city over the Tenallytown and Brightwood roads, seeking a place of safety inside of ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams
... hesitated. Could we ask a man who owned books, and could probably read, to play second fiddle to a woman who could not speak the English language, and who for years, perhaps, had devoted the energies of her soul to the ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... seated on a sea-chest with a fiddle under his left ear. He was playing the "Shan van vaught," and accompanying the tune, punctuating it, with blows of his left heel on the ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... JOE of Grand Old VILL-I-AM, at fust vos pal most chummy, But second fiddle vos not quite the instrument for Brummy. Says he, "Old VILL vants his own vay, the vicked old vote-snatcher! But that arrangement vill not suit ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various
... you and I, and you were all to me; And round us were the barren lands, but little did we fear; Of all God's happy, happy folks the happiest were we. . . . (Oh, call her, poor old fiddle mine, ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... stoop-shouldered, stuttering, yet with a chord of natural rhetoric in his high fiddle-string of a windpipe, stood looking after them till they passed down the thoroughfare under the jib-sail, and Joe Johnson did not say a word till some marsh brush intervened between them, he being apparently under a remnant of ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... sawed away at the kite line, which was as taut as a string on a bass fiddle. Suddenly there was a loud snap and the cord parted. Sam and Dick fell back from the edge of the cliff, while the entangled kites soared away ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... what comfort is, I tell you: A bed on the floor, a bit of rosin, A fire to thaw our thumbs (poor fellow, The paw he holds up there has been frozen), Plenty of catgut for my fiddle, (This outdoor business is bad for strings), Then a few nice buckwheats hot from the griddle, And Roger and I set ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... fiddle what can draw the Sperrits o' Snowdon when it's played by a vargin. I dessay you've often heard the sayin' "The sperrits follow the crwth." She makes a sight o' money by playin' on that fiddle in the houses o' the gentlefolk, ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... grange, far spreading to the sight, The gentle kine, the bullocks strong in fight, The garden whiten'd with the comfrey plant, The flowers Saint Mary shooting with the light— ... The far-seen groves around the hermit's cell, The merry fiddle dinning up the dell, The joyous dancing in the hostry court— But now, high song and every joy farewell, Farewell the very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... with its inky shadows and its crystalline coves. Rilla and her partner swung in among the dancers; she drew a long breath of delight; what witching music Ned Burr of the Upper Glen was coaxing from his fiddle—it was really like the magical pipes of the old tale which compelled all who heard them to dance. How cool and fresh the gulf breeze blew; how white and wonderful the moonlight was over everything! This was ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... ain't for you to say," returned Nick, apparently not aware of his insolence. "Come, now, I'll tell you what I'll do. My father's got a bill against yours for a dollar and sixty-four cents. I told father I had a use for the fiddle, and he says if you'll give it to me, he'll call it square. There, what do you say ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... accounts for everything—the exclamation which you explained deceitfully, and all! Forgive the harsh word, Elfride—forgive it.' He smiled a surface smile as he continued: 'What a poor mortal I am to play second fiddle in everything and to ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... 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 ranging off to their positions ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... Folker guarded the door with his fiddle bow, one side of which was a trenchant sword, the battle began. The Burgundians taunted the Huns with their weakness and cowardice until they ventured into the hall and were cut down by Hagan and his desperate men. When evening fell the thousand and four who had entered ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... [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, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... is strong, lively, and congregational. Sometimes there is more cry than wool in it; but taken altogether, and considering the place, it is creditable. There is neither an organ, nor a fiddle, nor a musical instrument of any sort that we have been able to notice, in the place. All is done directly and without equivocation from the mouth. The members of the choir sit downstairs, in a square ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... and nonsense), Shargar. Do ye think I dinna ken a fiddle whan I see ane, wi' its guts ootside o' 'ts wame, an' the thoomacks to screw them up wi' ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... in making sleds after the manner of the country. They are made of a single plank turned up at one end like a fiddle head, and the baggage is lashed on in bags and sacks. Two other Indians arrived from the woods. ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... strongly marked features, with a brown complexion, and his clothes, when I saw him, were all brown. He seemed to believe in everything which was to others utterly incredible. He said one day to me, "Why don't you give up your fiddle- faddle of geology and zoology, and turn to the occult sciences!" The historian, then Lord Mahon, seemed shocked at such a speech to me, and his charming ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... Mr. Goodfellow. "No, I dare say not; but you just wait till you fall in love. It's a most curious feelin'. First of all it makes you want to pull off your coat and turn a hand to anything, from breakin' stones to playing the fiddle—it don't matter what, so long as you sweat an' feel you're earnin' money. Why, just take a look at my business card!" He stepped to his coat, pulled one from his pocket, and glanced over it proudly: 'George Goodfellow, Carpenter and ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... reflected upon the profound truth conveyed by this finale, at the instant when the composer delivers his last note and the author his last line, when the orchestra gives the last pull at the fiddle-bow and the last puff at the bassoon, when the principal singers say "Let's go to supper!" and the chorus people exclaim "How lucky, it doesn't rain!" Well, in every condition in life, as in an Italian opera, there comes a time when the joke is over, when the trick is done, when people must make ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... not baffle your ingenuity to extricate them. Among other stalked-eyed crustaceans is that with one red, shielding claw, absurdly large, and which scuttles among the roots, making a defiant clicking noise—the fiddle or soldier crab (GELASIMUS VOCANS). Oysters seal themselves to the roots, and various sorts of shell-fish gather together—two or three varieties appear to browse upon the leaves and bark of the mangroves; some excavate galleries in ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... with its thin old walls, vibrates at night like a great dry fiddle; the slightest noises grow great in it, become disfigured and ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... institution of the true critics was of absolute necessity to the commonwealth of learning. For all human actions seem to be divided like Themistocles and his company. One man can fiddle, and another can make a small town a great city; and he that cannot do either one or the other deserves to be kicked out of the creation. The avoiding of which penalty has doubtless given the first birth to the nation of critics, and withal an occasion for their secret detractors ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... your head, but o' my fegs, Ye've set auld Scota on her legs; Lang had she lien wi' beffs and flegs, Bumbaz'd and dizzie, Her fiddle wanted strings and ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... watched with wondering eyes, extracting those marvellously sweet sounds from his wooden instrument, until, with the child's spirit of imitation, as his parents sang their "Volkslieder," the little fellow, perched on a stone bench, gravely handled two pieces of wood of his own as if they were bow and fiddle, keeping exact time, and flourishing the bow in the approved fashion of the schoolmaster. From this very little incident came an important change in his life; for a relation, Johann Mathias Frankh, of Hainburg, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... need give evidence against himself. Besides, business is no worse than every other calling. Do you suppose a lawyer never defends a man whom he knows to be guilty? He says he does it to give the culprit a fair trial. Fiddle-de-dee! He strains every nerve to get the man off. A lawyer is hired to take the side of a company or a corporation in every quarrel. He's paid by the year or by the case. He probably stops to consider whether his company is right, doesn't he? ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... his son again, this brave honest lad, a change seemed to have come over the old man. The boy had been a willing dutiful soldier, everybody said so, and yet they were going to shut him up in prison for five long months, all because of a piece of fiddle-faddle! Devil take them all! What was the use of being a good soldier? And at a stroke every trace disappeared of the obedient and respectful old sergeant who had worn the uniform so proudly; he was peasant pure and simple, hard-headed ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... dainty ear a fiddle charms, A bagpipe's her delight, But for the crooning o' her wheel She disna care a mite. The weary ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... jus' right!" he was continually exclaiming to Jack. "They stop all day now. Have trial in my house. Maybe stay to-night, too. I wish we had a fiddle. We could dance. But we can slap ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... and at the entrance into the wood, he dismissed him and his attendants, though much against their will, and proceeded on his journey unarmed; from too great a presumption of security, preceded only by a minstrel and a singer, one accompanying the other on the fiddle. The Welsh awaiting his arrival, with Iorwerth, brother of Morgan of Caerleon, at their head, and others of his family, rushed upon him unawares from the thickets, and killed him and many of his followers. Thus it appears how incautious and neglectful of itself is too great presumption; ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... my 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 ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... large the saxophone has its friends and its foes. Its detractors agree that the late Emperor Nero was a maligned man; cruel, perhaps, in some of his aspects, but not so cruel as has been made out in the case against him. It was a fiddle he played while Rome burned—it might have been a saxophone. But to the melody-loving heart of the black race in our land the mooing tones of this long-waisted, dark-complected horn carry messages as of great joy. It had remained, though, for the resourceful Rev. Wickliffe to prove that it might ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... stunt of Tintinnabula and the Camelopard!" said Gerald. "That is the Black Shore yonder, and the noise is that of the Tree-browser's fiddle, in sooth a goodly noise. Approach we along the moonglade! that is what we call the wake ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... successful deer-hunt had taken place, and the fiddle had, as Bryan expressed it, been "sarved out" to the men, for the purpose of rejoicing their hearts with sweet sounds. On that day a small band of Indians had arrived with a rich and unusually large ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... be due to a spectre, or mare, which they called the "wood mare." The Water [51] Betony is said to make one of the ingredients in Count Mattaei's noted remedy, "anti-scrofuloso." The Figwort is named in Somersetshire "crowdy-kit" (the word kit meaning a fiddle), "or fiddlewood," because if two of the stalks are rubbed together, they make a noise like the scraping of the bow on violin strings. In Devonshire, also, the ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... spitcat sate on a garden gate And a snapdog fared beneath; Careless and free was his mien, and he Held a fiddle-string in his teeth. ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... a row-boat up Loch Katrine, though both on that and Loch Lomond you may go in a hateful little steamer with a squeaking fiddle to play Rob Roy MacGregor O. I walked almost all the way through the pass from Loch Katrine to Loch Lomond; it was a distance of six miles; but you feel as if you could walk sixty in that pure, exhilarating ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... that direct appeal in Paris," he thought. "It's British. Come, I am going to sleep, I must wake up, I must aim higher—aim higher," cried the little artist to himself. All through his tea and afterward, as he was giving his eldest boy a lesson on the fiddle, his mind dwelt no longer on his troubles, but he was rapt into the better land; and no sooner was he at liberty than he hastened with positive exhilaration ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... they simply went on with their ordinary tasks and amusements as if nothing personal had happened. Before these two gentlemen retired, however, they had to take part in a dance in the coach-house, at which old Styles played the fiddle, and the constable called out the figures, while Mr. Pilgrim groaned in the ears of Mrs. Hill over the worldly spirit that was sapping the foundations of spiritual life. When the drawing-room people left ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... he had failed in his attempts at speaking grammatically, and with a sudden determination never again to try, he precipitately left the house, and for the next two hours amused himself by playing "Bruce's Address" upon his old cracked fiddle. From that time Sal gave up all hopes of educating Uncle Peter, and confined herself mostly to literary efforts, of which we shall ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... wish to speak about that now. I take this figure of a man who so contentedly and continually took such a subordinate place—played second fiddle quite willingly all his days, and who toiled on without any notice or record, and ask whether it does not teach one ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... is called, by some people, watering. Now it happened that a certain man named PYKE did build him a costly mansion on the street which is called Twenty-third, and did therein have foreign singers and dancers, and players upon the violin, which is called the fiddle, and upon the bass viol, which is called the big fiddle, and upon sheets of parchment, which are called the drum, and upon divers other instruments. And PHYSKE looked upon the mansion, and it seemed good in his eyes, and he said unto ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... 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 sweep ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... this child is that of every man! What difficulties in the pursuit of his desires! what inanity in the possession of most, and satiety in those which seem more real and substantial! The delights of most men are as childish and as superficial as that of my little girl; a feather or a fiddle are their pursuits and their pleasures through life, even to their ripest years, if such men may be said to attain any ripeness at all. But let us survey those whose understandings are of a more elevated and refined temper; how empty ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... dance, and here I became useful, being able to play Scotch reels and Irish jigs on the fiddle. Then we had songs and yarns again. Some could tell of furious fights with whales that made our blood boil; others could talk of the green fields at home, until we almost fancied we were boys again; and some could not tell stories at all. They had little ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... "Oh, fiddle-de-fudge, Roger! I'm not interfering, and it is my affair. Mona is my affair, and so are you; and now your Aunt Patty is going ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... mannerliness will not let him feed, and he is sharp set at an argument when he should cut his meat. He is discarded for a gamester at all games but one and thirty[41], and at tables he reaches not beyond doublets. His fingers are not long and drawn out to handle a fiddle, but his fist clunched with the habit of disputing. He ascends a horse somewhat sinisterly, though not on the left side, and they both go jogging in grief together. He is exceedingly censured by the inns-of-court men, for that heinous vice, being out of fashion. He cannot ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... "Rock-a-by-Lady," by Eugene Field; to Houghton Mifflin Company for permission to adapt selections from Hiawatha; to Doubleday, Page & Company for "The Sand Man," by Margaret Vandergrift, from The Posy Ring—Wiggin and Smith; to James A. Honey for "The Monkey's Fiddle," from South African Tales; to Maud Barnard for "Donal and Conal"; to Maud Barnard and Emilie Yonker for ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... the strings of the old fiddle will tighten up a good deal, if I abstain from attempting to play upon the instrument at present—but that a few jigs now will ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... fiddle," replied the verger, examining the lady's basket of fish in a non-committing and final way. For a locksmith is almost as confidential an adviser as a notary. The Dantzigers, moreover, are a thrifty race and keep their money in a safe place; a habit ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... department well enough, but by doing every department too well. As child, cockney, pirate, or Puritan, his disguises were so good that most people could not see the same man under all. It is an unjust fact that if a man can play the fiddle, give legal opinions, and black boots just tolerably, he is called an Admirable Crichton, but if he does all three thoroughly well, he is apt to be regarded, in the several departments, as a common fiddler, a common lawyer, and a common boot-black. This is what has ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... just remembered. It is like that in this life. You wake up, feeling as fit as a fiddle; you look at the window and see the sun, and thank Heaven for a fine day; you begin to plan a perfectly corking luncheon party with some of the chappies you met last night at the National ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... find me food and drink. Cakes and fruit there! Nothing of the sort. Stones, painted stones! And those other things! Bottles they call them— bottles and decanters. All a deception. They're imps—some demigods! See how they dance. Let's join them! Come, old Zanzibar! Bring your fiddle! And my Bornean beauties, come you. We'll have a grand fandango. We'll make a dancing room of the Condor's deck, and kick up our heels high as the cuddy head. That's the way we'll ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... to the whizbangs concert party last night. It was A1—one chap makes his fiddle absolutely speak. He played that Volunteer Organist and parts of Henry VIII., the basso sang 'Will o' the Wisp,' and most of the other songs were old 'uns. I tell you, you wouldn't believe we had such things a couple ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... there was a sharp, scraping sound. The silk, which had been strained like a fiddle-string over a bridge, parted on the edge of the keen knife, and, as Joe's arms dropped quite nerveless and inert, down went the knife, and Gwyn felt ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... sick!" cried Smallbones. "My sister in Iowa has got a fiddle; an' I know she plays five toons on it—I've heerd her. She's got a mouth organ, too, an' a musical-box—electric! One 'ud think nobody had got nuthin' but Will Henderson." He strode back to the bar in dudgeon, filled to the brim with ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... great use, and the people are astonished to hear me speak French, Italian, German, Russian, and occasionally Gypsy. I have already met with several Gypsies; those who live abroad in the wildernesses are quite black; the more civilised wander about as musicians, playing on the fiddle, at which they are very expert, they speak the same languages as those in England, with slight variations, and upon the whole they understand me very well. Amongst other places I have been to Tokay, where I drank some of ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... sword-stroke with both his hands, so that his head fell quickly beneath the table to the ground. A piteous meed it was, which he meted out to the master. Hagen then spied a gleeman sitting at King Etzel's board. In his wrath he hied him thither and struck off his right hand upon the fiddle. "Take this as message to the ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... never is," laughed his friend. "But she's a right smart filly; she looks much the best of the lot. Dixon's got her as fit as a fiddle string. When you're done with that man you might turn him over to ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... isn't right to neglect the boy that's come to do a day's work with you. (Going to the door) Many's the day I put in with the scythe in Ireland, and in England too; I did more than stroll with the fiddle, and I saw more places than where fiddling brought me. (Brian MacConnell comes to the door) I was just going out to you, Brian. I was telling the girl here that it's not right to neglect the boy that's giving you a day's work out of ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... neither splayed nor in-toed, and to set their feet down with a gentle forward pressure, rather like the Australian's stealthy footfall. Talking among themselves, or waiting for friends, they did not drum with their fingers, fiddle with their feet, or feel the hair on their faces. These things seem trivial enough, but when breeds are in the making everything is worth while. A man told me once—but I never tried the experiment—that each of our Four Races ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... by ill luck of any kind. When they halted for the midday meal it was like a great picnic in the soft warm sunshine, and when evening came the Jayhawkers rollicked around their fires or gathered where one of their number had tuned up his fiddle. William Isham was his name, a great bearded fellow who hailed originally from Rochester, New York; he would sit by the hour on the tongue of his wagon playing "Oh Susannah" and other lively airs, or strike up a jig tune while Negro Joe, who ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... the middle, with Esther and Mellicent hanging on an arm at either side. Robert was her sworn vassal, and Max and Oswald her respectful and, on the whole, obedient servants. Altogether, the prospect of playing second fiddle to this strange girl was by no means pleasant. Peggy tilted her chin, and spoke in ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... Oriental origin as their counterparts can still be seen amongst the Kabyles of Northern Africa): the first being a fife (siscariello); the second a tin globe covered with skin pierced by a piece of cane (puti-puti); the third a wooden saw and a split stick, making a primitive bow and fiddle (scetavaiasse); the fourth an arrangement of three wooden mallets, that are rattled together like a gigantic pair of bones (tricca-ballache); and the fifth a Jew's harp (scaccia-pensieri). A tarantella danced to the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... 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. It will save him so much ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie |
