"Fiddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ran himself into debt because he bought so many and such good ones. Once, when visiting his father's house at Ipsden, he shocked the punctilious old gentleman by dancing on the dining-table to the accompaniment of a fiddle, which he scraped delightedly. Dancing, indeed, was another of his diversions, and, in spite of the fact that he was a fellow of Magdalen and a D.C.L. of Oxford, he was always ready to caper and to display ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... to justify the expense. Now she wished nervously that she had done as Lance Lorrigan had done, and brought musicians from Lava. Of course, there had been no piano when Lance gave his party, which was different. She herself meant to play, and Art Miller had brought his fiddle, and Jennie had volunteered to "chord" with him. But, Mary Hope felt much nervous apprehension lest these Pocatello and Lava people should think it was just Scotch stinginess ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... shrieking. There's tea or something going on downstairs. You had better come away before they have a fresh burst; they are carrying up a big fiddle." ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... little stock of flour and dried meat with them as fairly as possible and decided we would try the trail. When our plans were settled we felt in pretty good spirits again, and one of the boys got up a sort of corn-stalk fiddle which made a squeaking noise and in a little while there was a sort of mixed American and Indian dance going on in which the squaws joined in and we had a pretty jolly time till quite late at night. We were well pleased ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... ma'am, I do s'pose," answered the black. "Dey's got box wid somet'in' in him, and dey's got new kind of fiddle. Come, young man, gib Miss Dus a tune—a libely one; sich as make ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... solely from ear was a practice to be avoided if she wished her son to fulfil the promise of his babyhood. Then he had lessons at Knype, until he began to teach his teacher. Then he said he would learn the fiddle, and he did learn the fiddle; also the viola. He did not pretend to play the flute, though he could. And at school the other boys would bring him their penny or even sixpenny whistles so that he might show them of what wonderful feats a common ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... good natured, feckless lad, about eighteen or twenty years of age, and the only thing he appeared to be able to make anything of was playing the fiddle. Wherever he went his violin accompanied him. While fiddling he was happy, but it was pitiful to watch him trying to work at or take an interest in any employment which he could neither appreciate ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... of some ideas of dancing is really ludicrous. The Cambro-Britains, in a very late period, used to be played out of church by a fiddle, and to form a dance in the church-yard at the end of the service. But the ideas which the Chinese have of dancing exceeds all others. When Commodore Anson was at Canton, the officers of the Centurion had a ball upon some court holiday: while ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... part to insure the presence of Quirk's three boys. Supper over, a fresh horse was furnished me, and we set out for the dance, covering the distance in less than two hours. I knew nearly every one in the settlement, and got a cordial welcome. I played the fiddle, danced with my former sweethearts, and, ere the sun rose in the morning, rode home in time for breakfast. During that night's revelry, I contrasted my former girl friends on the San Antonio with another maiden, a slip of the old Scotch stock, transplanted and nurtured in the sunshine and soil of ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... humble thing with music in it, not a fife, not a negro-fiddle, that is not to be reverenced as much as the grandest architectural organ that ever rolled its flood-tide of harmony down a cathedral nave. For even a Jew's-harp may be so played, as to awaken all the fairies that ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... have been the most fascinating people. One Lord Maxwell of the seventeenth century, who was Roman Catholic when it wasn't safe to be Roman Catholic, used to disguise himself as a beggar, and play the fiddle in the market-place of Dumfries as a signal to tell the faithful of his own religion where and when they might come to Mass. They understood according to certain tunes agreed upon, which was easy, as they had only three meeting-places. A nice ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... makes you so fond of Lithuania! Here are we, Father Missail and I, a sinner, when we fled from the monastery, then we cared for nothing. Was it Lithuania, was it Russia, was it fiddle, was it dulcimer? All the same for us, if only there was wine. That's ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... had no idea of playing first fiddle in any social orchestra, but was always quite satisfied to be set down for the hundred and fiftieth violin in the band, or thereabouts, is to express his modesty in very inadequate terms. He was much delighted, therefore, by ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... fellow scholars and fellow students alone could occasion. We told old stories; laughed and quaffed, and resolved, rashly perhaps, that we would hold the Club at least once a year, if possible twice. We will see how this will fudge. Our mirth was more unexpected as Sir Adam, our first fiddle, was wanting, owing to ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the Manager sits in his chair, With a gloomy brow and dissatisfied air, And he says, as he slaps his hand on his knee, 'I'll have nothing to do with Fiddle-de-dee! ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... came after a certain miracle on May-day. The Major had taken Chad to the festival where the dance was on sawdust in the woodland—in the bottom of a little hollow, around which the seats ran as in an amphitheatre. Ready to fiddle for them stood none other than John Morgan himself, his gray eyes dancing and an arch smile on his handsome face; and, taking a place among the dancers, were Richard Hunt and—Margaret. The poised bow fell, a merry tune rang out, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... how then? For that once, said Sir Aymeris, I should bid them disobey their lady. Said Birdalone: And how if they disobeyed thee, and obeyed me? Quoth Sir Aymeris: If they bring thee back safe, they may chance to sing to the twiggen fiddle-bow, that they may be warned from such folly; but if they come back without thee, by All-hallows the wind of wrath shall sweep their ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... perhaps a fit of coughing would come on, and the boy would grow discouraged again, but only until Hock appeared on his daily round, and plumping his sturdy person into a chair would tell all the news, and finish with, "Say, Arch, fiddle for a ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... 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
... There was a rare junketting last night at Thomas's among Sir Harry Benson's servants; he lay at Squire Walton's, but he would not suffer his servants to trouble the family: so, to be sure, they were all at Tom's, and had a fiddle, and a hot supper in the big room where the justices meet about the destroying of hares and partridges, and them things; and Tom's eyes looked so red and so bleared when I called him to get the barberries:- ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... of so many people for any length of time in the over-crowded mines was opt of the question. But that was a consideration to which the "Military Situation" could not resonably be expected to play second fiddle. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... for the first time a fair breeze sprang up or rather lazily got up. Joyfully then we raised our mast and sail. The boys curled up to sleep, except Beaulieu. He had his fiddle and now he proceeded to favour us with 'A Life on the Ocean Wave,' 'The Campbells are Coming,' etc., in a manner worthy of his social position and of his fiddle. When not in use this aesthetic instrument (in its box) knocks about on deck or underfoot, ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... this trio is an inspired man. His fiddle is out of tune, and there is no rosin on his bow, but still he is an inspired man—the hands of the muses have been laid upon him. He plays like one possessed by a demon, by a whole horde of demons. You can feel them in the air round about him, capering frenetically; with ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... used to play the fiddle, left a girl here with child; and though I gave her two tayes in silver to bring up the child; she killed it as soon as it was born, which is a common thing in this country. The whistle and chain belonging to Mr Foster, the master ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... calamity happening to her white soul without her knowing it. If she should ever marry that man—well, it would be the old story: May and December! Noble shuddered, and the drums, the fiddles, the bass fiddle, and the saxophone seemed ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... their teeth. There were Irish harps, English harps, and Welsh harps. There was no Caledonian harp, though; but a remarkably dirty fellow in the procession seemed to be making up for the lack of one stringed instrument by bringing another,—the Scotch fiddle!—on which he perpetually played the tune of "God bless the gude Duke of Argyle!" There were harps with one, two, and three sets of strings,—harps with gold strings, silver strings, brass strings,—strings ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... learns to dance and to fence, by the masters of those noble sciences. He becomes a compleat connoisseur in dressing hair, and in adorning his own person, under the hands and instructions of his barber and valet de chambre. If he learns to play upon the flute or the fiddle, he is altogether irresistible. But he piques himself upon being polished above the natives of any other country by his conversation with the fair sex. In the course of this communication, with which he is indulged ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... greatly astonished on seeing it made into candles, and lighted in his presence; saying, that the Europeans knew every thing. Their only musical instruments are two, one of which they have from the Moors, which is like a large drum[5]; the other is somewhat like a fiddle, having only two strings, which they play on with their fingers, but gives no sounds that can ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... he heard Bower's smooth, well rounded accents through the half-open door. "Nothing I should like better," he was saying. "Are you tired? If not, bring your friend to my rooms now. Although I have been in the train all night, I am fit as a fiddle." ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... smells of the earth. They learned the ways of birds and bugs, why birds have wings, why bugs have legs, why the gladdywhingers have spotted eggs in a basket nest in a booblow tree, and why the chizzywhizzies scrape off little fiddle songs all summer long while the ...
— Rootabaga Stories • Carl Sandburg
... the stammerer, indignantly. "Ain't got no nerves. G-gr-gramma says so, and she knows. She's older 'n you, an' she's got 'em worst kind. Always gets 'em when I play the f-f-fiddle." ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... "Fiddle!" cried Noreen derisively. "No chance of that. Whether you like it or no, my dear, this day has settled your fate. You can never be a mere acquaintance any more. You've done us a service which will bind us together as long ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... "Fiddle-dee-dee! if I didn't use any slang, I couldn't talk at all! And suitor isn't exactly slang; it's the word in current fashion for any pleasant young gentleman who sends flowers, or otherwise favors any pleasant young lady. Everybody in society ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... moral, and patter won't level 'em up. Wy yer might as well talk of a popgun a holding its own with a Krupp. 'Ow the brains and the ochre got fust ladled hout is a bit beyond me, But to fancy as them as has got 'em will part is dashed fiddle-de-dee. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... 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
... double-stopping upon the violin. In these the dominating influence was E flat. Spinrobin was not musical enough to describe it more accurately than this. Only, with greater skill than he knows, he mentions how Skale drew out of that fiddle the peculiarly intimate and searching tones by which strings can reach the spiritual center of a man and make him respond to delicate vibrations of ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... contracting parties were signing the document as Becky returned. The bridegroom, who halted a little on one leg, was a tall sallow man named Pesach Weingott. He was a boot-maker, who could expound the Talmud and play the fiddle, but was unable to earn a living. He was marrying Fanny Belcovitch because his parents-in-law would give him free board and lodging for a year, and because he liked her. Fanny was a plump, pulpy girl, not in the prime of youth. Her complexion was fair and ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... said, "if I ever get my hands on Halsey Innes, I shall not let go until I have told him a few things. When we get this cleared up, I am going back to the city to be quiet. One more night like the last two will end me. The peace of the country—fiddle sticks!" ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... wide level plot in the outskirts of the settlement, around which the trees spread their sheltering arms. On a plank raised on two casks sat the blacksmith with his fiddle. The carpenter sat beside him with a kettledrum, more literally a kettledrum even than the real thing, for that drum was a kettle! On a little mound that rose in the centre of the plot sat, in state, ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... bustle, uproar, and confusion; yet nothing seemed to advance: while the rage and impetuosity of the Squire continued fermenting to the highest degree of exasperation, which he signified, from time to time, by converting some newly unpacked article, such as a book, a bottle, a ham, or a fiddle, into a missile against the head of some unfortunate servant who did not seem to move in a ratio of velocity corresponding to the ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... faint, and was interrupted by gasps for breath, whereupon Roseen, still vigorously footing it, would take up the tune after a fashion of her own, her voice imitating as nearly as might be the sound of a fiddle. Overhead a lark was soaring, and his trill, wafted down to them, mingled with their quaint human music; far away over that brown and purple stretch of bog the plovers were circling, their faint melancholy call sounding every now and then. The sun would soon set, ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... to supper, an old man, with a fiddle in his hand, tottered into the garden, and down the lawn. He was a very queer-looking old man. He had long white hair, and a long ...
— The Birthday Party - A Story for Little Folks • Oliver Optic
... greater wages than a student; a lawyer get more in a day than a philosopher in a year, better reward for an hour, than a scholar for a twelvemonth's study; him that can [378]paint Thais, play on a fiddle, curl hair, &c., sooner get preferment than a philologer ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... arranging the details of the ceremony. The children were obliged, therefore, to be content with their usual game of drilling every one that they were able to muster for soldiers, after the fashion of Captain Brown's 'rifle practice,' or marching up and down the decks to the strains of Jem Butt's fiddle playing 'Tommy make room for your Uncle,' accompanied by the somewhat discordant noise of their own drums. These amusements after sunset, and scrubbing decks and working at the pumps before sunrise, give us all the much-needed exercise it is impossible ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... curbed his words. He knew that there was one appreciative ear in the mansion by the river that no amount of "dago fiddlin'" ever would charm and satisfy like his own voice with the banjo, or his little brown fiddle when it gave out the old foot-warming tunes. Mrs. Chadron was his champion in all company, and ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... worth, The manner how he sallied forth; His arms and equipage are shown; His horse's virtues, and his own. Th' adventure of the bear and fiddle Is sung, but breaks off ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... rides the rosin o'er the horse's hair! In unison their various tones to tune. Murmurs the hautboy, growls the hoarse bassoon; In soft vibration sighs the whispering lute, Tang goes the harpsichord, too-too the flute, Brays the loud trumpet, squeaks the fiddle sharp, Winds the French-horn, and twangs the tingling harp; Till, like great Jove, the leader, figuring in, Attunes to order the chaotic din. Rejected Addresses: The Theatre. H. AND ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... diddle! the cat and the fiddle; The cow jumped over the moon; The little dog laughed to see such craft, And the dish ran away ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook
... have. I have noticed nothing else. Why, she is dressed as fine as a fiddle. She is 'taking notice.' She 'll be giving Old Caesar a successor. Then what will you do? I thought that fat darky I have seen going in at the back gate with a silk hat and a long-tailed coat looked like a preacher. You 'd better look out ...
— Mam' Lyddy's Recognition - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... Bah! I should have thought that you knew him better than that, Manutoli. To him a woman is a voice, and nothing else. If the same sounds could be got out of a flute or a fiddle he would like it much better, and think it far more convenient. I don't think my uncle Lamberto ever knew whether a woman was pretty or plain. I wish to heaven he would get caught for once in his life; it would suit my book very well. He would have less leisure ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... succeeded Southey as poet-laureate in 1843; he is emphatically the poet of external nature and of its all-inspiring power, and it is as such his admirers regard him; Carlyle compares his muse to "an honest rustic fiddle, good and well handled, but wanting two or more of the strings, and not capable of much"; to judge of Wordsworth's merits as a poet the student is referred to Matthew Arnold's ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... me a curious thing that the bow, without which the fiddle could have no being, should have received so scant attention, not alone from the community of fiddlers, but also from writers on the subject. I only know of one book in which the subject is adequately handled. Out of every twenty violinists who profess to ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... to the door when we halted and called to someone within. The fiddle played on with no faltering, but a woman came out—a gaunt and tattered woman who was yet curiously cheerful. The children lurked in her wake as she came to us and peered from beyond her while we ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... of these things let him off; and when the fateful evening came, Simon, with his beloved fiddle tucked beneath his arm for companionship, and a lantern, appeared at the inn. They wished him good luck and pleasant dreams, doubting nevertheless that he would have either; and the landlord, a kindly soul, slipped a cold snack and a jug of his ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... brim, as some poet has observed. If I wanted to harrow you, gentlemen, I would recall to you little tables, little round tables, set out under the trees on the lawn of some country inn, where the enchanting music of harp and fiddle twangled on the summer air, where great bowls of punch chimed gently as the lumps of ice knocked on the thin crystal. The little tables were spread tinder the trees, and then, later on, perhaps, the customers were spread under the tables.—I would ask you to recall ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... I s'pect she's relieved in her mind now the bar at the hotel is closed," snapped Mrs. Scattergood. "Hopewell Drugg can't go fur astray if he don't go playin' that fiddle of his to no more o' them dances. Though you can't trust no man too fur—that's been my experience ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... child had gravely informed her that she looked like Connie and immediately taken her into his confidence regarding his aspirations toward some day playing in "a big band." He had also obligingly favored her with a solo of marvelous shrieks and squawks on his much tortured "fiddle." Mary loved children, and this, perhaps, went far toward stilling the jealousy, which, so far, only faintly stirring, bade fair to one day burst forth ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... neighborhood of Green River, when we received notice that there was to be a grand frolic at Bob Mosely's, to greet the hunters. This Bob Mosely was a prime fellow throughout the country. He was an indifferent hunter, it is true, and rather lazy to boot; but then he could play the fiddle, and that was enough to make him of consequence. There was no other man within a hundred miles that could play the fiddle, so there was no having a regular frolic without Bob Mosely. The hunters, therefore, were always ready to give him a share of their game in exchange ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... first, Larry was the master's favorite—not because he was particularly studious, but because he took to the fiddle as naturally, Dermot said, "as a ducklin' takes to the wather, just." Indeed, the boy showed such extraordinary talent for music, that, for the mere love of it, Dermot gave him lessons, and often lent him an old fiddle to ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... you, Mr. Brandreth," Annie said. "Then Mrs. Munger has subscribed already, and I'm only second fiddle, after all," she thought. ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... him, the more so that he had been playing a concertina and not a fiddle at all. His feelings were vague, and in some respects contradictory; but he was convinced that Mrs. Prockter's scheme for separating Helen and the Apollo Emanuel was not ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... and boys to go down into the town, while I went further up into the hills with my stick and my dog. In the loveliness of the morning, and the beauty of the hills and valleys, I soon lost my sense of sadness and regret. For nearly an hour I walked along the road to the 'Cat and Fiddle,' and then returned. On the way back, suddenly, without warning, I felt that I was in Heaven—an inward state of peace and joy and assurance indescribably intense, accompanied with a sense of being bathed in a warm glow of light, as though the external condition ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... most of Mrs. Gaynor's songs, already mentioned, and the songs collected by Reinecke, called "Fifty Children's Songs," are excellent for this purpose. The old-fashioned nonsense songs, such as "Billy Boy," "Mary had a Little Lamb" and "Hey Diddle Diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle," may also have a pleasant and harmless place ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... "Fiddle-dee-dee, my child!" said Colonel Lowerby. "Look at him! You don't understand the fundamental principles of human nature if you say that. When a man is madly in love with a woman, nature says, 'This is your mate,' not a saint of alabaster on a church altar. ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... to do but exist as cheerfully as might be until the weather improved. The wet had shrunk canvas and rope gear till the tent-guys were as taut as fiddle-strings; and as it did not seem to have occurred to any of the servants to attend to this, an immediate tour of the camp had to be undertaken, in "rubbers" and waterproofs, to slack off guys and inspect the drainage system, as we had no wish to have our earthen floor—already ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... to 'im, Maria," he muttered uneasily. "He fair makes my flesh creep with that doggoned fiddle of his. 'Tis like a child crying in the dark. I ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... and hubbub was Carlisle city that day; yet, as the two entered the courtyard of the castle, James was aware of another sound, rising clear above the tumult of the town—strains of music, surely, that came from a fiddle. As they stepped under the inner gateway and approached the Norman Keep, the fiddler himself came in sight playing with might and main, under a barred window about six feet from the ground. By the fiddler's side, urging him on, was a ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... very night, I remember, he dined with me. We went to the play together, and afterwards looked in at Lady ALICIA PARBOIL's dance. Dear Lady ALICIA, how plump she was, and how good-natured, and how well she married her fiddle-headed daughters. Her husband too, that clumsy, heavy-witted oaf, how cunningly and how successfully withal she schemed for his advancement. Quid plura? you knew her well, she was devoted to you. I only speak of her to remind you that it was in her hospitable ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... and picture-books, but boys like to see things made and done; else how is it that any boy worth his salt will leave the newest and brightest toys to follow a carpenter or a plumber round the house, fiddle with his tools, ask him a thousand questions, and watch him ply his trade? Dickie at New Cross had spent many an hour watching those interesting men who open square trap-doors in the pavement and drag out from them yards and yards of wire. I do not ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... picture in chiaroscuro among the arabesques of the cappella nova in the cathedral at Orvieto. It represents the youthful Orpheus crowned with the laureate wreath playing before Pluto and Proserpine upon a fiddle or crowd of antique pattern. At his feet lies Eurydice, while around are spirits ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... an aesthetic interest, for he had gathered no statistics, had no money to give, and cared nothing for the wrongs of the poor, being content to pay for the pleasure of eye and ear with a tune upon the fiddle. He did not love them the better because they were poor and miserable, and it was only when he found Innismaan and the Blaskets, where there is neither riches nor poverty, neither what he calls 'the nullity of the rich' nor 'the squalor of the poor' that his writing lost its ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... crabs burrow holes in the mud, and in them await your coming, and more often than 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 living trunks. The insidious cobra ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... about rules and forms in court when the enemy's cannon are pointed at the door, and the flames encircle the cupola! The man whose stoicism would enable him to philosophize coolly under these circumstances would fiddle while the Capitol was burning, and laugh at the horror and anguish that surrounded him in the midst of the conflagration! I claim not the possession of these remarkable feelings. I concede them all to those who think that the savior of New Orleans ought to be ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... he had held his fiddle, and tuned it upon an arm not quite so stout, I should have known without being told that he was the man who had played in the Saint-Michel cabin while Annabel ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... 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 ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... the woodland beauty and the happy fields we till, And the homes of ancient stories, the tombs of the mighty dead, And the wise men seeking out marvels and the poet's teaming head. And the painter's hand of wonder, and the marvellous fiddle-bow, And the banded choirs of music—all those that do and know. For all these shall be ours and all men's, nor shall any lack a share Of the toil and the gain of living in the days ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... said 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
... known from Milton's exquisite "L'Allegro." Sir John Hawkins (vol. ii. page 86) traces it to the Moorish Rebeb; and believes he finds this old three-stringed fiddle in the hands of Chaucer's Absolon, the parish-clerk, who could "plaie songs on a ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... specimen of the Grand Nation familiar to our childhood proved a poor emigre 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 "Telemaque," 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 Fenelon. Perhaps the next ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... for do here, when you leff? 'speck ebbery ting be dull, wuss nor ditch-water. No more fun—no more shuffle-foot. Old maussa no like de fiddle, and nebber hab party and jollication like udder people. Don't tink I can stay here, Mass Ra'ph, after you gone; 'spose, you no 'jection, I go 'long wid you? You leff me, I take to de swamp, sure as ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... first violin played this simple melody," whereupon the two sing the verse over again, the player imitating with his arms the movements of a violin player, and with his voice the sound of a squeaking fiddle. Then the conductor says, pointing to another player, "and the big trombone played this simple melody." Then the three sing together, the second player imitating the sound of a trombone and the appearance of a trombone player. This is continued until every ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... whiskey," he said to himself—"it always leaves you keyed up like a fiddle or a woman. I'll get over it after a while or I'll die trying," and he closed his teeth upon each other with a nervous twist that belied his ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... if I was you, Faith—(how pretty you look!)—I'd keep still and not let my head be turned; the old direction's the best; and after all directions are more than dresses. For what's the odds between an embroidered vest and a plain one? Not that it's much to embroider it—I used to fiddle faddle many a one, till I lost my eyes; and I'll teach you to do it in a minute, if you like." With which kind and lucid proposal, Miss Bezac put her hand softly on Faith's waist and smoothed out an imaginary wrinkle ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... he, "wife may as well hang up her fiddle about me; can't make a whistle out of a pig's tail, man, I tell ye! She may fuss up the young'un as much as she's a mind to, but it'll be labor lost over an old chap like me. I feel more at home down here in the old place, ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... Boswell's address and talent for recording gossip, or the Anecdotes would have been a much more racy book. Spence was certainly an amiable, but I think a very weak man; and it appears to me that his learning has been overrated. He might indeed have been well designated as "a fiddle-faddle bit of sterling." ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... the belly out of my fiddle," said Johnny Mears to his wife, who sat on a three-legged stool by the rough table in the little whitewashed "end-room", putting a patch of patches over the seat of a pair of moleskin knickerbockers. ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... 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 Sporting ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... of an eater. School-teachers are n't as a rule. They pick, and paw, and fiddle round a meal in a way that gives a healthy-appetited person the jim-jams. She did n't touch the fried pumpkin. And the way she sat there at the table in her watch-chain and ribbons made poor old Dave, who sat opposite her ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... understand, the well-edited 'Select Beauties' of an immeasurable waste imbroglio of Heroic Ballads in their respective centuries and countries. Think what strumming of the seven-stringed heroic lyre, torturing of the less heroic fiddle-catgut, in Hellenic Kings' Courts, and English wayside Public Houses; and beating of the studious Poetic brain, and gasping here too in the semi-articulate windpipe of Poetic men, before the Wrath of a Divine Achilles, the Prowess of a ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... Guilds, and public and private Bodies of Citizens, from the highest to the lowest, march; the very Hawkers, one finds, have ceased bawling for one day. The neighbouring Villages turn out: their able men come marching, to village fiddle or tambourine and triangle, under their Mayor, or Mayor and Curate, who also walk bespaded, and in tricolor sash. As many as one hundred and fifty thousand workers: nay at certain seasons, as some count, two hundred ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... audience; now bubbling over with witty anecdotes, again exercising his power of graphic portraiture. His elixir vitae—animal spirits—humanized his effort, and, as Sir Robert Peel played upon the House of Commons "as on an old fiddle," so John B. Gough (for it was the versatile comic singer, actor and speaker) sounded the chords ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... most part. I might have had their names on my bills as long as their fingers could hold a pen, but slit me if I like bleeding my own companions. They might have found a place for me, too, had I consented to play second-fiddle where I had been used to lead the band. I' faith, I care not what I turn my hand to amongst strangers, but I would fain leave my memory ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... nothing, but grinned like the head of an old fiddle. Mr. Gibney appeared to swell visibly, after the ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... 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, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... is long past the, closing hour of one and the tango parlors are dark, suppose we blow this 'Who's Who in Pittsburg' and taxi-cab it out to a roadhouse where the bass fiddle is still inhabited and the second generation is trotting to ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... with Nebuchadnezzar's idolatrous concert of cornet, flute, dulcimer, sackbut, and psaltery; and the ministers, from their overwhelming store of Biblical knowledge, hurled text after text at the "fiddle-players." ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Italian lad does not smoke the mock tobacco that must tempt him upon each ear. If he does, he apes a habit no less American in its origin than the maize itself. So the American lad playing with a 'shoe-string bow' or a 'corn-stalk fiddle' would turn ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... major breed: there is an effect of passing from attenuated parlor tricks into the open, when you take him up. Here, you can but feel, is a masculine man of letters, even if it is his fate to play second fiddle ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... de imbimin' of awjus liquors. De imbimin' of awjus liquors, de wiolution of de Sabbaf, de playin' of de fiddle, and de usin' of by-words, dey is de fo' sins of de conscience; an' if any man sin de fo' sins of de conscience, de debble done sharp his fork fo' dat man.—Ain't that ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... representing day and night, good and evil, and was comforted by the excellent omen. But now I longed for a message of another kind, and chance, if chance there is, brought it, for a man got into the carriage and began to play on a fiddle made apparently of an old blacking-box, and though I am quite unmusical the sounds filled me with the strangest emotions. I seemed to hear a voice of lamentation out of the Golden Age. It told me that we are imperfect, incomplete, and no more like a beautiful woven web, but ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... sure! Interspersed in the hubbub were now and then snatches of merry song, and now and then the notes of a somewhat squeaky and asthmatical violin, invariably followed by some one shouting, "Stop that awful fiddle!" "Hit 'im in the eye with a bit o' biscuit!" or "Grease his bow!" Then a deeper bass voice, evidently Scotch, and just as evidently a junior surgeon's, saying, "Let the laddie practise.—Fiddle away, my boy; I'll thrash all hands if they ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... is an extremely poor, landlocked country, highly dependent on farming (wheat especially) and livestock raising (sheep and goats). Economic considerations, however, have played second fiddle to political and military upheavals, including the nine-year Soviet military occupation (ended 15 February 1989) and the continuing bloody civil war. Over the past decade, one-third of the population has fled the ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... head, mournfully. "I must depend on my voice; and, provided I do not catch a cold, that will, I hope, produce as much effect as your fiddle." ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... to the elves and the trolls," thought Gertrude. The old man was standing upon the hearth, playing his fiddle, so as not to be in the ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... one of those taverns, where a curtezan in other cities would scarcely vouchsafe to be entertained; but you will be more astonish't when I shall assure you that they drink their crowned cups roundly, strain healths through their smocks, daunce after the fiddle, kiss freely, and tearm it an honourable treat." He furthermore says they were to be found until midnight in company with their lovers at Spring Garden, which seemed to be "contrived to all the advantages of gallantry." From which evidences it may be gathered, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... teeth, and a golden beard. His appearance was grave, but not morose, as if he were always examining things and people without condemning them. It was evident that he expected to take the upper hand in general, to play the first fiddle, to hold the top saw, to "be helped to all the stuffing of the pumpkin," as dear Uncle Sam was fond of saying. Of moderate stature, almost of middle age, and dressed nicely, without any gewgaws, which look so common upon a gentleman's front, he ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... a fiddle. Let's hit it up, and get to the dock as soon as we can. Think of landing ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... dreamed that he set two geese to dance, While he took a fiddle and played. He said, "You look pretty and gay, my dears." "We feel very tired," ...
— Merry Words for Merry Children • A. Hoatson
... the Lord! Only God could have brought it to its shape. It feels as if his handgrasp, wearing you had polished you and hollowed you, hollowed this groove in your sides, grasped you under the breasts and brought you to the very quick of your form, subtler than an old, soft-worn fiddle-bow. ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... "Uh-huh—fiddle and er banjer, and the feller that plays the banjer kin tear more music out o' it and stomp on the floor harder'n any other perfesser in the mountains. Better come if Paw ain't run you-all ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... and riding-whips hung on them; and the pictures of his ancestors, in their antiquated dresses, and slender, tarnished, antiquated frames. In his drawing-room you will find none of your new grand pianos and fashionable couches and ottomans; but an old spinet and a fiddle, another set of those long-legged, tall-backed chairs, two or three little settees, a good massy table, and a fine large carved mantle-piece, with bright steel dogs instead of a modern stove, and logs of oak burning, if it be cold. At table, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... the success of his stratagem. He had just transformed the Rose Princess into a fiddle and was about to transform Files into a fiddle bow, when the dragon appeared to interrupt him. ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... beauty of her face and the grace of her figure. Jack Kilmeny was to be there later for bridge, and before he came she had to dazzle and placate Verinder, who had been for several days very sulky at having to play second fiddle. ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... need to look so scared. You ain't done nothing wrong. Me and the boys, we like your music. Sing us another tune on that fiddle!" ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim |
