"Guitar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... youths an impression of being at once popular and inaccessible. A man felt as if he had fallen in love with Cleopatra, or as if he were asking for a great actress at the stage door. Indeed, some theatrical spangles seemed to cling about Miss Hunt; she played the guitar and the mandoline; she always wanted charades; and with that great rending of the sky by sun and storm, she felt a girlish melodrama swell again within her. To the crashing orchestration of the air the clouds rose like the curtain ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... cries of the pent-house keepers, or the noises of the apprentices as they set upon some offending pedestrian. The din was almost indescribable. And yet in the midst of the confusion there was music. From every barber shop came the twang of cittern or guitar, while song burst from the ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... wearied of the dice. He pocketed his winnings and pushed back his chair. A guitar in its case in a corner of the room had caught his roving eye. Standing with his back to the wall, leaning indolently, he sent his white fingers wandering across the strings and his eyes drifting bade to find those of Ernestine Dumont. Then through the discordance of other voices, of clicking ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... is good," interrupted Amy. "Boys, you should hear him play! He has a guitar hung over his shoulder, a harmonica strapped to his head, a piano near by to which he makes sudden dashes, and all the while he ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... understand neither your allowing yourself to insult, or to be insulted! [Music is heard from the orchard; guitar and an Italian song.] The singers have arrived; perhaps you would all like to step out and have a bit of harmony on top ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... village iv Sulu, where he finds Hadji settin' up on a high chair surrounded be wives. 'Tis a domestic scene that'd make Brigham Young think he was a bachelor. Hadji is smokin' a good seegar an' occasionally histin' a dhrink iv cider, an' wan iv th' ladies is playin' a guitar, an' another is singin' 'I want ye my Sulu,' an' another is makin' a tidy, an' three or four hundred more ar-re sewin' patches on th' pants iv th' Hadji kids. An' th' ambassadure he says: 'Mos' rile an' luminous citizen, here is a copy iv th' Annual Thanksgivin' pro-clamation,' he says. 'Tis ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... own, on the further side of a narrow courtyard which divided one section of the great palace from another. Accordingly, having armed himself with a native zither, on which, being an adept with the light guitar, he had easily learned to strum, he proceeded at midnight — the fashionable hour for this sort of caterwauling — to make night hideous with his amorous yells. I was fast asleep when they began, but they soon woke ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... 218, and they toasted me, as if I had done something heroic instead of merely having sent a telegram. Later four sat down to poker, while Miss Cullen, Fred and I went out and sat on the platform of the car while Madge played on her guitar and sang to us. She had a very sweet voice, and before she had been singing long we had the crew of a "dust express"—as we jokingly call a gravel train—standing about, and they were speedily reinforced by many cowboys, who ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... once. The part he plays here is very dull for him, but conscientious. As for the bedmaker, she's a dream, a kind of cheerful, innocent nightmare; I never saw so poor an imitation of humanity. I cannot work - CANNOT. Even the GUITAR is still undone; I can only write ditch-water. 'Tis ghastly; but I am quite cheerful, and that is more important. Do you think you could prepare the printers for a possible breakdown this week? I shall try all ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... paused for a moment, and dwelt upon the one who was playing a guitar and singing a Hawaiian song to the accompaniment of all ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... gasped with surprise, so the Rector enlarged further on that detail. Of course he realized the tub was broken amidships, the ribs strained, the deck warped and sagging in the middle—squeaking like an old guitar every time a sea went under her, ready for breaking up, about. But they hadn't fooled him, they hadn't fooled him! Thirty duros, he had paid, not a cent more. And the firewood in her was worth that much. But she would keep afloat ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... followers, obstinate not to lose the great white hope that had come to illumine the gloom of the Jewries, explained away his defection; what sects and counter-sects his appostasy gave birth to, and what new prophets arose—a guitar-playing gallant of Madrid, a tobacco dealer of Pignerol, a blue-blooded Christian millionaire of Copenhagen—to nourish that great pathetic hope (which still lives on) long after Sabbatai himself, after who knows what new spasms of self-mystification and hypocrisy, what renewed aspirations after ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... She sent for Feintise, and threatened to kill her. Feintise, half dead with terror, confessed all; but promised, if she spared her, that she would still find means to do away with them. The Queen was appeased; and, indeed, old Feintise did all she could for her own sake. Taking a guitar, she went and sat down opposite the Princess's window, and sang a song which Belle-Etoile thought so pretty that she invited her into her chamber. "My fair child," said Feintise, "Heaven has made you very lovely, but you ...
— The Frog Prince and Other Stories - The Frog Prince, Princess Belle-Etoile, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp • Anonymous
... whole distance, upwards of two miles, themselves. I objected for a time; but when they told me it was the custom of the country, and, that the art of sculling was as much an accomplishment as the softer allurements of the harp, or guitar, I felt more reconciled, and fully appreciated an honour that could never be ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... and trumpets, roared against each other; Bajazzo growled; a couple of hoarse girls sang and twanged upon the guitar: it was comic or affecting, just as one was disposed. The evening approached, and now the crowd became greater, the ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... semblance of talk, had an eye and an ear on the bungalow—the "Old Man's" quarters not three hundred feet away. The boom of his jovial laughter still rang out upon the air, and presently the tinkle of guitar, the swish of feminine garments, the rasp of chairs and the merry mingling of voices told that the little dinner party, the first the camp had ever known—for what is a dinner party without women—had quit the table and gathered on the porch. By this time, too, an unclouded ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... her gown of finest woof? Ye gods! what an insult to suppose her repairing such! The lady's mental accomplishments and qualifications are as follow:—She sings divinely, plays on the harp (and piano too in modern days) a merveille; occasionally condescends to fascinate on the guitar, and the lute also, should that instrument, now rather antiquated, fall in her way. She takes portraits, and sketches from nature; she understands all languages, or rather that desideratum, an universal tongue, since in the most foreign lands she is never ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... possess the necessary funds, but in this you can no doubt assist me, for in a few days I expect some thirty pounds from my relations in Italy. If you will return to my room to-night you might rescue my guitar and what few little objects of value I possess and pawn them, and burn all papers and documents of ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... approached the end of the cottage he observed that Rose was not at her accustomed work in the garden, and he was about to pass the door when the tones of a guitar struck his ear and arrested his step. He was surprised, for at that period the instrument was not much used, and the out-of-the-way town of St. Just was naturally the last place in the land where he would have expected to meet with one. No air was played—only a few chords were lightly ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... of a small mirror set in a frame which appears to be silver; while above is suspended a guitar, of ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... know; she wrote to me about it. King Cophetua is the name, isn't it? I am very curious indeed, for I have set Tennyson's ballad to music myself. I sing it to the guitar, and if life were not so hurried I should have sent it to you. However—however, we are all going home to-morrow. I have promised to take charge of Cecilia, and Mrs. Scully is going to ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... mind can be softened by harmony and whose feelings are so evidently alive to the in fluence of sweet sounds, should not decry the pleasures of virtue. This flute, and yon guitar, both call you master." ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... our own repast Was that of monks from lenten fast. The meal once o'er; our stores replaced; We gather'd where the window fac'd Upon the vale, and gaz'd below Where mists from a mad torrent's flow Were dimly waving to and fro. Meanwhile, the old guitar replied To the swift fingers of our guide: His voice was deep, and rich, and strong, And he himself a child of song. At first the music's liquid flow Was soft and plaintive—rich and low; The murmur of a fountain's stream Where sleeping ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... long street blocked with merchandise, and shaded with the awnings of the Chinese stores. There was a little barber-shop in a kiosko, where an idle native, crossing his legs and tilting back his chair, abandoned himself to the spirit of a big guitar. The avenue that branched off here would be thronged with shoppers during the busy hours. Here were the retail stores of every description—"The Nineteenth-century Bazaar," the stock of which was every ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... not until the meal ended and they were again on the porch in the summer dusk that Winona made any progress in her criminal investigations. There, while Dave Cowan played his guitar and sang sentimental ballads to Mrs. Penniman—these being among the supposed infirmities of the profligate duchess—Winona drew the twins aside and managed to gain a blurred impression of the day's tremendous events. She ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... reanimate the gayety, usually so sparkling, of our friend. Neither questions, teasing nor entreaties succeeded in drawing her from her reverie: her eyes fixed on the sky, her fingers wandering carelessly over the trembling strings of her guitar, she seemed not to notice what was going on around her, and to be thinking of nothing but the plaintive sounds she caused her instrument to utter, and the capricious ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... ever returned," answered Blanch, opening the door and leading the way across the patio in the direction of the garden. The tinkle of a guitar attracted their attention to a group of peons and women squatted on their heels on one side of the court, in the shade of the arcades, smoking and chatting. A little beyond them, in the shadow of the doorway, stood the major-domo, Juan Ramon ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... State of Qatar conventional short form: Qatar local long form: Dawlat Qatar local short form: Qatar note: closest approximation of the native pronunciation falls between cutter and gutter, but not like guitar ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... she ought to be ashamed of herself for wishing to be unsexed; that God has given her the nursery, the ball-room, the opera, and that, if these fail, He has graciously provided the kitchen, the wash-tub, and the needle? Or shall I tell her that she is a lute, a moonbeam, a rosebud; and touch my guitar, and weave flowers ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... intrinsic powers of the great masters of these arts may yield in no degree to that of those who have employed language as the hieroglyphic of their thoughts, has never equalled that of poets in the restricted sense of the term, as two performers of equal skill will produce unequal effects from a guitar and a harp. The fame of legislators and founders of religions, so long as their institutions last, alone seems to exceed that of poets in the restricted sense; but it can scarcely be a question, whether, if we deduct the celebrity which their flattery of the gross ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... pleased, clamoured for something to eat or drink, or else fell down on a bundle of rags in the corner and were sound asleep in a moment. They often slept in the heat of the day and were up almost all night listening to a neighbour playing the guitar, or singing and rollicking with other children. Their usual drink was sour red wine made from grapes grown on the neighbouring hillsides after all the best juice had been already pressed out of them. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... reason, seeing that she has always shown herself a daughter to me—that she has all kinds of good qualities, and several accomplishments, knowing something of conchology, more of botany, drawing capitally in the Dutch style, and playing remarkably well on the guitar—not the trumpery German thing so-called—but the ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... was arranged that Grace should stand at the stern with a long oar, or what was to pass for it, while Betty would run the motor and do the real steering. Mollie, Amy, and Aunt Kate were to be passengers. Mollie borrowed a guitar and there was to be music and singing as they took part in ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... reassured him. The wit and sprightliness of Chloe were so famous as to be considered medical, he affirmed; she was besieged for her company; she composed and sang impromptu verses, she played harp and harpsichord divinely, and touched the guitar, and danced, danced like the silvery moon on the waters of the mill pool. He concluded by saying that she was both humane and wise, humble-minded and amusing, virtuous yet not a Tartar; the best of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... it remains, in forgotten places, For I saw a blinded boy strumming a guitar, Playing with his face a-smile, with the arts and graces Of a troubadour of old. ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... thought, suggesting other and more objectionable approaches up my back. When I had lain awake a little while, those extraordinary voices with which silence teems began to make themselves audible. The closet whispered, the fireplace sighed, the little washing-stand ticked, and one guitar-string played occasionally in the chest of drawers. At about the same time, the eyes on the wall acquired a new expression, and in every one of those staring rounds I saw ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... took her guitar to the sands and sang one or two Basque hymns. Unlike us, the Basques do not take their pleasures sadly. One of their ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... Jim Pink had composed a good many—the minstrel instinctively avoided humor. He always improvised them to the sobbing of a guitar, and they were as invariably sad as the poetry of adolescents. It was called "Tump Pack's Lament." The negroes of Hooker's Bend learned it from Jim Pink, and with them it drifted up and down the three great American rivers, and now it is sung by the roustabouts, stevedores, and underlings ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... polished satin-wood, cushioned with delicate azure silk shot and starred with silver. A luxurious number of silken cushions lay upon the couch, chairs, and even on the floor; for two or three were heaped against the pedestal, on which a basket of flowers stood, and upon them lay a guitar, with its broad, pink ribbon hanging loose. Every table was loaded with some exquisitely feminine object of use or beauty, till the very profusion was oppressive, light and ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... save you, unhappy wretch?" said a voice in the dark that sounded like a guitar out ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... 'G. Ubaldo Dx. and Fe Dux.' Amongst the devices was the crane standing on one leg, and holding, with the foot of the other, which is raised, the stone he is to drop as a signal of alarm to his companions. Among other feigned contents of a bookcase were an hour-glass, guitar, and pair of compasses; in another were seen a dagger, dried fruits in a small basket made of thin wood, and a tankard, while in a third was represented an open book surmounted with the name of Guidobaldo, who probably made the selection inscribed on the ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... have been feeing the vergers too liberally, so I wrote a song about it called 'The Ballad of the Vergers and the Foolish Virgin,' which I sang to my guitar. Mr. Copley thinks it is cleverer than anything he ever did with his pencil. Of course, he says that only to be agreeable; but really, whenever he talks to me in that way, I can almost ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... again, dinner eaten, and dusk come down, Signet brought out an old guitar from among the Dutchman's effects (it had belonged probably to that defunct nephew of the dress clothes), and as he talked he picked at the thing with idle fingers. Not altogether idle, though, I began to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... dances, some account has incidentally been given in different parts of my Journal. On the first of these heads, I have now to add a list of their musical instruments, the principal of which are—the koonting, a sort of guitar with three strings;—the korro, a large harp, with eighteen strings;—the simbing, a small harp with seven strings;—the balafou, an instrument composed of twenty pieces of hard wood of different lengths, with the shells of gourds hung ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... thoughtful child, full of fancies and imaginings. She loved to sit on the stairs, listening to her mother's voice singing sweetly in her dressing-room to her guitar. She had wonderful fancies about an echo which the children discovered in the hilly grounds round the rectory. Echo she believed to be a beautiful winged boy; "and I longed to see him, though I knew it was in vain to attempt to pursue him to his haunts; neither was Echo the ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... kind of guitar, formed from the calabash, which they call kilara. Some of these are of an enormous size, and the musician performs upon it by placing himself on the ground, and putting the kilara between his thighs; he performs on it with both his hands, in a manner similar to the playing ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... supper, Dona Isabella played charmingly on the guitar, while amidst the shrubbery before the house the enormous fire-flies made long streaks of light or blazed like jewels on leaf and twig. With the graceful Pascal Charley chased and captured some. Pascal had a wicker cage partly full of them, and used it as ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... muses into three groups, in order to give antiphonal effect to their songs. He combined the episodes so as to furnish the musician with the motives for a dance and in a manner permit of the use of numerous and varied instruments, from the organ to the Spanish guitar. Probably this ballet morceau was one of the first of many medleys of national character dances so familiar ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... romantic. He offered the cosmos as an adventure rather than a scheme. He did not explain evil, far less explain it away; he enjoyed defying it. He was a troubadour even in theology and metaphysics: like the Jongleurs de Dieu of St. Francis. He may be said to have serenaded heaven with a guitar, and even, so to speak, tried to climb there with a rope ladder. Thus his most vivid things are the red-hot little love lyrics, or rather, little love dramas. He did one really original and admirable ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... word uji belongs to the Tamanac language.) To reanimate them, they must be irritated, or wetted with water. Boas are killed, and immersed in the streams, to obtain, by means of putrefaction, the tendinous parts of the dorsal muscles, of which excellent guitar-strings are made at Calabozo, preferable to those furnished by the intestines ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... which she had learned from the young person who had taught her dancing, and Dick enlarged her vocabulary with a few soft phrases, and would sing her a song sometimes, touching the air upon an ancient-looking guitar they had found with the ghostly things in the garret,—a quaint old instrument, marked E. M. on the back, and supposed to have belonged to a certain Elizabeth Mascarene, before mentioned in connection with a work of art,—a fair, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... been about to ask the same thing, turned away and stretched himself at Mildred Huger's feet. Susy softly touched her guitar, suggesting popular airs, and voices took up the tunes, now stopping to say something funny and to laugh while others carried on the song, now joining in an energetic chorus. On the outskirts of the circle farthest from the ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... I saw before me the peristyle of a magnificent garden-house, which seemed to have similar prospects and entrances on the other sides! The heavenly music which streamed from the building transported me still more than this model of architecture. I fancied that I heard now a lute, now a harp, now a guitar, and now something tinkling which did not belong to any of these instruments. The door for which we made opened soon on being lightly touched by the old man. But how was I amazed when the porteress ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... into the star-studded, cloudless sky. Nothing could be more placid, nothing less prophetic of peril or ambush than this exquisite summer night. Somewhere within the forbidden region of Moreno's harem a guitar was beginning to tinkle softly. That was all very well, but then a woman's voice, anything but soft, took up a strange, monotonous refrain. Line after line, verse after verse it ran, harsh, changeless. He could ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... every guide-book; but I cannot pass over Giorgione's beautiful group of himself, and his wife and child, which Lord Byron calls "love at full length and life, not love ideal," and it is indeed exquisite. A female with a guitar by the same master is almost equal to it. There are two Lucretias—one by Guido and one by Giordano: though both are beautiful, particularly the former, there was, I thought, an impropriety in the conception of both pictures: the figure was too voluptuous—too exposed, and did not give ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... The instrument is a gourd shaped like some of our long-necked squashes, hollowed out through two vents cut in one side, and the surface over half the perimeter slashed or furrowed so as to offer a file-like resistance to a metal trident, which is scraped over it in time to the music made by the guitar, or whatever other instrument or instruments make up the orchestra. There are times when the result is suggestive of ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... dens of a worse description, were now silent heaps of grass-grown timber. In those days the dancing rooms were crowded nightly, and I once attended a ball here in a low, stuffy apartment, festooned with flags, with a drinking bar at one end. The orchestra consisted of a violin and guitar, the music being almost drowned by a noisy crowd at the bar, where a wrangle took place on an average every five minutes. One dollar was charged by the saloon-keeper for the privilege of a dance with a gaily painted lady (of a class with which most mining camps are only too familiar), ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... poor, wasted but still handsome mother waiting her turn whilst the gin-drinking laundress pawns her flat-irons to gratify her passion for the deadly drink; note the insouciance of the thoughtless musician as he twangs the guitar which he is about to pledge, though probably dependent on it for bread. Notice the pictures above,—the Bacchante pressing grapes into a wine cup,—the bailiff distraining for rent. Hablot Knight Browne has ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... matrons who visited her called upon her, instead of finding her in the kitchen or the cellar, they found her lying upon the sofa with a book or her guitar in her hands, or perhaps playing with her little boy, and the amiable ones among them explained it by her pale face and delicate air, but the severer ones said that such idleness was the Italian custom and they ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... voices, seemingly numerous, are talking in low tones. Then rises the sound of a guitar, and the song of a woman, plaintive and gentle in the echoing sonority of the bare house, in the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the sun, and then pray before it, and fold up his mat again and go home. And the next night, and night after night, until that particular flower faded away, he would return to it, and bring his friends in ever-increasing troops to it, and sit and play the guitar or lute before it, and they would all together pray there, and after prayer still sit before it sipping sherbet, and talking the most hilarious and shocking scandal, late into the moonlight; and so again and again every evening until the flower died. Sometimes, by way of a grand ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... the old attic of the humble house, The guitar hangs in cobwebs wrapped: Softly, oh, softly touch her! Listen! You have awaked the ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... She seized a guitar that lay near, and began in a soft voice in some language he knew not—a cadence of melody he had never heard, but one whose notes made strange quivers all up his spine. An exquisite pleasure of sound that was almost pain. And when he felt ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... no doubt. She jumped whenever I came round the corner, and used to stand behind trees watching me. Also she used to come to see the dogs fed. Now, when I knew beyond all question the state of her feelings, I borrowed Guido's guitar, and struck one chord upon it at night under her window, and sang but one word—Vieni! In three minutes she came on to the balcony, and we looked at each other. There was a moon, and we could see quite well. We stood looking like that for ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... guitar, and in a deep deacon's bass strike up "In the midst of the valley." We would begin singing. My tutor took the bass, Fyodor sang in a hardly audible tenor, while I sang soprano in unison ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... divan in front of him, Baya would drone him monotonous tunes with a guitar in her fist; or else, to distract her lord and master, favour him with the Bee Dance, holding a hand-glass up, in which she reflected her white teeth ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... conference such and so close as we have described, with the late representative of the Athenian weaver, whom his recent visit to his chamber had metamorphosed into the more gallant disguise of an ancient Spanish cavalier. He now appeared with cloak and drooping plume, sword, poniard, and guitar, richly dressed at all points, as for a serenade beneath his mistress's window; a silk mask at the breast of his embroidered doublet hung ready to be assumed in case of intrusion, as an appropriate ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... difficulties and dangers. She had few friends and many enemies, little money and cruel cares. She was, it is needless to state, pregnant when she left France, and paused in her work long enough to bear her husband "a lusty boy"; after which Sir Ralph writes that he fears she is neglecting her guitar, and urges her to practise some new music before she returns to ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... We left this very strange place with our minds occupied by a variety of reflections: but at any rate highly pleased and gratified by the agreeable family which had performed the part of guides on the occasion. In the evening, a professor of music treated us with some pleasing tunes upon the guitar—which utterly astonished the Count—and it was quite night-fall when we returned homewards, towards our quarters at the hotel of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Natchees; guitar; sundries. Personal attendants, looking like yeomen of the guard in red cloth dresses, variegated with yellow; the Rajah wearing ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... as the purchaser of the “affections.” Sometimes he would imagine that he had a marital aptitude, and his fancy would sketch a graceful picture, in which he appeared reclining on a divan, with a beautiful Greek woman fondly couched at his feet, and soothing him with the witchery of her guitar. Having satisfied himself with the ideal picture thus created, he would pass into action; the guitar he would buy instantly, and would give such intimations of his wish to be wedded to a Greek, as could ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... since to make room for a big manufacturing plant. I used to visit there every time I went to the Quaker City, and all the furnishings mentioned stand out vividly in my recollection to this day, even to the guitar off in one corner. I never played Fish Pond there, but I have eaten some of the best dinners I ever tasted in that famous kitchen below stairs, which had to serve for dining room as well. That kitchen and the great cat, who used to sun himself in the shop window, ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... Gavin Hamilton, the painter, to whom he had been introduced by Mr. Robinson, took him to a coffee-house, the usual resort of the British travellers. While they were sitting at one of the tables, a venerable old man, with a guitar suspended from his shoulder, entered the room, and coming immediately to their table, Mr. Hamilton addressed him by the name of Homer.—He was the most celebrated Improvisatore in all Italy, and the richness of expression, and nobleness ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... good nature that made every thing easy, and an originality of character that was very amusing. Scarcely had we arrived, when an Italian musician, whom I had with me to give lessons to my daughter, began playing upon the guitar; my daughter accompanied upon the harp the sweet voice of my beautiful friend Madame Recamier; the peasants collected round the windows, astonished to see this colony of troubadours, which had come to enliven the solitude ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... songs, to which I listened, as an English audience to an Italian opera, delighted with the sound of words which I did not understand.' Boswell records (Hebrides, Sept. 28) that another day a lady 'pleased him much, by singing Erse songs, and playing on the guitar.' Johnson himself shews that if his ear was dull to music, it was by no means dead to sound. He thus describes a journey by night in the Highlands (Works, ix. l55):—'The wind was loud, the rain was heavy, and the whistling of the blast, the fall of the shower, the rush of the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... a jimp Jaguar, Who purchased a Spanish guitar; He played popular airs At fetes and at fairs, And down at ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... siesta, smoke cigarettes and wait for the sun to go down. And always they dance; at dusk on the smooth adobe floors, afternoons under the trellises where the earth is damp and has a fruity smell. A betrothal, a wedding, or a christening, or the mere proximity of a guitar is sufficient occasion; and if the occasion lacks, send for the ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... account sounds all right," interrupted Mr. Atwood. "Sounds as if it could be stretched. I want to buy a new flag, a monkey, a guitar and a barrel of pineapples. Will that rubber ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... &c., you could not do it. The Greek language itself, perhaps the finest (all things weighed and valued) that man has employed, could not do it. The scale was not so pitched as to make the transfer possible. It was to execute organ music on a guitar. And, hereafter, I will endeavor to show how scandalous an error has been committed on this subject, not by scholars only, but by religious philosophers. The relation of Christian ethics (which word ethics, however, is itself most insufficient) ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... conversed so long that they now recurred to the enjoyment of that always-ready, always-pleasing art, music. A young man sang to the accompaniment of a guitar. ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... none. "I like Alexis," he said once. "He's not so original as he makes out, but there's enough to give him a relish. A handy chap, too, in a dozen ways—he'll model you in wax, or draw you in pastels, or sing about you on the guitar, or whistle you off on the piano; but he's not strong, isn't Alexis. The one thing he can do—no, there are two. He can ride anything, and he can use a revolver. I saw him empty the ten of hearts once: very ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... boarding-house, but with one of Hale's married friends on Poplar Hill. And always was she, young as she was, one of the merry parties of that happy summer—even at the dances, for the dance, too, June had learned. Moreover she had picked up the guitar, and many times when Hale had been out in the hills, he would hear her silver-clear voice floating out into the moonlight as he made his way toward Poplar Hill, and he would stop under the beeches and listen with ears of growing love to the wonder of it all. For it was he who was the ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... agriculture, including pears, plums, peaches, almonds, grapes, pomegranates, rice, and wheat. The inhabitants were dressed in silk and woollen materials. There were musicians in the chief cities who played on the flute and the guitar. Buddhism was the prevailing religion, but there were traces of an earlier worship, the Bactrian fire-worship. The country was everywhere studded with halls, monasteries, monuments, and statues. Samarkand formed at that early time a kind ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... described by me as not to overlook the smallest particular, I should not be less astonished if they succeeded on the first attempt than if a person were in one day to become an accomplished performer on the guitar, by merely having excellent sheets of music set up before him. And if I write in French, which is the language of my country, in preference to Latin, which is that of my preceptors, it is because I expect that those who make use of their ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... the improvement of odd moments in reading and study, he found time to attend to music, and became quite an accomplished player on the harp, guitar, and violin. His family and company were often ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... 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 ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... genuine and valuable. Even by candle-light the bright clear skies, the soft distances, with blue air quivering between the eye and the hills, the fresh tints, and well-massed lights and shadows, charmed the view. The subjects were all pastoral, the scenes were all sunny. There was a guitar and some music on a sofa; there were cameos, beautiful miniatures; a set of Grecian-looking vases on the mantelpiece; there were books well arranged ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the graceful slowness of the swans, which, disturbed in their ancient possessions by the approach of the bark, looked from a distance at this splendid and noisy pageant. We say noisy—for the bark contained four guitar and lute players, two singers, and several courtiers, all sparkling with gold and precious stones, and showing their white teeth in emulation of each other, to please the Lady Henrietta Stuart, grand-daughter of Henry IV., daughter ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... followed, and they all joined in on the chorus. Other lively songs were sung, and, by the time Frank put aside the guitar all were ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... raised quite a weight from my mind, for it shows that at last you have received all mine, and that thus the chain of communication between us is unbroken. What you said about your spiritual experiences in feeling the presence of dear Henry with you, and, above all, the vibration of that mysterious guitar, was very pleasant to me. Since I have been in Florence, I have been distressed by inexpressible yearnings after him,—such sighings and outreachings, with a sense of utter darkness and separation, not only from him but from all spiritual communion with ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... progress. Karain did not visit us in the afternoon as usual. A message of greeting and a present of fruit and vegetables came off for us before sunset. Our friend paid us like a banker, but treated us like a prince. We sat up for him till midnight. Under the stern awning bearded Jackson jingled an old guitar and sang, with an execrable accent, Spanish love-songs; while young Hollis and I, sprawling on the deck, had a game of chess by the light of a cargo lantern. Karain did not appear. Next day we were busy unloading, and heard that the Rajah was unwell. The expected ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... me during the evening with a dancing deer; a comical affair of wood, made to dance on a table by jerking a string. The luti plays a sort of "whangadoodle" tune on a guitar, and manipulates the string so as to make the deer keep time to the tune. He tells me he obtained ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... features bore the imprint of a noble soul within, and I pitied her for having to grow up under the authority of a foolish mother. Sophie went to the piano, played with feeling, and then sang some Italian airs, to the accompaniment of the guitar, too well for her age. She was too precocious, and wanted much more discretion in her education than Madame Cornelis ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... gun-powder to the test the man reached down for a guitar leaning against his chair, and with a twanging of chords which made the shifting people on the outskirts stand still to see what would happen next, he began to sing a song that had been popular in his youth. Or, rather, it was a parody of the song. Georgina recognized it as one that she had heard ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... had gone to bed, and before she slept, she heard something which instantly excited her attention; it was the sound of a guitar, and it came from the lawn in front of the house. Jumping up, and throwing a dressing-gown about her, she cautiously approached the open window. But the night was dark, and she could see nothing. Pushing an armchair to ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... love-songs, always provided that they were sung "with great sadness"; and Ferragut would devour her with his eyes while she plucked the guitar, chanting the song of Malek-Adhel and other romances about "Roses, sighs and Moors of Granada," that from childhood the doctor had heard sung by the Berbers of his country. The simple attempt at taking one of her hands always provoked ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... had hurried into No. 7, to declare that the ladies were all that was charming, but that their servants gave themselves airs beyond credence, especially the butler, who played the guitar, and insisted on a second table; when there was a peal of the bell, and Mary from her post of observation 'really believed it was Lady Conway herself;' whereupon Miss Mercy, without listening to persuasions, popped into the back drawing room to ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Fonda de Madrid is Mr. Thomas Hobhouse, brother of Byron's friend. We had a pleasant party in the Court this evening, listening to blind Pepe, who sang to his guitar a medley of merry Andalusian refrains. Singing made the old man courageous, and, at the close, he gave us the radical song of Spain, which is now strictly prohibited. The air is charming, but too gay; one would sooner dance than fight to ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... great length of his crow-black beard, the form and length of his "facon," or knife, which was nothing but a sword worn knife-wise, and the ballads he composed, in which were recounted, in a harsh tuneless voice to the strum-strum of a guitar, the hand-to-hand combats he had had with others of his class—fighters and desperadoes—and in which he had always been the victor, for his adversaries had all been slain to a man. But his eyes, his most wonderful feature, ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... humanity, if intellect breathed within: some reclining against the rails, others seated in groups, or solitary as if buried in "lonely thoughts sublime"; while the rush of the falling waters is sweeter music than that of the pipe and the guitar, that faintly strive to be heard. The cataract in the plate is a very fine one; on its foam the moonlight was lovely: we passed many an hour here on such a night, the clear waters of the Pharpar, as they rolled on, reflecting each pillar, each Damascene slowly ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... cabbage-palm, and about two feet, or two feet and a half, in length. A hole was cut in it in a slanting direction, and six fibres of the stem had been raised up, and kept in an elevated position at each end, by means of a small bridge. The fingers were then used for playing upon these as upon a guitar: the tone was ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer |
