"Improvise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he had dispossessed any one. He would not willingly keep from his home a friendly and worthy black bear, but since it was the only home of the kind he needed that he could find, he must keep his place. The bear was not hunted as he was, and required less to give him comfort and shelter. He could improvise elsewhere a home that ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... adhesiveness (we can hardly call it obstinacy or pertinacity) of temper, which can make no allowance for change of circumstances, and we think we have a tolerably clear notion of the causes of General McClellan's disasters. He can compose a good campaign beforehand, but he cannot improvise one out of the events of the moment, as is the wont of great generals. Occasion seldom offers her forelock twice to the grasp of the same man, and yet General McClellan, by the admission of the Rebels themselves, had Richmond at ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Indians may also improvise a net with the help of their blankets, and drag the river at suitable places. Farther down on the Rio Fuerte, I once saw them make a large and serviceable net by fastening sixteen blankets together lengthwise with a double ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... and buoyancy were still unquenched. Quebec was giving unmistakable signs of a social revolt against the rigorous subjection in which the Church had held her. Exiled from Fontainebleau, the officers of the Governor's suite did their best to improvise a counterpart, and the ladies of the ambitious noblesse were not loth to join in the crude but brilliant revels of the castle. The winter carnival, then, as now, afforded merriment to a gay company, the King's representative being ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... feels is outstanding. Corbett in leadership, administration, and command; Manning in electronics; Astro in atomic power and propulsion. You will talk to the applicants and give them simple tests. An important point in any applicant's favor will be his ability to improvise and handle three, four, or five jobs, where a less imaginative person would do but one. Talk to them, sound them out, and then write your report. Captain Strong will review your opinions and make recommendations to me. I will finally ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... a series of pictures, evenings of song when a boy soldier would improvise verses to our head nurse; a fight between a Belgian corporal and an English nurse with seltzer bottles; the night when our soldiers were short of ammunition and we sat up till dawn awaiting the attack that might send us running for our lives; the black nights when some spy back of our lines flashed ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... heard of anything so delightful! Why, we shall be able to slip down at night and hear him improvise! What' is his name?' ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... cheered," he began, but the note of sarcasm in his voice was too apparent for him to permit himself to proceed. He caught up the lyre, and drawing up a diphros—a double seat of fine woods—rested against it and began to improvise with an assumption of carelessness. Ta-meri sank back in her chair and regarded him from under dreamy lids—her senses charmed, her light heart won by his comeliness and talent. Kenkenes became conscious ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... told, says Karasowski, by Casimir Wodzinski, a boarder of Nicholas Chopin's. One day when the latter was out, Barcinski, the assistant master, could not manage the noisy boys. Seeing this, Frederick, who just then happened to come into the room, said to them that he would improvise a pretty story if they would sit down and be quiet. This quickly restored silence. He thereupon had the lights extinguished, took his seat at the piano, and ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... ink was prepared in these. Each member of the family then wrote poems. The adults composed verses, according to their ability, in praise of the Star-deities; and the children either wrote dictation or tried to improvise. Little folk too young to use the writing-brush without help had their small hands guided, by parent or elder sister or elder brother, so as to shape on a tanzaku the character of some single word or phrase relating to the festival,—such as "Amanogawa," or "Tanabata," ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... a signal for the information of the punters. In a minute they arrived, bearing two grand strings of fish, only the strings that went through the gills of the bass were hazel twigs. Then there was washing of hands without soap, Mr. Bigglethorpe showing his companions how to improvise a substitute for Pears' by pulling up the pretty little water-lobelia and using the unctuous clay about its spreading roots for the purpose. All sat about the table-cloth, Mr. Perrowne said, "For what we are about to receive," and the al fresco repast began. Mrs. Carmichael dispensed ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... of some one we can hire; second, if we undertake the job ourselves, on the tools made for us by skilled labour; and third, on the shops to supply us with the materials we may need. Not once in a lifetime are we thrown entirely on our own resources. Then we improvise bunglingly a makeshift. ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... improvise an army at short notice it would be the United States, for its men, all round, are more hardy, more self-reliant, and quicker to learn than those of older communities. But, notwithstanding this advantage, both in 1861 and 1898 the United States failed ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... chanced that the Kazi of Kazis passed by the smith's house and heard him improvise these lines; so he sent for him and as soon as he saw him said to him, "O blacksmith, who is she on whom thou callest so instantly and eloquently and with whose love thy heart is full filled?" The smith sprang to his feet ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... make Paris the most beautiful capital of the world: I wish that in ten years it should number two millions of inhabitants." "But," replied his Minister of the Interior, "one cannot improvise population; ... as it is, Paris would scarcely support one million"; and he instanced the want of good drinking water. "What are your plans for giving water to Paris?" Chaptal gave two alternatives—artesian wells or the bringing of water from the River Ourcq to Paris. "I adopt the latter ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... possible to improvise a navy after war breaks out. The ships must be built and the men trained long in advance. Some auxiliary vessels can be turned into makeshifts which will do in default of any better for the minor work, and a proportion of raw men can ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... I go every Sunday, let me carry home all the works of Handel and Sebastian Bach after I had played them through for him. Constanze fell in love with the fugues as soon as she had heard them; she doesn't want to hear anything but fugues, especially those of Handel and Bach. Having often heard me improvise fugues she asked me if I had never written any down, and when I said no, she gave me a good scolding, for not being willing to write the most beautiful things in music, and did not cease her begging until I had composed one for her, and so it came about. I purposely wrote the indication ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... resign ourselves to boil with anger, to roar with impatience, to freeze our feet in the mud, to be numbed, and roasted, and torn by false hopes. We must go, on the faith of a mere indication, to a vague object, miss our end, curse our luck, improvise to ourselves elegies, dithyrambics, exclaim idiotically before inoffensive pedestrians who observe us, knock over old apple-women and their baskets, run hither and thither, stand on guard beneath a window, make a thousand suppositions. But, after all, it is a chase, ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... pass through your head. I must hear more." I said. Then he played, and I sat and listened to the most bewildering and beautiful music that I ever heard. From that moment there was no more copying. What a genius he is! I wish you could hear him improvise! ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... organist informed me that he had noticed, time and again, that spiders were affected by music. Several days afterwards I went to the church for the special purpose of experiment; I seated myself at the organ and commenced to improvise on the swell organ with flute, viol d'amour, and tremulant stops out. In a few moments the spider let herself down from the ceiling and hung suspended before my eyes. So close was she that I could see her palpi vibrating rapidly and continuously. I suddenly dropped to great organ ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... our own doors. I see clearly there are great disadvantages in city life. If a friend and his wife drop in suddenly in the evening or to dine, it is monstrously inconvenient to have an oyster-shop round the corner whence to improvise a supper or a dinner. It would be so much better to have nothing but the village grocery a mile or two away. The advantages are conspicuous. I wonder the entire population of the city doesn't go out to live ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... sincerest people on earth. And it's remarkable, that both they and the others—that is, both prostitutes and children—lie only to us—men—and grown-ups. Among themselves they don't lie—they only inspiredly improvise. But they lie to us because we ourselves demand this of them, because we clamber into their souls, altogether foreign to us, with our stupid tactics and questionings, because they regard us in secret as great fools and senseless dissemblers. But if you like, I shall ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... wonderful region for grasshoppers out there, you know; you'd improvise us such charming dishes of locusts and wild honey! As for cookies, a snowflake and a sunbeam, and there they are," said Ray, making inroads on the Fort-Riley stores; while little Jane set down a cup of beaten cream by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Dick to telephone before coming. Why hadn't he telephoned? Perhaps something had happened to prevent it, or perhaps an idea had come to him by which their plan could be bettered without a telephone message. In either case, she and Dick might have to improvise and deftly catch cues tossed to each other, as experienced actors sometimes do without the audience ever knowing that a hiatus in the ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... landing under fire will be the most critical as well as the most vital of the whole operations. If the Admiralty will improvise and send us out post haste 20 to 30 large lighters difficulty and duration of this phase will be cut down to at least one half. The lighters should each be capable of conveying 400 to 500 men or 30 to 40 horses. They should be protected ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... that ain't the step we took at rehearsal no more'n nuthin'. If you're going to improvise a new cow duet, I wish you wouldn't take the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... plebeos,[30] a gravibus juramentis, tum blande consulendo, tum dure corripiendo, compescuit. Quoniam abhominabilis erat eis[31] quisque jurans. Audiens autem rex quendam magnum dominum, sibi camerarium, ex abrupto et improvise graviter jurare, graviter increpavit eum, dicens: Prohdolor! vos dominus familiae multae dum juramenta sic editis contra Dei mandatum, pessimum exhibitis[32] exemplum servis et subditis vestris. ipsos enim ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... the problem which the revolutionists have and will eternally have to resolve. It is the rock of Sisyphus that will always fall back upon them. To exist a single instant, they are and always will be by fatality reduced to improvise a despotism without other reason of existence than necessity, and which, consequently, is violent and blind as Necessity. We escape from the harmonious monarchy of Reason, only to fall under ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... manifold quarters of a wholesale discussion, and querying and exaggerating, agreeing and controverting, till the dishes she was washing would clash and clang excitedly in the general badinage. Loaded with a pyramid of glistening cups and saucers, she would improvise a gallant line of march from the kitchen table to the pantry, heading an imaginary procession, and whistling a fife-tune that would stir your blood. Then she would trippingly return, rippling her rosy fingers up and down the keys of an imaginary portable piano, or stammering flat-soled ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... returning to Alnwick I was sent, on September 2, to the Army School of Signalling and Bombing at Tynemouth, and went through the Bombing course, which lasted about a week. So primitive were the arrangements, even at this date, that we were only taught how to improvise grenades out of old jam tins, and how to fire them out of iron pipes as trench-mortar bombs. We were indeed allowed to handle precious specimens of the famous No. 3 (Hales) and No. 5 (Mills), but there were not enough available for live practice. The West Spring Thrower had ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... now, hurried us from the scene of the explosion to a local drug-store, which combined most of the functions of a general store, even being able to improvise a dark- room in which ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... he told them. "She was in the last Russian ballet, and she is waiting now for the rest of the company to start again at Covent Garden. You see, it is Metzger who plays there. They improvise. Rather ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in the world's history was the command of the sea worth what it is now. But the command of the sea is, after all, like military predominance on land, to be insured only by superiority of equipment in the hands of a certain type of man, a type of man that it becomes more and more impossible to improvise, that a country must live for through many years, and that no country on earth at present can be said to be doing its best ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... from it—the glasses were too small, and the poets, the wits, the punsters, the jesters, preferred to drink their port out of tumblers. After dinner Hook gave one of his songs which satirized successively, and successfully, each person present. He was then challenged to improvise on any given subject, and by way of one as far distant from poetry as could be, cocoa-nut oil was fixed upon. Theodore accepted the challenge; and after a moment's consideration began his lay with a description of the Mauritius, which he knew so well, the negroes ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... high, of live ivory, and imagine some rosy flecks here and there on her. Imagine her robed in the garments that Godiva wore, that is, nothing but her hair of flowing sunbeams, and so on, and so on." Frederick began to improvise poetry. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... yet so as to cause him the least suffering, and then proceeded to improvise a gag. At this point his calmness disappeared, and for a short time he looked both surprised ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... applied to the smooth brilliance of the Potocka valse. There runs a story regarding this composition that George Sand had a little dog that used to chase its own tail around in a circle, and that one evening, she said to Chopin, "If I had your talent, I would improvise a valse for that dog," whereupon the composer promptly seated himself at the pianoforte and dashed off this fascinating little improvisation. It is Parisian in its grace and coquetry and ends with a rapid run, the last note of which is ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... flame. "That leaves nineteen torpedoes," he said. "In Cth we're safe enough but we're helpless without a probe. Yet we can only get into attack position from Cth. That leaves us only one thing to do—improvise a probe." ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... a night when the clerk of the weather will be polite enough to give moon and stars and soft southern breezes. Then cover the surface of the roof with rugs or else stretch a matting over the tin. Improvise couches upon boxes covered with rugs, or bring up a couple of cots ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... gave vent to loud discordant laughter, which was effectual in arousing all the inhabitants from their dreams. They awoke with the most immoderate desires to upset, make fun of, and laugh at all ruling authorities, to improvise couplets, and say rude things. One of these people, we can imagine it must have been Jaime Moro, called his servant directly he had jumped out of bed, and asked him with a smiling countenance if Don Nicanor, the bass of ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... the battlefield. Against these natural limits to mobility are the compensating advantages of the power of infantry to move into and over almost any ground by day or by night, and the rapidity with which trained infantrymen can find or improvise cover. ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... a dream," he began to improvise. "Because I was awake. And I heard a terrible plump and I said 'what can that be?' and then I was ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... boat? There was not such a thing along these banks. Improvise one. That was not possible. Flor listened, and the wild gasps of hope died out again into the dulness of despair. Some other time,—not this. As she stood still, idly and hopelessly hearkening to the mutter of the old women, with the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... among them is a sterilizer, or boiler, which consists of a large fiat-bottomed vessel fitted with a rack and a tight-fitting cover. A number of such devices are manufactured for canning by the cold-pack method, but it is possible to improvise one in the home. A wash boiler, a large pail, a large lard can, or, in fact, any large vessel with a flat bottom into which is fitted a rack of some kind to keep the jars 3/4 inch above the bottom can be used. ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... wish you to talk. I want to improvise to-night. The murmur of your conversation will ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... at the suggestion of the events of the moment, is a mere improvise, and derives its interest (should it be found to possess any) solely from the intense sympathy which the Author feels with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... 1914, from the vicinity of Ypres, while their own forces had been concentrated upon Dixmude, twelve miles to the north. This town had suffered severely before, but the allied forces using what shelter they could improvise, were doing considerable damage from this point. Therefore the Germans began to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... hastily invented the Jagborough expedition in order to impress on Nicholas the delights that he had justly forfeited by his disgraceful conduct at the breakfast- table. It was her habit, whenever one of the children fell from grace, to improvise something of a festival nature from which the offender would be rigorously debarred; if all the children sinned collectively they were suddenly informed of a circus in a neighbouring town, a circus of unrivalled merit and uncounted elephants, to which, but for their depravity, they would ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... lukewarm, and all were slow. Even Massachusetts, usually the foremost, failed to get all her men into the field till the season was nearly ended. Having no military establishment, the colonies were forced to improvise a new army for every campaign. Each of them watched its neighbors, or, jealous lest it should do more than its just share, waited for them to begin. Each popular assembly acted under the eye of a ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... ship was torpedoed the radio was out of commission. The radio officer and radio electrician chief managed to improvise a temporary auxiliary antenna. The generators were out of commission for a short time after the explosion, the ship ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... He was on his mettle now. Surely no cardinal could sing fuller, clearer, sweeter notes! He began at the very first, and rollicked through a story of adventure, colouring it with every wild, dashing, catchy note he could improvise. He followed that with a rippling song of the joy and fulness of spring, in notes as light and airy as the wind-blown soul of melody, and with swaying body kept time to his rhythmic measures. Then he glided into a song of love, and tenderly, pleadingly, passionately, told the story as only ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the centre of everything that was bright and gay at Court, sought after as one who could discourse sweetest music, the most graceful figure in the dance, the most accomplished poet who could quickly improvise a verse in praise of his Queen, or a rhyme to commemorate some feat of arms at joust or tourney, like ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... intense heat of the day: the too sudden lowering of temperature at sundown which makes the evenings unhealthy in many Southern countries is not experienced in Portugal. Every peasant has his guitar, for a love of music is widely diffused, and some of them not only sing but improvise. In the province of the Minho it is not uncommon at these gatherings for a match of improvisation to be held between two rustic bards. One takes his guitar, and in a slow, drawling recitative sings a simple quatrain, which the other at once caps with a second in rhyme and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... Or, improvise a syringe by sliding a piece of glass rod (to serve as a piston) into the lumen of a slightly shorter length of glass tubing and secure in position by a band of rubber tubing. Sterilise by boiling. Withdraw the rod a few millimetres and deposit the piece of tissue within the ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... a lonely childhood in a little English village. She would improvise warlike ballads for amusement, though her later works and her character are marked by gentleness of thought. She hoped to make a name by singing, but unfortunately lost her voice. Her family were all hostile to a musical career, and regarded her ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... philosophers have come the inventors, who between them are the glory of mankind. Unamuno despises inventors, but in this case it is his misfortune. It is far easier for a nation which is destitute of a tradition of culture to improvise an histologist or a physicist, than a ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... who play such vulgar instruments as the flute and drum; 2, those who play on the ballafond, which is the marimba of Angola and South America, and on the harp; 3, those who sing the legends and battle-songs of their country, or who improvise satires or panegyrics. This last class are dreaded, though despised. They are richly rewarded in their lifetime, but after death they are not even given a decent burial. If they were buried in the ground, it would become barren; if in the river, the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... wonder, ... and yet I suppose you are right. Some devilish incident will twist things out of gear, and then the old Adam must improvise for safety and success. Yes, I suppose my one beautiful ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... parting; the sea-chest was all made up and packed; and Mara's fingers had been busy with everything, from more substantial garments down to all those little comforts and nameless conveniences that only a woman knows how to improvise. Mara thought certainly she should get a few kind words, as Moses looked it over. But he only said, "All right;" and then added that "there was a button off one of the shirts." Mara's busy fingers quickly replaced it, and Moses was annoyed at ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of the Californian females of all classes in the dance are highly graceful. The waltz is their favourite measure, and in this they appear to excel as much as the men do in horsemanship. During the progress of the dance, the males and females improvise doggerel rhymes complimentary of the personal beauties and graces of those whom they admire, or expressive of their love and devotion, which are chanted with the music of the instruments, and the whole company join in the ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... Purgatoire." "That should be spoken with music as an accompaniment," exclaimed Rossini when I came to an end. Every one approved this idea, and Walewski said; "Mademoiselle will begin again, and you could improvise, cher maitre." ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... to his quarters. He set to work upon the highly necessary task of pretending that he was a castaway from the children's civilization in order to improvise conveniences that as a castaway he'd consider crude, ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... in a cafe late at night and show Wurzelmann one score after another, sing a few bars in order to bring out the quality of a song, improvise an accompaniment, praise a melody, or explain the peculiarity of a certain rhythm, he surprised the little slave, and drove him into an attitude of self-defence. All this was fundamentally new to Wurzelmann. If Daniel proved that the new was ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... he knew no more of wine. The draught had relish fiery new, and it seemed to warm him everywhere at once. His mind grew exquisitely bright, and his thoughts were astonishingly vivid. He began to improvise verses, and they came with an ease which was quite startling. They seemed to unroll themselves before him, to reveal themselves line by line as if they had been in existence long ago, and some spell ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... hum They heard a loud and slashing thrum: 'Twas the king: and each his breath drew in Till you might have heard a falling pin. Some little excuse, at first, he made, While over the lute his fingers strayed:— "You know my way,—as the fancies come, I improvise."—There was ink on his thumb. That morning, alone, good hours he spent ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... his wife at the age of fifty. But he had an only child, a girl who was called "Little Golden Daughter." She had a face of rare beauty and was the jewel of his love. She had been versed in the lore of books from her youth up, and could write, improvise poems and compose essays. She was also experienced in needlework, a skilled dancer and singer, and could play the flute and zither. The old beggar-king above all else wanted her to have a scholar for a husband. Yet because he was a beggar-king the distinguished ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... you say,—if I have courage? You shall soon see. And you shall see, too, what a lawyer-like defence I am able to improvise. I wager that if I put the case before them, they will give the ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... no composition, but he had trained himself to improvise, singing out of his heart for the joy of the music. He told of the land of Elis, beloved of Jupiter, in which they were gathered that day, of the great bare mountain slopes, of the swift shadows of the clouds, ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... playing together more or less at random, are too much carried away by their performance to conceive its effect; they cry far too loud and too unceasingly to listen. A contagious tradition carries them along and controls them, in a way, as they improvise; the assembly is hardly an audience; all are performers, and the crowd is only a stimulus that keeps every one dancing and howling in emulation. This unconsidered flow of early art remains present, more or less, to the end. Instead of vague custom we have schools, and instead ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... one of the queer little Serb carts we had avoided so anxiously. A few planks nailed together and bound around with an insecure rail, four wheels slipped on to the axles with no pins to hold them, a Turkish driver dangling his legs—such was our chariot. Some hay was produced to improvise a seat; we bought some apples on tick, as the vendor said he had no change for our one shilling note, and off ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... in which their provisions have been carried. Such a packing box is easily made into a cupboard, and it is not difficult to improvise shelves, hinges, or even a rough ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... father's house in George Street, Edinburgh (now the Northern Club), listening to the performance of a passing piper. There was another episode which he recalled with humorous satisfaction. Fired by his father's tales of the jungle, Yule (then about six years old) proceeded to improvise an elephant pit in the back garden, only too successfully, for soon, with mingled terror and delight, he saw his uncle John[9] fall headlong into the snare. He lost his mother before he was eight, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... him everything yet, since in that case I shall probably have lost the best part of it." Maggie went, she went—she felt herself going; she reminded herself of an actress who had been studying a part and rehearsing it, but who suddenly, on the stage, before the footlights, had begun to improvise, to speak lines not in the text. It was this very sense of the stage and the footlights that kept her up, made her rise higher: just as it was the sense of action that logically involved some platform—action quite positively for the first time in her life, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... traditional amount of moonlight streaming through two windows. Any ghost, even an apprentice, could have acquitted himself with credit in such surroundings, and Jurgen thought he did extremely well. He was atavistically brutal, and to improvise the accompanying dialogue he did not find difficult. So everything went smoothly, and with such spirit that Anaitis was presently wakened by Queen Sylvia's very moving wails for mercy, and sat erect in bed, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... in the greatest splendour, doing honour to himself; and in the rank to which his merits had raised him, what he possessed was nothing to what he would have been able to spend. He delighted in poetry, and loved to improvise upon the lyre, or to hear others doing this: and he composed some sonnets, if not as polished as we now demand them, at least weighty and without faults. He was much esteemed by the prelates, and was received by ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... Continental nations, we also have the external forms of the English Constitution, without having its internal essence, which constitutes the real value of its political institutions,—viz., Self-government. It is true that the political wisdom of nations does not improvise itself, nor reveal itself all at once in its fulness, as Minerva of old sprang from the head of Jupiter, clad in complete armour, but that it develops itself during their historic progress amidst vicissitude, and by turning to profit the lessons ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... her ladyship, smiling, "that about describes it. And now I think it is about bed-time. Jim, my dear," she continued, as she took her bed-room candle, "as you have thought fit to improvise a ball, you had better take care that the young ladies have partners by asking three or four of the officers from Rockcliffe, if they will waive ceremony ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... New material was to occupy the place which had not yet been vacated by the old, and I began to grow obstinate. Thus they even drove me into hating music, which is now the delight and at the same time the support of my life. When I used to improvise on my violin at twilight in order to enjoy myself in my own way, they would take the instrument away from me, asserting that this ruined my fingering. They would also complain of the torture inflicted upon their ears and made me wait ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... his hearers, a bright violet or an audacious scarlet gown annoyed his taste; if the reflection of a ruby or a diamond vexed his eye, he would choose that instant to improvise a rustic idyl or to ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... read this story, so I am not going to pretend to repeat the things they said, once they were released from dumb amazement. I should be compelled to improvise and substitute—which would remove much of the flavor. Let bare ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... infinite sausages, and drink inexhaustible beer; where they sing songs of eight hundred million verses, and gash the tips of each other's noses with huge swords. Envious Death snatched him from his parents when they were no longer of an age to improvise a successor. The unfortunate old millionnaires tenderly collected his effects, to sell them. During this operation, so trying to their souls (for there was a great deal of brand-new linen that could not be found), Nicholas Meiser said to his wife, "My heart bleeds at the idea that our buildings and ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... shortly rivaled by the sweeter, dearer, not less heavenly voice of little Julia, calling an imaginary dog, counting her mother's eyes, or singing to herself an original improvise upon the exalted subject of two brown bugs. And a moment later, came the sound of rapturous kissing, and Carol was awake. And before the smile of content left his face, she stood in the doorway, her face ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... Mr. Slocum, who had not provided himself with an explanation, and was puzzled to improvise one. "I discharged him,—that is to say, I let him go. I forgot to mention it. He didn't take to ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... There was already disorganization everywhere. The planetary government was in process of destroying all the machinery by which Kandar had been governed, as if to make the Mekinese improvise a government anew. They would make many blunders, of course, which would be resented by their new subjects. There would be much fumbling, which would keep the victims of their conquest from regarding them with respect. And ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... have bread, and it did not take long to improvise an old Dutch oven with the firebrick, and in this a fire was built, so that the bricks were heated up intensely, and the fire then withdrawn, and a cover put over the chimney. The heated brick, therefore, did the baking. Loaf after loaf ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... what is it moveth thee to discover unto me that lovely face and those fair limbs, wont to be so jealously veiled and guarded? Tell me the truth of the matter, may I be thy ransom!" And he began to improvise,[FN263] ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... belle. You must improvise, using it as a theme. When all is said and done, you know far more than Giotto about Saint Peter. Holy blue! if you bring that back to Paris as a veritable likeness of the Chief Apostle you will be placed on the Index Expurgatorius. Moreover, ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... in the middle of the seventeenth century. Then it declined for lack of competent actors. It was the realism of everyday life. It tended always back again to the mountebanks, jugglers, rope dancers, etc.[2141] The lazzi were "business" which gave the actors time to improvise. In the sixteenth century Italian comedians began to play at Paris in Italian. The Italian actresses undressed on the stage much and often, so that "Italian comedy" came to mean vulgar and licentious comedy. The Parlement of Paris held that the plays were immoral. Many of them ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... reached Sarawak in the yacht Fanny, after an absence of ten days. We had a visit from H.M.S. Scout about this time, and one day sat down sixteen to dinner in the mission-house, some of the officers having come up to spend the day. It is difficult to improvise a dinner in a country where no joints of meat are to be had, unless you kill an ox for the purpose. Sheep there are none. A capon or goose, or a sucking pig, are the only big dishes, and not always to be had. However, we did very well, and our ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... a valuable document, showing Donatello's system as regards his own preliminary studies and the amount of finishing he would leave to pupils. We see his astonishing plastic facility, and the ease with which he could improvise by a few curves, depressions and prominences so complex a theme as the Flagellation, or Christ on the Cross. It ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... poems, which are thought to have been composed about 1000 B.C. In these we find the minstrel everywhere a central figure, an honored guest, ready at call to entertain the company with some ballad of the ancient times, or to improvise a new one appropriate to the case in hand. The heroes themselves were not loth to take part in these exercises. Ulysses, the Odyssey tells us, occasionally took the lyre in his own hand and sang a rhapsody of his own adventures. Several ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... Senorita. What? You! You yourself bringing this blessing to my lips! In your childhood I cried 'viva' many times before your coach. And now you deign—in your voice—with your hand. Ha! I could improvise—The star stoops ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... times when she had to sing from herself. To Brandon this seemed the most amazing of her powers. In Italy the power of improvisation is not uncommon, and Englishmen generally imagine that this is on account of some peculiar quality of the Italian language. This is not the case. One can improvise in any language; and Brandon found that Beatrice could do ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... led back to the instrument. The moon shone brightly in through the window and lit up his glorious rugged head and massive figure. "I will improvise a sonata to the moonlight!" looking up thoughtfully to the sky and stars—then his hands dropped on the keys, and he began playing a sad and infinitely lovely movement, which crept gently over the instrument like the calm flow of moonlight over the dark earth. This was followed ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... scout must know: The fireman's lift. How to drag an insensible man with ropes. How to improvise a stretcher. How to fling a life-line. The position of main arteries. How to stop bleeding from vein or artery, internal or external. How to improvise splints and to diagnose and bind fractured limb. The Schafer method of artificial respiration. ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... the texts of the surreptitiously obtained Quartos are particularly subject include omissions and alterations due to lapse of memory on the part of the actors, additions due to the tendency to improvise which Shakespeare censures in Hamlet, omissions due to the reporter's failure to hear or to write quickly enough, garbled paraphrases made up to supply such omissions, and the writing of prose as verse and verse ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... to see Toni. Uncle Caragol would improvise something to eat while the captain was telling his mate all about his adventure at the bar. Besides, it seemed to him a fitting finale to his escapade to offer to any enemies that might be following him a favorable occasion for attacking him on the deserted ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... been arranged for the harp," said Aurelia. "But if Mrs. Easely can remember some of the lines, and will be good enough to repeat them, I will improvise for it." ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... and Valentine was instructed to commit it to memory, as the event proved, with but indifferent success. He comprehended, in a vague way, that the warriors were to do battle for the honor of their true loves, but, at the critical moment, the lines escaped him and he had to improvise. The lances were rake-handles, and, as this was not to be a fray a l'outrance, about the end of each formidable weapon was wadded and tied an ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... manufactured for the occasion. Selden evinced an extraordinary interest in her household arrangements: complimented her on the ingenuity with which she had utilized every inch of her small quarters, asked how her servant managed about afternoons out, learned that one may improvise delicious dinners in a chafing-dish, and uttered thoughtful generalizations on the burden ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... By uniting two such sections together, we could make a bridge of eighteen hundred feet, enough for any river we had to traverse; but habitually the leading brigade would, out of the abundant timber, improvise a bridge before the pontoon-train could come up, unless in the cases of rivers of considerable magnitude, such as the Ocmulgee, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... educational means, one which cannot be overlooked; Auer more interested in the interpretative, artistic educational end, which has always claimed his attention. Hubay personally was a grand seigneur, a multi-millionaire, and married to an Hungarian countess. He had a fine ear for phrasing, could improvise most interesting violin accompaniments to whatever his pupils played, and beside Rode, Kreutzer and Fiorillo I studied the concertos and other repertory works with him. Then there were the conservatory lessons! ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... undiscoverable without the most accurate measurements by delicate micrometers, would cause stoppages and the breaking of different small parts. And, at that time, spare parts were almost unknown, so it required the utmost ingenuity on the part of the gunners to improvise, with what materials could be found on the spot, and with the very few tools at hand, many of the small but all-important parts that go to make up the interior economy ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... wise, wiseacre, wisdom, wizard, witch, wit, unwitting, to wit, outwit, twit, witticism, witness, evidence, providence, invidious, advice, vision, visit, vista, visage, visualize, envisage, invisible, vis-a-vis, visor, revise, supervise, improvise, proviso, provision, view, review, survey, vie, envy, clairvoyance. Perhaps the last six should be disregarded as too exceptional in form to be clearly recognized. And certainly some words, as prudence from ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... masked a speculative unsettled temperament. Her pose, if one wished to be critical, was just a little too elaborately careless. She wore some excellently set rubies with that indefinable air of having more at home that is so difficult to improvise. Francesca was distinctly ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... Mihul said. "They just might! You're fast. You've been taught to improvise. And there's something eating you. ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... compared to marching on a battery; every face that I confronted would threaten me like the muzzle of a gun; and it came into my head suddenly with how much better a countenance I should be able to do it if I could but improvise a companion. Hard by Merchiston I was so fortunate as to observe a bulky gentleman in broadcloth and gaiters, stooping with his head almost between his knees, before a stone wall. Seizing occasion by the forelock, I drew up as I came alongside ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mediterranean has been divided among powerful nations. In Italy all roads now lead to Milan, the city of industry and commerce, and Rome is but a town of passage. And so the most valiant efforts have failed to rouse it from its invincible slumber. The capital which the newcomers sought to improvise with such extreme haste has remained unfinished, and has almost ruined the nation. The Government, legislators, and functionaries only camp there, fleeing directly the warm weather sets in so as to escape the pernicious climate. The hotels and shops even put up their shutters, and the streets ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... sent to the Chamber for her husband; but precautions had been taken, and at that moment the Minister was on his legs addressing the Chamber. The lady racked her brains and replied to the note with such intellect as she could improvise. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... sensitive domesticity shrank from the discomforts of the slovenly southern hotel, and at immense expense, and in face of almost insuperable difficulties, Mrs. Welland was obliged, year after year, to improvise an establishment partly made up of discontented New York servants and partly drawn from ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... is Mr. Bennet," the plump man said. "I wish to beg your forgiveness, Mr. Dennison, for the violence to which you were subjected. We found out about your invention only at the last moment and therefore had to improvise. The bullets were meant only to frighten and delay you. Murder was ...
— Forever • Robert Sheckley
... his seat with his guitar, improvise love-ditties to admiring groups of majos and majas, or prompt with his music the ever-ready dance. He was thus engaged one evening when he beheld a padre of the church advancing, at whose approach every one ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... after the ninth round. What a curious instance of our Western ways this incident affords; the Chinese firing upon our own people with the latest artillery made by ourselves, while they are left to improvise a gun from a relic found in an ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... now it won't be long." Nadia caroled happily, buckling on her pack straps and taking up bow and arrows for her daily hunt. "I never thought that he could do it, but what it takes to do things, he's got lots of," she continued to improvise the song as she left the "Hope" with its multitudinous devices whose very variety was a never-failing delight to her; showing as it did the sheer ability of the man, whose brain and hands had almost finished a ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... ourselves and our belongings into a little open craft or model-boat The Mee-wah-sin. We have a crew of five men, one on the steering-sweep and four to track, and in this wise we make our way for three hundred miles up the great river to Fort Vermilion. One day we improvise a sail and so make fifty miles in a favourable wind, but, with this exception, every other mile of the journey ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... had grown shorter, colder, and drearier, and the discomforts of camp-life harder to endure. There were few tents even for the officers, and the men were compelled to improvise such shelter as circumstances permitted. Huts of stone, wood, and brush, and barricades against the wind, lined the hillside, and the region already was denuded of almost everything that would burn. Therefore, when ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... was utterly useless to think of scudding before the gale; our only hope of living through what was impending depended upon our ability to keep the boat riding bows-on to the sea, and to do this it became necessary for us to improvise a sea anchor again. This was easily done by lashing together six of our eight oars in a bundle, three of the blades at one end and three at the other, with the boat anchor lashed amidships to sink the oars somewhat in the water and give them a ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... Divisional Chateau. Should anyone desire to survey life from the altitude of an R.T.O. (Railway Transport, not Really Tantalising Officer, as supposed by some) it might be arranged for him, in the interests of realism, to improvise information as to trains for the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... negro, Nicasio and I improvise a lodging on the banks of the river which flows near Don Benigno's country house. Our rustic bower consists of a framework of roughly cut branches, and has an outer covering formed of the dried papyrus-like bark of palms. ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... on from a farmhouse flying the Red Cross flag, and sustained five or six casualties. We were detailed to a section of the defence of Bakenlaagte, which was practically surrounded. We lay down on the slopes with our heads downhill, and kept the enemy well away, taking the opportunity to improvise some sort of head-cover whenever their fire slackened. Although we fully expected an attack in the night, or at dawn, none was made, there being no sign of the ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... the people of Lawrence little by little, and finally, becoming alarmed, they began to improvise means of defense. Two abortive imitations of the Missouri Blue Lodges, set on foot during the summer by the free-State men, provoked by the election invasion in March, furnished them a starting-point for military organization. A committee ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... while it was equally apparent that no tents were going to be set up for us. Also it was quite possible that we should be exposed to another fearful storm, because the season was advancing. Consequently it was just as well that we should improvise some kind of shelter over our heads. The issue was where to discover the materials, since the authorities were not disposed to extend ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... that certain orders of beings are able to improvise or to interchange organs, just as need calls. Thus a polyp, if hard put to it, may shift what little brain and stomach happen to be in his possession. You may say that he carries his heart in his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... of the Sonata-Form is the second part which is known as the Development Section; for, as we shall soon explain, the structure as a whole is tripartite. In this portion of the movement the composer has an opportunity to improvise, as it were, with his material, using one theme or both as already presented. Dry and labored development sections may, of course, be found in certain Sonatas and Symphonies, but in the great works of such masters as Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikowsky and d'Indy the development ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... Then, as he climbed higher and higher, on and up, never getting away from the richest verdure and the sweetest flowers, scenes for an artist to paint with rapture, and a poet to sing in ecstasy, I found myself pushing up my forehead to improvise a mansard roof for my brain to swell in sympathy. And when he reached the summit and the panorama burst upon his enraptured vision, it was too much for my strained emotions, and ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... Blaine enlightened me. We sat together at table and suddenly he turned and said: "How are you getting on with your bill?" And my reply being rather halting, he continued, "You won't get a vote in either House," and he proceeded very humorously to improvise the average member's argument against it as a dangerous power, a perquisite to the great newspapers and an imposition upon the little ones. To my mind this was something more than the post-prandial levity ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... ever had that humble dwelling seen so abundant a meal as that which Bibi had managed to improvise for their young guest, and when it was over the honest Canadian produced the promised rifle and accoutrements, and his wife and Amoahmeh did their best to add to them such trifles as might be useful in a ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... fanciful projector. V. imagine, fancy, conceive; idealize, realize; dream, dream of, dream up; "give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name" [Midsummer Night's Dream]. create, originate, devise, invent, coin, fabricate; improvise, strike out something new. set one's wits to work; strain one's invention, crack one's invention; rack one's brains, ransack one's brains, cudgel one's brains; excogitate[obs3]; brainstorm. give play, give the reins, give a loose to ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... that came the desperate attempt of a party of young clubmen from New York, who, inspired by patriotic and adventurous imaginations, slipped off in half a dozen motor-cars to Beacon Hill, and set to work with remarkable vigour to improvise a fort about the Doan swivel gun that had been placed there. They found it still in the hands of the disgusted gunners, who had been ordered to cease fire at the capitulation, and it was easy to infect these men ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... Confederacy. A blockading vessel need not be of great strength or powerful armament. All that is necessary is that she should be swift, and carry a gun heavy enough to overawe any merchantman that might attempt to run the blockade. And as such vessels were easy to improvise out of tug-boats, ferry-boats, yachts, and other small craft, it came about that by the last of 1861, the people of the seaport towns of the South, looking seaward from their deserted wharves, could ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... desert of African lovelessness and contempt for women. Touareg women, we are told therein (208-10), are allowed to dispose of their hands and to eat with the men, certain dishes being reserved for them, others (including tea and coffee) for the men. In the evening the women assemble and improvise songs while the men sit around in their best attire. The women write mottoes on the men's shields, and the men carve their chosen one's name in the rocks and sing her praises. The situation has been compared to ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... army; we have conjured a navy out of nothing so rapidly that pines the jay screamed in last summer may be even now listening for the hum of the hostile shot from Sumter; why not give another rub at our Aladdin's lamp and improvise a genius ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... with the others in extending courtesies and showing kindness to us, but all laughed heartily, I remember, when they had to improvise chairs for my father and myself to sit at table. They were richly attired in a costume peculiar to themselves, and very attractive. The men were clothed in handsomely embroidered tunics of silk and satin and belted at the waist. They wore knee-breeches ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... put himself in the place of another, take his mask and play his part. Hence the liveliest of diversions is the comedy in which one is an actor. It is that of children who, as authors, actors and audience, improvise and perform small scenes. It is that of a people whose political regime excludes exacting manly tasks (soucis virile) and who sport with life just like children. At Venice, in the eighteenth century, the carnival lasts six months; in France, under another form, it lasts the entire ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... meriteth not destruction at my hands." Then the youth came forward and took the mare and her appointments. Now the damsel was standing by the young Sayyid, and she winked at him with her eye as one saying, "Do thou choose me and leave all the rest;" whereupon he began to improvise the following couplets, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... a real trouble to him, and helped to spoil his enjoyable stay at the palace. He knew himself to be popular there and that his visit had given real pleasure. He had been asked to improvise upon the piano every evening, and had even sung once, saying gracefully to the Bishop's daughter, when she had concluded her very indifferent accompaniment to the song, 'An accompanist is born, not made!' He had preached one of his favourite sermons on Sunday, which had not only swelled ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... to punish me for what you are pleased to call my falsehood, your majesty proves that I have spoken the truth," cried Voltaire, eagerly. "You wish to show me that the fruit of your muse ripens slowly, and you improvise a charming quatrain that Moliere himself would be proud to ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... prominent in daydreams, can be detected also in many sleep dreams. There are dreams in {503} which we do big things—tell excruciatingly funny jokes, which turn out when recalled next day to be utterly flat; or improvise the most beautiful music, which we never can recall with any precision, but which probably amounted to nothing; or play the best sort of baseball. The gliding or flying dream, which many people have had, reminds one of the numerous toys and sports in which defiance of gravity is the motive; and ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... position open to artillery fire from all sides, was left absolutely destitute of long-range guns, and none too well provided with field-artillery. But that Captain Scott proved himself able, just in time, to improvise out of the rough materials at hand an effective gun-carriage, there would have been nothing to prevent the Boers from using their big guns at half the distance they have actually ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... proved to be one of those kongo canes, the support to feet and belly of the devout in their long pilgrimages, sign manual of the pious intent of the bearer. He had taken a candle from his pocket, and, with small respect to the "six worlds" of its rings, used the spiked end to improvise a torch. Then an unexpected voice caught his ear; a sad, wailing cry which chilled the heart. Then followed low, rapid, disorderly speech, the meaning of which rendered indistinct by distance could not be made out. Then came the unearthly ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... from our bed-room window, at midnight, we would gaze on the silvery moon in the heavens, listening to the rippling notes of the water-spirits that to our fancy inhabited the sparkling stream that ran near the house. How beautifully would she improvise at times—for improvisations in truth were they, while she was quite unconscious of her gift. She never wrote a line of poetry, but when in such moods, every word she uttered was true, pure poetry. She had a most remarkable memory, and seemed never to forget a line ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... heard, but about things around him, of what we saw and heard, and we ourselves were in the song. My mother told me he was an improvisatore; and Federigo, our artist lodger, told me I should also improvise, for I was really a poet. And I tried it forthwith—singing about the foodshop over the way, with its attractively set out window and the haggling customers. I gained much applause; and from this time forth I turned everything ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... complimented thus: "It is marvelous, Mr. President, how you deliver long improvised speeches about which you have not had time to reflect." His reply was: "You are not paying me a compliment; it is criminal in a statesman to improvise speeches on public affairs. Those speeches I have been fifty years preparing." Daniel Webster's notable reply to Hayne was the result of years of study on the problem of State Rights. Professor Mowry once told the following story: "A few years ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... which it is intended a group of children shall dance and improvise pantomime led by ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... us have a mental sanctum to which we retire at times, locking the door behind us; and there we think of high and beautiful things, and hold commune with our Maker; or count our money, or improvise that repartee the gods withheld last night, and shake hands with ourselves for our wit; or caress the thought of some darling, secret wickedness or vice; or revel in dreams of some hidden hate, or some love we mustn't own; ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... soliloquy, monologue; dialogue; colloquy; trialogue; interlocution; improvisation; toast; equivocation, prevarication, quibbling; ambages, pseudology, amphibology, amphiboly, dilogy. Associated Words: extempore, extemporaneous, extemporize, extemporization, impromptu, improvise, improvisation, brogue, aphasia, amnesia, oratory, elocution, rhetoric, oratorical, rhetorical, rhetorician, elocutionary, peroration, voluble, volubility, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... were always acting—often beginning breakfast with a "stunt." The Madame sang well, and her little impromptu arias pleased her thin little lover immensely and he would improvise and answer in kind, and then take the part of an audience and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... ever listened to. I write merely to disabuse your mind of the common impression which we are all apt to form of these singular geniuses; and very strongly recommend you not only to hear him play, but privately test him (as I have done) in any way you like. Improvise to him as difficult or elaborate or out-of-the-way piece as you please, and he will instantly reproduce it. Now, this is no common gift; and therefore you and I, and all who know any thing of music, ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... my discourse. But in spite of the most violent efforts, I could not tear my eyes from those two living lights to which they were so mysteriously riveted. That was not all. By a more amazing phenomenon still, and contrary to all the principles of my whole life, I began to improvise. God alone knows if this was the result of my ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... Mir Khan Palace. We were short of jail room and had to improvise. The horse-stalls there have come in handy more than once before. Shall ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... accomplishments were many; and when the guests assembled in the great hall to make the walls ring with their laughter over cups of mead and ale, he could take his turn with the harpers and minstrels to improvise one of those sturdy bold ballads that stir the blood to-day with their ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... improvise," said the manager, quite pleased, "and I've no objection when it's well done like that; but you'd better go on now, and stick to ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... she will do; but I am sure of this—that you will not take her for an angel afterwards.—And now play for me; improvise and make me happy. It will divert your thoughts; your gloomy ideas will vanish, and for me the dark hours will be filled with ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... extraordinary had taken place: the German's face glowed with a kind of warmth and contentment, and was so smiling and radiant that I hardly recognised it. I could scarcely believe that he had been able to improvise this face, which was sensitive and trustful, out of the features he ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... If we were in the service and I had the power, I'd have you brevetted at once, and get some fellow knocked on the head to make a vacancy. You have been contributing royally to our mess, and now you must take a soldier's luck with us to-night. Grace, couldn't you improvise a ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... sound common sense and practical business capacity. His family moved to Colorado, Texas, while he was still a lad and here his musical talent began to display itself. "The inventive faculties of the small boy, and the innate harmony of the musician, combined to improvise a crude instrument which emitted the notes of the scale. Successful at drawing forth a concord of sweet sounds, he continued to experiment upon everything which would emit musical vibrations. (Even the pigs, I take it, did ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... of suicides who know they have botched up life for good. The Fury of cocksure men who realize they have been outsmarted by fate, the enemy, and themselves, and know that they will never be able to improvise a defense when arraigned before the high court of history—and whose unadmitted hope is that there will be no high court of history left to arraign them. More cobalt bombs were dropped during the Fury than in all the ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber |
