"Improvise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... never heard of anything so delightful! Why, we shall be able to slip down at night and hear him improvise! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... breadth 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
... is by no means unique. The profession moves ahead, and national security advances with it, because of men who have the confidence and courage to toss the rule book out the window when it doesn't fit the situation, and who dare to trust their own decisions and improvise swiftly. ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... hairs of its distinguished occupant, whose spirits 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 as keen a pleasure-seeker as the rest. On ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... Mihul said. "They just might! You're fast. You've been taught to improvise. And there's something eating you. You're ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... a man singing to a guitar—not songs like those which I had so often 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 ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... 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 pleased with ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... How to use the stomach bath by three different methods. How to improvise the Turkish Bath in your own home, without apparatus. How to use the wet sheet pack. How to care ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... nation could 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 ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... 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 providentia, are so metamorphosed that they should be excluded from ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... was determined to 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 was put in, and while the dough had not risen as it should ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... an 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... rolled this sweet and picturesque language of Italy from her lips—like music sounded those full, artistic rhymes, of which but few of the hearers had the least suspicion that they came from Tasso. To improvise in the Italian language is an easy and a grateful task! What wonder, then, that Corilla acquitted herself so charmingly? The audience paid no attention to the thoughts expressed; they asked not after the quintessence; they were ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... intimate part in the wars of Charles XII. of Sweden and Peter the Great of Russia. Here Bach's principal rival was a French virtuoso, Marchand, who, an exile from Paris, had delighted the king by the lightness and brilliancy of his execution. They were both to improvise on the same theme. Marchand heard Bach's performance, and signalized his own inferiority by declining to play, and secretly leaving the city of Dresden. Augustus sent Bach a hundred louis d'or, but this splendid douceur never reached him, as it was appropriated by ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... said at this distance of time that it was not precisely the greatest among them who were most prominent as mystagogues of Science with the big S, and it may certainly be said that when the mystagogues, the Cliffords, Huxleys, and the rest, undertook to improvise a theory of first principles, their achievement was little better than infantile. They took it on trust from Hume that the whole of knowledge is built up of sensations, actual or 'revived', and quite missed Kant's point that their ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... twelve miles distant from Ypres, on December 8, 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
... division of great existences which have fallen, that fatal dismemberment of flourishing things which is accomplished every day, obscurely, in the human community, and which history has noted only once, because it occurred after the death of Alexander. Lieutenants are crowned kings; superintendents improvise manufacturers out of themselves. Envious rivalries arose. M. Madeleine's vast workshops were shut; his buildings fell to ruin, his workmen were scattered. Some of them quitted the country, others abandoned the trade. Thenceforth, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... pressed hard and even angrily for an immediate assault on the whole Prussian line. Not they. It was on paper that the assault should be at daybreak to-morrow. Such leaders as they were cannot IMPROVISE. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... plenty of meat and melocheea and bread; and then zikrs of different kinds, and a Gama el Fokara (assembly of the poor). Gama is the true word for Mosque—i.e., Meeting, which consists in a great circle of men seated thick on the ground, with two poets facing each other, who improvise religious verses. On this occasion the rule of the game was to end each stanza with a word having the sound of wahed (one), or el Had (the first). Thus one sung: 'Let a man take heed how he walks,' etc., etc.; and 'pray to God not to let ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... killed a steward for the misdemeanour of remaining silent, through fear, when spoken to: we also find it recorded that he struck down a maid-of-honour who had brought him a cup of wine, and that he would have cut off her head but for the extraordinary presence of mind which enabled her to improvise a poetical appeal for mercy. Her only fault had been that, in carrying the wine-cup, she failed to notice that a leaf had fallen into it,—probably because court-custom obliged her to carry the cup in such a way as not to breathe upon it; for emperors and high nobles were ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... cases it will be found necessary to obtain or improvise a tool similar to a broad-bladed putty knife or spatula to be used as an inking instrument. The ink is rolled evenly and thinly on the knife or spatula and applied to the finger by passing the inked knife or spatula ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... at his instrument. When, as he expressed it, he was in the mood, few men could improvise more exquisitely, with a technique more Chopinesque, than this man whose orchestral work was so tremendous: so filled with the rolling grandeur, the passion, the energy, the gigantic climaxes, the seething, troubled depths, of a nature ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... 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 ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... most critical and serious operations, and this quickly and continuously. The battle ceasing, their labors continue. While other officers are sleeping, renewing their strength for further efforts, the medical are still toiling. They have to improvise hospitals from the rudest materials, are obliged to 'make bricks without straw,' to surmount seeming impossibilities. The work is unending both by day and night, the anxiety is constant, and the strain upon both the physical and mental faculties unceasing. Thus, ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... me this translation, also furnished me with a copy of extempore French verses, given by a gentleman of Maestricht, who was celebrated as an improvisatore. They certainly are very superior. He was at a large party, and agreed to improvise upon any theme given him by five of those present in the way of Souvenir. The first person requested ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... us to 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 ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... not know what 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 your ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... being told stories, one inside the other, like a nest of Oriental boxes. Unfortunately Fakrash did not seem in the humour for listening to apologues, and, even if he were, Horace could not think of or improvise any just then. "Besides," he thought, "I can't sit up here telling him anecdotes for ever. I'd almost sooner die!" Still, he remembered that it was generally possible to draw an Arabian Efreet into discussion: ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... 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, should use our best efforts to let the public ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... 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
... asked 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 play has ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... knocked down his opponent. The authorities had a good deal of trouble to keep order. Augustin, who was an intrepid logician, must have longed to take his share in these rows. But one cannot exactly improvise a faith between to-day and to-morrow. While he awaited the enlightenment of the truth, he studied ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... his sheep, and even express a cordial hope that his house is in a good state of repair and his horses and cattle properly protected from any possible inclemency of weather. Furthermore, you must always adapt your greeting to time, place and circumstances, and be prepared to improvise a new, graceful and appropriate salutation to meet any extraordinary exigence. In the morning a mountaineer greets another with "May your morning be bright!" to which the prompt rejoinder is, "And may a sunny day never pass you by!" A guest he welcomes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... 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 approve or ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... castle-buildier, 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^; brainstorm. give play, give the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... thread to her web high up among the timbers of the ceiling. The 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 ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... Point, and added to these, these mammoth floating hospitals, which are coming in from day to day with their precious cargoes. Without any previous notice, they anchor, and send to him for supplies, which it would be extremely difficult to improvise, even in our large cities, and quite impossible at Old Point. 'No bakeries, no stores, except small sutlers.' The bread had all to be baked; the boat rationed for two days; eight hundred ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... 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 see two or three Federal cruisers ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... puzzle in a London newspaper, in competition, no correct solution was received, but an ingenious and neatly executed attempt by a man lying in a London infirmary was accompanied by the following note: "Having no compasses here, I was compelled to improvise a pair with the aid of a small penknife, a bit of firewood from a bundle, a piece of tin from a toy engine, a tin tack, and two portions of a hairpin, for points. They are a fairly serviceable pair of compasses, and I shall keep them as a memento of ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... your million-and-one favorite melodies which nobody but that all-around musical amateur, the Auto-Comrade, can so exquisitely whistle, hum, strum, fiddle, blat, or roar. There is also a universe full of new ones for him to improvise. And he is the jolliest sort of fellow musician, because, when you play or sing a duet with him, you can combine with the exciting give-and-take and reciprocal stimulation of the duet, the god-like autocracy of ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... to 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 ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... 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 and ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... 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 Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... they had taught him all that there was to learn, he had ceased to regard those naturalisation papers, almost a patent of nobility, which the Faubourg Saint-Germain had bestowed upon him, save as a sort of negotiable bond, a letter of credit with no intrinsic value, which allowed him to improvise a status for himself in some little hole in the country, or in some obscure quarter of Paris, where the good-looking daughter of a local squire or solicitor had taken his fancy. For at such times desire, or love itself, would revive ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Tai-yue both smiled. "Who doesn't go in for these things for fun?" they asked. "Is it likely that we improvise verses in real earnest? Why, if any one treated our verses as genuine verses, and took them outside this garden, people would have such a hearty laugh at our expense that their very teeth ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... 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 ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... whole army. For the Persians are able to cross all rivers without the slightest difficulty because when they are on the march they have in readiness hook-shaped irons with which they fasten together long timbers, and with the help of these they improvise a bridge on the spur of the moment wherever they may desire. And as soon as he had reached the land on the opposite side, he sent to Belisarius and said that he, for his part, had bestowed a favour upon the Romans in the withdrawal of the Median army, and that he was expecting the envoys from them, ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... 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 ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... figures written above a bass. The recitative which separated one aria from another was improvised by the singer, and was accompanied on the harpsichord by the kapellmeister, who was naturally obliged to improvise his part on the spur of the moment, following the caprice of the singer. There was no creating an atmosphere for a tragic or dramatic situation by means of the accompaniment; as soon as the situation arrived, an aria was sung explaining it. ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... the north and below the city, it may have seemed to him that it would delay our progress; but as a large number of empty coal barges were lying at the town, it took our company of mechanics, under Captain Lane of the Eleventh Ohio, but a little while to improvise a good floating bridge, and part of the command passed through the town and camped beyond it. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. li. pt. i. p. 425.] One day was now given to the establishment of a depot of supplies at Charleston and to the organization of regular communication ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... 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 ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... me," said Kenelm, modestly. "But if I, who never before strung two rhymes together, can improvise so readily in the style of the present day, why should not a practical rhymester like yourself dash off at a sitting a volume or so in the same style; disguising completely the verbal elegances borrowed, adding to the delicacies of the rhyme by the frequent introduction ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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, a hunt; a hunt in Paris, ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... 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 visitors were delighted with Sarawak, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... They improvise many more words as they sing. It is one of the strangest, most mournful things I ever heard. It is impossible to give any idea of the deep pathos ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... as many troops as he can catch up, assuring him that his army will grow like a snow-ball as it progresses. I have no doubt it would. I think it would swell to 50,000 before reaching Washington, and that the people on the route would supply the quartermaster's stores, and improvise an adequate commissariat. I believe he could drive the Abolitionists out of Washington even yet, if he would make a bold dash, and that there would be a universal uprising in all the border States this side of the Susquehanna. But he does not respond. Virginia was too late moving, and North Carolina, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... of that heroic defence from the lips of one who was concerned so intimately with it is one of my greatest desires. But I am a coward. I cannot face the extravaganza that Alphonse would improvise, neither dare I approach him for a mere haircut and so confess to having deserted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... have not commenced to learn their ABC's; he was a virtuoso before the time when most boys can be trusted with a blunt knife. Kissed and fondled by great beauties, from the age of five, it is small wonder that Mozart began to improvise upon the oldest theme in the world precociously. His first recorded love affair is found in his letters at the age of thirteen. He loved with the same radiant enthusiasm that he gave to his music, and while ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... years to do it in, although they had an army and navy provided to their hand, and were receiving recruits in hundreds from the masses of incoming emigrants, up to the very end of the struggle; while, the Southerners had to improvise everything, and their forces dwindled down ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... numberless characters, chipping in from 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 across ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... tell his wife.' 'For he will tell his wife' did ring All day through heart and brain; In sleep a nightmare stole his voice, And shouted it again. I spent whole days in meditating How I should break the spell, Which made my wife keep prating Of things she shouldn't tell. Some awful crime I'll improvise, Which I'll to her confide, Upon the instant home I rushed, My hands in blood were dyed. 'Now, Catharine, by your love for me, My secret closely hide.' Her quiet tongue, for full three days, The secret kept so well, I almost grew to hope that she This secret wouldn't tell. Alas! ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... address for the Major, and on going over the next morning, we met some four or five hundred miners at the grocery store, who had assembled to listen to the orders sent for their removal. There being no boards or boxes into which to improvise a stand for the speaker, a whisky-barrel was introduced, from the head of which, after apologizing to the miners for the disagreeable duty that had been placed upon the Major, and in consequence of his suffering from a bad cold, we had taken the stand to read to them his short address, and ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... does finish us, 'Amphitrite's' a dead duck." The "Lachesis" quivered as the port turrets belched 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
... charm which does more for a woman than any amount of ordinary ability; and she had a passionate and great love for music. Kathleen's musical genius was already spoken of with much approbation by the rest of the school. The girls used to ask her to improvise. Kathleen could improvise in almost any style, in almost any fashion. She could make the piano sob with her heart-rendering notes; and again she could bring forth music clear and fairy-like. Again she would lead the tender and solemn strains of the march; and again she ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... one to give up while a single hope remained. "I could improvise a key," he said, and with decision hastily ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... made use of, and a 1-pounder gun, which the enemy had posted but 100 yards off, was silenced 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 ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... with exactly the 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, as ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... the quartet inharmoniously, at least two of them off key; for Tex Martin had joined the concert and was performing with a bull bellow that could be heard across a section. Then Bud began suddenly to improvise, and his voice rose valiantly that his words might carry their meaning to the ears of Johnny Jewel, who had stalked back across the corral and was striving now to catch the horse he had let go, while his one ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... 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 tastes as most heinous. She describes the ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... the accompaniment of his lute on any argument proposed to him, the poetry being as graceful and pleasing as the music. One day, while sitting at a state banquet in the Palazzo di Venezia, Giovanni Angelo de' Medici, one of the cardinals present, asked him if he could improvise "on the praises of the clock," the sound of which, from the belfry of the palace, had just struck his ears. The melodious song of Silvio, on such an extraordinary theme, was received with loud applause; and when Giovanni Angelo de' ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... 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 frugal constituency, who, having little money, were as chary of ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... 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 his ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... 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," or "Kasasagi ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... she will opine that it is all your fault, dearest, and that I have behaved admirably. Between you I shall stand exonerated. And now, since it is too cold for walking, since it is late, since it is far to Lyvern and farther to London, I must improvise some accommodation ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... the man who, to place his country at the height of other civilized nations, has known how to improvise, in less than three months, an astronomical commission, and send it to Japan to observe the transit of Venus, will he permit, I ask, the greatest discovery ever made in American archaeology, to remain lost and unknown to the scientific men, to the artists, to the travellers, ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... ceremonious intercourse is remarkable and complicated. They have relapsed into the analphabetic state of their ancestors; they are great at eloquence; and, though without our poetical forms, they have a variety of songs upon all subjects and they improvise panegyrics in honour of chiefs and guests. Their dances have been copied in Europe. Without ever inventing the modes of the Greeks, which are still preserved by the Hindoos, they have an original music, dealing in harmony rather than in tune, and there are motives, of course all in the ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... darkness and solitude and music"—of a wild Gaelic lament, with its insistent falling cadences. A story concerning his poetic precocity has been circulated, but is not worth repeating. Most children love jingling rhymes, and one need not be a born genius to improvise a rhyming couplet on ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... proportion of balks and cheeses, constituting a load for one wagon. 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
... 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 ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... 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
... strolled to the piano, and began to improvise something so yearning and melancholy that Anna was not sorry when her uncle came back and mentioned the tune ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the palace. 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 there would be the small tumult Bors ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... hook that held the entrance door open. They were doing it from one of the crevices in the ceiling. They had evidently made no preparations for lifting the hook. I suppose they never thought that anyone would make use of it, and so they had to improvise a grapple. The wire was too fine to be seen by the amount of light we had in the hall; but the flashlight 'picked it out.' ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... want you to think that I run about after women in an habitual and systematic manner. Or that I deliberately hunt them in the interests of my work and energy. Your questions had set me theorizing about myself. And I did my best to improvise a scheme of motives yesterday. It was, I perceive, a jerry-built scheme, run up at short notice. My nocturnal reflections convinced me of that. I put reason into things that are essentially instinctive. The truth is that the wanderings of desire have no single ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... prudent. However, it would be betraying the intentions of Mozart to execute literally many passages in concertos written by that author for the piano. At times he would write a veritable scheme only, upon which he would improvise. However, one should not imitate Kalkbrenner, who, in executing at Paris the great concerto in C Major of Mozart, had rewritten all its passages in a different manner from the author. On the other hand, when I played at the Conservatoire in Paris Mozart's magnificent concerto ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... action, or to expedite the removal of exhausted troops from 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
... never 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 ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... disgust, and took passage on a small French steam-ship for Bordeaux, to make the "grand tour" of Europe. His violin made him the most popular person on the ship. He had a facile talent and a good memory, which enabled him to play almost any kind of music; and when he could not remember he could improvise. The second officer, a short, stout man, with a pointed black beard, and a secret passion for the fine arts, conceived a great fancy for the young American. When they reached Bordeaux he took Richard to his favourite ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... 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 ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... 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
... 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, or, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... deal with any small raid that happened to get through the meshes of our navy, and perhaps to police the empire. That was all, no more. But now we have to assist neighbors becoming the victims of a power with millions of warriors at its command, and we have to improvise a great army, and gallantly have our men flocked to the standard. [Cheers.] We have raised the largest voluntary army that has been enrolled in any country or any century—the largest voluntary army, and it is ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... to be 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 ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... had a great deal of natural wit, a liveliness peculiar to the native of the faubourgs, all the impudence of the street arab, and a veritable talent of mimicry. She was a good housewife, active, industrious and most clever in turning everything to account. With a mere nothing she could improvise a dress or a hat and give it a certain style. She was always most skilful with her fingers, a typical Parisian work-girl, a daughter of the street and a child of the people. In our times she ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... been stoutly reinforced by his experience in what he called "the war of America the Unready." His first message to Congress was a long and exhaustive paper, dealing with many matters of importance. But almost one-fifth of it was devoted to the army and the navy. "It is not possible," he said, "to improvise a navy after war breaks out. The ships must be built and the men trained long in advance." He urged that Congress forthwith provide for several additional battleships and heavy armored cruisers, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... 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 ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... said 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 ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... take us long to improvise a stretcher, and, with the willing help of two men and of the landlady, in about three hours we had Halley in his room. But a hideous walk it was down the canon, every step we made wringing a groan from the poor fellow except when ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... want to hear what it's like to play with an organ?" he said kindly to Bess, sounding the notes for her to tune her violin, and at the same time turning over her music. "What have we got here? It must be something I know, so that I can improvise an accompaniment. Let us try this Impromptu. Don't be afraid of your instrument, and bring the tone well out. Remember, you're in a church, and ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... said the Creole, "listen to a song of my country; we do not know how to make verses; we muse a simple recitative, without rhyme, and at each pause we improvise a couplet appropriate to the subject; it is very pastoral; it will please you, I am sure, master. This song is called the 'Loving Girl!' it is she ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... 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
... affected an interest in art matters, that was over-strained and wanting in sincerity when it was not ridiculous. For what was there the man could not do? He wrote books about which all Germany was talking, he could improvise on the pianoforte, compose operas, sketch caricatures, and streams of wit gushed from him so soon as he opened his mouth. The homage showered upon him at these gatherings flattered Hoffmann's vanity for a time, but he soon saw the motives for which he ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... but kept the Peninsula. Suchet's sound judgment, his governing yet conciliating spirit, his military tact, and his bravery, had procured him astonishing success. "It is to be regretted," added he, "that a sovereign cannot improvise men of ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... drunkard with, as he thought, a withering look of contempt; and then, though the man was drunk and the night was dark, he waddled off, leaving Mr. Leather on his once white breeches' knees. If Jog had had reasonable time, say an hour or an hour and twenty minutes, to improvise it in, he would have said something uncommonly sharp; as it was he left him with the pertinent inquiry we have recorded—'What have you to do with Robins, the mole-catcher?' We need hardly say that this little incident ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees |
