"Bass" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have been on?" the woman continued. "There's none due on this line that we knew of. David Bass, the station-master, was here but two hours ago and said he'd finished for the night, and praised the Lord for that. The goods trains had all been stopped at Ipswich, and the first passenger train was ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... The vehicles, drawn into a single way, crowded together, progressed slowly. Gordon saw in the back of the buggy before him two whiskey jugs. Some one far ahead began to sing a revival hymn, and it ran along the line of carriages like a trail of ignited powder. A deep bass caught it behind Gordon Makimmon, then the piercing soprano of a woman ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... afternoon was the best time for fishing. For the next two hours our thoughts were of quivering rods and leaping bass. ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... spring a boy came to me and said: "Dad, let's go fishing; I saw the bass jumping in the lake just now, and that means ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... vibrations of a wine-glass when its rim is rubbed by a moistened finger. It was not one sustained note, but a multitude of tiny, sounds, each clear and distinct in itself; the sweetest treble mingling with the lowest bass. On applying the ear to the woodwork of the boat, the vibration was greatly increased in volume. The sounds varied considerably at different points, as we moved across the lake, as if the number of the animals from which they proceeded ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... Bateman," said Reding, "to make a bass play quadrilles, and you will see what is ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... The bass voice of the man referred to as Ba'tiste gave the answer, and Barry listened with interest. Evidently he had struggled to his feet at some time during the night—though he could not remember it—and striven to find his way down the mountain ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... contemplated. At seven his man came to him again, and then read to him and wrote till dinner. The writing was as much as the reading" (Aubrey). Then he took exercise, either walking in the garden, or swinging in a machine. His only recreation, besides conversation, was music. He played the organ and the bass viol, the organ most. Sometimes he would sing himself or get his wife to sing to him, though she had, he said, no ear, yet a good voice. Then he went up to his study to be read to till six. After six his friends were admitted to visit him, and would sit with him ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... to play some other dance-music, of which our music-books, in their jigs and murkies, [Footnote: A "murki" is defined as an old species of short composition for the harpsichord, with a lively murmuring accompaniment in the bass.—TRANS.] offered us a rich supply; and I immediately found out, of myself, the steps and other motions for them, the time being quite suitable to my limbs, and, as it were, born with them. This pleased my father to a certain degree; indeed, he often, by way of joke for himself ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Synge wrote "Riders to the Sea" on a second-hand $40 typewriter, and wore a celluloid collar. Richard Wagner made a living, during four lean years, arranging Italian opera arias for the cornet. Herbert Spencer sang bass in a barber-shop quartette and was in love with George Eliot. William Shakespeare was a social pusher and bought him a bogus coat-of-arms. Martin Luther suffered from the jim-jams. One of the greatest soldiers in Hungarian history was named ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... a visitor was not indeed needed to excuse a serenade. Of a summer night, young men would bring an orchestra under a pretty girl's window—or, it might be, her father's, or that of an ailing maiden aunt—and flute, harp, fiddle, 'cello, cornet, and bass viol would presently release to the dulcet stars such melodies as sing through "You'll Remember Me," "I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Halls," "Silver Threads Among the Gold," "Kathleen Mavourneen," or "The ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... pities you—then you can have some idea of the triumph of Eddie Ashton upon the evening in question. He had fished on several occasions in the river and bay, both with rod and with trolling line, and had been moderately successful, catching some fine pike and bass—larger indeed than he had ever seen before, even in the fish-market in the city; but their capture did not animate him with pride like this day's catch. He had often read of trout-fishing, and had longed to participate in its exciting pleasures, thinking how delighted he should be if he were ever ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... should have a head register. It is a part of nature's equipment, and this calls for a word on the classification of voices. It ought not to be difficult to determine whether a voice is soprano, alto, tenor, baritone or bass, but I find each year a considerable number that have been misled. Why? A number of things are responsible. One of the most common is that of mistaking a soprano who has a chest register for an alto. This singer ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... exercise, or an old-fashioned technical study with its dry little theme in the treble and its foolish little answer in the bass, always suggests to me something along the lines of ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... ledges on the face of a very steep cliff, and it was a lengthy business getting the Battalion arranged with its different companies respectively in their right places; but by 4 A.M. we were all snug like gannets on the Bass Rock, and quite easy in our minds, except for the uncertainty as to whether dawn would discover the place to be under Turkish machine-gun fire. This was pretty important, as we were not to attack until 8 A.M., so there was time for a very uncomfortable two or three hours before we could ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... you are really mad! To light the fire with music, and then feed it with bass-viols and harpsichords is really ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... Use no sloth; nature abhorreth idleness, Which leseth delight to nature appropriate. In sensual causes delight is chief mistress; Specially recounting love's business. To say thus doth she: the time thus they pass, And such manner they use, and thus they kiss and bass; And thus they meet and embrace together. What speech, what grace, what plays is between them! Where is she? there she goeth; let us see whither: Now pleased, now froward; now mum, now hem! Strike up, minstrel, with saws ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... time I saw the little cherub he was singing bass in a bellboys' quartette at Hot Springs. He hops bells at the Arlington summers and butchers peanuts at the track during the season—you know, hollers 'Here they come!' before they start, then when the women jump up he pinches the betting tickets out of their ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... Choir consisted of men, lads, and boys, with about half a dozen little girls. The boys and girls, of course, sang alto and treble; the lads alto, if they could manage nothing better; and the men bass and tenor. There were eight men between thirty and fifty years of age, six lads ...
— Archie's Mistake • G. E. Wyatt
... tremendous bass voice came up from the garden below, singing the chorus of an old song. The windows of the room had not recovered from the shock, when a stout, short man, in a velvet coat, close-cut hair, and heavy beard, burst into ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Abel's house, a little cottage in Back Street, the door of which was never locked because the inmates had nothing to lose. Reaching Whittle's bedside the corn-factor shouted a bass note so vigorously that Abel started up instantly, and beholding Henchard standing over him, was galvanized into spasmodic movements which had not much relation ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... or tenor, with organ, a Fantasia, Ricercata, etc.), among which are to be found two sonatas, the one entitled, "Prima Sonata, doppio soggietto," the other "Seconda Sonata, soggietto triplicato." They are written out in open score of four staves, with mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor, and bass clefs. To show how the sonatas of those days differed both in form and contents from the sonata of our century, the first of the above-mentioned is given in short score. It will, probably, remind readers of "the ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... up. From their corner came a medley of mellow sounds, the subdued chirps of the violins, the dull bourdon of the bass viol, the liquid gurgling of the flageolet and the deep-toned snarl of the big horn, with now and then a rasping stridulating of the snare drum. A sense of gayety began to spread throughout the assembly. At every moment the crowd increased. The aroma of new-sawn timber and ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... men in the woods rustled. There was a general uplifting of heads. A murmuring of voices broke upon the air. In it there was much bass of grumbling oaths. Strange gods were addressed in condemnation of the early hours necessary to correct war. An officer's peremptory tenor rang out and quickened the stiffened movement of the men. The tangled limbs unraveled. The corpse-hued faces were hidden behind fists that twisted ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... entered the garden, the Doctor singing, now in fantastic high notes, now producing deep reverberations from his chest. He took a seat, rapped loudly on the table, assailed the waiter with witticisms; and when the bottle of Bass was at length produced, far more charged with gas than the most delirious champagne, he filled out a long glassful of froth and pushed it over to Jean-Marie. "Drink," ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Bass drums were booming, snare drums were rattling, above them sounded the shrill notes of the bugles. There was the rumble of big-wheeled wagons, now and then an elephant trumpeted or a lion gave a hungry roar. Gay banners fluttered, ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... there," said a bass voice. The men stamped across the floor leading into the dark room in which he lay, and halted at the entrance. They did not stand there over a moment before they turned and moved away again; but to Raegen, lying with blood-vessels choked, and with his ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... it is monstrous, monstrous! Methought the billows spoke, and told me of it; The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder, That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounc'd The name of Prosper: it did bass my trespass. Therefore my son i' the ooze is bedded; and I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded, And with him ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... porch in the twilight. While Tony played on his flute they sang many songs. They were surprised how much talent they had in their own family circle. Aunt Bettie and Edith both had good soprano voices and Ruth a fair contralto. Bob sang tenor and his uncle bass. It was Maria, though, that surprised them with a remarkable ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... quite to my mind, I cut its companion as true to the lines of the other as possible, fig. 14, when I take in hand the placing of the bass bar on the belly, in the rough, preparatory to toning it down in shape, etc., when ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... breaking over her quarter or stern-rail with a force that made her quiver from end to end, and "stagger like a drunken man," as the Psalmist has so aptly described it, the thud of the heavy waves playing a sort of deep bass accompaniment to the shrieking treble of the wind as it whistled and wailed through the shrouds and cordage, and the ragged remnants of the torn topsail flapping against the yard, with the sound of a stock-driver's whip, in a series of ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... night; in his old age he loves the sunlight of early morning as it glimmers on his sightless eyes. The music which had been his delight since childhood has still its charm, and he either sings or plays on the organ or bass-violin every day. In his gray coat, at the door of his house in Bunhill Fields, he sits on clear afternoons; a proud, ruggedly genial old man, with sharp satiric touches in his talk, the untunable fiber in him to the last. ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... an inconsiderable extent. In No. 2 we meet already with harmonic piquancies which charmed musicians and lovers of music so much in the later mazurkas. Critics and students will not overlook the octaves between, treble and bass in the second bar of part two in No. 1. A. Polonaise in B flat minor, superscribed "Farewell to William Kolberg," of the year 1826, has not less naturalness and grace than the Polonaise of 1822, but in addition to these qualities, it has also at least one thought (part ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... important service is the propagation and distribution of food fishes. Under its direction are hatched and liberated millions of the young of the best food fishes in the various inland waters of the United States. Rivers suitable for black bass, shad, carp, or other food fishes, but not having them in their waters, are supplied. For these purposes the Commission owns and manages various fish hatcheries, fish distributing vessels and cars, ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... Sir James. "Not another gamekeeper shot, I hope? It's what I should expect, when a fellow like Trapping Bass is let off ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... were the saints who, under intolerable pangs, had glorified God by meek submission to his will. And all the time, whilst this tumult of sublime memorials held on as the deep chords from some accompaniment in the bass, I saw through the wide central field of the window, where the glass was uncolored, white, fleecy clouds sailing over the azure depths of the sky: were it but a fragment or a hint of such a cloud, immediately under the flash of my sorrow-haunted ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the race means only the boys. It would do no good for generations of Margaritas to inherit that Golden Voice—each and all must give it up—for Roger. The race gets no music till the bass, barytone or tenor appear. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... and I and a medical student called Ticklets, who had a fine bass voice, disguised ourselves as paupers, and went singing for money about Camden Town and Mornington Crescent and Regent's Park. It took us about an hour to make eighteen pence. Barty played the guitar, Ticklets the tambourine, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... moving voices. The following list will give a better idea of the astonishing range of Haydn's activity as composer: One hundred and twenty-five symphonies; 20 clavier concertos and divertisements with clavier; 9 violin concertos; 6 concertos for 'cello, and 16 concertos for other instruments (contra-bass, baritone, lyra, flute, horn, etc.); 77 string quartets; 68 trios; 4 violin sonatas; 175 pieces for baritone; 6 duets for solo violin and viola; 53 works for piano; 7 nocturnes for lyra, and various other pieces for the same instrument; 14 masses; ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... Meadows and Farmer Brown's boy had gone home for his supper. Then Grandfather Frog had climbed back on his big green lily-pad and had sat there half the night without once leading the chorus of the Smiling Pool with his great deep bass voice as he usually did. He was thinking, thinking very hard. And now, this bright, sunshiny morning, he was ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... officer required something to be granted him. At first the old General was very wrathful. He said I had disobeyed his orders and that he had a mind to have me shot for breach of discipline. However, after much storming in his fine bass voice, he grew calmer, and in stentorian tones ordered me for the time being to join General Schalk Burger, who was operating near Lombard's Kop in the ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... stout, jolly-looking man, who was evidently one of the leaders of the party. Frank made just a feeble answer about not drinking, and a pretence of holding back his glass, and then allowed himself to be helped first to one tumbler, then another, and then another, of foaming Bass. He was soon past all qualms, ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... some fine Ayala—'93, in magnums—unless it is all drunk by now. There must be something about the cellars of these out-door places peculiarly favourable to beer, for no pale ale in the world can compare with that drawn at the bars of the Epsom grand-stand, and in Belgium there is no bottled Bass so fresh and palatable as that which one gets ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... bed, an' a' at ance there comes a wee soughie o' win' i' my face, an' I luik up an' see it was naething but the wings o' a flittin' flee, I think wi' mysel' hoo a' the curses are but blessin's 'at ye dinna see intill, an' hoo ilka midge, an' flee, an' muckle dronin' thing 'at gangs aboot singin' bass, no to mention the doos an' the mairtins an' the craws an' the kites an' the oolets an' the muckle aigles an' the butterflees, is a' jist haudin' the air gauin' 'at ilka defilin' thing may be weel turnt ower, an' brunt clean. That's the best I got oot o' my cheemistry ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... boudoir, and approached to receive his blessing; Lavretzky saluted him in silence; and he returned the salute in silence. The priest stood still for a short time, then cleared his throat again, and asked in a low tone, with a bass voice: ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... upon that that I practiced when I was scarcely large enough to handle a cue. It was rather a primitive piece of furniture, but it answered the purpose for which it had been designed. It was one of the old six pocket affairs, with a bass-wood bed instead of slate, and the balls sometimes went wabbling over it very much the same fashion as eggs would roll if pushed about on a kitchen table with a broomstick. In spite of having to use such poor tools I soon became quite proficient at the ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... might have been. I didn't think any more of the business, except that it had cured me of wanting to be sea-sick. I went down to the reeking cabin without one qualm in my stomach, and ate a good meal of welsh-rabbit and bottled Bass, with a tot of rum to follow up with. Then I shed my wet garments, and slept in my bunk till we anchored off a village in Mull in a ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... 'troulling,' which consists of throwing out a baited hook and paying out, as the boat moves on, a hundred feet, or so, of line, that is left to trail, floating on the surface of the water behind; when most large fish, like bass, or trout, especially if you make a sharp tack, occasionally, so as to draw the line across an undisturbed portion of the water, will see, and, darting up, sieze it, and hook themselves. And, if you ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... of the Order!" was the next command. The Mystic Symbols were placed on a stand in the middle of the room, and turned out to be a gilt fish about the size of a four-pound bass, a jar of human bones, and a rolled-up scroll said to contain the Gospels. The fish, as explained by the Deacon Militant, typified a great many things connected with early Christianity, and served always as a reminder of the password of the order. The relics in the jar were the bones of martyrs. ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... under which, perhaps, her warrior lay sleeping; she wandered through the green glades, singing snatches of his old ballads in a clear voice, made tuneful with love,—and as she sang, there mingled with the everlasting murmur of the trees the faint sound of a muffled bass, borne upon the south wind like a distant drum-beat, responsive to a bugle. So she led for some months a very pleasant idyllic life, face to face with a strong, vivid memory, which gave everything and asked nothing. These were doubtless to be (and she half knew it) the happiest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... church in the nun's choir as usual; but while joining in the closing hymn, she suddenly changed colour, began to sob and tremble in every limb, then continued the chant in a strange, uncertain voice, sometimes treble, sometimes bass, like that of a lad whose beard is just beginning to grow. At this the abbess and the sisterhood listened and stared in wonder, then asked if the dear ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... hand clutched my wet oilskins as the yacht plunged from the back of an enormous swell, and I was so busy noting the beauty of the hand that I had no eye for the sallow face that peeped from the companion. Leith's bass voice rose above the noise of the waves, and there was an angry ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... wave. I know it of myself. I have turned rancher, and live beyond sight of the sea. Yet I can stay away from it only so long. After several months have passed, I begin to grow restless. I find myself day-dreaming over incidents of the last cruise, or wondering if the striped bass are running on Wingo Slough, or eagerly reading the newspapers for reports of the first northern flights of ducks. And then, suddenly, there is a hurried pack of suit-cases and overhauling of gear, and we are off for Vallejo where the little Roamer lies, waiting, ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... a moment's wait, then Jimmie Dale spoke again—his voice still pleasant, but changed in pitch and register to a bass that was far from Jimmie Dale's, though one ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... come! Mr. Prohack drove straight to the Monument, and paid more money for the privilege of climbing it. He next visited the Tower. The day seemed to consist of twenty-four thousand hours. He dined at the Trocadero Restaurant, solitary at a table under the shadow of the bass fiddle of the orchestra; and finally he patronised Maskelyne and Cook's entertainment, and witnessed the dissipation of solid young women into air. He reached home, as it was humorously called, at ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... were to dine late, after sunset, and, before dinner, we went into the cathedral. The choir had just finished practising. Certain exceedingly ill-looking men, whose faces bespoke principally sensuality and self-conceit, and whose function was that of praising God, on the sole qualification of good bass and tenor voices, were coming chattering through the choir gates; and behind them a group of small boys were suddenly transforming themselves from angels into sinners, by tearing off their white surplices, and pinching and ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... parent as a rule assumes any other responsibility than properly disposing of and fertilizing the eggs. Where, however, any care is taken, it not infrequently devolves upon the father instead of the mother. This is true of the fresh-water black bass and of the stickleback, where the father protects the eggs until they are hatched, and protects and cares for the young fish. In the case of the stickleback, the father even makes a nest ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... He was half sob, half song. The wine of glory flushed his veins as at the moment when he stormed with the crew of the Tremendous at the heels of Lushy. His eyes ran; his voice broke. Now it was a shrill treble, now a hoarse bass. ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... keen as a boy's. We had our meals together, sometimes in the crowded and rather smart Bastasini's, but more often in the maelstrom of humanity that nightly packed the Olympos Palace restaurant. Davis, Shepherd, Hare, and I, with sometimes Mr. and Mrs. John Bass, made up these parties, which, for a period of about two weeks or so, were the most enjoyable daily events ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... evenings as this that she had come to know her son best, as she sat on the arm of his chair and listened with tactful sympathy to his stories of the big black bass that kept house in the pool at the end of the lake, or of the downy woodpecker's nest in the old hickory, or, perhaps, of the big hoot owl that perched on the granary warm nights to watch for mice. It was with a certain feeling of sadness, as well as of pride, that she watched him grow ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... of men, but yet with some of the coquetry of women. In truth, as we soon found it was her boast that she was the equal of men, her complaint that the foolish way of the world (which she said had gone all askew) would not let her skipper a schooner, which, as she maintained in a deep bass voice, she was more capable of ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... we gain an idea of sound as conveyed by musical tones; 'tone,' as Professor Mueller remarks, 'being produced by the stretching and vibrating of cords.' Still further: if we cause a heavy piece of cord to vibrate, or, what is better, the bass string of a violin or guitar, or strike a very low key on the piano, and pronounce the word tone in a full voice at the same time, the remarkable similarity of the two sounds thus produced will be clearly apparent. Thus the root tan, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the remonstrances of my conscience—and of Maister Wiggie—and of the kirk-session. Whenever any thing is carried on out of the course of nature, especially when accompanied with dancing and singing, toot-tooing of clarionets, and bumming of bass-fiddles, ye may be as sure as you are born, that ye run a chance of being deluded out of your right senses—that the sounds are by way of lulling the soul asleep—and that, to the certainty of a without-a-doubt, you are in the heat and heart ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... thing the male will not fertilize eggs other than those of his own species. But even in these low forms, we see the evidence of that higher expression of Love which presages the god-like quality of self-sacrifice. Some species of fish, notably the stickle-back and the bass, make nests and ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... journeying across the desert, and a freshly laundered wash dress and a bit of bright ribbon work wonders. When she heard voices in the patio, that of Alan Howard and of another man, this a sonorous bass, she was ready. She went to her father's door; Longstreet was in the final stages of his own toilet-making, his face red and shiny from his towelling, his sparse hair on end, his whole being in that condition of bewildering untidiness which comes just before the ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... THE Bass Rock is a steep black mass of stone, standing about two miles out to sea, off the coast of Berwickshire. The sheer cliffs, straight as a wall, are some four hundred feet in height. At the top there is a sloping grassy shelf, on which a few sheep are kept, but the chief ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... I want to make a new kind of fly for the bass. They aren't biting at all, and your hair is just the colour, to a shade. There! that is the ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... on a night when the Prince of Wales was to be present, and untuned all the instruments. As soon as the prince arrived, Handel gave the signal for beginning, con spirito; but such was the horrible discord, that the enraged musician started up from his seat, and having overturned a double bass, which stood in his way, he seized a kettle-drum, which he threw with such violence at the leader of the band, that he lost his full-bottomed wig in the effort. Without waiting to replace it, he advanced bare-headed to the front of the orchestra, ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... ye'll no," interposed Betsy, who had been coming nearer. "Ye'se juist gang into the study, an' I'll lay doon a bass for ye to stand an' dreep on. Where come ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... Admiral Hassy and Commodore Boden. Capt. Cooper established a boat livery which included five sailboats and twenty rowboats. He developed the fisheries of Otsego Lake on a big scale, having introduced the gill net as a means of catching bass. In the spring of 1851 there were taken from the lake 25,000 bass. The gill net which Capt. Cooper introduced is made of the best kind of linen thread, with meshes from two to two and a half inches square. The net is about three feet wide, having ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... certain thought that he must die. Whereon this Miller both of corn and meal An hundred times more than before did steal; For, ere this chance, he stole but courteously, But now he was a thief outrageously. The Warden scolded with an angry air; But this the Miller rated not a tare: He sang high bass, and ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... of Winwidfield, Oswiu had vowed to build twelve minsters in his kingdom, and he redeemed his vow by founding six in Bernicia and six in Deira. In 669, Ecgberht of Kent "gave Reculver to Bass, the mass-priest, to build a monastery thereon." In 663, AEthelthryth, a lady of royal blood, better known by the Latinised name of St. Etheldreda, "began the monastery at Ely." Before Baeda's death, in 735, religious houses already existed at Lastingham, Melrose, Lindisfarne, ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... wind rose, and the play of its solemn music in the rigging of the yacht and in the deep bass of the billows was, as Harry said, "like a chant of High Mass. I heard one for the sailors leaving Hull last Christmas night," he said, "and I shall never ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... stifling hot. The paraffin stove that heated irons for Sister Tobias smelled clamorously, and the droning of myriads of flies, not the least of the seven plagues of Gueldersdorp, kept up a persistent bass to the shrill singing of the little tin kettle. Later, when the April rains began, and the tarpaulins were pulled over the sand-bagged roof, tin lamps burning more paraffin did battle ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... chorus was commencing, and the bass and tenor were at once absorbed in their work; so Mr. Ried and Mrs. Roberts had the memorial laugh all to themselves. None but they understood what ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... was taken, and confessed before the Council, after receiving from Rothes, then Chancellor, assurance of his life: this with Lauderdale's consent. But when brought before the judges, he retracted his confession. He was kept a prisoner on the Bass Rock; in 1676 was tortured; in January 1678 was again tried. Haltoun (who in a letter of 1674 had mentioned the assurance of life), Rothes, Sharp, and Lauderdale, all swore that, to their memory, no assurance had been given in 1674. ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... in Maine and New Brunswick," explained Mr. Fernald. "I don't know, though, that they are any more fun to land than a good, spirited bass. I often think that all these fashionable camps with their guides, and canoes, and fishing tackles of the latest variety can't touch a Vermont brook just after the ice has thawed. I'd give all I own to live one of those days of my boyhood ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... other days when the Judge had waded into mountain streams with the water coming up close to the pocket of his flannel shirt where he kept his cigars, or had been poled by Bob Flippin from "riffle" to pool. Those had been the days of speckled trout and small-mouthed bass, and Bob had been a boy and the Judge at middle age. Now Bob Flippin had reached the middle years, and the Judge was old, but they still fished together. They were comrades in a very close and special sense. What Bob Flippin lacked ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... by various instruments of music, or playing on them. Domenichino, who was in Rome when the sarcophagus of St. Cecilia was opened, and painted numerous pictures of the saint, shows her in one of them as performing on the bass viol. This picture is in the Louvre, where also is Mignard's canvas, representing her accompanying her voice ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... the night: an infinity of flutings and tinklings made by tiny amphibia,—like the low blowing of numberless little tin horns, the clanking of billions of little bells;—and, at intervals, profound tones, vibrant and heavy, as of a bass viol—the orchestra of the great frogs! And interweaving with it all, one continuous shrilling,—keen as the steel speech of a saw,—the ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... the bass drums. The snare drums buzzed a long, thrilling roll; then came the blare of the brass as the whole band launched into a lively tune such as only circus bands know ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... terms, as one of many similar instances which had come under his observation:—"In the 14th year of the present century, (the 18th,) in the opera they were performing at Ancona, there was at the beginning of the 3d act a line of recitative, unaccompanied by any instruments but the bass, by which, equally among the professors and the audience, was raised such and so great a commotion of mind, that all looked in one another's faces, on account of the evident change of colour which took place in each. The effect was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... as it was light enough to see, and the Indians were followed fully fifteen miles, over a winding way leading over hills and rocks, and through immense belts of timber land. They had to ford several streams, and at one of these points they stopped for an hour to catch and cook some black bass, which were plentiful. Toward nightfall the chase came ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... don't, sir," growled Bob Hampton, in the deepest of deep bass voices. "We're strong enough, if you'll only give ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... "Don't kill the orator's son!" and bore him through the crowd, and placed him upon the staging at his father's feet. It required the utmost efforts of Daniel Webster to control that multitudinous throng. "Stand back, gentlemen!" he repeatedly shouted with his double-bass voice; "you must stand back!" "We can't stand back, Mr. Webster; it is impossible!" cried a voice in the crowd. Mr. Webster replied, in tones of thunder: "On Bunker Hill nothing is impossible." And the ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... the theatre, we were attracted by a loud beating of drums to a building calling itself the "Sacred Museum." Such establishments are usually content with the word "moral"; but this one was "sacred." From a balcony in front, two bass-drums and one bugle were filling all that part of the town with horrid noise, and in the entrance, behind the ticket-office, a huge negro was grinding out discord from an organ as big as an upright piano. We defy creation to produce another ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... few better weapons to teach a boy to be a keen sportsman. The birds that he shot were game—duck or geese, turkeys, quail, grouse, or snipe—and the fish that he caught were mostly game fish—trout and bass. It is true that the American generally shoots foxes; so does the Englishman when he goes to the Colonies where there are no hounds and too many foxes, with game birds which he wishes kept for his own shooting, and domestic chickens which he destines for his own table. On the other ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... were all still; Joy had hidden her face. Tom began to hum over the tune uneasily, in his deep bass. A sudden ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... safe if they liked. But out of the sea the silly things come, into the great river down below, and we come up to watch for them; and when they go down again we go down and follow them. And there we fish for the bass and the pollock, and have jolly days along the shore, and toss and roll in the breakers, and sleep snug in the warm dry crags. Ah, that is a merry life too, children, if it were not for ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... stable-boy answers that the little blacks are at "the funeral." And after he has gone off to ask his employer what is in then, the employer, who in his unofficial moments is our neighbour, our church choir bass, our landlord even, comes and tells us that, after all, we may have the little blacks, and he himself brings them round at once,—the same little blacks that we meant all along. And when, quite naturally, we wonder at the boy's version, we ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... in the stirrups and searched the bank for the boat. It was gone. The Valley River ran full, a quarter of a mile of glistening yellow water, and no way across it but the way of the bass or ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... well enough," laughed Marjorie. "But I'll be there on Saturday, and perhaps I'll be lucky enough to get into it somehow. Won't it be fun to rehearse? Hal Macy ought to have a part. He has a splendid tenor voice, and the Crane can sing bass. I can hardly wait until Saturday comes. I am so anxious to see who will ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... of the Esplanade stood out in cut outlines against the warm windows of the Reading-room. Above, the open windows were tenanted by boys who pillowed their heads on one another and sent their treble or bass notes down ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... morning into these high windows of mine, free as yonder fresh young voices welling up to me from the caverns of brick and mortar below—swelling with song, instinct with life, tremulous treble and darkening bass. My children, my little children, are singing to the ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... story, "The Girl I Left Behind Me," had made a hit the last season. It was thought to take a profound hold upon life, because it was a book that could not be read aloud in a mixed company. Margaret was very much interested in him, although Mr. Summers Bass was not her idea of an imaginative writer. He was a stout young gentleman, with very black hair and small black eyes, to which it was difficult to give a melancholy cast even by an habitual frown. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... in which he had shut up the vanquished demons. The wise king sank those vessels in the sea and I seemed to hear the voices of the imprisoned spirits while Paganini's violin growled its most wrathful bass. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... badly wounded, whose name, if I remember correctly, was Matt. Martin. He said to us, "Give 'em goss, boys. That's right, my brave First Tennessee. Give 'em Hail Columbia!" We halted but a moment, and said I, "Colonel, where are you wounded?" He answered in a deep bass voice, "My son, I am wounded in the arm, in the leg, in the head, in the body, and in another place which I have a delicacy in mentioning." That is what the gallant old Colonel said. Advancing a little further on, we saw General Albert Sidney Johnson surrounded by his staff and Governor Harris, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... a few seconds, except for the startled clucking of the fowls. Then a heavy bass voice boomed ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... legions of tortoises: and you yourself shall write the chant, while I will see that the chorus is worthy of what it has to sing. No mere squeaking double flute and a pair of boys: but a whole army of cyclops and graces, with such trebles and such bass-voices! It shall make Cyril's ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... Professor Badois had organized a band of eight pieces, which performed a few tunes very well. Unfortunately, on the present occasion, the band was not available, for Stockwell, the cornet player, and Boyden, the bass drummer, belonged to the absent crew of the second cutter, and the procession moved to the sterling notes of the ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... master hand ensuring that nothing shall clash or be inappropriate. Into this scheme she introduces the song of birds and the sighing of the breeze, with perhaps in the dull distance the roar of the sea growling away and refusing to be driven from its obstinate pedal bass. Into our life she brings affection rose-colour, and for openness and truth the blue of the sky. She paints hatred dark, and passion fiery. Energy she portrays as red, and purity white. Could we but see ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... us all?" said I. "The Plantations maybe, or the Bass! It's a bonny creel you've landed me in, for I'm as ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... them to begin, pressing against the grill. Johnny Coombs was not the only man with a deep bass voice, he might have been mistaken. He listened, but there was no sound. He heard the whir of a fan begin, still no ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... to say about it?" demanded Dick, when the section bass came from the shanty and while Stanley and the policeman were approaching. "Do we ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield
... on Nancy's knee and sent its thin pipe through Pete's terrific bass. Caesar opened his mouth and gaped, and the young man, now white and afraid, scraped and backed himself to ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... became serious. "I'll tell you a place— it's honest. It's the next street, a few hundred yards down, on the left. There's a wooden fish over the door. It's called The Black Bass —that hotel. Say I sent you. Good luck to you, countryman! Ah, la; la, there's the second bell—I must be getting to Mass!" With a nod he turned and went into ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Ruth and proposed music, herself going after Rich. Johnson to come and sing tenor, and bidding him bring a friend to sing bass. Then such music as they had that evening, was certainly never heard at a party ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... a deep bass voice sang a doleful song about the twining tendrils of the heart ruthlessly torn, but required urgent persuasions and heavy trumpeting of his lungs to get to the end: before he had accomplished it, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... consolation there are fifteen perpendicular feet of stone and mortar and the relics of twelve hundred bottles of Bass," ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... rather more to the Westward, makes me Doubtfull whether they are one land or no.* (* Had not the gale on the day before forced Cook to run to the northward, he would have made the north end of the Furneaux Group, and probably have discovered Bass Strait, which would have cleared up the doubt, which he evidently felt, as to whether Tasmania was an island or not. The fact was not positively known until Dr. Bass sailed through the Strait in a whale-boat in 1797. Point Hicks was merely a rise ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... reckoned on the verse—'That He might hear the mournings of such as are in captivity, and deliver the children appointed unto death.' But she had not reckoned on its falling on her ears in the deep full-toned melodious bass, that came in, giving body to the young notes of the choristers—a voice so altered and mellowed since she last had heard it, that it made her look across in doubt, and recognize in the uplifted face, that here indeed the freed captive was at home, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this craving by singing the treble part, and descanting eloquently on the manner in which the other parts ought to come in; but all in vain he repeated, "There now, Hamilton, you see this is the contralto part; and when this bit of the soprano is sung, it comes in so beautifully, and the bass is crossing it, and playing hide and ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... died away, while still acknowledgments are being bowed, another man takes his place on the platform. He is a stranger and no one knows what he will sing. But the pianist is a man of genius. Whisper to him the name of the song, give even a hint of its nature, let him guess at the kind of voice, bass, baritone, tenor, and he will vamp an accompaniment. He has his difficulties. A singer will start at the wrong time, will for a whole verse, perhaps, make noises in a different key; the pianist never fails. Somehow, before very long, instrument and ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... listens to charming [koestliche] instrumental music played on organs, lutes, pandorins, mandolins, violins, and flutes; as, indeed, on this occasion, a boy sang cum voce tremula to the accompaniment of a bass-viol, so delightfully [lieblich] that, if the Nuns at Milan did not excel him, we had not heard his equal in our travels."[324] In addition, the Children were provided with splendid apparel—though not at the cost of the Queen, as Mr. Wallace contends.[325] Naturally they ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... roar, And see her back for the bolted door— See the cage rock—heerd her call "God have mercy!" and that was all— For ther haint no livin' man can tell What it's like when a thousand yell In female tones, and a thousand more Howl in bass till ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... conversation; but on the other hand it is distinguishable from them by the fact that it has more of a moral than of an intellectual bearing; in other words, it reflects the movements of the will. As an accompaniment of conversation it is like the bass of a melody; and if, as in music, it keeps true to the progress of the treble, it serves to ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... comparatively easy to him. Everything was provisional, and nobody asked questions. Fitzpiers had come in the performance of a plan of penitence, which had originated in circumstances hereafter to be explained; his self-humiliation to the very bass-string was deliberate; and as soon as a call reached him from the bedside of a dying man his desire was to set to work and do as much good as he could with the least possible fuss or show. He therefore refrained ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... street-lamp became the social center of Benton. At last the mad race was ended. I think it was the cornet that won, with the clarinet a close second. The tuba, as I recollect it, complacently claimed third money, and the bass-drum finished last with ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... intoxicants were genuine, but is far worse when they are compounds of vitriol, fusel oil, bad vinegar, and I know not what. I saw two shops in Yamagata which sold champagne of the best brands, Martel's cognac, Bass' ale, Medoc, St. Julian, and Scotch whisky, at about one-fifth of their cost price—all poisonous compounds, the sale of which ought to ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... terrific rattle of gunfire, with the dull drum of horses' hoofs as a bass accompaniment. Red spurred his horse toward the fire, shouting his battle cry and throwing down on the two startled men who leaped to their feet, reaching for their guns. Kid Wolf's great white charger burned the breeze at the two guards on the ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... the coasts of Australia and New Zealand. The following notes will serve to record the more prominent facts bearing upon the Bathymetrical distribution of the Testacea collected on the northern coast of Australia, at Port Essington, and on the eastern coast from Cape York to Bass Strait, including the northern ports ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... her a good fright, and thus prevent her from spying and listening any more. Then she called Wolde, and bid her dance, while she muttered some words out of the cookery-book. But here Anna called out, "It is not true; there were three danced. Where is the carl with the deep bass voice? Who could this be at that midnight hour, but the ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... procession, for he forgot at times that he was a peaceable servant of the sanctuary, and fancied, as he marched mace in hand to the music of the organ, that he was a daring officer leading a forlorn hope. That very afternoon he had had a heated discussion in the vestry with Mr Milligan, the bass, on a question of gardening, and the singer, who still smarted under the clerk's overbearing tongue, was glad to emphasise his adversary's defeat by paying attention to ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... metal which is very sonorous. The gongs, a kind of bell, but differing much in shape and struck on the outside, are cast in sets regularly tuned to thirds, fourth, fifth, and octave, and often serve as a bass, or under part, to the kalintang. They are also sounded for the purpose of calling together the inhabitants of the village upon any particular occasion; but the more ancient and still common instrument for this use is a hollowed log of ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... deck her with necklaces of garnets from the rocks, and wreaths of the delicate sand-wort flower. She said she would rather make Paul a woodchopper than a suppliant, taking the constitutional oath. I could make him a hunter and a fisherman. Game, bass, trout, pickerel, grew for us in abundance. I saw this vision with a single eye; it looked so possible! All the crude imaginings of youth colored the spring woods with vivid beauty. My face betrayed me, and she ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... proportion, and it was one of the ambitions of all the best actors in the golden age of histrionic art to have an "even voice"—i.e., one equally good through the whole range required. The tragic actor, elocutionist, and public speaker, and the singer, whether soprano or bass, should neglect no muscle, though they may be justified in developing some in excess of others, but ever with a watchful eye ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... Sebastian Wagner was to court disaster. He ventured to submit the following list for the benefit of persons who contemplated making the change. For a soprano: Miss Hyam Seton. For a contralto: Miss Ritchie Plummer. For a tenor: Mr. Uther Chesterton. For a bass: Mr. Deeping Downer. For a pianist: Mr. or Miss Ivory Pounds. For a banjoist: Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... tubes play us another trick when we are frightened: the voice is the voice of somebody else, it has no resemblance to our own. Ventriloquism might well study the phenomena of shyness, for the voice becomes bass that was treble, and soprano that ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... never forget my feelings when one morning in a certain wine-merchant's cellar I saw several eighteen-gallon casks of Bass's Pale Ale. I left Poperinghe in a motor-ambulance, and the Germans shelled it next day, but my latest advices state that the ale is ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... whereupon he assured me that since I had left his oboe had failed to give real satisfaction, and it was now a long time since he had had himself pensioned off. He told me in response to my inquiries that all my old military bandsmen—including Dietz, the tall double-bass player—were either dead or pensioned off. Our manager Luttichau and Conductor Reissiger were among those who had died, Lipinsky had returned to Poland long before, Schubert, the leader, was unfit for work, and everything ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... resignation. And in the tenderer pieces of the repertoire, where the melody, muffled and staggering like a cracked old human voice, groped its way amongst the rusty pipes of the treble, then there was a trembling in the bass like suppressed sobs. Now and then the voice of the tired organ failed it completely, and then the old man would resignedly turn the handle during some bars of rest more touching in their eloquent ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... half-a-dozen trills, and then stops a moment for breath before commencing the second bar. Bull-frogs, too, though not so numerous, help to vary the sound by croaking vociferously, as if they understood the value of bass, and were glad of having an opportunity to join in the universal hum of life and joy which rises everywhere, from the river and the swamp, the forest and the prairie, to welcome back ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... A big bass viol, taller than himself, had long been the solace of his Sundays. After he had shaved—a ceremony so solemn that it seemed a rite of his religion—that sacred viol was uncovered. He carried it ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... soothing in the river's song, and, yielding to temptation, he turned his head from the growing light to indulge in another half-hour's slumber. Suddenly, a discordant note, jarring through the deep-toned harmonies, struck his ears, which were quick to distinguish between the bass roar of the canyon and the higher-pitched calling of the rapid at its entrance. What had caused it he could not tell. He dressed with greatest haste and was striding down into the camp when Mattawa Tom and ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... woodbirds sang, the bells of the flocks tinkled, the many shaded green trees were gilded by the sun, and, over all, the blue silk canopy of heaven was so transparent that one could look through the depths even to the Holy of Holies, where angels sit at the feet of God, studying thorough-bass in the features of the eternal countenance. But I was all the time lost in a dream of the previous night, which I could not banish from my thoughts. It was an echo of the old legend—how a knight descended into a deep fountain beneath ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Barham ("Tom Ingoldsby"), and Charles Knight have, at intervals, been entertained "after business hours." The Staff, at such times, would go into Committee over cigars and drinks and literary talk and jokes, and Leech would rumble out in his splendid great bass voice Barry Cornwall's "King Death." This was the only song of his which his friends remember; and Ponny Mayhew would seek to emulate it with the musical setting of Thackeray's "Mahogany Tree." He sang that song in chorus, all upstanding, that sad Christmas Eve when Thackeray died, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... the evening. Drinks. Dinner ... he had had dinner, hadn't he? Yes, he had. He recalled a broiled sea bass looking up at him with mournful eyes. He couldn't have dreamed anything ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... nose, on which a pair of eyeglasses sat astride, who came meekly forward, looking self-conscious, and smiling with one side of her mouth. The man with the protruding jaw, who was Lord Holme, said to her, in a loud bass voice: ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... she hateth all fellows, And spinning's my father's desire, While the old cat growls bass with the bellows If e'er I hitch up to the fire. I make the whole house out of humour, I wish nothing else but to please, Would fortune but bring a good comer To marry, and ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... MR. BARTLEMAN, a celebrated bass-singer, was taken ill, just before the commencement of the musical festival at Gloucester: another basso was applied to, at a short notice, who attended, and acquitted himself to the satisfaction of everybody. When he called on the organist to be ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... or from the eastward, bound to Port Adelaide, having arrived at Cape Howe, should shape a course for Hogan's Group in Bass' Straits, when off which, with a northerly wind, the best passage through the Straits is between Redondo and Wilson's Promontory, because should a gale of wind come on from the north-west, as it almost invariably does commence in that quarter, they would ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... your tricks," said the squire; "yours is not bad music; you speak your words articulately, and even eloquently. Your accompaniment is a little queer, especially in the bass; but you find out your mistakes, and slip out of them Heaven knows how. Zoe, you are tame, but accurate. Correct his accompaniments some day—when I'm out of hearing. Practice drives me ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... clipped the reproach short; they elongated it into a sliding thrill. From one boy, larger than the others, and whose voice was changing, came at intervals the demand, in a hoarse, cracking treble, with sudden descents into gulfs of bass: "Take it ba-ck! Take ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... baggage, with a bow, hounds, crescent, and a blue sash for drapery—they were led through a rapid review of all sorts of worthies and unworthies, relics and rubbish, without end. Portraits are always interesting. Even Lavinia, who 'had no soul for Art,' as Mat said, looked with real pleasure at a bass-relief of Agnes of Sorel, and pictures of Montaigne, Rabelais, Ninon d'Enclos, Madame de Sevigne, and miniatures of La Fayette and Ben Franklin. The latter gentleman looked rather out of place in such society; but, perhaps, his good old face ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... where old and young leap about together: thence they can not escape, for the holes are all surrounded with heaps of ice. It is a regular witches' dance—wide-mouthed carp leaping high in air, the pike in its despair wriggling like a snake among the gasping heaps of perch and bass. One conger after another is hauled out with a hook and thrown on the frozen surface, where, laying down his ugly head, he flaps his fellow-prisoners into pieces with his heavy tail. The space around the hole is all covered with fishes. The carp jump like water-rats, but no one notices—they ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... carried dulcimers, accordions, fiddles, flutes and various kinds of brass horns, and in those days a great many people could sing the good old hymns in the Carmina Sacra, and the glees and part-songs in the old Jubilee, with the soprano, tenor, bass and alto, and the high tenor and counter which made better music than any gathering of people are likely to make nowadays. All they needed was a leader with a tuning-fork, and off they would start, making ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... gone down; the storm has come up; the sea tyrant has got hold of the solitary passenger and dandles her very roughly, singing "The Wreck of the 'Hesperus'" in a loud bass to some grand deep tune, alternating with the one hundred and third Psalm in Gaelic. The passenger holds on for dear life and wonders why the winds sing those words ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... Highness hears This burst and bass of loyal harmony, And how we each and all of us abhor The venomous, bestial, devilish revolt Of Thomas Wyatt. Hear us now make oath To raise your Highness thirty thousand men, And arm and strike as with one hand, ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... seen in its congeners great and small. The wild huntsmen almost cried with laughter when they saw the sketches in the "Gorilla Book,"[FN24] the mighty pugilist standing stiff and upright as the late Mr. Benjamin Caunt, "beating the breast with huge fists till it sounded like an immense bass drum;" and preparing to deal a buffet worthy of Friar Tuck. They asked me if I thought mortal man would ever attempt to face such a thing as that? With respect to drumming with both forehands upon the chest, some asserted that such is the brute's practice when calling ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Slater ate in voracious silence. William never spoke, and Mrs. Slater filled their plates without comment. Ardelia had never in her life eaten in silence. Through the open door the buzz of the katydids was beginning tentatively. In the intervals of William's gulps a faint bass note ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... come home to get ready for supper," came in a loud, jovial voice that carried across the street like the tocsin of a bass drum. The Rucker home sat in a clump of sugar maples just opposite the Briars, and was square, solid and unadorned of vine or flower. A row of bright tin buckets hung along the picket fence that separated the yard from the store enclosure, and rain-barrels sat under the two front gutters with stolid ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... before Christmas of the year 1832, my friend Wilfred, with his double-bass slung over his back, and I, with my violin under my arm, started to walk from the Black Forest to Heidelberg. It was unusually snowy weather; as far as we could see across the great, deserted plain, ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... aware that every Man has two mouths or voices—as well as two eyes—a bass at one and a tenor at the other of his extremities. I should not mention this, but that I have been unable to distinguish your tenor in the course of our conversation." I replied that I had but one voice, and that I had not ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott |
