"Chord" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the South!" twittered the other two dreamily. "Its songs, its hues, its radiant air! O, do you remember—" and, forgetting the Rat, they slid into passionate reminiscence, while he listened fascinated, and his heart burned within him. In himself, too, he knew that it was vibrating at last, that chord hitherto dormant and unsuspected. The mere chatter of these southern-bound birds, their pale and second-hand reports, had yet power to awaken this wild new sensation and thrill him through and through with it; what would one moment of the real thing work ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... apparent to me that our relations would never again be on the same footing. I could no longer anticipate his wishes, I found, or foresee what he would think or say upon matters as they came up. We two were wholly out of chord, be the fault whose it might. And so, I say, I was rather puzzled than surprised to see how much stress was laid between them upon the question whether or not Daisy would go that day to Cairncross, as the place ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... a brave endeavor To chord my harp with the sun, But the strings would slacken ever, And the task was a weary one: And so, like a child impatient And sick of a discontent, I bowed in a shower of tear-drops And mourned with ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... he had defeated Hannibal at Zama, and called upon them to neglect all disputes and lawsuits, and follow him to the Capitol, there to return thanks to the immortal gods, and pray that they would grant the Roman state other citizens like himself. Scipio struck a chord which vibrated in every heart; their veneration for the hero returned; and he was followed by such crowds to the Capitol that the Tribunes were left alone in the rostra. Having thus set all the laws at defiance, ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... statesman is so to adjust these otherwise discordant elements as to form once for all in the body-politic a perfect, a final and immutable harmony. There is, according to this view, one simple chord and one only, which the great organ of society is adapted to play; and the business of the legislator is merely to tune the instrument so that it shall play it correctly. Thus, if Plato could have had his way, his great common chord, his harmony of producers, soldiers and philosophers, ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... we to each other belong, Come graceful elf, And around my lute in sympathy strong Now wind thyself; And quake as if mov’d by zephyr’s wing, ’Neath the clang of the chord, And a morning song with glee we’ll sing To ...
— The Expedition to Birting's Land - and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... any explanations, if authority was in the slightest degree at stake. Whoever had the address to make a question take this shape, might be assured that the King would throw aside all consideration of justice, right, and reason, and dismiss all evidence. It was by playing on this chord that his ministers knew how to manage him with so much art, and to make themselves despotic masters, causing him to believe all they wished, while at the same time they rendered him inaccessible to explanation, and to ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... place is a kind of wilderness of ruin; there are scarcely any details; the great feature is the overtopping wall. This wall being the back of the scene, the space left between it and the chord of the semicircle (of the auditorium) which formed the proscenium is rather less than one would have supposed. In other words, the stage was very shallow, and appears to have been arranged for a number of performers standing ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... alluded, in consequence of the rapid manner in which he ran over their names; but so cunningly did he time his events, and so thrillingly did he make his appeals, aided as they were by the power of his deep-toned and stirring voice, that each of them struck an answering chord in the breast of some one ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of the old year, and, in the midst of the Christmas joy, there were allusions to it in the services and hymns. Something in the tune of 'Days and moments quickly flying,' touched some chord in Dolores's spirit, and set her off crying. She would have done anything to stop it, but there was no helping it, great round splashes came down, and the more she was afraid of being noticed, the worse ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he answered, there was no hint in his finely modulated tones of any chord having been touched in his breast, save the legitimate one of respectful appreciation of a woman who fulfilled the expectation of one alive to what is ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... suitor there was one and only one in this wide, wide world, and her words, burning their way into his heart, had made this temptation possible: "No drooping Clytie could be more constant than I to him who strikes the chord that is ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... of God will ever triumph at our cost. It is equally certain that none of us can truly pray for the glory of God, unless we are living for it. It is only out of the heart that has but one purpose in life and death, that those prayers emanate which touch the tenderest chord in the Saviour's nature, and awaken all His energies to their highest activity, "That will ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... another from Opelousas to Fort Jesup, an abandoned military post, thence to Pleasant Hill, Mansfield, and Shreveport. At varying distances of twelve to thirty miles the valley of the Red River is an arc, of which this last-mentioned road is the chord, and several routes from the valley cross to ferries on the Sabine above Burr's. But the country between the Boeuf and Pleasant Hill, ninety miles, was utterly barren, and depots of forage, etc., were necessary before troops could march through it. With great expenditure of time and labor ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... and radiant, Mark put back the cover, twirled the stool, and carefully opened a green book marked "Chopin." Then he sat down, and, with the sigh of a happy child falling upon a feast, he struck an opening chord. ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... will not break if the chord of the outer arch does not touch the inner arch. This is manifest by experience, because whenever the chord a o n of the outer arch n r a approaches the inner arch x b y the arch will be weak, and it will be weaker in proportion as the inner arch ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... Yet his eyes are closed. He certainly does not see. His mind has interpenetrated to a small extent the nervous system of the operator; and is in relation with his voluntary nerves and the anterior half of his cranio-spinal chord. (These are the organs by which the impulse to voluntary motion is conveyed and originated.) Farther into the other's being, he has not yet got. So he does not what the other thinks of, or wishes him to do; but only what the other either does, or goes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... imposing, indeed an awful, figure, the herald of death, seen only by warriors about to die. The Fate theme sounds from the orchestra, and another melody, out of which nearly the whole scene is woven, is heard, and then, to a simple chord—supernatural, ghostly in its effect—she calls Siegmund. She tells him he is to die and go with her to Valhalla. He pleads in vain; she (simply, be it remembered, a part of her father's will) cannot understand why he should refuse to go where his father and so many famous warriors have ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... and ladies bright The harp of Tara swells: The chord alone that breaks at night, Its tale of ruin tells. Thus freedom now so seldom wakes, The only throb she gives Is when some heart indignant breaks, To ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... her more than I do you," he added, fearing that he had been impolite. "But she strikes just that chord. She always makes me laugh. She is a sort of sun ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... trail wending his way toward the purple mountain—the silent way to the bunk-house at the camp—in that clear air where sound travels a long distance the traveler heard the song, and something thrilled his soul. A chord that never had been touched in him before was vibrating, and its echoes would be heard ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... blows that have no rebound in them. The sympathy excited is not a voluntary contribution, but a tax. Nothing is unforced and spontaneous. There is a want of elasticity and motion. The story does not "give an echo to the seat where love is throned." The heart does not answer of itself like a chord in music. The fancy does not run on before the writer with breathless expectation, but is dragged along with an infinite number of pins and wheels, like those with which the Lilliputians dragged Gulliver pinioned to the royal palace.—Sir Charles ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... her extremity something of the real passion of this wild youth found a chord of sympathy in Rosebud's heart. His sincerity, his splendid personality, savage though he was, made her listen attentively. The woman in her was not insensible to his address, but the very truth of his passion roused her fears again to the topmost pitch. There ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... in subconscious depths, a chord of fear seemed to have been struck in her as well—the fear of stony faces, drooped lids, and stretched, pointing fingers. For that night she started up, with a cry, from dreaming that not Annie Johns but she was being expelled; that an army of spear-like first fingers was marching ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... to Rhein-gold where Wagner wishes to portray a certain elemental condition he uses 136 measures of the chord of E flat major. ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... by heaven's design, That from my half unconscious touch, There swept a passing chord of such Sweet harmony, it ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... hated a military hero, indulged in a series of fierce denunciations in the House of Representatives; Mr. Adams alone stood gallantly by the man who had dared to take vigorous measures upon his own sole responsibility. His career touched a kindred chord in Adams's own independent and courageous character, and perhaps for the only time in his life the Secretary of State became almost sophistical in the arguments by which he endeavored to sustain the impetuous ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... of the mining town. There was not a man in the place, no matter how rough his ways, nor how dark had been his past, who was not made the better by her presence. She touched a responsive chord in every heart. She awoke tones that had been silent for years, and stirred into life resolves that had lain dormant for a generation. When the weather grew milder with the approach of spring, she flitted like a bird from cabin to cabin, ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... the sun should shine in all his glory; Again, the twilight seems the fitting time. Yet sweet dark night would understand the story, So old, so new, so tender, so sublime. Wild storms should rage to chord with my desire, Yet faithful stars should shine and never ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... here, a note of passion beyond the deepest of Herrick's. This tone (whether from temperament or circumstance or scheme of art), is wanting to the HESPERIDES and NOBLE NUMBERS: nor does Herrick's lyre, sweet and varied as it is, own that purple chord, that more inwoven harmony, possessed by poets of greater depth and splendour,—by Shakespeare and Milton often, by Spenser more rarely. But if we put aside these 'greater gods' of song, with Sidney,—in the Editor's judgment Herrick's mastery (to ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... led for a brief space was not only beautiful in outward circumstance, as old Sophy had described it to the Reverend Doctor. It was that delicious process of the tuning of two souls to each other, string by string, not without little half-pleasing discords now and then when some chord in one or the other proves to be over-strained or over-lax, but always approaching nearer and nearer to harmony, until they become at last as two instruments with a single voice. Something more than a year of this blissful doubled consciousness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... me to join in what seemed to me little else than a mockery of human life; but rather than "displace the mirth," I tried, but could not long remain a passive spectator; the glee seemed forced and unnatural. It touched no sympathetic chord; it only jarred the feelings; it was the last attempt at gaiety I witnessed within ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... one overstretched chord of her agony slacked; she thought Something above relented; she felt as if Something far round drew nigher; she heard as if Silence spoke. There was no language, no word, only ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... physics, in the broadest sense, reveals beneath the seeming multiplicity and variety of things. It is a desire for beauty as well as a thoroughgoing scientific passion which prompts men like Poincare and Karl Pearson to seek for one law, one formula which, like "one clear chord to reach the ears of ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... room" to Lucy and George. It was a pretty room, white panelled and blue curtained—and no place for a foreman, as Eugene said. There was a grand piano, and Lucy stood leaning back against it, looking intently at George, while her fingers, behind her, absently struck a chord or two. And her dress was the dress for that room, being of blue and white, too; and the high colour in her cheeks was far from interfering with the general harmony of things—George saw with dismay that she was prettier than ever, and naturally he missed the reassurance ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... Coniglio of the Louvre, but the Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist and St. Catherine, which is No. 635 at the National Gallery.[2] Few pictures of the master have been more frequently copied and adapted than this radiantly beautiful piece, in which the dominant chord of the scheme of colour is composed by the cerulean blues of the heavens and the Virgin's entire dress, the deep luscious greens of the landscape, and the peculiar, pale, citron hue, relieved with a crimson girdle, of the robe worn by ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... veined web of its delicate resistance—round the hollow stem and across the fluffy breadth of it—with a humming music as of wind among the telegraph wires, only infinitely sweet and far away. There were several notes in it, a chord—the music that accompanies all flying things, even a butterfly or settling leaf, and ever fills ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... he had touched the right chord. So he played on it, till he got Lord Tadcaster to pledge his honor not to ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Tennessee to the plains of the Carolinas calling the black youths, whose hopes ran high within their bosoms, to rise and make for higher things? This clarion note, though still for the nonce, shall not become a lost chord. Its inspiring tones must again appeal to the youth to arise to their higher assertion and exertion. If you wish to reach and inspire the life of the people, the approach must be made not to the intellectual, nor yet to the feelings, as the final basis of appeal, ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... dignity of the Roman orator, and diverging only from the pure and polished exposition of his cause to awake a feeling of commiseration for the wrongs which he unfolded.[571] Tiberius played but on a single chord; Caius on many. Tiberius appealed to noble instincts, Caius appealed to all and his Protean manifestations were a symbol of a more complex creed, a wider knowledge of humanity, a greater recklessness as to his means, and of that burning consciousness, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... And a white, white wave whispered, "List to me, I'm a note in the song for the beautiful sea, A song whose grand accents no earth din may sever, And the river flows on in the same mystic key That blends in one chord ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... perception, form organizations or complexes of "lost" memories. It thus comes about that in social situations, where no rapport exists between two persons, a suggestion may be made which, by striking the right chord of memory or by resurrecting a forgotten sentiment, may transform the life of the other, as in conversion. The area of suggestion in social life is indicated in a second paper selected from Bechterew. In later chapters upon "Social Control" and "Collective Behavior" the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... had failed in his attempt to speak with the indifference of a man who longs for a change, and is yet too weary to welcome it. Do what he would, the chord of eagerness vibrated. ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... of Mendelssohn, therefore, London struck a sympathetic chord, and the pleasure which he felt on entering the city was heightened by the warmth of the welcome which he received at the hands of the musical public. His first appearance was at the Argyll Rooms, in Regent Street, ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... Avery also, but in a different way. The personality of the player forced itself upon her with a curious insistence, and she had an odd feeling that he did it by deliberate intention. Every chord he struck seemed to speak to her directly, compelling her attention, dominating her will. He was playing to her alone, and, though she chose to ignore the fact, she was none the less aware of it. By his music he enthralled her, making her see the things he saw, making her feel the ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... chapter in my life had finished. Already, before the completion of my sixth year, this first chapter had run its circle, had rendered up its music to the final chord—might seem even, like ripe fruit from a tree, to have detached itself forever from all the rest of the arras that was shaping itself within my loom of life. No Eden of lakes and forest lawns, such as the mirage suddenly evokes in Arabian sands,—no pageant of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... expresses a happy thought. He calls East and West together in common appreciation of one whose influence was not merely local but worldwide. He invites the old world and the new to kneel together at the altar of sentiment, an appeal to the emotions which never fails to touch a responsive chord in ...
— Dickens in Camp • Bret Harte
... suddenly she glanced up. She saw that her companion's face had softened, and changed. There was a look,—Robinette caught it just for one moment,—such as a proud angry child might have worn: sulky, hurt to the heart, but determined not to cry. Instantly a chord was struck in Robinette's soul. "She has suffered, anyway," she thought. "May I be forgiven for ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... clearly and rapidly. He felt sure of himself, sure of his disguise; if this were an exhibition of woman's wiles, it would find him proof; on that he was resolved. Yet, dissolved in tears as she was, with her long lashes glistening and her mouth twitching pitifully, the dancer seemed to touch a chord deep ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... harp will be a mingled one, for so is our theme; having a sympathy alike for our mirthful and sorrowful moments, which it alike spiritualizes; striking the light, gleesome chord to the one, and attuning the soul to more ethereal joy; while by its soft influence it tones down the harshness of bitter, unavailing sorrow, and woos the heart, misanthropizing under the pangs of grief or unrequited love—pent up in its own solitude, unpitied and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... he, that his arm partly released its clasp. Oceaxe turned around to gaze at him. Whether or not she was satisfied with what she saw, she uttered a low laugh, like a peculiar chord. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... in cap and gown, his purple hood falling over his shoulders, entered followed by his faculty, also gowned and hooded. The students rose and remained standing until the president and faculty were seated. The organ sounded a final chord, and then the college chaplain rose and prayed—very badly. He implored the Lord to look kindly "on these young men who have come from near and far to drink from this great fount of learning, ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... chord of feeling those words touched, or what memories they awoke? but their effect upon Arthur was striking. He sprang up upon the deck, his eyes blazing, and his face white ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... says that detachments of the Mounted Police are found at points "where industrial activities are vital to the welfare of the nation" he strikes a chord that will find grateful response from every industrious citizen, whether employer or employed, who understands that "trade is the calm health of nations." There is nothing in this world of material things more to ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... hung over Auteuil. A long, slow rain fell softly. Chardon pulled the chord at the gate of the Hameau roughly summoning the concierge. He soon found himself under the viaduct on the Boulevard Exelmans, where he walked until he reached Point-du-Jour. There a few workingmen about to take ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... fled," were resented as an undeserved stigma upon the honor and good name of all the Kentuckians in the army, and upon the State of Kentucky herself. The epigrammatic phrase, construed to mean more than was intended, perhaps, like Burchard's "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion," struck a chord of sympathetic emotion that vibrated not only in the army and the community of Louisiana, but throughout the entire country. These burning words are of record in the archives at Washington, and remembered in history; but the facts in full, which vindicate the truth and render justice to whom it ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... I said eagerly, for he had touched a chord which set me thinking—I mean trying to think; "that trouble hanging over us. There was some ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... on Fort Sumter, then held by a small garrison under command of Major Robert Anderson. The first gun fired on the 12th of April, 1861, resounded throughout the United States and the civilized world, touching an electric chord in every family in the northern states and changing the whole current of feeling. From this time forth, among the patriotic people of the loyal states, there was no thought or talk of compromise. That this insult ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... any part of it between the ends. The bight of his cable has swept our anchor, i.e. the bight of the cable of another ship as she ranged about has entangled itself about the flukes of our anchor. Any part of the chord or curvature of a rope between the ends may ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... wound received in the duel with Cumming, his nervous system suffered, and finally his brain. The ball remained imbedded in the spine, and pressed upon the spinal chord. An attempt to remove it, the surgeons determined, would be more hazardous to life than to permit it to remain. There was no remedy. From its effects his mind began to decay, and finally perished, leaving him, long before his death, a melancholy imbecile. In all the relations ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Divine service at Rampart, and on Maundy Thursday, after four miles upon the river, we took the portage of eleven miles that cuts a chord to the arc of the greatest bend of the river within the Ramparts and so saves nine miles. Three miles more took us to the deserted cabin at the site of the abandoned coal-mine opposite the mouth of the Mike Hess River, here confluent with the Yukon, and in that cabin we spent ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... encouragement. In truth, Miss Royanna was much impressed with his manly bearing. He stood so erect, with his blue eyes looking straight into hers. For an instant there flashed into her mind the idea that she had seen those eyes before. Some chord of memory was stirred, which affected her in a remarkable manner. She tried to recall something, but ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... as the poem itself, suggests another criticism. Byron suffered or enjoyed vivid dreams, and, as poets will, shaped his dreams, consciously and of set purpose, to the furtherance of his art, but nothing concerning himself interested him or awoke the slumbering chord which was not based on actual fact. If the meeting on the "cape crowned with a peculiar diadem," and the final interview in the "antique oratory" had never happened or happened otherwise; if he had ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... to waste in vain speculations. My whole being was still vibrating to those magic syllables, "secret drawer;" and that particular chord had been touched that never fails to thrill responsive to such words as CAVE, TRAP-DOOR, SLIDING-PANEL, BULLION, INGOTS, or SPANISH DOLLARS. For, besides its own special bliss, who ever heard of a secret drawer with nothing in it? And oh, I did want money so badly! ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... are the grim ones. Designed, as epitaphs are, to arrest and hold in their momentary grasp the wandering attention and languid interest of the passer-by, they must hit him hard and at once, and this they can only do by striking some very responsive chord, and no chords are so immediately responsive as those which relate to death and, it ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... terrific blows, He struck and slew his foremost foes. At every blow, at every thrust, He laid a Vanar in the dust. So fell they neath the sword and lance In battle's wild Gandharva(961) dance, Where clang of bow and clash of sword Did duty for the silvery chord, And hoofs that rang and steeds that neighed Loud concert for the dancers made. So fiercely from Dhumraksha's bow His arrows rained in ceaseless flow, The Vanar legions turned and fled To all the winds discomfited. Hanuman saw the Vanars fly; He heaved a mighty rock on high. His keen eyes ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... would have told you. But her sense of humor did not conceal from her that in spite of her grin-and-bear-it mien, she was far from happy. At any rate, the suggestion that Jimmy was hopeless awoke a sympathetic chord in her breast, so that she looked at him more tenderly on the day after she had been told. Jimmy was slow of speech and rather dirty as to his face. There were warts on his hands, and his sphinx-like countenance was ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... marble sculpture especially arrests the eye, and awakens a chord of feeling in the most callous heart. It represents one of those Imagines Clipeatae which the ancient Romans were so fond of sculpturing in their temples or upon their tombs; a clam shell or shield with the bust ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Not one of the guests had ever before known the depth of sympathy in the old Bishop till now. Every chord in the nature of each man vibrated to the ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... of half-forgotten perfume, or a long-lost chord fresh sounded, brings back the memories of a lifetime, so does this chance remark of his now recall to her a scene almost gone out of mind, yet still fraught with recollections ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... till after trial following trial the fugitive found that his efforts to escape in that way could only result in tiring out his mustang, and so cleverly had the enemy manoeuvred that they had cast, as it were, a line round him, a semicircle whose chord was the edge of the depression, towards which when it pleased them and they felt certain, they could press him back, gradually contracting their line till he ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... of the English press. Each press issue for several weeks harped on the same chord, though sounding varying notes. If the South really means forcible resistance, said the Times, it is doomed to quick suppression. "A few hundred thousand slave-owners, trembling nightly with visions of murder and pillage, ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... lone carriage a face looked forth upon him. It looked with a vacant gaze. It was Margaret's face that, even she knew not why, stared upon Clarence. An electric chord seemed to connect the two,—the one with wealth and the vigor of life, the other with ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... heart, not for a lost love, but for the vanished dreams of girlhood. The chord he had hoped to touch remained mute. In view of the fact that she believed love to be dead between them, this method of stimulating an outworn romance seemed sentimental and insincere. Had he loved her, she might well have thought it boyish and pathetic. What he spoke of as a disguise had seemed ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... given to long speeches, nor ever before had I descended to bombast, but I had guessed at the keynote which would strike an answering chord in the breasts of the green Martians, nor was I wrong, for my harangue evidently deeply impressed them, and their attitude toward me thereafter ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... coasting-vessels moored near at hand. The semi-silence of the night was broken by musical sounds, scarcely melody, but an uneven kind of chant, commencing in unison, and dying away in a prolonged melancholy, wailing chord, swelling and falling, almost like the notes produced by an AEolian harp as the wind sweeps over its strings. The glow of light which showed the door of a wine-shop across the water marked where the singers were enjoying ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... born, and here, I am convinced, we shall find the key to the mystery, though I'm very far from guessing what that key is. But I have a premonition—you may smile if you wish—that I'll find the clew I'm seeking at Etretat. The name has somehow struck an answering chord in me." ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... there was something more in it all than the gratification of mere fun and laughter, more even than the rarer pleasure that underlies the outbreak of all forms of genuine humor. Another chord had been struck. Over and above the lively painting of manners which at first had been so attractive, there was something that left deeper mark. Genial and irrepressible enjoyment, affectionate heartiness of tone, unrestrained exuberance of ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... of regulators or slides, called layettes, moving up and down in longitudinal grooves round the circumference of the barrel, the length of the drone pipes could be so regulated that a simple harmonic bass, consisting mainly of the common chord, could be obtained. The chaunter, of narrow cylindrical bore, was also furnished with a double reed and had eleven holes, four of which had keys, giving a compass of twelve notes from F to C. [Notation: F4 to C6.] This number of holes was not invariable. After Mersenne's time, Jean ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... God who gives thee thy mirror of imagination, and if thou keep it clean, it will give thee back no shadow but of the truth. Never a cry of love went forth from human heart but it found some heavenly chord to fold it in. Be sure thy friend inhabits a day not out of harmony with this morning of earthly spring, with this sunlight, those rain-drops, that sweet wind that flows so softly over ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... struck a chord, and the children lined up, the girls on one side, the boys on the other, a long line, with Mrs. Van Buren in the center. Another chord, rather a long one. Mrs. Van Buren curtsied to the girls. The line dipped, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... all, the light and heat and lustre of the unclouded sun!—Here there was no dreaming possible, . . nothing but glad life, glad youth, glad love! With an ambrosial rush of tune, like the lark descending, the dancing bow cast forth the final chord from the violin as though it were a diamond flung from the hand of a king, a flawless jewel of pure sound,—and the Minstrel monarch of Andalusia, serenely saluting the now wildly enthusiastic audience, left the platform. ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... performer let her hands fall upon the last somber chord (her puritanical soul enjoying the double dissipation of pretending to herself while she afflicted others), she lifted her eyes to the mirror over the piano and saw Irene out in the hall. In the ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... up. This girlish voice rang upon the chord of memory. Wade had not the strength to look at her then. It was not that he could not bear to look, but that he could not bear the disillusion sure to follow his first glimpse of this adopted daughter of Belllounds. ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... the wood into a clearing. Nor does the scenery any more affect the thoughts than the thoughts affect the scenery. We see places through our humours as through differently coloured glasses. We are ourselves a term in the equation, a note of the chord, and make discord or harmony almost at will. There is no fear for the result, if we can but surrender ourselves sufficiently to the country that surrounds and follows us, so that we are ever thinking suitable thoughts or telling ourselves some suitable sort of story as we go. We become thus, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in a dream, promising that this man might come. She had found herself later in her own apartments, panting, wide-eyed, afraid. Some great hand, unseen, uninvited, mysterious, had swept ruthlessly across each chord of womanly reserve and resolution which so long she had held well-ordered and absolutely under control. It was self-distrust, fear, which now compelled her to take refuge in this woman's fence of speech with him. "Surely," argued she with herself, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... decide. He sat bitingly conscious of his hands spread open on the table under the scrutiny of eyes that were invisible to him vividly aware of the awkwardness of his position. He felt with instinctive certainty that a new chord had been struck; but a man seldom acts on instinctive certainties. If the exposure of his hands had struck this fresh note, then any added action would but heighten the dilemma. He sat ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... in a marked and distinct manner when it has run its course, and we find a similarly felt necessity in regard to musical form. The repetition so common at the close of a piece of music of the same chord several times in succession is exactly analogous to the repetition of cross lines at the necking of a Doric column to stop the vertical lines of the fluting, or to the strongly marked horizontal lines of a cornice ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... all that great building, but one little group sat silent. Ivan and the three gathered close at his side, were like men dead. Long before it was over, Nicholas had flung his baton to the floor and left the stage; but still the orchestra went on—and on. In the silence following on the last chord—a silence broken by no demonstration, either of applause or of hissing—Ivan the composer rose, pushed his way to an aisle, and hurried blindly out into the streets. Thus he knew nothing of the remarkable sequel of the affair: how Rubinstein, an instant ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... body sang. Life, thought, emotion broke in waves in the seething sea of his consciousness. The notes strike a chord of memory. A cloud of recollection hovers before him, shaping the figure of a woman who holds him to her breast. He gropes in his consciousness—it was thus that his mother's arms cradled him, his face pressed to her breast ... her figure grows ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... Edinburgh all manner of loud bells join, or rather disjoin, in one swelling, brutal babblement of noise. Now one overtakes another, and now lags behind it; now five or six all strike on the pained tympanum at the same punctual instant of time, and make together a dismal chord of discord; and now for a second all seem to have conspired to hold their peace. Indeed, there are not many uproars in this world more dismal than that of the Sabbath bells in Edinburgh: a harsh ecclesiastical ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thirty-two conductors only; this arrangement has been adopted to avoid the heating from the Foucault currents, which, with 11/2 in. conductors, would have been very considerable. The bars are coupled at the ends of the core across a certain chord ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... was hardly more than a rare accelerated heart-beat at a chord of music like the memory of a lost happiness, or at the sea shimmering with morning. He never spoke of it now, not even to Fanny; although it was possible that he might be doing her understanding an injustice. Fanny, generally, was a ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Its chord of penetrating passion and melancholy, again, its Titanism as we see it in Byron,—what other European poetry possesses that like the English, and where do we get it from? The Celts, with their vehement reaction against the despotism of fact, with their sensuous nature, their manifold striving, ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... verdant, velvet sward, Oh may we hold in reverent thought The debt we owe, forgetting not The spirit passed to its reward Of one whose giant soul was fraught With true benignity—who sought To touch humanity's quick chord With fire from Heaven's altar brought, That love and zeal and being caught As ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... suppress an exclamation. So he had not told her what he was going to do, and yet he had not forbidden me to tell her. Poor Bob was more subtle than I had supposed, but it was a simple subtlety, a strange chord but still in key with his ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... Judah's sky, That voice o'er Bethlehem's palmy glen! The lamp far sages hailed on high, The tones that thrilled the shepherd men: Glory to God in loftiest heaven! Thus angels smote the echoing chord; Glad tidings unto man forgiven, Peace from the presence of ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... the drawling quality of his voice which sounded as mellow as though someone had struck a chord upon a harp, surprised them out of an answer. Rousing ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... forced into a corner near the witness-box in which he was to make an unwilling appearance. And from that corner he looked with renewed interest at the man who was presently placed in the dock, and for the hundredth time asked himself what it was in his face that woke some chord of memory in him. ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... stated in parabolic language, and is appreciated only by the consecrated follower of Jesus; but when understood, it is indeed a harp that yields the most entrancing music that ever fell upon human ears. Strike now the chord of restitution and hear how beautifully it responds and harmonises with all the other strings upon the divine harp! Know, then, that as the people come to learn of God's wonderful arrangement, all whose hearts are right will praise him. The Psalmist ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... simply a lens through which one could see the feelings at work beneath, and Bannon knew that he had struck the right chord at last. "How ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... lips and eyes, And lights up in a lover's sighs. Fancy these young Venetian maids Listening, at night, to serenades From amorous lutes, where Music, such As southern skies alone afford, Echoes to every burning touch, And thrills in each impassion'd chord. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... and the storm and stress of existence; and the outcome of it is to show the vanity of all human effort. Deeply moved, we are either directly prompted to disengage our will from the struggle of life, or else a chord is struck in us which ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... reach the people in this way, why, there are other courses to pursue. We should not despair. If we fail in accomplishing our ends in one manner, we must try other plans, and finally we may be able to touch the right chord. (Dennis S. ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... from some chord of an angel's harp had reached them, the children were still for ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... stringed instruments. One of these, which Captain Grant describes, was played by an old woman; it had seven notes, six of which were a perfect scale. Another, which had three strings, was played by a man: they were a full, harmonious chord. A third instrument called "the laced nanga" formed of dark wood, in the shape of a tray, had three crosses in the bottom, and was laced with one string, seven or eight times, over bridges ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... aching chord in the doctor's heart, but he gave no sign of the jealousy which had troubled him, and for a moment there was silence in the room; then, as the doctor began faintly to realize that Maddy had refused him, there awoke within him a more intense ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... betrayed the miserable truth; perhaps some chord of sympathy passed from me to them—I know not. They jumped up and came forward with a sudden fear in their eyes. I had already bidden them farewell, and they did not expect to see me again, until I rode from the city in ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... by the canopy, came a little piteous wail; then another followed, and was lost in the singer's voice. During a long phrase on the harpsichord, sharp and tinkling, the singer turned his head towards the dais, and there came a plaintive little sob. But he, instead of stopping, struck a sharp chord; and with a thread of voice so hushed as to be scarcely audible, slid softly into a long cadenza. At the same moment he threw his head backwards, and the light fell full upon the handsome, effeminate face, with its ashy pallor ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... final chord, and rose from the piano. Then he turned to me and said, composedly enough, 'Well, I'm ready.' He, apparently, had in some measure pulled himself together. In the street he took my arm. 'Let's walk in this direction,' he said, leading ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... of the art and its higher influences had prompted her clever novelette La Marquise. Here she illustrates the power of the stage as a means of expression—of the truly inspired actor, though his greatness be but momentary, and his heroism a semblance, to strike a like chord in the heart of the spectator—and, in a corrupt and artificial age, to keep alive some latent faith in the ideal. Since then the stage and players had figured repeatedly in her works. Sometimes she portrays a perfected type, such as Consuelo, or Imperia in Pierre qui ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... in his Commonwealth, discoursing of the faculties of the soul, has very well compared the symphony of reason and of the irascible and the concupiscent faculties to the harmony of the middle, lowest, and highest chord, (See "Republic," iv. p. 443.) ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... brown eyes reminded Randy of the little sister at home. Then a strange hush pervaded the hall, and as the director swayed his baton, twenty bows were drawn across the strings of as many violins in one grand chord ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... the tree and peered on tiptoe at the embedded volume. On a blank page stood pencilled: "This is the last fruit of the tree. Come not to gather more." There was no meaning for her in that sentimental chord but she must have got some glimpse of a meaning; for now, as in an agony, her lips fashioned the words: "If I forget his face I may as well die;" and she wandered on, striving more and more vainly to call up his features. The—"Does he think of me?" and—"What am I to him?"—such timorous little ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... light and dark, a stranger from one of the coaches, asking for a barber, was directed by the hostler to the cellar opposite. Coming in hastily, he requested to be shaved quickly, while they changed horses, as he did not like to violate the Sabbath. This was touching the barber on a tender chord. He burst into tears; asked the stranger to lend him a half-penny to buy a candle, as it was not light enough to shave him with safety. He did so, revolving in his mind the extreme poverty to which the poor ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... hurried by Each vacant space, each slackened chord; Nor would her wayward zeal let die The music-spirit ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... the common chord in music like a portion of the Mediterranean?—Because it's the E ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... voice touched a responsive chord in me. I looked at her earnestly; she raised her ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... next door Desire of it destroyed it Detestable feminine storms enveloping men weak enough Didn't say a word No use in talking about feelings Distaste for all exercise once pleasurable Divided lovers in presence Enthusiasm struck and tightened the loose chord of scepticism Enthusiast, when not lyrical, is perilously near to boring Exult in imagination of an escape up to the moment of capture Few men can forbear to tell a spicy story of their friends Greatest of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his starting-point, in the days of his innocency, and his goal, the lowest depths of degradation and sham, was so direct an appeal to his last chord of poetic feeling, that the unhappy fellow melted into tears. For four hours he wept, as rigid in appearance as a figure of stone, but enduring the subversion of all his hopes, the crushing of all his social vanity, and the utter overthrow of his pride, smarting in each separate ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac |
