"Fiddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rest-cure for jangled nerves. "I don't care a damn for death; but it's the waiting for it, the devilishness of its uncertainty, the sight of one's pals blown to bits about one, and the animal fear under shell-fire, that break one's pluck... My nerves are like fiddle-strings." ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... through his favourite air, Aden Ddu'r Fran (the Crow's Black Wing). When he passed over the green sward where the Tylwyth Teg, or Fairies, held their merry meetings, he heard something rattle in his fiddle, and this something continued rattling and tinkling until he reached Llwybr Scriw Riw, his home, almost out of his senses at the fright caused by that everlasting 'tink, rink, jink,' which was ever sounding in his ears. Having entered the cottage he soon heard music of a different kind, in ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... do here, when you leff? 'speck ebbery ting be dull, wuss nor ditch-water. No more fun—no more shuffle-foot. Old maussa no like de fiddle, and nebber hab party and jollication like udder people. Don't tink I can stay here, Mass Ra'ph, after you gone; 'spose, you no 'jection, I go 'long wid you? You leff me, I take to de swamp, sure ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... until twenty minutes of nine; and, toward the close, faint scrapings of dissatisfaction were heard, which would have been more audible had Signor Mancussi not been present. As the last twang of the fiddle died on the air, M. Bartin was heard by several persons to say, "Bah! a bad hash from Rossini and Auber." The remark was reported to Signor Mancussi, and did not tend to enhance his friendly regards for ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... "he's dreadfully inclined to music since he had a drum, and I want the fiddle to see if I can't make another Pickaninny or an Old Bull of him. Jews-harps is simple, though I can't see how King David played on one of 'em, and sung his psalms at the same time; but the fiddle is best, because genius can show itself plainer on it without much noise. Some prefers ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... loved, and he would pass his fingers among the broad strings, and ever and anon he would produce from one of them a low, melancholy, almost unearthly sound. And then he would pause, never daring to produce two such notes in succession,—one close upon the other. And these last sad moans of the old fiddle were now known through the household. They were the ghosts of the melody of days long past. He imagined that his visits to the box were unsuspected,—that none knew of the folly of his old fingers which could not keep themselves from touching the wires; but the voice of ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... at her; even Johnny Whitelamb looked, with a face as long as a fiddle. The comment was quiet, but the note of scorn in it could not be mistaken. Molly in revolt! Molly, of all persons! Molly sat trembling. She knew that among them all Johnny was her one ally—and a hopelessly distressed and ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the gypsies now, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. The authorities have sent them away. But we've Jews that play the cymbals and the fiddle in the village, so one might send ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... a "serious" interview with a woman if she is putting on new gloves! She is perfectly free to seem occupied or not, as suits her convenience; and she can, by wrestling with the gloves, interrupt him without speech, distract his attention, fiddle his thoughts, give him a sense of imbecile futility, and all the time offer him no cause for resentment against her. He himself seems in the wrong; she is ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... didn't do the fair thing. He got you to give the flag through him instead of through me, by a mean trick. He gets the credit of getting the flag; now let him have the honor of accepting it. I won't play second fiddle to such a fellow as he is, and that's all ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... that everything has this shot-silk quality, and is all the finer for that. When people talk of a horse as an ugly animal I think of its beautiful moments, but when I hear a flow of indiscriminate praise of its beauty I think of such an aspect as one gets for example from a dog-cart, the fiddle-shaped back, and that distressing blade of the neck, the narrow clumsy place between the ears, and the ugly glimpse of cheek. There is, indeed, no beauty whatever save that transitory thing that comes and comes again; all ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... when as the camp-fire cast a ruddy, genial flame, He'd bring his tuneful fiddle out and play upon the same; No diabolic engine this—no instrument of sin— No relative at all to that lewd toy, the violin! But a godly hoosier fiddle—a quaint archaic thing Full of all the proper melodies our grandmas used to sing; With "Bonnie Doon," ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... and Tommy stared over the rim of his mug with round eyes, full of interest. "Mr. Bhaer's got an old fiddle, and he'll let you play on ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... smooths down his hair. He enters: in the hall a crowd, No more the music thunders loud, Some a mazurka occupies, Crushing and a confusing noise; Spurs of the Cavalier Guard clash, The feet of graceful ladies fly, And following them ye might espy Full many a glance like lightning flash, And by the fiddle's rushing sound The voice ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... home. My mercantile career had ended, and forthwith I took to the range as a preacher's son takes to vice. By the time I was twenty there was no better cow-hand in the entire country. I could, besides, speak Spanish and play the fiddle, and thought nothing of riding thirty miles to a dance. The vagabond temperament of the ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... a sign. The fiddler tucked up the sleeve of his coat, squeezed tightly the finger board, rested his chin on the tailpiece, and sent his bow over the fiddle like a race horse. At this signal, the bagpipers, who were standing close by, blew into their sacks and filled their cheeks with breath, making a quick motion with their arms as though flapping their wings; you might have thought that the pair would fly off on the breeze, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... been in the world for all time, the positive right and wrong, which are facts, not ideas. I believe that there is good and evil, that the one is at war with the other always; and that good can do no evil, evil no good. I've got beyond all the dogma and fiddle-faddle of the intellect with which the church has overlaid the spirit, and all the ceremonial so useful and necessary for individual souls in early stages of development. I used to think if I could find a religion with no blood in it, I would embrace it. Now I feel sure that it does ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... tormented him a lot," admitted her husband. "He's a great hand at the fiddle and likes company. He goes to the harbour a good deal. But they say he takes sulky spells when he hasn't a word to throw to a dog. 'Twouldn't be any wonder, living with the Gordons. They're all as ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... will be no end until the venerable traditional nonsense about those interesting emotions shares the fate that should overtake all the cobwebs of ignorance thickly clogging the windows and walls of the human mind. Of all the fiddle-faddle concerning passion probably none is more shudderingly admired than the notion that one possessed of an overwhelming desire for another longs to destroy that other. It is true there is a form of murderous mania that ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... venture a wrestle with the boatswain, who was very appropriately distinguished by the cognomen of Jemmy Ducks. Jemmy was a sensible, merry fellow, and a good seaman: you could not affront him by any jokes on his figure, for he would joke with you. He was indeed the fiddle of the ship's company, and he always played the fiddle to them when they danced, on which instrument he was no mean performer; and, moreover, accompanied his voice with his instrument when he sang to them after they were tired of dancing. ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... curtain in front of the stage and the orchestra was located in the rear of the stage. The orchestra would attract attention anywhere. The music was a cross between the noise made by a boiler shop during working hours and a horse fiddle at a ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... buried his face in his hands. "That was ignorance, an' I'm payin' for it by havin' you turn away an' snap my future like a fiddle string! Oh, how could my hand a-struck yoh ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... confituras. Instead, the houses inside now ring with boisterous revelry, with a perfume of mint and Monongahela; and although the guitar still tinkles, it is almost inaudible amid the louder strains of clarionet, fiddle, and ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... fine Rouen cloth is to be made; your Leominster superfine wool is mine arse to it; mere flock in comparison. Of their skins the best cordovan will be made, which shall be sold for Turkey and Montelimart, or for Spanish leather at least. Of the guts shall be made fiddle and harp strings that will sell as dear as if they came from Munican or Aquileia. What do you think on't, hah? If you please, sell me one of them, said Panurge, and I will be yours for ever. Look, here's ready cash. What's the price? ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... together with some others, were, for the most part, as a maul on the head of pride, and desire of vain glory; what, thought I, shall I be proud because I am a sounding brass? Is it so much to be a fiddle? Hath not the least creature that hath life, more of God in it than these? Besides, I knew it was love should never die, but these must cease and vanish; so I concluded, a little grace, a little love, a little of the true fear ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... up. The persons on the balcony hang over the railings. The figures on the floor go reeling off in a mixture of dancing and by-play as fantastic as the music. The pianist seems to get excited and to want to prove himself a Hans von Bulow of rapid execution. The fiddler weaves excitedly over his fiddle. The cornetist toots in a screech like a car-engine whistle. The movements of the dancers grow licentious and more and more rapid. They have begun the Cancan. Feet go up. Legs are exhibited in wild abandon. Hats fly off. There are occasional exhibitions of nature that would put Adam and ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... ax. Seizing the tool, he sprang erect, poised for an instant upon the edge of the boat which was already awash, and with the next flash of lightning, brought its blade down upon the wire cable stretched taut as a fiddle gut. The rebound of the ax nearly wrenched it from his grasp, the boat shifted as the cable seemed to stretch ever so slightly, and the Texan noted with satisfaction that the edge was no longer awash. Another ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... didn't want to make bombs or automatic bankrobbers; he just wanted to fiddle with the stack, see what it would do. He turned it over in his hands a couple of times, then shrugged, got up, went over to his closet, and put the thing away. There wasn't anything he could do with it until he'd bought ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the superintendence of his father, he had written a sonata, which, however, along with many other juvenile productions, he lately destroyed; and as he played about three times a week in the churches and at private musical parties, upon a fiddle nearly as large as himself, he soon began to make himself known among his townsmen. At this time he received much benefit from one Francesco Gnecco, who died in 1811, and whom ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... was receiving friends in his own house. The handsome doctor promenaded the deck arm-in-arm with ladies in course of rapid recovery from the first gastric consequences of travelling by sea. The excellent chief engineer, musical in his leisure moments to his fingers' ends, played the fiddle in his cabin, accompanied on the flute by that young Apollo of the Atlantic trade, the steward's mate. Only on the third morning of the voyage was the harmony on board the Aquila disturbed by a passing moment of discord—due to an unexpected addition ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... strong enough to work the land; but the father was old and frail and knew nothing about farming. He was a weaver by trade; had been a skilled workman on tapestries and upholstery materials. He had brought his fiddle with him, which wouldn't be of much use here, though he used to pick up money by ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... tall, handsome black fellow, with white teeth and bright eyes, and he could play the fiddle and pick the banjo, and knock the bones and cut the pigeon-wing, and, besides all that, he was the best hoe-hand, and could pick more cotton than any other negro on the plantation. He had amused himself by courting and flirting with all ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... when I was dining with the Mitfords, when he knew that his time had come, to turn to Mrs. Bourke, who was famous only as shining in his reflected light, and say: "Mrs. Bourke, won't you play us something, and I will just come in with my fiddle?" Rubinstein's playing I never liked. To me he seemed only the most violent of all the piano-bangers of the world; but he was literally worshipped by his admirers, and was grand to look at—as fine as Beethoven must ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... dear!" And had it come to this that their preacher had to sleep on the prairie! This was a family of hospitable Kentuckians, who were born to a love of music, and the old gentleman was a fiddler, and next to his Bible he loved his fiddle. Of course, we had a grand, good time, and were all filled with joy; and this was the beginning of the churches on the upper waters of the Kansas River. Twelve miles above St. George was Ashland, where we found ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... Meath (A curious corruption of Mentz. Old printers distorted foreign names in an extraordinary manner.) Mechall Mention ( dimension) Mew Middleton, quotation from his Family of Love Minikin ( fiddle) Mistris Moe Monthes mind Mooncalf More hayre than wit Morglay Mosch Mother Motion ( suggestion, proposal) Mouse Much (ironical) Mumchance Muscadine Muschatoes ( moustaches) Mushrumps ( mushrooms) Music ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... for fifteen minutes, and had a smoke out of a pipe that one of them left in reach; then the crossing was finished, and they stumped back and had a drink around and went to talking and singing again. Next they got out an old fiddle, and one played and another patted juba, and the rest turned themselves loose on a regular old- fashioned keel-boat break-down. They couldn't keep that up very long without getting winded, so by and by they settled around the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... name Irving Ramsey. Us play fiddle together lots of time. When de white boys dance dey allus wants me to go to play for dey party. One day I say to dat boy, 'I done knowed you last night.' He say, 'What you mean?' I say, 'You one dem Klu Klux.' He want to know how I know. I say, 'Member ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... revel of feasting and song and dancing. They received the new prisoner literally with open arms, and almost before she had wiped the tears from her eyes, at parting from her nurslings, she was capering gaily to the music of hautboy and fiddle, with the arm of a stalwart ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... diddle diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon. The little dog laughed To see such a craft, And the dish ...
— Chenodia - The Classic Mother Goose • Jacob Bigelow
... saints! I think you are right, Clement Maldon," he muttered. "Beneath that black dress of yours you are a man like the rest of us, are you not? You have a heart, you have members, you have a brain to think with; you are a fiddle for God to play on, and however much your superstitions mask and alter it, out of those strings now and again will come some squeak of truth. Well, I am another fiddle, of a more honest sort, mayhap, ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... thought that I was a very queer boy displaced his image. I could not but be a very queer boy, such a lot of things happened to me. Suppose I joined the gipsies? My companion wished me to. She had brothers, horse-dealers, beautiful fiddlers. Suppose I learnt the fiddle? Suppose I learnt their language and went about with them and became king of the gipsies? My companion shook her head; she could not encourage this ambitious idea because she had never heard of a king of the gipsies or a queen either. 'We fool people,' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... tenth good shield A fiddle, and 'neath it a bow; That's borne by Folker Spillemand; For drink he ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... to do but exist as cheerfully as might be until the weather improved. The wet had shrunk canvas and rope gear till the tent-guys were as taut as fiddle-strings; and as it did not seem to have occurred to any of the servants to attend to this, an immediate tour of the camp had to be undertaken, in "rubbers" and waterproofs, to slack off guys and inspect the drainage system, as we had no wish to have ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... feeling, and violent interruptions of the currents of mental life and action, are never favorable to reflection. If I wish to cheer a man who is bowed to the earth in grief for the loss of a companion, I will not break in upon his mourning with a lively tune upon a fiddle. If I wish to attract him to a religious life, I will not interrupt the flow of his innocently social hours by some terrible threat or warning. In truth, I know of nothing that calls for more care, or nicer discrimination, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... comes the Times and eleven strikes (it does) already, and I have to go to Town, and I have no alternative but that this story of the Critic and Poet, 'the Bear and the Fiddle,' should 'begin but break off in the middle'; yet I doubt—nor will you henceforth, I know, say, 'I vex you, I am sure, by this lengthy writing.' Mind that spring is coming, for all this snow; and know me for yours ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... outsider that one is (if it all be true)—one whose heart, so hopelessly impervious to the written word, so helplessly callous to the spoken message, can be reached only by the organized vibrations of a trained larynx, a metal pipe, a reed, a fiddle-string—by invisible, impalpable, incomprehensible little air-waves in mathematical combination, that beat against a tiny drum at the back of one's ear. And these mathematical combinations and the laws that govern them have ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... the other end of the world. The place was empty of other customers. The Kaffir woman slumbered behind the flimsy planking of the bar, and "White Harry" sat on the counter scraping tunes out of a little fiddle. Thalassa remembered the tune he was playing—"Annie Laurie." Upon this scene there entered two young men, Englishmen. Thalassa discerned that at once by the cut of their jib. Besides, they ordered Bass beer. Who else but Englishmen would order Bass beer at five shillings a bottle ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... there than in the hum of men. There the stocks and stones are more impressible than those we sometimes stumble on in human society, and, moulded at our will, take what shape we choose to give them; the trees follow our footsteps, though our lips be mute, and we may have left at home our fiddle—more potent we in our actuality than the fabled Orpheus. Be hushed, ye streams, and listen unto Christopher! Be chained, ye clouds, and attentive unto North! And at our bidding silent the cataract on the cliff—the thunder on the sky. The sea beholds us on the shore—and his one huge frown ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... curves and super-ornamentation are out of fashion; whether they are really bad or not, time alone can tell. At present we are admiring plain silver and are perhaps exacting that it be too plain? The only safe measure of what is good, is to choose that which has best endured. The "King" and the "Fiddle" pattern for flat silver, have both been in use in houses of highest fashion ever since they were designed, so that they, among others, must have merit to have ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... and it is now at press again; which is very flattering to the unknown author. Another incognito proposes immediately to resume the second volume of Triermain, which is at present in the state of the Bear and Fiddle.[36] Adieu, dear Morritt. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... the then accountant, John Tipp. He neither pretended to high blood, nor in good truth cared one fig about the matter. He "thought an accountant the greatest character in the world, and himself the greatest accountant in it." Yet John was not without his hobby. The fiddle relieved his vacant hours. He sang, certainly, with other notes than to the Orphean lyre. He did, indeed, scream and scrape most abominably. His fine suite of official rooms in Threadneedle-street, which, without any ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... stories of some Negroes flinging themselves at the feet of an European playing on a fiddle, entreating him to desist, unless he had a mind to tire them to death; it being impossible for them to cease dancing, while he continued playing. Such is the irresistible passion for dancing ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... had quite an exciting time getting the piano up into the loft with the block and pulley. But the music sounds very well up there. The only trouble is old Andy Ferguson, the fencer—he's always been accustomed to fiddle for them, and he's very crushed because we've got out these men. Dad says he'd never have got them if he'd dreamed how ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... waiter, meditatively laying two fingers wide on his chin, 'as many people would call it a treat. But the little 'uns likes dressing up in their evening frocks, and the buns and lemonade is well enough for their time of life. There used to be a fiddle too, as well as the piano; but the class hev fallen off considerable of late. The management don't like it too well. But there's a notion 'twould be unfeelin' to stop it. She's been carrying it on all these years, and her ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... grouped so as to give occasion for a general frolic. Thus Daniel R. Tucker in 1858 sent a general invitation over the countryside in central Georgia to a sextuple wedding among his slaves, with dinner and dancing to follow.[2] On the whole, the fiddle, the banjo and the bones were ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... held in the adjoining regions of Smithfield, there is nothing going on but gossiping and gadding about. The late quiet streets of Little Britain are overrun with an irruption of strange figures and faces; every tavern is a scene of rout and revel. The fiddle and the song are heard from the taproom morning, noon, and night; and at each window may be seen some group of boon companions, with half-shut eyes, hats on one side, pipe in mouth and tankard in hand, fondling and prosing, and singing maudlin songs over ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... have been ashamed to have spent as much time at my looking-glass as if I'd been a girl. I could make myself as smart as any one when I was going to a dance, or to a party where I was likely to meet pretty girls; but I should have laughed myself to scorn if I'd stood fiddle-faddling at a glass, smirking at my own likeness, all ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... as we used to call it. The play party was quite respectable, and could be indulged in by church-members. In it the people taking part sang airs each with its own words, and moved about in step to the music. The absence of the fiddle and the "calling off" and the name of dancing took the curse off. They went through figures a lot like dances; swung partners by one hand or both; advanced and retreated, "balanced to partners" ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... particularly characteristic dances is the Gigue with its counterparts mentioned above. This is a rapid, animated dance in 6/8, 3/8, 12/8, 12/16 (sometimes 4/4) with marked rhythm; the term being derived from giga (German, geige)—an early name for fiddle—on account of the power of accent associated with the violin family. The Gigue is always the closing number of Bach's Suites, in order to give a final impression of irrepressible vitality and gaiety, and is treated with considerable ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... one. Willin' as could be to do what he was told, but forgettin' what it was, regular. Just naturally no good, like, except with the fiddle. I will say, that with that there instrument he was a Paderwooski—yes, mam! By the time our outfit got into them trenches the boys was just clean dippy about him. They kind of took turns dry-nursin' him and remindin' him of the things he'd got to do, and doin' them ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... passing worth, The manner how he sallied forth; His arms and equipage are shown; His horse's virtues, and his own. Th' adventure of the bear and fiddle Is sung, but breaks off in ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... An' plays the fiddle fit to tear the heart out of your body, and reads big books till God knows what hour in the mornin'. His father, he says he don't know what to do with him ... There's a big, bad devil of a Polack down to the works that wants him to join the anarchists ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... disabled by the gout, his principal occupation was his violin, and it was her delight to listen to him. She more than once observed to the vicar, "Such music is quite heavenly." "I am in despair," cried out the village fiddler, "I may now stick my fiddle in my thatched roof, for a greater performer is come to reside in the parish." The existing superstition of the country is that his spirit, playing on his favourite instrument, still haunts one wing of Brynbella. If he ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Jerry," says he, "wife may as well hang up her fiddle about me; can't make a whistle out of a pig's tail, man, I tell ye! She may fuss up the young'un as much as she's a mind to, but it'll be labor lost over an old chap like me. I feel more at home down here in the old place, and a plaguy sight more comfortable, than ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... a bit of fiddle-de-dee," he informed his delighted family. "Duncan Gallosh to be looking for bogles is pretty ridiculous—but oh, I can't ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... effort, human and mechanical, all over the great factory, was now strained almost to the breaking-point. How long can this agony last? How long can the roar and the rush and the throbbing pain continue until that nameless and unknown something snaps like an overstrained fiddle-string and brings relief? The remorseless clock informed us that there were two hours more of this torture before the signal to "clean up"—a signal, however, which is not given until the last girl has finished her allotted task. At half-past two it appeared hopeless even to dream of getting out ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... felt that the day was not suitably ended if, after tidying up the kitchen and practicing "The Harp That Once" and "Oft in the Stilly Night" on his fiddle, he did not go across the fields to Marietta Martin's and compare the moment's mood with her, either in the porch or at her fireside, according to the season. They lived, each alone, in a stretch of meadow land ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... Marit, mother's young one, father's fiddle, the hulder of the house, granddaughter to Ola Nordistuen of the Heidegards, four years old in the autumn, two days ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... in silence, and then rushed en masse upon the intruder, the landlord bringing up the rear, and sounding a charge upon his fiddle. But, as they drew nigh, the black cloak began to assume a familiar look; the hat, also, was an old acquaintance; and, these being removed, from beneath them shone forth the reverend face and form ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... over, we eat pudding, baked beans, mince, apple, and pumpkin pie, and top off with pop-corn, apples, and cider. After supper the girls clear away the dishes; then we push the table into one corner of the kitchen, Julius Caesar mounts it with his fiddle, and we dance jigs and quicksteps. The girl who first found a red ear while husking, and was kissed before she could throw it into the basket, is ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 20, 1773. Boswell writing of this Tour said:—'I also may be allowed to claim some merit in leading the conversation; I do not mean leading, as in an orchestra, by playing the first fiddle; but leading as one does in examining a witness—starting topics, and making him pursue them.' Ib. Sept. 28. One day he recorded:—'I did not exert myself to get Dr. Johnson to talk, that I might ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... then—one from the city and one from the country, a married woman and this poor girl," said he, in a jeering tone; "does little Reine know that she is playing second fiddle?" ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... wish they would not say anything kind and pleasant and cheap. At college they praised my verses, and the theatres stole my music for the Pudding play, and the girls giggled over my sketches. And now, at twenty-six, I don't know whether I want to fiddle, or to write an epic, or to model, or to paint. I am a ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... sa, like a fiddle, and hope a please you when we get you through sa. Old 'ooman at home sa:' chuckling very much. 'Outside gentleman sa, he often remember old 'ooman ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... at the wide-flung door Stand mute as men of wood. Gleams like a pool the ballroom floor— A burnished solitude. A hundred waxen tapers shine From silver sconces; softly pine 'Cello, fiddle, mandoline, To music deftly wooed— And dancers in cambric, satin, silk, With glancing hair and cheeks like ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... the fiddle a great deal, and have played for Lincoln a number of times. He used to come over to where I was boarding and ask me to play the fiddle for him; and I would take it with me when I went over to visit him, and when he grew weary of telling stories ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... officers resolved to celebrate the event by giving a ball. "This was an enterprise of a desperate character;—building a brig hundreds of miles from a ship-yard was a trifle to giving a ball in the wilderness. True, one fiddle and half a dozen officers were something; refreshments and a military ball-room might be hoped for; but where, pray, were the ladies to come from?" They would not think of dancing with each other, and ladies must be found. Vigorous efforts were made ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... dim-lit by flickering lanthorn, I passed many weary hours, while all about me was a stir and bustle, a confused sound made up of many, as the never-ending tread of feet, the sound of hoarse voices now faint and far and anon clear and loud, the scrape of a fiddle, snatches of rough song, the ceaseless ring and tap of hammers—a very babel that, telling of life and action, made my gloomy prison the harder to endure. And here (mindful of what is to follow) I do think it well to describe ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... sore I misdoubt me it will not. But well it were, well it were! For such things are in the wood, yea and before ye come to its innermost, as may well try the stoutest heart. Therein are Kobbolds, and Wights that love not men, things unto whom the grief of men is as the sound of the fiddle-bow unto us. And there abide the ghosts of those that may not rest; and there wander the dwarfs and the mountain-dwellers, the dealers in marvels, the givers of gifts that destroy Houses; the forgers of the curse that clingeth and ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... you, not you me. Why, look what a stupid old fogy I was then, toddling about the place with too much time on my hands, reading a lot and forgetting everything; and here you came in, gave me something to do, made the little I know of any use, and ran a pretty gold wire down the rusty fiddle of life. If there are any speeches of gratitude to be made, they are ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... feelings, you know,—not our tastes nor our passions. I don't advocate fiddling while Rome is burning. In fact it's only poor, unsatisfied devils that are tempted to fiddle. There is one feeling which is respectable and honorable, and even sacred, at all times and in all places, whatever they may be. It doesn't depend upon circumstances, but they upon it; and with its help, I think, we are a match for any circumstances. I don't mean religion, Miss Whittaker," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... and Sam jerked his thumb back to show that he meant Si Lee; "sounds like a Chinese laundry. I guess that's the only thing he isn't. He can do any mortal thing but get on in life. He's been a soldier an' a undertaker an' a cook He plays a fiddle he made himself; it's a rotten bad one, but it's away ahead of his playing. He stuffs birds—that Owl in the parlour is his doin'; he tempers razors, kin doctor a horse or fix up a watch, an' he does it in about the same way, ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... see all that was done in and out of Sebastopol, and over all the Crimea. The Czar, however, took care that Sinclair could not join the allies; but where he is and what he is about I must not tell, until the war is over—except that he is not in Russia, and that he will never play first fiddle again in Morayshire." ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... Square. He was a married man, without family. He obtained his livelihood by giving lessons on the flute, on the guitar, and in teaching French during the day, and at night was engaged as second violin in the orchestra of the Opera House; so that he had many strings to his bow, besides those of his fiddle. His wife, a pretty little lively woman, taught young ladies to make flowers in wax, and mended lace in the evenings. They were a very amiable and amusing couple, always at good-natured warfare with each other, and sparring all day long, from the time they met until ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... the toot of the flute, an' the twiddle of the fiddle, Dancin' in the middle, like a herring on a griddle! Up an' down, hands come round, cross into the wall— Faith, hadn't we ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... enough to avail himself of the opportunity of three or four hours' continuous sleep on land. Rodier showed more reluctance, declaring that he was as fit as a fiddle; but Captain Warren bore him away from the crowd of admirers, and stood over him until he, like his ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... and change my dreaming. From the mufflers in which his father, the mountebank, has wrapped the child, to carry him across the heath, a little tumbling-boy emerges in soiled tights. He is half asleep. His father scrapes the fiddle. The boy shortens his red belt, kisses his fingers to us, and ties himself into a knot among the glasses on ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... it. There's a sight more the matter with folks's p'int o' view than there is with the Lord A'mighty's world.—Now, Jo, if you've got that cretur o' yourn into ship-shape,—it always doos seem to me jest like a human cretur that's got the right p'int o' view, that fiddle doos,—jest give it to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... strips covered with mysterious characters. And these settled the business, for I recognised them as a kind of bed-hanging, popular with the commoner class of the Chinese. Nor were further evidences wanting, such as night-clothes of an extraordinary design, a three-stringed Chinese fiddle, a silk handkerchief full of roots and herbs, and a neat apparatus for smoking opium, with a liberal provision of the drug. Plainly, then, the cook had been a Chinaman; and, if so, who was Jos. Amalu? Or had Jos. stolen the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have played second fiddle to you often, do let me take command this time—or, at all events, wait till you see my plot unfolded. Then you can take your part, or leave it alone, or modify to taste. Nothing can ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... right this morning, yet you had to go fiddle-faddling with that architect instead of staying at home where you belonged. And now she's dead. My little girl, my little girl!" And the big man ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... Concerts begin in August. You go to them. You smoke your cigar or cigarette (and I regret to say that you strike your matches during the soft bars of the "Lohengrin" overture), and you enjoy the music. But you say you cannot play the piano or the fiddle, or even the banjo; that you know nothing ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... to live after the Indian fashion. A party of Loyalists who came before us late in the spring, had gone up the river further, but they were no better off than those at St. Ann's. The men caught fish and hunted moose when they could. In the spring we made maple sugar. We ate fiddle heads, grapes and even the leaves of trees to allay the pangs of hunger. On one occasion some poisonous weeds were eaten along with the fiddle heads; one or two died, and Dr. Earle had all he could ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... be serviceable to the Church. But how far we must depend upon new friends, I have learnt by long practice, though I think among great Ministers, they are just as good as old ones. And so I think this important day has made a great hole in this side of the paper; and the fiddle-faddles of tomorrow and Monday will make up the rest; and, besides, I shall see Harley on ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... early to light the fire or go for the cows. Ted crept softly to a corner in the garret and took from the wall an old brown fiddle. It had been his father's. He loved to play on it, and his few rare spare moments were always spent in the garret corner or the hayloft, with his precious fiddle. It was his one link with the old life he had lived ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Giles made his appearance, with an old green bag under his arm. Barton, of course, had the credit of this arrangement, and it made him, for the time, very popular. After a pull at the bottle, Giles began to screw his fiddle, drawing now and then unearthly shrieks from its strings. The more eager of the young men thereupon stole to the house, assisted in carrying in the tables and benches, and in other ways busied themselves to bring about ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... he muttered uneasily. "He fair makes my flesh creep with that doggoned fiddle of his. 'Tis like a child crying in the dark. I wish ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... said Cadge, beaming with satisfaction. "I never like that Opera assignment—dresses and society, second fiddle to the music man—but I wouldn't have missed last night! Minute I saw you in the Van Dam box I knew there'd be the biggest circus ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... more hopeful than you that the repetition of a consonant beginning the second syllable of a dissyllable, to close the preceding syllable, as in "differ", "fiddle", "gobble", etc., wil "be generally accepted", especially in view of the fact that it is alreddy "generally accepted", and needs only to be extended to ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... the singing as sweet as a dream And the fiddle that climbs to the sky, With head 'neath the curtain she stares out—O hark! The music so strange in ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... freshened, the rain began to fall, and the sea rose so high that it was difficult to keep one's footing on the deck. I have spoken of our concerts. We were indeed a musical ship's company, and cheered our way into exile with the fiddle, the accordion, and the songs of all nations. Good, bad, or indifferent—Scottish, English, Irish, Russian, German or Norse,—the songs were received with generous applause. Once or twice, a recitation, very spiritedly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mr. Salter was an odd character. Not content with serving dishes of coffee, nor with drawing people's teeth and cutting their hair, he indulged in attempts at fiddle-playing and set up a ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... see them on that day. They said it was the best day of their year. It was a cold day, with much ice and snow. They had a good dinner and after dinner the soldiers danced. On New Year's Day, 1805, they fired off all their guns. The captains let the soldiers go to the Mandan camp. They took their fiddle and danced for the Indians. One soldier danced on his hands with his head down. The Indians liked this dancing very much. They gave the soldiers some ...
— The Bird-Woman of the Lewis and Clark Expedition • Katherine Chandler
... had grown dark and Tonio Kroeger was sitting in his room, there was noise and bustle again on the road and in the house. The picnickers were returning; yes, and from the direction of Elsinore new guests came by bicycle and carriage, and already one could hear in the room below a fiddle tuning up and a clarinet executing nasal runs by way of practice ... Everything promised to make ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... passed from England into Wales, accompanied by certain other lords and attendants. At the passage of Coed Grono, at the entrance into the woods, he dismissed his attendants and pursued his journey undefended, preceded by a minstrel and a singer, the one accompanying the other on the fiddle. ["Tibicinem praeviens habens et precentorem cantilenae ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... belle of the evening. She treated the suitors for the pleasure of the next set with becoming ease and suavity of manner; she knew her worth, and managed accordingly. When the favoured gallant stood by her side waiting for the rudely scraped tune from a screeching fiddle, satisfaction, joy, and triumph over his rivals were pictured on ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... affirmative, and softly discharged herself of her familiar phrase, 'Turn and turn about; one off, one on.' But she spoke so tremulously that she felt called upon to add, 'which fiddle-strings is weakness to expredge ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Gloomer had time-tabled himself all over the Universe, trying to close in on a Climate that would put him on his Feet and keep him Fit as a Fiddle. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... is the pride O' chaps an' maidens vur an' wide; They can't keep up a merry tide, But Bob is in the middle. If merry Bob do come avore ye, He'll zing a zong, or tell a story; But if you'd zee en in his glory, Jist let en have a fiddle. ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... the middle of the circle. And the voice grew, not so much in loudness as in sweetness (though it grew louder, too), till it was so sweet that you wanted to cry with pleasure just at the sound of it. It was like nightingales, and the sea, and the fiddle, and the voice of your mother when you have been a long time away, and she meets you at the door when ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... adorns the choir, and under each of the sixty-eight seats are carved misereres, making a larger collection than any other in the country. The subjects range from a horrible representation of the devil with a second face in the middle of his body to humorous pictures of a cat playing a fiddle, and a scold on her way to the ducking-stool in a wheel-barrow, gripping with one hand the ear of the man ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... you dancing now, O chimney-sweeps of Cheltenham, And why are you singing of a May that is fled?— O, there's music to be born, though we pluck the old fiddle-strings, And a world's May awaking where the ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... he would make eyes about it, and then give you a little picture fit to adorn a boudoir. He does every thing with a flourish. If he has never painted Nero performing that celebrated violin-solo over Rome, it is because he despaired of conveying an idea of the tremulous flourish of the fiddle-bow. He reads nature, and translates her, without understanding her. He will prove to you that the cattle of Rosa Bonheur are those of the fields, while he will object to Landseer that his beasts are those of the guinea cattle-show. He blows up grand ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... the picture of health. He was tall, broad, of fair complexion, had sandy hair and blue eyes, and, as he drank his tea, he looked as fit as a fiddle. ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... "Fine's a fiddle-string," replied Bokes. "We done got out all right, I reckon;" and it was plain that he had not taken notice that the schooner was no longer ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... a nachrul sport," complained Ricks. "That's your trouble. When the last fight was on, you set on the fence and listened at a' ole idiot scrapin' a fiddle down ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... with their usual game of drilling every one that they were able to muster for soldiers, after the fashion of Captain Brown's 'rifle practice,' or marching up and down the decks to the strains of Jem Butt's fiddle playing 'Tommy make room for your Uncle,' accompanied by the somewhat discordant noise of their own drums. These amusements after sunset, and scrubbing decks and working at the pumps before sunrise, give us all the much-needed exercise it is impossible ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... child and the stranger resumed their journey; and, by and by, they came to a house by the roadside, where some people were making merry. Young men and rosy-cheeked girls, with smiles on their faces, were dancing to the sound of a fiddle. ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... use is a man who dawdles away his time on a fiddle; of what benefit is he to mankind? Do fiddlers build cities? Do they delve into the earth for precious metals? Do they sow the seed and harvest the grain? No, no; they are ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa |
