"Fiddling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a squeaking fiddle roused Forester from his reverie; he looked up, and saw a thin, pale man fiddling to a set of dancing dogs, that he was exhibiting upon the flags, for the amusement of a crowd of men, women, and children. It was a deplorable spectacle; the dogs appeared so wretched, in the midst of the merriment of the spectators, that Forester's ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... When you see the people of this republic banishing and murdering their best and ablest citizens, dissipating the public treasure with the most senseless extravagance, and spending their whole time, as spectators or actors, in playing, fiddling, dancing, and singing, does it not, my lord, strike your imagination with the image of a sort of complex Nero? And does it not strike you with the greater horror, when you observe, not one man only, but a whole city, grown drunk with ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and candles were expensive), "it is a great sin and shame—the lad is neither crooked nor misshapen—the Lord has done well enough by him, Heaven knows; and yet never a stroke of work has he done since his poor father went out of the world as naked as he came into it. A shiftless, fiddling, and galavanting set they have always been, and me then as has only this one lass, givin' her away, with my eyes wide ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... him 50 cents till early in the mornin. I told him I'd probly send it round to him before he retired to his virtoous couch, but if I didn't he might look for it next fall, as soon as I cut my corn. The Orchestry was now fiddling with all their might, & as the peple didn't understan anything about it they applaudid versifrussly. Presently, Old Ed cum out. The play was Otheller or More of Veniss. Otheller was writ by Wm. Shakspeer. The scene is laid in Veniss. Otheller was a likely man & was ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... there any sound except the throbbing of their machinery, and a fairy fiddling of unseen crickets, which seemed to make the silence more intense, under the great sparkling dome ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and nodded, and the doctor stopped short at the railings, and grinned up in return, and threw out his arms to express surprise, and then snapped his fingers, and cut a little caper, as though he would say—'Now, you're come back—we'll have fun and fiddling again.' And forthwith he began to bawl his enquiries and salutations. But Devereux called him up peremptorily, for he wanted to hear the news—especially all about the Walsinghams. And up came Toole, and they had a great shaking of hands, and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... that moment he heard a tap at the door, and opening it, Lawrence was standing on the threshold. He entered, taking off his cap and loosening his heavy uniform greatcoat. Once he had been a handsome fellow, but he had danced too long to the devil's fiddling, and that ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... was found ready to brave all this danger in the endeavour to discover the secret. It may be remembered with what courage and determination the founder of the Foley family introduced the manufacture of nails into England. He went into the Danemora mine district, near Upsala in Sweden, fiddling his way among the miners; and after making two voyages, he at last wrested from them the secret of making nails, and introduced the new industry into the Staffordshire district.[4] The courage of John ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... you come to the door and ring, instead of fiddling out there in the cold!" demanded Burns. "Do you think we're heathen, to shut anybody out ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... they had; fiddling, dancing, fun, and patriotism was the order of the day. In the evening, however, the entertainments were varied by the delivery of a sermon and other religious exercises in the school-house by a young Baptist clergyman, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... was not necessary to its felicity after death, I determined to give a portion of my worldly goods toward the building of a light-house on the Norway coast, for which purpose, I heard it averred, this man's performances were given; and I went to the building where the fiddling was to be, to see if it were done with ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... you could, almost," replied Neroda, smiling. "I, who had been a concert master in Italy, was only too glad to get three dollars for fiddling from eight in the evening until three in the morning; but they were happy nights, because I was young and strong and full of hope and loved my fiddle. Sometimes, when I am leading the band in my fine uniform, I long to take the instrument away from one of the bandsmen ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... Thus, while the patriotic author is weeping and howling in prose, in blank verse, and in rhyme, and collecting the drops of public sorrow into his volume, as into a lachrymal vase, it is more than probable his fellow-citizens are eating and drinking, fiddling and dancing, as utterly ignorant of the bitter lamentations made in their name as are those men of straw, John Doe and Richard Roe, of the plaintiffs for whom they are generously pleased to ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... fiddling with his hat and staring hard at a pile of old ties just outside the window. He raised his head, and regarded her steadily. It was beginning to occur to him that there was a good deal to this Miss Georgie, under that offhand, ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... and one hears bowling of ninepin alleys half the night through our walks up and down the street; and talks aloud, and sees the stars shoot in the high heaven. The foreign musicians, who wend their way homeward toward midnight, go fiddling along the street to their quarters, and the whole neighborhood runs to the window. The extra posts arrive later, and the horses neigh. One lies by the noise in the window and droops asleep. The post-horns awake him and the whole starry heaven hath spread itself open. O God! ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... of this fix, I'll blow the whole shooting match," he promised himself, holding the glass beneath the faucet and fiddling nervously with the valves. For a moment he fancied the tank must be empty, for nothing came of his efforts. Then abruptly the fixture seemed to explode. "A geyser!" he cried, blinded with the dash of carbonated water and syrup in his face, while he fumbled ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... come in; he had been doing his duty (I could swear by his stern jaw), and making MacCailein Mor writhe to the flame of a conscience revived. There was a constraint on the company for some minutes, on no one more than Argile, who sat propped up on his bolsters, and, fiddling with long thin fingers with the fringes of his coverlet, looked every way but in the eyes of M'Iver or myself. I can swear John was glad enough to escape their glance. He was as little at ease as his master, made all the fuss he could with his bottle, and drank ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... in Three against the World (CHAPMAN AND HALL) colours up life with lavish brush. We have a returned convict who fiddles in the rain for the benefit of dancing village children; we have impresarios who stand at the doors of inns and hear him thus fiddling; an untidy heroine who speaks in gasps and gurglings; and a lover who goes to literary parties in London and therefore (the inference is implied by the author) falls in love with two ladies at once. Such a novel is refreshing after the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... pause here to say a few words about Sinfi Lovell. Some of my readers must have already recognised her as a famous character in bohemian circles. Sinfi's father was a 'Griengro,' that is to say, a horse-dealer. She was, indeed, none other than that 'Fiddling Sinfi' who became famous in many parts of England and Wales as a violinist, and also as the only performer on the old Welsh stringed instrument called the 'crwth,' or cruth. Most Gypsies are musical, but Sinfi was a genuine ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... about thirty men and women were making the ground quake and the woods ring with their unrestrained jollity. Marc Antony was rattling away at the bones, Nero fiddling as if Rome were burning, and Hannibal clawing at a banjo as if the fate of Carthage hung on its strings. Napoleon, as young and as lean as when he mounted the bridge of Lodi, with the battle-smoke ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... was bound to have a rum shop and a sailor's boarding-house under my nose. There'll be a crowd of men hanging round and fiddling and carousing half the night. I don't see what's getting into Boston! Places that were good enough twenty year ago are only fit for tramps, and decent people have to get out of the way, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... of yours who looks as if she had just come out of the wash, and your sweet-smiling grandmother who is always fiddling with knitting-pins—" ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... time; for over our heads, sailing very comfortably through the windy stars, was the ship that had passed the summer in landlord's field. Her port-holes and her bay-window were blazing with lights, and there was a noise of singing and fiddling on her decks. "He's gone!" shouted landlord above the storm, "and he's taken half the village with him." I could only nod in answer, not having lungs ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... me, Jane," she said, "and leave off fiddling with those horrid, detestable feathers. When—when one is quite wretched, what do feathers matter? I have come home to ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... devil. Thus, by a bloodless victory, might they accomplish the chief object of their adventure—the rescue of their little master; though, to the Fighting Nigger's taste, a victory without blood were but as a dram without alcohol, gingerbread without ginger, dancing without fiddling—insipid entertainment. This brilliant stratagem, smacking more of Burlman Reynolds's lively fancy than of the Fighting Nigger's slower judgment, was another thought scarce worth the second thinking. After all their trouble, they might gain the ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... now; that glass was warming.— You rascal! limber your lazy feet! We must be fiddling and performing For supper and bed, or starve in the street.— Not a very gay life to lead, you think? But soon we shall go where lodgings are free, And the sleepers need neither victuals nor drink:— The sooner, the better for ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... Though fortune's road be rough an' hilly To every fiddling, rhyming billie, We never heed, But tak' it like the unback'd filly, Proud o' ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... must show your zeal, Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole, And nip each softling of a wee white mouse, 10 Weke, weke, that's crept to keep him company! Aha, you know your betters! Then, you'll take Your hand away that's fiddling on my throat, And please to know me likewise. Who am I? Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friend 15 Three streets off—he's a certain ... how d'ye call? Master—a ... Cosimo of the Medici, I' the house that caps the corner. Boh! you were best! Remember and tell me, the day you're hanged, How ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... better now; that glass was warming.— You rascal! limber your lazy feet I We must be fiddling and performing For supper and bed, or starve in the street.— Not a very gay life to lead, you think? But soon we shall go where lodgings are free, And the sleepers need neither victuals nor drink;— The sooner, the better ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... o'clock sharp she was still in Norfolk Street, Strand, inside an A.B.C. shop, sipping cold coffee opposite a grotesque old man who was fiddling ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... and you would not fancy there was a green or habitable spot in a universe thus awfully lighted up. And yet it is by the blaze of such a conflagration, to which the fire of Rome was but a spark, that we do all our fiddling, and hold domestic tea-parties at the ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... these sportive plains, and under this genial sun, where at this instant all flesh is running out piping, fiddling, and dancing to the vintage, and every step that's taken, the judgment is surprised by the imagination, I defy, notwithstanding all that has been said upon straight lines (Vid. Vol. III.) in sundry ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... enormous damage had been wrought. It must be pointed out, however, that the mischief done by our men was in no way authorised—was, in fact, against express orders, whereas the British now burn our houses to the joyful fiddling of the London Times, and with a ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... office. The store owner was still lying motionless on his stretcher. Claire was fiddling with a telecast receiving set; she had just tuned out a lecture on Home Beautifications and had gotten the mid-section of a serial in which three couples were somewhat confused over just ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... the picture. "I mean, so why worry? You got a picture, right? You want me to turn the picture around? I can do that with a little fiddling around inside the set ...
— Something Will Turn Up • David Mason
... early friend and companion of Jefferson. He was a jovial young fellow noted for mimicry, practical jokes, fiddling and dancing. Jefferson's holidays were sometimes spent with Henry, and the two together would go off on hunting excursions of which each was passionately fond. Both were swift of foot and sound ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... prosaical fanatic who does the work; and the poet, if he tries to do it, is certain to put down his spade every five minutes, to look at the prospect, and pick flowers, and moralise on dead asses, till he ends a Neron malgre lui-meme, fiddling melodiously while Rome is burning. And perhaps this is the secret of Raleigh's failure. He is a fanatic, no doubt, a true knight-errant: but he is too much of a poet withal. The sense of beauty enthrals ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... or this time, that e'er she suld hae shook a limb on sic an errand. Better for her to hae been born a cripple, and carried frae door to door, like auld Bessie Bowie, begging bawbees, than to be a king's daughter, fiddling and flinging the gate she did. I hae often wondered that ony ane that ever bent a knee for the right purpose, should ever daur to crook a hough to fyke and fling at piper's wind and fiddler's squealing. And I bless God (with that singular ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... music." Again the same writer says: "Handell with his lousy crew, a great number of foreign fiddlers, had a performance for his own benefit at the theatre." One of the dons writes of the performance as follows: "This is an innovation; but every one paid his five shillings to try how a little fiddling would sit upon him. And, notwithstanding the barbarous and inhuman combination of such a parcel of unconscionable scamps, he [Handel] disposed of the most of ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... this reporter was traveling, as a non-fiddling, non-tooting member of the Philadelphia Orchestra, on a train that carried the organization on one ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... leave to go down to see their men. They were guided to their rooms by sounds of music and uproarious laughter. They found Le Duc seated on a three-legged stool on the top of a table fiddling away, while old Francois, three black women, Tom and Brown, were dancing in the strangest possible fashion, whirling round and round, kicking up their heels, and joining hands, while Jack lay on a bed at the farther end of the room, looking as if he longed to get up and ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... words she fell to thinking. Many things that had been dark to her suddenly became light. She seemed to see Royal Lee fiddling while the world was in travail, but beside him rose a vision of David in sailor's blue, ready to do his whole duty ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... music, and that sometimes he tired of cities and came down to Harvey to get the sunshine and prairie grass and the woods and the waters of his childhood into his soul. But the Captain waved the idea aside, "Nothing in the fiddling business, Grant—two dollars a day and find yourself, is all the best of 'em make," protested the Captain. "Let him do like I done—get at something sound and practical early in life and 'y gory, man—look at ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... a walk with you There's honor and instruction too; Yet here alone I care not to resort, Because I coarseness hate of every sort. This fiddling, shouting, skittling, I detest; I hate the tumult of the vulgar throng; They roar as by the evil one possess'd, And call it pleasure, call ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... arranged, such great profit may arise from a small degree of human reliance on oneself, and such, in particular, is the happy star of this trade of writing, that it should combine pleasure and profit to both parties, and be at once agreeable, like fiddling, and useful, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... snow on a summer meadow, a white silence fell from his imagination across that fiddling, jigging, gleaming atmosphere, and everywhere the dead sat around him, watching in a trance strange antics of the grimacing dead. Curiously, in these moods, he never thought of himself as dead. Alas! life was too cruel to release him so soon to ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... joke about them, too, I suppose," Quirk retorted. "An excellent subject for a joke—the safety of the country! A capital subject for a merry jest; Nero fiddling ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... come into the world with a fiddle in his hand," says Mrs. Warrington, with a toss of her head. "I am sure I hated the harpsichord when a chit at Kensington School, and only learned it to please my mamma. Say what you will, dear sir, I can not believe that this fiddling is ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... plain that all desire left me. I looked her all over, to which she made no objection, remarking as she pulled up her clothes, "Ah, you may look, I am as clean as any woman although I am what I am." I went on looking at, and fiddling her about, but no erection came. She gave an uneasy motion with her bum and said, "Oh! you are tickling me so, why don't you get on?" I said I did not want it yet, which so astonished her, that she sat upright, and looked at me and at my tool. Then she made me lay down ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... erected, and where shooting at targets with wooden darts, sham railway-trains and riding-horses, confectionery of every kind, beer of every name, strength, and colour, pipes, cigars, toys, gambling, organ-grinding, fiddling, dancing, &c., goes on incessantly. The great attraction, however, is the shooting at the bird, which occupies the attention of every Saxon, and is looked upon as the consummation of human invention and physical science. A great pole, nearly 80 feet high, is erected ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... therefore; up they came to Grumesby. That heard soon the highest of this land, and to the queen came tiding of Arthur the king, that he was come in safety, and his folk in prosperity. Then were in Britain joys enow! Here was fiddling and song, here was harping among, pipes and trumps sang there merrily. Poets there sung of Arthur the king, and of the great honour, that he had won. Folk came in concourse of many kind of land; wide ...
— Brut • Layamon
... "ta preacher is a goot feller after all, she will tance with her hern ainsel;" and fiddling his way up to him again, he danced a jig with Jehu, to the infinite amusement of us all. The familiarity which Mr Judd exhibited with the steps and the dance, convinced me that he must have often indulged in it ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... deliberate and punctilious. He took his time over his cigar and his whisky; he pulled out a suit-case from some nook or other and produced from it a truly gorgeous sleeping-suit of gaily-striped silk; it occupied him quite twenty minutes to get undressed and into this grandeur, and even then he lingered, fiddling about in carefully folding and arranging his garment. In the course of this, and in moving about the narrow cabin, he took apparently casual glances at Baxter and the Frenchman, and I saw from his satisfied, quiet smirk that each was ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... a sweet and rich discovery—that the adventures of the last ten days had been so real and meant so much to him. No man of action, leading a deep, full life of actual experience, felt the need of scribbling, painting, fiddling. "Glorious, by Jove!" he exclaimed between great puffs of smoke. "I've struck a fact!" He had been so busily creating these last days that he had lost the yearning to describe merely what others did. The children had caught him body and soul in their eternal world of ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... everlastingly! What are your occupations? Why, to hoard, and sell your souls for gain, that your heirs may squander and buy a hot place in hell! I am not one of your fashionable fine spoken mealy mouthed preachers: I tell you the plain truth. What are your pastimes? Cards and dice, fiddling and dancing, guzzling and guttling! Can you be saved by dice? No! Will the four knaves give you a passport to heaven? No! Can you fiddle yourself into a good birth among the sheep? No! You are goats, and goat like you may ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... overjoyed when the reinforcements did arrive. "Now we can really begin to work," he told me. "Now we can begin to fight back in a big way. No more of this sneaking around, doing fiddling little jobs—" ...
— The Man Who Played to Lose • Laurence Mark Janifer
... for the evening, instead of a rival organization from Wells, which the Colonel often imported upon private and public occasions. Jerry Dugan was getting old, too, like the Judge and the Honourable Joe. He had not lost the peculiar wail and lilt from his fiddling, but he had made few recent additions to his repertoire. Just now the band concert in front of Odd Fellows' Hall was winding up with his old favourite: "A Day on ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... being a wire over the cork for some purpose or other, or maybe just to look neat, we had some fight to get it torn away, but at last we succeeded. I had turned about for a jug, and the wife was rummaging for the screw, while Benjie was fiddling away with his fingers at the cork—Save us! all at once it gave a thud like thunder, driving the cork over poor Benjie's head, while it squirted there-up in his eyes like a fire-engine, and I had only just time to throw down the jug, and up with the bottle to my mouth. Luckily, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... said Pat. "I was the 'cello myself, fiddling with a ruler on me own knees, double pedalling with two knees! I had no thought for flutes. Ye made the most noise, I'll say that ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... forty—and very far from good-looking. The people here said that he was the ugliest man, and the most good-natured, that ever lived. He played on the fiddle, sang, and wrote poetry. His habits were odd and desultory. He would sometimes sit all day in his room writing, singing, and fiddling, and go out at night for a walk. An eccentric man! He was by no means a millionaire, but he had a modicum bonum, you understand—a trifle more than half a million of francs. He consulted his stockbroker about investing this money in foreign stocks, ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... &c. &c. The men of harmony were all acquiescence—every instrument was tuned and toned, and, striking up one of their most ambrosial airs, the whole band followed the Count to the lady's apartment. At their head was the first fiddler, who, bowing and fiddling at the same moment, headed his troop and advanced up the room. Death and discord!—it was the Marquis himself, who was on a serenading party in the country, while his spouse had run away from town. The rest may be imagined—but, first of all, the lady tried to persuade him that she was ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... such as the Cornwall case a number of years before under their veneer in a way scarcely intended by nature, a thing good Mrs Grundy, as the law stands, was terribly down on though not for the reason they thought they were probably whatever it was except women chiefly who were always fiddling more or less at one another it being largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it. Ladies who like distinctive underclothing should, and every welltailored man must, trying to make the gap wider between them by innuendo and give more of a genuine ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... success. Even the intensely critical small fry dancing on the pavement without to the scraping and fiddling of the string band, had to admit that. So far as they were concerned it was all right, but what shall we say of the guests within? They who glided easily over the canvassed floors, bowed, and scraped and simpered, "just like the big folks on ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... wonderful than a village school; and that this I had indeed learned well, but on the cobbler's bench. "Surely Yvon has told you, mademoiselle, of our good shoemaker, and how he taught me his trade, that I might practise it at times when there is no fiddling needed?" I spoke cheerfully, but let it be seen that I was not in jest. A little pale, she looked from one of us to the other, ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... I, evasively, casting down my eyes, and fiddling uneasily with one of the buttons of his coat, "it is hardly a question of 'like,' is it? I do not imagine that you like it much yourself?—one cannot always be thinking ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... simply: I need not tell the author of "Elder Conklin" that sweetness and simplicity of expression take more out of one than fiddling harmonics on one string. I felt it my duty to write, but it has been a distressing one. It would have been better for me to have lain in the brown grass on the cliff, or to have walked slowly by the sea. It would have been kinder ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... under Mrs. Willis, and tea and coffee and chocolate steaming in the silver, and ale for the gentlemen if they preferred, came the prayers and more carols in the big drawing-room. And then music in the big house, or perhaps a ride afield to greet the neighbours, and fiddling and dancing in the two big quarters, Hank's and Johnson's, when the tables were cleared after the bountiful feast Mr. Carvel was wont to give them. There was no stint, my dears,—naught but good cheer and praising God in sheer happiness at ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in single file, measured step, just so far apart, came the eight men from the bunk-house—Long Bill, Big Jim, Fiddling Boss, Jasper Kemp, Fade-away Forbes, Stocky, Croaker, and Fudge; and behind them, looking like a scared rabbit, Mom Wallis scuttled into the back seat and sank out of sight. The eight men, however, ranged themselves across the front of the room on the recitation-bench, directly in front of the platform, ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... of the Romany were burning. An idea had just come into his brain. Was it through his fiddling that he was going to find a way to deal with this Gorgio, who had come between him ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... gravity. Then came the Schuetzhallen, where the marksmen stationed themselves three feet from the target and cracked away at it with no other visible effect than that produced on a monkey doing its tricks close by: at every shot the poor little creature stopped fiddling and looked over its shoulder with a distressed air of "If I'm not hit this time!" Hand-organs, penny trumpets and rattles quite drowned the voice of a street-songstress with a large assortment of vocal music before her, from which she was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... No amount of fiddling and dancing, however, could quite drown apprehension concerning the safety of the post and the security of the English hold upon the great region over which this fort and its distant neighbors stood sentinel. Thousands of square miles of territory ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... that had been there. He sighed, and, striking a chord, sang out boldly the old air from the Trovatore, "Ah, che la morte ognora e tarda nel venir." Every blind fiddler in the streets plays it, though he would be sufficiently scared if death came any the quicker for his fiddling. But old and worn as it is it has a strain of passion in it, and Nino threw more fire and voice into the ring of it than ever did famous old Boccarde, when he sang it at the first performance of the opera, thirty and odd years ago. As he played the ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... there were great iron lamps swung on chains across the street, so that the street itself was almost as bright as day, and Dorothy thought she recognized it as a place she had once read about where nobody but astrologers lived. There was a confused sound of fiddling going on somewhere, and as Dorothy walked along she could hear a scuffling noise inside the houses as if the inhabitants were dancing about on sanded floors. Presently, as she turned a corner, she came upon a number of storks who were dancing ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... harping on the merits of the horse he sold Lord Bearwarden in the Park. Of course half the party are talking of hunting, the other half of racing, soldiering, and women. "He'd have been thrown away on most of the fellows we know. He wants a good man on his back, for if you keep him fiddling behind, it breaks his heart. I always said you ought to have him—you or Mr. Stanmore. He's just the sort for both of you. I'm sorry to hear yours are all coming up at Tattersall's," adds Tom, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... man alive has seen me, But women hear me play, Sometimes at door or window, Fiddling the souls away— The child's soul and the colleen's ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... to the Mermaid Inn, One dark May night, Fiddling a tune that quelled our motley din, With quaint delight, It haunts me yet, as old lost airs will do, A phantom strain: Look for me once, lest I should look for you, ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... first of the three was fiddling there In the glow of evening pallid, Playing a wild and passionate air, The ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... smartly!" urged Dick; "the matches are burning much more rapidly than I anticipated; and if we are not pretty lively we shall be caught by the first explosions. That's your sort; that will do, Parsons, don't stand there fiddling with that match, it is burning all right. Now, lads, away you go; over with you; ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... endangering the state's rights. It is, nevertheless, decided that Kate, and Nan, and Dorothy, and Webster, and Clay, and such like young folks, may go to "settings up" and funerals, but strictly abstain from all fandangoes. Dad Daniel and his brother deacons cannot countenance such fiddling and dancing, such break-downs, and shoutings, and whirlings, and flouncing and frilling, and gay ribboning, as generally make up the evening's merriment at these fandangoes, so prevalent on neighbouring plantations about Christmas time. "Da don' mount to no good!" Daniel says, with ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... her. "That's where it is," he said: "I've done nothing for your people. It's all very well to go playing and playing, but that's not doing anything; and, if he had done nothing, there would ha' been no fiddling. You understand me, miss, I know: work comes before music, and makes the soul of it; it's not the music that makes the doing. I'm a poor hand at saying without my fiddle, miss: ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... father, plenty of whisky being drunk, and the men racing recklessly along the narrow bridle-paths, for there were few roads or wheeled vehicles in the backwoods. At the bride's house the ceremony was performed, and then a huge dinner was eaten, after which the fiddling and dancing began, and were continued all the afternoon, and most of the night as well. A party of girls stole off the bride and put her to bed in the loft above; and a party of young men then performed the like service for the groom. The fun was hearty and coarse, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Wednesday, and Artillery Election on the Monday following, at which time lilacs were in bloom and 'lection buns were in order; Fourth of July, when strawberries were just going out; and Commencement, a grand time of feasting, fiddling, dancing, jollity, not to mention drunkenness and fighting, on the classic green of Cambridge. This was the season of melons and peaches. That is the way our boyhood chronicles events. It was odd that the literary festival ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... third of the party. There was the poodle. There was Pompey. There was myself. We were three. Thus it is said there were originally but three Furies—Melty, Nimmy, and Hetty—Meditation, Memory, and Fiddling. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... "I have done my fiddling so long under Vesuvius, that I have almost forgotten to play, and can only wait for the eruption and think it long of coming," he wrote; and shortly after, in December 1894, it came and smote him down to ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... opinion is that the head of the state, carrying out the gigantic policy of his predecessors, believes: 'That that government governs best that gives the greatest amount of fiddling to the greatest amount of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and you shall see how I'll come out! I'll hold up my head with the best of them. (Puts on his hat with an air, and struts up and down the room.) I'll give my lessons in the great concert-room, and won't I smoke away at the best puyke varinas—and, when you catch me again fiddling at the penny-hop, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... divisions, the petty subjects which rouse the ire of the orthodox mind, the persistent quibbling over insignificant details of faith and service, have strained rationalistic patience to the breaking-point. The Church has been found fiddling whilst ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... of politics, concealed the devastating wit of a Moliere; his surviving epigrams are truly stupendous. And Beethoven, after soaring to the heights of tragedy in the first movement of the Fifth Symphony, turned to the sardonic bull-fiddling ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... over the stove that the English service in the hotel is at ten o'clock. But the announcement is purely speculative. The landlord "hopes" there will be service, and plunges again into the kitchen. Profane sounds of fiddling and dancing reach the ear from an outbuilding where the guides and the maids are celebrating the day by a dance. The spinster is in earnest, but the insuperable difficulty lies in the non-existence of a parson. The Indian civilian suggests that we should adopt the naval usage, and ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... upon her shoulders most of the laundering. Osborn said "Clever kid" when he knew, but it did not impress him much; his feeling about it was vague. Did he not work all day himself? All this fiddling donkey-work with which women occupied themselves at home—he dismissed it. Always, when he returned, by the dining-room fire, in an easy chair and a decent frock, sat Marie, sweet and leisured. It was evident that her household ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... years since, so much good company came to take its pleasure. Is it possible, that in the past century, gentlefolks of the first rank (as I read lately in a lecture on George II. in the Cornhill Magazine) assembled here and entertained each other with gaming, dancing, fiddling, and tea? There are fiddlers, harpers, and trumpeters performing at this moment in a weak little old balcony, but where is the fine company? Where are the earls, duchesses, bishops, and magnificent embroidered gamesters? A half-dozen of children ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... plantation were permitted to "frolic" whenever they wanted to and for as long a time as they wanted to. The master gave them all of the whiskey that they desired. One of the main times for a frolic was during a corn shucking. At each frolic there was dancing, fiddling, and eating. The next morning, however all had to be prepared to report as ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... clothing driving the oxen; a wife in butternut-colored clothing riding in the wagon, holding a butternut baby, and seventeen butternut children running promiscuously about the establishment; all are barefooted, dusty, and smell unpleasantly. (All these circumstances are expressed by pretty rapid fiddling for some minutes, winding up with a puff from the orpheclide played by an intoxicated Teuton with an atrocious breath—it is impossible to misunderstand the description.) Now rises o'er the plains, in mellifluous accents, the grand ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... he was catholic in granting them—his mistress in good-natured tolerance acceding to requests which promised many forgetful hours at a time when the land was shadowed by war. So it happened that Jeff was often at the more pretending residences of the neighborhood, sometimes fiddling in the detached kitchen of a Southern mansion to the shuffle of heavy feet, again in the lighted parlor, especially when Confederate troops were quartered near. It was then that his strains took on their most inspiring ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... of a magic fiddle and a wonderworking fiddler was strongly rooted in the popular imagination of many peoples, through many ages. Typical illustrations are the Wonderful Musician of Grimm's Fairy Tales, whose fiddling attracted man and beast, and the lad of Norse folk-lore who won a fiddle that could make people dance to any tune he chose. In Norway the traditional violin teacher is the cascade-haunting musical genius Fossegrim, who, when suitably propitiated, seizes the right hand of one that ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... aided not a little, and his fiddle was in constant requisition to keep up their spirits. When not engaged in playing for the amusement of the men, he employed himself in fiddling to little True Blue, whom Tom Snell had lately undertaken to instruct in dancing a hornpipe. No more apt ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... alcoholic commodities now practically unprocurable, and returned in triumph to the couple's furnished room. There they entertained him with two bottles of cointreau and a stone demijohn of cornwhisky. "Touched ... filial affection ... even drank the cointreau—fiddling stuff, no wonder it was still available in the drought ... better son ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... with sand. About twenty years ago a brig was wrecked near by, and three or four fishermen were put to watch the deserted hulk through the darkness. At midnight they saw sitting on a stone at the cave's mouth two red-capped fiddlers fiddling with all their might. The men fled. A great crowd of villagers rushed down to the cave to see the fiddlers, but ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... what little there was, is charged with alkali but there is no better anywhere near; a great many camped hear [sic] to-night, it had the appearance of a large town, & in a tent near by ours, they were fiddling & dancing, nearly all night; this was the first dancing I had seen on the plains, although I had seen some choose partners on the Steamboat, for the first sett on the plains, but there had been so much sickness on the ...
— Across the Plains to California in 1852 - Journal of Mrs. Lodisa Frizzell • Lodisa Frizell
... years old, wrote thus in the middle of this century, of the church of her youth: "After awhile there was a bass-viol Introduced and brought into meeting and did not suit the Old people; one Old Gentleman got up, took his hat off the peg and marched off. Said they had begun fiddling and there would be dancing soon." Another church-member, in derisive opposition to a clarinet which had been "voted into the choir," brought into meeting a fish-horn, which he blew loud and long to ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... leafless decaying branches and creepers against the moonlit sky—a sad sight: but music enough we had to cheer us on our way. We did not hear the howl of a monkey, nor the yell of a tiger-cat, common enough on the mountains which lay in front of us; but of harping, fiddling, humming, drumming, croaking, clacking, snoring, screaming, hooting, from cicadas, toads, birds, and what not, there was a concert at every step, which made the glens ring again, as the Brocken might ring on ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... puzzle over a sewing machine after labouring with too easily diagnosed motor troubles, or to restore a bit of marquetry in a table, or play at a feat of locksmithing. The First-Class Garage urged him to quit fiddling round and become its foreman, but this glittering offer he refused. It was too much like settling ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... talk and can lead to nothing, fair sir," said he, turning away and fiddling with the keys of his strong boxes. "Yet I have no wish to be hard on you. Take my outside price, which ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... no prude, and she certainly was no saint. Twice a week there was the sound of fiddling and dancing feet in a certain wooden hall that stood near the river; and there, with the men and women of the worldly sort, Ann and her sister danced. It was their amusement; they had no other except the idle talking and laughing that went on over the table at which Ann sold her home-brewed ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... with the quarter-staff, a wrestling match, running matches, a contest of singing among "a dozen blushing maidens," and of fiddling among twenty bold musicians: and the day is wound up with a ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... tiger-rush Locasto threw himself on his man. There was no preliminary fiddling here; they were out for blood, and the sooner they wallowed in it the better. Right and left he struck with mighty swings that would have felled an ox, but the Jam-wagon was too quick for him. Twice he ducked in time to avoid a furious blow, and, before Locasto could ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... pitch dark, but as I opened the door there was light enough to see Father's nightdress as he lay on the floor under the safe, just as on that first awful night. Then I think I must have gone mad for a moment." She stopped and shuddered. My eyes lit on Sergeant Daw, still fiddling in an aimless way with the revolver. Mindful of my work with the ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... were all merry; why not, to be sure, That O'Hanlon got inside of Phadrig Crohoore; And they all talked and laughed, the length of the table, Aiting and drinking while they were able— With the piping and fiddling, and roaring like thunder, Och! you'd think your head fairly was splitting asunder; And the priest shouted, "Silence, ye blabblers, agin," And he took up his prayer-book and was going to begin, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... me.' JOHNSON, (laughing) 'No, Sir; it must be born with a man to be contented to take up with little things. Women have a great advantage that they may take up with little things, without disgracing themselves: a man cannot, except with fiddling. Had I learnt to fiddle, I should have done nothing else[680].' BOSWELL. 'Pray, Sir, did you ever play on any musical instrument?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir. I once bought me a flagelet; but I never made out a tune.' BOSWELL. 'A flagelet, Sir!—so small an ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... of prison in 1858, Peace resumed his fiddling, but it was now no more than a musical accompaniment to burglary. This had become the serious business of Peace's life, to be pursued, should necessity arise, even to the peril of men's lives. His operations extended beyond the bounds of his native town. ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... the mate and boatswain down below, Bramble and I, now that there was no chance of our being seen by the sentinels, ascended the tower. It commanded a view of the town and harbor. We looked down upon the main street—all was mirth and revelry; fiddling and dancing and singing were to be heard from more than one house; women in the street laughing, and now and then running and screaming when ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... wood. They're fiddling," he explained; "three fiddlers fiddling upon fiddles.... There's going to be a dance, you know," old dog Spot continued. "And of course nobody cares ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Rome said Nero: "If to smoke you turn I shall not cease to fiddle while you burn." To Nero Rome replied: "Pray do your worst, 'Tis my excuse that you were fiddling first." ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... at once a comprehensive code of game laws, and clean her house in one siege, instead of fiddling and fussing with all these matters one by one, through a series of ten long, weary years. The time for puttering with game protection has gone by. It is now time to make short cuts to comprehensive results, and save the game ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... superiority, that conscious patronage, as now, when Uncle Clem, breaking off his conversation with the invalid in the next room about the price of mutton on the hoof and the chances of the Democrats' getting in again, stopped fiddling with his thick plated watch chain and grinned across at big Tom to fling his undeviating flower ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... quietly. "I didn't mean that. The clowns in the circus represent amusing cads. Some of them are awfully clever, too," he added, turning the subject. "Some of those fiddling fellows are extraordinary. They really play very decently. They must have a lot of talent, when you think of all the different things they do besides their feats of strength—they act, and play the fiddle, and sing, ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... with musical criticisms. The fiddling did not suit him at all. It was too quick, or else it was too slow. He failed to perceive how any one could tolerate such music even in the infernal regions, and he expressed himself in plain words to that effect. In fact, he damned the ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... a smile. Even now, from the windows of the east wing, there burst, suddenly, the sound of fiddling, a masterly fiddling inspired by infernal passion, controlled by divine technique. It was his uncle, Sir Frederick, and he wished him at the devil. If all accounts were true, Sir Frederick, when not actually fiddling, was going there with a celerity that left nothing to be desired; he was, if ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... architecture, navigation, etc., to wise men, may perchance be in the right, that they were invented by wise men; but they were not invented by wise men, as wise men; for wisdom does not teach our fingers, but our minds: fiddling and dancing, arms and fortifications, were the works of luxury and discord; but wisdom instructs us in the way of nature, and in the arts of unity and concord; not in the instruments, but in the government of life; nor to make us live only, but to live happily. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... incapable of being sung to, in any but a trivial manner, till these convulsive agonies and wild revolutionary overturnings readjust themselves? Intelligible word of command, not musical psalmody and fiddling, is possible in this fell storm of battle. Beyond all ages, our Age admonishes whatsoever thinking or writing man it has: Oh, speak to me some wise intelligible speech; your wise meaning in the shortest and clearest way; behold I am dying ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle |
