"Flute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... last night that the ghost of Jezebel and I danced a fandango together in the graveyard up yonder, while the Devil himself sat cross-legged on old Daniel Root's tombstone and blew on a dry, dusty shank-bone by way of a flute. And now" (here he swore a terrific oath) "you know the worst that is to be known, with only this to say: if ever a man sets foot upon Pig and Sow Point again after nightfall to interfere with the Devil's sport and mine, hell suffer for ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... wandering—but it was an eye sparkling, petulant, and imperious, of high claims, and large exactions—an eye full of brisk challenges and sharp responses, an eye of satisfied strength and confident ascendancy—speaking, not like the dulcet appeal of a mellow flute, but like the trumpet stop of some powerful party organ. The cornea was perhaps a shade sallow or so, even verging on the Widow's favourite Yellow—(for the Widow, like some modern decorative artists, was sweet upon all tawny tints, from the most delicate buff to the most flamboyant Orange)—but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... in the early morn to listen to the small bird singing on the tree. No sound of voice or flute is like to the bird's song; there is something in it distinct and separate from all other notes. The throat of woman gives forth a more perfect music, and the organ is the glory of man's soul. The ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... out on the table a card-case, a sketch-book, two pencils, a bottle of wine, a cup, a piece of bread, a scrap of French newspaper, an old Secolo, a needle, some thread, and a flute—but no passport. ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... laughter, rarer than song; for women as a rule laugh too loudly, and the sound of their merriment partakes more of the nature of a goose's cackle than any other sort of natural melody. But this large, soft and silvery, was like a delicately subdued cadence played on a magic flute in the distance, and suggested nothing but sweetness; and at the sound of it Gervase started violently and turned sharply round upon his friend Murray with a look of wonderment ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... after rubbing them in the dirt! You got a whole meal for a couple of cents, a pair of red painted eggs like you saw at home at Easter, and tea in cups the size of egg-shells,—and you could go to sleep if you wanted to, on the couch of some Moorish cafe there, to the sound of a flute and ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... man—also a Scotchman. It is curious to note how numerous Scotchmen are in the wilds of North America. This specimen was diminutive and sharp. Moreover, he played the flute—an accomplishment of which he was so proud that he ordered out from England a flute of ebony, so elaborately enriched with silver keys that one's fingers ached to behold it. This beautiful instrument, like most other instruments of a delicate nature, found the climate too much for its constitution, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... him, amid peal after peal of flute-like laughter, while their father and mother rushed to his assistance, scolding and angry. But he calmed the parents by saying: "Let them be! they are simply wishing me good day. And besides, I must bear with them, you know, since, as our friend Beauchene ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... but also the texture of the resultant form will be very different. There will also be a similar difference in texture between the result of a piece of music played upon a violin and the same piece executed upon the flute. Again, the excellence of the performance has its effect, and there is a wonderful difference between the radiant beauty of the form produced by the work of a true artist, perfect alike in expression and execution, and ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... durable, because glazed so as to resist the rain. They used vegetable dyes of various colours—brown, purple, yellow, red, and black. Their baskets, made of the same material as their mats, were very beautiful. They had different kinds of musical instruments: one of these was a sort of flute, which was made resonant by the breath of the nostril; another was similar to Pandean pipes, and composed of reeds; and a third was a drum made out of a heavy log. Their mode of saluting was like that of the New ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... like all instruments, Now like a lonely flute; And now it is an angel's song That makes ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... the blue-penciled passage drew near. The voice quavered and broke; singer and orchestra stopped dead. The house roared. "Go on!" cried encouraging voices from gallery and pit. "Go on! Go on!" And the singer thus emboldened, and accompanied by one small piping flute, a ridiculous starveling of sound after all the blare that had preceded it, sang with a modest and deprecating air a line which fell very flat indeed—a mere nothing tagged from a nursery rhyme—obviously an importation. Stalls, pit, and gallery ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... may go on whistling till that flute bursts itself before I get a halfpenny," he remarked to himself in a tone of intense injury, eyeing the "flute" (which was really a penny whistle) anxiously as he rubbed it on his wet sleeve with a view to improving the notes. "All ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... is no mistaking his blackbird this time for the European species, though it is true there is nothing fluty or flute-like in the redwing's voice. The flute is mellow, while the "O-KA-LEE" of the starling is strong and sharply accented. The voice of the thrushes (and our robin and the European blackbird are thrushes) is flute-like. Hence the aptness of this ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... family, and for the first time enjoyed the pleasures, of highly-polished society. Mrs Courtenay was an admirable performer upon the harp; Miss Emma Courtenay, her niece, was a delightful pianist; and my host himself was no mean amateur upon the flute. Our evenings would pass quickly away, in reading Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine, Metastasio, or the modern writers of English literature after which we would remain till the night had far advanced, enjoying the beautiful compositions ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... the very act. She gave herself no affected airs, but when I requested it, not only concluded the song she was singing, but sang many others, in which I was able to accompany her. The old Captain has insisted upon my bringing my flute over, that I may accompany his Juliet upon the piano. He could not have done me a greater kindness, and I have no doubt that we shall get ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... home of school-boy life, With creaking stair and wind-swept hall, And, scarred by many a truant knife, Our old initials on the wall; Here rest—their keen vibrations mute— The shout of voices known so well, The ringing laugh, the wailing flute, The chiding ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... seeing nothing else, treating it in a hundred forms, exaggerating it, and so dazzling and overpowering his readers with it that escape is impossible. This he maintains to be equally the effect as Mr. Mell the usher plays the flute, as Tom Pinch enjoys or exposes his Pecksniff, as the guard blows his bugle while Tom rides to London, as Ruth Pinch crosses Fountain Court or makes the beefsteak pudding, as Jonas Chuzzlewit commits and returns from the murder, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... that portion of the Imperial Palace called the Seir-y[o]den; and upon these mattings were placed four tables of offerings to the Star-deities. Besides the customary food-offerings, there were placed upon these tables rice-wine, incense, vases of red lacquer containing flowers, a harp and flute, and a needle with five eyes, threaded with threads of five different colors. Black-lacquered oil-lamps were placed beside the tables, to illuminate the feast. In another part of the grounds a tub of water was so placed as to reflect the light of the Tanabata-stars; and the ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... as pleasure. I longed for a change: behold, a change was at hand! Then, to say truth, I was heartily glad of a pretence of escaping from a numerous cohort of folles amours, with Madame D'Anville at the head; and the very circumstance which men who play the German flute and fall in love, would have considered the most vexatious, I regarded ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and far into the night, and who were now shaking from their hair and garments the straw and chaff amid which they had slept. Above them, under the open gable of the barn, Daniel Nothafft was lying in the straw. With an absorbed and devout expression he was seeking to elicit a melody from a flute which one of the musicians ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... turtle-doves cooed plaintively to each other in their far-reaching, mournful tones, giving a minor note to the nocturnal concert. Now and then a fish sprang from the water and fell back with a splash, and the water itself kept up a soft babble like the notes of a living flute. ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... pianiste, but she also sang exceedingly well. My father possessed a chamber organ, Nesbitt owned a very sweet-toned violin from which he could extract the most wonderful music, and, lastly, I had learned to tootle fairly well upon the flute; therefore whenever we had visitors we were generally required to organise an impromptu concert for their benefit, as was the case on the evening in question. But at length the instruments fell silent, my mother and Nell bade us good night ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... falsified—picture the fall! Already you perceive the consequences: the mind is stimulated, the heart steps to a different measure, and the man is himself no longer. I have passionately studied myself—the true business of philosophy. I know my character as the musician knows the ventages of his flute. Should I return to Paris, I should ruin myself gambling; nay, I go further—I should break the heart ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was characterized by great condensation of thought and forcefulness of words and he consequently was unable to restrain himself easily but was often led to say what he did not wish, he used to bring in a flute-player, and from him, playing a low accompaniment, he would take his rhythm and time, or if even so he in some way fell out of measure, he would stop. This was the sort of man that attacked the government, and, by assuming no speech or act to be forbidden, in the ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... is divided as follows: composition, harmony, solfaing, singing, violin, violincello, harpsicord, organ, flute, hautboy, clarinette, French-horn, bassoon, trumpet, trombonne, serpent, preparation for singing, and declamation applicable ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... was going to teach Mrs. Mildini to be an actress. But they were constantly interrupted by Mr. Mildini, who was a funny darky, all blacked up. And then it appeared that Mr. Mildini could play on many instruments; one of them a long spoon, which he used as a flute. There was no end to that man's talents. And to think he had been so friendly and chatty ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... Oliver Wendell Holmes The Dark Man Nora Hopper Eurydice Francis William Bourdillon A Woman's Thought Richard Watson Gilder Laus Veneris Louise Chandler Moulton Adonais Will Wallace Harney Face to Face Frances Cochrane Ashore Laurence Hope Khristna and His Flute Laurence Hope Impenitentia Ultima Ernest Dowson Non Sum Quails Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae Ernest Dowson Quid non Speremus, Amantes? Ernest Dowson "So Sweet Love Seemed" Robert Bridges An Old Tune Andrew ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... his song. It was of that day when the pipings of love's flute startled for the first time the hushed air of the Vrinda forest. The shepherd women did not know who was the player or whence came the music. Sometimes it seemed to come from the heart of the south wind, and sometimes from the straying ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... his high penny-flute voice when such a thing happened. "I see where the honorable court of appeals has disagreed with me agin. Well, they've still got quite a piece to go yit before they ketch up with the number of times ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... good heart about life when I was younger; to tell me how dangers are most portentous on a distant sight; and how the good in a man's spirit will not suffer itself to be overlaid, and rarely or never deserts him in the hour of need. But we are all for tootling on the sentimental flute in literature; and not a man among us will go to the head of the march to sound ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... below the bed he pulled a box from which he drew a handsome flute. 'Ye'll forgive me, Mr Brand, but I aye like a tune before I go to my bed. Macnab says his prayers, and I have a tune on the flute, and the principle is just ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... superficial judgment, shocking to the souls concentrated upon their own bitter labour in the cause of sanctity, or of knowledge, or of temperance, let us say, or of art, if only the art of cracking jokes or playing the flute. And thus this general's daughter came to me—or I should say one of the general's daughters did. There were three of these bachelor ladies, of nicely graduated ages, who held a neighbouring farm-house in a united and more or less military occupation. The eldest warred ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... there rose a cry—Newport! The sleepers started to their feet. I started to mine, but I discreetly and quietly sat down again. Was it Newport, at last? Not at all. The harbor lights were gleaming from afar; and the cry was of the bandmaster shouting to his emissaries, arousing fiddle and flute and bassoon to their deceitful duty. They had played us out of port—they would play us in again. They had promised us that all should go merry as a marriage-bell, and—I would not be understood to complain, but it had been a sad occasion. Now the deceitful strains rose and fell again upon the ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... singin' the fust four vusses of the 100th psalm, old vusshun';" and he put on his spectacles and read and sung each verse, frequently as a solo accompanying himself on a bass-viol, said to have been made by himself! At W—— old V—— set the tune with a cracked flute, and on one occasion, when reading the 26th verse of the grand 104th Psalm, he said:—"There goes the Ships, and there is that Lufftenant [Leviathan] whom thou hast made to take his ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... way, Winding the wonderlands circuitous, By foot and horse will trace the long way back! Fiddling for ocean liners, while the dance Sweeps through the decks, your brown tribes all will go! Those east-bound ships will hear your long farewell On fiddle, piccolo, and flute and timbrel. I know all this, when ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... clog-dances, while others consisted of regular figures, such as forward and back, swing, and so on, the latter kind being restricted to the lower orders. In all of these, women must have taken a large part, and doubtless they were responsible for some of the music. They were not allowed to play the flute, but could indulge in the tabor and other instruments. Some of the scenes depicted closely resemble the modern stage, and it is more than probable that, when the audiences of to-day applaud our own ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... come with me?" said the donkey. "You see, I am going to try my luck as a street musician in the city. I think we might easily earn a living by music. You can play the bass drum and I can play the flute." ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... that he was a hero to those girls of fifty years ago? No theological student called upon them who had not some story to tell of his enthusiasm, daring or cleverness, and how eagerly must they have listened as the adventures of his magic flute were dwelt upon. ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... a strain of music! Oh! what lips breathed forth that gush of touching melody which flows in such linked sweetness from the flute of an unseen performer? How soft, how gentle, but oh, how very mournful are the notes! Alas! they are steeped in sorrow, and melt away in the plaintive cadences of despair, until they mingle with silence. Surely, surely, ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... and rain, and bitter weather.(179) The poor fellow was never so friendless but he could befriend some one; never so pinched and wretched but he could give of his crust, and speak his word of compassion. If he had but his flute left, he could give that, and make the children happy in the dreary London court. He could give the coals in that queer coal-scuttle we read of to his poor neighbour: he could give away his blankets in college to the poor widow, and warm himself as he best might ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... themselves with singing musically, in four or five parts, or upon a set theme or ground at random, as it best pleased them. In matter of musical instruments, he learned to play upon the lute, the virginals, the harp, the Almain flute with nine holes, the viol, and the sackbut. This hour thus spent, and digestion finished, he did purge his body of natural excrements, then betook himself to his principal study for three hours together, or more, as well ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... besides the lady, the far more irretrievable treasure of our modest earnings. This brought us to destitution, and the troop was disbanded. I had nothing but the spangled frock on my back, and thinking to make some use of my sole possession I set out as a dancer with the flute-player of the company, a good-natured fellow that had a performing marmozet from the Indies. We three wandered from one town to another, spreading our carpet wherever there was a fair or a cattle-market, going hungry in bad seasons, and in our luckier days attaching ourselves to ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... day eye you saucily as you pass within ten yards of him, while on any other you cannot approach him within a hundred. At ten o'clock the household is assembled in the drawing-room, the piano—with, it may be, a flute accompaniment—is made to do the organ's duty, and the full service of the Prayer-Book is read and sung and listened to with reverent attention. There are yet two hours to dinner, and as the wild, wailing chant from the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... pieces by Aquinas. Of these, as of some later instances, e.g. the figure constructed by Descartes and the automata exhibited by Dr Camus, not much is accurately known. But in the 18th century, Jacques de Vaucanson, the celebrated mechanician, exhibited three admirable figures,—the flute-player, the tambourine-player, and the duck, which was capable of eating, drinking, and imitating exactly the natural voice of that fowl. The means by which these results had been produced were clearly seen, and a great impulse was given to the construction of similar figures. Knauss exhibited at ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... portly presence, converting itself into a sort of blacksmith's bellows, started to vent, through open mouth and distended nostrils, such sounds as can have greeted the reader's ear but seldom—sounds as of a drum being beaten in combination with the whistling of a flute and the strident ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... all I have to say about him, except that if possible I disliked him more when he walked out of the house than when he walked in; though why I should have done so I do not know, for he was a harmless body. Perhaps it was because he played the flute, which I have always ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... mention it—that the first thing you did, on joining your regiment in India as a young subaltern, was to gather all the European children in cantonments together and march them through the place, playing 'The Girl I Left Behind Me' on the flute." ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... coming puffing out of the cave, and calling with delight to his ladies, 'Ah, mesdames, etes-vous noires?' as they certainly were, for all one gets in the cave is a blackened face from the torches. There was another gaunt figure of the party in a fur cap, who was playing the flute— ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... came there, And the Pobble who has no toes, And the small Olympian bear, And the Dong with a luminous nose. And the Blue Baboon who played the flute, And the Orient Calf from the Land of Tute, And the Attery Squash, and the Bisky Bat,— All came and built on the lovely Hat Of the ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... day Her Majesty asked me while we were sailing on the lake in the moonlight, if I wanted to go to Europe any more. It was a superb night, and several boats were sailing behind us. In one boat several eunuchs were playing a kind of sweet music on the flute and an instrument very much like the mandolin, called Yeuh Chin (small harp, like the shape of the moon), with Her Majesty singing very softly to herself. I told her I was satisfied to be with her, and did not wish to go anywhere ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... Fipple-Flute, a word Suggestive of seraphic screeches; The Poliphant comes next, and third The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... no regular "hops" at the Brant House, but dancing in a quiet way every evening to a flute, violin, and violoncello, played by some of the waiters. For a time Burnham and Salsbury did not mingle much in these festivities, but loitered about the halls and piazzas, very elegantly dressed and barbered (Thomas was an unrivalled ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... a little linen, and the clothes on my back. I am twenty-five, have an iron constitution, and a determination to do all in my power to make an honest living; but I can do nothing. I have not cultivated any one talent in a manner to make use of it now. I can play on the flute, but only as an amateur. I only know my own language, and I have no taste for literature. So what can you make of me? I must add that I have not a single expectation, least of all from my father, for to save the honour ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of Durdlebury, Doggie Trevor began to feel appreciated. He could play the piano, the harp, the viola, the flute, and the clarionette, and sing a mild tenor. Besides music, Doggie had other accomplishments. He could choose the exact shade of silk for a drawing-room sofa cushion, and he had an excellent gift for the selection ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... played upon several instruments, so that he was glad to be freed from the fantastic humors of Furibon. One day as he was walking in the garden, finding the heat increase, he retired into a shady grove and began to play upon the flute to amuse himself. As he played, he felt something wind about his leg, and looking down saw a great adder: he took his handkerchief, and catching it by the head was going to kill it. But the adder, looking steadfastly in his face, seemed to beg his pardon. At ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... of a song, but a melancholy sort of a song. I'd as lief be listening to a saw going through timber. Wait, now, till you will hear myself giving out a tune on the flute. [Goes out ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... instrument of the Sioux, the flute, was made to appeal to the susceptible ears of the maidens late into the night. There comes to me now the picture of two young men with their robes over their heads, and only a portion of the hand-made and carved ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego? do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden image which I have set up? Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... influenced by the soft beauty of the evening, by the peace of the hills. But as they crossed the ravine they heard the tinkle of bells, and a procession of goats tripped by them, following a boy who was twittering upon a flute. He was playing the tune of the tarantella, that tune which Hermione associated with careless joy in the sun. He passed down into the shadows of the trees, and gradually the airy rapture of his fluting and the tinkle of the goat-bells died away towards Marechiaro. ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... The author, bent upon going to the root of his subject, begins with the Creation, and speaks of Adam as a Violist. Perhaps Rousseau based his belief in the existence of Fiddling at this early period of the world's history on the words "and his brother's name was Jubal; from him descended the Flute players and Fiddlers," ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... terrace, pool, and flower recollect thee: Ye weavers in saffron and haze and Tyrian purple, Tell yet what range in color wakes the eye; Sorcerer, release the dreams born here when Drowsy, shifting palm-shade enspells the brain; And sound! ye with harp and flute ne'er essay Before these star-noted birds escaped from paradise awhile to Stir all dark, and dear, and passionate desire, till mine Arms go out to be mocked by the softly kissing body of the wind— Slave, ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... devoured them day after day, seated on the doorsill of his study, facing a bit of terrace to the South. It was in the pages of this magazine that I made my first acquaintance with the poetry of Viharilal Chakravarti. His poems appealed to me the most of all that I read at the time. The artless flute-strains of his lyrics awoke within me the ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... she suddenly rechristened the bird for herself now. That bird henceforth would be the Magic Flute to musical June—and she leaned back with ears, eyes and soul awake and ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... out of the lone woman's distress. How unkind of those ugly satyrs! And once, while crossing a solitary sheep pasture, she saw a personage named Pan, seated at the foot of a tall rock, and making music on a shepherd's flute. He, too, had horns, and hairy ears, and goats' feet; but, being acquainted with Mother Ceres, he answered her question as civilly as he knew how, and invited her to taste some milk and honey out of a wooden bowl. But neither could Pan tell her what had become ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was drawn in purple on the tentskin, and the girl, seeing it, turned quickly to the curtain through which she had passed. Upon the curtain were other signs. She read them slowly, and repeated them out loud in a low uncertain voice, like a bird's note blundering in a flute: ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Ever and anon some amiable youth would dash off a bumper of claret with an air of desperate bravery, and then turn pale at the idea of his own temerity. The most cautious were Scotch assistant-surgeons, and pale young ensigns who played the flute. The midshipmen feasted and feared. The major and the doctor kept on the "even tenor of their way," that is, they ate and drank ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... a cross between a clarinet, a flute, and a piccolo," he smiled. "Some one is trying to furnish music for this ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... several years earlier, when Hans Andersen read "The Ugly Duckling," and Browning, "The Pied Piper"; which led to "a grand march through the spacious Barberini apartment, with Story doing his best on a flute in default of bagpipes." W.W. Story, vol. ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... was once a hero's temple, crowned With myrtle boughs by lovers, and with palm By wrestlers, resonant with sweetest sound Of flute and fife in summer evening's calm, And odorous with incense all the year, With nard and ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... end in front of one, and roll out as before. Repeat this until it has got 4 turns, taking care to keep the edges as even as possible, and for the last time roll out a good deal larger than the dish. Put a band of paste on the dish, wet this and lay on the cover. Flute the edges neatly. Brush over with egg. Cut the trimmings of paste into leaves, &c., and decorate the pie, putting a rose in the centre. Brush these also with egg. Make one or two slits to let out the steam, and bake in hot oven. The oven should be made very hot before ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... the Duke of Ferrara, written on March 8. He wrote: "The comedy was recited and well acted, and at the end of each act there was an intermezzo with fifes, bag-pipes, two cornets, some viols, some lutes and a small organ with a variety of tone. There was at the same time a flute and a voice which pleased much. There was also a concert of voices which did not come off quite so well, in my opinion, as other parts of ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... a pretty, gloved hand touched Dick's arm, and Edith Blake's clear, flute-like voice said, "We are forming sets for the lancers, Dick, and you must dance. Mamma requests you to choose Miss Irvine for your partner, so please go and ask her ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... thought of medicine, and resided two years in Edinburgh. He started for Leyden, in Holland, to continue what he called his medical studies; but he had a thirst to see the world— and so, with a guinea in his pocket, one shirt, and a flute, he set out on his travels through the continent of Europe. At length, on the 1st of February 1756, he landed at Dover, after an absence of two years, without a farthing in his pocket. London reached, he tried many ways of making a living, as assistant to an apothecary, physician, reader ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... hall, would yield to the gentle influence of delirium tremens and begin to overturn chairs under the delusion that Hammerstein was pursuing them with a five-hundred-dollar-a-week contract. Then the gent at the window across the air-shaft would get out his flute; the nightly gas leak would steal forth to frolic in the highways; the dumbwaiter would slip off its trolley; the janitor would drive Mrs. Zanowitski's five children once more across the Yalu, the lady with the champagne shoes and the Skye terrier would trip ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... here I find it all about me in the places where the poets first unveiled it. Once before I had a sight of it, as all over Italy it glimpses at times from the hills and the campagna. Descending under the high peak of Capri, I heard a flute, and turned and saw on the neighbouring slopes the shepherd-boy leading his flock, the music at his lips. Then the centuries rolled together like a scroll, and I heard the world's morning notes. That was a single moment; but here, day-long is ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... married. The Indian children attend the same school as the children of the white colonists. A certain number of them, chosen from those who exhibit most intelligence, are taught music—plain-chant, violin, flute, horn, violincello, and other instruments. Those who distinguish themselves in the carpenter's shop, at the forge, or in the field, are termed alcaldes, or chiefs, and given charge of a band of workmen. The management of each mission is composed ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson
... I missed the soothing undertone. The women, in their high white caps, and the men, in their blue blouses, were sauntering slowly homeward. The children were playing all down the village street, and not far away a few girls and young men were beginning to dance to the piping of a flute. Over the whole was creeping the golden twilight ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... the most worthy and renowned of all the Grecian generals. Eumenes boldly remonstrated, and told Alexander that he plainly saw the best way to acquire promotion in his army would be to throw away arms, and learn to play upon the flute ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... translator of Pindar, may also have been at Eton in Fielding's time, as he was only a year older, and was intimate with Lyttelton. Thomas Augustine Arne, again, famous in days to come as Dr. Arne, was doubtless also at this date practising sedulously upon that "miserable cracked common flute," with which tradition avers he was wont to torment his school-fellows. Gray and Horace Walpole belong ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... have been living in the Forest of Arden, so like were they to the clowns of Shakespeare. They were singing of Nicolette and her present, and the cakes and knives and flute they would buy with it. Aucassins jumped to the bait they offered him; and they instantly began to play him as though ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... red with lights; long streaks of red, the reflection of the lighted windows, stretched over the dark sea. The captain of the ship was giving a ball. The gay music floated across to me in snatches at long intervals. I recall in particular the trill of a little flute in the midst of the deep blare of the trumpets; it seemed to flit, like a butterfly, about my boat. I bade the man row to the ship; twice he took me round it. ... I caught glimpses at the windows of women's figures, borne gaily round in the whirl-wind of the waltz.... ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... tremulous female voice raised a hymn, another caught it up, and another—voices strong and beautiful; alto voices soft as flute notes blended with the rich bass notes and triumphant tenors that welled from the choir, and floated in from the windows, until the body of the church itself seemed almost to sway with the rhythmic ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... met him with some impatient questions as to what he had been living on so long, for the old man well knew how scantily his pocket was supplied. "Pretty much like the young ravens," answered he; "I only wished I had been as good a player on the flute as poor George Primrose in The Vicar of Wakefield. If I had his art I should like nothing better than to tramp like him from cottage to cottage over the world."—"I doubt," said the grave Clerk to the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... not strangers to the influences of poetry and music. Says the poet CAMPBELL, "The Spartans used not the trumpet in their march into battle, because they wished not to excite the rage of their warriors. Their charging step was made to the 'Dorian mood of flute and soft recorder.' The valor of a Spartan was too highly tempered to require a stunning or rousing impulse. His spirit was like a steed too ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... shivered again, but the girl said nothing. And Barlow, rather to hear her voice, for it was sweet like flute music, chaffed: "What is he like, the one that you love? A swaggering tall black-whiskered Rajput, no doubt, with a purple vest embroidered in gold, clanking with tulwar, and a voice like a Brahmini ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... German, but I play the German flute," said the apologetic gentleman; and so might we say. We don't engage ladies in diplomacy, but we employ all the old women of our own sex! Wherever we find a well-mannered, soft-spoken, fussy old soul, with a taste for fine clothes and fine dinners, fond of court festivities, and heart and soul devoted ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... its wonted fire—a smile was on his lip, and the hand which had so long brandished the sword, gladly resumed the pen. He who had so long uttered only words of command and calls to battle, now bowed over his flute and drew from it the tenderest and most melting melodies. The evening concerts were resumed. The musical friends and comrades of the king had been summoned from Berlin; and that nothing might be wanting to make his happiness complete, he had called his best-beloved friend, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... you say to flute-makers and flute-players? Would you admit them into our State when you reflect that in this composite use of harmony the flute is worse than all the stringed instruments put together; even the panharmonic music is only an ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Minerva invented the flute, and played upon it to the delight of all the celestial auditors; but the mischievous urchin Cupid having dared to laugh at the queer face which the goddess made while playing, Minerva threw the instrument indignantly away, and it fell down to ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... night are mute Beneath the moon's eclipse; The silence of the fitful flute Is in the dying lips! The silence of my lonely heart Is kept for ever more In the lull Of the waves ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... Love, "Although ye serve no more Mine images of ivory and bronze With flute-led dances of the days of yore, But leave them to barbarian orisons Of dull hearth-loving hearts, mistaking me: Yet from mine incense ye shall not divorce Remembrance. Fools, these recantations be Ardours that prove ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... stoves, huddling themselves in furs, and waddling obesely.... Very pleasant.... And in France, too, in the assommoirs, the tang of wine in the air and the blue hue of smoke, excited Latin voices. "Encore un bock! T'es saoul, mon vieux! Flute! Je suis comme le Pont Neuf!" A raucous voice singing a ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... great chestnut tree, where we had prayers, the morning psalms, and lessons, and sung a hymn, which sounded in that lone but lovely spot so soft and beautiful that it used to bring tears to my eyes. So many young voices, gave a peculiar flute-like sound to the music, and as each cadence rose swelling through the branches of the great tree above us, so did the birds rise in clouds above us, returning nearer and nearer, as the soft voices died away, at the end of each verse. And to look at each young face uplifted with ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... character. But he always knew when to stop. He would say to me suddenly: "Dr. Waddilove said to me yesterday that he never argued with atheists or radicals, because they always came round in the end." Or he would say, in Henry Bland's flute-like tones: "Your mention of Robert Browning induces me to relate an anecdote, which I think may prove not wholly uninteresting to you." At times we used to tell long stories on our walks, stopping short in the ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... musical literature will show. For we see that the fugal form has been used to express well-nigh every form of human emotion, the sublime, the tragic, the romantic; very often the humorous and the fantastic. When we recall the irresistible sparkle and dash of Mozart's Magic Flute Overture, of the Overture to the Bartered Bride by Smetana, of the Finale of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, and of many of the fugues in the Well-tempered Clavichord, it is evident that to call a fugue "dry" is an utter abuse of language. It is true that there are weak, artificial ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... on the "Entrenchment of the Town of Ross," in the year 1265. We have there the various trades and crafts-mariners, coat-makers, fullers, cloth-dyers and sellers, butchers, cordwainers, tanners, hucksters, smiths, masons, carpenters, arranged by guilds, and marching to the sound of flute and tabor, under banners bearing a fish and platter, a painted ship, and other "rare devices." On the walls, when finished, cross-bows hung, with store of arrows ready to shoot; when the city horn sounded twice, burgess and bachelor vied with each other in ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... gentlemen,-men of family and fortune: all of whom were now, with their families, destitute. He mentioned two of these who had engaged themselves lately in some orchestra, where they played first and second flute. The princes, he said, had been twice arrested for debt in different places—that they were now so reduced that they dined, themselves, the Comte d'Artois, children, tutors, etc.—eight or nine persons in all—upon ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... podesta, valet, avvocato, and gondolier, held their way alike to the common centre of amusement. The hurried air and careless eye; the measured step and jealous glance; the jest and laugh; the song of the cantatrice, and the melody of the flute; the grimace of the buffoon, and the tragic frown of the improvisatore; the pyramid of the grotesque, the compelled and melancholy smile of the harpist, cries of water-sellers, cowls of monks, plumage of warriors, hum of voices, ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the Corn Maidens, found at last only by Paiyatuma, the god of dawn, from whose flute came wonderful music, as of liquid voices in caverns, or the echo of women's laughter in water vases, heard only by men of nights as they wandered up and down ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... like to relate here that one of his seemingly gross but really innocent diversions was occasionally visiting a certain black house of prostitution, of which there were many in St. Louis. Here while he played a flute and some one else a tambourine or small drum, he would have two or three of the inmates dance in some weird savage way that took one instanter to the wilds of Central Africa. There was, so far as I know, no ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... connection with the swim bladder. (41. 'Comptes-Rendus,' tom. xlvi. 1858, p. 353; tom. xlvii. 1858, p. 916; tom. liv. 1862, p. 393. The noise made by the Umbrinas (Sciaena aquila), is said by some authors to be more like that of a flute or organ, than drumming: Dr. Zouteveen, in the Dutch translation of this work (vol. ii. p. 36), gives some further particulars on the sounds made by fishes.) The drumming of the Umbrinas in the European seas is said to be audible from a depth of twenty fathoms; and the ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... The stops labelled flute, horn, celestial voice, were pulled out, ready to be placed. Des Esseintes sipped here and there, enjoying the inner symphonies, succeeded in procuring sensations in his throat analogous to those which music ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... into the streets with his weekly earnings in his pockets and spent them. He spent every penny he had. First he went to a florist's and bought daffodils, in great golden sheaves. Then he went to a toyshop and got a splendid family of fluffy beasts, and a musical box, and a Noah's Ark, and a flute. He had spent all his money by then, so he pawned his watch and signet ring and bought Thomas some pretty cambric clothes and a rocking cradle. He had nothing else much to pawn. But he badly wanted some Japanese paintings to put in the place of the pictures that at present ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... "There are any number left; and Charlie, man, be sure and bring your flute to waken the echoes of the grove. It will be delightful by moonlight, won't ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... be a full house to-night—six parties in the boxes, already; four little boys and a woman in the pit; and two fiddles and a flute in the orchestra, who have got through five overtures since seven o'clock (the hour fixed for the commencement of the performances), and have just begun the sixth. There will be plenty of it, though, when ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... ridiculous and extravagant these concerts were. My teacher generally played two concertos on the piano by Wolff or Emanuel Bach,[3] a member of the town band struggled with Stamitz,[4] while the receiver of excise duties worked away hard at the flute, and took in such an immense supply of breath that he blew out both lights on his music-stand, and always had to have them relighted again. Singing wasn't thought about; my uncle, a great friend and patron of music, always ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... standing in the shade of a large warehouse; the line of slates making a crescent of the full moon, and amid the reverberating yards and brickways Kate's voice sounded as penetrating and direct as a flute. The exquisite accuracy of her ear enabled her to give each note its just value. Dick was astonished, and he said when ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... of closely written and finely torn scraps in the waste-basket. Then coatless, collarless, with open vest and hair disarranged in the manner traditional among love-sick youths, he would pour mournful airs from a flute. ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... were a jade flute and a golden flageolet. In a third were antique jewels, gold furnishings and a hundred ornaments worth thousands of ounces each. She threw them all into the river. The stricken onlookers gave voice to ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... at arms, art thou an archer, art thou a pikeman?"—"I am none of all this; but I know how to command all these." And Antisthenes took it for an argument of little value in Ismenias that he was commended for playing excellently well upon a flute. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... evenings I frequently sat in the boat playing the flute, and saw the perch, which I seemed to have charmed, hovering around me, and the moon travelling over the ribbed bottom, which was strewed with the wrecks of the forest. Formerly I had come to this pond adventurously, from time to time, in ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... long, slim package, wrapped in a faded and yellow newspaper. Unfolding the wrappings, nothing but a piece of bamboo-like cane, about as large as a flute, was revealed. ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... the laugh. One of those flute-like, bird-throated voices that children often have who live in the open all their lives, chasing butterflies ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... he crept out from the shelter of a porch to hearken, as those boyish lips sent forth in flute-like tones the melody of "Home, Sweet Home." Hearkening, he followed, fearing he should lose the music which impressed him, all unknowing why; and as the whistler left the last village house behind him and set out to run over the long stretch ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... back to his senses, a toad near him was whistling deliciously like a flute, and a cloud of mosquitoes were dancing before the moon. He rose with great difficulty and ...
— The Story Of The Duchess Of Cicogne And Of Monsieur De Boulingrin - 1920 • Anatole France |
