"Flute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... [223], from the earliest time, was an essential part of instruction; and it had now become so common an acquirement, that Aristotle [224] observes, that at the close of the Persian war there was scarcely a single freeborn Athenian unacquainted with the flute. The use of this instrument was afterward discontinued, and indeed proscribed in the education of freemen, from the notion that it was not an instrument capable of music sufficiently elevated and intellectual [225]; yet it was only succeeded ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he is singing", said Adele, "and listen as intently as if they heard an angel. His voice is sometimes like a flute, sometimes like a trumpet. Did you hear the ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... air the sound of instruments, from the sweet, low tones of the flute and golden notes of the magadis, to the resounding clang of the cymbals and the beat of the timbrels, playing the 'March of Hell.' Whoever has heard such notes may never forget them—music set to the shrieks of the lost in Tartarus—the wild imploring of the forsaken pleading for forgiveness, ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... pure and strong, My father's flute of silvery tone, The little household's strength of song, The childish treble of my own,— I hear them once ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... safer you will find— For a single man gets bottled on them twisty-wisty stairs, An' a woman comes and clobs 'im from be'ind. When you've turned 'em inside out, an' it seems beyond a doubt As if there weren't enough to dust a flute (Cornet: Toot! toot!)— Before you sling your 'ook, at the 'ousetops take a look, For it's underneath the tiles they 'ide the ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... Whether the trusty hounds a stag have eyed, Or the fierce Marsian boar has burst the snare. To me the artist's meed, the ivy wreath Is very heaven: me the sweet cool of woods, Where Satyrs frolic with the Nymphs, secludes From rabble rout, so but Euterpe's breath Fail not the flute, nor Polyhymnia fly Averse from stringing new the Lesbian lyre. O, write my name among that minstrel choir, And my proud head shall ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... 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 ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... Why, all creatures that are brought up together love one another. Look at our birds reared up in the same nests; they love like us; they are always together like us. Hark? how they call and answer from one tree to another. So when the echoes bring to my ears the air which you play upon your flute at the top of the mountain, I repeat the words at the bottom of the valley. Above all, you are dear to me since the day when you wanted to fight the master of the slave for me. Since that time how often have I said to myself, 'Ah, my brother has a good heart; but for him I should have died of terror.' ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... 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, and the universal movement and bustle, added to the more permanent ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... expectation of a cup o' tea or the like o' that. By that time I had my shelves all put t' rights an' was stretched out on my counter, with my head on a roll o' factory-cotton, dawdlin' along with my friendly ol' flute. I tooted a ballad or two—Larboard Watch an' Dublin Bay; an' my fingers bein' limber an' able, then, I played the weird, sad songs o' little Toby Farr, o' Ha-ha Harbor, which is more t' my taste, mark you, than any o' the fashionable music that drifts our way from ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... but it did not take me long to discover that he was wrapped up in her. His beard was smaller and more neatly trimmed than it had looked at the Cooper Institute meeting, but it still ill became him. He had an unsophisticated smile, which I thought suggestive of a man playing on a flute and which emphasized the discrepancy between his weak face and his reputation ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... of statues. The most remarkable among them were the Fighting Gladiator; Silenus and a Faun; Seneca, in black marble, or rather a slave at the baths; Camillus; the Hermaphrodite; the Centaur and Cupid; two Fauns, playing on the flute; Ceres; an Egyptian; a statue of the younger Nero; the busts of Lucius Verus, Alexander, Faustina and Verus; various relievos, among which was one representing Curtius; an urn, on which was represented the festival ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... speaking a thought grew up in his heart, and he began to act. He cut a slim piece of hollow bamboo, and pierced small holes in it. Thus was the first flute (duraio) born. Webubu then built himself a platform high in a corkwood tree, which we call "troba" on the beach, and seating himself there he began ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... worked out problems in arithmetic and geometry, while, after his regular work was done, he would carry a French or Latin chronicle to his small window, and pore over the history of bygone times. In his spare moments he would play some old music on the flute or ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... said the visitor, in a silvery, flute-like voice, which the girl could not but admire. "You will forgive me for calling so soon? My old friendship with Mr. Brooke—whom I have known for years—made me anxious to see you, dear, as soon as possible. You will receive me also as a friend, ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... rich voices trilling the lays of their land, and ringing with happy laughter. But I mount higher and yet higher, till gleam and voice are lost. Here the freshening air sweeps down, and the low gurgle of living water purling out from cool, dark chasms, mingles with the shepherd's flute. Here the young shepherd himself climbs, leaping from rock to rock, supple, strong, brave, and free as the soul of his race,—the same iron in his sinews, and the same fire in his blood that dealt the "dolorous ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Yong Chum. The music was of a plaintive character, and was lacking in the melody of a Broadwood or a Steinway. Then he played on another instrument which resembled a bandore or banjo and was named Sem Yim. Afterwards he took up a Chinese flute and played a tune, which was out of the ordinary and was withal of a cheerful nature. He then showed us something that was striking and peculiar—a Chinese fiddle with two strings. The bow strings were moved beneath the fiddle strings. The music ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... magnificent garden. And in the garden sat Sai-Jen, singing and playing upon the lute. The Feng-Hwang deposited the prince outside the wall near a place where bamboos were growing and showed him how to cut twelve bamboos between the knots to make the flute which is called Pai-Siao and has a sound sweeter than the evening breeze on the ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... much wonder at what followed. Csar was yet lingering on the hither bank, when suddenly, at a point not far distant from himself, an apparition was descried in a sitting posture, and holding in its hand what seemed a flute. This phantom was of unusual size, and of beauty more than human, so far as its lineaments could be traced in the early dawn. What is singular, however, in the story, on any hypothesis which would explain it out of Csar's individual condition, is, that others saw it as well as he; both pastoral ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... naught, and of known use; you might as well treat her with Viols and Flute-doux, which were enough to disoblige her ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... the collection in the museum of the Wisconsin Historical Society by the Secretary, Mr. Reuben G. Thwaites. The coat and chapeau belonged to General Dodge, an important leader in the war. The Indian relics are a tomahawk, a Winnebago pipe, a Winnebago flute, and a knife. The powder-horn and the flintlock rifle are the only volunteer articles. One of the survivors of the war, Mr. Elijah Herring of Stockton, Illinois, says of the flintlock rifles used by the Illinois volunteers: "They were constructed like the old-fashioned ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... travelled since I landed, but have not heard one mention of Canada as a desirable place to emigrate to. The Western States, the prairie lands, seem to be the promised land to everyone. One of these would-be emigrants took a flute out of his pocket and played the Exile of Erin. The talk of emigration stilled and a great silence fell on them all. There were some soldiers on the car, young men, boys in fact, who seemed by the heavy marching order of their get-up to be going to join their regiment. Some of them ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... diameters in height, with a base, while the capital is more ornamented than the Doric. The shaft is fluted with twenty-four flutes and alternate fillets (flat longitudinal ridges), and the fillet is about a quarter the width of the flute. The pediment is flatter than that of the Doric order, and more elaborate. The great distinction of the Ionic column is a base, and a capital formed with volutes (spiral scrolls), the shaft also being more slender. Vitruvius, the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... 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 ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... alert as we approached the curve that opens the meadow into view, and—as I am a Christian man, living in the twentieth century—I saw this Vision: I beheld beneath the shade of the midmost oak eight men sitting stark naked, whereof one blew on a flute, one played a concertina, and the rest beat their palms together, marking the time; while before them, in couples on the sward, my gang of navvies rotated in a clumsy waltz watched by a ring ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 of the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... subjects; two authors alone have given 800 dances in four volumes.[Footnote: Thompson's complete collection of 200 country dances performed at Court, Bath, Tunbridge, and all public assemblies, with proper figures and directions to each set for the violin, German flute, and hautboy, 8s. 6d. Printed for Charles and Samuel Thompson, St. Paul's Churchyard, London, where may be had the yearly dances and minuets. Four ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... scholar at a very early age; he was an astronomer, a mathematician, and there were few branches of science in which he was not versed. When young, his Quaker habits did not prevent him from taking lessons in music and dancing. I have heard him accompany his sister-in-law with the flute, while she played the piano. When not more than sixteen years of age he was so remarkable for steadiness and acquirements that he was engaged more as a companion than tutor to young Hudson Gurney, who was nearly of his own ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... poem to the second Lindsay book shook the literary world awake with its perfect interpretation of The Salvation Army leader. It is a poem to be chanted at first with "Bass drums beaten loudly" and then "with banjos"; then softly with "sweet flute music," and finally, as the great General comes face to face with Christ, with a "Grand chorus of all instruments; tambourines to the foreground." Running through this poem is the refrain of "Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?" and the last lines catch the tender, yet absolutely unique spirit ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... Region of Kentucky Flute and Violin, and Other Kentucky Tales The Bride of the Mistletoe A Kentucky Cardinal. Aftermath. A Sequel to "A ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... compositions or solved their problems by the side of others writing to their sweethearts on pink perforated note-paper covered with drawings. Here one was composing a melodrama at the side of another practising on the flute, from which he drew wheezy notes. Over there, the older boys, students in professional courses, who affected silk socks and embroidered slippers, amused themselves in teasing the smaller boys by pulling ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... was then new, and very much the fashion; it represented a quadrille of priests and vestals who entered to the sound of delicious music on the flute and harp, and in addition to this there were magicians, a Swiss marriage, Tyrolian betrothals, etc. All the costumes were wonderfully handsome and true to nature; and there had been arranged in the apartments at the palace a supply of costumes ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... 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 spice ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... went home by themselves to the little dark hut and the meal of black bread, whilst in the mill-house all the children of the village sang and laughed, and ate the big round cakes of Dijon and the almond gingerbread of Brabant, and danced in the great barn to the light of the stars and the music of flute and fiddle. ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... (as I felt, without exactly seeing why) a dreadful exaggeration to whatever incivility might, at any rate, attach to the question; and some did attach, that was clear, even if warbled through an air of Cherubini's and accompanied on the flute. Perhaps they were not idiots, and only seemed to be such from the slowness of apprehension naturally connected with deafness. That I saw them but seldom, arose from their peculiar position in the family. Their ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 disparaged ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... years now, on postage-stamps and currency, in marble and plaster and in bronze, in photographs of original portraits, paintings, and stereoscopic views. We have seen him on horseback and on foot, on the war-path and on skates, playing the flute, cussing his troops for their shiftlessness, and then, in the solitude of the forest, with his snorting war-horse tied to ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... 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 earth, and was found by Marsyas. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... considered young, then he is a mere child. The only interruptions to his careless cheerfulness are on a wet Sunday, when he is apt to be unusually religious and solemn, and sometimes of an evening, when he has been blowing a very slow tune on the flute. On these last-named occasions he is apt to incline towards the mysterious, or the terrible. As a specimen of his powers in this mood, I refer my readers to the extract from the clock-case which follows this paper: he brought it to me not long ago at ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... old fable which Lord Bacon, in his "Wisdom of the Ancients," has not interpreted. This is the flaying of Marsyas by Apollo. Everybody remembers the accepted version of it, namely,—that the young shepherd found Minerva's flute, and was rash enough to enter into a musical contest with the God of Music. He was vanquished, of course,—and the story is, that the victor fastened him to a tree and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... 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
... there was any hardship for others to be reduced to the same state. The wild ones also, when they found that escape was impossible, bore their captivity with wonderful dignity and composure. Some even seemed to listen with pleasure to the notes of the Kandyan flute which the natives played near them; and though at first they would not eat, at length when some juicy stems of the plantain were offered them, they could not resist the temptation of the luscious morsels. The young ones, however, though they ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Nereids, in the mountain the Oread, the Dryad in the wood; and everywhere, in groves and marshes, on the pastures or the rocky heights, floating in the current of the streams or traversing untrodden snows, in the day at the chase and as evening closes in solitude fingering his flute, seen and heard by shepherds, alone or with his dancing train, is to be met the horned and goat-footed, the ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... retired to his chamber, feeling delighted that he had got off so much easier than he anticipated. Indeed, so little did he think of his father's command, that he felt in no hurry to obey it. Instead of going to bed, he sat awhile at the window, listening to the music of a flute which some one in the neighborhood was playing upon. Presently Ralph and George, who slept in the same chamber with him, came up to keep him company. They amused themselves together for some time, and Oscar quite forgot that he had been sent to bed, until ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... hand is to the lute, What the breath is to the flute, What's the mother to the child, What the guide in pathless wild, What is oil to troubled wave, What is ransom to a slave, What is flower to the bee, That is Jesus Christ ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... is an item when he was sixteen years old, "To cash pd ye Musick Master for my Entrance 3/9." It is commonly said that he played the flute, but this is as great a libel on him as any Tom Paine wrote, and though he often went to concerts, and though fond of hearing his granddaughter Nelly play and sing, he never was himself a performer, and the above entry probably refers to the singing-master whom ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... only, and the arts which are concerned with the higher interests of soul and body. Does Callicles agree to this division? Callicles will agree to anything, in order that he may get through the argument. Which of the arts then are flatteries? Flute-playing, harp-playing, choral exhibitions, the dithyrambics of Cinesias are all equally condemned on the ground that they give pleasure only; and Meles the harp-player, who was the father of Cinesias, failed even in that. The stately muse ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... this be shown from the fact that the Pleasures arising from one kind of Workings hinder other Workings; for instance, people who are fond of flute-music cannot keep their attention to conversation or discourse when they catch the sound of a flute; because they take more Pleasure in flute-playing than in the Working they are at the time engaged on; in other words, the Pleasure attendant on flute-playing destroys the Working ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... turn we might reasonably predict a domicil of equal fitness and elegance. At least I demand of him as clean and handsome a nest as the King-Bird's, whose harsh jingle, compared with Robin's evening melody, is as the clatter of pots and kettles beside the tone of a flute. I love his note and ways better even than those of the Orchard-Starling or the Baltimore Oriole; yet his nest, compared with theirs, is a half-subterranean hut contrasted with a Roman villa. There is something courtly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... Though rather feeble of constitution, he soon became a proficient in martial exercises. The different branches of science bearing on the art of war he was forced to study; but his leisure hours were devoted to reading French verses, and playing on the flute—pursuits that greatly displeased his royal father, who frequently threw the books into the fire, and the flutes ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... and he drew the little maiden up to the firm ground. He would have restored the broken branch to the place from which it had been torn, but "everything in its place" cannot always be managed, and therefore he stuck the piece in the ground. "Grow and prosper till you can furnish a good flute for them up yonder," he said; for he would have liked to play the "rogue's march" for my lord the baron, and my lord's whole family. And then he betook himself to the castle, but not into the ancestral hall, he was too ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... distant copse arise, Of softest flute or reeds harmonic join'd, With rapture thrill'd each worldly passion dies, And pleased attention claims the ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... very prettily, and laughed a laugh that Wentworth thought was like a little ripple of music from a mellow flute. ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... a familiar acquaintance of Goldsmith, who in his Chinese letters speaks of him kindly as 'the little sculptor.' He was fond of music, and Goldsmith would play the flute to him. As Sir John Hawkins records, the sculptor once tricked the poet by pretending to set down the notes on paper as Goldsmith played them. Goldsmith looked over the paper afterwards with seeming great attention, said it was quite correct, and that if he had not ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... are no barriers for incapacity to stumble against, no external criteria to prevent a writer from mistaking foolish facility for mastery. And so we have again and again the old story of La Fontaine's ass, who pats his nose to the flute, and, finding that he elicits some sound, exclaims, "Moi, aussie, je joue de la flute"—a fable which we commend, at parting, to the consideration of any feminine reader who is in danger of adding to the number of "silly novels by ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... fear of her brother—who could be rather awful when she went too far—wisely contented herself with watching him like a little cat, ready to pounce on the first visible sign of weakness. Demi had taken to playing pensively upon his flute after he was in his room for the night, making this melodious friend his confidante, and breathing into it all the tender hopes and fears that filled his heart. Mrs Meg, absorbed in domestic affairs, ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... the 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 of Beethoven, Gluck, and Mozart, or the ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... exhibition, which they do with singular adroitness, and with fearful interest to the unpractised observer. They carry the reptiles from house to house in a small round basket, from which they issue at the sound of a sort of flute, and execute certain movements ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... It was a delicious evening, and the birds were singing from every brake and hedgerow. Once or twice she heard the harsh call of the corncrake mingled with the flute-like notes of the thrush; a lark was carolling high up in the blue sky—by and by she heard him descend. Audrey walked swiftly down the long grass lanes, and, as she neared Rutherford she could see a dim man's figure ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 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 to repeat his matutinal ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... me something for it?" he asked, as Mr. Badcock dived a hand suddenly into a tail pocket and drew forth what at first appeared to be the neck of a bottle, but to closer view revealed itself as the upper half of a flute. A second dive produced ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... wooings, gentle June? Thou hast a Naiad's charm; Thy breezes scent the rose's breath; Old Time gives thee her palm. [5] The lark's shrill song doth wake the dawn; The eve-bird's forest flute Gives back some maiden melody, Too ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... heart, and listen, For sweet and yet acute I hear the wistful music Of Khristna and his flute. Across the cool, blue evenings, Throughout the burning days, Persuasive and beguiling, He plays and ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... the hymns, had already had a quarrel with the singing pew because they would not more frequently perform a tune with a solo for the double bass, which he always accompanied with his own bass voice, and Mr. Broad had found it difficult to restore peace; the flute and clarionet justly urging that they never had solos, and why the double bass, who only played from ear, and not half as many notes as they played, should be allowed to show off they didn't know. Mr. Bushel, ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... lent ear When soft he touched his lute; And beasts came trooping nigh to hear When Orpheus played his flute. ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... "Now what do you say? He'll be giving us into custody again. 'Tillery's our only chance. He daren't touch us there. But I say, he isn't going back to the office. Let's run and get what's in our desks. There's my old flute." ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... a savage chief of still more savage men. My ancestors came from old Sparta, and settled among the vine-clad rocks and citron groves of Syrasella. My early life ran quiet as the brooks by which I sported; and when, at noon, I gathered the sheep beneath the shade, and played upon the shepherd's flute, there was a friend, the son of a neighbor, to join me in the pastime. We led our flocks to the same pasture, and partook together our ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... chapel the figures of some angels which waved their wings, and some priests that made several ecclesiastical movements. With the view of executing some other automata he had designed, he proceeded to study anatomy, music, and mechanics, which occupied him for several years. The sight of the Flute-player in the Gardens of the Tuileries inspired him with the resolution to invent a similar figure that should PLAY; and after several years' study and labour, though struggling with illness, he succeeded in accomplishing his object. ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... 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
... sound from without made its way into the convent. But there was one year when the sound of a flute penetrated thither. This was an event, and the girls who were at school there at the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the air; Yet he stands there, brave and mute, In his eyes a look of greeting, In his hand an old-time flute. ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... heap o' sojus had on nice buttons an' had plumes in dere hats. Dey wus singin' an' playin' on a flute dis song, 'I wish I wus in Dixie,' an' dey went in de big house an' broke up ebery thing. Dey say to me, 'you are as free as a frog,' an' dey say to my pa, 'all your chillun are free.' Dey say 'little niggers is free as a frog' an' we ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... wood and ivory showed the fortifications of Avaricum, and of many another city; and here too were carried specimens of the olives and vines, and other curious plants of the newly won land; here was the breastplate of British pearls that Caesar dedicated to Venus. A band of flute-players followed, and then came the white oxen that were to be sacrificed, their horns gilded and flowers hung round them, the sacrificing priests with wreathed heads marching with them. Specimens of bears and wolves from the woods and mountains ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with everything I like—including tons of jelly, at sight of which I grinned at Mother and she grinned back—if you can call her gorgeous smile a grin. After dinner the lights were put on and we had some music, as we always do when I'm home—little family orchestra with two fiddles, a flute, my mandolin, and the piano, and I noticed we didn't play any but the jolliest sort of things. Then Dad and I sat down again on the big couch in front of the fireplace to smoke and talk, with the kids hanging round till long past their bed-time. I went up with Jimmy, ...
— The Whistling Mother • Grace S. Richmond
... his window and plays the flute. From my bed I can hear him, And the round notes flutter and tap about the room, And hit against each other, Blurring to unexpected chords. It is very beautiful, With the little flute-notes all about me, In ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... continually in a manner that will certainly drive me to distraction. I can stand it no longer. We must be cut asunder. For years, colonel, Wilberforce has been attempting to learn to play upon the flute. He has no more idea of music than a crow, but he will try to learn. He has been practicing upon the flute since 1862, and he has learned but a portion of but one tune—'Nelly Bly.' He can play but four notes, 'Nelly Bly shuts—' ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... of Mary Magdalen, carrying the jar of ointment in her hand, and behind her stands St. Augustine with a bishop's staff, looking toward John. At the feet of St. Cecilia are scattered various instruments of music, a viol, cymbals, the triangle, flute, and others. They are broken, and some of the pipes of the regal held by St. Cecilia are falling from their place,—all seeming to indicate the inferiority of earthly music to the celestial harmonies. Of the five saints depicted, only Cecilia looks upward, and it has been ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... cross-game on the occasion. The blissful day over, and the happy bride and bridegroom withdrawing from the banquet and the dance, the well-pleased chirping, able little tutor hopped before them, and led them to the hymeneal bower with floral flute, and gratulatory song!" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... mullet. As might have been anticipated, he soon greatly offended Dionysius, who actually sent him to work in the stone-quarries; but the cause of his misfortune is uncertain. Athenaeus attributes it to his falling in love with a favourite "flute-girl" of Dionysius, and says that in his "Galataea," he caricatured his rival as the Cyclops. According to another account, his disgrace was owing to his having, when asked to revise one of Dionysius' poetical compositions, crossed out the whole of it from beginning ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... while she was crossing a lonely sheep-field she saw the god Pan: he was sitting at the foot of a tall rock, making music on a shepherd's flute. He too had horns on his brow, and hairy ears, and goat's feet. He knew Mother Ceres and answered her questions kindly, and he gave her some milk and honey to drink out of a wooden bowl. But he knew ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... flute, with me Maenalian lays. Ever hath Maenalus his murmuring groves And whispering pines, and ever hears the songs Of love-lorn shepherds, and of Pan, who first Brooked not the tuneful reed should ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... that Adolf Menzel, the painter, would shortly celebrate his eightieth birthday, some one remarked on the refusal by the Court marshal in the previous reign to allow him to see the scene of his celebrated "Flute Concert at Sans Souci," which he was then composing, lighted up. The conversation, according to ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... this moment a sweet and flute-like voice whispered in D'Harmental's ear, while a little hand rested on ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... a second suit Of clothes, of which the coat was braided; Mary, they went to buy that flute With which I thee have serenaded. Mary, I had a beaver hat, Than this I wear a great deal better; Mary, I've parted too with that, For pens, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... money than he had ever before possessed. He took passage for London, where he landed a few days after, in total ignorance of the place and the language. His brother welcomed him with German warmth, and assisted him to procure employment,—probably in the flute and piano manufactory of ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Theocrite; Be their just writings, by the gods inspired, Your constant pattern, practiced and admired. By them alone you'll easy comprehend How poets without shame may condescend To sing of gardens, fields, of flowers and fruit, To stir up shepherds and to tune the flute; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... saith 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 you still idolators; And, though ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... soft complaining flute In dying notes discovers The woes of hopeless lovers, Whose dirge is whisper'd ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... of Vaud, "conseiller" and "chambellan" of the court, he was chatelain of Moudon and Faucigny, military governor of the great fortress of Montbeliard; and finally, as marechal of Savoy, became the general-in-chief of all his forces. When Amedee, resigning his flute playing and his many charities, returned to Italy and abandoned his throne to the Duchess Yolande—worthy sister of Louis the XI of France—Francois de Gruyere was still the principal support of the throne. The virtual governor by reason of his judicial and ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... Sharp, "the gambler produces skill; and there can be no doubt that hundreds of men derive as much pleasure from an exhibition of skill with the billiard-cue as others derive from an exhibition of skill with the flute or violin." ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... old man tips The pitcher, and brings his choicest fruit; Benjie basks in the blaze, and sips, And tells his story, and joints his flute: O, sweet the tunes, the talk, the laughter! They fill the hour with a glowing tide; But sweeter the still, deep moments after, When she is ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... for instance, is full of this empiricism; for sounds are harmonized, not by measure, but by skilful conjecture; the music of the flute is always trying to guess the pitch of each vibrating note, and is therefore mixed up with much that is doubtful and has little ...
— Philebus • Plato
... the tuning of the violins. A flute ripples up and down in a care-free manner as though the villain Kazrac were already dead and virtue had come into its own. The orchestra emerges from below. Their calmness is but a pretense. Having ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... curves that the chisel has freed from the roughness of the marble? Or have you listened while the diviner spell of music has lifted you, step by step, till you seem to hear the Gandharvas singing and almost the divine flute is being played and echoing in the lower world? Or have you stood on the mountain peak with the snows around you, and felt the grandeur of the unmoving nature that shows out God as well as the human spirit? Ah, if you have known any of these peaceful spots in life's desert, ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... little trafficked, and one might prefer to have it so, for in the stillness of the evening the birds are eloquent. The thrushes of Wister Woods, which have been immortalized by T. A. Daly in perhaps the loveliest poem ever written in Philadelphia, flute and whistle their tantalizing note, while the song sparrow echoes them with his confident, challenging call. Down behind the dusty sumac shrubbery lies the little blue-green cottage said to have been used by Benjamin West as a studio. In a meadow beside ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... the night of the fifteenth, the belated Chinook wind began to flute through the canyon, and towards dawn the guests at Scenic Hot Springs were wakened by the near thunder of an avalanche. After a while, word was brought that the Great Northern track was buried under forty feet of snow and rock and fallen trees for a distance ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... to speak. Now through the garden trees the sun 'gan break, And that inevitable time drew near; Then through the courts, grown cruel, strange, and drear, Since the bright morn, they led her to the gate. Where she beheld a golden litter wait. Whereby the King stood, aged and bent to earth, The flute-players with faces void of mirth, The down-cast bearers of the ivory wands, The maiden torch-bearers' ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... worn off, graced the mantelpiece; a good fire—a cheap comfort in that well-wooded country—blazed upon the hearth; on the right side of the fireplace a few shelves contained some well-worn books, a flute, a few minerals and other little treasures belonging to Traverse; on the left hand there was a dresser containing the little delfware, tea service and plates and dishes ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... heard was something like this: the sound of a bell, tolling at regular intervals, like the throbbing of a life begun; about it an accompaniment of hopes, inducements, fears, the flute, the violin, the violoncello, promising, urging, entreating, inspiring; the life beset with trials, lured with pleasures, hesitating, doubting, questioning; its purpose at length grows more certain and fixed, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... winter evening, as I was alone in my chamber," relates an American gentleman, "I took up my flute and commenced playing. In a few minutes my attention was directed to a mouse that I saw creeping from a hole, and advancing to the chair in which I was sitting. I ceased playing, and it ran precipitately back ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... offered me his arm, which I gladly accepted, happy to be relieved from the impertinence of my female companion. We returned to tea; after which the ladies sung, and played by turns on the piano forte; while some of the gentlemen accompanied with the flute, the clarinet, and the violin, forming in the whole a very decent concert. An elegant supper, and half an hour's conversation after it, closed the evening; when we returned home, delighted with our entertainment, and ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... in personal character, the most dissipated, degraded, and corrupt of all the sovereigns in the dynasty. He spent his whole time in vice and debauchery. The only honest accomplishment that he seemed to possess was his skill in playing upon the flute; of this he was very vain. He instituted musical contests, in which the musical performers of Alexandria played for prizes and crowns; and he himself was accustomed to enter the lists with the rest as a competitor. The people of Alexandria, and the world in general, ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... sketching landscapes and costumes, and better yet, the scientific drawing of engines and complicated machines, and also of acquiring skill on some musical instrument, to keep one from the gaming table in one's idle hours, preferably of learning to play on a portable instrument, such as a German flute. Journals, it goes without saying, must be written every night before ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... fame.' Accordingly a day was selected to present the board to us, and we prepared tea and cakes for those who would come. On the day appointed at 2 P.M., we heard a lot of fire-crackers, rockets, and guns, and a band playing the flute and bugle at the same time. The 'merit board,' consisting of a black board with four big carved and gilded characters in the centre, and with red cloth over it, was carried into our guest hall by four men, and set on the centre table. The characters complimented us by a comparison ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... languished, and I would watch her as she worked among her flowers. I can see her flitting figure in a dress of dainty white as she hovered over a beautiful blossom. I can hear her calling me, her voice like the music of a flute, calling me to come and see some triumph of her skill. I have a picture of her coming towards me with her arms full of flowers, burying her face lovingly among the velvet petals, and raising it again, the sweetest flower ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... his warlike companion he tapped the lid of his case, opened it, and revealed three joints of a flute lying snugly in purple-velvet fittings, and, taking them out, he proceeded to lick the ends all round in a tomcat sort of way, and screwed them together, evidently with a great deal of satisfaction to himself, for he ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn |
