"For a song" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you can be punished for such lies, since you are an official.' For though the police are the same in all countries, and will swear black is white, and destroy men for a song, yet where there is a droit administratif- that is, where the Revolution has made things tolerable—you are much surer of punishing your policeman, and he is much less able to do you a damage than in England ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... and there a one in the City of London were able to procure. In its flavour, said he, lurked the mystery of strange and barbaric names. He showed me a Bonington water colour which he had picked up for a song. On enquiry as to the signification of a song as a unit of value, I learned that since eminent tenors and divas had sung into gramophones, ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... Lady K. says we might have Lord Porlock's house—poor Lady Porlock and her baby died a few weeks ago, and he has gone to Sweden quite broken-hearted. It is one of the new houses, exquisitely furnished, and Lady K. thinks you might have it for a song. Will you get Steadman to write to his lordship's steward, and see what can ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... their backs upon their claims and never gave them a second thought. One man sold a half-interest in five hundred feet of it for a sack of flour. Other owners wandered around trying to bunco men into buying them out for a song. And then Eldorado "showed up." It was far, far richer than Bonanza, with an average value of a thousand dollars a foot to every foot ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... fortnight, or perhaps a little longer, while he and Mr. Heathcote came back by way of New England and from there went down into Maryland and Virginia, where, according to "a member of the Canadian Parliament," lands were to be had for a song. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... the worse for Colorow society," laughed Serviss. Then, to clear the shadow which had gathered on the girl's face, he said: "I see a fine piano, and shelves of music books. This argues that you love music. Won't you sing for me? I am hungry for a song." ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... of mystery upon reading the titles of many of the volumes. The majority were old books, many of them in languages that he was not able to decipher, picked up for a song at second-hand shops or on the book stands installed upon the parapets of the Seine. Only a man holding the key of tongues could get together such volumes. An atmosphere of mysticism, of superhuman insight, of secrets intact for many centuries appeared to emanate from these heaps of dusty ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Crittenden (the Camp Floyd of General Johnston), the Mormons supposed that it would make its camp there. Persons having a pecuniary interest in the reoccupation of the old site, where they wanted to sell to the government the buildings they had bought for a song, tried hard to induce Colonel Connor to accept their view, even warning him of armed Mormon opposition to his passage through Salt Lake City. But he was not a man to be thus deterred. Among the rumors that reached him was one that Bill Hickman, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... and low, by Jacopo's own trusted servant, and the old woman who had waited on Arisa, and it had reached the market-place at an early hour, so that the ballad-makers were busy with it. For many had known of the existence of the beautiful Georgian slave and the subject was a good one for a song—how she had caressed him to sleep and fostered his foolish security while he loved her blindly, and how she and her mysterious lover had bound him and shaved his head and face and made him a laughing-stock, so that he must hide himself from the world for months, and moreover how they had carried ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... advisers were not politicians. They were business men, but recently honestly interested in reform. I was talking one day, with a gentleman of very wide reputation as a philanthropist, about the unhappy lot of the old fire-engine horses,—which, after lives of toil that deserve a better fate, are sold for a song to drag out a weary existence hauling some huckster's cart around,—and wishing that they might be pensioned off to live out their years on a farm, with enough to eat and a chance to roll in the grass. He was much interested, and promptly gave me this advice: "I ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... quiet satisfaction, even though murder had been the outcome of my art. "The lady and her husband dead and gone (honesty would have made me say 'or gone'), the letters fell into the possession of my friend, who in a way deals in such curios. I bought them from him for a song (some songs are worth one thousand dollars), although he was not ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... saw there worth speaking of was a good face set upon an ill game, and the shells of the two eggs formerly laid up and hatched by Leda, out of which came Castor and Pollux, fair Helen's brothers. These same syndics sold us a piece of 'em for a song, I mean, for a morsel of bread. Before we went we bought a parcel of hats and caps of the manufacture of the place, which, I fear, will turn to no very good account; nor are those who shall take 'em off our hands more likely to ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... gave back each of these treasures for a song, and the nightingale went on singing. It sang about the quiet churchyard, when the roses bloom, where the elder flower scents the air, and where the fresh grass is ever moistened anew by the tears of the mourner. This song brought to Death a longing ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... The sleeping Leaves, and through the Branches spoke— 'What! is the Love between us two begun And waxing till we Two were nearly One For three score Years of Intercourse unstirr'd Of Men, now shaken by a little Bird; And such a precious Bargain, and so long A making, [put in peril] for a Song?' ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... and to the point," said Metem reflectively. "Well, I have prepared myself a rock-hewn tomb at Tyre, and do not wish that my graven sarcophagus of best Egyptian alabaster should be wasted, or sold to some upstart for a song." ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... know, that it is in the night time precisely he is filling his pocket, in the night when, as I think, we receive gifts from the unseen. I placed him in the house of a miser, an old man who had saved a store of gold. I called the old man Damer, from a folk-story of a chandler who had bought for a song the kegs of gold the Danes had covered with tallow as a disguise when they were driven out of Ireland, and who had been rich and a miser ever after. I did not mean this old man, Damer, to appear at all. He was to be as invisible as that Heaven of which we are told the violent take it by force. My ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... his country is fighting by a levy en masse for her very existence, he aids her by depreciating her paper, so that he may accumulate fabulous amounts with little outlay. If his neighbor is distressed, he buys his property for a song. If he administers upon an estate, it turns out insolvent, and the orphans are paupers. If his bank explodes, he is found to have taken care of himself in time. Society worships its paper-and-credit ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... made my bow and went to the village, and in going past the ale-house I thought I would just step in, which I did. The house was full of people, chiefly farmers, and when they saw me they asked me to sit down and take a glass with them, which I did, and being called upon for a song I sang one, and then began talking about myself and how much my lord thought of me, and I repeated the lines which I had written to him, and showed them the James' guinea he had given me. You should ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... may carry a poor lyric to success, and a great lyric may carry a poor melody; but for a song to become widely popular you must have both a great melody ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... o' them, or he would nivver hev spoke o' them; and he'll go to them, rather than not hev his own way. Even if he didn't, just as soon as he was squire, he'd manage it. The Norfolk Hallams, who are next to him, are a poor shiftless crowd, that he'd buy for a song. Now dost thou want to keep Hallam i' thy own flesh and blood? If ta does, I'll tell thee ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... And then a silence; then the auctioneer: "It's going! Going! Gone! Three thousand pounds!" Three thousand pounds! A frenzy leapt in me. "That picture's mine," I cried; "I'm David Strong. I painted it, this famished wretch you see; I did it, I, and sold it for a song. And in a garret three small hours ago My daughter died for want of Christian care. Look, look at me! . . . Is it to mock my woe You pay three thousand for my picture there?" ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... every other large center of population, increased by the necessary rerouting around the affected area, threatened disruption of the entire organism and the further disintegration of the city's already weakened coordination. The values of realestate dropped, houses were sold for a song, officebuildings for an aria, hotels ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... which would make their fortunes, in order to tempt your wise countrymen, who are willing to pay vast sums to have the risk of breaking their necks, yet who will not invest in the best property in Switzerland when it is offered to them for a song." ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... will have the advantage? The few who have money. They will buy for a song and some day, when times are better again, they will sell for twice as much. Some day they are likely ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... were gathered round another lady, who was telling them an amusing temperance tale, trying to speak so that the Bible readers should not hear her and yet that the Leinsters should was a difficulty, but when the Irishmen begged for a song—difficulty became impossibility, and their friend had to say, 'No.' Yet this is just the double work required in Soldiers' Homes, and above all at Lydd, where there is so little safe amusement to be had in camp, and none in the village." ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... To wrap me in the universal shade; Whether the darkened room to muse invite, Or whitened wall provoke the skewer to write: In durance, exile, Bedlam or the Mint— Like Lee or Budgel, I will rhyme and print. F. Alas, young man! your days can ne'er be long, In flower of age you perish for a song! Plums and directors, Shylock and his wife, Will club their testers, now, to take your life! P. What? armed for virtue when I point the pen, Brand the bold front of shameless guilty men; Dash the proud gamester in his gilded car; Bare the mean heart that lurks beneath ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... a poor man. I could have made money out of my remedies had I charged as some physicians do, but instead I wished to aid humanity, and so sold my priceless medicines for a song. Yes, I am poor, sir, and I need money. If I aid ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... 1863, he wrote, "I am much pleased with your 'Knickerbocker Magazine,' and cannot too much admire your energy and versatility. Take notice, I recommended you Miss Braddon's works while they were to be had for a song. 'Lost and Saved,' by Mrs. Norton, will make you a good deal of money if you venture boldly on it and publish it. It is out-and-out the best new thing, and rather American. If you hear of any scrap-books containing copious extracts from American papers, I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... the baker, who had once tried his hand at an original Christmas carol. He even called upon the ladies—and we were all of us rather shocked at the time—to bring their music; and as a piano had actually been hired from somewhere, and stood on the platform, he called upon his sister for a song there and then, and she actually—we were surprised—sang one of those old English ballads to hear which we had regarded as the sole privilege of the select few who were invited to take tea at the vicarage, at the sewing meetings which we had associated with the name ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... altogether I have made a pretty good night's work of it. Kitey Graves wasn't in great force, so after I had sung Bid me Discourse, and I'd be a Butterfly, I cut my stick and went to the hopposition shop, where they used me much more genteelly; giving me three tickets for a song, and introducing me in more flattering terms to the company—don't like being considered one of the nasty 'reglars,' and they should make a point of explaining that one isn't. Besides, what business had Kitey to say anything about Bagnigge Vells? a hass!—Now, perhaps, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... you know. But I have never told Silver; she might ask where were the people to whom they belonged. You do not like the idea? Neither do I. But how could we help the drowning when we were not there, and these things were going for a song down at Beaver. The child loves pretty things; what could a poor man do? Have a glass of punch; I'll get it ready in no time.' He bustled about, and then came back with the full glasses. 'You won't tell her? I may have done wrong in the matter, but it would ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... in winter. His voice sounds flat, from flatulence; and he fetches breath, like a drowning kitten, whenever he can. Notwithstanding all this, his music gains ground, for it walks with him from end to end of the street. He is your only performer that requires not many entreaties for a song; for he will chant, without asking, to a street cur, or a parish post. His only backwardness is to a stave after dinner, seeing that he never dines; for he sings for bread, and though corn has ears, sings ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... prodigious favourite. I see by your look, however, that enough has been said; but after having done so much to amuse this good company, to-night, I shall feel authorised to call on every lady present, at least for a song, as soon as the proper moment arrives. Perhaps I have a right to add, a sentiment, and ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... from Kerry crossroads and leave the wooded dells, Take the mountain path and find where Tip O'Leary dwells; Tip O'Leary is the name, I sing it all day long, And every bird whose heart is wise will have it for a song. ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... pretensions, had that of being able to relate a story in an impressive manner. These words were as pleasing to his ears as the request for a song is to a lady who requires urging, although she is dying ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... be deafened,' said Rose, laughing, as she escaped from him a moment, to arrange for a song from a tall formidable maiden, built after the fashion of Mr. Gilbert's contralto heroines, with a voice which bore out the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with some of the railroad people— gave them stock you know—and got rebates. And he had some union leaders on his pay rolls, and he called strikes on his rivals, and when he'd ruined them he bought them out for a song. And when he had everything in his hands, and got tired of paying high wages, he fired some of the union men and forced a strike. Then he brought in some strike-breakers and hired some thugs to slug them, and turned the police loose on the men—and ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... Boutelle, fellows!" he shouted. "A long cheer and a whopper!" And, when it had been given lustily: "And now one for the second team!" he cried. "Everyone into it! One—two—three!" The enthusiasm was mounting high now, and, after the cheer had died away, there were demands for a song. "We want to sing!" proclaimed the meeting. "We want ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... weren't a friend, this would be a mighty good chance to squeeze you," remarked the General; "we could keep your cars back until we'd clean squelched your traffic, and then buy the little road up for a song. It's business, but it isn't fair, and I'll be blamed if I'm going ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... was always smoking, broken here and there by a little blaze of blue or crimson colour. It was not his dream! Mentally he had hung this space with those gold-framed masterpieces of still and stiller life which he had bought in days when quantity was precious. And now where were they? Sold for a song! That something which made him, alone among Forsytes, move with the times had warned him against the struggle to retain them. But in his study he still had 'Dutch Fishing ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... this once splendid feudal estate literally for a song—the song in the second act of Fremier's comedy, which had a long run at the Varietes three years ago, and in which she earned an enviable success and some beautiful bank-notes. Were the Duc de Rambutin alive I am sure he would have presented ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... lived in the Chausee des Minimes, a short, broad street leading to the Place Royale. He had bought the house, an old-fashioned mansion, for a song, as the saying is, in 1831. Yet there were sumptuous apartments within it, decorated in the time of Louis XV.; for it had once been the Hotel Maulaincourt, built by the great President of the Cour des Aides, and ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... the last, because Lady Monica told us it was to be done first," said Pilar sagely; so we wandered through the shabby aisles of Rag Fair, Pilar hoping against hope to unearth a treasure; because, did not a man once pick up, for a song, a Greco worth a fortune, and did not one always find something at least amusing in the Rag Fair of Madrid? Thence we went on to the Moorish mosque, which the Visigoths began, and so to San Juan de los Reyes, which, Pilar said, I must like better than anything else in Toledo, because she ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... surroundings. Their cottages were simple; but each had its charming outlook to sea and a sufficient number of more or less wooded acres to command privacy and breathing space. In the early days the land had sold for a song, but it had risen steadily with the times, as more and more people coveted a foothold. The last ten years had introduced many changes; the older houses had been pulled down and replaced by lordly structures with all the modern conveniences, including ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... to tell you all about it; how the estate must be closed up; how the house may be had for a song; and he names a figure so small that it gives you two separate mental shocks; first, to realize that it is within your means; second, to find that ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... because Ixion says his wheel's old-fashioned; he wants a new one with pneumatic tyres warranted puncturable, which shows that he is really entering into the spirit of the thing. You might have had his old one for a song, I'm sure. However, what do you say to calling on those Danaid girls, and getting them to teach you their little industry? There, again, you have simplicity itself. Take a can with a hole in the bottom, go on pouring ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... stock by him, for there is a constant demand. The work out in the country here does for a uniform in no time, and many men who, before marching for the frontier, parted with all their extra kit for a song, are glad enough to write to him for a fresh outfit at three times the price he gave them two or three ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... obtain a capital. In pursuance of this clever scheme, the adventurer sets out on his travels, visits provincial towns, and the estates of landed gentry of every shade of character, honesty, and financial standing; and from them he buys for a song (or cajoles from them for nothing, as a gift, when they are a trifle scrupulous over the tempting prospect of illegal gain) huge numbers of "dead souls." Pushkin himself could not have used with ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... theme! She has altered the bar To Kathleen Mavourneen and Erin-go-bragh! Spell-bound stand the rustics; she's won the whole throng! To the lady they've given their votes "for a song." "'Twill be ours, will the seat—'tis the plot I have planned! Oh, Music ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... the city's "plots," upon which deserted houses stood, were sold for default in payment of taxes, old Wardelow bought them himself—they always went for a song, and the old man preferred to own them, lest some one else might destroy the ruins, and thus make the place unfamiliar ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... drink," cried Robin, only wetting his own lips meanwhile. "Ho, landlord! Bring my friend another pot of the same. And now for a song, my ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... ecstasy from the throats of bobolinks nesting among the daisies, timothy, and clover; when the blue sky arches over the fairest scenes the year can show, and all the world is full of sunshine and happy promises of fruition, must we Americans always go to English literature for a song to fit our ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... claim to have created forms in which life became manifest. Of these, the most marvellous were those strange beings, male and female, which were called homunculi. The old philosophers doubted the possibility of this operation, but Paracelsus asserts positively that it can be done. I picked up once for a song on a barrow at London Bridge a little book in German. It was dirty and thumbed, many of the pages were torn, and the binding scarcely held the leaves together. It was called Die Sphinx and was edited by ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... paying fifteen dollars for a fiddle which it is a genu-ine Amati," he said, "and that brother of mine which he ain't got no more sense as a lunatic lets it go for a song already." ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... Rocambeau, could possibly tell. But it was the only name that Andrew had, and as good as any other. It was part of his inheritance, the remainder being ninety-five francs in cash, some cheap trinkets, a couple of boxes of fripperies which were sold for a song, a tattered copy of Longfellow's Poems, and a brand new gilt-edged Bible, carefully covered in brown paper, with "For Fanny from Jim" inscribed on the flyleaf. From which Andrew Lackaday, as soon as his mind could grasp such things, deduced that his mother's ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... the law already, do you?" said the newcomer. "Well. Eat some bread and cheese, and I will give you sixpence for a song." ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... the interest his heirs still have in it. Poets like Uhland, Freiligrath, Geibel, have also received as much as $6,000 or $12,000 on the sales of a single volume. Long ago in Boston, Robert Treat Paine received $1,500 for a song. Of our living poets, Longfellow has been most ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... to some thousands of acres of the finest timber in this country," he announced challengingly, "all ship-shape in the name of Stephen O'Mara, 2nd! Old Tom bought them for the boy he hid away with him, in the days when timber-lands were going for a song. He paid the taxes until he was drowned, and I—I've paid 'em since, my dear! Three or four hundred thousand dollars, or more, ought to buy quite an amount of—er—feminine necessities, it ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... craft, and built in the best possible manner, and with the very best materials, yet, a few years of scudding before the wind, as they do, seriously impairs their constitutions—like robust young men, who live too fast in their teens —and they are soon sold out for a song; generally to the people of Nantucket, New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, who repair and fit them out for the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... sell him for a song than he should disturb the peace of the city thus." To New Orleans Mr. Grabguy sends his unsubdued property; but that the threatened sale is only a feint to more effectually dissolve the contract and forfeit the money paid as part of his freedom, he soon becomes ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Chicago street-railways, once he had them well in hand, could be made to yield such splendid profits! He could incorporate and overcapitalize. Many subsidiary lines, which McKenty would secure for him for a song, would be worth millions in the future, and they should be his entirely; he would not be indebted to the directors of the old North Chicago company for any interest on those. By degrees, year by year, as the city grew, the lines which were still controlled by this old company, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Bo," interrupted Horatio, gently. "You are only a little boy. I will do the thinking for this firm. Now for a song, ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine
... valuation upon the land according to the return from it which each expects to get. The low valuation is expressed in the border wilderness, by which a third or even a half of the whole area is wasted; and also in the readiness with which savages often sell their best territory for a song. ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... mute. But evidently the birds have not enthroned this thrush. Possibly, even, they do not share human admiration for his song. The redstart goes on jerking out his monotonous ditty; chippy irreverently mounts a perch and trills out his inane apology for a song; the vireo in yonder tree spares us not one of his never-ending platitudes. But the hermit thrush goes on with sublime indifference to the voices of common folk down below. Sometimes he is answered from afar by another of his kind, who arranges his notes ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... to Squire Gale, the clerk of the court, who is another of those conniving big bugs, who are seen going round with the sheriff, at such times, with their pockets full of money to buy up the poor man's property for a song, though never a dollar will they lend him to redeem ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... Jolly, Stansbury, Chapman, and other vocalists. The Shepherd, too, treated us with an original song, the burden of which was 'Robin's awa.' It is a lament for Burns as the best of the minstrels; but it was brought in by a laugh, in consequence of the toast-master calling for silence for a song from Mr. Shepherd." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... hypocrite, as you judge me, Mr Walpole. Be witness yourself if my presence there this day has proved me one. Refused and cast away by this nobleman, I had nothing to do but to dispose for a trifle of a few articles of linen which were still in my possession. I sold them for a song, and believing failure to be impossible, still struggled on. In that room I dwelt, living for days upon nothing richer than bread and water, and regarding my little money with the agony of a miser, as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... the age of revolution in America, he rose to leadership through a bloody terror, which contrived a Negro "problem" for the Western Hemisphere, intensified and defined the anti-slavery movement, became one of the causes, and probably the prime one, which led Napoleon to sell Louisiana for a song, and finally, through the interworking of all these effects, rendered more certain the final prohibition of the slave-trade by the United ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of Norway! To think but of thee Makes so small all the small things I felt. To thy coming I hallow me, wholly to thee, And I humbly look up to thy face, unto thee, And I pray for a song With thy tongue's stirring sound, That I true may and strong In the crisis be found, To rouse heroes for thee ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... forenoon, riding or walking out together, his lordship and Allan passed a sweet romantic spot on Irwine water, still called "Patie's Mill," where a bonnie lass was "tedding hay, bareheaded on the green." My lord observed to Allan, that it would be a fine theme for a song, Ramsay took the hint, and lingering behind, he composed the first sketch of it, which he ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... as he continued, I answered with such spirit, as to arouse his indignation. My own blood boiled; but the interference of mutual friends pacified us for the time, and we renewed our applications to the bottle. My cousin was called upon for a song; he had a fine voice and considerable ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... island of Herm, in the Channel Isles; such are one or two volcanic rocks in the Greek Archipelago, which you may purchase for a song, and live on if you can, though their barren waterlessness under the midsummer suns will compel you to put out to sea again for all the dangers of swift currents and black crags; such, too, I imagine, are some of those enchanted small islands in the South Seas of which ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... and answered, "No man should boast; but—" Pepper paused significantly, and then glancing at Attie, said, "Talking of lasses, it is my turn to knock down a gentleman for a song, and ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... am rich and a woman of leisure, I will build a house that shall have pleasant rooms and good bread and butter, and I will board school-teachers and sewing-girls and clerks for a song." This she said aloud. ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... ordered him for his support, which nevertheless was abridged to 100l. by Cecil, who, hearing of it, and owing him a grudge for some reflections in Mother Hubbard's Tale, cry'd out to the queen, What! all this for a song? This he is said to have taken so much to heart, that he contracted a deep melancholy, which soon after brought his life to a period. So apt is an ingenuous spirit to resent a slighting, even from the greatest persons; thus much I must needs say of the merit of so great a poet ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... what he thinks of the proceedings, characterizes them (his strength lying in a slangular direction) as "a rummy start." The landlord of the Sol's Arms, finding Little Swills so popular, commends him highly to the jurymen and public, observing that for a song in character he don't know his equal and that that man's character-wardrobe would fill ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... respectful compliment to Jan Steen, Esq.? He is a glorious composer. His humor is as frank as Fielding's. Look at his own figure sitting in the window-sill yonder, and roaring with laughter! What a twinkle in the eyes! what a mouth it is for a song, or a joke, or a noggin! I think the composition in some of Jan's pictures amounts to the sublime, and look at them with the same delight and admiration which I have felt before works of the very highest style. This gallery is admirable—and the city in which the gallery is, is perhaps ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... twelvemonth, along with several other broken-down lodgers whose slender means compelled them to call this place "home"—this place where never a bit of sunshine seemed to come; where even the birds hated to stop for a song as they flew merrily over the tree-tops. And no wonder. The trees were scraggy, loppy old things hanging down in dismal sweep over the leaky roof and damp walls. They had to stay—the lodgers, but the birds and the sunshine ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... creatures of any sort, for since there are no woods there are few hiding places. Neither do we see any birds, and we listen in vain for a song ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... sit in homely cell, I'll teach my swains this carrol for a song: "Blest be the hearts that think my sovereign well, Curs'd be the souls that think to do her wrong." Goddess, vouchsafe this aged man his right, To be your beadsman ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... better than it should be. It's wus nor nothin'. It puts them wot listens in the blues an' the man wot sings into the stews—an' sarve him right. I wouldn't, no, I wouldn't give the fag-end o' nothin' mixed in bucket o' salt water for a song without a ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... mere daubers; he went straight, as if from instinct, to individualists, whose talent was contested still, but whose future fame his flaming, drunkard's nose sniffed from afar. Added to this he was a ferocious hand at bargaining, and displayed all the cunning of a savage in his efforts to secure, for a song, the pictures that he coveted. True, he himself was satisfied with very honest profits, twenty per cent., thirty at the most. He based his calculations on quickly turning over his small capital, never purchasing in the morning without knowing where to dispose ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... to other crusty individuals who flatly refuse to exercise their talents, as, for instance, after the accident to the coach which was conveying Nicholas Nickleby and Squeers to Yorkshire. In response to the call for a song to pass the time away, some protest they cannot, others wish they could, others can do nothing without the book, while the 'very fastidious lady entirely ignored the invitation to give them some little Italian thing out of the last opera.' A somewhat original plea for refusing ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... Balls, the great grocer of South Audley Street, a warm man, who, they say, had his twenty thousand pounds; Jack Snaffle, of the mews hard by, a capital fellow for a song; Clinker, the ironmonger: all married gentlemen, and in the best line of business; Tressle, the undertaker, etc. No liveries were admitted into the room, as may be imagined, but one or two select butlers and major-domos ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Yes: for a song. If it was a tale, now, or an epic, it would be a different matter. But they are beyond me, both of them. Do you think, Uncle," and La Mothe turned over the arquebuse Commines had pointed at in jest as it lay on his lap, "this will ever be better than a ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... places to pay my debts and do business, I being resolved to cast up my accounts within a day or two, for I fear I have run out too far. In coming home I met with a face I knew and challenged him, thinking it had been one of the Theatre musicians, and did enquire for a song of him, but finding it a mistake, and that it was a gentleman that comes sometimes to the office, I was much ashamed, but made a pretty good excuse that I took him for a gentleman of Gray's Inn who sings ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... strange little shops for some particularly old and strong-smelling piece at a reasonable price. When he brought home a bargain of that kind, he acted like a bibliophile having just captured a rare first edition for a song, and the mother tried hard to share his enthusiasm. But, she said once, she had to draw the line at cheese that walked by itself. Half in jest and half in earnest, the father maintained that the ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... has come out for a song? It has the form of a young man, but the simpering silliness of a school girl. Half idiot, it jabbers out a lot of words that can not be understood, but which are wildly applauded by the crowd on the floor, who 'pat juba' while the creature dances. The girl who ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... sniffing laugh. "Ottawa! Why, it's some of the big guns at Ottawa that's gettin' the cream of it all. The little fellows are just lapping up the drips. Look at them big concessions they're selling for a song, good placer ground that would mean pie to the poor miner, closed tight and everlastingly tied up. How is it done? Why, there's some politician at the bottom of the whole business. Look at the liquor permits—crude alcohol sent into the country by the thousand ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... for a song for you, George," she said. "I want Mr. Wingfold to hear you sing, lest he should take you for a man ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... practice, a visit to his brokers, Messrs. Grin and Grinning, to give them instructions to sell his shares in the New Colliery Co., Ltd., whose business he suspected, rather than knew, was stagnating (this enterprise afterwards slowly declined, and was ultimately sold for a song to an American syndicate); and a long conference at Waterbuck, Q.C.'s chambers, attended by Boulter, by Fiske, the junior ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a quite opposite tendency, very often of a commonplace character. From the great distress which at such times Antonia's glances betrayed, I perceived that he only did it to deprive me of a pretext for calling upon her for a song. But I didn't relinquish my design. The hindrances which the Councillor threw in my way only strengthened my resolution to overcome them; I must hear Antonia sing if I was not to pine away in reveries and dim aspirations ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... thankless pianoforte solo, in this case gratuitously meretricious into the bargain, albeit the arbitrary choice of no less a judge than Mrs. Clarkson. It was received with perfunctory applause, through which a dissipated stockman thundered thickly for a song. Miss Bouverie averted her eyes from Sir Julian (ensconced like Royalty in the centre of the first row) as she descended from the platform. She had not the hardihood to glance toward the great man until the indistinct stockman ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... strove to learn all they taught as ardently as his father had striven to wreck, before capture, the railways of his native land; and it must have been some touch of the old bandit railway blood that bade him buy, for a song, Holt Hangars, whose forty-acre lawn, as every one knows, sweeps down in velvet to the quadruple tracks of the Great Buchonian Railway. Their trains flew by almost continuously, with a bee-like drone in the day and a flutter of strong wings at night. ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... uv mine—d'ye know Jow 'Awkins? Him as kep' the frahd fish shop off of Flower and Dean. Yus? Well, he sold his bit uv biziness lahst week for a song, thinkin' the world was acomin' to a end, and this mornin' I meets 'im on the 'Owben Viadeck lookin' as if 'e'd ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... gallery roared with contempt when he was called a tyrant, was the remorseless and aged Creon. And Ismene, being arrayed in spangled muslin trousers very loose in the legs and very tight in the ankles, such as Fatima would wear in Blue Beard, was at her appearance immediately called upon for a song! After ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... which Mr. JOHN HASSALL wrote under one of his sketches suggested the words for a song which has now been written. It is only fair to the artist to say that he was not aware that his quite innocent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... splendours were only Neeland's rejected Academy pictures and studies; a few cheap Japanese hangings, cheaper Nippon porcelains, and several shaky, broken-down antiques picked up for a song here and there. All the trash and truck and dust and junk characteristic of the conventional artist's ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... and Berlin to look for any pictures which might still remain on the island, that they had any idea that among them had dwelt a man of consequence. They remembered then that they could have bought for a song canvases which now were worth large sums, and they could not forgive themselves for the opportunity which had escaped them. There was a Jewish trader called Cohen, who had come by one of Strickland's pictures in a singular way. He was a little old Frenchman, with soft ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... when he saddest sits in holy cell, He'll teach his swains this carol for a song: Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well! Cursed be the souls that think her any wrong! Goddess! allow this aged man his right To be your beadsman now, that was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... up at an auction where people were being sold out, and he got it for a song," he said. "But we've outgrown it. I'd like a real pony. I ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... we proceeded on our journey, always in profound silence, for a song or a loud laugh was now strictly prohibited until we should have passed the utmost limits of country where the enemy might possibly be. We had been warned beforehand that a certain point, where the ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... estates peaceably, riots were so easy to arrange; he had arranged them before. Then, when the Two Strange People had been struck with panic, the Syrian donkey- market, and the five hundred feddans of American cotton, and the new schools would be his for a song—or a curse. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
