"Musical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... way home the pastor met Elsie with her babe in her arms, and told her of his farewell visit to Frida, and of his delight with the child's musical talent, and advised her to encourage her as much as possible to play ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... particular," responded Mrs. Bonnifay; "only a girl whom Rose met when she was studying music in Germany. I fancy she spent her last cent on her musical education, which, I fear, won't do her much good, after all; for, as you must notice, she is utterly lacking in style. She is dreadfully poor now, and earns a living by singing in private houses—all her voice is really fit for, you know. So Rose takes pity on her, and has her in once in a while. ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... not," added she, with a musical laugh, which made Tom think of the melody of the spheres, or ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... children have a keen sense of the musical qualities of verse. The child of two years of age will give his attention to the rhythm of the nursery rhyme when the prose story will not interest him. The consideration and analysis of these musical qualities should be ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... further enacted, that each slave, at entering the said ship, is to receive some present, not exceeding in value ——, to be provided according to the instructions aforesaid; and musical instruments, according to the fashion of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... by some one softly whistling a theme from the overture to Masaniello, popular at the college in the form of an arrangement for six pianofortes and twelve hands. There was only one student unladylike and musical enough to whistle; and Miss Wilson was ashamed to find herself growing nervous at the prospect of an encounter with Agatha, who entered whistling sweetly, but with a lugubrious countenance. When she saw in whose presence she stood, she begged pardon politely, ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... The musical skeleton rattled his bones against the ivory in a very one, two, three, four symphony; the poet ran his fingers through his hair, pulled up his collar, gave his head a ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... among them were many long-tried friends who had gathered with him around the festal board; so he chose the only remaining alternative, and went back to his native country, cherishing the hope that he should one day return to the home he loved so well, and listen again to the musical flow of the brook, which could be distinctly heard from the door of the mansion. But his wish was vain, for when at last America was free and the British troops recalled, he slept beneath the sod ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... Lee, possessed an accordion on which he was an earnest and artistic performer. Miss Pringle's Jefferson had with him a harmonica, or mouth organ, which he at once produced. Jefferson was endowed with the peculiar gift of manipulating this little musical instrument solely with his lips, moving it back and forth and round about as he played, without touching it with his hands; and this left his hands free to pat the time. The negro orchestra perched itself on the top of the cabin, and in a moment ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... sat nearly speechless for an hour and a half while half a dozen young ladies had discussed the origin of evil with great volubility, and what seemed to her, however it might have impressed metaphysicians, astounding erudition and profundity. She had assisted at that sacred rite of musical devotees, the Saturday night Symphony concert, where a handful of people gathered to hear the music, and all the rest of the world crowded for the sake of having been there. She had been taken by Miss Mott to a select sewing-circle—that peculiar institution by means ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... and openings; and the runaway. Cornish tried hard to make himself agreeable, not ingratiatingly but good-naturedly. He wished profoundly that before coming he had looked up some more stories in the back of the Musical Gazettes. Lulu surreptitiously pinched off an ant that was running at large upon the cloth and thereafter kept her eyes steadfastly on the sugar-bowl to see if it could be from that. Dwight pretended that those whom he was helping a second time were getting ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... I said. My voice was a marvel even to myself, so rich and full and musical! "Look at me! Of what use was it to make me beautiful if you are now to make me unhappy? Ah, I beg of you, I implore you, don't be just, but be kind! Let me have my own way and see—oh, see how I shall ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... doubtless as many melodious shepherds as ever Theocritus found in Sicily, for they were of the same race of people as the Sicilians. Why should the slopes of Lactarius be less musical than those of Aetna? Indeed the reasonable reader will find that, except for an occasional transference of actual persons into Arcadian setting—by an allegorical turn invented before Vergil—there is no serious confusion in the scenery or inconsistent treatment in the plots of ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... have draft animals; when we were coming down, I saw a few of them pulling pole travoises. I'd say they've been farming for a long time. They have quite a diversity of crops, and I suspect that they have some idea of crop-rotation. I'm amazed at their musical instruments; they seem to have put more skill into making them than anything else. I'm going to take a jeep, while they're all in the village, and have a look ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... thought and many thousands of francs to the education of her daughter, who spent three years at a very superior school at Dresden, receiving wonderful instruction in sciences, arts and tongues, and who, taking a different line from Leolin, was to be brought up wholly as a femme du monde. The girl was musical and philological; she made a specialty of languages and learned enough about them to be inspired with a great contempt for her mother's artless accents. Greville Fane's French and Italian were droll; the imitative faculty had been denied her, and she had an ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... (close to a county town with a memorable history that had its relics in church and castle) was one of those excellent musicians here and there to be found in our provinces, worthy to compare with many a noted Kapellmeister in a country which offers more plentiful conditions of musical celebrity. Rosamond, with the executant's instinct, had seized his manner of playing, and gave forth his large rendering of noble music with the precision of an echo. It was almost startling, heard for the first time. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... almost simultaneously outside, and the dining-room was plunged into pitchy darkness. Steel instantly caught up a chair. He was no coward, but he was a novelist with a novelist's imagination. As he stood there the sweetest, most musical laugh in the world broke on his ear. He caught the swish of silken drapery and the subtle scent that suggested the fragrance of a woman's hair. It was ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... executing the laws given it by God. But the means to this end, the instruments, the living members, are the Nationalities, in which all the varieties of the human race have their fairest bloom, their most precious flower. What the tones are in the musical chord they are in humanity, eternal variety in eternal harmony and concord. It is impossible to conceive Humanity without them; it would then be unity without variety, consequently no proper unity at all, a mere lifeness oneness. States are of human creation, an aggregative ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... whisper of roguishness, when the slight rural monotony of its narrative speech disappeared, and soul and heart—or what seemed soul and heart—resounded. The charm lay in the intervals, using that word in its musical sense. She would say a few syllables in one note, and end her sentence in a soft modulation upwards, then downwards, then into her own note again. The curve of sound was as artistic as any line of beauty ever struck by his pencil—as satisfying as ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... she grows much more fretful I'm afraid I shall have to take her to the country for July and August. It seems dreadful to leave Oliver all alone, but I don't see how I can help it if the doctor advises me to go. Oliver has gone to some musical comedy at the Academy to-night, and I am so tired that I am going to bed just as soon as I finish this letter. I hope and pray that the baby will have a quiet night. Don't you think that Daisy treated me very badly considering how kind I had been to her? ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... her room to think. Magic effects had risen from the spectacle of the well-remembered face, from the sound of the sharp, high voice. A new sensation grew out of them for Joan. Home rose like a vision, with the sighing of the sea, the crying of the gulls, the musical rattle of blocks in the bay, the clink, clink of picks in the quarry, the occasional thunder of a blast. Many odors were with her: the smell of tar and twine and stores, the scent of drying fish. She saw the low cliffs all gemmed at this season with moon-flowers—the great ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... earliest poetry depended upon accent and alliteration; that is, the beginning of two or more words in the same line with the same sound or letter. The lines were made up of two short halves, separated by a pause. No rime was used; but a musical effect was produced by giving each half line two strongly accented syllables. Each full line, therefore, had four accents, three of which (i.e. two in the first half, and one in the second) usually began with the same sound or letter. The musical effect was heightened by the harp with which the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... complete her happiness, the silence that reigned around her was broken by a sweet, musical sound of a little bird that sang from the tree-top high above her head. This was the redstart, and the tree under which she sat was its singing-tree, to which it resorted many times a day to spend half an hour or so repeating its brief ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... with his face ghastly, and his eyes starting, as, with his hands behind his ears, he strained to catch the faintest sound which came up as through a great whispering tube; but all he could hear was the splashing of the rope, and a deep low musical dripping sound of ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... acquaintance, the buffalo-calf, came and peeped over the edge of the excavation. Almost at the same moment he heard voices, which approached nearer and nearer; a man's voice, and a feminine one, talking the musical tongue of Italy. Besides the hairy visage of his four footed friend, Kenyon now saw the figures of a peasant and a contadina, making gestures of salutation to him, on the opposite verge ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... him in this mistake, addressed him in the most pleasant language, and presented him the best of every thing with her own hand. The entertainment being finished, they rose from the table; ten slaves took musical instruments, and began to play and sing, and others to dance. My brother, to please them, danced likewise, and the lady danced with them. After they had danced some time, they sat down to take breath, and the young lady calling for a glass of wine, looked upon my ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... name was Mokompa. With the free and easy disposition of his race, he allowed his fancy to play round the facts of which he sang, and was never at a loss, for, if the right word did not come readily, he spun out the measure with musical sounds which ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... copious luncheon in the Eclair restaurant, which is almost as good as a second-class Paris restaurant, and after an idle afternoon the couple went to a popular musical comedy to end their day. Adelle's business with the trust company was now finished, and they must decide upon their next move. Their first impulse after the rout upon the dock had been to dart back to Europe as expeditiously as possible, ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... is a fair example of an Emerson poem. The opening verses are musical, though they are handicapped by a reminiscence of the German way of writing. In the succeeding verses we are lapped into a charming reverie, and then at the end suddenly jolted by the question, "What is it all about?" In this poem we see expanded ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... over the time, and his friend, Sergeant Smith, feeling anxious for Penn—'s welfare, went after him and had him arrested as a deserter—and here he is! 'Nix my Dolly,'" etc. etc.; and he settled again into his musical reverie. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... great place. Character modified, enriched by foreign strains, is to mould a noble literature—noble through many and many a gift and grace. A great poet is to arise with sympathies large and wide, to show us, in verse most musical, in words full meaning, with that grace of humour which is a fresh light upon life, how men and women lived: and to be the great precursor of a greater than he. Geoffrey Chaucer is to come to us. After ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... cor. Sixth Ave. It is reported that Smith, to the neglect of his duty, was reading poetry from a book called 'Sonnets of de Heredia' at the time of the accident. Three Italians were slightly injured by the accident, and Ethelbert Pangwyn, an actor starring in 'The Girl and the Idiot,' a musical comedy, was killed." ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin
... Naturally enough, therefore, the dialogue strays a good deal as, in the opening scenes, it acquires a material that later on is worked over, picked up again, repeated, expounded, and built up like the theme in a musical composition. ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... too, to an incredible extent, in a prince who, although of intellect beneath mediocrity, was not utterly without sense, and who had had some experience. Without voice or musical knowledge, he used to sing, in private, the passages of the opera prologues that ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to the essence of this pictorial character, we see that it is not impaired by apparent irregularities (such as the use [sharp] of and [flat] in musical notation). For even these irregularities depict what they are intended to express; only they do it in ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... viper cure its own bite. But, perhaps Asclepiades was the inventor of the acousticon, or ear-trumpet, which has been thought a modern discovery; or of the speaking-trumpet, which is a kind of cure for distant deafness. These would be admirable proofs of musical power![117] We have the testimony of Plutarch, and several other ancient writers, that Thaletas the Cretan, delivered the Lacedemonians from the pestilence by the sweetness ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... toward which a stream of guests still flowed. The company here was noisier now than when he left it a short time before. Revelry had taken the place of staid propriety. Glasses clinked like a chime of bells, voices ran up into the higher keys, and the loud musical laugh of girls mingled gaily with the deeper tones of their male companions. Young maidens with glasses of sparkling champagne or rich brown and amber sherry in their hands were calling young men and boys to drink with them, and showing a freedom and ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... musical compositions, and characters in plays are sometimes italicized. This is not ordinarily advisable. It violates the rule of never using italics or other emphasizing devices needlessly and is liable ...
— The Uses of Italic - A Primer of Information Regarding the Origin and Uses of Italic Letters • Frederick W. Hamilton
... under this regimen, like a fire without a draught; and it is not very strange, if the instinct of mental self-preservation drives them to brandy-and-water, which makes the hoarse whisper of memory musical for a few brief moments, and puts a weak leer of promise on the features of the hollow-eyed future. The Colonel was kept pretty well in hand as yet by his wife, and though it had happened to him once or twice to come home rather ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... evil smells and clouds of dust. He liked the odor of the loam in the early morning, the clean air washed by the dew and redolent of burning wood, the drowsy hour of noon with its meal of cheese and bread eaten at the shady brink of some musical stream and the day-dream or doze that followed it; the long mellow afternoons under the blue arch of sky where the pink clouds moved as lazily as he, in vagabond procession, across the zenith. His aimlessness and theirs ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... court and the standards, Haroun-er-Raschid marched at the head. He advanced, followed by princes, ministers, and officers. The wives of the grandees accompanied the Queen with her maids-of-honor, and all the musical instruments gave forth their harmonious sounds. Seven times they made the circuit of the city. When the two spouses had arrived at the foot of the Palace of Baths the Sultan made them ascend. Then came the spouses of the grandees with the Queen, who showered them with rice- powder ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... excitement. In one corner were Mr. Holohan, Mr. Fitzpatrick, Miss Beirne, two of the stewards, the baritone, the bass, and Mr. O'Madden Burke. Mr. O'Madden Burke said it was the most scandalous exhibition he had ever witnessed. Miss Kathleen Kearney's musical career was ended in Dublin after that, he said. The baritone was asked what did he think of Mrs. Kearney's conduct. He did not like to say anything. He had been paid his money and wished to be at peace with men. However, he said that Mrs. Kearney ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... that place. A loud and varied murmur, resembling that of a thronged hive, floated from the camp of the crusaders to the neighbouring town of Scutari, and every now and then the deep tone was broken by some shriller sound, the note of some musical instrument, or the treble scream of some child or female, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... will be that the people will not wrangle; by abrogating, to the utmost degree, wise rules under the heavens, the people will, at length, be able to take part in deliberation. By putting to confusion the musical scale, and destroying fifes and lutes, by deafening the ears of the blind Kuang, then, at last, will the human race in the world constrain his sense of hearing. By extinguishing literary compositions, by ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... suddenly halted. A young lady attired in the gayest fashion of the period, throwing the reins to the groom, sprang out of the caleche with the ease and elasticity of an antelope. She ran up the rampart to Amelie with a glad cry of recognition, repeating her name in a clear, musical voice, which Amelie at once knew belonged to no other than the gay, beautiful Angelique des Meloises. The newcomer embraced Amelie and kissed her, with warmest expressions of joy at meeting her thus unexpectedly in the city. She had learned that Lady de Tilly had returned ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Chieregati,[241] the papal envoy in England, "the King sent for these ambassadors, and kept them to dine with him privately in his chamber with the Queen, a very unusual proceeding. After dinner he took to singing and playing on every musical instrument, and exhibited a part of his very excellent endowments. At length he commenced dancing," and, continues another narrator, "doing marvellous things, both in dancing and jumping, proving himself, as he is in truth, indefatigable." On another day there was "a most stately ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... up, great cathedrals are begun, the wonder and despair of even twentieth-century resources. Royal ladies work on tapestries, queer things in their way, but certainly not barbaric. Musical notation is improved. Manuscripts are gorgeously illumined. Paintings and mosaics, though of the crudest, reappear on long-barren walls. Civilization begins ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... morning to night thousands gather around that venerated shrine. The prince with his liveried servants, and the poor peasant with the snow-white handkerchief tied on her head, kneel there side by side. From the first anniversary of the great saint's death to the present day the musical services of the great cathedral have been rendered by the greatest talent in Italy, Professionals and amateurs flocked from every side to do honor to the man who did so much honor to the city of ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... had her suspicions when told of the affair, but was silent, for of all the officers stationed in and around the old Southern city Sam Waring was by long odds the most graceful and accomplished dancer and german leader, the best informed on all manner of interesting matters,—social, musical, dramatic, fashionable,—the prime mover in garrison hops and parties, the connecting link between the families of the general and staff officers in town and the linesmen at the surrounding posts, the man whose dictum as to a dinner or luncheon and whose judgment as to a woman's toilet ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... merriment were the more touching, the more exquisite, from the fact that they flowered upon the dark background of the cave. It was, he saw, with a richer flavour that Karen tasted again the charm of old days, when, after some great musical or social event, in which the girl had played her part of contented observer, they had laughed together over follies and appreciated qualities, in the familiar language of allusion evolved from ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the geographer to himself, "let the Australian birds be as queer as they may, and even granting the paroquets are the most musical in the world, ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... march of democracy, although changing the government of Gruyere has left the people strangely unaltered. In spite of the injunctions of the Lutheran Bernois, they still danced and sang, and until the dawn of the present century still spoke their musical patois. The chateau, long used as the residence of a prefet of Fribourg, was offered for sale when in the middle of the 19th century the prefecture was transferred to Bulle. For a long time left to decay, it was finally doomed to demolition, when for ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... pockets of the coat he carried slung across his shoulder and brought out a packet of food. "I laid in some fuel when I thought I might get the chance to run my own engine across the mountains," he told the girl, opening his bundle and dividing evenly. He uttered a few musical ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... thought she would be likely to go, but no trace could be found. He inquired for Mayall, and was told that he was seen the evening before equipped for a hunting excursion. He returned home in grief and loneliness. His house no longer echoed to the musical voice of his lovely daughter. His wife, who had been the most anxious for her daughter to marry a farm instead of a man of worth, now began to murmur and find fault with her husband for his unkindness to Mayall, who had saved their lives and the life ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... jasper, Smoothed and sharpened at the edges, Hard and polished, keen and costly. With him dwelt his dark-eyed daughter, Wayward as the Minnehaha, With her moods of shade and sunshine, Eyes that smiled and frowned alternate, Feet as rapid as the river, Tresses flowing like the water, And as musical a laughter; And he named her from the river, From the water-fall he named her, Minnehaha, Laughing Water. Was it then for heads of arrows, Arrow-heads of chalcedony, Arrow-heads of flint and jasper, That my Hiawatha ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... conclusion: Consult the revised version of the Bible for meaning, but read the old one for style. It is a treasury of musical and vigorous Saxon, a well of strong English undefiled; although Hebrew is a poor language, and the Greek of the New Testament is perhaps the worst ever written. But do not think, as Macaulay pretended, that the language of the Bible ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... scents rose from the dewy ground, and as they neared a marshy pool, a low, musical whining and croaking told that the frogs which made the stagnant place their home had a full belief that before long ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... lived out her brief romance with De Musset, and, apparently unmindful of his tragic end, entered upon a new epoch of her life with that most remarkable modern musical genius, Chopin. ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... bas-reliefs in the whole Museum. There is something in it which reminds one of the music and the sweetness of Propertian verse. Then we have delightful friezes of children. One representing children playing on musical instruments might have suggested much of the plastic art of Florence. Indeed, as we view these marbles it is not difficult to see whence the Renaissance sprang and to what we owe the various forms of Renaissance art. The frieze of the Muses, each of whom wears in her hair ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... dearest amusement reminiscences are those musical ones. I doubt if ever the senses and emotions of the future will be thrill'd as were the auditors of a generation ago by the deep passion of Alboni's contralto (at the Broadway Theatre, south side, near Pearl street)—or by the trumpet notes of Badiali's ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... he had any other christened name, it was unknown to men—was an original. As Nola had said, he belonged back a few hundred years, when musical proficiency was not so common as now. The profession was not crowded in that country, happily, and Banjo traveled from ranch to ranch carrying cheer and entertainment with him as ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... he saw us, to the funniest broken English, spoken with intense relish and pride. We explained ourselves and our mission as well as we could through the hospitable interruptions caused by beer and the strains of a huge musical box, which had been set going in honour of our arrival. Needless to say, I was read like a book at once, and fell into the ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... star nor of a drop of water ... with our ears that deceive us, for they transmit to us the vibrations of the air in sonorous notes. They are fairies who work the miracle of changing that movement into noise, and by that metamorphosis give birth to music, which makes the mute agitation of nature musical ... with our sense of smell which is smaller than that of a dog ... with our sense of taste which can scarcely distinguish the age of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... In addition, when at one time in the senate the consuls came down from their seats to talk with him, he rose in turn and went to meet them. In Naples he lived entirely like a private citizen. He and his associates while there adopted the Greek manner of life invariably; at the musical entertainments he would wear cloak and military boots, and at the gymnastic exercises a purple robe and golden crown. His action, moreover, in regard to money was remarkable, for he forbade any one to bring him contributions, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... for about a year, when he announced to me one day, weeping bitterly, that he was compelled to leave me to go to Rome, but he promised to see me again. The news threw me into despair. He had arranged everything for the continuation of my musical education, but, as he was preparing himself for his departure, my father died very suddenly, after a short illness, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... either precedes or follows a consonant, and it is comparatively rare that two consonants are required to be uttered together. There is but one language that has the th, so common in English. Sh and gh are, however, frequently sounded in the Chippewa. The most musical words are found in the great Muscogee and Algonquin families, and it is in these that the regular succession of vowels ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... full fed, turned to tobacco and song,—their officers with them. The subaltern is happy who can win the approval of the musical critics in his regiment, and is honoured among the more intricate step- dancers. By him, as by him who plays cricket cleverly, Thomas Atkins will stand in time of need, when he will let a better officer go on ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... posture. Very far away in the night reveille was sounding for some regiment outward bound; and then the bugles blew for another regiment and another, and another, until everywhere the darkened world grew gaily musical with ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... fresher in tint, and breathed a sweeter fragrance in the air; the hum of the homeward bee, laden with treasures for his love-queen, fell with a dreamy pleasance upon the ear; the voices of the birds sounded softer and more musical; even the aras and paroquets, chanting in a more subdued tone, no longer pronounced that hated name; and the tiny Mexican doves, las palomitas—scarcely so large as finches—walked with proud gait over the ground, or side by side upon the branches of the ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... children were near me in age. Charley, the only son—they had lost an older boy—was sixteen; Julia, who was known as the musical one, was fourteen when I was; and Sally, the tomboy with short hair, was a year younger. She was nearly as strong as I, and uncannily clever at all boys' sports. Sally was a wild thing, with sunburned yellow hair, bobbed ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... rapidly from his lips, and his deep musical voice had a defiant ring as it fell on the stillness of the evening air. I smiled bitterly as I heard! She struggled ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... pianist. In the evening she would play Liszt's rhapsodies for the Doctor, who enjoyed the Hungarian composer most of all. He said to me once that he felt as if music in his study, when he was at work, would be a great inspiration. So my Christmas present to him that year was a musical box, which he kept ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... such celerity and delicacy of modulation, producing such a consonance from the rapidity of seemingly discordant touches, that I shall briefly repeat what is set forth in our Irish Topography on the subject of the musical instruments of the three nations. It is astonishing that in so complex and rapid a movement of the fingers, the musical proportions can be preserved, and that throughout the difficult modulations on their various instruments, the harmony is completed with such a sweet velocity, ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis
... son of a blue-blooded but impecunious baronet should, and to step into the living which is fattening for you, then I must refuse to take any further responsibility for your future. Here is a thousand pounds; it is the money I had set aside for your college course. Use it for your musical tomfoolery if you insist, and then—get what living you can.' Which was severe but dignified, unpaternal yet patrician. But what does my governor do? That cantankerous, pig-headed old Philistine—God bless him!—he's got no sense of the respect a father owes to his offspring. Not an atom. ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... contralto voice and a perfect ear, but these were both uncultivated; and so she could only sing and play the simplest ballads in the language. She had often regretted her want of power to please the fastidious musical taste of her husband; but never so bitterly as now, when she saw that power in the possession of another, and that other a beauty, a rival, and an inmate of her house. Oh, how deeply she now deplored her short-sightedness in bringing this siren to ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... judge with more painful severity those witty writers who advise us to light-hearted friendship with Bismarck the "great German," with William the "sympathetic Emperor", with Richard Wagner "the highest expression of historical poetry and musical art," those men who prepared and who perpetuate Prussia's victories—I should judge them differently, I say, were it not that I remember my former anger against the young decadents and the older roues in the last ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... of the orchestra in the Teatro Real, and his home was a rendezvous of young musicians, artists, and litterateurs. There Gustavo, with Correa, Manuel del Palacio, Augusto Ferran, and other friends, used to gather for musical and literary evenings, and there Gustavo used to read his verses. These he would bring written on odd scraps of paper, and often upon calling cards, in his usual ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... of New York, was equally tall with Mr. Channing, but of a type of features that was ordinarily less pleasing; wearing a full beard closely trimmed, intellectual in forehead and face, with a voice one could hardly call musical; a rapid, earnest talker; the travelled son of a wealthy man, who had spent some years abroad and in France, where he became acquainted personally with Fourier and with his doctrines of association, ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... savages varies greatly in different tribes. The lives of some seem to be moved wholly through the emotions, while others are stolid or dull. The variations in musical ability and practice of savage and barbarous races are good evidence of this. Many of the tribes in Africa have their rude musical instruments, and chant their simple, monotonous music. The South Sea Islanders beat hollow logs with clubs, marking time and creating melody by these ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... of odoriferous and fragrant smells of sweet gums and pleasant notes of musical birds, which other countries in more temperate zones do yield, we tasted the most boisterous Boreal blasts, mixed with snow and hail, in the months of June and July, nothing inferior to our untemperate winter: a sudden alteration, and especially ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... musician detects a certain musical note in every city which is different from that of another city. He hears in each little brook a new melody, and to him the sound of wind in the treetops of different forests give a varying sound. In the Desire World we noted the existence of forms similar to the shapes ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... of sheep (chap. iv., 2); his son Cain was the builder of the first city (chap. iv., 17); his descendant, Tubal-cain, was the first metallurgist (chap. iv., 22); Jabal was the first that erected tents and kept cattle (chap. iv., 20); Jubal was the first that made musical instruments. We have here the successive steps by which a savage race advances to civilization. We will see hereafter that the Atlanteans passed through precisely similar stages ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... of what was called music in Italy more than thirty years ago. He had the true ear and the facile memory for melody common to Italians, who are a singing people, if not a musical race, and which constituted a talent for music when music was considered to be a succession of sounds rather than a series of sensuous impressions. He could listen to an opera, understand it without thought, enjoy it ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... Japanese delicacy. One served soup in small lacquer bowls, another fish, a third cakes, a fourth tea in very tiny cups, and others various things, and finally saki, the wine of the country, was produced, served in small cups like the tea. Then came the girls. Seven approached, each carrying a musical instrument of queer construction. They bowed profoundly, but I noticed did not touch the mat with their foreheads, their rank being much superior to that of the servants, and began to play ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... to the rank of a Nightingale. The Cuckoo, proud of its new position, seated itself proudly on an aspen, and began to exhibit its musical talents. After a time, it looks round. All the birds are flying away, some laughing at it, others abusing it. Our Cuckoo grows angry, and hastens to the Eagle with a complaint against ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... wages, and we were all very poor and very blue. Jonathan Whittemore—a real good fellow, who used to cover the hammers with leather—came to me the day the shop was closed, and told me he was going to take the chance to go to Europe. He was going to the Musical Conservatory at Leipsic, if he could. He would work his passage out as a stoker. He would wash himself for three or four days at Bremen, and then get work, if he could, with Voightlander or Von Hammer till he could enter the Conservatory. By way of preparation for this he wanted me to sell ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... was yet dawn, long before the glint of the sun found its way through the foliage, the air was musical with the twittering of ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... talk like an old maid in a musical comedy. In love with him? How I wish I could be! At my age every self-respecting girl ought to be in love—they always are in books. But try as I will, I can't seem to manage it. I guess I've got a heart of stone or perhaps ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... Piccinist.[298] Lulli and Rameau (the uncle of our parasite) had undisputed possession of Paris until the arrival, in 1752, of a company of Italian singers. The great quarrel at once broke out as to the true method and destination of musical composition. Is music an independent art, appealing directly to a special sense, or is it to be made an instrument for expressing affections of the mind in a certain deeper way? The Italians asked ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... the sunny white sand with a low musical tinkle, across the bay one could see the delicate chain of islands rising with their feathery trees into the blue, warding off the breakers and the storms of the open sea beyond. In here, the peaceful water murmured to itself and ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... schoolhouse and for a time wandered through the different fields of art, indulging a slender talent for painting until he thought he was destined for the brush and palette, and then making merry with various musical instruments, the banjo, the guitar, the violin, until finally he appeared as bass drummer in a brass band. "In a few weeks," he said, "I had beat myself into the more enviable position of snare drummer. Then I wanted to travel with a circus, and dangle my legs before admiring ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... internal recurrence, the folding back of the musical phrase upon itself; and as it comes over and over again it seems to set the whole poem swaying to its own music. In one of the most remarkable of his lyrics (like this poem, a song of spring), Tennyson has come ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... impending evil Isaac stopped and looked around him. Suddenly above the musical babble of the brook and the rustle of the leaves by the breeze came a repetition of the sound. He crouched close by the trunk of a tree and strained his ears. All was quiet for some moments. Then he heard the patter, patter of little hoofs coming down the stream. Nearer and nearer ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... bees each striving to get out first; it is as when the dam gives way and lets the waters loose; it is a flood of bees which breaks upward into the air, and becomes a maze of whirling black lines to the eye and a soft chorus of myriad musical sounds to the ear. This way and that way they drift, now contracting, now expanding, rising, sinking, growing thick about some branch or bush, then dispersing and massing at some other point, till finally they begin ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... smell only. This reminds us of the singing apple in the fairy romance, which would persuade by its smell alone, and enable the possessor to write poetry or prose, and to display the most accomplished wit; and of the singing tree in the "Arabian Nights," each leaf of which was musical, all the leaves joining together in ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... director of the observatory. His eminence in his department was widely recognized, as was shown when he was afterward made director of the Dudley Observatory at Albany, N. Y., and, finally, astronomer royal of Ireland. His musical abilities, in connection with those of Frieze, aided to give a delightful side to this period of my life. There was in him a quiet simplicity which led those who knew him best to love him most, but it occasionally provoked ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... to adopt this mode of metrical translation was, that the free and unfettered character of the verse enabled me to preserve more of the freshness and vigour of the original. If the poetical ideas of Kalidasa have not been expressed in language as musical as his own, I have at least done my best to avoid diluting them by unwarrantable paraphrases or additions. If the English verses are prosaic, I have the satisfaction of knowing that by resisting the allurements of rhyme, ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... dictionaries. Three conjectures are open: 1. A derivative of tifatas, a species of mollusk—hence a conch; 2. A Malay or Tagal word for either a wind or other instrument—the Malay words for "to blow," "to sound a musical instrument," being tiyup and tiyupkan; 3. A misprint for the Spanish pifas—a possible shorthand ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... beautiful. Life was harsh and stirring and this note was echoed in all the literature. As a result we have narrative and political poetry, such as "The Battle of the Kegs" and "A Fable," dealing almost entirely with events and aiming to arouse military ardor. In "The Ballad of Nathan Hale," the musical expression of bravery, pride, and sympathy raises the poem so far above the rhymes of their period that it will long endure as the most memorable poetic expression of ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... Athens a great number of beautiful girls; Praxiteles designed them all, one after another; then from all these diverse types of beauty, each one of which had its defects, he formed a single faultless beauty and created Venus. The first man who created a musical instrument and who gave to that art its rules and its laws, had for a long time listened to the murmuring of reeds and the singing of birds. Thus the poets who understand life, after having known much of love, more or less transitory, after having felt that sublime exaltation ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... commonly, but incorrectly, called the battle of Tulbiacum. But this was a most improbable theory, for it was difficult to understand how a boy of sixteen (and that was the age of Boethius in 496) should have attained such eminence as a musical connoisseur as to be entrusted with the task of selecting the citharoedus. And in a very recent monograph[31] Herr von Schubert has shown, I think convincingly, that the last victory of Clovis over the Alamanni, ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... mounted tomahawk and a hunting knife in a leathern case. "Tall, athletic and manly, dignified, but graceful," he stood as the chosen exponent of his people's wrongs, ready to voice their plaints in the "musical and euphonious" accents of ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... though the stars be dim, Yet let us think upon the vernal showers That gladden the green earth, and we shall find A pleasure in the dimness of the stars. And hark! the Nightingale begins its song, "Most musical, most melancholy" bird! A melancholy bird? Oh! idle thought! In Nature there is nothing melancholy. But some night-wandering man whose heart was pierced With the remembrance of a grievous wrong, Or slow distemper, or neglected love, (And so, poor wretch! fill'd ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... the young man rather shortly, but despite the curtness of his accents there was a musical quality ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... Maria, with a sudden sparkle of intelligence, "it might have been her father he was acquainted with? Sir Edwin is so very musical himself that it is not unlikely he should seek the company of musicians. As for Christian "—simple as she was, Aunt Maria had not lived fifty years in the world, and twenty with Miss Gascoigne, without some small acuteness—"I can see, of course, how very bad it would have been for poor Christian ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... single moment, and his voice, which had grown softer, became suddenly almost musical. Katharine, who was listening intently, realised like a flash that for the first moment ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... us to pass any judgment whatever upon the musical and artistic value of these transmissions of trumpet music to a distance; we prefer to confess our incompetency in the matter. But it is none the less certain that these experiments are having the same success that they had at their inception in 1881 at ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... a lion, really," confided Bertram, in a lower voice; "but as he prefers it, we'll just call him 'the Musical Man.'" ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... undergrowth; the trees flung their balsamy, aromatic scent liberally upon the air, and, in the unlighted depths of many a ravine and hollow, clear bright torrents leapt and tumbled, drowning with their thundering bass the musical treble of the lighter streams. Not a traveller disturbed the solitude with his sandalled footfall; there was neither song of bird ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... quite another to walk steadily onward and encounter a robust, vital, brown-haired wench from Stuttgart who stood waiting with unmistakable invitation in her pose. When he arrived at the corner he was in a condition bordering on blind panic and he heard, as through a thick wall, a hoarse, musical voice murmur unintelligible words. He heard himself murmur something which brought a look of angry astonishment into her eyes. He heard the words "Don't you like me?" far off, drowned by a buzzing of the blood in his ear-drums. And then ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... how much he is delighted with the liberty of conversing with me. He has explained to me many pieces of Arabian poetry, which, I observe, are in numbers not unlike ours, generally of an alternate verse, and of a very musical sound. Their expressions of love are very passionate and lively. I am so much pleased with them, I really believe I should learn to read Arabic, if I was to stay here a few months. He has a very good library of their books of all kinds; and, as he tells me, spends the greatest ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... the Hapsburg lip, sense defects such as deafness or blindness, tendencies to certain diseases, especially those of the nervous system,—all these run in families. Certain mental traits likewise are obviously handed down from parents to child, such as strong will, memory for faces, musical imagination, abilities in mathematics or the languages, artistic talent. In these ways and many others children resemble their parents. The same general law holds of likes and dislikes, of temperamental qualities such as ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... looked out seemed to confirm his words. It was the last evening of their stay at Bellocchio, and the Procuratessa had planned a musical festival on the river. Festoons of coloured lanterns wound from the portico to the water; and opposite the landing lay the Procuratore's Bucentaur, a great barge hung with crimson velvet. In the prow were stationed the comedians, in airy mythological dress, and as the guests stepped ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... smooth the asperities of Puritan verse, became also the easy vehicle of the commonplace. There were hints here and there of something better to come, and in the many examples of verse remaining it is easy to discern a coming era of free thought and more musical expression. Peter Folger had sent out from the fogs of Nantucket a defiant and rollicking voice; John Rogers and Urian Oakes, both poets and both Harvard presidents, had done something better than mere rhyme, but it remained for another pastor, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... the unhappy bard. From this pile of manuscripts the Editor has selected those which appear under the title of Asylum Poems. The selection was a pleasing, mournful task. Again and again it happened that a poem would open with a bright, musical stanza giving promise of a finished work not unworthy of Clare's genius at its best. This would be followed by others in which, to quote a line from the "Village Minstrel," were "Half-vacant thoughts and rhymes of careless form." Then came deeper obscurity, and at last incoherent ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... and all records bearing on it having been lost in the mists of antiquity, it could not now be ascertained; but Miss Tippet laid claim to the relationship, and as she was an obliging, good-humoured, chatty, and musical lady, Mr Auberly admitted ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... mean. You're not a Westerner. You are what a cowpuncher would call a swell Easterner." Ignoring Gray's grimace of dislike she went on, deliberately exaggerating her musical Texas drawl. "You are a person of education and culture; you speak languages; you have the broad 'a,' and if you had to go unshaven it would be a living death. You are rich, too, and probably play the piano. People like ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... shaking hands and talking in the doorway. What he said was correct, agreeable to hear; it contained no irritable thought. The voice was sweet, soft, caressing, musical; but I had heard others much more attractive, much more moving. One listened to him with pleasure, just as one would look at a pretty little brook. No tension of the mind was necessary in order to follow him, no hidden meaning aroused curiosity, no expectation awoke interest. His conversation ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... attractive—at least not to me. Our marriage was a mistake. We quarreled whenever we were not at work with the music. If he had not died, we should have been divorced." She smiled merrily. "Then he would have hired me as his musical secretary, and ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... great gate of the castle, and its posts were hung with the offerings of seven of the Grecian deities to her majesty; displaying in grotesque assemblage, cages of various large birds, fruits, corn, fishes, grapes, and wine in silver vessels, musical instruments of many kinds and weapons and armour hung trophy-wise on two ragged staves. A poet standing at the end of the bridge explained in Latin verse the meaning of all. The Lady of the Lake, invisible since the disappearance of the renowned prince Arthur, approached ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... There I was in my element. I had always practised penmanship with enthusiasm; and even now I know of no more agreeable pastime than joining stroke to stroke with good ink on good paper to form words or merely letters. But musical notes are beautiful above everything, only at that time ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Milton's musical tastes had brought him the acquaintance of Henry Lawes, at that time the most celebrated composer in England. When the Earl of Bridgewater would give an entertainment at Ludlow Castle to celebrate his entry upon his office as President ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... knowledge of men can give to women. He wondered if he were found wanting.... Her dark head bended, elbow on knee, chin resting lightly in the cradle of her slender, parted fingers, the woman thought profoundly, her reverie ending with a brief, curt laugh, musical and mirthless as the sound of ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... in the misty, drippy doorway,—and then, returning to his study, he began his daily walk up and down its carpeted length, with a singularly solemn elation. Ere long, the thoughtful stride was accompanied by low, musical mutterings, dropping from his lips in such majestic cadences that his steps involuntarily fell to their music in ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... as her gown. She wore that same silken gown of a pale-blue color, spangled with roses, and the skirts were so wide and trained over a hoop and starched petticoats that they swung and tilted like a great double flower, and hit on this side and that with a quick musical slur. Over Lucina's shoulders, far below her waist, fell her wonderful fair hair, in curls, and every curl might well have proved a twining finger of love. Lucina wore a bonnet of fine straw, trimmed simply enough with a white ribbon, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... are we to do to change this for the better. I say give your country homes a name, no matter how homely or isolated that home may be. Give each one a name, and let those names be appropriate and musical, short, sweet, and easily remembered and pronounced, and then, when you go to visit a neighbor, either on business or pleasure, instead of saying, I am going to Jones', or to Brown's, or Smith's, let it be, I am going over to "The Cedars," or, to "Hickory Grove," or, to "Holly ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... procession, as is our custom, the celebration at night was by no means inferior. On the contrary, there was burned a great quantity of illuminations—rockets, bombs, and other fireworks. Our people played a thousand musical instruments. During the day we held mass, in our impressive manner, and then had a sermon; and in the afternoon we presented a remarkable drama on the conception. All the people said they had ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair |
