"Pedal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be nearer the mark to say, since you began by being so plain-spoken, that you came here to ask me to give you my husband," I retorted as quietly as I could, not because I preferred the soft pedal, but because I nursed a strong suspicion that Struthers' attentive ear was just below ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... great wall-spaces were broken by only two or three old engravings in ancient frames. Lucette, under her mother's direction, was putting the finishing touches to a piece of needle work, and, on the rather worn-out piano, I was playing, with the soft pedal down, one of Rameau's dances; the old-fashioned music sounded exquisite to me as it mingled with the noise of the ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... and the young lady who played it was a pupil of that celebrated Italian musician. When the male portion of the guests entered, the air was being played in the bass with a great deal of power (that is, the loud pedal was down), and with a perpetual rattle of treble notes, trying with all their shrill ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... happened. "Get out of the way!" a voice shrieked "out of the way, out of the way, OUT OF THE WAY!" Her heart lurched, her stomach twisted convulsively, and there was a brassy taste in her mouth. Instinctively, she stamped down on the brake pedal, swerved sharply into the outer lane. By the time she had topped the rise, she was going a cautious 50 miles an hour and hugging the far edge of the freeway. Then, and only then, she heard the squeal of agonized tires and saw the cumbersome ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant
... light swept chaos, this peaceful fancy was disrupted,—her heart ravished from its rest, its calm torn from it. Down went the pedal which forced the whole first organ out at once, and as if shouted by hosts of men and by myriad angels echoed, pealed the great Hosanna. The mighty rapture of the princess won her instantly from regret; no peace could be so glorious as that praise; and vast ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... is like a pedal-point in music; it must support the whole fabric, whether you are planning a house, a ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... I am doomed to counterchord Her notes no more In those old things I used to know, In a fashion, when we practised so, "Good-night!—Good-bye!" to your pleated show Of silk, now hoar, Each nodding hammer, and pedal and key, For dead, dead, dead, ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... upon the dominant figure in the corn-straw dress. The sweet voice was still rising and the interested listener hoped that the accompanist would force the tone to cover it a little, and put on the loud pedal. The pianist, however, was gazing at his music, and played on until, with ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... A pedal is heavy when there is a snore. Sing kindly with the silver service near, sing the song with the pleasure of the incubator. Sing the same seasoning. Use no partition, use ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... not be absolutely erect, but leaning slightly forward, so as to allow the weight to be distributed between the handle-bars, the pedal, and the saddle. This slightly inclined attitude also maintains the proper and harmonious relation of the internal organs, so that the bowels do not crowd down on the ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... things like leeches," responded Kate. "I believe they develop into mosquitoes later on, bad 'cess to them. What Mr. Nash would call my pedal extremities are simply being devoured by the brutes. Ugh! I believe the bottom of this creek is all soft mud. We may have to drive—no, as I'm a living, wiggler-haunted human being, here's firm bottom. Hurrah, Phil, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... pattern : modelo, desegno. pause : halteti, pauxzi. pave : pavimi. paw : piedego. pawn : garantie doni; (chess) soldato. pay : pagi; salajro. pea : pizo. peace : paco. peach : persiko. peacock : pavo. peak : pinto. pear : piro. pearl : perlo. pedal : pedalo. pedestal : piedestalo. peel : sxelo, sensxeligi. pen : plumo, skribilo. pencil : krajono, ("slate"—) grifelo; ("hair"—) peniko. pendulum : pendolo. penetrate : penetri peninsula : duoninsulo. pension : pensio. people : homoj, (a—) popolo. pepper : pipro. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... around and were bored until somebody proposed playing 'The Prince of Paris Lost his Hat' or some game like that. When the old folks went to bed, our hostess would find a pack of cards—authors, most likely—or play a waltz on the soft pedal for two couples to dance. Wholesome but ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... down the pedal and bent over the wheel as if urging the machine to its utmost. Then there was jolt—a roar! a bang! ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... want to hoodoo the hotel right at the start. We had a suicide the other day who left an apologetic note that was played up by some of the papers. Now comes this affair. The management are just as anxious to have the crime cleared up as any one - if it is a crime. But can't it be done with the soft pedal? We will stop at nothing in the way of expense - just so long as the name of the Vanderveer is kept in the background. Only, I'm afraid the coroner will try to rub it in and make ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... anticipation all who may venture to speak after her. She will play various kinds of music upon the piano with a uniform vigour that would serve well for the beating of carpets, and will express much scorn for the feeble beings who use the soft pedal, or indulge in the luxury ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 29, 1890 • Various
... dominant figure in the corn-straw dress that the glare of light fell shimmering on. The sweet voice was still rising, and she longed that the accompanist would force the tone to cover it a little, and put the loud pedal on. He, however, was gazing at his music, and played on quietly until, with startling ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... the suggestion of the young man in the bottle-green roundabout, I mount and ride, wheeling slowly along between the little files of soldiers. The soldiers are delighted at the novelty of their duty, and they swing briskly along as I pedal a little faster. They smile at the exertion necessary to keep up, and falling in with their spirit of amusement, I gradually increase my speed, and finally shoot ahead of them entirely. Kiftan Sahib comes galloping after me on the gray, and with good-humored anxiety motions for me to stop and let ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... with the couple and they moved down the aisle to what the paper called the "Bridle March, by Lohengrin," Mr. Maugans always craned his neck to see and usually put his foot on the wrong pedal, with the startling effect of firing a ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... her mattress, and a rose-leaf her coverlid. There she lay at night, but in the day-time she used to play about on the table; here the woman had put a bowl, surrounded by a ring of flowers, with their stalks in water, in the middle of which floated a great tulip pedal, and on this Thumbelina sat, and sailed from one side of the bowl to the other, rowing herself with two white horse-hairs for oars. It was such a pretty sight! She could sing, too, with a voice more soft and sweet than had ever ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... hundred pounds of male rheumatism to every square inch of cold female foot, and the Philadelphia doctor should be thanked by men of rheumatic tendencies as well as by women of arctic pedal extremities for this timely discovery. There is no woman who enjoys seeing her husband in the throes of rheumatic pains, and now that they know that their cold feet have brought about so much suffering, we trust they will try and lead ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... on to the music-stool again, put his foot on the soft pedal, lightly touched the familiar chords, and began ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... "This was a very compact organ, in which four key-boards of five octaves each, and a pedal board of thirty-six keys, with swell complete, were packed into a cube of nine feet. See Fetis's 'Biographie Universelle des Musiciens'.—G. Grove." 'Note to Miss Marx's ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... precipice that rose from out of the glaciers shaped itself suddenly into an organ, and there was one whose face I well knew sitting at the keyboard, smiling and pluming himself like a bird as he thundered forth a giant fugue by way of overture. I heard the great pedal notes in the bass stalk majestically up and down, like the rays of the Aurora that go about upon the face of the heavens off the coast of Labrador. Then presently the people rose and sang the chorus "Venus laughing from the skies;" but ere the sound had well died away, I awoke, and all was changed; ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... Burns's collar, till I'm well on my way. He may try to follow me. Good-by, old chap," he added, bending down and taking the collie's silken head affectionately between his hands. "You're a good dog, and a good pal. But put the soft pedal on the temperamental stuff, when you're near Simon Cameron. That's the best recipe for avoiding a scratched nose. By the way, Miss Standish, don't encourage him to roam around in the palmetto scrub, on your outings with him. The rattlesnakes ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... and began softly playing, with the hush-pedal on. The two women drew close around her. Suddenly she released the pedal, and lifted her hands from the keys, as if they burned her. One string was still faintly singing which she had not touched, the string of the key that the Commandant ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... upon the steering wheel, panting, fighting back his weakness; then he thrust forward his control lever and the car began to move. The motion, the kindly touch of the cool night air against his head, stimulated him; he stepped on the gas pedal and the car leaped forward as ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... his hat went back on his head; his long arms dangled, pendulum-like, by his sides, while his lanky legs, dragging along anyhow, were ever lagging behind one another. But when he opened the piano and put hands and feet to keys and pedal, he was not the same individual. He would turn on nerve and muscle-power, and would hurl avalanches of music and torrents of notes at his audience till he, in his turn, was overwhelmed with thunders of applause. And those were ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... has finished making her spouse a pair of waterproof boots, she hands them to him, and he blows them up. If there is one little pin-hole and the air oozes out, he throws the boots back to her, and she may take up the pedal gauntlet in one of two ways. Either she must meekly start to make a new pair of boots without murmuring a word, or leave it open to him to take to his bosom another conjugal bootmaker. We noticed with interest in watching this little tableau ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... this last visit to Asolo Browning suffered some inconvenience from shortness of breath in climbing hills, but the discomfort passed away. He looked forward to an early return to England, spoke with pleasant anticipation of the soft-pedal piano which his kind friend Mrs Bronson desired to procure at Boston and place in his study in De Vere Gardens, and he dreamed of future poetical achievements. "Shall I whisper to you my ambition and my hope?" he asked his hostess. "It is to write a tragedy better than anything ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... string, but enabled the pianist to play any note loud or soft at pleasure; hence the name piano-forte. But the pianoforte itself required many years before all its possibilities of tone-production were discovered. The instruments used by Mozart still had a thin short tone, and there was no pedal for prolonging it, except a clumsy one worked with the knee—a circumstance which greatly influenced Mozart's style, and is largely responsible for the fact that his pianoforte works are hardly ever played to-day in the concert hall. For, as the tone could ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... won't; we'll settle it now. You began it, and I want it finished now," I added, cracking the whip once more in the neighborhood of his pedal extremities. ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... whenever a composer has wished to dwell with emphasis on a particular theme, he almost invariably resorts to some form of fugal treatment, strict or free. The most effective media for rendering fugues are the chorus of mixed voices, the organ (by reason of its pedal key-board always making the subject in the bass stand out majestically) and the stringed orchestra which, with the "bite" of the strings, brings out—with peculiar sharpness—the different entrances of the subject. The student should become ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... from the opposite side, was heard to murmur that he didn't care what Miss Hilda heard, nor the whole world, for the matter of that. "But," he added, with a faint smile, "folks allow that you know how to PLAY UP sometimes, and put on the loud pedal, when you don't want ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... been studying the exhibits in the distillery got the idea in his head that my foot was the loud pedal on a piano and he started to play the overture from William Tell until I ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... where some unlucky burgher had found his way into a group of students and was being made the butt of a good-humoured jest. And beneath the high, laughing tones, the perpetual hum of a thousand talking voices neither rose nor fell, but droned unceasingly like the long pedal in a fugue, whose full deep note stands still amidst the strife of moving sounds, as the sun stood while the battle was fought out in Ajalon. The very life of the multitude seemed to produce a sound of its own, in the breathing of a thousand pairs of strong young lungs, in the beating of a ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... are some—there are half a dozen—" muttered Marzio, relapsing into sullen discontent and slowly turning the body of the chalice beneath the cord stretched by the pedal on which he pressed his foot. Having brought under his hand a round boss which was to become the head of a cherub under his chisel, he rubbed his fingers over the smooth silver, mechanically, while he contemplated ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... an impression upon his tender cortex, and he never forgot about John, in Browning's poem, scorning ale. But many years afterward, reading Browning, he found that the words really were: "John's corns ail," meaning apparently that John was troubled by pedal callouses.) Peter, we repeat, and to avoid any further misunderstanding and press diligently toward our theme, having mentioned his garden, who should come up to us but Pete Corcoran, also of the ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... convince me. No! I can't answer it. I—I don't want to answer it. I simply surrender. He shall have his way with you—and with me. Only," he added in a gloomy lowered tone which struck Mr Powell as if a pedal had been put down, "only it shall take a little time. I have never lied to you. Never. I renounce not only my chance but my life. In a few days, directly we get into port, the very moment we do, I, who have said I could never let you go, I shall let ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... you have no idea of the vastness of the scale." Perhaps I swelled a little with pride in my celebration of the national prosperity, as it flowed from our Western farms of five and ten and twenty thousand acres; I could not very well help putting on the pedal in these passages. Mrs. Makely listened almost, as eagerly, as the Altrurian, for, as a cultivated American woman, she was necessarily quite ignorant of her own country, geographically, politically, and historically. "The only people left in the hill country ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... was racing out of the hotel. He ran to the coach-house, wheeled his bicycle into the courtyard, mounted, and rode down the street. He went at a moderate pace through the town, but once on the Corniche road, he drove the machine as hard as he could pedal. ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... hackneyed from its perpetual and wearisome repetition in popular church music, seems to be especially disliked by Mr. Paine, as it occurs but once or twice in the course of the work. In the great choruses the cadence is usually reached either by a pedal on the tonic, as in the chorus, "Awake, thou that sleepest," or by a pedal on the dominant culminating in a chord of the major ninth, as in the final chorus; or there is a plagal cadence, as in the first chorus of the second part; or, if the ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the road out there seemed so hard and firm, the snow being packed down solid, I just jumped on my wheel, and took a little run up in that direction. It wasn't so easy, once I struck in on that side road, but I managed to pedal along somehow." ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... the right hand thrusts the flute, it is the duty of the left to see that the alternate and the limiting threads of the warp are properly lifted. First comes a pressure of the foot on a long, lath-like pedal which is attached to the bar holding in turn the loops ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... are rendered possible by being taken on a drone or pedal of cant, common form and conventionality. This drone is, as it were, the flour and suet of a ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... and, soft pedal down, he played a few bars of Marzials' "My True Love Hath My Heart," humming the words ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... have been a lie. The word idled is the hopeless part of this criticism, or rather of this uncritical remark. To ask this kind of a man, who plays all the "choice gems from celebrated composers" literally, always literally, and always with the loud pedal, who plays all hymns, wrong notes, right notes, games, people, and jokes literally, and with the loud pedal, who will die literally and with the loud pedal—to ask this man to smile even faintly at Thoreau's humor is like casting ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... on the organ. Not a penny on the Father Smith, clear and sweet-voiced as a mountain brook. Oh," he cried, "it's too bad! The naturals are worn down to the quick, you can see the wood in the gutters of the keys, and the pedal-board's too short and all to pieces. Ah well! the organ's like me—old, neglected, worn-out. I wish I was dead." He had been talking half to himself, but he turned to Westray and said: "Forgive me for being peevish; you'll be peevish, too, when you come to my age—at least, ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... bottines. But these shoes were only for show. The ladies walked painfully about in the unaccustomed leather. They seemed to have innumerable corns, to wrestle with bunions huge and dire, to suffer from unknown pedal infirmities. Outside the town the ladies put on their shoes. Outside the town, after the fair, they took them off again, sitting on the roadside, stripping their shapely feet, bundling the obnoxious, crippling abominations into Isabella-colour ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... after freedom. Used to give a brooch (hank) or two to weave at night. I'se sometimes thread de needle for my Ma, or pick out de seed out de cotton, an' make it into rolls to spin. Sometimes I'd work de foot pedal for my Ma. Den dey'd warp de thread. If she want to dye it, she'd dye it. She'd get indigo—you know dat bush—an' boil it. It was kinder blue. It would make good cloth. Sometimes, de cloth wuz kinder strip, one strip of white, an' one of blue. I remember how dey'd warp ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... platitude about the beautiful Indian summer weather and labored out a ponderous joke or two about such a bad-tempered man having such a good-looking wife—for which I despised them all. But I could see that even if my intrusion had put the soft pedal on their talk it had also left everything uncomfortably tentative and non-committal. For some reason or other this was a man's fight, one which had to be settled in a man's way. So I decided to retire with outward dignity even if with inward ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... pedals and its peculiar registers; the Teutonic muse alone can execute these solemn airs which must be played with the soft pedal. For more than an hour Gilbert exhausted himself in vain attempts, and at last, disheartened, he contented himself with reciting aloud the poem which he despaired of translating. He uttered the first part with the fire of enthusiasm; but his ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... we have been routed night after night from our warm quarters, in the dead of winter, to kindle fires and fill frosty kettles from water-pails thickly crusted with ice, that we might get the writhing pedal extremities of our little heir into a tub of water as quickly as possible. But lately we have learned that all this work and exposure is needless. We simply wring a towel from salted water—a bowl of it standing ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... Sunday morning, and the most beautiful melody of bells I ever heard is toning through the air. They are the bells of S. Michael's church, and I am told that the musician plays them by a set of pedal keys, and works himself into a mighty heat and flurry in the operation. But we cannot think of the wild manner and mad motions of the player in connection with those beautiful sounds, so clear and melodious; that half plaintive music so sweetly ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... would be deemed sufficient. There was, however, one entertainment almost free (only a penny was charged), an automatic sight-tester, which pleased me greatly. By putting a copper in the slot, pressing a pedal, and turning a handle, I learned that anyone could discover, literally at a glance, the condition of his eyes. Had I not made up my mind to disburse nothing further than the bare shilling I had already expended, I should certainly have ascertained if the time had arrived for my regretful ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various |
