"Tuning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shall meet before that. I shall do what I can, but upon my word I feel, you know," he laughed, "that such a tuning-up as YOU'VE given me will last me a long time. It's like the high Alps." Then with his hand out again he added: "Have you any ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... fireflies as they darted to and fro, and called out the hours and the state of the night whenever the ship's bell sent its musical note echoing from bank to bank of the creek, and rousing the denizens of the forest around. A bird sang in the grove, tuning its lay to reproduce the notes of every songster that had warbled during the daytime. The scents from the masses of flowers, that clustered the banks and wound their tendrils round the giant trees, floated fragrantly on the night air. There ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... lady did as she was requested, and shortly afterwards the tuning of three fiddles was heard. Which process having been protracted as long as it was supposed that the patience of the audience could possibly bear it, was put a stop to by another jerk of the bell, which, being the signal to begin in earnest, set the orchestra playing ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... open our jalousies in our salon at the corner of this tower, and we see all the world without being seen; when we shut it we are in solitude, and what can we require beyond? My little son," she continued, pointing to the other object of her care, who was seated beside a pretty little girl, tuning a small instrument, "occupies himself with his violin, and he can touch the guitar prettily, also; he is now playing to a petite voisine who often comes to keep him company: he has considerable parts, and is well advanced ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... government were thoroughly established in this great Western country; in the days when Indian "Sun" dances, and other barbarous functions were held. In the days of the Red River Jig, when a good fiddler of the same was held to be a man of importance; when the method of tuning the fiddle to the necessary pitch for the playing of that curious dance was a secret known only to a privileged few. Some might call them the "good" old days. "Bad" is the adjective ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... man of great dignity, with a bristling moustache, who had once been a schoolmaster, led the choir and carried the tenor part. It was no small privilege after the elder had announced the hymn, to see him rise and tap the desk with his tuning fork and hold it to his ear solemnly. Then he would seem to press his chin full hard upon his throat while he warbled a scale. Immediately, soprano, alto, bass and tenor launched forth upon the sea of song. The parts were like the treacherous ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... the Tuning Fork trench system at the present moment," said I. "The Babe and the grooms are digging him out. If you hurry ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... Instrumental and Vocal, including Pianoforte, Organ, Violin, and all Orchestral and Band Instruments, Voice Culture and Singing, Harmony, Theory and Orchestration, Church Music, Oratorio and Chorus Practice, Art of Conducting; also, Tuning and Repairing Pianos and Organs. All under the very best teachers, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... the donor of the beer," he said, tuning his voice to an apologetic note. "But I take it Robinson is conducting certain inquiries, and I imagine that his superiors demand a degree of circumspection in such conditions. That ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... were, they transformed what had been to all intents and purposes a concert-hall into a flower-decked ballroom, while the members of the band engaged for the dance began climbing agilely into their allotted places on the raised platform preparatory to tuning up ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... a little tuning up this morning," he said, pulling off his gauntlets and fishing a screwdriver out of one of the many pockets in his ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... temptations for the lad, who seized the cup like other lads, and did not care to calculate on the headache in store for the morning. Whilst he and his cousin were talking, the fiddles from the open orchestra on the Parade made a great tuning and squeaking, preparatory to their usual evening concert. Maria knew her aunt was awake again, and that she must go back to her slavery. Harry never asked about that slavery, though he must have known it, had he taken the trouble to think. He never pitied ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... necessarily provided with two instruments (an A and a B-flat—the C clarinet being almost obsolete, and the E-flat being used only in military bands); but in playing upon the brass wind instruments the same instrument may be tuned in various keys, either by means of a tuning slide or by inserting separate shanks or crooks, these latter being merely additional lengths of tubing by the insertion of which the total length of the tube constituting the instrument may be increased, thus throwing its fundamental pitch ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... and I enquired concerning them and behold they were his brethren.[FN43] he set before them what they needed of wine and dessert, and they ceased not to press the damsel to sing, till she called for the lute and tuning it, intoned these ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... blending is sometimes a discordant trying of strings far removed from a melody, very far from a symphony. (For the benefit of those who must be reassured, I will say that I have felt a musician tuning his violin, that I have read about a symphony, and so have a fair intellectual perception of my metaphor.) But with training and experience the faculties gather up the stray notes and combine them into a full, ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... And these delightful anticipations concentrated themselves into one rose-coloured point of joy, when no less than two independent observers, without collusion, saw the piano-tuner either entering or leaving The Hurst, while a third, an ear-witness, unmistakably heard the tuning of the piano actually going on. It was thus clear to all penetrating minds that Olga Bracely was going to sing. It was further known that something was going on between her and Georgie, for she had been heard by one Miss Antrobus ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... characteristic of Falconer when once committed to a plan not to open his mind to the objections which besieged it. So that night, at the fall of dark, as the two young men motored forth together, he maintained a stolid resolution which refused to look back. The approach of the danger was tuning up his nerves, and whatever his common sense might think about it, his youth and pluck greeted the adventure with a quickening heart and a rash ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... say," said the doctor. "The action of thought on the human consciousness is exactly like that of sound on the tuning fork. When the mind is tuned right, we'll say for illustration, the lower vibrations are not picked out of the ether. But as few minds are tuned right, and as all vary from time ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... fought them in the light of a great carbuncle that was fastened to the roof. The noises recurred in 1888, when houses rattled in witch-haunted Salem, eight miles away, and the bell on the village church "sung like a tuning-fork." The noises have occurred simultaneously with earthquakes in other parts of the country, and afterward rocks have been found moved from their bases and cracks have been discovered in the earth. One sapient editor said that the pearls in the mussels in Salmon ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... a political speech, reported as one continued stream of enchaining eloquence, delivered amid thunders of applause; and now, under the blaze of astral lamps, and pink and green candles, while the musicians were tuning their fiddles, and producing all sorts of discordant sounds, he was dozing as quietly as if in his own rocking-chair. Uncle Dozie seldom talked when he could help it; the chief business and pleasure of his life consisted in ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... thunder, while that of the Norseman was shining with delight in some long-winded story he was telling. The white-robed servants were clearing the tables at this moment, and the prince's bard, a fine old harper with golden collar and chain, was tuning his little gilded harp as if the time ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... courtiers are so freezing? Doubtless they take their breeding from him they serve." These reflections were interrupted by the duenna suddenly introducing him into a room where three ladies sat working, and a pretty little girl tuning a lute. The ladies were richly but not showily dressed, and the duenna went up to the one who was hemming a kerchief, and said a few words in a low tone. This lady then turned towards Gerard with a smile, and beckoned him to come near ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... it mere chance that threw within his reach Fragments and symbols of the bliss unknown? Was it vague hope that murmured down the beach, Tuning the ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... gloomy; I long again to be hungry that I may again quicken the attention. The birds peck the berries or the corn, and fly away to the groves, where they sit in seeming happiness on the branches, and waste their lives in tuning one unvaried series of sounds. I likewise can call the lutist and the singer; but the sounds that pleased me yesterday weary me to-day, and will grow yet more wearisome to- morrow. I can discover in me no power of perception which is not glutted with its proper pleasure, ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... Oh me! I have hearde such a long Sermon on Marriage-duty and Service, that I am faine to sit down and weepe. But no, I must not, for they are waiting for me in the Hall, and the Guests are come and the Musick is tuning, and my Lookes must not betray me.—And now farewell, Journall; for Rose, who first bade me keepe you (little deeming after what Fashion), will not pack you up, and I will not close you with a heavie Strayn. Robin is calling me beneath the Window,—Father ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... science lifts its modern type, Hist'ry her Pot, Divinity her Pipe, While proud philosophy repines to shew, Dishonest sight! his breeches rent below; Imbrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley stands, Tuning his voice and balancing his hands. How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue! How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung! Still break the benches, Henley! with thy strain, While SHERLOCK, HARE, and GIBSON, preach in vain. Oh great restorer of the good old stage, Preacher at once, and zany ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... dressing room a different person, and plunged into the wild dance for which the limited orchestra was already tuning up. It was a veritable riot of whirl and rhythm. Never before had Constance seen Adele dance with such abandon. As she executed the wild mazes of a newly imported dance, she held even the jaded Mayfair spellbound. And when she concluded with one daring figure and sat down, flushed ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... we should again find ourselves among the ice.] which I have had fitted up for her reception abaft the binnacle. A spacious meadow of sweet-scented hay has been laid down in a neighbouring corner for her further accommodation; and the Doctor is tuning up his flageolet, in order to complete the bucolic character of the scene. The only personage amongst us at all disconcerted by these arrangements is the little white fox which has come with us from Iceland. Whether he considers the admission on board of ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... depends on abstraction, on the omission from the field of attention, of all the elements which do not conform to a simple law. This may be called the principle of purity. But if it were, the only principle at work, there would be no music more beautiful than the tone of a tuning-fork. Such sounds, although delightful perhaps to a child, are soon tedious. The principle of purity must make some compromise with another principle, which we may call that of interest. The object must have enough variety ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... already spoken of the earthquake shock as an oscillation. It is a quality of all bodies which oscillate under the influence of a blow, such as originates in earthquake shocks, to swing to and fro, after the manner of the metal in a bell or a tuning fork, in a succession of movements, each less than the preceding, until the impulse is worn out, or rather, we should in strict sense say, changed to other forms of energy. The result is, that even in the slightest earthquake shock the earth moves not once to and ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... waft his spreading Sails; but thee, fair, gentle Maid, whom Mnesis, happy Nymph, first on the Banks of Hebrus didst produce. Thee, whom Maeonia educated, whom Mantua charm'd, and who, on that fair Hill which overlooks the proud Metropolis of Britain, sat, with thy Milton, sweetly tuning the Heroic Lyre; fill my ravished Fancy with the Hopes of charming Ages yet to come. Foretel me that some tender Maid, whose Grandmother is yet unborn, hereafter, when, under the fictitious Name of Sophia, she reads the real Worth which once existed in my Charlotte, shall, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... the Never-ending Quest, And Minstrel of the Unfulfilled Desire; For ever tuning thy frail earthly lyre To some unearthly music, and possessed With painful passionate longing to invest The golden dream of Love's immortal fire With mortal robes of beautiful attire, And fold perfection ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... is what I sang, with a heart that knocked to the notes of the old madrigal like the precentor's tuning-fork to a ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... the 'cello, and after a few moments spent in carefully tuning up, began with Handel's immortal Largo, then he wandered into the Adagio Movement in Haydn's third Sonata, from thence to Schubert's Impromptu in C Minor, after which he began the Serenade, when he was checked by ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... time it is tuned. The hammers need occasional and careful attention to preserve original tone quality and elasticity. Never allow the piano to be beaten or played hard upon. This is ruinous to both the action and tuning. When not in use the music rack and top should be closed to exclude dust. The keyboard need never be closed, as the ivory needs both light and ventilation and will eventually turn yellow unless ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... said, and his voice was well-tuned for the tender serious manner, had her ears been alive to such tuning. "Alexandrina, this is a very important step that you and I have ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... state once more. On the 10th of April, 1661, Samuel Pepys, then on a visit of inspection to Chatham as Secretary to the Admiralty, tells, in his diary, how he went on to Rochester and "there saw the Cathedrall, which is now fitting for use, and the organ then a-tuning." The church must have been in a very bad state, for the dean and chapter reported to the bishop, in 1662, that the repairs that they had already executed had cost them L8,000, and that the defects still remaining in the fabric would need a further expenditure of not less than L5,000 to make them ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... course, you have it in your rooms. Would you be so good as to bring me the bow of your violin, and borrow for me anywhere a tuning-fork of as high ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... uniform. It was one of the few that at all approached fitting, and Paul thought it very becoming-though he knew that the tight, straight coat accentuated his narrow chest, about which he was exceedingly sensitive. He was always considerably excited while he dressed, twanging all over to the tuning of the strings and the preliminary flourishes of the horns in the music room; but tonight he seemed quite beside himself, and he teased and plagued the boys until, telling him that he was crazy, they put him down on the ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... have playde, Augustus, wantonly, Tuning our song unto a tender Muse, And, like a cobweb weaving slenderly, Have onely playde: let thus much then excuse This Gnats small poeme, that th'whole history 5 Is but a iest; though envie it abuse: But who such sports and sweet delights ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... reproduction, before mentioned, of heads in the body of certain annelids, with the facts of serial homology, as well as those of bilateral and vertical symmetry. {230} Also, as the atoms of a resonant body may be made to give out sound by the juxtaposition of a vibrating tuning-fork, so it is conceivable that the physiological units of a living organism may be so influenced by surrounding conditions (organic and other) that the accumulation of these conditions may upset the previous rhythm of such units, producing modifications in them—a fresh chord in the harmony ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... everybody brightens up, as a couple of colored gentlemen enter the cellar, and seating themselves upon a raised platform termed by courtesy "the orchestra," commence tuning a fiddle and base viol, preparatory to a dance by "all the characters."—Away the musicians glide into the harmonious measures of a gay quadrille—and to say the truth, the music is excellent, for Picayune and Joe are very skillful performers on their respective instruments; ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... prepare unwary strangers for the discovery that they are in the presence of the parish clerk. "Old Joshway," as he is irreverently called by his neighbours, is in a state of simmering indignation; but he has not yet opened his lips except to say, in a resounding bass undertone, like the tuning of a violoncello, "Sehon, King of the Amorites; for His mercy endureth for ever; and Og the King of Basan: for His mercy endureth for ever"—a quotation which may seem to have slight bearing on the present occasion, but, as with every other ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... and he began to rapidly unscrew his flute, but so hurriedly that in place of separating the top joint from the next he pulled it open at the tuning-slide, changed colour, and swung himself round so as to turn his back to his companions, keeping in that position till his instrument was properly separated and replaced in its case, whose lid he closed, and then turned ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... begged to know the whole, and she told it as simply as she could. When she came to the story of her lamb, her voice faltered, and everybody present was touched. The old harper sighed once, and cleared his throat several times. He then asked for his harp, and after tuning it for long, he played the air he ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... gone now that had been conducive to thought at Christmas in this same room when we heard the two girls count four so often, but Sally could pull an azalea flower to pieces over her cogitations, and did so, instead of tuning up forthwith. Laetitia was preoccupied—couldn't take an interest in other people's fathers, nor her own for that matter. She tuned up, though, and told Sally to look alive. But while Sally looks alive she backs into a conversation of the forenoon, and out of the pending ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... bird, new to me also, which uttered an amusing phrase in two keys, something like tee tay, tee tay, tee tay, one note sustained high and long, followed by another given on a lower key. It was not unlike to the sound made by a boy with a tuning pipe. This, Burton said, was also a familiar sound in the depths of the great Washington firs. These two cheery birds kept us company in the gloomy, black-pine forest, when we sorely needed ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... was taken from the box, and put in the front room. While its owner was tuning it, I put up a couple of rude box bedsteads in the attic, and filled them with clean hay. The cooking-stove was put up in the rear apartment, and the whole building looked as though it had never been disturbed, for everything had been placed as it was on the island. I had the pleasure of conducting ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... quivering jet of gas lighted the ladies' room. It couldn't wait; it was dancing already. When the door opened again and there came a burst of tuning from the drill hall, it leaped almost ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... got in quite a lot while he was vainly trying to remember where he had last seen the damned girl. He had just succeeded in getting back to his own topic when the Cuddiford girl from next door dashed in without a hat to borrow a tuning-fork. It had been quite a business finding the tuning-fork, and when she was gone they had to begin all over again. They had quarrelled about the drawing-room carpet; about her sister Florrie's birthday present; and the way he drove the motor-car. It had taken them over an hour and ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... study of the vocal organs as they form sounds. Examines the Helmholtz method for the analysis and synthesis of vocal sounds. Suggests the electrical actuation of tuning-forks and the electrical transmission of their tones. Distinguishes intermittent, pulsatory and undulatory currents. Devises as his first articulating telephone a harp of steel rods thrown into vibration by electro-magnetism. Exhibits optically the vibrations ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... at the old border home, close and hard-handed, who went afield with his own negroes, and made his sons take the plough-handles, and marched them all before him every Sunday to the plank church, and led the singing himself with an ancient tuning-fork, and took up the collection in a black velvet ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... of Song? Year after Year striking up some new Song, The Breath of some Old Story? Life is gone, And yet the Song is not the Last; my Soul Is spent—and still a Story to be told! And I, whose Back is crooked as the Harp I still keep tuning through the Night till Day! That Harp untun'd by Time—the Harper's hand Shaking with Age—how shall the Harper's hand Repair its cunning, and the sweet old Harp Be modulated as of old? Methinks 'Tis time to break ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Whitehead, with his famous fiddle, which he was already tuning up, so as to be ready to commence operations; while his "band," consisting of Abe Skinner and Mose Coffin, sat there with huge grins on their faces, and also an expectant look. They had undoubtedly noted the huge hampers of eatables that came with each party, and could anticipate a delightful ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... is of prime importance, never use it for drilling, if you have a driller, as it always has enough work to do for tuning up work. ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... was light and bustle; people were already arriving from the other hotels and chalets, their costumes hidden beneath many wraps. Groups of men in evening dress stood about smoking, talking "snow" and "ski-ing." The band was tuning up. The claims of the hotel-world clashed about him faintly as of old. At the big glass windows of the verandah, peasants stopped a moment on their way home from the cafe to peer. Hibbert thought laughingly of that ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... reputation. Seeing two rows of houses with brightly lighted windows and wide-open doors, and hearing gay strains of pianos and violins, sounds which floated out from every door and mingled in a strange chaos, as though an unseen orchestra were tuning up in the darkness above the roofs, ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... behind us; we were both far away in that Utopia where mind penetrates mind, heart understands heart. We heard neither the squeaking of a swing beneath us, nor the shouts of laughter along the promenades, nor the sound of a band tuning up in a neighboring pavilion. Our eyes, raised to heaven, failed to see the night descending upon us, vast and silent, piercing the foliage with its first stars. Now and again a warm breath passed over us, blown from the woods; I tasted its strangely sweet perfume; I saw in glimpses the flying ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... this verse Chan was seen tuning his instrument in the garden, and at the end sallied gallantly forth to ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... of," has eight: and this article we believe to be by Mr. Cayley,[473] who certainly ought to know his subject, being himself a large manufacturer of the new terms which he explains. Again, though "Music" in genere, as the schoolmen said, has only nine columns, "Temperament and Tuning," has eight, and "Chord" alone has two. And ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... to maintain his assumed character while the servants were removing the table, was tuning his harp when the Earl of Gloucester entered the room. The earl told Bruce the king had required the attendance of the border minstrel, and that after searching over the castle, the royal seneschal had at last discovered ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... low. No more songs from the tree-top, and no more songs from any point, till nearly a week had elapsed, when I heard him again under the hill, where the pair had started a new nest, cautiously tuning up, and apparently with his recent bitter experience still weighing ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... to Beauport Lake; sailed across, caught a nice trout but no other fish, and were only allowed to use the line. A great quantity of raspberries, and there had been many strawberries. His income at one time had been 25 dollars per week. He had received 100 dollars for tuning the organ at ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... with their white floors; the folding-doors had been rolled back, and the parlour and dining-room made an immense sweep. The vases on the mantels were full of flowers. In the distance she heard the tuning of a fiddle. ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... to begin and end with music. What particular solo they expect me to perform I am somewhat uncertain. But the truth is you have already had a part of the music and you will have the rest when I am done. For my part is only that of the leader in the old Puritan choir—to take up the tuning fork and pitch the key; and I do this when I say that we are assembled for the two hundred and seventy-third time [laughter] to commemorate the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock. If any one doubts the correctness of that chronology, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... in the choir had a frown on in the singing, though the bass fellows would be the fiercest. We've been twice enlarged since, and the organist has long been a salaried professional. But I doubt whether the praise of God is any heartier than it was when it followed Peter Craig's tuning-fork. Aye. You'd always hear John Murchison's ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... this old closet, drawn up in mockery beside me during the hour when I stood spellbound in the middle of the floor, thinking of what I had just read, and listening—listening for something less loud than the sound of carriages now beginning to roll up in front or the stray notes of the band tuning up below?—less loud, but meaning what? A step into the empty closet yawning so near—an effort with a drawer—a—a— Do not ask me to recall it. I did not shudder when the moment came and I stood there. Then I was cold as marble. But I shudder ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... du Parc, Lugano. Time, afternoon; the orchestra is tuning up in a kiosk. CULCHARD is seated on a bench in the shade, keeping an anxious eye upon the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... presented over the airwaves confronts the citizen, not only in public, but also in the privacy of the home, where the individual's right to be left alone plainly outweighs the First Amendment rights of an intruder. Because the broadcast audience is constantly tuning in and out, prior warnings cannot completely protect the listener or viewer from unexpected ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... was led by Roderick Ray, who had the Covenanters' blood in his veins. He carried a tuning-fork with him always, and fitted the psalm tunes to the hymns, carrying them through in a rolling baritone, and swinging his whole ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... still dancing their devil's dance down the road like wriggling circumflexes to accent a false promise of coolness off there in the distance; the ominous emptiness of the landscape; the brooding quiet, cut through only by the frogs and the dry flies tuning up for their evening concert; the bandannaed negress wrangling at the weeds with her hoe blade inside the rail fence; and, half sheltered within the lintels of the office doorway of his mill, Dudley Stackpole, a slim, still figure, watching up the ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... gay group of giggling lasses, waiting with joyful impatience for the dancing to begin. The two village gipsies who made bricks during the week and played on Sundays, were already there, leaning against one of the wooden pillars of the porch in front of the house, and tuning their fiddles. The lads crowded together, shouting jesting remarks to the group of girls, who answered them promptly and to the point. One after another the young men left their companions and took from the laughing bevy of maidens a partner, who, as village custom required, at first resisted, but ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... bramble-roses; and where Autumn fills Her lap with asters; and old Winter frills With crimson haw and hip his snowy blouse. Here you may meet with Beauty. Here she sits Gazing upon the moon, or all the day Tuning a wood-thrush flute, remote, unseen; Or when the storm is out, 'tis she who flits From rock to rock, a form of flying spray, Shouting, beneath the leaves' ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... milliners had to arrange their wares on tables in the ante-room, and make all ready before they could venture to peep into the ball-room, where the musicians were already tuning their instruments, and where one or two char-women (strange contrast! with their dirty, loose attire, and their incessant chatter, to the grand echoes of the vaulted room) were completing the dusting of ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... chords that make men weep, and love, and fall into a very ecstasy; he directs in his will that they bury this violin with him in his coffin. Well, Paganini is the lover, the instrument with its strings and tuning-pegs is the woman. The instrument must be beautifully made and come from the workshop of a right skilful maker; more than that, it must fall into the hands of an accomplished player. But, my poor lad, granting your actress is a divine instrument of amorous ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... Thompson more remarkable than during this hour dedicated to the tuning and exalting of the souls of these girls. Several told me that she held their hearts in her hands when she talked and that they would follow her straight to the battlefield. She, herself, assumed her most serious ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... has been described by her daughter as "a great artist lost for want of development"; showing a wonderful dexterity in whatever she put her hand to, no matter if practiced in it or not. "She tried everything, and always succeeded"—sewing, drawing, tuning the piano—"she would have made shoes, locks, furniture, had it been necessary." But her tastes were simple and domestic. Though married out of her rank, she was entirely without any vain ambition to push herself into fashionable ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... tuning Has the sweet and sleepy crooning That the mother hums the baby at her breast, Till the world forgets its sorrow And the cares that haunt the morrow, And is sinking, hushed and happy, to its rest Sometimes bubbling o'er with ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... which the iron ball opens one current at a time at the moment it leaves the electro-magnet and when it reaches the foot of the support, these two breakages producing two induction sparks that exactly limit the length to be taken in order to measure the time upon the tracing of the chronoscope tuning-fork; an absolute galvanometer; a bifilar galvanometer (Fig. 8) for absolute measurements, in which the helix is carried by two vertical steel wires stretched from o to u, and which is rendered ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... The tuning of the six strings on the bass-viol was, on the bass staff, 1st string, or treble, D over the staff; 2nd or small mean, A on the top line; 3rd or great mean, E in the third space; 4th or counter-tenor, C in the second space; 5th or ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... unusual trouble developed during the tuning of the instrument," Winston went on. "Earlier this afternoon I had a phone call from Cairo, and a request to help our Egyptian colleagues iron out the bugs. ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... are thick: the light is dead That dyed the west: and Drowsyhead, Tuning his cricket-pipe, Nods, and some apple, round ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... think of no good retort to make at that moment. And since the odd buzzing had stopped, and all three fiddlers were tuning up for more dance music, in his excitement Buster forgot all about the raising bee again, the bumblebee in the pumpkin, and even his dispute with ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... go easy. Better strike up your tuning fork to find his pitch to-day. You'll discover it's ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... invaded the poor girl. Not hers the hovering sense of marriage bells Tuning the air with fragrance of sweet sound; But the low dirge that ever rose and died, Recurring without pause or any close, Like one verse chaunted aye in sleepless brain. Down to the shore it drew her from the heights, Like witch's demon-spell, that fearful ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... side on the top of the low rail fence. The soft May mists were gathering in the valleys, the orchards shone pink in the sunset. Away down in the beaver meadow the frogs were tuning up for their first overture of evening, and a whippoorwill far up in the Slash had begun to sing his lonely song to the dark hillside. Allister looked about him and uttered ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... Alaskan exile the Chief of Police—who, by the way, was said to have become immensely rich in Alaska while Lane's paper was running into bankruptcy in Tacoma. But Lane's misadventure was not wholly due to his civic virtue. He had "bought in" at just the moment when the instruments were tuning up for the prelude to the great panic crash of 1893. Tacoma, and the whole Northwest, had been mainly developed by casual investments of speculative Eastern capital, and this capital, sensitive ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... has got him a cassock and become a gentle-faced dominie. The sleepy music of bells calling, the pensive air of study, the odour of simple piety, the sober confidence of great possessions, are most impressive. Poitiers has beaten her swords into crosiers and her spears into tuning-forks. Never was there an old age so ripe, so mellow, so becoming. With this for evidence, you may look History in the eyes and swear that you have seen Poitiers in the prime of her full life. The dead will turn in their graves to hear you; ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... evening, when tuning in for the concert, they caught another of those mysterious, stuttering messages in the unmistakable ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... too, my hearty, or I shan't be able to fiddle. Come, what will you have this fine morning?" said Harness, tuning his instrument. As soon as it was in tune he flourished a prelude from the top of the scale to the bottom, ending with an "Eh-haw! eh-haw!" in imitation of the braying of ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... weary of looking at the inscriptions on the great cliffs at the River of the Dog—the strange beauty of that name! It was like the place-names of native Ulster—Athbo, the Ford of Cows, Sraidcuacha, the Cuckoo's Lane—one name sounded to the other like tuning-forks. And the sweet strange harmony of it filled his heart, so that he could understand the irresistible charm of Lebanon—the high clear note like a bird's song. Here was the sun and the dreams of mighty things, and the palpable proximity of God. ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... a magnet or point of metal placed above each spring so that the spring would touch it at every vibration, thus making and breaking the electric current the same number of times per second that corresponded to the pitch of the piece of steel. By tuning the springs of the receivers to the same pitch with the transmitters and running a wire between them equipped with signalling keys and a battery, Bell reasoned he could send as many messages at one time ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... said, extending to him at the same time her thin transparent hand. "It is kind of you to come, and kind of you (she added, tuning to Mrs. Denley, and to Mary Evans, who were standings by,) to join in these prayers. There are responses to be made, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... groups itself at the end of the street, and the children stand round. After tuning up, the band begins ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... had been tuning up, eased into a quiet song as he spoke. We listened as the question hung in the air, and I decided that the funny feeling under my belt was homesickness, all the stranger because I owned three homes not too far ...
— Fee of the Frontier • Horace Brown Fyfe
... shy about his fiddle, and besides he was not in a mood for it; his father's words had rasped him. It took the united persuasions of Billy Jack and Jessac and Hughie to get the fiddle into Thomas' hands, but after a few tuning scrapes all shyness and moodiness vanished, and soon the reels and strathspeys were dropping from Thomas' flying fingers in a way that set Hughie's blood tingling. But when the fiddler struck into Money Musk, Billy Jack signed ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... With the tuning key of his matchless genius he struck the chords of sorrow to their inmost tone and played on the heart strings of joy with the tender vibrations of an aeolian harp, trembling with melodious echoes among the wild ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... His zeal to God, and his just awe o'er men, They may blood-shaken then, Feel such a flesh-quake to possess their powers, As they shall cry 'like ours, In sound of peace, or wars, No harp ere hit the stars, In tuning forth the acts of his sweet raign, And raising Charles ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... must be of a low caliber to be influenced by low thoughts, and that it is as impossible to incite a person of benevolent character to do murder—unless we put him into a hypnotic sleep—as to make a tuning fork which vibrates to C sing by striking another attuned to the key of G, but the thoughts of both living and dead constantly surround us, and no man ever thought out a high spiritual philosophy under the influence of tobacco ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... hearing to a degree as yet undreamed of even by the all-believing children. Their feathers became wee, accurate, tuning-forks for all existence. They understood that everything in the whole world sang; that no rose leaf fluttered to the earth, no rabbit twitched its ears, no mouse its tail, no single bluebell waved a head towards its bluer neighbour, without this ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... "finger organ," "which elicited the surprise and admiration of musicians." This extraordinary man improved everything he touched. For his second organ he devised a number of novelties, a sustained monochord, indicators and regulators of the blast, means for tuning to any system, contrivances ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... not to seem curious about Bud's past. They even refrained from manifesting too much interest in the musical instruments until Bud himself took them out of their cases that evening and began tuning them. Then the half-baked, tongue-tied fellow came over ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... better in expression, than most of the Spaniard's. "After the second Battle of Newbury," by Cattermole, is a well-imagined scene, but is defective in that in which we should have supposed the artist would not have failed. It is not moonlight. "Tuning," by J. W. Wright, is a good proof that blue, as Gainsborough likewise proved, is not necessarily cold. His "Confession," with the two graceful figures, is very sweet. "The Gap of Dunloe," W. A. Nesfield—has fine folding forms—the distance and rainbow beautiful—it is, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... twice unfortunate," said Alfred, tuning to Lydia, and there was an earnest ring in his deep voice "This time I am indeed blameless. I have just left Colonel Zane's house, where there has been an accident, and I was dispatched to find 'Betty,' being entirely ignorant as to who she ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... the statement was greeted by the audience with great and prolonged applause, that, after a little adjustment of the "Sympathetic Transmitter," it was found that by the sounding of one of the small English tuning forks I had brought with me from the other side of the Atlantic, upon the said "Transmitter," I could myself start the vibrodyne, and cause it to revolve rapidly, without Mr Keely's intervention, and I exhibited to the meeting, the fork actually used by me.—Thanking you in anticipation, ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... demoiselle wishes to appear a boy, un petit garcon?" she inquired, gazing eagerly at Flo's long, slender frame. Her voice was old and thin, like the high quavering of an imperfect tuning fork, and her eyes were sharp as talons ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... the commutator which produces the successive charges and discharges of the condenser consists of a vibrating tuning fork, we see that the duration of a vibration is equal to the product of the two abstract ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... fulfilment? The objection, however, is not unanswerable; indeed, the very comparison employed in stating it may enable us to supply at least a partial answer. For we understand that the success of wireless messages being transmitted and received depends upon absolutely perfect "tuning"; the electric waves set up, i.e., will only act upon a receiver most delicately attuned to a particular rate of oscillations, and when the difference between the rate of oscillation of the waves ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... windes were husht, no leafe so small At all was scene to stirre: Whilst tuning to the waters fall, The small Birds sang ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... overflowed from the congregation to the Bible College. The lad in his room at the dormitory one Sunday afternoon heard a debate on whether a tuning fork is a violation of the word of God. The debaters turned to him excited ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... Romans owed to Greece in the beginning, whilst their mind was, as it were, tuning itself to an after-effort of its own music, it suffered more in proportion by the influence of Greek literature subsequently, when it was already mature and ought to have worked for itself. It then became a superfetation ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... I went trout-fishing. There is more fascination and less waste tissue in that. I would creep down while the house was still and get my rod and basket, and take a sheltered lane that was like a green tunnel through the woods, where the birds were just tuning up for a concert, then out across the "bean-lot," to strike the brook at about the head ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... courageously performs the horrible operation. One cannot help thinking that a cockerel brought up without any companions of his own sex and age would not often crow, but in this instance there were no fewer than ten of them to encourage each other in the laborious process of tuning thejr harsh throats. Heard subsequently in the quiet of the early morning, these first tuning efforts suggested some reflections to my mind, which may not prove entirely without interest to fanciers who aim at something beyond a mere increase ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... a deep, premonitory stillness, broken only by the precentor, who covertly struck his tuning-fork on the round of his chair, and held it to his ear with a faint, accordant hum; then the minister arose and spread his hands in solemn invocation above ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... first on the list of our songsters. He is truly a royal minstrel, and, considering his liberal distribution throughout our Atlantic seaboard, perhaps contributes more than any other bird to our sylvan melody. One may object, that he spends a little too much time in tuning his instrument, yet his careless and uncertain touches reveal its rare compass ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... bronze, lo! Henley stands, Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands, How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue! How sweet the periods, neither said ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... coming with the same friendly purpose; a piece of information, which caused the young Monsieur T—— to make me a hasty bow, and leave me with the ladies. He returned in a short time, and the sound of fiddles tuning below on the lawn, rendered any explanation unnecessary. We immediately descended; the promised ladies, and their partners, soon made their appearance; and the merry dance on the green began. As the stranger of ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... his baton. The orchestra ceased its tuning. The lights were lowered. Silence and stillness enwrapped the auditorium. And the quivering violins sighed out the first chords of the "Lohengrin" overture. For me, then, there existed nothing save the voluptuous music, to which I abandoned myself as to the fascination ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... aloft, and some aeroplanes coming and going. Our front line is not more than a mile away, and the German line is about a mile and a quarter. Far off to my right I can just see a field with tanks in it. Ah—there goes a shell on the Hun line—another! Can't think why we're tuning up at this time of day. We shall be getting some of their heavy stuff over directly, if we don't look out. ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the instruments to a single note, so must you tune your various bodies in order that harmoniously they may allow the spiritual force to come through from the higher to the lower plane. It is a real tuning, a real making of harmonious vibrations; and the difference between the vibrations that are harmonious and the vibrations that are discordant, from this point of view, is this: when all the bodies vibrate ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... the door, followed by the first call of the call-boy. "Half-hour, ladies." Then there was much bustle and some irritation in the dressing-room and the tuning up of the orchestra outside. The knock came again. "Curtain up, please." The door was thrown open, the three ladies swept out—the tall one in tights, the little one in a serpentine skirt, the plump one in some fancy costume—and Glory was left ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the violin was brought in, and the boys had arranged a program. Harry had a fine baritone voice, while George could take a high note and sustain it as well as most sopranos. When all the preliminaries had been arranged, the instrument was produced, and after a little preliminary tuning, George played "America." ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... outside, or the sound of a piano from one of the superior houses that back-wall screened the Court from—though they had no call to give theirselves airs that the Court could see—a piano on which talent was playing scales with both hands, but which wanted tuning. Old Mrs. Prichard was not sensitive about a little discord now and again. As she sat there alone, knitting worsteds or dozing, it brought back old times to her, before her troubles began. She and her sister could both play easy tunes, such as the "Harmonious ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... sentences. He may make as great a blunder as that simple prince who praised the conductor of his orchestra for the piece just before the overture; the musician was too good a courtier to tell him that it was only the tuning of the instruments. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... poem should be fortunate enough to be selected for the opening address, a few words of explanation may be deemed necessary, on my part, to avert invidious misrepresentation. The animadversion I have thought it right to make on the noise created by tuning the orchestra will, I hope, give no lasting remorse to any of the gentlemen employed in the band. It is to be desired that they would keep their instruments ready tuned, and strike off at once. This would ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... such a remarkable irritation of nerves, that he could not bear to hear the tuning of instruments, and therefore at a performance this was always done before he arrived. A musical wag, who knew how to extract some mirth from Handel's irascibility of temper, stole into the orchestra, on a night when the Prince of Wales was to be present, and untuned all ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... The tuning of instruments began just then, and the rasping sound tore at him, dragging him back to a consciousness of externals. Then, as his eyes rested again on the stalls, he drew right back instinctively into the shadow of his box. For he had ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... whispered, and John Storm entered the sacristy by a low doorway like the auditorium entrance to a stage. There he met some six others of his fellow-curates. They nodded to him and went on arranging their surplices. The choir were gathering in their own quarters, where the violins were tuning up and the choir boys were laughing ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... find all the girls so quiet-looking; and they being that way braced up the whole crowd to be like a dancing-party back East. To see the boys a-bowing away to their partners, while Jose—he was the fiddler, Jose was—was a tuning up, you ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... o'clock the rehearsal had not begun. At six-thirty it had not begun. The orchestra was there, sunk out of sight and filling the dimness with the sounds of tuning. But the great curtain was down. And from behind it came shouting voices, noises of ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... sung by my sire, Like some prophetic bard tuning the lyre? Sweet were the notes that he taught to the young; Psalms for the Sabbath, on Sabbath were sung; And the young minstrels enraptured would come To the little lone cottage ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... any one who wished to listen to him. I had already heard him sing some sentimental rubbish about meeting by moonlight and another thing about stars and souls, and I threw a cushion at his head as soon as he began to make some noise which he called "tuning up." That began a cushion fight, which resulted in two china shepherdesses, a small lamp, and some teacups being smashed, but it persuaded Lambert that he could not sing whenever he felt inclined. We all sat down again, and ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... themselves and the musicians tuning up, Pierre sat down with his little partner. Natasha was perfectly happy; she was dancing with a grown-up man, who had been abroad. She was sitting in a conspicuous place and talking to him like a grown-up lady. She had a fan in her hand that one of the ladies had given her to hold. Assuming quite ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... identified with music as an art for many years that a word about their present activities may be of interest. Mr. McCurrie went into Eastern piano factories and interested himself in the technical makeup of pianos and the art of tuning and returning settled and still lives in Alameda, Calif., where he has written several successful operettas and collections of songs for children. Selections from the latter are in daily use in the public schools, although not written for that purpose. The Rival ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... suit of azure and silver; his sword and poniard were heavy with silver chasings. His blue hat, its white plume pinned in a silver buckle, lay on the stone beside him. He had discarded his sling and was engaged in tuning ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... a genius of the first water, when it came to tuning pianos. Whether his talent as a composer ran to any such lengths as that she, of course, didn't know. If what he had played for her had been his own, any of it, it was awfully modern and interesting, at least. You could tell that even though it kept him swearing at ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... window and had it open. Early it was; the sun not more than half an hour high, and taking his work coolly, like one who meant to do a great deal before the day was ended. A faint dewy sparkle on the grass and the sweetbriars; the song sparrows giving good-morrow to each other and tuning their throats for the day; and a few wood thrushes now and then telling of their shyer and rarer neighbourhood. The river was asleep, it ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... from the yard a sound of tuning instruments, squeak of fiddle, croon of 'cello, a falling triangle ringing and tinkling to the ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... on the telescreen again; after tuning out a dance orchestra and a comedy show, she got the image of an angry-faced ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... to class study are those of the eyes, such as the closing of the lids on moving objects near them and the dilating of the pupils when the eyes are shaded. The involuntary jerking of the head on bringing the prongs of a vibrating tuning fork in contact with the end of the nose is also a reflex action which ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... pure Castilian idiom, the young lady answers with a smile expressing assent, at the same time taking hold of her guitar. As she reseats herself, and commences tuning the instrument, a ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... to its utmost capacity, would yield a delightful twang when played upon with the forefinger. He could also fashion an interesting musical instrument in his desk by means of spools and catgut and bits of broken glass. The chief joy of his life was an old tuning-fork that the teacher of the singing school had given him, but, owing to the degrading and arbitrary censorship of pockets that prevailed, he never dared bring it into the schoolroom. There were ways, however, of evading inexorable law and circumventing ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... flood of soft light emanating from the lovely planet overhead, and which turned all it fell on, whether tree, or tower, or stream, to beauty, was the artificial glare caused by the torches near the pavilion; while the discordant sounds occasioned by the minstrels tuning their instruments, disturbed the repose. As they went on, however, these sounds were lost in the distance, and the glare of the torches was excluded by intervening trees. Then the moon looked down lovingly upon them, and the only music ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... performer was obliged to be continually warming his instrument at a brazier of coals placed near. Some years ago a Japanese Commission was appointed to consider which of the national instruments were most suitable for use in schools; it rejected the Sho because its manufacture was troublesome and its tuning even worse. ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... pencil and struck a sharp blow on the table. "There you have a single blow," he said, "just one isolated noise. Now if I strike this tuning fork you have a vibrating note. In other words, a succession of blows or wave vibrations of a certain kind affects the ear and we call it sound, just as a succession of other wave vibrations affects the retina and we have sight. If a ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... original genius. He liked to impress his audiences by fantastic eccentricities and by mere tricks of legerdemain, such as dropping and catching his instrument, or breaking one string after another to finish his concert on one alone. Other tricks of virtuosity, such as tuning up the A string by a semi-tone, left hand pizzicato, or his double thirds, were executed with such stupendous technique that they held connoisseurs and amateurs spellbound. His individuality, in fact, was so abnormal that it rendered him unfit to play with others in quartets or other chamber ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... acoustics the mind was first disciplined, conceptions being thus obtained from direct observation, which were afterwards applied to phenomena of a character far too subtle to be observed directly. Sound we know to be due to vibratory motion. A vibrating tuning-fork, for example, moulds the air around it into undulations or waves, which speed away on all sides with a certain measured velocity, impinge upon the drum of the ear, shake the auditory nerve, and awake ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... past Mrs. Farrinder, and Mrs. Farrinder knew it. There was room for both, no doubt, they had such a different style; anyhow, what he wanted to show was that there was room for Miss Verena. She didn't want any more tuning-up, she wanted to break right out. Moreover, he felt that any gentleman who should lead her to success would win her esteem; he might even attract her more powerfully—who could tell? If Miss Chancellor wanted to attach her permanently, she ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... nor even a tuning-fork, in use at the Tabernacle. But the difficulties, apparently insuperable under these circumstances, of leading so vast a congregation in the singing of unpractised tunes is almost overcome by the ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... and replied, quite loud now, for the choir leader had stood up already with his tuning-fork in hand, and one ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... laps but for so long a time as he shall be in drawing of that string." But when he had spent some little time in making proof of the bow, and had found it to be in good plight, like as a harper in tuning of his harp draws out a string, with such ease or much more did Ulysses draw to the head the string of his own tough bow, and in letting of it go, it twanged with such a shrill noise as a swallow makes when it sings through the air; which so much amazed ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... listened, however, from behind this closed door came a cheerful, cracked voice—the same voice she had heard whispering the lullaby in the middle of the night. But now it was tuning up on an old-time ballad, ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... Now the fiddler was tuning with long drawn bow, and the patting of the guitarist's foot told that he was ready. Thornton, tossing his hat to the teacher's desk just outside the door, entered the building and strode straight to the girl. Other men were hurrying across ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... wound east toward Megara. Here, by the gate, were gathered a rustic company: brown-faced village lads and lasses, toothless graybeards, cackling old wives. Above the barred gate swung a festoon of ivy, whilst from within the court came the squeaking of pipes, the tuning of citharas, and shouted orders—signs of a mighty bustling. Then even while the company grew, a half-stripped courier flew up the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... reasons for looking upon physical life as a mode of frequency, akin to Light, Electricity, Magnetism, Chemical Action, the Vibration of a Tuning Fork, or the Swing of a Pendulum, and therefore a transient phenomenon having to do only with the Race; Life can under these conditions only be looked upon as a reality in the same sense in which all other forms of energy or matter appear real to our finite senses—namely, as the shadows or manifestations ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... this boy with the aid of a Japanese servant, had set up his own aerial and apparatus, had learned the code alphabet and was thoroughly familiar with all the delicate intricacies of detector, tuning coil, sparker and the rest of it. He had gotten in touch with certain other wireless operators within a radius of ten miles and, although he had never seen any of them, he could recognize instantly the sound of their different ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... and good, For tuning the nerves and digesting the food— Graceful gymnastics for stirring the blood Without the gross purpose of use Ant, let me tell you 'tis not a la mode To plod like a pilgrim, and carry a load, ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... the destined laurel was placed on his head. Corinne ordered her lyre to be brought to her—the instrument of her choice—which greatly resembled the harp, but was however more antique in form and more simple in its sounds. In tuning it she was seized with uncommon timidity, and it was with a trembling voice that she asked to know the subject imposed on her. "The glory and happiness of Italy!" cried all around her with a unanimous voice. "Very ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... We won't need to add anything but a few tuning devices, really, and they don't take a whale of a lot ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... filled with gooseberry-trees; but the very secrecy of their operations aroused suspicion, and popular superstition at once connected them with some kind of witchcraft or sorcery. Two old women who lived close by averred that they heard strange noises in it of a humming nature, as if the devil were tuning his bagpipes, and Arkwright and Kay were dancing a reel, and so much consternation was produced that many were inclined to break open the place. The building has since been changed into a public-house, which is ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... Donne, shall meet with those That do confine Tuning unto the duller line, And sing not but in sanctified prose, How will they, with sharper eyes, The foreskin of thy fancy circumcise, And fear thy wantonness should now begin Example, that hath ceased to be sin! And that ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... the Irishman, eagerly grasping his treasure. "Erin go bragh!—long life to yese, me jewil!" and clapping the instrument to his chin, he made an attempt to play on it; but it required, as may be supposed, no small amount of tuning. Mike at once set to work, however, turning the keys and drawing the bow over the strings, all the time uttering expressions of gratitude to the Indian, and to all concerned in the recovery of the fiddle. The moment ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston |
