"Bass" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the song, but he did not intend to be balked with the minister standing right behind him, ready, no doubt, to jump in and take the precedence; so he growled away at a note in the bass, turning it over and over and trying to make it fit, like a dog gnawing at a bare bone; but he managed to keep time and make it sound ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... careless 'bon homie' and gay assurance? Both chatted away in high spirits, and made the evening whirl along in the most mirthful manner. Ruth sang for Harry, and that young gentleman turned the leaves for her at the piano, and put in a bass note now and then where he ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... Banjul [US Embassy] Gambia, The Banks Island Canada Banks Islands (Iles Banks) Vanuatu Barcelona [US Consulate General] Spain Barents Sea Arctic Ocean Barranquilla [US Consulate] Colombia Bashi Channel Pacific Ocean Basilan Strait Pacific Ocean Bass Strait Indian Ocean Batan Islands Philippines Bavaria (Bayern) Germany Beagle Channel Atlantic Ocean Bear Island (Bjornoya) Svalbard Beaufort Sea Arctic Ocean Bechuanaland Botswana Beijing [US Embassy] China Beirut [US Embassy] Lebanon Belau Pacific Islands, Trust Territory of the (Palau) ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... bass viol, taller than himself, had long been the solace of his Sundays. After he had shaved—a ceremony so solemn that it seemed a rite of his religion—that sacred viol was uncovered. He carried it sometimes to the ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... and grip the knot with both hands, while his lips moved as he muttered a prayer, feeling the thin cord quiver and jerk as if it were a strange nerve which connected him with his father, who was below there somewhere in the darkness—jar, thrill, and make a humming noise like the string of some huge bass instrument, but so faint that it would have been inaudible at any other time. But he could hear plainly enough, without any exaltation of his senses, that the soldiers were talking earnestly not a hundred yards away, their voices rising clearly ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... The Noone-tide Sun, call'd forth the mutenous windes, And twixt the greene Sea, and the azur'd vault Set roaring warre: To the dread ratling Thunder Haue I giuen fire, and rifted Ioues stowt Oke With his owne Bolt: The strong bass'd promontorie Haue I made shake, and by the spurs pluckt vp The Pyne, and Cedar. Graues at my command Haue wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and let 'em forth By my so potent Art. But this rough Magicke I heere abiure: and when ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... is!" she said. "Best sea bass you ever tasted, and about all you can catch, too! And it tastes delicious, because the fish down there get cooked almost as soon as they're caught. And there are lobsters and crabs—and it's good fun to go crabbing. Then at low tide we dig for clams, ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart
... thrust; the narrow forehead, seamed and contracted, and the twinkling, keen eyes so marred by the cast, so heavily shadowed by the shaggy eyebrows. When he spoke the voice came heavy and vibrant from the great chest, a harsh, deep bass, a voice in which to command men, not a voice in ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... invitation with some embarrassment, as became a "paid hand," but a bottle of Bass soon put him at his ease. We began by discussing various nautical topics, such as the relative merits of a centre-board or a keel for small boats, and whether whisky or beer was really the better drink when one was tired and wet through. It was not until we had finished ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... information that man possessed about the next world was simply astonishing. He knew pretty nearly everything. I think he could tell you, within a fraction or two, just how much material it took to make wings for John the Baptist, and whether Paul sings bass or tenor. His presbytery says he is a most remarkable theologian—and I don't doubt it. According to the law of compensation, however, what he does not know about this world would ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... of the town, it is entirely music; real fiddles, bass-viols and hautboys; not poetical harps, lyres and reeds. There's nobody allowed to say, I sing, but an eunuch or an Italian woman. Everybody is grown now as great a judge of music, as they were in your time of poetry, and folks ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... in a line with the black oak-don't you see the crooked sapling that is hooked up in the branches of the bass-wood, near it? Now, that sapling was once snow-ridden, and got the bend by its weight; but it never straightened itself, and fastened itself in among the bass-wood branches in the way you see. The hand of man did that act of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... for the London Philharmonic Society, next season; Elman the Nardini concerto in A, which was published only shortly before the outbreak of the war. Thirty years ago I found, by chance, three old Nardini concertos for violin and bass in the composer's original ms., in Bologna. The best was the one in A—a beautiful work! But the bass was not even figured, and the task of reconstructing the accompaniment for piano, as well as for orchestra, ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... lumbering days. It contained bunks filled with straw. Here was the very place to spend the night; it seemed waiting for him. He set to work to make camp with the skill of a lifelong practice. A splendid black bass that responded hungrily to his bait made a fine addition to his larder. He soon had a merry fire in front of the cabin, sending a blue column of smoke straight into the treetops, and when it burned down to a bed of coals he cooked his fish. Supper was soon ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... shameless limmer! And true it is, that he could repose me in that nasty, stinking hole, the Canongate Tolbooth, from which your mother drew me out—the Lord reward her for it!—or to that cold, unbieldy, marine place of the Bass Rock, which, with my delicate kist, would be fair ruin to me. But I will be valiant in my Master's service. I have a duty here: a duty to my God, to myself, and to Haddo: in His strength, I will ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this time you are really mad! To light the fire with music, and then feed it with bass-viols and harpsichords is ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... talking and laughing upstairs, and once he detected the sound of a jolly soldier's song going on above, and recognized the unmistakable bass of the general's voice. But the sudden outbreak of song did not last; and for an hour afterwards the animated sound of apparently drunken conversation continued to be heard from above. At length there ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... "I'll tell you a place— it's honest. It's the next street, a few hundred yards down, on the left. There's a wooden fish over the door. It's called The Black Bass —that hotel. Say I sent you. Good luck to you, countryman! Ah, la; la, there's the second bell—I must be getting to Mass!" With a nod he turned ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... church. A melodeon was to be purchased. Miss M. Kroh was to play the organ and direct the music and the sisters were to sing. During the time the melodeon was on the way we had become acquainted with William Trembly, a fine tenor; James Holmes, bass; William Cobb, tenor; Will Belding, bass; Samuel Grove, tenor; and William ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... might you have been on?" the woman continued. "There's none due on this line that we knew of. David Bass, the station-master, was here but two hours ago and said he'd finished for the night, and praised the Lord for that. The goods trains had all been stopped at Ipswich, and the first passenger train was not due till ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... before they sang it, for there was no other hymn-book than his own. It was the simplest hymn, Hester thought, she had ever heard. He began the singing himself to a well-known tune, but when he heard the voice of Hester take it up, he left the leading to her, and betaking himself to the bass, did his part there. When they heard her voice the people all turned to look, and some began to whisper, but presently resumed the hymn. When it was ended, he prayed for two or three minutes, not more, and sent them away. Hester being ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... dully enduring the uproar; the horses of the field ambulances parked near the orchard were being backed into the shafts; the band of an infantry regiment, instruments flashing dully, marched up, halted, deposited trombone, clarion and bass drum on the grass and were told off as stretcher-bearers by a smart, Irish sergeant, who wore his ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... having bicycled over from South Wellmouth. Primmie arrived also and bursts of her energetic conversation, punctuated by grumblings in Mr. Bloomer's bass, drifted in from the kitchen. Supper was a happy meal. Young Howard, questioned by Martha and Lulie—the latter evidently anxious to "show off" her lover—told of his experiences aboard one of Uncle Sam's transports and the narrow escape from a German submarine. Galusha, decoyed ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... postman's bell, the notes of a very young puppy. Finally, an old hound which appeared to be gifted with a peculiarly robust temperament kept supplying the part of contrabasso, so that his growls resembled the rumbling of a bass singer when a chorus is in full cry, and the tenors are rising on tiptoe in their efforts to compass a particularly high note, and the whole body of choristers are wagging their heads before approaching ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... this moment I'll maintain, that the real temple of love is a parish church—Cupid is a chubby curate—his torch is the sexton's lantern—and the according paean of the spheres is the profound nasal thorough bass of ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton
... far too polite to use such a word. Yet I have spoken to Japanese artists who, in referring to European taste in Art, used a word equivalent to barbarous. The average free-born Briton travelling round the world carries with him, or is supposed to carry with him, his Bible, and a taste for Bass's beer and beefsteak. According as a country does or does not possess these essentials, and according as its own attributes of civilisation are removed from his own standards of perfection, so does he regard its ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... a pessimistic eye on Ishmael. "Are you still pure?" he shot at him in his deepest bass. "I see you are; your look answers for you." And he strode on again. He turned to add over his shoulder: "I cannot in the intewests of my pwofession emulate you; it is incumbent on me to know first hand all that ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... chapel of S. Bernardino, where the Christ in the gold almond and the worshipping and music-making angels of Pinturicchio rise out of the blue darkness behind the grating, I felt oddly that music of the organ. The sonorous rasping of the bass tubes, the somewhat nasal quaver of the vox humana and the hautboy, was actually the music made by these beribboned Umbrian angels, those long ages ago, in the gloom of their blue cloudy sky, with the blessing, newly arisen Christ in the ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... mountain-track, toiled the cars; at last coming to a wheezy and radiator-boiling halt at the foot of a rock-summit so steep that no vehicle could breast it. In a cup, at the summit of this mountain-top hillock, was the camp-site; its farther edge only a few yards above a little bass-populated spring-lake. ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... of the North Liberty Second Presbyterian Church had just ceased ringing. But in the last five years it had rung out the bass viol and harmonium, and rung in an organ and choir; and the old austere interior had been subjected at the hands of the rising generation to an invasion of youthful warmth and color. Nowhere was this more apparent ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... fifteen miles, over a winding way leading over hills and rocks, and through immense belts of timber land. They had to ford several streams, and at one of these points they stopped for an hour to catch and cook some black bass, which were plentiful. Toward nightfall the chase came to ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... represents Poetry, crowned with laurel, holding a scroll in one hand, the other with a pen in it, and resting on a book; the other, Painting, with a pallet and pencils, &c.: on the sweep of the arch lies one of the Muses, playing on a bass-viol; another of the Muses, on the other side, holding a trumpet in one hand, and the other on a harp. Between these figures, in the middle of the sweep of the arch, is a very large pannel in a frame of gold; in this pannel is painted, on one side, a Woman, representing ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... to? I went to get Frenchmen," answered Tikhon boldly and hurriedly, in a husky but melodious bass voice. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... or seven hundred, out of Yankee-land; and strange enough, what is not unlikely, if it be the first cash I realize for that piece of work,—Angle-land continuing still insolvent to me! Well, it is a wide Motherland we have here, or are getting to have, from Bass's Straits all round to Columbia River, already almost circling the Globe: it must be hard with a man if somewhere or other he find not some one or other to take his part, and stand by him a little! Blessings on you, my brother: ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... uncompromising "Son of Temperance," had come over herself to explain matters to Jimmy's sister, and had taken the opportunity to enlarge on the number of bottles she had found in her lodger's room, omitting to state, however, that these had included the best part of a dozen of Bass, which, possibly because she hated liquor so much, she had promptly sold to her next-door neighbour at a halfpenny a bottle ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... musingly. "One night as I sat between Viola and the closed piano, the spook, or whatever it was, ran up and down the keys—now on the treble, now on the bass—keeping ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... Kirkoswald a farm-road leads to the coast. As I came down above Turnberry, the sea view was indeed strangely different from the day before. The cold fogs were all blown away; and there was Ailsa Craig, like a refraction, magnified and deformed, of the Bass Rock; and there were the chiselled mountain tops of Arran, veined and tipped with snow; and behind, and fainter, the low, blue land of Cantyre. Cottony clouds stood, in a great castle, over the top of Arran, and blew out in long streamers to the south. The sea was bitten all ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... experiment I propose to try is what in my region we call 'troulling,' which consists of throwing out a baited hook and paying out, as the boat moves on, a hundred feet, or so, of line, that is left to trail, floating on the surface of the water behind; when most large fish, like bass, or trout, especially if you make a sharp tack, occasionally, so as to draw the line across an undisturbed portion of the water, will see, and, darting up, sieze it, and hook themselves. And, if you have many large trout here, and they are any related to those I have found in the Great Maguntic, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... only the power, but the wild and exulting voice of the world's soul. Whether she ran with her tall spars swinging, or breasted it with her tall spars lying over, there was always that wild song, deep like a chant, for a bass to the shrill pipe of the wind played on the sea- tops, with a punctuating crash, now and then, of a breaking wave. At times the weird effects of that invisible orchestra would get upon a man's nerves till he wished ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... like a bow that is being drawn, and a swift leap landed her right on the perch. The parrot, seeing the danger upon him, unexpectedly called out in a deep, sonorous bass voice: "Have ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... particularly the rice-bird, which is very like the ortolan. There are rattlesnakes, but not near so frequent as is generally reported. There are several species of snakes, some of which are not venomous. There are crocodiles, porpoises, sturgeon, mullet, cat-fish, bass, drum, devil-fish; and many species of fresh-water fish that we have not in Europe; and oysters upon the sea-islands ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... briefly grateful glance at her, "if you may only really understand! For, just as there are all colors for the painter to use, so are there all of the same within music. There is from darkness far below the under bass to the dazzle of sun in the high over the treble, and in between there are gray, and rose, and rain, and twilight, so that with my bow I may make you all a sad picture between the clefs or a gay one of flowers blooming from G to upper C. And there is heat and cold ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... if that were the very war-cry of the saints of God. Then in a splendid bass voice he began to sing a hymn, and some women joined him. So Fred Oakes fell to his old accustomed task, and played them marching accompaniments on his concertina until his fingers ached and even he, the enthusiast, loathed the thing's bray. In one ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... and shame-faced to push themselves forward; but there were others, bold young sailors, used to voyaging hither and thither and to making their own way in strange places, who did not hesitate to put themselves in the very front, close by the settle where she sat, and to sing bass to Rhoda's treble, and even to find the text for her in the Bible. One of them, a notorious young scamp, Evan Price, was Aunt Priscilla's greatest plague and aversion; but she never caught a single word or glance from Rhoda which could show that the ...
— The Christmas Child • Hesba Stretton
... evening, the ship was hove to, and continued lying to until three A.M. of the 4th. At half past four, being quite dark, and raining hard, blowing a fearful gale, the ship struck on a reef, situated on the west coast of King's Island, at the entrance of Bass's Straights. ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... associations to this day. There was often an odor of sassafras in the afternoon service. It used to stand in my mind as a substitute for the Old Testament incense of the Jews. Something in the same way the big bass-viol in the choir took the place of "David's harp ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... which I have installed in Philemon's cabinet, and a very pretty dove-cote it makes me. For the rest, my husband is coming back with seven hundred francs, which he got from his respectable family, under pretence of learning the bass viol, the cornet-a-piston, and the speaking trumpet, so as to make his way in society, and a slap-up marriage—to use ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... eye and his mouth behaved similarly, the latter loosing upon the quiet air one shriek of mental agony before the little dog scrambled to his feet and gave further employment to his voice in a frenzy of profanity. At the same time the subterranean diapason of a demoniac bass viol was heard; it rose to a wail, and rose and rose again till it screamed like a small siren. It was Gipsy's war-cry, and, at the sound of it, Duke became a frothing maniac. He made a convulsive frontal attack upon the ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... placed him upon the staging at his father's feet. It required the utmost efforts of Daniel Webster to control that multitudinous throng. "Stand back, gentlemen!" he repeatedly shouted with his double-bass voice; "you must stand back!" "We can't stand back, Mr. Webster; it is impossible!" cried a voice in the crowd. Mr. Webster replied, in tones of thunder: "On Bunker Hill nothing is impossible." ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... another finicking; a third loud; a fourth enthusiastic; a fifth timid; and all failed in tact except Mr. Hardie. Then, other male voices were imperfect; they were too insignificant or too startling, too bass or too treble, too something or too other. Mr. Hardie's was a mellow tenor, always modulated to the exact tone of good society. Like herself, too, he never laughed loud, seldom out; and even his smiles, like her own, did not come in unmeaning profusion, so they ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... colder climate, (which is yet sufficiently mild,) and its supposed resemblance in appearance and productions to their native land, have appeared preferable to all the advantages which the larger island possesses. Van Diemen's Land is divided from New Holland on the north by Bass's Straits, its extreme points of latitude are 41 deg. 20', and 43 deg. 40' S., and of longitude 144 deg. 40', and 148 deg. 20' E. Its shape is irregular, being much broken by various inlets, but its greatest extent from N. to S. is reckoned to be about 210 miles, and from E. to ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... in its proportions, and the smoke-laden air gave a peculiar distortion to everything. She felt as though she would stifle. There were shrill cries of boys selling programmes and soda water, and there was a great bass rumble of masculine voices. She heard a voice offering ten to six on Joe Fleming. The utterance was monotonous—hopeless, it seemed to her, and she felt a quick thrill. It was her Joe against whom everybody ...
— The Game • Jack London
... walked slowly home. Unlocking the front door with his latchkey he tiptoed through the hall and listened at the head of the back stairs. There was a steady murmur of voices in the kitchen. He heard a bass grumble from Mr. Ginn and Azuba's shrill reply. Then the pair burst into a laugh. Evidently some sort of understanding on a peaceful basis had been reached. Still chuckling, the captain went up to his ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the right word," answered Reding; "it is very wonderful. You say, 'How can he manage it?' and 'It's very wonderful for a bass;' but it is not pleasant in itself. In like manner, I have always felt a disgust when Mr. So-and-so comes forward to make his sweet flute bleat and bray like a hautbois; it's forcing the poor thing to do what it was never ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... was there, Occupied a singer's chair Next to—well, no prouder man Ever lifts the bass, nor can, Sometimes held the self-same book, (How my nervous fingers shook!) Sometimes—wretch—while still the air Echoed to the parson's prayer, I would whisper in her ear What she could not help but hear. Once, I told her my desire. (Tildy ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... was a fine treble; Gray's a mellow bass. Others joined them, and the party returned to the Academy, singing high and ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... was evidently one of the leaders of the party. Frank made just a feeble answer about not drinking, and a pretence of holding back his glass, and then allowed himself to be helped first to one tumbler, then another, and then another, of foaming Bass. He was soon past all qualms, ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... steps of the staircase, were the pieces of coal which Fog-horn Cranch and Waller, who held the scuttle, had pounded into bits when they produced that wild jangle which had added so much of dignity and power to the bass notes of the ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Do you observe that monk among the train, Who pours from his great throat the roaring bass, As a cathedral spout pours out the rain, And this way turns ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... don't, sir," growled Bob Hampton, in the deepest of deep bass voices. "We're strong enough, if you'll only give ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... has changed hands? Have actresses elevated the stage to a moral altitude congenial to the colder virtues? In studios of the artists is the "sound of revelry by night" invariably a deep, masculine bass? In literature are the immoral books—the books "dealing" with questionable "questions"—always, or ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... to tune up. From their corner came a medley of mellow sounds, the subdued chirps of the violins, the dull bourdon of the bass viol, the liquid gurgling of the flageolet and the deep-toned snarl of the big horn, with now and then a rasping stridulating of the snare drum. A sense of gayety began to spread throughout the assembly. At every moment the crowd increased. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... driven her brother as a horse there, and had played with him at hunting lions. She had studied landscape drawing there from the days when a half staggery stroke with some blotches out of it was supposed to represent a tree, and a thing shaped like the trade-mark on Mr. Bass's beer bottles stood for a mountain. As she grew up she came there to read and to idle and to think. There she revelled in all the boundless fancies and extravagant ambitions of a clever, half-poetic child. There she was in turn ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... green, setting the silence echoing with the tinkle of cataracts over some rock wall, or filling the air with the voice of many waters at noontide thaw. One old navigator—Coates—describes the beat of the angry tide at the rock base and the silver voice of the mountain brooks, like the treble and bass of some great cathedral organ sounding its diapason to the glory of ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... mysteriously closed her eyes—as if to exclude some vision of the lost courier which was of a nature to disturb a respectable woman. 'Nothing that Mr. Ferrari could do would surprise me,' she replied in her deepest bass tones. ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... blue eyes which, though not particularly expressive when in repose, had an electrical appearance when kindled. His voice was one of extraordinary compass, melody and power. From the 'deep and dreadful sub-bass of the organ' to the most aerial warblings of its highest key, hardly a pipe or stop was wanting. Like all the magical voices, it had the faculty of imparting to the most familiar and commonplace expressions an inexpressible fascination. Probably no orator ever lived who, when speaking on ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... aborigines have been removed to an island in Bass's Straits, so that Van Diemen's Land enjoys the great advantage of being free from a native population. This most cruel step seems to have been quite unavoidable, as the only means of stopping a fearful succession of robberies, burnings, and ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... sealed the iron vessels in which he had shut up the vanquished demons. The wise king sank those vessels in the sea and I seemed to hear the voices of the imprisoned spirits while Paganini's violin growled its most wrathful bass. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... "Crack! Il tombe des obus," the big bass-drum boomed like the shell he sang of. His voice was as tense and metallic as a taut string, and he snapped out the lilting line in swift staccato as if he were flaying his audience with a whip. Man after man on the hillside took up the irresistible rhythm in ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... for Wenman's[2] bass! Why should he make a boast of it? If he has a voice, I have got the ghost of it! When I pitch it low, you may say how weak it is, When I pitch it high, heavens! what a squeak it is! But I never mind; for ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... resounding Like blasts of a trumpet. The heads of the peasants Are eagerly lifted, They gaze at the tower. On the balcony round it A man is now standing; He wears a pope's cassock; 290 He sings ... on the balmy Soft air of the evening, The bass, like a huge Silver bell, is vibrating, And throbbing it enters The hearts of the peasants. The words are not Russian, But some foreign language, But, like Russian songs, It is full of great sorrow, 300 Of passionate grief, ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... night after we had both been out all day for fish, went down alone to feed the seals. It was nearly dark, and he closed the outside door without catching it. When he opened the inside door and began to distribute the bass, Nab took advantage of the dusk to steal every fish he could get his nose in reach of. It seemed impossible to get a mouthful to any other seal in the lot; and father, at last quite out of patience, ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... cries, only pitched deeper, into a sort of roaring bass. These grew momentarily louder, and soon I saw him approaching, my father—at least, by all the evidence of the times, I am driven to conclude that ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... the ball began, and it was the strangest ball that ever was seen. The trumpeter Gadfly and a number of his relations, besides several Grasshoppers and Bees, were the chief musicians. They wanted a bass very much at first, but the Bull-frog offered his services, although he confessed that he was accustomed to sing alone. Then the gentlemen drew on their gloves, flattened their wings, pulled up their collars, and coiled away their tails; while the ladies ...
— The Butterfly's Ball - The Grasshopper's Feast • R.M. Ballantyne
... farceur's offending—no more. Any person eminently gifted with patience, and anxious to give it a fair trial, cannot have a better opportunity of testing it than by spending a couple of hours in seeing that single incident drag its slow length along, and witnessing a new comedian, named Bass, roll his heavy breadth about in hard-working attempts to be droll. As a specimen of manual labour in comedy, we never saw the acting of this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... duck forward with his nose. 'Yes, it's an accomplished fact, he, he, he.... However,' he added, trying to assume a dignified air, 'I'm all right.' He tried to lift his foot, but almost fell over, and to preserve his dignity pronounced in a deep bass, 'Boy, bring ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... my curiosity still more; so I rose about midnight, and let myself gently down through the window, and shaped my course in the direction of the negro houses, guided by a loud drumming, which, as I came nearer, every now and then sunk into a low murmuring roll, when a strong bass voice would burst forth into a wild recitative; to which succeeded a loud piercing chorus of female voices, during which the drums were beaten with great vehemence; this was succeeded by another solo, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... he could see Melissa sitting at a low table. The yellow cat occupied the big rocker. It was all so pleasant and home-like a lump rose in the captain's throat. He decided to steal quietly in and surprise Melissa. But at the door he stopped as suddenly as if he had been shot. A deep bass voice was uttering words that sounded ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... appeared only a few yards away, a flare of brilliant blue lines, in the midst of which passed a phantom-like body in a mist and accompanied by a musical sound (it seemed) of extraordinary clarity and beauty, that rose from a deep organ-note to the shrill of a flute, and down again Into a bass and a silence. ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... contemplated. At seven his man came to him again, and then read to him and wrote till dinner. The writing was as much as the reading" (Aubrey). Then he took exercise, either walking in the garden, or swinging in a machine. His only recreation, besides conversation, was music. He played the organ and the bass viol, the organ most. Sometimes he would sing himself or get his wife to sing to him, though she had, he said, no ear, yet a good voice. Then he went up to his study to be read to till six. After six his friends were admitted to visit him, and would sit with him till eight. At ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... a most agreeable, well-informed, and entertaining female. They travelled together till night, and she gave Giglio all sorts of things out of the bag which she carried, and which indeed seemed to contain the most wonderful collection of articles. He was thirsty—out there came a pint bottle of Bass's pale ale, and a silver mug! Hungry—she took out a cold fowl, some slices of ham, bread, salt, and a most delicious piece of cold plum-pudding, and a little glass ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... p. de pisce lupo—wolf, because of its voracity; a sea fish, sea pike, or sea bass; perhaps akin to our barracuda, wolfish both in appearance and character. Sch. ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... musical party, to which he had come much against his will, and only in obedience to a compulsion he dared not analyse, she asked him in passing if he would kindly find Mr. MacFadden, a bass singer, whose name stood next on the programme, and who was not to be seen in ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... days; fresh flies and grubs and beetles crop up, and disturb the primitive entomological balance. The bustard is gone from Salisbury Plain; the fenland butterflies have disappeared with the drainage of the fens. In their place the red-legged partridge invades Norfolk; the American black bass is making himself quite at home, with Yankee assurance, in our sluggish rivers; and the spoonbill is nesting of its own accord among the warmer corners of the ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... building two sounds deafened an unfamiliar ear: a steady roar, deep and persistent, and through it, like a staccato pulse, a louder, more painful, more penetrating din. The bass to this harsh treble arose from humming belts and running wheels; the crash that punctuated their deep-mouthed riot broke from the drawing heads ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... terrified his judges. He simulated madness, foamed at the mouth, and finally tore up the benches in order to attack the judges with the fragments. He was sent first to the castle of Edinburgh and afterward to the Bass (an island), "for a change of air," as the record quaintly says. Finally, he was despatched to Blackness Castle, where he remained close in hold ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Young James will not travel hither to fulfil old Lailoken's rhyme, and Tushielaw's arm hath no power over Cockburn. Truly, I do intend to weed thy pretty arbours, Maudge; and, peradventure, I may even essay to sing a bass to thy sweet ballad of "Lustye May, with Flora Queen;" and such a domesticated creature shall I be that, like Hercules, you may see me, ere long, ply the distaff—a pretty sight for Adam Scott's ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... about a gunshot," said Bruce. "They may never have heard one before; but instinct tells them quickly of the menace. Years ago at home, when I used to fish for bass, during the closed season I'd see thousands of duck and geese and deer. Yet a single gunshot when the season opened and you never could get within a ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... boiled fowls, rock-fish, sea-bass, and other boiled fresh fish.. Also with knuckle of veal, and with calf's ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... colour, and easy working, and that it is not subject to split, architects make with it models for their designed buildings; and the carvers in wood, not only for small figures, but large statues and intire histories, in bass, and high relieve; witness (besides several more) the lapidation of St. Stephen, with the structures and elevations about it: The trophies, festoons, frutages, encarpa, and other sculptures in the frontoons, freezes, capitals, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... poor old Broadwood with the squeaky treble and the wheezy bass was banished for ever from The Lindens, and there arrived in its place a ninety-five-guinea cottage grand, all dark walnut and gilding, with notes in it so deep and rich and resonant that Maude could sit before it ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... whailbone bow. Gim sed to me easy have you got them things and i sed yes and Gim sed no fooling and i sed hope to die and i crosed my throte and i sed you have got to lick him first and he sed he wood lick him. so we went over in the high school yard to play prisners bass. well prety soon Gim sed Will cheeted, and Will said he dident, and Gim sed do you mean to call me a lier and Will sed he dident cheet and Gim sed he wood giv him a paist on the nose, and Will sed he want man enuf and Gim scrached a line in the dirt and told Will not to dass to step over it ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... baited fishhooks into the water for a "brain-food" supper. This was not more than half a mile from the tie-up where they passed their first night in the Thousand Islands. The finny fellows bit greedily and in a short time they had enough black bass and pickerel to feed a party twice the size ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... that the prisoner be taught at once proper respect for the high tribunal of the Scarlet Mask." The request was made in a voice that aspired to bass depths. It fell short enough of them for Marjorie to identify it as feminine, although she did not know to whom it belonged. She had had so slight an acquaintance with ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... old religiosity by the spirit of modern common sense is shown most interestingly in the Salvation Army. William Booth was a man with a great heart, who took his life into his hands and went out with a bass-drum to save the lost souls of the slums. He was stoned and jailed, but he persisted, and ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... The caterer from Louisville came in a truck, bringing with him stylish negro waiters and many freezers and hampers. The musicians arrived on the seven o'clock trolley, almost filling one car with their great drums and saxophones and bass fiddles. ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... has been twenty days on the trail, for cattle may only be driven about ten miles a day; he has been up day and night and slept half the time in the saddle; he has made himself hoarse singing "Sam Bass" and "The Dying Ranger" to keep the cattle quiet and stave off stampedes; he has ridden ten ponies to shadows in his twenty days of driving, wherefore, and naturally, your ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... the crash of musketry from many parts of the city, accompanied by the grumbling bass of the gattling guns, then the defiant yells ceased, and ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... remarkable degree as Henri de Malfort, who played the guitar exquisitely, and into whose hands you had but to put a musical instrument for him to extract sweetness from it. Lute or theorbo, viola or viol di gamba, treble or bass, came alike to his hand and ear. Some instruments he had studied; with some his skill ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... of the arch gave back Learoyd's broken whisper in a bass boom. Mulvaney looked at me hopelessly, but I remembered how the madness of despair had once fallen upon Ortheris, that weary, weary afternoon in the banks of the Khemi River, and how it had been exorcised by the ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... was always in unison; and, as the natural soprano, contralto, tenor, and bass moved along in octaves, the different qualities of tone in the voices brought out the overtones and produced harmonic effects. When listening to chorals sung by two or three hundred voices, as I have many times heard them in ceremonials, it has ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... a deep bass voice, turning to the speaker and nodding his venerable head a number of times. "Nowhere, assuredly, except here. It was represented to me that at ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... hand, and at a meeting of the boys of the Y. M. C. A. of Cliffwood, it was decided that a regular summer camp should be instituted. This was located at a beautiful spot on Bass Island, and there the lads went boating, swimming, fishing and tramping to their heart's content. There were a great many surprises, but in the end the boys managed to clear up a mystery of long standing. ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... look-outs at the signal-stations and battery peered through the early dawn to seaward; else not a sound or moving thing, save a teal or two fluttering with a sharp cry up and down the lagoon; the music of the tiny ripples lapping on the shelly beach; and the low roar, in a deep bass, breaking and moaning over the ledge beyond the island. Such was the appearance of things where our scene is laid in the Twelve League Group of Keys, on a Sunday morning, in the year of our Lord eighteen ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... a fisherman out of Bass Harbor, last October, who went in a power-boat to Clay Bank after hake. His engine played out and he got blown off by a northwester. For over five days he didn't have a thing to eat or drink. Then he got back to Mount Desert Rock. That's the ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... dulcimers, accordions, fiddles, flutes and various kinds of brass horns, and in those days a great many people could sing the good old hymns in the Carmina Sacra, and the glees and part-songs in the old Jubilee, with the soprano, tenor, bass and alto, and the high tenor and counter which made better music than any gathering of people are likely to make nowadays. All they needed was a leader with a tuning-fork, and off they would start, making the great canal ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... must have fitting circumstances, background, and perspective. The ruin of a soul, the tragedy of a heart, demand, as a necessity of harmony and picturesque effect, a corresponding and conspiring environment and stage—just as, in music, the air in the treble is supported and reverberated by the bass accompaniment. The immediate, contemporary act or predicament loses more than half its meaning and impressiveness if it be re-echoed from no sounding-board in the past—its notes, however sweetly and truly touched, fall flatly on the ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... preacher. Would have no objection to form a small class of young ladies and gentlemen to instruct them in the higher branches. To a dentist or chiropodist he would be invaluable; or he would cheerfully accept a position as bass or tenor singer ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the bow to serve as a resonance-chamber. When the musician of early times enlarged this chamber, moved it to the end of the bow, and multiplied the strings, he constructed the cithara of antiquity,—the ancestor of a host of modern types, from the harp to the bass-viol and mandolin. ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... Scot to Jeanne d'Arc How they held the Bass for King James Three portraits of Prince Charles From Omar Khayyam Aesop Les Roses de Sadi The Haunted Tower Boat-song Lost Love The Promise of Helen The Restoration of Romance Central American Antiquities in ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... left in the township, supposed by some to have been planted by the pigeons that were once baited with beechnuts near by; it is worth the while to see the silver grain sparkle when you split this wood; the bass; the hornbeam; the Celtis occidentalis, or false elm, of which we have but one well-grown; some taller mast of a pine, a shingle tree, or a more perfect hemlock than usual, standing like a pagoda in the midst of the woods; and ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... silver Charles: the tramp of horses' hoofs comes to my ear from the timbers of the bridge. Here, with a pelt and a scramble your bridge is crossed: nothing addresses the heart from its stony causeway. But the low, arched tubes of wood that span the streams of my native land are so many bass-viols, sending out mellow thunders with every passing wagon to blend with the rustling stream and the sighing woods. Shall I never hear ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... father, himself an enthusiastic amateur, and caused him to bestow the utmost pains on the cultivation of the child's talents. The boy's first master was Buroni, choir-master a tone of the churches, and a relation of the family. Later, young Clementi took lessons in thorough bass from an eminent organist, Condicelli, and after a couple of years' application he was thought sufficiently advanced to apply for the position of organist, which he obtained, his age then being barely nine. He prosecuted his studies with great zeal under the ablest masters, ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... Year's eve with the blizzard raging outside, and that bright crowded hall, and all you boys just home from France. Do you remember the big blue parrots that swung in hoops from the chandeliers? And that wonderful saxophone and the big bass drum!" ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... the messenger who was to come to me tonight?" interrupted the man addressed. He spoke in a commanding and vibrant bass voice. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... merely lacked imagination. Her mind was capable of appreciating how serious for her would be the loss of her overshoes but not being burned alive. At the battle of Velestinos, in the Greek-Turkish War, John F. Bass, of The Chicago Daily News, and myself got into a trench at the foot of a hill on which later the Greeks placed a battery. All day the Turks bombarded this battery with a cross-fire of shrapnel and rifle-bullets which ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... approached the grey old stones they became aware of a certain agitation among them. A voice, an authoritative bass voice, was audible, crying, "Anthony!" A nurse appeared remotely going in the direction of the aeroplane sheds, and her cry of "Master Anthony" came faintly on the breeze. An extremely pretty young woman of five or six and twenty ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... similar cases further to buttress my position. I told him that almost the skinniest human being I ever knew had been one of the largest eaters. I was speaking now of John Wesley Bass, the champion raw-egg eater of Massac Precinct, whose triumphant career knew not pause or discomfiture until one day at the McCracken County fair when ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb |
