"Singer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out at one hole, it gushed out at the bottom till the square was flooded. My mother was fair disgusted when told by me and James of the waste of good liquor. It is gospel truth I speak when I say I mind well of seeing Singer Davie catching the porter in a pan as it ran down the sire, and, when the pan was full to overflowing, putting his mouth to the stream and drinking till he was as full as the pan. Most of the men, ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... prince, and a civil engineer at the head of one of the largest Austrian steel corporations. The surgeon of our battalion was the head of a great medical institution and a man of international fame. Among my men in the platoon were a painter, two college professors, a singer of repute, a banker, and a post official of high rank. But nobody cared and in fact I myself did not know until much later what distinguished men were in my platoon. A great cloak of brotherhood seemed to have enveloped ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... infantine of the new. Still this, though interesting in itself, is a trifle, and the whole paper, short as it is, is a sort of Nunc Dimittis in a new sense, a hymn of praise for dismissal, not from but to work—to the singer's proper function, from which he ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... straight illumined track The bride, the singer, and the child Fled, far from sceptics, came not back, Engulped? ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... been accused of forming the most dangerous of these intermediate agents; but in my opinion, without justice. The most formidable, to my thinking, is the conductor of the orchestra. A bad singer can spoil only his own part; while an incapable or malevolent conductor ruins all. Happy indeed may the composer esteem himself when the conductor into whose hands he has fallen is not at once incapable and inimical; for nothing can resist ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... convulsed with laughter; but the sweet singer, who saw in this utterance only the contrite soul of the speaker, burst ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... Brave singer of the coming time, Sweet minstrel of the joyous present, Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme, The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant, Good-bye! Good-bye!—Our hearts and hands, Our lips in honest Saxon phrases, Cry, God be with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... shades, and then thought of strolling to his rooms at Markton. Just at leaving, as he passed under the inhabited wing, whence one or two lights now blinked, he heard a piano, and a voice singing 'The Mistletoe Bough.' The song had probably been suggested to the romantic fancy of the singer by her visit to the scene ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... meet all State officials and every prominent politician, Democrat or Republican, who visited the Capitol. When the lower house was not in session and the Court of Appeals was, he attended its sessions and sat within the space reserved for attorneys. He and Judge Singer, whose judicial ear was attuned to the hum of the gubernatorial bee, became great friends. As a member of the Judiciary Committee he supported a pending bill allowing to each judge of the court a stenographer, and helped through the committee other bills that Judge Singer and the several ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... him Lord, how is he his son?" The Lord's citation of David's jubilant and worshipful song of praise, which, as Mark avers, Jesus said was inspired by the Holy Ghost, had reference to the Messianic psalm[1124] in which the royal singer affirmed his own reverent allegiance, and extolled the glorious reign of the promised King of kings, who is specifically called therein "a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek."[1125] Puzzling as was the unexpected question to the erudite Jews, we fail to perceive in it any ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... of my own woe forsaking, I thought about the singer of that song. Some other breast felt this same weary aching; Another found the ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... there, behind that clump of groom. I stand on the look out for long, but all in vain. At the faintest sound of movement in the brushwood, the jingle ceases. I try again next day and the day after. This time, my stubborn watch succeeds. Whoosh! A grab of my hand and I hold the singer. It is not a bird; it is a kind of Grasshopper whose hind legs my playfellows have taught me to like: a poor recompense for my prolonged ambush. The best part of the business is not the two haunches with the shrimpy flavor, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... fought with the hairy Ulfadha. Return soon, she said, O Lamderg! for here I wait in sorrow. Her white breaft rose with sighs; her cheek was wet with tears. But she cometh not to meet Lamderg; or sooth his soul after battle. Silent is the hall of joy; I hear not the voice of the singer. Brann does not shake his chains at the gate, glad at the coming of his master. Where is Gealchossa my love, ...
— Fragments Of Ancient Poetry • James MacPherson
... round, and burst out laughing. "Sit down again, you old fool," he said. "It's only Mrs. Housekeeper. We are singing, Mrs. Housekeeper! You haven't heard my voice yet—I'm the finest singer in Germany." ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... skilfully handled that the room rose to its feet, waving napkins, and the great Carvalho, the famous tenor—a guest of Crug's, each member could invite one guest—who was singing that week at the Academy of Music, left his seat and, circling the table, threw his arms about the singer in ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... had some able assistants, but most cases still received his own attention at some stage of their development. This was characteristic of the colonel. He was always going to retire, in fact he said he had, but, somehow or other, it was like a singer's farewell, always postponed. ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... ever a lover and student of poetry, and among poets, Whittier was from the first his favorite. As a boy he committed to memory many of the Quaker poet's trumpet-like calls to duty. As a man he always turned for inspiration to this sweet singer of freedom. What attracted Carleton was not only the intense moral earnestness of the Friend, his beautiful images and grand simplicity, but the seer's perfect familiarity with the New Hampshire landscape, ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... in acute enjoyment. "The General's a regular opera singer, a high-rolling canary. Go after it ... a ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... retain it. Vasco da Gama had died within the year. Albuquerque, the hero of the Lusiado, the noblest and most far-sighted mind in an age of great men, had been dead ten years. Camoens, like the Greek dramatists, was soldier as well as poet: he was not alone the singer of past adventures—he was the reporter of what took place under his own eyes. His epic was already finished before the defeat of Don Sebastian in the battle of Alcazar put an end to the glory it celebrated, and in dying shortly after the poet is said to have breathed a prayer of thanksgiving ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... Terence Magrath, who teaches my girls. He beats almost all whom I have ever heard attempt Moore's songs, and I can easily cajole him also out to Abbotsford for a day or two. In jest or earnest, I never heard a better singer in a room, though his voice is not quite full enough for a concert; and for an after-supper song, he ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... master singer of modern days has not yet appeared. There have been faint signs of him, a suggestion of him, an indistinct prophecy of him, in nearly all of the world's singers for a hundred years. Some day he will come. It may be soon, and then he will sound that note which shall again thrill ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... speech, since that means that it will always be changing, and so the time will come when you and I will be as hard to read for the common people as Chaucer is to-day." You remember what opinion your brilliant humorist, Artemus Ward, let fall concerning that ancient singer. "Mr. Chaucer," he observed casually, "is an admirable poet, but as a ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... Mr. Payne supplies "Then they returned and sat down" (apparently changing places). He is quite correct in characterising the Bresl. Edit. as corrupt and "fearfully incoherent." All we can make certain of in this passage is that the singer mistook the Persian ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... between palette and canvas, the artist paused,—turning his head to listen,—half inclined to the belief that his fancy was tricking him. But no; the singer was coming nearer; the melody was growing more distinct; but still the voice was in perfect harmony with the deep-toned ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... improved awfully. Her cough is all gone, and she can walk ten miles. I was the one that was sick. You see, I wanted to get Pa into the church again, and get him to stop drinking, so I got a boy to write a letter to him, in a female hand, and sign the name of a choir singer Pa was mashed on, and tell him she was yearning for him to come back to the church, and that the church seemed a blank without his smiling face, and benevolent heart, and to please come back for her sake. Pa got the letters Saturday night and he seemed tickled, but I guess he dreamed ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... fixed them on the young girl. They seemed to ask the question whether this noble hymn did not draw his nurse also to him who had sung it; whether, in spite of it, she still persisted, with sorrowful blindness, in her refusal to join the Sisters of St. Clare, whom the saintly singer also numbered amongst his followers. Yet he felt too feeble to appeal to her conscience now, as he had often done, and bear the replies with which this highly gifted, peculiar creature, in every conversation ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... without a beat As true as church-bell ringers, Unless she tapped time with her feet, Or squeezed it with her fingers; Her clear unstudied notes were sweet As many a practised singer's. ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... amours! The thousand heartaches; the fingers clutching hungrily at keys that might be other fingers; the fiddler with his eyelids clenched while he dreams that the violin, against his cheek is the satin cheek of "the inexpressive She;" the singer with a cry in every note; the moonlit youth with the mandolin tinkling his serenade to an ivied window; the dead-marches; the nocturnes; the amorous waltzes; the duets; the trills and trinkets of flirtatious scherzi; the laughing roulades; the ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... They sing long ballads to popular melodies, some of which are very pretty and gay, and for a baiocco they sell a sheet containing the printed words of the song. Sometimes it is in the form of a dialogue,—either a love-making, a quarrel, a reconciliation, or a leave-taking,—each singer taking an alternate verse. Sometimes it is a story with a chorus, or a religious conversation-ballad, or a story of a saint, or from the Bible. Those drawn from the Bible are generally very curious paraphrases of the original simple text, turned into the simplest and commonest idioms of the people;—one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... buzzed in the sun's rays was a singer in the universal chorus, "knew its place, and was happy in it." Every blade of grass grew and was happy. Everything knew its path and loved it, went forth with a song and returned with a song; only he knew nothing, understood nothing, neither men nor words, nor any ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... see the contrast between essential paganism and idealism is that of Orpheus. The myth appears in countless forms and with innumerable excrescences, but in the main it is in three successive parts. The first of these tells of the sweet singer loved by all the creatures, the dear friend of all the world, whose charm nothing that lived on earth could resist, and whose spell hurt no creature whom it allured. The conception stands in sharp contrast to the ghastly statuary that adorned Medusa's precincts. Here, with a song whose ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... came to congratulate her on her birthday? First of all, the solitary sparrow, whose name was David—surely because he, too, was a tireless singer! Already at early dawn, when the first faint rosy hues of morning glimmered through the jalousie, he would fly to the head of her bed. Then the cats would come with their gratulations, but not until their little mistress had leaped from ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... the uncertainty on this point, could only adduce the following passage of Dekker's Guls Horne-booke, 1609, from which, he says, "it may be presumed"[ix:3] that Kemp was then deceased: "Tush, tush, Tarleton, Kemp, nor Singer, nor all the litter of fooles that now come drawling behinde them, neuer plaid the Clownes more naturally then the arrantest Sot of you all."[ix:4] George Chalmers, however, discovered an entry in the burial register of St. Saviour's, Southwark—"1603, November ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp
... listened, and put his finger to the little dent in his own chin, wishing the singer would finish this pleasing song. But she never did, though he often heard that, as well as other childish ditties, sung in the same gay voice, with bursts of laughter and the sound of lively feet tripping up and down the boarded walks. Johnny ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... Cecily Doran speaking where he could not see her, must have turned in that direction, have listened eagerly for the sounds to repeat themselves, and then have moved forward to discover the speaker. The divinest singer may leave one unaffected by the tone of her speech. Cecily could not sing, but her voice declared her of those who think in song, whose minds are modulated to the poetry, not to the ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... might almost say that Cherbuliez knows all that he wishes to know, without the trouble of learning it. He is a calm Mephistopheles, with perfect manners, grace, variety, and an exquisite urbanity; and Mephisto is a clever jeweler; and this jeweler is a subtle musician; and this fine singer and storyteller, with his amber-like delicacy and brilliancy, is making mock of us all the while. He takes a malicious pleasure in withdrawing his own personality from scrutiny and divination, while he himself divines everything, and he likes to make us feel that although he holds in his hand the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hand, if not in love, Fell into that no less imperious passion, Self-love—which, when some sort of thing above Ourselves, a singer, dancer, much in fashion, Or duchess, princess, empress, 'deigns to prove' ('T is Pope's phrase) a great longing, though a rash one, For one especial person out of many, Makes us believe ourselves ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... have been lost; several are extant only in the second or later editions; and of at least ten, only single copies are known to exist. Beside the edition of the Works already referred to, a number of Rowlands's tracts have been separately reprinted, in limited editions, by Sir Walter Scott, by S. W. Singer, by E. V. Utterson, by Halliwell-Phillipps, by J. P. Collier, and by E. F. Rimbault in the publications of the Percy Society; to this series of reprints, ...
— The Bride • Samuel Rowlands et al
... a song divine, With a sword in every line, And this shall be thy reward." And he loosened the belt at his waist, And in front of the singer placed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... that he had entertained more miscellaneous parties than any other man in London. At one time he had received the Duke of Cumberland, Dr. Johnson, Mr. Nairne the optician, and Leoni the singer. It was at his table that Dr. Johnson made that excellent reply to a pert coxcomb who baited him during dinner. "Pray now," said he to the Doctor, "what would you give, old gentleman, to be as young and sprightly as I am?" "Why, Sir, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... voice, not unmusical, singing a rousing chorus in Italian, and peering circumspectly through an open balustrade into that lower room, Captain Folsom saw the singer seated at a great square piano, a giant of a man with a huge shock of dark brown hair and ferocious mustaches, while a coal black negro, even huger in size, lolled negligently at one end of the keyboard, his red lips parted wide in a grin of enjoyment and ivory white teeth showing between, ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... Avenue de l'Opra, at the intersection of the Rue Louis-le-Grand, the Paris shop of the Singer Sewing Machine Company is closed, while on the other side Hanan's boot and shoe store is also shut. Just off the avenue, where the Rue des Pyramides cuts in, the establishment where the Colgate and the Chesebrough companies exploit their products likewise presents ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... and actual and a part of ideal autobiography, says so little of singers, although the song which moves us, rummaging among our old memories and, to our surprise and delight, bringing back clear pictures, is generally linked to the sweet singer who sang it, who interpreted it for us and made it a part of our imaginative possessions? Heroines of novels are rarely singers, or, if they sing, abstain from effective music, and have soft, soothing voices, "as if they only sang at twilight." Heroines ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... bits of old purple velvets and violet silks on the tables, under large bowls of Benares bronze filled with violets. The grand piano was protected by a piece of old brocade in faded yellows, and our hostess, a well-known singer, usually wore a simple Florentine tea-gown of soft violet velvet, which together with the lighter violet walls, set off her fair skin and ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... be classed rather as a singer than an actress, and if we may view Davenant's "Siege of Rhodes" more as a musical entertainment than as a regular play, then no doubt the claim of the Desdemona of Clare Market to be, as Mr. Thomas Jordan described her, "the first woman that ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... holden in a school-house in their vicinity, the most attractive feature of which was the excellent singing of the small congregation. Mrs. Ridgeley came from a family of much local celebrity for their vocal powers, while her husband was not only an accomplished singer, but master of several instruments, and in the new settlements he was often employed ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... more exigeant in this than in other arts, the want or impossibility of having any classic examples which might fix the taste or guide the studies of the novice, are doubtless among the causes of these frequent changes. The style of the leading singer of the day often forms and rules the passing taste, and even characterizes the works of contemporary composers. Music is often composed purposely for the singer; his intonation, his peculiarities, his very mannerisms, are borne in mind. Not merely sounds, but his sounds, are the vehicles ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... her who is born for his destiny;—and as for Mary, what did it avail her that she could say the Assembly's Catechism from end to end without tripping, and that every habit of her life beat time to practical realities, steadily as the parlor clock? The wildest Italian singer or dancer, nursed on nothing but excitement from her cradle, never was more thoroughly possessed by the awful and solemn mystery of woman's life than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... molten wax upon the costly carpet of his beautiful protectress; and might have even had a more enduring effect, and taught him to be merciful, when the brewer's widow went mad in her turn, and married that dreadful creature, the Italian singer. Who has not been, or in not to be mad in some lonely hour of life? Who is quite safe from the trembling ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Mrs. Rushmore, in her generosity, would have liked to practise some such affectionate deception, and she would try almost anything, however hopeless, rather than let Margaret be a professional singer. ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... him to carry away a picture in his memory that can be drawn upon for help on future occasions of gloom. In "The Solitary Reaper" the weird and haunting notes of the song coming to his ear in an unknown tongue suggest possible ideas back of the strong feeling which he recognizes in the singer. Here also, the poet's memory ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the least happy she had ever spent. She repeatedly alarmed her mother by broaching projects of becoming a hospital nurse, a public singer, or an actress. These projects led to some desultory studies. In order to qualify herself as a nurse she read a handbook of physiology, which Mrs. Wylie thought so improper a subject for a young lady that she went in tears to beg ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... and ladies laughed till the tears came, and clapped their hands in very ecstacy when that unhappy old woman would come meekly out for the sixth time, with uncomplaining patience, to meet a storm of hisses! It was the cruelest exhibition—the most wanton, the most unfeeling. The singer would have conquered an audience of American rowdies by her brave, unflinching tranquillity (for she answered encore after encore, and smiled and bowed pleasantly, and sang the best she possibly could, and went bowing off, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... seeking, ever striving, and pressing onward and upward to new truth and light. Her works are the mirror of this progress. In reviewing them, the first point that strikes us is the precocity, or rather the spontaneity, of her poetic gift. She was a born singer; poetry was her natural language, and to write was less effort than to speak, for she was a shy, sensitive child, with strange reserves and reticences, not easily putting herself "en rapport" with those ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... for a time, but loses her piquancy, and (by no means wholly to her satisfaction) is able to avail herself of the conditional enfranchisement, and return to her country, which his magnanimity has granted her. Her immediate supplanter, Delia, is an admirable singer, and possessed of many of the qualifications of an accomplished hetaera. But for that very reason the Sultan tires of her likewise; and for the same, she is not inconsolable or restive: indeed she acts as a sort of Lady Pandara, if not to introduce, at any ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... at Schumann-Heink as the singer in question, and Grieg and Chopin as the composers named. Her interest was incredibly aroused. She had expected the West and its products to exhilarate her, but she had not looked to find so finished a Mephisto among its vaunted "bad men." ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... I shouldn't! But are leading ladies all dreadful? And I thought you were in love with a singer yourself," said Sylvia. ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... of Regret. They settle screaming—Then the evil sound, By the moist wind's impatient hushing drowned, Dies by degrees, till nothing more is heard Save the lone singing of a single bird, Save the clear voice—O singer, sweetly done!— Warbling the praises of the Absent One.... And in the silence of a summer night Sultry and splendid, by a late moon's light That sad and sallow peers above the hill, The humid hushing wind that ranges still Rocks to a whispered sleepsong ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... he had finished the verse—with one exception, that of the man in the chimney-corner, who, at the singer's word, 'Chorus! 'joined him in a deep bass voice ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... inevitable rupture occurred between them, tradition does not make altogether clear. Maeterlinck is alleged to have become incensed on account of certain excisions made by Debussy in fitting the text of the play to music; then, it appears, there was a quarrel over the choice of a singer for the performance, and Maeterlinck published a letter of protest in which he declared that "the Pelleas of the Opera-Comique" was "a piece which had become entirely foreign" to him, and that, as he was "deprived of all ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... song of levity and wantonness, of freedom and license, of coquetry and incitement! Yet such was its fascination that he fancied it was reclaimed by the delightful childlike and innocent expression of the singer. ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... These Scotchmen died thinking of Ben Lothian, as did the Greeks recalling Argos. The sword of a cuirassier, which hewed down the bagpipes and the arm which bore it, put an end to the song by killing the singer. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... life that Tchekoff shows us, but Russian life and character in general, in which the old order is giving place to the new, and we see the practical, modern spirit invading the vague, aimless existence so dear to the owners of the cherry orchard. A new epoch was beginning, and at its dawn the singer of old, ...
— Swan Song • Anton Checkov
... carried across "No Man's Land" from the Turkish line 120 yards away. It used to fascinate me quite a lot and one felt that under the eastern sky, in the land of Sinbad the Sailor and Omar Khayyam that war had not quite killed romance. I wonder what happened to that singer. I wonder if in the great push to Baghdad and beyond he was killed or if he is now singing to his fellow-prisoners in captivity in India, or if he is still cheering on his comrades in the front line further up the Tigris. I don't suppose one will ever know, ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... greatest artists and in every village a stage can be set up and the joy of a true theater performance can be spread to the remotest corner of the lands. Just as the graphophone can multiply without limit the music of the concert hall, the singer, and the orchestra, so, it seemed, would the photoplay reproduce ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... The singer must have heard the whisper, for he sat near the window. He raised his eyes, and turned them toward the pane. They were blue, meek, and sad. But he did not interrupt his singing. On the contrary, he lifted his hands, white as alabastar, and in that ecstatic position, ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... bullet went with a soft thud into the singer's breast, and the cracked voice was choked ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... an end as abruptly as it lad begun, and the singer, having nothing better to do, went fast asleep. His companion, more wakeful, lay with his hands behind his head and his eyes upon the splendor of the firmament. Lying so, he could not see the valleys nor the looming mountains. There were only the dome of the sky, the grass, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... Tumults of primal love and hate, Through crags of song reverberate. Held by the Singer of High State, Battalions of the ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... be like we do not care to speculate,—and the old "wooden walls" whose prowess on the high seas founded England's maritime glory? Will a Dibdin ever arise to sing a Devastation or a Glatton? Can a Devastation or a Glatton ever inspire poetic thoughts and images? One would say that the singer must be endowed in no ordinary degree with the sacred fire whom such a theme as a modern ironclad turret-ship should move to lyric utterance. It has been said that all the romance of the road died out ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... emotion of piety. Yet when it happens to me to be more moved by the music than by the words that are sung I confess that I have sinned (poenaliter peccare), and it is then that I would rather not hear the singer[5].' ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... busied with this world and their own lusts, that the sweetest and pleasantest offers in the gospel sound not so sweet unto them as the clink of their money, or the sound of oil and wine in a cup. Any musician would affect them more than the sweet singer of Israel, the anointed of the God of Jacob. Always(458) these souls that have mourned and danced according to Christ's motions, and whose hearts have exulted within them at the message and word of reconciliation,—blessed are ye. Ye are of another ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... of paper which the boy held in his hand, the warm-hearted singer lightly hummed the air. Then, turning toward him, she asked, in amazement: "Did you compose it? you, a child! And the words, too?" Without waiting for a reply, she added quickly, "Would you like to come to my concert this evening?" The boy's face became radiant with delight at the thought ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... told them a fortune which pleased them very much. So, after they had heard their fortunes, one of them asked if any of our women could sing; and I told them several could, more particularly Leviathan—you know Leviathan, she is not here now, but some miles distant, she is our best singer, Ursula coming next. So the lady said she should like to hear Leviathan sing, whereupon Leviathan sang the Gudlo pesham, {269a} and Piramus played the tune of the same name, which, as you know, means the honeycomb, the song and the tune being ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... vs. 76, 77, the singer turns to address his own son whose birth has given occasion to the song. He declares that John is to be recognized as a prophet of God whose divine mission will be to announce and to define the promised salvation as in its essence not a political but ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... spirit of the dead man called him, seeming to say: "Come and keep me company. Our old quarrel is over. You and I understand each other now. We are two of a kind, just as like as two hogs from one litter—you the sanctimonious psalm-singer and I the conscienceless profligate—we are brothers ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... intended to honour. . . . It turned out to be the Duc de Luxembourg's, and upon my lady's entrance—a little late—the whole audience rose to its feet in homage, though Visconti happened just then to be midway in an aria. The singer faltered at the interruption, perplexed; her singing stopped, and lifting her eyes to the lines of boxes she dropped a sweeping curtsy—to the opposite side of the house! . . . All eyes turn, and behold! right opposite to Beauty Number ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... one of the party, "find Rosalie, and tell her to come and listen to a better singer than herself, who will give her a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... you've got? "Tou fail to see What great Chrysippus means by that," says he. "What though the wise ne'er shoe nor slipper made, The wise is still a brother of the trade. Just as Hennogenes, when silent, still Remains a singer of consummate skill, As sly Alfenius, when he had let drop His implements of art and shut up shop, Was still a barber, so the wise is best In every craft, a king's among the rest." Hail to your majesty! yet, ne'ertheless, Rude boys are pulling at your beard, I guess; And now, unless ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... names, there was a consult about taking away all such sports as had lately crept in and were not of ancient institution. For after they had taken in the tragedy in addition to the three ancient, which were as old as the solemnity itself, the Pythian piper, the harper, and the singer to the harp, as if a large gate were opened, they could not keep out an infinite crowd of plays and musical entertainments of all sorts that rushed in after him. Which indeed made no unpleasant variety, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... all his lifetime he toiled for others. That was the measure of his manhood. He was a humanist and a lover. And he, with his incarnate spirit of battle, his gladiator body and his eagle spirit—he was as gentle and tender to me as a poet. He was a poet. A singer in deeds. And all his life he sang the song of man. And he did it out of sheer love of man, and for man he gave his ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... year by year, The singer who lies songless here Was wont to woo a less austere, Less deep repose, Where ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... no singer to please me comparable to Malibran: there is something positively electrical in the effect she produces on my feelings. Her acting is as original as it is effective; Passion and Nature are her guides, and she abandons herself to ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... what he is, and of what one who has been, and therefore still is, in near contact with him is bound to be. The whole movement of the poem is between the mourner and the mourned: it may be called one long soliloquy; but it has this mark of greatness, that, though the singer is himself a large part of the subject, it never degenerates into egotism— for he speaks typically on behalf of humanity at large, and in his own name, like Dante on his mystic journey, teaches deep lessons of life and conscience to ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... led a party of men down to the "dumping ground" to fetch ammunition, I was astonished to hear the familiar strains of "Gilbert the Filbert" coming from this desolate ruin. The singer had a fine voice, and he gave forth his chant as happily as though he were safe at home in England, with no cares or troubles in the world. With a sergeant, I set out to explore; as our boots clattered on the cobble-stones of the farmyard, there was a noise in the cellar, a head poked up in the ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... stanza in the manner of a ballad-singer, whose voice has been cracked by matching his windpipe against the bugle of the north blast, Richie Moniplies aided Lord Glenvarloch to rise, attended his toilet with every possible mark of the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... listened absent-mindedly to the hymn, and did not press the singer any further—though she was quite resolved, in her own mind, to find out the meaning of the riddle later. But her maid, who, being a Florentine, could not understand the Corsican dialect any better than her mistress, was as eager as Miss Lydia for information, and, turning to Orso, before ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... held up Dr. Shrapnel's letter to Commander Beauchamp, at about half a yard's distance on the level of his chin, as a big-chested singer in a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... prest, Have drunk their cup a round or two before, And one by one crept silently to rest. Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the dust descend; Dust unto dust, and under dust to lie, Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and—sans End.' —[The 'Rubaiyat' had made its first appearance, in Hartford, a little before in a column of extracts published in the Courant.] Twichell immediately wrote ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... an incident occurred which had, one may truly say, a great influence on my fate, so great an influence that here I am dying, thanks to that incident. I went to the theatre to see a ballet. I never cared for ballets; and for every sort of actress, singer, and dancer I had always had a secret feeling of repulsion.... But it is clear there's no changing one's fate, and no one knows himself, and one cannot foresee the future. In reality, in life it's only the unexpected that happens, and we do nothing in a whole lifetime but ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Austria and later had been sent to school in Paris. There, as Norman and Roy could see, he had received a more than ordinary education, part of which, as the boys afterwards learned, was devoted to music. They also learned later that although not a great singer he had a pleasing ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... music, the Berlin Opera was then at the height of its reputation, the leading singer being the famous Joanna Wagner. But my greatest satisfaction was derived from the "Liebig Classical Concerts.'' These were, undoubtedly, the best instrumental music then given in Europe, and a small party of us were very assiduous in our attendance. Three afternoons a week we ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... was applause. With a roulade the brindisi had ceased and the singer as though pleased, not with herself but with the audience, bowed. The fat woman twisting on her bench, was also smiling. She ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... it not a trifle hackneyed? Ah, well, not for this audience, perhaps. Yes, I will play." And then, just as Caspar Brooke, with a slight gesture of annoyance, turned to explain to the people that a singer whom he expected had not come, Oliver touched him on ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... song of broken interludes— A song of little cunning; of a singer nothing worth. Through the naked words and mean May ye see the truth between As the singer knew and touched it in the ends of ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... supported on two low stools or trestles; a piece of flaming resinous wood was stuck in the ground at the head, and another at the feet; and a lump of kneaded clay, in which another torchlike splinter was fixed, rested on the breast. An old man, naked like the solo singer, was digging a grave close to where the body lay. The ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... national and patriotic poet a home in every American heart? If not, he deserves it, and we for one offer him our grateful homage. Not only shall the refined and cultivated in the coming ages praise the noble singer, but the 'dark sad millions,' whose long 'night of wrong is brightening into day,' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... and in excellent order. His household books contain registers of the names, ages, and marks of his various horses; such as Ajax, Blueskin, Valiant, Magnolia (an Arab), &c. Also his dogs, chiefly fox-hounds, Vulcan, Singer, Ringwood, Sweetlips, Forrester, Music, Rockwood, Truelove, &c. [Footnote: In one of his letter-books we find orders on his London agent for riding ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... of forest, like a rippling lake, and the spear-pointed spruces. He heard the flutter of aspen leaves and the soft, continuous splash of falling water. The melancholy note of a canyon bird broke clear and lonely from the high cliffs. Venters had no name for this night singer, and he had never seen one, but the few notes, always pealing out just at darkness, were as familiar to him as the canyon silence. Then they ceased, and the rustle of leaves and the murmur of water hushed in a growing sound that Venters fancied was not ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... the voice the singer paused, gayly flicked the strings of the banjo, then put her hand flat upon them to stop the vibration and smiled round on her admirers. The group were applauding heartily. A chorus said, "Another ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... dreamer of dreams all unfulfilled — (And thou art, child, a living dream of him) — Dost ever feel thy spirit all enthrilled With his lost dreams when summer days wane dim? When suns go down, Thou, song of the dead singer, Dost sigh at eve and grieve O'er the brow that paled before it won ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... he that is guilty of foeticide, or he that is ill of consumption, or he that keeps animals, of is destitute of Vedic study, or is a common servant of a village, or lives upon the interest of loans, or he that is a singer, or he that sells all articles, or he that is guilty of arson, or he that is a poisoner or he that is a pimp by profession, or he that sells Soma, or he that is a professor of palmistry, or he that is in the employ of the king, or he that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the head of modern and European civilization,—who think and feel deeply, but do not keep their feelings hidden. The Americans, too, like expression: when they admire a Kossuth or a Jenny Lind, a patriot exile or a foreign singer, all the world is sure to know of their admiration; when they are delighted at some great achievement in science, like the laying of an Atlantic Cable, they demonstrate their delight. They make their successful generals Presidents; they give dinners to Morphy and banquets ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... singer in de bunch, and I want you to lead us in our favorite song. No revenues air near tonight, and we'uns air safe from danger if we'uns ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... in a shuddering echo, and before Gervase had time to raise his eyes from their brooding study of the floor the singer and her companion had noiselessly disappeared, and he was left alone with the Princess Ziska. He drew along breath, and turning fully round in his chair, looked at her steadily. There was a faint smile on her lips—a smile of mingled mockery and triumph,—her beautiful ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... nature. A dead quiet had crept over the astonished house; but at the close of the first stanza a thunderous burst of applause broke forth that shook the whole building. It was pleasant to see how the singer brightened into confidence, as a child might, at the sound; the look of anxiety left the sweet face; the eyes danced; the yellow curls shook with half-suppressed merriment; and when the applause had subsided, and the thrumming of the old piano began again, there was an ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... auditors. Moreover, subsequent hearings will reveal the fact that this sensation is aroused always in the same place, and in the same manner. The beauty of the voice may be temporarily affected in the case of a singer, or an instrument of less aesthetic tone-quality be used by the instrumentalist, but the result ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... said, "So much for your singing, but where, in God's name, did you learn to accompany your singing with such action; which I declare, said he, turning to the people on the stage, wants little to be what I should call perfect for a singer?" "We boys, sir, acted plays together." "And you played—" "Several parts, sir." "You surprise me, boy!" "Well," said he, "call upon this gentleman tomorrow morning betimes, and he will converse with ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... But even the poorest singer will, after a certain time, gain his own consent to refrain from contributing to the world's noises. So the Kid, by the time he was within a mile or two of Tonia's /jacal/, had reluctantly allowed his song to die away—not because his vocal performance had become less charming to his own ears, ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... bird that breezes down Main street in a set of scenery that would make John Drew look like one of the boys in the gas main trenches somewheres in Broadway, and yet couldn't purchase an eraser, if rubber was sellin' at three cents a ton. A four-flusher is a hick that admits bein' a better singer than Caruso, a better ball-player than Ty Cobb, a better real estate judge than Columbus and more of a ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... and Madonnas from all the churches and the Cathedral are carried in one procession or another. The figures are dressed in costly vestments and jewels, and the procession is lighted by flickering torches and candles. As the figures pass beneath balconies crowded with watchers, a singer will suddenly break into a spontaneous, unaccompanied song, called a "saeta," to salute the saint being carried by. The saeta is the same sort of song the Moors used to sing when they lived in Seville and other cities in Andalusia, and today it is ...
— Getting to know Spain • Dee Day
... our singer For his truant string Feels with disconcerted finger, What does cricket else but fling Fiery heart forth, sound the note Wanted by the ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... a soft voice, outside of the enclosure, chanting his name-song. Who could have learned his name? The court had risen. "Yes," he said, "the singer is true. I am Lono, and she whom I hear is my ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... disinterment, of which Worthington was a witness, the body was placed in the chapel of the little English church, and a few Americans and English reverently gathered there, while Mrs. Worthington, who was known as "Cooperstown's sweetest singer," sang touchingly the famous song of home, written by the man who had no home during the last forty years of his life, and whose body, thirty years after his death, was going home at last to be interred in ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... arranging his stock for the night, and grasped Henry Fenn's hand. "Say, Henry—you're all right. You're a man—I've always said so. I tell you, Hen, I've been to lots of funerals in this town first and last as pall-bearer or choir singer—pretty nearly every one worth while, but say, I'm right here to tell you that I have never went to one I was sorrier over than yours, Henry—and I'm mighty glad to see you're ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Paganini.—In the year 1760, La Paganini, an admirable singer and actress, came to London from Berlin. Her reputation was so great, that when she had her benefit at the Opera, such a crowd assembled as was never before witnessed on a like occasion, not one third of the company that presented themselves at the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... the stairs to meet you. I have heard you play and sing, oh, so sweetly, I have heard little Janie's bird-like voice at home, and Sandy McLeod has often played his pipes for me, but to-day I am to hear the violins and listen to the great singer of whom you have told me. Oh, I can hardly wait to get there, and to hear ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... Raymond Wutherspoon says if he had my energy he'd be a grand opera singer. I always think this climate is the finest in the world, and my friends are the dearest people in the world, and my work is the most essential thing in the world. Probably I fool myself. But I know one thing for certain: You're the pluckiest ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... the two forces now appeared to be in alliance. The men sang, as they confessed, because it constituted a kind of employment at least to the mind, enabled them to forget their misery somewhat, and proved an excellent antidote to the gnawing pain in the vicinity of the waist-belt. Once a singer started up the strains of "Little Mary," but this was unanimously vetoed as coming too near home. Then from absence of a better inspiration, we commenced to roar "Home, Sweet Home," which I think struck just as responsive a chord, but the ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... peasants and the musical country gentry that the gipsy gets his music. He learns the songs after a single hearing, and plays them exactly according to the singer's wish. The Hungarian noble when singing with the gipsies is capable of giving the dark-faced boys every penny he has. In this manner many a young nobleman has been ruined, and the gipsies make nothing of it, because ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... stage-music, and quite in keeping with the repulsive style of traditional opera; thanks to the efforts of cultivated conductors, his works were even cut and hacked about, until, after they had been bereft of all their spirit, they were held to be nearer the professional singer's plane. But when people tried to follow Wagner's instructions to the letter, they proceeded so clumsily and timidly that they were not incapable of representing the midnight riot in the second act of the Meistersingers by a group of ballet-dancers. They seemed to do all this, ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... instance, you are in the mood for a grand theme of Handel, and somebody gives you a sentimental bit of Rossini. Or when Mendelssohn is played as if 'songs without words' were songs without meaning. Or when a singer simply displays to you a VOICE, and leaves music ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... of the great camp fire burning warmly through the shore-side trees. Someone was singing a dull, old droning sailor's song, with a droop and a quaver at the end of every verse, and seemingly no end to it at all but the patience of the singer. I had heard it on the voyage more than once, and remembered ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Fotheringham's attention to it loudly and repeatedly. It was she also who, at a pause in the dancing and at a hint from Mrs. Colwood, insisted on making Diana sing, to the grand piano which had been pushed into a corner of the hall. And when the singing, helped by the looks and personality of the singer, had added to the girl's success, Lady Niton sat fanning herself in reflected triumph, appealing to the spectators on all sides for applause. The topics that Diana fled from, Lady Niton took up; and when Mrs. Fotheringham, bewildered by an avalanche of words, would ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... but is perhaps somewhat too artificial for our purposes; and we may rather simply note that in the earlier part the personal element is present, and that in the later it fades entirely, and the mighty deeds of God alone fill the meek singer's eye and lips. We may consider the lessons of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... you luring here? I'll give it you! Accursed rat-catchers, your strains I'll end! First, to the devil the guitar I'll send! Then to the devil with the singer too! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... was, for Markheim, the one displeasing circumstance. It carried him back, upon the instant, to a certain day in a fishers' village: a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the street, the blare of brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over head in the crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon the chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen with pictures, dismally designed, garishly colored: Brownrigg ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... instant another cry arose. Another form, this one of horse and rider, appeared at the crest, silhouetted with the girl's against the stars. They saw the rider leap from saddle, almost within arms' length of the singer; saw her quickly turn, as though, for the first time, aware of an intruder. Then the wailing song went out in sudden scream of mingled wrath, hatred and despair, and, like the Sioux that she was at heart, the girl made one mad rush to reach the point of bluff where was a sheer descent ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... was our moose; and like the American frontiersmen of to-day, the old German singer calls the Wisent or Bison a buffalo—European sportsmen now committing an equally bad blunder by giving it the name of the extinct aurochs. Be it observed also that the hard fighting, hard drinking, boastful hero of Nieblung fame used a "spur hund," just as his representative ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... grandeur of the opening is suitable to the words, and the rest of the motet is so elegantly harmonious that everyone was struck with it. I had composed it for a great orchestra. D'Epinay procured the best performers. Madam Bruna, an Italian singer, sung the motet, and was well accompanied. The composition succeeded so well that it was afterwards performed at the spiritual concert, where, in spite of secret cabals, and notwithstanding it was badly executed, it was twice generally applauded. I gave for the birthday of M. d'Epinay the idea ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... female by the display of his charms and abilities. "And in the human world," he continues, "it is the same; without the modest reserve of the woman that must, in most cases, be overcome by lovable qualities, the sexual relationship would with difficulty find a singer who would extol in love the highest movements of the human soul." (Groos, Spiele der Menschen, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... unrivalled skill in logical fence, his unfailing good-humour and love of fun, in which his personal clumsiness set off the vivacity and nimbleness of his joyous moods. "He was," says Mr. Mozley, "a great musical critic, knew all the operas, and was an admirable buffo singer."—No one could doubt that, having started, Mr. Ward would go far ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... though it were seen in a dream. Then one bids adieu to the world's perfect building, thankful that he has been given the opportunity to enjoy the greatest marvel of architecture, which leaves on the mind the same impression left by splendid music or the notes of a great singer. Words are poor to describe things like the Taj, which become our cherished possessions and may be recalled to cheer hours of ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... a man loves in another what he loves not in himself, there is a certain likeness of proportion: because as the latter is to that which is loved in him, so is the former to that which he loves in himself: for instance, if a good singer love a good writer, we can see a likeness of proportion, inasmuch as each one has that which is becoming to him ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... was beaten in Rose Alley (and which was so remarkably known by the name of the 'Rose Alley Satire') as his own? Indeed he made a few alterations in it, but these were only verbal, and generally for the worse."—Spence's Anecdotes, edit. Singer, p. 64. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... and found him one bitter cold and stormy morning standing at an open window, nearly quite undressed. On asking him what he was about, he said he was getting up a bass voice; that Mrs. Somebody, who gave good dinners and bad concerts, was disappointed of her bass singer, 'and I think,' said Tom, 'I'll be hoarse enough in the evening to take double B flat. Systems are the fashion now,' said he; 'there is the Logierian system and other systems, and mine is the Cold-air-ian system, and the best in the world for ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... charming piece of ground with a delightful view. On the 25th of March a light veil of snow still rested on the ground, but two days later we were listening to the notes of the lark and gathering violets to take to Schiller's house and adorn the table of the beloved singer. Everything was illumined by the brilliant sunlight—the narrow bedstead on which he died, and all the numerous withered laurel-wreaths and bouquets of flowers that filled it—while outside, in Schiller's little garden, in the bed where his bust is placed, violets nodded at us between the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... to converse well is an attainment which should be cultivated by every intelligent man and woman. It is better to be a good talker than a good singer or musician, because the former is more widely appreciated, and the company of a person who is able to talk well on a great variety of subjects, is much sought after. The importance, therefore, of cultivating the art of conversation, cannot easily ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... a great singer. Sometimes, when Hakadah wakened too early in the morning, she would sing to him something like ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... other. I am well within reach of everything urban that I care about, and as for the country, that is too good to be put to common use; let it be kept for holiday. There's an atmosphere in the old Inns that pleases me. The new flats are insufferable. How can one live sandwiched between a music-hall singer and a female politician? For lodgings of any kind no sane man had ever a word of approval. Reflecting on all these things, I ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... society once addressed a foreign savant at her conversazione, and begged him to favor the company with a little music, because, having heard that he was virtuous, she had no other association with the word than its technical use in Italy to indicate a professional singer as a virtuoso. A father of a family who kept no abbate for the education of his children ingeniously taught them himself. "Father," asked one of his children, "what are the stars?" "The stars are stars, and little things that shine as thou seest." "Then they are ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... I have lately had many troubles, and am therefore rejoiced to hear in your last note that your faith keeps staunch. That is a curious fact about the bullfinches all appearing to listen to the German singer (441/1. See Letter 445, note.); and this leads me to ask how much faith may I put in the statement that male birds will sing in rivalry until they injure themselves. Yarrell formerly told me that they would sometimes even sing themselves ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... news came not so very long ago of a certain actress, singer,—something of the kind, you understand? Friends thought it their duty—rightly, of course,—to inform Mr. Mutimer. I can't say exactly who did it; but we know that Hubert Eldon is not regarded affectionately by a good many people. My dear, he has been ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... or no, yes or no?" She had raised her eyes for a moment, about to speak; the words were stifled at their birth, for the next instant she was in his arms. Again came the voice of the singer, nearer this time. The ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... beauty, placed those healing springs,[3] Which not more help, than that destruction, brings. Thy heart no ruder than the rugged stone, I might, like Orpheus, with my num'rous moan Melt to compassion; now, my trait'rous song With thee conspires to do the singer wrong; While thus I suffer not myself to lose 29 The memory of what augments my woes; But with my own breath still foment the fire, Which flames as high as fancy ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... streamed roses, a great, soundless fall of them, reflected, mass and color, in the lake. Above the roses sprang deep trees, shade behind shade, and here sang nightingales. Facing him sat the Milanese song-bird, the singer Antonia Castinelli. She had the throat of the nightingale and the beauty ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... look so astonished. The Princess is really a Hungarian aristocrat. She quarrelled with her people, and came to England with very little money. To keep herself alive she tried to become a governess. Afterwards, having a beautiful voice, she became a concert singer. I ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... opinions that were sought, nor your education that was to be furthered. You were only an escape-pipe, and your mission ceased when the soul of song fled and the gas was turned off. This, too, is all that can justly be demanded. Minister, lecturer, singer, no one has any right to ask of his audience anything more than opportunity,—the externals of attention. All the rest is his own look-out. If you prepossess your mind with a theme, you do not give him an even chance. You must offer him in the beginning a tabula rasa,—a fair field, and then it ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... probably paid her in their merchandise. There was a dowager whose aristocratic name appeared daily on the fourth page of the newspapers, attesting the merits of some kind of quack medicine; and a retired opera-singer, who, having been called Zenaide Rochet till she grew up in Montmartre, where she was born, had had a brilliant career as a star in Italy under the name of Zina Rochette. La Rochette's name, alas! is unknown to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... chorus of the golden wires. The voice is raucous and the phrases squeak; They labor, they complain, they sweat, they reek! The more the wayward, disobedient song Errs from the right to celebrate the wrong, More diligently still the singer strums, To drown the horrid sound, with all his thumbs. Gods, what a spectacle! The angels lean Out of high Heaven to view the sorry scene, And Israfel, "whose heart-strings are a lute," Though now compassion makes their music mute, Among the weeping ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... throne, that is to say, to their two chairs; before each one was a praying-stand. Then high mass began; it was said by the Pope; the music had been composed by Paesiello, the Abbe Rose, and Lesueur. There were three hundred performers, singers, and musicians; among the soloists were the great singer Lais, and two famous violinists, Kreutzer and Baillot. At the Gradual the mass was interrupted for the blessing of the ornaments which the Emperor and Empress ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... rendering it most tearfully, the refrain being, "Empty is the cradle, baby's gone!" Apprehensive at this, I stole softly up the stairs and had but reached the door of my own room when I heard Mrs. Effie below. I could fancy the chilling gaze which she fastened upon the singer, and I heard her coldly demand, "Where are your feet?" Whereupon the plaintive voice of Cousin Egbert arose to me, "Just below my legs." I mean to say, he had taken the thing as a quiz in anatomy rather than as the rebuke it was meant to be. As I closed my ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... on. The wall concealed them from view, but they saw a sitting-room furnished with bright wall-paper and a blue Roman carpet. The throbbing voice ceased. The piano ended with a last chord; and the singer rose and appeared framed ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... that's coming to-day is a nice quiet one,' she went on, as if Abel were a pony. 'And I hope the lady singer is not a contralto. Contralto, to my mind,' she went on placidly, stirring her porter in preparation for a draught, 'is only another name for roaring, which is unseemly.' She drank her porter gratefully, keeping the spoon in ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... in Fulham Church. The son of Lord Mordaunt, who afterwards received the title of Earl of Peterborough, married first, Carey, daughter to Sir Alexander Fraser, of Dover. His second wife was the accomplished singer Anastasia Robinson, who survived him. The earl was visited at Peterborough House by all the wits and literati of his time. Bowack, in 1706, describes the gardens of Peterborough House, as containing twenty acres of ground, and mentions a tulip-tree seventy-six feet in height, ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... His dates (1567-1620) almost coincide with those of Shakespeare. Living in an age of music, he wrote music that Shakespeare alone could equal and even Shakespeare could hardly surpass. Campion's words are themselves airs. They give us at once singer and ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... room, by which the tune was carried on, and Tora fell in with fresh courage. Most of the party were taking their soup, as well as listening; but the boys observed that their uncle quietly held his motionless spoon, and was looking at the singer as if lost in musical bliss. His mouth was closed, but his nostrils seemed undergoing a rhythmical contraction and distension most interesting ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... buildings stretching their disorderly array along the road. Coming closer he saw the name, "Pipesville," printed on the door, and knew that this must be the "summer home," as it was called, of San Francisco's beloved minstrel, Stephen Massett, otherwise "Jeems Pipes of Pipesville," singer, player, essayist and creator of those wondrous one-man concerts ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... performance, but although it is a practice which is wearing off, there is a great deal too much of it left. Nourrit had none of it, his voice was firm and sweet, and few men have I ever heard sing with so much feeling. Duprez is also a singer of no common stamp, and of whom any nation might be proud, and I have often met men in society sing together most delightfully, either duets, trios, or quartettos, and totally devoid of the nasal twang, or, as the reader will observe, delightful ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... could you would be the most famous person in the world. The song is there, waiting the singer. It has always been there, waiting, and the singer has never come. We who hear it in our hearts have no voices. Now and then some genius strikes the chord by accident, almost, and loses it. I don't think any one will ever find it completely. But if some one should! Heavens! ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... a man of means, was prominent as one of the pioneers in organizing the volunteer army of Great Britain. He was musical, playing the cornet and having an unusual tenor voice. His mother (Agnes Handforth)—also musical and a gifted singer—was a daughter of the Rector of ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... (Thou art, like Fortune, full of chops and changes, Thou hast a fillet too before thine eye!) Scanning our kitchen, and our vocal ranges, As tho' it were the same to sing or fry— Nay, so it is—hear how Miss Paton's throat Makes "fritters" of a note! And how Tom Cook (Fryer and Singer born By name and nature) oh! how night and morn He for the nicest public taste doth dish up The good things from that Pan of music, Bishop! And is not reading near akin to feeding, Or why should Oxford Sausages be fit Receptacles for wit? Or why should Cambridge put its little, smart, Minc'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the gaiest but Phebe's the happiest. Both went out a good deal, for the beautiful voice was welcomed everywhere, and many were ready to patronize the singer who would have been slow to recognize the woman. Phebe knew this and made no attempt to assert herself, content to know that those whose regard she valued felt her worth and hopeful of a time when she could gracefully take the place she was ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott |
