"Tuning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Adelbert's request Cuthbert related the story of his adventures among the Saracens; and then Blondel, tuning his lute, sang several canzonets which he had composed in the Holy Land, of feats ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... the others were tuning and scraping and tugging at their pegs, a pleasant bustle of discord which became so much a part of Sylvia's brain that she could never in after years hear the strumming and sawing of an orchestra preparing to play, without seeing the big living-room of her father's ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... crystal glint of duranium they were invisible to earth dwellers at that height. Then we used a suction draft at night, drawing the talc from the earth, filling one drum after another. This is done by tuning in a certain selective attraction that attracts only talc. It draws it right out of your ground in tiny particles and assembles it in the transportation drums as pure talc. On the earth, if noticed at all, it would have been ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... began tuning their instruments, when his highness instantly exclaimed, "Inshallah, heaven be praised, that is it!" The Turkish prince may be excused, when it is known that at the commemoration of Handel in 1784, Dr. Burney thought the mere tuning of that host of instruments more gratifying than the ordinary performances to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... be adjusted or attuned to the electric waves as a string or pipe is to sonorous waves. In this way the receiver can be made to work only when electric waves of a certain rate are passing through the tube, just as a tuning-fork resounds to a certain note; it being understood that the length of the waves can be regulated by adjusting the balls of the transmitter. As the etheric waves produced by the sparks, like ripples of water caused by dropping a stone into a pool, travel in all ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... sausage balloons sitting up aloft, and some aeroplanes coming and going. Our front line is not more than a mile away, and the German line is about a mile and a quarter. Far off to my right I can just see a field with tanks in it. Ah—there goes a shell on the Hun line—another! Can't think why we're tuning up at this time of day. We shall be getting some of their heavy stuff over directly, if we ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... holy rest. In opposition to the flood of soft light emanating from the lovely planet overhead, and which turned all it fell on, whether tree, or tower, or stream, to beauty, was the artificial glare caused by the torches near the pavilion; while the discordant sounds occasioned by the minstrels tuning their instruments, disturbed the repose. As they went on, however, these sounds were lost in the distance, and the glare of the torches was excluded by intervening trees. Then the moon looked down lovingly upon them, and the only music that reached their ears arose from the nightingales. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... harpsichord. The other suites in the book were only distinguished by numbers, but this one the composer had dignified with the name of "l'Areopagita." Almost mechanically John put the book on his music-stand, took his violin from its case, and after a moment's tuning stood up and played the first movement, a lively Coranto. The light of the single candle burning on the table was scarcely sufficient to illumine the page; the shadows hung in the creases of the leaves, ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... Moses struck two fingers on the capstan after the manner of a tuning-fork, and, holding them gravely to his ear as if to get the right pitch, began in a really fine manly voice to chant ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... from which the real horrors are abstracted;—therefore it is poetical, though not in strictness natural—(the distinction to which I have so often alluded)—and is purposely restrained from concentering the interest on itself, but used merely as an induction or tuning for what is ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... her child, will tell my story And fright her crying babe with Tarquin's name; The orator, to deck his oratory, Will couple my reproach to Tarquin's shame: Feast-finding minstrels, tuning my defame, Will tie the hearers to attend each line, How Tarquin wronged me, ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the donor of the beer," he said, tuning his voice to an apologetic note. "But I take it Robinson is conducting certain inquiries, and I imagine that his superiors demand a degree of circumspection in ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... of twelve, this boy with the aid of a Japanese servant, had set up his own aerial and apparatus, had learned the code alphabet and was thoroughly familiar with all the delicate intricacies of detector, tuning coil, sparker and the rest of it. He had gotten in touch with certain other wireless operators within a radius of ten miles and, although he had never seen any of them, he could recognize instantly the sound of their different instruments and it was a joy and delight to hold conversations ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... from the box, and put in the front room. While its owner was tuning it, I put up a couple of rude box bedsteads in the attic, and filled them with clean hay. The cooking-stove was put up in the rear apartment, and the whole building looked as though it had never been disturbed, for everything had been placed as it ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... left Juan Fernandez far behind us; we were both far away in that Utopia where mind penetrates mind, heart understands heart. We heard neither the squeaking of a swing beneath us, nor the shouts of laughter along the promenades, nor the sound of a band tuning up in a neighboring pavilion. Our eyes, raised to heaven, failed to see the night descending upon us, vast and silent, piercing the foliage with its first stars. Now and again a warm breath passed over us, blown from the woods; I tasted its strangely sweet perfume; ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... are aware, has been accused of tuning his harpsichord to the key-note of a faction, and of substituting, wherever he could, a party spirit for the spirit of poetry: this, in the opinion of most persons, would derogate even from his poetical character, but we hope ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Lone Man had a heart tuned for the music of this road. The strong wind of His Father's love blew down through the wild mountains into His face, and made sweetest music, and His ear was in tune and heard it. He had a tuning-fork that gave Him the true pitch for the rarest music, while His feet travelled cautiously the deep wilderness ravines, and boldly climbed through the thorny undergrowth of that steep hill just outside the city wall. Obedience is the rhythm of two wills, that blends their action into rarest ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... treatment might not profit by the psychotherapeutic influence. With a few vague words of encouragement mechanically uttered, or with a routine of tricks of suggestion by bread pills and colored water and tuning forks, not much will be gained even in the ordinary physician's practice. Subtle adjustment to the personal needs and to the individual conditions is necessary in every case where the psychical factor is to play an important ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... that I was at the Academy of Music, and that the orchestra were tuning their instruments for the overture. A louder strain than usual caused me to start up, and I saw through the open window a robin on a maple bough, with its tuneful throat swelled to the utmost. This was the leader of my orchestra, ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... Pianoforte, Organ, Violin, and all Orchestral and Band Instruments, Voice Culture and Singing, Harmony, Theory and Orchestration, Church Music, Oratorio and Chorus Practice, Art of Conducting; also, Tuning and Repairing Pianos and Organs. All under the very best teachers, in ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... about his fiddle, and besides he was not in a mood for it; his father's words had rasped him. It took the united persuasions of Billy Jack and Jessac and Hughie to get the fiddle into Thomas' hands, but after a few tuning scrapes all shyness and moodiness vanished, and soon the reels and strathspeys were dropping from Thomas' flying fingers in a way that set Hughie's blood tingling. But when the fiddler struck into Money Musk, Billy Jack signed Jessac to him, ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... denying that this music exists. Aviators tell us that when they listen from a distance to the myriads of noises and sounds that arise over a great city, these are all apparently lost in a modulated hum precisely like the vibrations of an immense tuning-fork, and appearing as but a single tone. Thus the immense noise going from our world is musically digested into one tone, and the aviator soaring above the earth hears only the one ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... know the whole, and she told it as simply as she could. When she came to the story of her lamb, her voice faltered, and everybody present was touched. The old harper sighed once, and cleared his throat several times. He then asked for his harp, and after tuning it for long, he played the air he had promised ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... well as freedom and equality of the fingers. His "Well Tempered Clavichord" has been called the pianist's Sacred Book. Its Preludes and Fugues illustrate every shade of human feeling, and were especially designed to exemplify the mode of tuning known as equal temperament, introduced into general use by Bach, and still employed by ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... companion had caught the first sounds of the tuning of the instruments, and here we were, before the invitation to dance, a customed observance at Moldwarp Hall, had begun to play. In a few minutes thereafter, the door of the drawing-room opened; when, pair after pair, the company, to the number of over a hundred ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... but thee, fair, gentle Maid, whom Mnesis, happy Nymph, first on the Banks of Hebrus didst produce. Thee, whom Maeonia educated, whom Mantua charm'd, and who, on that fair Hill which overlooks the proud Metropolis of Britain, sat, with thy Milton, sweetly tuning the Heroic Lyre; fill my ravished Fancy with the Hopes of charming Ages yet to come. Foretel me that some tender Maid, whose Grandmother is yet unborn, hereafter, when, under the fictitious Name of Sophia, she reads the real Worth which once existed in my Charlotte, shall, from her sympathetic ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... long, Jami, in this Old House Stringing thy Pearls upon a Harp of Song? Year after Year striking up some new Song, The Breath of some Old Story? Life is gone, And yet the Song is not the Last; my Soul Is spent—and still a Story to be told! And I, whose Back is crooked as the Harp I still keep tuning through the Night till Day! That Harp untun'd by Time—the Harper's hand Shaking with Age—how shall the Harper's hand Repair its cunning, and the sweet old Harp Be modulated as of old? Methinks 'Tis time to break and cast it in the Fire; ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... orchestra tuning for the overture, and shivered. She felt much more like a victim waiting her turn to be thrown to the lions than a young woman about to make her debut as a "headliner." To herself she kept repeating under her breath, "Tomorrow they will be comfortable again." She did not know that ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... was led by Roderick Ray, who had the Covenanters' blood in his veins. He carried a tuning-fork with him always, and fitted the psalm tunes to the hymns, carrying them through in a rolling baritone, and swinging his whole ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... voices. Behind him, the doors opened and shut, letting in all who were outside: they pressed forward expectantly. On his left, a row of girls tried to start a round of applause and tittered nervously at their failure. Schilsky had come down the platform and commenced tuning. He bent his long, thin body as he pressed his violin to his knee, and his reddish hair fell over his face. The accompanist, his hands on the keys, waited for the signal ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the servants were already on the watch. The porte-cochere was wide open and the concierge all in a flutter. The piano-tuner, who had just spent an hour tuning my Bechstein, had departed when a cart drew up in front of the door. What do you think it was? Nothing less than the King's own piano, an upright one, though it did connive at deception, as you will see. It was ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... refined proprieties—I do not mean proprieties of the essential kind—cannot endure between man and maid cast alone in a wilderness. They become frail, insipid; and mar, rather than perfect, the harmony of existence. Contraversely, their absence adds a deeper luster, strikes the tuning-fork that hums with the true note of life. Sorry the man who does not feel a sympathetic vibration! A woman is not exactly at her best when bathing her face above a porcelain bowl, and to be the constant, daily witness of such ablutions would, in my limited experience, engender a slight unrest ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... the lady, "it hasn't been tuned for four years or more. Mr. Scrutite went about the country for many a year tuning pianos; but he got old, and the last time he came he left his tuning key, or whatever you call it, saying he'd be round again if he could; but he never came. It's such an expensive thing, you know, to bring a man twenty miles to do it, that I've been putting it off, and putting it off. But ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... compensation," said the girl ironically; and she added, with the kind of repellent lure with which women know how to leave men the responsibility of any reciprocal approach, "I don't know whether it won't need tuning first." ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... almost beside himself. He cut out rock samples and carried them back to the ship. He personally supervised the tuning of the surveyors. And when he finally gave orders to take off, he was almost friendly to Mason, whereas before his attitude toward him had been one ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi
... Nera said, tuning her voice to a tone of tender pity; "you have grown older too since I last saw you. Is it love, or grief, or ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... hall there was light and bustle; people were already arriving from the other hotels and chalets, their costumes hidden beneath many wraps. Groups of men in evening dress stood about smoking, talking "snow" and "ski-ing." The band was tuning up. The claims of the hotel-world clashed about him faintly as of old. At the big glass windows of the verandah, peasants stopped a moment on their way home from the cafe to peer. Hibbert thought ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... come out you pass a fresh victim going in and you see the dentist welcome him and then turn to crank up his motor and you hear the canary tuning up with a new line of v-shaped twitters. And you are glad that he is the one who is going in and that you are the one who ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... well-dressed man of whom his father had thought so highly. Charles Benton, in spite of his hair tuning grey, was a handsome man, and moved in a very good circle of society. Nobody knew his source of income, and nobody cared. In these days clothes make the gentleman, and ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... harmoniously draped with the separate colors of the four rooms, red, yellow, violet and green; immense gongs, connected apparently with some intricate network of shining wires, hung suspended in midair beneath the arches; rising from the floor were gigantic tuning forks, erect and silent, immediately behind which gaped artificial air-cavities placed to increase the intensity of the respective notes when caught; and in the dim background the clergyman pointed out an elaborate apparatus for quickly altering the ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... and I enquired concerning them and behold they were his brethren.[FN43] he set before them what they needed of wine and dessert, and they ceased not to press the damsel to sing, till she called for the lute and tuning it, intoned ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... examined, and, if necessary, adjusted each time it is tuned. The hammers need occasional and careful attention to preserve original tone quality and elasticity. Never allow the piano to be beaten or played hard upon. This is ruinous to both the action and tuning. When not in use the music rack and top should be closed to exclude dust. The keyboard need never be closed, as the ivory needs both light and ventilation and will eventually turn yellow ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... is just tolerated in a sort of appendix to the more important subject of the "Treble, Tenor, and Bass Viols." It consists chiefly of various methods of ensuring accuracy in tuning the fifths, and the question of bowing is ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... the caverny house sounded the noise of the orchestra tuning up. The leader appeared and greeted the performers he knew like long lost brothers and sisters, and then Brass Check Number One dropped into his hand, and the Monday morning rehearsal began. Then it was that Mr. Author learned that it is not the acts, which ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... anticipations concentrated themselves into one rose-coloured point of joy, when no less than two independent observers, without collusion, saw the piano-tuner either entering or leaving The Hurst, while a third, an ear-witness, unmistakably heard the tuning of the piano actually going on. It was thus clear to all penetrating minds that Olga Bracely was going to sing. It was further known that something was going on between her and Georgie, for she had been heard by one Miss Antrobus to ask for ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... again to be hungry, that I may again quicken my attention. The birds peck the berries, or the corn, and fly away to the groves, where they sit, in seeming happiness, on the branches, and waste their lives in tuning one unvaried series of sounds. I, likewise, can call the lutanist and the singer, but the sounds, that pleased me yesterday, weary me to-day, and will grow yet more wearisome to-morrow. I can discover within me no power of perception, which is not glutted with its proper pleasure, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... I gave you as good! "That foreign fellow,—who can know How she pays, in a playful mood, For his tuning her that piano?" ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... thoroughly identified with music as an art for many years that a word about their present activities may be of interest. Mr. McCurrie went into Eastern piano factories and interested himself in the technical makeup of pianos and the art of tuning and returning settled and still lives in Alameda, Calif., where he has written several successful operettas and collections of songs for children. Selections from the latter are in daily use in the public schools, although not written for that purpose. ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... compact, gentlemen, is that the United States and England are now concluding negotiations, unknown to each other, by which they will protect their seaports by means of mines primed with this cap. The tuning of the caps which we will use is known only to us; the tuning of the caps which they will use is also known to us! The addition to the wireless apparatus which they will use is such that they can not, even by accident, explode a mine guarding our seaports; but, ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... deep, premonitory stillness, broken only by the precentor, who covertly struck his tuning-fork on the round of his chair, and held it to his ear with a faint, accordant hum; then the minister arose and spread his hands in solemn invocation ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... lately emancipated press was beginning to make itself felt as a great power in the country; periodical literature was by degrees taking the place which in earlier times had been less fitly occupied by the pulpit for the ventilation of political questions. The bad old custom of 'tuning the pulpits' had died out; but political preaching could not be quickly or easily ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Steve, "but they're down there in the Square now stackin' up drive impedimenta and such, red banners, and so forth, tuning up to warble the hymn to free Russia. Hurry if you want to join ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... box and began moving the metal switch arms back and forth, thus tuning in more perfectly as indicated by the increased and clearer sound and the absence of interference from other broadcasting stations, noticed at first by a low buzzing. In a moment the music came clear and sweet, the stirring tune of "America." When the sound of the cornet ceased, there followed ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... the villa young Nerva and Tullius Senecio were entertaining the Augusta with conversation. Terpnos and Diodorus were tuning citharae. ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... presented over the airwaves confronts the citizen, not only in public, but also in the privacy of the home, where the individual's right to be left alone plainly outweighs the First Amendment rights of an intruder. Because the broadcast audience is constantly tuning in and out, prior warnings cannot completely protect the listener or viewer from ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... little Mayfair Street was the haunt of much voluntary minstrelsy. Bands of cockney darkeys came down it, tuning their voices to our native ragtime. Or a balladist, man or woman, took the centre, and sang towards our compassionate windows. Or a musical husband and wife placed their portable melodeon on the opposite sidewalk, and trained their vocal ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... Radio is a six-tube super-heterodyne receiver designed for operation with a HEADER type speaker. It comprises the best in automotive radio engineering, featuring Syncro-Tuning—the newest, most efficient antenna circuit yet ...
— Delco Manuals: Radio Model 633, Delcotron Generator - Delco Radio Owner's Manual Model 633, Delcotron Generator Installation • Delco-Remy Division
... stage-manage, parson," he said at last, lightly enough, but with a hint of tiredness in his eyes. "And then vanish behind the scenes, leaving the hero and heroine in the middle of the spotlight, with the orchestra tuning up 'The Voice that Breathed o'er Eden,'" he finished, without a trace of bitterness. "So I sent Madame a note by a little nigger newsie." His eyes crinkled, and he quoted the favorite aphorism of the colored people, when they seem ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... old doctor, giving her a look made up of humourous vexation and real sadness,—"I wish I knew the right tuning-key to take ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... discover no structural basis for deafness, Panse (23 p. 140) expressed himself as unwilling to believe that the mice are deaf, and this despite the fact that he observed no responses to the sounds made by a series of tuning forks ranging from C5 to C8. He believes rather that they are strangely irresponsive to sounds and that their sensitiveness is dulled, possibly, by the presence of plugs of wax in the ears. Since another investigator, Kishi, has observed the presence of similar plugs of wax in the ears ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... of the parish clerk. "Old Joshway," as he is irreverently called by his neighbours, is in a state of simmering indignation; but he has not yet opened his lips except to say, in a resounding bass undertone, like the tuning of a violoncello, "Sehon, King of the Amorites; for His mercy endureth for ever; and Og the King of Basan: for His mercy endureth for ever"—a quotation which may seem to have slight bearing on the present occasion, but, as with every ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... possible to where they saw their comrade, gathered close about Lawless and the two shipmen. These, to judge by the distempered countenance and cloudy eye, had long since gone beyond the boundaries of moderation; and as Richard entered, closely followed by Lord Foxham, they were all three tuning up an old, pitiful sea-ditty, to the chorus of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and good, For tuning the nerves and digesting the food— Graceful gymnastics for stirring the blood Without the gross purpose of use Ant, let me tell you 'tis not a la mode To plod like a pilgrim, and carry a load, Perverting the limbs that for grace were bestowed, ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... women when the day was done. There the lean weaver ground anew his axe, Nor backward look'd upon the vanish'd loom, But forward to the ploughing of his fields; And to the rose of Plenty in the cheeks. Of wife and children—nor heeded much the pangs Of the rous'd muscles tuning to new work. The pallid clerk look'd on his blister'd palms And sigh'd and smil'd, but girded up his loins And found new vigour as he felt new hope. The lab'rer with train'd muscles, grim and grave, Look'd at the ground and wonder'd in ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... Moodus witches, who used white magic, in a cave beneath Mount Tom, and fought them in the light of a great carbuncle that was fastened to the roof. The noises recurred in 1888, when houses rattled in witch-haunted Salem, eight miles away, and the bell on the village church "sung like a tuning-fork." The noises have occurred simultaneously with earthquakes in other parts of the country, and afterward rocks have been found moved from their bases and cracks have been discovered in the earth. One sapient editor said that the pearls in the mussels in Salmon and Connecticut ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... device would be carried in a small case, hooked to the diver's belt, with a single tuning-knob control. The "throttle" or speed control for the ion drive would be housed in the ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... his work-calloused and crooked hands and began tuning it. The group at the kitchen door turned to listen, their faces lighting up a little. Rose tried to get a set ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... I read. "Buff-and-crimson cards will mark the trail of all goods ready for the sale. We are tuning up. By September it is our intention to have assembled in these two great buildings the most fashionable merchandise ever shown. No one piece of goods will be permitted to linger that lacks, in any detail, the aesthetic beauty demanded ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... tomato when it is time to pass the dulces and wines? And think no more of thy lover until he can come out of prison and marry thee." She drew herself away as the woman attempted to clutch her skirts. "Go," she said. "The musicians are tuning." ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... down her bow, and once more holding the violin to her ear, began tuning it. That time the tuning was so bad that she handed the ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... courageously performs the horrible operation. One cannot help thinking that a cockerel brought up without any companions of his own sex and age would not often crow, but in this instance there were no fewer than ten of them to encourage each other in the laborious process of tuning thejr harsh throats. Heard subsequently in the quiet of the early morning, these first tuning efforts suggested some reflections to my mind, which may not prove entirely without interest to fanciers who aim at something beyond a mere increase in our ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... signal, by tuning his clarionet, the joyous sounds of which were greeted with huzzas from ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... as inexhaustible fertility of invention, truth, fluency and vivacity of description, copious learning, and a pure, amiable and heart-ennobling morality shall be prized among the students of English verse, was now tuning his enchanting lyre; and the ear of Raleigh was the first to catch its strains. This eminent person was probably of obscure parentage and slender means, for it was as a sizer, the lowest order of students, that ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... she sate down at a little distance upon the bench on which Allan M'Aulay was placed, and tuning her clairshach, a small harp, about thirty inches in height, she accompanied it with her voice. The air was an ancient Gaelic melody, and the words, which were supposed to be very old, were in the ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... bounds, Nor yet had ventured to exalt Its rash ambition to B alt, That point towards which when ladies rise, The wise man takes his hat and—flies. Tones of a harp, too, gently played, Came with this youthful voice communing; Tones true, for once, without the aid Of that inflictive process, tuning— A process which must oft have given Poor Milton's ears a deadly wound; So pleased, among the joys of Heaven, He specifies "harps ever tuned." She who now sung this gentle strain Was our young nymph's still younger sister— Scarce ready yet for Fashion's train ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... gaping silence, the three ladies listened to the melancholy harper and the lachrymose fiddlers who, on the estrade in the far corner, sat tuning their instruments. At last the people began to come in. The first were a few stray blackcoats, then feminine voices were heard in the passages, and necks and arms, green toilettes and white satin shoes, were ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... of you probably know that sound is produced by rapid motion. Put your finger on a piano wire that is sounding, and you will feel the motion, or touch your front tooth with a tuning-fork that is singing; in the last case you will feel very distinctly the raps made by the vibrating fork. Now, a sounding body will not only jar another body which touches it, but it will also give its motion to the air that touches it; ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... silent. What say you Laddie?" The dog responded to the appeal with an opportune if not an intelligent wag of that member on which so momentous an issue hung. From one of the rosy closets in the wall a fiddle was forthwith brought out, and soon the noise of the tempest was drowned in the preliminary tuning of ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... did, indeed, show their pleasure by arriving early, flannel-shrouded instruments under their arms. Doctor Churchill came in just as they were tuning. Since Lanse had been away, Andy, who was something of a violinist had taken up Lanse's viola, and was now able to occupy his brother-in-law's place. Celia, however, had been chosen to fill the vacant ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... Gnats and mosquitoes (Culicidae) also seem to attract each other by humming; and Prof. Mayer has recently ascertained that the hairs on the antennae of the male vibrate in unison with the notes of a tuning-fork, within the range of the sounds emitted by the female. The longer hairs vibrate sympathetically with the graver notes, and the shorter hairs with the higher ones. Landois also asserts that he has repeatedly drawn down a whole swarm of gnats by uttering a particular note. It may ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... red stream of life, this last of the squires of old England thumped along among the guests, a very tuning-fork to keep them at their pitch of enthusiasm. He encountered Mr. Caddis, and it was an encounter. Mr. Caddis represented his political opinions; but here was this cur of a Caddis whineing his niminy ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the point of beginning to read, when the tuning and twang of the fiddle is heard close outside the open window, and the daughter sings in a clear cheerful voice. A little tittering is heard in the room, and the ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... abroad eternal day. Almighty, uncreated Source of life! To Thee I dedicate my soul and song; In humble adoration bending low Before thy footstool. Thou alone canst stamp A lasting glory on the works of man, Tuning the shepherd's reed, or monarch's harp, To sounds harmonious. Immortality Exists alone in Thee. The proudest strain That ever fired the poet's soul, or drew Melodious breathings from his gifted lyre, Unsanctioned by thy smile, shall die away ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... his question, for I was poignantly interested in the little situation I had created, and I made haste to answer: "Well, nominally at eight o'clock; but the first half-hour is usually taken up in tuning the instruments. If you get into the pavilion at a quarter to nine you won't lose much. It isn't so bad ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... it to music. Nothing, indeed, is more notable than the heroic quality of the verses that our little sensualist in a periwig chose out to marry with his own mortal strains. Some gust from brave Elizabethan times must have warmed his spirit, as he sat tuning his sublime theorbo. "To be or not to be. Whether 'tis nobler"—"Beauty retire, thou dost my pity move"—"It is decreed, nor shall thy fate, O Rome";—open and dignified in the sound, various and majestic in the sentiment, it was no inapt, as it was certainly no timid, spirit that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... With the tuning key of his matchless genius he struck the chords of sorrow to their inmost tone and played on the heart strings of joy with the tender vibrations of an aeolian harp, trembling with melodious echoes among the wild flowers of ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... he were subjecting Dudley to critical inspection before he decided a certain question much, and foolishly, dreaded by the dear soul. That quieted her. And another thing, she liked him to be with Colney, for a clog on him; as it were, a tuning-fork for the wild airs he started. A little pessimism, also, she seemed to like; probably as an appeasement after hearing, and having to share, high flights. And she was, in her queer woman's way, always reassured by his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... invention to the world, it remained for northern Europe and England to take up the idea and improve it. Christofori solved three important problems: first, the construction of thicker strings to withstand the hammer action; second, a way to compensate for the weakness caused by the opening in the tuning-pin block; third, the mechanical control of the rebound of the hammer from the strings, so that the hammer should not block against the latter ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... symphony concerts and the tuning-up of the orchestra never failed to give her delicious thrills, but she had never had a speaking acquaintance—so to speak—with a 'cello before this, and the beautiful mellow tones delighted her more than anything she had ever heard before. As she undressed that night she revised her plans ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... as she began tuning her strings. It did seem like the funniest thing she had ever heard. The picture of Pennington, girt with a sack for an apron, with that plump, quaint face of his, and those kindly, fussy ways, drying cups for her and ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... Hospital School, and is supplementing the work of the government in a most able manner. Typewriting, dictaphone, switchboard operating, telegraphy, osteopathy, massage, and salesmanship are to be taught to those who are fitted for these branches; and trades and occupations, including piano tuning, winding coils for armatures used in electric motors, joinery, mat and mattress making, broom and basket making, rug weaving, and shoe cobbling are to be taught to those who are not fitted for the professions. The government will send ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... meet before that. I shall do what I can, but upon my word I feel, you know," he laughed, "that such a tuning-up as YOU'VE given me will last me a long time. It's like the high Alps." Then with his hand out again he added: "Have ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... the earthquake shock as an oscillation. It is a quality of all bodies which oscillate under the influence of a blow, such as originates in earthquake shocks, to swing to and fro, after the manner of the metal in a bell or a tuning fork, in a succession of movements, each less than the preceding, until the impulse is worn out, or rather, we should in strict sense say, changed to other forms of energy. The result is, that even in the slightest ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... perceptible in two quite different ways - via the ear as a direct sense experience and via the eye (potentially also via the senses of touch and movement) in the form of certain mechanical movements, such as those of a string or a tuning fork. Hence the world-spectator, as soon as he began to investigate acoustic phenomena scientifically, found himself in a unique position. In all other fields of perception, with the exception of the purely mechanical processes, the transition to ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... his eyes riveted on the street entrance, he heard a laugh behind him; a laugh tempered with a vibrant mellowness which was of a sort with no other laugh, and which set him vibrating in turn, as promptly as a tuning-fork ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... was already tuning his violin when Mary came from the bedroom, and sat down on the sofa. The instant he had got it to his mind, he turned, and, going to the farthest corner of the room, closed his eyes tight, and began ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... crept painfully along the quivering path, against which the wind shrieked and wailed as it shook it, causing it to murmur like a vast tuning-fork. On we went, I do not know for how long, only gazing round now and again, when it was absolutely necessary, until at last we saw that we were on the very tip of the spur, a slab of rock, little ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... thinking of my letter and its probable effect. It never once occurred to me that my Angelina might possibly find it difficult to construe Horace. Towards evening, I escaped again, and flew to Barnard's Green. It wanted nearly an hour to the time of performance; but the tuning of a violin was audible from within, and the money-taker was already there with his pipe in his mouth and his hands in his pockets. I had no courage to address that functionary; but I lingered in his sight and sighed audibly, and wandered round and round the canvas walls that hedged my ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... certainly ought to know his subject, being himself a large manufacturer of the new terms which he explains. Again, though "Music" in genere, as the schoolmen said, has only nine columns, "Temperament and Tuning," has eight, and "Chord" alone has ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... birds the early nesters were already twittering in minor among the trees and thickets; a mountain-eagle cleft the air in the hawk's trail, so high that only a keen eye could have caught sight of him. Daylight insects were beginning to abate their clamor, while their fellows of the night were tuning for the evening concert. Mournfully, and very faintly, came a locomotive's wail from the ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... is about finished," Gaston replied, tuning up the fiddle. "And then what?" he said, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... no composition at all; but a kind of tuning and riming fall in what they write. It runs and slides, and only makes a sound. Women's poets they are called, as ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey |
