"Vocal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... departed in a series of earsplitting, heart-appalling whoops that shattered the still night air and made a vocal pandemonium of that portion of the fair Rhine valley. The colour left the cheeks of the Lady of Bernstein as she listened in palpable terror to the fiendish outcry which seemed to scream for blood and that instantly, looking down she saw the Knight of Hochstaden still there ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... to admit that the sounds and vocal organs of some males are used only for challenging, but I doubt whether this applies to the musical notes of Hylobates or to the howling (I judge chiefly from Rengger) of the American monkeys. No account that I have seen of the stridulation of ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... in Yaque as in America, remained the thing it was, supreme and vital. But had not the simplicity of Rollo taken the leap in experience, and likewise without changing? For a moment, as he went down the silent corridors, lofty as the woods, vocal with faint inscriptions on the uncovered stone, the old human doubt assailed him. The very age of the walls was a protest against the assumption that there is a touchstone that is ageless. Even if there ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... But on the face of it, I should say she doesn't. At least, she doesn't appear to. I have been very—circumspect," said he, moodily. And he added angrily: "She seems to regard me as a sort of cicerone, a perambulating, vocal Baedeker!" ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... on the grounds in true Bohemian style, but everybody enjoyed it. The evening passed very pleasantly with vocal, instrumental music, etc. It was a fitting celebration, and one which both old and young will no doubt often be pleased to look back upon. Mr. and Mrs. Trueman and the members of their family dispensed the kindest ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... same mind about it. We like all the waters, and drink them without regard to their different properties; but we rather prefer the Congress spring, because it is such a pleasant place to listen to the Troy military band in the afternoon, and the more or less vocal concert in the evening. All the Saratoga world comes and goes before us, as we sit there by day and by night, and we find a perpetual interest in it. We go and look at the deer (a herd of two, I think) behind their wire netting in the southward valley of the park, and we would feed the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... admission of one, creeping along somewhat tardily with satchel on back, and "shining morning face." What a sudden burst of sound was emitted—what harmonious discord—what a commixture of all the tones in the vocal gamut, from the shrill treble to the deep underhum! A chord was touched which vibrated in unison; boyish days and school recollections crowded upon me; pleasures long vanished; feelings long stifled; and friendships—aye, everlasting friendships—cut asunder ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... are many favourable critics, though personally I consider them to be extremely poor. Their music, both vocal and instrumental, is worse than rubbish; in sketching and painting they are without sense of perspective; their architecture is clumsy and coarse; their much-vaunted pottery is full of flaws and blemishes, for which reason a perfect specimen is almost priceless and over which connoisseurs hypnotise ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... road. They were entering the asylum; now they passed the porter's lodge. In the jewelled light of a senescent moon, his wife and little daughter gazed at them curiously, without semblance of pity or fear. Then, as if shot from the same vocal spring-board, the voices of poet and painter merged ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... nursery rhymes, as in the simpler and more genuine ballads which have so close a connection with them, we find this attraction of the inarticulate—this charm of pure sound, this utilizing of alliteration and rhyme and assonance." Those who have noticed the tendency of children to find vocal pleasure even of a physical or muscular sort in nonsense combinations of sounds, and who also realize their own tendency in this direction, will feel that Professor Saintsbury has hit upon a suggestive term in his claim for "the attraction of the inarticulate" ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... of instrumental music," said Mrs. Aylett, half interrogatively. "You used always to prefer vocal." ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... defined as the vocal expression of feeling, though it is also applied to written forms which are intended to express emotion. Thus in describing a towering mountain we can write "Heavens, what a piece of Nature's handiwork! how majestic! how sublime! how awe-inspiring in its colossal impressiveness!" This figure rather ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... secretary and announcing his resignation of the Mastership. A servant had by this time brought his horse round to the door, and in a few seconds Mrs. Hoopington's shrill monotone had the field to itself. But after the Major's display her best efforts at vocal violence missed their full effect; it was as though one had come straight out from a Wagner opera into a rather tame thunderstorm. Realising, perhaps, that her tirades were something of an anticlimax, Mrs. Hoopington broke suddenly into some rather necessary tears and marched out of the ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... The first step was, to teach the child to speak; and as this implied the ability to hear, the ear, hitherto dead to all sounds, must be impressed. For this purpose, sound was communicated by speaking trumpets or other instruments, which should force and fix the attention. The lips and vocal organs were then moulded to imitate these sounds. The process was long and wearisome, often occupying months, and even years; but in the end it was successful. The eye was trained by the attraction of bright and varied colors, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Crevecoeur says of the bird kingdom. "In the spring," he writes, "I generally rise from bed about that indistinct interval which, properly speaking, is neither night nor day:" for then it is that he enjoys "the universal vocal choir." He continues—more and more lyrically: "Who can listen unmoved, to the sweet love-tales of our robins, told from tree to tree? Or to the shrill cat birds? The sublime accents of the thrush from on high, always retard my steps, that I may listen to the delicious music." And the ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... meeting with Isabel at the end of the journey he shared the Governor's zest for flight. It was a joy to be free under the broad blue arch of June. Spring is a playtime for fledgling fancy but in summer the heart is strong of wing and dares the heavens. It was Archie who now initiated vocal outbursts, striking up old glee club catches he hadn't thought of since his college days. He was in love. He bawled his scraps of song that the world might know that he was a lover riding far and hard at the behest of his ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... on the table and a piece of wreckage flung on the fire, he made himself ready by taking off his soaked boots and stockings, and plumping his feet on Mam Widger's lap; then brought himself into the vocal mood with a long rigmarole that he used to recite with the Mummers at Christmas time. Soon we were humming, whistling and singing "Sweet Evelina," whose sole musical merit is that her chorus goes with a swing. The fire crackled and burnt blue. The fragrant steam of the grog rose to ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... which I now let fall.—So it is with the impressions you will make there on your pupil. You should get into the habit of regarding them all as leading to the acquisition by him of capacities for behavior,—emotional, social, bodily, vocal, technical, or what not. And, this being the case, you ought to feel willing, in a general way, and without hair-splitting or farther ado, to take up for the purposes of these lectures with the biological conception ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... nor understand why you should. Their attitude to you is if not contempt only one remove from it. But one of the officials in the Doges' Palace who is sometimes to be found in this Great Hall is both enthusiastic and vocal. He has English too, a little. His weakness for the "Paradiso" is chiefly due to the circumstance that it is the "largest oil painting in the world." I dare say this is true; but the same claim, I recall, was once made for an original poster in the Strand. The "Paradiso" ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... religious exercises were not frequent, and were 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 as a ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... error. There would be a certain group that felt sufficiently alike to be classified together. There would be variants of feeling at both ends. These classifications would tend to harden as individuals in each of the classifications made their reactions vocal. That is to say, when the vague feelings of those who felt vaguely had been put into words, they would know more definitely what they felt, and would ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... evening we heard the grand Ristori render a part of Dante's Inferno and a selection from Joan of Arc. Of course I couldn't understand a word she said, but her voice, her gestures, her expression told the whole story. Then the music, vocal and instrumental, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... it was once thought, would be practically sublime; for he carried off all manner of college prizes, and was the Admirable-Crichton of Konigsberg University and the Graduates there. But in the end they proved to be gifts of the vocal sort rather: and have led only to what we see. A man, I should guess, rather of buoyant vivacity than of depth or strength in intellect or otherwise. Excessively buoyant, ingenious; full of wit, kindly exuberance; a loyal-hearted, gay-tempered man, and much a favorite in society ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... concerns. Those whose savings were invested in the concerns had little coming to them after the failures. The fees of the ring left little of that. All this "grinding of the faces of the poor" is being accomplished by those politicians who were most vocal in proclaiming their allegiance to the Chicago platform as a new "Magna Charta ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... exhilarating airs of the one or basked in the golden sunlight of the other may see at a glance that Duluth must be a place of untold delights (laughter), a terrestrial paradise, fanned by the balmy zephyrs of an eternal spring, clothed in the gorgeous sheen of ever-blooming flowers, and vocal with the silvery melody of nature's choicest songsters. (Laughter.) In fact, sir, since I have seen this map I have no doubt that Byron was vainly endeavoring to convey some faint conception of the delicious charms of Duluth when his poetic soul gushed forth in ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... complexities as yours, for the reason that owing to the high development of the mental faculties thoughts are almost as audible as words. Hence, converse between individuals on our planet is not altogether a series of vocal ejaculations. On the contrary, among the older members of the race, communication between individuals is ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... conducted them into the House. Captain Swan, and we that were with him followed after. It was not long before the General caused his dancing Women to enter the Room, and divert the Company with that pastime. I had forgot to tell you that they have none but vocal Musick here, by what I could learn, except only a row of a kind of Bells without Clappers, 16 in number, and their weight increasing gradually from about three to ten pound weight. These were set in a row on a ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... that the main impression on the minds of Ulster delegates had been made by the Nationalist County Councillors. They had expected noisy demagogues; they had found solid, substantial business men, many of them with large and prosperous concerns, all of them rather too silent than too vocal, and all of them most good-humoured in their tolerance of dissent. What Willie Redmond had foretold in his last speech was coming true: Irishmen brought into contact with one another in the Convention, as other Irishmen had been ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... for she did see well that by prayer all virtues are increased, and made mighty and strong; and, without prayer, they wax feeble and defail.[132] Wherefore she induced her disciples that they should busy them to prayer perseverauntly; and therefore she told them of two manner of prayers:[133] Vocal and Mental. Vocal prayers, she said, should be kept certain hours in the night and in the day ordained by holy Church; but mental prayer should ever be had, in act or in habit of the soul. Also she said that, by the light of quick faith, she saw clearly ...
— The Cell of Self-Knowledge - Seven Early English Mystical Treaties • Various
... cannot resist the thought that such local and homely renown would have been more to our simple hero's taste than the laurel and the throne. I groaned in spirit over the monstrous playhouse, with its pretentious Teutonic air; I walked through the churchyard, vocal with building rooks, and came to the noble church, full of the evidences of wealth and worship and honour. I do not like to confess the breathless awe with which I drew near to the chancel and gazed on the stone that, nameless, ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... moon brought new songsters, with many a nightingale among them. A low bush near the plain was vocal during the full moon with the sweet but disconnected music of the yellow-breasted chat. The forest rang again and again with a wild, torrential strain of music that seemed to come from the stars. It sent peculiar thrill into Rolf's heart, and gave him ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... equal value for indoor entertainments and give opportunity for the talent of the young women as well as the men. The community chorus or choral club has often taken the place of the old-fashioned singing school. If a good director can be secured he will always discover more vocal ability than has been suspected, and the people of many a rural community have been surprised at the musical works they have been able to ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... mere approximation owing to the strict rules of early Irish verse both as regards alliteration and vowel consonance. Still the use of the "inlaid rhyme" and other assonantal devices have, it is to be hoped, brought my renderings nearer in vocal effect to the originals than the use of more familiar English verse ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... day, and one captive male which, when teased into a state of anger and excitement, would squeal much like a cornered house rat. Vorhies has spent many moonlight hours observing kangaroo rats, but without ever hearing a vocal ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor
... distinguished visitor was conducted to a spacious bower prepared for his reception, and tastefully decorated with evergreens and flowers by the ladies of Concord. As he entered the village, he received a salute from the artillery corps, and the vocal salutations of the inhabitants of both sexes, who had assembled to present him their grateful offerings. The peals of the village bell prolonged the acclamations of the admiring throng. The following inscription was to be seen in a conspicuous place in the arbor—"In 1775, the people of Concord ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... the birds is attracted by any unusual sound or commotion among them. In May or June, when other birds are most vocal, the jay is a silent bird; he goes sneaking about the orchards and the groves as silent as a pickpocket; he is robbing bird's-nests and he is very anxious that nothing should be said about it; but in the ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... subsided so that Baiting Will could make himself heard. He was evidently a well-known street wag, for his remarks were received with frequent laughter and vocal applause. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... scoring, beautiful melodies combined with dramatic connection between action, voice and orchestra, entirely revolutionised the opera. Fortunately, he had a still greater contemporary to carry on his reforms. Gluck has himself explained how he set out to avoid any concession of music to the vocal abilities of the singer; how he had tried to bring music to its proper function, i.e., to go side by side with the poetry of the drama—a clear ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... said Cora, forgetting what she owed the unfortunate Mr. Trumble for the vocal wall which had so effectively sheltered her earlier in the evening. "He's like one of those booming June-bugs, batting against the walls, falling ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... she had," replied the duke, with careless naivete and a complaisant forgetfulness, of which no words could translate the tone and the vocal expression. "Now, here is poor Raoul, who is your son, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... every corner of 'Wahnfried,' on which while wandering about the house during sleepless nights, musing and planning, he made brief jottings, often merely a new idea in instrumentation. The rest was in his head; the vocal parts were added to the score without hesitation, and never needed correction. For the orchestra he employed three staves, one of which was reserved for special notes, as, for instance, when a particular instrument was to enter. From ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... know that I blame them," said Bill. "She favored me with a vocal selection. And, believe me, she ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... silence. Serbia's tragedy needs no rhetoric, no language to describe it, to exalt it. For silence, and not rhetoric, makes tragedy greater. Serbia's silence to-day is as deep as her tragedy is dark. The most silent suffering is the most vocal suffering at the same time. The most silent suffering is like a screw boring into the conscience of the makers of the suffering. Such silent suffering is the severe judge of the world who makes all rich people poor, all proud humble, all pleasure bitter, ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... my services were frequently utilized as substitute preacher by our good pastor, who was much afflicted with what Mrs. Partington calls "brown creeturs." He had harped on one string of his vocal apparatus so long that like Jeshuran of old "it waxed fat and kicked." Exceedingly monotonous and soporific was his voice, and it was necessary to strain every nerve to tell whether he was preaching, praying or reading, the words were much the same ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... followed by the words "Pray do not tease him any more") and the cheerful candle-light, and the cricket chirping in a corner, and the glass door, and the spring night which, laying its elbows upon the tree-tops, and spangled with stars, and vocal with the nightingales which were pouring forth warbled ditties from the recesses of the foliage, kept glancing through the door, and regarding ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... quaintly associated figures of little Marcel and his nurse. They were busy, particularly the boy. Amidst a confusion of coiled, rawhide ropes An-ina, hammer in hand, was securing a rope end to the angle of the wall, while Marcel, with tireless vocal energy, was encouraging and instructing her to his own ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... wicker cradles, babies stretched out flat on their backs on women's knees, babies prone on the floor toasting before a slow fire. Every one of these Cornish cherubs was crying in every variety of vocal key. Every one of their affectionate parents was talking at the top of her voice. Every one of their little elder brothers was screaming, squabbling, and tumbling down in the passage with prodigious energy and spirit. The mothers of England—and they only—can imagine the deafening and composite ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... mimicry be considered as a mark of superiority, the crow has claims to high rank in this department also. The closest imitators of the human voice are birds of this family: for instance, the Mino bird. Our crow also is a vocal mimic, and that not in the matter-of-course way of the mocking-bird, but, as it were, more individual and spontaneous. He is not merely an imitator of the human voice, like the parrots, (and a better one as regards tone,) nor of other birds, like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... was a harp solo. This was followed by a piano duet, which, in turn, was succeeded by a vocal number. Following each the applause was almost deafening. Encores were allowed in each ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... has left the door open. The harmonium breaks forth again, together with vocal accompaniment as before.] ...
— Fanny and the Servant Problem • Jerome K. Jerome
... a beautiful practice has always prevailed of giving to a boy his mother's name—preceded and strengthened by a male name, as Charles Anne, Victor Victoire. In cases where a mother's memory has been unusually dear to a son, this vocal memento of her, locked into the circle of his own name, gives to it the tenderness of a testamentary relique, or a funeral ring. I presume, therefore, that La Pacelle must have borne the baptismal names of Jeanne Jean; the latter with no reference to so sublime a person ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... thou canst, by thy soul's travail, bring it into clear being. That loud inane Actuality, with millions in its pocket, too 'possible' that, which rolls along there, with quilted trumpeters blaring round it, and all the world escorting it as mute or vocal flunky,—escort it not thou; say to it, either nothing, or else deeply in thy heart: "Loud-blaring Nonentity, no force of trumpets, cash, Long-acre art, or universal flunkyhood of men, makes thee an Entity; thou art a Nonentity, and deceptive Simulacrum, more accursed than thou ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... MUSICIANS, or scientific criticisms on vocal and instrumental performers, operas, and new music, on the Continent as well as in ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... and smell of sawdust; but in frank and free novel-fashion, with a Venetian church, a famous maestro (Porpora), a choir of mostly Italian girls, and the little Spanish gipsy Consuelo, the poorest, humblest, plainest (as most people think) of all the bevy, but the possessor of the rarest vocal faculties and the most happiness-producing-and-diffusing temper. There is nothing in the least milk-soppy or prudish about Consuelo, though she is perfectly "pure"; nor is there anything tractified about her, though she is pious and generous. The contrast between her and her betrothed, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... honest man and faithful as a dog. My grandfather had taken a liking to him, and when he quitted the sea Krok followed him, and became his man and served him faithfully. He could neither read nor write at that time, and his only vocal expression was a hoarse croak like the cawing of a crow, and this, combined with ample play of head and hand and facial expression and hieroglyphic gesture, formed his only means of ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... the morning be "fine" or "pretty," it was all one to the birds. The woods were vocal with the cackling of robins, the warble of bluebirds, and the trills of pine warblers. Flickers were shouting—or laughing, if one pleased to hear it so—with true flickerish prolixity, and a single downy woodpecker called sharply again and again. A mocking-bird near me (there is always ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... rage of hunger quell'd, they all advance And form to measured airs the mazy dance; To Phemius was consign'd the chorded lyre, Whose hand reluctant touch'd the warbling wire; Phemius, whose voice divine could sweetest sing High strains responsive to the vocal string. ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... me music! In my years Of childhood's hopes and childhood's fears, One sweetly-breathing vocal lay Could steal my griefs, ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... best education that New York city could afford, having met with reverses in fortune, would be happy to accept, as private pupils, a few ladies whose early cultivation was, for any reason, neglected. French, Italian, Spanish, vocal music, the piano, and all the English rudiments, taught at reasonable prices. Particular attention paid to pronunciation, spelling, and writing. Satisfactory references given ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... instrumental music generally, and stringed instrument music in particular, can hardly be over-estimated. It may be said that in the Middle Ages no written music for instruments existed. The melodies and accompaniments produced from instruments were either extemporaneous or parrot-like imitations of vocal music. Madrigals and a few dances constituted the food upon which instruments were nursed until towards the close of the sixteenth century, when Gabrielli, or a contemporary musician, prepared a special and distinct aliment, the outcome of which is found in the symphonies ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... clenched and rolled upon the floor like two great, grim cats. Through the sound of scuffling came the noise of short-armed jabs, the deep throated curses of Kootanie George and once . . . his first vocal utterance . . . one of Dave Drennen's laughs. It was when he had again driven his fist against George's mouth, drawing blood from both lips and ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... dishonorable act." The Rev. G. Winfred Hervey[102] thinks that "in any controversy between mules and muledrivers, the latter have several advantages among which one of the most important is that they have the exclusive use of vocal attack and defence. Cary was too prudent a man to publish an apology for constructive sedition; and as he has not left us his own explanation of any of the facts in the case, we have not all the materials on which to base an ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... quantity and pitch, yet differ in quality. The sounds produced on the clarinet and flute may agree in pitch and quantity, yet be unlike in quality. The same is true in regard to the tones of the voice of two individuals. This difference is occasioned mainly by the different positions of the vocal organs. ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... his paladins beleaguered enchanted castles and battled with giants and genii in the fabled days of the olden time; old when Christ and His disciples walked the earth; stood where it stands to-day when the lips of Memnon were vocal and men bought and sold in the streets ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... precincts. Its boarding-houses are musical, and the notes of pianos and harps float in the evening time round the head of the mournful statue, the guardian genius of the little wilderness of shrubs, in the centre of the square.... Sounds of gruff voices practising vocal music invade the evening's silence, and the fumes of choice tobacco scent the air. There, snuff and cigars and German pipes and flutes, and violins and violoncellos, divide the supremacy between them. It is the region of song and smoke. ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... three large theatres; an opera-house of gigantic proportions, which is annually graced by the highest vocal talent of Europe; Wood's minstrels, and Christy's minstrels, where blacks perform in unexceptionable style to unwearied audiences; and comic operas. There are al fresco entertainments, masquerades, concerts, restaurants, and ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... thing about the buzzard is his silence. The crow caws, the hawk screams, the eagle barks, but the buzzard says not a word. So far as I have observed, he has no vocal powers whatever. Nature dare not trust him to speak. In his case ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... hearing some strange sounds on the other side of the boarding, evidently provoked by his own unguarded tones. The sounds were like a child's cry, blended with the sharp short barking noise which is supposed to be the manner in which trows give expression to their mirth; and these vocal utterances were supplemented by a sound of scratching and thumping applied ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... a song-sparrow above our heads gave one liquid trill, so inexpressibly sudden and delicious, that it seemed to set to music every atom of freshness and fragrance that Nature held; then the spell was broken, and the whole shore and lake were vocal with song. Joining in this jubilee of morning, we were early in motion; bathing and breakfast, though they seemed indisputably in accordance with the instincts of the Universe, yet did not detain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... mortal mixture of Earths mould Breath such Divine inchanting ravishment? Sure somthing holy lodges in that brest, And with these raptures moves the vocal air To testifie his hidd'n residence; How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night 250 At every fall smoothing the Raven doune Of darknes till it smil'd: I have oft heard My mother Circe with the Sirens three, Amid'st ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... inheritance." "'Tis the convinced belief of mankind," wrote Francis Thompson with a sardonic smile, "that to make a poet sing you must pinch his belly, as if the Almighty had constructed him like certain rudimentarily vocal dolls." "No artist," declares Arnold Bennett, "was ever assisted in his career by the yoke, by servitude, by enforced monotony, by economic inferiority." And Bliss Carman speaks out loud and bold: "The best poets who have come to ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... like somnambules. However, at 5.10 a.m. we struck north, over a low divide of trap hill, by a broad and evidently made road, and regained the Wady el-Kubbah: here it is a pleasant spectacle rich in trees, and vocal with the cooing of the turtle-dove. After an hour's sharp riding we reached its head, a fair round plain some two miles across, and rimmed with hills of red, green, and black plutonics, the latter much resembling coal. It was ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... Castalia's whispering shadow, by Pieria's vocal spring, By yourselves, O listening Muses, who did prompt the song I sing,— Fly, I pray you, to her chamber, and my pretty booklet bear, All unmarred and perfect give it, every color fresh and fair: Let her send you back, confessing, if our hearts together burn; Or, if she but loves me little, ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... of the day three supplementary strokes sound from the church bell of the convent. At this signal prioress, vocal mothers, professed nuns, lay-sisters, novices, postulants, interrupt what they are saying, what they are doing, or what they are thinking, and all say in unison if it is five o'clock, for instance, "At five ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... conformity to his thought, thus to the influx of affection from love; yea, if he hold the breath entirely he is unable to think, except in his spirit by its respiration, which is not manifestly perceived. (2) From speech: Since not the least vocal sound flows forth from the mouth without the concurrent aid of the lungs, - for the sound, which is articulated into words, all comes forth from the lungs through the trachea and epiglottis, - therefore, according to the inflation ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Michael was unable to appreciate the excellence of the music he listened to, for the finer and more delicate gradations of tone are difficult to discriminate with exactness; they are seldom heard in the vocal and instrumental music of people who have not made a regular study of the art. But as his ear became more habituated to the style, the more it delighted him. He had seen the rapture on Abdul's face and ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... unawares—a throb of the heart made vocal. It roused her to reality, to the fact that she had been standing rigidly in the middle of the room,—how long she knew not,—seeing nothing, hearing nothing, but the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... enthusiasm almost beyond belief at this distance of time?" she went on; "and isn't it a curious fact, as Mr. Macdonald told me a moment ago, that though the whole country was vocal with songs for the lost cause and the fallen race, not one in favour of the victors ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a dozen fights, the superfluous flesh of talking is long work'd off him, and he gives me little but the hard meat and sinew. I find it refreshing, these hardy, bright, intuitive, American young men, (experienc'd soldiers with all their youth.) The vocal play and significance moves one more than books. Then there hangs something majestic about a man who has borne his part in battles, especially if he is very quiet regarding it when you desire him to unbosom. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... permeate their consciousness. It is really robbing an audience of its rights, to pass so quickly from one point to another that the mind must lose a new one if it lingers to take in the old. Every vital point in a tale must be given a certain amount of time: by an anticipatory pause, by some form of vocal or repetitive emphasis, and by actual time. But even more than other tales does the funny story demand this. It ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... howl. It was so long since Robbie Belle had grown up that she had almost forgotten the joy of using her lungs to their full capacity. With her spirits dancing in the afterglow of such vocal exercise, she marched after the others down to the hall below. There in the vestibule Berta halted her followers ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... all this time, was Flora? When I put the question to Miles, he played on a minute before answering and then could only say: "Why, my dear, how do I know?"—breaking moreover into a happy laugh which, immediately after, as if it were a vocal accompaniment, he prolonged into incoherent, ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... to you," he said curtly. His rich, musical voice, for all its deepness, held a faint hint of the tremulous, birdlike notes heard in the voice of a young child who has not used his vocal chords long enough for them to have lost their ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... firemen, sailors, butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers, and he associated with them; but they never read him or understood him. They prefer Longfellow. It is the cultured class he so despises that discovered, lauded him, believing that he makes vocal the underground world; above all, believing that he truly represents America and the dwellers thereof—which he decidedly does not. We are, if you will, a commonplace people, but normal, and not ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... more to test my voice than for anything else. It sounded perfectly natural, and my vocal chords ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... almost in vain for the fugitive, and, at last finding him, dumbfounded him with fairy promises, presented him with a villa, and treated him to a splendour few musicians have ever known, except perhaps Lully, and Farinelli, who became the vocal prime minister of the truly good king Ferdinand VI. of Spain. Wagner's relations with Ludwig were of a sort which Mr. Finck euphemises as "Grecian." This was seemingly not the only instance in his career; but it brought him furious enmity as soon as ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... stranger ask what lore Of by-gone days, this winding shore, Yon cliffs, and fir-clad steeps, could tell If vocal made by Fancy's spell, The varying legend might rehearse Fit themes for ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... The exercise of vocal power among birds seems to be complementary to the development of accessory plumes and ornaments. All our finest singing birds are plainly coloured, with no crests, neck or tail plumes to display. The gorgeously ornamented birds of the tropics have no song, and ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... increasingly vocal on human rights. African leaders have spoken out on the issue of political prisoners, and the OAU is drafting its own Charter on Human Rights. Three countries in Africa— Nigeria, Ghana, and Uganda—have returned to civilian ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... some things which fit one another, and other things which do not fit, so there are some vocal signs which do, and others which do not, combine and ...
— Sophist • Plato
... eagerly in the evening to the vocal exercises. French Janin struggled to perform his part, but mostly Harry Baggs boomed out his Ahs! undirected. The other had been without his white powder for three days; his shredlike muscles twitched ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... creatures which attract our admiration, or excite our fears, the greater part display their appetites, or develope their instincts, during the day time only; especially—with few exceptions—all those remarkable for beauty of plumage, and vocal melody. Predacious animals are chiefly distinguished for their nocturnal habits; and ideas of rapine, terror and blood, are ever associated with the tiger, the hyena, and the wolf. Among the feathered tribes, the owl and the bat, also companions of darkness, are shunned by many, as horrible ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... our thinking powers, and all the noblest intellectual products of our soul are deposited, we should find that red-lined drawer close beneath, with the delicate little bosses set like jewels over the tremulous vocal tongue and palate, garnisht in front with teeth that toil and cut, and closed by the graceful mouth. Eating is only another mode of thinking. Thus this box is a coppel in which the essences of all created things, the finest and the grossest, vapours and juices, the soft soothing ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... read the speech, I am sure he has never read it, but the fact that I had made any sort of speech about him, displeased him. That was one of the few times in my long association with him that I found him distinctly cold. He said nothing, but his silence was vocal. ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... reading the original poem, until something particularly well expressed occasions me to revert to the Latin; and then I find the superiority, or at least the powers, of the German in all other respects, but am made feelingly alive, at the same time, to its unsmooth mixture of the vocal and the organic, the fluid and the substance, of language. The fluid seems to have been poured in on the corpuscles all at once, and the whole has, therefore, curdled, and collected itself into a lumpy soup full of knots of curds inisled by ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... contribute my mesquin supply of grapes and brioches, and the supper was a considerable event. Their canteens were filled with red wines, and one cup served the whole company. They drank my health and that of the President of the United States. Afterward we had vocal music, two of the officers being good singers. They sang Beranger's songs and the charming serenade from Lalla Rookh. I finally expressed a desire to hear the Marseillaise. This seemed to take them by surprise, but one of the singers, declaring ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... evidence of processes subsidiary to ideation, and may be compared, in respect of the motor factors which the 'striving' implies, with the preparatory stage which Binet found to be an inseparable and essential part of any given (vocal) motor reaction.[8] ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... it become the fashion to criticise Handel's new effects in vocal and instrumental composition, that some years later Mr. Sheridan makes one of his characters fire a pistol simply to shock the audience, and makes him say in a stage whisper to the gallery, "This hint, gentlemen, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... regulating centre, the size of the area representing any group depending upon the character and complexity of the movements performed by the muscles, rather than upon the amount of muscular tissue that is governed by the centre—for example, the centre for the mouth, tongue, and vocal cords is larger than that for the muscles of ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... this to what I would call the idealist party. Then I would say something to those who talk nonsense about apathy and supineness. We will not be hurried into repression, any more than we will be hurried into the other direction. This party, which is very vocal in this country, say:—Oh! we are astonished, and India is astonished, and amazed at the licence that you extend to newspapers and to speakers; why don't you stop it? Orientals, they say, do not understand it. Yes, but just let us look at that. We ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... great deal to passion: more than men ever realize. Wasn't it Darwin who once even risked the conjecture that the vocal organs themselves were developed for sexual purposes, the object being to call or charm one's mate. Hence—perhaps—only animals that were continuously concerned with their matings would be at all likely to form an elaborate language. And without ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... minds. This is done to make them calm and passive, that they may be in a state to receive the influence of the pure principle. It may be observed again, that in their meetings for worship, whether silent or vocal, they endeavour to avoid all activity of the mind for the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... change with conditions, and the fact that to-day the three most deadly diseases are pneumonia, tuberculosis, and diphtheria,—all diseases of the respiratory organs,—justifies the assertion that we have a right to protection against colds. The prevalence of colds, sore throats, irritated vocal cords, bad voices, catarrh, bronchitis, laryngitis, and asthma in America to-day demands summary measures. One can learn to sneeze into a handkerchief, not into a companion's face or into a room. School children can be taught to avoid handkerchiefs on which mucus has dried. In the far distant future ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... 2400 francs; but what relief from misery could mitigate a quarter of a century of darkness for a man who had looked out at the world with such vivifying eyes? His father had followed the trade of a glazier, but was otherwise vocal than in the emission of the rich street-cry with which we used all to be familiar, and which has vanished with so many other friendly pedestrian notes. The elder Daumier wrought verses as well as window-panes, and M. Champfleury has disinterred a small volume published by him in 1823. ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... wide the temple door, And let the solemn, swelling organ greet, With VOLUNTARIES meet, The WILLING advent of the rich and poor! And while to God the loud Hosannas soar, With rich vibiations from the vocal throng— From quiet shades that to the woods belong, And brooks with music of their own, Voices may come to swell the choral song With notes of praise they ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... theology and science in the field of comparative philology opened just on this point, apparently so insignificant: the direct divine inspiration of the rabbinical punctuation. The first to impugn this divine origin of these vocal points and accents appears to have been a Spanish monk, Raymundus Martinus, in his Pugio Fidei, or Poniard of the Faith, which he put forth in the thirteenth century. But he and his doctrine disappeared beneath the waves of the orthodox ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... are in perfect correspondence with the gaiety of the morning. The general warbling continues, with now and then an interruption by the transient croak of the raven, the scream of the jay, or the pert chattering of the daw. The nightingale, unwearied by the vocal exertions of the night, joins his inferiors in sound in the general harmony. The thrush is wisely placed on the summit of some lofty tree, that its loud and piercing notes may be softened by distance ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... animals, and man's own instinctive cries, aided by signs and gestures." The development of actual language presupposes a higher degree of intelligence than is found in any kind of ape. Darwin remarks on this point (Ibid. pages 136, 137.): "The fact of the higher apes not using their vocal organs for speech no doubt depends on their intelligence not having been ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... this volume the author has made use of the terminology usually employed in describing bird music. Hence such words as "song," "chant," "vocal cords," etc., are of frequent occurrence. In reality the writer's personal view is that the birds are whistlers, pipers, fluters, and not vocalists, none of the sounds they produce being real voice tones. The reader who may desire to ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... way he drives that machine of Wilson's that he's been used to a car—likely a foreign one. All the swells have foreign cars." Still the barytone, who was almost as fond of conversation as of what he termed "vocal." "And another thing. Do you notice the way he takes Dr. Ed around? Has him at every consultation. The ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart |
