"Musical instrument" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lined with ermine: in short, all the walls of the palace shine with gold and silver. Here is besides a certain cabinet called Paradise, where besides that everything glitters so with silver, gold, and jewels, as to dazzle one's eyes, there is a musical instrument made all of glass, except the strings. Afterwards we were led into the gardens, which are most pleasant; here we saw rosemary so planted and nailed to the walls as to cover them entirely, which is a method exceeding common ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... heavier. His mind suffered, and his nerves were tense as the wires of a musical instrument. Every jolt found an echoing note upon them, and each note so struck caused him exquisite pain. And now, too, the wolves grew bolder; the scent of blood was in the air and taunted their hungry bellies till they began to lose their fear ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... of Canadian Families Gien, a musical instrument Gillam, Captain Zachariah Gillam, —, son of Captain Zachariah Goats Godfrey, Marguerite Godfry, John Baptista Gooseberries Gorst, Thomas Grapes Green Point Groseilliers. (See Chouart, Medard.) Guillam. (See Gillam.) Guinea, visited ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... narrowed ever so slightly. Although she could play no musical instrument herself and knew less about music than any of the others, she realized, probably better than all the rest, the quality of Veronica's performance on the violin. Sahwah had a mysterious inner perception which made her sense things without knowing why or how. So ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... is strong, lively, and congregational. Sometimes there is more cry than wool in it; but taken altogether, and considering the place, it is creditable. There is neither an organ, nor a fiddle, nor a musical instrument of any sort that we have been able to notice, in the place. All is done directly and without equivocation from the mouth. The members of the choir sit downstairs, in a square place fronting the pulpit; the young men—in their quiet moments—looking very pleasantly at ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... hand, or rather its two hands. For, as its arms and hands are turned into wings, all it has to depend upon, in economical and practical life, is its beak. The beak, therefore, is at once its sword, its carpenter's tool-box, and its dressing-case; partly also its musical instrument; all this besides its function of seizing and preparing the food, in which functions alone it has to be a trap, carving-knife, and ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... DOOLITTLE. Musical instrument, Governor. A few pictures, a trifle of jewelry, and a bird-cage. She said she didn't want no clothes. What was I to think from that, Governor? I ask you as a parent what was I ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... slender dividend of eighteen pence in the pound. The man who can use his feet, is envied by him who cannot; and he, in turn, envies him who will not. Our health and our feet, in a double sense, go together. The human body has been justly compared to a musical instrument; I add, this instrument was never perfectly in tune, without a due portion ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... highly intellectual, but without the power of sight, brought up in darkness, receiving impressions solely by hearing and touch. Suppose him introduced into a room such as mine, and endeavouring to form an impression of the kind of creature who inhabited it. Chairs, tables, even a musical instrument he could interpret; but what would he make of a writing-table and its apparatus? How would he guess at the use of a picture? Strangest of all, what would he think of books? He would find in my room hundreds of curious oblong objects, opening with a sort ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... could observe, that some of our visitors in the canoes wore pearl shells hang about the neck as an ornament. One of them kept blowing a large conch-shell, to which a reed near two feet long was fixed; at first, with a continued tone of the same kind, but he afterward converted it into a kind of musical instrument, perpetually repeating two or three notes, with the same strength. What the blowing the conch portended, I cannot say, but I never found ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... among them for nearly a year, about 1527. None of these remain, though as late as about 1820, one of great antiquity, believed to be an original native production, continued to be acted. Its title was La Ollita or El Canahuate, the former word meaning the peculiar musical instrument of that locality, the "whistling jar." The subject was a tale of love, and one of these primitive flutes was used as an ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... in, heard Ibrahim say, 'O my lady, I have laid aside gravity in drinking wine, but this is not thoroughly delectable without the melodious sound of the strings. 'By Allah,' replied Enis el Jelis, 'if we had but some musical instrument, our joy would be complete!' When the old man heard what she said, he rose to his feet, and the Khalif said to Jaafer, 'I wonder what he is going to do.' 'I know not,' replied Jaafer. Then Ibrahim went out and returned with ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... An instrument with which a vindictive Tommy causes misery to the rest of his platoon. Some authorities define it as a "musical instrument." ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... science is conditioned by the kinship and capacity of the mind to which it speaks. It is only such a mind as this that possesses the magic word to stir and call forth the spirits that lie hidden in great work. To the ordinary mind a masterpiece is a sealed cabinet of mystery,—an unfamiliar musical instrument from which the player, however much he may flatter himself, can draw none but confused tones. How different a painting looks when seen in a good light, as compared with some dark corner! Just in the same way, the impression made ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... use was it to forbid the boy Handel to touch a musical instrument, or to forbid him going to school, lest he learn the gamut? He stole midnight interviews with a dumb spinet in a secret attic. The boy Bach copied whole books of studies by moonlight, for want of a candle churlishly denied. Nor was he disheartened when these copies were taken from him. The ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... remarkable in Scott's appearance; what this something was he cannot now recall, but he remembers telling his companion some time afterwards that he thought he looked like a hautboy player. Scott was amused with this notion, as he had never touched a musical instrument of any kind; but I fancy his friend had been watching a certain noticeable but altogether indescribable play of the upper lip when in an abstracted mood. He rallied Walter, he says, during one of their first evening walks together, on the slovenliness of his dress: he wore a pair of corduroy breeches, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... varied at that day from fifty dollars to two hundred, according to the difficulty and respectability of the vocation. A carpenter or a blacksmith might be satisfied with a premium of sixty or seventy dollars, while a cabinet-maker would demand a hundred, and a musical instrument maker ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... severely if he had caught him at any such mean business. No, his fun took quite another form. He was fond of what you call "playing the fool," singing comic songs, learning to play tunes on every odd musical instrument he could find, and delighting his brothers by "taking off" people of their acquaintance. B.-P., you must know, is a first-rate actor, and in his boyhood it was one of his chief delights to write plays for himself and his brothers to act. Some of these ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... law for all, my friend." She tapped him reprovingly on the arm with her sunshade. "When you were twenty your father did not, I presume, object to your learning chemistry or playing a musical instrument. You would have thought ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... (lit. priest) B[o]dsee, or B[o]dzee[26]. Bite to, as a dog Cooyoong[27]. Bitter Injassa. Black Korosa. Bleed, to, (lit. to draw blood) Chee-hooga-choong. Blind Meegua. Blind man Akee meegua. Block Koorooma. Blood Chee[28]. Blow up, to, or light a fire Foo-tchoong. Blowing (through a musical instrument) Gacoo. Blue (colour) Tama-eeroo. Blue (light colour) Meez-eeroo. Blunt Chirrarung. Blush (lit. red) Akassa. Boat Timma, or Sabannee, Boat, the bottom of a Nakamma. Boil, to Tajeeing. Book Sheemootsee[29]. Bone Cootsee. Bonnet, or head-dress worn by the natives Hat'chee Mat'chee. Both alike, or ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... the Chicago Art Institute. The thing is as well designed as a Dutch house, wind-mill, or clock. And it is more elegant than any of these. There is humor enough in the picture to last one reel through. The society dame of the period, in her pretty raiment, fingers the strings of her musical instrument, while the master stands by her with the baton. The painter has enjoyed the satire, from her elegant little hands to the teacher's well-combed locks. It is very plain that she does not want to study music with any sincerity, ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... not long after "God breathed into the nostrils of man the breath of life, and he became a living soul," he learned to express the joys and yearnings of his soul in song first, and then with some sort of musical instrument. And to man it was given, commencing with the early ages, to develop the simple ejaculations or melodies of a praise-giving soul into a beautiful, a noble art, replete at times with harmonic intricacies, ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... returns home he does so well dressed, sporting a Waterbury watch, collars, cuffs, boots, and jewelry. He takes with him one or more boxes—["Box" is English for trunk.]—well filled with clothing, a musical instrument or two, and perfumery and other articles of luxury he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... following are examples: Neginath (Psa. 61), elsewhere Neginoth, stringed instruments; Nehiloth, probably flutes (Psa. 5); Gittith (Psa. 8, 81, 84), from the word Gath, which denotes a Philistine city, and also a wine-press. Gittith has been accordingly interpreted to mean (1) a musical instrument or a melody brought from Gath; (2) a musical instrument in the form of a winepress, or a melody used in treading the wine-press; Shoshannim, lilies (Psa. 45, 69); Shushan-eduth, lily of the testimony (Psa. 60); Shoshannim-eduth, lilies of ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... boy's applause was electric. The two men started. The half-breed snatched up a gun that was leaning against a tree near by; one hand of the bearded man deposited the musical instrument upon the ground as his right picked up a handy rifle; while Bannock, the dog, crouched down with ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... able to examine the inner surface of the thighs, which, judging from analogy, would be finely serrated. The species of Pneumora have been more profoundly modified for the sake of stridulation than any other orthopterous insect; for in the male the whole body has been converted into a musical instrument, being distended with air, like a great pellucid bladder, so as to increase the resonance. Mr. Trimen informs me that at the Cape of Good Hope these insects make a wonderful noise during ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... help envying him the happiness of owning so valuable a treasure. He stopped and looked at him with an expression of delight, and they exchanged glances that showed a genuine sympathy springing up between them. At once he resolved to possess a similar musical instrument, as I suppose it may be called; and away he hastened to the toy-shop, knowing that it ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... an angry tone, "Who is nervous, if I am not? And do not those other words of his, too, apply to my case, where he says that drawing blood from a nervous patient is like loosening the chords of a musical instrument, whose tones already fail for want of sufficient tension? Even before this illness, you yourself know how weak and irritable I had become;—and bleeding, by increasing this state, will inevitably kill me. Do with me whatever else you like, but bleed me you shall not. I have had ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... believing it. God cannot afford to reward a man for believing anything reasonable. Why, even the scribes and Pharisees would believe a reasonable thing. Do you suppose God is to crown you with eternal joy and give you a musical instrument for believing something where the evidence is clear? No, sir. The larger the miracle the more grace. And let me advise the ministers of Chicago and of this country, never to explain a miracle; it cannot be explained. If you succeed in explaining it, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... 'makes the Exeter pillar the very type of the union of beauty and strength.' In the central bay of the nave, on the north side, is the Minstrels' Gallery, one of the few to be found in England. It is delicately and elaborately sculptured, and each of the twelve angels in the niches holds a musical instrument—a flageolet, a trumpet and two wind instruments, a tambour, a violin, an organ, a harp, bagpipes, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... exercise of his pencil, while his parents are averse to their son practising his young art! See HANDEL, intended for a doctor of the civil laws, and whom no parental discouragement could deprive of his enthusiasm, for ever touching harpsichords, and having secretly conveyed a musical instrument to a retired apartment, listen to him when, sitting through the night, he awakens his harmonious spirit! Observe FERGUSON, the child of a peasant, acquiring the art of reading without any one suspecting it, by listening to his father ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... produced in the Jubalee Year. I don't know who JUBAL was, at least I've only a vague idea. Rather think he was a partner of TUBAL. TUBAL, JUBAL & CO., Instrument Makers. From this Oratorio I gather that JUBAL was an enthusiastic amateur, but that the only musical instrument he possessed was a tortoise-shell,—whether comb or simple shell I couldn't quite make out. However, comb or shell, he worked hard at it, until one morning, when he was practising outside the house (I expect TUBAL & CO. wouldn't stand ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... title of 'The Forty-eight Preludes and Fugues,' was begun at this time. It is, perhaps, the most popular of all Bach's works, and the idea of writing it is said to have occurred to him whilst staying at a place where no musical instrument of any kind was available. That he should have sat down to write the first part of this monumental work (the second part was not completed until twenty years later) in a place where from sheer force of circumstances his fingers would otherwise ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... have it! Yellin' Kid said he was going to send to Kansas City for a flute he could play on. This must be part of it! He dropped it here; though that couldn't 'a' been him sneaking around the tunnel. But this is Yellin' Kid's musical instrument all right! Oh, won't I rag him, though! I wonder which end you ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... of kebiishi, applied for permission to proceed at once to his brother's assistance. The Court refused his application, whereupon he resigned his office and, like a true bushi, hastened to the war. Yoshimitsu was a skilled performer upon a musical instrument called the sho. He had studied under a celebrated master, Toyohara Tokimoto, now no more, and, on setting out for the field of battle in the far north, he became apprehensive lest the secrets imparted to him by his teacher should die with him. He therefore invited Tokimoto's son, Tokiaki, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... noted is that the carrying power and quality of a voice depend far more upon the use made of the resonance cavities than upon the violence with which the vocal cords vibrate. Every musical instrument involves, in its production of tone, a ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... superintended a Sunday-school—gathered the young people into an Endeavor Society. He formed a singing class—a portable baby organ which he played was their only musical instrument. ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... also speaks, in his West Indian travels, of another musical instrument, very popular among the Martinique slaves of his time—"a sort of guitar" made out of a half-calabash or cou, covered with some kind of skin. It had four strings of silk or catgut, and a very long neck. The tradition or this African instrument is said to survive ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... tired, he had come to the conclusion that the drum would travel quite as easily upon a camel's back as upon his shoulders; he had accordingly slung it upon the very camel that had now performed a somersault and solo on the drum. The musical instrument was picked up in the shape of a flat dish, and existed no longer as a drum, every note having been squeezed out of it. The donkey is a much more calculating animal than the camel, the latter being an excessively stupid beast, while the former is remarkably clever —at least I can answer for the ability ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... didn't do. That is Mr. Katy's love-song. Ah, he finds Mrs. Katy very charming—her beautiful wings, her gracefully waving antennae, her knowing, shining eyes! Now, listen again. Katydid carries its musical instrument at the base of its wing cover. On each side is a tiny membrane and a strong vein. When the wing covers are rubbed together the ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... was no fable; for it was a very ancient custom to carry on immense labour by an accompaniment of music and singing. The custom still exists both in Egypt and Greece. It might, therefore, be said that the Walls of Thebes were built at the sound of the only musical instrument then in use; because, according to the custom of the country, the lyre was necessary for the accomplishment of the work."[57] The same custom appears to exist in Africa. Lander notices at Yaoorie that the "labourers in their plantations were attended by a drummer, that ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... you call this the music-room?" asked Patty; "there's no piano in it, nor any musical instrument that I can see." ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... afternoon, and the house was full of those bluish shadows that belong to gray days; it was charged, even more than usual, with mystery: the whole atmosphere tingled with it as with electricity. I couldn't read. I have never been able to play upon any musical instrument, much as I love music. I do not sing, either, except in a small-beer voice; and when I tried to sew I pricked my fingers with the needle. I went into the kitchen, consulted with Mary Magdalen as to the evening's dinner, weighed and measured such ingredients as she needed, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... force the blood to the head so violently that stupor would be the result. The mouth serves the mind as well as the body itself. According to the most critical calculation, the muscles of the mouth are so movable that it may pronounce fifteen hundred letters." What a wonderful musical instrument. ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... diffuses itself over every Face. Wit, so used, is an Instrument of the sweetest Musick in the Hands of an Artist, commanding, soothing, and modulating the Passions into Harmony and Peace. Neither is this the only Use of it; 'tis a sharp Sword, as well as a musical Instrument, and ought to be drawn against Folly and Affectation. There is at the same time an humble Ignorance, a modest Weakness, that ought to be spar'd; they are unhappy already in the Consciousness of their own Defects, and 'tis fighting with the Lame and Sick to be severe upon them. The Wit that genteely ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... when the night had been spent, Dhananjaya, together with his brothers, paid homage unto Yudhishthira the just. And, O Bharata, at this moment, proceeding from the celestials there arose mighty and tremendous sounds of a musical instrument, and the rattling of car-wheels, and the tolling of bells. And there at all the beasts and beasts of prey and birds emitted separate cries. And from all sides in cars resplendent as the sun, hosts ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... is made of a musical instrument called kimor, which was probably the same as the kimmori, both being of great antiquity, and most likely ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... experiment made in the year 1829, on some of the Duke of Buckleuch's hunters. A gentleman went toward them in the field, but they were shy of his approach, as he was a stranger, and slowly retreated, till he sounded a small musical instrument, called a mouth AEolian harp. On hearing this, they immediately erected their heads and turned round. On his sounding it again, they approached nearer, when he began to retreat, and they to advance. Having gone over a paling, one of the horses came up to him, putting its mouth close to his breast, ...
— Minnie's Pet Horse • Madeline Leslie
... The legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin is by no means recent, nor is it confined to European peoples alone; in one form or another it exists among Asiatic, Indian, and Indo-Malayan races. In all the legends, the rats or mice are drawn together by sounds emanating from some kind of musical instrument. ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... strictly true; but that something about the young man—that hyperborean crispness, stringency, and charm, as of a well-braced musical instrument, which had awakened the interest of Henchard, and of Elizabeth-Jane and of the Three Mariners' jovial crew, at sight, made his unexpected presence here attractive to Lucetta. He hesitated, looked at the chair, thought there was no danger ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... no leakage anywhere in nature; that matter is not a source, but a transmitter of energy; and that the brain, so far from originating thought, is a mere machine responsive to something external to itself, a revealer of something which it does not produce, like a musical instrument. This "something" is the universal of thought, which is identified with the general logos of the fourth gospel. Moral perfection consists in assimilation to this; sin is the falling short of perfect ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... delicately tuned musical instrument. If you know the scales and the common chords, you can improvise nice little airs and charming variations. She's a sort of—well, a penny whistle, and the music you get depends not on her at all, but ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... heard him on board the liner, and had thought his voice the most wonderful I had ever met with. But now in that great resonant hall the magic of it was doubled. He played upon the souls of his hearers as on a musical instrument. At will he struck the chords of pride, fury, hate, and mad joy. Now they would be hushed in breathless quiet, and now the place would echo with savage assent. I remember noticing that the face of my neighbour, ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... this vibration because during the body's initial period of growth the bones increase in length to a much greater extent than do the sinews and muscles. Hence the latter arrive at a condition of elastic tension not unlike that of the strings of a musical instrument.10 ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... conscious states filing off on the stage of the cerebrum "in a dead march of mere effects," that it is not, as old Aristoxenus dreamed, merely a harmony resulting from the form and nature of the body in the same way that a tune springs from the consenting motions of a musical instrument, seems to be shown by facts of which we have direct knowledge in consciousness. We think that the mind is an independent force, dealing with intellectual products, weighing opposing motives, estimating moral qualities, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... experience the taste, or rather the odor, which goes before it. For it is an absolute condition that the feeling should be hazy, something in the nature of an odor; or, better still, the echo of an odor. No key of a musical instrument is to be touched; no definite features are to be drawn; the tone of mind alone is to be produced. The baron's dwelling gave the tone of mind for another world. He and his associates believed in another world, beyond the earth and the grave; on the basis of the ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... find sunshine in our life, and flowers about our path, we must be kindly affectioned one to another, pitiful, courteous, in our words. The man who goes through life saying cruel things is like a musical instrument out of tune, whose only sounds are discord. It is the kindly tongue which makes "the music of men's lives." Think what an unkind word can do! It can, and has, parted husband and wife, parent and child, ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... been very properly committed by Mr. Fang to the House of Correction for one month; with the appropriate and amusing remark that since he had so much breath to spare, it would be more wholesomely expended on the treadmill than in a musical instrument. He made no answer: being occupied mentally bewailing the loss of the flute, which had been confiscated for the use of the county: so Nancy passed on to the next cell, and ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... thought. She did not know how fearfully she had disclosed herself; she was too profoundly innocent. Her soul was no more ashamed than the fair shapes that walked in Eden without a thought of over-liberal loveliness. Having nobody to tell her story to,—having, as she said in her verses, no musical instrument to laugh and cry with her,—nothing, in short, but the language of pen and pencil,—all the veinings of her nature were impressed on these pages as those of a fresh leaf are transferred to the blank sheets which inclose it. ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... Lehrs arrived at dusk, rang the bell, and brought a leg of veal; Kietz brought some rum, sugar, and a lemon; Pecht supplied a goose; and Anders two bottles of the champagne with which he had been presented by a musical instrument-maker in return for a flattering article he had written about his pianos. Bottles from that stock were produced only on very great occasions. I soon threw the confounded Favorita aside, therefore, and entered ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... its legs, and on its head a crimson cap with white feather. As soon as this quaint little figure jumped out of the gourd he was followed by another, and another, and another, till there were a full score of them, all dressed exactly like the first, and each carrying a tiny musical instrument ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... banjo which I carried wrapped up under my arm. How she knew that it was a musical instrument I could not imagine; possibly, I thought, she may have seen me playing on it as I strolled about the environs of the town. Be that as it may, I offered no opposition to the bargain, and further intimated that I would reward her more substantially on our arrival. ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... donkeys feeding on it, and a cow or two, and at the side of the public road passing over it, the blind girl has sat down to rest awhile. She is a simple beggar, not a poetical or vicious one;—being peripatetic with musical instrument, she will, I suppose, come under the general term of tramp; a girl of eighteen or twenty, extremely plain-featured, but healthy, and just now resting, as any one of us would rest, not because she is much tired, but because the sun has but this moment come out after a shower, and the smell ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... aside his musical instrument and hurriedly dons an apron. TWEENY gives him the bird to pluck, and busies herself laying the ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... to the lawn, where the dew lay white. The freshness in the air, the glamour of the moonlight, and the fumes of the port combined to make him feel strangely rhumantic, and if he had possessed a musical instrument he would very likely have begun to play on it. He spent some moments tracking to and fro in the dew before he settled on the centre of the lawn as the most suitable spot for the act which he contemplated, for thence he would be able to turn his last looks towards Aurora's bedroom-window ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... has of adapting herself to any settled course was lost. The extreme sensitiveness produced by long periods of utter abstinence made the succeeding debauch more maddening and fatal. He was like a fine musical instrument, whose strings were every day alternating between extreme tension and perfect laxity. We have in his Journal many passages, of which the following is ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in the sun in her formal garden he quite knew how little even the tenderest consideration failed to disguise his treating her as the most exquisite of curiosities. The term of comparison most present to him was that of some obsolete musical instrument. The old-time order of her mind and her air had the stillness of a painted spinnet that was duly dusted, gently rubbed, but never tuned nor played on. Her opinions were like dried rose- leaves; her attitudes like British sculpture; her voice what ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... 87th St., N.Y. city, a lot of boys weekly papers and other reading matter, for some musical instrument in ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... in the flat now; it had been Grannie Amber's, and was old, but still it fulfilled its purpose of a musical instrument. It stood in the sitting-room, across one of the corners by the fire, and after dinner Marie played and Julia sang; and when she refused to sing more, it was Desmond's turn. He looked through Marie's pile of music, selected a song, and ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... disheartened. Thus, as Plato says, he was able to prove that oratory is the art of influencing men's minds, and to use it in its highest application, when it deals with men's passions and characters, which, like certain strings of a musical instrument, require a skilful and delicate touch. The secret of his power is to be found, however, as Thucydides says, not so much in his mere oratory as in his pure and blameless life, because he was so well known to be incorruptible, and indifferent to money; for though he made the city, which was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... the head of a frog. The body is nude, except a girdle, also in the form of a plait, supporting a flat piece intended to cover the privates, and two round ornaments on each side. The arms are extended from the body; the well drawn hands hold, one of them a short, round club, the other a musical instrument, of which one end is in the mouth and the other forms an enlargement like that of a flute, made of human bone. It is not probable that this is a pipe. Both thighs have an enlargement, and the toes are not marked in ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... the human race the voice has been the means by which it has most completely revealed itself, but the art is not in the voice, but in the feeling transferred. It is the same whether the medium be the voice, painting, sculpture, poetry or a musical instrument. We speak of a painting as being a great work of art, but the art is not in the painting, the art is the feeling of beauty which the painting awakes in the observer. When we listen to an orchestra the music is what we feel. Said Walt Whitman: ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... of small muscles and nerves so very supple, that it winds and turns like a serpent, with unconceivable mobility and pliantness. It performs in the mouth the same office which either the fingers or the bow of a master of music perform on a musical instrument: for sometimes it strikes the teeth, sometimes the roof of the mouth. There is a pipe that goes into the inside of the neck, called throat, from the roof of the mouth to the breast, which is made up of cartilaginous rings nicely set one within another, and lined within with ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... stood by the window—then stooped, looked askance at the sunset, at the fields, at the musical instrument. He reflected a moment, then ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... prime confidant of the Irish Marchioness. She affected enthusiasm about the poor sufferers. She had learnt Otaheitan, she lectured about the bread-fruit, and she played upon a barbarous thrum-thrum, the only musical instrument in those savage wastes, ironically called the Society Islands, because there is no society. She was dreadful. The Duke in despair took out his purse, poured forth from the pink and silver delicacy, worked by the slender fingers of Lady Aphrodite, a shower ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... kinds of grammatical knowledge. Grammar may be looked upon as a mere art, and, as taught at present in most schools, it is nothing but an art. We learn to play on a foreign language as we learn to play on a musical instrument, and we may arrive at the highest perfection in performing on any instrument, without having a notion of thorough bass or the laws of harmony. For practical purposes this purely empirical knowledge is all that is required. But though it would be a mistake ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... Europe were assembled at that place. A loud and varied murmur, resembling that of a thronged hive, floated from the camp of the crusaders to the neighbouring town of Scutari, and every now and then the deep tone was broken by some shriller sound, the note of some musical instrument, or the treble scream of some child or female, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... daubs, crudely coloured and gaudy. In the first, a red man was reposing serenely upon what appeared to be a range of mountains, with a musical instrument in his hand, a crown upon his head, and a smile upon his face. In the second, a similar man was screaming at the pitch of his lungs, while half-a-dozen black creatures were battering him with poles and prodding him ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... p. 12. The Psalms derived their name from the musical instrument to which they were sung. This was called in Hebrew nebel. It obtained the name from its resemblance to a bottle or flagon. Psaltery is the Greek translation, and hence ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... rags answered the purpose of blankets. The only articles of furniture and comfort were a primitive pipe moulded out of mud—the chilam or the gaddu as it is called by the Kakars—which occupied a prominent place in the dwelling, and a musical instrument placed in a receptacle in the wall of the cave. At the entrance of the cave a wall had been built for protection against ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Phonograph. The invention of the phonograph by Edison in 1878 marked a new era in the popularity and dissemination of music. Up to that time, household music was limited to those who were rich enough to possess a real musical instrument, and who in addition had the understanding and the skill to use the instrument. The invention of the phonograph has brought music to thousands of homes possessed of neither wealth nor skill. That the music reproduced by a phonograph is ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... beautiful Moon Daughters saw two men coming in they all stood up and bowed very low before them and treated them with great kindness. Every girl played for them her Musical Instrument, such as the Psalteries, the Cymbals, the Harp, the Organ, and the Tymbal, then they sang songs in ...
— Seven Maids of Far Cathay • Bing Ding, Ed.
... to express it. This Divine charity penetrated his whole interior, as fire penetrates a burning coal. Only by hearing the term of the love of God pronounced, he was moved and inflamed, and this movement made the affections of his soul thrill, as the strings of a musical instrument sound on being touched. ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... the schoolhouse they heard the music of the "band," as Julie had been pleased to call it. Hearing, Washington Washington played his own musical instrument with renewed vigor. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... like the blue, becoming first a blue-green, then a greeny-blue, then blue, there will come a moment when we are doubtful whether we can see any difference, and then a moment when we know that we cannot see any difference. The same thing happens in tuning a musical instrument, or in any other case where there is a continuous gradation. Thus self-evidence of this sort is a matter of degree; and it seems plain that the higher degrees are more to be ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... aged eighteen is not too old to learn how to play the piano, violin or any other musical instrument. There are thousands of stenographers who did not take up that profession until they were twenty-five or thirty years of age. They were firm believers in the adage, "It is never too late to learn." 2. Munson's appears to be the most popular system of shorthand. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... wishing a useful cow, and the other, the frivolous one, a piano. The author, in the old remorseless way, contrasts their subsequent careers, nothing but happiness and worth falling to the sensible girl who chose the cow, and nothing but disaster dogging the steps of the foolish desirer of the musical instrument. I do not think this to be good working morality, since proficiency on the piano can also be a step towards a livelihood and independence, and even Madame Schumann, one supposes, had to make a start somehow. The name of ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... were the people who at this time were wholly normal. The whole world seemed a great musical instrument, overstrung and giving out previously unknown harmonies and inharmonies. Amid the thunders of great crashing discords the individual note was almost unheard—but the individual note continued ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... NEW YEAR is here, and we greet it with the "sound of Cornet" (or any other musical instrument, for all of which Oliver Ditson & Co. provide the ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 3, March 1888 • Various
... impressive. He was already the author of a cheap songbook, "The Paul Dresser Songster" ("All the Songs Sung in the Show"), and some copies of this he had with him, one of which he gave me. But we having no musical instrument of any kind, he taught me some of the melodies "by ear." The home in which by force of poverty we were compelled to live was most unprepossessing and inconvenient, and the result of his coming could but be our request for, or at least the obvious need of, assistance. Still he was as much ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... is a musical instrument, an organ of exquisite contrivance and adaptation of parts. Breath being the material of its sound, vocal training should begin with the function of breathing. Vigorous respiration is as essential to good elocution as ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of a cabinet and musical instrument maker at Grottkau, in Silesia, was born on June 1, 1769. As his father intended him for the medical profession, he was sent in 1781 to the Latin school at Breslau, and some years later to the University at Vienna. Having already been encouraged by the rector in ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... better part," he said. "Yet Borrowdean is one of those men who know very well how to play upon the heartstrings. A human being is like a musical instrument to him. He knows how to find out the harmonies ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that had fallen upon Mrs. Armine had made her unusually thoughtful, unusually introspective, unusually sensitive to all influences from without; had left her vibrating like a musical instrument that had been powerfully struck by a ruthless hand. The gust of fury that had shaken her had stirred her to a fierce and powerful life, had roused up all her secret energies of temper, of will of desire, all her greed to get the best out of life, to wring dry, ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... have seen nothing," answered Donal, "—only heard something.—One night, the first I was there indeed, I heard the sound of a far-off musical instrument, faint and sweet." ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... Sergeant-Major, and he's invented a musical instrument of his own. It's made out of a cardboard box, some pins and two or three elastic bands. There it is—you'll find ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... was a pretty dance, of a modified Oriental character, by one of the damsels. For this, as for the singing, the only musical instrument used was a guitar, which had seven strings, tuned in Spanish fashion, and was rather weak in tone. I wished it had been a powerful Panormo, which would have exactly suited the timbre of these voices. The gypsies were honestly interested in all I could tell them about their kind in other ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... more count than the beasts of the field. In every intellectual exercise they are hopelessly incompetent; no Jew can play chess; no Jew can learn languages; no Jew has ever appeared in the smallest part in any theatrical performance; no Jew can give or take any pleasure connected with any musical instrument. These people are our subjects; and we understand them. We accept full responsibility for treating such ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... actual change to a wholly undreamed-of and renewed condition of human body and soul: as if he saw the heavy yet decrepit old Roman architecture about him, rebuilding on an intrinsically better pattern. Could it have been actually on a new musical instrument that Flavian had first heard the novel accents of his verse? And still Marius noticed there, amid all its richness of expression and imagery, that firmness of outline he had always relished so much in the composition of [115] ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... treated the matter very calmly. The exception, who was supposed to be wanting in his wits (he played on the barrel-organ), determined to do his best to rescue his Royal Master; and an idea occurred to him. He had noticed that when he performed on his musical instrument those who, perforce, were obliged to listen to him acted strangely. Some of his audiences had frowned, others had shaken their fists at him, and all had gone quickly away. Only once had a loiterer stayed behind, smiling ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... extempore, to their feelings in the form of {Schnaderhpfel} (lit., reapers [ country-people's] dancing-songs) or "Tyrolese ditties." They have all the same rhythm, are sung to the accompaniment of the cithern, the favorite musical instrument of the mountaineers, and recite in verse, more or less rude, the interests of mountain-life, such as the adventures of lovers, and ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel
... how to play a musical instrument. Be able to do sight reading. Have a knowledge of note signs ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... was in a garret, with a half-starved musician who made violins. A violin is a musical instrument that miauls when you touch it just as we cats do, and it was amusing to live with a man who could make things with voices like my own. He was very poor, and often had not enough to eat, but he always got me my cat's-meat; ...
— Pussy and Doggy Tales • Edith Nesbit
... signifies trouble. Any musical instrument, a wedding. Bird, suit at law. Cat, deception. Dog, faithful friend. Horse, important news. Snake, an enemy. Turtle, long life. Rabbit, luck. House, offer of marriage, or a removal. Flag, some surprise or a journey ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... beautiful girls; Praxiteles designed them all, one after another; then from all these diverse types of beauty, each one of which had its defects, he formed a single faultless beauty and created Venus. The first man who created a musical instrument and who gave to that art its rules and its laws, had for a long time listened to the murmuring of reeds and the singing of birds. Thus the poets who understand life, after having known much of love, more or ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... said, at Athens a great number of beautiful girls; Praxiteles drew them all one after another; then from these diverse types of beauty, each one of which had its defects, he formed a single faultless beauty and created Venus. The man who first created a musical instrument, and who gave to harmony its rules and its laws, had for a long time listened to the murmuring of reeds and the singing of birds. Thus the poets, who understand life, after knowing much of love, more or less transitory, after feeling that sublime exaltation which real passion ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset |
