"Vocal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... guaranteed, proved ghost, but; only a ghost, alas! Only that. In his first visit Soames was a creature of flesh and blood, whereas the creatures among whom he was projected were but ghosts, I take it—solid, palpable, vocal, but unconscious and automatic ghosts, in a building that was itself an illusion. Next time that building and those creatures will be real. It is of Soames that there will be but the semblance. I wish I could think him destined to revisit ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... big mottled beef walked out from among a thousand others and stood entranced over the simple song. In my younger days my voice was considered musical; I could sing the folk-songs of my country better than the average, and when the herdsmen left us, I was pleased to see that my vocal efforts fascinated the late arrival from Texas. Within a week I could call him out with a song, when I fell so deeply in love with the broad-horn Texan that his life was spared through my disloyalty. In the daily issue to the army we kept him back as long as possible; but when our ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... Gladiators. From the best information on the subject we glean that Spartacus was in figure tall, with a voice appreciably deep. I am not tall, nor burly, although of suitable height for my breadth of frame. Nor can I, without vocal strain, attain the rumbling bass tones so favoured by many elocutionists. But I have been led to believe that a sonorousness of delivery and a nice use of gesticulation and modulation compensate in me for a lack of bulk, creating as it were an ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... on. The oratorios of the Messiah, Judas Maccabeus, and Samson were to be performed under HERSCHEL'S direction, with an orchestra of nearly one hundred pieces. The scores and vocal parts of these CAROLINA copied with her own hands, and the soprani were instructed by her, she being the leading soloist. Along with the music went the astronomy. Not only were new telescopes made, but they ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... include various numbers to suit the tastes of the hostess, and those of her guests if she happens to know what they are. Sometimes there are vocal selections in addition to the instrumental selections. All professional singers and players are paid for their services, unless they themselves offer them free. It is very bad form indeed, to invite a singer or player as ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... from four quarters; It will not be advised, It will not be without advice. It commences its journey Above the marble rock, It is sonorous, it is dumb, It is mild, It is strong, it is bold, When it glances over the land, It is silent, it is vocal, It is clamorous, It is the most noisy On the face of the earth. It is good, it is bad, It is extremely injurious. It is concealed, Because sight cannot perceive it. It is noxious, it is beneficial; It is yonder, ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... that languor! the rest of human limbs and hearts, at utter need, not in sweet meadows or soft air, but in harbor slime and biting fog; so drawing their breath once more, to go out again, without lament, from between the two skeletons of pier-heads, vocal with wash of under wave, into the gray troughs of tumbling brine; there, as they can, with slacked rope, and patched sail, and leaky hull, again to roll and stagger far away amidst the wind and salt sleet, from dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn, winning day ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... a brilliant mind; as a composer he has talent, though he will never attain to the first rank. Without Rossini, without Meyerbeer, he might perhaps have been taken for a man of genius. He has one advantage over those men,—he is in vocal music what Paganini is on the violin, Liszt on the piano, Taglioni in the ballet, and what the famous Garat was; at any rate he recalls that great singer to those who knew him. His is not a voice, my friend, it is a soul. When its song replies to certain ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... last voyage was going to cost, he uttered a prolonged "Oh!" which extended throughout his vocal gamut. ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... temple that for size, proportions and style shall attract, surprise and dazzle all beholders"; something "unique externally, and in the interior peculiar, imposing and grand." The "clergymen" must be of the best as regards mental and vocal equipment, and there should be a choir such as "was never before organized." A college, too, would be of great value if funds for it could ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... always attired in the height of the fashion, and in manner and appearance much more of a Frenchman than an Italian. He was mercilessly satirical on the failures of his pupils, to whom (having reduced them, by the most ridiculous imitation of their unfortunate vocal attempts, to an almost inaudible utterance of pianissimo pipings) he would exclaim, "Ma per carita! aprite la bocca! che cantate come ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... was at its lowest ebb. There were one or two ambitious orchestra conductors in America; one in Chicago trying to introduce the Wagnerian polyphonic school, and perhaps one or two in New York; but the public clamoured after divas, prima donnas and tenors with temperaments and vocal pyrotechnic skill. For orchestral music there was little demand. Wagner was as yet unknown to the public—certainly he was unheard except on the rarest occasions and the majority of musicians did not like him because he ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... infinite dung, no end of calumnies and stupidities accumulated upon him. For the class we speak of, class of "flunkies doing saturnalia below stairs," is numerous, is innumerable; and can well remunerate a "vocal flunky" that will serve their purposes on ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... be pulled, a professor of anatomy performed the operation because he knew the root from the crown, while a dentist handled freight in a warehouse. A professor of mathematics was put in charge of motor vehicles, while a machinist arranged the programme for a vocal concert. A professor of languages would be made chief accountant, while an expert accountant was put in charge of a moving-picture machine. Professor Brown was given charge in France; Professor Greene in England, and Professor Black in Italy; ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... speaking to you at this moment, but if you were to alter, in the minutest degree, the proportion of the nervous forces now active in the two nerves which supply the muscles of my glottis, I should become suddenly dumb. The voice is produced only so long as the vocal chords are parallel; and these are parallel only so long as certain muscles contract with exact equality; and that again depends on the equality of action of those two nerves I spoke of. So that a change of the minutest ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... got his eldest daughter; he had got your humble servant. A horrid smile of enjoyment overspread the reverend gentleman's face, as he surveyed us from the opposite end of the room, and opened his vocal fire on ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... and Vietnam signed a joint accord on marine seismic activities in the Spratly Islands; China occupies some of the Paracel Islands also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan; China and Taiwan have become more vocal in rejecting both Japan's claims to the uninhabited islands of Senkaku-shoto (Diaoyu Tai) and Japan's unilaterally declared exclusive economic zone in the East China Sea, the site of intensive hydrocarbon prospecting; certain islands in the Yalu and Tumen rivers are in an uncontested dispute with ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... of a piece of music is determined by the particular character of the rendering it requires; the question, therefore, comes to this: does the sustained tone, the vocal element, the cantilena predominate, or the rhythmical movement? (Figuration). The conductor should ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... entertained, however, during those waking hours with a serenade such as few civilized ears ever listen to. This was nothing else than a vocal concert performed by all the dogs of the village, and as they amounted to nearly two thousand the orchestra was a ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Here he appears as an uncertain but yet ardent disciple of the Porch. His uncertainty is shown by his inability to answer many grave doubts, as: Why is the future revealed by presages? [48] why are the oracles, once so vocal, now silent? [49] his enthusiasm by his portraiture of Cato, who was regarded by the Stoics as coming nearest of all men to their ideal Wise Man. Cato is to him a peg on which to hang the virtues and paradoxes of ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... | q e e | q q | "Ah, the autumn days fade out, and the nights grow chill | ^ | ^ | ^ ^ | | e e e e | e e e e | q q | And we walk no more to gether as we used of yore When the rose was new in blossom and the sun was on the hill, And the eves were sweetly vocal with the happy whippoorwill, And the land-breeze piped its sweetest ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... and they understood. But with understanding came, apparently, a species of paralysis of the vocal organs. Zoeth turned pale and leaned back in his chair. Shadrach's mouth opened and closed several times, ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sweet to remember thee, and God's Zion, with [1] healing on her wings. May her walls be vocal with sal- vation; and ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... country. The late April noon gleamed like a frosty morning, but the air, though tonic, was kind. The road ran over sweeps of moorland where curlews wailed, and into lowland pastures dotted with very white, very vocal lambs. The young grass had the warm fragrance of new milk. As he went he munched his buns, for he had resolved to have no plethoric midday meal, and presently he found the burnside nook of his fancy, and halted to smoke. On a patch of turf close to a grey stone ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... fireworks, completed the scene. The Chevalier de Grammont always made one of the company, and it was very seldom that he did not add something of his own invention, agreeably to surprise by some unexpected stroke of magnificence and gallantry. Sometimes he had complete concerts of vocal and instrumental music, which he privately brought from Paris, and which struck up on a sudden in the midst of these parties; sometimes he gave banquets, which likewise came from France, and which, even in the midst of London, surpassed the king's collations. These ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... was first away, her decks crammed with soldiers bound for Central Asia. They treated us to a vocal concert as the ship left port, and I paced the moonlit deck for some time, listening to the sweet sad airs sung with the pathos and harmony that seems born in every Russian, high or low. I retired to rest with the "Matoushka Volga," a boat-song ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... to be singing. The melodic wraiths float from the key of G flat—I use "key" in the old-fashioned sense, for the word, like the thing itself, is fast disappearing—through one and four sharps back to two and three flats, employing all signatures but that of C major. Six sets of severed vocal organs meandering in space would hardly ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... lights blaze at the palace windows, and the trumpets sound out as the feast proceeds within. He rages, and a theme (f) quoted is abruptly transformed into (g) as he bitterly casts upon Ortrud the blame for their downfall. The vocal parts are neither recitative nor true song; the orchestral tide is developed in much the same symphonic style as in Tannhaeuser. We are still no nearer to the perfect blending of the orchestral stream and the vocal parts that we get in Tristan and in the Mastersingers. ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... deserted; on the shore No gaily bathing men and maidens leave Food for the swans; its reedy bowers no more Are vocal: seeing this, ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... XI. The Vocal Parts of an Entertainment, called Apollo and Daphne, or the Burgo Master Trick'd; performed at the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... Whippoorwill, in this part of the country, is first heard in May, and continues vocal until the middle of July. He begins to sing at dusk, and we usually hear his note soon after the Veery, the Philomel of our summer evenings, has become silent. His song consists of three notes, in a sort of triple or waltz time, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... think there's nobody like Mrs. Grubb; she has a wonderful following, and it's growing all the time; I took this house to be near her. Good afternoon. By the way, if you or any of your friends should require any vocal culture, you couldn't do better than take of Madame Goldmarker in No. 17. She can make anybody sing, they say. I'm taking of her right along, and my voice has about doubled in size. I ought to be leading the Kipling Brothers now, but my ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... "Lady, how beauteous to the view Those glossy plumes of sable hue! Thy features how divinely fair! With what a shape, and what an air! Could you but frame your voice to sing, You'd have no rival on the wing." But she, now willing to display Her talents in the vocal way, Let go the cheese of luscious taste, Which Renard seized with greedy haste. The grudging dupe now sees at last That for ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... sale, and installed it in the clubroom, hoping to profit thereby. Again Caldew was conscious of the same distinct air of constraint immediately he entered. Two or three men who were talking and laughing loudly became as mute as though their vocal organs had been suddenly smitten with paralysis. The village butcher, who was at the billiard table in the act of attempting some complicated stroke, stopped abruptly with his cue in mid air, and gazed at the detective with open mouth and a look of apprehension ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... ushered in with majestic and deafening fireworks, and the 'Hail Mary' rendered by the beautiful band of the——Infantry regiment. There will be an intentional mass, grand vocal and instrumental music, solemn vespers, the Gospel preached, and ribbons, which have been placed round the neck of the image of ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... be less so in France, where a beautiful practice has always prevailed of giving 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 relic, or a funeral ring. I presume, therefore, that La Pucelle must have borne the baptismal name of Jeanne Jean; the ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... recovering her former "Liberty," and hence the necessity of continuing the place as a tavern merely, with its seductive offer of "coffee and tea at any hour." Even without a license, however, a concert was announced for the night of August 30th, 1759, the law being evaded by the statement that the vocal and instrumental programme was to be given by "a select number of gentlemen for their own private diversion." As there is no record of any other entertainment having been given at the E'eathers, it is probable that this attempt to dodge the law met with condign punishment, and resulted in ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... disposition to have the house clean in spite of the ever-encroaching dirt. And so she scrubbed and scolded, and scolded and scrubbed, the scrubbing and scolding agreeing in time and rhythm. The scolding was the vocal music, the scrubbing an accompaniment. The concordant discord was perfect. Just at the moment I speak of there was a lull in her scolding. The symphonious scrubbing went on as usual. Julia, wishing to divert the next thunder-storm from herself, ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... rim of the Bad Lands and there were no birds to sing; but crows, wheeling about a sandstone summit, flung doleful voices downward into the morning hush—the spirit of the place grown vocal. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... rendered possible that excellence in all the arts of civilization which raises him so far above the savage, and is perhaps but the forerunner of a higher intellectual and moral advancement. The perfection of his vocal organs has first led to the formation of articulate speech, and then to the development of those exquisitely toned sounds, which are only appreciated by the higher races, and which are probably destined for more elevated ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... expected, and when the labour of an entire morning resulted in nothing, Palmer Billy grew impatient, and said it was a visitation upon them for working in the holiday season. He told the others they could stay, if they liked, but he was off to give the festivities at Birralong the benefit of his vocal art. Peters and Tony fell in with the proposal, and started off without giving Walker time to get ahead of them and warn Gleeson to keep out ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... with matting. The interior was elegantly fitted up, and lighted by large numbers of glass chandeliers; the sides were richly decorated, and here were soon altars overhung with gorgeous drapery, and conservatories full of flowering plants, while concerts of vocal and instrumental music were going on in several parts of the building. There were also rooms where light refreshments, such as tea, coffee, and fruit, could be obtained without charge. Those who required more substantial fare could procure it at booths outside ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... drawing-room had not only been transformed into a study; it had been rechristened 'the study.' And in speaking of the apartment to each other or to Sarah, Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie employed a vocal inflection of peculiar impressiveness. Sarah entered the study with awe, the ladies with pride. Henry sat in it nearly every night and laboured hard, with no result whatever. If the ladies ventured to question him about his progress, he replied with false gaiety ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... here and made slides of every different kind of tissue I could find. The anatomy is perfectly clear cut, no objections there. These people are very similar to Earth-type monkeys in structure, with heart and lungs and vocal cords and all. But I can't find any reason why they should be dying. ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... all the sacrifices he made for the dear lad. He will tell you that he often went without his beer and tobacco in order to pay for the music lessons that he forced the boy to take. He will tell you that he wanted to get him into the Government School of Music, for that he possessed great vocal and instrumental talent, and he cherished the hope of one day seeing him a great composer, like Weber or Mozart. I expect that this flow of self-praise will melt the heart of your client, for he will see that his son had made an effort to rise out of the mire ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... man behind the alder screen, his horse standing belly deep in the water. It was the cavalier of the ostrich-feathers; and then, through the white trunks of the birches, he caught the flutter of a woman's gown. Constans tried to shout, to call out, but the vocal chords refused to relax, the sounds rattled ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... debonair wooers the male birds are! Dressed in their gay attire, they display it to the best advantage before the fair sex. Is there anything so interesting or so amusing as bird courtship? The rollicking song of the male, an exhibition of his vocal powers worthy of a virtuoso, is accompanied by the most comical gymnastics—bowing, scraping, and side-stepping like a dancing-master; all of which, I am sure, is highly appreciated by the demure little lady. I have seen birds courting in the stately ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... things and stay to tea, at least," urged Felicity, as hospitably as her strained vocal chords ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... "talk"; that was a general word in the Tr'en language, and Didyak had used a specific meaning, roughly: "gain information from, by peaceful and vocal means." Korvin filed it away for future reference. "Why did the Ruler not come ...
— Lost in Translation • Larry M. Harris
... followed the vocal party, came hurrying along, helter-skelter, as if no drilling had ever been thought necessary in their military education; but, while we were remarking the "admired disorder" of their march, we heard their commanding officer's voice loud ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... Africans have become 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 rule during the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... passage as this has been quoted, to set down what 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, ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... belongs to this. Inasmuch as in general in every onomatopoetic attempt we have to do with a sound-imitation or the reproducing of the oscillations of the tympanum as nearly as possible by means of the vocal cords, all attempts of the speechless child to speak are ultimately of onomatopoetic character in the earliest period; but from the present time on sound-imitation retires before the reasoning activity, which is now shooting forth vigorously in the ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... people may be more able because of longer practice. Education has nothing to do with it, though education may facilitate verbal expression. The essential matter is the inward prompting, under God's guidance. The Book of Discipline says, "Our conviction is that the Spirit of God is in all, and that vocal utterance comes when this Spirit works within us. The varying needs of a meeting can be best supplied by different personalities, and a meeting is enriched by the sharing of any living ...
— An Interpretation of Friends Worship • N. Jean Toomer
... of mirth, From the vocal vales ascending, Hail thy birth. Happy birds in echoing bowers, Waken all their tuneful powers, And spontaneous music springs From all animated things,— Verdant hills, Tuneful ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... of an emerald, if one turns from the high-road into a lane. The trees, in these Devonshire and Normandy by-paths, have ways of their own of vaulting into space; the hedges are thicker, sweeter, more vocal with insect and song notes than elsewhere; the roadway itself is softer to the foot, and narrower—only two are expected to ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... on the happy side of nature is common, in their hours, to all created things. Some are vocal under a good influence, are pleasing whenever they are pleased, and hand on their happiness to others, as a child who, looking upon lovely things, looks lovely. Some leap to the strains with unapt foot, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Francis Wilson grow green with envy. Smith was the Pantaloon, and obligingly entertained the audience, by special request, with the song of "Mr. Dooley," in the chorus of which the audience joined with vigor. The song is not new, but Smith's particular version, as well as his vocal rendition, was. The dwarf, who posed somewhat as a magician and sleight-of-hand man, undertook for some reason or other to attempt the great Indian box trick. Two gentlemen from the audience were invited to come on the ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... vocal performance, and could not forbear a smile as he thought of the young man's three songs with the same accompaniment to each. Suppressing, however, his inclination to laugh, he asked Barty to have a drink, which invitation was promptly accepted, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... poetic effusions, in which, from constant habit, some of them have become such adepts, that they with facility speak extempore poetry; those who are unable to 206 converse in this manner are less esteemed. Their evening amusements consist in dancing and music, vocal and instrumental. Generally, throughout all the Arab provinces, but particularly in Suse, among the Mograffra Arabs, the Woled Abbusebah, and Woled Deleim, the whole country is in a blaze of light of a summer's evening; music, dancing, and rejoicing, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... meditation, let the person rouse himself from things temporal, and let him collect himself within himself ....Here let him hearken to the voice of God...as though there were no other in the world save God and himself." St. Teresa found happiness only in "shutting herself up within herself." Vocal prayer could not satisfy her, and she adopted mental prayer. The four stages of her experience—which she named "recollectedness," "quietude" (listening rather than speaking), "union" (blissful sleep with the faculties of the mind still), "ecstasy or rapture"—are but ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... cottage chimney rings, Though only vocal with four fiddle-strings: And see, the poor blind fiddler draws his bow, And lifts intent his time-denoting toe; While yonder maid, as blythe as birds in June, You almost hear her whistle to the tune! Hard by, a lad, in imitative guise, Fixed, fiddle-like, the broken ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... nightingales on their tree-tops. And indeed, it would seem as if the mountain people were always calling to one another across intervening valleys, always singing and whistling and shouting over their work in a way that gives tone to the whole vocal mechanism. Witness Welsh penillion singing. And wherever this fine physical endowment goes hand in hand with a delicate ear and a poetic temperament, you get your great vocalist, your Sims Reeves or your Patti. But in England proper it was only in the cathedral towns ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... pouting lips; unbeautiful to look upon, but pious, wise, silent, and with a terrible blaze of fighting-talent in him; full of obedience, of endurance, and yet of unsubduable "silent rage" (which has brooked even the vocal rage of Friedrich, on occasion); a really curious old Hussar General. He is now a kind of mythical or demigod personage among the Prussians; and was then (1779), and ever after the Seven-Years War, regarded popularly as their ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Appendix - Frederick The Great—A Day with Friedrich.—(23d July, 1779.) • Thomas Carlyle
... many trumpet-calls to action. All great languages invariably utter great things, and command them; they cannot be mimicked but by obedience; the breath of them is inspiration because it is not only vocal, but vital; and you can only learn to speak as these men spoke, by becoming what these ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... praise? Notes inspiring holy love, Notes that wing their heavenly ways To mend the choirs above. Orpheus could lead the savage race, And trees uprooted left their place Sequacious of the lyre: But bright Cecilia raised the wonder higher: When to her Organ vocal breath was given An angel heard, and straight appear'd— Mistaking Earth ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... the "Normals" held the Fort. The aim had not been to foster theatrical tastes, nor to produce startling dramatic effects, but to render in a natural and easy manner, historic, patriotic and practical selections, both of poetry and prose. Music, vocal and instrumental, lent its ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 08, August, 1885 • Various
... the sounding rain is occasionally heard on the part of a flabby, moist creature unable to restrain its sentiments until the approach of evening. But as the sun sets, each of the countless host utters a song of thankfulness and pleasure. To the unappreciative it may appear merely an inharmonious vocal go-as-you-please, in which each frog is the embodiment of the idea that upon its jubilant efforts the honour and reputation of the race as vocalists depend. But to one class of listener the opera is decently if not scientifically constituted. There is ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... yells" of the United States and Canada offer an inviting field for study in linguistic atavism and barbaric vocal expression. The New York World Almanac for 1895 contains a list of the "yells" of some three hundred colleges and universities in the United States. Out of this great number, in which there is a plenitude of "Rah! rah! rah!" the ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... fatiguing walk our hero enjoyed the sensation of riding. The road was a pleasant one, the day was bright with sunshine and the air vocal with the songs of birds. For a time houses were met at rare intervals, but after a while it became evident that they were approaching a town of ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... child does not perceive the effort that the performance costs and, therefore, as far as his consciousness is concerned, is deprived of the force of his mother's example, or (b) they groan aloud over their burdens and make their daily martyrdom vocal. Either way is wrong, for it is a mistake not to let a child see that your steady performance of tasks, which cannot be always delightful, is a result of self-discipline; and it is equally a mistake to let him think that this discipline is one against which you ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... 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 ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... short lyric containing some pleasant thought or sweet sentiment daintily expressed; applied also to vocal music of a ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... metaphysical background, for which I need only mention the names of Descartes, who died in 1650, and Gassendi, who died in 1655. And then there was also the new methodological approach, that critical empiricism whose most vocal exponent was Francis Bacon, which led directly to the founding of the Royal Society in 1660 and its subsequent incorporation. These phases of seventeenth-century thought and activity I do ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... from each of the ladies who first sipped by way of pledging me. During supper, which for number and variety of dishes exceeded any thing I had hitherto met with in the country, the girls played on the flute and sung several airs, but there was nothing very captivating either in the vocal or instrumental part of the music. We passed a most convivial evening free from any reserve or restraint, but on going away I was particularly desired by Van not to take any notice of what I had seen, apprehensive, I suppose, that their brother officers might condemn their want of prudence ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... lasted on the second day. They consisted of speeches, poems, disputations, and all the other forms of learned gaiety wherein our academic predecessors took such unwearying delight; there was 'music too, vocal and instrumental, in the balustrade corridor opposite to the Vice-Chancellor's seat'. And those who took part had among them some who bore famous names; the great preacher, South, was Public Orator; among ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... Then the buds break for very joy, and timid green things push up through the leaf-mold; and from the swamps the little frogs begin to pipe, at first in solo, but soon in exultant chorus, till the whole moist night is vocal, and then every one knows that the sugar time is over, and troughs and spiles are gathered up, and with sap-barrels and kettles, are stored in the back shed ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... program will probably be the soloist—say, a coloratura soprano. Your first remark should be that you don't really care for the human voice—the reason being, of course, that symphonic Music, ABSOLUTE music, has spoiled you for things like vocal gymnastics. This leads your bewildered friend to ask you what sort of soloist ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... stupid sheep lay on the plains, little lambs rollicked out their short-lived youth around them, and no premonition floated over from the adjoining pea-patch, nor any misgiving of approaching mutton marred their happy heyday. Straight through the piny forests, straight past the vocal orchards, right in among the robins and the jays and the startled thrushes, we dashed inexorable, and made harsh dissonance in the wild-wood orchestra; but not for that was the music hushed, nor did ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... she had," replied the duc, 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 ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... the eye. Generally, the meaning that we find in such productions, the appeal that they make to the understanding or feelings, is as great a source of interest to us as their intrinsic beauty. Poetry and vocal music are greatly dependent for their effect upon the meaning they convey in words; painting and sculpture, upon the ideas or sentiments they suggest. In all four, however, and most decidedly in music unaccompanied by words, the appeal is frequently ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... if they can. Whenever a person proclaims to you 'In worldly matters I'm a child,' you consider that that person is only a-crying off from being held accountable and that you have got that person's number, and it's Number One. Now, I am not a poetical man myself, except in a vocal way when it goes round a company, but I'm a practical one, and that's my experience. So's this rule. Fast and loose in one thing, fast and loose in everything. I never knew it fail. No more will you. Nor no one. With which caution to the unwary, my dear, I take the liberty ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... so frivolous and locoed by the electric lights and the noises of the phonographs and the second-story railroads that I forgot one of the crying needs of my Western system of natural requirements. I never was no hand to deny myself the pleasures of sociable vocal intercourse with friends and strangers. Out in the Territories when I meet a man I never saw before, inside of nine minutes I know his income, religion, size of collar, and his wife's temper, and how much he pays for clothes, alimony, and chewing tobacco. It's a gift with me not to be penurious ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... hitherto failed to take part in the music of its fellows, but henceforward will chime in. Probably there is also a subsidiary, but in its context not less prominent meaning—namely, that, while the several poets (such as Chatterton, Sidney, and Lucan) had each a vocal sphere of his own, apposite to his particular poetic quality, the sphere which Keats is now to control had hitherto remained unoccupied because no poet of that special type of genius which it demanded had as yet appeared. Its affinity was for Keats, and for no one else. This is ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... We must invite her to tea to-morrow," he said to me in a whisper that shook the Nissen hut to its foundations. Slingswivel was no vocal lightweight. Those people in Thanet and Kent who used to write to the papers saying they could hear the guns in the Vimy Ridge and Messines offensives were wrong. What they really heard was Major Slingswivel at Nullepart ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... scope and the limits of an individual's character and achievement. It tells "how much" and, in the most general way, "what" his capacities are. Thus a man born with a normal vocal apparatus can speak; a man born with normal vision can see. But what language he shall speak, and what sights he shall see, depend on the social and geographical situation in which he happens to be placed. Again, if a man is born with a "high general intelligence," ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... insistently as darkness fell, and Siena grew vocal with that shrill diversity of sounds that breaks, on summer nights, from every cleft of the masonry in old Italian towns. Then the moon rose, unfolding depth by depth the lines of the antique land; and Ralph, ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... decidedly. "I've set my heart on studying vocal music. I have always said that I should go to a conservatory, and since Eleanor's father has given me so much encouragement, I've made up my mind to become a concert singer if possible. I'll stay a year in the conservatory at least, and at ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... Institute it was thought that it would be a good thing for her to take vocal lessons to strengthen her throat and lungs. This training was given simply for the sake of her health, and with no expectation that she would ever sing in public, but it soon became evident that she had musical ability of no small ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... throbbeth in silent veins, 'Tis vocal without noise; It gushed o'er Manassas' solemn plains From the blood of the Maryland boys. That blood shall cry aloud and rise With an everlasting threat— By the death of the brave, by the God in the skies, "There's life in ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... adolescent students in any subject, in philology just as much as in comparative anatomy, and in history just as much as in economics. The cheapening of printing, paper, and, above all, of illustration has done away with the last excuse for the vocal course of instruction and the lecturer's diagrams. But it has not done away ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... between 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 ocean, and ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... might as well talk to a carrot as try an' get sense out of this runt of a feller," said Bill, disgusted. "Come an' see if we can't find someone that it won't bust a man's vocal cords gettin' information ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... soap and towel for the lavatory. "But keep the story. I shouldn't like to get interested in boy tennis just now. We must forget—" proclaimed Jane in tones so dramatic a poet calendar on the wall trembled in the vocal waves. "Forget! forget——" and Jane was outside the door with a sweeping wave of her big fuzzy towel and a rather alarming thrust of ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... vocal, because, on account of its articulative powers, it is capable of becoming detrimental to morals—its tendency to this, as discoverable by an analysis of ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... quite a study, varying from the mild sniff to the stentorian snort, which startled the echoes and hoisted the performer erect to accuse his neighbor of the deed, magnanimously forgive him, and wrapping the drapery of his couch about him, lie down to vocal slumber. After listening for a week to this band of wind instruments, I indulged in the belief that I could recognize each by the snore alone, and was tempted to join the chorus by breaking out with John ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... such an appeal as men are rarely able to make, because a regenerated life was also vocal in utterance. To him a miracle seemed to have been wrought, and he listened to each word as if to a reprieve from a death ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... to reduce the difficulty of learning music to the lowest possible point, and so to bring the most delightful of the arts within the reach of the largest possible number of people. Hence, although he maintains the fitness of his scheme for instrumental as well as vocal performances, it is clearly the latter which he has most at heart, evidently for the reason that this is the kind of music most accessible to the thousands, and it was always the thousands of whom Rousseau thought. This is the true distinction of music, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... breathing exercises and tried a few three-note vocal exercises, and was delighted that her voice seemed clearer than it had ever sounded ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... is more than this; originally, at least in many cases, it was not this at all. The written signs represented not sounds, but ideas themselves; if they were intended to correspond directly with anything, it was with the rude gestures that signified ideas and had nothing to do with their vocal expression. It was not until later that these written symbols came to correspond to vocal sounds and even to-day they do so imperfectly; languages that are largely phonetic are the exception. The result is, as I have said, that ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... find his opponent lying dead before him, the sliver of flint buried in his heart. He staggered to his feet and tried to speak. His vocal cords refused to act and he massaged his ...
— B. C. 30,000 • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... a small hill now called Monte Rotondo. We may take our Horace from our pocket, and feel, as with our Wordsworth at Dove Cottage, with our Scott at Ashestiel, that we are gazing on the hills, the streams, and valleys, which received the primal outpourings of their muse, and are for ever vocal with its memories. ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... shot. Buffaloes and other large game were also numerous in this region, and in the water crocodiles and hippopotami sported about everywhere, while aquatic birds of every shape and size rendered the air vocal with their cries. Sometimes these feathered denizens of the swamp arose, when startled, in a dense cloud so vast that the mighty rush of their wings was almost ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... here reached an extreme which is contrary to the very construction of the human vocal organs. Scarcely is moderate and natural compass of tone still permitted, even in a song. In every age the song-composer had been allowed to construct his melodies out of the fewest possible tones. While the elder Bach ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... not reply. The orchestra of the Flower Garden was of a calibre that discouraged vocal competition; and she was having, moreover, too much difficulty in adjusting her feet to Mr. Cracknell's erratic dance-steps to employ her attention elsewhere. They manoeuvred jerkily past the table where Miss Mabel Hobson, the Flower Garden's newest "hostess," sat watching the ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... tooth-breaking biscuit; and the Bedawin working and walking 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 a replica of the Sadr-basin below the Hism, even to the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... of Israel passed through the Red Sea!" The auditors, for the moment, are as Egyptians to him, and he rides over our necks in triumph. There is no mistaking him.—B—— has a strong expression of sense in his countenance, and it is confirmed by his singing. The foundation of his vocal excellence is sense. He sings with understanding, as Kemble delivered dialogue. He would sing the Commandments, and give an appropriate character to each prohibition. His nation, in general, have not ever-sensible countenances. How should they?—but you seldom see a silly expression ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... says, and so I mount and bid him follow along behind. By vocal suasion and a liberal application of his cruel, triple-thonged, raw-hide whip, he urges his well-nigh staggering animal into a canter, lifting his forefeet clear of the ground seemingly by the bridle at every jump. Suspicious as to his lank and angular steed's sure-footedness under the strain, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... swayings of the body and occasional choral interruptions, all becoming more and more excited as the story or song approached its natural climax. Sometimes this was varied by a solitary dancer starting from the circle, and performing the wildest bacchanalian antics, to the vocal incitement of the rest. This only ended with physical exhaustion, or ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... limit of his narrower fate". Compare the direction in which he looks in his day dreams now, with the direction in which he looked in those of his boyhood. What is meant by "vocal springs"? ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... misunderstanding of orders on the part of Hill and Ewell resulting in a confused and retarded march. Night fell, hot and breathless. Twenty-three thousand grey soldiers, moving toward Orange Court House, made the dark road vocal with statements as to the reeking heat, the dust, the condition of their shoes and the impertinence of the cavalry. The latter was more irritating than were the flapping soles, the dust in the throat, and the sweat pouring into the eyes. The infantry swore, swerving ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... of panels high, And great fire-places that laugh at night, When the blazing splinters of lightwood fry And wrap the rooms in a flood of light. 'Tis then the cabins in the rear, Low and little and plain and old, Are vocal with the Negro'a cheer, For his heart is light when the ...
— The American Missionary, October, 1890, Vol. XLIV., No. 10 • Various
... and the crew of the brig were plunged in sleep, except for two watchmen, who at Lingard's appearance retreated noiselessly from the poop. Lingard, leaning on the rail, fell into a sombre reverie of his past. Reproachful spectres crowded the air, animated and vocal, not in the articulate language of mortals but assailing him with faint sobs, deep sighs, and fateful gestures. When he came to himself and turned about they vanished, all but one dark shape without sound or movement. Lingard looked at ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... white in the sun, the buttercups gilding the pastures and hill-slopes, the clover shedding its perfume, the timothy shaking out its little clouds of pollen as the sickle-bar strikes it, most of the song-birds still vocal, and the tide of summer standing poised at its full. Very soon it will begin to ebb, the stalks of the meadow grasses will become dry and harsh, the clover will fade, the girlish daisies will become coarse and matronly, the birds will sing fitfully ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... calisthenics, penmanship, how to run a jack from the bottom of the pack without getting shot, civil engineering, decorative art, kalsomining, bicycling, base ball, hydraulics, botany, poker, international law, high-low-jack, drawing and painting, faro, vocal music, driving, breaking team, fifteen ball pool, how to remove grease spots from last year's pantaloons, horsemanship, coupling freight cars, riding on a rail, riding on a pass, feeding threshing machines, how to wean a calf from the parent stem, teaching school, bull-whacking, ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... presided at the harpsichord in the orchestra (piano-fortes not being then known). His embellishments were so masterly, that the attention of the audience was frequently diverted from the singing to the accompaniment, to the frequent mortification of the vocal professors. A pompous Italian singer was, on a certain occasion, so chagrined at the marked attention paid to the harpsichord, in preference to his own singing, that he swore, that if ever Handel played him a similar trick, he would jump down ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... an obstruction in his vocal cords, but he could run like a streak; on the other hand, while Bandy-legs could not be said to have an elegant walk, which some hateful fellows compared to the waddle of a duck, there was nothing the matter with ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... 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 lady. His thoughts skipped before him like dancing children. ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... conversations with the colored people whose sad memories of the old slavery days recalled so vividly the experiences of Uncle Tom and his associates in Mrs. Stowe's famous tale. Nor were the days unvaried by plenty of fun. Music, vocal and instrumental, we had in abundance. The mimic talents of our men, led to the performance of a variety of entertainments, and in their happy-go-easy dispositions, their troubles set very lightly on them. Their extravagancies of expression ...
— Reminiscences of two years with the colored troops • Joshua M. Addeman |
