"Crescendo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for a moment; they would drive me mad,' returned Phoebe, in the hollow tones that seemed natural to her. 'Flowers are better; but what have I to do with flowers? Doctor,' her voice rising into a shrill crescendo, 'you must give me something to send me to sleep, or I shall go mad. I think, think, think, until my head is in a craze with pain ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... shed they hung about, and walked briskly up and down beside the track until a speck of blinking light rose out of the white wilderness. It grew rapidly larger, until they could make out a trail of smoke behind it, and the roar of wheels rose in a long crescendo. Then a bell commenced to toll, and the blaze of a big lamp beat into their faces as the great locomotive came ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... occurred until someone proposed to drink to the downfall of Gladstone. The beautiful lord got on his legs and began a speech. Politically it was sound enough, but much of it was plainly intended to turn me into ridicule. I answered sharply, working gradually up crescendo, until at last, to bring matters to a head, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... "Ye ill laddie! Eh—ye—ill—laddie! (crescendo) Makin' a hash o' my back door wi' your dirty feet! What are ye slinkin' roond here for, when I tell't ye this mornin' that I wad sell ye nae mair scones till ye paid for the last lot? Ye're a wheen thievin' hungry callants, and if there were a polisman in ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... chateau had once been fortified, but now the remains of the fortifications are made into terraces, planted with roses and honeysuckles. Here we heard, for the first time in our lives, the nightingale's song; a gurgling warble, with an occasional crescendo, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... As they drew on towards it the waves were bigger, the wind was stronger. Even on calm nights there was always a breeze when one had passed the Giuseppone going towards Ischia, and beyond the island there was sometimes quite a lively sea. What would it be to-night? Her heart cried out for a crescendo. Within her, at that moment, was a desire like the motorist's for speed. More! more! More wind! More sea! More uproar from ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... defeat the electric cars, gigantic insects of the dawn, began to howl and the trains on the elevated railway thundered by. The city's voice, which never ceases, but which had sunk to a sleepy murmur, suddenly awoke, and with clattering, snarling crescendo roar announced the coming of the tides of toilers. "I am facing the day," he said to himself, "and the papers containing the contemptuous judgments of my critics are being delivered in millions to my fellow-citizens. This thing I have ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the comic in its unadulterated state, and in both I received the same impression. The first time, the clowns came and went, collided, fell and jumped up again in a uniformly accelerated rhythm, visibly intent upon affecting a CRESCENDO. And it was more and more to the jumping up again, the REBOUND, that the attention of the public was attracted. Gradually, one lost sight of the fact that they were men of flesh and blood like ourselves; one began to think of bundles of all sorts, falling and knocking against each other. ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... conscious of a trembling of all the laboratory, and the eyes of Jaska were wide with fear. Swiftly the trembling grew, until sound now was added to the vast, awesome tremor—a vast, roaring crescendo of sound that mounted and mounted as the speed of the cube-army increased. The vanguard of the cube-army struck the dwelling of the Gens southward of that of Dalis, and a mighty, rocketing roar sounded in the Master Beryl, was audible inside the laboratory, even without the aid ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... wealth they possess, and, as their record in war proves them to be no cowards' breed, it would be a monstrous indictment to maintain that their childlessness is mostly due to the use of contraceptives. If all these results arose from the practice of birth control, it would imply a crescendo of general national selfishness unparalleled in the history of humanity. No, it is not possible to give Neo-Malthusians credit, even for all the evil ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... concealment from air observation; the clear, blue sky promises the continuance of fine weather, the final release from the inactivity of the trenches. To these men the 'Promise of Spring' is the promise of the crescendo of ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... and on Earth. But it is not in the power of reward or punishment to bend her female will in the essential point: 'Divorce, your Highness? When I am found guilty, yes. Till then, never, your Highness, never, never,' in steadv CRESCENDO tone:—so that his Highness is glad to escape again, and drop the subject. On which the Serene Lady again falls silent. Gravenitz, in fact, hopes always to be wedded with the right, nay were it only with the left hand: and this Serene Lady stands like a fateful monument irremovably ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... playing of music. "The efforts which feeling makes to hold to...the shape of the first rhythm, the force which it is necessary to use to make it lose its desires and its habits, and to impose others on it, are naturally expressed by an agitation, that is, by a crescendo or greater intensity of sound, by an acceleration in movement." If a purely technical expression may be pardoned here, it could be said that the motor image, that is, the coordinated muscular tensions which make the group feeling of the fundamental rhythm, is always latent, and becomes conscious ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... gave them hell at Belmont and at Graspan, and they say they are fighting again to-day at Modder River. Major Erasmus is very down-hearted about it. But the ordinary burghers hear nothing but lies; all lies, I tell you. (Crescendo) Look at the lies that have been told about us! Barbarians! savages! every name your papers have called us, but you know better than that now; you know how well we have treated you since you have been a prisoner; and look at the way your people have ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... with too much vigour, and it stopped too abruptly, to be entirely enjoyable; but there was no doubt about the musical intention. It was not even intoning; it was singing, beginning with moderation, going on stronger with indignation, and ending suddenly in a crescendo of denunciation. ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... is doubtful; and I have studied the exact sciences, geometry and philosophy and medicine and logic and rhetoric and composition; and I have learnt many things by rote and am passionately fond of poetry. I can play the lute and know its gamut and notes and notation and the crescendo and diminuendo. If I sing and dance, I seduce, and if I dress and scent myself, I slay. In fine, I have reached a pitch of perfection such as can be estimated only by those of them who are firmly rooted in knowledge."[FN296] Now when the Caliph heard these words spoken ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the sky was lit up by all manner of S.O.S. lights and the innumerable flashes from our guns, which were now showing their maximum strength for the first time. They belched forth concentrated death, the roar reached such a deafening crescendo that conversation was entirely out of the question—indeed it was impossible to hear one's own voice. However, the scene was truly impressive, and the grandeur was beyond ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... any words of greeting they were lost in the crescendo growl of a fat bull-dog lying in supple shining length ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... another spell o' the shallers," put in Mrs. Lem as the old man's chuckles threatened a crescendo. ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... notice. I never did take any notice of Esmeralda, but she was right this time, it appears, and I was wrong. Imagine it! Pixie began bemoaning that she was not pretty, and it was not herself she was grieving for, or you, or Me!"—Bridgie's voice sounded a crescendo of amazement over that last pronoun—"but whom do you suppose? You'll never guess! ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... marked the divisions of time on the job by the shrill note of the little whistle on the hoisting engine boiler, and there was not a man but started at the screaming crescendo of the big siren on top of the power house. Men in the streets, in the straggling boarding houses over across the flats, on the wharves along the river, men who had been forbidden to come to the elevator till they were needed lest they should be in the way, ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... This is the favorite aria of all who have heard it,—of myself, as well,—and is written right into the voice of Adamberger. One can see the reeling and trembling, one can see the heaving breast which is illustrated by a crescendo; one hears the lispings and sighs expressed by the muted violins with flute in unison. The Janizary chorus is, as such, all that could be asked, short and jolly, ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... half-past nine when the air was filled with a deep musical, melancholy sound, which appeared to come from the hill north of the village, where the meeting-house stood. It lasted, perhaps, five seconds, beginning with a long crescendo, and quivering into silence by an equally prolonged diminuendo. It was certainly an astonishing sound but none of the family appeared in the least agitated, Elnathan ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... the pit proved to be helpless against the outraged horde from above. The priests and the guards were being torn to pieces as though by the fangs of maddened dogs. The screams of terror and agony were a crescendo drowning the ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... you had. Now are you satisfied?" The cruel desire to hurt gave this added thrust. "No? Then let me tell you that I have never loved you, never! I've always loved Philip Danvers—always—always—always!" Her voice rose in crescendo. ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... pleading of the Thracian bard stirs long-forgotten memories of spring and of the plains of Enna, Orfeo's song receives adequate expression. It is closely imitated from the corresponding passage in Ovid, but the lyrical perfection and passionate crescendo of the stanzas are Poliziano's own. Addressing Pluto, Orfeo discovers the object of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... woodland musicale given by the Dryads, say, to their friends, the squirrels and moles and wild-cats, and other denizens of the forest, Apollo will suffice. The musical taste of a kangaroo might find the strumming of his lyre by Apollo to its liking, but for cultivated people who know a crescendo andante-arpeggio from the staccato tones of a penny ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... she had supported him to a chair she could do nothing but stare at him, with her hands clasped and her eyes goggling, and cry, "Aaron, Aaron, dear!" in crescendo. His sole replies to her were hollow sounds in his ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... the scene loosened her tongue, gave her whole being expression, and made her words thrill. She took off her hat as if to free her body, even by that little, while she drank in the scene of leaping flames, the crescendo of light, the pathetic, noble emptiness between the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... victim made no attempt to escape, uttered no cry for help. Suddenly she felt something whirling and buzzing in her brain, while a wild fluttering filled both her ears; then the swirling, fluttering torment rose in a swift and awful crescendo which seemed to involve all creation in its vortex; then a pang like a lightning-thrust and a crash like the thunder that goes with it, and she saw a tall man striding rapidly from the window. She was still sure ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... with red-hot balls, for some days; [2d-10th December (Espagnac, i. 171).] intent to explode the Seckendorf-Broglio projects before winter quite came. Seckendorf, in a fine frenzy, calls to Broglio, "Help!" and again calls; both Kaiser and he, CRESCENDO to a high pitch, before Broglio will come. "Relieve Braunau? Well;—but no fighting farther, mark you!" answers Broglio. To the disgust of Kaiser and Seckendorf; who were eager for a combined movement, and hearty attack ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... dish of lobster, smothered in a spiced sauce that makes a cold dry wine only half quench one's thirst, and were proceeding with a crisp salad when Boldi, with a rushing crescendo slipped into a delicious waltz. De Savignac now sat with his chin sunk heavily in his hands, drinking in the melody with its spirited accompaniment as the cymballist's flexible hammers flew over the resonant strings, the violins following the master in ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... sheer and stark, a grim relic of a bygone age. There was a faint rustling through last year's wormwood. The air arose from the plains in a crescendo of quivering chords, gushing upward like a welling spring. There was the scent of decaying foliage. The sky beyond had darkened, charged to the brim with mystery. The atmosphere became moist and cold; the valley lay beneath—empty, boundless, a ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... glow of the purple reached its apogee. Rome had been watching a crescendo that had mounted with the years. Its culmination was in that hermaphrodite. But the tension had been too great—something snapped; there was nothing left—a procession of colorless bandits merely, Thracians, Gauls, Pannonians, Dalmatians, Goths, women even, ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... this slender, blue-eyed woman as I write. She is walking up and down beside her spinning-wheel. I can hear the dreary buz-z-z-z of the spindle as she feeds it with the fleecy ropes. That loud crescendo echoes in the still house of memory. I can hear her singing as she steps forward and slows the wheel and swings the cradle with ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... nature of the music gave it more than half its magic. It would die away as the wind declined, or come in passionate crescendo. For long it seemed to Montaiglon—and yet it was too short—the night was rich with these incongruous but delightful strains. Now the player breathed some soft, slow, melancholy measure of the manner Count Victor had often heard the Scottish exiles croon with tears at his father's house, or sing ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... he voiced the beautiful plea for aid in the hour of man's supreme need, which finds expression in the first two lines. Then, with his bow gripping the strings in a great sweeping crescendo, he poured forth in full strong chords the triumphant faith with ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... voice somewhere among the trees, the sound rising weirdly to a subdued crescendo, clinging there until one's flesh went creepy, and then sliding mournfully down ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... that any one could cross that fire-swept area alive, but before many moments we heard the staccato of bursting bombs and hand grenades which meant that some of the enemy, at least, were within striking distance. There was a sharp crescendo of deafening sound, then, gradually, the firing ceased, and word came down the line, "Counter-attack against the —— Guards; and jolly well beaten off too." Another was attempted before daybreak, and again the same torrent of lead, the same hideous uproar, ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... say, to the Music of that grand last Scene in Fidelio: Sullivan & Co. supplying the introductory Recitative; beginning dreamily, and increasing, crescendo, up to where the Poet begins to 'feel the truth and Stir of Day'; till Beethoven's pompous March should begin, and the Chorus, with 'Arthur is come, etc.'; the chief Voices raising the words aloft (as they do in Fidelio), and the Chorus thundering in upon them. It is very grand ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... answering questions, now telling bits of the story in her own way, Mr. Butt, the great advocate, taking care that it should all be consecutive and clear with a due crescendo of interest. In October, 1862, it appeared Lady Wilde was not in the house at Merrion Square, but was away at Bray, as one of the children had not been well, and she thought the sea air would benefit him. Dr. Wilde was alone in the house. Miss Travers called and was ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... crescendo of a hyena's howl some place off in the night. It was answered by another, miles away; then another, far off in a still different direction. The scent of the bait was spreading to the far horizon and ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... are made at once: I button my clothes tightly, so as to afford the Bees the least possible opportunity, and I enter the heart of the swarm. A few blows of the mattock, which arouse a far from reassuring crescendo in the humming of the Anthophorae, soon place me in possession of a lump of earth; and I beat a hasty retreat, greatly astonished to find myself still safe and sound and unpursued. But the lump of earth which I have removed is from a part too near the surface; it contains nothing ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... and Blue Over There—making himself one with them in hardship, danger and wounds for the sake of their immortal souls, now impels him to the writing of this Book. "The Greater Love" is a religious message which teaches that as man needed God in war—with a crescendo of need reaching full tide in the front trench—even so he needs him in Peace. The message is clothed in the narrative of adventure—personal experiences of the Author—and every page an epic of absorbing interest. No one is better ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... intermission. It rose and fell, that was all. From a truculent piano it leapt to a titanic crescendo only to find relief again in a fierce growling dissatisfaction. It seemed less of an elemental war than a physical attack upon a shuddering earth. The electric fires rifting the darkness of this out-world night were beyond ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... applause signalized the appearance of the conductor. The next moment he raised his baton and the celli began to sigh the mournful phrase which ushers in the symphony. Milton leaned back luxuriously as the woodwind commenced the next phrase; and then, while the introduction ended with a sweeping crescendo and the tempo suddenly increased, Elkan sat up and his eyes became fixed on the ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... the third-floor-back of my skull I feel a light, airy, prurient, menacing tickling, Dainty as the pattering toes of nautch girls On a polished cabaret floor. Suddenly, With a crescendo like an approaching express train, The fury bursts upon me.... My brain explodes. Pinwheels of violet fire Whirl and spin before my bloodshot eyes— Violet, puce, ochre, nacre, euchre ... all the other Colours, Including jade, umber and sienna. My ears ring, my soul reels. ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... In an insensible crescendo the thought grew in him: Why should he never attain anything of that which he most longed for—intimate and cordial intercourse and friendliness which should answer to the warmth pent up within him? Why should ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... to its height precisely in that passage where the lyrist has to be displayed. Before the gates of Hades and the throne of Proserpine he sings, and his singing is the right outpouring of a poet's soul; each octave resumes the theme of the last stanza with a swell of utterance, a crescendo of intonation that recalls the passionate and unpremeditated descant of a bird upon the boughs alone. To this true quality of music is added the persuasiveness of pleading. That the violin melody of his incomparable song is lost, must be reckoned ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... invention of the most bizarre, eccentric, and original verse forms. An example of this is the poem entitled "The Djinns" included in "Les Orientales" (1829). The coming and going of the flying cohort of spirits is indicated by the crescendo effect of the verse, beginning with a stanza in lines of two syllables, rising gradually to the middle stanza of the poem in lines of ten syllables, and then dying away by exactly graded diminutions to the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... hold a man across a few thousand miles. You lectured me with a lot of ideal patriotism, my young friend; but it's practical patriotism now for you and me, and with no lies to help it. You talked as if everything always went right with us all over the world, in a triumphant crescendo culminating in Hastings. I tell you everything has gone wrong with us here, except Hastings. He was the one name we had left to conjure with, and that mustn't go as well, no, by God! It's bad enough that a gang of infernal Jews should plant us here, where there's ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... gradually assumed a rather deafening and complex character. Tim, thinking slightly of David's vocalization, was impelled to supersede that feeble buzz by a spirited commencement of "Three Merry Mowers," but David was not to be put down so easily, and showed himself capable of a copious crescendo, which was rendering it doubtful whether the rose would not predominate over the mowers, when old Kester, with an entirely unmoved and immovable aspect, suddenly set up a quavering treble—as if he had been an alarum, and the time was come for him ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... ... all spoon!' At this moment, from merely designating single objects by names learnt through imitation, the child's consciousness had awakened to connective thinking. That this achievement was a cause of inner satisfaction could be heard in the joyful crescendo with ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... during the whole warm season. There are, I believe, seven kinds; but I have become familiar with only four. The first to be heard in my trees is the natsuzemi, or summer semi: it makes a sound like the Japanese monosyllable ji, beginning wheezily, slowly swelling into a crescendo shrill as the blowing of steam, and dying away in another wheeze. This j-i-i-iiiiiiiiii is so deafening that when two or three natsuzemi come close to the window I am obliged to make them go away. Happily the natsuzemi is soon succeeded by the minminzemi, a much finer musician, whose ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... finished this with a mighty CRESCENDO, he was obliged to pause for breath. He stared about, gaspily. The afternoon was waning. The mountains close at hand were a darker green. The distant ranges had assumed a rosy amethystine tint, like nothing earthly—like ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... often done in the passion-music, by the soprano choir, which gives it peculiar significance and makes it stand out in striking contrast with the rest of the work. A forcible orchestral interlude, worked up in a strong crescendo, leads to the vigorous chorus, "Rise up! arise!" in which the powerful orchestral climax adds great strength to the vocal part. It is a vigorously constructed chorus, and is followed by a chorale ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... rippled softly by shadowy rock, or splashed joyous and exultant down its boulder-strewn path. It was this same brook whose music drifted into his little attic bedroom at night, stilled to a faint, far-away murmur as the wind died down, rising to a high, clear crescendo of rushing, tumbling water as the breeze stirred in the tree tops and brought to him the forest sounds. Hour after hour he lay awake listening to it, his childish imagination picturing fairies and elves holding their revels in the woods beyond. An oratorical little brook ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... results. It postponed the wedding: it stirred me to a very crescendo of patronage, for with the removal of the bread-winner the only flaw in my Cophetua pose had vanished: and it gave Audrey a great deal more scope than she had hitherto been granted for the exercise of free will in ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... of showing Amsterdam was to work slowly up to a grand crescendo effect; and the crescendo was the Ryks Museum. We had two days of Amsterdam (the second was mostly spent at the diamond cutters') before I ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... gave her a glance as he came up; his machine flew by with a swirl, amid a crashing crescendo; then it disappeared in ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... spirited flash of her bright hazel eyes and great temerity of speculation; for be it remembered the days of the theories of woman's equality with man had not yet dawned. "Sure, sir, I can speak when I am spoken to. I understand the English language; and"—her voice rising into a liquid crescendo of delight—"I can wear my gray sergedusoy sack made over my carnation taffeta bodice and cashmere petticoat, all pranked out with bows of black velvet, most genteel, and my hat of quilled primrose sarcenet, grandfather. I'd take them in a bundle, for if we should have rain I would rather be ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... behind it, of course. It was the worst beating that Peter had ever had, and that was something, but its occurrence marked more than a mere crescendo of pain, and that evening stood for some new resolution that he did not rightly understand yet—something that was in its beginning the mere planting of a seed. But he had certainly met the affair ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... sudden angry roar, muffled, distant, he thought in the voice of Alden. It was stifled, cut off ere it had come to full crescendo, in a very significant manner. Silence, then, fell about him, the chill silence of ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... car?" Her playful tones rose in ecstatic crescendo. The impulsiveness of her nature was displayed by her manner in accepting this favor. She danced to her father and threw her arms about him. She exhibited as much delight as if he had bestowed upon her a gift of ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... began; then broke, sharply, impatiently, crescendo, as the passion of the music mounted up and up. And now as it settled into its rhythm his hands ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... mamma, in a crescendo sweep, "that all but undid my lifework for the family's position, and that may yet cost your father his presidency ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... off, startled. He sat up with a jump. A great gust of wind broke down upon the vessel. It came with a shriek that rose in a fierce crescendo. His startled eyes were riveted upon a new development in the sky. An inky cloud bank was sweeping down upon them out of the north-east, and the wind seemed to roar its way out of ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... worked feverishly up to a crashing crescendo, supported by the voices of the dancers, until all joined at the top note in a yell, while the drummer fired a .44 Colt into a box of wet sawdust beside his chair—all in time, all in the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... of profound stillness had passed, and I could just make out the circle of dogs sitting on their tails on the open shore, when suddenly, faint and far away, an unearthly howl came rolling down the mountains, ooooooo-ow-wow-wow! a long wailing crescendo beginning softly, like a sound in a dream, and swelling into a roar that waked the sleeping echoes and set them jumping like startled goats from crag to crag. Instantly the huskies answered, every ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... summer still in almost unmenaced possession, and ever since, till within a day or two, the weight of its hand has been sensible. Properly enough, as the city of flowers, Florence mingles the elements most artfully in the spring—during the divine crescendo of March and April, the weeks when six months of steady shiver have still not shaken New York and Boston free of the long Polar reach. But the very quality of the decline of the year as we at present here ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... rises in thick clouds and buries the picture in a glaring fog. This moving, struggling mass, that fights for the right of way along the road, is within easy distance of the shells. Those from their own guns pass over them with a shrill crescendo, those from the enemy burst among them at rare intervals, or sink impotently in the soft soil. And a dozen Tommies rush to dig them out as keepsakes. Up at the front, brown and yellow regiments are lying crouched behind brown and yellow rocks and stones. As far as you can see, the ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... of the absence of bird voices,—so silent the fields and groves and orchards were, compared with what she had been used to at home. The most noticeable midsummer sound everywhere was the shrill, brassy crescendo of ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... joke, the class expressed its appreciation in a prolonged and uproarious laugh. It was a stupendous laugh. It had fine crescendo and diminuendo passages, and only died hard, after a chain of intermittent "Ha-ha's." Then it had a glorious resurrection, but faded at last into the distance, a few stray "Ha-ha's" from Pennybet ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... will!" he cried, and clenched his hands proudly. "Fer her an'—an' fer him!" he choked. Whatever he meant to do, his young passion for Salome Madeira and his young affection for Steering, his hero, leaped out on his face whitely. "She loves him, too, Unc' Bernique!" he cried in a final, broken crescendo. ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... until the great crescendo of the man's storm of grief had passed that Nan bethought herself of the need in which he stood. Nor was that need apparent until his whole note had changed to a moody bitterness with which he regarded the future. Then she ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... voice became more ugly, less like hers, as if the emotion that governed her just then made a crescendo, became more vital ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... as if this exchange were something he had been expecting, made no demur, and a moment later, with Woodbury at the wheel, the motor began to hum again in a gradually increasing crescendo. Two or three motor-police glanced after the car as it snapped about corners with an ominous skid and straightened out, whining, on the new street; but in each case, having made a comfortable number of arrests that day, they had little ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... sending the message the crescendo whine of enormous propellers was heard. Simultaneously there was a deafening concussion and one entire wing of the palace disappeared in a cloud of dust, in the midst of which could be discerned a few flying fragments. The air was filled with Mardonalian warships. ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... by. Surely he would have had time to reach camp by now. The storm neither increased nor decreased; only played its mournful melodies in the forest. The song of the rain was despairing,—low mournful notes rising to a sharp crescendo as the fiercer gusts swept it into the tree tops. The limbs murmured unhappily as they smote together; and a tall tree, swaying in the wind, creaked with a maddening regularity. She was never so ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... thing, not a red blossom nor a strong yellow one, nor one broad leaf, nor any mass of dense or dark foliage, comes into view until one reaches a side of the dwelling. But there at once he finds the second phase in a crescendo of floral colors. The base of the house, and especially those empty eye-sockets, the cellar windows, are veiled in exultant bloom, yellows predominating. Then at the back of the place comes the full chorus, and red flowers overmaster the yellow, though the delicate tints with which the scheme ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... with a small escort towards the river and hospitals. An officer was despatched with the news to the Sirdar, and on the instant both cannonade and fusillade broke out again behind the ridge, and grew in a crashing crescendo until the whole landscape seemed to vibrate with the sound of explosions. The second phase ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... at her father and laughed. The saw was ripping through a series of knots in alternate crescendo and diminuendo. "Shall I wake him? He likes to sleep after eating. I think it ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... that is possible in piano playing; but the second variety can be secured in the case of an organ with swell box, the human voice, and in both string and wind orchestral instruments. Since some of the most beautiful musical effects may be produced by the use of this second type of crescendo, it should be employed very much more than it is in choral and orchestral music. The English conductor Coward takes the ground that the swell (a combination of crescendo and diminuendo) is the most powerful choral ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... on the pillow, its eyes closed, and its nose and mouth covered with a wire cone. In a moment there came a gasp, the sheathed form drew tense, the nurse spilled a few drops from her can upon the cone, the growling recommenced and heightened to a crescendo. Stefan had an impression of tremendous physical life, but the human tone of the "Hello, Stefan," was ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... lightened for a moment and they saw the shape of leaves and tree fronds far above them like a pattern on a carpet—a pattern which changed with elflike witchery, for a wind had blown up and sounded about them with the roar of a distant sea, rising now and then in a mighty crescendo, like the boom of a nearer wave upon the shore. The tree tops swayed and joined in the ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... an insistent siren blared a crescendo and diminuendo blast of sound, and two minutes remained. In every stateroom and in every lounge and saloon speakers sounded ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... might be content never to hear a better prima donna if one were secured against never hearing a worse. In her was first remarked here, among vocalists of distinction, that trembling of the voice when it is pressed in a crescendo, which has since become so common as greatly to mar our enjoyment of vocal music. This great fault, unknown before the appearance of Verdi, is attributed by some musical critics to the influence of his vociferous ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... was lost in a crescendo bellow of sound. Seaton, still at the controls, shut off the noise, studied his meters carefully, and turned around ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... blows to his ears a sound of laughter, Young men shuffle their feet, loaf in the sunlight; A girl's laugh rings like a silver bell. But clearer than all these sounds is a sound he hears More in his secret heart than in his ears,— A hammer's steady crescendo, like a knell. He hears the snarl of pineboards under the plane, The rhythmic saw, and then the hammer again,— Playing with delicate strokes that sombre scale . . . And the fountain dwindles, the ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... to hope that the dam would hold against the rising crescendo of that battering from beyond and the insidious tongues that ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... assured her, smoothing back her hair. But she continued to sob on in a gradual crescendo of despair, till the vehemence of her weeping began to frighten him, and he drew her to her feet and tried to persuade her to let herself be led upstairs. She yielded to his arm, sobbing in short exhausted gasps, and leaning her whole weight ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... left the box-door open, and, as the curtain fell, he took up his position where he could see the house applauding. Loud and continuous, gloriously continuous, came the clapping. The curtain was drawn aside, and the players came forward, one by one. A crescendo of cheers greeted Manders, dying down until he could utter his smiling six sentences of acknowledgement. Then there was a pause. The lights were still lowered. Simultaneously in rasping barks came the ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... eat—Thomas was beyond reach in the lodge—and paid no attention to her evident terror of the kitchen regions. Then I went to bed. The men were still in the billiard-room when I finally dozed off, and the last thing I remember was the howl of a dog in front of the house. It wailed a crescendo of woe that trailed off hopefully, only to break out afresh from a ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... pieces as the gunners drew the levers home. There were four sharp reports, four flashes of flame and smoke, the crescendo moan of tons of flying steel—and the church tower, the bells, and the German officers came crashing to ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... and as rigid as it is excellent. The power which this gentleman possesses over his musical troops is very curious. The whole mass of performers seem to wait upon his will as the spirits did on Prospero. At the spreading of his arms, the music dies away to the most faintly-whispered murmurs. A crescendo or musical climax works gradually up step by step, and bar by bar, until it explodes in a perfect crash of vocal and instrumental tempest. The extraordinary choral effects produced in the performance of the Huguenots almost bewildered the hearers; and the wondrous ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... you into a puddle? But—I never did owt o' t' sort!" cried Mason, in a slow crescendo ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "nip" would come a crescendo, swelling to a sharp little monosyllabic quaver, and then the whole thing would die away ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... pianola's; but the interpretation is yours! The instrument provides the devices for accelerating or retarding the time and for making the tone loud or soft, but when to whip up the time or to slow down, when to use the sustaining or the soft lever or when to swell through a crescendo from pianissimo to fortissimo—all that is left to your own taste, judgment and discretion. There is, indeed, among the improvements introduced in the pianola a contrivance, of which more hereafter, by which complete directions are given for the ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... letters on the door, and he was seated in his chair beneath the gallery of cartoons. He began calmly enough when I entered, speaking in a low, almost gentle tone, helping himself to snuff between sentences, but gradually working up into a quite artistic crescendo. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... strings, and, as if ears could be thirsty as a drunkard's throat, he drank his fill of the 'cello's deep, full-membered chord. The air was heavy with the resonance of marching feet, ghostly feet marching and marching down upon him in slow, inexorable crescendo as the tides ebbed later among the sedges on the marsh and the moon grew big. And above the pulse of the march he seemed to hear another cadence, ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... the exclamation out in a rising crescendo of astonishment. Then he laid his gun down across a roll of bedding, and stood looking at her in ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... into a positive crescendo of conviction—"I know by somethin' that tells me, an' it's somethin' that can't lie. The prophets knew that God had picked 'em out because He told 'em so in visions. I haven't just heard voices in dreams I've had the voice in me and I know—know I tell you—that, with a chance, I can ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... shot Mr. Fenley!" Farrow could only repeat each word in a crescendo of amazement. Being a singer, he understood the use of a crescendo, and ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... switch on the control panel and the noise from the power deck below began to build to an unbearable crescendo! ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... those words as you should," he cried, "until you know and feel the glory of that wondrous cross. Never, never, never." His voice rose in a passionate crescendo. ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... pines are straight and reach their heads far into the sky, each a many-wired harp to the winds that come down from the high divide. Their music is never still; now a low, ominous rush, soft but mighty, swelling as it nears, the rush of a winged host, rising swiftly to one fearsome crescendo until the listener cowers instinctively as if under the tread of many feet; then dying away to mutter threats in the distance, and to come again more fiercely; or, it may be, to come with a gentler sweep, as if pacified, even yearning, ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... instead of its being a smash that opened a way to better things, it might have been a smash without a recovery. It is part of my business to understand economics, and from that point of view the century before Holsten was just a hundred years' crescendo of waste. Only the extreme individualism of that period, only its utter want of any collective understanding or purpose can explain that waste. Mankind used up material—insanely. They had got through three-quarters of all ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... not essential. On the whole, I can only say that the work of translation has made me feel even more strongly than before the extraordinary grip and reality of the dialogue, the deftness of the construction, and, except perhaps for a slight drop in the Creon scene, the unbroken crescendo of tragedy from the opening ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... hereditary Majesty smiled on me when she gave Leicester conge and fiery quittance. She hath me in favour, and all shall be well with Michel and Angele. O fool, fool, fantastic and flavoured fool, sing me a song of good content, for if this business ends not with crescendo and bell-ringing, I am no butler to the Queen ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... subjection. Aristide became the confidant, in turn, of Madame's sour philosophy of life and of Monsieur's impotence and despair. As for Mademoiselle Stephanie, she kept on saying "Oui, Monsieur" and "Non, Monsieur," in a crescendo of ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... "is not for regulation by law. No one has the right," he declared, with an emphatic thump on the bar, "to dictate to the individual on the subject." He went on at high pressure in a heated crescendo for some moments, denouncing any interference by public bodies. Then of a sudden he laid a hand on Abe's shoulder and abruptly dropped his voice to a confidential whisper. His eyes were smiling and shining with the feelings ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... spring, and his arms were apt to beat at his sides in rapid tattoo. This, in fact made up solely his morning exercises now. Standing with legs close together, a-tip-toe, head back and chest forward, placing his hands beneath his shoulders he waved his arms up and down in a beat that rose in fervid crescendo, till his eyes closed and there went through him a soaring ecstasy that threatened at times to lift him ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... her, eager, ardent, passionate, the color in his cheeks burning to a dull brick tint beneath the tan. Body and soul she swayed toward him. All her vital love of life, of things beautiful and good and true, fused in a crescendo of emotion. ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... crescendo as their speed increased. Then, abruptly, the sound broke off into deathly silence as the limit of audibility was passed. Against the brilliant background of swift color changes and geometric light-shapes that so quickly merged into the familiar blur, Bert saw his companions as dim wraithlike ...
— Wanderer of Infinity • Harl Vincent
... emblematic of this physiognomy and physique, summing it up and expressing it in terms of apparel, were the soft collar and black scarf tied in a flowing bow. Janet longed to know what he was saying. His phrases, like music, played on her emotions, and at last, when his voice rose in crescendo at the climax of his speech, she felt ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... rhythms, pulses and ebbings of clear tone, beautiful phrases rising antiphonal, showerings of bright notes, moments of subsidence, almost of pause. As the light grows and sharpens, the music reaches a crescendo of exuberance, and at last dies down as real day comes, bringing with it the day's work. On our island the leader of the chorus was almost always a song sparrow, though once or twice a wood thrush came over from the shore woods and filled the hemlock ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... Oh, oh, oh!" Miss Barrace cried in a wonderful crescendo. There was more in it, our friend made out, than met the ear. Was it after all a joke that he should be serious about anything? He envied Miss Barrace at any rate her power of not being. She seemed, with little ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... reading that Report of his; green Vengeance, in the shape of Robespierre, watching nigh. Behold, however, Saint-Just has read but few sentences, when interruption rises, rapid crescendo; when Tallien starts to his feet, and Billaud, and this man starts and that,—and Tallien, a second time, with his: "Citoyens, at the Jacobins last night, I trembled for the Republic. I said to ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... "The crescendo of quarrel is most skilfully and drolly arranged;—a scene on classic lines boldly challenging and, what is more, maintaining comparison with Sheridan." Mr. A. B. Walkley—The ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... forces within him reach a crescendo at that moment. And his body was frozen immobile, his eyes locked on the cat's eyes, burning into the animal, the animal burning into ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... will you not go to the devil?" rejoined Lottchen, with a comic crescendo; to which the other replied with ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald |
