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More "Overture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them, however, cherished the most vengeful hostility against these marauders of the mountains. The Blackfeet came to a halt. One of the chiefs advanced singly and unarmed, bearing the pipe of peace. This overture was certainly pacific; but Antoine and the Flathead were predisposed to hostility, and pretended to ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... First there was an overture; then several scenes from "Lucia di Lammermoor,"—that great Shakspearian drama, whose dread catastrophe of Death and Doom leaves in the memory of the hearer a heavenly sorrow unmixed with earthly taint. It was the master-work of two poets, Scott ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... of Spanish infantry rushed in on General Maceo and shot him down unarmed. It is said that his friends recovered his body and buried it in a secret place unknown to the Spaniards, who were anxious to obtain it for exhibition as a trophy of war in Havana. Maceo was equal to Toussaint L'Overture of San Domingo. His public life was consecrated to liberty; he knew no vice nor mean action; he would not permit any around him. When he landed in Cuba from Porto Rico he was told there were no arms. He ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... [Afrik.]. prelude, preamble, preface, prologue, foreword, avant-propos [Fr.], protasis^, proemium^, prolusion^, proem, prolepsis [Gramm.], prolegomena, prefix, introduction; heading, frontispiece, groundwork; preparation &c 673; overture, exordium [Lat.], symphony; premises. prefigurement &c 511; omen &c 512. Adj. precursory; prelusive, prelusory, preludious^; proemial^, introductory, prefatory, prodromous^, inaugural, preliminary; precedent &c (prior) 116. Phr. a precedent ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... all unexpected things, Beethoven's Overture to Leonore began to take visible form in the night, and I would rather be able to set down what we saw than write Homer's Iliad! It must be that we knew then all that Beethoven did. It was not just wind music, or mere strings, but ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... Balkan complications of the last ten years, which form the overture to the present war, the Jewish organisations in Western Europe and America—chiefly the London Jewish Conjoint Committee—lost no opportunity of keeping the grievances of the Rumanian Jews before the Great Powers and of maintaining ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... place, we sought to redress the balance by taking into partnership in the running of the Politics Class a strongly Conservative master. Such an arrangement would have been admirable had the genuine educational spirit been there. It was not. The overture was a failure and only added to our difficulties. To some men it seemed better to root out the Liberal masters as "traitors" than to co-operate ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... was any overture, or hope of peace, he would be more erect and vigorous, and exceedingly solicitous to press anything which he thought might promote it; and sitting among his friends, often, after a deep silence ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... was the opening note of an overture, for directly after the balls began whistling over their heads, and the first reports grew into a loud rattle followed by the trampling ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... that the race has produced are dead. No three living Negroes fill so much space in books or in men's thoughts as Toussaint L'Overture, Richard Allen, and Frederick Douglass, and it will be a long while before three Negroes of equal intelligence and ability for leadership and organization will be able to take their places. There are others, but these ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... park, where the band thundered Cherubini's "Overture to the Water-Carrier" across ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... sat in silence through an overture. Grant was delighting himself simply in her presence, and guessed that for her part she could not retract the confession her love had wrung from ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... the city, the mayor took possession, and sallied forth to meet the commander of the National forces for the purpose of surrendering the town, making terms for the protection of property, etc. Sherman paid no attention at all to the overture, but pushed forward and took the town without making any conditions whatever with its citizens. He then, however, co-operated with the mayor in extinguishing the flames and providing for the people who were rendered destitute by this destruction of their homes. When he left there he even ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... not long before my father had as many scholars as he could find time to attend. And when they assembled at my father's to make little concerts, I was frequently called to join the second violin in an overture, for my father found pleasure in giving me sometimes a lesson before the instruments were laid by, after practising with DIETRICH, for I never was missing at those hours, sitting in a corner with my knitting and ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... Boccaccios,—nay, add twenty more,— A hawthorn asking spring's most dainty breath, And him you're freezing pretty well to death. However, since you say so, I will tease My memory to a story by degrees, Though you will cry, "Enough!" I'm wellnigh sure, Ere I have dreamed through half my overture. 100 Stories were good for men who had no books, (Fortunate race!) and built their nests like rooks In lonely towers, to which the Jongleur brought His pedler's-box of cheap and tawdry thought, With here and there ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... increasing power, sought his friendship. He addressed a kind letter to him, and proposed that he should enter the service of Shah Tamasp, and aid that Prince in expelling the Afghans from Persia. Nadir pretended to listen to this overture, and earnestly desired that the King should grant him a pardon for his past offences. This was easily obtained; and he went to Khelat to receive it. He appears to have always deemed the Governor of that place as the chief obstacle to his rise; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... struck up the overture. It was a skilfully arranged medley of well-known popular war-songs, interlarded with the Dessauer and Hohenfriedberger march, as if the enthusiasm of the audience were to be carried to the highest ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... curious little tremor went through her. Had he wanted her so very badly after all? Not once since their wedding-day had he made any friendly overture or responded to any overture of hers. They were as completely strangers now as they had been on the day he had ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... way to stop him?" groaned Mary Braddock, opening her eyes to look again upon the sinister figure across the way. She had not heard a word of Colonel Grand's minacious overture. ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... first notes of the overture ran through the house, and loud applause was heard. This time, too, the gentleman in the proscenium box gave the signal for the applause, but no ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... of the Philharmonic Society. He will play the Tschaikovsky Violin Concerto, Opus 35, and the remainder of the program will consist of Dvorak's Symphony, Aus der Neuen Welt, and the ever-popular Meistersinger Overture. ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... man takes a fancy to any one [of the young women,] it is not considered as absolutely necessary, that he should make an overture to the girl herself. The first object is to agree with the parents, concerning the recompense to be given them for the loss of the company and services of their daughter. The value of two slaves is a common ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... touching whom I have orders to speak to you if you will be pleased to hearken." It was to Charles V.'s eldest sister, Eleanor, widow of Manuel the Fortunate, King of Portugal, that allusion was made. This overture led to nothing at the time; but the next year, in 1522, war was declared between Francis I. and Charles V.; the rupture between Francis I. and the Duke of Bourbon took place; the Bourbon lawsuit was begun; and the duke's mother-in-law, Anne of France, daughter of Louis XI., ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... himself through it all that his cousin had loved him. He had felt sure that such was the case while they were together in Switzerland. When she had determined to give up John Grey, of course he had told himself the same thing. When she had at once answered his first subsequent overture with an assent, he had of course been certain that it was so. Dark, selfish, and even dishonest as he was, he had, nevertheless, enjoyed something of a lover's true pleasure in believing that Alice had still loved him ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... wasn't bad either. They snored on different keys, and still there was harmony in it—a kind of chime of imported snore as it were. I used to lie and listen to it for hours. Then the cook would begin his coffee mill overture and I would arise. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... full of the war from the moment of its breaking out. The arrangements for special correspondents and news from the front were more complete than they had ever been before, and as the astounding drama swiftly advanced from the trivial overture at Saarbruck to the overwhelming catastrophe at Sedan, the civilised world had eyes and ears for nothing else. Barely seven weeks elapsed between the declaration of war and the surrender of the Emperor and the fall of his empire. During those ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... Gloucester (with whom, indeed, I have no doubt, in spite of chronology, that she very often dined), was commissioned to inquire of me diplomatically, and without committing Abbey Hill too much by the overture, whether I would take a large and antiquated mansion, in which abbots were said to have lived many centuries ago, and which was still popularly styled Abbots' House, situated on the verge of the Hill, as in that case the ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ate she never afterward remembered. It was all merely a succession of delicious sensations for the palate, for the eye, for the ear when the excellent orchestra was playing some gay overture from one of the newer musical comedies ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... around them; their amusing adventure out in the water-it had again assumed its entertaining aspect; about the wind, the trees, the people who had gone to the Cheniere; about the children playing croquet under the oaks, and the Farival twins, who were now performing the overture to "The Poet ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... may set a gouty father to sleep, and a capriccio may operate successfully on the nerves of a valetudinary mother. A slight indisposition may be removed by a single air, while a more obstinate case may require an overture or a concerto. The tastes of the ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... know how abruptly this chosen calm of my life was to be broken nor how these same studies were to be turned in a new and strange direction. But if on this night which was to witness the overture of a horrible drama, I had not hitherto experienced any premonition of the coming of those dark forces which were to change the whole tenor of my existence, suddenly, now, in sight of the elm tree which stood before my cottage the ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... her own counsel, never intimating a wish or expectation of her son's return. Her surprise upon his arrival was well counterfeited; nor was it ever known beyond mother and son that the latter had not been first to make the overture. But this son, in some respects so like his mother, might have evinced less disposition to do at once her bidding had not the ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... stormy. We stayed quietly under shelter, preparing for our real journey after so much prelude. The Isaac Newton's steam-whistle had sent up the curtain; the overture had followed with strains Der-Frei-schutzy in the Adirondacks, pastoral in the valleys of Vermont and New Hampshire, funebral and andante in the fogs of Mollychunkamug; now it was to end in an allegretto gallopade, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Kirk of England. The Assemblies answer to their Commissioners at London. The Assemblies Letter to the Kirks in the Netherlands. Ordinance concerning Bursars. Ordinance for up lifting and imploying Penalties contained in Acts of Parliament, upon pious uses. An Overture concerning Promises of Marriage made by Minors, to those with whom they have committed Fornication. Act concerning dissenting voices in Presbyteries and Synods. Act concerning the Election of a Moderator in Provinciall ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... brother-in-law Hensel, Court painter; both his sisters and his brother Paul occupying leading social positions. He was heir-apparent to a great estate. He was greeted with the applause of England from the outset of his career; "awoke famous," after the production of the "Midsummer Overture," while almost a boy; never had a piece fall short of triumphant success; in fact, so commanding prestige that he could find not one who would rationally blame or criticize him,—a "most wearying" thing, he writes, that every piece he brought out ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... incantation swelled in shrillness, the electric shudders deepened. Alone in this elemental overture to tempest I took no note of time, but felt, through self-abandonment to the symphonic influence, how sea and air, and clouds akin to both, were dealing with each other complainingly, and in compliance ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... was the Canadian line stretching to the north, and the men who were "on the deal" would stop at nothing. They had been approached, tentatively, in the beginning, for a share of profits; but they had scorned the overture. "Catch me—if you can!" the voice laughed and rang off. The police were hot against them. Just one clue—the merest clue—and they would run it to earth—like bloodhounds. They chewed the ends of their cigars and waited... and in the garden the boy ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... when to wet down. We're going to break away or go out trying—there aren't enough amphibians between here and Andromeda to keep us humans cooped up like menagerie animals forever! But here comes my specialist with the keys to the city; time for the overture ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... leave a hospital alone?" The next minute any lingering hope was destroyed. Both men heard it—the well-known whistling whooce of the bomb—the vicious crack as it burst; both men felt the ground trembling through their beds. That was the overture . . . the play was about to commence. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... overture with joy; he had some particular fancies, but Fuensaldagne, who had a particular kindness for him, said that he was the wisest fool he ever saw in his life. I have remarked more than once that this sort of man cannot persuade, but can insinuate perfectly well, ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... stack of programmes and was pointing out the stars on the list to the youngest Miss Bevis. The back of the hall was rapidly filling, and one or two other parties strolled into the stalls. The orchestra had already commenced to play the overture rather shakily. ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... appeal never reached the Russian chief, and Dmitrieff had to do the best he could. Nothing now could save his small force from those grim lines of gaping muzzles turned against his positions. The overture began on April 28, 1915, with an advance on the Upper Biala toward Gorlice, by Von Mackensen's right. Here some minor attacks had been previously made, and the gradually increasing pressure did not at first reveal the intent or magnitude of the movement behind it. Meanwhile the German troops ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... without being measured for his wedding coat. On the Continent of Europe, and especially in the Latin countries, where class barriers are more formidable, the situation differs materially, and to the disadvantage of the girl. If she makes an overture, it is an invitation to disaster; her hope of lawful marriage by such means is almost nil. In consequence, the prudent and decent girl avoids such overtures, and they must be made by third parties or by the man himself. This ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... in the publishing trade, and in the publishing trade as in the newspaper-office—it was everywhere the same; there was not a word of art or of glory. The steady beat of the great pendulum, Money, seemed to fall like hammer-strokes on his heart and brain. And yet while the orchestra played the overture, while the pit was full of noisy tumult of applause and hisses, unconsciously he drew a comparison between this scene and others that came up in his mind. Visions arose before him of David and the printing-office, of the poetry that he came to know in that atmosphere of pure ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... polyphonic texture than the whole form of a composition. At present one runs the risk of grotesque misconceptions when one quite rightly describes as "written in fugue" such passages as the first subjects in Mozart's Zauberfloete overture, the andantes of Beethoven's first symphony and C minor quartet, or the first and second subjects of the finale of Mozart's G major quartet, the second subject of the finale of his D major quintet, and the exposition of quintuple counterpoint in the coda of the finale of the Jupiter ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... phrasing, no more enunciation! What is the use, when all that is required of you is to beugler (bellow)? Any cornet a piston is just as good as the best tenor, and better, for it can be heard over the orchestra. But the instrumentation is magnificent. There Wagner excels. The overture of Tannhaeuser is a chef-d'oeuvre; there is a swing, a sway, and a shush that carries you off your feet.... I wish I ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... I do not put up my fidelity 15 To sale, Count Tertsky! Half a year ago I would not have advised you to have made me An overture to that, to which I now Offer myself of my own free accord.— But that is past! and to the Duke, Field Marshal, 20 I bring myself together with my regiment. And mark you, 'tis my humour to believe, The example which I give will ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Bessie Bissell in that box! You know she married a young fellow, an engineer or something." And she added either aloud or to herself, "They seem to be in it,—that's the Leason box." While the alluring strains of the overture floated across the house, she mused at the strange mutations of fortune, which had landed Bessie Bissell there and herself here beside the dentist,—with some envy, in spite of three beloved children at home ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Princess was suddenly drowned by the sharp tap of the conductor, followed by the opening blast of the overture. Then the lights went down and the curtain rose, but still the audience kept up a constant movement in the lower regions of the house, and there was an almost ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... perfectly right, my worthy friend," replied Aramis, constantly consulting with his looks the countenance of Biscarrat, who was silent and constrained. "You wish, M. de Biscarrat, to say something to us, to make us some overture, and you dare not—is not ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... got on the stage the first person she saw was Montgomery, the very one she wished most to avoid. After having conducted the overture he had come up to find out the reason of the 'wait.' Dick was rushing about, declaring that if this ever occurred again half a-crown would be stopped ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... the guns. But the bargain had been broken by the time I arrived. Bombing planes had been over; the Allied planes had retaliated. Houses, emptied like cart-loads of bricks into the street, were significant of the ruin that was pending. Any moment the orchestra of destruction might break into its overture. Without cessation one could hear a distant booming. The fiddlers of ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... by the study of music itself. Instead of this, I contented myself with hearing bits from Freischutz played by my sisters. Yet my passion for it gradually grew so strong that I can remember taking a particular fancy for a young man called Spiess, chiefly because he could play the overture to Freischutz, which I used to ask him to do whenever I met him. It was chiefly the introduction to this overture which at last led me to attempt, without ever having received any instruction on the piano, to play this piece in my own peculiar way, for, oddly ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Ireland and of his second departure from Ireland, they know that he had been mildly interested in Ireland as material for art as far back as 1894, and that it was Mr. Martyn who had interested him in the things of home. Mr. Moore tells us all about it more than explicitly in the "Overture" to his trilogy. In the first chapter he tells us that the interest faded away gradually, to be reawakened in 1899 by a visit paid him in London by Mr. Martyn and Mr. Yeats, who came to ask his help in founding a "Literary Theatre in Dublin." Then Mr. Moore ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... myself within a Fortnight of her. As I waited upon her one Morning, she told me that she intended to keep her Ready-Money and Jointure in her own Hand, and desired me to call upon her Attorney in Lyons-Inn, who would adjust with me what it was proper for me to add to it. I was so rebuffed by this Overture, that I never enquired either for her ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... contrary winds, and makes Sicily the second time. This part of the action completes the year. Then he celebrates the anniversary of his father's funerals, and shortly after arrives at Cumes. And from thence his time is taken up in his first treaty with Latinus; the overture of the war; the siege of his camp by Turnus; his going for succours to relieve it; his return; the raising of the siege by the first battle; the twelve days' truce; the second battle; the assault of Laurentum, ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... A triangular conversation of this sort was almost impossible. The members of the orchestra were already climbing up to their places, in preparation for the overture to the last act. Sir ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... streamed from the parlor windows, illuminating exquisitely stained pictures of the Apostles. Strains from a select orchestra greeted them as they entered the house, and Hubert recognized with a queer feeling of incongruity the overture from a well-known opera. The appealing notes of the violins drew his memory instantly to the production he had lately enjoyed, but he thrust the mental vision from him as unworthy of Christ, and tried not to listen to ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... violently to this sudden overture and declined positively to acknowledge the relationship. In fact, when Kate attempted to pull him to her, he fled for protection to Lovey Mary and cast belligerent ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... the same time he was not very eager to respond to this overture of closer acquaintanceship with one who, by his dress, manner and method of speech, proclaimed himself a 'decadent' of the modern school of ethics; but he was nothing if not courteous. So he ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... that the humiliating state in which Matilda must feel herself in the house of her father might gladly induce her to take shelter under any other protection, he boldly advanced as soon as the Earl was gone, to make such overture as his wishes and his vanity told him, ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... They were not yet come to town, and my stay was uncertain, so I could not undertake it; but, from this incident, I thought it likely that, if I were to remain in England and open a swimming-school, I might get a good deal of money; and it struck me so strongly, that, had the overture been sooner made me, probably I should not so soon have returned to America. After many years, you and I had something of more importance to do with one of these sons of Sir William Wyndham, become Earl of Egremont, which I shall ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... sun throws abroad his light, giving token of the majestic glories of noon-day, while the earth exhales a dewy freshness and the air is enchanted by the songs of birds, just wakened from their nests. It recalls the overture of a grand musical drama introducing the joyous melodies, the wailing minors, the noble chords and sublime ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... garb. His eye, listless no more, scanned the hollow. 'That's only the overture,' he cried. 'The opera will soon begin. We must put a breastwork up in these gaps or they'll pick us off ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... point was just touching the crystal. Still there was no sound in the ear phones, and the boys looked at one another in bitter disappointment. Bob moved the antenna slider slowly along the tuning coil, and suddenly, faint, but very clear, the boys heard the opening chords of an overture played by a famous orchestra nearly a hundred miles away! Sweet and resonant the distant music rose and fell, growing in tone and volume as Bob manipulated the contacts along the coil. The boys sat spellbound listening to this miracle, to this soul stirring music that seemed as though it must surely ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... period "Pomp and Circumstance" was played in almost every theatre, sometimes well, often badly, till we got sick of it. Pieces such as "Apres le Bal" and "Simple Aveu" were hurled at us every night. A statement of the number of times that Nicolai's overture to The Merry Wives of Windsor has been played in the theatres would stagger people; Gounod's Faust music and Edward German's charming dances from Henry VIII., and one or two overtures by Suppe and the Stradella music, have ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... of Jules Laforgue recalls to me his description of the orchestra in Salome, the fourth of the Moralites legendaires. Sur un mode allegre et fataliste, un orchestre aux instruments d'ivoire improvisait une petite overture unanime. That his syllables are of ivory I feel, and improvised, but his themes are pluralistic, the immedicable and colossal ennui of life the chiefest. Woman—the "Eternal Madame," as Baudelaire calls her—is ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Before the overture began that evening, Brand was in his seat in the stalls; and he had scarcely sat down when he knew, rather than saw, that certain figures were coming into the box which he had been covertly watching. The opera was Fidelio—that beautiful story of a wife's devotion ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... hostess, Mrs. Laurence, who seemed something above her station in her inn. While we were at cards before supper, we were much surprised by the sounds of a pianoforte. I jumped up, and ran to listen whence it proceeded. I found it came from the next room, where the overture to the "Buona Figliuola" was performing. The playing was very decent, but as the music was not quite new to me, my curiosity was not whole ages in satisfying, and therefore I returned ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... ardent love for the Union,—a love always present with the loyal people of the free States, but developed in an extraordinary degree by the costly struggle which the slaveholders' rebellion had precipitated. If the Southern States should meet the overture of the Administration in the spirit in which it was made, the probability was decidedly in favor of their restoration to their old places without condition, without promise, without sacrifice. Observing men in the loyal States regarded such a policy not only as weak and maudlin, but as ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... a New England city I saw a man, who had been the president of an Electric Light Company for twenty years, who had invented a public service corporation that worked. Since he took office and dictated the policy of the Company, every single overture for more expensive equipment in the electric lighting of the city has come from the Company, and every single overture for reducing the rate to consumers has come from ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... it was precisely at the time of the Duke of Wellington's return to Paris, that we received a direct and pressing overture from the Spanish Government, which placed us in the alternative of either affording our good offices to Spain, or of ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... for an officer, on taking a new post, to order sweeping changes affecting other men, in the belief that this will give him a reputation for action and firmness. The studying of the situation is the overture to the steadying of it. The story is told of Gen. Curtis E. LeMay of the Air Force. Taking over the 21st Bomber Command in the Marianas, he faced the worried staff officers of his predecessor and said quietly, "You're all staying put. I assume you know your jobs ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... murmured, dropping into a Scots mannerism which made no more than an overture to speech between us, and yet signified ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... however, convinced that the proper time for making proposals for a peace was after gaining advantage, he sent one Ru'fus, whom he had taken prisoner, to effect an accommodation with Pompey, offering to refer all to the senate and people of Rome; but Pompey once more rejected the overture, considering the people of Rome too much in Caesar's interest ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... time another little overture was being made on the top of the same Pyramid,—an overture which was not received quite in the same spirit. While Mr. Damer was recovering his breath for the sake of answering Miss Dawkins, Miss Damer had walked to the further ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope
... the way in," answered Billy, accepting noncommittally the meat and the overture for peace. "They'll be here in less than ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... invited the king of Siam to renew the ancient connexion between their respective states, and to unite in a league against the Dutch, by whose encroachments the commerce of her subjects and the extent of her dominions were much circumscribed. It does not appear however that this overture was attended with any effect, nor have the limits of the Achinese jurisdiction since that period extended beyond Pidir on the northern, and Barus on the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... She listens through the overture; she is not much moved during the first act. Miss Neilson is pretty and winsome in her quaint dress, with her round, white arms on her nurse's knee, looking up to her eyes; she is respectful to her stately mother, ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... lively overture by piano, violin, and harp, the three Misses Hunt, in Japanese costume, gave a prettily kittenish rendering of "Three Little Maids from School," selection from one of those Gilbert and Sullivan operettas latterly enchanting both ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... and the Swiss to "Rufst Du mein Vaterland." It was sung in Sweden, also, and till 1833 it was in public use in Russia commonly enough to give it a national character. Von Weber introduced it in his "Jubel" overture, and Beethoven, in 1814, copied it in C Major and wrote piano variations on it. It has been ascribed to Henry Purcell (1696), to Lulli, a French composer (1670), to Dr. John Bull (1619), and to Thomas Ravenscroft and an old Scotch carol as old as 1609. One might fancy that the biography ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... business the orchestra was asked for an overture, and while it was playing Evan was called behind the scenes. A gentleman, whom he took for a bank official, was waiting ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... expected from the best of fathers! what more could children, born to the highest fortunes, have enjoyed! nor was their happiness like to be fleeting: Dorilaus was a man steady in his resolutions, had always declared an aversion to marriage, and by rejecting every overture made him on that score, had made his friends cease any farther importunities; he had besides (as has already been observed) no near relations, so that it was the opinion of most people that he would make the young Horatio heir to the greatest part of his estate, and give Louisa a portion ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... tribe which has reduced the problem of housing and home life to its lowest common denominator. The Poonans of Central Borneo, discovered and described by Carl Bock, build no houses of any kind, not even huts of green branches; and their only overture toward the promotion of personal comfort in the home is a five-foot grass mat spread upon the sodden earth, to lie upon when at rest. And this, in a country where in the so-called "dry season" it rains half the time, and in the "wet ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... much more important," said Mr. Nachez, "but when my name happens to be mentioned, echo always answers 'Gypsy Dances,' my little rubbishy 'Gypsy Dances!' It is not quite fair. I have published thirty-five works, among them a 'Requiem Mass,' an orchestral overture, two violin concertos, three rhapsodies for violin and orchestra, variations on a Swiss theme, Romances, a Polonaise (dedicated to Ysaye), and Evening Song, three Poemes hongrois, twelve classical masterworks of the 17th century—to say nothing of songs, etc.—and ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... silent for a moment, and the old tormenting doubt began to rise within her. Would he think she desired to make an overture? Would he take for granted that because his magnetism had drawn her he could do ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... the theatre. The hour of Simon Petrovitch had struck: with the inspiration smuggled to him by Prince Boris, he had arranged a performance which he felt to be his masterpiece. Anxiety as to its reception kept him sober. The overture had ceased, the spectators were all in their seats, and now the curtain rose. The background was a growth of enormous, sickly toad-stools, supposed to be clouds. On the stage stood a girl of eighteen, ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... been purposely silent while awaiting a sign from her, she had read his heart from the first. His every look and tone for years had been an unconscious act of wooing, and so when she brought matters to a point as she did, 'twas on her part not so much an overture as a consent. As for marriage proposal in general, all men with whom I have discussed it have confessed their own scenes thereof to have been, in the mere words, quite simple and unpoetical, whether enacted in confusion ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... and novelettes, and with this apparently inexhaustible fund of invention she would amuse him between his periods of work. The description that we have of the composition of the great "Don Giovanni" overture gives a pleasing illustration of this phase of the family life. Owing to rehearsals and other work, the day before the performance arrived with no overture yet written. In the evening, according to his custom, ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... not this overture," said that magniloquent Spaniard, "to engender in a person of my talents, and with the heart of a Mendoza, venom enough for vengeance. I could not more desire than I did already to assist in so holy a work; nor could I aspire to greater honour than would be gained in uniting those crowns ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... game laws of France, like the old game laws, and indeed like many other old laws, of England and of other countries, were not over-mild. Was not a woman first strangled and then burned in England for 'coining' in the year 1789, while the States-General were performing at Paris their fantastic overture to the ghastly drama of the Terror? Yet England in 1789 knew a great deal more of personal liberty than France knows now in 1889. The tradition of the seignorial right of hanging boys for killing rabbits originated, it is probable, with Enguerrand ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... appealing to the most unmusical side of the fashionable audiences of Europe, did so much to discourage the production of operas with a lofty aim. In France, however, his influence was unchallenged, and we may almost say that, with few exceptions, the overture to "William Tell" served as a model for all other operatic overtures which have been written there up to the present day. We have only to look at the many overtures by Herold, Boieldieu, Auber, and others, to see the influence exerted by this style ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... laying hold of the bow, and the other the stern, they swung it between them, as two washerwomen might a basket of dirty clothes. I must confess that I was a great deal mortified at seeing my command treated thus slightingly, which mortification was not a little increased by an overture that they kindly made to me, saying, that if I were at all tired, they would, with all the pleasure in the world, carry me ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... assailing him from a different side, broached the precise story to which, in the case of Agrippa or Albertus Magnus, the Syndic was prepared to give credence, he had certainly received the overture with suspicion if not with contempt. He had certainly been very far from staking good florins upon it. But when the experimenter in the midst of the apparatus of science, and surrounded by things which imposed on the vulgar, denied ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... unable to object anything against so advantageous a match, received the proposal with a profound silence, which her father commended in her, as the most decent manner of a virgin's giving her consent to an overture of that kind. The noise of this intended marriage soon reached Theodosius, who, after a long tumult of passions which naturally rise in a lover's heart on such an occasion, wrote ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... liking was not, during his absence, so far extinguished but that it immediately revived on his return. Of this she took care to give Mr. Trent proper intimation; for she was not one of those backward and delicate ladies who can die rather than make the first overture. Trent was overjoyed at this, and with reason, for she was a very lovely girl in her person, the only child of a rich father; and the prospect of so complete a revenge on the attorney charmed him above all the rest. To be as short in the matter as the parties, ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... indeed!' cried Pinchas to his garret walls. 'Who ever heard of Ignatz Levitsky? And who wants his music? The tragedy of a thinker needs no caterwauling of violins. Does Goldwater imagine I have written a melodrama? At most will I permit an overture—or the cymbals shall clash ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... mustaches! I have seduced Otto. They become us uncommonly well, and give us a very imposing air; and that is very good now that we are come into the land of banditti, where we must endeavor to awe the robbers. Thus travelled we. It was a dark night, and still as death, as in the moment when the overture begins to an opera. Soon, indeed, was the great Simplon curtain to be rolled up, and we to behold the land of music. Immediately on leaving the city, the road began to ascend; we could not see a hand before us; around us tumbled and roared the water-courses,—it was as if we ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... Fontenoy, you came to-night to Roselands with the simple purpose of making friends with the man she loves, then, sir, that man would be a heartless churl indeed if he were not touched and gratified, and did not accept with eagerness such an overture. But, sir, but! There is more, I think, in your visit to-night than meets the eye. You demand that I shall become my party's candidate for the governorship. I answer it is not now possible. You insist ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... symphonies, the music to "Egmont," the best of his chamber-music pieces, fourteen pianoforte sonatas, among them the "Pastorale" and the "Appassionata," and his only opera "Fidelio." This opera, which was first named "Leonore," with an overture that was afterward abandoned, had its first public performance in Vienna just before Napoleon's entry into the capital in 1805. After three representations it was withdrawn. Nearly ten years later, after complete revision by Beethoven, "Fidelio" achieved its ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... burning souls, had possessed him; and the noises, the shriek and the whisper, the jangling rattle of the piano-organ, the long-continued scream of the butcher as he dabbled in the blood, the lewd litany of the singers, these seemed to be resolved into an infernal overture, loud with the expectation of lust and death. And how the spectacle was set in the cloud of dark night, a phantom play acted on that fiery stage, beneath those hideous brassy lamps, very slowly swinging in a violent ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... distributed in the Eastern States. The red or scarlet maple is well named, for its flowers, not any more conspicuous in form than those of its close relation, the silver maple, are usually bright red or yellow, and they give a joyous color note in the very beginning of spring's overture. Not long are these flowers with us; they fade, only to be quickly succeeded by even more brilliant samaras, a little more delicate and refined than those of the silver maple, as well as of the richest and warmest hue. Particularly in New England ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... chromatic passages like the violin and the clarinet. As the point is of some interest, I should like to bring it before the reader with some examples. The essential character of the horns is nowhere more truly conveyed than in the soft passage near the beginning of the overture to Der Freischuetz, and it is the contrast between the two nature scales on the C horn and the F horn which gives the character to this lovely idyll. The trumpets are capable of even less variety of expression than the horns, as their individuality is even more strongly ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... Strange, indeed, that she, the grand-daughter of Henry the Great, Mademoiselle d'Eu, Mademoiselle de Dombes, Mademoiselle d'Orleans, Mademoiselle the King's first cousin, the Mademoiselle destined to the throne, should ask the King's permission to marry a Gascon cadet. Louis, as the sequel to an overture made to him by several nobles collectively, friends of Lauzun, with M. de Montausier at their head, granted his permission. But when the question arose, thanks to the blind vanity of Lauzun, of their union being celebrated ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... luminous eyes. There was a prevalent odor of stale tobacco, and orange-peel, and bad gas; and there was bustle, and noise, and laughter, and a harsh collection of stringed instruments grinding out the overture. ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... ran from the bassoon player's eyes in such plentiful showers, that they choked the finger-stops, and, making a spout of the instrument, poured in such torrents on the first fiddler's book, that, not seeing the overture was in two sharps, the leader of the band actually played in one flat. But the sobs and sighs of the groaning audience, and the noise of corks drawn from the smelling-bottles, prevented the mistakes between the flats and sharps being discovered. One hundred and nine ladies ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... 'Cara sposa' and 'Lascia ch'io pianga' (the latter still admired as one of the purest expressions of his genius), made a great impression. In the same season the Haymarket produced 'Hamlet' as an opera by Gasparini, called 'Ambleto', with an overture that had four movements ending in a jig. But as was Gasparini so was Handel in the ears of Addison and Steele. They recognized in music only the sensual pleasure that it gave, and the words set to music for the opera, whatever the composer, were then, as they have since been, almost without ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... girl did not look round at that deep-drawn sigh of the man's; she did not lift her head even when he cleared his throat: but I was intent upon him, for I thought that these sounds preluded an overture (I am not sure of the figure) to my acquaintance, and in fact he actually asked, "Do you know just when ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... curiosity, I was about to propose that we should sally out and see if the boy would repeat his overture to us, when I caught the sound of footsteps coming along the street. "Is it Maignan?" the ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... had desired somebody (she did not say who) to speak to Frederick,[6] and said he would call on him himself the next day. Something, however, prevented him, and she did not say whether he did call or not afterwards. He denied ever having made any overture at all. To Palmerston he proposed the choice of four places, and she thinks he would have taken in Huskisson if the latter had lived. He would have done nothing but on compulsion; that is clear. It is very true (what ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... it, they there left a garrison. Arran desired leave to send commissioners in order to treat of a peace; and Somerset, having appointed Berwick for the place of conference, left Warwick with full powers to negotiate: but no commissioners from Scotland ever appeared. The overture of the Scots was an artifice, to gain time till succors should arrive ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... the overture, up went the curtain. If it was a play, and the play was in German or Russian or Italian, I had but to touch Mary's little finger to understand it all—a true but incomprehensible thing. For well as I might understand, I could not have spoken ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... is merely a clever skit in which Goethe has a hit at the public and those who supply it with so-called drama. It has no organic connexion with the play. The Prologue in Heaven begins with the songs of the three Archangels—sonorous verses of majestic harmony, like some grand overture by Bach or Handel. These verses are, I think, meant to intimate the great harmonious order and procession of the natural and moral universe, as Pythagoras intimated them by his 'Music of the Spheres'—those eternal laws against which man, ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... pace the room nervously, listening for he knew not what. His mind was filled with vague imaginings; when at last came an overture to the grim test to ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... Upon this overture we ventured to request that he would come in and suffer us to shut the door, which we also locked. Next we produced the official paper nominating his son to a small place in the customs,—not yielding much, it was true, in the way of salary, but fortunately, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... was meself got the whack on me nose," responded Mrs. Connelly quite unexpectedly. She was looking squarely at the window where Mrs. Dunleavy sat behind the screen of blue mosquito netting. They were both conscious that Mrs. Connelly made a definite overture ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... see how he loves me. Didn't I ever tell you that Bel made the first friendly overture I ever received in this part of the country? He's watched me by the day, even ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... of Massachusetts, her face and figure would have ornamented any light-opera stage. I never looked at her but I thought so; and her cuffs and apron merely accentuated the delusion. Such ankles are seldom seen when the curtain rises after the overture. Odd that frivolous thoughts could flit through an intellect dedicated only ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... in the wind. And so Alfred is coming here directly! Then I understand everything. Hurrah, once more! I assure you that is the best of all the good things that have happened to-day. I really think I must play a festal overture till he comes! (Goes towards the ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... said, turning to me a face in which pride and delight and anxiety seemed equally mingled. But when the overture was played through, and his name was called, the child seemed, in her eagerness, to forget me and all the earth except him. She rose to her feet and leaned forward for a better view of her beloved as he mounted to the speaker's stand. I knew by her deep breathing that her ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... obedience the inhabitants there and at Saco and Cape Porpoise, in the Lygonian patent, and the conditions made resistance unlikely. Disregarding the Rigby claims,[40] the settlers in southern Maine accepted the overture of the Massachusetts commissioners. Accordingly, Welles, Saco, and Cape Porpoise followed the example of Kittery and Gorgeana, and came under the government ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... and Eckart. Liszt also made his triumphant entry into Germany at Leipzig, and everybody was full of expectation and excitement. His concert had been advertised long before his arrival. It was to consist of an Overture of Weber's; a Cavatina from Robert le Diable, sung by Madame Schlegel; a Concerto of Weber's, to be played by Liszt, the same which I had shortly before heard played by Madame Pleyel; Beethoven's Overture to ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... busy with the rehearsals which Wurzelmann was conducting. Professor Doederlein was not to take charge of the orchestra until it had been thoroughly drilled. The programme was to consist of Daniel's works and the "Leonore Overture." Wurzelmann referred to the Beethoven number as "a good third ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the band of the beef—that is, the band behind the beef; that is, the band that nightly hymns the beef (the phrase is to be had in three qualities)—struck up the overture from Tannhaeuser, which is not the only music that makes the Sphinx forget my existence; and thus, forgetting me, she momentarily forgot the whitebait. But I remembered, remembered hard—worked at pretty things, as metal-workers punch out their flowers of ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... out of the glaciers shaped itself suddenly into an organ, and there was one whose face I well knew sitting at the keyboard, smiling and pluming himself like a bird as he thundered forth a giant fugue by way of overture. I heard the great pedal notes in the bass stalk majestically up and down, like the rays of the Aurora that go about upon the face of the heavens off the coast of Labrador. Then presently the people rose and sang ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... United Provinces was divided on this important question. An instinctive hatred against the Spaniards, and long habits of warfare, influenced the great mass of the people to consider any overture for peace as some wily artifice aimed at their religion and liberty. War seemed to open inexhaustible sources of wealth; while peace seemed to threaten the extinction of the courage which was now as much a habit as war appeared to be a want. This reasoning was particularly convincing ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... was playing the Overture of Phedre et Hippolyte, a young Muscadin, pointing his ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... last visit which he paid to the Emperor was shortly before the battle of Waterloo. Montholon was in the antechamber, when the man with the red cloak entered his master's apartment. After renewed expostulations, he urged the Emperor to make an overture to the allied powers, and to promise that he would confine his claims to France, and pledge himself not to attempt conquest beyond the Rhine. When Napoleon, though half awed, rejected this advice with some irritation, his visitor rose, and solemnly predicted ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... the struggle to a close by the capture of Candia, the siege of which had already reached near twice the duration of that of Troy. To supply the deficiencies of the Turkish marine, which had been almost ruined by the repeated naval victories of the Venetians, an overture was made to the English ambassador, Lord Winchilsea, for permission to hire the services of a number of British vessels; but this strange request being evaded, the expedition was postponed for a year, while every nerve was strained in the building ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... ascended the stairs the swing door was pushed open. The pilgrims' song drifted through it, and she knew that they had begun the overture. She crossed a stage in indescribable disorder. Scene-shifters were calling to each other, and there was an incessant hammering in the flies. "We might as well rehearse in a barn with the threshing-machine going all the ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... stop him?" groaned Mary Braddock, opening her eyes to look again upon the sinister figure across the way. She had not heard a word of Colonel Grand's minacious overture. ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... prayer to God. Then, my son, being led into temptation, do not you persist in courting, nay, almost tempting temptation. Try the effects of absence, though but for a month." The good father even made an overture toward imposing a penance upon him, that would have involved an absence of some duration. But he was obliged to desist; for he saw that, without effecting any good, he would merely add spiritual disobedience to the other ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... promised a sensation even greater. As the crowd in the lobby thinned, the strains of the overture crashed out. Through the open door the little boy saw the curtain rise on a scene that to him represented the glitter and the glory of fairyland. Beautiful ladies danced and sang and the light flashed on brilliant costumes. With their unsold books in their hands, the ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... married. I was best man, and realized what a menstruum is music—what curious trafficking it causes, what opposites it intertwines. And the overture being finished the real curtain arose, as it does on ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... ineffectual and laughable attempts to manipulate in the approved fashion, you throw on one side. After the decks are cleared the young ladies bring out their sam-sins, and whilst we smoke Japanese pipes, they delight our ears with an overture, which we pronounce excruciating in English, though with our eyes ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... hundred pages or so of preface—or perhaps overture would be the better word, since in it a group of literary men, while contributing recondite recipes, flourish trumpets in every key—to his huge volume he says, "I wish to be read by people of the world, and practiced by people of the art" (gens de l'art); and although ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... was packed on this the first night of the Thessalonian play. It was already long past time for the performance to begin. The orchestra finished the overture and waited a few minutes; then began another selection. They played this through, and there was still no indication of the curtain going up. They played a third piece. The house became restless and began to clap for the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... among us, we all know, and voices not musical, it may be, to those who hear them for the first time, yet sweeter to us than any we shall hear until we listen to some warbling angel in the overture to that eternity of blissful harmonies we hope to enjoy.—But why should I tell lies? If my friends love me, it is because I try to tell the truth. I never heard but two voices in my life that frightened me ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... abruptly this chosen calm of my life was to be broken nor how these same studies were to be turned in a new and strange direction. But if on this night which was to witness the overture of a horrible drama, I had not hitherto experienced any premonition of the coming of those dark forces which were to change the whole tenor of my existence, suddenly, now, in sight of the elm tree which stood before my ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... of the commonwealth, that Tiberius should be declared a god, and have divine worship paid him. The Emperor was surprised at the proposal, and demanded of him to declare whether he had made any application to incline him to that overture? The senator answered, with a bold and haughty tone, "Sir, in matters that concern the commonwealth, I will be governed by no man."[213] Another gentleman mentioned something of the same kind spoken by the late Duke of B——m,[214] to the late Earl of O——y:[215] "My ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... to apply to the horse-dealer himself, whom he described as a very just and modest man. The horse-dealer, whose will was, in fact, broken by the incident which had occurred in the market-place, was, in conformity with the advice of the Lord Chancellor, only waiting for an overture on the part of the Squire or his relatives in order to meet them half-way with perfect willingness and forgiveness for all that had happened; but to make this overture entailed too great a sacrifice of dignity ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... clothes. I wonder if they were made for some great actor, or whether they were once the real thing? No, that's impossible..... I wish Miss Medford was going to take a part—perhaps she is.... unless that's her touch on the piano. The overture probably..... It's so cold in here, I must walk about..... The candle is ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... yet almost overwhelming pathos of the tones affected Dr. Grey much as the tremolo-stop in some organ-overture in a dimly-lighted cathedral; and, as the singer seemed to pour her whole aching heart and wearied soul into the concluding "Ah! tutto-tutto fini!" he turned, and involuntarily followed the sound, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... regard these few words as a further declaration of war, or as an overture to peace; but he lost no time in complying with the summons they conveyed. He started for Paris the next morning, and in the evening, after he had removed the dust of his journey and swallowed a hasty dinner, he rang at Mrs. Vivian's door. This ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... last will and testament upon the rocky floor of the den. What was his surprise to see the lion advance amicably and extend his right forefoot! Androcles, however, was equal to the occasion: he met the friendly overture with a cordial grasp of the hand, whereat the lion howled—for he had a carpet-tack in his foot. Perceiving that he had made a little mistake, Androcles made such reparation as was in his power by pulling out the tack and putting ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... her. Shall I play to you a little, Mr. Sefton? It is getting too dark to read." Bessie made this overture as a sort of amends to Richard, and the friendly little act seemed to ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to tackle a full score, and Jimson was so unconventional. A dedication would be found convincing, I believe. 'Dedicated to' (let me see) 'to William Ewart Gladstone, by his obedient servant the composer.' And now some music: I had better avoid the overture; it seems to present difficulties. Let's give an air for the tenor: key—O, something modern!—seven sharps." And he made a business-like signature across the staves, and then paused and browsed for a while on the handle of his pen. Melody, with no better inspiration than ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... coup d'archet announced the overture, and roused her energy, as if Ithuriel's spear had pricked her. She came down dressed, to listen at one of the upper entrances, to fill herself with the musical theme, before taking her part in it, and also to gauge the audience and ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... happen than the weariness of experience gone by. She was weary, not because of the past, but because the fairy theatre of life still kept its curtain down, and forced her to play over and over again the impatient overture ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... that says "Don't" when you squeeze it,—he actually mistook her for a goddess.' Ah! reader, don't you wish you could make such a splendid mistake? I do. I'd give anything to be once more sitting before the footlights for the first time, with the wonderful overture just beginning to steal through ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... was giving way to such thoughts as these, and vainly endeavouring to make up his mind as to what he would do, that Martin made his offer to Anty. To tell the truth, it was Martin's sister Meg who had made the first overture; and, as Anty had not rejected it with any great disdain, but had rather shown a disposition to talk about it as a thing just possible, Martin had repeated it in person, and had reiterated it, till Anty had at last taught herself to look upon it as a likely and desirable circumstance. Martin ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... providentially, the band of the beef—that is, the band behind the beef; that is, the band that nightly hymns the beef (the phrase is to be had in three qualities)—struck up the overture from Tannhaeuser, which is not the only music that makes the Sphinx forget my existence; and thus, forgetting me, she momentarily forgot the whitebait. But I remembered, remembered hard—worked at pretty things, as metal-workers punch ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... source of dread, and when the carriage called for Albert and herself she was in an excited state of mind, and maybe it was not all on account of Mrs. Nason either. They had barely taken their seats in the box, and the orchestra had only just begun the overture, when the usher knocked and Blanch, followed by the rest of the family, entered. That young lady greeted Alice with an effusive kiss at once, and the next instant she found herself shaking hands with a rotund and gray-haired ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... like Tarzan the Terrible must be a fellow-tribesman of his lost friend, was more than glad to accept this overture of peace, the sign of which he returned in kind as he ascended the trail to where the other stood. "Who are you?" he asked, but the newcomer only shook his head to indicate that ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... dinner. The count employed all his practised seductions on Laurence, which were so brilliant and able that they were well fitted to surprise and dazzle a young girl. It was not long before the count was the hero of the mayor's household. Nothing formal had been said, nor any direct allusion or overture made; yet M. Courtois was sure that Hector would some day ask his daughter's hand, and that he should freely answer, "yes;" while he thought it certain that Laurence would not ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... authorship of the music has been often contested, but it is proven by the conclusive evidence contained in the pamphlet on the subject, by his nephew, published in Paris, in 1865. Schumann has used the "Marseillaise" in the overture to "Hermann and Dorothea," and also in his song of the ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... bring no overture of war, no taxation of homage; I hold the Olive in my hand; my words are as full ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... first-tier box presented to her husband with the accustomed heavy courtesy of the Societe Harmonique. She went early to the hall that she might hear the entire music-making of the evening—Van Kuyp's tone-poem, Sordello, was on the programme between a Weber overture and a Beethoven symphony, an unusual honour for a young American composer. If she had gone late, it would have seemed an affectation, she reasoned. Her husband kept within doors; she could tell him all. And then, was there not ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... So with the other general feature in verse 12. A true wife is a fountain of good, and good only, all the days of her life—ay, and beyond them too, when her remembrance shines like the calm west after a cloudless sunset. This being, as it were, the overture, next follows the main ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the house electrician, with each hand on portions of the big switchboard, threw on the border and bunch lights, making the great stage almost as light as day. Then, out in front, Dorothy heard the orchestra as it struck into the overture, and hastening away, she seated herself in her dressing-room to await her ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... so ungrateful as to go out of the way to be civil to her enemies, to royalists; as if those worn-out creatures had hearts, as if they could comprehend the struggle that took place in my mind between duty, and generosity to the fallen, before I could make the first overture to their acquaintance; as if they could understand the politeness of the heart, or anything nobler than curving and ducking and heartless etiquette. This is the last notice I will ever take of that old woman, unless it is ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... climaxes, exceptions, surprises, suspensions, in which harmony delights; the change from the last bar of the overture to the first of the opening recitative in the "Messiah," the chord upon which the victor is crowned in "The Meistersingers," the 59th and 60th bars in Handel's "Every Valley." (I hope some of us are "old-fashioned" enough to be unashamed ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... the palm or pulp which is under the thumb. Then put he the forefinger of the right hand in the like buckle of the left, but he put it under, and not over, as Panurge did. Then Panurge knocked one hand against another, and blowed in his palm, and put again the forefinger of his right hand into the overture or mouth of the left, pulling it often in and out. Then held he out his chin, most intentively looking upon Thaumast. The people there, which understood nothing in the other signs, knew very well that therein he demanded, without speaking ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... After a lively overture by piano, violin, and harp, the three Misses Hunt, in Japanese costume, gave a prettily kittenish rendering of "Three Little Maids from School," selection from one of those Gilbert and Sullivan operettas latterly enchanting both England and America. The tub-shaped Herr Spiegelmeyer, ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... them carrying a big drum, the other hidden under a Punch and Judy show. Of a sudden there sounded a shrill note, high above the organ, a fluting from the bottom to the top of the gamut, the immemorial summons to children, the overture to the primitive drama. It was drowned in a scream of welcome, which, in its turn, was outdone by thunderous peals ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... Barndale regarded him with amazement. Demetri Agryopoulo, salaried hanger-on to the Persian embassy, was glaring like a roused wild beast at these two shadowy figures in the shadow of the orchestra. The band was crashing away at the overture to 'Tannhaeuser,' the people were laughing and chattering as they circled, and not an eye but Barndale's regarded this drama in the corner. The Greek's hand was in his bosom, where it clutched something with an ugly gesture. His face was in ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... windows. The sunlight and ventilation to the ancients was given through empty spaces in the roofs.... Hoofs knocked under the weight of materials thrown out by Vesuvius; it is undoubted, however, that roofs were provided with covers or supported terraces. In the middle of the roofs was cut an overture through which air and light brought their benefits to the underlaid ambients.... Proprietor disposed the locals according to his own delight.... So that, there were bed, bath, dining, talking and game rooms." ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... attainment of the dominion they aimed at, a dominion as universal as that of Rome; and so intoxicated were they with that vast ambition that under all their present distress and danger they haughtily rejected every overture for a treaty or a cessation of arms; that the war was a just and necessary measure, advised by the Parliament itself from the conviction that, at any rate, Delenda est Carthago—such a government'must be destroyed; and that therefore the King may well say it was their war; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... all by the study of music itself. Instead of this, I contented myself with hearing bits from Freischutz played by my sisters. Yet my passion for it gradually grew so strong that I can remember taking a particular fancy for a young man called Spiess, chiefly because he could play the overture to Freischutz, which I used to ask him to do whenever I met him. It was chiefly the introduction to this overture which at last led me to attempt, without ever having received any instruction on the piano, to play this piece in my own peculiar way, for, oddly ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... chair, pulled forward the velvet drapery so as to shut out the view of the house, and fixed his eyes upon the heads of the musicians in the orchestra. The overture was nearly over. The curtain would very soon go up. Then he observed that Powell still stood near him. The man was strangely officious to-day, he thought. Could that be connected in any way with the fact he had had his hair cut? For a moment the notion appeared ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Alexander's overture was unheeded at Vienna, at least for the moment, because Metternich was in Paris wooing Napoleon's good will. Simultaneously and openly, therefore, the fencing between Paris and St. Petersburg went on. A rejoinder to the counter-project ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... felt it was my death knell. But through the darkness of my weltering soul (for I was presumably dead and undoubtedly damned) there marched, stood still, and curtsied majestically towards each other, the great grave opening chords of the overture. And when they had delivered, solemnly, their mysterious herald's message and subsided, off started the little nimble notes of the fugue, hastening from all sides, meeting, crossing, dispersing, returning, telling their wonderful ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... between the tallness of their spars, and the low character of the adjacent shores. As we drew near the Narrows, the wind increased; and forty sail, working through the pass in close conjunction, terminated the piece with something like the effect produced by a finale in an overture. The brightness of the morning, the placid charms of the scenery, and the propitious circumstances under which I commenced the voyage, in a commercial point of view, had all contributed to make me momentarily forget my private ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... Saltzburg, brandishing his baton as if he were conducting an unseen orchestra, plunged through the scenery at the left upper entrance and charged excitedly down the stage. Having taken his musicians twice through the overture, he had for ten minutes been sitting in silence, waiting for the curtain to go up. At last, his emotional nature cracking under the strain of this suspense, he had left his conductor's chair and plunged down under the stage by way of the musician's bolthole to ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... gain your aid by a deceitful silence. I owe ye an apology for the way I treated your overture before, but I must tell you that both my own, and my girl's word is given to Major Hennion, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... Otomo Yoshishige, who invaded Hizen, so that Masaiye had to apply to the Shimazu family for succour. The Satsuma chieftain suggested that the matter might be settled by mutual withdrawal of forces, but Yoshishige declined this overture, and the result was a battle in which the Otomo troops were completely defeated. Otomo Yoshishige then (1586) had recourse to Hideyoshi for assistance, thus furnishing the opportunity of which Osaka was in search. Orders were immediately issued to Mori, Kikkawa, Kohayakawa, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... one other attempt to win Tom's favor as she was walking about the garden. But Tom eyed her askance and discreetly declined her overture. There had always been cats at Miss Arabella's, and two great dogs as well as her pony, and birds so tame they would fly ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Ireland, they know that he had been mildly interested in Ireland as material for art as far back as 1894, and that it was Mr. Martyn who had interested him in the things of home. Mr. Moore tells us all about it more than explicitly in the "Overture" to his trilogy. In the first chapter he tells us that the interest faded away gradually, to be reawakened in 1899 by a visit paid him in London by Mr. Martyn and Mr. Yeats, who came to ask his help in founding a "Literary ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... greatly relieved, but still this friendly overture might be merely a feint to open the way for a home thrust. Sam was silent. So Yan said, presently, "We ain't allowed to use anything but what the Indians had or could ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... he had made it parenthetic, that he didn't happen "personally" to know Basil French—as if it would have been at all likely he should know him, even im personally, and as if he could conceal from her the fact that, since she had made him her overture, this gentleman's name supremely baited her hook! Oh, they would help Julia Bride if they could—they would do their remarkable best; but they would at any rate have made his acquaintance over it, and she might indeed leave the rest to their thoroughness. ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... civil lady of the shop proceeding to inquire after the health of his master and mistress, and the general news of Aberleigh, master Ben, who well knew her proficiency in gossiping, and had the dislike of a man and a rival to any female practitioner in that art, checked at once this condescending overture to conversation by answering with more than his usual consequence: "The chief news that I know, Miss Firkin, is, that our geraniums are all pining away for want of fresh earth, and that I am sent in furious haste after a load of your best garden-pots. ...
— Miss Philly Firkin, The China-Woman • Mary Russell Mitford
... wedding coat. On the Continent of Europe, and especially in the Latin countries, where class barriers are more formidable, the situation differs materially, and to the disadvantage of the girl. If she makes an overture, it is an invitation to disaster; her hope of lawful marriage by such means is almost nil. In consequence, the prudent and decent girl avoids such overtures, and they must be made by third parties or by the man himself. This is the ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... devil, and not to be convinced, till too late, I replied to his peaceful overture by the most insulting irony: "You were not afraid to fire at a poor boy in the water," said I, "though you do not like to stand a shot in return. Come, come, take your ground, be a man, stand up, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... into a rhythmic clatter, always changing in distance and intensity. When it comes near, you should get into a tunnel, and stand there while it passes. I did that once, and it was like the last page of an overture by Beethoven—thunderingly impetuous. I cannot conceive how any person can hope to disparage a train by comparing it with a stage-coach; and I know something of stage-coaches—or, at least, of diligences. Their effect on the men employed about them ought to decide the superiority ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... to know me so well," answered the marquise, with another effort, as unsuccessful as the former, to free the bridle of her horse, "you should know how a woman like me would receive such an overture; say to yourself what I might say to you, and above all, what I might say ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... proper overture to the tale that was about to be told. Conversation was impossible until the storm raved past and was heard dying in deep, reverberating echoes from the depths of the Devil's ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... the Sonnets I do not care for: mostly because of the Subject: but there is pretty sure to be some beautiful line or expression in all; and all pure, tender, noble, and—original. Old Spedding supplies a beautiful Prose Overture to this delightful Volume: never was Critic more one with his Subject—or, Object, is it? Frederick Tennyson, my old friend, ought to have done something to live along with his Brothers: all who will live, I believe, of their Generation: ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... Unfortunately, his first overture of what he considered good-fellowship had been made to an upper-classman, and had been a grievous mistake. Ken had not yet recovered from its reception. He grew careful after that, then shy, and finally began to struggle ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... the glaciers shaped itself suddenly into an organ, and there was one whose face I well knew sitting at the keyboard, smiling and pluming himself like a bird as he thundered forth a giant fugue by way of overture. I heard the great pedal notes in the bass stalk majestically up and down, as the rays of the Aurora that go about upon the face of the heavens off the coast of Labrador. Then presently the people rose and sang the chorus "Venus ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... for a peace was after gaining advantage, he sent one Ru'fus, whom he had taken prisoner, to effect an accommodation with Pompey, offering to refer all to the senate and people of Rome; but Pompey once more rejected the overture, considering the people of Rome too much in Caesar's ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... the last portion of Oliver Twist, its author, having been relieved altogether from his engagement to the magazine, handed over, in a familiar epistle from a parent to his child, the editorship to Mr. Ainsworth; and the still subsisting agreement to write Barnaby Rudge was, upon the overture of Mr. Bentley himself in June of the following year, 1840, also put an end to, on payment by Dickens, for the copyright of Oliver Twist and such printed stock as remained of the edition then on ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... with ample funds by the munificence of citizens who remained, and sent forward to Virginia, to make their breasts a shield for the proud old "Mother of Presidents." The battle of Bethel was regarded as part of an overture to the opera of Blood, yclept "Subjugation," and people watched in silence for the crimson curtain to rise on the banks of the Potomac. Russell Aubrey had succeeded in raising a fine full company for the war, ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... lonesomeness that oppressed him by tackling his neglected correspondence. Somehow, to-day, the sense of his isolation had come over him stronger than ever. His rank forbade any intimacy with his miserable handful of men, who had already fallen into the monotony of routine, while every friendly overture he made towards the citizens of Flambeau was met with distrust and coldness, his stripes of office seeming to erect a barrier and induce an ostracism stronger and more complete than if they had been emblems of the penitentiary. ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... high a degree of exactness and perfection of style is reached. This band appeared to me to differ from all others I have heard in this,—that it plays music of a higher order; on this occasion, for instance, it gave an arrangement of Mozart's overture ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... too proper a sense of dignity to allow herself to be entrapped into the acceptance of an obligation by one whom she so deservedly despised. She replied coldly that she had jewels enough, and did not desire to increase the number. But the overture thus made by Madame du Barri could not be kept secret, and more than one of her partisans followed the hint afforded by her example, and showed a desire to make their peace with their future queen. The Duc d'Aiguillon himself was among the foremost of her ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... Superior, alas! would be sure to make inquiries as to the friends whom she had visited—the magic violin of M. Szmera played its first notes, accompanied by Madame Odinska on the piano, and by a delicious little flute. They played an overture, the dreamy sweetness of which extorted cries of ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... 'comic person.' It is merely a clever skit in which Goethe has a hit at the public and those who supply it with so-called drama. It has no organic connexion with the play. The Prologue in Heaven begins with the songs of the three Archangels—sonorous verses of majestic harmony, like some grand overture by Bach or Handel. These verses are, I think, meant to intimate the great harmonious order and procession of the natural and moral universe, as Pythagoras intimated them by his 'Music of the Spheres'—those ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... rate, the fact is, their training is so imperfect they daren't let themselves go. It's only when a man possesses the lower secrets of his art perfectly that he can aim at the higher. But the band is nearly through the overture. Just tell me before the curtain goes up something about the play. I have only very vague ideas about it. The scene ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Patrick Gillespie and Mr. Minzies were called up by the protector to London, where he proposed to him, that he would take off the heavy fines, that were laid on severals in Scotland, which they were unable to pay; he seemed to like the motion, but when he proposed the overture to the council, they went ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... stopping and looking at the friendly propounder, 'that's nae bad overture, as they say in the General Assembly. I have heard waur motions ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... time, Western history emerged, and—astonishing thing—began to move and change! "Why," I said, "there's something trying to happen! What is it? Is there going to be a melody?" There was not one. But there was—has the reader ever heard the second—or is it the third?—overture to "Leonora"? A scale begins to run up, first on the violins; then one by one the other instruments join in, till the great basses are swept into the current and run and scale too. So it was here. The West began; but the East caught it up. The unchanging drone began ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... State is of opinion that this overture should be attended to without delay, and that the proposal of treating at Madrid, though not what might have been desired, should yet be accepted, and a commission plenipotentiary made out ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... a letter. It must not be long; it must not strike the lyrical note; yet assuredly it must not read like a commercial overture. He had great difficulty in writing anything that seemed tolerable. Yet done it must be, and done it was; and before going to bed he had dropped his letter into the post. He durst not leave it for ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... members of the orchestra took their places for the overture, and it was to the appropriate strains of "Land of Hope and Glory" that the curtain rose on the ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... the members of the National Association, duly discussed, and so far as one of the parties could do, accepted; that is, the National Society pledged itself to be merged into a Union Association, provided the American would make the same surrender at its first Anniversary. But as this overture for peace was rejected, the mission of the Union Society ended, leaving the National free to reassert itself and go forward with its catholic platform and persistent demands for "National protection for ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... unfriendly attitude. Within a mile and a half of the town several of the officers impatiently urged an immediate attack; but as the president's commands were to keep peace as long as possible, Harrison decided to send an officer with a small guard to arrange for a conference. This overture, however, did not succeed; the Indians were hostile, and even made an attempt to capture the officer and his men. And Harrison then ordered his army to advance ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... aspiration, not the topaz of praise, not the emerald of holiness, but the carbuncle of delight from the high priest's breast-plate. And I must give the introduction too: it is the cloudy grove of an overture, whence rushes the ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... snowy wreaths from their pipes, and varying their employment now and then with a pull at the tin pots, which seemed to afford them extreme satisfaction. In this manner we lay till the moon waned; and the owl having finished his overture, we rolled ourselves in our blankets, and watched the twinkling star, till sleep ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... matter off; but if she could not be induced to talk of Lord Blandamer, she thought of him the more, and rehearsed again and again in day-dreams and in night-dreams every incident of that momentous Saturday afternoon, from the first bars of the overture, when he had revealed in so easy and simple a way that he was none other than Lord Blandamer, to the ringing down of the curtain, when he turned to look back—to that glance when his eyes had seemed to meet hers, although she was hidden behind a blind, and he could not have guessed that ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... the commissarial resolutions of the 9th of May, 1781, the 16th of January, and the 20th of March, of the present year, 1782, have examined the resolution of their High Mightinesses of the 4th of May, 1781, containing an overture, that the President of the Assembly of their High Mightinesses had made, 'that a person, styling himself J. Adams, had been with him, and had given him to understand that he had received letters of credence for their High Mightinesses from the United States of ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... envoys, the Lord Inchiquin unexpectedly declared, with his army, in favour of the king against the parliament, and instantly proposed an armistice to the confederate Catholics, as friends to the royal cause. By some the overture was indignantly rejected. Inchiquin, they said, had been their most bitter enemy; he had made it his delight to shed the blood of Irishmen, and to pollute and destroy their altars. Besides, what pledge ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... possible that something might be gained on the other side by his refusal to see the elder brother of his son-in-law. He might, by refusing, leave it open to his enemies to say that he had rejected an overture to peace, and he now regarded as his enemies almost the entire Germain family. His own son-in-law would in future, he thought, be as much opposed to him as the head of the family. The old Marchioness, he knew, sincerely ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... yet quite abandoned the hope that Ralph who was not the heir might yet possess the place; and when he heard of his nephew's doings, heard falsehood as well as truth, from day to day he built up new hopes. He had not expected any such overture as that which had come from Sir Thomas; but if, as he did expect, Ralph the heir should go to the Jews, why should not the Squire purchase the Jews' interest in his own estate? Or, if Ralph the heir should, more wisely, ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... "is founded on a bass, as on a fruitful soil. Mahomet was to have a majestic bass voice, and his wife necessarily had a contralto. Kadijah was quite old—twenty! Attention! This is the overture. It begins with an andante in C major, triple time. Do you hear the sadness of the ambitious man who is not satisfied with love? Then, through his lamentation, by a transition to the key of E flat, allegro, common time, ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... opened the concert with a brilliant solo by way of overture, which was duly reported by the musical critic in the shape of a chalk line on the table. The length of the effusion did not matter; a long aria, or a brilliant but spasmodic cadenza, each counted one, and one only. The Bermondsey bird, heedless of the ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... absence, so far extinguished but that it immediately revived on his return. Of this she took care to give Mr. Trent proper intimation; for she was not one of those backward and delicate ladies who can die rather than make the first overture. Trent was overjoyed at this, and with reason, for she was a very lovely girl in her person, the only child of a rich father; and the prospect of so complete a revenge on the attorney charmed him above all the rest. To be as ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... thence outside to the little thatched cook-house a few yards away. With ardent infatuation Etheridge rested his blue eyes on the white-robed, slender figure as she stood at the door and watched the Niue cook light his fire for an early cup of coffee—the first overture to breakfast at Etheridge's. ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... in," answered Billy, accepting noncommittally the meat and the overture for peace. "They'll be here in ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... purposely silent while awaiting a sign from her, she had read his heart from the first. His every look and tone for years had been an unconscious act of wooing, and so when she brought matters to a point as she did, 'twas on her part not so much an overture as a consent. As for marriage proposal in general, all men with whom I have discussed it have confessed their own scenes thereof to have been, in the mere words, quite simple and unpoetical, whether enacted in confusion ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... answered in the affirmative, wondering if this were a friendly overture. He had noticed that Mr Smith's eyes had a sort of inward look as though he had disliked or disdained his surroundings. The captain's wife had disappeared then down the companion stairs. Mr Smith said 'Ah!' and waited a little longer to ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... wait for the overture. The minute he hands Kazedky over he fades towards the elevator. There's nothin' for me to do but wait; so I picks out a red velvet chair and camps down on it to watch the promenade. That's what it was, too; for Mallory acts like he'd forgot everything he ever knew except that he's got to talk ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... him before United States Commissioner Loring. The next morning Theodore Parker hastened to the court-room to say that he was the chaplain of the Abolition Society, and had come to offer counsel. But the fugitive was afraid to accept the overture, lest his master punish him the ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... a tribe which has reduced the problem of housing and home life to its lowest common denominator. The Poonans of Central Borneo, discovered and described by Carl Bock, build no houses of any kind, not even huts of green branches; and their only overture toward the promotion of personal comfort in the home is a five-foot grass mat spread upon the sodden earth, to lie upon when at rest. And this, in a country where in the so-called "dry season" it rains half the time, and in the "wet season" all ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... greater glories which might appertain to a future Marchioness of Hartletop. In that direction she was not without sufficient wisdom. But then Lord Lufton had not offered to her, nor given any signs that he intended to do so; and to give Griselda Grantly her due, she was not a girl to make a first overture. Neither had Lord Dumbello offered; but he had given signs,—dumb signs, such as birds give to each other, quite as intelligible as verbal signs to a girl who preferred the use of her toes to that ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... accompanying the voice, repeat portions of the melody in short symphonies. Pistocchi was one of the most prominent stage-singers of his time, and established a school of singing at Bologna. His most famous oratorio is entitled "Maria Vergine addolerata," and is without overture or chorus. Burney notes that in the close of this work degrees of diminution of sound, such as "piano," "piu piano," and "pianissimo," are used for the first time. Caldara wrote a large number of oratorios, mostly adapted to the poetry of Zeno ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... of horns referred to in Titus II, ii, 10 is a technical term in forestry for a particular set of notes on the horn. Mehul (1763-1817), in his overture 'Le jeune Henri,' introduces several old French hunting fanfares, which perhaps may give an idea of what was meant by 'Horns wind a peal.' [See Appendix.] Also in Purcell's 'Dido and Eneas,' No. 16 (date 1675), in the ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... with Jules Benedict's overture to his opera, The Crusaders, himself conducting the orchestra of 60 instruments. It was an admirably balanced and effective orchestra, and notwithstanding that we had to listen as it were round a corner, we felt the unity and full force of its strong chords, and traced the precise ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... able-bodied musicians are discoursing Beethoven's rambling "Eroica," it were possible to dispatch and to dress a carload of as fine beeves as ever hailed from Texas; and the performance of the "Sakuntala" overture might be regarded as a virtual loss of as much time as would be required for the beheading, skinning, and dismembering of ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... forward while the two women overwhelmed Hazel with a flood of exclamations and questions, and extended his hand. Hazel accepted the overture. She had long since gotten over her resentment against him. She was furthermore amazed to find that she could meet his eye and take his hand without a single flutter of her pulse. It seemed strange, but she was glad of it. And, indeed, she was too much taken up with ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... rejected. From Fort Defiance, a fort he built and named, at the junction of the Miami and Le Glaize rivers, he, in August, 1794, went down the Miami River, with about one thousand men, until he came close to a British post, at the foot of the rapids of the river. Here he sent a last overture to the Indians, promising peace if they would lay down their arms. Upon their rejecting this, he, on August 20th, moved to the head of the rapids, and attacked them with such vigor, using again his favorite weapon, the bayonet, that their ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... "Will that content you?" sez he, blowin' on his knuckles for all the world like a Scots Greys orf'cer. "Content!" sez I. "For your own sake, man, take off your spurs, peel your jackut, an' onglove. 'Tis the beginnin' av the overture; stand up!" ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... than a minute, and presently the four were seated in their box, and the gay strains from the overture of The Strand Girl came floating ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... England with the king, leaving his bride behind. And Chancellor Hyde being presently re-established in his offices, and settled in his residence at Worcester House in the Strand, sent for his wife and children; the more speedily as he had received an overture from a noble family, on behalf of "a hopeful, well-bred young gentleman," who expressed himself anxious to ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... replied promptly, the little hand again stealing through the long sleeve and stroking my much-admired skirt. She had now snuggled down beside me upon the settee, and instinctively, rather than from any desire to show friendliness, I drew my arm about the small shoulders, which overture was interpreted as an invitation for the ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... The entire overture, long as it was, was played to a dark house with the curtain down. It was exquisite; it was delicious. But straightway thereafter, or course, came the singing, and it does seem to me that nothing can make a Wagner opera absolutely perfect and satisfactory to the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... him down unarmed. It is said that his friends recovered his body and buried it in a secret place unknown to the Spaniards, who were anxious to obtain it for exhibition as a trophy of war in Havana. Maceo was equal to Toussaint L'Overture of San Domingo. His public life was consecrated to liberty; he knew no vice nor mean action; he would not permit any around him. When he landed in Cuba from Porto Rico he was told there were no arms. He replied, "I will get them ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... own counsel, never intimating a wish or expectation of her son's return. Her surprise upon his arrival was well counterfeited; nor was it ever known beyond mother and son that the latter had not been first to make the overture. But this son, in some respects so like his mother, might have evinced less disposition to do at once her bidding had not the inducements held forth ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... opening bars of the overture to Fred, with rather the air of a man who lets a trout have line. And ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... wage, and could eat three meals, besides second breakfast and afternoon coffee, down deep in his heart old Adelbert felt that he had lost caste. The Opera—that was a setting! Great staircases of marble, velvet hangings, the hush before the overture, and over all the magic and dignity of music. And before his stall had passed and repassed the world—royalties, the aristocracy, the army. Hoi polloi had used another entrance by which to climb to the upper galleries. He had been, then, of the elect. ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the concentration of her thoughts. The melodies which she had played rang in his ears now. For the girl possessed the gift of music, and the strings of her violin spoke to the questions of her bow. There was in particular an overture—the Melusine overture—which had the very sob of the waves. Durrance had listened wondering, for the violin had spoken to him of many things of which the girl who played it could know nothing. It had spoken of long perilous journeys and the faces of strange countries; of the silver way ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... arrived; the guests assembled; the great dramatic experiment stood on its trial. Magdalen had made the most of her opportunities; she had learned all that the manager could teach her in the time. Miss Garth left her when the overture began, sitting apart in a corner behind the scenes, serious and silent, with her smelling-bottle in one hand, and her book in the other, resolutely training herself for the coming ordeal, ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... of business the orchestra was asked for an overture, and while it was playing Evan was called behind the scenes. A gentleman, whom he took for a bank official, was waiting to speak ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... constructed and adjusted as not only to sound each note and chord in its proper sequence and relation, but to regulate also the duration of the sound vibration. If this machine were operated in such a manner as to play, in a single second of time, the entire overture of an opera which would normally occupy half an hour, we should hear only an unintelligible noise a second long. This would be due to no defect in the sound-producing mechanism, but to the limitations ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... reading two interesting French books: Emile Faguet's "Short History of French Literature" and Dumas' "Vingt Ans Apres." I wish you would send me Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," or one of Hegel's books. This evening I listened to Beethoven's "Egmont" overture—what a glorious work it is! Keep your eye for me on any books dealing with ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... Women and marriage and breaches of marriage appear indeed; but the earlier Graal stories are dominated by the most ascetic virginity-worship, and the earlier Arthur-stories show absolutely nothing of the passion which is the subject of the magnificent overture of Mr. Swinburne's Tristram. Even this story of Tristram himself, afterwards fired and coloured by passion, seems at first to have shown nothing but the mixture of animalism, cruelty, and magic which is characteristic ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... a rustling of ladies' silks, and of cavaliers' velvets, and the grateful spectators took their seats, while the emperor, with a look of extreme satisfaction, opened the score of the Porno d'Oro, laid it on the ledge of the box, and began to hum the overture. ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... look). I do not put up my fidelity To sale, Count Terzky! Half a year ago I would not have advised you to have made me An overture to that, to which I now Offer myself of my own free accord. But that is past! and to the duke, field-marshal, I bring myself, together with my regiment. And mark you, 'tis my humor to believe, The example which I give will not remain ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... baton. The orchestra ceased its tuning. The lights were lowered. Silence and stillness enwrapped the auditorium. And the quivering violins sighed out the first chords of the "Lohengrin" overture. For me, then, there existed nothing save the voluptuous music, to which I abandoned myself as to the fascination of a dream. But not for long. Just as the curtain rose, the door behind me gave a click, and Sullivan entered in all his magnificence. I jumped up. On his arm ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... The interval between overture and finale is, as has been said or hinted, uncommonly lively, and for once, not only in the final retribution, Paul has distributed the peine du talion pretty equally between his personages. Dorsan has already lost another grisette mistress, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... States equal in extent to Kentucky. It must be confessed that a device better calculated to produce jealousy, suspicion, ill-will and hatred, could not have been contrived. It is further affirmed that this overture, offensive in itself, was made precisely at the time when a swarm of colonists from these United States, were covering the Mexican border with land-jobbing, and with slaves, introduced in defiance of Mexican laws, by which slavery had been abolished throughout ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... rustle of a large, mannerly audience was heard as the janitor opened and closed the door; and stage-fright seized the boy. The orchestra began an overture, and, at that, Penrod, trembling violently, tiptoed down the hall into the Janitor's Room. It was a cul-de-sac: There was no outlet save by ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... listening to the overture to Tannhauser, there came back to her the memory of that night. Ever through the mad Satanic discords she could hear, now faint, now conquering, the Pilgrims' onward march. So through the jangled discords of the world one heard the ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... Whether she had struggled or not, there was a catch-penny effect about the whole thing which added to the fever in his cheek and made him wish he had money to buy up the stock of the vociferous little boys. Suddenly the notes of the organ rolled out into the hall, and he became aware that the overture or prelude had begun. This, too, seemed to him a piece of claptrap, but he didn't wait to think of it; he instantly edged out of his place, which he had chosen near the end of a row, and reached one of the numerous doors. If he had had no definite plan he now had ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... naphtha flares and by the burning souls, had possessed him; and the noises, the shriek and the whisper, the jangling rattle of the piano-organ, the long-continued scream of the butcher as he dabbled in the blood, the lewd litany of the singers, these seemed to be resolved into an infernal overture, loud with the expectation of lust and death. And how the spectacle was set in the cloud of dark night, a phantom play acted on that fiery stage, beneath those hideous brassy lamps, very slowly swinging in a violent blast. As all the ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... reconciliation,) that since I find I have the good fortune to stand so well with your relations, I will, from time to time, acquaint you, by letter, when you are absent, with every step I shall take, and with every overture that shall be made to me: but not with an intention to render myself accountable to you, neither, as to my acceptance or non-acceptance of those overtures. They know that I have a power given me by my grandfather's will, to bequeath the estate he left me, with other of his bounties, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... gist of that 'Overture on Education' which was carried some three weeks ago by a majority of the Free Church Presbytery of Glasgow. It has the merit of being a clear enunciation of meaning; of being also at least as well fitted to express the views of the Established ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... body having considered the award as not obligatory and advised me to open a further negotiation, the proposition was immediately made to the British Government, but the circumstances to which I have alluded have hitherto prevented any answer being given to the overture. Early attention, however, has been promised to the subject, and every effort on my part will be made for a satisfactory settlement of this question, interesting to the Union generally, and particularly so to one ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... the orchestra, where the musicians sat awaiting him, seemed to confirm a rumour that was now circling among the audience, warning all to prepare for a disappointment. His baton was brought in and laid on the book of the new overture. When at last he was seen bearing onward through the music-stands, a low murmur ran round. Rocco paid no heed to it. His demeanour produced such satisfaction in the breast of Antonio-Pericles that he rose, and was guilty ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... exhibit a thoroughly ungenerous course on the part of the American authorities, contrasted with a desire not to offend on the part of Britain. President Madison's Declaration of War was made on the 18th of June, 1812, and the British Government, after using every honorable overture for friendship, only issued theirs in October, couching it, besides, in terms of regret and reproach at the unfairness in which Madison's party persisted. Owing to that unfairness and other causes the ...
— An Account Of The Battle Of Chateauguay - Being A Lecture Delivered At Ormstown, March 8th, 1889 • William D. Lighthall
... or Mendelssohn being regarded as serious figures in art at all. Yet I honestly believe that poems like 'Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal,' or 'Come down, O Maid,' have a high and permanent beauty about them; or, again, the overture to the Midsummer Night's Dream. I can't believe that it isn't a thing full of loveliness and delight. I can't for the life of me see what happens to cause such things to be forgotten. Tennyson and Mendelssohn seem to me to have been penetrated with a sense of beauty, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... voorlooper[Afrikaans], voortrekker[Afrikaans]. prelude, preamble, preface, prologue, foreword, avant-propos[Fr], protasis[obs3], proemium[obs3], prolusion[obs3], proem, prolepsis[Gram], prolegomena, prefix, introduction; heading, frontispiece, groundwork; preparation &c. 673; overture, exordium[Lat], symphony; premises. prefigurement &c. 511; omen &c. 512. Adj. precursory; prelusive, prelusory, preludious[obs3]; proemial[obs3], introductory, prefatory, prodromous[obs3], inaugural, preliminary; precedent &c. (prior) 116. Phr. "a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... floral offerings from many distinguished actors in England and America, while telegrams from Booth, McCullough, Lawrence Barrett, Irving, Ellen Terry, Christine Nilsson, and Lillie Langtry, bade her be of good courage, and wished her success. The overture smote like a dirge on her ear, and when the callboy came to announce that the moment of her entrance was at hand, it reminded her of nothing so much as the feeling of mourners when the sable mute appears at the door, as a signal to form the procession to the tomb. But in a moment ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... the same party. I fagged at writing letters to Lockhart, to Charles, and to John Gibson, to Mr. Cadell, Croker, Lord Haddington, and others. Lockhart has had an overture through Croker requesting him to communicate with some newspaper on the part of the Government, which he has wisely declined. Nothing but a thorough-going blackguard ought to attempt the daily press, unless it is some quiet ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... heaved, and she was just about to speak, when, there was a sudden clap as of thunder, and she leaped up in her seat. But it was only the beginning of the overture, and she sat down laughing. There was a tender passage in the music; and after it was over she was very quiet for a while, and then whispered to Polly that she hoped little Johnnie wasn't worse to-night, and it seemed wicked to enjoy ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... a long while. He was busy with the rehearsals which Wurzelmann was conducting. Professor Doederlein was not to take charge of the orchestra until it had been thoroughly drilled. The programme was to consist of Daniel's works and the "Leonore Overture." Wurzelmann referred to the Beethoven number as "a good ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... six o'clock, after stopping barely an hour with him, and as soon as her carriage had driven off he dressed and went to the opera. During the overture, he saw the Princess enter her box and looking dazzlingly beautiful; she was wearing the same green velvet cloak, trimmed with ermine, that he had had in his hands a short time before, but almost immediately she let it fall from her shoulders, and showed a bust which was worthy of the Goddess of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the production of "Fidelio" was, it did not escape criticism from an eminent source. Cherubini was present at the first performance at the Karnthnerthor Theatre in Vienna, and when asked how he liked the overture (Leonora ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... evidence against him, enforced conviction in the young man's guilt in spite of the detective's previous belief to the contrary. In assisting Queensmead in his search Colwyn had cherished the hope that Ronald, if captured, would declare his innocence and gladly respond to his overture of help. But, instead of doing so, Ronald had taken up an attitude which was suspicious in the highest degree, and one which caused the detective to falter in his belief that the Glenthorpe murder case was a much deeper mystery than the ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... something to do, and that she mustn't be weak for this, must much rather be strong. For many hours after, none the less, she remained weak—if weak it was; though holding fast indeed to the theory of her success, since her agitated overture had been, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... I see it is time for us to withdraw; the Actors are preparing to begin. Play away the Overture. ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... Duke of Gloucester (with whom, indeed, I have no doubt, in spite of chronology, that she very often dined), was commissioned to inquire of me diplomatically, and without committing Abbey Hill too much by the overture, whether I would take a large and antiquated mansion, in which abbots were said to have lived many centuries ago, and which was still popularly styled Abbots' House, situated on the verge of the Hill, as in that case the "Hill" would think ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not restricted to what adults think good for them. Just at present our young people are going mad over ragtimes, apparently because syncopated rhythms are new to them. If they had learnt what can be done with syncopation from Beethoven's third Leonora overture, they would enjoy the ragtimes all the more; but they would put them in their proper place ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... pleasures of the festive board, to which it is indeed as indispensable a prelude, as an overture is to an opera: and the host will thus acquire an additional claim to the gratitude of his guests. We urge this point more strongly, because, from want of attention to it, we have seen more than once persons whom many kindred ties would have drawn ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... for my own use, I lighted it at the little wax candle that stood before them; and after having thrown in two or three whiffs amongst them, sat down and made one of the company. I need not tell my reader, that lighting a man's pipe at the same candle is looked upon among brother-smoakers as an overture to conversation and friendship." From the very beginning smoking has induced and fostered a spirit ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... tempo is very rapid, the 4-4 measure will probably be given only two beats, but in an adagio movement, as, e.g., the first part of the Messiah overture, it may be necessary to beat eight for each measure in order to insure rhythmic continuity. There are many examples of triple measure in which the movement is so rapid as to make it impracticable to beat three in a measure, and the conductor is therefore content merely to give a ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... of children, he took up his hand, and did not make the slightest response to the sly overture of the small coquette, the effect as Honor well knew of opposition quite as much as of her strong turn for gentlemen. She pouted a little, and then marched on with 'don't care' determination, while Humfrey and Honora began to talk over Hiltonbury affairs, but were ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kindness. As an overture to peace and goodwill, it was reenforced by very large eyes, the intense blackness of which was softened by a perceptible glow of pleasure. Uel was won on the instant. A recollection of the one supreme singularity of the new acquaintance—his immunity from death—recurred to him, and he ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... Glaize and the Maumee, and began the erection of Fort Defiance. The whole country was filled with the Indian gardens and corn fields which extended up the Maumee to the British fort. On the thirteenth of August, the General dispatched the scout, Christopher Miller, with the last and final overture of peace. In the event of a refusal, there must be a final appeal to arms. "America," said Wayne, "shall no longer be insulted with impunity. To the all-powerful and just God I therefore commit myself and gallant army." Impatient of a reply, Wayne moved forward again on the fifteenth, and met ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... Hester was, Helen stood beside her, but no attention whatever was paid to her. Then she laid her hand lightly on Hester's arm. The result was the same. Hester stood with her eyes fixed upon the river, and made no response to the overture of friendship. Then Helen turned away, feeling that she had ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... she said swiftly. "Why, the theatre's all full by now. The people are all in. They're tuning up for the overture. Look at it!" She pointed a wavering finger ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... small ones—at once. When it was all over he explained at some length that he did not wish ever to be taken out of an opponent's double. I expect this was another convention he was going to tell me about when he was interrupted in the overture to the rubber. Anyway he hadn't told me, and I at some slight cost—five hundred—had nobly carried ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... difference which could not have happened but in a moment of passion. I requested Mr Tilghman to tell him—1st. That I had taken my resolution in a manner not to be revoked ... Thus we stand ... Perhaps you may think I was precipitate in rejecting the overture made by the General to an accomodation. I assure you, my dear sir, it was not the effect of resentment; it was the deliberate result of maxims I had long formed for the government of my own conduct.... I believe you know the place I held ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... in the like buckle of the left, but he put it under, and not over, as Panurge did. Then Panurge knocked one hand against another, and blowed in his palm, and put again the forefinger of his right hand into the overture or mouth of the left, pulling it often in and out. Then held he out his chin, most intentively looking upon Thaumast. The people there, which understood nothing in the other signs, knew very well that therein he demanded, without speaking a word to Thaumast, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... how abruptly this chosen calm of my life was to be broken nor how these same studies were to be turned in a new and strange direction. But if on this night which was to witness the overture of a horrible drama, I had not hitherto experienced any premonition of the coming of those dark forces which were to change the whole tenor of my existence, suddenly, now, in sight of the elm tree which stood before my cottage ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... at his side on the top of the low rail fence. The soft May mists were gathering in the valleys, the orchards shone pink in the sunset. Away down in the beaver meadow the frogs were tuning up for their first overture of evening, and a whippoorwill far up in the Slash had begun to sing his lonely song to the dark hillside. Allister looked about him and uttered a great sigh ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... plumes of the bird of Paradise. His dress, composed of tapa cloth, shells, and feathers, was more elaborate than any I had seen in the islands. In his hand he carried a spear tipped with white quartz. His followers were decked in similar fashion. Raising his right arm in token of friendship, an overture to which I responded, the chief then addressed me in the same dialect to that used at Cortes' island, which I had little difficulty in understanding, although some ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... at six o'clock, after stopping barely an hour with him, and as soon as her carriage had driven off he dressed and went to the opera. During the overture, he saw the Princess enter her box and looking dazzlingly beautiful; she was wearing the same green velvet cloak, trimmed with ermine, that he had had in his hands a short time before, but almost immediately she let it fall from her shoulders, and showed a bust which was worthy of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... reasonings can explain it. It was both ridiculous and provoking. At first, he employed himself in fomenting quarrels, and devising schemes to embark the sultan in his cause. Vizier after vizier was flattered and assailed. He rejected every overture for his peaceable return. He lingered five years in endless intrigues and negotiations, in order to realize the great dream of his life—the dethronement of the czar. He lived recklessly on the bounty of the sultan, taking no hints that even imperial hospitality might be abused and exhausted. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... blaze of light that shone through the curtain. The odour of cigarette-smoke and scent greeted them, with the rustle of dresses and the subdued sound of gay talk. The band struck up. Then, after the rolling overture, the curtain ran swiftly up, and a smart young person tripped on the stage in the limelight and made great ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... composer, born at Greenock; entered the Royal College of Music in 1883, and became junior professor of Harmony at the Royal Academy; his fertility in melody and mastery of the orchestra are devoted to music of strong national characteristics, as his overture "Land of the Mountain and the Flood," and his choral work "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... a hearty squeeze by the hand, was the suitable answer to this overture; and Caleb made his escape from the jovial party, in order to avoid committing himself by ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... pages or so of preface—or perhaps overture would be the better word, since in it a group of literary men, while contributing recondite recipes, flourish trumpets in every key—to his huge volume he says, "I wish to be read by people of the world, and practiced by ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... study past creations, the more impressive and significant do the synthetic types, presenting features of the higher classes under the guise of the lower ones, become. They hold the promise of the future. As the opening overture of an opera contains all the musical elements to be therein developed, so this living prelude of the Creative work comprises all the organic elements to be successively developed in the course of time. When Cuvier first saw ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... shall go," he continued. "It may be for the best." He was thinking that if he rejected this overture, she might make no other: and, hard as it would prove to persuade Bale to leave him, he must undertake it. "In any case," ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... stage the first person she saw was Montgomery, the very one she wished most to avoid. After having conducted the overture he had come up to find out the reason of the 'wait.' Dick was rushing about, declaring that if this ever occurred again half a-crown would be stopped out of all ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... was assuring the Egyptians that he would support the Grand Seignior against the beys. But Djezzar, confiding in his own strength and in the protection of the English, who had anticipated Bonaparte, was deaf to every overture, and would not even receive Beauvoisin, who was sent to him on the 22d of August. A second envoy was beheaded at Acre. The occupations of Bonaparte and the necessity of obtaining a more solid footing in Egypt retarded for the moment the invasion of that pashalic, which provoked vengeance ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... enough to constitute nine States equal in extent to Kentucky. It must be confessed that a device better calculated to produce jealousy, suspicion, ill-will and hatred, could not have been contrived. It is further affirmed that this overture, offensive in itself, was made precisely at the time when a swarm of colonists from these United States, were covering the Mexican border with land-jobbing, and with slaves, introduced in defiance of Mexican laws, by which slavery had been abolished throughout the Republic. The war ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... was penning a letter. It must not be long; it must not strike the lyrical note; yet assuredly it must not read like a commercial overture. He had great difficulty in writing anything that seemed tolerable. Yet done it must be, and done it was; and before going to bed he had dropped his letter into the post. He durst not leave it for reperusal in ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... should have lost, not the sapphire of aspiration, not the topaz of praise, not the emerald of holiness, but the carbuncle of delight from the high priest's breast-plate. And I must give the introduction too: it is the cloudy grove of an overture, whence rushes the ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... would have ornamented any light-opera stage. I never looked at her but I thought so; and her cuffs and apron merely accentuated the delusion. Such ankles are seldom seen when the curtain rises after the overture. Odd that frivolous thoughts could flit through an intellect dedicated ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... had been, since the times of Frederic the Great, in perpetual rivalry, the greatness of the common danger from such a warlike neighbor now induced Metternich to make every overture to Prussia to prevent a possible calamity to Germany; but Frederick William was obstinate, and his league with Alexander could not be broken. It appears, from the memoirs of Metternich, that it had ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... engagement to the magazine, handed over, in a familiar epistle from a parent to his child, the editorship to Mr. Ainsworth; and the still subsisting agreement to write Barnaby Rudge was, upon the overture of Mr. Bentley himself in June of the following year, 1840, also put an end to, on payment by Dickens, for the copyright of Oliver Twist and such printed stock as remained of the edition then on hand, of two thousand two hundred and fifty pounds. What was ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Duke admitted him. There was but one idea in his head as to what was coming. His son had taken this way of making some communication to him respecting his political creed. Some overture or some demand was to be preferred through Tregear. If so, it was proof of a certain anxiety as to the matter on his son's part which was not displeasing to him. But he was not left long in this mistake after Tregear had entered the room. "Sir," he said, ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... wreaths from their pipes, and varying their employment now and then with a pull at the tin pots, which seemed to afford them extreme satisfaction. In this manner we lay till the moon waned; and the owl having finished his overture, we rolled ourselves in our blankets, and watched the twinkling star, till ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... to Belford.— He makes such a fair representation to Tomlinson of the situation between him and the lady, behaves so plausibly, and makes an overture so generous, that she is all kindness and unreserved to him. Her affecting exultation on her amended prospects. His unusual sensibility upon it. Reflection on the good effects of education. Pride ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... to the kitchen range; and we hibernated there, more or less, while the cold spell lasted. It was warm by the fifteenth, but on that day, in the hours of early dawn, we were awakened by a Wagnerian overture in the steam radiators. It became an anvil chorus ere long and there was no more sleep. By breakfast time we had all the things open that we could get open to let in fresh air and we were shouting to each other above the din and smell of the new pipes. We ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... press was thinning out. It was understood that the overture had begun. Other people who were waiting like Laura and her sister had been joined by their friends and had gone inside. Laura, for whom this opera night had been an event, a thing desired and anticipated with ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... of Private Box. Grandfather and Grandchildren discovered listening to the Overture. Father and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... be doubted. She possessed the faculty of telling interesting stories and novelettes, and with this apparently inexhaustible fund of invention she would amuse him between his periods of work. The description that we have of the composition of the great "Don Giovanni" overture gives a pleasing illustration of this phase of the family life. Owing to rehearsals and other work, the day before the performance arrived with no overture yet written. In the evening, according to his custom, Mozart began the task by sketching out the themes and a general plan ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... welcome of the American Peace Society to the delegation of more than two hundred members of the British Parliament who favor international arbitration. Few events have more profoundly impressed me than the presentation of this peaceful overture to the President of the United States. It seems to me that every true patriot who seeks the best interests of his country and every believer in the gospel of Christ must respond to the admirable address of Sir Lyon Playfair and that of his colleagues who represented the workingmen ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... it! Ah, we are a great people. If I could tell you the secrets of her eyes as she looks at me—but no, you are dry as dust, a creature of prose! And there will be an orchestra, too, for Pesach Weingott has promised to play the overture on his fiddle. How he stirs the soul! It is like David ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... he said, he might trust to my discretion, that I would not let Mr. B. know from whom I had the information: that, indeed, his motive in mentioning it was self-interest; having presumed to make some overture of an honourable nature to the Countess, in his own behalf; which had been rejected since that masquerade night: and he hoped the prudent use I would make of the intimation, might somehow be a means to break off that correspondence, before it ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... hated it, but he hated himself more. Here was one, who had hugged himself all his days as an adventurer waiting his chance, running away at the first challenge of adventure; a lover of Romance who fled from the earliest overture of his goddess. He was ashamed and angry, but what else was there to do? Burglary in the company of a queer poet and a queerer urchin? ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... Petersburg and Vienna have offered their mediation. The King has answered, that it will be personally agreeable to him, but that he could not accept it as yet, because he has allies whose concurrence is necessary. Dr Franklin is requested to acquaint Congress of this overture and the answer, and to engage them to send their instructions to their Plenipotentiaries. It is supposed that Congress will eagerly accept ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... Canning's overture was earnestly considered in America. The ex-Presidents, Jefferson and Madison, recommended its acceptance, but the Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, opposed this, favouring rather a separate declaration by the United States, and of this opinion was also President ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... in the Red Light an', except Black Jack,—who of course is present offishul—the stranger's alone. He's weak an' meek an' shook by a cough that sounds like the overture to a fooneral. Ugly Collins, who's a tyrannizin' cowardly form of outcast, sizes him up as a easy prey. He figgers he'll have a heap of evil fun with him, Ugly Collins does. Tharupon he approaches the ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... by far the ablest and most relentless enemy. The correspondence which has come to light in recent times, shows the importance which he attached to Tyrconnell's proposition—an importance still further enhanced by the direct but unsuccessful overture made to the earl by William himself, on landing in England, and before embarking in the actual ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... had struggled or not, there was a catch-penny effect about the whole thing which added to the fever in his cheek and made him wish he had money to buy up the stock of the vociferous little boys. Suddenly the notes of the organ rolled out into the hall, and he became aware that the overture or prelude had begun. This, too, seemed to him a piece of claptrap, but he didn't wait to think of it; he instantly edged out of his place, which he had chosen near the end of a row, and reached one of the numerous doors. If he had had no definite plan ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... respite amid the continual wars of the Indian tribes is scarcely more than a truce. Nevertheless, it is concluded with considerable form and ceremony. The first advance toward a cessation of hostilities is usually made through the chief of a neutral power. The nation proposing the first overture dispatches some men of note as embassadors, accompanied by an orator, to contract the negotiation. They bear with them the calumet[279] of peace as the symbol of their purpose, and a certain number of wampum belts[280] ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... fully developed Sonata-allegro form is the design in which the classic overture and the first movement of the symphony, sonata and concerto are usually framed. The student must be careful not to confound this musical form with the complete sonata of three or four movements. It is not to be called the "sonata form," but the "sonata-allegro form." It is to ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... minutes the overture was continued; then the band stopped and looked around with an air of triumph, while Joe uttered two or three more howls by way of effect, and to show that he could have kept it up ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... from the pavilion, Till the two old friends were turning Toward that spot without suspicion. Like a volley then resounded At their entrance a loud flourish, Every instrument saluting; And like roaring torrents bursting Wildly through the gaping sluice-gate, So the overture let loose now Its loud storming floods of music On the much astonished hearers. With the greatest skill young Werner Led the orchestra, whose chorus Gladly yielded to his baton. Ha! that was a splendid bowing, Such a fiddling, such a pealing! Hopping lightly, like ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... General Maceo and shot him down unarmed. It is said that his friends recovered his body and buried it in a secret place unknown to the Spaniards, who were anxious to obtain it for exhibition as a trophy of war in Havana. Maceo was equal to Toussaint L'Overture of San Domingo. His public life was consecrated to liberty; he knew no vice nor mean action; he would not permit any around him. When he landed in Cuba from Porto Rico he was told there were no arms. He replied, "I will get ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... a boy, advantage was taken of the fact by Otomo Yoshishige, who invaded Hizen, so that Masaiye had to apply to the Shimazu family for succour. The Satsuma chieftain suggested that the matter might be settled by mutual withdrawal of forces, but Yoshishige declined this overture, and the result was a battle in which the Otomo troops were completely defeated. Otomo Yoshishige then (1586) had recourse to Hideyoshi for assistance, thus furnishing the opportunity of which Osaka was in search. Orders were immediately issued to Mori, Kikkawa, Kohayakawa, and Chosokabe ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... not buried in matter. This is the spirit- [1] ual dawn of the Messiah, and the overture of the angels. This is when God is made manifest in the flesh, and thus it destroys all sense of sin, sickness, and death,—when the brightness of His glory encompasseth ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... trousers-pockets all the corners of the hall rang with: "Now the fun will begin! Now the fun will begin!" And thither among those who were welcoming the guests—but he was no longer walking, he was gliding, swimming on the music—every dance was a jubilant overture on the name Nettenmair—he felt no floor, no feet, no legs beneath him, he scarcely still felt young Frau Nettenmair swimming along beside him, hanging to his right fin, the most beautiful among the beautiful, just as he was the most jovial among the jovial, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... certainly through the influence of Rosalie, from the beginning took a keen interest in the younger. He played Richard's music at the theatre—to his own confusion on at least one occasion. Richard had composed an overture in six-eight time with a fearful stroke of the drum, a Paukenschlag, every fourth or fifth bar; Dorn played it; the audience grew mirthful. That is all. What the motive was for the drum-strokes I cannot ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... my train provides for me is doubly entertaining if it be but the overture to greater delights. If some magic property which the train possesses—whether it be the motion or the clankety-clank—makes me happy even when I am only thinking about a cow, is it any wonder that I am happy in thinking about the delightful new life to which I ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... as adamant in their observance of the rules in such matters. More than once I arrived at the opera a few minutes late, once four minutes late, the doors are closed and guarded, and I listen to the overture from the outside. At a concert led by the famous von Buelow half a dozen women come in after the music has begun, rustling, sibilant, and excited. The music stops, the great conductor turns to glare at them, and, referring to the geese which are said ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... to prescribe. Had I observed a different conduct, I must have been a loser by it in the end; and all I could expect, after destroying some part of their property, would have been the empty honour of obliging them to make the first overture towards an accommodation. But who knows if this would have been the event? Three things made them our fast friends. Their own good-nature and benevolent disposition; gentle treatment on our part; and the dread of our fire-arms. By ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... example of that at Magdeburg and went into bankruptcy. During the honeymoon year, Wagner had composed only one work, an overture, based on "Rule Britannia." At that time "The Old Oaken Bucket" had not been written. He then drifted to Riga, where he became music-director and his wife a singer. Now his relentless ambition seized him and he determined to consecrate the rest of his life ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... noise and pleasureless excitement had to be worn away, ere the party with whom Elizabeth came to Dunwich would agree to return. Elizabeth's remonstrances, entreaties, and anger were alike unheeded by the companions of her voyage. She had haughtily rejected every overture on the part of Arthur toward a reconciliation, and declined to receive fairings or attentions of any kind from him, to manifest her indignant sense of the slight she had experienced from him in the early part of the day; and Arthur had retorted by paying his ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... nothing of the plays, and the projects for plays, with which, for some time past, he had seen his daily post-bag distended. He had made out, on looking at these things, no difference at all from one to the other. Here, however, was something more—something that made his fellow-guest's overture independently interesting and, as he might imagine, important. He smiled, he was friendly and vague; said "A work of fiction, I suppose?" and that he didn't pretend ever to pronounce, that he in fact quite hated, ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... orders, and sat in silence through an overture. Grant was delighting himself simply in her presence, and guessed that for her part she could not retract the confession her love had wrung from ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... an angel.'' In these Liebig concerts we then heard, for the first time, the music of a new composer,—one Wagner,—and agreed that while it was all very strange, there was really something in the overture to "Tannhuser.'' ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... then sit down at the prompt table there and make notes," directed Handy, "of our lay-out. We open with a grand overture by the Handel and Hayden Philharmonic Society; and as a matter of course, on account of their patriotic kindness in volunteering for the celebration of the anniversary of the foundation of Gotown, they will have an encore and will then play a medley of national American airs, 'Yankee Doodle,' ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... and children's stories, as if he himself still were a child. He would write and listen, drop his pen and laugh, and then go on with work again. The day before the first performance of "Don Giovanni," when the final rehearsal already had been held, the overture still remained unwritten. It had to be written overnight, and it was she who sat by him and relieved the rush and strain of work with her cheerful prattle. It is said that, among other things, she read to him the story of "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp." Be ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... fancied for some days that his proposals were accepted; but before he could enter on any of the Eastern arrangements his active mind had already suggested, he learned that the overture was rejected "with a contempt which," as Madame Campan sagaciously admits, "the court would doubtless have concealed, if they could have foreseen the future." Contenting himself with the angry menace, "They shall soon hear some of my news," within a month he became the author ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Barquettes Norvegienne—No? Madame did not so desire? Of course not. He frowned terrifically at the waiter, who glared ferociously at the diminutive waitress. Morbleu! What imbecile suggested Barquettes Norvegienne? Monsieur Beauchamp mentioned other dishes as an overture to the meal, waxing increasingly wrathy towards the waiter on each veto. Ah! monsieur desired Consomme Anton. The proprietor's face beamed and his arms were outstretched towards heaven. That this gentleman should order Consomme Anton, the soup ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... impatiently urged an immediate attack; but as the president's commands were to keep peace as long as possible, Harrison decided to send an officer with a small guard to arrange for a conference. This overture, however, did not succeed; the Indians were hostile, and even made an attempt to capture the officer and his men. And Harrison then ordered his army to advance upon ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... part of my penance; and I will show the higher, stronger pride of one who makes no vain, useless pretence to happy indifference, but who can maintain a self-control so perfect that even Mrs. Alston shall not see one unmaidenly advance or overture." ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... candle that stood before them; and after having thrown in two or three whiffs amongst them, sat down and made one of the company. I need not tell my reader, that lighting a man's pipe at the same candle is looked upon among brother-smoakers as an overture to conversation and friendship." From the very beginning smoking has induced and fostered a spirit ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... how to receive this overture, but he was finally thawed by Herbert's manner, and they were soon sauntering about on the lawn on the ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... domes which flank the great dome of the cathedral of Florence enhance and reinforce the latter, and prepare the eye for a climax which would otherwise be too abrupt. The central pavilion of the Chateau Maintenon, with its two turrets, echoes the entire facade with its two towers. Like the overture to an opera, it introduces themes which find a more extended development elsewhere ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... charge of the fiddlers. The good women laughed for joy; the men winked at each other and popped their fists; it was like the charge of the Old Guard at Waterloo, or a battle with a den of snakes. Upon the completion of the grand overture of the fiddlers the brilliant programme of the "exhibition," which usually lasted all day, opened with "Mary had a little lamb;" and it gathered fury until it reached Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death!!!" The programme was interspersed with compositions by the girls, from the simple ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... Mission garden; but in his ignorance of the language he could not even interrogate his Indian housekeeper. On the third night, however, his hymn was uninterrupted by any sound from the former musician. A sense of disappointment, he knew not why, came over him. The kindly overture of the unseen player had been a relief to his loneliness. Yet he had barely concluded the hymn when the familiar sound again struck his ears. But this time the musician played boldly, confidently, and with a singular ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... capacity in America. By a grim pleasantry of Fate, the letter from England conveying final and official information of the approval of the aforesaid Ministers, and arranging for the publication of the first formal overture from the United States (for the movement was to be made to appear to emanate therefrom) arrived in America on the very day of the appearance—and readers will remember how totally unexpected the appearance was—of Mr. Cleveland's Venezuelan message. What would have been the effect upon the crisis ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... passages like the violin and the clarinet. As the point is of some interest, I should like to bring it before the reader with some examples. The essential character of the horns is nowhere more truly conveyed than in the soft passage near the beginning of the overture to Der Freischuetz, and it is the contrast between the two nature scales on the C horn and the F horn which gives the character to this lovely idyll. The trumpets are capable of even less variety of expression than the horns, as ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... of one of the last string quartets. In fact the instances in which composers have put their pieces to widely divergent purposes are innumerable and sometimes amusing, in view of the fantastic belief that they are guided by plenary inspiration. The overture which Rossini wrote for his "Barber of Seville" was lost soon after the first production of the opera. The composer did not take the trouble to write another, but appropriated one which had served its purpose in an earlier work. Persons ignorant of that fact, ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... finished speaking the overture, which had now been on for some time, ceased, and the curtain went up on a very ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... memories of his childhood and college life softened his heart. He forgot the double-line fences and determined to go on the morrow to Drayton Hall and make up the quarrel. He would offer the first overture and a full declaration of regret, and this, he was quite sure, would make it up. Once he actually turned his horse around to go straight across the fields as he used to do in his boyhood, but there below him were the double-line fences stretching brown and clear. No horse could get over them, and ...
— The Christmas Peace - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... gift was not great, and his choral writing is generally of the most unpretentious description. But his recitative is always solid and dignified, and often impassioned and pathetic. Music, too, owes him a great debt for his invention of what is known as the French form of overture, consisting of a prelude, fugue, and dance movement, which was afterwards carried to the highest conceivable pitch of perfection ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... Montpeliers having made this overture, the potingers[163] most unnaturally and wickedly made him a poisonable potion stuffed wt sulfre, quick silver, a vicked thing they cal l'eau forte, and diverse others burning corrasive ingredients to drink. He being ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... This overture was received with a general shout of applause, which altogether drowned the voice of the dissidents, if any there were amongst the Alsatian senate who could have resisted a proposal so popular. The words of, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... up their tiny bagging undergarments, and at disentangling hat elastics from the soft hair at the back of moist little necks. If a mother occasionally showed signs of friendliness, Rachael accepted the overture pleasantly, but managed to wander next day to some other part of the beach, and so evade the definite beginning of ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... are perfectly right, my worthy friend," replied Aramis, constantly consulting with his looks the countenance of Biscarrat, who had grown silent and constrained. "You wish, Monsieur de Biscarrat, to say something to us, to make us some overture, and ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... chiefly in New Orleans; but this, I believe, is the only cloud that has darkened his horizon, or disturbed the tranquil current of his life. His consecration, with its attendant fatigues, must have been to him a wearisome overture to a pleasant drama, a hard stepping-stone to glory. As to the rest, he is very unostentatious, and his conversation is far from austere. On the contrary, he is one of the best-tempered and most cheerful old men in society that it is ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... sweetly it peals With grass or heather beneath our heels,— For bells are Music's laughter!— But a London peal, well mingled, be sure, With vulgar noises and voices impure,— With a harsh and discordant overture To the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Melbourne, but what was tantamount to it. He had desired somebody (she did not say who) to speak to Frederick,[6] and said he would call on him himself the next day. Something, however, prevented him, and she did not say whether he did call or not afterwards. He denied ever having made any overture at all. To Palmerston he proposed the choice of four places, and she thinks he would have taken in Huskisson if the latter had lived. He would have done nothing but on compulsion; that is clear. It is very true (what they say Peel said of him) that no man ever had any influence with him, only ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... facing the open sea, with Olga beaming at the head of the table, would have been a peaceful and pleasant meal, had Muriel's state of mind allowed her to enjoy it. But Nick's treatment of her overture had completely banished all enjoyment for her. She forced herself to eat and to appear unconcerned, but she was quivering inwardly with a burning sense of resentment. She was firmly determined that ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... been able to find the overture of 'Oberon' here," he began:—"Mme. Byelenitzyn was merely boasting, that she had all the classical music,—as a matter of fact, she has nothing except polkas and waltzes; but I have already written to Moscow, and within a week I shall have that overture. ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... get the overture of Oberon here," he began. "Madame Byelenitsin was boasting when she said she had all the classical music: in reality she has nothing but polkas and waltzes, but I have already written to Moscow, and within a week you will have the overture. By the way," he went on, "I wrote ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... you to keep on your table, at your elbow. Very many of the Sonnets I do not care for: mostly because of the Subject: but there is pretty sure to be some beautiful line or expression in all; and all pure, tender, noble, and—original. Old Spedding supplies a beautiful Prose Overture to this delightful Volume: never was Critic more one with his Subject—or, Object, is it? Frederick Tennyson, my old friend, ought to have done something to live along with his Brothers: all who will live, I believe, of their ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... not impregnable; but the terms and manner of compliance were as decent as those in marriage among us, and according to their notions, the agreement was as innocent. When any of our people made an overture to any of their young women, he was given to understand that the consent of her friends was necessary, and by the influence of a proper present it was generally obtained; but when these preliminaries were settled, it was also necessary to treat the wife for a night ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the two great states between which it had the misfortune of lying. Hoping to free his country, he sent ambassadors to Uaphris, who were to conclude a treaty and demand the assistance of a powerful contingent, composed of both foot and horse. Uaphris received the overture favorably; and Zedekiah at once revolted from Babylon, and made preparations to defend himself with vigor. It was not long before the Babylonians arrived. Determined to crush the daring state, which, weak as it was, had yet ventured to revolt ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... the beginning. After this overture the stings and slurs came thick and fast. It seemed to the dismayed Vice-President that every one in New York took delight in recalling to publicity some detail discreditable to his Bostonian discovery. From all over ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... discomforts, of every sort and kind; with cures for all these evils; and to end finally by a grand climax of supplication, invocation, imprecation, resignation, and beatification, in the regular crash of a stout-expiring overture. ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... along the streets too rapidly to have time or breath to speak, and it was five minutes after the time when we scrambled into the orchestra, and found that the overture ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... is uneasy about her. Shall I play to you a little, Mr. Sefton? It is getting too dark to read." Bessie made this overture as a sort of amends to Richard, and the friendly little act seemed ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... stranger she generally merely bows her head slightly and says: "How do you do!" Strictly speaking, it is always her place to offer her hand or not as she chooses, but if he puts out his hand, it is rude on her part to ignore it. Nothing could be more ill-bred than to treat curtly any overture made in spontaneous friendliness. No thoroughbred lady would ever refuse to shake any hand that is honorable, not even the hand of a coal heaver at the risk ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... lady given him but a moment's time I make no doubt he would have come instantly at the truth and the little farce would have been turned into a tragedy on the spot. But she gave him no time. The spinet in the ball-room alcove was tinkling out the overture to a minuet, and she laid the tips of her dainty fingers on the ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... calashes; all the inns are filled to excess, where insolence reigns at its height. All occupations have ceased; at the moment of the performance the town has the aspect of a desert. All the passions, all the solicitudes, all the life, of a whole population, is concentrated at the theatre. The overture commences; so intense is the attention, that the buzzing of a fly could be heard. On its conclusion, the most tremendous uproar ensues. It is either applauded to the clouds, or hissed, or rather howled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... suddenly at head appeerd Satan: And thus was heard Commanding loud. Vangard, to Right and Left the Front unfould; That all may see who hate us, how we seek Peace and composure, and with open brest 560 Stand readie to receive them, if they like Our overture, and turn not back perverse; But that I doubt, however witness Heaven, Heav'n witness thou anon, while we discharge Freely our part: yee who appointed stand Do as you have in charge, and briefly touch What ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... was to clear out the remnant of the inhabitants, and the overture to this performance was the following ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... this overture," said that magniloquent Spaniard, "to engender in a person of my talents, and with the heart of a Mendoza, venom enough for vengeance. I could not more desire than I did already to assist in so holy a work; nor could I aspire to greater honour than would be gained in uniting those ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... progress, progression, march, advancement, promotion, preferment, elevation, appreciation, enhancement; overture, tender, proposal, proffer, offer. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... beautiful arm, as the splendour of the brilliants on her bracelet—I, of course, said the lustre of the arm itself—was so great as to obstruct my view of the stage. She smilingly complied. The last long-drawn note of the overture was over, the curtain had risen, and the prima donna Schenkelmann was just trilling forth that exquisite aria with which the opera of the Gasthaus begins, when the door of the box immediately adjoining the imperial one opened, and a party entered in the gay Wallachian ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... Marriage supper, and that means gladdest festivity. Twelve manner of fruits, and that means luscious and unending variety. Harp, trumpet, grand march, anthem, amen, and hallelujah in the same orchestra. Choral meeting solo, and overture meeting antiphon, and strophe joining dithyramb, as they roll into the ocean of doxologies. And you and I may have all that, and have it forever through Christ, if we will let Him with the blood of one wounded hand rub out ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... with Raff, it is but natural that MacDowell should have been influenced strongly toward the poetic and fantastic and programmatic elements that mark the "Forest Symphony" and the "Lenore Overture" of his master. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... peacemaking had never occurred between them before. Mrs. Lessways, as simple in forgiveness as in wrath, did not disguise her pleasure in the remarkable fact that it was Hilda who had made the overture. Hilda thought: "How strange I am! What is coming over me?" She glanced at the range, in which was a pale gleam of red, and that gleam, in the heavy twilight, seemed to her to be inexpressibly, enchantingly mournful. And she ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... were bought, they might as well be used. So that evening, as they sat in the theater listening to the lively overture, even Miss Lydia was minded to relegate their troubles, for the hour, to second place. The Major, in spotless linen, with his extraordinary coat showing only where it was closely buttoned, and his white hair smoothly roached, looked really fine ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... officers. Although the detention of the Young Otter, and the cause of his being detained, had been made known to the Angry Snake, weeks passed away, and yet there appeared no intention on the part of the chief to redeem his young warrior by producing Percival. Every day an overture on his part was expected, but none came, and those who were in the secret were in a continual state of suspense and anxiety. One thing had been ascertained, which was that the Indian fired at by John had been killed, and this occasioned much ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... stage. I was thirty-five! This harmless little work was received with the fiercest hostility. "It is impossible to tell," wrote Jouvin, a much feared critic of the time, "in what key or in what time the overture is written." And to show me how utterly wrong I was, he told me that the public was "a compound of angles and shadows." His prose was certainly more obscure than ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... the slight indications of time which the concertmeister (first violin-player) gave them; and not to attend to Beethoven's conducting-stick. Moreover, it should be observed, that conducting a symphony, an overture, or any other composition whose movements remain continual, vary little, and contain few nice gradations, is child's play in comparison with conducting an opera, or like work, where there are recitatives, airs, ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... to her to suit herself rather than her hearers, and her snowy fingers—from which flashed Daisy's diamond and a superb emerald—swept the keys with a masterly grace and skill. Ethelyn was perfectly at home at the piano, and dashing off into a brilliant and difficult overture, she held her hearers for a few minutes astonished both at her execution and the sounds she made. To the most of them, however, the sounds were meaningless; their tastes had not yet been cultivated up to Ethelyn's style. They wanted something familiar—something they had heard before; and when the ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... or scarlet maple is well named, for its flowers, not any more conspicuous in form than those of its close relation, the silver maple, are usually bright red or yellow, and they give a joyous color note in the very beginning of spring's overture. Not long are these flowers with us; they fade, only to be quickly succeeded by even more brilliant samaras, a little more delicate and refined than those of the silver maple, as well as of the richest and warmest hue. Particularly ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... India, and to him the Iteghe Helena applied for aid. Her ambassador arrived at Goa, "bearing a fragment of wood belonging to the true cross on which Christ died," which relic had been sent as a token of friendship to her brother Emanuel by the empress of AEthiopia. The overture was followed by the arrival at Masawwah of an embassy from the king of Portugal. Too proud, however, to await foreign aid, David at the age of sixteen took the field in person against ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... to summon to obedience the inhabitants there and at Saco and Cape Porpoise, in the Lygonian patent, and the conditions made resistance unlikely. Disregarding the Rigby claims,[40] the settlers in southern Maine accepted the overture of the Massachusetts commissioners. Accordingly, Welles, Saco, and Cape Porpoise followed the example of Kittery and Gorgeana, and came under the ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... Neufchatel, taking with me four or five hundred Louis. I cast my eyes on Fauche-Borel, the King's printer at Neufchatel, and also yours and mine, as the instrument by which to make the first overture, and I selected as his colleague M. Courant, a native of Neufchatel. I persuaded them to undertake the business: I supplied them with instructions and passports. They were foreigners: so I furnished them with all the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... musical construction of the overture with which the music-drama opens, as it is well known that Wagner in his Preludes prepares the spectator's mind for the impressions that are to follow. Several of the leading motives appear in this Vorspiel and must be appreciated to be understood. First we have ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Strauss, even from Palestrina to Debussy, the achievements of genius lay at his mercy. He criticized them with a freedom that was entirely unprejudiced by tradition. Beethoven was no more to him than Arthur Sullivan—indeed, was rather less. The works of his choice were the "Tannhaeuser" overture, a potpourri of Verdi's "Aida," Chopin's Study in Thirds (which ravished him), and a selection from "The Merry Widow" (which also ravished him). So that on the whole it may be said that he had ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... prove this I picked out an instrumental piece which we had not played all the evening. It was the finale of the overture to "Faust"; a selection, by the way, which was a great favourite of Harry's and is one of mine. Ariadne listened in silence ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... compromised themselves and are compelled to execute their threats, the thing is done in a hesitating manner that avoids nothing so much as the means to the end, and catches at pretexts to succumb. The bray of the overture, that announces the fray, is lost in a timid growl so soon as this is to start; the actors cease to take themselves seriously, and the performance falls flat like an inflated balloon that is pricked with ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... home over the shop. No doubt there would be a certain awkwardness, visible to others if not to themselves, about her living in one part of London and her children in another. But here also her good sense would come on;—and, besides, this furnished house in town would be a mere brief overture to the real thing—the noble country mansion he was going to have, with gardens and horses and hounds and artificial lakes and deer parks and everything. Quite within the year he would be able to realize this ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... hardly find a more perfect morning than this in early March. The sun was heralded over the hills in a blaze of glory; meadow larks strung like beads on a telegraph wire were calling their cheery notes, and robins were singing their overture to the morning sun. ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... profess to know me so well," answered the marquise, with another effort, as unsuccessful as the former, to free the bridle of her horse, "you should know how a woman like me would receive such an overture; say to yourself what I might say to you, and above all, what I might ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... up to Rheingold and Tristan. The modest fellow once paid me a visit afterwards and told me that he had gone regularly to different places in order to see the productions of my operas, which had given him the opportunity of comparing the representation of Tannhauser in Prague, in which the overture had lasted twenty minutes, with the one in Dresden, which, under my direction, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... is that the overture? I never will be on, I'm sure— The things us actresses endure, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... interest to an air which everyone—so she said—must feel to be rather heavy in the form in which Handel left it. As for her governess, she indeed had been a rarely accomplished musician: she was a pupil of the famous Dr Clarke of Cambridge, and used to play the overture to Atalanta, arranged by Mazzinghi. Nevertheless, it was some time before Theobald could bring his courage to the sticking point of actually proposing. He made it quite clear that he believed himself to be much smitten, but month after month went by, during ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... protector to London, where he proposed to him, that he would take off the heavy fines, that were laid on severals in Scotland, which they were unable to pay; he seemed to like the motion, but when he proposed the overture to the council, they went ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... the orchestra stalls were Beauchamp and Debray, whose attention was divided between the stage and the arrivals of splendidly attired elegantes in the different loges, during the overture. All the elite of Paris ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... righted it, and one laying hold of the bow, and the other the stern, they swung it between them, as two washerwomen might a basket of dirty clothes. I must confess that I was a great deal mortified at seeing my command treated thus slightingly, which mortification was not a little increased by an overture that they kindly made to me, saying, that if I were at all tired, they would, with all the pleasure in the world, carry me in it. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... of the parties could do, accepted; that is, the National Society pledged itself to be merged into a Union Association, provided the American would make the same surrender at its first Anniversary. But as this overture for peace was rejected, the mission of the Union Society ended, leaving the National free to reassert itself and go forward with its catholic platform and persistent demands for "National protection for United ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Le Pere la Victoire by Ganne. This was followed by Gillet's Loin du Bal. At Suppe's overture from Banditenstreiche, the eternal skat players came tramping into the saloon, having delayed, as usual, to finish their game. At all the tables much wine was being drunk, because it strengthened one's courage and dulled one's nerves. The passengers toasted the Roland. It ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... no reply. A triangular conversation of this sort was almost impossible. The members of the orchestra were already climbing up to their places, in preparation for the overture to the last act. Sir ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... face that Barndale regarded him with amazement. Demetri Agryopoulo, salaried hanger-on to the Persian embassy, was glaring like a roused wild beast at these two shadowy figures in the shadow of the orchestra. The band was crashing away at the overture to 'Tannhaeuser,' the people were laughing and chattering as they circled, and not an eye but Barndale's regarded this drama in the corner. The Greek's hand was in his bosom, where it clutched something ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... impregnably intrenched, will make the best of the marriage, especially as the groom is of royal blood. Next, an alliance with the French king against the emperor. Why not; was not Francis once ready to treat even with Solyman to defeat Charles, an overture which shocked Christendom? And while Charles' energies are bent to the task of protecting his country from the Turks, a new leader appears; a devil-may-care fellow—and ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... was, what I repeat, that your creed that no one can wish to marry you except for your wealth is a morbid conviction, and must lead to unhappiness; that I do not believe that Lord Roehampton is influenced in his overture, if he make one, by any unworthy motive, and that any woman whose heart is disengaged should not lightly repudiate such an advance from such a man, by which, at all ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... is not to be had for the asking. Humours must first be accorded in a kind of overture or prologue; hour, company and circumstance be suited; and then, at a fit juncture, the subject, the quarry of two heated minds, spring up like a deer out of the wood. Not that the talker has any of the hunter's pride, though he has all and more than all his ardour. The genuine artist follows the ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Cantos up to this I 've not begun what we have to go through. These first twelve books are merely flourishes, Preludios, trying just a string or two Upon my lyre, or making the pegs sure; And when so, you shall have the overture. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... into beautiful womanhood, Arbaces determined to claim her life and her love for himself alone; but his first overture not only met with rebuff, but revealed the fact that she already loved Glaucus. Angered by a fate which not even his dark sorcery could remove, and which the prophecy of the stars had foretold, he is further enraged by the violent opposition of Apaecides, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... touched the keys, her eyes watching eagerly for a chance to speak to the Boss and see if he knew anything of Gardley; but Forsythe was close beside her all the time, and there was no opportunity. She struck the opening chords of the overture they were to attempt to play, and somehow got through it. Of course, the audience was not a critical one, and there were few real judges of music present; but it may be that the truly wonderful effect she produced upon the listeners was due ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... all the Parisian breeding of Mademoiselle Viefville to preserve her gravity during this overture, though she kept her bright animated, French-looking eyes, roaming over the assembly, with an air of delight that, as Mr. Bragg would say, made her very popular. No one else in the party from the Wigwam, Captain Truck excepted, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... through the darkness of my weltering soul (for I was presumably dead and undoubtedly damned) there marched, stood still, and curtsied majestically towards each other, the great grave opening chords of the overture. And when they had delivered, solemnly, their mysterious herald's message and subsided, off started the little nimble notes of the fugue, hastening from all sides, meeting, crossing, dispersing, returning, telling their ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... parenthetic, that he didn't happen "personally" to know Basil French—as if it would have been at all likely he should know him, even im personally, and as if he could conceal from her the fact that, since she had made him her overture, this gentleman's name supremely baited her hook! Oh, they would help Julia Bride if they could—they would do their remarkable best; but they would at any rate have made his acquaintance over it, and she might indeed leave the rest to their thoroughness. He would already have ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... father had left, a gentleman called and asked to see Edith. On entering the room where he had been shown by the servant, she found a young man whose countenance she had never seen before. He made known his business after a few embarrassing preliminaries, which proved to be an overture of peace from Allison, if she would accept the offer of marriage he had made her five years previously. After hearing the young man patiently through, Edith replied, in a firm voice—"Tell Mr. Allison that there is no evil in this world or the next that I would ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... man is contained in the single phrase, "Il etait toujours brusque," which at least shows a fine freedom from self-consciousness on the part of the man whose only remark on being told of the death of Brod, the famous oboist, was, "Ah, he hadn't much tone" ("Ah, petit son"). Of the overture to Leonore Cherubini only remarked that he could not tell what key it was in, and of Beethoven's later style he observed, "It makes me sneeze." Beethoven's brusqueness, notorious as it was, did not prevent him from assuring Cherubini ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... education from year to year. Surely your field in Brooklyn is not more important than mine was at the Broadway Tabernacle in New York, nor can your people be more attached to you than mine were to me." This letter—although its kind overture was promptly declined—was a gratifying proof that the once bitter controversies between "old school" and "new school" had become quite obsolete. When I mentioned this letter to my beloved Princeton instructor, Dr. Charles Hodge, a few weeks before his death, he simply ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... an invitation!" commanded Colonel Carter, and the left-hand gun barked out an overture, killing one sepoy. The rest made off in ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... But my own sensibility told me how much of additional grandeur accrued to these two lines as being the immediate and all-pompous opening of the poem. The same feeling I had received from the crashing overture to the grand chapter of Daniel—"Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords." But, above all, I felt this effect produced in the two opening ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
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