"Falsetto" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... assembled on the wharf, a crowd content to wait an hour or more without a murmur after the ship had dropped anchor in midstream for the captain's gig to be lowered from the davits. The shrill falsetto of the boatswain's whistle suddenly informed those on shore of what was taking place on the starboard side, and in a few minutes the gig came sweeping across the blue water, with James Dutton seated in the stern-sheets ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... this, a mysterious falsetto voice, which seemed to come from behind the copper basins, repeated, in an acrid ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... stands or falls on your decision! This is a public charge! The people rely upon you! If you won't, for some reason of your own, come to the rescue now, when you are publicly called upon, you'll be a ruined man!" The voice of the Boss ascended in a shrill falsetto of remonstrance. ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... treated everything so derisively and possessed a heart so full of tricks and surprises that there was no dependence to be placed upon him. The eternal smile hovering around his temples and thick lips, and the mocking falsetto voice, impaired the good impression that might otherwise have been made by his nobly cut face and a pair of large hands, from which New Year's presents, benefit performances, and gratuities were continually falling. Wherefore the birds of passage proclaimed the man, this human ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... his breast, shook his other fist wildly. "You have no right here!" he screamed in fury. "Do you hear! I have not done anything! I tell you, I have not done anything! You have no right here! I will make you pay for this! I will! I will!" His voice was rising in a shrill falsetto. "I will ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... and repeated the same verse over and over. They got one or two of those sitting nearest to join in, but now sounded down by the door a light street song. Notes struggled against notes, words against words, guitar against whistle. The women's strong, trained voices contested with the boys' hoarse falsetto, with the men's growling bass. When the street song was almost conquered, they began to stamp and whistle down by the door. The Salvation Army song sank like a wounded warrior. The noise was terrifying. The women fell ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... the cook sings in the kitchen— Is love also her head turning? In falsetto she now screameth, That with rage my soul ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... only starts each song. The women never sing at these gatherings, although on other occasions, when they get together by themselves, they sing very sweetly. It is quite common to hear a primitive kind of part singing, some piping in a curious falsetto, ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... word in a cracked falsetto, with the evident intention of mocking her, and at the same time hideously contorted his face into a grotesque idiocy of expression, pursing his lips so extremely, and setting his brows so awry, that his other features were cartooned ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... began, in a high-pitched, falsetto voice, "to express our regrets for what has occurred, and I wish to state on behalf of my associates here, and also personally, that there was no ill feeling toward your friend, and I am perfectly willing to overlook the small amount ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... together, and sang Coo in soft voices. And then they felt relieved. Jay remembered the last Coo. It happened when Kew's voice was breaking ten years ago, and he found that he could no longer coo except in a funny falsetto. So, rather than become ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... in a shrill falsetto. "My daughter passed the night in her apartment in 59th Street. I myself saw her ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... now resounded through the ship as it was repeated in the variety of basses of the boatswain and his mates, at either hatchway—one of the youngsters of the watch running down at the same time to acquaint the officers, in his shrill falsetto, with that which had been roared out loud enough to startle even the deaf purser. The first-lieutenant, followed by the master, brushed by him, and was up the ladder before his supererogatory communication ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... with a grayish beard threw branches on the fire, which was enveloped in thick, whitish smoke. The damp branches, falling on the fire, crackled and rustled plaintively, and the accordion teasingly played a lively tune, while the falsetto of the singer reinforced ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... his stature, his limbs compose the least part of it. His hands and feet, forming some compensation by their ample proportions, with short, thick fins, vulgarly called a cobbler's thumb. His voice varying in cadence from a deep barytone, to a high falsetto, maintains throughout the distinctive characteristic of a Dublin accent and pronunciation, and he talks of the "Veel of Ovoca, and a beef-steek," with some price of intonation. What part of the Island he came originally from, or what may be his age, are questions I have the most profound ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... of his English tongue seemed to take all the fight out of the remaining warriors. Tagg had closed valiantly with one, and the others made off. Von Kerber rose to his feet, so Royson went to Tagg's assistance. He heard the Baron shriek, in a falsetto of rage: ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... strange from below. The whole scene was so remarkable, that it required some effort to realise the fact that I was not in a dream. Christian stood at the top invisible, jodeling in a most unearthly manner, and developing an astonishing falsetto power, only interrupting his performance to assure me that he was not coming down again; so I was obliged to measure the breadth of the fall by myself. I chose a part where the ice was not very steep, and where occasional ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... It is the way of the world—'lieto ricordo d'un amor che fu,'" sang Contini in the thin but expressive falsetto which seems to be the natural inheritance of men who play upon stringed instruments. He broke off in the middle of a bar and laughed, out of sheer delight ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... soars out of his range. He continues falsetto, but changes the tune to Let Erin Remember]. I'm afraid I'm boring you, Nora, though you're too ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... you," interrupted a voice, which began in a shrill falsetto and ended in a gruff bass, as a flushed, dusty, long-legged boy burst in, with a bleeding hand obligingly extended ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... he cried in a shrill falsetto, "or I'll send for the constable to turn you off. Bah! You came to steal. You're no nephew of mine; I disown you! You're a common cheat—a ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... sort of falsetto growl from Jock's corner, where he was blushing in the firelight. "It's because you were once a fellow yourself, and ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... off your mustache, kiss the old woman, and climb up on to the bridge, and there you are! Has the engine been oiled, Hans? Right away, then, off we go; hand me my best whip!" He imitated the peasants' manner of speech. "Be careful about the inns, Dad!" he added in a shrill falsetto. There were peals of laughter, that had an evil sound ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... to carry in screens, small tables, and an odd chair or two, to represent houses, city walls, and so on, or hand cups of tea to the actors when their throats become dry from vociferous singing, which is always in falsetto. All this in the face of the audience. Dead people get up and walk off the stage; or while lying dead, contrive to alter their facial expression, and then get up and carry themselves off. There is no interval between one play and the next following, which probably gives ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... high falsetto tone. It was the voice of Mr. Tubbs, but pitched in a key of quite insane excitement. I sprang up and ran, Crusoe and the Honorable Cuthbert at my heels. There in the midst of the camp Mr. Tubbs stood, the center of a group who were regarding him with astonished looks. Mr. ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... over again, in a high falsetto this time. Great surprise on the part of the audience. Nervous old lady begins to cry, and has ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... theatres over there are insupportable; the atmosphere is pestilential. People sit with their elbows in your sides; they squeeze past you every half-hour. It was one of my bad moments; I have a great many in Europe. The conventional perfunctory play, all in falsetto, which I seemed to have seen a thousand times; the horrible faces of the people; the pushing, bullying ouvreuse, with her false politeness, and her real rapacity, drove me out of the place at the end of an hour; and, as it was too early to go ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... and the new fish stories, and the general invoice of the old ones, it was delectable to get back to the girls again, and in the old "best room" hear once more the lilt of the old songs and the stacattoed laughter of the piano mingling with the alto and falsetto voices of the Mills girls, and the gallant soprano of ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... six years he was a close neighbor and we were associated in lodge-work. He was an effeminate little fellow: height, 5 feet 2 inches; weight, 105 pounds; very near-sighted; and he had a light voice, not a treble or falsetto, but still a voice that detracted materially from the beautiful rhetoric that flowed from his lips. He had served his country as its representative in the Legislature and had received the nomination for senator, over a hard-fought ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... presented to him. Athanase had described him accurately enough, a mannikin in fat. Under the vast bent brow one could hardly see his eyes, behind the blue glasses that seemed always ready to fall as he inclined too far his fat head with its timid and yet all-powerful glance. When he spoke in his falsetto voice, his chin dropped in a fold over his collar, and he had a steady gesture with the thumb and index finger of his right hand to retain the glasses from sliding ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... her rounding his bends on grey December dawns to music wild and lamentable as the almost forgotten throb of Dervish drums, when, high above Royal's tenor bell, sharper even than lying Beagle-boy's falsetto break, Farag chanted deathless war against Abu Hussein and all his seed. At sunrise the river would shoulder her carefully into her place, and listen to the rush and scutter of the pack fleeing up the gang-plank, and the tramp ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... stars were visible. The cutter's deck was crowded with stuff, and there seemed less room for us than ever, except in the hateful cabin. The boys sang monotonously "for wind," quite convinced that the next breeze would be due to their efforts. A fat old man sang all night long in falsetto in three notes; it was unbearably silly and irritating, yet one could hardly stop the poor devil and rob him of his only pleasure in that dark night. We felt damp, restless and sleepless, and tried in vain to find some comfort. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... being a curiosity on the range, was a fat man with a big double chin. He was large as well as fat, and, by queer contrast, the voice that came from that mountain of flesh was a small falsetto scarce above ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... he was saying in a shrill falsetto. "Stap me, the way of it was this! I have it on the best of authority and it comes direct, rot me if it doesn't! Sir Robert's man, Watkins, told Madame Bellevue's maid, from whom it came straight to Lord Pam's fellow ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... XIV. suggests ultra-lavishness in life and taste; a time when French society, surfeited with pleasure, demanded a stimulus of continual novelty in current literature. The natural result was preciosite, hyperbole, falsetto sentiment, which ranked the unusual above the natural, clever conceit above careful workmanship. It was tainted with artificiality, and now seems mawkish ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the doctors call "a man of full habit." He ate largely, drank deeply, slept heavily, but, alas! he was a bachelor. There was no comfortable woman in the room at the back of his workshop to call in sweet falsetto, "Benjamin, come to dinner! Come at once: the steak's getting cold!" As he used to say, "This my domicile lacks the female touch—there's too much tobacco-ashes an' cobwebs about it: the women seem kind o' scared to come near, as ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... remark I lost. The reply came to me in a shrill falsetto. So grotesque was the effect of this treble from a bulk so squat and broad and hairy as the silhouette before me that I ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... eyeing the girls and women that passed by, who tried hard to seem, as they went, not self-conscious and stiff-stepping because of our observation ... and sometimes we whistled after them or called out to them in falsetto voices. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... exclaimed the widow, with a stress on the exclamation peculiar to herself—two notes of deprecating falsetto. 'How can you say it is good of me, when I'm sure there are no words for your kindness to us all! If only you knew our debt to your friend, Mr Earwaker! To our dying day we must all remember it. It is entirely through Mr. Malkin that we are able to leave ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... so herself. She said," he went on, screwing up his nose and speaking in a falsetto to express the intensity of his scorn—"she said she ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... one salutary effect. It frightened Sally out of her feeble old wits, confirming, as it did, Dr. Guy's fable of the periodical fits of madness to which the young lady was prone. She related to her mistress, in shrill falsetto, what had occurred. ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... understanding, interest, sentiment, are for the most part only nascent; and most that pertains to the true kingdom of mature manhood is embryonic. The wisest requirements seem to the child more or less alien, arbitrary, heteronomous, artificial, falsetto. There is much passivity, often active resistance and evasion, and perhaps spasms of obstinacy, to it all. But the senses are keen and alert, reactions immediate and vigorous; and the memory is quick, sure and lasting; ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... write a "Tribune" leader, he became aware that some one was standing behind his chair. Turning around suddenly, he saw a missionary well known in the city slums,—the Rev. Mr. Pease,—and asked in his highest, shrillest, most complaining falsetto, "Well, what do YOU want?" Mr. Pease, a kindly, gentle, apologetic man, said deprecatingly, "Well, Mr. Greeley, I have come for a little help. We are still trying to save souls in the Five Points." "Oh," said Mr. Greeley, "go along! ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... and wax merry at my expense! How they would draw pictures of me in the book covers with long curls and petticoats! How they would address me as "Jemima," and talk to one another about me in a high falsetto voice! How they would fall into hysterics when they met me, and weep copiously, and ask me to lend them hairpins and parasols! I knew what it would be like only too well, and I quaked as I ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... way, and also the fact that she had come from Duluth,—probably of "ordinary" people. Surely not a girl's girl, nor a woman's woman! But one to be reckoned with when it came to men. Isabelle was conscious of her old reserve as she listened to Conny's piping, falsetto voice,—such a funny voice to come from that large person through ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... merely waving a red flag at an already exasperated bull. The president got upon his feet, and his shrill falsetto cut the air like ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... know what girls is for gettin' speed out of a dog. 'You poor tired little doggie, you can stop right here an' rest if you want to; I don't care if they do get ahead of us,'" and Danny finished his remarks in the high falsetto and mincing inflection he attributed to the youthful members of a sex that in his opinion, as well as in George's, has no right to engage in the ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... asked to go to the opera with them, but we had scarcely got there when I lost my party in the crowd. I had no mask on, and I soon found myself attacked by a black domino, whom I knew to be a woman, and as she told me a hundred truths about myself in a falsetto voice, I was interested, and determined on finding out who she was. At last I succeeded in persuading her to come with me into a box, and as soon as we were in and I had taken off her mask I was astonished to find she was Mdlle. X. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... high falsetto, and slapped himself smartly on the wrist. "Has he been here? I thought it seemed kind of close. Give me a ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... objective intellect of genius. However acute this subjective intellect may be—and it exists in very various degrees of perfection—it is never on the same level with the double intellect of genius; just as the open chest notes of the human voice, however high, are essentially different from the falsetto notes. These, like the two upper octaves of the flute and the harmonics of the violin, are produced by the column of air dividing itself into two vibrating halves, with a node between them; while the open chest notes ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... work appears falsetto and even sentimental. It is often applied in artificial schoolroom ways to things without significance. General grade teachers cannot be specialists in the multiplicity of things demanded of them; it is not ...
— What the Schools Teach and Might Teach • John Franklin Bobbitt
... and spiced wines and other beverages peculiar to the season introduced, than Master Simon was called on for a good old Christmas song. He bethought himself for a moment, and then, with a sparkle of the eye, and a voice that was by no means bad, excepting that it ran occasionally into a falsetto, like the notes of a split reed, he quavered ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... sitting in the stern. Mrs. Samuel was a powerful, pretty lady, and a conscientious and continuous paddler. Mr. S. was none of these things, but an ex-Bible reader, with an amazing knowledge of English, which he spoke in a quaint, falsetto, far-away sort of voice, and that man's besetting sin was curiosity. "You be Christian, ma?" said he. I asked him if he had ever met a white man who was not. "Yes, ma," says Samuel. I said "You must have been associating with people whom you ought ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Thousand Ships, in the Russell Isles; and the remaining twelve were from Pennduffryn on the east coast of Guadalcanar. In addition to these—and they were all on deck, chattering and piping in queer, almost elfish, falsetto voices—were the two white men, Captain Van Horn and his Danish mate, Borckman, making a total ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... method consisted in making a healthy man ride horseback constantly, until an irritable weakness of the reproductive organs ensued, and a paralytic impotence followed. The exhausted testes would then atrophy, and the voice ring falsetto, muscular tone and energy diminish, inclinations and habits become feminine. The Mujerado lost his position in society as a man, assumed female clothing, manners and customs, and to all intents and purposes was treated as a woman. ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... in ecstasy). Eh, lass, yer du keep us old 'uns in order. (He bursts into a falsetto chuckle, loses the note, blushes and buries his head ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... fact, as Mackenzie already has pointed out, although the laryngoscope is invaluable in the recognition and treatment of diseases which before only could be guessed at, "with the exception of certain points relating to the 'falsetto' register, it can scarcely be said to have thrown any new light on the mechanism of the voice." In other words, the instrument belongs in the hands of the physician, not in those ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... comes. How could you keep ces dames waiting like this? It is shameful, shameful!" cried the woman, as she half shook the panting girl, in anger. "If ces dames will enter,"—her voice changing at once to a caressing falsetto, as the door flew open, opened by Augustine's trembling fingers—"they will find ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... the height which his courage warranted. His thickness of wit was never a bar to the success of his irony. For the irony of the ignorant Scot is rarely the outcome of intellectual qualities. It depends on a falsetto voice and the use of a recognized number of catchwords. "Dee-ee-ar me, dee-ee-ar me;" "Just so-a, just so-a;" "Im-phm!" "D'ye tell me that?" "Wonderful, serr, wonderful;" "Ah, well, may-ay-be, may-ay-be"—these be words of potent irony when uttered with a certain birr. Long practice had ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... the golden showers that it saw falling divinely round her—Randal was suddenly reminded of the exceeding bluntness with which, at their last interview, it had been his policy to announce his suit, and of the necessity of an impromptu falsetto suited to the new variations that tossed him again to and fro on the merciless gamut. However, he could not recoil from her father's proposition, though, in order to prepare Riccabocca for Violante's representation, he confessed pathetically that his impatience ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by the sopranists, because the aim of this music was mere enjoyment of the senses, without any regard for genuine depth of feeling—as is also shown by the fact that the voice of young manhood, the tenor voice, was hardly used at all at this period, and later only in a sopranistic way, as falsetto. Now, the spirit of modern music, under the undisputed leadership of German genius, especially Beethoven, has succeeded in first rising to the true dignity of art, by bringing within the sphere of its incomparable ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... of fewer than a score of rifles could be distinguished through the general uproar, and again that penetrating falsetto: ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... accompaniment on such occasions. Missy thought the interruptions, though proper and lending an atmosphere of fervour, rather a pity because they spoiled the effective rise and fall of the minister's voice. There was one recurrent nasal falsetto which especially threw you off the religious track. It belonged to old Mrs. Lemon. Everybody knew she nagged at and overworked and half-starved that ragged little Sims orphan she'd adopted, but here she was making the ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... whole expression assumes the character of extreme ferocity. A similar description is applicable to another man, excepting that he generally foams at the mouth and spits, dancing and jumping about in a strange rapid manner, shrieking out his maledictions in a shrill falsetto voice. ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... to her, and repeated it with outstretched finger, "Tip, tip, Pete!" He spoke in a falsetto voice. Did he mean Peter? Did he take her for a man? Behind him on a pillow lay something hairy; it was a toupet; she now saw that he was bald on the crown. "Tip, tip, Pete!" she heard ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... are wont to think of him. By them he was regarded as an illustrious declaimer, in an age when declamation was the most valued of all accomplishments. It was true that there was a sort of "tinkle," a certain falsetto tone in his style, which offended men of robust and severe taste; but this meretricious resonance of style was a matter of envy and admiration when affectation was the rage, and when the times were ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... Mr. Denis should have rushed on, but Mr. Denis did not rush on. The play stopped. Mr. Denis was not in the library, the improvised greenroom; Mr. Denis did not appear when his name was called in stentorian tones by Ralph, or in pathetic falsetto by Charles. In short, Mr. Denis was not forthcoming. A rush up-stairs on the part of most of the young men brought to light the awful fact that Mr. Denis had retired to his chamber, a prey to sudden and ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... concert-room, and church he had scarcely a rival; and whether in singing a simple ballad, in oratorio, or in the grandest dramatic music, the largeness and nobility of his style were matched by a voice which in its prime was almost peerless. His compass extended over nineteen notes, and his falsetto from D to A was so perfect that it was difficult to tell where the natural voice ended. When Weber composed his opera "Oberon" for the English stage in 1826, Braham was the original ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... pockets dip water from a hole or ditch and empty it into troughs, whence it spreads over the field. The screeching of these wheels can be heard for miles, and the grotesque Chinese figures stepping up, up, up in pairs, yet never ascending, the women singing in shrill, falsetto voices, and the incessant gabble of conversation, makes a picture of industry the like of which is to be seen in no other ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... and that English literature would be seriously impoverished without it. Certainly never was there a style which more fully justified the definition given by Buffon, in Sterne's own time, of style as "the very man." Falsetto, "faking," vamping, shoddy—all manner of evil terms may be heaped upon it without the possibility of completely clearing it from them. To some eyes it underlies them most when it is most ambitious, as in the Le Fevre story and the diatribe against critics. It leaves ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... break must be more complete. Think of the range of sounds made by the Japanese, the gipsy, the Chinese, the Spanish folk-singers. The newest composer may ask for shrieks, squeaks, groans, screams, a thousand delicate shades of guttural and falsetto vocal tones from his interpreters. Why should the gamut of expression on our opera stage be so much more limited than it is in our music halls? Why should the Hottentots be able to make so many delightful noises that we are incapable of producing? Composers up to date have ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... gay, could be sublime with Johnson, or blackguard with the groom; could dispute, could rally, could quibble, in our language. Baretti has, besides, some skill in music, with a bass voice, very agreeable, besides a falsetto which he can manage so as to mimic any singer he hears. I would also trust his knowledge of painting a long way. These accomplishments, with his extensive power over every modern language, make him a most pleasing ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... object for the moment, Otty, I rejoiced in a clear thoroughfare and let her rip for Putney Bridge. There was a communication tube in the taxi, and for some while it had been whistling in my ear, with calls and outcries in high falsetto interjected between the blasts. 'Funny dog's ventriloquising,' thought I, and paid no further attention to the noises. Our pace was such, I couldn't be distracted from the steering. . . . I was quite sober by this time: sober, but ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... grumbled Vic, stooping reluctantly to pick up the old hoe-handle he used for a staff. "What ridge?" He paused to thunder up at her, his voice unexpectedly changing to a shrill falsetto on the last word, as frequently happens to rob a mancub of his dignity just when he needs ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... downwards by mistake, whereat it began to scream vociferously. This scream was accomplished by Davie Summers creeping below the stage and putting his mouth to a hole in the flooring close to which the baby's head lay. Davie's falsetto was uncommonly like to a child's voice, and the effect was quite startling. Of course Whackinta tried to soothe it, and failing in this she whipped it, which caused it to yell with tenfold violence. Thereafter losing all patience, ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... harrowing up somebody—the stage child; it really ought not to be left about as it is. When it has done upsetting its mother it fishes out some broken-hearted maid, who has just been cruelly severed forever from her lover, and asks her in a high falsetto voice why she doesn't get married, and prattles to her about love, and domestic bliss, and young men, and any other subject it can think of particularly calculated to lacerate the poor girl's heart until ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... youth who is taking lessons from a comic actor in voice-production not to carry his precepts so far as to imitate the female falsetto, the senile tremolo, the obsequiousness of the slave, the stuttering accents of intoxication or the intonations ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... in high falsetto, palpably tinged with that fine scorn of a healthy boy, for anything which does not exactly square with his young highness's ideas. "Come back to mammy, eh? Well, it's a pity she ever let him go away from her. Hope she'll ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... and shouted, in a voice that cracked and broke, piping into falsetto: "He thinks of bein' a PLUMBER! He wants to be a PLUMBER! He told me he couldn't THINK if he went into business—he wants to be a plumber so he ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... tinkle-tinkle of serenading guitars and yearning notes of violins wailing despairing love. And Isidro, seated on the bamboo ladder of his house, went through an independent performance. He sang "Good-night, Ladies," the last song given to the school, sang it in soft falsetto, with languorous drawls, and never-ending organ points, over and over again, till it changed character gradually, dropping into a wailing minor, an endless croon full of obscure melancholy of a race ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... no sign had been placed on the building. He said, "Everybody will know it is A. T. Stewart's!" And they did. After his death the place was plastered with signs that called in throaty falsetto at the passer-by, like eager salesmen on the Midway who try to entice people to enter. The new management took all these signs down, and by the main entrance placed a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... his mate, and his agent are the acme of politeness. The Chinese in the third class are good-natured and funny. Yesterday a Chinaman sat on the deck and sang something very mournful in a falsetto voice; as he did so his profile was funnier than any caricature. Everybody looked at him and laughed, while he took not the slightest notice. He sang falsetto and then began singing tenor. My God, what a voice! It was like the ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... make sure that the constable and his wife were in the bedroom the other side of the flimsy wall, complied, and in a voice that rose gradually to a piercing falsetto told Mr. Grummit things that had been rankling in her mind for some months. She raked up misdemeanours that he had long since forgotten, and, not content with that, had a fling at the entire Grummit family, beginning with her mother-in-law and ending with ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... glance harmlessly aside. Without that breast-plate the sword of talent cannot force its way through the battle of life, for blows have to be borne as well as dealt. I do not, of course, speak of the conceit that displays itself in an elevated nose and a falsetto voice. That is not real conceit—that is only playing at being conceited; like children play at being kings and queens and go strutting about with feathers and long trains. Genuine conceit does not make a man objectionable. On the contrary, it tends to make him genial, kind-hearted, ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... next above the alto), the term for the lowest variety of the female voice, as distinguished from the soprano and mezzo-soprano. Originally it signified, in choral music, the part next higher than the alto, given to the falsetto counter-tenor. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... are highly interesting. The book was born, as all good books, because its mother could not help it. Behind every page and between the lines you see the fevered toss of human emotion and hot ambition—these women were rivals. There were digs and scratches, bandied epithets in falsetto, and sounds like a piccolo played by a man in distress, before all this; and these are not explained, so you have to fill them in with your imagination. But the Bernhardt is the bigger woman of the two. She goes her splendid pace alone, and all the other woman ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... communicating with his maker, should afflict us as the insufferable splendor of the face of Moses afflicted the Jews at Mount Sinai. His audible prayers were made kneeling with clasped hands and upturned face. His eyes were closed tightly, his features were painfully contracted, and his voice was a falsetto squeak. I fancy the Governor must have sighed at the performance. The doctor never troubled ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... could do as he liked with it!" said a mild, piping falsetto; "And so far, he has made it beau-ti-ful!—beau-ti-ful!" carved with traceries of natural fruit and foliage, which were scarcely injured by the devastating mark of time. But rough and sacrilegious hands ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... of the impliedly forbidden to the Madigans), and was discovered by Francis Madigan one evening on C Street, putting up a fluent prayer in a nasal tremolo—an excellent imitation of the semi-hysterical falsetto of the bonneted enthusiast who ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... crew. 'Come along, Kit,' Cried Puff, 'we'll all be friends now, all take hands, And dance—ha! ha!—the shaking of the sheets!' Then Archer, shuffling a step, raised his cracked voice In Kit's own song to a falsetto tune, Snapping one hand, thus, over ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... fainter in the distance as Shanghai sings to Bantam and Chittagong to Brahmapootra, until, at last, there is silence; and then, "O hark! O hear! How thin and clear!" far, far away some rooster sends out a delicate falsetto note that might have come from a microscopic cock who is practicing ventriloquism in the cellar. Instantly the catarrhal chicken in the next yard begins the refrain again with his hoarse voice; and then again and again the fugue goes round, never tiring ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... melon seeds and peanuts—others going about with halfpenny buttonholes of gelsomina, each neatly folded up in a vine-leaf to keep the scent in—three independent piano-organs and a brass band in the middle distance—an enthusiastic blind singer, a survival of Demodocus in the Odyssey, with a falsetto voice and no bridge to his nose keeping a group of listeners spellbound in the foreground with their favourite ballad, illustrated by a large sheet of oil paintings in eight tableaux, about the man who murdered his wife and mother with one bloody knife—there it is lying on ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... pertinacity, took up the sentence just where she had left off. She had carefully kept her place throughout the period of unconsciousness. But now she spoke, not with a gasp, but in that shrill, unnatural falsetto so characteristic of hysteria; that voice—half yell—that makes every nerve of the listener jangle with the discord. "Think, oh-h-h Samuel! why won't you think what a wife I've been to you? Here I've drudged and scrubbed and scrubbed and drudged ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... playing Juliet to the Romeo of the tall young surgeon, singing falsetto like a fat German angel dressed in loose-fitting khaki, with his belt undone. There were charades in the tent. The boy from Barts' did remarkable imitations of a gamecock challenging a rival bird, of a cow coming through a gate, of a general addressing his troops (most comical of ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... coal loafin' around here, an' before you get the bark inside you'll be plumb out o' coal," Mr. McGuffey reminded them. "I know this old coffin like I know the back o' my own hand. Why, she lives on coal! Oh-h-h, Scraggsy, Scraggsy, poor old Scraggsy," he keened in a high falsetto voice and subsided on a crate of celery, the while he waved his legs in the air and affected to be overcome by his merriment. Scraggs turned the colour of a ripe old Edam cheese, while Mr. Gibney folded his hands and ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... Toot, a certain spirit from whom she could learn all that Gladys and Shiel wanted to know. Accordingly, in the manner of most other two-guinea clairvoyants, she composed herself in a graceful and recumbent attitude, made a lot of queer grimaces and still queerer noises, and spoke in a falsetto voice, which purposed to be that of Tillie Toot, once a barmaid in Edinburgh, now one of Madame's familiar spirits. And the gist of what "Tillie" told them was that Hamar & Co. derived their powers from Black Magic; and that the secrets thereof could only be learned ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... the corner was an apology for a bed. On this was stretched an old man whose face was sunken, whose eyes were lusterless, whose hand was long and thin and bony, and whose voice was attenuated and pitched in a falsetto key. The guide said that this old Chinaman was sixty-eight years of age, and that he had had a life of varied experience. He was a miner by profession, but had spent all his earnings long ago, and was now an object of charity as well as of pity. Indeed he was the very embodiment of misery, a wretched, ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... their red glow on our gear, ourselves, and Ring's truthful face. One of the young men sang a Latin student's song and two Negro melodies; the other "Sweet Spirit, hear my Prayer." "Jim" sang one of Moore's melodies in a singular falsetto, and all together sang, "The Star-spangled Banner" and "The Red, White, and Blue." Then "Jim" recited a very clever poem of his own composition, and told some fearful Indian stories. A group of small silver spruces ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... beauty, eh, my beauty!' said Marshall, in a queer high falsetto voice, that caused the other man to have convulsions of laughter ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... falsetto-femina voice, "you're too slow at that calling. The clearing men need Nelson on a machine from now on. You'll have to do less talking and ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... Brower's boy?' he asked in a drawling falsetto, looking at me out of grey eyes and ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... woman I remember," said Honey Smith. There were bruises, mottled blue and black, all over Honey's body. There was a falsetto whistling to Honey's voice. "That Irish granny! She didn't say a word. Her mouth just opened until her jaw fell. Then the wave struck!" He paused. He tried to control the falsetto whistling. But it got away from him. "God, I bet she was dead before ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... respond to some inward monition of danger, of responsibility. "I be enough of a dead shot ter stop all that dad-burned talk of yourn!" he drawled in a languid, falsetto, spiritless voice, but with an odd intimation of a deadly intention. "Ye both done the deed the same ez ef ye hed pulled the trigger; ye holped ter plan it, an' kem along ter see it done an' lend a hand ef needed. Ye both done the deed the ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Here's the climax. Helen Grimes, chaparralish as she can be, is goaded beyond imprudence. She convinces herself that Jack Valentine is not only a falsetto, but a financier. To lose at one fell swoop $647,000 and a lover in riding trousers with angles in the sides like the variations on the chart of a typhoid-fever patient is enough to make any ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... falsetto voice from the gathering' audience cried: 'Oh, ye bad boy, come here till I skelp ye!'—and there was a general laugh, in which the hapless ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... traveling in a circle, clashed its steam-whistlings and organ-wailings against a drum-and-trombone band, while these distinct strata of sound were cut across by an outcropping of graphophones and megaphones. Upon an open-air platform, a minstrel troupe, by dint of falsetto inarticulateness, futile banjoes, and convulsive dancing, demonstrated how little of art one might obtain for a dime. Always out of sympathy with such displays, but now more than ever repelled by them, Grace and Gregory hurried away to find themselves ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... differences between the two. By a very ancient and inviolable regulation, the so-called 'musico,' or artificial soprano, is never allowed to sing in the Chapel of the Choir, where the soprano singers are without exception men who sing in falsetto, though they speak in a deep voice. On great occasions the Choir of the Sixtine joins in the music in the body of the church, but never in the Chapel, and always behind ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... above all ignorance, to which add confidence, audacity, and effrontery; as for diffidence, equity, moderation, and shame, you will please leave them at home; they are not merely needless, they are encumbrances. The loudest voice you can come by, please, a ready falsetto, and a gait modelled on my own. That exhausts the real necessaries; very often there would be no occasion for anything further. But I recommend bright colours or white for your clothes; the Tarentine stuff that lets the body show through is best; for shoes, wear either the Attic woman's ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... consequent Carnegie medals. However, the average visitor could not be expected to be aware of that; and therefore he would be more than likely to feel it incumbent upon him to say gracious things in a tremulous falsetto voice. In the present case, the question concerned itself with the problem whether or not Scott Brenton would prove to be ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Let me look at it,'" began Madame de Guiraud in a falsetto voice, as she rose with a silly ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... tress of his victim's hair, the parings of his nails, some of his spittle, or a shred of his garment. Having obtained the object, whatever it was, he chanted certain spells and curses over it in a falsetto voice and buried it in the ground. As the thing decayed, the person to whom it had belonged was supposed to waste away. When an Australian blackfellow wishes to get rid of his wife, he cuts off a lock of her hair in her sleep, ties it to his spear-thrower, and goes with it to a neighbouring ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... and swept the room with his painted grin. In his hands he held a great bunch of variegated circus bills. Tossing a half-dozen of these at the feet of the all-absorbed spectators, he cried in high cracked falsetto: ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... The high, falsetto squeak of a gramophone was coming gaily through the portal, and without waiting for an answer Gilbert impatiently put his head through the doorway. Since the lawnmower had gone to its well-earned rest Mr. Munn lived ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... court suit stolen," Advena finished for him. "As Disraeli said—wasn't it Disraeli?" She heard, and hated the note of constraint in her voice. "Am I reduced," she thought, indignantly, "to falsetto?" and chose, since she must choose, the ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... and also the women and girls, decked in their best, with ear-rings and armlets, and terrapin shells filled with pebbles fastened to the outside of their legs. They kept time with foot and voice; the men in deep tones, with short accents, the women in a shrill falsetto; while the clay drums, with heads of taut deer-hide, were beaten, the whistles blown, and the gourds and calabashes rattled, until the air resounded ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... do you want?" she gave out in a shrill falsetto; but no one heard her till the questions were repeated about an octave and ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... her house with an angry flounce. What in the world was all this noise about! zzz! zzz! then a thump and a bump and the strangest little noises, more like a falsetto squeak than anything else. This had been going on for the last minute, which is a whole hour for a cricket, and going on while she was trying to teach Chee and Chirk and Chirp their lessons in Running and Humming. These two things, unlike ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... vein. This alone was enough to get hopelessly lost in, even without its many blind-alley branches. Now and then we came upon another shaft-opening that seemed a bottomless hole a few feet in diameter in the solid rock, from far down which came up the falsetto voices and the stinking sweat of peons, and the rap, rap of heavy hammers on iron rock-bars. But we had only started. Far back in the gallery we took another hoist and descended some two hundred feet more, then wound off again through the mountain by more labyrinthian ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... criminologist in the best falsetto tone he could muster. Then he disconnected with a smile. This was turning the tables with a vengeance. But he knew that he must be getting away from the den before the possible investigation by Warren or his lieutenant. There were many ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... what I am going to say!' cried Nikolai Artemyevitch in a falsetto shriek, suddenly losing the majesty of his oratorical pose, the smooth dignity of his speech, and his bass notes. 'You don't know, ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... some reason I had become a mark for their amusement; more than once I caught them exchanging looks, or regarding me from the corners of their eyes in such fashion as set my ears a-tingling. The Captain was possessed of a peculiarly high-pitched, falsetto laugh, which, recurring at frequent intervals (and for no reason as I could see), annoyed me almost beyond bearing. But I paid no heed, staring straight before me and meditating upon a course of action which had been in my ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... said yesterday that the resolution meant initiation of money grants. When this announcement was made I heard a shout from the direction of my honourable friend, Mr. Partelow, in a tenor voice, and an honourable member in the rear [Mr. Barberie] joining in a sort of falsetto accompaniment. I think my honourable friend [Mr. Hazen] is much to blame for having accused his honourable colleague [Mr. Woodward] with writing an article in a city paper. What, suppose he did write it, ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... would run away?" But Smerdyakov did not deign to reply. After a moment's silence the guitar tinkled again, and he sang again in the same falsetto: ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... him shrewdly with his peering, merry eyes. He rather liked Harboro, so far as first impressions went. Yet his lips were set in a straight line. "All right," he drawled amiably. His voice was pitched high—almost to a falsetto. ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... sighs changed into a wail, in which the other members of the camp joined, a penetrating falsetto cry which continued for two days, mingled with the strong man's expression of woe, a low, weird yet not inharmonious hum. For two days they chanted the virtues of the dead, told of her likes and dislikes, and of their ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... were sitting side by side in stony silence. The fiddles had fallen into a more sentimental strain; hints of "The Mocking Bird" might be heard struggling for utterance in the strings. In this ambitious attempt the pitch would get lower and lower, and then recover itself with a queer falsetto effect. Charley Leroy, the crack "bronco-buster" of the region, was caller-out this time. He was less inventive than the curly-headed boy, but he gave out his commands in the same chanting measure, and the tramp, tramp of the feet was as rhythmic ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... A carolling falsetto seemed to hang muffled in upper space, above the fog that settled low on the water, like a dense and milky sediment of the air. The moonlight fell into it strangely. We seemed to breathe at the bottom of a shallow sea, white as snow, shining like ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... and the figure dipped into the hollow, till, with a crash of rending grass, the lost one strode up to the light of the fire, and disappeared to the waist in a wave of joyous dogs! Then Learoyd and Ortheris gave greeting, bass and falsetto together, both swallowing a ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... "eremite's sad cell" and "Paynim shores" and Newstead's "monastic dome." The ballad "Adieu, adieu my native shore," was suggested by "Lord Maxwell's Good-Night" in the "Border Minstrelsy," and introduces some romantic appurtenances: the harp, the falcon, and the little foot-page. But this kind of falsetto, in the tradition of the last-century Spenserians, evidently hampered the poet; so he shook himself free from imitation after the opening stanzas, and spoke in his natural voice.[2] "Lara" is a tale of feudal days, with a due proportion of knights, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... to quiver. The lines of every man's limbs, except the King's, were drawn in tension. Then from the prostrate body of the witch-doctor, whose legs and arms were twisted as in agony, whose dribbling mouth was closed like a vise, came a ventriloquous falsetto: ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... together, always have one to sing out, which is done in high and long-drawn notes, varying with the motion of the windlass. This requires a clear voice, strong lungs, and much practice, to be done well. This fellow had a very peculiar, wild sort of note, breaking occasionally into a falsetto. The sailors thought that it was too high, and not enough of the boatswain hoarseness about it; but to me it had a great charm. The harbor was perfectly still, and his voice rang among the hills as though it could have been heard for miles. Toward ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... very still. So still that the shrill voice of a street-gamin, a boy from the Via Sacra, was audible throughout the vast enclosure from gallery to gallery. He yelled in his cutting falsetto: "Good for ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... proper. Now and then the dancers give vent to what is supposed to be an imitation of the hikuli's talk, which reminded me of the crowing of a cock. Beating their mouths quickly three times with the hollow of their hands, they shout in a shrill, falsetto voice, "Hikuli vava!" which means, ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... he is called, of Roads and Bridges was my principal companion. He was generally intelligent, and could have spoken more or less falsetto on any of the trite topics; but it was his specially to have a generous taste in eating. This was what was most indigenous in the man; it was here he was an artist; and I found in his company what I ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with suffering womanhood. She could only writhe her hand from his grasp with childish contortions; she could only glare at him with eyes that were prettily and piquantly brilliant; she could only slap at his detaining hand with a plump and velvety palm, and when she found her voice it was high falsetto. And all she could say was, "Leave me be, looney, or ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... 'joyous and melodious notes' of the bird as 'the purest incense that can ascend to heaven.'] (bulbuls), sundry seguidillas, and El Tajaraste. The music may be heard everywhere between Morocco and Sind. It starts with the highest possible falsetto and gradually falls like a wail, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... Shelley's voice was equally taken from exceptional instances, and the account of it usually suggests the idea that he spoke in a falsetto which might almost be mistaken for the "shriek" of a harsh-toned woman. Nothing could be more unlike the reality. The voice was indeed quite peculiar, and I do not know where any parallel to it is likely to be found unless in Lancashire. Shelley had no ear for music,—the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... the situation. He advanced, razor in hand. He strode up to the milkman and stood dramatically before him, arm raised and head thrown back. "Now, look at here," he proclaimed, in a high falsetto, "I ain't agoin' to hear no asparagusment of my friends, not here in this tonsorial parlor. No, sir!" There was something at once touching, noble, and absurd about the demonstration. The others chuckled, then sobered, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fictitious emotion and spurious rhetoric. From beginning to end there is a painful strain that never relaxes, reminding us of singers who pitch their voices too high and have to render all the upper notes in falsetto. An attempt is made to employ poetical imagery, but it ludicrously fails. The heaven of the Book of Revelation, with its gold and silver and precious stones, is nothing but a magnified jeweller's shop, and a study of it has influenced the style of later writers. At present Christian ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... beards, for all I care, till they are so long that at the judgment-day the Almighty will not know whether you are Jews or Christians. Yes, hang yourselves with your beards, shaggy bears that you are!" Here he burst into tears and, in a maudlin, falsetto voice, sobbed out, "Am I to drink water like a wretched fish? Is that loving your neighbor? Am I not a man and a skilled surgeon? Ah, I am beside myself today; my heart is full of pity, and of ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the family Caesar conceived that Mlle. Cadet was the most intelligent. She was a French country girl, very jovial, blond, with a turned-up nose, and on the whole insignificant looking. When she spoke, her voice had certain falsetto inflexions that were ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... an object of friendly amusement with the children, who could not get used to having the trains started by a small Christmas-horn. They had not entirely respected the English engine, with the shrill falsetto of its whistle, after the burly roar of our locomotives; and the boatswain's pipe of the French conductor had considerably diminished the dignity of a sister republic in their minds; but this Christmas-horn was too droll. That a grown man, much more imposingly ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... never been able to win many friends in the land of his mother's kin. The other proved to be at once a rudder to guide him over the uncharted future of his life, and an outlet for the pent-up passion within him. His voice was totally untrained, and as yet it broke into all manner of distressing falsetto fragments. Nevertheless, it gave him a cause for living, and it enabled him, the descendant of a taciturn race, to give utterance to the doubts and questionings which accompanied his growth to manhood. Bereft of his mother and without his voice, he might ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... of merit and attraction—some of the descriptive ones especially: and they demonstrate, in the infallible way which letters and letters alone can supply in the absence of long personal familiarity, that the general tone and key of his writings was no falsetto but a perfectly genuine thing—that the often urged contrast of the Life of Schiller, instead of evidencing affectation in the later work, only proves constraint in the earlier. At the same time, except for what may ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... tell you what he did. He sat down on a Windsor chair, without a harp; he put his hands in his pockets, cleared his throat, looked up at the ceiling, and suddenly burst into a series of the shrillest falsetto screeches I ever heard in my life. My own private opinion is that he was suffering from hydrophobia. I have lost all belief, henceforth and forever, in bards—all belief in everything, in short, except your very delightful stories and this remarkably ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... benefits for actors. It was indeed a delight: loads of incense were burned, there were plenty of Latin chants, large quantities of holy water were expended, and Padre Irene, out of regard for his old friend, sang the Dies Irae in a falsetto voice from the choir, while the neighbors suffered real headaches from ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... came. It came down out of the northwest, like a cloudburst. It hummed and sang, and then it whined, and then it screamed, screamed in a high falsetto that made you think poor old Mother Earth was in her last throes! The snow was fine and hard, really minute particles of ice, and not snow at all, as we know it in the East, little sharp-angled diamond-points that stung the skin like fire. It came in almost horizontal lines, ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... didn't furgit the password!" cried Nick Peters with his little falsetto laugh, that seemed keyed for a fleer, although it was most graciously modulated now. "Ye mought hev shot us ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... at the corner the strains of a Canton actor's falsetto, with the squeak of the Celestial fiddles issued from a phonograph, but so real I fancied I was again on Shameen, listening over the Canton River to the noises of the night, the music, and the singsong ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... pale and hinted at the uncomfortable future that awaited them. He ran over the various denominations one by one, and one by one showed them to be worshipers of idols and followers after strange gods. He sank hoarsely into the bass and quavered up into falsetto and a chorus of "Amens!" and "Hallelujahs!" ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln |
