"Flute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... most correct poet; and, at the same time, the most harmonious (a circumstance which redounds very much to the honour of this muse) that England ever gave birth to. He has mellowed the harsh sounds of the English trumpet to the soft accents of the flute. His compositions may be easily translated, because they are vastly clear and perspicuous; besides, most of his subjects are general, and relative ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... speaker addressed his warlike companion he tapped the lid of his case, opened it, and revealed three joints of a flute lying snugly in purple-velvet fittings, and, taking them out, he proceeded to lick the ends all round in a tomcat sort of way, and screwed them together, evidently with a great deal of satisfaction to himself, for ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... sacredly endowed with beauty and the wonderful vibrating note about the very mention of them, are criminal to hideousness when they betray. Cry, False! on them, and there is an instant echo of bleeding males in many circles, like the poor quavering flute-howl of transformed beasts, which at some remembering touch bewail their higher state. Those women are sovereignly attractive, too, loathsomely. Therein ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... page; the tremendous forces which sweep through her disclose their potency in human passion and impulse. There was a fine note in Mr. Allen's earliest work; a prelusive note with the quality of the flute.... In Summer in Arcady a deeper note in the treatment of Nature was struck, and Mr. Allen's style took on, not only greater freedom, but a richer beauty. The story is a kind of incarnation of the tremendous vitality of Nature, the unconscious, unmoral sweep of the force which makes for life. So ...
— James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work • Macmillan Company
... costumes so rich and magnificent as to eclipse even that of the Caliph. They were followed by four negroes, two of whom bore guitars of Moorish make and appearance, the third the East Indian tomtom or drum, and the fourth the Persian flute. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... recesses of the garden Larbi, that idle gardener, played upon his little flute his eternal song of love, and from the desert, beyond the white wall, there rose an Arab's voice singing a song of the Sahara, "No one but God and I knows what is in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... there was a senate-meeting, and to it the majority came wearing the equestrian costume, but the officials the senatorial, except for the purple-bordered togas. Tiberius and Drusus his son wore dark clothing made in everyday fashion. They, too, offered incense but made no use of a flute player. Most of the members sat in their accustomed places, but the consuls below, one on the praetors' bench and one on the tribunes'. After this Tiberius was absolved for having touched the corpse,—a forbidden act,—and for having escorted it on ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... the out-door accessories of a London life are the strains of fugitive music which one hears in the quiet by-streets or suburban highways—strains born of the skill of some of our wandering artists, who, with flute, violin, harp, or brazen tube of various shape and designation, make the brick-walls of the busy city responsive with the echoes of harmony. Many a time and oft have we lingered entranced by the witchery of some street Orpheus, forgetful, not merely of all the troubles ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... guests in their seats, Faull stepped up to the curtain and flung it aside. A replica, or nearly so, of the Drury Lane presentation of the temple scene in The Magic Flute was then exposed to view: the gloomy, massive architecture of the interior, the glowing sky above it in the background, and, silhouetted against the latter, the gigantic seated statue of the Pharaoh. A fantastically carved wooden ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... the idea of ever seeing Portland," answered Dora, staring with all her blue eyes at the display of musical instruments about the room, and longing to stop her ears, for several of the children were playing on the violin, flute, horn or harp. They were street musicians, and even the baby seemed to be getting ready to take part in the concert, for he sat on the floor beside an immense bass horn taller than himself, with his rosy lips at the mouth piece and his cheeks puffed out in vain attempts to make a ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... peril. He served the next enemy a big, blundering old bear, in the same way. When there were no wild beasts creeping up to the rim of the fire he made near his little tent, the lad would amuse himself by playing on the flute, or the jewsharp he carried; and at home, when the father and sons were gathered around in silence, he used to play upon his larger harp so sweetly that all bad thoughts fled, and everybody was glad and at peace ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... sweetest moan For lost Eurydice. The Fates walk all alone In empty kingdoms, where is none to fear Shaking of any spear. Even the ghosts are gone From lightless fields of mint and euphrasy: There sings no wind in any willow-tree, And shadowy flute-girls wander listlessly Down to the shore where Charon's empty boat, As shadowed swan doth float, Rides all as listlessly, with none to steer. A shrunken stream is Lethe's water wan Unsought of any man: Grass Ceres sowed by alien hands is mown, And now she seeks Persephone ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... is the image of the dappled concave of the cloudy sky. Thenceforward all the limiting or restraining modes of music belong to the Muses; but the more passionate music is wind music, as in the Doric flute. Then, when this inspired music becomes degraded in its passion, it sinks into the pipe of Pan, and the double pipe of Marsyas, and is then rejected by Athena. The myth which represents her doing ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... Swiss, and Polidori, a physician of Italian descent, son of Alfieri's secretary, a man of some talent but indiscreet. A question arises as to the source from which he obtained the means for these and subsequent luxuries, in striking contrast with Goldsmith's walking-stick, knapsack, and flute. Byron's financial affairs are almost inextricably confused. We can, for instance, nowhere find a clear statement of the result of the suit regarding the Rochdale Estates, save that he lost it before the ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... to the wall, hung the musicians' gallery[105] and to the strains of fiddle, flute, and banjo, the quality of the neighborhood bowed and glided. Upon these boards skipped little satin slippers and many times the heavy tread of the first citizen of America, for this gentleman was ever ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... down the steps until he reached the one on which the dog was sitting, and put his arm around its neck. The banister posts hid him from the approaching couple. He could hear Georgina's eager voice piping up flute-like: ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the election of a Trierarch; elsewhere pay is being distributed, the Pallas figure-heads are being regilded, crowds are surging under the market porticos, encumbered with wheat that is being measured, wine-skins, oar-leathers, garlic, olives, onions in nets; everywhere are chaplets, sprats, flute-girls, black eyes; in the arsenal bolts are being noisily driven home, sweeps are being made and fitted with leathers; we hear nothing but the sound of whistles, of flutes and fifes to encourage the work-folk. ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... life worth leading; take the hope therein away, All we have to do is surely not endure another day. This life has its hopes for this life, hopes that promise joy: life done— Out of all the hopes, how many had complete fulfilment? none. 'But the soul is not the body': and the breath is not the flute; Both together make the music: either ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... contortion, as though grinning through a horse-collar, has the bass confided to his faithful keeping; and emits a variety of growls and groans truly appalling, though evidently to his own great comfort and satisfaction. The bassoon, the clarinet, the flute—but how shall we describe them! Suffice it to say, that they appeared to be suffering inexpressible torments at the hands of their apoplectic-looking performers; who were all at the last gasp, and all determined to die bravely at their posts. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... where the band was, but the strains of "Sweet Evelina, dear Evelina," came floating on the air, and, looking up, she saw two crows perched on the bar from which the swing hung in summer. One had a little fiddle, and the other a flute. ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... said so. Talking was a thing she did not often attempt, though she sang a great deal, with a voice as clear as a flute. Prudy mourned because her tongue "did not grow fast enough." But where was the need of speech? If she fancied she would like to be tossed to the "sky of the room," she had only to pat her father's arm, and point upward, and the next ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... of the forest, Tapio's girl, with mouth of honey, Play upon thy flute of honey, Whistle through thy pipe of honey, 70 In thy noble mistress' hearing, Gracious queen of all the forest, That she soon may hear the music, And from her repose may rouse her, For she does not hear at present, And she but awakens rarely, Though ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... this idea of confused personal identity also in a brief poem printed among the "Translations" in the Appendix to Emerson's Poems. These are the last two lines of "The Flute, from Hilali":— ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... asleep, and his portly presence, converting itself into a sort of blacksmith's bellows, started to vent, through open mouth and distended nostrils, such sounds as can have greeted the reader's ear but seldom—sounds as of a drum being beaten in combination with the whistling of a flute and the strident ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Golden Grouse came there, And the Pobble who has no toes, And the small Olympian bear, And the Dong with a luminous nose. And the Blue Baboon who played the flute, And the Orient Calf from the Land of Tute, And the Attery Squash, and the Bisky Bat,— All came and built on the lovely Hat Of the ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... in the trees, among whose dark branches here and there a bird's warbling or flute-like notes resounded. The sun threw his emerald light over the soft velvety carpet of the ground, which, rising and falling in gentle, undulating lines, formed lovely little hollows and hillocks, on which now and then was seen here and there the slender and stately figure ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... YOU? Piano Organ Violin Clarinet Flute Harp Coronet 'Cello Guitar Ukulele Saxophone Banjo, (Plectrum 5-String or Tenor) Piccolo Hawaiian Steel Guitar Drums and Traps Mandolin Sight Singing Trombone Piano Accordion Voice and Speech Culture Harmony and Composition Automatic Finger Control ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... registers in which every ordinary violinist must be able to play nowadays would in those days have seemed too break-neck for the foremost virtuosos. Men themselves were not tuned high enough to take pleasure in such poignant chirping. The flute of the seventeenth century was a fourth lower than that of the eighteenth. In the flute and the piccolo of the nineteenth century we have again risen a third, yes, an entire octave above the eighteenth century! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... will come on and I shall get so many things there will be no money left for you. Besides Mr. Pendleton is going to the Bucknor's some day next week and I am going to get him to stop for me, and if you are home I shall invite you to go along. Beek Fish will be there the same evening with his flute. He told Emily B. that his sister [Mrs. Thomas Pym Remington of Philadelphia] had written them that you had been in Philadelphia and that she was ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... the dooty's house. It was a feast day. Informed that a white man was in the place, the performers stopped their dance and came to the spot where I was, walking in order, two by two, following the musician, who played on a curious sort of flute. Then they danced and sang till midnight, crowds surrounding me where I sat. The next day, our landlord, proud of the honour of entertaining a white man, insisted on my staying with him and his friends till the cool of the evening, when he said he ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... call him their friend. He told me a few months before his death that "they" would not let him sleep at night with crying things at him in Irish, and with playing their pipes. He had asked a friend of his what he should do, and the friend had told him to buy a flute, and play on it when they began to shout or to play on their pipes, and maybe they would give up annoying him; and he did, and they always went out into the field when he began to play. He showed ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... a court, too, of romance. It might be a garden of Allah, with a plaintive Arab flute singing, among the orange trees, of the wars and the hot passions of the desert. It might be a court in Seville or Granada, with guitars tinkling and lace gleaming among the cool arcades. It is a place ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... large and small, suspended from them; And the hand-drums and sounding-stones, the instrument to give the signal for commencing, and the stopper. These being all complete, the music is struck up. The pan-pipe and the double flute begin ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... upon thy ears? And do they not hereby make the Scythian king Ateas more musical than this comes to, who, when he heard that admirable flutist Ismenias, detained then by him as a prisoner of war, playing upon the flute at a compotation, swore he had rather hear his own horse neigh? And do they not also profess themselves to stand at an implacable and irreconcilable defiance with whatever is generous and becoming? And indeed ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Keith, a degree of licentiousness was developed in his habits. To please his father he accepted a position in the army, but took every opportunity to throw aside the hated uniform, dress in luxurious garments, solace himself with the flute, bury himself among his books, and enjoy the society of the women he admired and the friends he loved. He was frequently forced to attend the king's smoking-parties, where he seems to have avoided smoking and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... a garden, behind the house, in which there was a small arbour, where often in the summer evenings Eugene and Lucille had sat together,—hours never to return! One day she heard from her own chamber, where she sat mourning, the sound of St. Amand's flute swelling gently from that beloved and consecrated bower. She wept as she heard it, and the memories that the music bore softening and endearing his image, she began to reproach herself that she had yielded so often to the impulse of her wounded feelings; that chilled ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the fourth of a hogshead of wine in one day, etc. Gentle as a marriageable girl, Socquard, who was a stout, short man, with a placid face, broad shoulders, and a deep chest, where his lungs played like the bellows of a forge, possessed a flute-like voice, the limpid tones of which surprised all those who heard them ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... was lucky enough to provoke a laugh, a little light gay trill, sudden and brief like three notes on a flute. ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... utterly unable to change their tune. "Cherry ripe!" "Cherry ripe!" was the universal cry of all the idle in the town. Every unmelodious voice gave utterance to it; every crazy fiddle, every cracked flute, every wheezy pipe, every street organ was heard in the same strain, until studious and quiet men stopped their ears in desperation, or fled miles away into the fields or woodlands, to be at peace. This plague lasted ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... must be premised, is a city man, who travels in drugs for a couple of the best London houses, blows the flute, has an album, drives his own gig, and is considered, both on the road and in the metropolis, a remarkably nice, intelligent, thriving young man. Pogson's only fault is too great an attachment to the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... herself no affected airs, but when I requested it, not only concluded the song she was singing, but sang many others, in which I was able to accompany her. The old Captain has insisted upon my bringing my flute over, that I may accompany his Juliet upon the piano. He could not have done me a greater kindness, and I have no doubt that we shall get ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... every possible form? The everlasting hum and seething of myriad life satisfies and soothes me. I feel as if something were going on in the world, else why all this shouting, and bedecking of every weed in its best, this endless strain from every tiny weed or great oaken flute? All that cannot sing, dances; the gnats in the air and the long-legged spiders on the water. Even the ants and beetles, the workers that are quoted for examples by hoarding men, run about doing nothing, putting ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... ordered a bottle of champagne," said he. Her answer surprised him. "You have done well. We must now begin to prove the truth of the old proverb, 'Ce qui vient de la flute ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... damsels, to viol and flute, So we skipped from the shadows, and mocked their pursuit; But the soft zephyrs chased us, with scents of the morn, As we passed by the hay-fields and green waving corn,— ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... men and women in vehicles and on horseback, and in expectation of great fun, were wending their way to Yabtree—nearly every trap containing a fiddle, concertina, flute, or accordion ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... covered with standing grain, and their acres shone like gold in the level rays of the morning sun. Far and near the farmers worked in their fields of corn and other grain, giving vent to their joy by short snatches of song or loud, clear whistling, as full and flute-like as the notes of the red birds that sang in the trees which bordered them. The drought and extreme heat had forced grain into premature ripeness and the yield thereby was somewhat diminished. We passed men and boys on the road going ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... and both together heard What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night, Oft till the star that rose at evening bright Towards heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel. Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute, Tempered to the oaten flute; Rough satyrs danced, and fauns with cloven heel From the glad sound would not be absent long; And old Damoetas loved to hear our song. But O the heavy change, now thou art gone, Now thou art gone, and never must return! Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves With wild ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... cold, but not in hot. My second is in pan, but not in pot. My third is in nap, but not in sleep. My fourth is in sold, but not in keep. My fifth is in flute, but not in drum. My sixth is in example, but not in sum. My whole is useful in ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... right-hand corner; and, moving in a semi-circle, would pass slowly on and disappear in the left. Moreover I beheld the shapes of castles and houses, of horses and riders, of plants, trees, musical instruments, theatres, dresses of men of all sorts, and flute-players who seemed to be playing upon their instruments, but neither voice nor sound was heard therefrom. And besides these things I beheld soldiers, and crowds of men, and fields, and certain bodily forms, which seem hateful to me even now: groves and forests, and divers other things ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... was Camilla. Her father Monsieur Salvatore Urso played the flute in the orchestra at the theatre, or opera house, and on Sundays played the organ at the Church of the Holy Cross that stood facing a little square not far ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... have taken here Roots like an olive tree, And with my flute deep-sounding, I make the breezes languish. I play and lo, all things are mated, Love giving, love receiving. I play and lo, all things are dancing, All: Men and ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... Queen sat on a dais at the end of the banqueting hall, and above them in a little gallery there was a band of fiddlers and flute-players. On either side of the royal pair sat the twelve fairy godmothers, six on the right hand and six on the left. In front of each fairy was a golden plate and a golden casket made to hold her knife, fork and spoon. These ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... with his jew's-harp charms the kine, And plays upon the flute so fine, And I sing ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... married. The Indian children attend the same school as the children of the white colonists. A certain number of them, chosen from those who exhibit most intelligence, are taught music—plain-chant, violin, flute, horn, violincello, and other instruments. Those who distinguish themselves in the carpenter's shop, at the forge, or in the field, are termed alcaldes, or chiefs, and given charge of a band of workmen. The management ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson
... in character. But he always knew when to stop. He would say to me suddenly: "Dr. Waddilove said to me yesterday that he never argued with atheists or radicals, because they always came round in the end." Or he would say, in Henry Bland's flute-like tones: "Your mention of Robert Browning induces me to relate an anecdote, which I think may prove not wholly uninteresting to you." At times we used to tell long stories on our walks, stopping short in the middle of ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... caption Plautina[18] gives vent to further solemn Teutonic carpings at the plot of the Epidicus and argues the play a contaminatio on the basis of the double intrigue. He is much exercised too over the mysterious episode of 'the disappearing flute-girl.' ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... doorway, Murmuring to himself, and saying: "Thus it is our daughters leave us, Those we love, and those who love us! Just when they have learned to help us, 215 When we are old and lean upon them, Comes a youth with flaunting feathers, With his flute of reeds, a stranger Wanders piping through the village, Beckons to the fairest maiden, 220 And she follows where he leads her, Leaving ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... great deal of the temperament of a child, and it was his philosophy to encourage it. In his dreary passages of bed, when his illness was more than commonly heavy on him, he used to contrive little amusements for himself. He played on the flute, or he modelled little groups ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... attraction, the conspicuous personality here; she was head chief of this household, that was plain. She caused us to be seated, and then she began, with all manner of pretty graces and graciousnesses, to ask me questions. Dear me, it was like a bird or a flute, or something, talking. I felt persuaded that this woman must have been misrepresented, lied about. She trilled along, and trilled along, and presently a handsome young page, clothed like the rainbow, and as easy and undulatory of movement as a wave, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hardly less than the birds, though the advent of the white-throated sparrow (who delayed till April twenty-first last year) is always a great event. He is first heard most often before breakfast, in an apple tree close to the sleeping-porch, his flute-like triplets sweetly penetrating my dreams and bringing me gladly out of bed—something he alone can do, by the way, and not even he after the first morning! But the bees come long before. The earliest record ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... we heard was something like this: the sound of a bell, tolling at regular intervals, like the throbbing of a life begun; about it an accompaniment of hopes, inducements, fears, the flute, the violin, the violoncello, promising, urging, entreating, inspiring; the life beset with trials, lured with pleasures, hesitating, doubting, questioning; its purpose at length grows more certain and fixed, the bell tolling becomes ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... tender handling of first love a venerable toad, which smiled upon her, she placed the interesting animal so that it could crawl up and nestle in her bosom. 'Poor child of dank, of darkness, and of dripping,' exclaimed she, in her flute-like notes, 'who sheltereth thyself under the wet and mouldering wall, so neglected in thy form by thy mother Nature, repose awhile in peace where princes and nobles would envy thee, if they knew thy present lot. But that shall never be; these lips shall never breathe a tale which might endanger ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... I renounce The feast, the cheerful guest, the flow'ry wreath, {350} And song that used to echo through my house: For never will I touch the lyre again, Nor to the Libyan flute's sweet measures raise My voice: with thee all my delights are dead. Thy beauteous figure, by the artist's hand Skillfully wrought, shall in my bed be laid; By that reclining, I will clasp it to me, And call it by thy name, and think I hold ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... terror. They stopped their ears with their fingers and gave clear signs of the unpleasant feelings they were suffering from. But it was quite different when they heard the higher-toned instruments, especially those of wood, as the flute, the clarionet and the oboe. The pure, vibrating notes gave them intense enjoyment judging from the pleased expression of their countenances and their singularly ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... monogram is decently covered up by Gothic shields, hastily improvised after that distinguished actor met the reward of his crimes. I heard lima di Murska for the first time. She is an unpleasant miracle, compelling your reluctant astonishment. Such vocal gymnastics I never heard. The flute and the musical-box are left in the background, but her voice is nasal and disagreeable at first. Lucca's splendid, rich, full organ rang out gloriously by contrast, although her constitutional jealousy showed itself unpleasantly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... poetry Tannahill early cultivated the kindred arts of music and song; a mere youth, he occasionally earned the payment of ten shillings for playing on the fife at the Greenock parades; he afterwards became eminent for his skill in the use of the flute. Having completed his education at school, which consisted of instruction in the elementary branches, he became apprenticed to a cotton-weaver. Collecting old or obscure airs, he began to adapt to them ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... flowers; D 's for Dick, who is one of the mowers. E is for Eliza, feeding a hen; F is for Frank, who is mending his pen. G 's for Georgiana, shooting an arrow; H is for Harry, wheeling a barrow. I 's for Isabella, gathering fruit; J is for John, who is playing the flute. K 's for Kate, who is nursing her dolly; L is for Lawrence, feeding Poor Polly. M is for Maja, learning to draw; N is for Nicholas, with a jackdaw. O 's for Octavius, riding a goat; P 's for Penelope, sailing a ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... her lips in the dark. That merry whistler, passing her poor cast-out son in his lonely, half-furnished house, whose dark, shadowy walls she could see across the field, smote her as sorely as he smote him. It seemed to her that she could hear that flute-like melody even as far as Charlotte's door. In spite of her stern resolution to be just, a great gust of wrath shook her. "Lettin' of him come courtin' her when it ain't six weeks since Barney went," she said, quite out loud, ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... voices of the storm! Detached wafts and swirls were coming through the woods, with music from the leaves and branches and furrowed boles, and even from the splintered rocks and ice-crags overhead, many of the tones soft and low and flute-like, as if each leaf and tree, crag and spire were a tuned reed. A broad torrent, draining the side of the glacier, now swollen by scores of new streams from the mountains, was rolling boulders along its rocky channel, with thudding, bumping, muffled sounds, rushing towards the bay ...
— Stickeen • John Muir
... do you say? He'll be giving us into custody again. 'Tillery's our only chance. He daren't touch us there. But I say, he isn't going back to the office. Let's run and get what's in our desks. There's my old flute." ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... Dr. Shrapnel, casting out a league of leg as he sat beside his only half-persuaded fretful guest. 'You subject the winds to serve you; that's a gain. You do actually accomplish a resonant imitation of the various instruments; they sing out as your two hands command them—trumpet, flute, dulcimer, hautboy, drum, storm, earthquake, ethereal quire; you have them at your option. But tell me of an organ in the open air? The sublimity would vanish, ma'am, both from the notes and from the structure, because accessories and circumstances produce its ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ordinary look of the women was beauty, the ordinary accent was sweetness. The soft moonlight evenings were rendered doubly harmonious by the tender tinkling of the wandering guitar, or the tones of the plaintive flute; while, from every third dwelling, rose the more stately but scarcely sweeter melodies stricken by pliant fingers from the yielding soul of the divine piano. The tastes even of the mechanic were refined by this language, the purest In which passion ever speaks; and an ambition—the ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... arm-chair by the empty grate, a young man with a flute paused for a moment, irresolute. He was a handsome young man, expressive eyes, and a neatly-cut brown beard—for all the world like Cyril Waring's. Indeed, if Elma Clifford could that moment have been transported from her gloomy prison in the Lavington tunnel ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... is at his concert, playing the flute. 'Tis his dessert after dinner, and he treats himself to it every day. Did ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... a flute Tried to teach two young tooters to toot. Said the two to the tutor, "Is it harder to toot, or To tutor two ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... song. It was of that day when the pipings of love's flute startled for the first time the hushed air of the Vrinda forest. The shepherd women did not know who was the player or whence came the music. Sometimes it seemed to come from the heart of the south wind, and sometimes from the straying clouds ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... to me one day (he always spoak in that kind way), "who is this person that has taken the opsit chambers, and plays the flute ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... heaving bellows learn'd to blow, While organs{24} yet were mute; Timotheus to his breathing flute, And sounding lyre, Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire. At last divine Cecilia came, Inventress of the vocal frame;{25} The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store, Enlarged the former narrow bounds, And added ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... between Dialogue and Comedy; the former was a stay-at-home, spending his time in solitude, or at most taking a stroll with a few intimates; whereas Comedy put herself in the hands of Dionysus, haunted the theatre, frolicked in company, laughed and mocked and tripped it to the flute when she saw good; nay, she would mount her anapaests, as likely as not, and pelt the friends of Dialogue with nicknames— doctrinaires, airy metaphysicians, and the like. The thing she loved of all else was to chaff them and drench them in holiday impertinence, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... he was playing his violin for the benefit of his cousins, as he explained, his new-found acquaintance said, "I play the flute a little, and we might try some pieces together some ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... YONDER WALLS—BREATHED. The walls of Troy were built by Poseidon (Neptune) and Apollo, whom Jupiter had condemned to serve King Laomedon of Troas for a year. The stones were charmed into their places by the breathing of Apollo's flute, as the walls of Thebes are said to have risen to the strain of Amphion's ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... account, not only he, but most of his schoolfellows, used to lead merry lives enough at school. They had what they called the "Academy Band," and grand music it made, with a hat-box for a drum, cricket-bat for violoncello, and paper flute and trumpets. You would not recognize Uncle John, whom you know only as a man six feet high, in that little lad on the left side of the picture with a battledore for a fiddle. They had a great deal of what he called excellent fun, though I am afraid it sometimes bordered upon mischief or naughtiness. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... can smile, your flute make music, only through delight in my love; therefore you are importunate ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... freedom among his intimates and some of his Generals.... His Music still takes up a great share of the King's time. On a table in his Cabinet there, I saw, I believe, twenty boxes with a German flute in each; in his Bed-chamber, twice as many boxes of Spanish snuff; and, alike in Cabinet and in Bed-chamber, three arm-chairs in a row for three favorite dogs, each with a little stool by way of step, that the getting up might ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... taquitock (autumn), when the red glow of the forests was half veiled in the bluish mist that came with the return of soft languid days after frost had painted the trees and ripened the bristly chinquapins and luscious persimmons, Claw-of-the-Eagle took his flute and ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... they will gather, and Rome be resurgent, Day-dawn from Italy's midnight emergent: Cannon shall sound and the bells ring the new, Mem'ries illumine the future's bright blue!— Greeting a bridal pair Charming in hope so rare, Voices bring soft salute, Music of harp and flute. Mightier yearnings sweet sleep is beguiling;— Lesser dare ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... personal attractions have some romantic memories. Lavendar had his share, but somehow that morning he was disconcertingly candid to himself. It may have been the sudden change from London air and London noise; something in the clear transparency of the April day, in the flute-like melody of the birds' song, in the dream-like beauty of the scene before him, that made all the moth and rust that had consumed the remembrances of the past more apparent. There was little of the treasure of heaven there,—it ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... laughter.—Mr. Cathcart's voice saying, "I felt it incumbent upon me to object, Lady Calmady. I spoke very plainly to Fallowfeild."—Julius March's delicately refined tones, "I am afraid spirituality is somewhat deficient in that case."—Then the high flute-like notes of a child, rising clearly above the general murmur, "Ah! enfin—le voila, Maman. C'est bien lui, n'est-ce pas?" And with that, Richard was aware of a sudden hush falling upon the assembled company. He was sensible every one watched him as Winter carried him across ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... South has given us two most melodious singers, Poe and Lanier. When only nineteen Sidney Lanier enlisted in the Confederate army, and the close of the war found him broken in health, with little else in the world than a brave wife and a brave heart. When his health permitted he played the flute in an orchestra in Baltimore. The rhythm, the rhyme and the melodious words of his poetry all show him the passionate lover of music that he was. Among his prose writings, "The Boy's Froissart" and "The Boy's King Arthur" are of especial interest ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... involved. The overseers domineered over them, and stormed at them as violently as though they were the most abject slaves. They were allowed no privileges such as their former habits impelled them to seek. If they played a flute in the hearing of the overseer, they were commanded to be silent instantly. If they dared to put a gold ring on their finger, even that trifling pretension to gentility was detected and disallowed by the jealous overseer. (These things were specified by Mr. G. himself.) ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the wild tarantella proceeded. There fell a deep hush, broken only by the silver notes of a flute played somewhere behind the curtain. The dancer's movements were wholly without sound. The quivering, whirling feet scarcely seemed to touch the floor, it was a dance of inspiration, possessing a strange and irresistible fascination, ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... The silvery flute, The melancholy lute, Were night-owl's hoot To my low-whispered coo - Were I thy bride! The skylark's trill Were but discordance shrill To the soft thrill Of wooing as I'd woo - Were ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... walking: he understood painting, read much, and played upon several instruments, so that he was glad to be freed from the fantastic humors of Furibon. One day as he was walking in the garden, finding the heat increase, he retired into a shady grove and began to play upon the flute to amuse himself. As he played, he felt something wind about his leg, and looking down saw a great adder: he took his handkerchief, and catching it by the head was going to kill it. But the adder, looking steadfastly in his ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... married woman, who acts as a kind of priestess. Then after another sacrifice and a wedding feast, the bride is conducted from her old home to that of her husband, accompanied by three boys, sons of living parents, one carrying a torch while the other two lead her by either hand; flute-players go before, and nuts are thrown to the boys. This deductio, charmingly described in the beautiful sixty-fifth poem of Catullus, is full of interesting detail which must be omitted here. When the bridegroom's ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... ye know, yer honor, when I went out into the town yesterday, what should I see but a man sitting down against a wall, with a little bit of a flute in his hand, and a basket by his side. Well, yer honor, I thought maybe he was going to play a tune, when he lifts up the top of the basket and then began to play. Ye may call it music, yer honor, but there was nayther ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... you condemn us to the savage sadness of equality? Why, Daphnis's flute would not be melodious if it were made of seven equal reeds. You wish to destroy the beautiful harmonies between masters and servants, aristocrats and artisans. Oh, I fear you are a sad barbarian, Monsieur Choulette. You are full of pity for those who are in need, and you have no pity for divine ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... large and pleasant salon which extended across the width of the house, the Ratignolles entertained their friends once a fortnight with a soiree musicale, sometimes diversified by card-playing. There was a friend who played upon the 'cello. One brought his flute and another his violin, while there were some who sang and a number who performed upon the piano with various degrees of taste and agility. The Ratignolles' soirees musicales were widely known, and it was considered a privilege ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... one tune from another, sang at the top of her voice. Aunt Abigail hummed the air in a cracked soprano, with traces of bygone sweetness. Priscilla's silvery notes soared flute-like above the others, and even Rosetta Muriel joined after a brief hesitation, probably due to her uncertainty as to whether this was customary in the best society, on the occasion of a ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... used to spend their schoolboy Saturdays among the birds and rabbits. Near by flows the Ocmulgee, where the boys, inseparable in sport as well as in the more serious aspects of life, were wont to fish. Here Sidney cut the reed with which he took his first flute lesson from the birds in the woods. Above the town were the hills for which the soul of the poet longed ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... eat up the remains of the dinner. It was a child employed in the ballet, one that certainly wanted feeding. The little one used to appear, sometimes as an elf, sometimes as a page; the most difficult part she had to play was the lion's hind leg in the "Magic Flute;" but as she grew larger she could represent the fore-feet of the lion. She certainly only got half a guilder for that, whereas the hind legs were paid for with a whole guilder; but then she had to walk bent, and ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... extent of persuading him to purchase outright all he had finished. There were some fifteen of these, which were placed in the rooms at the palace. This demonstrates the King's love for music. He was a flute player of considerable ability. One of the court musicians was Carl Philip Emanuel Bach, son of the great master, and King Frederick had expressed a desire to hear the elder Bach play upon the new invention. For some ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... accredited representative of the Pall Mall Gazette. I came over from Paris to spend Christmas at home, and never went back to complete that continental tour in search of knowledge, which I fancy had been suggested by Goldsmith's trip with his flute. It happened that in the early days of 1870, the proprietor of the Pall Mall Gazette began the first of the series of chequered changes in the history of the journal, by starting it as a morning paper. I had been an occasional contributor in a humble way to the evening edition, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Flute-players, accustomed to having their parts written in the upper octave, and not admitting that their part can be written below that of clarinets or hautboys, frequently transpose entire passages an octave higher. The conductor, if he does not carefully peruse his score, if he is not ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... words, Pattering like hail, Like hail falling without aim... Egos rampant, Screaming each other down. One motions perpetually, Waving arms like overgrowths. He has burning eyes and a cough And a thin voice piping Like a flute ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... hast not been! Pale tunes irresolute And traceries of old sounds Blown from a rotted flute Mingle with noise of cymbals rouged with rust, Nor not strange forms and epicene Lie bleeding in the dust, Being ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... for any other. A French cook for Mr. Rossitur, and even Rosaline for his wife, who declared she was worth all the rest of Paris. Hugh cared little for any of these things; he brought home a treasure of books and a flute, to which he was devoted. Fleda cared for them all, even Monsieur Emile and Rosaline, for her uncle's and aunt's sake; but her special joy was a beautiful little King Charles, which had been sent her by Mr. Carleton a few weeks before. ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... ringing through the night, chanting in a tone of singular sweetness words of which each syllable comes through my open window like a wavelet of flute-sound. My Japanese servant, who speaks a little English. has told me what ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... the name of the instrument played at such a price; and on the antiquarian principle that consonants are changeable at pleasure, and vowels go for nothing, we take leave for hurdy-gurdy (what a vulgar sound it has!) to read flute, violin, lute, or, in short, any other presentable musical instrument that may chance to find the greatest favour in our eyes. A change which has the twofold merit of saving Abel's character for taste, and preserving so excellent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... had been to hear the music, and I left exasperated after the third act. A friend was with me and he left, but for different reasons; he suffered in his ears; it was my intelligence that suffered. Why did the flute play the chromatic scale when the boy said, "Il faut que cela soit un grand navire," and why were all the cellos in motion when the girl answered, "Cela ou bien tout autre chose?" I suffered because of ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... all due civility, that you will send me a copy of each of the two works for pianoforte and flute, with variations. As for the receipt, you shall have it to-morrow; and I also beg you will forward it forthwith. Give my compliments to Herr Artaria, and thank him from me for his kind offer of an advance, but as I have received from abroad ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... musingly, and I spoke rather to myself than to my companion, "yet, how happy do they seem! what a revival of our Arcadian dreams are the flute and the dance, the glossy trees all glowing in the autumn sunset, the green sod, and the murmuring rill, and the buoyant laugh, startling the satyr in his leafy haunts; and the rural loves which will grow sweeter still when the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Jill can trill and sing With a flute-like voice, Dance as light as bird on wing, Laugh for careless joys: Yet it's I who ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... the Argives and their allies advancing with haste and fury, the Lacedaemonians slowly and to the music of many flute-players—a standing institution in their army, that has nothing to do with religion, but is meant to make them advance evenly, stepping in time, without break their order, as large armies are apt to do in the moment ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... violin, a guitar, flute, or a cornet—oh, yes, I know them all!—on a passing vessel, we float alongside just far enough under water to keep our bodies out of sight, while we take in the strains in our own peculiar way. For although our ears might be hard to find, we yet absorb or ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... in our pinnace we returned at leisure Over the shadowy lake, and to the beach Of some small island steered our course with one, The minstrel of the troop, and left him there, And rowed off gently, while he blew his flute Alone upon the rock—oh, then the calm And dead still water lay upon my mind Even with a weight of pleasure, and the sky, Never before so beautiful, sank down Into my heart, and held me ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... carved ivory, not to speak of the men who created those things, and who were of no practical use to the community in which they lived. And the workmen in the factories listened to the drone of their engines until they too had lost all taste for the melody of the flute or fiddle of their peasant ancestry. The arts became the step-children of the new industrial era. Art and Life became entirely separated. Whatever paintings had been left, were dying a slow death in the museums. And music became a ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... you could do it fast, but there wa'n't many so fortunate. An Italian iron was a tube about as big as your finger on a standard. Two rods to fit this tube come with it. You could put these heated, inside then run your silk ruffle or whatever you were making over it and there was your flute quick as ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... a domestic fowl. There was a musician among the camel-drivers, chosen especially—so said Ben Hadj—because he knew and could sing a hundred famous songs of love and war. Also he was master of the Arab flute, and the raeita, "Muezzin of Satan," strange instrument of the wicked voice that can ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... of a son—a Chinaman's dearest wish on earth—elicits no congratulations from thronging friends; no red eggs are sent to the lucky parents, and no joyous feast is provided in return. Merrymaking of all kinds is forbidden to all classes for the full term of one year, and the familiar sound of the flute and the guitar is hushed in every household and in every street.[*] The ordinary Chinese visiting-card —a piece of red paper about six inches by three, inscribed with its owner's name in large characters—changes to a dusky brown; and the very lines on letter paper, usually red, ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... smoky fire; and hard beer, and poor cheese, called Isle of Wight rock, were all the accommodation our host could provide. His parlour was just painted; but half-a-dozen sectarian books and an ill-toned flute amused us for an hour; then we again started, in harder rain than ever, for Newport. Compelled to halt twice, we saw some deplorable scenes of cottage misery, almost enough to put us out of conceit of rusticity, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... for commercial life, borrowed a work on thorough-bass and a flute and proceeded to try the wings of his muse. A melodeon supplanted the flute, and when he was sixteen he attained the glory of a piano, a rare possession in those times. (Would that it were rarer now!) He took a few lessons and played ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... 'cellos' pleading, passionate strain The yearning theme, and let the flute reply In placid melody, while violins complain, And sob, and sigh, With muted string; Then let the oboe half-reluctant sing Of bliss that trembles on the verge of pain, While 'cellos plead and plead again, With throbbing notes delayed, that would impart To every urgent tone the ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... their striking peculiarities is a decided talent for music. Nearly every skull in the collection shows it. After I had remarked this fact to the proprietor of the exhibit, Mr. McLoyd, showed me a very well-preserved fragment of a flute which is in the collection. The skulls of these people, however, bear a more eloquent testimonial to their musical genius than this fragment of ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... households of the absent soldiery quite willing to be consoled and comforted. There were bright lights, therefore, further along the edge of the steep, beyond those of the hospital, and the squeak of fiddle and drone of 'cello, mingled with the plaintive piping of the flute, were heard at intervals through the silence of the wintry night. No tramp of sentry broke the hush about the little rift between the heights—the major holding that none was necessary where there were so many dogs. Most of the ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... me, my friend," Roncivalli answered. The liquid Italian played against the German guttural like the warble of a flute answering the snarl of a violoncello. "I am doing what I know. Until our friend Rossano came to England I had a place from which he was good enough to depose me. You may say what you like, Herr Sacovitch, but the independence ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... you how I occupy my spare time in reading, writing, and playing the flute. We are forming a band here. I shall play either the flute or hautboy. I enjoy myself pretty well. In Latin I am studying Sallust. As to ease, all I have to do is study straight ahead. It comes pretty easy. My Greek is rather hard. I am as yet studying the grammar and Jacob's ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... petulant, and imperious, of high claims, and large exactions—an eye full of brisk challenges and sharp responses, an eye of satisfied strength and confident ascendancy—speaking, not like the dulcet appeal of a mellow flute, but like the trumpet stop of some powerful party organ. The cornea was perhaps a shade sallow or so, even verging on the Widow's favourite Yellow—(for the Widow, like some modern decorative artists, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... far off, sir. He was sitting by the bank of the stream playing on his flute; and Miss Barbara, she had climbed one of my apple-trees,—she says they are your ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... makes werry useful in the streets, as a warning to the old happle women to get out of the way. Pray, sir," turning to the Yorkshireman with a jerk, "do you dance?"—as the boat band, consisting of a harp, a flute, a lute, a long horn, and a short horn, struck up a quadrille,—and, without waiting for a reply, our hero sidled past, and glided among the crowd ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... Gone is the flute-like note, the yearning strain, And all the air forlorn Is breathless till ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... reappeared in the Sicilian fountain. See the note in Grote's "History of Greece", Edition 1863, vol. ii., p. 8.) (12) As a serpent. XXXXX is the Greek word for serpent. (13) Conf. Book VI., 473. (14) The Centaurs. (15) Probably the flute thrown away by Pallas, which Marsyas picked up and then challenged Apollo to a musical contest. For his presumption the god had him flayed alive. (16) That is, the Little Bear, by which the Phoenicians steered, while the Greeks steered by ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... with new pictures. Thanks to the extreme acuteness of his hearing, he catches the very slightest sounds of nature. When barely five years of age the boy shows his love for music; he spends hours, motionless, listening to the playing of one of the servants who has made for himself a kind of flute. Soon Peter begins to study music, and especially the violin. His rapid progress astonishes his teachers. However, in spite of his love for music and the comfort that it gives him, the blind boy suffers from his infirmity. ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... there will be dancing, and such music! old Santos to play the flute, a little lean man with a saintly countenance, young Garcia whose guitar has a soul, and Carrasco with the violin. They sit on a high platform above the dancers in the candle flare, backed by the red, white, and green of Old Mexico, and play fervently such music as you ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... came from our GROUND. He returned from college hopeless and broken-hearted, and fell into a decline. My father supported him till his death, which happened before he was nineteen. He played beautifully on the flute, and was supposed to have a great turn for poetry. He was affectionate and compassionate to his brother, who followed him like his shadow, and we think that from him Davie gathered many fragments of songs and music unlike those of this country. But if we ask him where he got such ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... can tell what to say when I'm brimming'; the duchess let fall a sigh. 'And he can play the flute, Mr. Beamish. He promised me he would go into the orchestra and play a bit at one of your nice evening delicious concerts, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... effect, who carry all before them. The present phenomenon in this way is Bottesini, who, grasping a huge double-bass, the most unwieldy of instruments, tortures out of it the notes of a violin, of an oboe, and of a flute. A season or two ago, M. Vivier took all London by storm, by producing a chord upon the French horn, a feat previously considered impossible, and probably only the fruit of the most determined and energetic ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... hands and raised their childish faces. Cliantha had a thin, high piping soprano like a small flute, and Pendrilla sang "counter" to it. They were repositories of all the old ballads of the mountains—ballads from Scotland, from Ireland, from England, and from Wales, that set the ferocities and the love-making of Elizabeth's time ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... Nothing, apparently, but to let him qualify for orders, and for this he is too young. Thereupon ensues a sort of 'Martin's summer' in his changing life,—a disengaged, delightful time when 'Master Noll' wanders irresponsibly from house to house, fishing and flute-playing, or, of winter evenings, taking the chair at the village inn. When at last the moment came for his presentation to the Bishop of Elphin, that prelate, sad to say, rejected him, perhaps because of his college reputation, perhaps because of actual incompetence, perhaps even, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... they heard the occasional inharmonious notes of an Indian flute among the trees. Instantly they recognized it as an Indian lover calling for his sweetheart to come out from ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... banquet was resumed again— And, hark, the softly warbled strain, As harp and flute, in union sweet, The voices of the singers meet. The black-eyed damsels now display Their art in many an amorous lay; And now the song is loud and clear, And speaks of Rustem's welcome here. "This is a day, a glorious day, That drives ungenial thoughts away; This is a day to make us glad, Since ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... position would have taken to drinking; but as Mr Swiveller had taken to that before, he only took, on receiving the news that Sophy Wackles was lost to him for ever, to playing the flute; thinking after mature consideration that it was a good, sound, dismal occupation, not only in unison with his own sad thoughts, but calculated to awaken a fellow-feeling in the bosoms of his neighbours. In pursuance of this resolution, he now drew a little table to his ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... soft complaining flute In dying notes discovers The woes of hopeless lovers, Whose dirge is whisper'd ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... meadow into view, and—as I am a Christian man, living in the twentieth century—I saw this Vision: I beheld beneath the shade of the midmost oak eight men sitting stark naked, whereof one blew on a flute, one played a concertina, and the rest beat their palms together, marking the time; while before them, in couples on the sward, my gang of navvies rotated in a clumsy waltz watched by a ring ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... all at work for next May-day, happy as ever bees were on Hybla itself; and gone now though be the age of gold, happy as Arcadians were we, nor wanted our festal-day or pipe or song; for to the breath of Harry Wilton, the young English boy, the flute gave forth tones almost as liquid sweet as those that flowed from the lips of Mary Morrison herself, who alone, of all singers in hut or hall that ever drew tears, left nothing for the heart or the imagination to desire in any one of Scotland's ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... a young girl can reach to the heart; The song of the baritone—well, it is art. The flute and the lute in gavotte—the guitar In soft serenade—how entrancing they are! But to all the mad millions Who dance at cotillons There's naught like the clink and the clank and the crunch Of the ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... Florian, "her voice is musical, if that's what you mean—musical and low, and reminds one of the sounds made by a great master playing his heart out in the lowest notes of the flute; but it is so far from being familiar to me that I'm quite sure I never heard a voice like ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... old fable which Lord Bacon, in his "Wisdom of the Ancients," has not interpreted. This is the flaying of Marsyas by Apollo. Everybody remembers the accepted version of it, namely,—that the young shepherd found Minerva's flute, and was rash enough to enter into a musical contest with the God of Music. He was vanquished, of course,—and the story is, that the victor fastened him to a tree ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... walking on their lawn, which sloped to the lake, they heard the sound of a flute, played with a skill so exquisite as to draw them, surprised and spellbound, to the banks. The musician was a young man, in a boat, which he had moored beneath the trees of their demesne. He was alone, or, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... menacing; but the girl pushed fearlessly forward, singing like a robin, while the rain slashed over her, and the thunder boomed and re-echoed from crag to crag like warning guns in magnificent alarums. "I love this!" she cried, her clear voice piercing the veil of water like a flute ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland |
