"Flute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so sorrowfully towards the ground that people plant them on their graves and some whose branches are so tough and flexible that people use them to weave baskets of. There are some out of which you can carve yourself a grand flute, if you know how. And then there are a heap about which there is nothing ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... 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 and flayed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... trouble, and for my own purposes? Can it be that he pretended his intoxication the more easily to outwit me? I had no fear, but believed that he would be sure to select some slim youth who could be taught to play the flute before him or act as cupbearer. What demon put it into his head so suddenly to look for bone and muscle ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... arts which are concerned with the higher interests of soul and body. Does Callicles agree to this division? Callicles will agree to anything, in order that he may get through the argument. Which of the arts then are flatteries? Flute-playing, harp-playing, choral exhibitions, the dithyrambics of Cinesias are all equally condemned on the ground that they give pleasure only; and Meles the harp-player, who was the father of Cinesias, failed even in that. The stately muse of Tragedy is bent upon pleasure, and not upon ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... Reviewers who supposed the "harp of Aeolus" to be meant led Gray to insert this note: "Pindar styles his own poetry with its musical accompaniments, [Greek: Aiolis molpe, Aiolides chordai, Aiolidon pnoai aulon], Aeolian song, Aeolian strings, the breath of the Aeolian flute." ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... his sunny 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, 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, And she follows where he leads her, Leaving all things for ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... gracefully as a poplar to the breezy west, and her gait, goddess-like, was as that of a winged angel new alit from heaven's high floor; the pearly fairness of her complexion was stained by a pure suffusion; her voice resembled the low, subdued tenor of a flute. It is easiest perhaps to describe by contrast. I have detailed the perfections of my sister; and yet she was utterly unlike Idris. Perdita, even where she loved, was reserved and timid; Idris was frank and confiding. ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... As it was in a Kansas paper, which spoke of some one's 'blowing large chunks of melody out of a flute.' But the charm of these Winsted gems is the entire unconsciousness of the writer. For instance, here: 'The elite lingerie of Winsted invited their gentleman friends ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... The moonlight touched to silver the snow upon the mountains; the sound of the leaping river was like a distant flute; the wind was rising with long, wavelike sounds. Honora lingered in the doorway, looking and listening. Her heart was big with pity—pity for that disheartened man whose buoyancy and self-love had been so deeply wounded, pity for those wandering, angry, aimless ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... hunting, fishing, and 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 ...
— 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
... asked what his main difficulty was he replied that he "didn't seem to be able to get on the key." And this was apparent when he started in and wandered up and down the tonal till he managed to strike the tonic. Then he asked me whether I would rather hear "Qui sdegno," from Mozart's "Magic Flute," or "Love Me and the World is Mine." Upon the latter being chosen he asked the accompanist to transpose it, and upon this gentleman's suggesting a third lower, he said: "No, put it down an octave." And that's where he sang it, ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... identical with thee). Thou art he that appears in the firmament in the heart encased in the body of every creature.[119] Thou art he who enters into the cranium (brain) of every creature. Thou bearest the wrinkles of age. Thou bearest the bamboo flute. Thou hast also the tabour. Thou bearest the musical instrument called Tali. Thou hast the wooden vessel used for husking grain. Thou art he who covers that illusion which covers Yama.[120] Thou art an astrologer inasmuch as thy understanding is always directed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... asphodel. Below them lay a stretch of rugged rocks and turquoise bay, with no sound to break the silence but the tinkling of goat-bells, or the piping of a little dark-eyed boy who practiced a rustic flute as he minded his flock. To poor Mr. Carson, wearied with the noise and clamor of Naples, it was a veritable Paradise, a haven of refuge, a breathing space in the dreary pilgrimage of his sad life. On the top of this sunlit, rock-crowned islet he gained a short period of peace and ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... 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
... born musician. When a little boy, he had constructed for himself a fife and clarionet of young shoots of elder, on which he succeeded in discoursing sweet music; and addressing himself at another and later period to both the principles and practice of the science, he became one of the best flute-players in the district. Notwithstanding my dulness of ear, I do cherish a pleasing recollection of the sweet sounds that used to issue from his little room in the outhouse, every milder evening as I approached, and of the soothed and tranquil ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... beamed out upon us for many years now, on postage-stamps and currency, in marble and plaster and in bronze, in photographs of original portraits, paintings, and stereoscopic views. We have seen him on horseback and on foot, on the war-path and on skates, playing the flute, cussing his troops for their shiftlessness, and then, in the solitude of the forest, with his snorting war-horse tied to a ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... Tour—the least known to the general reader of Boswell's three great works—what seems to us the gem of the book:—'One day they must needs hear me play upon my German flute. To have told my honest natural visitants, 'Really, gentlemen, I play very ill,' and put on such airs as we do in our genteel companies, would have been highly ridiculous. I therefore immediately complied with their request. I ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... Vestale was then new, and very much the fashion; it represented a quadrille of priests and vestals who entered to the sound of delicious music on the flute and harp, and in addition to this there were magicians, a Swiss marriage, Tyrolian betrothals, etc. All the costumes were wonderfully handsome and true to nature; and there had been arranged in ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... shivered again, but the girl said nothing. And Barlow, rather to hear her voice, for it was sweet like flute music, chaffed: "What is he like, the one that you love? A swaggering tall black-whiskered Rajput, no doubt, with a purple vest embroidered in gold, clanking with tulwar, and a voice like ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... eyes on him; it seemed to her a long while that she was first blushing, and then turning pale, but to Grandcourt's rate of judgment she answered soon enough, with the lightest flute-tone and a careless movement of the head, "Oh, I am not sure that I want to be taken care of: if I chose to risk breaking my neck, I should like to be at liberty ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... graceful elm—while here and there the tulip-tree reared its majestic head, the giant of the forest. Where now are seen the gay retreats of luxury—villas half buried in twilight bowers, whence the amorous flute oft breathes the sighings of some city swain—there the fish-hawk built his solitary nest, on some dry tree that overlooked his watery domain. The timid deer fed undisturbed along those shores now hallowed ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... baron; and he drew the little maiden up to the firm ground. He would have restored the broken branch to the place from which it had been torn, but "everything in its place" cannot always be managed, and therefore he stuck the piece in the ground. "Grow and prosper till you can furnish a good flute for them up yonder," he said; for he would have liked to play the "rogue's march" for my lord the baron, and my lord's whole family. And then he betook himself to the castle, but not into the ancestral hall, he was too humble for that! ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... conversation—though, for the sake of accuracy, it should be said that Mrs. Tanberry was engaged in conversation, Miss Betty in giving ear—when their attention was arrested by sounds of a somewhat musical nature from the lawn, which sounds were immediately identified as emanating from a flute ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... home of school-boy life, With creaking stair and wind-swept hall, And, scarred by many a truant knife, Our old initials on the wall; Here rest—their keen vibrations mute— The shout of voices known so well, The ringing laugh, the wailing flute, The chiding of the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... it is connected with the thing of which it is the image, this connection being made to aid and correspond mutually on both sides. Cicero says in his oration for Murena: "They who have not a genius for playing on the lyre, may become expert at playing on the flute (a proverbial saying among the Greeks to specify the man who can not make himself master of the superior sciences): so among us they who can not become orators, turn to the study of the law." In another passage of the same oration, the connected comparison is conceived ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... Jose he saw the Spanish flag floating over the roof of the alcalde's office, while the hollow beating of a drum, the bucolic quavering of a flute, and the snapping of castanets, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... dance was in full swing when I approached. Only six of the men were dancers. Of the others, one was the 'minstrel,' the other the 'dysard.' The minstrel was playing a flute; and the dysard I knew by the wand and leathern bladder which he brandished as he walked around, keeping a space for the dancers, and chasing and buffeting merrily any man or child who ventured too near. He, like the others, wore a white ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... I should like to relate here that one of his seemingly gross but really innocent diversions was occasionally visiting a certain black house of prostitution, of which there were many in St. Louis. Here while he played a flute and some one else a tambourine or small drum, he would have two or three of the inmates dance in some weird savage way that took one instanter to the wilds of Central Africa. There was, so far as I know, no payment of any kind ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... all the lovely months of spring, of summer, and of autumn? Sometimes the shepherds, as they sat in the shade watching their sheep, would play sweet tunes on their pipes and flutes, for a shepherd who could not use a flute was thought little of in those hills. It was sweet to hear those pipes and flutes from a little distance, when all was quiet among the hills, excepting the ever restless and ever dancing waters. There were many villages among the hills, each village having ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... there were on one wall telescopes, swords, and naval caps; on another a compact library. Above my head, stretching diagonally across the bed, was an object which caused me no little surprise and much speculation. In appearance it resembled a giant flute with finger holes that no man of mortal mould could have covered. Not till next morning did I discover that this tube was part of a system of air-distributing pipes, supplied by fanners worked by steam, whereby fresh air is driven to every ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... the old man tips The pitcher, and brings his choicest fruit; Benjie basks in the blaze, and sips, And tells his story, and joints his flute: O, sweet the tunes, the talk, the laughter! They fill the hour with a glowing tide; But sweeter the still, deep moments after, When she is alone by ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... something on my head that I could politely remove to a lady. The first night I marched down that village street, shoes well polished, starched linen, and hard hat, I expected the whole town to be there to see me. I had made several attempts at this hat business before. They organized a flute band in the town and I joined it for the sake of the hat. But it was too nice a thing to be lying around when people were hungry, and, as it was in pawn most of the time, I finally redeemed it, returned it, and quit. But this time the hat had ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... in repose, stands loaded with fruit and flowers, and innumerable white marble statues of fauns and wood-nymphs. From this delicious retreat the rippling of fountains is to be heard, occasionally interrupted by the rustling of leaves, or the plaintive cadences of the Roman flute. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... and placed in a marble urn, was carried with much ceremony to its resting place. Preceding the bier bearing the urn, "a grenadier marched in full uniform, nine grenadiers two deep, the odd one last; two German flute players, two surpliced choristers with notes pinned to their backs, two more flute players, eleven singing men in surplices, two French horn players, two bassoon players, six fifers, and four drummers ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... to be always got up with a flat iron), a conversation took place in the gallery respecting the paleness of his leg, and whether it was occasioned by the turn the ghost had given him. On his taking the recorders,—very like a little black flute that had just been played in the orchestra and handed out at the door,—he was called upon unanimously for Rule Britannia. When he recommended the player not to saw the air thus, the sulky man said, "And don't you do it, neither; you're ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... consonants. In order to support the second part of this statement, viz., that it is impossible to pronounce an initial vowel without a slight, and to many hardly perceptible, initial noise, the coup de la glotte, I had appealed to musicians who know how difficult it is, in playing on the flute or on the violin, to weaken or to avoid certain noises (Ansatz) arising from the first impulses imparted to the air, before it can produce really musical sensations. Professor Whitney, in quoting this paragraph, leaves out the ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... after the cock-fight one droll fellow brought around a miniature marionette theater, of which he was the proud proprietor. While his assistant blew a bamboo flute behind the scenes, the puppets danced fandangoes and played football in a very lifelike manner. Seated on an empty cracker-box in front, surrounded by the ragged picaninnies, sat Dolores, with her sparkling eyes, lips parted, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... 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 to be invited ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... rises towards white, a movement little suited to it, its appeal to men grows weaker and more distant. In music a light blue is like a flute, a darker blue a cello; a still darker a thunderous double bass; and the ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... temples, the roofs of the basilicas, the arches of Janus, one that extended remotely to the black walls of the Curia Hostilia beyond. And there, on the rostrum, a musician behind him supplying the la from a flute, the air filled with gold motes, Caesar, his toga becomingly adjusted, a jewelled hand extended, opened for the defence. Presently, when through the exercise of that art of his which Cicero pronounced incomparable, he felt that the sympathy of the audience was won, it would have been interesting, ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... listened, and looked pleased. Then it was my turn, and I began my chorus from St. Paul, "How lovely are the messengers." Before I got to the end of the first verse they both joined in the chorus, and all the time Prince Albert managed the stops for me so cleverly—first a flute, at the forte the great organ, at the D major part the whole register, then he made a lovely diminuendo with the stops, and so on to the end of the piece, and all by heart—that I was really quite ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... his master is hungry or thirsty, he sometimes has neither bread nor water to offer him; he does not even know how to protect him from the wind which blows in through door and window, as Tulou blows upon his flute, ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... singer in the city, had sung a dithyramb to her harp, in a voice as sweet as a bell, and Alexander, a skilled performer on the trigonon, had executed a piece. Finally a troop of female dancers had rushed into the room and swayed and balanced themselves to the music of the double-flute ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... son of a physician, who, two years after Louis was born at Brunswick, took up his residence at Seesen, where the childhood of the future virtuoso was passed. Both father and mother were musical, the former playing the flute, while the latter was a pianist and singer. It is said that young Spohr showed his talents remarkably early, and was able to sing duets with his mother when only four years of age. At five he began to learn the violin and at six he could take part in Kalkbrenner's trios. He ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... about keeping the White Feast on the birthday of the King. When the great doors swung wide for the white-robed choir to enter, Mary knew that it was only the Dardell twins leading in the processional with flute and cornet. But as they came slowly up the dim aisle under the arches of Christmas greens, their wide, flowing sleeves falling back from their arms, they made her think of two of Fra Angelico's trumpet-blowing angels, and she clasped ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of his voice, gruff as a day laborer's after these flute-sweet tones, increased his embarrassment. Nevertheless he determined that he would tell them ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... in Rome, next to the capitol, particularly for its fine collection of statues. The most remarkable among them were the Fighting Gladiator; Silenus and a Faun; Seneca, in black marble, or rather a slave at the baths; Camillus; the Hermaphrodite; the Centaur and Cupid; two Fauns, playing on the flute; Ceres; an Egyptian; a statue of the younger Nero; the busts of Lucius Verus, Alexander, Faustina and Verus; various relievos, among which was one representing Curtius; an urn, on which was represented the festival of Bacchus; ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... am I one with you? . . . When my joy and pain, My thought and aspiration, like the stops Of pipe or flute, are absolutely dumb Unless melodious, do you play on me, My pipers, and if, sooth, you did not play, Would no sound come? Or is the music mine; As a man's voice or breath is called his own, Inbreathed by ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... better yet, the scientific drawing of engines and complicated machines, and also of acquiring skill on some musical instrument, to keep one from the gaming table in one's idle hours, preferably of learning to play on a portable instrument, such as a German flute. Journals, it goes without saying, must be written every night before the traveller ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... Lycian language. The first cast is that from the panel of the tomb door, upon which Talas is represented standing: the second represents a group of females; and the third an ancient entertainment with figures reclining on couches with children; a figure playing the double flute, and to the right a nude figure called Hecatomnas. Six casts from tombs hereabouts (153-6), exhibit inscriptions, two of which are in two languages—the Lycian and the Greek, declaring that the owners have built the tombs for themselves and their relations; the ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... He was dressed like a bourgeois of the old school in a gold-laced cocked hat, a plum-coloured coat and blue waistcoat embroidered in silver. He looked well-meaning enough, and was something of a musician to judge by a flute, one end of which peeped from his pocket. Never for a moment did his eyes wander from the supposed stripling, on whom he bestowed continual smiles, and when he saw him leave his seat, he would get up himself and follow him at a distance. Julie, in her misery and loneliness, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... to every word we had to say to each other. If you must know, it was only last night that the ghost of Jezebel and I danced a fandango together in the graveyard up yonder, while the Devil himself sat cross-legged on old Daniel Root's tombstone and blew on a dry, dusty shank-bone by way of a flute. And now" (here he swore a terrific oath) "you know the worst that is to be known, with only this to say: if ever a man sets foot upon Pig and Sow Point again after nightfall to interfere with the Devil's sport and mine, hell suffer for it as sure as fire can burn or brimstone ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... scientific research. How does a bird produce the melodious notes that emanate from his throat? Are they manufactured far down in the trachea, or only at its anterior opening? Are they voice tones or flute tones? These questions will be answered as we proceed to examine the bird's lyrical apparatus without going into wearisome detail, or making use of many difficult scientific terms, which are the bane ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... the 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
... faint flute music on an upper floor, and as Kirby felt cautiously for his footing on the lower step Warrington began to whistle softly to himself. Next to war, an adventure of this kind was the nearest he could imagine to sheer bliss, ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... except when the flute-player is at hand to accompany them, those verses are very like prose. But the iambics of the common poets are, on account of their likeness to ordinary conversation, very often in such a very low style, that sometimes ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... in the same place, and for the same purpose; and we had a very agreeable party. The band of our friend Major Godby's regiment played sometimes in the evening upon the terrace of the Taj; but, of all the complicated music ever heard upon earth, that of a flute blown gently in the vault below, where the remains of the Emperor and his consort repose, as the sound rises to the dome amidst a hundred arched alcoves around, and descends in heavenly reverberations upon those who sit or recline upon the cenotaphs above the vault, is, perhaps, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... questions as to what he had been living on so long, for the old man well knew how scantily his pocket was supplied. "Pretty much like the young ravens," answered he; "I only wished I had been as good a player on the flute as poor George Primrose in The Vicar of Wakefield. If I had his art I should like nothing better than to tramp like him from cottage to cottage over the world."—"I doubt," said the grave Clerk to the Signet, "I greatly doubt, sir, you were ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Mrs. Lloyd Avalons! She was here again, to-day, to tell me about the programme. What does she know of music? She refuses the Haydn Variations and demands a Liszt Rhapsodie. If you are not firm with her, she will end by making you sing The Holy City with a flute obligato." ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... ladies. Many of the planters themselves in their leisure moments indulged in this delightful amusement. Robert Carter had in his home in Westmoreland County a harpsichord, a piano-forte, an harmonica, a guitar and a flute, and at Williamsburg an organ. He had a good ear, a very delicate touch, was indefatigable in practicing and performed well on several instruments. Especially was he fond of the harmonica, and spent much time in practicing upon it. His skill is thus described by his tutor, "The music ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... before eight—there will be a full house to-night—six parties in the boxes, already; four little boys and a woman in the pit; and two fiddles and a flute in the orchestra, who have got through five overtures since seven o'clock (the hour fixed for the commencement of the performances), and have just begun the sixth. There will be plenty of it, though, when it does begin, for there is enough in the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Osborne, a New Hampshire preacher of the "Christian" (Christ-ian) denomination, is said to have composed the tune (and possibly the words) about 1815—though apparently the music was arranged from a flute interlude in one of Haydn's themes. The warbling notes of the air are full of heart-feeling, and usually the best available treble voice ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... and down, and over and across, and three times round. Being white, the garments were of course changed daily. In the intervals of baby-tending, the mother snatched a few minutes here and a few minutes there to starch, iron, flute, or crimp a ruffle, or to finish off a dress of her own. This "finishing off" was carried on for weeks. When her baby was asleep, or was good, or had its little ruffles all fluted, and its little sister's little ruffles were all fluted, then would she seize the opportunity to stitch, to plait, to ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... allowed to amuse themselves with games of various kinds, as well as dancing and singing, until nine o'clock, when they had to turn in, and all lights were extinguished. The officers employed their evenings in reading and writing, with an occasional game of chess, or a tune on the flute or ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... of Nares (1859), this very passage is quoted to illustrate the meaning of the word, which is defined rather vaguely to be A CASK. Obviously the word signifies something of the kind, but the explanation does not at all satisfy me. I suspect that a flute OF CANARY was so called from the cask having several vent-holes, in the same way that the French call a lamprey FLEUTE D'ALEMAN from the fish having little holes in the upper part ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... biggest 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 to that cosy room at Staple Inn, Holborn, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... and take possession of the performers or of the beneficiary of the function by entering through the top of the head. A primitive jews'-harp, universally found among the tribes, is played to frighten away antohs, and so is the flute. ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... not builded until many labourers have dug and toiled waist-deep in dirt. Here, too, such spatterment seemed necessary. So I played, in fine, I played a cunning music. The pride of Demetrios, the jealousy of Callistion, and the greed of Orestes—these were as so many stops of that flute on which I played a cunning deadly music. Who ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... always as much as he was loved by her, and in virtue of the permission formally given by the Pope, he went every week to pass an hour or two with her in the parlour. He regularly took there his singing and flute lessons; these were two amiable talents in which ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... a serious flirtation with a man who played a flute and piccolo. He was about fifty years old, still handsome, and growing stout. When sober, he was completely reserved. When rather drunk, he talked charmingly and amusingly—oh, most charmingly. Alvina quite loved him. But alas, how ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... man—also a Scotchman. It is curious to note how numerous Scotchmen are in the wilds of North America. This specimen was diminutive and sharp. Moreover, he played the flute—an accomplishment of which he was so proud that he ordered out from England a flute of ebony, so elaborately enriched with silver keys that one's fingers ached to behold it. This beautiful instrument, like most ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... 54, Minersville, Pa., a rosewood flute, a small steam engine and a magic lantern with complete ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... enough form to make it real and perceptible. Very rich and beautiful materials therefore do well to assume this form. You will spoil the beauty you have by superimposing another; as if you make a statue of gold, or flute a jasper column, or bedeck a velvet cloak. The beauty of stuffs appears when they are plain. Even stone gives its specific quality best in great unbroken spaces of wall; the simplicity of the form emphasizes the substance. And again, ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... neither would he seem to be. So they came to the principal house, which was on a mound. All the houses were of two stories, of which the upper was open on the sides, and used for sleeping. Soto sat with Tuscaloosa in the piazza and feasted; dancing girls came out in the town square with flute-players, and danced ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... overhead and screeching: just about as high again as the houses. Lord, how them birds did fly. And there was the other young fellows, what were not out walking, standing about by the roadside, just doing nothing at all. One of them had a flute: Jim Booker, he was. Those were great days. The bats used to come out, flutter, flutter, flutter; and then there'd be a star or two; and the smoke from the chimneys going all grey; and a little cold wind going ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... 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 their busy antennae into everything, tumbling over the ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... I'll do it up and flute the ruffles," Mrs. Biggs said. "'Tain't mussy, but a little rinse and starch ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... promised (as I felt, without exactly seeing why) a dreadful exaggeration to whatever incivility might, at any rate, attach to the question; and some did attach, that was clear, even if warbled through an air of Cherubini's and accompanied on the flute. Perhaps they were not idiots, and only seemed to be such from the slowness of apprehension naturally connected with deafness. That I saw them but seldom, arose from their peculiar position in the family. Their father had no private fortune; his income from the church was very ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... young 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 in readiness ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... this place; Let me, oh Rai! thy feet embrace. To deprecate thy sullen ire, Therefore I come in strange attire; Revive me, Radha, kindness speak, Clasping thy feet my home I'd seek. Of thy fair form to catch a ray From door to door with flute I stray; When thy soft name it murmurs low Mine eyes with sudden tears o'erflow. If thou wilt not my pardon speak The banks of Jumna's stream I'll seek, Will break my flute and yield my life; Oh! cease thy wrath, and end the strife. The joys of Braj I've cast ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... and himself taught him how to play it. It was not long before all the wild things in the woods of Thrace crept out from the green trees and thick undergrowth, and from the holes and caves in the rocks, to listen to the music that the child's fingers made. The coo of the dove to his mate, the flute-clear trill of the blackbird, the song of the lark, the liquid carol of the nightingale—all ceased when the boy made music. The winds that whispered their secrets to the trees owned him for their lord, and the proudest trees of the forest bowed their heads that they might not miss one ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... slowly, with shuffling steps. The quiet is broken by a note on a gong, struck softly, and there is an almost inaudible flute melody on reeds, and liquid notes struck on empty bamboos. These dusky figures are Kachin men, with red turbans, and short, white, very loose kilts and bolero jackets. Some of the reflected light from the sand shows their ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... foreign land, Soft music met mine ear— O Richard, O mon roi, struck up In flute-notes wild and clear: And scarce had died that plaintive strain, When lo! how could it be? Thy thunder pealed above the tide, 'Britannia rules the sea!' I knew not whence the magic came, But sought the distant shore, And there a stately pageant lay Unseen, undreamt before: A gallant vessel ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... A white-curved bud Opening its petals slowly in the warmth of heaven.... The air is full of odours And languorous warm sounds.... A flute drones its insect music to the night Below the ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... was no scenery, nor stage appliances; the descriptions of the chorus or of the actors took their place. The dialogue and choruses are given in a nasal recitative, accompanied by the mouth-organ, flute, drum, and other classical instruments, and are utterly unintelligible. The ancient poetry is full of puns and plays upon words, and it was with no little difficulty that, with the assistance of a man of letters, I prepared beforehand the arguments ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... of the waving grass, the silvery tinkling of the grazing sheep, the mighty beat and rhythm of the earth sang through the dreaming boy unconscious of his divine destiny. Drowsing, his voice and the notes of his flute joined the harmonious silence: and his song was so calmly, so limpidly joyous, that, hearing it, there could be no thought of joy or sorrow, only the feeling that it must be so and could not be otherwise.—Suddenly over the moor reached great shadows: the air was still: life seemed to ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... maids And joyous love of comely girl and boy; His eyes were bright, and 'mid the dancing blades Of golden grass his feet did trip for joy. And in his hands he held an ivory lute, With strings of gold that were as maidens' hair, And sang with voice as tuneful as a flute, And round his neck three chains of roses were. But he that was his comrade walked aside; He was full sad and sweet, and his large eyes Were strange with wondrous brightness, staring wide With gazing; ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... with a genius so unstable, so erratic? 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, as tradition affirms, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... the liberties of his wit. He, the conqueror, the irresistible, had never met one of that audacious, self-willed race. So he enveloped her in all the magnetic currents of his seductive charm, while around them the murmur of the fete, the flute-like laughter, the rustling of satins and strings of pearls played an accompaniment to that duet of worldly ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... him, amid peal after peal of flute-like laughter, while their father and mother rushed to his assistance, scolding and angry. But he calmed the parents by saying: "Let them be! they are simply wishing me good day. And besides, I must bear with them, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... of the trip, I knew how an emancipated slave feels; for I was an emancipated slave myself. While we lay at landings, I listened to George Ealer's flute; or to his readings from his two bibles, that is to say, Goldsmith and Shakespeare; or I played chess with him—and would have beaten him sometimes, only he always took back his last move and ran the game ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fine little bare-foot book[9] of Leipzig, which comes along on clogs—nay, on stilts. It imagines that it alone (among all the others) does not step into the mud; perhaps it would gladly dance if some one would buy it a flute. I must have a ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... the church-organ be the grandest and most comprehensive of musical instruments we may still be permitted to cherish our piano. Each has its own sphere, its own reason for being. So of the pen,—the piccolo flute of the artistic orchestra. Let it pipe its high treble as merrily as it may, but do not coerce ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... little rest, but I give up 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 ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... 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 ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Look at our birds reared up in the same nests; they love like us; they are always together like us. Hark? how they call and answer from one tree to another. So when the echoes bring to my ears the air which you play upon your flute at the top of the mountain, I repeat the words at the bottom of the valley. Above all, you are dear to me since the day when you wanted to fight the master of the slave for me. Since that time how often have I said to myself, 'Ah, my brother has a good heart; but for him I should have ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... of the music. Around the corner. Up a little flight of stairs. She entered the realm of Euterpe; Euterpe with her hair frizzed; Euterpe with her flowing white robe replaced by soiled white shoes; Euterpe abandoning her flute for jazz. She sat at the piano, a red-haired young lady whose familiarity with the piano had bred contempt. Nothing else could have accounted for her treatment of it. Her fingers, tipped with sharp-pointed ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... Baronet, and his cousin Mark, are both at a coach for the Army exam, after which, if successful, they would join the Army as officers. But Mark is seen to be a cad and liar, and there is a fight between them, Mark being apparently dead. Dick, who is a good musician, goes off with his flute in its case, intending to make his way to a city where there is an Army barracks and a Naval port, presumably Chatham, since we are in Kent. He had intended to cross a river by a certain bridge, but the river was in flood, ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... or virgins who endeavoured to fill Emma's place found the door of Newcombe's heart fast and barred, and assailed it in vain. Miss Billing sat down before it with her piano, and, as the Colonel was a practitioner on the flute, hoped to make all life one harmonious duet with him; but she played her most brilliant sonatas and variations in vain; and, as everybody knows, subsequently carried her grand piano to Lieutenant and Adjutant Hodgkin's house, whose name she now bears. The lovely ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... we passed in music (he was musical, and played on more than one instrument, flute and violoncello), in which I was audience; and I think that our chief beverage was soda-water. In the day we rode, bathed, and lounged, reading occasionally. I remember our buying, with vast alacrity, Moore's new quarto (in 1806), and reading it ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... and shelved, above is a label on which are some lines of the hymn of S. John Baptist, with notes in plain song and with the name of the author above, which was Alessandro Agricola, and below is a flute and a violin with its bow. The twelfth is the figure of a young man with a label below which says, 'Johannis Baptistae discipulus.' This is generally thought to represent S. Andrew the apostle. The thirteenth is another open ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... studies in Rome, she settled in Munich. She painted historical and religious subjects, and a few portraits. "Zacharias Naming the Little St. John" is in the New Picture Gallery, Munich; in the same gallery is also a portrait called the "Boy Playing a Flute"; in the Leuchtenberg Gallery, Petersburg, is her "Three Women at the Sepulchre." She painted a picture called the "Glorification of Religion through Art" and a "Madonna in Prayer." She also executed a number ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... were not clever, they took what the family connection had to offer them. The girls accepted situations occasionally, but there were always one or two at home, nursing sick animals, tending silkworms, or playing the flute in their bedrooms. The distinction between the elder children and the younger corresponded almost to the distinction between a higher class and a lower one, for with only a haphazard education and insufficient allowances, the ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... unfolded large Babylonian hangings, and stretched them on cords all around the room, for Salammbo did not wish to be seen even by the walls. The kinnor-player squatted behind the door and the young boy standing upright applied a reed flute to his lips. In the distance the roar of the streets was growing feebler, violet shadows were lengthening before the peristyles of the temples, and on the other side of the gulf the mountain bases, the fields of olive-trees, and the vague yellow ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... for pearls, Or drown them in a drain; We flute it with the merles, Or tug and sweat and strain; We grovel, or we reign; We saunter, or we brawl; We answer, or we call; We search the stars for Fame, Or sink her subterranities; The legend's still the same:- 'O Vanity ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... noise was, if mine ear be true, My best guide now. Methought it was the sound Of riot and ill-managed merriment, Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds, When, for their teeming flocks and granges full, In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan, And thank the gods amiss. I should be loth To meet the rudeness and swilled insolence Of such late wassailers; ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... leaving with a wave of the hand to the yellow-girted one who dispensed the common provender, I sauntered on again, caring little or nothing which way the road went, and soon across the current of my meditations a peal of laughter broke, accompanied by the piping of a flute somewhere close at hand, and the next minute I found myself amid a ring of light-hearted roisterers who were linking hands for a dance to the music a curly-headed fellow ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... and then a big bell rings, and the working men and women tramp gaily by, chatting noisily and in excellent spirits. Now comes the milkman's turn. He, like the chimney-sweep, has his own howl, softer, more flute-like in quality than that of the sweep, but still capable of waking any one who is not a domestic servant in hard training. The milkman also cries "woa" to his horse at every house, and accompanies himself on his great tin cans, making a noise most tolerable, and not to be endured. Is it necessary, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... me?" said the donkey. "You see, I am going to try my luck as a street musician in the city. I think we might easily earn a living by music. You can play the bass drum and I can play the flute." ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... happened to him,—was he suddenly possessed, or was he losing his wits? He tried to force his voice back into its usual tone, tried even to speak gently, though his heart was beating so wildly at the way she looked, at the sweet notes of her voice, like a flute in its lower notes, that he could hardly hear his own words. "No, no music!" he said. "There must be no music here, among Christian folks. Put away that thing, young woman. It is an evil thing, bringing sin, and death, which is the wages ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... him in private; our 'immortal bard' seems to have forgotten that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, were flung into the fiery furnace (made seven times hotter than usual) amidst the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music; he seems to have forgotten that it was a music and a dance-loving damsel that chose, as a recompense for her elegant performance, the bloody head of John ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... instance of ursine [Footnote: Ursine: pertaining to a bear.] irritability. A friend of his would persist in practising the flute near his tame black bear. Bruin bore this in silence for a while, went so far indeed as himself to try and play the flute on his favorite stick; but at last he could stand it no longer, and one morning knocked ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... Hopper Eurydice Francis William Bourdillon A Woman's Thought Richard Watson Gilder Laus Veneris Louise Chandler Moulton Adonais Will Wallace Harney Face to Face Frances Cochrane Ashore Laurence Hope Khristna and His Flute Laurence Hope Impenitentia Ultima Ernest Dowson Non Sum Quails Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae Ernest Dowson Quid non Speremus, Amantes? Ernest Dowson "So Sweet Love Seemed" Robert Bridges An Old Tune Andrew Lang ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... sojus had on nice buttons an' had plumes in dere hats. Dey wus singin' an' playin' on a flute dis song, 'I wish I wus in Dixie,' an' dey went in de big house an' broke up ebery thing. Dey say to me, 'you are as free as a frog,' an' dey say to my pa, 'all your chillun are free.' Dey say 'little niggers is free as a frog' an' we ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... so, one evening in 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 ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... I want. I wuz er cuttin' some wood dis mawnin' ober at de Peters' place, an' I yere some talk dat don't soun' like er flute. 'Pear like dat white man has got some trouble in his ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... I chose a room looking out upon the Hudson and the noble Palisades. I took with me a flute, a copy of the Bucolics of Virgil, and numerous linen garments. A great calm came over me. I was no longer haunted, goaded, oppressed. With peace nestling in my bosom, I went down to my first supper in the new boarding-house. A goodly meal smoked on the table, and the savor of baked shad, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... had never heard a song of that kind before. Nor could he readily associate the voice, which again and again he could not distinguish from the flute-like tones of the organ, with the sordidness and grime of material, fleshly existence. He entered softly and took a seat in the shadow of a pillar. The clear, sweet voice of the young girl flowed over him ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... and so have the American Indians. Perhaps the character of these several nations may be connected with it. The steady honour, and firm valour of the Spaniard, very like that of the ancient Doric nation, who followed the flute not the trumpet to the field; and met the enemy, not with shouts and fury, but with a determined virtue: it is the temper of the Hypochondriac to be slow, but unmoveably resolved: the Jew has shewn this mistakenly, but almost miraculously; ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill
... Like those birds in clouds that choir. Aching-sweet from silver string, Purling flute and golden wire Music flows no mortal knows Even in April thronged with voices. Deeper glory throbs and glows Till ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... entered and took their places on the funny little place back of a brass rail. Then came the delicious thrills of the squeaking violins as they were tuned, the tap-tap of the drum, the tinkle of a piano, and the soft, low notes of a flute. ...
— Bobbsey Twins in Washington • Laura Lee Hope
... her gaze, with a gloomy expression, toward the heavens, and with a violently heaving bosom, with feverishly flitting breath, she began the lament of Sappho. Now like rattling thunder, now like the gentle breathings of the flute, rolled this sweet and picturesque language of Italy from her lips—like music sounded those full, artistic rhymes, of which but few of the hearers had the least suspicion that they came from Tasso. To improvise in the Italian ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... 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 a ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... house, and the turtle-doves cooed plaintively to each other in their far-reaching, mournful tones, giving a minor note to the nocturnal concert. Now and then a fish sprang from the water and fell back with a splash, and the water itself kept up a soft babble like the notes of a living flute. ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... arithmetic and geometry, while, after his regular work was done, he would carry a French or Latin chronicle to his small window, and pore over the history of bygone times. In his spare moments he would play some old music on the flute or ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... suburb of Bristol. Young Alfred soon gave evidence of great musical talent, and used to amuse himself blowing trumpet calls on his father's French horn, although the instrument was almost as big as himself; he also achieved considerable mastery over the piano, the flute and the violin, but, though bright and intelligent enough, and always maintaining a creditable position at school, it was evident that nature had intended him for a musician, and that he could never succeed in anything prosaic or mechanical. Accordingly his father taught him not only ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... soft sounds of the flute or of the hautboy that I hear, but the sweeter notes of Nature's own music. The mellowness of the song, the varied modulations and gradations, the extent of its compass, the great brilliancy of execution, are unrivalled. There is probably no bird in the world that possesses ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... our young decadents. Think how terrible it would be if Nature could all of a sudden learn English! That exquisite mirror of all our shifting moods would be broken for ever. No longer might we coin the woodland into metaphors of our own joys and sorrows. The birds would no longer flute to us of lost loves, but of found worms; we should realise how terribly selfish they are; we could never more quote 'Hark, hark, the lark at heaven's gate sings,' or poetise with Mr. Patmore of 'the ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... goodness. There is a curious aloofness in his look sometimes, as of some pure intelligence beholding good and evil with the same even speculative mind. But this strange mood breaks up so humanly! he has such wiles—such soft wet kisses! such a little flute of a voice when he wants to coax ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hand! Then, to say truth, I was heartily glad of a pretence of escaping from a numerous cohort of folles amours, with Madame D'Anville at the head; and the very circumstance which men who play the German flute and fall in love, would have considered the most vexatious, I regarded as the ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... unless it follow through the valley of a stream. The movement is so easy that, with your eyes shut, you do not know you move. The route is so direct, that when you are once shielded from the sun, you are safe for hours. You draw, you read, you write, or you sew, crochet, or knit. You play on your flute or your guitar, without one hint of inconvenience. At a "low bridge" you duck your head lest you lose your hat,—and that reminder teaches you that you are human. You are glad to know this, and you laugh at ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... 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":— ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... principal Shinto temples I saw the sacred dance with which that great god is propitiated. In a booth two stories high, in front of the temple, was a small stage upon which sat three old priests. One beat a drum, the second played a flute, while the third fingered a guitar. To this music a very pretty young daughter of a priest, gorgeously arrayed in sacred robes, postured with a fan, keeping time to the music. This was all. But, ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... again. He had watched them the day before, as they trotted hand-in-hand along the home-meadow where the snowdrops and crocuses grew. They had pulled some of the white and yellow blossoms, and had then stood still to listen to the flute-like voice of an unseen minstrel. Hand-in-hand they listened; the little boy with his large brown eyes fixed on the tree from whence came the song, the little girl with her baby-face uplifted, and one pink finger held up as much as to ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... know," said Rosina thoughtfully; "I think that I like a flute best, but I always think whenever I see a man playing on a violin that the attitude ought to develop very affectionate ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... the God had left her; ere she fell And foam'd among her maidens on the ground, The air was ringing with a merry swell Of flute, and pipe, and every sweetest sound, In Aphrodite's fane, and all around Were roses toss'd beneath the glimmering green Of that high roof, and Helen there was crown'd The Goddess of the Trojans, ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... or tappe, a flute, a whistle, apipe as well to conueigh water, as an instrument of Musicke. Fistula ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... words that I sent you to speak? Whose dull, dead ear has been raised to life by that vocalization of heaven, that was given to you more than to any other one?" Man is sub-base. A thirty-two feet six-inch pipe is he. But what is an organ played with the feet, if all the upper part is left unused? The flute, the hautboy, the finer trumpet stops, all those stops that minister to the intellect, the imagination, and the higher feelings—these must be drawn, and the whole organ played from top ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... while the roses heard the flute, violin, bassoon, none in all the gay company had been gayer than Sharlee. Past many heads in the dining-room, West had watched her, laughing, radiant, sparkling as the wine itself, a pretty little lady of a joyous sweetness that never knew ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... breathe your slow sweet name, As one breathes low notes on a flute, Have vext your peace with word of blame, The phrase is dead — the lips are mute. Yet when I turn towards the wall, In stormy nights, in times of rain, I often wish you could recall Your tender speeches, ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... mind him a bit. He pulled out his flute and began to play like vengeance; and dickens a man or boy in the yard but began shovelling away heel and toe, and the wolf himself was obliged to get on his hind legs and dance "Tatther Jack Walsh," along with the ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... seen in some wondrous sculpture, the gracious living curves that the chisel has freed from the roughness of the marble? Or have you listened while the diviner spell of music has lifted you, step by step, till you seem to hear the Gandharvas singing and almost the divine flute is being played and echoing in the lower world? Or have you stood on the mountain peak with the snows around you, and felt the grandeur of the unmoving nature that shows out God as well as the human spirit? Ah, if you have ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... to the genii of the planets we mention the seven days of the week, the seven stories of the tower of Babylon, the seven gates of Thebes, the seven piped flute of Pan, the seven stringed lyre of Apollo, the seven books of fate, the book of seven seals, the seven castes into which the Egyptians and East Indians were divided, and the jubilee of seven times seven ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... have learnt a great deal, for he went to the best boarding school in Paris; but he only learnt what he liked, and what he liked was not much. He can play the flute, ride, fence, dance a minuet, change his shirt every day, answer politely, make a graceful bow, talk elegant trifles, and dress well. As he never had any application, he doesn't know anything about literature; ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... 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 lyre. Compare ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... tone of Anthony's violin came like a heavenly message to a tired, despairing soul. Remember that in her secluded existence she had heard only such harmony as Elvira Reynolds evoked from her piano or George Reynolds from his flute, and the Reynolds temperament ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... spick-and-span highway for motors. But now it lies little trafficked, and one might prefer to have it so, for in the stillness of the evening the birds are eloquent. The thrushes of Wister Woods, which have been immortalized by T. A. Daly in perhaps the loveliest poem ever written in Philadelphia, flute and whistle their tantalizing note, while the song sparrow echoes them with his confident, challenging call. Down behind the dusty sumac shrubbery lies the little blue-green cottage said to have been used by Benjamin West as a studio. In a meadow beside the road two cows ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... hoped, he was quite alone, for the Cotillon had attracted almost everybody to the picture gallery. And the silence in the little salon was nearly perfect, for at that distance the blare of the orchestra subsided into a faint, flute-like murmur. The young priest at once apologised to the prelate for having kept ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... resist the rain. They used vegetable dyes of various colours—brown, purple, yellow, red, and black. Their baskets, made of the same material as their mats, were very beautiful. They had different kinds of musical instruments: one of these was a sort of flute, which was made resonant by the breath of the nostril; another was similar to Pandean pipes, and composed of reeds; and a third was a drum made out of a heavy log. Their mode of saluting was like that of the New Zealanders, by rubbing noses together; and when anything was ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... the sire, in his most flute-like tones, "I have brought a friend to see you, my little girl; turn round and give him your pretty hand. It is good to be devout; but it is necessary ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... that Meyerbeer's operas contain such strange scenes as phantom nuns dancing, girls bathing, sunrise, skating, gunpowder explosions, a king playing the flute, and the prima donna leading a goat, dramatic music owes to him new accents of genuine pathos and an addition to its resources of rendering passionate emotions. Through much that is merely showy and meretricious there come frequent ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... and clear its closes were— As if the hand of Music through The sombre robe of Silence drew A thread of golden gossamer; So pure a flute the fairy blew. Like beggared princes of the wood, In silver rags the birches stood; The hemlocks, lordly counselors, Were dumb; the sturdy servitors, In beechen jackets patched and gray, Seemed waiting spellbound all the day That low, entrancing ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs |
