"Sounding-board" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... goes up to her). The blood money of my daughter? To Beelzebub with thee, thou infamous bawd! Sooner will I vagabondize with my violin and fiddle for a bit of bread—sooner will I break to pieces my instrument and carry dung on the sounding-board than taste a mouthful earned by my only child at the price of her soul and future happiness. Give up your cursed coffee and snuff-taking, and there will be no need to carry your daughter's face to market. I have ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Ambassador, Your Honor, is simply trying to use the courts of the Planet of New Texas as a sounding-board ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... man, you know, and up to the eyes in all sorts of movements. Just the sort of person to turn loose at a drawing-room meeting, or to send down to a mission-hall in some unheard-of neighbourhood. Given a sounding-board and a harmonium, and a titled woman of some sort in the chair, and he'll be perfectly happy; I must say I hadn't realised how overpowering he might be at ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... man glanced at him; and when he dropped his oar all the section of the ship on his side seemed aglow. He heard nothing of what was said; enough that the chain hung idly from its staple in the bench, and that the chief, going to his seat, began to beat the sounding-board. The notes of the gavel were never so like music. With his breast against the leaded handle, he pushed with all his might—pushed until the shaft bent as ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... hemlock wood at the head waters of the Delaware is a chosen haunt of the winter wren. His voice fills these dim aisles, as if aided by some marvelous sounding-board. Indeed, his song is very strong for so small a bird, and unites in a remarkable degree brilliancy and plaintiveness. I think of a tremulous, vibrating tongue of silver. You may know it is the song of a wren from its gushing, lyrical character; but you must needs look sharp to see the little ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... crutch-propped beggars to the mighty ruin of the Templars' Tower; on the right the flats reach away to the almost imperceptible humps of masonry that were once the villages of St. Georges, Ramscappelle, Pervyse. And over it all the incessant crash of the guns stretches a sounding-board ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... house will understand that where the noise seemed to me to be was in the neighbourhood of the dome. For all I know, the dome, as somebody suggested, may be a regular sounding-board; but even so, that does not help much towards an explanation. Wherever the noise may have been produced, the question still remains, 'What produced it?' and that we have ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... universal satisfaction. It is considered the best 50-cent outfit ever produced, and, although we have made several improvements lately, the price is the same as before. In connection with a peculiar oscillating electro-magnet and a queer anvil, the sounding-board aids in giving out a loud, clear click that is found elsewhere only in noisy railroad sounders. This outfit is best adapted for a learner's set of one instrument and a battery to be used on the table for practising, either with or without the "codegraph," ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John
... on this occasion Alcman superseded the wonted performer by his own more popular song and the melody of his richer voice. Standing by the mainmast, and holding the large harp, which was stricken by the quill, its strings being deepened by a sounding-board, he chanted an Io Paean to the Dorian god of light and poesy. The harp at stated intervals was supported by a burst of flutes, and the burthen of the verse was caught up by the rowers as in chorus. Thus, far and wide over the shining waves, went ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... resonant sound is heard overhead; a second pull is followed by a second report, that rings as with shrill accompaniment down the very sides of the balloon. It is the working of the valve, which causes a loud booming noise, as from a sounding-board, as the springs ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... ancient "three-decker" pattern, which is rarely seen now-a-days, with a clerk's desk below, a reading-desk above, above that a lofty pulpit for the clergyman, to which a narrow flight of stairs gave access, and suspended over all an enormous extinguisher-shaped sounding-board. It looked large and heavy enough to crush any clergyman who should be caught by its fall while in act of preaching; and Candace watched its slight oscillations with an apprehensive fascination, till she recollected that it must have hung there for a hundred years at ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... and faith and trust might grow up and prevail among the flock of which he was the shepherd, more especially those dear lambs whom he gathered with his arm, and carried in his bosom, when the old sounding-board, which had hung safely for nearly a century,—loosened, no doubt, by the bolt which had fallen on the church,—broke from its fastenings, and fell with a loud crash upon the pulpit, crushing the Rev. Mr. Stoker under its ruins. The scene that followed beggars description. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... fish-houses; and a row of fish-flakes. Every house seemed to have a lane of its own, and all faced different ways except two fish-houses, which stood amiably side by side. There was a church, which we had been told was the oldest in the region. Through the windows we saw the high pulpit and sounding-board, and finally found the keys at a house near by; so we went in and looked around at our leisure. A rusty foot-stove stood in one of the old square pews, and in the gallery there was a majestic bass-viol with all its strings snapped but the largest, which gave out ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... morning the solemnity had simply increased. Then we went to church. The minister was in a pulpit about twenty feet high, with a little sounding-board above him, and he commenced at "firstly" and went on and on and on to about "twenty-thirdly." Then he made a few remarks by way of application; and then took a general view of the subject, and in about two hours reached the last ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... across me:—This State of New York is a great guitar; yonder, at Albany, are the legislative pegs and screws; down there in Manhattan Island is the great sounding-board; these iron wires are the strings! The spirits are singing, perhaps, with their heads up there in the sweet heavens and the rosy clouds,—and this vibration of the wires is a sort of loose jangling accompaniment ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... very soon become everybody's, and this was just one of those facts that are propagated with a mysterious and ridiculous rapidity. The whisper that carries them is very small, in the great scale of things, of air and space and progress, but it is also very safe, for there is no compression, no sounding-board, to make speakers responsible. And then repetition at sea is somehow not repetition; monotony is in the air, the mind is flat and everything recurs—the bells, the meals, the stewards' faces, the romp ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... meaning, to see the shapes his words assumed in the mind of his listening friend! For, in place of falling upon the table of his perception, kept steady by will and judgment, he would see them tumble upon the sounding-board of his imagination, ever vibrating, and there be danced like sand into all manner of shapes, according to the tune played by the capricious instrument. Thus, in Glaston, the strangest stories of barbarity and cruelty ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... sounding-board, the harp a mere subservient tinkle, and my small, excitable frame would thrill and vibrate under the waves of my unconscious father's voice; and oh, the ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... imposts. The arcading of the nave was formed by cutting arches through what probably were at one time the outside walls of the church; two of these on the south side open into the chapel. The carved oak pulpit of early seventeenth-century work, with its sounding-board and iron frame for the hour-glass, demands attention; but the chief attraction of the church for many is the alabaster statue of Francis Bacon, which is placed in a niche in the north wall of the chancel. He wished to be buried in this church, as his mother was already buried there, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... was the meeting-house. To this, the double line of windows all round, broken by the long round-topped window midway on the back side, and the two-storied vestibule on the front, and, more than all, the old pulpit still remaining within, with the sounding-board suspended above it, bore witness. Here assembled every spring, at the March meeting, the voters of the town, to elect their selectmen and other town officers for the ensuing year, to vote what moneys should be raised for the repair of roads, bridges, maintaining the poor, etc., and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... were so open and reverberating, it was generally thought imperative to hang above the pulpit a great sounding-board, which threatened the minister like a giant extinguisher, and was really as devoid of utility as it was curious in ornamentation, "reflecting most part an empty ineffectual sound." This great sound-killer was decorated with carved and painted rosettes, as in the Shrewsbury meeting-house; with ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... cheerful look than the highly-coloured lion and unicorn on the gallery in front. The clerk's box, the reading-desk, and the pulpit, piled one above another, had a symmetrical effect, to which the umbrella-shaped sounding-board above gave a distant resemblance to a Chinese pagoda. The only things which gave warmth or colour to the interior as a whole were the cushions and pew curtains. There were plenty of them, and they were mostly red. These same curtains added to the sense of isolation, ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... dangled a sword, for boarders' work was more than likely. Thirty spare rowers rested impatiently on the centre deck, ready to leap wherever needed. On the forecastle commanded the proreus, Ameinias's lieutenant, and with him the keleustes, the oar master who must give time on his sounding-board for the rowing, and never fail,—not though the ships around reeled down to watery grave. And finally on the poop by the captain stood the "governor,"—knotted, grizzled, and keen,—the man whose touch upon the heavy steering oars might give the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the great red-headed woodpecker, or woodcock, as he is called by the country people, looking like a miniature man with a crimson turban and sable spear, attacking the bark of yon old oak. He is making a sounding-board of the seamed mail of the venerable monarch, to detect by the startled writhing within the grub snugly ensconced, as it thinks, there, in order to transfix it with his sharp tongue through the hole made by his bill. He ceases his work ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... permeation of a great mass of the German people by the socialistic conceptions which in their bearing on women have been rendered so familiar by Bebel's exposition has furnished, as it were, a ready-made sounding-board which has given resonance and effect to voices which might otherwise have been quickly lost ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... circle of flying cherubs, made up a composition not at all bad in itself but utterly out of character with the Gothic work behind and around it. At the same time the sanctuary was railed and paved with black and white marble, the body of the church newly paved and galleried, a pulpit with sounding-board erected, and the whole church "cleaned, white-washed, and beautified throughout, at the charge of the parish." That the work was generally approved may be inferred from the remark of Stow's "Continuator": "This is now a very magnificent church since the late reparation"; while another ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... find herself mounting the gallery stairs, and to emerge into a well-cushioned abode, with the shield-bearing angel of the corbel of an arch all to herself, and a very good view of the cobwebs over Mr. Dusautoy's sounding-board. It seemed to suit all parties, however, for Lucy and Sophia took possession of the forefront, and their father had the inmost corner, where certainly ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little cluster of unpainted cabins,—lies the white barge of a photographer, just such a home as the Derby artist covets. The Ohio is here about half-a-mile wide, but high-pitched voices of people on the opposite bank are plainly heard across the smooth sounding-board; and in the quiet evening air comes to us the "chuck-chuck" of oars nearly a mile away. Following a torrid afternoon, with exasperating headwinds, this cool, fresh atmosphere, in the long twilight, is inspiring. Overhead is the slender streak ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... out of which rose a slender spire with the sharp-billed weathercock at its summit. Inside, tall, square pews with flapping seats, and a gallery running round three sides of the building. On the fourth side the pulpit, with a huge, dusty sounding-board hanging over it. Here preached the Reverend Pierrepont Honeywood, D. D., successor, after a number of generations, to the office and the parsonage of the Reverend Didymus Bean, before mentioned, but not suspected of any of his alleged heresies. He held to the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... beyond stood the backs of a company of ecclesiastics—secular priests in cotta, cassock, and biretta, with three or four bare-footed Franciscans and a couple of Benedictines. Ten yards away there rose a temporary pulpit with a back and a sounding-board beneath the open sky; and in it was the tall figure of a young friar, preaching, it seemed, with extraordinary fervour. Around the pulpit, beyond it, and on all sides to an immense distance, so far as he could see, stretched the heads of an incalculable multitude, dead silent, and beyond them again ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... Stockbridge, than on the Sunday a week ago. Walking the whole length of the meeting-house, he opened the door of the big square pew at the right hand of the pulpit, considered the first in honor, and the only part of the interior of the meeting-house, save the pulpit and sounding-board, which was painted. One by one the numerous children who called him father, passed before him into the pew. Then he closed the door and sat down facing the congregation, and slowly and deliberately looked at the people. As his glance ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... along like a crippled thing, slow-moving, hideous. Outside fell the monotonous drip, drip from trees and bushes, likened by Phillida to a horrid clock. The fog was a sounding-board for furtive noises that grew up like fungi in the moist atmosphere. The thought of Phillida and Vere down in the pleasant living room tempted me almost beyond resistance. I wanted to spring up, to rush out of the room; to fling myself into my car and drive full speed until strength failed ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... glances traveled from every quarter of the building toward the tall pew where, collected but somewhat palely smiling, sat Mistress Evelyn Byrd beside her father. All this was before the sermon. When the minister of the day mounted the pulpit, and, gaunt against the great black sounding-board, gave out his text in a solemn and ringing voice, such was the genuine power of the man that every face was turned toward him, and throughout the building there ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... people,' I went on, 'is simply—how shall I put it?—simply the ticking of clocks; it marks the hour, but it has no other interest. But I like to think for myself, to be something more than a mere mouthpiece of the age I live in—a mere sounding-board and echo of ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... is Jack, standing erect in his parti-colored pulpit with a sounding-board over his head; but he is a gay deceiver, a wolf in sheep's clothing, literally a "brother to dragons," an arrant upstart, an ingrate, a murderer of innocent benefactors! "Female botanizing classes pounce upon it as they would upon a pious young ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... wherever he went, it was always desirous of accompanying him. Whenever therefore he had to perform the service of his church, he was under the necessity of shutting it up in his room. Once, however, the animal escaped, and followed the father to the church; where silently mounting the sounding-board above the pulpit, he lay perfectly still till the sermon commenced. He then crept to the edge, and overlooking the preacher, imitated all his gestures in so grotesque a manner, that the whole congregation were ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... be another off-shoot of "the great corvine nest;" and the author of "The Vestiges of Creation" regards the hollow protuberance upon the upper mandible (which is the distinguishing feature of the family), as "a sounding-board to increase the vociferation which these birds delight to utter." The remarkable varieties in the cases, are the helmet hornbill of India, and the African rhinoceros hornbill. These birds prey upon small birds and reptiles, which they ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... lady opened her eyes. The sermon was still beating the sounding-board, but she was not then aware that she, too, had spoken ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... went to church, and the minister was up in a pulpit about twenty feet high, with a little sounding-board over him, and he commenced with Firstly and went on to about twenty-thirdly, and then around by way of application, and then divided it off again once or twice, and after having put in about two hours, he got to Revelations. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... more intense if a sonorous body is near its source. This is taken advantage of in musical instruments, where a sounding-board is used, as in the case of the piano, and in the violin, which has a thin shell as a body for ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... in this connection, that, as the voice ascends in pitch, there is a tendency to blend the various vowel-sounds into one sound. As the tones grow higher the sound-waves are focused at higher points upon the hard-palate, the sounding-board of the resonance cavities, and more difficulty is experienced in moulding these sound-waves into the forms characteristic of the different vowel-elements. As the parts concerned in tone-formation gain in flexibility, the result appears in the ease with ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... by a sounding-board of inky clouds, the alarm shots at Brannon, the shouting, the reports of the Gatlings, and the trumpet-calls fell sharp and clear upon the shack. Dallas, watching into the blackness from her bench by the door, was up and armed on the instant, and leaning ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... an al fresco theatre such as one sees in the Champs-Elysees; indeed, the place had quite a Frenchy atmosphere, and was not at all German, as was Russ' Garden. French singers sang French songs upon the stage—it was not much larger than a sounding-board. ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... took the fancy to stroll into the building. He looked about him at the maze of dusty green-cushioned pews with little alleys winding hither and thither among them; at the great three-decker with its huge sounding-board; at the royal escutcheon, and the faded tables of the law, and was about to leave as aimlessly as he had entered, when he espied the open vestry door. Popping in his head, his eye fell on a folio bound in sheepskin, that lay ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... a baldacchino of wood over the altar, with urns upon its corners. Farther east is a solid altar screen, classical in design, of wood, with a pediment, in which is a triangle surrounded by rays, enclosing certain Hebrew letters in gold. Cherubs contemplate these. There is a pulpit with a great sounding-board at the eastern end of the stalls on the north side, and there is a black and white marble pavement. Two ladies and a gentleman are admiring the general effect. From other sources I gather that the archdeacon's stall then, as now, was next to the bishop's throne at the ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... is the chosen haunt of the Winter Wren. This is the only place and these the only woods in which I find him in this vicinity. His voice fills these dim aisles, as if aided by some marvellous sounding-board. Indeed, his song is very strong for so small a bird, and unites in a remarkable degree brilliancy and plaintiveness. I think of a tremulous vibrating tongue of silver. You may know it is the song of a wren, from its gushing lyrical character; but you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... sounded a crisis in a series of tremendous, shattering crashes, so heavy and so prolonged that all the world seemed to rock and vibrate, echoing the uproar like a gigantic sounding-board. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... lingered at Paris: he gave up all notion of proceeding farther. He was, in fact, tired of travel. But there was another reason that chained him to that "Navel of the Earth,"—there is not anywhere a better sounding-board to London rumours than the English quartier between the Boulevard des Italiennes and the Tuileries; here, at all events, he should soonest learn the worst: and every day, as he took up the English newspapers, a sick feeling of apprehension ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
