"Crescendo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... herself and went to the door. As she shut it behind her she could hear Mrs. Wladek's voice, rising to a crescendo of threats and abuse, and Mr. Fredericksohn's calm, scholarly attempts to stem the tide. ...
— Hex • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)
... noise was wafted to his ears through the forest behind. It began like the gentle, mellow lowing of a cow at evening, swelled into a quavering, appealing crescendo cadence, and gradually died away. Almost as the last note ceased another commenced at the same low pitch, with only the rest of a heart-beat between the two, and surged forth into a plaintive yet tempestuous call, which sank as before. ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... Vionnet? Oh, oh, oh!" Miss Barrace cried in a wonderful crescendo. There was more in it, our friend made out, than met the ear. Was it after all a joke that he should be serious about anything? He envied Miss Barrace at any rate her power of not being. She seemed, with little cries and protests and quick recognitions, movements like the darts of ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... increased suddenly as it had done on the evening of the wreck. It rose even as the day darkened, and in a moment it was rushing through the trees screaming in a constantly rising crescendo. The rain was coming, and against that tropical ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... lad's voice mounted into a positive crescendo of conviction—"I know by somethin' that tells me, an' it's somethin' that can't lie. The prophets knew that God had picked 'em out because He told 'em so in visions. I haven't just heard voices in dreams I've had the voice in me and I know—know ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... for the sun and its surrounding ocean of life—ah, that is beyond me! but the sun will dry up, too, and its ocean of life no doubt be drawn to other greater suns. For everything seems to go on more or less in the same way, only crescendo, everywhere ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... for be it remembered the days of the theories of woman's equality with man had not yet dawned. "Sure, sir, I can speak when I am spoken to. I understand the English language; and"—her voice rising into a liquid crescendo of delight—"I can wear my gray sergedusoy sack made over my carnation taffeta bodice and cashmere petticoat, all pranked out with bows of black velvet, most genteel, and my hat of quilled primrose sarcenet, grandfather. ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of coffee sitting somewhere. He'd done that once, and the stuff had boiled out all over everywhere when he pulled the air out of the little room. Nope, no coffee. No obstacles to turning on the pump. He thumbed the button, and the pumps started to whine. The whine built up to a crescendo, then began to die away until finally it could only be felt through the walls or floor. The ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... crescendo of excited and scarcely intelligible utterances the girl had first backed away from Curtis, and then turned, running to open, without knocking, a door on the right of the extreme end of a corridor which divided the ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... out, one by one; the sharp blast of a whistle cuts the air, the clang of a bell peals out, the rumble of a wagon is heard, and the street cars begin their clatter and clang. All this comes floating up to you on the still morning air, until an ever-increasing crescendo of sounds is borne in upon you, telling that the town has awakened from its nap, stretched itself like a drowsy giant, and is ready once more to grapple ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... the utmost in the invention of the most bizarre, eccentric, and original verse forms. An example of this is the poem entitled "The Djinns" included in "Les Orientales" (1829). The coming and going of the flying cohort of spirits is indicated by the crescendo effect of the verse, beginning with a stanza in lines of two syllables, rising gradually to the middle stanza of the poem in lines of ten syllables, and then dying away by exactly graded diminutions to the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... gave them hell at Belmont and at Graspan, and they say they are fighting again to-day at Modder River. Major Erasmus is very down-hearted about it. But the ordinary burghers hear nothing but lies; all lies, I tell you. (Crescendo) Look at the lies that have been told about us! Barbarians! savages! every name your papers have called us, but you know better than that now; you know how well we have treated you since you have been a prisoner; and look at the way ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... Esmeralda, but she was right this time, it appears, and I was wrong. Imagine it! Pixie began bemoaning that she was not pretty, and it was not herself she was grieving for, or you, or Me!"—Bridgie's voice sounded a crescendo of amazement over that last pronoun—"but whom do you suppose? You'll never guess! ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... in a steady crescendo until the last cry became a hoarse, cracked yell that was as unlike his own full, rich, mellow tone as any sound could well be. Yet the dog heard it, ay, and recognised it, for he immediately replied vigorously. ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of the music gave it more than half its magic. It would die away as the wind declined, or come in passionate crescendo. For long it seemed to Montaiglon—and yet it was too short—the night was rich with these incongruous but delightful strains. Now the player breathed some soft, slow, melancholy measure of the manner Count Victor had often heard the Scottish exiles croon with tears at his father's ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... his chair beneath the gallery of cartoons. He began calmly enough when I entered, speaking in a low, almost gentle tone, helping himself to snuff between sentences, but gradually working up into a quite artistic crescendo. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... characterizes the lyric actors of our day is a real profanation of scenic musical art. Not only are singers allowed to walk and gesticulate on the stage without paying any attention to the time, but also no shade of expression, dynamic or motor, of the orchestra—crescendo, decrescendo, accelerando, rallentando—finds in their gestures adequate realization. By this I mean the kind of wholly instinctive transformation of sound movements into bodily movements such ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... sound continued, seeming to come nearer—the sound of a man's voice shrieking horribly for help, in piercing accents of terror that might have come from a torture-chamber. Suddenly the yells became articulate, resolved into words: "Anne! Anne! Anne!" in terrible crescendo. ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... I say, to the Music of that grand last Scene in Fidelio: Sullivan & Co. supplying the introductory Recitative; beginning dreamily, and increasing, crescendo, up to where the Poet begins to 'feel the truth and Stir of Day'; till Beethoven's pompous March should begin, and the Chorus, with 'Arthur is come, etc.'; the chief Voices raising the words aloft (as they do in Fidelio), and the Chorus thundering ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... wickedness, its artistic and scientific majesty, its occasional moral justification against the oppressor, its ultimate blank insanity. But I would not have liked to be an Austrian yesterday or this morning. The Italian Infantry attacked on our sector at 5.30 a.m. There was a tremendous crescendo of gunfire at this time. The Major relieved me in the Command Post at 5 o'clock, and urged me to go to bed, but I did not feel inclined to sleep. Instead I went up about 6 o'clock through Pec village to an O.P. on a hillside beyond, to see what could be seen. But all ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... Nashville warblers were especially numerous, as they are also upon Mount Washington, and, as far as I have seen, upon the White Mountains generally. The feeble, sharp song of the black-poll is a singular affair; short and slight as it is, it embraces a perfect crescendo and a perfect decrescendo. Without question I passed plenty of white-throated sparrows, but by some coincidence not one of them announced himself. The gray-cheeked thrushes, which sang freely, were not heard till I was perhaps halfway between the Eagle Cliff Notch and the Eagle Lakes. This ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... class expressed its appreciation in a prolonged and uproarious laugh. It was a stupendous laugh. It had fine crescendo and diminuendo passages, and only died hard, after a chain of intermittent "Ha-ha's." Then it had a glorious resurrection, but faded at last into the distance, a few stray "Ha-ha's" from ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... the yelling dissonance descending crescendo from floor to floor. Then an avalanche of children and dogs poured down the hall-stairs in pursuit of a rumpled and bored cat, tumbling with yelps and cheers and thuds among the thick ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... fair margin of shrubs in either garden afforded us additional protection. Thus entrenched, we had stood an hour, watching a pair of lighted bow-windows with vague shadows flitting continually across the blinds, and listening to the drawing of corks, the clink of glasses, and a gradual crescendo of coarse voices within. Our luck seemed to have deserted us: the owner of the purple diamonds was dining at home and dining at undue length. I thought it was a dinner-party. Raffles differed; in the end he proved right. ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... only old women calling out "rags" ('cenci')—he was tempted from his airy flights to throw himself for once into the portrayal of reality. There was no need now to dip "his pen in earthquake and eclipse"; clothed in plain and natural language, the action unfolded itself in a crescendo of horror; but from the ease with which he wrote—it cost him relatively the least time and pains of all his works—it would be rash to infer that he could have constructed an equally good tragedy on any other subject ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... once: I button my clothes tightly, so as to afford the Bees the least possible opportunity, and I enter the heart of the swarm. A few blows of the mattock, which arouse a far from reassuring crescendo in the humming of the Anthophorae, soon place me in possession of a lump of earth; and I beat a hasty retreat, greatly astonished to find myself still safe and sound and unpursued. But the lump of earth which I have removed is from a part too near the surface; ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... stood an elegant, open-topped, twenty-horse Humber, with an undersized and very astonished chauffeur blinking from under his peaked cap. From behind the wind-screen the veil-bound hats and wondering faces of two very pretty young women protruded, one upon either side, and a little crescendo of frightened squeaks announced the acute emotion of one of them. The other was cooler and ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shoulder and the stallion. A snarl of incredible ferocity made Satan turn, but without the slightest dread, apparently. For an instant the two stood nose to nose, Black Bart a picture of snarling danger and Satan with curiously pricking ears and bright eyes. The growling rose towards a crescendo, a terrible sound; then a lean hand shot out with that speed which Joan could never comprehend—and which always made her think, rather breathlessly, of the strike of a snake. The fingers settled around the muzzle ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... harp in window wailing Stirred by fitful gales from sea: Shrieking up in mad crescendo— Dying ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... mentioned the refusal of sleep and the refusal of food. In both it is possible to detect the influence of this pronounced force of opposition. As the child lies sobbing or screaming in bed, every new approach to him, every fresh attempt at pacification, renews the force of his opposition in a crescendo of sound. But it is in his refusal of food that the child is apt to find his chief opportunity. Meal-times degenerate into a struggle. There at least he can show his complete mastery of the situation. No one ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... disturbing Miller's peace of mind, but whatever it was moved to his advantage. He clamped tighter, working his heels into another secure position. The big man bellowed with pain. "Take him off! Take him off!" he implored in shrill crescendo. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... sent with a small escort towards the river and hospitals. An officer was despatched with the news to the Sirdar, and on the instant both cannonade and fusillade broke out again behind the ridge, and grew in a crashing crescendo until the whole landscape seemed to vibrate with the sound of explosions. The second phase of the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... is truly rather rich and very intelligent; so much so that some would even say that he was the friend of Madame Le Maitre." Her voice had a crescendo of vehemence ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... thousand miles. You lectured me with a lot of ideal patriotism, my young friend; but it's practical patriotism now for you and me, and with no lies to help it. You talked as if everything always went right with us all over the world, in a triumphant crescendo culminating in Hastings. I tell you everything has gone wrong with us here, except Hastings. He was the one name we had left to conjure with, and that mustn't go as well, no, by God! It's bad enough that a gang of infernal Jews should plant us here, where there's ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... Galen Albret, in a crescendo outburst. "Silence! I will not be gainsaid! You have made your choice! You are no ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... against slavery, Garrison remained true to his principles of non-resistance. But his denunciations of slavery made more impression on the popular mind, and aided in stirring up much of the violent sentiment in the North which expressed itself in a crescendo of denunciation of the slave owners. In the South, where anti-slavery sentiment had been strong before, a new defensive attitude began to develop. As Calhoun said of the ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... on the reservation card. Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon! Pretty high-soundin' patronymic, what? Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon!" He repeated the name over and over, crescendo, with growing fervor. "What's a woman with a title doin' d'you suppose? The title's no fake. She's got the blood all right, all right! You ought to ha' heard her shoo me out! Lummy! A nestin' hen giving the office to a snake weren't in it to her an' me! Good looker, ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... without intermission. It rose and fell, that was all. From a truculent piano it leapt to a titanic crescendo only to find relief again in a fierce growling dissatisfaction. It seemed less of an elemental war than a physical attack upon a shuddering earth. The electric fires rifting the darkness of this out-world ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... but nothing decidedly unpleasant occurred until someone proposed to drink to the downfall of Gladstone. The beautiful lord got on his legs and began a speech. Politically it was sound enough, but much of it was plainly intended to turn me into ridicule. I answered sharply, working gradually up crescendo, until at last, to bring matters to ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... Joe heard a crescendo of booming, crackling noises behind. Something else exploded dully. But he should be far enough ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... in response to a whistle. The sound came from the thick scrub with which the low bank of the river beyond the gorge was deeply overgrown. It was a whistle he knew. It came low and rose to a piercing crescendo. Then it died away to its original note. ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... done in the passion-music, by the soprano choir, which gives it peculiar significance and makes it stand out in striking contrast with the rest of the work. A forcible orchestral interlude, worked up in a strong crescendo, leads to the vigorous chorus, "Rise up! arise!" in which the powerful orchestral climax adds great strength to the vocal part. It is a vigorously constructed chorus, and is followed by a chorale ("Sleepers, wake! a Voice is calling"), which still further heightens the effect ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... unmenaced possession, and ever since, till within a day or two, the weight of its hand has been sensible. Properly enough, as the city of flowers, Florence mingles the elements most artfully in the spring—during the divine crescendo of March and April, the weeks when six months of steady shiver have still not shaken New York and Boston free of the long Polar reach. But the very quality of the decline of the year as we at present ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... at thought of which Sophia's heart fluttered till her breath was all but gone, was not allowed a natural beginning. After a time there came from below the first of a crescendo of sounds—that noise of muffled voices, long since familiar to the room. As the sound increased, and the laughter began to be punctuated by clangs of shivering glass, the woman and the boy drew closer together, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Mr. Fenley!" Farrow could only repeat each word in a crescendo of amazement. Being a singer, he understood the use of a crescendo, and gave ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... her. That is ancient history now. Now the English still feel fraternal and fraternally proud; but in a mute way they are dazzled. Since the German attack on Verdun began, the French have achieved a crescendo. None of us could have imagined it. It did not seem possible to very many of us at the end of 1915 that either France or Germany could hold on for another year. There was much secret anxiety for France. It has given place now to unstinted confidence and ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... ... ' (everyone in turn spoon) ' ... all spoon!' At this moment, from merely designating single objects by names learnt through imitation, the child's consciousness had awakened to connective thinking. That this achievement was a cause of inner satisfaction could be heard in the joyful crescendo with which ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... dock an insistent siren blared a crescendo and diminuendo blast of sound, and two minutes remained. In every stateroom and in every lounge and saloon speakers sounded ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... lament of the wood pewee brings to mind deep, moist places in the Pennsylvania backwoods; the crescendo of the oven bird awakens memories of the oaks of the Orange mountains; when a loon or an olive-sided flycatcher or a white-throat calls, the lakes and forests of Nova Scotia come vividly to mind; the cry of a sea-swallow ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... simple converse of the dactylic. There is presented in each case a single curve; the dactyl moves continuously away from an initial accent in an unbroken decrescendo, the anapaest moves continuously toward a final accent in an unbroken crescendo. But in the anapaestic form as well as in the dactylic there is a clear duality in the arrangement of elements within the group, since the two unaccented beats fall, as before, into one natural group, while the accented element is set apart by its widely differentiated ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... she thinks that he has recently refused to buy her a dress, and to take her to the theatre; that at the same time he looks unfriendly and walks away to the window; that indeed, she is really a pitiful, misunderstood, immeasurably unhappy woman, and after this crescendo, which often occurs presto prestissimo, the stream of tears breaks through. Some tiny reason, a little time, a little auto- suggestion, and a little imagination,—these can keep every woman weeping eternally, and these ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... see the vista growing hour by hour as the huge trees swayed, bent, and came crashing earthward. Far away the noise of the felling sounded, softened by distance; snowy jets of steam puffed up above the trees, the panting of a toy locomotive came on the breeze, the mean, crescendo ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... spoke, Gwynplaine, in a crescendo of stupor, remembered the past. Memory is a gulf that a word can move to its lowest depths. Gwynplaine knew all the words pronounced by Barkilphedro. They were written in the last lines of the two scrolls which lined the van in which his childhood had been passed, and, from so often letting ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... several results. It postponed the wedding: it stirred me to a very crescendo of patronage, for with the removal of the bread-winner the only flaw in my Cophetua pose had vanished: and it gave Audrey a great deal more scope than she had hitherto been granted for the exercise of free will in the ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... which to me has always seemed the high-water mark of Hugo's lyrical achievement as well as the most human of his utterances, one might pass on to masterpieces of another inspiration: to the luxurious and charming graces of Sara la Baigneuse; to the superb crescendo and diminuendo of les Djinns; to 'Si vous n'avez rien a me dire,' that daintiest of songlets; to the ringing rhymes and gallant spirit of the Pas ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... nice—" Rosemary's voice rose in a crescendo of pure pleasure. "But I'm not a good example—you won't say that when you know me. I get as ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... a voice somewhere among the trees, the sound rising weirdly to a subdued crescendo, clinging there until one's flesh went creepy, and then sliding ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... eager, ardent, passionate, the color in his cheeks burning to a dull brick tint beneath the tan. Body and soul she swayed toward him. All her vital love of life, of things beautiful and good and true, fused in a crescendo ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... and all things, Domini thought, were filled with a sense of climax. She felt as if the room, all the inanimate objects, and all the animate figures in it, were instruments of an orchestra, and as if each individual instrument was contributing to a slow and great, and irresistible crescendo. The stranger took his part with the rest, but against his will, and as if under ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... is yours! The instrument provides the devices for accelerating or retarding the time and for making the tone loud or soft, but when to whip up the time or to slow down, when to use the sustaining or the soft lever or when to swell through a crescendo from pianissimo to fortissimo—all that is left to your own taste, judgment and discretion. There is, indeed, among the improvements introduced in the pianola a contrivance, of which more hereafter, ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... novel with 'body,' with a large and timely idea back of it, with sound principles under it, and with a good crescendo ...
— The Uncrowned King • Harold Bell Wright
... "I shall leave immediately! Mr. Cone," dramatically, "the room I have occupied for twenty-eight summers is at your disposal." His voice rose in a crescendo movement so that even in the furthermost corner of the dining room they heard it: "I have a peach orchard down in Delaware, and I shall go there, where I can snore as much as I damn please; and ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... never still for a moment; they would drive me mad,' returned Phoebe, in the hollow tones that seemed natural to her. 'Flowers are better; but what have I to do with flowers? Doctor,' her voice rising into a shrill crescendo, 'you must give me something to send me to sleep, or I shall go mad. I think, think, think, until my head is in a craze ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... In an insensible crescendo the thought grew in him: Why should he never attain anything of that which he most longed for—intimate and cordial intercourse and friendliness which should answer to the warmth pent up within him? Why should everyone smile to Alphonse with ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... at her father and laughed. The saw was ripping through a series of knots in alternate crescendo and diminuendo. "Shall I wake him? He likes to sleep after eating. I think it does ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... by an inn of lamps and shades, a yellow inn under a yellow moon—then silence, where crescendo laughter fades... the car swung out again to the winds of June, mellowed the shadows where the distance grew, then crushed ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... high hereditary Majesty smiled on me when she gave Leicester conge and fiery quittance. She hath me in favour, and all shall be well with Michel and Angele. O fool, fool, fantastic and flavoured fool, sing me a song of good content, for if this business ends not with crescendo and bell-ringing, I am no butler to the Queen nor keep ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... playing of music. "The efforts which feeling makes to hold to...the shape of the first rhythm, the force which it is necessary to use to make it lose its desires and its habits, and to impose others on it, are naturally expressed by an agitation, that is, by a crescendo or greater intensity of sound, by an acceleration in movement." If a purely technical expression may be pardoned here, it could be said that the motor image, that is, the coordinated muscular tensions which make the group feeling of the fundamental rhythm, is always ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... Diminuendo, Now crescendo:— Thus play the furious band, Led by the kid-gloved hand Of Jullien—that Napoleon of quadrille, Of Piccolo-nians shrillest of the shrill; Perspiring raver Over a semi-quaver; Who tunes his pipes so well, he'll tell you that The natural key of Johnny Bull's—A flat. Demon of discord, with mustaches ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... you not go to the devil?' rejoined Lottchen, with a comic crescendo; to which the other ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... door, left ajar, there came, like a lightning-flash, a streak of light with an accompaniment of the crescendo of the orgy and the fragrance of a banquet ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... unkind longing to push everybody out of his life. He was, therefore, strongly irritated one afternoon, eight days after Charmian had written her note of conditional acceptance to Mrs. Shiffney, when his parlor-maid, Harriet, after two or three knocks, which made a well planned and carried out crescendo, came into the studio with the announcement that a lady wished ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... not in the power of reward or punishment to bend her female will in the essential point: 'Divorce, your Highness? When I am found guilty, yes. Till then, never, your Highness, never, never,' in steadv CRESCENDO tone:—so that his Highness is glad to escape again, and drop the subject. On which the Serene Lady again falls silent. Gravenitz, in fact, hopes always to be wedded with the right, nay were it only with the ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... voice rising into a perfect crescendo of ecstasy at the sight of his dear dark face. Could anything be more deliciously unexpected? And there was Miss Ruth laughing very softly to herself at ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... The duet produces a crescendo astounding to them both, for there has never been a noise so wonderful as this in all their experience. Then to Judy a very strange thing happens. She pauses for breath, but the noise goes on. "This is amazing—how do I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... coma, drew from a supermundane source beatific drafts, for he awoke refreshed, his mind clear, even alert. He gazed around; he, alone, moved. His companions resembled so many bags of rags cast here and there; only the snores, now diminuendo, then crescendo, dispelled the illusion. A smoking lamp threw a paucity of light and a good deal of odor around them. Was it night? The shadows played hide-and-seek in corners; there was no sound ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... departure of the procession from the church. It passed slowly along by the highroad and presently we heard a chorus of young voices singing hymns—the girls and boys of the village: the music was soft and illusive in the distance, developing a sweet crescendo as they turned into the pasture, fairly plowing their way through a sea of daisies. Behind them came two little acolytes, fair as angels, swinging their golden incense lamps; then followed six choir boys, chanting the Mass, like veritable della Robbias, in their red soutanes ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... about, with the persistence of constables during a London police-court hearing, carrying refreshments and little charcoal stoves. The signal for the next act is a deafening clicking noise made by one of the stage hands on two sticks, which gradually rises to a shattering crescendo as the curtain is drawn aside. It must be understood that the theatre that I am describing was set apart for national drama. In others there are topical farces and laughter is continuous; but I did not visit any. On board ship, ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... begun; and we have not said 'Good-morning.' Why should we? We did not say 'Good-night.' How ideal it would be, never to say 'Good-morning'; and never to say 'Good-night.' The night would be always 'good', and so would the morning. All life would be one grand crescendo of good—better—best. What? Have we found the Best? Ah, hush! I did not mean to say that yet.... Are you ready for the climb down? No, I can't allow any peeping over, and considering. If you really feel afraid of it, I will run to Tregarth as quickly as possible, rouse the sleeping village, bring ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... touched the very bottom of suicidal gloom. Three months hence their state of mind will no doubt appear in all its absurdity, but at the moment it is too piteous for words. When you think what they were yesterday and the day before, there is no language to express the crescendo of their despair. I came upon Mr. Riley this morning, standing by the window of the mess-room, and contemplating the facade of the railway station. (It is making a pattern on our brains.) I tried to soothe him. I said it ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... one said, "Was they a string around his neck, Dan'l?" Then he went back into his shop and returned with a long stick with a bent nail in the end and began to fish absorbedly into the culvert. Presently a wild crescendo of shrieks announced his catch. I shut my eyes and covered my ears and when I looked again he was hauling out a quivering lump of baby dog. He felt him all over with grimy, gentle fingers and "allowed they warn't nothin' broke ... just skairt him outer a year's growth," ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... silence, the rustics communicating with one another only by such whispers as might be perpetrated in church. But this did not last very long. From the moment the first turn was given to the tap in the cider-barrel, the attentive observer might have detected a rapid crescendo of human voices, which rose into a roar long before the end of the feast. When all had eaten their fill, songs were called for, and "Master" Perryman, of course, led off with ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... Victoria say it!" cried Sylvia with conviction. Father came out on the veranda, saying to Mother, "Isn't that crescendo superb?" To Sylvia he said, as though sure of her comprehension, "Didn't you like the ending, dear—where it sounded like the Argonauts all striking the oars into the water at once ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... Japanese man dlunk, ol no dlunk, all same to me. He no can speak tluth, he no can be honest man. He buy something, nevel pay. Japanese belong bad, bad, bad man. He always speak lie, lie, lie, lie," and he emphasised his words with a crescendo as he curled up what he possessed in the shape of a nose—for it was so flat that it hardly deserved the name; indeed, to give strength to his speech, he spat with violence on the ground, as if to clear his mouth, as it were, of the unclean sound ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... gradually ran up the scale till it reached a crescendo shout and then died out in a soft sound like a woman's wail. Heard anywhere the sound would have been alarming enough, but coming as it did in the midst of these unknown, mysterious Mountains of the Moon it struck a chill to the boy's heart ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... The day of our redemption shall arrive!" The voice ceased and a murmur ran through Hell, A fearful whisper, scarcely breathing, "Hope!" Then louder, as when storms begin to blow, Gusty and fitful, and the word was "Hope!" Then, rising like a tempest, swelling high In vast crescendo, swept the human cry, And all Hell's ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... favourites with the audience, passed by them and disappeared in the direction of the castle gate. We heard him knock and we heard the movement within, indicating serious alarm, while the masks made comments in dialect. This was repeated and repeated with a roaring crescendo until, with a crash, the walls of the castle fell upon the stage—a bushel of stones—and Samson entered carrying the castle gates under his left arm and his father on his right, and the delighted audience applauded as ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... took the heights and pushed in the Austrian center, driving its forces in this section in a disorganized flight toward Valievo. The days that ended the first invasion were renewed. Nor was this flight a mere sudden panic; it had, in fact, risen in a crescendo, from a small beginning, until it developed ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... "The crescendo of quarrel is most skilfully and drolly arranged;—a scene on classic lines boldly challenging and, what is more, maintaining comparison with Sheridan." Mr. A. ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... broke the camel's back, if it is proper so to speak of a middle-aged, delicate-featured lady, delightfully gowned and coiffed and manicured. Mrs. Gower's grief waxed crescendo. Whereupon her husband, with no manifest change of expression beyond an unpleasant narrowing of his eyes, heaved his short, flesh-burdened body out of the chair ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... again, but alas! (this reflection is worth a whole sermon in Lent) sin, like all pleasure, contains a spur. Vice is like an Autocrat, and let a single harsh fold in a rose-leaf irritate it, it forgets a thousand charming bygone flatteries. With Vice a man's course must always be crescendo!—and forever. ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... heard all through the long summer day. I hear it in the dry and parched August when most birds are silent, sometimes delivered on the wing and sometimes from the perch. Indeed, with me its song is as much a midsummer sound as is the brassy crescendo of the cicada. The memory of its note calls to mind the flame-like quiver of the heated atmosphere and the bright glare of the meridian sun. Its color is much more intense than that of the common bluebird, as summer skies are deeper than those of April, but its note is less mellow and ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... I to address you?" he said at length, having reached the culminating point of his crescendo, and knowing neither how to mount higher, nor to ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... flourishing crescendo finale Adrian Brownwell entered the dark stairway and went down into the street. Barclay turned quickly to his work as if to avoid meditation. The scratch of his pen and the murmur of the water on the roof grew louder and louder as the evening waxed old. And out on the hill, out ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... behind, upon each side were madly plunging horses, eyes staring, mouths agape exposing long white teeth that flashed wickedly in the moonlight, manes tossing wildly, and air whistling through wide-flaring nostrils. On and on they swept down the valley. The roar of hoofs rose to a mighty crescendo of thunder, above which, now and then, the terrified girl caught fierce yells from the flank of the herd. So close were the terrorized horses running that it was impossible for the girl to see the ground before her. Sweating, plunging bodies ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... led his party away from the little shed they hung about, and walked briskly up and down beside the track until a speck of blinking light rose out of the white wilderness. It grew rapidly larger, until they could make out a trail of smoke behind it, and the roar of wheels rose in a long crescendo. Then a bell commenced to toll, and the blaze of a big lamp beat into their faces as the great locomotive came clanking into ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... developments, in the terseness of impressive summaries, in the overpowering directness of unexpected arguments, in the multiplicity of literary achievements, in the execution of those passages of bravura, portraits, descriptions, comparisons, creations, wherein, as in a musical crescendo, the same idea, varied by a series of yet more animated expressions, attains to or surpasses, at the last note, all that is possible of energy and of brilliancy. Finally, he has that which is wanting in La Bruyere; his passages ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... faint, as though the girl's horror was somehow communicated to him. The scream reverberated through his brain, rising in an intolerable crescendo, blotting out other sensory perception. He fought to regain control of his fading senses, but the castle court blurred and he felt himself slipping into unconsciousness. He started sliding down an endless, dark chute, ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... little squint to its nose that Bud had ever seen. It was so absolutely demoralizing that to relieve himself Bud gave the squaw a shake. This tickled the baby so much that the chuckle burst into a rollicking laugh, with a catch of the breath after each crescendo tone that made it absolutely individual and like none ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... scenes of the sort quoted above, where the apparent monotony and verbal padding could be converted into coin for laughter by the clever comedian. Amph. 551-632 could be worked up poco a poco crescendo e animato; in Poen. 504 ff., Agorastocles and the Advocati bandy extensive rhetoric; in Trin. 276 ff., the action is suspended while Philto proves himself Polonius' ancestor in his long-winded sermonizing to Lysiteles and his insistent laudatio temporis acti; in ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... the Vatican. On stopping for refreshment at a wayside tavern, Bianca was struck by the arresting looks of the ostler who was tending their steaming steeds. Beckoning to him, she asked of him his name; he turned his vacant eyes round and round wonderingly for a moment. "Crescendo," he replied. Bianca's eyes flashed fire. "Accelerato!" she cried imperiously, and, hypnotised into submission, the scared man fled ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... became more ugly, less like hers, as if the emotion that governed her just then made a crescendo, became more vital and ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... knocked together and parted, And started to dance, Skipping, tripping, each one slipping Under and over the others so That the polychrome fire streamed like a lance Or a comet's tail, Behind them. Then a wail arose—crescendo— And dropped from off the end of the bow, And the dancing stopped. A scent of lilies filled the room, Long and slow. Each large white bloom Breathed a sound which was holy perfume from a blessed censer, And the hum of an organ tone, And they waved like ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... yipp arose in a crescendo, the man stirred, putting one hand to his head. His eyes opened, he looked vaguely about him and sat up. Behind him was the torn and ripped ship, but he did not look ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... sentence was lost in a crescendo bellow of sound. Seaton, still at the controls, shut off the noise, studied his meters carefully, and turned around to ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... distance seem like long Chinese banners held up against the sky. From Sandy Hook to the great landing stages and the swirling hooting traffic of the Hudson River there fails nothing in that magnificent crescendo of approach. ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... piece of woods for a hundred rods the other evening, and heard the katydids by myriads—very curious for once; but I like better my single neighbor on the tree. Let me say more about the song of the locust, even to repetition; a long, chromatic, tremulous crescendo, like a brass disk whirling round and round, emitting wave after wave of notes, beginning with a certain moderate beat or measure, rapidly increasing in speed and emphasis, reaching a point of great energy and significance, and then quickly ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... blacks wage war. One of the most redoubtable of our chiefs stepped forward, and explained the reason of his people's visit in comparatively calm tones. An opposing chief replied to him, and gradually a heated altercation arose, the abuse rising on a crescendo scale for ten or fifteen minutes. These two then retired, and another couple of champion abusers stepped forward to "discuss" the matter. This kind of thing went on for a considerable time, the abuse being of the most appalling description, and directed mainly against the organs of the ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... opening scene a little too slow," he said. "I shall call the director's attention to that. But that crescendo is well done; yes, that is most effective. The shawl—observe the beautiful lines into which the shawl falls as she waves it. That is wonderful—a very impressive entry. Ah, but they should not cross the stage yet; it is more effective if they ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... advice. But it was of no use; when he had struggled on for half an hour, he sprang up, realising how monstrous it was that he should be sitting there, drilling his fingers, getting the right notes of a turn, the specific shade of a crescendo, when, not very far away, Louise perhaps lay dying. Again he felt keenly the contrariness of life; and all the labour which those around him were expending on the cult of hand and voice and car, seemed of a ludicrous vanity compared with the grim little tragedy that touched him so nearly; ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... came closer, she saw that he walked with his chin on his breast; when he reached the gate at the end of the avenue, he did not see it and bumped into it. "Dios mio!" she heard him mutter. "Dios! Dios! Dios!" The last word ended in tragic crescendo; he leaned on the gate, and there, in the white silence, the last of the Farrels stood gazing up the avenue as if ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... red, holding a hint of brown, by where the sun had sunk. And minutes passed—minutes for me full of silent expectation, while the moonlight grew a little stronger, a few more silver rays slipped down upon the ruins. I turned toward the east. And then came that curious crescendo of color and of light which, in Egypt, succeeds the diminuendo of color and of light that is the prelude to the pause before the afterglow. Everything seemed to be in subtle movement, heaving as ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... he assured her, smoothing back her hair. But she continued to sob on in a gradual crescendo of despair, till the vehemence of her weeping began to frighten him, and he drew her to her feet and tried to persuade her to let herself be led upstairs. She yielded to his arm, sobbing in short exhausted gasps, and leaning her ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... by. Surely he would have had time to reach camp by now. The storm neither increased nor decreased; only played its mournful melodies in the forest. The song of the rain was despairing,—low mournful notes rising to a sharp crescendo as the fiercer gusts swept it into the tree tops. The limbs murmured unhappily as they smote together; and a tall tree, swaying in the wind, creaked with a maddening regularity. She was never so lonely before, so ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... of profound stillness had passed, and I could just make out the circle of dogs sitting on their tails on the open shore, when suddenly, faint and far away, an unearthly howl came rolling down the mountains, ooooooo-ow-wow-wow! a long wailing crescendo beginning softly, like a sound in a dream, and swelling into a roar that waked the sleeping echoes and set them jumping like startled goats from crag to crag. Instantly the huskies answered, every clog breaking out into indescribable frenzied wailings, as a collie responds in agony to certain ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... your own mother who gives all to her dear boy. Make it last as long as possible. Frig my cunt, Mary—put in two fingers. Now go on, but not too fast at first—gentle strokes bring the greatest pleasure, till at length we go crescendo. Oh, you do it so nicely, my love, my own boy! Isn't he a darling, Mary? He shall fuck you, my love, as often as he likes; only I must have my boy when ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... believe that any one could cross that fire-swept area alive, but before many moments we heard the staccato of bursting bombs and hand grenades which meant that some of the enemy, at least, were within striking distance. There was a sharp crescendo of deafening sound, then, gradually, the firing ceased, and word came down the line, "Counter-attack against the —— Guards; and jolly well beaten off too." Another was attempted before daybreak, and again the same torrent of lead, the same hideous uproar, the same sickening smell ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... to free himself from the clutch of the white, bloodless hand, but she clung to him desperately, despairingly, while her voice rose in an agonized crescendo. ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... displayed. Before the gates of Hades and the throne of Proserpine he sings, and his singing is the right outpouring of a poet's soul; each octave resumes the theme of the last stanza with a swell of utterance, a crescendo of intonation that recalls the passionate and unpremeditated descant of a bird upon the boughs alone. To this true quality of music is added the persuasiveness of pleading. That the violin melody of his ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... up a shower of snow which caused the glowing coals of the little fire to sizzle and smoke. The cry of the wolves had floated—but this new cry seemed to hurl itself through the night—a terrifying crescendo of noise that sounded at once a challenge and wail. For a full minute after the sound ceased the boy sat tense and motionless, staring wide-eyed beyond the fire, while behind him, in the farthest corner of the tent the malamutes huddled and whined. ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... take possession of their victims slowly and quietly, with an imperceptible start, and a gradual crescendo of envelopment; others there are, that strike, sudden as a hawk, or a bullet. And this is true also of that other illness, the fever of the mind and heart that is called Love. An old song says, and says, for ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... super-Simba. The dispute might in the ordinary course of events have come to shooting; but only after hours of excited wrangling, and as a climax worked up to in a crescendo of emotion. This expeditious nipping in the bud was a ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... straightness—are thickly bordered with mignonette. Not an audacious thing, not a red blossom nor a strong yellow one, nor one broad leaf, nor any mass of dense or dark foliage, comes into view until one reaches a side of the dwelling. But there at once he finds the second phase in a crescendo of floral colors. The base of the house, and especially those empty eye-sockets, the cellar windows, are veiled in exultant bloom, yellows predominating. Then at the back of the place comes the full ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... Cino, or Cinito, the affectionate diminutive, would have been I am unable to say, since I never had the courage to try the experiment. It often amused me to hear Dona Mercedes calling to him from the house, and throwing the whole emphasis on the last syllable in a long, piercing crescendo: "Ne—po—mu—ci—no—o." Sometimes, when I sat in the orchard, he would come, and, placing himself before me, discourse gravely about things in general, clipping his words and substituting r for l in the negro fashion, which made it hard for me to repress a smile. After winding ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... Piper whirled down the aisle and swept out of the building on the high tide of his song. The young men in the back of the hall followed him in noisy hilarity, but he stopped for nobody. He went marching straight up the village street towards home, the defiant notes rising in a wild crescendo. And oh, how he blew with lungs of leather like fifty pipers together, when he was passing the ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... Bourne might have to overcome that habit of putting his hand before his face as he talked, and he would certainly have to use language much less lurid than he occasionally employed. William Clowes might have to abandon his practice of repeating a sentence over and over again in animated crescendo. Henry Higginson might be instructed not to lapse into impromptu rhyme in his Camp Meeting addresses. Joseph Spoor might be informed that if he wanted gymnastic exercises he must take them in private, and never by way of standing with one foot on the pulpit seat and the other on ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... Mrs. Sturk, with a loud hysterical cry, that quivered with her agony, answered from without, and wildly rattled at the door-handle, and pushed with all her feeble force to get in, in a kind of crescendo screaming—'Oh, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... bald-headed men behind him; and there was youth also in his clear, ringing voice that not even the vault-like atmosphere of that shadowless chamber could altogether rob of its vitality. He spoke simply and good-humouredly, without any attempt at rhetoric, relying chiefly upon a crescendo of telling facts that gradually, as he proceeded, roused the House to that tense stillness that comes to it ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... angry roar, muffled, distant, he thought in the voice of Alden. It was stifled, cut off ere it had come to full crescendo, in a very significant manner. Silence, then, fell about him, the chill ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... monotonous music stirred the savages to action. Solemnly they formed a circle around the fire, arms extended, lightly touching each other's finger-tips. To and fro they swayed in time to the crude music, and when the drums thundered out a sonorous crescendo, they crouched to the earth, springing up in unison, uttering fearful yells. When the individual dancing commenced, exhausted members began to fall out, leaving the youth and vigor of the tribe to compete for the honors. A maiden must prevent a youth from confronting her; the youth, ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... line) [<] Crescendo hairpin [x] small cross [] 45 degree downstroke [/] 45 degree upstroke [/] large circumflex shape [O|] a circle bisected by a vertical line protruding both ways [Gamma] The Greek capital gamma [mid-dot] a dot at the ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell |
