"For a song" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... visionary throng Who choose to follow where thy pathway leads, Have sold my patrimony for a song, And donned the simple, lowly pilgrim's weeds. From that first image of beloved walls, Deep-bowered in umbrage of ancestral trees, Where earliest thy sweet enchantment falls, Tingeing a child's fantastic reveries With radiance so fair it seems to be Of heavens just lost the lingering evidence ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... lately, by his own concurrence, that he intended to sing at a concert at the Argyle Rooms; and although he has no more voice than a 424 cat, he was under the full impression that his Majesty, at the conclusion of the last court-day, intended to call upon him for a song. The Doctor asked me and Caustic to one of his literary dinners; and as T have supplied you with a sketch of a cook-shop gourmand, I make no apology for shewing up a more elevated class of gastronomes, by reporting the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... are in two long, narrow rooms, lighted only on one side and not nearly large enough. But how the little throats did roll out the music and what time they kept, when called upon for a song! Another treat was a song from a young lady who was practicing in the music room. The modest grace with which she complied when asked to sing for us, is almost as pleasant a memory ...
— American Missionary, August, 1888, (Vol. XLII, No. 8) • Various
... "It's going! Going! Gone! Three thousand pounds!" Three thousand pounds! A frenzy leapt in me. "That picture's mine," I cried; "I'm David Strong. I painted it, this famished wretch you see; I did it, I, and sold it for a song. And in a garret three small hours ago My daughter died for want of Christian care. Look, look at me! . . . Is it to mock my woe You pay three thousand for my picture there?" . ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... them. He doubtless bought it for a song and, contrary to all human belief, he may have resurrected a conscience. Anyhow, there remains a chance for the ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... sometimes gets impatient during the intermission. If I could put you on for a song, ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... won't anybody worry about 'Bony.' He's right handy around the mill, an' he does odd jobs for a many people; but if you want him, I 'low you can have him 'for a song.'" ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... it, turned their backs upon their claims and never gave them a second thought. One man sold a half-interest in five hundred feet of it for a sack of flour. Other owners wandered around trying to bunco men into buying them out for a song. And then Eldorado "showed up." It was far, far richer than Bonanza, with an average value of a thousand dollars a foot to every ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... you don't want to die in here, do you? (explanatorily) "die in"—dine—you'll excuse me, but the ocean always makes me feel so facetious. Captain, dear, if you'll pardon a common sailor like myself for making the suggestion, I beg to call upon you for a song. (The Captain obligingly bellows "The Stormy Nore—The Jolly old Nore," to the general satisfaction). Ah, they didn't know what a canary-bird you were, Captain! Here's a lady asking you to drink at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... abreast, with snorting prows, we raced along; our mat-sails panting to the breeze. All present partook of the life of the air; and unanimously Yoomy was called upon for a song. The canoes were passing a long, white reef, sparkling with shells, like a jeweler's case: and thus Yoomy sang in the same old strain as of yore; beginning aloud, where he had left off in ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... saddest sits in homely cell, He'll teach his swains this carol for a song,— "Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well, Curst be the souls that think her any wrong." Goddess, allow this aged man his right To be your beadsman ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... there was no time for rest. A half dozen kilted Highlanders hailed her through the open door and asked for a song. She gave them "Wee Hoose Amang the Heather—" standing on the step. It was still raining, and they took with them a picture of a girl with glorious uncovered hair, and that cut ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... a poor man. I could have made money out of my remedies had I charged as some physicians do, but instead I wished to aid humanity, and so sold my priceless medicines for a song. Yes, I am poor, sir, and I need money. If I aid you——" Hooker Montgomery ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... before the brake was to start back, and it was then the concertinas came in useful. They sat down on the grass, and the concert was begun by Harry, who played a solo; then there was a call for a song, and Jim stood up and sang that ancient ditty, 'O dem Golden Kippers, O'. There was no shyness in the company, and Liza, almost without being asked, gave another popular comic song. Then there was more concertina playing, and ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... on having a night of real rational enjoyment, he goes to some tavern where singing is the order of the evening. A stout man in the chair knocks on the table, and being the landlord, makes disinterested enquiries if every gentleman has a bumper. He then calls on himself for a song, and states that he is to be accompanied on the piano by a distinguished performer; whereupon, a tall young man of a moribund expression of countenance, and with his hair closely pomatumed over his head, rises, and, after a low bow, seats himself at the instrument. The stout ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... arm, to make him remember that talking was his dangerous pastime, and sent abroad a petition for a song-book; and after a space a very doggy-eared book, resembling a poodle of that genus, was handed to her. Then uprose a shout for this song and that; but Emilia fixed upon the one she had in view, and walked back to her harp, with her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... before seen. She found herself speculating as to the amount these elaborate furnishings would fetch if sold. She recalled the fact, forgotten till now, that when the Berringtons' belongings, purchased with reckless extravagance, passed under the hammer, they had gone for a song. She made the same forecast regarding the contents of Tory Hill. Much money had been spent on them, but, with the exception perhaps of some of the old portraits, there was little of real intrinsic value. She made the reflection coldly, drearily, as bearing ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... meeting each other at nights, in the meadow-bottom at the end of her own park. It lies over that way,—I could take you to the very place. The schoolmaster was a noble-looking young man too, a devil-me-care blade of a fellow, with a turn for poetry, they said, and a merry man too, and much in request for a song at The Moonrakers of an evening. Many 's the night I've heard the windows rattling with the good company gathered round him. Yes, he was a noble-looking man, a noble-looking man," he repeated wistfully, and with an evident sympathy ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... himself down to his last groat, and will let it go for a song now," said Tom. "I would get there before any other fellow does. Jack Wyse and Hal Langton both want it, but they have gamed their pockets empty, and wait till necessity forces him to lower his price to their ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... will go where work is," said the mother of a multimillionaire-to-be. The furniture went to pay the grocer. The looms were sold for a song. The debts were paid, and there was enough, with the contribution of a ten-pound note by a fond uncle, to buy passage to New York for the father, mother, Thomas and Andrew. It was the year Eighteen Hundred Forty-eight. Thomas was sixteen, and Andrew was eleven. Tom was more handsome than Andy, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... in vain for a song; only a lisping "Twee-twee-ze," or "a dreary whisper," as Minot calls their low-toned communications with each other, reaches our ears from their high perches in the cedar trees, where they sit, almost motionless hours at a time, digesting ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... one day and said, 'We are rich'; and the next he said, 'We are poor.' This Maloney mine looks well, but who can be sure? When I came here I thought that if I found the man with the shares I could get them for a song. I may yet, but my dear child tells me that he has seen here a man from Grass Valley named Barclay who is a friend of that shareholder, and," she added, bitterly, "perhaps he has got ahead of me. I must see the man at once and make him ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... General, Absent Friends and so on—several comrades from other corps dropped in and every one was called upon for a song. It is curious to find the extraordinary popularity amongst soldiers of lugubrious and doleful songs. The majority of our songs at that Christmas dinner dealt with graves and the flowers that grew upon them, on the death ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... a father than a master." It was during the course of a visit to Edinburgh in the same year, that an accidental circumstance gave a wider range to his poetical reputation. Spending an evening with a party of friends in the Crown Tavern, he was solicited for a song. He sung the last which he had composed; it was "Donald Macdonald." The reception was a roar of applause, and one of the party offered to get it set to music and published. The song was issued anonymously from the music establishment of Mr John Hamilton of Edinburgh. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... each of these treasures for a song, and the nightingale went on singing. It sang about the quiet churchyard, when the roses bloom, where the elder flower scents the air, and where the fresh grass is ever moistened anew by the tears of the mourner. This song brought to Death a longing for his ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... was nothing doing in lumber; big fellows wouldn't come in and develop. Well, Moyese got 'em the timber tracts for a song. Other men couldn't, wouldn't or didn't ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... several other places to pay my debts and do business, I being resolved to cast up my accounts within a day or two, for I fear I have run out too far. In coming home I met with a face I knew and challenged him, thinking it had been one of the Theatre musicians, and did enquire for a song of him, but finding it a mistake, and that it was a gentleman that comes sometimes to the office, I was much ashamed, but made a pretty good excuse that I took him for a gentleman of Gray's Inn who sings well, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... or two before might have been had for a song, and mineral rights that might have been had for less than a song, were now held at ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... and below the Ohio, through all the gigantic valley of a river so great that it seems a fable, south to New Orleans, and westward to the undiscovered lies the country that is to be! And Napoleon, in order that he may brandish over England one thunderbolt the more, sells it for a song!—and we buy it for a song—and not one man in fifty guesses that we have bought the song of the future! The man who bought it knows its value—but Mr. Jefferson cares only for Done lays. He'll not have the Phrygian. He dreams of cotton and olives, of flocks ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... mislead you as to its uncommonness; it was really commonplace life in strange and unfamiliar circumstances. Here is an example. At the first concert it was noticed, not without surprise, that the Captain's name was down for a song. Now for days the Captain had tramped alone up and down the deck—a large man, with a heavy face and drooping eye, and a head set forward on the shoulders by reason of long hours of staring into the sea dust; a man past ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... said my host; "it's just the place for a solitary-minded devil like you. And it would be rather worth while to own the most romantic house in Brittany. The present people are dead broke, and it's going for a song—you ought ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... such men as Iberville, were as cheerful in the still iron winter as any city under any more cordial sky then or now: men loved, hated, made and broke bargains, lied to women, kept a foolish honour with each other, and did deeds of valour for a song, as ever they did from the beginning of the world. Through the stern soul of Nature ran the temperament of men who had hearts of summer; and if, on a certain notable day in Iberville's life, one could have looked through the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... voice shook a little on the last line and he was a trifle amused at his emotionalism. He tried to bring the moment sanely back to the commonplace. "Corking for a song, Top Step. I'll hammer out some chords ... doesn't need much." He looked again through the strangely charged atmosphere of the quiet room, at the three big children. Jimsy King was on his feet, shaken out of the ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... ears during their advance in the wood. The Don complied, malgre, bongre; and at the conclusion of this feat, the French colonel, resolved not to be outdone in any thing, called on one of his subalterns for a song. The subaltern hopelessly searched his memory for its lyrical stores; but after half a dozen snatches of "chansons," and breaking down in them all, he volunteered, in despair, what he pronounced, "the most popular love-song in all Italy." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... argument, and to the point," said Metem reflectively. "Well, I have prepared myself a rock-hewn tomb at Tyre, and do not wish that my graven sarcophagus of best Egyptian alabaster should be wasted, or sold to some upstart for a song." ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... all ends." To quote Mr. Harry Cowell, writing in The Magazine Maker: "A title is a means to an end. The end of a story should justify the title. If the title gives the story away, the writer may have to give it away, too, or sell it for a song, which is bad business." Let the title suggest the theme of the story, by all means; but keep your climax, your "big" scene, safely under cover until the moment comes to "spring it" upon the spectators and leave them gasping, as it were, at the very unexpectedness of it. Avoid titles ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... myself," said the driver of the wagon, who had been a farm hand for the former owner. "They're the greatest honey-makers I ever saw. But I didn't have any place to take them, so I had to let them go. You're a lucky boy—you got them for a song, but do you know how to handle them?" he inquired. "You'll have to look out for them now very carefully, or you may lose them. The spring is the time they require watching so ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... the sea coast, were armed entirely with muskets, these being either cheap Birmingham trade guns or old converted muskets, bought by traders for a song at the sale of disused government stores. It is much to be regretted that the various governments of Europe do not insist that their old guns shall be used only as old iron. The price obtained for them is so trifling as to be immaterial, and the great proportion of them find their way to Africa to ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... Chicago street-railways, once he had them well in hand, could be made to yield such splendid profits! He could incorporate and overcapitalize. Many subsidiary lines, which McKenty would secure for him for a song, would be worth millions in the future, and they should be his entirely; he would not be indebted to the directors of the old North Chicago company for any interest on those. By degrees, year by year, as the city grew, the lines which were still controlled by this old company, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... for beauty follow long Flying traces; some there be Seek thee only for a song: I to lose myself ...
— The Nuts of Knowledge - Lyrical Poems New and Old • George William Russell
... will be deafened,' said Rose, laughing, as she escaped from him a moment, to arrange for a song from a tall formidable maiden, built after the fashion of Mr. Gilbert's contralto heroines, with a voice which bore out the ample promise of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Norway! To think but of thee Makes so small all the small things I felt. To thy coming I hallow me, wholly to thee, And I humbly look up to thy face, unto thee, And I pray for a song With thy tongue's stirring sound, That I true may and strong In the crisis be found, To rouse heroes for thee ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... I found a nest with four young ones on the south side of the Pir-Pinjal Pass. This bird has no song, only a double chirp in addition to its callnote. The double chirp, which is very loud, is intended for a song, for the male bird incessantly repeats it as he feeds from tree to tree near where the female is sitting ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... struck up a song, and Doyle remembered that Satherwaite had been in the Glee Club. There was an instant clamor for a song, and Satherwaite, consenting, ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... cabin for myself. As you see, she has four little brass guns, which I picked up for a song at Calcutta; and there are twenty-four muskets aft. It is an arrangement that the crew are to practise shooting once a week, so they have all come to be pretty fair shots; and the captain, himself, can send a two-pound shot from ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... mason's repeated applications. "Turpsichor" had then been sold cheap to a man who had started a tea-garden, in the vain hope of reviving the glories of those forgotten institutions; when he had drifted into bankruptcy, she had been knocked down for a song to a second-hand shop, where she had been bought for next to nothing by Mr Poulter as "the very thing." Now she stood in the entrance hall of the academy, where, it can truthfully be said, that no heathen ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... book and an old copy of the "Carmina Sacra," and then our friend, Colonel, now Major-General, Connor, was never at a loss for a song, and Colonel French often displayed his genius with the violin, and our friend, the chaplain, could always tell a good story or perpetrate a joke. Chaplain Norman Fox was an accession to our staff, who joined us when ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... what he could for him by giving him the Portuguese mission (after first offering it to my father), and O'Sullivan did excellent work there. But he became interested—abstractly—in some copper-mines in Spain, which, as he clearly demonstrated, could be bought for a song, and would pay a thousand per cent, from the start. Partly to gratify him, and partly with the hope of at least getting his money back, my father finally, in 1858 or 1859, advanced him ten thousand dollars to finance the scheme. I saw the dear old gentleman, a generation later, in New York; ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... Transcontinental Railroad. More than anyone else Ryder had been aroused by the present legal action, not so much for the money interest at stake as that any one should dare to thwart his will. It had been a pet scheme of his, this purchase for a song, when the land was cheap, of some thousand acres along the line, and it is true that at the time of the purchase there had been some idea of laying the land out as a park. But real estate values had increased in astonishing ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... heart out of books and reciting it by rote, like parrots; so that a finished education consisted simply of a permanent headache and the ability to read without stopping to spell the words or take breath. Hawkins bought out the village store for a song and proceeded to reap the profits, which amounted to but little ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... a friend, this would be a mighty good chance to squeeze you," remarked the General; "we could keep your cars back until we'd clean squelched your traffic, and then buy the little road up for a song. It's business, but it isn't fair, and I'll be blamed if I'm going ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... this clever scheme, the adventurer sets out on his travels, visits provincial towns, and the estates of landed gentry of every shade of character, honesty, and financial standing; and from them he buys for a song (or cajoles from them for nothing, as a gift, when they are a trifle scrupulous over the tempting prospect of illegal gain) huge numbers of "dead souls." Pushkin himself could not have used with such tremendous effect the phenomenal opportunities ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... 1819, my father took possession of the apothecary's shop in Neu-Ruppin, which he had acquired at a most favorable price, for a song, so to speak; at Easter, 1826, after three of my four brothers and sisters had been born there, he disposed of the property. Whenever this early sale of the business became a topic of conversation, it was always characterized ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... shook his head. "Bought it on her own, after the husband's time, for a song—a song! I know, because I knew the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... all these treasures for a song. And still the Nightingale sang on. He sang of the quiet churchyard, where the white roses grow, where the elder flowers bloom, and where the grass is kept moist by the tears of those left behind, and there came to Death such a ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... intervals when he was partially sober, he sold all he possessed,—ship after ship sold for a song, and the proceeds squandered in drinking or worse. He never had a sight of his lost bride. He did not seek it; and she, terrified, took every precaution to avoid it, and soon returned with ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Lady K. says we might have Lord Porlock's house—poor Lady Porlock and her baby died a few weeks ago, and he has gone to Sweden quite broken-hearted. It is one of the new houses, exquisitely furnished, and Lady K. thinks you might have it for a song. Will you get Steadman to write to his lordship's steward, and see what can ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... all his leases inside of a month if he doesn't sell 'em; and with cotton at six cents, they ain't shovin' each other off of Reedy's stairway tryin' to get to him first. It's my idea that a fellow could buy out the Red Butte for a song, and hire a parrot to sing it for ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... room to muse invite, Or whitened wall provoke the skewer to write: In durance, exile, Bedlam or the Mint— Like Lee or Budgel, I will rhyme and print. F. Alas, young man! your days can ne'er be long, In flower of age you perish for a song! Plums and directors, Shylock and his wife, Will club their testers, now, to take your life! P. What? armed for virtue when I point the pen, Brand the bold front of shameless guilty men; Dash the proud gamester in his gilded car; Bare the mean heart that lurks beneath a star; Can there ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... "'Gene picked it up at an auction where people were being sold out, and he got it for a song," he said. "But we've outgrown it. I'd like a real pony. I wish ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... up in a cascade of ecstasy from the throats of bobolinks nesting among the daisies, timothy, and clover; when the blue sky arches over the fairest scenes the year can show, and all the world is full of sunshine and happy promises of fruition, must we Americans always go to English literature for a song to ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... mounted to millions of acres. The long-standing practice of stealing these lands was checked and put a stop to as rapidly as possible. Individuals and private companies had bought for a song great tracts of national property, getting thereby, it might be, the title to mineral deposits worth fabulous sums; and these persons were naturally angry at being deprived of the immense fortunes which they had counted on for ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... true state of his thoughts when called upon by Sir Thomas Tilden. "Here is Lieutenant Trevelyan, the Adonis of our Regiment, whom we cannot accuse of a breach of impropriety to-night, except it be that of reserve." "Come now, Trevelyan, you are in for a song," exclaimed a dozen voices, pressing around the young Lieutenant, in noisy appeals. Contrary to their expectations, Trevelyan did favor the company with a patriotic song, which drew forth stirring applause and made him the hero of the evening. "Well ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... anyhow, one sighs for a song, and my heart-quaking carried me to a ballad, very familiar in our countryside, which tells of an unbridled lover laying siege to a woman he covets. Her men were absent, and she and her domestics were the only garrison of the castle when he ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... in Mr. Gowans, a Scotchman and a book-collector of means and cultivation, whose fancy for them went so far as to induce him to become a member of the unique little family in the dingy wooden shanty which they had succeeded in renting for a song. To this old gentleman, who had the reputation of being something of a crank, The Dreamer's conversation and Virginia's beauty and exquisite singing were never-failing wells of delight, while the generous sum that ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... more than 550 feet above sea-level, the climate of Heddle's Farm is said to be wholly different from that of the lower town. The property was bought by Government for a song, and now it occasionally lodges a sick governor or a convalescent officer. During my last visit the Sa Leonites spoke of building a sanatorium at Wilberforce village, alias Signal Hill, where a flag announces the approach of vessels. The tenement rose to nearly ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... the party turned a hasty glance in the direction where we lay hidden, supposing probably that the noise was made by some bird in the foliage above their heads. In a short time one of the young gentlemen was called on for a song. He without hesitation complied. I forget the strain. It was a right merry one. Another ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... he sneered. 'I have the missing portions of the papyrus here with me. You can have them for a song. I was afraid to leave the roll too complete, lest I should invite detection. It would be a pity to let them go to some other museum. Berlin is longing for a ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... social revolution ought to begin from above. What right has the bricklayer to grumble when he receives for a week's work almost more than I for a song?" ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... Tom, Dick, and Harry (according to us; Jim, Charlie, and Frank according to their sponsors in baptism) simply couldn't bear it. They went out; and four hours later came back with a car (Lord made it, so let it pass for a car!) which they had bought somewhere, second or third hand, for a song. Even a song of sixpence would be dear for the great-grandmother of the whole progeny of Lords! The thing must be eight years old if it's a day, but the boys are as pleased as Punch with their bargain. The oldest of them (Tom) ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... I searched my mind for a song, but the only one which came promptly was "M'Appari," several bars of which I gave my juvenile audience, ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... because of his legend. Verlaine over again! The etchings were classic when they were born. We wonder they did not appeal immediately. To-day, if you are lucky enough to come across one, you are asked a staggering price. They sold for a song—when they did sell—during the lifetime of the artist. Louis Napoleon and Baron Haussmann destroyed picturesque Paris to the consternation of Meryon, who to the eye of an archaeologist united the soul of an artist. He loved old Paris. We ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... awkward fashion, but always moving the head forwards in a straight line. The women then joined in, remaining, however, at some little distance in the rear of the men, and making the same awkward movements. They now began a most horrible noise, which was intended for a song, at the same time distorting their features in a frightful manner. One of them stood near, playing upon a kind of stringed instrument, made out of the stem of a cabbage-palm, and about two feet, or two feet and a half, in length. A hole was cut in it in a slanting direction, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... laugh. "Ottawa! Why, it's some of the big guns at Ottawa that's gettin' the cream of it all. The little fellows are just lapping up the drips. Look at them big concessions they're selling for a song, good placer ground that would mean pie to the poor miner, closed tight and everlastingly tied up. How is it done? Why, there's some politician at the bottom of the whole business. Look at the liquor permits—crude alcohol sent into the country by the thousand gallons, diluted ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the island of Herm, in the Channel Isles; such are one or two volcanic rocks in the Greek Archipelago, which you may purchase for a song, and live on if you can, though their barren waterlessness under the midsummer suns will compel you to put out to sea again for all the dangers of swift currents and black crags; such, too, I imagine, are some of those enchanted small islands in the South Seas of which Conrad writes: "It was ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Madeleine; for she had counted on his inviting her. She was first incredulous, then offended, at his refusal: and she pooh-poohed his strongest argument—that he did not own a dress-suit. If that was all, she knew a shop in the BRUHL, where such things could be hired for a song. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... it Lumber can't go any higher. Think of the situation; the lumber men in the north and west are overstocked, and there is a strike ready to go into effect. When that comes the stock will go for a song. The slump is liable to ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... tumultuous toasting of the Chief Commissioner and Mr. Solomon Pell, who had that day displayed such transcendent abilities, a mottled-faced gentleman in a blue shawl proposed that somebody should sing a song. The obvious suggestion was, that the mottled-faced gentleman, being anxious for a song, should sing it himself; but this the mottled-faced gentleman sturdily, and somewhat offensively, declined to do. Upon which, as is not unusual in such cases, a ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... prices for all Cruikshank's illustrations, so that a lover of modern art has been jealous to note the amount paid for by many extremely poor pictures by this artist, when even original drawings for the masterpieces by later illustrators went for a song. In Mr. Temple Scott's indispensable "Book Sales of 1896" we find the two volumes ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... colonists, cleared more land and drained the marshes, increased his orchards, laid out new farms, gave some attention to adornment, erected a church and school-houses, and purchased from the American settlers in the neighborhood their best lands for a song. He did everything systematically. He always assigned his colonists the sort of labor that they appeared to him best fitted for, and each one found the place best suited to his capabilities. If any one objected to doing his will and obeying his orders, he was driven out of the colony, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... a block of a hundred shares myself, which I bought eighteen months ago for a song. I give you my word I didn't think it worth more than a dollar or two a share—what I gave—when I learned not long since that they'd struck it rich, and I was no longer ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... "A long cheer and a whopper!" And, when it had been given lustily: "And now one for the second team!" he cried. "Everyone into it! One—two—three!" The enthusiasm was mounting high now, and, after the cheer had died away, there were demands for a song. "We want to sing!" proclaimed the meeting. "We want ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... affairs of his practice, a visit to his brokers, Messrs. Grin and Grinning, to give them instructions to sell his shares in the New Colliery Co., Ltd., whose business he suspected, rather than knew, was stagnating (this enterprise afterwards slowly declined, and was ultimately sold for a song to an American syndicate); and a long conference at Waterbuck, Q.C.'s chambers, attended by Boulter, by Fiske, the junior counsel, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... do for a song, but it ain't no p'ints of a good hos. Trotters nowadays go in all shapes, big heads and little heads, big eyes and little eyes, short ears or long ears, thick tail and no tail; so as they have sound legs, good l'in, good barrel, and good stifle, and wind, 'squire, and speed well, they'll fetch ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... speculator thrives and fattens. If his country is fighting by a levy en masse for her very existence, he aids her by depreciating her paper, so that he may accumulate fabulous amounts with little outlay. If his neighbor is distressed, he buys his property for a song. If he administers upon an estate, it turns out insolvent, and the orphans are paupers. If his bank explodes, he is found to have taken care of himself in time. Society worships its paper-and-credit kings, as the old Hindus and Egyptians worshipped their worthless idols, and often the most ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... read, but are keen on a story) were gathered round another lady, who was telling them an amusing temperance tale, trying to speak so that the Bible readers should not hear her and yet that the Leinsters should was a difficulty, but when the Irishmen begged for a song—difficulty became impossibility, and their friend had to say, 'No.' Yet this is just the double work required in Soldiers' Homes, and above all at Lydd, where there is so little safe amusement to be had in camp, and none ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... shipmates, that a song without a chorus is no better than it should be. It's wus nor nothin'. It puts them wot listens in the blues an' the man wot sings into the stews—an' sarve him right. I wouldn't, no, I wouldn't give the fag-end o' nothin' mixed in bucket o' salt water for a song without a chorus—that's ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... indeed, surpassed herself! April blenched, but she took the blow standing. After all, she had been as great a fool as the girl sitting there, for she, too, had handed over her good name into the careless hands of another; had sold her reputation for a song—a song that had lasted seventeen days, but seemed now in the act of becoming ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... pocket of my coat," said Walter Bruce, "you will find a document. It is the deed of five lots in the town of Tacoma, in Washington Territory. I was out there last year, and having a little money, bought the lots for a song. They are worth very little now, but some time they may ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... have tried each other, If she better like another, Let her quickly change for me; Then to change am I as free. He or she that loves too long Sell their freedom for a song. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... great grocer of South Audley Street, a warm man, who, they say, had his twenty thousand pounds; Jack Snaffle, of the mews hard by, a capital fellow for a song; Clinker, the ironmonger: all married gentlemen, and in the best line of business; Tressle, the undertaker, etc. No liveries were admitted into the room, as may be imagined, but one or two select butlers and major-domos joined the circle; for the persons composing it knew very well how ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ought to say in this case his absent-mindedness—is illustrated by an incident which happened on the morning of the funeral of a great friend of his. As Cecil (his real name was Blount) was having his bath, he was suddenly inspired with some idea for a song; so, pulling his sponge-bath into the adjoining sitting-room closer to the piano, he placed a chair in it, and sat down to try it over. A friend, rushing in to fetch him to the funeral, found him so seated, singing and playing, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... for a song—or to meditate upon the charms of the fair Geraldine, eh, my lord?" rejoined Bouchier. "But I will not question you too shrewdly. Only let me caution you against going near Herne's Oak. It is said that the demon hunter walks at nightfall, and scares, if he does not ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... but was unaccompanied. She had a long talk with the dowager. "I am not rich, my dear, like your friends, and cannot afford to pay ten napoleons for a song. Like you I have seen 'better days.' But this is no place for you, child, and if you can bear with an old woman's company for a while I think I can find you something to do." That evening Helen left for England with the duchess, a piece of "ingratitude, indelicacy, and shameless snobbery," ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... neighbour than "cruelty" cases do of the old and just horror of the parents that hated their own flesh. A libel case has become one of the sports of the less athletic rich—a variation on baccarat, a game of chance. A music-hall actress got damages for a song that was called "vulgar," which is as if I could fine or imprison my neighbour for calling my handwriting "rococo." A politician got huge damages because he was said to have spoken to children about Tariff Reform; as if that seductive topic would corrupt ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... composition, entitled The Grocer of London. This was the last shot in the political locker. At a Guildhall dinner, given to Pitt by the worshipful company of grocers, Boswell contrived to get himself called upon for a song. He rose, and delivered himself of a catch on the model of Dibdin's 'Little cherub that sits up aloft,' prefaced and interlarded by an address to the guest of the evening. Honoured as he had been on his continental ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... by anybody in elucidation of this enigma, the shepherd's wife once more called for a song. The same obstacles presented themselves as at the former time—one had no voice, another had forgotten the first verse. The stranger at the table, whose soul had now risen to a good working temperature, relieved the difficulty by exclaiming that, to start the ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... they have yearn'd for long Have done their Literary Taste much wrong: Reprints of Burton will not sell to-day (I mean the stupid Burton) for a Song! ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... amenities we must turn to the lyrical poems. The Satires and Epistles, as their author frequently reminds us, were in prose: the revealed Horatian secret, the condensed expression of the Horatian charm, demanded musical verse; and this we have in the Odes and Epodes. The word Ode is Greek for a Song; Epode was merely a metrical term to express an ode which alternated in longer and shorter lines, and we may treat them all alike as Odes. The Epodes are amongst his earliest publications, and bear ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... Bouverie opened it herself with the inevitably thankless pianoforte solo, in this case gratuitously meretricious into the bargain, albeit the arbitrary choice of no less a judge than Mrs. Clarkson. It was received with perfunctory applause, through which a dissipated stockman thundered thickly for a song. Miss Bouverie averted her eyes from Sir Julian (ensconced like Royalty in the centre of the first row) as she descended from the platform. She had not the hardihood to glance toward the great man until the indistinct ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... lived in the Chausee des Minimes, a short, broad street leading to the Place Royale. He had bought the house, an old-fashioned mansion, for a song, as the saying is, in 1831. Yet there were sumptuous apartments within it, decorated in the time of Louis XV.; for it had once been the Hotel Maulaincourt, built by the great President of the Cour des Aides, and its remote position had saved it at ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... come in again, you just question him carefully a little. There's a new affair bein' started. Got a political side to it. Immense piece o' business. 'Course I got my finger in that pie, as I has in all the others now. We'd like to get Rauchhaupt's land ... He bought it for a song in the old days. If we c'n get it—the whole of it an' not parcelled—there'd be ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... am half in love with you myself, little Allison, in love with your lost youth, in love with the shadow of a shadow. And that is a subject for a song—" ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the Junker besought Ann that she would sing "Tanderadei," which she very readily did, Herdegen could bear no more; he asked the Italian to lend him his mandoline, and struck the strings as though merely for his own good pleasure. Whereupon Ann turned to him and courteously entreated him for a song, and he asking her which song she would have, she hastily replied: "Your old ditties are already known to me, Junker Schopper; and, to judge by your seeming, you now take no pleasure save in French music. Let us then hear somewhat of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... from ancestors that knew no stain, and we shall leave a good and virtuous race of children behind us. While we live they will be our support and our pleasure here, and when we die they will transmit our honour untainted to posterity. Come, my son, we wait for a song: let us have a chorus. But where is my darling Olivia? That little cherub's voice is always sweetest in the concert.'—Just as I spoke Dick came running in. 'O pappa, pappa, she is gone from us, she is gone from us, my ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... be done—Really, Mr. Roebuck, the whole state knows that the trustees of the Waukeegan Christian University are your dummies. It would be insanity for the party to turn over a hundred thousand acres of valuable public land gratis to them, so that they can presently sell it to you for a song." ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... Idols I have loved so long Have done my Credit in Men's Eye much wrong: Have drown'd my Honour in a shallow Cup, And sold my Reputation for a Song. ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... doubt but that we can, If we would search with care and pain, Find some one good in some one man; So going thorough all your strain, We shall, at last, of parcels make One good enough for a song's sake. ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... from it which each expects to get. The low valuation is expressed in the border wilderness, by which a third or even a half of the whole area is wasted; and also in the readiness with which savages often sell their best territory for a song. ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... hawks and crows I never attack, and yet they call me a bully. Sometimes I do go for a Song-bird or a Robin, but only when they come too near my nest. People wonder why I never attack the cunning Catbird. I'll never tell them, you ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... being drunk, Mr. THORNE was called on for a song, and sung, with great taste and ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... officers and men, on account of his lively and genial temper, combined with a fine voice for music—an accomplishment that with soldiers endears, and makes a favorite of any person possessing it. He was soon called upon for a song, and in accordance with the request commenced a song, and soon the rich and clear voice of the young man rang out on the air of the soft twilight. He sang of home, and as each word fell with distinctness ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... Morris's Songs than in the writings of any other American poet.' Willis also tells us, as proof of the General's popularity with those shrewd dollar-loving men, the publishers, that 'he can, at any time, obtain fifty dollars for a song unread, when the whole remainder of the American Parnassus could not sell one to the same buyer for a single shilling!' He is the best-known poet of the country by ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... has come out for a song? It has the form of a young man, but the simpering silliness of a school girl. Half idiot, it jabbers out a lot of words that can not be understood, but which are wildly applauded by the crowd on the floor, who 'pat juba' while ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... fish for supper! I got them for a song—or, rather, for a whistle. I was fed with more than fish. And I went to sleep that night with a glorious thought for a pillow: Truth expressed as Art is the universal language. One immortal strain from Verdi, poorly whistled ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... said, with a peculiar air of modesty which somewhat puzzled me, "if I may venture to ask Miss Macnab for a song." ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... original Christmas carol. He even called upon the ladies—and we were all of us rather shocked at the time—to bring their music; and as a piano had actually been hired from somewhere, and stood on the platform, he called upon his sister for a song there and then, and she actually—we were surprised—sang one of those old English ballads to hear which we had regarded as the sole privilege of the select few who were invited to take tea at the vicarage, at the sewing meetings which we had associated with the name ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... we saw there worth speaking of was a good face set upon an ill game, and the shells of the two eggs formerly laid up and hatched by Leda, out of which came Castor and Pollux, fair Helen's brothers. These same syndics sold us a piece of 'em for a song, I mean, for a morsel of bread. Before we went we bought a parcel of hats and caps of the manufacture of the place, which, I fear, will turn to no very good account; nor are those who shall take 'em off our hands more ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... read the following sign over the threshold of a youthful life: "For sale, grand opportunities, for a song;" "golden chances for beer;" "magnificent opportunities exchanged for a little sensual enjoyment;" "for exchange, a beautiful home, devoted wife, lovely children, for drink;" "for sale, cheap, all the magnificent possibilities of a brilliant life, a competence, ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... another hour. But Saturday nights was her great bargain opportunity. If I couldn't go with her she'd take Dick and the two would plan to get there at about nine o'clock. From this time on she often picked up for a song odd ends of meat and good vegetables which the market men didn't want to carry over to Monday. In fact they had to sell out these things as their stock at the beginning of the week had to be fresh. I suppose marketing at this time of day would be ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... most of the shares for a song," confessed Mr. de Vinne. "In fact, I happen to be one of the debenture-holders, and stepped in when things were going groggy. We've been on the point of winding it up—it is grossly over-capitalised—but I kept it going in the hope ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... purposes it isn't worth a cent, and unless the owner knows what is here it could be bought for a song." ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... natives, and a year before had acquired from them two good buck wagons. Probably they were stolen from some wandering Boers or found derelict after their murder or death by fever. These wagons he was only too glad to sell for a song. I think I gave him twenty pounds English for the two, and thirty more for twelve oxen that he had bought at the same time as the wagons. They were fine beasts of the Afrikander breed, that after a long rest had grown quite fat ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... sits in homely cell, He'll teach his swains this carol for a song: 'Blessed be the hearts that wish my Sovereign well, Cursed be the souls that think her any wrong.' Goddess allow this aged man his right, To be your beadsman now that was ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... After years of privation, a glimmering of light stole in upon us, to be soon extinguished. I obtained temporary employment in a school far away from the scenes of my misery, and hither my evil fortune followed me. The schoolmaster was an ignorant, gross man. He gained my services for a song, and he treated me with disrespect in consequence. I had been with him about six months when some silver spoons were stolen from his house. The thief escaped detection; but the master received an anonymous communication, containing a false history of my life, with a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... knew enough to be sure that she was aware of Fairfax Detlor's true character. She had known less still of his life, for since her marriage she had never set foot in Louisiana, and her mother, while she lived, never mentioned his name or told her more than that the Telford plantation had been sold for a song. When Hagar had told him that Detlor was dead, a wild kind of hope had leaped up in him that perhaps she might care for him still and forgive him when he had told all. These last few minutes had robbed him of that hope. He did not quarrel with the act ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... bestowed upon a passing panhandler, and he was obliged to don a very correct gray "shroud," as he named it in thankless terms, and to put his cigar and cigar ashes into something having the earmarks of an Etruscan coal scuttle, though Beatrice said it was a priceless antique Gay had bought for a song! There were many times when Steve would have liked to roam about his house in plebeian shirt sleeves, eat a plain steak and French-fried potatoes with a hunk of homemade pie as a finish, and spend the evening in that harmless, disorderly fashion known to men of doing nothing ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... of china at the house which came over in the Mayflower. John likes it, but it has grown to be an eyesore to me, and if you hear of anybody who has a fancy for such things, send him up to the cottage. I will let it go for a song." Nobody answered, and James disappeared. It was the last time, Abel remembered, that he had been ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... half-price, depreciated, unsalable. gratuitous, gratis, free, for nothing; costless, expenseless^; without charge, not charged, untaxed; scotfree, shotfree^, rent-free; free of cost, free of expense; honorary, unbought, unpaid. Adv. for a mere song, for a song; at cost, at cost price, at prime cost, at a reduction; a bon ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the nature of things that silence should be preserved under such incentives to conversation as tobacco and soda-water with something in it, but presently, above other sounds, a young voice was heard to clamour for a song. ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... dinner on the first anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill. In a letter written by an American officer describing this event, it is more than intimated that he was ever ready to accommodate when called upon for a song or a speech on such an occasion, for he says: "Our good General Putnam got sick and went to his quarters before dinner was over, and we missed him a marvel, as there is not a chap in the camp who can lead him in the ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober |
