"Instrument" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... child?" cried Hugh Calveley, knitting his brows. "I am but an instrument in the hands of Heaven, appointed to do its work; and as directed, so I must act. Heaven may make me the scourge of the oppressor and evil-doer, or the sword to slay the tyrant. I may die a martyr for my faith, or do battle for it with carnal weapons. For all these ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... was who regretted the Bill still more deeply, but in a different point of view. At the head of these was Thomas Davis. He regarded it as an instrument of dissension and weakness, cunningly adapted to that end by Sir Robert Peel, and he deplored the diversion of the public mind and energy from the grand national object. Mr. O'Brien, to a certain ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... precisely as the law of its individuality requires; in a word, this thorough mastery of the inmost springs and principles of human transpiration;—all this is so extraordinary, that I am not surprised to find even grave and temperate thinkers applying to the Poet such bold expressions as the instrument, the rival, the co-worker, the completer ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... before they thought of leaving the table. A very perplexed waiter brought them coffee and watched them light cigarettes. Then the telephone bell rang. They both stared at the instrument. Philip would have taken off the receiver, but Elizabeth held ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in the bands of discerning and skillful teachers, can be made the instrument of a great deal of right and valuable discipline for primary classes; but without some guarding and help from the teacher's own thought, it will not always do the best work, nor in the best way. It is an approach to a good book for early mental development; but it is not the consummation ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... almost every summer for several successive years, and perhaps even the {p.126} first of them was in some degree connected with his professional business. At all events, it was to his allotted task of enforcing the execution of a legal instrument against some Maclarens, refractory tenants of Stewart of Appin, brother-in-law to Invernahyle, that Scott owed his introduction to the scenery of The Lady of the Lake. "An escort of a sergeant and six men," he says, "was ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... science and to seek as it can the meaning of the universal enigma; so that neither philosophy, properly speaking, nor even metaphysics will ever disappear. Nietzsche has said that life is valuable only as the instrument of knowledge. However eager humanity may be and become for branches of knowledge, it will be always passionately and indefatigably ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... was largely the cause of his attitude toward life and art—for with our eyes we create our world—and his intense sufferings and consequent pessimism must be set down to the inevitable tragedy of a soul that greatly aspired, but a soul that had the interior vision though not the instrument with which to interpret it. Lafcadio Hearn was a poetic temperament, a ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... secure by her apparent zeal for the honour of the monarch. The Prince himself was directed to proceed forthwith to Hungary to serve against the Turks; and the unfortunate secretary, who had been an unconscious instrument in the hands of the able conspirators, and whom it was necessary to consider guilty of a crime absolutely profitless to himself whatever might be its result, was committed to a prison; there to moralize at his leisure upon the vices ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... patch of light. The stand had been erected at a point where the city's four principal streets meet, and as far as I could see there were solid masses of citizens extending into these streets. A glee-club was doing its best to help things along, and the music of an organette, an instrument much used at the time in campaign rallies, swelled the joyful tumult. As I mounted the platform the crowd was singing "Vote for Betty and the Baby," and I took that song for my text, speaking of the helplessness ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... that affection which for many a long and weary year had pined for some one on which to expend its force, now centred in the noble youth of whose preservation he had been so strangely and providentially an instrument. To Edward it was not in the least strange, that any one who had once known his aunt, it mattered not how many years previous, should still retain a lively remembrance of her, and wish to know more concerning her, and his feelings were strongly excited ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... however, objects to this, and insists that the prophetess herself shall go with him. This is regarded as a caprice of unbelief, because the prophetess is thought to have exhausted her mission when she transmitted the command of the Deity to His instrument: she has appeared for no end but to make it known through her prophecy that Jehovah alone brings everything to pass. In the song this is different. There Barak is not summoned against his will; on the contrary, he has a personal motive for taking up arms: "Arise, Barak; take captive ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... another, small and lithe as a monkey and enjoying the task as a monkey might, ran up to the top that leaned against the window. Evidently he was a skilled worker, for before I knew what he would be at, he had with some small, sharp instrument, prized out without breaking it, one of the sections of carved lattice. This he tossed lightly down to a man who caught it, and as he and four others after him slipped through the opening, the sergeant knocked on the closed door, under ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... their fulfilment in my person. I may be credulous; I may be weak; I may be erring; but I am steadfast in this. Bid me perish at your feet, and I will do it. I will not be your Fate. I will not be the wretched instrument of your perdition. I will love, worship, watch, serve, perish for you—but ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the tiny instrument to his lips, and drew from it sounds so sweet, so soft, so melodious and tuneful, that his companions seemed to listen in a trance of delight, with eyes ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... Gr. [Greek: anemos], wind, and [Greek: metron], a measure), an instrument for measuring either the velocity or the pressure of the wind. Anemometers may be divided into two classes, (1) those that measure the velocity, (2) those that measure the pressure of the wind, but inasmuch as there is a close connexion between the pressure and the velocity, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... he hit and leaped to his feet, his sword moving in flickering arcs around him. The natives had no knowledge of effective swordplay. Like any barbarian, they conceived of a sword as a cutting instrument rather than a thrusting one. They chopped with them, using small shields to protect their bodies as they tried to ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... curiosity, and many messages were exchanged to prove that the machine really spoke. At Anadyrsk Captain Kennan arranged a small battery and held in his pocket the key that controlled the circuit. Then the marvel began. The instrument told when persons entered or left the room, when any thing was taken from the table without permission, or any impropriety committed. Even covered with a piece of deer skin, it could see distinctly. With the human tendency to ascribe to the devil anything ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... replied Miss Husted, who could not help thinking that her friend had a somewhat mercenary mind. "No one's been to see him, so he hasn't got it for his friends; his violin has a beautiful sound. Mr. Pinac tells me that it must be a rare old instrument." ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... predicament! But Abdul Mujid faced the peril like a man, and held to the faint hope that no one would recognise the instrument even if they found it. It was a false hope. In a few minutes up came the boy, gleefully flourishing the damning evidence, and there was not one who doubted what it was. Probably in the circumstances, whatever the article it would have had the same effect, ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... length of time enjoy office and power without being more or less under the influence of feelings unfavorable to the faithful discharge of their public duties.... Office is considered as a species of property, and government rather as a means of promoting individual interests than as an instrument created solely for the service of the people. Corruption in some, and in others a perversion of correct feelings and principles, divert government from its legitimate ends and make it an engine for the support ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... George's final stage, and he knew too that he would never again enter the home he loved; but this last he could not tell him outright. He would rather have cut his right hand off than tell him at all. Being even the humblest instrument in the exiling of a man like St. George Wilmot Temple ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the frightful manner in which the knife had cut Merriwell, and then, despite his feeble struggles, Diamond was placed upon the instrument of torture. ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... Direction my G^d Father underwent an Operation w^{ch} sav'd his Life, and was the most wonderfull of the kind that had been heard of, till that time. His Breast was layd open, the matter discharg'd, and an Orifice ever afterwards kept open by a silver pipe: an Instrument famouse {98} upon Record, in the Writings our Popish and Jacobite Authors, who never faild to reproach him with ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... 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 some ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... so to do, and that with the Same authority as they can do in Cases and Causes already Sentenced. And I again renounce all the Laws and Customs in my favour and makes this Bill of Sale in due form in this Village and port of Sta. Cruz de Tenerife the 13th December 1740. The maker of this Instrument that I the Notary Publick, do give faith, Knows, and that he Sayed, I freely Grant and Sign this in the presance of the Witnesses Don Arnoldo Vane Stemfort, Consul General of said Dutch Nation in this Island,[11] Peter ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... the study, the telephone rang. Crystal sprang to the instrument, brushing away her father's hand, which ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... you have got a good touch. I am anxious for Violet to play well, but her violin lessons with Miss Graham are a source of constant trouble to me. I wish you could give her a few hints about it. Miss Graham is a good musician, but she certainly does not handle the instrument as you do.' ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... of the true English character, for which they are equally distinguished, they overshot the mark, and stand convicted of a design to make a verbal misconstruction the pretence for persecuting an absent man, and to convert honest prejudices into an unconscious instrument of oppression. They have thus earned a large allowance of general contempt, and they have nowhere, perhaps, excited a stronger feeling of disgust than in the minds of those who thought themselves compelled, by a rigid conscience, to give a seeming concurrence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... changed, and this involved a revolution in naval warfare greater than that caused by steam or by the submarine. From the time that Helen's beauty launched a thousand ships until the battle of Lepanto, the oar had been the chief instrument of locomotion, though supplemented, even from Homeric times, by the sail. Naval battles were like those on land; the enemy keels approached and the soldiers on each strove to board and master the other's crew. The only distinctly naval ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... enlighten; and it came into his mind, sometimes, that the good days of which he had read were coming back again, when the Lord used to work openly in the eyes of all the people, making his Church the instrument of spreading the glory of his name by the conversion of many in a day. It did not trouble or stumble him, as it did his sister, that it was not in their church—the church of their fathers—that this was done. They were God's people, and it made no difference; ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... the first flush of victory, Isabella and Mortimer were too insecure and too bitter to allow Edward of Carnarvon to remain quietly in prison under the custody of the Earl of Lancaster. As long as he was alive, he might always become the possible instrument of their degradation. At Orleton's instigation the deposed king was transferred in April from his cousin's care to that of two knights, Thomas Gurney and John Maltravers. He was promptly removed ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... the lid of a worm-eaten old chest, and, smiling the while, took out the instrument, placed the green baize-covered bag under one arm, arranged the long pipes over his shoulder, and, inflating his cheeks, seemed to mount guard over the doorway, making Max a complete prisoner, and sending a thrill of misery through him, as, after producing a few ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... in a certain degree in the maturity of my intellectual powers, and bearing my name, early in January, 1793; and about the middle of the following month the book was published. It was my fortune at that time to be obliged to consider my pen as the sole instrument for supplying my current expenses. By the liberality of my bookseller, Mr. George Robinson, of Paternoster Row, I was enabled then, and for nearly ten years before, to meet these expenses, while writing different things of obscure note, the names of which, though innocent and in some degree ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... and, jointly with his sister-in-law, Isabel of Bavaria, increased the taxation far beyond that imposed by the Duke d'Anjou. The Duke of Burgundy, called John the Fearless, in order to gratify his personal hatred to his cousin, Louis of Orleans, made himself the instrument of the strong popular feeling by assassinating that prince as he was returning from an entertainment. The tragical death of the Duke of Orleans no more alleviated the ills of France than did that of the Duke of Burgundy sixteen years later—for ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... was accosted by a gentleman, a lodger in the same house, who assured him, that the ladies would take it as a great favour if he would let them know when he intended to amuse himself again with his instrument, that they might not, by falling asleep beforehand, deprive themselves of the pleasure of hearing his music. To this message he replied, with an air of consequence and reserve, that, though music was not the art he professed, he should ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... inserted into a transverse orifice in the penis, made by a painful and somewhat dangerous operation and kept open by a quill. Two or more of these instruments are occasionally worn. Sometimes little brushes are attached to each end of the instrument. Another instrument, used by the Dyaks, but said to have been borrowed from the Malays, is the palang anus, which is a ring or collar of plaited palm-fiber, furnished with a pair of stiffish horns of the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... foster the implementation of human rights, fundamental freedoms, democracy, and the rule of law; to act as an instrument of early warning, conflict prevention, and crisis management; and to serve as a framework for conventional arms control and ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... things in the State should be subverted. Revolution, civil commotion, and bloodshed would be the inevitable consequences. The provision in the Constitution intended for the security of the States would thus be turned into the instrument of their destruction. The President would become, in fact, the great constitution maker for the States, and all power would be vested ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... hundred American vessels had been captured; an apathy had fallen upon the country. Yet light was beginning to dawn: Steuben, the German, had begun to introduce the discipline which was to make the American army a new and powerful instrument; Lafayette had brought the sympathy of France and his own substantial services; more than all, during these dark days the American envoys were concluding the treaty with France which ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... separated. Research brought about the discovery that the crime had been for a long while in preparation, and that a Norman nobleman, Raoul d'Auquetonville, late receiver-general of finance, having been deprived of his post by the Duke of Orleans for malversation, had been the instrument. The council of princes met the next day at the Hotel de Nesle. The Duke of Burgundy, who had recovered all his audacity, came to take his seat there. Word was sent to him not to enter the room. Duke John persisted; but the Duke of Berry went to the door ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... attraction was mutual"—and presently it grew to be very mutual indeed, between Shelley and Cornelia Turner, when they got to studying the Italian poets together. Shelley, "responding like a tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or of sentiment," had his chance here. It took only four days for Cornelia's attractions to begin to dim Harriet's. Shelley arrived on the 27th of July; on the 31st he wrote a sonnet to Harriet in which "one detects already the little ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... iron hoop; and, on the outside of the church, we certainly saw a piece of crooked iron suspended. When struck, it uttered a bell-like sound, by which the hour of prayer was announced. What sort of tune could be played on such an instrument the doctor has judiciously left his readers ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... how that would help Mrs. Atterson, for even testimony of witnesses who heard the discussion between the dead man and the real estate agent, could not controvert a written instrument. ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... Their later designs are a long step away from the conventional and hopelessly ugly piano cases that have been put out by the piano trade universally. They reason that the piano, as an artistic instrument, should have an artistic setting, and it is to draw the attention of architectural designers to this point that they have already given prizes for one competition, and purpose offering another prize, probably of $100, for a second competition. The making of special designs for piano cases ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 01, No. 12, December 1895 - English Country Houses • Various
... subordination of the State to the family has kept pace with the subordination of physical to spiritual force. Woman has an interest in everything which affects the State, and only lacks the legitimate instrument of these interests—the ballot—with which to enforce them. Life regulates legislation. Domestic life is woman's sphere, but a sphere of much larger dimensions than has ever yet been accorded it, these dimensions reaching out and controlling ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Coecilius, a christian minister of Carthage became the happy instrument of Cyprian's conversion: on which account, and for the great love that he always afterward bore for the author of his conversion, he was termed Coecilius Cyprian. Previous to his baptism, he studied the scriptures with care, and being struck with the beauties of the truths ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... exclaimed, with his legal state of mind returning. "A finer case never came into any court of law. There is a coarse axiom, not without some truth, that possession is nine points of the law. We have possession. What is even more important, we have the hostile instrument in our possession." ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... had a hard time of it. We had lost our medicine chest in the wreck; we had only little packages of bandages for skirmishes; but no probing instrument, no scissors were at hand. On the next day our men came up with thick tongues, feverish, and crying 'Water! water!' But each one received only a little cupful three times a day. If our water supply was exhausted, we would have to sally from our camp and fight our way through. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... gazing in wonder, his heart beating swiftly, his eyes upon the instrument on the wall. It was a house phone; he knew that it could only be rung from the switchboard in the hall below. "I'm going mad already," he remarked, and ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... Reuter. I had been calm in my demeanour to her, though stony cold and hard. When I looked at her, it was with the glance fitting to be bestowed on one who I knew had consulted jealousy as an adviser, and employed treachery as an instrument—the glance of quiet disdain and rooted distrust. On Saturday evening, ere I left the house, I stept into the SALLE-A-MANGER, where she was sitting alone, and, placing myself before her, I asked, with the same tranquil tone and manner that I should have used had ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... soothing murmur, listened and waited, and sure enough he had not long to stay in expectation. For Perris went to the hole behind the rock and presently returned carrying that flapping, creaking instrument of torture—a saddle. ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... this record is, it is doubtful how far it represents accurately the movement of the ground. The Moncalieri instrument was erected before the modern type of seismograph was designed, in which some part remains steady, or very nearly steady, during the complicated movements of the ground that take place in an earthquake. It will be noticed that the curve ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... Street, Russell Square, and after the pattering of steps on the oil-cloth in the hall the door was opened, and the murmur of a gruff voice was followed by the closing of the front door, and then a series of three sounds, as if someone was beginning to learn a deep brass instrument, and Mrs Dunn ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... started the dramas of history, of romance, of domestic life; and, by fashioning through their leader Marlowe the tragic decasyllable, put into the hands of the still greater group who succeeded them an instrument, the power of which it is impossible to exaggerate. Before the close of the century they had themselves all ceased their stormy careers; but Shakespere was in the full swing of his activity; Ben Jonson had achieved ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... and return you my thanks for the paper you have sent me. You have added a question to it, which, if I understand it, you yourself, Sir, are more capable than any body of answering. You say, "Is it probable that this instrument was framed by Richard Duke of Gloucester?" If by framed you mean drawn up, I should think princes of the blood, in that barbarous age, were not very expert in drawing acts of attainder, though a branch of the law more in use then than ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... in the tin box that was lashed upon the number four sledge, looking for his notebook wherein he had begun his calculations for latitude, he was surprised to find a copy of the record he had left in the instrument box under the cairn at Cape Kammeni at the beginning of this southerly march. He had supposed that this copy had been mislaid, and was not a little relieved to come across it now. He read it through hastily, ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... social enjoyment. Their evenings are passed away round the fires, with songs generally of a low, plaintive, and not unpleasing character, time being kept by beating one bone or stick upon another. They have besides what may be called a musical instrument—the ibero—a piece of bamboo, three feet in length, which, by blowing into it, is made to produce an interrupted, drumming, monotonous noise. In their dances I ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... bewildered in the danger and confusion, are kidnapped and secured. The herds of cattle, still within their kraal or "zareeba," are easily disposed of, and are driven off with great rejoicing, as the prize of victory. The women and children are then fastened together, and the former secured in an instrument called a sheba, made of a forked pole, the neck of the prisoner fitting into the fork, and secured by a cross-piece lashed behind, while the wrists, brought together in advance of the body, are tied to the pole. The ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... down on the bare floor. Little Lucie whispered to me that they were going to have a parlor carpet if they got ninety cents for their wheat. Leo, with a good deal of fussing, got out his violin. It was old Mr. Shimerda's instrument, which Antonia had always kept, and it was too big for him. But he played very well for a self-taught boy. Poor Yulka's efforts were not so successful. While they were playing, little Nina got up from her corner, came out into the middle of the floor, and began ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the National Constitution amended. While I make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority of the people over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself; and I should, under existing circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon it. I will venture to add that to me the convention mode seems preferable, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... feet beneath the green shadows of the old elm tree, often reading to her while she worked her crochet; or strumming upon his old guitar an accompaniment to her song. For long ago the professor had taught Ishmael to play, and loaned him the instrument. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... belonged to degraded minds. And then, too, as at all times, her lofty ambition destined a good proportion of them to the consumption of martial service, she perhaps judged that the less they were trained to think, the more fit they might be to be actuated mechanically, as an instrument of blind impetuous force. Or perhaps she thought it would be rather an inconsistency, to be making much of the inner existence of a thing which was to be, in frequent wholesale lots, sent off to be cut or dashed to pieces. [Footnote: "Killed ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... been his duty, as instrument of the King's justice, to make all the preparations for the deed that was to be done that day, and now all was completed and he sat alone and thought bitter thoughts. The child of his life was in ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... important facts which stand out in a comparison of the physical traits of men and women is that man is a more specialized instrument for motion, quicker on his feet, with a longer reach, and fitted for bursts of energy; while woman has a greater fund of stored energy and is consequently more fitted for endurance. The development of intelligence and motion have gone along side by side in all animal forms. ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... cement walk and slid slowly down the driveway to the garage. He climbed stiffly out, rolled the big doors shut, turned on the electric lights and then methodically switched off the lights of the car. He looked at the clock imbedded in the instrument board and saw that it lacked twenty minutes of three. It would soon be daylight. It seemed to him that there was a good deal to be done ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... which was still a sealed book to the rest of the world. Their job was "to search in every hole and corner of the country and see what is there, and classify everything in proper form"—to quote the words of their prospectus. For this work they required both the surveyor's instrument and ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... beside himself. "A man who pretends to conscientious scruples of that kind is not fit to have a parish," he said to his wife. His wife understood what he meant, and I trust that the reader may also understand it. In the ordinary cutting of blocks a very fine razor is not an appropriate instrument. The archdeacon, moreover, loved the temporalities of the Church as temporalities. The Church was beautiful to him because one man by interest might have a thousand a year, while another man equally good, but without interest, could only have a hundred. And he liked ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... a universal car was to have as nearly as possible all parts of equal strength considering their purpose—to put a motor in a one-horse shay. Also it had to be fool proof. This was difficult because a gasoline motor is essentially a delicate instrument and there is a wonderful opportunity for any one who has a mind that way to mess it up. I ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... tell you the truth as I see it. Abraham Lincoln was an instrument of God sent to set us free, for it was God's will that we should be freed. I never did hitch my mind on Jeff Davis; like the children of Israel, he had his time to rule. Booker T. Washington! Well, now I didn't give him a thought. He had ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... grounds of complaint against certain persons, who by unaccustomed favour, had been allowed to assume rank and dignity to which their birth did not entitle them; that it was time this irregularity should be stopped short, and that with this view, an instrument had been drawn up, which the Keeper of the Seals ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... was but an instrument transmitting power. And yet—oh paradox!—the instrument continued to improve, to grow stronger, to develop individuality and personality day by day! Life, present and hereafter, was growth, development, the opportunity for service in a cause. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... an object of peculiar veneration, when we reflect that it formed the earliest instrument by which human ideas, and all the charms of literature and science were communicated, and which has handed down to us the light of religion and the glow of genius from the remotest ages."—Drummond's First Steps ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... convince you this minute." So saying, he took a box wherein he had several medicines that he carried about him to use as occasion might require; and drew out a little phial of balsam, with which he rubbed humpback's neck a long time; then he took out of his case a neat iron instrument, which he put betwixt his teeth, and after he had opened his mouth, he thrust down his throat a pair of small pincers, with which he took out a bit of fish and bone, which he shewed to all the people. Immediately humpback sneezed, stretched forth his arms and feet, opened his eyes, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... tootle, tootle-too went the performer, running up the gamut till he reached the octave and was about to run down again, but he stopped short, lowered his instrument, and turned from a warm pink to a deep purply crimson, for West suddenly burst out into a half-hysterical roar of laughter, one which he vainly strove ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... fight, too. They'd sooner fight than eat. Our boys, conscious of inferiority, keep to themselves. The boys from across the tracks show off all the bad words they can think of. One of them has a mouth-harp which he plays upon, now and then opening his hands hollowed around the instrument. Patsy Gubbins dances to the music, which is a thing even more reckless and daredevil than swearing. Patsy's going with a "troupe" some day. Or else, he's going to get a job firing on an engine. He isn't right sure which he wants to ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... they were going out or returning, and drawn by oxen whose strong necks seemed to be bowed unwillingly under the yoke. Men, women, and children were abroad; some cutting with a short sickle the bunches of grapes, some breaking them with a wooden instrument, some carrying them on their backs from the gatherers to those who pressed the juice; and, as in ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... however, other principles have been introduced with considerable success, and the matter is of so much interest, not only to the practical manufacturer but also to the physicist, that a sketch of the chief systems now in use will probably be acceptable. He will thus be enabled to select the instrument best suited for the particular purpose ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... name of the little instrument something like a pair of snuffer which was formerly used to extinguish the candles and called a "Doute." Therefore I have correctly substituted "extinguished" for "out-doo." At the beginning I have substituted "dummy" for "figure" because we are told that the ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... public, which still regarded Mr. Chamberlain as a man with more self-assertion than intellect or force of character, pictured him to itself as the tool of Mr. Morley. It was Mr. Morley, we were told, who found the policy and the brains, and Mr. Chamberlain was but the instrument of his will. This is not the only point upon which the public fell into error, but it is one that deserves ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... was in a garret, with a half-starved musician who made violins. A violin is a musical instrument that miauls when you touch it just as we cats do, and it was amusing to live with a man who could make things with voices like my own. He was very poor, and often had not enough to eat, but he always got me my cat's-meat; and when there was no fire on, he nursed me to keep me ...
— Pussy and Doggy Tales • Edith Nesbit
... use them in this case," remarked Judge Graney, who had stepped down beside the two men. "The governor's instructions were that they should be used merely as an instrument in enforcing the court's order regarding the sale of Dunlavey's cattle. The theft of the Circle Bar cattle is a matter which comes directly under the jurisdiction of the sheriff. If ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... auditors were lined up in the gutters and everywhere to hear. Mr. McBride had announced 'The best Friend to have is Jesus,' and was himself swinging his arms and singing lustily, while I played and pumped the panting little instrument and sang as loudly as I could, too. Suddenly there turned down the street a handsome automobile (I don't know why, for they never go down that street) and in it the Misses Steele and Miss Proudfeather from Baltimore. To crown it all, with them was seated my precious ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... harmless primulas. In other words, the beetle-browed Lucretia, with the handy poison-ring, whom they promise you turns out to be a blue-eyed, fair-haired, rather yielding little darling, ultimately an excellent wife and mother, given to piety and good works, used in her earlier years as a political instrument by father and brother, and these two no worse than masterful and ambitious men employing the political technique common ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... more so by their discipline; let loose with all the passions of a warmer climate upon a rich and peaceful country, and inexorable towards an enemy whom the church had cursed. Their fanatical and sanguinary spirit, their thirst for glory and innate courage was aided by a rude sensuality, the instrument by which the Spanish general firmly and surely ruled his otherwise intractable troops. With a prudent indulgence he allowed riot and voluptuousness to reign throughout the camp. Under his tacit connivance Italian ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... principles which, if properly applied, may serve to correct this misuse of our American soil. The careful tiller should note that all soils whatever which lie on declivities having a slope of more than one foot in thirty inevitably and rapidly waste when subject to plough tillage. This instrument tends to smear and consolidate the layer of earth over which its heel runs, so that at a depth of a few inches below the surface a layer tolerably impervious to water is formed. The result is that the porous portion of the deposit becomes excessively charged with water in times of heavy rain, and ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... accurately, and kept in their memories periodicity charts so that they are able to form estimates of what will be, by considering what has been. They had a wonderful art of navigation, considering that they had no compass, sextant, or other instrument, and that their vessels were always comparatively small. The handling of canoes, like swimming, is instinctive with them, and no white ever compares with ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... explain these ambitions. The magnate of the financial world is Roebuck, who has from time to time made use of Blacklock's peculiar abilities and following. The latter has become dissatisfied with his role as a mere instrument and demands of Roebuck that he shall be given a place among the "seats of the mighty." Roebuck makes a pretense ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... the other returned. Even when silent the sound of him seemed to encompass him, as the roll of a drum seems to salute you when merely beholding that instrument. His speech filled all the room, flowing forth into every corner, sweeping upward in waves to the very cornice. The feminine members of his congregation found this most beautiful; having, indeed, been known to declare that did he preach in Chinese, they would still receive edification and ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... cornices and the cockatoo was preening his lemon colored topknot. At first Kathlyn had not the least idea where she was, but the light beyond the lattice, the flitting shadows, and the tinkle of a stringed instrument assured her that she was ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... Senate of the 12th of June, 1884, declining to advise and consent to the ratification of an accession of the United States to an international convention for the protection of industrial property, signed at Paris March 20, 1883, I now return the proposed instrument of accession to the Senate for reconsideration in connection with the views and recommendations contained in the accompanying report of the Secretary of State, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... Already he was addicted to gambling and other forms of dissipation. At Leghorn he had to sell his violin to pay a gambling debt. A Frenchman, M. Levron, lent him his own Guarnero violin. When he heard him play on it he was so charmed that he made him a present of the instrument. Paganini kept the Guarnero throughout the rest of his life. It was the turning-point of his career. After two years of incessant practice, Paganini appeared in public again at Lucca, where he aroused unbounded enthusiasm by his novel performances on the G string. For the ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... matchlocks of the Arabs had been very worrying to the French in Algiers. It was a common pastime of the Ishmaelites to pick off the Gauls at a distance which left Brown Bess helpless. Protruded over an almost inaccessible crag, the former primitive instrument would plump its ball into the ranks of the Giaour in the dell below with a precision and an effect hardly requited by victories in the open field or by the cave-smokings of His Grace of Malakoff. Delvigne's arm was accordingly supplied to the Chasseurs d'Orleans, and in their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... inquiries as to the cause of Delora's presence in Newcastle with that particular companion. I went to the telephone, therefore, and rang up the County Hotel. I asked to speak to the manager, who came at once to the instrument. ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... said Townshead, "no use in anticipating unpleasant probabilities. We will in the first place go down to Vancouver, where I fancy you will be able to earn a moderate sum by typewriting. The use of the instrument is, I understand, readily acquired, and while I regret the necessity for a daughter of mine to follow such an occupation, the ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... the workbench where Troy, a small man with powerful arms and shoulders, was working on a complicated array of wires and vacuum tubes. He looked up, nodded casually at the two men, and indicated the instrument. ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... wearied of one location it moved on. Unlike the mound builders, the Indian had a picture language and he delighted to record it in cuttings on rocks and trees. He would peel the bark from the bole of a tree and with a sharp stone instrument carve deep into the wood figures of feather-decked chieftains, of drums, arrows, wild beasts. And having carved these symbols of the life about him, depicting scenes of the hunt and battle and conflict, he covered the carving with paint fashioned in his crude way from the colored earth on the mountain ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... originated in America. Its name appears to have been derived from Tabaco, a province of Yucatan, in Mexico, from which place it is said to have been first sent to Spain; or, as some assert, though with less probability, from an instrument named Tabaco, employed in Hispaniola in ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey
... in my sitting-room. It is a masterpiece of an instrument, I can tell you; for one of the legs is gone and I propped it up with two empty boxes, and the keys are all black except those that have lost the ivory—and those are green. It has also five pedals, disposed as a harp underneath; ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... to take off all their models in wood, which might not only give us some notion of the ancient music, but help us to pleasanter instruments than are now in use. By the appearance they make in marble, there is not one string-instrument that seems comparable to our violins, for they are all played on either by the bare fingers, or the plectrum, so that they were incapable of adding any length to their notes, or of varying them by those insensible swellings, and wearings away of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... to do their duties they are as it were without officers, yea, worse than if they had none at all, and then God giveth the sword into the people's hand." And what the people were to do with the sword Poinet had already put very clearly. It was the "ungodly serpent Mary" who was "the chief instrument of all this present misery in England." "Now both by God's laws and man's," concluded the bishop, "she ought to be punished with death, as an open idolatress in the sight of God, and a cruel murderer of His saints ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... appreciate the leader's work. They overload the founder's deism with the sectarian theism from which they have not really freed themselves. On the other hand, younger men, who have been educated in English colleges and are imbued with the spirit of practical reform, enter the church to use it as an instrument for social progress. So the church is divided, theists and reformers both being at odds with the original deists; and the founder is lucky if he escapes being deified by one party and being looked upon by the other ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... importance prescribes that registration per se and alone shall give validity to transactions affecting land. Deposit of duplicate of the instrument, together with the record of the transaction by memorandum entered in the book of registration and endorsed on the grant by the Registrar-General, to constitute registration. This method is designed to give confidence and security to purchasers ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... been called in to see Mr. Axworthy, and arrived at seven o'clock A. M. Found him dead, from a fracture of the skull over the left temple, he should imagine, from a blow from a heavy blunt instrument, such as the stock of a gun. Death must have been instantaneous, and had probably taken place seven or eight hours before he was called in. The marks upon the rifle before him were probably blood; but he could not ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have cloaks, redingotes; some of them leather-breeches, boots,—as if for instant riding! Or what is this that sticks visible from the lapelle of Chevalier de Court? (Weber, ii. 286.) Too like the handle of some cutting or stabbing instrument! He glides and goes; and still the dudgeon sticks from his left lapelle. "Hold, Monsieur!"—a Centre Grenadier clutches him; clutches the protrusive dudgeon, whisks it out in the face of the world: by Heaven, a very dagger; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... to me all tenderness—you who have been to me just and merciful, with a justice and a mercy more than human; you whom God made His instrument to bring me through much sorrow unto repentance; and you through whose means He brought me back to Himself, listen to me, and hearken to my dying words. Mrs. Middleton, you had a child, and you lost her; my hand, unwittingly, unknowingly ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... the short, square-built young man of the Red Cross taxi. Leaning with both elbows on the instrument stood the doll-like figure of his companion, the girl in nurse's dress. His back and her profile were turned our way, but at the sound of the opening door he wheeled on the stool, and both stared at Mr. Beckett. Also they stared past ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... formulas that she did not hesitate to class her friend's state with the emotional "change of heart" to which her dealings with the poor had accustomed her; and she rejoiced in the thought that she had been the humble instrument of this renewal. Now she had an answer to all criticisms of Lily's conduct: as she had said, she knew "the real Lily," and the discovery that Selden shared her knowledge raised her placid acceptance of life to a dazzled sense ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... itself. Put this one great principle of universal suffrage, irrespective of sex or color, into the foundation of our temple of liberty, and it will rise in fair and beautiful proportions, "without the sound of a hammer or the noise of any instrument," to stand at last "perfect and entire, wanting nothing." Omit it, and only "He who sees the end from the beginning" knows through what other national woes we must be driven, before we learn that the path of justice is the only path of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and his friends to break down Hammerfeldt's power and obtain a political influence over me. Hammerfeldt's political dominance seemed to them to be based on a personal ascendency; this they must contrive to match. Their instrument was not far to seek. The Countess was ready to their hand, a beautiful woman, sharpest weapon of all in such a strife. They put her forward against the Prince in the fight whereof I was the prize. All this I saw, against it all I was forewarned, and forearmed. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... copied by men: the kaleidoscope, with its infinite variety of shifting figures; the orrery; the prism; the burning-glass; the microscope and the telescope; and the magic lantern, with its vast variety of entertainment. Another magic spell she put into operation, by which, with the aid of an instrument in a little square box, the sun was compelled to paint landscapes and portraits, so true to life that they seemed only to lack motion. Rudolph was very happy, playing with these beautiful and ingenious toys: ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... was not at an end. Though the new Sovereigns had been proclaimed, they had not yet been put into possession of the royal authority by a formal tender and a formal acceptance. At Edinburgh, as at Westminster, it was thought necessary that the instrument which settled the government should clearly define and solemnly assert those privileges of the people which the Stuarts had illegally infringed. A Claim of Right was therefore drawn up by the Twenty Four, and adopted by the Convention. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the mists Flying, and rainy vapours, call out shapes {58} And phantoms from the crags and solid earth As fast as a musician scatters sounds Out of his instrument." ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... non-official members have met each other. The official wall which of necessity to some extent separated them has been broken down. They have talked over many things together." From this point of view, if future sessions fulfil the promise of the first one, the Imperial Council may grow into a potent instrument for good. ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... of Saint Mary's, who, for reasons best known to himself and me, chooseth to administer his hospitality to me through the means of thee, his servant and vassal, who art, therefore, in good truth, as passive an instrument of my accommodation as this ill-made and rugged joint-stool on which I sit, or as the wooden trencher from which I eat my coarse commons. Wherefore," he added, turning to Mary, "fairest mistress, or rather, as I said before, most ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... instrument with a gesture of relief and leaned back in his chair, his great bushy head against the bare oak, his big hands loose in his lap. A half-minute perhaps he sat so—until the eyes slowly closed and, true to his ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... Always after my victories the vision of the Crucified, with the stern reproachful eyes! Am I not the Lord's appointed instrument? What means it? Tell your master that I will have no more of his inventions. They are too diabolical! ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... of the committee of five elected by ballot to frame a declaration of independence. Had he been called upon to write the document he would certainly have given something more terse and simple than that rotund and magniloquent instrument which Jefferson bequeathed to the unbounded admiration of American posterity. As it was, Franklin's recorded connection with the preparation of that famous paper is confined to the amusing tale about John Thompson, Hatter, wherewith he mitigated ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... Jones picked up the glasses which the man had thrown on the floor and examined them carefully. "Rather a fine instrument," he observed. "Marked N. K. I think ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... proceedings before a court of justice between parties adverse to each other, it constitutes, in the strictest sense, a controversy between parties, and a case arising under the Constitution of the United States, within the express delegation of judicial power given by that instrument." (16 Peters, 616.) Hence your commissioners are, in the strictest sense, judges, exercising "judicial power" ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... be curious to have some idea of the style and manner of expression peculiar to that people, as well as to know the articles upon which I recovered my liberty, I have made a translation of the whole instrument, word for word, as near as I was able, which I ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... man dies, it must bring pause to a reasoning world. We may call his death-sickness pneumonia, but we all know that it was sheer overwork,—the using of a delicately-tuned instrument too commonly and continuously and carelessly to let it last its normal life. We may well talk of the waste of wood and water, of food and fire, but the real and unforgivable waste of modern civilization is the waste of ability and genius,—the ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... prose had recently found itself. We admire the splendour of the Miltonic style, and lose ourselves in the rich harmonies of Sir Thomas Browne's work; but after all prose is needed for ordinary every-day jog-trot purposes and must be clear and straightforward. It can still remain a very attractive instrument of speech or writing, and in Addison's hands it fulfilled to perfection the needs of the essay style. He avoids verbiage and excessive adornment, he is content to tell what he sees or knows or thinks as simply as possible (and even with a tendency towards the ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... takes me, and binds my head as hard as possibly she could; then ties up both my legs, and makes me swallow down a horrid mixture. I thought it a harsh entrance into life, to begin with taking physic; but I was forced to it, or else must have taken down a great instrument in which she gave it me. When I was thus dressed, I was carried to a bedside, where a fine young lady, my mother I wot, had like to have hugged me to death. From her they faced me about, and there was a ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... explanation is that of Mr. Fraser in quotation, 1892. There may perhaps be an etymological connection with the name woomera (q.v.), which is a different weapon, being a throwing stick, that is, an instrument with which to throw spears, whilst the boomerang is itself thrown; but the idea of throwing is common to both. In many parts the word is pronounced by the blacks bummerang. Others connect it with the aboriginal word for "wind," which at Hunter River was burramaronga, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... rustic musical instrument formed of reeds, similar to the Tyrrhenian and Lydian pipes we find depicted on the ancient Etruscan vases. It consists of three or four reeds of proportionate lengths to create two octaves, a terce and a quint, with a small mouthpiece at the end of each. Like ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... may be seen also in the physical order, it follows that such persons lose the use of their power, so that it is not lawful for them to use it. Yet if they use it, this power has its effect in sacramental acts, because therein man acts only as God's instrument, so that sacramental effects are not precluded on account of any fault whatever in the person ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... was not accepted. I was not to be an instrument of God's vengeance upon these murderers. Now, our son, without word or consultation with me, feels called upon to take up the work I cannot perform. It happens strangely that he can for the next two or three years be well spared from his life at sea. That the boy will do great feats I do not suppose; ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... a good thing to laugh, and if a straw can tickle a man, it is an instrument of happiness, ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... at the instrument table, fixed silvery disks to his ears, twanged the detector wire and made a few quick alterations in connections. Fortunately his inspection of the equipment earlier in the day had given him a grasp of its arrangement. In an instant he had the tuner adjusted, was listening, ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... Carnatic. It was among the leading measures in the design of this cabal (according to their own emphatic language) to extirpate this Hyder Ali.[34] They declared the Nabob of Arcot to be his sovereign, and himself to be a rebel, and publicly invested their instrument with the sovereignty of the kingdom of Mysore. But their victim was not of the passive kind. They were soon obliged to conclude a treaty of peace and close alliance with this rebel, at the gates ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... best living performers, vocal and instrumental, and to a finer voice than yours I never listened; but you need study and practice, for your execution is faulty. You have a splendid instrument; but you do not yet understand its management. Where do ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... approached her father's house, Semestre's call and the gay notes of a monaulus—[A musical instrument, played like our ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... boiler and engine design of Smeaton, Newcomen and their contemporaries, were followed by those of the great engineer, James Watt, an instrument maker of Glasgow. In 1763, while repairing a model of Newcomen's engine, he was impressed by the great waste of steam to which the alternating cooling and heating of the engine gave rise. His remedy was the maintaining of the ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... was to play so prominent a part in the early political history of the United States. At this time he was thirty-three years old. He was by profession a lawyer, of elegant tastes, well read in literature, deeply versed in political history and philosophy. He was chosen to draft the instrument chiefly because of the great ability of other state papers from his pen. It is said that he consulted no books during the composition, but wrote from the overflowing ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... him only by a friend, long ago in his grave. Mr. Powers inquired what was the last thing that had been given as a present to a deceased child; and suddenly both he and his wife felt a prick as of some sharp instrument, on their knees. The present had been a penknife. I have forgotten other incidents quite as striking as these; but, with the exception of the spirit-hands, they seemed to be akin to those that have been produced by mesmerism, returning the inquirer's thoughts and ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... who were supposed to preside over Nature. The Ode therefore in its first formation was a song in honour of these Powers[9], either sung at solemn festivals or after the days of Amphion who was the inventor of the Lyre, accompanied with the musick of that instrument. Thus Horace ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... the same guild of wandering minstrels as a sort of "crusaders sent from infernal clime to dock the ears of melody and break the legs of time." And yet the hand-organ, so often the subject of municipal legislation, is dulcet music compared with the steam-whistle, even when the latter instrument takes its most ambitiously artistic ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... a great deal of our bush on a contract, and it ought to be measured. I set myself to the task with a tape-line; it seemed a dreary business; then I borrowed a prismatic compass, and tackled the task afresh. I have no books; I had not touched an instrument nor given a thought to the business since the year of grace 1871; you can imagine with what interest I sat down yesterday afternoon to reduce my observations; five triangles I had taken; all five came right, to my ineffable joy. Our dinner—the lowest we have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Modern, but similar to the Elizabethan instrument. French name, 'galoubet.' Merely a whistle, cylindrical bore, and 3 holes, two in front, one (for thumb) behind. The scale is produced on the basis of the 1st harmonic—thus 3 holes are sufficient. It was played with left hand only, the tabor being hung to the left wrist, and beaten with ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... of which nevertheless he feels himself to be the diminutive focus? His senses are absurdly imperfect. His ear cannot catch any music the spheres make; and moreover there are probably neither spheres nor music. His eye is so dull an instrument that (as Blanco White's famous sonnet reminds us) he can neither see this world in the dark, nor glimpse any of the scores of ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... part of most women; but it was a sign of Mrs. Leath's quality that every movement, every syllable, told with her. Even in the old days, as an intent grave-eyed girl, she had seldom misplaced her light strokes; and Darrow, on meeting her again, had immediately felt how much finer and surer an instrument ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... acquired. In Fanny Brandeis there was this abnormal response to the color and tone of any city. And Chicago was a huge, polyglot orchestra, made up of players in every possible sort of bizarre costume, performing on every known instrument, leaderless, terrifyingly discordant, yet with an occasional strain, exquisite and poignant, to be heard through ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... of the room, someone in blue fatigues like his own was bent over a stand of some sort. The figure straightened at the same time a tinkle of music filled the room. He recognized the red-gold hair of the young woman he had seen beside the pool. She was wielding two mallets to play a stringed instrument that lay on its side supported by a ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... people are walking up and down in an avenue of lime-trees, which are still permitted to grow in that ancient place. In the centre of that avenue is a fountain, surmounted by a Triton so grey and moss-eaten, that though he holds his conch to his swelling lips, curling his tail in the arid basin, his instrument has had a sinecure for at least fifty years; and did not think fit even to play when the Bourbons, in whose time he was erected, came back from their exile. At the end of the lime-tree avenue is a broken-nosed ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... me resign this instrument of death. [Giving the sword to her father, and then pulling it back. Ah, no! I was too hasty to resign: 'Tis in your hand ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... musical race, I see," observed Aunt Maria, pointing to a pair of painted drumsticks tipped with gay feathers, and a reed wind-instrument with a bell-shaped mouth like a clarionet. "Of course they are. The Welsh were always famous for their bards and their harpers. Does anybody in our party speak Welsh? What a pity we are such ignoramuses! We might have an interesting conversation with these people. I should so like ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... is to get a clear understanding of the fact that the physical body is not the self but only a vehicle or instrument through which the self is being manifested in the visible world. The body is as much your instrument as the hand is, or as your pen is. It is a thing which you, the self, use and a clear conception of this fact—a feeling that this is the fact—is the first step toward that absolute control of ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers
... personal peculiarities and his political offences. Now we are wondering how he will handle this strike if it comes off; and what effect it will have on his career? Benham, of course, thinks that he is an instrument in the hands of a political group; that his office was the price they paid him not to interfere in the strike. As for me I have no opinion. I am waiting ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow |
