"Tune" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... neat little foreign church, also with a spire. The Romish Church is a rather noisy neighbour, for its bells ring at unnatural hours, and doleful strains of a band which cannot play either in time or tune proceed from it. The court-house, a large buff painted frame-building with two deep verandahs, standing on a well-kept lawn planted with exotic trees, is the most imposing building in Hilo. All the foreigners have carried out their individual ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Myra, "do you remember a little tune I often hummed down in Cornwall; and, when you asked me what it was, I said you should hear ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... of their masters, and thus commenced the great "ticket-of-leave" strike. Early in the dispute I was applied to by the strike authorities to write and expose the unfair dealings of the "Iron Lords" of Keighley, and on the first day of the strike I composed several verses to go to the tune of the National Anthem. This was sung at the first great meeting of the strikers held in the Temperance Hall. The verses were ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... believe, mate, but, by the Lord Harry, it is as I say. There is a pirate about somewhere, and the books show that, since the stock-taking fifteen months ago, he has eased the craft of her goods to the tune of ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... freedom that makes the first street-corner an invitation to flight. How he envied Alfieri, whose travelling-carriage stood at the beck of such moods! Odo's scant means forbade evasion, even had his military duties not kept him in Turin. He felt himself no more than a puppet dancing to the tune of Parini's satire, a puny doll condemned, as the strings of custom pulled, to feign the gestures ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... call plantation or "made-up songs." While singing, the leader adds new words to suit his fancy and emotional fervor; thus the song often undergoes several changes of words in the course of a few months, all the time retaining the same tune. This is what is meant by "made-up songs." Among those of my people in whom the emotional tide runs high this kind of ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889 • Various
... Sunday, even to the extent of wearing a billycock hat to church, and people will put up with it from a countryman of Buffalo Bill and the Wild West Show. But in a Scotch village, if you whistle in the street on a Lord's Day, though it be a Moody and Sankey tune, you will be likely to get, as I did, an admonition from ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... tune that has suddenly become popular. Any night you may see hundreds of East Side children dancing on the asphalt and ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... hear the sound of a fiddle, scraped in a loose and erratic fashion and giving forth an occasional note of a tune. I looked around and saw Lamborn sitting in the doorway of the hut. Zoe was near him, laughing at his half-drunken attempts to manage the instrument. Douglas looked up. A quick smile shot across his face. He glanced into my eyes in a ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... palm. It was somewhere in the immediate neighbourhood of Queen's Gate, and a fashionable band, tired of modernist tunes, was throbbing out the old Wiener Blatter. . . . If Constantia remembered that sacred tune, she gave no sign ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... take the trouble of him in the voyage he was taking, he did not care, not he; he should be very happy at home without him. He should cry no more: he wondered why he cried at first, for he had not cared all the while; and so he went whistling about the house the tune of the 'Jolly Miller' which he ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... as he was gone the arrangement for the procession began, the slaves lit their torches and grouped themselves outside the house-door, the flute players struck up a tune, Flexinna's thirteen-year-old boy lit his white-thorn torch at the altar-fire, her eleven-year-old and nine-year-old, as pages of honor, caught Brinnaria by the hands and led her out at the door. So led by the two little boys, their ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... agreed Arrumpa gravely. "I remember that Taku would call me Father at times, and—if he was very fond of me—Grandfather. But all he wanted at that tune was to keep Opata from being elected in his father's place, and Opata, who understood this perfectly, was ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... I'm proof. Take things more easily. Don't ask yourself so much whether this or that is good for you. Don't question your conscience so much—it will get out of tune like a strummed piano. Keep it for great occasions. Don't try so much to form your character—it's like trying to pull open a tight, tender young rose. Live as you like best, and your character will take care of itself. Most things are good for you; the exceptions are very rare, and a comfortable ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... ordered—to play one tune only. Mr. West asked, when the thing was absolutely inevitable, that at least some sweet and sacred melody, acceptable to church-going ears, might be chosen; but Captain Monk fixed on a sea-song that was a favourite of his own—"The Bay of Biscay." At the end of every hour, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... That is the tune the piper pipes. We would buy, and behold, we must pay. Then the lights go out, the voices stop, and only the dark tumultuous streets surround us, and the grime of life is ours again. Whereupon we go heavily to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... passed over the table around which the officers sat. Under these circumstances the decision was quickly made. The entire army, nearly six thousand strong, laid down their arms, and an American detachment marched into their camp to the tune of Yankee Doodle. General Burgoyne handed his sword to General Gates, who ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... that consists of a church and a steeple, With three or four houses, and as many people, There went an Address in great form and good order, Composed, as 'tis said, by Will Crowe, their Recorder.[1] And thus it began to an excellent tune: Forgive us, good madam, that we did not as soon As the rest of the cities and towns of this nation Wish your majesty joy on this glorious occasion. Not that we're less hearty or loyal than others, But having ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... was being particularly dense. "I've seen a lot about it on Telly. You know, when there isn't a good fracas on, you tune to one of them educational ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... it can: President's List swells ever higher with names claiming to speak; from day to day, all days and all hours, the constant Tribune drones;—shrill Galleries supplying, very variably, the tenor and treble. It were a dull tune otherwise. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... goodness, could he help loving her? So one morning down by the Pacific, with "Blix" and "The Seven Seas," it all came over "Landy," that "living was better than reading and life was better than literature." And so it is; once, and only once, for each of us; and that is the tune that sings and sings through one's head when ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... them either," interrupted their Captain, setting the words to a tune. Then only less melodiously—"No, sir-ee! Why, gentlemen, they weren't trying to kill the poor devil, he was trying to kill them, tell your Committee of Public Safety. And tell them times are changed. You can take Sam and Maxime, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... which the gunboat had been sent. He sat on Mrs Neverbend's left hand, and did seem in some respect to be the chief man on that occasion. However, he proposed Mrs Neverbend's health and the ladies, and the captain instantly called upon the band to play some favourite tune. After that there was no attempt at speaking. We sat with the officers some little time after dinner, and then went ashore. "Sir Ferdinando and I," said the captain, as we shook hands with him, "will do ourselves the honour of calling on you at ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... moonlight toward Font Abbey, Eve holding his hand, and tripping by his side, and lecturing him on deportment very gravely while dancing around him and pulling him all manner of ways, like your solid tune with your gamboling accompaniment, a combination now in vogue. All of a sudden, without with your leave or by your leave, the said David caught this light fantastic object up in his arms, and carried it ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... my mood will be," returned Earthrid. "But when I have finished, you shall adventure your tune, and produce whatever shapes you please—unless, indeed, the tune is out of your ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... which rests secure that all like itself are natively immaculate; that—Pshaw!—I can find no words, find you imagination therefore, and think not I will labour at impossibility. You have read of ancient vestals, of the virgins of Paradise, and of demi-deities that tune their golden harps on high?—Read again—And, having travelled with prophets and apostles to the heaven of heavens, descend and view her, and invent me language to describe her, if ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... an umbrella, he was at length saved from his companion's loquacity. Baffled, but not beaten, the old fellow began to sing, at first in a low, droning tone; but growing louder as the fire of patriotism warmed him, he shouted, to a very wild and somewhat irregular tune, a ballad, of which Walpole could not but hear the words occasionally, while the tramping of the fellow's feet on the foot-board kept time ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... torrent of Broadway leaps highest in folly and the nights are riddled with incandescent tire and chewing gum signs; jazz bands and musical comedies to the ticket speculators' tune of five dollars a seat, My Khaki-Boy, covered with the golden hoar of three hundred Metropolitan nights rose to the slightly off key grand finale of its eighty-first matine, curtain slithering down to the rub-a-dud-dub ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... the black passage evidently in rare good humour, humming a tune, with one hand pressed upon the wall to better guide his movements. So dark it was, even the outlines of his form were indistinguishable, yet, as he felt no need for caution, it was easy enough to trace his forward progress. The girl stood erect, the revolver gripped in one ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... yet arrived. More draughts must be drunk, more libations poured out, ere the mystery of the curtain is revealed! Ho, Glyco!' he continued, turning towards the singing-boy, who had silently entered the room, 'the moment is yours! Tune your lyre, and recite my last ode, which I have addressed to you! Let the charms of Poetry preside ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... Claud mounted a staircase in the corner, and led Tom into a large upper room, the walls of which were adorned by rapiers with buttons at the end, where a man was sitting polishing the foils and humming a tune to himself. He rose instantly upon seeing Lord Claud, and ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... new to these men. The remotenesses of the back world had been their life for years. They understood its every mood, and met them with nerves in perfect tune. The mountains filled their whole outlook. They ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... squeak from Zeron's fiddle. From time to time a staggering, panting couple would fling themselves out, help themselves liberally to pink sirop from the bowl on the side table, and then fling themselves in once more, until Zeron stopped from sheer exhaustion, to tune up for a pas ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the skipper, with almost stern solemnity, "it iss all fery weel for men to speak aboot moderate drinkin', when their feelin's iss easy an' their intellec's iss confused wi' theories an' fancies, but men will change their tune when it iss brought home to themselves. Let a man only see his brither or his mither, or his faither, on the high road to destruction wi' drink, an' he'll change his opeenion aboot moderate drinkin'—at ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... the weariness of suffering, the clouding of the inner sky, the haunting of spectral shapes, the misery of disordered laws, when nature is wrong within him, and her music is out of tune and harsh, when he is shot through with varied griefs and pains, and it seems as there were no life more in the world, save of misery—"pain, pain ever, for ever"? Then, surely, he has also known the turn of the tide, when the pain begins to abate, ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... the possession of it, excites neither greed nor envy, and it is something which is always there for us and which may take us out of the small worries of life. When we are bored, when we are out of tune, when we have little worries, it clears our feelings and changes our mood if we can get in touch with the beauty of the natural world. There is a quaint but apposite quotation from an old writer which runs as follows: "I sleep, I drink and eat, I read and meditate, ...
— Recreation • Edward Grey
... will give. The system now: remember that the rays are short electrical waves. The easiest way to stop them is to interpose a wave of opposite phase, and cause interference. Fine, but try to get in tune with an unknown wave when it is moving in relation to your center of control. It is impossible to do it before you yourself have been rayed out of existence. We must use some system that will automatically, instantly ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... necessity of conquering the passions. But logick may, likewise, fail to produce its effects upon common occasions, for want of being frequently and familiarly applied, till its precepts may direct the mind imperceptibly, as the fingers of a musician are regulated by his knowledge of the tune. This readiness of recollection is only to be procured by frequent impression; and, therefore, it will be proper, when logick has been once learned, the teacher take frequent occasion, in the most easy and familiar conversation, to observe when its rules are preserved, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... ain't nothin' stronger in the fort to give 'ee than tea, but for my part I find it strong enough to keep up my spirits, an' yer all heartily welcome to swig buckets-full o' that. There is an old fiddle in the store. If any o' ye can scrape a tune, we'll have a dance. If not, why we'll sing and ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... with his arms laden with bundles. He looked keenly at the tired face on the couch, but whistled a merry tune to let on he had ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... looking a long way from comfortable; but they had a couple of bottles of brandy on the table and glasses, and were filling up. So was Moran. They'd had quite as much as was good for them. The eldest Miss Whitman was sitting at the piano, playing away tune after tune, while her eyes were wandering about and her lips trembling, and every now and then she'd flush up all over her face; then she'd turn as white as a sheet, and look as if she'd fall off the stool. ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... Wise, the musician, being requested to subscribe his name to a petition against an expected prorogation of Parliament in the reign of Charles II., wittily answered, "No, gentlemen, it is not my business to meddle with state affairs; but I'll set a tune to it, ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... door of the tavern. The affected warmth of that shake of the hand, the courteous nod, the obvious recollection of the dinner, the savoury flavour of which still hangs upon his lips, are all characteristics of his great prototype. He hobbles away humming an opera tune, and twirling his cane to and fro, with affected carelessness. Suddenly he stops—'tis at the milliner's window. He peeps through one of the large panes of glass; and, his view of the ladies within being obstructed by the India shawls, directs his attentions to the young ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... they meant her no harm she could, at least, overlook their repulsiveness. Renewed hope aroused within her a spirit of greater cheerfulness, and it was almost blithely now that she moved at the side of her weird companion. She even caught herself humming a gay little tune that was then popular in Helium. The creature at her side turned its ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... said the mother, lifting her head. "She does sing nice, and play, poor thing! There was a time when I wouldn't have wanted to listen. But Dicky liked it so . . . . It's the very tune he loved. He don't seem to hear it now. He don't even ask for Mr. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... seems the minister told Grandma Wentworth what a fine voice Jim had and what an ear for music. And he was most surprised that Jim never even had a second-hand organ of his own in the house but had to go over to his sister's, Mrs. Hoskins, for to play a little tune when the fancy took him. He said it was an awful pity that a man who wanted music so badly and was always so obliging at weddings and funerals and entertainments should be without a proper instrument. And Grandma ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... the loiterers have a new interest for the moment. "Rabbi, Rabbi," they say, and the great man moves onward, obviously pleased with the greeting in the marketplace (Matt. 23:7). As soon as he is out of hearing, it is no longer "Rabbi" he is called; talk turns to another tune. How little the fine word meant! How lightly the title was given! Worse still, the title will stand between a man and the facts of life. Some will use it to deceive him; others, impressed by it, are silent ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... Senior, his only son and heir. Father and son stood, gazing down at the campus. On the Gym steps was a group of Seniors, singing songs of old Bannister, songs tinged with sadness. Up to Hicks' windows, on the warm June: night, drifted the 1916 Class Ode, to the beautiful tune, "A Perfect Day." Over before the Science Hall, a crowd of joyous alumni laughed over narratives of their campus escapades. Happy undergraduates, skylarking on the campus, celebrated the end of study, and gazed with some awe at the ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... without rule, who hearing of wine doe long for it as a daintie that their purses could neuer reach to in England, and having it there without mony euen in their houses where they lie and hold their guard, can be kept from being drunk; and once drunke, held in any order or tune, except we had for euery drunkard an officer to attend him? But who be they that haue runne into these disorders? Euen our newest men, our yongest men, and our idelest men, and for the most part our slouenly prest men, whom the Justices, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... violence of the rain. In the light of the vivid flashes she groped her way through the water, now up to her ankles, and from her boxes obtained all the wraps she possessed. To keep up the spirits of the children she started a hymn, "Oh, come let us sing." Amidst the roar of the elements they caught the tune, and gradually their terror was subdued. When the torrent ceased she was in a high fever. She dosed herself with quinine, and as the shadow of death is never very far away in Africa she made all arrangements in case the end should come. But her temperature fell, and in two ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... carbon light, that the chorus of boatmen who hail you on landing will reappear immediately costumed as the Sultan's body-guard, that the women bearing water-jars on their shoulders will come on in the next scene as slaves of the harem, and that the national anthem will prove to be Sousa's Typical Tune of Zanzibar. ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... balance on the opposite ledge. On archways and street-staircases and dark alleys that bore through a density of massive basements, and curve and climb and plunge as they go, all to the truest mediaeval tune, you may feast your fill. These are the local, the architectural, the compositional commonplaces.. Some of the little streets in out-of-the-way corners are so rugged and brown and silent that you may imagine them passages long since hewn by the pick-axe in a deserted ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Termagant; as broken glass, in that Polish-Election freak!] And to me they cannot spare a few trifling Principalities? If the Queen does not now grant me all I require, I shall in four weeks demand Four Principalities more! [Nay, I now do it, being in sibylline tune.] I now demand the whole of Lower Silesia, Breslau included;—and with that Answer ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "By changing my tune a bit, sir. I started asking if they knew anybody who could recommend the cigarettes from personal experience, as we were only trying them ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... whistle a tune, but it turned out only a melancholy failure; so he gave that up in despair, and walked on until he got within a hundred yards, or thereabouts, of ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... I have seen the British Museum; which is a noble collection, and even stupendous, if we consider it was made by a private man, a physician, who was obliged to make his own for tune at the same time: but great as the collection is, it would appear more striking if it was arranged in one spacious saloon, instead of being divided into different apartments, which it does not entirely fill — I could ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... option but to obey, but the awesome tune had carried its doleful message. The mournful notes had reached the ears of the wounded lad in the canoe. Its message was plain to him. Walter was a captive, or in great danger. And now began a contest between will-power and ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... man with his back towards me," Durrance resumed, "began to fumble out a solo upon the zither. He struck so many false notes, no tune was to be apprehended at the first. The laughter and noise grew amongst the crowd, and I was just turning away, rather sick at heart, when some notes, a succession of notes played correctly by chance, suddenly arrested ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... in his favour. The lovely spring eve, the mystical twilight, the mellow flutings of the blackbirds and the vesper thrushes piping nothing new or strange, only the sweet old tune of love, the lift of the hills, the soft trinkling of hidden brooks, the scent of violets at their feet and of the fresh leaves above them—all the magic of the young year and of young love made the delicious story Roland had been longing to tell and the innocent ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... related, about the middle of it, when the whole city was in a deep silence and general sadness, expecting the event of the next day, on a sudden was heard the sound of all sorts of instruments, and voices singing in tune, and the cry of a crowd of people shouting and dancing, like a troop of bacchanals on its way. This tumultuous procession seemed to take its course right through the middle of the city to the gate nearest the enemy; here it became ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... he prayed, his voice now shrill and quivering and just out of tune, so that it jarred every nerve in Maggie's body, "Thou seest what we are, miserable sinners not worthy of Thy care or goodness, sunk deep in the mire of evil living and evil 'abits, nevertheless, oh God, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... Mr. Chambers' account of the origin of this song:—Jessy Lewars had a call one morning from Burns. He offered, if she would play him any tune of which she was fond, and for which she desired new verses, that he would do his best to gratify her wish. She sat down at the piano, and played over and over the air of an old song, beginning with ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... in a crowded street, I only desired to ride— Only to wait for a Hammersmith 'bus With room for myself outside; When I caught the nastiest tune My ear had ever heard, And asked the Police to take it away, But never ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... delicate eyebrows, humming a light tune, and her husband turned from her in despair. Was it nothing at all to her that this child had saved ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... again, and swoons with confusion. Several reams of blank paper constantly spread on the drawing-room walls, and sliced off again, which looks like insanity. Two men still clinking at the new stair-rails. I think they must be learning a tune; I cannot make out any other object ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... larger and larger. There is no telling what proportions it might have reached if the new organ just arrived from Moscow had not fortunately begun playing in the tavern close by. Hearing their favourite tune, the crowd gasped and rushed off to the tavern. So nobody ever knew why the crowd had assembled, and Potcheshihin and Optimov had by now forgotten the existence of the starlings who were ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... playing God Save the King and Tipperary, and the trying to make my eyes look moist like a man in a picture book, I'm that bet that I hardly get a wink of sleep. I give you my word, Sir Pearce, that I never heard the tune of Tipperary in my life till I came back from Flanders; and already it's drove me to that pitch of tiredness of it that when a poor little innocent slip of a boy in the street the other night drew himself up and saluted and began whistling it at me, ...
— O'Flaherty V. C. • George Bernard Shaw
... court, the bal champetre was beginning, and through the open window one could see all that was going on. Lanterns, hung from the branches, gave the leaves a grayish green tint. Rustics and their partners danced in a circle shouting a wild dance tune to the feeble accompaniment of two violins and a clarinet, the players seated on a large table as a platform. The boisterous singing of the peasants at times completely drowned the instruments, and the feeble strains torn to tatters by the ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... and dark-featured, with a velvet cap, was grinding out music from a hand-organ, while a woman with a complexion equally dark, and black sorrowful-looking eyes, accompanied her husband on the tambourine. They were playing a lively tune as Paul came up, but quickly glided into "Home, ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... very well call our new acquaintance a bird," interrupted Balbilla, "for as we approached the screen behind which he is working he was whistling a tune with his lips, so pure and cheery, and loud, that it rang through the empty hall above all the noise of the workmen. A nightingale does not pipe more sweetly. We stood still to listen till the merry fellow, who had no idea that we were by, was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... store-keepers of California, profiting at once by the needs and habits of the people, have made themselves in too many cases the tyrants of the rural population. Credit is offered, is pressed on the new customer, and when once he is beyond his depth, the tune changes, and he is from thenceforth a white slave. I believe, even from the little I saw, that Kelmar, if he chose to put on the screw, could send half the settlers packing in a radius of seven or eight miles round Calistoga. These are continually paying him, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gliding quietly along, with the wind abaft the beam, at the rate of five or six knots. Suddenly Mr. Fairfield, whose nose was not remarkable for size, but might with propriety be classed among the SNUBS, ceased to play upon it its accustomed tune in the night watches, sprang from the hen-coop, on which he had been reclining, and began to snuff the air in an eager and agitated manner! He snuffed again; he stretched his head over the weather quarter and continued to snuff! ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... be, "seen a more distinctly musical face. It is remarkable. It ought to convert any skeptic to phrenology. The development of what we phrenologists call, for the sake of convenience, the organs of tune and time—just over and near the side of the eye—the fulness of the eyes, the exquisite mobility of the mouth, are fairly abno-or-r-mal," and here the learned professor's whisper made one's flesh creep. "And I have no doubt, if I could examine the organs which are ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... muttered Hadrian to himself. "And what is tune? That subtle harmony or discord is a condition which masters all the emotions of the soul at once; and not without reason—to-day my ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Smoky Hilltops? Will darling Alicia Keith break out in green spots next time we watch her on the air? Has Captain Al of the star-roving space-ship breathed in spores of the Swelling Fungus? Are the space-travellers doomed? Tune in on our next broadcast and see! My dear Bill, if we weren't signed up for sponsors' fees, I'd raise our prices ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... host's daughter, a maiden young and fair, Lifting to light her sweet blue eyes and pride of soft brown hair, The master of the village school, sleek of hair and smooth of tongue, To the quaint tune of some old psalm, ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... eloquence is necessary for you or not; not only common eloquence, which is rather free from faults than adorned by beauties; but the highest, the most shining degree of eloquence. For God's sake, have this object always in your view and in your thoughts. Tune your tongue early to persuasion; and let no jarring, dissonant accents ever fall from it, Contract a habit of speaking well upon every occasion, and neglect yourself in no one. Eloquence and good-breeding, alone, with an exceeding small degree of parts and knowledge, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... together, side by side, they did not talk; but the father usually hummed a tune softly,—sometimes quite aloud,—and the lad listened attentively. On rainy Sundays they sat at the window together in the cottage, and seldom talked then; but the man drew his harmonica from his pocket, and played one tune after another to ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... face a moment in the bowl of pink roses. Then she went to the window and drew back the curtain. Leaning her head against the window-sill, she began stringing on the thread of a tune the things that just then thrilled her with ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... his shoulders, and the tailor seated himself on a branch, and the giant, who could not see what he was doing, had the whole tree to carry, and the little man on it as well. And the little man was very cheerful and merry, and whistled the tune: "There were three tailors riding by," as if carrying the tree was mere child's play. The giant, when he had struggled on under his heavy load a part of the way, was tired ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... King of Ceylon as a gift to Kublai Khan, and carried with signal honour to China. MARCO POLO describes the scene as something within his own knowledge:—"Quando autem magnus Kaan scivit quod isti ambaxiatores redibant cum reliquis istis, et erant prope terram ubi ipse tune erat, scilicet in Cambalu (Pekin), fecit mitti bandum quod omnes de terra obviarent reliquis istis (quia credebat quod essent reliquiae de Adam) et istud fuit ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Ptolemy found the library at Alexandria as a rival to that at Pergamon. Reges Attalici magnis philologiae dulcedinibus inducti cum egregiam bibliothecam Pergami ad communem delectationem instituissent, tune item Ptolemaeus, infinito zelo cupiditatisque incitatus studio, non minoribus industriis ad ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... to some sudden mode of robust sophistry. Once when I was pressing upon him with visible advantage, he stopped me thus: "My dear Boswell, let's have no more of this. You'll make nothing of it. I'd rather have you whistle a Scotch tune." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... nail upon the foe with curious outcries. And now might be seen prodigies of valor, unmatched in history or song. Here was the sturdy Stoffel Brinkerhoff brandishing his quarter-staff, like the giant Blanderon his oak-tree (for he scorned to carry any other weapon), and drumming a horrific tune upon the hard heads of the Swedish soldiery. There were the Van Kortlandts, posted at a distance, like the Locrian archers of yore, and plying it most potently with the long-bow, for which they were so justly renowned. On a rising knoll were gathered ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to make of him this last week or so. Twice he's been late, three days runnin' he's quit early, and in all that time he ain't raised a blessed howl about anything. Not only that, but the other mornin' he blew in wearin' a carnation in his button-hole and hummin' a tune. I saw Piddie watch him with his eyes bugged, and the battery of typists let out a sort of chorus gasp as the door of his private office ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... brown—a dusty plain Split and parched with heat of June, Flying hoof and tightened rein, Hearts that beat the old, old tune. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... asked him if he was any relation to W.W. Norcross, and he said, 'Yes, a son.' You should have seen how that Moore girl changed her tune the moment he admitted that. She'd been very free with him up to that time; but when she found out he was a rich man's son she became as quiet and innocent as a kitten. I hate her; she's ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... moon to shadowy-pale, And scuds the cloud before the gale, 10 Ere the Morn all gem-bedight Hath streak'd the East with rosy light, We sip the furze-flower's fragrant dews Clad in robes of rainbow hues; Or sport amid the shooting gleams 15 To the tune of distant-tinkling teams, While lusty Labour scouting sorrow Bids the Dame a glad good-morrow, Who jogs the accustom'd road along, And paces cheery to her cheering ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... evening the table was arranged festively. The betrothed sat together, and Otto had the place of honor—he sat on the other side of Sophie. The preacher had written a song to the tune of "Be thou our social guardian-goddess;" this was sung. Otto's voice sounded beautifully and strong; he rang his glass with the betrothed pair, and the Kammerjunker said that now Mr. Thostrup must speedily seek ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... of a hand in the proposals made by Mr. Solmes, than my father or other friends. In short, fain would my aunt have furnished me with an excuse to come off my opposition; Bell all the while humming a tune, and opening this book and that, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the door of her son's room, pretending to be unconscious of the gaze he maintained upon her. Mustering courage to hum a little tune and affecting inconsequence, she had nearly crossed the threshold when ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... the last week given the Clerk 2s., which I set down that I may know what to do the next year, if it please the Lord that I live so long; but the jest was, the Clerk begins the 25th psalm, which hath a proper tune to it, and then the 116th, which cannot be sung with that tune, which seemed very ridiculous. After church to Sir W. Batten's, where on purpose I have not been this fortnight, and I am resolved to keep myself ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the fine arts, that kind of thing—they should study those up to a certain point, women should; but in a light way, you know. A woman should be able to sit down and play you or sing you a good old English tune. That is what I like; though I have heard most things—been at the opera in Vienna: Gluck, Mozart, everything of that sort. But I'm a conservative in music—it's not like ideas, you know. I stick ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... She put up her hand, in its soaked and slippery glove, and touched the roses about the crown and laughed herself. "He won't mind," she said, contentedly. She had forgotten that he had stopped loving her. She began to sing under her breath the old tune ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... other, till the priest said, 'Peter! it's dragon-time now,' whereat the roof flew off, and a great yellow dragon came down on the chapel-floor with a flop, and danced about clumsily, wriggling his fat tail, and saying to a sort of tune, 'O the Devil, the Devil, the Devil, O the Devil,' so I went up to him, and put my hand on his breast, meaning to slay him, and so awoke, and found myself standing up with my hand on the breast of an armed knight; the door lay flat on the ground, and under ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... most deeply-rooted faults, if only he will be true to Jesus, and use the gifts that are given to him. There are many of us whose daily life is pitched in a minor key; whose whole landscape is grey and monotonous and sunless; who feel as if yesterday must set the tune for to-day, and as if, because we have been beaten and baffled so often, it is useless to try again. But remember that the field on which the Stone of Help was erected, to commemorate the great and decisive victory ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... sentries we stand by the sea an' the land Wherever the bugles are blown. (Poor beggars!—an' don't we get blown!) Take 'old o' the Wings o' the Mornin', An' flop round the earth till you're dead; But you won't get away from the tune that they play To the bloomin' old rag over'ead. (Poor beggars!—it's 'ot over'ead!) Then 'ere's to the sons o' the Widow, Wherever, 'owever they roam. 'Ere's all they desire, an' if they require A speedy return to their 'ome. (Poor beggars!—they'll ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... humming a little tune to herself, as blithe as a young girl. I heard a momentary whispering with Joseph in the hall. Then the house-door closed—and there was an end of Madame ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... and sat by the piano, where Angelica was playing and singing, and he sang out of tune, and he upset the coffee when the footman brought it, and he laughed out of place, and talked absurdly, and fell asleep and snored horridly. Booh, the nasty pig! But as he lay there stretched on ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the door. Prayers over, Miss Elizabeth Blake, the senior lady teacher, sat down to the harmonium and played the first few bars of a hymn. Then the little congregation stood up and sang. They kept good time, and their singing was fairly in tune, but the voices of some of the native girls were very harsh and shrill, and somewhat spoilt the general effect. The probationer, Samuel Gozani, led the singing from his place close to the instrumentalist. The choir stood facing the right-hand end of the harmonium, and the leader stood ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... were really about to drown when they heard a voice like a guitar out of tune call ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... to step in the other room, Sally," he remarked, "and have a pipe and a bit of a tune. I'll see you later—you ladies," he added gallantly, with a bow. And then he withdrew, leaving them alone, with Sally's cheeks flushed at the warmth and the subject they had been considering. All the time old Perce had been talking she had been wishing that Toby had been there to ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... the drawing room where I am writing, and are playing, one the fiddle, and the other the guitar. Perhaps they are trying to get up a "hop," later, but there do not seem materials enough for it, and their tune is at present squeaky—jerky—with an attempt at an adagio. The nigger is now playing "Comin' thro' the Rye," with much expression, both of face and fiddle! Oh, such, squeaks! I wish Louisa heard them. Here come the variations with accompaniment of guitar.—Later.—The nigger ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... is sheer hard work! Drills as arduous in the engine- room as at the guns; machinery kept in tune; traditions in manoeuvring in all weathers, which is kept up with ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... gather into Boston. Tall, lanky, awkward, fellows, came in squads, and companies, and regiments, swaggering along, dressed in their brown homespun clothes and blue yarn stockings. They stooped, as if they still had hold of the plough-handles, and marched without any time or tune. Hither they came, from the corn-fields, from the clearing in the forest, from the blacksmith's forge, from the carpenter's workshop, and from the shoemaker's seat. They were an army of rough faces and sturdy frames. A trained officer of Europe would have laughed at them, till his sides ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... themselves as going concerns, as happiness in being; they make it an essential condition that a happy land can have no history, and all the citizens one is permitted to see are well looking and upright and mentally and morally in tune. But we are under the dominion of a logic that obliges us to take over the actual population of the world with only such moral and mental and physical improvements as lie within their inherent possibilities, and it is our business to ask what Utopia will ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... and 'Omurs' and stuff' (also pointed out by Mr. Lobban) are interesting, because they show plainly that Goldsmith remembered the works of Swift far better than 'The New Bath Guide', which has sometimes been supposed to have set the tune to the 'Haunch' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... have the right idea. Bob and Paul can't help me much from now on, and if we take that trip around the world next summer this machine must be done some weeks ahead, so that we can have a chance to test her out and tune her up. Now, it happens that Paul and I have a cousin—Tom Meeks—who is about my age and who flew in the same squadron with me over on the French front during the war. I will vouch for Tom's ability as a mechanic and flyer, also as to his trustworthiness. ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... bank-notes, and bills of exchange, which had been previously booked at the company's office in Boulogne, and paid for according to the rates agreed upon by the company, and which, with others, had been entrusted to his care. After evidence had been adduced, Mr Wire requested that Captain Tune should be remanded for a week, and stated that the directors being anxious that he should receive as much accommodation as might be consistent with the respectability of his character and the nature ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... recollections which cluster around this Psalm, so well known to all the Alumni of Harvard, are of the most pleasant nature. For more than a hundred years, it has been sung at the dinner given on Commencement day at Cambridge, and for more than a half-century to the tune of St. Martin's. Mr. Samuel Shapleigh, who graduated at Harvard College in the year 1789, and who was afterwards its Librarian, on the leaf of a hymn-book makes a memorandum in reference to this Psalm, to the effect that it has been sung ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... thought she seemed to enjoy the defect in my complexion; I really believe it raised me in her estimation. "We shall get on better in time," she said; "I am beginning to like you." She walked out humming a tune. Don't you agree with me? Don't ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... struck me dumb. I stood as still and as stiff as a web of buckram. My tongue was tied, and I could not contradict him. Jamie folded his arms, and went away whistling, turning every now and then his sooty face over his shoulder, and mostly sticking his tune, as he could not keep his mouth screwed for laughing. What would I not have given ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... airs, with the view of interesting her friends, or producing good humour and happiness in the family circle. She had formed the acquaintance of Neil Gow, the celebrated violinist, and composed, at his particular request, the words to his popular tune "Farewell to Whisky,"—the only lyric from her pen which has hitherto been published. In all the collections of Scottish song, it appears as anonymous. In the present work, it is printed from a copy in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... as you went along the street, somebody start humming or whistling a tune? any kind of a tune, but a catchy one the best. In a little while you'll hear another person pick it up and hum or whistle, just the same way; so on, till nobody knows how many have caught and heard the wandering melody and passed it onward through a ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... words seem to be what my friend Pope calls 'an echo to the sense.'" "I am pleased and proud," answered Macgowran, "that it has afforded you any amusement: and when you, Sir," addressing himself to the Dean, "put all the strings of the Irish harp in tune, it will yield your Reverence a double pleasure, and perhaps put me out of my senses with joy." Macgowran, in a short time, presented the Dean with a literal translation, for which he rewarded him very liberally, and recommended him to the protection of Mr. Gore, who behaved with great kindness ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... fallin' off 'n a slated rufe. The genius of Ammerikin liberty, in the shape of the carnivorous eagle, soarin' aloft on diluted pillions, seems to mutter E Pluribus Unum—we are one of 'em! Hail Columby happy land! Sing Yankee Doodle that fine tune—cry havock! and let looset the ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... this compliment, but thinking to himself that a hostess's first duty was to have her piano in tune, and not to expose a bass singer to the danger of imperilling his low "E" before an ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... noise of feet. She next saw a bright light streaming out of the cave, which seemed to have grown much deeper, and a quantity of little people,[FN6] in various coloured dresses, red predominating, dancing to a tune ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats |
