"Tuning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apart, sat down with them without the curtain; and I enquired concerning them and behold they were his brethren.[FN43] he set before them what they needed of wine and dessert, and they ceased not to press the damsel to sing, till she called for the lute and tuning ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... prepare unwary strangers for the discovery that they are in the presence of the parish clerk. "Old Joshway," as he is irreverently called by his neighbours, is in a state of simmering indignation; but he has not yet opened his lips except to say, in a resounding bass undertone, like the tuning of a violoncello, "Sehon, King of the Amorites; for His mercy endureth for ever; and Og the King of Basan: for His mercy endureth for ever"—a quotation which may seem to have slight bearing on the present occasion, but, as with every other anomaly, adequate knowledge will ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... the middle of the aerodrome, to avoid damage by splinters if the shed should be hit by a shell. On the forenoon of the 8th the weather was misty, so Squadron Commander Spenser Grey and Flight Lieutenant Marix spent the time in tuning up their Sopwith Tabloid machines. In the afternoon there was no improvement in the weather, but if an attack was to be made from Antwerp it was important to start, for the Germans were about to enter the city. Flight Lieutenant Marix, starting at 1.30 p.m., flew ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... predilections for dodging round the gravestones overcame the better instinct of reverence for the day and for the dead. Mr. Penrose was just entering the vestry, and discordant sounds came through the open door as of stringed instruments in process of tuning. ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... and one by Kreutzer, he scarcely rose above mediocrity, and he was well aware of his failure. He adopted the ideas of his predecessors, resuscitated forgotten effects and added to them, and the chief features of his performance were, the diversity of tones produced, the different methods of tuning his instrument, the frequent employment of double and single harmonics, the simultaneous use of pizzicato and bow passages, the use of double and triple notes, the various staccati, and a wonderful facility for executing ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... half pain, and half furtive unacknowledged joy. Men whose conscious thoughts are mostly projected outward, on the world of external activities, may be more moved by such a touch on the feelings than those who are perpetually testing and tuning their emotional chords. Amherst had foreseen from the first that Mrs. Ansell might mean to speak of his wife; but though he had intended, if she did so, to cut their talk short, he now felt himself irresistibly constrained to ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... months after, whenever you breathe on the place in question. Another has called memory the safe of the mind. It is the opinion of E. Hering[2] that what we once were conscious of and are conscious of again, does not endure as image but as echo such as may be heard in a tuning fork when it is properly struck. Reid asserts that memory does not have present ideas, but past things for its object, Natorp explains recollection as an identification of the unidentical, of not-now with now. According to Herbart and his ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... remarkable irritation of nerves, that he could not bear to hear the tuning of instruments, and therefore at a performance this was always done before he arrived. A musical wag, who knew how to extract some mirth from Handel's irascibility of temper, stole into the orchestra, on a night when the Prince of Wales was to be present, and untuned all the instruments. ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... of prime importance, never use it for drilling, if you have a driller, as it always has enough work to do for tuning up work. ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... the stripper girls were tuning up their voices preparatory to the late-afternoon concert, soon to begin. They hummed a few bars of one melody, then of another; and at last, Angela's voice leading, there burst upon the room in full chorus, to the rhythmic whir ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... who seized the cup like other lads, and did not care to calculate on the headache in store for the morning. Whilst he and his cousin were talking, the fiddles from the open orchestra on the Parade made a great tuning and squeaking, preparatory to their usual evening concert. Maria knew her aunt was awake again, and that she must go back to her slavery. Harry never asked about that slavery, though he must have known ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a "now-you-see-what-you've-joined" expression, or nudged each other reminiscently, until the live-oaks in the pasture almost blended with the long shadows under them, and hoarse-throated frogs were tuning up in the irrigating ditches. Then they formed four abreast and went down for the mail, humming a march song and lifting their hats in concert to Professor Stillwell and his wife, smiling from their porch. At the post-office the lines ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... parson," he said at last, lightly enough, but with a hint of tiredness in his eyes. "And then vanish behind the scenes, leaving the hero and heroine in the middle of the spotlight, with the orchestra tuning up 'The Voice that Breathed o'er Eden,'" he finished, without a trace of bitterness. "So I sent Madame a note by a little nigger newsie." His eyes crinkled, and he quoted the favorite aphorism of the colored people, when they seem to exercise a meticulous care: ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... become somewhat neglected during the long holiday I had spent in sightseeing in London, my father thought the surer way to secure my passing would be, as he had said, to procure the aid of a good tutor who might peradventure succeed in tuning me up to concert pitch in the short interval allowed me by the patent process of "cramming," which had come into fashion with the competition craze, more speedily than by any ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... great dignity, with a bristling moustache, who had once been a schoolmaster, led the choir and carried the tenor part. It was no small privilege after the elder had announced the hymn, to see him rise and tap the desk with his tuning fork and hold it to his ear solemnly. Then he would seem to press his chin full hard upon his throat while he warbled a scale. Immediately, soprano, alto, bass and tenor launched forth upon the sea of song. The parts were like the treacherous and ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... which was, the United States has been thinking and planning and doing for the greatness to be. Her captains of industry and kings of finance have toiled and sweated at organizing and consolidating production and transportation. But this has been merely the developmental stage, the tuning-up of the orchestra. With the twentieth century rises the curtain on the play,—a play which shall have much in it of comedy and a vast deal of tragedy, and which has been well named The Capitalistic ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... smoke a cigarette. The bull-frogs were singing in the marsh. Inside, Roger was making a start on teaching Filippo English, and learning a little Italian in return. Throppy was tuning his violin. He played a short selection, and then the boys ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... you probably know that sound is produced by rapid motion. Put your finger on a piano wire that is sounding, and you will feel the motion, or touch your front tooth with a tuning-fork that is singing; in the last case you will feel very distinctly the raps made by the vibrating fork. Now, a sounding body will not only jar another body which touches it, but it will also give its motion to the air that touches it; and when the air-motions or air-waves strike ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... were in front of the Odd Fellows' Building now. The door was open. The pair behind them crowded past and clattered hurriedly up the bare, polished stairs. The orchestra could be heard tuning industriously above. They were almost late, but Willard drew her into a corner of the entrance hall, ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... sir, is a brilliant specimen of Irish mirthfulness—what a creature she is! Hand me my lute, child," she said to her granddaughter; and having adjusted the blue ribbon over her shoulder, and twisted the tuning-pegs, and thrummed upon the wires for some time, she made a prelude and cleared her throat to sing "The lass with the delicate air," when the loud whirring of the clock-wheels interrupted her, and she looked up with great delight at a little door in the top of the clock, ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... green, and a deep orange, was as proper to her lightsome aspect as if she had been born in it. This gay stranger was appropriately burdened with that mirth- inspiring instrument, the fiddle, which her companion took from her hands, and shortly began the process of tuning. Neither of us—the previous company of the wagon-needed to inquire their trade; for this could be no mystery to frequenters of brigade-musters, ordinations, cattle-shows, commencements, and other festal meetings in our sober land; and there is a dear friend of mine, who will smile when this ...
— The Seven Vagabonds (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... down the hall, and all men drank, both carles and queens, with shouting and great joy. Then Redesman put down the cup (for it had come into his hands again), and reached his hand to the wall behind him, and took down his fiddle hanging there in its case, and drew it out and fell to tuning it, while the hall grew silent to hearken: then he handled the bow and laid it on the strings till they wailed and chuckled sweetly, and when the song was well awake and stirring briskly, then he lifted up his ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... rain battered at the orchard blossoms the next day and the next. Kenny found a tuning outfit in a closet and spent his days with Joan tuning the Craig piano. He was grateful in the gloom of dark wood and dust for the fantastic thing of lavender she wore. It was like a bit of iris in a bog, ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... station is not necessarily difficult. The progress made since my father and myself began these experiments has been, of course, considerable, and yet so far as I am able to ascertain the new devices in this direction were largely anticipated by us. The tuning of wireless messages by which the interception of messages is prevented was certainly forestalled by us, though in the communications with Mars herein detailed the ordinary [non-syntonic.—Editor] ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... attend symphony concerts and the tuning-up of the orchestra never failed to give her delicious thrills, but she had never had a speaking acquaintance—so to speak—with a 'cello before this, and the beautiful mellow tones delighted her more than anything ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... random as most children of that age would have done, I struck the notes one after another, going on only when the sound of the previous note had died away. My great-aunt taught me the names of the notes and got a tuner to put the piano in order. While the tuning was going on, I was playing in the next room, and they were utterly astonished when I named the notes as they were sounded. I was not told all ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... were made whilst he was tuning his harp, for when he once more began to play, not a word was uttered. He seemed pleased by their simple exclamations of wonder and delight, and, eager to amuse his young audience, he played now a gay and now a pathetic air, to suit their ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... suppose that it is with any light or childish joy that I resolve to follow in the steps of Zenobia to the field of slaughter. I would far rather sit here in the midst of security and peace, making mimic war on my embroidery, or tuning my voice and harp, with Gracchus and you to listen and applaud. But there is that within me that forbids my stay. I am urged from within by a voice which seems as the voice of a god, to do according to my strength, for what may be the last struggle of ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... music-room. Forgetting Ward's advice, she trips laughingly and carelessly up the stairs to the room, from which proceed faint sounds of music, increasing to quite an olla podri-da of sound as the apartment is reached—for the musicians are tuning up. The beautiful duchess is soon recognized, and as soon in deep gossip with her friends. But who is that gentlemanly man leaning over the chamber-organ? That is Sir Roger L'Estrange, an admirable performer ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... when tuning in for the concert, they caught another of those mysterious, stuttering messages in the ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... eyebrows went up. An Englishman? Bewildered, he bent to the trifling labour of tuning the violins. Hawksley rejected the first two instruments after thrumming the strings with his thumb. He struck up a melody on the third but did ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... finished his supper, he produced a book and sat reading by the light of the wicks of the three brass lamps. Annetta had taken away the things and had not come back again. Gigetto strolled in and took his guitar from the peg on the wall, and idled about the room, tuning it and humming to himself. He was a tall young fellow with a woman's face and beautiful velvet-like eyes, as handsome and idle a youth as you might meet in Subiaco on a summer's feast-day. He exchanged a word of greeting with Dalrymple, and, ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... placing him first on the list of our songsters. He is truly a royal minstrel, and, considering his liberal distribution throughout our Atlantic seaboard, perhaps contributes more than any other bird to our sylvan melody. One may object, that he spends a little too much time in tuning his instrument, yet his careless and uncertain touches reveal its rare ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... Lust Haus is now lighted up, the company are assembling fast; Babette is waddling and trotting like an armadillo from corner to corner: Babette here and Babette there, it is Babette everywhere. The room is full, and the musicians have commenced tuning their instruments; the party run from the table to join the rest. A general cheer greets the widow as she is led into the room by the corporal—for she had asked many of her friends as well as the ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... were gathered a rustic company: brown-faced village lads and lasses, toothless graybeards, cackling old wives. Above the barred gate swung a festoon of ivy, whilst from within the court came the squeaking of pipes, the tuning of citharas, and shouted orders—signs of a mighty bustling. Then even while the company grew, a half-stripped courier flew up the road ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... terminology of," has eight: and this article we believe to be by Mr. Cayley,[473] who certainly ought to know his subject, being himself a large manufacturer of the new terms which he explains. Again, though "Music" in genere, as the schoolmen said, has only nine columns, "Temperament and Tuning," has eight, and "Chord" alone has two. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... sorts of People passing to and fro, and every Man employ'd in something relating to the Diversions to come; so that no notice was taken of any body; a Marquess and his Train might have pass'd by as unregarded as a single Fachin or Cobler. Not a Window in the Streets but echoed the tuning of a Lute or thrumming of a Gitarr: for, by the way, the Inhabitants of Florence are strangely addicted to the love of Musick, insomuch that scarce their Children can go, before they can scratch some Instrument or other. It was ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... as she began tuning her strings. It did seem like the funniest thing she had ever heard. The picture of Pennington, girt with a sack for an apron, with that plump, quaint face of his, and those kindly, fussy ways, drying ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... and to banish fear, which he felt was gradually obtaining the mastery over him, instead of whistling, drew out from the skirt pocket of his long-tailed great coat his favourite instrument. After tuning it, be commenced elbowing his way through his favourite air, Aden Ddu'r Fran (the Crow's Black Wing). When he passed over the green sward where the Tylwyth Teg, or Fairies, held their merry meetings, he heard something rattle in his fiddle, and this ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... katydids seemed to keep time to their heart-beats; the fiddles began tuning for another reel, and the horses, tethered near, stretched out their ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... before that. I shall do what I can, but upon my word I feel, you know," he laughed, "that such a tuning-up as YOU'VE given me will last me a long time. It's like the high Alps." Then with his hand out again he added: ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... was elaborately carved. I cannot recall the pattern. As I scrutinised it, the stock oscillated up and down, and crumpled up. The metallic plate sank inwards: and the stock contracted so that it looked not unlike a tuning-fork (2). I gave up the stock and proceeded cautiously to examine the lock. I got it well into view, but no more of the gun. It turned out to be an old-fashioned flint-lock. It immediately began to nod backwards and forwards in a manner suggestive of the beak of a bird ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... him, the doors opened and shut, letting in all who were outside: they pressed forward expectantly. On his left, a row of girls tried to start a round of applause and tittered nervously at their failure. Schilsky had come down the platform and commenced tuning. He bent his long, thin body as he pressed his violin to his knee, and his reddish hair fell over his face. The accompanist, his hands on the keys, waited ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Tuning Fork trench system at the present moment," said I. "The Babe and the grooms are digging him out. If you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... glimpse of the bride and groom from any angle in any room. The spacious vistas stretched away from an equally spacious hallway, where a wide and graceful staircase curved up to a low gallery, smothered in flowers and palms and vines; and even so early the musicians were taking their places and tuning their instruments. On the floor above, where room after room shone in beauty, with costly furnishings, and perfect harmonies, white-capped maids flitted about, putting last touches to dressing tables and pausing to gossip as they ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... from the congregation to the Bible College. The lad in his room at the dormitory one Sunday afternoon heard a debate on whether a tuning fork is a violation of the word of God. The debaters turned to him excited ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... taking covers off the seats. My fifty cents gave me a good seat, from which I opined, alas, that the shop girl had been right and busness was rotten. But at last, after hours of waiting, the faint tuning ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... yet they were empty of guests, the floors were covered with canvas, and the walls decorated with fern leaves. In a window recess one of the caterer's men was setting out two punch bowls and a multitude of glass cups; three or four musicians were gathered about the piano, tuning up, and one heard the subdued note of a cornet; the air was heavy with the smell of pinks and ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... assault. The sun, piercing the crisped clouds, those breast feathers of heavenly doves, darted its beams at the mellowed leaves, and showered to the ground their delicate shadow stains. The first, too early, scent from leaves about to fall, penetrated to the heart. And sorrowful sweet birds were tuning their little autumn pipes, blowing into them fragments of Spring ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... man of an involved nature. He was never content to plod along, as I was, selling to the peasantry some little tool like a combination steak beater, shoe horn, marcel waver, monkey wrench, nail file, potato masher and Multum in Parvo tuning fork. Andy had the artistic temper, which is not to be judged as a preacher's or a moral man's is by purely commercial deflections. So we accepted Bill's offer, ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... description of the structural features of two typical Italian instruments and a general discussion of the stringing and tuning of Italian harpsichords and virginals that is based on certain measurements of 33 instruments housed in various museums in the United States. To the curators and other staff members of these institutions I express my sincere gratitude for making it possible for me to measure ...
— Italian Harpsichord-Building in the 16th and 17th Centuries • John D. Shortridge
... The tuning of the six strings on the bass-viol was, on the bass staff, 1st string, or treble, D over the staff; 2nd or small mean, A on the top line; 3rd or great mean, E in the third space; 4th or counter-tenor, C in the second space; 5th or tenor, or gamut, G on the first ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... think I gave you as good! "That foreign fellow,—who can know How she pays, in a playful mood, For his tuning her that piano?" ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... I read. "Buff-and-crimson cards will mark the trail of all goods ready for the sale. We are tuning up. By September it is our intention to have assembled in these two great buildings the most fashionable merchandise ever shown. No one piece of goods will be permitted to linger that lacks, in any detail, the aesthetic beauty ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... lady did as she was requested, and shortly afterwards the tuning of three fiddles was heard. Which process having been protracted as long as it was supposed that the patience of the audience could possibly bear it, was put a stop to by another jerk of the bell, which, being the signal to begin in earnest, set the orchestra playing a variety of popular ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... can make an AEolian harp of a box of thin pine. The box should be the length of your window, about five inches broad, and three deep. Put a row of hitch pins at one end, and tuning pins at the other, and two narrow bridges of hard wood about two inches within the pins, over which to stretch the strings. Eight strings will make a good harp. They should be of catgut, and if you tune them in unison, the sound will be sweeter than ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... there was light and bustle; people were already arriving from the other hotels and chalets, their costumes hidden beneath many wraps. Groups of men in evening dress stood about smoking, talking "snow" and "ski-ing." The band was tuning up. The claims of the hotel-world clashed about him faintly as of old. At the big glass windows of the verandah, peasants stopped a moment on their way home from the cafe to peer. Hibbert thought laughingly of that conflict he used to imagine. ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... the same time, was a disciple of Giovanni Bellini, Giovan Battista da Conigliano, by whose hand is a panel on the altar of S. Pietro Martire in the aforesaid Church of the Nuns of the Corpus Domini, containing the said Saint, S. Nicholas, and S. Benedict, with landscapes in perspective, an angel tuning a cithern, and many little figures more than passing good. And if this man had not died young, it may be believed that he would ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... more remarkable than during this hour dedicated to the tuning and exalting of the souls of these girls. Several told me that she held their hearts in her hands when she talked and that they would follow her straight to the battlefield. She, herself, assumed her ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... 'Our organ is tuning up its pipes—man comes to-morrow—Prayers in the Lady Chapel and not choral, and it's a holiday at school, so I got off by the 5.20, and need not go back till the 6.10 to-morrow. We are practising our throats out to lead you all on the 3rd. ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she sate down at a little distance upon the bench on which Allan M'Aulay was placed, and tuning her clairshach, a small harp, about thirty inches in height, she accompanied it with her voice. The air was an ancient Gaelic melody, and the words, which were supposed to be very old, were in the same language; ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... be fortunate enough to be selected for the opening address, a few words of explanation may be deemed necessary, on my part, to avert invidious misrepresentation. The animadversion I have thought it right to make on the noise created by tuning the orchestra will, I hope, give no lasting remorse to any of the gentlemen employed in the band. It is to be desired that they would keep their instruments ready tuned, and strike off at once. This would be an accommodation to ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... was led by Roderick Ray, who had the Covenanters' blood in his veins. He carried a tuning-fork with him always, and fitted the psalm tunes to the hymns, carrying them through in a rolling baritone, and swinging his whole body to ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... with Counts of Provence, archbishops and burghers of Arles, Queens of Naples, Kings of Aragon. Crusading, pillaging, betraying, spending their substance on the sword, and buying it again by deeds of valour or imperial acts of favour, tuning troubadour harps, presiding at courts of love,—they filled a large page in the history of Southern France. The Les Baux were very superstitious. In the fulness of their prosperity they restricted the number of their dependent towns, or places baussenques, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... speaker before the American public; she would walk right past Mrs. Farrinder, and Mrs. Farrinder knew it. There was room for both, no doubt, they had such a different style; anyhow, what he wanted to show was that there was room for Miss Verena. She didn't want any more tuning-up, she wanted to break right out. Moreover, he felt that any gentleman who should lead her to success would win her esteem; he might even attract her more powerfully—who could tell? If Miss Chancellor wanted to attach her permanently, she ought to push her right forward. He gathered from what ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... it mere chance that threw within his reach Fragments and symbols of the bliss unknown? Was it vague hope that murmured down the beach, Tuning the ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... to his father's study of the vocal organs as they form sounds. Examines the Helmholtz method for the analysis and synthesis of vocal sounds. Suggests the electrical actuation of tuning-forks and the electrical transmission of their tones. Distinguishes intermittent, pulsatory and undulatory currents. Devises as his first articulating telephone a harp of steel rods thrown into vibration by electro-magnetism. ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... groups, were bent on war, and war appeals to the men in the streets of all but the weakest countries. The mass of the people had not made up their mind for a war that was not defensive; but modern governments have ample means for tuning public opinion, and with a people so accustomed as the Germans to accept the truth from above, their rulers would have little difficulty, when once they had agreed upon war, in representing it as one of defence. It is, however, impossible to say ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... breakfast the next morning, for thinking of my letter and its probable effect. It never once occurred to me that my Angelina might possibly find it difficult to construe Horace. Towards evening, I escaped again, and flew to Barnard's Green. It wanted nearly an hour to the time of performance; but the tuning of a violin was audible from within, and the money-taker was already there with his pipe in his mouth and his hands in his pockets. I had no courage to address that functionary; but I lingered in his sight and sighed audibly, and wandered round ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... blood warmed and lashed by alcohol, ready to make any conquest; and they began to deliberate how to spend the evening, Bertin mentioning the Cirque, Rocdiane the Hippodrome, Maldant the Eden, and Landa the Folies-Bergere, when a light and distant sound of the tuning ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... of Song? Year after Year striking up some new Song, The Breath of some Old Story? Life is gone, And yet the Song is not the Last; my Soul Is spent—and still a Story to be told! And I, whose Back is crooked as the Harp I still keep tuning through the Night till Day! That Harp untun'd by Time—the Harper's hand Shaking with Age—how shall the Harper's hand Repair its cunning, and the sweet old Harp Be modulated as of old? Methinks 'Tis time to break and cast it in the Fire; Yea, sweet the Harp that can be sweet no more, To cast ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the session desiring "to come forward." It was to many an impressive sight to see Straight Rory rise in the precentor's box, feel round, with much facial contortion, for the pitch—he despised a tuning-fork—and then, straightening himself up till he bent over backwards, raise the chant that introduced the tune to the congregation. But to the young men under the gallery he was more humorous than impressive, and it is to be feared that they waited for the precentor's ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... they might be more solidly built, but they are not shops. They have electric bells, and small strips of garden, and a generally genteel appearance. Two of the houses in Arthur Street are occupied by piano-tuners, and bear brass plates. I do not object to that. Piano-tuning is a profession, and I suppose that, in a way, I should be considered a professional man myself. Nor do I object to the letting of apartments, as long as it is done modestly, and without large, vulgar notice-boards. But ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... was simple enough in outward construction. All that could be seen was an apparatus consisting of two ten-foot tuning-forks of steel supported on insulated pedestals, and between them a disk of some unknown composition, mounted in a vertical plane and revolving at inconceivable velocity. The power was taken from the shaft of this revolving disk and reduced in speed by means of gear-wheels before ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... Moses struck two fingers on the capstan after the manner of a tuning-fork, and, holding them gravely to his ear as if to get the right pitch, began in a really fine manly voice ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... regular jollification to-morrow, it being his birthday. Along the rigging were white trowsers, check shirts, and all the other paraphernalia of a sailor's wardrobe, hung up to swing to the wind, and dry; and, as Jerome sat on the windlass, scraping and screwing his fiddle by way of tuning, I could plainly be made to understand that Friday, the 21st of May, was not intended to be passed over with the indifference of any ordinary day,—at least, not on board the Iris. In a few minutes, while I still listened to the plaintive screams of ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... we are aware, has been accused of tuning his harpsichord to the key-note of a faction, and of substituting, wherever he could, a party spirit for the spirit of poetry: this, in the opinion of most persons, would derogate even from his poetical character, but we hope that Lord Byron stands alone in considering that such a prostitution ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Whispered tuning and trying of instruments up here; flutter and rush about down on the dancing floor; and Barbara, that clenched left hand of hers still pressed in hard against her ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... of the Never-ending Quest, And Minstrel of the Unfulfilled Desire; For ever tuning thy frail earthly lyre To some unearthly music, and possessed With painful passionate longing to invest The golden dream of Love's immortal fire With mortal robes of beautiful attire, And fold perfection to thy ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... conductors V Vl, which may be compared to resonators in music. They can be adjusted or attuned to the electric waves as a string or pipe is to sonorous waves. In this way the receiver can be made to work only when electric waves of a certain rate are passing through the tube, just as a tuning-fork resounds to a certain note; it being understood that the length of the waves can be regulated by adjusting the balls of the transmitter. As the etheric waves produced by the sparks, like ripples ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... and the boys had arranged a program. Harry had a fine baritone voice, while George could take a high note and sustain it as well as most sopranos. When all the preliminaries had been arranged, the instrument was produced, and after a little preliminary tuning, George ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... to my song," said the water sprite. With which she drew some of her golden hairs over her arm, and tuning them as if they had been the strings of a ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... six short tunes, in tuning the first notes, will bear a cheerful high pitch; in regard to their whole compass from the lowest note, the highest is not above five ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... one-sided specialists only, but that they should be cultured men and women, to add department after department, until to-day under the same roof and management there are well equipped schools of Music, Art, Elocution, Literature, Languages, Tuning, Physical Culture, and a home with the safeguards of a Christian family life ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... forget the songs sung by my sire, Like some prophetic bard tuning the lyre? Sweet were the notes that he taught to the young; Psalms for the Sabbath, on Sabbath were sung; And the young minstrels enraptured would come To the little lone cottage I once ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... propitious,—not a cloud in the sky. The musicians were already tuning their instruments; figures of waiters hired of Gunter—trim and decorous, in black trousers and white waistcoats—passed to and fro the space between the house and marquee. Richard looked and looked; and as he looked ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Muse, that whilom wail'd those Briton kings, Who unto her in vision did appear, Craves leave to strengthen her night-weathered wings In the warm sunshine of your golden Clere [clear]; Where she, fair Lady, tuning her chaste lays Of England's Empress to her hymnic string For your affect, to hear that virgins praise, Makes choice of your chaste self to hear her sing, Whose royal worth, (true virtue's paragon,) Here made me dare to engrave your worthy name. In hope that unto you the same alone Will ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... actions adapted to class study are those of the eyes, such as the closing of the lids on moving objects near them and the dilating of the pupils when the eyes are shaded. The involuntary jerking of the head on bringing the prongs of a vibrating tuning fork in contact with the end of the nose is also a reflex action which can be ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... eventually into a crow's-nest, as soon as we should again find ourselves among the ice.] which I have had fitted up for her reception abaft the binnacle. A spacious meadow of sweet-scented hay has been laid down in a neighbouring corner for her further accommodation; and the Doctor is tuning up his flageolet, in order to complete the bucolic character of the scene. The only personage amongst us at all disconcerted by these arrangements is the little white fox which has come with us from Iceland. Whether he considers the admission on board of so domestic an animal to be a reflection on ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... imitation of the tuning of a fiddle was marvellous enough to produce a startling effect upon a much less enthusiastic listener than the little boy. It was given in perfect good faith, but the serious expression on the old man's face ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... request Cuthbert related the story of his adventures among the Saracens; and then Blondel, tuning his lute, sang several canzonets which he had composed in the Holy Land, of feats of ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... feeding and reproducing inventions, the viscera boxed up in the chest and abdomen. The third partner is the glands of internal secretion, which act upon the viscera both directly and indirectly through the check and drive effect upon the vegetative nerves. The glands are like tuning keys, by which certain strings in the instrument may be tightened, so that its vibratory activity is increased, or they may be loosened, the vibrations decreased, the activity lessened. Tuning up the motors is a constant process in the organism. Finally, there are the large nerve ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... of Reed Pipe Vowel Cavities Diaphone in Worcester Cathedral Diaphone in Aberdeen University Diaphone in St. Patrick's, N. Y. Diaphone in Auditorium, Ocean Grove, N. J. Diaphone in St. Paul's Cathedral, Buffalo Diaphone Producing Foundation Tone. New Method of Tuning Reeds Portrait of Aristide Cavaille-Coll Portrait of Charles Spachman Barker Portrait of Henry Willis Portrait of Robert Hope-Jones. Keyboards of Organ, St. George's Hall Keyboards of Organ, Notre Dame, Paris Keyboards of Organ, Westminster Abbey Organ in ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... out, Mike; don't put yourself out!' said Klaus patronizingly, seating himself upon a chest, and then tuning his fiddle. 'Getting into a passion won't bring the shiners back! What do you say, gossip, to a tune? Will you dance if I play? I have improved wonderfully, I can tell you, since I left this half-and-half sort of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... With the tuning key of his matchless genius he struck the chords of sorrow to their inmost tone and played on the heart strings of joy with the tender vibrations of an aeolian harp, trembling with melodious echoes among the ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... could soon be heard tuning in the next room. Then one came through the passage-room where the three waited, and went in, then another, then another. Last of all ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... cast off his shroud. Most wintry sign of all I think, as I close the window hastily, is the open farm-stile, its poles lying embedded in the snow where they were last flung by Waster Lunny's herd. Through the still air comes from a distance a vibration as of a tuning-fork: a robin, perhaps, alighting on the wire ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... a sudden let-down; a string of the human violin snapped, just as it was keyed up to tuning point. Slowly and sorrowfully we regained the yawl after that brief and bitter experience, and a few strokes of the oars carried us to ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... the enthusiasts who swept down on them, Frank and Harry Chester, the Boy Aviators, who had just concluded a tuning up flight for the Hempstead Plains Cup—the contest for which was to take place in a week's time—entered the shed and, making their way to a screened-off room in the corner, shed their leather coats and woolen caps and removed the grime from their hands and ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... he replied. Looking anxiously at his wife across the table, he said: "You're the one that needs tuning up. I heard you crying last night. You thought I was asleep, but I wasn't. I didn't say anything because—well—I felt kind of ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... toothache. They were followed by white bread and butter, cranberry tarts, and cups of boiling hot tea, with which the supper finally ended. We were then supposed to be prepared for the labours of the evening; and after a good deal of preliminary scraping and tuning the orchestra struck up a lively Russian dance called "kapalooshka." The heads and right legs of the musicians all beat time emphatically to the music, the man with the comb blew himself red in the face, and the whole assembly began to sing. In a moment one of ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... first on the banks of Hebrus did produce. Thee, whom Maeonia educated, whom Mantua charmed, and who, on that fair hill which overlooks the proud metropolis of Britain, sat'st, with thy Milton, sweetly tuning the heroic lyre; fill my ravished fancy with the hopes of charming ages yet to come. Foretel me that some tender maid, whose grandmother is yet unborn, hereafter, when, under the fictitious name of Sophia, she reads the real worth which ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... broken meats, and munch. I am on nodding terms with a meditative turncock who lingers in one of them, and whom I suspect of a turn for poetry; the rather, as he looks out of temper when he gives the fire-plug a disparaging wrench with that large tuning-fork of his which would wear out the shoulder of his coat, but for a precautionary piece of inlaid leather. Fire-ladders, which I am satisfied nobody knows anything about, and the keys of which were lost in ancient times, moulder away in the ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... twice unfortunate," said Alfred, tuning to Lydia, and there was an earnest ring in his deep voice "This time I am indeed blameless. I have just left Colonel Zane's house, where there has been an accident, and I was dispatched to find 'Betty,' being entirely ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... was only the prologue, the overture. If one might be permitted to speak scientifically, it was only the tuning of the instruments. The opera was to come,—the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... poetical, in which mood there is ever imaginative activity refined by spiritual necessities. It is not extravagant to affirm that when act or thought reaches the beautiful, it resounds through the whole being, tuning it like a high strain of sweetest music. Thus in the poetical (and there is no poetry until the sphere of the beautiful is entered) there is always a reverberation from the emotional nature. Reverberation ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... jet of gas lighted the ladies' room. It couldn't wait; it was dancing already. When the door opened again and there came a burst of tuning from the drill hall, it ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... interesting," and "intensely exciting;" he has slept during a political speech, reported as one continued stream of enchaining eloquence, delivered amid thunders of applause; and now, under the blaze of astral lamps, and pink and green candles, while the musicians were tuning their fiddles, and producing all sorts of discordant sounds, he was dozing as quietly as if in his own rocking-chair. Uncle Dozie seldom talked when he could help it; the chief business and pleasure of his life consisted in superintending ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... of the quarrel as eagerly as if they were going to a racecourse. I stopped for a few minutes at the door of our cottage to listen to the volume of abuse that was rising across the stillness of the island. Then I went into the kitchen and began tuning the fiddle, as the boys were impatient for my music. At first I tried to play standing, but on the upward stroke my bow came in contact with the salt-fish and oil-skins that hung from the rafters, so I settled myself ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... bay in Shadowland, Tuning his ear to understand What voice hath tamed this Aerie; Chafe, chafe he may The stag all day, And never thirst ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... was sitting in a grove, Tuning her smiles unto the chirping songs, But straight she spied where two together strove, Each one complaining of the other's wrongs. Cupid did cry lamenting of the harm; Jove's messenger, thou wrong'st me too ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... the weather brought numerous butterflies afield, and one fiddler, to whose tuning the little women danced; others closer upon womanhood would have danced likewise, if the sisters had taken partners; but Dahlia was restrained by the sudden consciousness that she was under the immediate ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to fill up. On the up-stairs landing violins squeaked in the tuning. Ferren, who was to lead the cotillion with Kitty, chose six couples for the first figure, and ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... the box and began moving the metal switch arms back and forth, thus tuning in more perfectly as indicated by the increased and clearer sound and the absence of interference from other broadcasting stations, noticed at first by a low buzzing. In a moment the music came clear and sweet, the stirring tune ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... tuning his violin. The guests, informed that this excellent artist was about to entertain them with his wonderful skill, drew near ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... wore a red ball-dress, without any ornaments or flowers; this was by her mother's wish. She feared that she had betrayed herself by coming so early, and remained alone in a side room; she did not appear until the rooms had been fully lighted, and the perfume, the buzz of voices, and the tuning of instruments lured her in. Ella was so short, that when she came into the crowd, she had not seen Aksel Aaroe when she heard several whispers of "There he is," and some one added, "He is coming towards us." It was Fru Holmbo for whom he was looking, and to whom he bowed; ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... behind us; we were both far away in that Utopia where mind penetrates mind, heart understands heart. We heard neither the squeaking of a swing beneath us, nor the shouts of laughter along the promenades, nor the sound of a band tuning up in a neighboring pavilion. Our eyes, raised to heaven, failed to see the night descending upon us, vast and silent, piercing the foliage with its first stars. Now and again a warm breath passed over us, ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... satisfied with fulness. The intermediate hours are tedious and gloomy; I long again to be hungry, that I may again quicken my attention. The birds peck the berries, or the corn, and fly away to the groves, where they sit, in seeming happiness, on the branches, and waste their lives in tuning one unvaried series of sounds. I, likewise, can call the lutanist and the singer, but the sounds, that pleased me yesterday, weary me to-day, and will grow yet more wearisome to-morrow. I can discover within me no power of perception, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... "It is plain therefore that the Egyptian harmony was purely diatonic; such a thing as modern modulation was unknown, and every piece from beginning to end was played in the same key." That this position is utterly untenable is very evident, for there was nothing to prevent the Egyptians from tuning their harps in the same order of tones and half tones as is used for our modern pianos. That this is even probable may be assumed from the scale of a flute dating back to the eighteenth or nineteenth century B.C. (1700 or 1600 B.C.), which was found in the royal tombs ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... companion had caught the first sounds of the tuning of the instruments, and here we were, before the invitation to dance, a customed observance at Moldwarp Hall, had begun to play. In a few minutes thereafter, the door of the drawing-room opened; when, pair after pair, the company, to the number of over a hundred and fifty, I should guess, ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... of the springs on the magnetic bar, it is always necessary to have some standard for corrections. In these experiments the time of fall of the gravity chronoscope plate, as determined by the graphic method with a 500 S.V. electric tuning fork, was 125[sigma] ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... no composition at all; but a kind of tuning and riming fall in what they write. It runs and slides, and only makes a sound. Women's poets they are called, as you ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... cathedral, most beautifully and harmoniously draped with the separate colors of the four rooms, red, yellow, violet and green; immense gongs, connected apparently with some intricate network of shining wires, hung suspended in midair beneath the arches; rising from the floor were gigantic tuning forks, erect and silent, immediately behind which gaped artificial air-cavities placed to increase the intensity of the respective notes when caught; and in the dim background the clergyman pointed out an elaborate apparatus for quickly altering the temperature ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... and the 16 feet reed, with the Horn, of the swell, are specimens of which the builders may well be somewhat proud. All the compound stops are very brilliant. Equal temperament has been applied to the tuning. ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... cliff shattered to fragments by the weight of its superincumbent mass, or pierced by the fingers of the frost and torn away. All these thunder down the valley and are pulverized to sand. Is this music? No, but it is a tuning of instruments. The rootlets seize the sand and turn it to soil, to woody fibre, leafy verdure, blooming flowers, and delicious fruit. This asks life to come, partake, and be made strong. The grass gives itself to all flesh, the insect grows to feed the bird, the bird to nourish the animal, the ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... morning bright, with scarlet sky, doth pass the evening's weed— As mellow pears above the crabs esteemed be— So doth my love surmount them all, whom yet I hap to see! The oak shall olives bear, the lamb the lion fray, The owl shall match the nightingale in tuning of her lay, Or I my love let slip out of mine entire heart, So deep reposed in my breast is she for her desart! For many blessed gifts, O happy, happy land! Where Mars and Pallas strive to make their glory most to stand! Yet, land, more is thy bliss ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy |
