"Tuning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... playde, Augustus, wantonly, Tuning our song unto a tender Muse, And, like a cobweb weaving slenderly, Have onely playde: let thus much then excuse This Gnats small poeme, that th'whole history 5 Is but a iest; though envie it abuse: But who such sports ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... the passage. It was deserted, but the sound of laughing voices and the tuning of violins floated up from below. Again that feeling that was akin to physical sickness assailed Dinah. Down there he was waiting for her, waiting to be intoxicated into headlong, devouring passion by her dancing. She seemed to feel his arms ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... because we are at once actor and spectator that we find no fault with blinking sight and slothful thought. We are finite branded and content, except during the shrill, undermining moments when the orchestra is tuning ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... The fiddler was tuning his fiddle for another dance, and the man of the house said to the young men, they would all know what dancing was like when they saw Hanrahan dance, for the like of it had never been seen since ...
— Stories of Red Hanrahan • W. B. Yeats
... Tug boat trensxipo. Tulip tulipo. Tulle tulo. Tumble elrenversi. Tumbler glaso. Tumbrel sxargxoveturilo. Tumour sxvelabsceso. Tumult tumulto. Tumultuous tumulta. Tun barelego. Tune agordi. Tuneful belsona. Tunic jxako. Tuning-fork tonforketo. Tunnel subtervojo. Turban turbano. Turbid sxlima. Turbot rombfisxo. Turbulent tumulta. Tureen supujo. Turf torfo. Turk Turko. Turkey Turkujo. Turkey (bird) meleagro. Turmoil bruego, tumulto. Turn turni. Turn (on a lathe) torni. Turn ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... feat he executed, which, as much as any thing else, showed what he could do. When at Aberdeen, as Dr. Howard explained, Tom heard, in a large ante-room adjoining the hall where he was, a teacher of dancing tuning his fiddle, the strings of which apparently had been rather difficult to get tightened up to proper tune. Tom had but to listen, and he retained every sound which the dancing-master produced. Tom's imitation on the piano—first of the striking of the violin-strings with ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... 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 wild ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... she would not forget him Then said he to her, "By Allah, thou art the desire of the Commander of the Faithful! Now take the lute and sing a song which thou shalt sing to the Caliph, when thou goest in to him" So she took the lute and tuning ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... and his voice was well-tuned for the tender serious manner, had her ears been alive to such tuning. "Alexandrina, this is a very important step that you and I ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... that had been conducive to thought at Christmas in this same room when we heard the two girls count four so often, but Sally could pull an azalea flower to pieces over her cogitations, and did so, instead of tuning up forthwith. Laetitia was preoccupied—couldn't take an interest in other people's fathers, nor her own for that matter. She tuned up, though, and told Sally to look alive. But while Sally looks alive she ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... 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 wide intervals with unerring accuracy, together with a great variety of styles ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... 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 ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... pulsing with fitful promise of the dawn; but within the vast enclosure of the aerodrome the gloom of night lingered so stubbornly that two huge search-lights had been pressed into the service of those engaged in tuning up the motor of the ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... eventide. Close was the garden and serene. The leaning reeds in quiet state About the pool, merged in the green Of misty leaves and hanging vines. The fireflies spun their silver lines Across the deeper atmosphere, And through the silence came the clear Persistent tuning of the frogs From ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... heroic quality of the verses that our little sensualist in a periwig chose out to marry with his own mortal strains. Some gust from brave Elizabethan times must have warmed his spirit, as he sat tuning his sublime theorbo. "To be or not to be. Whether 'tis nobler"—"Beauty retire, thou dost my pity move"—"It is decreed, nor shall thy fate, O Rome;"—open and dignified in the sound, various and majestic in the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... now and then shaking the loose thick hair from his handsome, genial face. Helfen listened to him with a half smile, screwing up his violin and giving him a quiet look now and then. The inspiring noise of tuning up had begun, and I was on the very ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... his work-calloused and crooked hands and began tuning it. The group at the kitchen door turned to listen, their faces lighting up a little. Rose tried to get ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... anxiety to present them. Then, there was a very interesting production of three little keys for the aforesaid cases, and a melodramatic expression of horror at finding a string broken; and a vast deal of screwing and tightening, and winding, and tuning, during which Mrs. Briggs expatiated to those near her on the immense difficulty of playing a guitar, and hinted at the wondrous proficiency of her daughters in that mystic art. Mrs. Taunton whispered to a neighbour that it was 'quite sickening!' and the Misses ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... windows; and I believe that in a few minutes I should have been asleep, if Ching had not awakened me by his vigorous onslaught upon the instrument, one of whose pegs refused to stay in exactly the right place as he kept on tuning. ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... our little Mayfair Street was the haunt of much voluntary minstrelsy. Bands of cockney darkeys came down it, tuning their voices to our native ragtime. Or a balladist, man or woman, took the centre, and sang towards our compassionate windows. Or a musical husband and wife placed their portable melodeon on the opposite sidewalk, and trained their vocal ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... our inspection and taking water samples for examination, we dined at the divisional Mess B and set out again to complete our tour. We visited the various filling points of water carts and gradually drew nearer the front line trenches. Turning down one arm of "the tuning fork"—a forked road near Festubert, we came upon an advanced dressing-station. A little to our left was a grey pile of bricks and rubble, all that remained of ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... stage direction. "A tucket sounds. Enter the Vicomte, disguised." To tell the truth, this entry was a daunting business. A dance had just come to an end; and the musicians in the gallery had fallen to tuning their violins. The chairs arrayed along the walls were thinly occupied, and as yet the social temperature scarce rose to thawing-point. In fact, the second-rate people had arrived, and from the far end of the room were nervously watching the door for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and my studies having 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 ordinary mode ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... ready for the afternoon and evening. She had already made a careful schedule of the broadcasting done by all the stations within reach of her fine radio set, and found that it was possible, by tuning her instrument to the wave lengths of different stations, to get something interesting into every hour from two o'clock ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... his uniform. It was one of the few that at all approached fitting, and Paul thought it very becoming-though he knew that the tight, straight coat accentuated his narrow chest, about which he was exceedingly sensitive. He was always considerably excited while he dressed, twanging all over to the tuning of the strings and the preliminary flourishes of the horns in the music room; but tonight he seemed quite beside himself, and he teased and plagued the boys until, telling him that he was crazy, they put him down on the floor and ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... age of twelve, this boy with the aid of a Japanese servant, had set up his own aerial and apparatus, had learned the code alphabet and was thoroughly familiar with all the delicate intricacies of detector, tuning coil, sparker and the rest of it. He had gotten in touch with certain other wireless operators within a radius of ten miles and, although he had never seen any of them, he could recognize instantly the sound of their different ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... 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, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... thinks wonders of it, and would not swap it for a world of modern fiddles, what don't touch the heart with their music. He can bring out tremendous wailings with these two strings; such as will set the whole plantation dancing. He puts it through the process of tuning, adding all the scientific motions and twists of an Italian first-fiddling artiste. Simon will moisten its ears by spitting on them, which he does, turning and twisting himself into the attitudes of a pompous maestro. But now he has got it in what he considers the very ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... come out you pass a fresh victim going in and you see the dentist welcome him and then turn to crank up his motor and you hear the canary tuning up with a new line of v-shaped twitters. And you are glad that he is the one who is going in and that you are the one ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... if I was," answered Joel, taking a tuning-fork from his pocket and striking it upon the table. "I've kep' singin' school one term, besides leadin' the Methodis' choir in Slocumville: so I orto know a little ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... effect, and better in expression, than most of the Spaniard's. "After the second Battle of Newbury," by Cattermole, is a well-imagined scene, but is defective in that in which we should have supposed the artist would not have failed. It is not moonlight. "Tuning," by J. W. Wright, is a good proof that blue, as Gainsborough likewise proved, is not necessarily cold. His "Confession," with the two graceful figures, is very sweet. "The Gap of Dunloe," W. A. Nesfield—has fine folding forms—the distance and rainbow beautiful—it is, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... cave beneath Mount Tom, and fought them in the light of a great carbuncle that was fastened to the roof. The noises recurred in 1888, when houses rattled in witch-haunted Salem, eight miles away, and the bell on the village church "sung like a tuning-fork." The noises have occurred simultaneously with earthquakes in other parts of the country, and afterward rocks have been found moved from their bases and cracks have been discovered in the earth. One sapient editor said that the pearls in the mussels ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... the poor girl. Not hers the hovering sense of marriage bells Tuning the air with fragrance of sweet sound; But the low dirge that ever rose and died, Recurring without pause or any close, Like one verse chaunted aye in sleepless brain. Down to the shore it drew her ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... derive, it must be confessed, their chief interest and value from that memorable association in which we find them. It was the first essay, which had to be made before those finished monuments of art, which command our admiration on their own account wholly, could begin to appear. It was 'the tuning of the instruments, that those who came afterwards might play the better.' We see, of course, the stiff, cramped hand of the beginner here, instead of the grand touch of the master, who never comes till his art has been prepared to his hands,—till the details ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... notes, but they were intended simply to elucidate the text. Though succinct, they are sufficient for the general reader. Here and there, however, we come upon a more elaborate note, such as that upon the tuning of the lute (Vol. viii., 179), where Mr. Payne's musical knowledge enables him to elucidate an obscure technical point. He also identified (giving proper chapter and verse references), collated, and where needful corrected all the ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... brilliant light, by which every object, from a human form to a marble acanthus leaf, cast sharp-edged shadows, I soon discovered my violin on a tangle of flowering clematis, and began tuning ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... appearance, and apparently large and powerful, and the two Mohammedans setting to work with great solemnity, and a commendable hush coming over the assembled company, I expected a musical treat. The performers began by tuning up with great care; but the tuning continued so long that I began to wonder how soon the real music would begin. Just then the musicians ceased, and I found that the apparent tuning was the actual performance and that it was all over. The audience appeared to be pleased ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... She heard the orchestra tuning for the overture, and shivered. She felt much more like a victim waiting her turn to be thrown to the lions than a young woman about to make her debut as a "headliner." To herself she kept repeating under her breath, "Tomorrow they will be comfortable ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... a man of 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 conflicting currents ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... that from the Badness of the Pegs, arise several Inconveniences; The first I have named, viz. the Loss of Labour. The 2d. is, the Loss of Time; for I have known some so extreme long in Tuning their Lutes and Viols, by reason only of Bad Pegs, that They have wearied out their Auditors before they began to Play. A 3d. Inconvenience is, that oftentimes, if a High-stretch'd small String happen to slip down, 'tis in great danger to break at the next winding up, especially ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... the earthquake shock as an oscillation. It is a quality of all bodies which oscillate under the influence of a blow, such as originates in earthquake shocks, to swing to and fro, after the manner of the metal in a bell or a tuning fork, in a succession of movements, each less than the preceding, until the impulse is worn out, or rather, we should in strict sense say, changed to other forms of energy. The result is, that even in the slightest earthquake shock the earth ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... in Shadowland, Tuning his ear to understand What voice hath tamed this Aerie; Chafe, chafe he may The stag all day, And ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... gentle maid, whom Mnesis, happy nymph, 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 once existed ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... days, while the upper-classmen looked at the Freshmen with 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 broke and the entire body, except the alumni, struggled into ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... 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 ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... "but they're down there in the Square now stackin' up drive impedimenta and such, red banners, and so forth, tuning up to warble the hymn to free Russia. Hurry if you want to ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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, he told her, ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... Stringing thy Pearls upon a Harp 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, ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... was the theatre or opera-house brilliantly lighted, and the instruments tuning up, and the splendid company pouring in: crowned heads, famous beauties, world-renowned warriors and statesmen, Garibaldi, Gortschakoff, Cavour, Bismarck, and Moltke, now so famous, and who not? Mary would point them out to me. ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... metallic beat, and, looking suddenly up, he saw, where Minuit's face had been, a round clock face looking down and ticking at him. This doctor was a worthless fellow, however, and loose of tongue. Minuit, it was observed, never used a tuning-fork in church, like all leaders of religious music, but cast his eyes down a moment towards his heart, and tapped his foot, and then, as if catching the pitch somewhere from within, he raised the tune and carried it forward with an exquisite ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... 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 for the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... bunch of flowers was gathered for the mother at home. There were happy hours, too, when the father and his son read together great books of poetry in which tales of love and knightly encounters were interesting parts. And then, I am sure, there were other happy hours when, tuning their instruments together, they filled the time with music's ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... the device would be carried in a small case, hooked to the diver's belt, with a single tuning-knob control. The "throttle" or speed control for the ion drive would be ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... 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 ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... transformed what had been to all intents and purposes a concert-hall into a flower-decked ballroom, while the members of the band engaged for the dance began climbing agilely into their allotted places on the raised platform preparatory to tuning up for the ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... 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 of ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... 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, ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... militarists, with considerable backing from financial and commercial 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 ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... other hand, the Service points out that listeners have a wide choice of broadcast programmes, advertised well in advance, and it assumes that listeners will be selective in tuning in their sets, and restrictive in not allowing their children to listen after 7 p.m. when programmes specially suited for them cease. This assumption, however, is not well founded. Once switched on, the radio frequently stays ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.
... you have it in your rooms. Would you be so good as to bring me the bow of your violin, and borrow for me anywhere a tuning-fork of as ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... to reach afterwards. But when he was admonished by his subject to descend, he came down gently circling in the air and singing to the ground, like a lark melodious in her mounting and continuing her song till she alights, still preparing for a higher flight at her next sally, and tuning her voice to better music." This is charming, and yet even this wants the ethereal tincture that pervades the style of Jeremy Taylor, making it, as Burke said of Sheridan's eloquence, "neither prose nor poetry, but something better than either." Let us compare Taylor's treatment of ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... 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 ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... 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 ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... 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, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... a a, is the tuning fork, f, which as estimated makes 184 vibrations in a second. By the stylus, y, on the upper limb of the fork these oscillations are marked upon the sliding plate of glass as a wave line. Lest, after the first impulses of the fork have ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... wrath extinguished by her pretty recognition of his flowers and his admiration of her ready wit,—"an untutored provincial maid! By my faith, Miss Sibyl, you'd put to shame many a court dame. But, hark, what's that? As I live, the musicians are tuning up for the minuet." And smilingly he held out ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... a delightful twang when played upon with the forefinger. He could also fashion an interesting musical instrument in his desk by means of spools and catgut and bits of broken glass. The chief joy of his life was an old tuning-fork that the teacher of the singing school had given him, but, owing to the degrading and arbitrary censorship of pockets that prevailed, he never dared bring it into the schoolroom. There were ways, however, of evading inexorable law and circumventing base injustice. He ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Sam Hollis, and the rest were then talking of going home and making ready for the race. Bottoms would have to be scrubbed, extra gear put ashore—a whole lot of things done—and a few try-outs in the Bay by way of tuning up. ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... girls left their pitchers at the wells; the market people threw down their baskets, and an immense crowd were assembled. The ring being formed, and drums beaten, the performers first came forward singly, plying their muscles, like a musician tuning his instrument, and each calling out to the bystanders—"I am a hyena." "I am a lion." "I can kill all that oppose me." After about twenty had shown off in this manner, they came forward in pairs, wearing ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... music. He is like one who has been four days dead, to whose body the music has recalled the soul. Down by his knee he holds a violin, fashioned like those of the orchestra within; which, as he listens, he is tuning to ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... old doctor, giving her a look made up of humourous vexation and real sadness,—"I wish I knew the right tuning-key to ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... in all its summer beauty, nature smiling with her brightest smiles, the glorious sunshine just departing from the sky, and glowing with double brightness in its dying hour, the woods still green and fresh, the blackbird tuning his evening song, and everything speaking peace and promising joy, as Wilton rode through the gates ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... 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, ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... like an ant-hill in commotion; people running forwards and backwards, trying vainly to bribe an entrance, until the noise was like hornets buzzing; while from behind came the sound of the orchestra tuning, faint raspings of the cellos, and the wails of the wood-winds, and above them the cry ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... sun had gone down on thy sorrow, the maidens Were wreathing the orange's bud in thy hair, And the trumpets were tuning the musical cadence That gave thee, a bride, to ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... the most important thing in life. As a man thinketh in his heart so is he. Just as a tuning fork near a piano will respond with a vibration when a key of the same pitch is struck on the piano nearby, so likewise do the bodies of men respond to proper stimulus and become in tune. By right thinking man can re-harmonize himself, can ...
— The Silence • David V. Bush
... clarinet, each player is necessarily provided with two instruments (an A and a B-flat—the C clarinet being almost obsolete, and the E-flat being used only in military bands); but in playing upon the brass wind instruments the same instrument may be tuned in various keys, either by means of a tuning slide or by inserting separate shanks or crooks, these latter being merely additional lengths of tubing by the insertion of which the total length of the tube constituting the instrument may be ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... piece of machinery, should be carefully examined, and, if necessary, adjusted each time it is tuned. The hammers need occasional and careful attention to preserve original tone quality and elasticity. Never allow the piano to be beaten or played hard upon. This is ruinous to both the action and tuning. When not in use the music rack and top should be closed to exclude dust. The keyboard need never be closed, as the ivory needs both light and ventilation and will eventually turn yellow ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... and at the same time closely consulting his idiosyncrasy in the application of both. His natural disposition and endowments are to be sedulously watched, and guided or wholly repressed as the case may demand. The budding artist is supplied with pencil, the nascent musician with trumpet or tuning-fork, the florist with tiny hoe and trowel, and so on. The boy is never loosed, physically or metaphysically, quite out of leading-strings. They are made, however, so elastic as scarce to be felt, and yet so strong as never to break. Moral suasion, perseveringly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... 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, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... was taken from the box, and put in the front room. While its owner was tuning it, I put up a couple of rude box bedsteads in the attic, and filled them with clean hay. The cooking-stove was put up in the rear apartment, and the whole building looked as though it had never been ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... recordings, of Cargill's speech and no man in his right mind would have refrained from tuning it in because everyone wanted to ...
— The Clean and Wholesome Land • Ralph Sholto
... got in after him. Then I told the two babes that I could take care of Smith all right and that there was no need of their walking clear up to the house. After that I shut the door and we came away. If looks could kill I'd be tuning up my harp this minute. Say, if I didn't have any more nerve than those two I'd get a permit from the city to live. And all the time Smith never made a kick. I had him hypnotized. Now I'm going in and make ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... your book, which I beg your pardon for detaining so long, that I have been tuning my lyre on the banks of Nith. Some large poetic plans that are floating in my imagination, or partly put in execution, I shall impart to you when I have the pleasure of meeting with you; which, if you are then in Edinburgh, I shall have about ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... stopped playing and was tuning a little, idly sounding chords of penetrating sweetness. There came a noise of jolting and jingling from the ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... Theatricals of a Most Christian Majesty." Think what a stab; crueler than daggers through one's heart: "Crebillon?" M. de Voltaire said nothing; looked nothing, in those sacred circles; and never ceased outwardly his worship, and assiduous tuning, of the Pompadour: but he felt—as only Phoebus Apollo in the like case can!"Away!" growled he to himself, when this atrocity had culminated. And, in effect, is, since the end of 1746 or so, pretty much ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 to ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... arranging themselves and the musicians tuning up, Pierre sat down with his little partner. Natasha was perfectly happy; she was dancing with a grown-up man, who had been abroad. She was sitting in a conspicuous place and talking to him like a grown-up lady. She had a ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... long. At night we were favoured with a different kind of concert. The dry ground around my house had become a marsh tenanted by frogs, who kept up a most incredible noise from dusk to dawn. They were somewhat musical too, having a deep vibrating note which at times closely resembles the tuning of two or three bass-viols in an orchestra. In Malacca and Borneo I had heard no such sounds as these, which indicates that the frogs, like most of the animals of Celebes, are of species peculiar ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... wander by the woodland That hangs upon the hill; Hark! the cock is tuning His morning clarion shrill; And hurriedly awaking From his nest amid the spray, Cheerily now, the blackbird, Whistling, greets the day. For be it ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... to understand this theory of Radiation and Absorption, it will be well for us if we look at a similar effect in the sphere of music and sound. Let us suppose that we have two tuning-forks of the same pitch, placed on a table at a distance of a foot from each other. If we set one of the forks vibrating, the waves which it radiates through the air will fall upon the other one, and will ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... whom Mnesis, happy Nymph, first on the Banks of Hebrus didst produce. Thee, whom Maeonia educated, whom Mantua charm'd, and who, on that fair Hill which overlooks the proud Metropolis of Britain, sat, 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 once existed in my Charlotte, shall, from her ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... two tuning-forks. I strike one, and it sounds D, the third space in the treble; I strike the other, and it sounds G, the first leger line, five notes above the C. I have drawn on this diagram (Fig. 35), an imaginary picture of these two sets of waves. You see that the G fork makes three waves, while the C ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... they're tuning Has the sweet and sleepy crooning That the mother hums the baby at her breast, Till the world forgets its sorrow And the cares that haunt the morrow, And is sinking, hushed and happy, to its rest Sometimes bubbling o'er with gladness, Sometimes ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... least, you know what to expect. You recognize each song, each piece. You wait in suspense until Miss. Brown has passed her high A—always half a tone too flat. You take it as a matter of course that Mr. Black—the first violinist in the place—after tuning up for ten minutes, will break a string directly he begins to play. I should have thought he would be pretty well used to it by now, but he never gets in tune again for the rest of the evening. You would be quite ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... between the evergreen shrubs in their pots, and through the great glass swing-door, with every assurance. The place seemed fairly full. There was a subdued hum of talk and clink of glasses; waiters hurried to and fro; the band was tuning up. British uniforms predominated, but there were many foreign officers and a few civilians. There were perhaps a couple of dozen girls ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... already heard him sing some sentimental rubbish about meeting by moonlight and another thing about stars and souls, and I threw a cushion at his head as soon as he began to make some noise which he called "tuning up." That began a cushion fight, which resulted in two china shepherdesses, a small lamp, and some teacups being smashed, but it persuaded Lambert that he could not sing whenever he felt inclined. We all sat down again, and Ward, who had been hanging on to the standard lamp while cushions had been ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... overly refined proprieties—I do not mean proprieties of the essential kind—cannot endure between man and maid cast alone in a wilderness. They become frail, insipid; and mar, rather than perfect, the harmony of existence. Contraversely, their absence adds a deeper luster, strikes the tuning-fork that hums with the true note of life. Sorry the man who does not feel a sympathetic vibration! A woman is not exactly at her best when bathing her face above a porcelain bowl, and to be the constant, daily witness of such ablutions would, in my ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... now on Jan's part had been a thing of priceless worth to Bill. Indeed, it was the ex-leader's one desire, its provocation his sole objective for the moment. This it was that drew his pointed red tongue in and out like a flame, this the tuning-fork that gave his snarl its key; the note of insolent, ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... the dusty road wound east toward Megara. Here, by the gate, 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
... thee." "O Allah cause her to sing vilely!" quoth Ja'afar. Asked the Caliph, "Why so?"; and he answered, "If thou crucify us all together, we shall keep one another company." The Caliph laughed at his speech. Presently the damsel took the lute and, after looking at it and tuning it, she played a measure which made all hearts yearn to her; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... 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. Exhibits optically the vibrations ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... established by special instruments, and is able to select the middle points of red, yellow, green, blue, and purple as a basis for comparing and relating all colors. These five middle colors form a Chromatic Tuning Fork. (See page 70.) It is far better that children should first become familiar with these tuned color intervals which are harmonious in themselves rather than begin by blundering among unrelated degrees of harsh and violent color. Who would think ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... her bow, and once more holding the violin to her ear, began tuning it. That time the tuning was so bad that she handed ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... that thou mightest bring her within the bond of thy covenant; this was the sum and substance of all my askings for her. I witnessed the time of her second birth, saw the tears of conviction and remorse. I witnessed thy loosing her bonds, and tuning her heart and tongue to praise redeeming love. I witnessed the teaching of thy Spirit, and the enlightening of her eyes, and the taste thou gavest her of thy salvation; I thought her mountain stood strong, and she ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... the lost musicians appeared, under the guidance of Maurice and Henry Scott. They were not, perhaps, quite beyond suspicion as to sobriety, but there was no fear of their being unable to do their duty reasonably well. The happy news of their arrival being made known by the commencement of a vigorous tuning, the doors of the dressing-rooms opened, and ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... 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 ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... same time. Gnats and mosquitoes (Culicidae) also seem to attract each other by humming; and Prof. Mayer has recently ascertained that the hairs on the antennae of the male vibrate in unison with the notes of a tuning-fork, within the range of the sounds emitted by the female. The longer hairs vibrate sympathetically with the graver notes, and the shorter hairs with the higher ones. Landois also asserts that he has repeatedly drawn down a whole swarm of gnats by uttering ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... may be able to manifest through them and by them. For just as in your orchestra you must tune the instruments to a single note, so must you tune your various bodies in order that harmoniously they may allow the spiritual force to come through from the higher to the lower plane. It is a real tuning, a real making of harmonious vibrations; and the difference between the vibrations that are harmonious and the vibrations that are discordant, from this point of view, is this: when all the bodies vibrate together, all the particles and their spaces correspond, ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... and women were going around 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 of musicle instruments ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that next week the works will certainly be sent off. You will easily understand, if you only imagine to yourself, that with uncertain copying I have to look through each part separately—for this branch has already decreased here in proportion as tuning has been taken up. Everywhere poverty of spirit—and of purse! Your Cecilia ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... think of no good retort to make at that moment. And since the odd buzzing had stopped, and all three fiddlers were tuning up for more dance music, in his excitement Buster forgot all about the raising bee again, the bumblebee in the pumpkin, and even his dispute ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... never had any one been otherwise than kind to him; never had he been called "youngster" when he wanted to take part; he blushed crimson, but said nothing, and drew back to the place where the new fiddler, who had just arrived, had taken his seat and was tuning his instrument. There was silence in the crowd, every one was waiting to hear the first vigorous tones from "the chief fiddler." He tried his instrument and kept on tuning; this lasted a long time; but finally he began with a spring dance, the boys ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... I must go and sort out the rest of my visitors. I am putting Philip and Chick over in the west wing, far removed from the nursery, for I don't want them imagining they are kept awake by the night thoughts of my child. And, I must confess, Fleurette has a way of tuning up in the wee, small hours! However, we had the nursery walls muffled, so I don't think you'll be disturbed. Isn't ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... the installation of a receptor, when his earplug buzzed. He thrust his chin against the tuning plate, switching from gang to interoffice band. "Mike?" said Avis Page's voice, "You're ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... the orchard were tuning up for evening. It seemed almost dreadful they should be able to sing like that. All the world was going on just the same! If he died, the world would have no more light for her than there was now in his poor eyes—and yet it would go on the same! How was that possible? It was not possible, because ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of sound starts off with the assumption that the atmosphere is composed of molecules, and that these supposed molecules are free to vibrate when acted upon by a vibrating body. When a tuning fork, for example, is caused to vibrate, it is assumed that the supposed molecules in front of the advancing fork are crowded closely together, thus forming a condensation, and on the retreat of the fork are separated more widely apart, thus forming ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... Pianoforte, Organ, Violin, and all Orchestral and Band Instruments, Voice Culture and Singing, Harmony, Theory and Orchestration, Church Music, Oratorio and Chorus Practice, Art of Conducting; also, Tuning and Repairing Pianos and Organs. All under the very best teachers, in classes ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... faces uncertainly. Dan'l sat softly tuning his violin, as if uninterested in the controversy. Uncle John and the Major looked on ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... 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 and round the canvas walls ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... like cart-loads of bricks into the street, were significant of the ruin that was pending. Any moment the orchestra of destruction might break into its overture. Without cessation one could hear a distant booming. The fiddlers of death were tuning up. ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... 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 ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... play for me, when I get back, the overture of 'Tannhauser'. Play it, mind; no tuning-up sort of thing, like last Sunday's performance. Practise it, my son! Is it a bargain? I'm not going to work for nothing ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the love of a true city editor for his paper, and the love of a mother for her child or a miser for his gold is no greater love than that, let me tell you. "You knew about this thing here?" He beat with two fingers that danced like the prongs of a tuning fork on the paper spread out in front of him. "You ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... at Dresden, where I often heard my favourite music played by Zillmann's Town Band, as I thought, exceedingly well. The mysterious joy I felt in hearing an orchestra play quite close to me still remains one of my most pleasant memories. The mere tuning up of the instruments put me in a state of mystic excitement; even the striking of fifths on the violin seemed to me like a greeting from the spirit world— which, I may mention incidentally, had a very real ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... corner of her brougham, the sharp rhythm of her horses' hoofs tuning her thoughts, she quietly endeavored to raise that cherished mental spectre, but could not, until by hazard she remembered the portrait of her husband ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... a genius, absolutely a genius of the first water, when it came to tuning pianos. Whether his talent as a composer ran to any such lengths as that she, of course, didn't know. If what he had played for her had been his own, any of it, it was awfully modern and interesting, at least. You could tell that even though it kept ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... 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: "Have ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... 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 ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... the balcony overhead were tuning up. There was a flute, a viol, a gittern, a fiddle, and a drum; and behind the curtain, just outside the door, Nick could hear the master-player's low voice giving hasty orders to ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... day still dancing their devil's dance down the road like wriggling circumflexes to accent a false promise of coolness off there in the distance; the ominous emptiness of the landscape; the brooding quiet, cut through only by the frogs and the dry flies tuning up for their evening concert; the bandannaed negress wrangling at the weeds with her hoe blade inside the rail fence; and, half sheltered within the lintels of the office doorway of his mill, Dudley Stackpole, a slim, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... down in the Tuning Fork trench system at the present moment," said I. "The Babe and the grooms are digging him out. If you hurry up ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... blench. But do not 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 our country against the encroachments ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... rehearsal had not begun. At six-thirty it had not begun. The orchestra was there, sunk out of sight and filling the dimness with the sounds of tuning. But the great curtain was down. And from behind it came shouting voices, noises of steps, loud and ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... nice trout but no other fish, and were only allowed to use the line. A great quantity of raspberries, and there had been many strawberries. His income at one time had been 25 dollars per week. He had received 100 dollars for tuning the ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... Latin compact, gentlemen, is that the United States and England are now concluding negotiations, unknown to each other, by which they will protect their seaports by means of mines primed with this cap. The tuning of the caps which we will use is known only to us; the tuning of the caps which they will use is also known to us! The addition to the wireless apparatus which they will use is such that they can not, even by accident, explode a mine guarding our ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... this Fiddle is in advance of that supplied in the St. Blasius manuscript, there being four strings, but there is no bridge indicated, and, had there been, it would not have evidenced a Saxon knowledge of tuning the strings to given intervals, and playing upon each string. The little light which has been thrown on the condition of instrumental music at the time renders it doubtful whether any bowed instrument was used, other than for the purpose of rendering a rude extemporaneous accompaniment to the ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... it's only a dream, an illusion.... It's the fruit of imagination, wrapped in the fog of the unknown.... [Picks up the keys, nicely smiling] She threw down the keys, she wanted to show she was no longer mistress here.... [Jingles keys] Well, it's all one! [Hears the band tuning up] Eh, musicians, play, I want to hear you! Come and look at Ermolai Lopakhin laying his axe to the cherry orchard, come and look at the trees falling! We'll build villas here, and our grandsons and great-grandsons will see a new life here.... ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov |
