"Fiddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her fiddle-case with her; and to offer to carry it for her seemed an easy way out of my difficulty; but she would not surrender it for a while. I asked her if she had been playing at a concert, or if she were coming from a lesson. No; well, then, why had she ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... quilting-frames or the spinning-wheels. After the work was done, it was usual to have a festival. The young men wrestled and showed their prowess at trials of strength; the rest looked on and applauded. In the evening there was a dance, at which the local musician scraped out tuneless tunes on an ancient fiddle; and there was of course hearty eating and, it is to be feared, ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... cried Smallbones. "My sister in Iowa has got a fiddle; an' I know she plays five toons on it—I've heerd her. She's got a mouth organ, too, an' a musical-box—electric! One 'ud think nobody had got nuthin' but Will Henderson." He strode back to the bar in dudgeon, filled to the brim ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... that the housing of so many people for any length of time in the over-crowded mines was opt of the question. But that was a consideration to which the "Military Situation" could not resonably be expected to play second fiddle. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... 'Oh, fiddle-de-dee!—every woman, unless she is a fool, knows intuitively what flirtation means, and can put it in practice. But it struck me last night that Aunt Margaret rather encouraged George to pay attention to Gladys. Of course it ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... a bit of a take-down for the bleeder, ain't it, 'avin' to play second fiddle,' said Philpot with ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... best maid, leading the way—marched in slow procession in the moonlight night to Tibbie's new home, between lines of hoarse and eager onlookers. An attempt was made by an itinerant musician to head the company with his fiddle; but instrumental music, even in the streets, was abhorrent to sound Auld Lichts, and the minister had spoken privately to Willie Todd on the subject. As a consequence, Peter was driven from the ranks. The last thing I saw that night, ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... a printed book. Then there was his wife, and the slip of a girl who bowled over Blake there, and half a dozen ragged brats; and a fellow on a tramp, not a gipsy—some runaway apprentice, I take it, but a jolly dog—with no luggage but an old fiddle on which he scraped away uncommonly well, and set Blake making rhymes as we sat in the tent. You never heard any of his songs. Here's one for each of us; we're going to get up the characters ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Paris, a famous city in France, That lies by the banks of the sluggish Seine, Where you and I may never have been, But which we know all about in advance;— A place of wild and wicked romance, A place where they gamble, and fiddle and dance, And the slowest coach has always a chance To get put over the road, I ween, Where women are naughty, and men are gay, And the suicides number a dozen a day, And one of the gallant jeunesse doree Will spend the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... book, sir?' chimed in Haymoss, kindly. 'I've knowed music early in life and late,—in short, ever since Luke Sneap broke his new fiddle-bow in the wedding psalm, when Pa'son Wilton brought home his bride (you can mind the time, Sammy?—when we sung "His wife, like a fair fertile vine, her lovely fruit shall bring," when the young woman turned ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... losse our Ladies Will haue of these trim vanities? Louell. I marry, There will be woe indeed Lords, the slye whorsons Haue got a speeding tricke to lay downe Ladies. A French Song, and a Fiddle, ha's ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... that bugbear of bufferish Middle-Age! Swift "scurry-funging" may do for the young, The "hey-diddle-diddle, the Cat-and-the-fiddle" age. "Over the moon" I myself once had sprung, Thirty years syne, in sheer fervour athletical— Now, like the dog, I would laugh, and look on. Once, with sheer "drive," I'd a sense ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... dependant at her waist. She was white from head to foot; a symbol of purity. Her frail smile appeared deeply studied in purity. Judging from her look and her reputation, Emma divined that the man was justly mated with a devious filmy sentimentalist, likely to 'fiddle harmonics on the sensual strings' for him at a mad rate in the years to come. Such fiddling is indeed the peculiar diversion of the opulent of a fatly prosperous people; who take it, one may concede to them, for an inspired elimination ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "Fiddle-faddle!" exclaimed the lady from Wild Cats'. "I think it is hard enough for poor human natur' to keep the commandments of the Lord and the laws of the land without having to be bound by a passel of ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... I mean I see them when I'm alone. I like to lie on my back in the meadows and look at the clouds and imagine myself sitting on a big fellow and sailing and sailing away to heaven. It's wonderful. I feel that way when I play my fiddle." He played the violin beautifully and had promptly been made soloist for the Musical Clubs. "I—I can't explain. Sometimes when I finish playing, I find my eyes full of tears. I feel as if I had been to some wonderful place, and I don't want ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... "A fiddle-stick! It is I who have cause to complain of you, not you of me! You throw dust in my eyes by accusing where you should stand otherwise accused. And you ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... in the end, doesn't it? You did not want to play second fiddle; you didn't want Rudd to appear to have scored. You wanted to be the central figure. Much the same, isn't it? The love ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... we were astonished to see a man seated in a sulky in the middle of the river and playing for his life on a fiddle. The horse was up to his middle in water, and it seemed as if the flimsy vehicle was ready to be swept away by the current. Still the fiddler fiddled on composedly as if his life had been insured. We thought he was mad, and shouted ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... his steps to his employer's, as has been said. In his way down the village street he had to pass a public house, the only one the place contain'd; and when he came off against it he heard the sound of a fiddle—drown'd, however, at intervals, by much laughter and talking. The windows were up, and, the house standing close to the road, Charles thought it no harm to take a look and see what was going on within. Half a dozen footsteps brought him to the low casement, on which he ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... life. The Negro songs, those that he has remembered best, are religious and other worldly. "It is a singular fact," says Krehbiel, "that very few secular songs—those which are referred to as 'reel tunes,' 'fiddle songs,' 'corn songs' and 'devil songs,' for which slaves generally expressed a deep abhorrence, though many of them no doubt were used to stimulate them while in the fields—have been preserved while 'shout songs' ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... a poor cottar high among the mountains. He had a daughter, Aslaug, who had inherited his cleverness. Though she could not play his fiddle, there was music in everything she did—in her talk, her singing, ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... as to treatment and this will be as the temperament of the restorer will suggest or the exigencies of the moment may demand. Temporary alleviation of symptoms—how to make the thing go somehow—when there is no fiddle physician within beck or call, is a problem frequently arising and very annoying, necessity then being the mother of invention, often of a most curious sort, as most professional repairers who have had the re-consideration of the matter ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... the window and pointed to a group of dim figures near the iliac bushes. "The dear, delightful vagabonds!" she chuckled. "I knew they'd come! It's the beautiful Tappingham Marsh with his fiddle, and young Jeff Bareaud with his flute, and 'Gene Madrillon and little Frank Chenowith and thin Will Cummings to sing. Hark to ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... JERRY. O, fiddle-de-dee, I don't mind how larned she is, so much the better—she can teach me to parlyvoo, and dance solos and duets, and such elegant ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... as not, in Ballymagenaghy there would be sung, to the accompaniment of fiddle, flute or clarionet, one of those stirring songs which, week after week, appeared about this time in the "Nation" from the pens of Thomas Davis, and the brilliant young men in O'Connell's movement known as the "Young ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... Night's Dream." The simple fact, of course, was that she had the best voice in the company, and was of such infinite value in singing parts that no manager in his senses would have taken her out of them. There was no question of my taking precedence of her, or of her playing second fiddle ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... learned also to sing songs of John Brown, and other songs of liberty. When the trains proceeded towards the Potomac freighted with these people they commingled songs of freedom and the religious hymns peculiar to their race with the universal but more cheerful music of the fiddle and banjo. ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... soul, once fair and blooming—I swear it—with its leaves fresh from the dews of heaven, one rank leprosy, this man who, rolling in riches, learned to cheat and pilfer as a boy learns to dance and play the fiddle, and (to damn me, whose happiness he had blasted) accused me to the world of his own crime!—here is this man who has not left off one vice, but added to those of his youth the bloodless craft of the veteran knave;—here is ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... in the light, but Father Baby chose the dark for those ecstatic antics into which the fiddle threw him. He leaped high from the floor at the first note, and came down into a jig of the most perfect execution. The pat of his bare soles was exquisitely true. He raised the gown above his ankles, and would have seemed to float but for his response in sound. Yet through his ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the custom. As we reached the spot, the observations of my companion were lost to me in the tremendous noise and uproar that resounded from within. It seemed as if a number of people were fighting pretty much as a banditti in a melodrama do, with considerable more of confusion than requisite; a fiddle and a French horn also lent their assistance to shouts and cries which, to say the best, were not exactly the aids to study I ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... showed me how, by three-fold scoff, When cares of life perplex us, To smoke, or sleep, or fiddle them off, And scorn the ills that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... an extremely poor, landlocked country, highly dependent on farming and livestock raising (sheep and goats). Economic considerations have played second fiddle to political and military upheavals during more than 17 years of war, including the nearly 10-year Soviet military occupation (which ended 15 February 1989). During the war one-third of the population fled the country, with Pakistan and ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Another blow! Managing to dodge Willie, he hurried home to meet the second morning delivery. Nothing again! . . . His mother's anxious questions as to his health irritated him, and he so far lost his temper as to ask his sister why she was wearing a face like a fiddle. Poor Jeannie! For half the night she had been weeping for her hero and wishing the most awful things for ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... sing their loudest, and the crickets draw the bow, And the 'hoppers and the locusts join the chorus, soft and low; And you hear the bees a humming like a fiddle with one string, While the air just seems to vibrate with ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... Fiddle is the title of honor which my queen has given me for the little service which I have been able to do for her. I leave this little gift for you as that which, next to your love, is the most sacred and precious thing to me on earth. If I die, preserve it for our ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... away in Smaaland the little imps were dancing With ready-loaded pistol and rifle-barrelled gun; All the little devils they played upon the fiddle, But for the grand piano Old Harry was ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... was a sharp, scraping sound. The silk, which had been strained like a fiddle-string over a bridge, parted on the edge of the keen knife, and, as Joe's arms dropped quite nerveless and inert, down went the knife, and Gwyn felt that ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... could tell the figures of the dance just as he could tell the gait of an unseen horse thumping a hard dirt road. He leaned over the yard fence—looking, listening, thinking. Through the window he could see the fiddler with his fiddle pressed almost against his heart, his eyes closed, his horny fingers thumping the strings like trip- hammers, and his melancholy calls ringing high above the din of shuffling feet. His grandfather was standing before the fireplace, his ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... lecture of the Library Association course was delivered on Tuesday evening by a female lecturer named Camilla Urso, on a fiddle. The lecturer was supported by a female singer, two male clamsellers, and a piano masher, all of them decidedly talented in their particular lines. The lecture on the fiddle gave the most unbounded satisfaction, and the Association in taking this new departure, ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... same, a character as well named as Chip should, if he have substance beyond his name, leave an impression even on weak memories. B. M. Bower was a woman, Bower being the name of her first husband. A Montana cowpuncher named "Fiddle Back" Sinclair was her second, and Robert Ellsworth Cowan became the third. Under the name of Bud Cowan he published a book of reminiscences entitled Range Rider (Garden City, N. Y., 1930). B. M. Bower wrote ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... knees and began to fiddle with the dial, of course in vain. Miss Emory, with more practical decision of character, began to run through the innumerable bundles and loose papers in the desk, tossing them aside as they proved unimportant or not germane to the issue. I had not the slightest knowledge of the constructions ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... face, and offered to do business with me at a fiddle.{6} "Tush, tush," said Peter Principal to the increasing multitude which now barred our passage, "we are only come to take a look, and watch the operation of the market." "Dividend hunters{7} I suppose," said a knowing looking ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... pleasure-seeker; for in that career, as in all others, it is failure that kills. The man who enjoys so wholly and bears so impatiently the slightest widowhood from joy, is just the man to lose a night's rest over some paltry question of his right to fiddle on the leads, or to be "vexed to the blood" by a solecism in his wife's attire; and we find in consequence that he was always peevish when he was hungry, and that his head "aked mightily" after a dispute. But nothing could divert him from his aim in life; his remedy in care ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... He will say that necessity keeps him at it. Or he will cite his avocations to prove he is not included. But he plays golf fretfully with his eye always on the score. He drives his motor furiously to hold a schedule. Yet in his youth many of these prosperous fellows learned to play upon a fiddle, and they dreamed on college window-seats. They had time for friendliness before they became so busy holding this great world by ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... himself by fretting. He's too good for that, if he had been an English lad, he would have been off to his sweetheart long before this, without saying with your leave or by your leave; but being a Frenchman, he is all for AEneas and filial piety,—filial fiddle-sticks!' (My lord had run away to sea, when a boy, against his father's consent, I am sorry to say; and, as all had ended well, and he had come back to find both his parents alive, I do not think he was ever as much aware of his fault as he might have been under other circumstances.) 'No, my lady,' ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... or in the woods, or to sigh within their graves, waiting for the day of judgment. In one place there is a story that on a hill at Garun people used to hear very beautiful music. This was played by the elves, or hill folk, and any one who had a fiddle, and went there, and promised the elves that they should be saved, was taught in a moment how to play; but those who mocked them, and told them they could never be saved, used to hear the poor elves, inside the hill, breaking their fairy ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... were to be forbidden me, as well as the use of the honest-hearted expressions from the Chronicles. I had to forget that I had read the "Kaiser von Geisersberg," and eschew the use of proverbs, which nevertheless, instead of much fiddle-faddle, just hit the nail upon the head,—all this, which I had appropriated to myself with youthful ardor, I was now to do without: I felt paralyzed to the core, and scarcely knew any more how I had to express myself on the commonest things. I was, moreover, told that one should speak ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... reckoned one of the liberal arts, and undoubtedly is so; but to be piping or fiddling at a concert, is degrading to a man of fashion. If you love music, hear it; pay fiddlers to play to you, but never fiddle yourself. It makes a gentleman appear frivolous and contemptible, leads him frequently into bad company, and wastes that time which might otherwise be ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... willed me to possess you, and that possession would seem as trivial as a fiddle in a temple.... Yet, too, there was a lustful beast, somewhere inside of me, which nudged me to—kiss you, say! But nothing happened. I did not even kiss you, my beautiful and ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... to lay out nuts to trap eastern nibblers. But the allurements of pecan growing in the South are spread before us with our bread and butter and morning coffee. The orange and pomelo properties have been banished from the stage, or made to play second fiddle, and now we see in the limelight the pecan plantation, with a vista of provision for old age and insurance for our children. And there shall be no work nor care nor trouble about it at all. Only something ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... as himself would undoubtedly have said, 'fit as a fiddle,' or 'right as rain.' His cheeks were rosy, his eyes sparkling. He had his arms akimbo, and his feet planted wide apart. His grey bowler rested on the back of his head, to display a sleek coating of hair plastered down over his brow. In his white satin tie shone a dubious but large diamond, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... there were many Negro musicians who were always ready to furnish music from their banjo and fiddle for the frolics. If a white family was entertaining, and needed a musician but didn't own one, they would hire a slave from another plantation ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... great work, but would have its defects passed over. It is an unhappy, luckless organization which will be perpetually fault-finding, and in the midst of a grand concert of music will persist only in hearing that unfortunate fiddle out of tune. ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... no end—and will be no end until the venerable traditional nonsense about those interesting emotions shares the fate that should overtake all the cobwebs of ignorance thickly clogging the windows and walls of the human mind. Of all the fiddle-faddle concerning passion probably none is more shudderingly admired than the notion that one possessed of an overwhelming desire for another longs to destroy that other. It is true there is a form of murderous mania that involves practically all the emotions, including of course the passions—which ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... have thought he was using Dryfoos, when Dryfoos was using him, and he may have supposed he was not afraid of him when he was very much so. His courage hadn't been put to the test, and courage is a matter of proof, like proficiency on the fiddle, you know: you can't tell whether you've got ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... thought at once," she said. "You're real smart, George; why not the farm? I says that to myself right off. I couldn't do better, I know, but there's drawbacks. Yes, drawbacks. Hervey isn't much for the petticoats—meaning his own folks. He's not one to play second fiddle, so to speak. Now while I live the farm is mine, and I learned my business from one who could teach me—my Silas. Now I'd make Hervey my foreman and give him a good wage. He'd have all he wants, but he'd have to be my foreman." The old lady ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... Dowson's to fetch some barberries he had picked for Mrs. Margery. There was a rare junketting last night at Thomas's among Sir Harry Benson's servants; he lay at Squire Walton's, but he would not suffer his servants to trouble the family: so, to be sure, they were all at Tom's, and had a fiddle, and a hot supper in the big room where the justices meet about the destroying of hares and partridges, and them things; and Tom's eyes looked so red and so bleared when I called him to get the barberries:- And I hear as how Sir Harry is going to be married to ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... in whale-bones, that did leese None of the whale's length, for they reached her knees; Off with her head, and then she hath a middle As her waste stands, just like the new found fiddle, The favourite Theorbo, truth to tell ye, Whose neck and throat are deeper ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... doesn't come home by spring I hope, I hope he will! but if he does not, I will take desperate measures. I will try farming myself, Hugh. I have thought of it, and I certainly will. I will get Earl Douglass, or somebody else, to play second fiddle, but I will have but one head on the farm, and I will try ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... related to the elves and the trolls," thought Gertrude. The old man was standing upon the hearth, playing his fiddle, so as not to be in the way ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... melodious it is enough, and henceforth, to such, no artist who does not play tunes is more than a quack; and the complaint of the man who sat hearing Ole Bull for an hour, and then departed because he was so long tuning his fiddle, is the most general criticism upon his performance. But the old Scotch and Irish airs, which endear these songs to us, were doubtless, at some remote period, the wordless singings of maternal love over the rocking-cradle. ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... I send are not my best, only very ordinary and humdrum affairs—but ex pede Herculem! Hon'ble Sir, and you will see how transcendentally superior are even such poor effusions compared to the fiddle-faddle and gim-crack style of article with which you are being fobbed off by puzzle-headed and ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... coming to him as well as to her. His prodigious muscles and his boyish gayety were fading away together. Though still delightfully jolly and hospitable, his temper was distinctly less buoyant. He still played the fiddle; but like his brother, David, he found less and less joy in it, for his stiffened fingers refused to do his bidding. The strings which once sang clear and sweet, failed of their proper pitch, and these ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... quadrille—none of your slipping and sliding about, but regular warm work, flying into corners, and diving among chairs, and shooting out at the door,—something like dancing! Signor Billsmethi in particular, notwithstanding his having a little fiddle to play all the time, was out on the landing every figure, and Master Billsmethi, when everybody else was breathless, danced a hornpipe, with a cane in his hand, and a cheese-plate on his head, to the unqualified admiration of the whole ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... BOSWELL. 'A man, as a machine, may have agreeable sensations; for instance, he may have pleasure in musick.' JOHNSON, 'No, sir, he can not have pleasure in musick; at least no power of producing musick; for he who can produce musick may let it alone: he who can play upon a fiddle may break it: such a man is not a machine.' This reasoning satisfied me. It is certain, there cannot be a free agent, unless there is the power of being evil as well as good. We must take the inherent possibilities of things into ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... you ought to be worked up to the proper pitch for this scene. You know—lights dimmed, throbby music from the bull fiddle and kettle drums, and the ushers seatin' nobody durin' the act. Belasco stuff. The stage showin' the private office of the Corrugated Trust. It's a case of the big four ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... O.C., could carry a weight of five hundred pounds on his shoulders. After the gymnastic performance, we had a concert, and a man sang, or rather made a hideous nasal sound, to the accompaniment of something that looked like a three stringed fiddle. The song, which greatly delighted the Chinese listeners, consisted of an interminable number of verses; in fact we never heard the end of it, for the O.C. stopped it and told the musicians that the officers had to leave. He told us that the men were well behaved, and that ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... comes the Times and eleven strikes (it does) already, and I have to go to Town, and I have no alternative but that this story of the Critic and Poet, 'the Bear and the Fiddle,' should 'begin but break off in the middle'; yet I doubt—nor will you henceforth, I know, say, 'I vex you, I am sure, by this lengthy writing.' Mind that spring is coming, for all this snow; and know me for yours ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... pig-headed sot! (aloud) Young man, you cannot know the risk you run. Th' alternative's in earnest—not in fun. Dame Turandot will spin you a tough riddle, That's not to be "got thro' like any fiddle." Not such as this, which any child might guess— (Though the Emperor could not, I must confess;) "What gives a cold, cures a cold, and pays the doctor's bill?" Not short enigmas lightly disentangled; Hard nuts you'll have to crack, ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... replied the professor, elevating to a still higher pitch the stentorian diapason of his voice, "I am Picot (Nepomucene), but I have not discovered a star; I don't concern myself with any such fiddle-faddle; besides, my eyes are very weak; and that insolent young fellow I have come here to find is making me ridiculous with such talk. I don't see him here; he is hiding himself, I know; he dares not ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... sober think vain, The fiddle's a wooden projection, Tunes are but flirts of a whimsical brain, Which the bottle brings best to perfection: Musicians are half-witted, merry and mad, The same are all those that admire 'em, They're fools if they play unless they're well ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... the way it always is in books, but in life, when you're poor, it's each fellow for himself and there's not any time for your grand sounding self-sacrifice. I wanted it to buy a violin. That thing I've got's nothing but a cheap old fiddle. And I can play—I know I can play, or could if I could get a good violin. I took lessons from an old Belgian who lived above us and I played once for Martini at the theatre and he said—but what's the use of caring? What's the use of thinking about it? All a girl like me can do ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... of maiden voices rising upon the wintry air, and the tumbling of glossy curls underneath the hoods and sealskin caps as they sped through the delightful hours. Tullie Wasson was out there with his string band—Tullie with his old black fiddle, and Jim Grey with his cornet, and his son with his wondrous bass violin, and Tullie knew all the good old tunes, and a few fancy waltzes and polkas, but he was at his best in the Virginia Reel, and it was a pretty sight to see the joyous couples ranging off to their positions for the ice dance, ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... something all day long Either do not think, or do not love to think Equally forbid insolent contempt, or low envy and jealousy Even where you are sure, seem rather doubtful Every virtue, has its kindred vice or weakness Fiddle-faddle stories, that carry no information along with them Flattery of women Forge accusations against themselves Forgive, but not approve, the bad. Frank, open, and ingenuous exterior, with a prudent interior Gain the affections ...
— Widger's Quotations from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son • David Widger
... Hrolfur. The fore-sail resembled a beautifully curved sheet of steel, stiff and unyielding. Both sails were snow-white, semi-transparent and supple in movement, like the ivory sails on the model ships in Rosenborg Palace. The mast seemed to bend slightly and the stays were as taut as fiddle-strings. The boat quivered like a leaf. The waves pounded hard against the thin strakes of the boat's side. I could feel them on my cheek, though their dampness never penetrated; but in between these hammer blows their little pats were wonderfully friendly. Every now and then I ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... things let him off; and when the fateful evening came, Simon, with his beloved fiddle tucked beneath his arm for companionship, and a lantern, appeared at the inn. They wished him good luck and pleasant dreams, doubting nevertheless that he would have either; and the landlord, a kindly soul, slipped a cold snack ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... happy till they are back home here under the roofs of thatch. And what a work their women folks make with them when they return! What feasting and merrymaking! What screwing of fiddle-pegs, nimble motion of elbows and long-sustained dancing and skipping. I don't deny that there is clink of glasses, too, at times, to aid the passage of the hours far ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... overweigh, overmatch; top, o'ertop, cap, beat, cut out; beat hollow; outstrip &c 303; eclipse, throw into the shade, take the shine out of, outshine, put one's nose out of joint; have the upper hand, have the whip hand of, have the advantage; turn the scale, kick the beam; play first fiddle &c (importance) 642; preponderate, predominate, prevail; precede, take precedence, come first; come to a head, culminate; beat all others, &c bear the palm; break the record; take the cake [U.S.]. become larger, render larger &c (increase) 35, (expand) 194. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and lose His past day's labours and his next day's views. Our Seamen too have choice; one takes a trip In the warm cabin of his favourite Ship; And on the morrow in the humbler Boat He rows till fancy feels herself afloat; Can he the sign—Three Jolly Sailors—pass, Who hears a fiddle and who sees a lass? The Anchor too affords the seaman joys, In small smoked room, all clamour, crowd, and noise; Where a curved settle half surrounds the fire, Where fifty voices purl and punch require; They come for pleasure in their leisure hour, And they enjoy it to their utmost ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... old man was playing, and was, moreover, dancing to his own music, and dancing with serious, incongruous elegance. Round and round the circle he footed it, his long thin legs twinkling in absolute accord with the complicated jig that his long thin fingers were ripping out of the cracked and raucous fiddle. A very plain, stout young woman, with a heavy red face and discordantly golden hair, shuffled round after him in a clumsy pretence of dancing, and as the couple faced Mrs. Pat she saw that the old man was blind. Steam was rising from his domed bald head, ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... "Fiddle!" cried the iron pillars of the deep, dark hold. "Who ever heard of curves? Stand up straight; be a perfectly round column, and carry tons of good solid weight—like that! There!" A big sea smashed on the deck ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... Why, she was in the kitchen talkin' and fiddle-faddlin' with them eggs; she thinks I ain't up to 'em. There warn't nothin' on earth the matter with her then. She had sot the table in here and fixed up the fire, and then she come in to the kitchen and went to ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... female hands had loaded and fired, the men being almost all away fighting. A band of brightly-clad women, not less than forty in number, now came to meet me, their children frolicking round them, and some boys playing, not very discordantly, the one-stringed fiddle of the country. At their head walked a grey-haired matron, whom Spira pointed out as her grandmother, and who carried on her shoulder Nilo, looking lovely in a "strucca" striped olive-green and mulberry-red. The dear little ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... charge, she would doubtless have done her duty to him but to stand by and see another doing it? No! a thousand times no! That part, insignificant in itself, and yet often one of the very sweetest and most useful in life's harmonies, familiarly called "second fiddle," was a part impossible to be played ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... wish to speak about that now. I take this figure of a man who so contentedly and continually took such a subordinate place—played second fiddle quite willingly all his days, and who toiled on without any notice or record, and ask whether it does not teach one or ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... are always your million-and-one favorite melodies which nobody but that all-around musical amateur, the Auto-Comrade, can so exquisitely whistle, hum, strum, fiddle, blat, or roar. There is also a universe full of new ones for him to improvise. And he is the jolliest sort of fellow musician, because, when you play or sing a duet with him, you can combine with the exciting give-and-take and reciprocal stimulation of the duet, the god-like autocracy ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... parties of hunting and fishing, and promised to be a good sportsman from a very early age. Their grandfather's ship was sailing for Europe once when the boys were children, and they were asked, what present Captain Franks should bring them back? George was divided between books and a fiddle; Harry instantly declared for a little gun: and Madam Warrington (as she then was called) was hurt that her elder boy should have low tastes, and applauded the younger's choice as more worthy of his name and lineage. "Books, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bronchus causing death on the eleventh day. Warren mentions spontaneous expulsion of a horse-shoe nail from the bronchus of a boy of two and one-half years. From Dublin, in 1844, Houston reports the case of a girl of sixteen who inhaled the wooden peg of a small fiddle and in a fit of coughing three months afterward expelled it from the lungs. In 1849 Solly communicated the case of a man who inhaled a pebble placed on his tongue to relieve thirst. On removal this pebble weighed 144 grains. Watson of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... got the dancers out upon the lawn, and then they managed to go through one quadrille. But it was found that it did not answer. The music of the single fiddle which Crosbie had hired from Guestwick was not sufficient for the purpose; and then the grass, though it was perfect for purposes of croquet, was not pleasant to the feet ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Gervas. 'They were brave-hearted boys for the most part. I might have had their names on my bills as long as their fingers could hold a pen, but slit me if I like bleeding my own companions. They might have found a place for me, too, had I consented to play second-fiddle where I had been used to lead the band. I' faith, I care not what I turn my hand to amongst strangers, but I would fain leave my memory sweet ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... complained Ricks. "That's your trouble. When the last fight was on, you set on the fence and listened at a' ole idiot scrapin' a fiddle ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... replied; "he's dreadfully inclined to music since he had a drum, and I want the fiddle to see if I can't make another Pickaninny or an Old Bull of him. Jews-harps is simple, though I can't see how King David played on one of 'em, and sung his psalms at the same time; but the fiddle is best, because genius can show itself plainer on it without much noise. Some prefers ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... never the fault of a parish. Mrs. Hazeldean dressed her part to perfection. She wore silks that seemed heirlooms,—so thick were they, so substantial and imposing; and over these, when she was in her own domain, the whitest of aprons; while at her waist was seen no fiddle-faddle chatelaine, with breloques and trumpery, but a good honest gold watch to mark the time, and a long pair of scissors to cut off the dead leaves from her flowers,—for she was a great horticulturalist. When occasion needed, Mrs. Hazeldean could, however, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... make a fiddle-faddle About a Hessian horse or saddle. No more of continental measures No more of wasting British treasures. Ten millions, and a vote of credit, 'Tis right. He can't be wrong ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... but he hasn't pluck to act up to it. He's not even told one of his fine friends what his brother does; he says it's for the sake of his school. He's living a lie for his own pride. He's got himself made master of a college, fine as a fiddle, and he cares more about that than about his brother. With all his prayers and his sermons in church every Sunday, he'd let me go to the dogs rather than live out the truth. He thinks I've gone to the devil ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... poor critter. He may have hearn the skylark or (what's nearly the same thing) MISS KELLOGG and CARLOTTY PATTI sing; he may have hearn OLE BULL fiddle, and all the DODWORTHS toot, an' yet he don't know nothin' about music—the real, ginuine thing—the music of the laughter of happy, well-fed children! And you may ax the father of sich children home to dinner, feelin werry ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... took a big fiddle from a big cupboard and played such loud and dreadful music that her prisoners were all thankful when at last she stopped and said she was ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the Military Gazette with a kettledrum. Immediately below, the Moscow Gazette, in the person of its celebrated chief, M. Katkoff, is playing in a reckless, haphazard fashion upon an enormous bass fiddle. Close by are the two leading comic journals, the one tinkling a triangle, the other blowing the pandean pipes. Farther on the Voice (Golos) is bawling through a speaking-trumpet, and the Bourse Gazette flourishing a tambourine, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... of pleasure suffused her face. "There's going to be fun there, they say, for Jacob the miller is going to ask Neddy 'Pandy' to dance the 'candle dance,' and Robin Davies the sailor will play the fiddle for him. Hast ever seen ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... painter's hand of wonder; and the marvellous fiddle-bow, And the banded choirs of music: all those that ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... everything—the exclamation which you explained deceitfully, and all! Forgive the harsh word, Elfride—forgive it.' He smiled a surface smile as he continued: 'What a poor mortal I am to play second fiddle in everything and to be ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... out one yell, for the pain about his chest—then made no further sound. The rawhide rope was like a fiddle-string. It seemed absurd that an anchor so small, so limber, in the sand, could hold so hard against the horse. Van urged a greater strain. He knew that the rope would hold. He did not know how much the man could bear before something ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... Tanners of Vie " Tilers of Paris " Weavers of Toulon " Wheelwrights of Paris Banquet, Grand, at the Court of France Barber Barnacle Geese Barrister, Fifteenth Century Basin-maker Bastille, The Bears and other Beasts, how they may be caught with a Dart Beggar playing the Fiddle Beheading Bell and Canon Caster Bird-catching, Fourteenth Century Bird-piping, Fourteenth Century Blind and Poor Sick of St. John, Fifteenth Century Bob Apple, The Game of Bootmaker's Apprentice working at a Trial-piece, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... angles from his tune, and winding up with a grand flourish on the guttural notes. Behind him, led by his little boy, came the blind fiddler, his honest features glowing with all the hilarity of a rustic bridal, and, as he stumbled along, sawing away upon his fiddle till he made all crack again. Then came the happy bridegroom, drest in his Sunday suit of blue, with a large nosegay in his button-hole; and close beside him his blushing bride, with downcast eyes, clad in a white robe and slippers, and wearing a wreath of white roses in her hair. The ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... broke for Goldfield. I ran a store and was a secret partner in a saloon that paid better than the store. I was in the game morning, noon, and night; it beat marching to class to recite Horace and fiddle with the binomial theorem, as it must for every man who counts ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... from the sofa, on which he sprawled at length. "My good child, your nerves are like fiddle-strings after a frost. Remind me to make you up a tonic when we get back! ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... their most pressing wants known. One son, Fuchs said, was well-grown, and strong enough to work the land; but the father was old and frail and knew nothing about farming. He was a weaver by trade; had been a skilled workman on tapestries and upholstery materials. He had brought his fiddle with him, which wouldn't be of much use here, though he used to pick up ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... refectory is a splendid baronial hall. In the Mitton village-church near by are the tombs of the Sherburne family, the most singular monument being that to Sir Richard and his lady, which the villagers point out as "old Fiddle o' God and his wife"—Fiddle o' God being his customary exclamation when angry, which tradition says was not seldom. The figures are kneeling—he in ruff and jerkin, she in black gown and hood, with tan-leather ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... bridge, and the Mate is, as usual, in a hurry. The mooring winch is groaning horribly as she hauls on a cable running from the stern to the quay while the tug pulls our head slowly round. Right down to the centre of the loading disc now. The Second Mate rushes to the fiddle-top, and shouts for "more steam"—the winch has stuck—and a howl from below tells him that the donkeyman is doing his best. As I go below again the sharp clang of the telegraph ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... luxuriant foliage, composed a very pleasing image. The manner in which the sod was partially worn under most of them, explained their nightly purpose; or if there could yet be any doubt, the flute and fiddle, pendant in almost every house, spoke ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... the passengers on the streets. All corporate Guilds, and public and private Bodies of Citizens, from the highest to the lowest, march; the very Hawkers, one finds, have ceased bawling for one day. The neighbouring Villages turn out: their able men come marching, to village fiddle or tambourine and triangle, under their Mayor, or Mayor and Curate, who also walk bespaded, and in tricolor sash. As many as one hundred and fifty thousand workers: nay at certain seasons, as some count, two hundred and fifty thousand; for, in the afternoon ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... &c. 'My heart so light, quo' she, My lad, is not for you; 'Tis for a soldier bold, With beard of martial hue. Down, down, derrydown. 'A feather in his hat, A red heel on his shoe; Who plays upon the flute, And on the fiddle too. Down, down, derrydown.' ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... symbol of a never-failing enchantment. Through the pleasant harmonious give-and-take of the other instruments, the voice of his violin vibrated with the throbbing passion of a living thing. His dirty old hand might shake and quaver, but once the neck of the fiddle rested between thumb and forefinger, the seraph who made his odd abiding-place in old Reinhardt's soul sang out in swelling tones and spoke of heavenly things, and of the Paradise where we might live, if ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... reflected upon the profound truth conveyed by this finale, at the instant when the composer delivers his last note and the author his last line, when the orchestra gives the last pull at the fiddle-bow and the last puff at the bassoon, when the principal singers say "Let's go to supper!" and the chorus people exclaim "How lucky, it doesn't rain!" Well, in every condition in life, as in an Italian opera, there comes a time when the joke is over, when the trick ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... of voices through the house, as Miss Nancy entered, mingled with the scrape of a fiddle preluding in the kitchen; but the Lammeters were guests whose arrival had evidently been thought of so much that it had been watched for from the windows, for Mrs. Kimble, who did the honours at the Red House on these great occasions, came forward to meet Miss Nancy in the ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... 'Fiddle-de-dee. He is an ape a monkey to be carried on his mother's organ. His only good quality was that you could have carried him on yours. I can tell you one thing there is not a woman breathing that will ever carry William Belton on hers. Whoever his wife may be, ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... taken to pieces and put together again, strengthened, soldered, tinkered, mended, and braced every accordion, guitar, melodeon, dulcimer, and fiddle in Edgewood, Pleasant River, and the neighboring villages. There was a little money to be earned in this way, but very little, as people in general regarded this "tinkering" as a pleasing diversion in which they could indulge him without danger. ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the doctor. "You two can chat for a while. Don't tire yourself out, young man, and in a day or two you will be fit as a fiddle. Wish I had your physique! That system of yours is a natural shock absorber. We run across them once in a long while—half-killed one day and back the next hunting for more ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... general, in carrying false curls, bandeaux, and other artificial head-gear paraphernalia, in bandboxes to boarding schools, and so on—a desire naturally sprung up within me, being now in my twenty-first year, and worth a guinea a week of wages, to look about for what old kind Seignor Fiddle-stringo, the minuet-master, used to recommend under the title of a cara sposa—open shop—and act head frizzle in an establishment ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... to both the "high contracting parties." Publisher and author were for the nonce on the best of terms. The latter, no doubt, saw his opening; was more than ready to undertake the work, and had no quarrel with the remuneration offered. But even then he was not the man to play second fiddle to anybody. Before they parted, he had quite succeeded in turning the tables on Seymour. The original proposal had been that the artist should produce four caricatures on sporting subjects every month, and that the ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... that if he knew what was good for him he had better give Giraffe a wide berth while he was strumming away with his "old fiddle," as some of the boys sneeringly described the fire outfit that continually refused to ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... way musical expression keeps step with musical ideas. In the beginning musical ideas were short, simple, fragmentary, monosyllabic, mere germs of melody (adherents of the germ theory will make a note of this). The Arab with his rudimentary fiddle will repeat this fragment of melody by the hour, while a company of his unlaundered brethren dance, until exhausted, in dust to their ankles, with the temperature near the boiling point. This musical monosyllable is ample to satisfy his artistic craving. In other words it is the complete ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... impression of melancholy and the sadness of fte. It was the moment when the great trees hung heavy and motionless, strangely green and solemn beneath a slate-coloured sky; and the plaintive waltz cried on Hungarian fiddle-strings, till it seemed the soul of this feminine evening. The fashionable crowd had moved out upon the lawn; the white dresses were phantom blue, and the men's coats faded into obscure masses, darkening the gathering shadows. It was the moment when voices soften, ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... of you—which, after all, is a more useful post, and a more lucrative one.' But Lancelot had not as yet 'Galliolised,' as the Irish schoolmaster used to call it, and cared very little to play a political ninth fiddle. ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... a bit of fiddle-de-dee," he informed his delighted family. "Duncan Gallosh to be looking for bogles is pretty ridiculous—but oh, I can't refuse ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... and matrons among the households of the absent soldiery quite willing to be consoled and comforted. There were bright lights, therefore, further along the edge of the steep, beyond those of the hospital, and the squeak of fiddle and drone of 'cello, mingled with the plaintive piping of the flute, were heard at intervals through the silence of the wintry night. No tramp of sentry broke the hush about the little rift between the heights—the major holding that none was necessary where there were so many ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... beside The one I give her,—tel she cried And laughed untel she like to died! I might go on and tell you all About the supper—and the BALL.— You'd ought to see me twist my heel Through jest one old Furginny reel Afore you die! er tromp the strings Of some old fiddle tel she sings Some old cowtillion, don't you know, That putts the ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... needed—a week of lolling around a deck in the hot sun with the sea winds blowing over your face. That's what you want to do—get out under the blue sky and soak it in. If you don't believe it, look at me. Fit as a fiddle; strong as a moose. You said you wanted to sprawl in the sunshine,—why the devil don't you take a week off and ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Highlanders in the service. He could use the axe as well as forge it, and, in short, could turn his hand to almost anything. Among other things, he could play splendidly on the violin—an instrument which he styled a fiddle, and which MacSweenie called a "fuddle." His repertoire was neither extensive nor select. If you had asked for something of Beethoven or Mozart he would have opened his eyes, perhaps also his mouth. But at a Strathspey or the Reel o' Tulloch ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... I was only second fiddle—" she began, with an assumption of scornful irascibility which became her less than ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... "Whether Goebel made the fiddle-bow lamps, 1, 2, and 3, is not necessary to determine. The weight of evidence on this motion is in the direction that he made these lamp or lamps similar in general appearance, though it is manifest that few, if any, of the many witnesses who saw the Goebel ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin |
