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Organ   Listen
noun
Organ  n.  
1.
An instrument or medium by which some important action is performed, or an important end accomplished; as, legislatures, courts, armies, taxgatherers, etc., are organs of government.
2.
(Biol.) A natural part or structure in an animal or a plant, capable of performing some special action (termed its function), which is essential to the life or well-being of the whole; as, the heart, lungs, etc., are organs of animals; the root, stem, foliage, etc., are organs of plants. Note: In animals the organs are generally made up of several tissues, one of which usually predominates, and determines the principal function of the organ. Groups of organs constitute a system. See System.
3.
A component part performing an essential office in the working of any complex machine; as, the cylinder, valves, crank, etc., are organs of the steam engine.
4.
A medium of communication between one person or body and another; as, the secretary of state is the organ of communication between the government and a foreign power; a newspaper is the organ of its editor, or of a party, sect, etc. A newsletter distributed within an organization is often called its house organ.
5.
(Mus.) A wind instrument containing numerous pipes of various dimensions and kinds, which are filled with wind from a bellows, and played upon by means of keys similar to those of a piano, and sometimes by foot keys or pedals; formerly used in the plural, each pipe being considered an organ. "The deep, majestic, solemn organs blow." Note: Chaucer used the form orgon as a plural. "The merry orgon... that in the church goon (go)."
Barrel organ, Choir organ, Great organ, etc. See under Barrel, Choir, etc.
Cabinet organ (Mus.), an organ of small size, as for a chapel or for domestic use; a reed organ.
Organ bird (Zool.), a Tasmanian crow shrike (Gymnorhina organicum). It utters discordant notes like those of a hand organ out of tune.
Organ fish (Zool.), the drumfish.
Organ gun. (Mil.) Same as Orgue (b).
Organ harmonium (Mus.), an harmonium of large capacity and power.
Organ of Corti (Anat.), a complicated structure in the cochlea of the ear, including the auditory hair cells, the rods or fibers of Corti, the membrane of Corti, etc. See Note under Ear.
Organ pipe. See Pipe, n., 1.
Organ-pipe coral. (Zool.) See Tubipora.
Organ point (Mus.), a passage in which the tonic or dominant is sustained continuously by one part, while the other parts move.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Organ" Quotes from Famous Books



... had died out, and the last chords on the small organ had wheezed themselves into silence. Seth, having finished his ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... supposed in France to suffer from a mysterious disease known as "le spleen." I have not the faintest idea of what this means. The spleen is, I believe, an internal organ whose functions are very imperfectly understood, still it is an accepted article of faith in France that every Briton is "devore de spleen," and that this lamentable state of things embitters his whole outlook ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... play on the flute for public exhibition, what hours and days would he spend in giving facility to his fingers, and attaining the power of the sweetest and most impressive execution. If he were devoting himself to the organ, what months and years would he labor, that he might know its compass, and be master of its keys, and be able to draw out, at will, all its various combinations of harmonious sound, and its full richness and delicacy of expression. And yet he will fancy that the grandest, ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware

... success upon his own warlike merits. He never arrayed himself in gaudy blanket and glittering necklaces, but left his statue-like form, limbed like an Apollo of bronze, to win its way to favor. His voice was singularly deep and strong. It sounded from his chest like the deep notes of an organ. Yet after all, he was but an Indian. See him as he lies there in the sun before our tent, kicking his heels in the air and cracking jokes with his brother. Does he look like a hero? See him now in the hour of his glory, when at sunset the whole village empties itself to behold ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... wail arose—crescendo— And dropped from off the end of the bow, And the dancing stopped. A scent of lilies filled the room, Long and slow. Each large white bloom Breathed a sound which was holy perfume from a blessed censer, And the hum of an organ tone, And they waved like fans in a hall of stone Over a bier standing there in the centre, alone. Each lily bent slowly as it was blown. Like smoke they rose from the violin— Then faded as a swifter bowing Jumbled the ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... out later, Morey was wrong on that last point. The men of Torlos' race had a small organ, a mass of cells in the lower abdomen which could absorb food from the bloodstream and oxidize it, yielding heat, whenever the temperature of the blood dropped below a certain point. Then they could live very comfortably in the ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell

... her down to the principal dealer in sporting goods on Market Street. It was a delicious world, whose atmosphere and charm were not to be resisted. There were shot-guns in rows, their gray barrels looking like so many organ-pipes; sheaves of fishing-rods, from the four-ounce whisp of the brook-trout up to the rigid eighteen-ounce lance of the king-salmon and sea-bass; showcases of wicked revolvers, swelling by calibres into ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... colored population in Canada, is the work of American abolitionists. The American Missionary Association, is their organ for the spread of a gospel untainted, it is claimed, by contact with slavery. Out of four stations under its care in Canada, at the opening of 1853, but one school, that of Miss Lyon, remained at its close. All the others were abandoned, and all the missionaries had asked ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... and NED DE RESZKE Romeo and The Friar. Why the waltz alone, which ought to be on every organ besides Miss EAMES'S, but which, strange to say, isn't thoroughly popular, should be enough to make an Opera; but it's like the proportion of one swallow in the composition of a summer, and, however well sung, it does not do ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various

... Missouri, was brought to Washington to establish and edit The Telegraph, the organ of the opposition which began operations in 1826. It gave currency to the campaign literature and educated the people in the cause of the West. Adams was an aristocrat; he lived sumptuously every day at the public expense; he did not ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... both!" grinned Judd, and diving for his suitcase he unearthed a mouth organ. In another moment he was reproducing the familiar strains of, "And ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman

... hands were turned out, and punch, fruit, and cigars were served in the festally lighted saloon. Something special in the way of a toast was expected on such an occasion. I lifted my glass, and made the following speech: "Skoal, my lads, and be glad we've passed Chelyuskin!" Then there was some organ-playing, during which I went up into the crow's-nest again, to have a last look at the land. I now saw that the height I had noticed in the evening, which has already been described, lies on the west side of the peninsula, while farther ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... musicians, and mechanics. For the record runs that Lamech had three sons, Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal—Jabal who became the father of those who live in tents and have cattle, Jubal the father of those that handle the harp and the organ, and Tubal the father of those who work in brass and iron. And we do not have to turn many pages to discover the social distinctions that grew out of the vocational. The first question of that western valley is, "Who ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... is the far-famed one at Freiburg, having 67 stops and 7,800 pipes, some of them 33 feet long. This instrument has such a range of volume that it can simulate the roaring thunder as well as the faintest echo. The portal of the same cathedral which contains the famous organ is also adorned (?) with a curious representation of the last judgment. St. Peter leads the blessed to the door of Heaven, but half a dozen evil ones busy themselves in disposing of the wicked. One of them that has a head like a hog, carries them ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner

... Abraham Lincoln. It has enabled us to be more social and cooperative. It has literally abolished the isolation of separate families, and has made us members of one great family. It has become so truly an organ of the social body that by telephone we now enter into contracts, give evidence, try lawsuits, make speeches, propose marriage, confer degrees, appeal to voters, and do almost everything else that is a matter ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... calculated to injure the Chief Consul in public opinion throughout Europe, than all the efforts of a thousand newspapers; and, though the jury found Peltier guilty of libel, the result was, on the whole, a signal triumph to the party of whom he had been the organ. ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... say, science itself will teach man (though to my mind it's a superfluous luxury) that he never has really had any caprice or will of his own, and that he himself is something of the nature of a piano-key or the stop of an organ, and that there are, besides, things called the laws of nature; so that everything he does is not done by his willing it, but is done of itself, by the laws of nature. Consequently we have only to discover these laws of nature, and man will no longer have to answer ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky

... time that this Buskes (who is a good musician) took one of his victims, who was on the way to execution, into the chapel and played the "Dead March in Saul," or some such piece, over him on the organ. ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... "nothing shows in the iris by abnormal signs or discolorations except that which is abnormal in the body or injurious to it." When substances which are uncongenial or poisonous to the system accumulate in any part or organ of the body in sufficient quantities, they will indicate their presence by certain signs and abnormal colors in the corresponding areas ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... and Second Vice President (and Minister of Economy and Finance) Pedro SOLBES (since 18 April 2004) cabinet: Council of Ministers designated by the president note: there is also a Council of State that is the supreme consultative organ of the government, but its recommendations are non-binding elections: the monarchy is hereditary; following legislative elections, the leader of the majority party or the leader of the majority coalition is usually proposed president by the monarch and ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... her somehow. Jane had always an unaccountable dislike to music," apologetically. "I'm exceedingly fond of it myself: it's a passion with me. I enjoy anything from an organ to a jewsharp. But she does not. When she was a baby it seemed to rouse her. She's a very quiet little body, you see.—Go, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... grim monk, in a high black sugar-loaf hat with a great knob at the top of it, carving the dishes. At five o'clock in the morning the chapel bell rang in the dismallest way for matins: and I, lying in bed close to the chapel, and being awakened by the solemn organ and the chaunting, thought for a moment I had died in the night and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... has performed a series of experiments upon the circulation parallel to those just narrated. Anaesthetizing animals and exposing the heart, he has found that the action of that organ is accelerated and weakened by the local application of heat, precisely as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... we have an external and an internal process. The milk is drawn forth from a receptacle, the udder, into which it finds its way, and so, in a superficial sense, it may be called an organ of secretion. Nevertheless the true internal secretion takes place in the innermost substance of the cells or particles of protoplasm, of the milk-land, which ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... forgot. The place was a little square, unpainted building, not larger than a country schoolhouse, and when Telly and he entered and seated themselves on one of the wooden settees that stood in rows, not over a dozen people were there. On a small platform in front was a cottage organ, and beside it a small desk. A few more entered after they did, and then a florid-faced man arose, and, followed by a short and stout young lady, walked forward to the platform. The girl seated herself at the organ, and the man, after turning ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... was apprenticed to an organ-builder at Innsbruck, but owing to his weak constitution he was unable to continue in the business, and chose instead the trade of Violin-making. Amongst the rumours concerning this maker may be mentioned that of his having been a pupil of Niccolo Amati. ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... great bell in the southern tower of the Minster booms forth its deep and solemn notes over the city of Beverley, you experience an uplifting of the mind—a sense of exaltation greater, perhaps, than even that produced by an organ's vibrating notes in the high ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... first issued forth; And "We praise thee, O God," methought I heard, In accents blended with sweet melody, The strains came o'er mine ear, e'en as the sound Of choral voices, that in solemn chant With organ mingle, and, now high and clear Come ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock

... the ancient monastery is an enclosure of several acres in extent, surrounded by a high wall of adobes; made to look still higher from being crested with a palisade of the organ cactus. Filled with fruit trees and flowering shrubs, these once carefully cultivated, but for long neglected, now cover the walks in wild luxuriance. Under their shade, silently treading with sandalled feet, or reclining on rustic benches, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... Equality has an organ;—gratuitous and obligatory instruction. We must begin with the right to the alphabet. The primary school obligatory upon all; the higher school offered to all. Such is the law. From the same school for all springs equal society. Instruction! ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... and limber man, with a small head and a big mouth, a most flexible and plastic organ. Morgan wore a mustache which was cut back to stubs, giving his face a grubby look about the nose. His light hair was short and thick, curling in little ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... Wyndham, smiling. "I see you want to believe it, at any rate. There is no proof to the contrary, so you might as well indulge your organ of wonder." ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins

... returned to Glasgow when his trade was mastered, and began to make mathematical instruments, for which, however, he found little sale. Then, to help eke out a living, he began to make and mend other instruments,—fiddles, guitars, and flutes,—and finally built an organ,—a very superior one, too,—with several additions of ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden

... favourite lock from the head of the young man. Often she watches with seemingly pious care the dying hours of a relative, and seizes the occasion to bite his lips, to compress his windpipe, and whisper in his expiring organ some message to the ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... on a Late Hospicious Ewent The Ballad of Eliza Davis Damages, Two Hundred Pounds The Knight and the Lady Jacob Homnium's Hoss The Speculators A Woeful New Ballad of the Protestant Conspiracy to take the Pope's Life The Lamentable Ballad of the Foundling of Shoreditch The Organ Boy's Appeal ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... promote economic cooperation among developing nations; to act as the main political organ for the ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... passed in stately procession along the shore of Loch Malcolm. Then the tones of the organ were heard, and, preceded by the minister, the group advanced into the chapel. The Divine blessing was first invoked on all present. Then Harry and Nell remained alone before the minister, who, holding the sacred book in his hand, proceeded to say, "Harry, ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne

... bad," he said. "I'm not denying it was murderously bad. And all the harder on you because, but for the one defaulting organ, your heart, you're as sound as a bell. You're a well enough man to put up a good fight; and that, you see, cuts both ways, be ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!" The old battle-hymn seemed to strike the very mood of the meeting; the whole throng took it up, and they sang it, stanza by stanza. It was rolling forth like a mighty organ-chant as they came ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... stones at the heads of heretics. . . . The eyes of all Catholics see aright; if they are afflicted with strabismus, the Church resorts to an operation. All Catholics hear aright; if they do not, the Church applies a remedy to their organ of hearing. These surgical operations go under the name of dogmas." The world remembers with what success an operation of this kind was performed on a number of Roman prelates, who questioned the infallibility of the Pope. The dogma was simply declared in 1870, and that put a quietus to ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... hundred feet long, but looks proportionate, from the Art-Gallery with its fine pictures and pipe-organ at one end, to its rich leather-finished dining-room at the other. It is of brownstone—the real Fifth Avenue stuff. Fond du Lac stone is cheaper and perhaps just as good, but it ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... convulsively and took a step towards his persecutor, breathing noisily through the criticised organ. He was a chivalrous man, a warm admirer of the sex, but he was conscious of a wish that it was in his power to give Mary what he would have described as "hers." She was one of the parlour-maids, a homely woman with a hard eye, and it was part of his grievance against her that ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... was interrupted by the arrival of the citizen for whom he had expressed such concern; that gentleman had received a contusion upon one eye, by which the sight was altogether obstructed, so that he concluded he should never retrieve the use of that organ, and with great clamour took all the spectators to witness the injury he had sustained; he entered the room with manifest perturbation, demanded satisfaction of the father, and peremptorily declared it should not be a lost eye to him if there was law in ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... bees and the carol of birds are naturally an incessant accompaniment to my toil—at least, in these spring and summer months. The tall, straight flue of the chimney, like the deep diapason of an organ, is softly murmurous with the flurry of the swifts in their afternoon or vesper flight. There is a robin's nest close by one window, a vireo's nest on a forked dogwood within touch of the porch, and continual reminders of similar snuggeries of indigo-bird, chat, and oriole within close limits, ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... If the organ of sight is such a vehicle of power, the other features have their own. A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants. The sculptor, and Winckelmann, and Lavater, will tell you how significant ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... genius. He and the modern development of periodical literature grew up together, and grew prosperous together. He was never completely known in England till after the establishment of "Punch." An independent and original organ just suited him, above all; for there he had the full play which he required as a humorist, and as a self-formed man with a peculiar style and experience. "Punch" was the "Argo" which conveyed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... There was no straining after mere rhetorical effect, but an artistic treatment of a succession of great subjects in a general and yet vivid and picturesque fashion. The emotion produced by the Plymouth oration was akin to that of listening to the strains of music issuing from a full-toned organ. Those who heard it did not seek to gratify their reason or look for conviction to be brought to their understanding. It did not appeal to the logical faculties or to the passions, which are roused by the keen contests of parliamentary debate. ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... richly-bound prayer-books on the pew desks, slam the doors, and hurry away, leaving the fashionable members of the congregation to inspect each other through their glasses, and to dazzle and glitter in the eyes of the few shabby people in the free seats. The organ peals forth, the hired singers commence a short hymn, and the congregation condescendingly rise, stare about them, and converse in whispers. The clergyman enters the reading-desk,—a young man of noble family and elegant demeanour, notorious at Cambridge for his knowledge of horse-flesh ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens

... time by the railing of the church, which was lighted up for evening service, listening blankly to the solemn drone of the organ within, unable to summon up resolution to move from the spot and present ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... attempts to secure me for an audience. It is the custom for these strolling buffoons to thus present themselves before persons on the street, and to visit houses whenever there is occasion for rejoicing, as at a wedding, or the birth of a son; the lutis are to the Persians what Italian organ-grinders are among ourselves; I fancy people give them money chiefly to get rid of their noise and annoyance, as we do to save ourselves from the soul-harrowing tones of a wheezy crank organ beneath the window. Among the novel conveyances observed in the courtyard of the caravanserai ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... not with rhetorical periods and vapid declamation, but with facts and figures and arguments which the voter can verify and ponder at his leisure, and not under the excitement or the tedium of a spoken harangue. The newspaper, also, unless it be a mere party "organ," is candid to the other side, and states the situation fairly. Moreover, the exigencies of a daily issue and of great space to fill produce a fulness and variety of information and of argument which are really the source of most of the speeches, so that the orator repeats to his audience an ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis

... possessed of the promptitude and business-habits which, in connexion with literary ability, are essential for such an office. The Dumfries Courier, which had formerly occupied a neutrality in politics, became, under his management, a powerful organ of the liberal party. But the editor was more than a politician; the columns of his journal were enriched with illustrations of the natural history of the district, and sent forth stirring appeals on subjects ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... serving maids were in 1645 fined a shilling each for "drinking at Totenhall Court on the Sabbath daie." In the eighteenth century the resort was at the height of its popularity. It had a large room with an organ, skittle-alleys, and cosy arbours for those who liked to consume their refreshments out of doors. At one time also its attractions actually embraced "a monkey, a heron, some wild fowl, some parrots, and a small pond for gold-fish." It was at this ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... seemed to drop with blood, and the light tick of the clock thrilled on his ear with such loud, painful distinctness, as if each sound were the prick of a bodkin inflicted on the naked nerve of the organ. ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... year the Kaiserswerth Almanac appeared and a large picture Bible for schools was published. In 1848 the magazine Der Armen und Kranken Freund was sent forth as an organ for the deaconess cause, not only for Kaiserswerth, but for all the institutions that are represented at the triennial Conferences. The publishing house is an important source of income, as the institution has little in the way of endowment beside the produce of the garden land attached to it. ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... hinted at the tacit understanding then existing between certain authors, publishers and reviews for their mutual advantage, but which was arousing a growing feeling of distrust on the part of the public. The British Critic (1793-1843) was edited by William Beloe and Robert Nares as the organ of the High Church Party. This "dull mass of orthodoxy" concerned itself extensively with literary reviews; but its articles were best known for their lack of interest and authority. The foibles of the British Critic were satirized in Bishop Copleston's Advice to a Young Reviewer ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... us who have wondered a little at the comparative inferiority of organ music. We have come to the conclusion that perhaps organ music is inferior because it has been largely composed by organists, by men who sit at organ machines many hours a day, and who have let their organ ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... the room was the work of a moment. Help opportunely arrived, and the undisciplined Indians were speedily driven beyond the walls, but in the scuffle the Commander received a blow upon his right eye, and, lifting his hand to that mysterious organ, it was gone. Never again was it found, and never again, for bale or bliss, did it adorn the right ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... be some kin' o' a tune, than? That casts a heap o' licht on't, my leddy—I never saw an organ: what ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... columns about half-way up the cliff is called the Giant's Organ—from its very striking resemblance to that instrument, and a single rock, worn by the waves into the shape of a rude seat, is his chair. A mile or two further along the coast, two cliffs project from ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... made a capture worth more than all the others put together. It was an indifferent-looking berline, and my men were within an ace of allowing it to pass. But I have a nose, mon cher"—and he tapped the organ with ludicrous significance—"and, bon Dieu, what affair! I can smell an aristocrat a league off. Down upon that coach I swooped like a hawk upon a sparrow. Within it sat two women, thickly veiled, and ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... thought: from the window to the quiet place where "no creature dwelleth," and in Patmore's phrase "the night of thought becomes the light of perception."[87] This fringe-region or foreconscious is in fact the organ of contemplation, as the realistic outward looking mind is the organ of action. Most men go through life without conceiving, far less employing, the rich possibilities which are implicit in it. Yet here, among the many untapped resources of the self, lie our powers of response to our spiritual ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... is well known, has for a long time been a very favourite theme, not only with prominent naturalists, but also with talented amateurs. Undoubtedly the skull, viewed as the bony capsule which encloses our most important organ of sense, our brain, has a special claim to morphological importance; for the general conformation of the skull corresponds on the whole to the development of the brain, and its inner surface gives ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... that is as necessary to her as honey. This craving will help to explain the spirit of the laws of the hive. For in them the individual is noting, her existence conditional only, and herself, for one indifferent moment, a winged organ of the race. Her whole life is an entire sacrifice to the manifold, everlasting being whereof she forms part. It is strange to note that it was not always so. We find even to-day, among the melliferous hymenoptera, all the stages of progressive ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... setting a trap or to engage in the next bloody skirmish. This must inevitably happen if, after the rider has fired, among the score or so of passing bullets, one of them, perchance, took a peculiar fancy for a vital organ of his horse. The mortally wounded animal would make no account of dismounting his master and leaving him to the tender mercies of the refined savages. In every close and unequal contest, such as above detailed, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... appeared, and the talkers were silent until the litany ended and the organ began again. Under the prolonged rustle of settling for the sermon, more ...
— Esther • Henry Adams

... neither cares how stupid he may become when the oration is delivered and the lyric set down on paper. The stimulant serves to bring out the talent when it is wanted, like the wind in the pipes of an organ. "What will it matter if I am even a little duller afterwards?" says the genius; "I can afford to be dull when I have done." But the truth still remains that there are stimulants and stimulants. Not the nectar of the gods themselves were worth the dash of a wave upon the beach, ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade

... with music. That's the jest of the Arch Humorist. My father was a clergyman. He droned out services for fifty years in a hamlet, with a little square church like a wooden money-box. I was taught music so that I could - well - make the tin-pot organ groan, I used to call it. I had twenty-five years of that, with never a break. I got so that, to keep myself from turning into a stone gargoyle on the organ seat, I must have my little jest too. "One way I had it was by making the organ groan dismallest at weddings and christenings, and squeak ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... of self-esteem: despised all humbug and show, one could see, though he never said it: when he was a boy, he was moody, with passionate likes and dislikes; but success had improved him, vastly. So Holmes was popular, though the beggars shunned him, and the lazy Italian organ-grinders never held their tambourines ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... the poet in this matter; we believe, if the characteristic cap were removed from that sturdy brow, we should find an admirable development of the organ of self-esteem. He thought as little of a future and "happier Hogarth," as he did of the old masters. He was Monarch of the Present—and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... glory of Jehovah; the Catholics counted their rosaries in the Cathedral; from the Protestant temple, built in the Moorish style as if it were a mosque, rose, like a celestial whispering, the voices of the virgins accompanied by the organ; the Mussulmen gathered in the house of their consul to whine their interminable and monotonous salutation to Allah. In the temperance restaurants, established by Protestant piety for the cure of drunkenness, ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... newspapers to this day. We can truly say that at that time journalism, as a thing by itself and for itself, had no existence in the United States. Newspapers were mere appendages of party, and the darling object of each journal was to be recognized as the organ of the party it supported. As to the public, the great public, hungry for interesting news, no one thought of it. Forty years ago, in the city of New York, a copy of a newspaper could not be bought for money. If any one wished to see a newspaper, he had either to go to the office ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... a window in the first room with a French novel in his hand. This room had probably been a music room; there was still an organ in it on which some rugs were piled, and in one corner stood the folding bedstead of Bennigsen's adjutant. This adjutant was also there and sat dozing on the rolled-up bedding, evidently exhausted by work or by feasting. Two doors led from the room, one straight on into what had been the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... claim to being an entomologist; I quite agree with the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table*", that "the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp." If my life depended upon it I could not give the scientific name of every least organ and nerve of a moth, and as for wrestling with the thousands of tiny species of day and night or even attempting all the ramifications of—say the alluringly beautiful Catocalae family— life is too ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... proclaimed him to have been long appeased. The boy, too, presently was breathing softly, and Grisell's attitude relaxed, as her prayers and her dreams mingled together, and by and by, what she thought was the organ in Wilton chapel, and the light of St. Edith's taper, proved to be the musical rush of the incoming tide, and the golden sunrise over the sea, while all lay sound asleep around her, and she ventured gently to ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... body is the eye." Of all our senses, sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, the sight is that which seems to us the most important. Through the eye, the organ of vision, we gain more information and experience more pleasure, perhaps, than through any or all our other organs of sense. Indeed, we are apt to depreciate the value of our other senses when comparing them to the eyesight. It is not uncommon to hear a person say, "I would rather ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various

... its nature barren, passive, and hostile to everything new. It is, if I may venture to use the comparison, the womb, sterile by itself, but to which come to deposit themselves the germs created by private activity, which, in hermaphroditic society, really performs the function of the male organ. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... done in England in 1714. Mrs. Tracy wished that the old high pulpit and sounding-board had never been replaced by the desk which she now saw there. The sexton showed them the old English Bible, which he said had been in use there about one hundred and twenty-five years. They noticed the little organ, which was very old, and also sent over from England. As they came out of the church, they saw, by its side, a graveyard containing some old inscriptions, and then went on to see the old Town House in the square, which Reuben said was in its prime in the days of George III. He told the boys ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various

... I went with the rest of my family to church: it was a church on the ancient model of England, having aisles, galleries, [12] organ, all things ancient and venerable, and the proportions majestic. Here, whilst the congregation knelt through the long litany, as often as we came to that passage, so beautiful amongst many that are so, where God is supplicated ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... in a silence which was pregnant with suggestion, they went up to the organ-loft, and he depreciated the present instrument and enlarged upon some technical details anent the latest modern improvements in keys and stops. He would play his setting of St. Ambrose's hymn, 'Veni redemptor gentium,' if Mr. Hare would ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... reviews were exceedingly favourable, and even where praise was diluted with blame, the blame was administered with respect, as a dentist might respectfully pain a prince in pulling his tooth out. The public had voted for Henry, and the press, organ of public opinion, displayed a wise discretion. The daring freshness of Henry's plot, his inventive power, his skill in 'creating atmosphere,' his gift for pathos, his unfailing wholesomeness, and his knack in the management of narrative, were noted and eulogized in dozens ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... his works; and he had most of the highly complimentary phrases by heart. The English critic, he said, wrote in the Tintinum, and he looked dubiously at me when I confessed that I had never heard of the organ in question. ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... Island"—is neither a long, a handsome, nor a pleasing thoroughfare. Dirty, undersized maids-of-all-work issue from it in pursuit of beer, or linger on its sidewalk listening to the voice of love. The cat's-meat man passes twice a day. An occasional organ-grinder wanders in and wanders out again, disgusted. In holiday-time the street is the arena of the young bloods of the neighbourhood, and the house-holders have an opportunity of studying the manly art of self-defence. And yet Norfolk Street has one ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... rich in coincidences: still, as the Dormont case and the Ormiston case have shown, coincidences as unlooked for do occur. A fastidious critic has found fault with Brown's flageolet. It is a modest instrument; but what was he to play upon,—a lute, a concertina, a barrel-organ? ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... sufficient evidence. A dozen of the American colonists in Rome came to talk with Mrs. Costello, who sat on a little portable stool at the base of one of the great pilasters. The vesper service was going forward in splendid chants and organ tones in the adjacent choir, and meanwhile, between Mrs. Costello and her friends, there was a great deal said about poor little Miss Miller's going really "too far." Winterbourne was not pleased with what he heard, ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James

... until blood flowed from his eyes and lips. For nearly five years he pursued his investigations in the new world, accompanied by the intrepid Bonpland. Nothing escaped his attention. He was the best intellectual organ of these new revelations of science. He was calm, reflective and eloquent; filled with a sense of the beautiful, and the love of truth. His collections were immense, and valuable beyond calculation to every science. He endured innumerable hardships, braved countless ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... Grammar and listened to these four gentlemen discussing the course of anti-slavery politics. The discussions were always serious; the Free Soil Party took itself quite seriously; and they were habitual because Mr. Adams had undertaken to edit a newspaper as the organ of these gentlemen, who came to discuss its policy and expression. At the same time Mr. Adams was editing the "Works" of his grandfather John Adams, and made the boy read texts for proof-correction. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... to the second question: What do you mean by light? And the first and obvious answer is, Everybody knows. And everybody that is not blind does know to a certain extent. We have a special sense organ for appreciating light, whereas we have none for electricity. Nevertheless, we must admit that we really know very little about the intimate nature of light—very little more than about electricity. But we do know this, that ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various

... joined his company at the station, they had the laugh on him. They had found the Cathedral,—and a statue of Richard the Lion-hearted, over the spot where the lion-heart itself was buried; "the identical organ," fat Sergeant Hicks assured him. But they were all glad ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... now tragic, but inevitable, that Roosevelt, after beginning and carrying forward the war for the reconciliation between Capital and Labor, should have been sacrificed by the Republican Machine, for that Machine was a special organ of Capital, by which Capital made and administered the laws of the States and of the Nation. But Roosevelt's struggle was not in vain; before he died, many of those who worked for his downfall in 1912 were looking ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... Gibbons, Organist to the King and of Westminster abbey. He was admitted Doctor of Music at Oxford 1664, and died 1676.] he and I to see an organ at the Dean of Westminster's lodgings at the abby, the Bishop of Rochester's; [John Dolben; afterwards translated to York.] where he lives like a great prelate, his lodgings being very good; though at present under great disgrace at Court, being put by his Clerks ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... glass in both hands, and was silently occupied in resuming acquaintance with himself, when a hand-organ came into the court and began playing "Partant pour ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... has been excited in the neighbourhood of Tulse Hill by the success of Mr. Enoch Pegler, the winner of the three-manual electric cathedral organ with sixty-four stops, the most sonorous instrument of its type yet constructed by Messrs. Waghorn and Fogg, the famous organ-builders of Penge. A special piquancy is lent to the episode by the fact that Mr. Pegler, who is seventy-nine years of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various

... Redemptioners.—Mittelberger, who, in 1750, brought to America the organ built at Heilbronn for the Lutheran church in Philadelphia, and served Muhlenberg also as schoolteacher in Providence, describes, in substance, the sad lot of the Redemptioners as follows: "Healthy and strong young people were bound to serve from three to six years, young people from ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente

... together with the state of things throughout Italy, had a subduing effect upon Neapolitan manners. In one respect the streets are assuredly less gay. When I first knew Naples one was never, literally never, out of hearing of a hand-organ; and these organs, which in general had a peculiarly dulcet note, played the brightest of melodies; trivial, vulgar if you will, but none the less melodious, and dear to Naples. Now the sound of street music ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing

... full height. "If we were to act entirely from her suggestions, we should reduce ourselves to a level with the brutes. Young ladies should never venture a remark until they have duly considered what they have to say. They should know how to keep the organ ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... stringed instruments, as well as the piano and organ. He is the proud possessor of a genuine Stradivarius violin—a family heirloom—which he naturally prizes beyond the intrinsic value. The feat of playing on several instruments at once presents ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... there be anything wanting to the argument we have persistently urged upon the Republicans of this State, it is contained in the following extract from an editorial in The New York Times, General Grant's especial organ. In speaking of what General Grant has said about South Carolina, the Times says: "He (General Grant) further added that unless a true reform was begun at once in South Carolina, the Republican party would this fall repudiate the so-called Republicans ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... The Great Organ is played at about this point. Travellers from New York frequently come upon the Sound when ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various

... his tune again. He hopt-light ladies, and tip-toed fine from end to end of the key-bord. He played soft, and low, and solemn. I heard the church bells over the hills. The candles in heaven were lit one by one; I saw the stars rise. The great organ of eternity began to play from the world's end to the world's end; and the angels went to prayers.... Then the music changed to water, full of feeling that couldn't be thought, and began to drop—drip, drop, drip, drop—clear and sweet, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... as their iron tongues!" exclaimed Oberon. "My heart leaps and trembles, but not with fear. And that other sound, too,—deep and awful as a mighty organ,—the roar and thunder of the multitude on the pavement below! Come! We are losing time. I will cry out in the loudest of the uproar, and mingle my spirit with the wildest of the confusion, and be a bubble on the top of ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... inspiration of the breeze Gives every reed a voice From tenebrae and silences; Over the valleys borne, Come organ harmonies; And when the low winds call, The pines with miserere mourn A requiem musical, Softer than moonbeams fall Across the starry oriels of night, Flooding the azure round With hushed delight And ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls

... building into which Etienne de Malville entered, not without religious awe, as the pealing organ—then recently introduced by the Normans—rolled its volume of sound through ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... he, in relating his early life to the Rev. Dr. Bellows, some years ago, "looking around anxiously for the means of living, I fell in with a worthy man, a clock-maker and organ-builder, who was willing to employ me to collect bad debts in the country. He put me on an old horse which had one very bad fault. He was afflicted with what the Western people called the 'swaleys,' and could not go downhill. I frequently had to ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... quarter to prevent this. I alleged to him that I am not quite sure but it is an affront to a Professor to presume that he has any connection as contributor, or anything else, to any work which he does not publicly avow as his organ for communicating with the world of letters. He answers that it would be so in him,—but that an old friend may write sub rosa. I rejoin that I know not but you may have cut Blackwood—even as a subscriber—a whole ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... and diphthongal sounds, or of drawling, if that term is insisted upon.... But it is often noticed by foreigners as both making us more readily understood by them when speaking our own tongue, and as connected with a flexibility of organ, which enables us to acquire a better pronunciation of other languages than is usual with Englishmen. In any case, as, in spite of the old adage, speech is given us that we may make ourselves understood, our drawling, however prolonged, is preferable to the nauseous, foggy, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... the dog tribe. Their most obtuse sense is that of taste; the lingual nerve in the lion, according to Des Moulins, being no larger than that of a middle-sized dog. In fact, the tongue of these animals is as much an organ of mastication as of taste; its sharp and horny points, inclined backwards, being used for tearing away the softer parts of the animal substances on which they prey. The perception of touch is said to reside ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various

... sitting outf of doors—a Sunday afternoon custom. Jim Bennett, in his shirtsleeves, was reading a newspaper in front of the postoffice; Sol Jerrems and his entire family occupied the platform before the store, which was of course locked; Nance Milliker was playing the organ in the brown house around the corner, and in front of the hotel sat Mary Ann Hopper ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)

... to be beautiful, it was given to thee alone to be perfect! It was given to thee to be ecstasy incarnate, to be melody too sweet to hear! It was given to thee, alone of all poets, to achieve by mere language a rapture that thrills the soul like the sound of an organ. And they mocked thee, they spit upon thee, they cursed thee, oh my poor, poor Keats! Thou, the hostler's son—thou, the apothecary's clerk! Thou, sick and starved and helpless—thou, dying of disease ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair



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