"Bass" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was to come to me tonight?" interrupted the man addressed. He spoke in a commanding and vibrant bass voice. ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... preceded by the boys, Who imitate in fashion droll, yet with no actual noise, But merely by the gesturing of finger or of hand, The cymbals, flute, and (best of all) the trombones of the band. The babies even laugh and crow, upheld in nurses' arms, And have no fear of trumpets loud, or the bass-drum's alarms. The pavement of the boulevard is struck in perfect time; Six hundred echoes blend in one, and make the scene sublime; Six hundred hearts are throbbing there, imbued with martial pride; Twelve hundred feet with rhythmic ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... the Megalensian Games;[13] M. Fulvius and M. Glabrio being Curule AEediles.[14] Ambivius Turpio and Lucius Atilius Praenestinus[15] performed it. Flaccus, the freedman of Claudius,[16] composed the music, to a pair of treble flutes and bass flutes[17] alternately. And it is entirely Grecian.[18] Published— M. Marcellus and Cneius ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... eve with the blizzard raging outside, and that bright crowded hall, and all you boys just home from France. Do you remember the big blue parrots that swung in hoops from the chandeliers? And that wonderful saxophone and the big bass drum!" ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... rascals, you would dress as the postillion de Longjumeau, you would appear as Debardeurs, sup in the morning, and breakfast at night at Very's—sometimes even at the Rocher de Cancale.—Dry bread for you, my boys! Why," said I, in a big bass voice, "you deserve to sleep under the bed, you are not ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... the nearest town and brought her books. Letters she avoided, and her family agreed to notify her at once of any real occasion for her presence. Even newspapers were shut out, and thus she began her new life. Her men shot birds and deer, and the lake gave her black bass, and with these and well-chosen canned vegetables and other stores she did well enough as to food. The changing seasons brought her strange varieties of flowers, and she and her friend took industriously to botany, and puzzled out their problems unaided save by books. ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... for a moment, then turned her eyes away. He felt vaguely uncomfortable, and was about to offer atonement when Joe's deep bass voice ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... rang Kincaid to Charlie, and in a sudden flutter of gauzes and clink of trappings, with wringing of soft fingers by hard ones, and in a tender clamor of bass and treble voices, away sprang every cannoneer to knapsacks and sabres in the hall, and down the outer stair into ranks and off under the stars at double-quick. Sisters of the battery, gliding out to the veranda rail, faintly saw and heard them a precious moment longer as they sped ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... animals and man's august self, he will probably feel the most acute humiliation should he take an occasional walk through a great rookery, such as that in Richmond Park. The black cloud of birds sweeps round and round, casting a shadow as it goes; the air is full of a solemn bass music softened by distance, and the twirling fleets of strange creatures sail about in answer to obvious signals. They are an orderly community, subject to recognised law, and we might take them for the mildest and most amusing of all birds; but wait, and we shall see something ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... city of Palenque we find, in one of the palaces, a stucco bass-relief of a priest. His elaborate head-dress or helmet represents very faithfully the head of an elephant. The cut on page 169 is from a drawing ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... Rome is baritone, always excepting that of the Roman locomotive,—the donkey,—which is deep bass, and comes tearing and braying along at times when it might well be spared. In the still night season, wandering among the moonlit ruins of the Coliseum, while you pause and gaze upon the rising tiers of crumbling stone ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... go through Bass Strait and then to sail towards the Royal Company Islands as given on the French chart, before heading for Macquarie Island. From thence we should steam across to the Auckland Islands. At both the latter places Mr. Waite would be able to secure ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... falsehood prate apace; Truth under bushel is fain to creep; Flattery is treble, pride sings the bass, The mean, the best part, ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... for an hour or two, Godfrey would stroll into the Isaac or Kasan cathedrals, both splendid structures, and wonder at the taste that marred their effect, by the profusion of the gilding lavished everywhere. He was delighted by the singing, which was unaccompanied by instruments, the bass voices predominating, and which certainly struck him as being much finer than anything he had ever heard in an English cathedral. There was no lack of amusement in the evening. Some of his English friends at once put Godfrey up as a member of the Skating Club. ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... instances of these in Three-part Vocal Exercises, by Raymond, published by Weekes & Sons. This book is also suitable for use where men's voices are obtainable, the two treble parts being taken by two tenors, and the transposed alto part by a bass. ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... Roger; and now you put me in mind of it I'll tell you of something surprising in my turn: I have an old ram and an old ewe, that, whenever they sing Yankee Doodle together, a skilful musician can scarcely distinguish it from the bass ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... Taylor, was treasurer of the company which was engaged in making the much-desired improvements. The shallow bays in the vicinity of Ocean City offer safe and pleasant sailing-grounds. The summer fishing consists chiefly of white perch, striped bass, sheep's-head, weak-fish, and drum. In the fall, bluefish are caught. All of these, with oysters, soft crabs, and diamond-backed terrapin, offer tempting dishes to the epicure. This recently isolated shore is now within direct railroad communication with Philadelphia ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... nearer green-clad hills to the purple deeps of the western mountain, already steeped in shadow. The pike was deserted, and the shrill hum of the house-flies played an insistent tune in which the low-pitched boom of a bumblebee tumbling awkwardly among the clover heads served for an intermittent bass. ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... seven hundred, out of Yankee-land; and strange enough, what is not unlikely, if it be the first cash I realize for that piece of work,—Angle-land continuing still insolvent to me! Well, it is a wide Motherland we have here, or are getting to have, from Bass's Straits all round to Columbia River, already almost circling the Globe: it must be hard with a man if somewhere or other he find not some one or other to take his part, and stand by him a little! Blessings on you, my brother: nay, your work is already twice ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... foot of the grave Henry found a medal, which was thickly covered with grime, and was so much the color of the clay stone on which it rested as to nearly escape detection. It proved to be a silver medal, two and a half inches in diameter, with a bass-relief portrait of George ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... in there," said a bass voice. The men stamped across the floor leading into the dark room in which he lay, and halted at the entrance. They did not stand there over a moment before they turned and moved away again; but to Raegen, lying with blood-vessels ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... lesson. Miss Singer had collected her usual six men during the intermission with as many bright glances, and was being admired properly and according to Hoyle, when Jim up and remarks, in his megaphone bass: "Say, Sall, you're a great work of art, but the time you made a hit with me was the day you slid down ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... an unromantic voice. The bass is a snarl, and the treble is made up of a shrill rattle. It was curious how this 'bus managed to ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... touching the water as it sped on. Then we made out the naked forms of the Illanums hanging to the ropes, far out over the water, and then we could hear their blood-curdling yell. It was too late; their yell was one of baffled rage. It was answered by the deep bass tones of the swivel on board the Bangor sending a ball skimming along over the waters, which, although it went wide of its mark, caused the natives on the ropes to throw themselves bodily across the prau, taking the great ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... quarter. She bustled off down to Water-Dock Lane, where, as we said in a former narrative, lived the old music-teacher, Dr. Bullfrog. The poor old doctor was a simple-minded, good, amiable creature, who had played the double-bass and led the forest choir on all public occasions since nobody knows when. Latterly some youngsters had arisen who sneered at his performances as behind the age. In fact, since a great city had grown up in the vicinity of the forest, tribes of wandering boys ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... black bucks in a wine-barrel room, Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable, A deep rolling bass. Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, Pounded on the table, Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom, Hard as they were able, Boom, boom, BOOM, With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom, Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... rich, but uncultivated bass voice joined in the melody. Still the effect was better tahn would have been expected from amateurs. After a few moments, Stanton stood back and Miss Burton and Van Berg sang together; then every one leaned forward and listened ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... at Vandon, with its great stained glass windows, representing the various quarterings of the Dare arms, about which he knew nothing and cared less, oppressed him. So did the black polished oak floor, and the walls with their white bass-reliefs of twisting wreaths and scrolls, with busts at intervals of Cicero and Dante, and other severe and melancholy personages. The rapiers upon the high white chimney-piece were more to his taste. He had taken them down the first day after his arrival, and had stamped and cut and thrust in ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... His deep bass voice, not always true, boomed out above the sound of the small organ. Ed had been a good brother to him; he had been ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... frequency at which the sound waves strike the ear. Pitches are referred to as high or low as the frequency of waves reaching the ear are greater or fewer. Familiar low pitches are the left-hand strings of a piano; the larger ones of stringed instruments generally; bass voices; and large bells. Familiar high pitches are right-hand piano strings; smaller ones of other stringed instruments; soprano voices; small bells; and the voices of most birds ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... has a genius, as well as a love, for music; if she had not been an heiress, she would have been a great artiste. If she comes to Paris in eighteen months or two years, she will take lessons in thorough bass and composition. It is all she needs as regards music. She has (without exaggeration) hands the size of a child of eight years old. These minute, supple, white hands, three of which I could hold in mine, have an iron power of finger, in the proportion, like that of Liszt. The ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... "I'll tell you a place— it's honest. It's the next street, a few hundred yards down, on the left. There's a wooden fish over the door. It's called The Black Bass —that hotel. Say I sent you. Good luck to you, countryman! Ah, la; la, there's the second bell—I must be getting to Mass!" With a nod he turned and went ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... foot. He took off his big, ugly shoe and rested the blood-stained sock on the straw. Voices like echoes traveled the length of the shelter—"Is it thou, Jarnac?"—"Art thou wounded, Jarnac?" "Yes," answered the big fellow in a bass whisper. He was a peasant of the Woevre, one ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... dare say deserved applause. It was difficult for me to persuade myself that all the performers were women, till, watching carefully, our eyes convinced us, as they were but slightly grated. The sight of girls, however, handling the double bass, and blowing into the bassoon, did not much please me; and the deep-toned voice of her who sung the part of Saul, seemed an odd unnatural thing enough. What I found most curious and pretty, was to hear ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... 'cellist bent over his instrument with an air of quiet devotion. The burly form of the player of the double-bassoon, behind his rare and awkward instrument, waiting for his time to come in, had the look of a man who could not be surprised or troubled by anything. One of the bass-violinists had the rough-hewn figure and the divinely chiseled, sorrow-lighted face of Lincoln, the others were children of the everyday. The clarionettist, with his dark beard and high temples, might have sat for Rembrandt's ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... abnormally sensitive to vibrations, which are to them what noises are to us. A rather smooth, not too shrill, whistle is one excellent sound to use. Not a fluttering whistle like the postman's, nor a heavy tone like an organ pipe or bass horn. Clapping the hands is a good initial test of a crude nature; then a moderate whistle, varying the pitch, for sometimes high sounds are perceived, but not low ones, or vice versa. Then a bell, such as a small table bell, the telephone, electric door bell, etc. Lastly, the human voice ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... now, Dick with the roar of the wind of the open sea about his ears as the deep bass voice let ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... old GOVERNOR HANCOCK out. The Governor came with his Lighthorse Troop And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop; Halberds glittered and colors flew, French horns whinnied and trumpets blew, The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth, And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath; So he rode with all his band, Till the President met him, cap in hand. The Governor "hefted" the crowns, and said,— "A will is a will, and the Parson's dead." The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he,— "There is your p'int. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to a dull roar, with now and then vast undertones like the rumbling of a cathedral pipe-organ. Emma knew that the high, clear tenor note was the shrill cry of the lame "newsie" at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Twenty-sixth Street. Those deep, thunderous bass notes were the combined reverberation of nearby "L" trains, distant subway and clanging surface cars. That sharp staccato was a motorman clanging his bell of warning. These things she knew. But she liked, nevertheless, to shut her eyes for a moment in the midst of her busy day and listen to ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... sorts of reasons for it: One is, the wise God will have it so; some must pipe, and some must weep (Matt. 11:16-18). Now Mr. Fearing was one that played upon this bass; he and his fellows sound the sackbut, whose notes are more doleful than the notes of other music are; though, indeed, some say the bass is the ground of music. And, for my part, I care not at all for that profession that begins not ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... tobacco. There was an air of importance in his manner which corresponded to the rural dignity of his exterior, and a habit which he had of throwing out a number of interjectional sounds, uttered with a strange variety of intonation running from bass up to treble in a very extraordinary manner, or breaking off his sentences with a whiff of his pipe, seemed adopted to give an air of thought and mature deliberation to his opinions and decisions. Notwithstanding all this, Alan, it might be DOOTED, as our old Professor ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Orient. It was a noble spectacle, a sublime spectacle! Of course the little skipper popped into the shrouds and squeaked out a hail, "Ship ahoy! What ship is that? And whence and whither?" In a deep and thunderous bass the answer came back through the speaking- trumpet, "The Begum, of Bengal—142 days out from Canton—homeward bound! What ship is that?" Well, it just crushed that poor little creature's vanity flat, and he squeaked back most humbly, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... was of no consequence. About the centre of the room, at two small tables joined together, were to be seen the party from the Yungfrau; some were drinking beer, some grog, and Jemmy Ducks was perched on the table, with his fiddle as usual held like a bass viol. He was known by those who frequented the house by the name of the Mannikin, and was a universal object of admiration and good-will. The quadrille was ended, ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... "abandon" in playing. "Abandon" is something quite different and pertains to that unconsciousness of technical effort which only comes to the artist after years of practice. To play with "abandon" and miss a few notes in this run, play a few false notes in the next, strike the wrong bass note here and there, mumble trills and overlook the correct phrasing entirely, with the idea that you are doing the same thing you have seen some great virtuoso do, is simply ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... are well stored with Salmon, Shad, Bass, Suckers, and Herrings, with abundance of small Fish, such as Trout, Perch, Chub, Smelt, Eels, &c. Cusks are taken in the winter, and Sturgeon are taken in some ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... the door open with a ceremonial politeness unusual in him towards men. Raut went out, and then, after a wordless look at her, her husband followed. She stood motionless while Raut's light footfall and her husband's heavy tread, like bass and treble, passed down the passage together. The front door slammed heavily. She went to the window, moving slowly, and stood watching, leaning forward. The two men appeared for a moment at the gateway in the road, passed under the street lamp, and were hidden by the black masses of the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... of the aquatic wilderness about him after that of Keela, hunting the wild duck and the turkey and discarding the bitter orange with aggrieved disgust. And if Keela occasionally found a brace of ducks by the camp fire or a bass in a nest of green palmetto, she wisely said nothing, sensing the barrier between these ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... In the middle of the nave, moreover, there was another galaxy of wax candles burning around an immense pall of black velvet, embroidered with silver, which seemed to cover, not only a coffin, but a sarcophagus, or something still more huge. The organ was rumbling forth a deep, lugubrious bass, accompanied with heavy chanting of priests, out of which sometimes rose the clear, young voices of choristers, like light flashing out of the gloom. The church, between the arches, along the nave, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... liked. But out of the sea the silly things come, into the great river down below, and we come up to watch for them; and when they go down again we go down and follow them. And there we fish for the bass and the pollock, and have jolly days along the shore, and toss and roll in the breakers, and sleep snug in the warm dry crags. Ah, that is a merry life too, children, if it were ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... travelled perhaps two hundred miles and has been twenty days on the trail, for cattle may only be driven about ten miles a day; he has been up day and night and slept half the time in the saddle; he has made himself hoarse singing "Sam Bass" and "The Dying Ranger" to keep the cattle quiet and stave off stampedes; he has ridden ten ponies to shadows in his twenty days of driving, wherefore, and naturally, your ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... hireling and apostate minister! Make my matters hot for me? quo' she! the shameless limmer! And true it is, that he could repose me in that nasty, stinking hole, the Canongate Tolbooth, from which your mother drew me out—the Lord reward her for it!—or to that cold, unbieldy, marine place of the Bass Rock, which, with my delicate kist, would be fair ruin to me. But I will be valiant in my Master's service. I have a duty here: a duty to my God, to myself, and to Haddo: in His strength, I ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Brazovics opens his mouth, one understands why Frau Sophie always screams; her husband, too, can only speak in shouts, but with the difference that he has a deep bass voice like a hippopotamus. ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... Chervonaneva. The road was white and straight, bare as one's empty hand. Here I endured the most curious experience of my life. Myself and companion, John Bass, correspondent of The Chicago Daily News, were walking in our heavy furs between the glaring moon and the German gunners, who will fire extravagantly at anything. Their guns got to work along the road and a shell came screaming up and ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... Robbie Burns to sing the Song o' Steam! To match wi' Scotia's noblest speech yon orchestra sublime Whaurto — uplifted like the Just — the tail-rods mark the time. The crank-throws give the double-bass, the feed-pump sobs an' heaves, An' now the main eccentrics start their quarrel on the sheaves: Her time, her own appointed time, the rocking link-head bides, Till — hear that note? — the rod's return whings glimmerin' through the guides. They're ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... villages, cultivated small farms, and were largely engaged in trade and commerce. They bartered corn and peas, woolen cloth, and wampum with the Indians for beaver skins, which they sent to England to pay for articles bought from the mother country. They salted cod, dried alewives and bass, made boards and staves for hogsheads, and sent all these to the West Indies to be exchanged for sugar, molasses, and other products of the tropics. They built ships in the seaports where lumber was cheap, and sold them ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... the trap in the gallery and turned round to mount to the fourth story. "Good evening!" he said, in his deep bass voice, as he approached them; "and good digestion, too, I ought to say!" He carried a great ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... seemed to betray a sense of guilt. He stole from himself; tones appealed to him as so many crimes. When the gripping melody of the twenty-second Psalm arose in his mind, he trembled from head to foot, and left the house as if lashed by Furies, though it was in the dead of night. The recurring bass figure of the presto sounded to him as though it were a gruesome, awed voice stammering out the fatal words: "Man, hold your breath, Man, hold your breath!" And he did hold his breath, full of unresting discomfort, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... into the new work before him, and the branch of the school under his direction soon rivalled any similar school. Various branches were added to the school,—in 1871 a class for organ, in 1872 classes for brass instruments, double-bass, and solo vocalists, in 1873 a chorus class. In 1875 the Royal Academy of Arts was reorganised and became the Royal High School for Music, with Joachim as director. That Joachim had earned a very high position as early as 1859 is shown by an extract from the ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... thence made so unwary a snatch that she overbalanced herself and splashed headlong into the heaving high-tide, where she would very soon have perished beneath the cold olive-gray swell, had not the brothers Denny, fishing for bass hard by, noticed the perilous accident, and pulled ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... it! Stop imagining that, then. Now imagine something else. The violins are playing a melodious plaint; the flutes are singing gently; the double bass drones like ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... for the biggest game fishes, them's black sea-bass," the man answered; "leastways there was an eight-hundred pounder brought in, and lots of us have ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... farm-road leads to the coast. As I came down above Turnberry, the sea view was indeed strangely different from the day before. The cold fogs were all blown away; and there was Ailsa Craig, like a refraction, magnified and deformed, of the Bass Rock; and there were the chiselled mountain tops of Arran, veined and tipped with snow; and behind, and fainter, the low, blue land of Cantyre. Cottony clouds stood, in a great castle, over the top of Arran, and blew out in long streamers ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a Fantasia, Ricercata, etc.), among which are to be found two sonatas, the one entitled, "Prima Sonata, doppio soggietto," the other "Seconda Sonata, soggietto triplicato." They are written out in open score of four staves, with mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor, and bass clefs. To show how the sonatas of those days differed both in form and contents from the sonata of our century, the first of the above-mentioned is given in short score. It will, probably, remind readers of "the first ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... called the Leader of the House, "whether he intended to propose any counsel, any course for the purpose of maintaining the authority of the House and of the Chair." And so it was on many occasions. When Mr. Bradlaugh did rush up to the table of the House, escorted by Mr. Labouchere and Mr. Bass, and went through the amusing part of taking the oath, he brought the book which he kissed and the papers which he signed, and then rushed back into his seat. The House witnessed the scene indescribable ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... was in C sharp minor, and was almost identical with the theme of the C minor study. At once Chopin ceased his moaning and weeping and came over to the instrument. 'That's very pretty,' he said, and began making a running bass accompaniment. He was a born inventor of finger tricks; he took up the theme and gradually we fashioned the study as it now stands. But it was first written in C sharp minor. Frederic suggested that it was too difficult for wealthy ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... Stumpton was the happiest loon in Ostable County. It was all we could do to keep him from cooking one of them "mack'rel" with his own hands. If Jonadab hadn't steered him out of the way while I sneaked down to the Port and bought a bass, we'd have had to eat dogfish—we would, as sure ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Irish giant, was clearing his throat with ominous sounds that suggested the tuning-up of a bass fiddle. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... his train halting to tank-up, the old Field-Marshal stepped ashore and called to the two gangers, who happened to be close at hand tinkering at their trolley. The guard, who was taking a bottle of Bass with the steward on the platform of the diner, suddenly jabbed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... italic, the hickory descended. It fell about as regularly and after the fashion of the stick beating upon the bass drum during a funeral march. But the beast, although convinced that something serious was impending, did not consider a funeral march appropriate for the occasion. He protested, at first, with vigorous whiskings of his tail and a rapid shifting of ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... replied the 'fiddle,' obsequiously; and, whispering the 'harp' and 'bass,' they played the ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... carefully selected party assembled at Belle Vue for Madame von Marwitz's delectation, she had been made a little to feel that she was but one of the indistinguishable orchestra that plucked out from accommodating strings a mellow bass to the one thrilling solo. Not for one moment did she grudge any of the recognitions that were her great friend's due; but she did expect to bask beside her; she did expect to find transmitted to her an important satellite's ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... darling live pigeons, which I have installed in Philemon's cabinet, and a very pretty dove-cote it makes me. For the rest, my husband is coming back with seven hundred francs, which he got from his respectable family, under pretence of learning the bass viol, the cornet-a-piston, and the speaking trumpet, so as to make his way in society, and a slap-up marriage—to ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... bass, struck the first chords of the sonata loudly and decisively, but Lisa did not begin her part. He stopped and looked at her. Lisa's eyes were fixed directly on him, and expressed displeasure. There was no smile on her lips, her whole face looked ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... and sisters looked up to him, guarding him jealously from corrupting associations, saw that he wore his overshoes when clouds lowered, and knitted him chest protectors, gloves, and pulse warmers which he was not allowed to forget. He taught the Bible Class in the Presbyterian Sabbath school, sang bass in the choir, and, on occasion, gave an excellent entertainment with his magic lantern, with views of the Holy Land, which he explained with a running fire of ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... point of land with three fishermen in it. One of the occupants was heard to exclaim "I am fifty cents to the good, old man Grump, for remember, on each black bass caught we had a nickel up. Whoopee! Say, d'ye see that darned big bass I would have got if the line would of held him? Oh, man! My heart stopped throbbing and I felt it in my throat and had ter swaller it fore I could breathe again. Such luck ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... The Go-cart struck the bass drum square, And passed completely through it. The Drummer madly tore his hair And said, "Vy did ...
— The Slant Book • Peter Newell
... explain matters to Jimmy's sister, and had taken the opportunity to enlarge on the number of bottles she had found in her lodger's room, omitting to state, however, that these had included the best part of a dozen of Bass, which, possibly because she hated liquor so much, she had promptly sold to her next-door neighbour at a halfpenny a bottle below ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... but see the vibrations of the atmosphere which a single musical chord produces—the rolling bass, the gliding alto, the sweeping soprano, and the soaring tenor, rolling onward in one broad channel of harmony, with its myriad tributary streams of thirds and fifths, and its curling, twinkling, shifting, blending, soaring mists of delicate-toned harmonics, how would ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the soil in wild lands may be known by the timber growing upon it. Hard-wood trees, those that shed their leaves during winter, show the best indication, such as maple, bass-wood, elm, black walnut, hickory, butternut, iron-wood, hemlock, and a giant species of nettle. A mixture of beech is good, but where it stands alone the soil is generally light. Oak is uncertain as ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... up against the demon Rum, when he engaged such a tough looking bunch. The alleged fat woman looked as if she was wasting away with consumption, and the bearded lady had a way of absentmindedly humming the popular airs in a bass voice which gave the whole snap away. There was one likely looking girl and when I asked her what she was she told me she was the web-footed lady and showed me her feet, which had little pieces of skin ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... which is neither frankly Italian nor honestly German. Again, he composed with an audience in his mind's eye that could only take in one melody or theme at a time. The melody might be in an upper part, a middle, or in the bass. In one or another it always is, and the rest of the musical tissue is only accompaniment. Hence a heaviness, a lumbering motion of the harmonies, which is irritating to our ears now that we are accustomed to webs ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... swelled to a crescendo climax. Then there came another sound, a single resonant note like that given when a string of a bass viol is violently plucked—and the tinkling melody abruptly died. Immediately following the resonant twang some object was ejected from the midst of the thicket on the dune's crest, and came rolling and bounding down the gentle slope ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... Harry Blossom at the head of the first and Dave Kearney leading the second. The two companies, called a battalion, were commanded by Major Bart. In addition to the officers, there were two drummers, a bass-drummer, and two fifers. ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... MR. BARTLEMAN, a celebrated bass-singer, was taken ill, just before the commencement of the musical festival at Gloucester: another basso was applied to, at a short notice, who attended, and acquitted himself to the satisfaction of everybody. When he called on the organist to be paid, the latter thanked him most ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... with Gazzaniga, the charming, lively, natural Gazzaniga, whose voice is fresh, and who can sing and act so charmingly in genial music, such as Donizetti's "Elisir d' Amore," with also Assoni, the buffo, and Coletti, the bass, compose the year-old and tried nucleus of the Philadelphia opera, which opened the first Monday in October. To these are added new attractions, in the shape of old celebrities from Europe: namely, Ronconi, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... men, lads, and boys, with about half a dozen little girls. The boys and girls, of course, sang alto and treble; the lads alto, if they could manage nothing better; and the men bass and tenor. There were eight men between thirty and fifty years of age, six lads like ...
— Archie's Mistake • G. E. Wyatt
... was there. Harry made a little choking noise deep in his throat, and my heart started pounding like a bass drum. ...
— The Man the Martians Made • Frank Belknap Long
... or Contrabassoon (Fr. contrebasson; Ger. Kontrafagott), a wood-wind instrument of the double reed family, which it completes as grand bass, the other members being the oboe, cor anglais, and bassoon. The contrafagotto corresponds to the double bass in strings, to the contrabass tuba in the brass wind, and to the pedal clarinet in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... continent. In 1780 an expedition under Captain Bligh, sent to transport bread-fruit trees from Otaheite to the West Indies for acclimatisation, ended in the famous mutiny on board his ship, the Bounty. To the last years of the century belong the voyages of Bass and Flinders in Australian waters. Meanwhile Mackenzie descended the river which bears his name to the Arctic ocean, and in 1770 Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller, reached the sources of the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... at the card-tables, sharpened faces seeing nothing in the universe but their cards; and at the piano-forte a set of signers and signoras, and ladies of quality, mingled together, full of duets, solos, overtures, cavatinas, expression, execution, and thorough bass—mothers in agonies, daughters pressed or pressing forward—some young and trembling with shame—more, though young, yet confident of applause—others, and these the saddest among the gay, veteran female exhibitors, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... region which resembles a great dark continent. The world which our memory peoples only reveals, in its revolution, a few luminous points at a time, while its immense and teeming mass remains in shade.... We daily see the conscious passing into unconsciousness; and take no notice of the bass accompaniment which our fingers continue to play, while our attention is directed to fresh musical effects.[49]" So far is it from being true that the self of our immediate consciousness is our true personality, that ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... listening, in the middle of the floor. She heard the front door opened, then she heard voices. She heard steps. The steps entered the sitting-room. Then she heard the voices in a steady flow. One of them was undoubtedly a man's. The bass resonances were unmistakable. A peal of girlish laughter rang out. Maria noiselessly groped her way to her bed, threw herself upon it, face down, and lay there shaking with ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... her resentment spurred her on. She toiled on and rested and gazed despairingly at the high crags, but still she kept her face to the heights. As midnight approached and the trail had no ending she stopped and gazed doubtfully back, and then she went hurrying on. A clanking of rocks and the bass guffaw of men had come up to her from below; and terror supplied a whip that even hatred lacked—it was Ike Bray and ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... soprano, alto and tenor, or alto, tenor and bass; and do not separate upper parts more than an octave. For a chord or two they may (for the sake of ...
— A Treatise on Simple Counterpoint in Forty Lessons • Friedrich J. Lehmann
... down to the bottom of the scale by the time it reached the end of the first line. When the congregation had got two-thirds of the way down, they found they could go no farther, not even those who sang bass. The leader, in some confusion, had to pitch the tune higher, and his miscalculation was looked upon as exceedingly funny by the reckless spirits at the back of the hall. The door opened quietly; and they all turned ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... frog creates only one little gush of music, composed of half-a-dozen trills, and then stops a moment for breath before commencing the second bar. Bull-frogs, too, though not so numerous, help to vary the sound by croaking vociferously, as if they understood the value of bass, and were glad of having an opportunity to join in the universal hum of life and joy which rises everywhere, from the river and the swamp, the forest and the prairie, to welcome back ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... got its hat. The Psammead was put into a flat bass-bag that had come from Farringdon Market with two pounds of filleted plaice in it. Now it contained about three pounds and a quarter of solid Psammead, and the children took it ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... of Winwidfield, Oswiu had vowed to build twelve minsters in his kingdom, and he redeemed his vow by founding six in Bernicia and six in Deira. In 669, Ecgberht of Kent "gave Reculver to Bass, the mass-priest, to build a monastery thereon." In 663, AEthelthryth, a lady of royal blood, better known by the Latinised name of St. Etheldreda, "began the monastery at Ely." Before Baeda's death, in 735, religious houses already ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... loses none of the advantages belonging to the snaffle, while it gains in the powerful leverage of the curb a restraint few horses are resolute enough to defy. In skilful hands, varying, yet harmonising, the manipulation of both, as a musician plays treble and bass on the pianoforte, it would seem to connect the rider's thought with the horse's movement, as if an electric chain passed through wrist, and finger and mouth, from the head of the one to the heart ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... like motion is experienced, when there is a sudden stop, and the conducteur is seen descending from his eminence, muttering sundry expressions of no very gentle nature—"what the devil's the matter now," growls a more than bass voice out of one window—"qu'est ce que c'est, conducteur," simultaneously demand a treble and a tenor from another window—"rien, Madame," the answer is always addressed to the lady, "rien du tout," he replies whilst endeavouring to repair some part of the "rigging" that ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... too, the old-time singing-school teacher, has honored place in my memory. Once a month, in the old church, the singing-school class of which we were all members regularly assembled. The school was in four divisions, Bass, Tenor, Counter, and Treble; each member was provided with a copy of the "Missouri Harmony," with "fa," "sol," "la," "mi," appearing in mysterious characters upon every page; the master, magnifying his office, as with tuning-fork in hand he stood proudly in the midst, raised the ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson |
