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More "Fiddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stood there thunderstruck. He saw that he had a successful rival: the reference to Madame made it obvious that this was the Duc de Guise, and left him in no doubt that his sister was to play second fiddle to the Princess de Montpensier. Jealousy, frustration and rage joining to the dislike which he already had for the Duc roused him to a violent fury; and he would have given there and then some bloody mark of ...
— The Princess of Montpensier • Madame de La Fayette
... had a passion for violins, and ran himself into debt because he bought so many and such good ones. Once, when visiting his father's house at Ipsden, he shocked the punctilious old gentleman by dancing on the dining-table to the accompaniment of a fiddle, which he scraped delightedly. Dancing, indeed, was another of his diversions, and, in spite of the fact that he was a fellow of Magdalen and a D.C.L. of Oxford, he was always ready to caper and to display ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... at the supper table, Mr. Pollock politely informed him that Alix Crown had returned from Michigan, looking as fit as a fiddle. ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Fiddle-de-dee!" cried Keawe. "An old rogue, I tell you, and an old ass to boot. For the bottle was hard enough to sell at four centimes; and at three it will be quite impossible. The margin is not broad enough, the thing begins to smell of scorching—brrr!" said he, and shuddered. "It is true I bought it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to supper, an old man, with a fiddle in his hand, tottered into the garden, and down the lawn. He was a very queer-looking old man. He had long white hair, ...
— The Birthday Party - A Story for Little Folks • Oliver Optic
... consideration, therefore, together with some others, were, for the most part, as a maul on the head of pride, and desire of vain glory; what, thought I, shall I be proud because I am a sounding brass? Is it so much to be a fiddle? Hath not the least creature that hath life, more of God in it than these? Besides, I knew it was love should never die, but these must cease and vanish; so I concluded, a little grace, a little love, a little of the true fear of God, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of auditors. Nobody, however, seemed to take any notice. Very often a whole band of musicians will strike up,— passing a hat round after playing a tune or two. On board the ferry, until the coldest weather began, there were always some wretched musicians, with an old fiddle, an old clarinet, and an old verdigrised brass bugle, performing during the passage, and, as the boat neared the shore, sending round one of their number to gather contributions in the hollow of the brass bugle. They were a very shabby set, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with a hundred other of his ilk Hissed on the hounds and smeared his bread with blood; Lebon, man-fiend, that vampire-ghoul who drank Hot blood of headless victims, and compelled Mothers to view the murder of their babes; At whose red guillotine, in Arras raised, The pipe and fiddle played at every fall Of ghastly head the ribald "Ca Ira;" And fiends unnamed and ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... to think of both countries, and every time I have left France it has been with more admiration of that lively land; {171} but Frenchmen, during this visit, looked at by us for the twentieth time, had evident signs of wounded vanity: they were conscious of playing second fiddle ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... planter's son returning after a long absence, joyfully welcomed and kissed by the aged mulatto nurse. On rivers, boatmen safely moored at nightfall, in their boats, under shelter of high banks, Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle—others sit on the gunwale, smoking and talking; Late in the afternoon the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal Swamp-there are the greenish waters, the resinous odour, the plenteous moss, the cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree. —Northward, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... good sportsman from a very early age. Their grandfather's ship was sailing for Europe once when the boys were children, and they were asked, what present Captain Franks should bring them back? George was divided between books and a fiddle; Harry instantly declared for a little gun: and Madam Warrington (as she then was called) was hurt that her elder boy should have low tastes, and applauded the younger's choice as more worthy of his name and lineage. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... berth, across the narrow passage under the bridge, there was, in the iron deck-structure covering the stokehold fiddle and the boiler-space, a storeroom with iron sides, iron roof, iron-plated floor, too, on account of the heat below. All sorts of rubbish was shot there: it had a mound of scrap-iron in a corner; rows of empty oil-cans; ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... enigma, We shall guess it all too soon; Failure brings no kind of stigma— Dance we to another tune! String the lyre and fill the cup, Lest on sorrow we should sup. Hop and skip to Fancy's fiddle, Hands across and down the middle— Life's perhaps the only riddle That we shrink from ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... in the middle, From the orchestra comes the first squeak of a fiddle. Then the bass gives a growl, and the horn makes a dash, And the music begins with a flourish and crash, And away to the zenith goes swelling and swaying, While we tap on the box to keep time to the playing. And we hear the old tunes as they follow and mingle, ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... turned to the third queen and asked, "What are you quarrelling about?" The queen answered, "Why should I do nothing but fiddle about the nursery?" Vasishta thought for a while and said, "In a former life, O Queen, you were a maid of a jungle tribe. Every Monday you used to fast yourself and offer the choicest fruits that you picked to the god Shiva. ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... me how, by three-fold scoff, When cares of life perplex us, To smoke, or sleep, or fiddle them off, And scorn the ills that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the shepherd dressed, In ribbons, wreath, and gayest vest Himself with care arraying: Around the linden lass and lad Already footed it like mad: Hurrah! hurrah! Hurrah—tarara-la! The fiddle-bow was playing. ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... hospital, a very modern and up-to-date motor ambulance came down and whisked us all off to that institution. I couldn't speak Spanish, nor could Ben; but those medicos could talk English after a fashion, and soon Ben was fixed fine in a private room and the doctors declared he'd be fit as a fiddle ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... beside the fire with a greasy pack of cards; or to listen to the peevish grumbling of Lashman in the bunk below him. Lashman had taken to his bed six weeks before with scurvy, and complained incessantly; and though they hardly knew it, these complaints were wearing his comrades' nerves to fiddle-strings—doing the mischief that cold and bitter hard work and the cruel loneliness had hitherto failed to do. Long Ede lay stretched by the fire in a bundle of skins, reading in his only book, the Bible, open now at the Song of Solomon. Cooney had finished patching a pair of trousers, and ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... such, but I know not who of his friends are able to judge of it.' GOLDSMITH. 'He is what is much better: he is a worthy humane man.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, that is not to the purpose of our argument[660]: that will as much prove that he can play upon the fiddle as well as Giardini, as that he is an eminent Grecian.' GOLDSMITH. 'The greatest musical performers have but small emoluments. Giardini, I am told, does not get above seven hundred a year.' JOHNSON. 'That ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Mr. Elwin and his wife were a most delightful couple, models of old-fashioned courtesy and heart-kindness. He knew Borrow well, and quite discredited the innuendoes and insinuations of many Norwich folk about him. It was a joke with the Murray circle that "big Borrow was second fiddle at his home, and there is ample testimony that his wife was a capable manager and looked after his affairs, literary as well as domestic." Though Borrow boasted of his proficiency in the Norfolk dialect, Mr. Elwin told him that he had not ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... fiddle out, and fiddled till he woke the echoes round. After a time a wolf came through the thicket and trotted up to ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... forty-five miles ain't to be sneezed at, an' when you throw in fifteen miles of desert an' a sand-storm to boot, it's what I call a pretty good day's work; yet I'm feelin' fine as a fiddle," he said in a tone of satisfaction, after which he made an apology for a ...
— Dick in the Desert • James Otis
... Eph took his fiddle and scraped away to his heart's content in the parlor, while the girls, after a short rest, set the table and made all ready to dish up the dinner when that exciting moment came. It was not at all the sort of table we see now, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... pieces; he succeeded Southey as poet-laureate in 1843; he is emphatically the poet of external nature and of its all-inspiring power, and it is as such his admirers regard him; Carlyle compares his muse to "an honest rustic fiddle, good and well handled, but wanting two or more of the strings, and not capable of much"; to judge of Wordsworth's merits as a poet the student is referred to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... has been pent up for years come out at last). You're surprised! Surprised! You would be. You've never stopped to think what other people are thinking; you take it for granted that they all love you, and that's all you care about. Do you think I liked playing second fiddle to you all my life? Do you think I've never had any ambitions of my own? I suppose you thought I was quite happy being one of the crowd of admirers round you, all saying, "Oh, look at Gerald, ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... the examination in the House, inquired who Mrs. Clarke was? He had heard nothing of it. He had evaded this omnipresence by utter insignificancy! The Duke should make that man his confidential valet. I proposed locking him up, barring him the use of his fiddle and red pumps, until he had minutely perused and committed to memory the whole body of the examinations, which employed the House of Commons a fortnight, to teach him to be more attentive to what concerns the public. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... high 'corn.' We cannot think that the Italian lad does not smoke the mock tobacco that must tempt him upon each ear. If he does, he apes a habit no less American in its origin than the maize itself. So the American lad playing with a 'shoe-string bow' or a 'corn-stalk fiddle' would turn to Italy ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... all come to hear it, Jean!" cried they: "but take care of your fiddle or you will get it crushed in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... inanity; flap-doodle; rigmarole, rodomontade; truism; nugae canorae[Lat]; twaddle, twattle, fudge, trash, garbage, humbug; poppy-cock [U.S.]; stuff, stuff and nonsense; bosh, rubbish, moonshine, wish-wash, fiddle-faddle; absurdity &c. 497; vagueness &c. (unintelligibility) 519. [routine or reflexive statements without substantive thought, esp. legal] boilerplate. V. mean nothing; be unmeaning &c. adj.; twaddle, quibble, scrabble. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... this ukeke, the Hawaiian fiddle, are tuned to [e]; to [b] and to [d]. These three strings are struck nearly simultaneously, but the sound being very feeble, it is only the first which, receiving the sharp impact of the blow, gives out enough volume ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... flour and dried meat with them as fairly as possible and decided we would try the trail. When our plans were settled we felt in pretty good spirits again, and one of the boys got up a sort of corn-stalk fiddle which made a squeaking noise and in a little while there was a sort of mixed American and Indian dance going on in which the squaws joined in and we had a pretty jolly time till quite late at night. We were well pleased that these wild folks ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... considered fully educated until he has reached his middle or even late twenties. Yet instead of speeding up the curriculum in the early school years, we have introduced such important studies as social graces, baton twirling, interpretive painting and dancing, and a lot of other fiddle-faddle which graduates students who cannot spell, nor read a book, nor count above ten without taking off their shoes. Perhaps such studies are necessary to make sound citizens and graceful companions. I shall not contest the point. However, I contend that a sound and basic schooling should be included—and ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... are a born artist and musician. Music, tone, sound, colour, vibrate in every page of your romances. Had your parents taught you harmony, the piano, and the fiddle, your music would have burst forth along its normal lines. As they merely taught you the alphabet and grammar, your creative faculty turned to literature; you wrote romances full of music, instead of composing ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... professional danseuses, the female characters in the ballet having previously been sustained by men." Lully, the celebrated composer, was manager of the opera house, where he amassed a very large fortune. He made himself greatly dreaded by his orchestra, whom he used to belabour over the head with his fiddle. In this manner he is said to have broken scores of violins, and one unlucky clarionet-player, in particular, who was never either in time or tune, cost him a vast number of instruments. They shivered like glass upon the obdurate noddle ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... called Cagnotte, whom it had been found impossible to bring with us. His absence told on me to such an extent that one morning, having first chucked out of the window my little tin soldiers, my German village with its painted houses, and my bright red fiddle, I was about to take the same road to return as speedily as possible to Tarbes, the Gascons, and Cagnotte. I was grabbed by the jacket in the nick of time, and Josephine, my nurse, had the happy thought to tell me that Cagnotte, tired of waiting ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... to her to bless and to abide with her long beyond the tarrying of the spirit in the flesh. "He said I looked nice. I met him the first time I wore the purple dress. It was at a corn-husking party at Jerry Grumb's barn. Some man played the fiddle and we danced." ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... Gaston brought his fiddle along, and those were wonderful tunes he drew from the strings. Sometimes he explained what they meant, his words running along in monotone that yet kept time ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... so," said Mrs. Cafferty. "Not a foot do you stir out of that bed till your daughter comes home, ma'am, said I. For do you see, child, many's the time you'd be thinking you were well and feeling as fit as a fiddle, and nothing would be doing you but to be up and gallivanting about, and then the next day you'd have a relapse, and the next day you'd be twice as bad, and the day after that they'd be measuring you ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... tall, handsome black fellow, with white teeth and bright eyes, and he could play the fiddle and pick the banjo, and knock the bones and cut the pigeon-wing, and, besides all that, he was the best hoe-hand, and could pick more cotton than any other negro on the plantation. He had amused himself by courting and flirting with all of the negro girls; but at last he had been caught himself ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... under different skies, but never such a one as this. So far, far from all that one associates with this evening. I think of the merriment round the bonfires at home, hear the scraping of the fiddle, the peals of laughter, and the salvoes of the guns, with the echoes answering from the purple-tinted heights. And then I look out over this boundless, white expanse into the fog and sleet and the driving wind. Here is truly no trace of ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... great a happiness that he thought he should never be tired of a life where there was so much music and dancing, to which he had been always addicted; and, as he phrased it himself, he thought he was in another world when he got with a set of men and maids in a barn with a fiddle among them. ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... a-wooing go Gave a party, you must know; And his bride, dressed all in green, Looked as fine as any queen. Their reception numbered some Of the best in Froggiedom. Four gay froggies played the fiddle,— Hands all round, and down ...
— The Nursery, February 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... on the stoop didn't use up so much of a man's wind! You should get your harp, sir; not but what a fiddle is best." ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... good natured, feckless lad, about eighteen or twenty years of age, and the only thing he appeared to be able to make anything of was playing the fiddle. Wherever he went his violin accompanied him. While fiddling he was happy, but it was pitiful to watch him trying to work at or take an interest in any employment which he could ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... everything—the exclamation which you explained deceitfully, and all! Forgive the harsh word, Elfride—forgive it.' He smiled a surface smile as he continued: 'What a poor mortal I am to play second fiddle in everything and to be deluded ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... in the outfit, so when they came to land again they rubbed off as much water as they could with their handkerchiefs, and finished drying by turning about fifty Catherine-wheels on a sunny patch of the bank. When they were dressed again, they were glowing with warmth, felt as fit as a fiddle, and were ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... can do one thing easily and others another, and every fellow has to work hard to learn those things which belong, as it were, to the other fellows. There are chaps, I suppose, like the Admirable Crichton, who are born good all round, and can play the fiddle, polish off Euclid, ride, shoot, lick anyone at any game, all without the slightest trouble, but one does not come across them often, thank goodness. I say, do ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... two never is," laughed his friend. "But she's a right smart filly; she looks much the best of the lot. Dixon's got her as fit as a fiddle string. When you're done with that man you might turn him over ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... would have been a much more racy book. Spence was certainly an amiable, but I think a very weak man; and it appears to me that his learning has been overrated. He might indeed have been well designated as "a fiddle-faddle ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... Court, Glasgow,[36] belonging co the Hunterian collection, in which King David is represented, as usual in the 12th century, playing or rather tuning a harp, surrounded by musicians playing bells, rebec, guitar fiddle (in 'cello position), quadruple pipes or ganistrum, and a bag-pipe with long chaunter having a well-defined stock. The insufflation tube appears to have been left out, and there are no ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... sounds of dancing feet soon came to his ears, and from those sounds he could tell the figures of the dance just as he could tell the gait of an unseen horse thumping a hard dirt road. He leaned over the yard fence—looking, listening, thinking. Through the window he could see the fiddler with his fiddle pressed almost against his heart, his eyes closed, his horny fingers thumping the strings like trip- hammers, and his melancholy calls ringing high above the din of shuffling feet. His grandfather was standing before the fireplace, his grizzled hair tousled and his face red with ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... should have thought that you knew him better than that, Manutoli. To him a woman is a voice, and nothing else. If the same sounds could be got out of a flute or a fiddle he would like it much better, and think it far more convenient. I don't think my uncle Lamberto ever knew whether a woman was pretty or plain. I wish to heaven he would get caught for once in his life; it would suit my book very well. He would ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... of course—the Lord Lieutenant's family wish to hear you in private." "Caro amico," rejoined he, with petrifying composure, "Paganini con violino e Paganini senza violino,—ecco due animali distinti." "Paganini with his fiddle and Paganini without it are two very different persons." I knew perfectly what he meant, and said, "The Lord Lieutenant is a nobleman of exalted rank and character, liberal in the extreme, but he is not Croesus; nor do I think you could with any consistency ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... interesting as the last dying glow of symbolism, derivative as they are from Huysmans and Mallarme. I cannot regard them as successful stories, but they have a certain experimental value which comes nearest to success in "The Cardinal's Fiddle." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Dan, returning the gift with precision. "Ef you don't like my music, git out your fiddle. I ain't goin' to lie here all day an' listen to you an' Long Jack arguin' 'baout candles. Fiddle, Tom Platt; or I'll learn Harve ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... so many people for any length of time in the over-crowded mines was opt of the question. But that was a consideration to which the "Military Situation" could not resonably be expected to play second fiddle. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... George Beaumont, on the contrary, furnishes, in the anecdotes given of him in Constable's life, a melancholy instance of the degradation into which the human mind may fall, when it suffers human works to interfere between it and its Master. The recommending the color of an old Cremona fiddle for the prevailing tone of everything, and the vapid inquiry of the conventionalist, "Where do you put your brown tree?" show a prostration of intellect so laughable and lamentable, that they are at once, on all, and to all, students of the gallery, a satire and a warning. ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... the O.C., could carry a weight of five hundred pounds on his shoulders. After the gymnastic performance, we had a concert, and a man sang, or rather made a hideous nasal sound, to the accompaniment of something that looked like a three stringed fiddle. The song, which greatly delighted the Chinese listeners, consisted of an interminable number of verses; in fact we never heard the end of it, for the O.C. stopped it and told the musicians that the officers had to leave. He ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... "Oh, fiddle-de-fudge, Roger! I'm not interfering, and it is my affair. Mona is my affair, and so are you; and now your Aunt Patty is going to ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... right, old chap. Just lie still for a minute, till I go and get you a taste of brandy. Be back like a shot. Don't move. You'll be all right. Fit as a fiddle when you've had something ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... then that same thing will be serviceable to the Church. But how far we must depend upon new friends, I have learnt by long practice, though I think among great Ministers, they are just as good as old ones. And so I think this important day has made a great hole in this side of the paper; and the fiddle-faddles of tomorrow and Monday will make up the rest; and, besides, I shall see Harley on Tuesday ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... piped, "and I've just had the very gloriousest tramp and I feel as fine as a—what is it they say? Oh, as fine as a violin—I—I mean fiddle. I walked miles and miles—perhaps not quite so far—and the wind was blowing a blue streak right in my face. Ugh! first it made me shiver and creep up into my collar. But bimeby I got nice and warmy, and my cheeks tingled. I felt as if I could walk from here to the place where the ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... issue, he was the most eligible and most pathetically sought-after marriageable man in all Hawaii. A clean-and-strong-featured brunette, tall, slenderly graceful, with the lean runner's stomach, always fit as a fiddle, a distinguished figure in any group, the greying of hair over his temples (in juxtaposition to his young- textured skin and bright vital eyes) made him appear even more distinguished. Despite the social demands upon his time, and despite his many committee meetings, and meetings ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... of his neighbor, there is a great deal of dancing going on. Here and there a ring is formed, carved out, as it were, from the solid mass of human beings, in which some half dozen couples are revolving more or less in time to the braying of a bagpipe or scraping of a fiddle, executing something which has more or less semblance to a waltz. The mode in which these rings are formed is at once simple and efficacious. Any couple who feel disposed to dance link themselves together and begin to bump themselves against their immediate neighbors. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... had been able to pay his way through Cambridge University by the scholarships and prizes which he had won. One beautiful little dark-eyed daughter of seven was playing in a West End Theatre as the dormouse in "Alice in Wonderland." She was second fiddle to Alice herself, also, and could sing all her songs. Her pay was some five pounds a week, poor enough for the attraction she proved, but more than all the rest of the family put together earned. At that time I never went to theatres. Acquaintances had persuaded me that so many of the girls were ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... third fiddler was different. He was a man after Buster Bumblebee's own heart. He seemed to love to make music and never tired of coaxing the jolliest tunes out of his old fiddle that anybody could hope to hear. He only laughed when his fellow fiddlers lay back in their chairs and mopped their red faces. And just to keep the company in good spirits—and because he couldn't help it—this frolicsome fiddler would start right ahead and play something that was ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... news that Tom Double The nation should bubble, Nor is't any wonder or riddle, That a parliament rump Should play hop, step, and jump, And dance any jig to his fiddle. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Look here, Adolph, chuck your job, and go on a walking tour with me. Let's travel through France and along the Riviera to Italy. I'm sick of cities. There's lots of money for us both, and if we run short, why, bring your fiddle along and ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... tones from voices like the murmur of a stream; And oh, the heart seems young again and from its anguish free When I gaze upon these pictures that are ever dear to me; Then I see the darkies dancing, I can hear the fiddle ring As they gathered in the cabin and they cut the pigeon-wing; I can smell the 'possum roasting, I can see the cider flow, When memory takes me back again to scenes ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... "Precisely the fiddle-stick, Mr Forster! you did mean it, and you do mean it, and this is all the return that I am to expect for my kindness and anxiety for your welfare—slaving and toiling all day as I do; but you're incorrigible, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... late that is, for a country dance. It was after nine o'clock when, riding Comet, he saw the schoolhouse lamps winking at him through the oaks and heard the merry music of fiddle and guitar in the frolic of a heel-and-toe polka. Already he made out here and there the saddle horses which had brought so many "stags" so many miles to the dance, and which stood tied to tree and shrub. Also there ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... evidence that the hurdy-gurdy sets the world to dancing—like the fiddle in the Turkish tale where even the headsman forgot his business—despite such evidence there are persons who affect to despise its melody. These claim such perceptivity of the outer ear and such fineness of the channels that the tune is but a ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... for she managed to get on better with Mrs. Partridge. But as for poor Mrs. Partridge, she didn't trouble us much, for her rheumatism got so very bad that all that winter she couldn't walk up-stairs though she managed to fiddle about down-stairs in her own rooms and to keep on the housekeeping. And this, by the by, brings me to the one big thing that happened, which you will see all came from something that I told you about almost at the ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... to make bombs or automatic bankrobbers; he just wanted to fiddle with the stack, see what it would do. He turned it over in his hands a couple of times, then shrugged, got up, went over to his closet, and put the thing away. There wasn't anything he could do with it until he'd bought a cryostat—a liquid helium ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... I reckon," said the jailer, lifting up his head on hearing an unusual bustle amongst the crew. "I am fain to see it, for I am waundy qualmish dancing to this up-an'-down tune, wi' nought but the wind for my fiddle." ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... de Whoopin' Cough, De Bluebird died wid de Measles; 'Long come a Nigger wid a fiddle on his back, 'Vitin' Crows fer to dance ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... bless you, he had a tune with wooden turns to it,—it was most cruel to hear; and then the look of him, those eyes, like dropsical oysters, and the hair standing every way, like a field of insane flax, and the mouth with a curl in it like the slit in the side of a fiddle. A pleasant fellow that for a mess that always boasted the best-looking chaps ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... as light she tript upstairs, Were in the cloak-room seen assembling— When, hark! some new outlandish airs, From the First Fiddle, set ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... noise and bustle again on the road and in the house. The picnickers were returning; yes, and from the direction of Elsinore new guests came by bicycle and carriage, and already one could hear in the room below a fiddle tuning up and a clarinet executing nasal runs by way of practice ... Everything promised to make it ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Augustus Holyoke, of Salem, who died in 1829, aged one hundred and one years. It was recalled by an old lady that the scholars in the school of her youth marched through Boston streets, to the music of the fiddle played by "Black Henry," to Concert Hall, corner Tremont and Bromfield streets, to practice dancing; and that Mr. Turner walked at the head of the school. His advertisements may be seen in Boston ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... not a word for my life—not breathe, even—to plase you! becaase I've a little business to mintion to the lady. Sixty guineas to resave from Mr. Gilbert, yonder. Long life to you, miss! But I'll say no more till this Scotchman has done with his fiddle and his musics. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... mistake some of our great masters; because they sometimes put in some of those round characters of clouds, they must do the same; but if you look at any of their skies, they either assist in the composition or make some figure in the picture—nay, sometimes play the first fiddle.... ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... are other things to do in life besides feeding lions," he said; and taking up his fiddle he became interested in it. He played it all the way across the Atlantic, and everyone said there was no reason why he should not play in the opera house. But an interview with the music conductor dispelled illusions. Ned learnt from him that improvisations were not admissible in an opera house; ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... several cried in an eager chorus; for their nerves had been wrought up to a high tension by all they had gone through, and they felt, as Seth aptly expressed it, "like fiddle strings keyed to next door ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... the singing as sweet as a dream And the fiddle that climbs to the sky, With head 'neath the curtain she stares out—O hark! The music so strange ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... had rallied from her usual gloom and begged the privilege of acting as lady's maid. 'Poleon Campbell, an old-time Negro fiddler, whom Peter had resurrected from some obscure cabin, oiled his rheumatic joints, tuned his fiddle and rosined his bow, and under the inspiration of good food and drink and liberal wage, played through his whole repertory, which included such ancient favourites as, "Fishers' Hornpipe," "Soldiers' Joy," "Chicken in the Bread-tray," and the "Campbells ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... baronets, eight yellow admirals, forty-seven major-generals on half pay (who narrate the whole Peninsular War), twenty-seven dowagers, one hundred and eighty-seven old maids on small annuities, and several unbeneficed clergymen, who play a little on the fiddle. All the above play at cards, and usually with success if partners. No objection to cards on Sunday evenings or rainy mornings. The country gentleman to allow the guests four feeds a day, and to produce claret if a Scotch or Irish peer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... wild turkey-gobbler so busily breakfasting out of the hopper that he was able to creep quietly up and catch him with his hands. The people all worked together in cultivating their respective lands; coming back to the fort before dusk for supper. They would then call on any man who owned a fiddle and spend the evening, with interludes of singing and story-telling, in dancing—an amusement they considered as only below hunting. On Sundays the stricter parents taught their children the catechism; ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... insure the presence of Quirk's three boys. Supper over, a fresh horse was furnished me, and we set out for the dance, covering the distance in less than two hours. I knew nearly every one in the settlement, and got a cordial welcome. I played the fiddle, danced with my former sweethearts, and, ere the sun rose in the morning, rode home in time for breakfast. During that night's revelry, I contrasted my former girl friends on the San Antonio with ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... among the broad strings, and ever and anon he would produce from one of them a low, melancholy, almost unearthly sound. And then he would pause, never daring to produce two such notes in succession,—one close upon the other. And these last sad moans of the old fiddle were now known through the household. They were the ghosts of the melody of days long past. He imagined that his visits to the box were unsuspected,—that none knew of the folly of his old fingers which could not keep themselves from touching the wires; but the ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... after all, is a more useful post, and a more lucrative one.' But Lancelot had not as yet 'Galliolised,' as the Irish schoolmaster used to call it, and cared very little to play a political ninth fiddle. ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... that night a long, long time ago when all the people under the protection of the newly erected fort, gathered here for a house-warming. How clearly I could hear that squawking, squeaking, good-natured fiddle and the din of dancing feet! Only the sound got mixed up with the dim, weird moonlight, until you didn't know whether you were hearing or seeing or feeling it—the music of the fiddles and the feet. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... overbalance, overweigh, overmatch; top, o'ertop, cap, beat, cut out; beat hollow; outstrip &c. 303; eclipse, throw into the shade, take the shine out of, outshine, put one's nose out of joint; have the upper hand, have the whip hand of, have the advantage; turn the scale, kick the beam; play first fiddle &c. (importance) 642; preponderate, predominate, prevail; precede, take precedence, come first; come to a head, culminate; beat &c. all others, bear the palm; break the record; take the cake * [U. S.]. become larger, render larger &c. (increase) 35, (expand) 194. Adj. superior, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Smallbones. "My sister in Iowa has got a fiddle; an' I know she plays five toons on it—I've heerd her. She's got a mouth organ, too, an' a musical-box—electric! One 'ud think nobody had got nuthin' but Will Henderson." He strode back to the bar in dudgeon, filled to the ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... expectation. All are seated—all look at each other in ominous anxiety. Which is accuser? Which is the accused? On whom shall their suspicion settle—on whom their pity? All are silent—almost speechless— and even the current of their thoughts is frost-bound by fear. Suddenly the sound of a fiddle or a viol is caught from a distance—it swells upon the ear—steps approach—and in another moment in rushes the elderly gentleman, grave and gloomy as his audience, but capering about in a frenzy of excitement. For half ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... for your groat; L2,000 to one, L3,000 a year to another, has been nothing. And for what? Is there one of them that yet knows what a commonwealth is? And are you yet afraid of such a government in which these shall not dare to scrape for fear of the statute? Themistocles could not fiddle, but could make of a small city a great commonwealth: these have fiddled, and for your money, till they have brought a great ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... these shapeless things the forms and costumes of the princes and princesses of ancient France? Why, the dark-skinned old-clo' men, who hang their cast-off raiment in Brattle Street, would be mobbed, if they paraded such vestments at their doors; and Papanti would break his fiddle-bow over the head of any awkward lout who should unfortunately assume such ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Gartley's heart swelled with delight, translating her confidence into his power. He was no longer the second person in the compact, but had taken the place belonging to the male contracting party! For he had been painfully conscious now and then that he played but second fiddle. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... groupe suited to Teniers, a cluster of out-of-door customers of the Rose, old benchers of the inn, who sit round a table smoking and drinking in high solemnity to the sound of Timothy's fiddle. Next, a mass of eager boys, the combatants of Monday, who are surrounding the shoemaker's shop, where an invisible hole in their ball is mending by Master Keep himself, under the joint superintendence of Ben Kirby and Tom Coper, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... good a nurse," he answered, stroking her hand, "not to be as fit as a fiddle by now. You must be tired yourself, Laura. Why, for whole days there—and nights, too, they tell me—you never ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... was Carlisle city that day; yet, as the two entered the courtyard of the castle, James was aware of another sound, rising clear above the tumult of the town—strains of music, surely, that came from a fiddle. As they stepped under the inner gateway and approached the Norman Keep, the fiddler himself came in sight playing with might and main, under a barred window about six feet from the ground. By the fiddler's side, urging him on, was a ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... would be done by Do what you will but do something all day long Either do not think, or do not love to think Equally forbid insolent contempt, or low envy and jealousy Even where you are sure, seem rather doubtful Every virtue, has its kindred vice or weakness Fiddle-faddle stories, that carry no information along with them Flattery of women Forge accusations against themselves Forgive, but not approve, the bad. Frank, open, and ingenuous exterior, with a prudent interior Gain the affections as well as the esteem Generosity ...
— Widger's Quotations from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son • David Widger
... to the whizbangs concert party last night. It was A1—one chap makes his fiddle absolutely speak. He played that Volunteer Organist and parts of Henry VIII., the basso sang 'Will o' the Wisp,' and most of the other songs were old 'uns. I tell you, you wouldn't believe we had such things a couple of miles ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... sorry, for all old men need some one to talk to and at, else they fret and grow peevish. Besides, I was anxious to put my young masters to the test. I have a grand piano of good age, with a sounding-board like a fine-tempered fiddle. The instrument, an American one, I handle like a delicate thoroughbred horse, and, as my playing is accomplished by the use of my fingers and not my heels, the piano does not really ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... (fiddle, staff, knife) which apparently brings to life again the dead woman. G2 The dead mother killed a second time, and paid ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... plays the fiddle fit to tear the heart out of your body, and reads big books till God knows what hour in the mornin'. His father, he says he don't know what to do with him ... There's a big, bad devil of a Polack down to the works that wants him to ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... Hrolfur. The fore-sail resembled a beautifully curved sheet of steel, stiff and unyielding. Both sails were snow-white, semi-transparent and supple in movement, like the ivory sails on the model ships in Rosenborg Palace. The mast seemed to bend slightly and the stays were as taut as fiddle-strings. The boat quivered like a leaf. The waves pounded hard against the thin strakes of the boat's side. I could feel them on my cheek, though their dampness never penetrated; but in between these hammer blows their little pats were wonderfully ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... had failed in his attempts at speaking grammatically, and with a sudden determination never again to try, he precipitately left the house, and for the next two hours amused himself by playing "Bruce's Address" upon his old cracked fiddle. From that time Sal gave up all hopes of educating Uncle Peter, and confined herself mostly to literary efforts, of which we shall ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... have thought he was using Dryfoos, when Dryfoos was using him, and he may have supposed he was not afraid of him when he was very much so. His courage hadn't been put to the test, and courage is a matter of proof, like proficiency on the fiddle, you know: you can't tell whether you've got it till ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Since your ladyship commands me, madam, I dare disobey no longer. My lodgings are in St Lucknor's Lane, at the Cat and Fiddle. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... the cold plunge," admitted Georgiana, laughing. "And I'm 'fit as a fiddle,' as Jimps says. He sent his good-bye to you and told me to tell you he'll ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... women and affront the men whom he met, and sometimes to beat them, and sometimes to be beaten by them. This was one of his imperial nocturnal pleasures; his chiefest in the day was to sing and play upon a fiddle, in the habit of a minstrel, upon the public stage; he was prouder of the garlands that were given to his divine voice (as they called it then) in those kind of prizes, than all his forefathers were of their triumphs over nations. He did not ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... and clear blue eyes, very beautiful teeth, and a golden beard. His appearance was grave, but not morose, as if he were always examining things and people without condemning them. It was evident that he expected to take the upper hand in general, to play the first fiddle, to hold the top saw, to "be helped to all the stuffing of the pumpkin," as dear Uncle Sam was fond of saying. Of moderate stature, almost of middle age, and dressed nicely, without any gewgaws, which look so common upon a gentleman's front, he was likely to please more people than ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... this. I did not even correct proof-sheets; nay, could not, for I have cancelled two sheets, instante Jacobo, and I myself being of his opinion; for, as I said yesterday, we must and will take pains. The fiddle-faddle of arranging all the things was troublesome, but they give a good account of my affairs. The money for the necessary payments is ready, and therefore there is a sort of pleasure which does not arise out of any mean source, since it has for its object the prospect ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... holes in the mud, and in them await your coming, and more often than not baffle your ingenuity to extricate them. Among other stalked-eyed crustaceans is that with one red, shielding claw, absurdly large, and which scuttles among the roots, making a defiant clicking noise—the fiddle or soldier crab (GELASIMUS VOCANS). Oysters seal themselves to the roots, and various sorts of shell-fish gather together—two or three varieties appear to browse upon the leaves and bark of the mangroves; some excavate galleries ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... of the open space was a large tree. Backed up against this tree, and looking straight at the little boy, with fiddle in position for playing, and uplifted bow, was a ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine
... vary long spich," went on the orator, "as I know dat you all rather have de dance. Den I see, too, dat my friend Magloire Meloche, down dare, he look many time at de fiddle he brought and hang on de wall." This bantering allusion to the veteran fiddle-player of the district caused a hearty outburst of ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... shout of excitement and the blacks outside the rails pulled for all they were worth. But no power of man could make such a creature stir unless it wanted to. It braced its fore legs and stood immovable, then shook its mighty head till the lasso twanged like a fiddle-string, but did not give an inch. Finally the steer caught sight of its tormentors outside the yard, and rushed. At once the rope became slack and the watchful men pulled it tight again, and soon the great beast was jammed up against the fence, using all its strength to try and break the ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... series of beautiful modulations in double-stopping upon the violin. In these the dominating influence was E flat. Spinrobin was not musical enough to describe it more accurately than this. Only, with greater skill than he knows, he mentions how Skale drew out of that fiddle the peculiarly intimate and searching tones by which strings can reach the spiritual center of a man and make him respond to delicate vibrations of thoughts beyond his ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... together with some others, were, for the most part, as a maul on the head of pride, and desire of vain glory; what, thought I, shall I be proud because I am a sounding brass? Is it so much to be a fiddle? Hath not the least creature that hath life, more of God in it than these? Besides, I knew it was love should never die, but these must cease and vanish; so I concluded, a little grace, a little love, a little of the true fear of God, is better than all these gifts; yea, and I am fully convinced ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... do but exist as cheerfully as might be until the weather improved. The wet had shrunk canvas and rope gear till the tent-guys were as taut as fiddle-strings; and as it did not seem to have occurred to any of the servants to attend to this, an immediate tour of the camp had to be undertaken, in "rubbers" and waterproofs, to slack off guys and inspect the drainage system, as we had no wish to have our earthen floor—already ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... cried William, leaning over the women's backs, waving his bony hand to the Demon, who rode past on Silver Braid. "The Gaffer will bring him to the post as fit as a fiddle." ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... as a fiddle now, sir," said the mate testily. "Why, nothing would do me more good than to stretch myself by having a set-to with that nigger ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... had shut his Latin primer and his English grammar when he left Wells, and had never opened a book since, except his prayer book on Sundays, and then he could scarcely spell out the verse of the psalms, and shouted Tate and Brady to the accompaniment of scraping fiddle and trombone in the gallery of the church, with a refreshing disregard of words, though he supplied deficiencies by mystic utterances which filled in doubtful passages and could be interpreted according to ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... alive to Lough Mask at all; and they could do as they have done. The probable effect of the movement, if any, will be to bring Mr. Somerset-Maxwell to the fore at the next contest for the county of Cavan. It may be imagined that the picked men of Monaghan are not very pleased at playing second fiddle to an electioneering scheme. Concerning Cavan, the hope of a fight between the men of the two counties has ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... several objects may possibly be one and the same in all cases, its operations however must be allowed to be different; for, how much soever we may be in love with an excellent surloin of beef, or bottle of Burgundy; with a damask rose, or Cremona fiddle; yet do we never smile, nor ogle, nor dress, nor flatter, nor endeavour by any other arts or tricks to gain the affection of the said beef, &c. Sigh indeed we sometimes may; but it is generally in the absence, not in the presence, of the beloved ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... take refuge for Sunday peace and devotion. It had nothing to do with faith or religion, but it was there. And sometimes in the midst of his work in the daytime he would divine, as in a quite separate consciousness, the tones of a fiddle-bow drawn across the strings, like reddish waves coming to him from far off, filling him with harmony, till ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... a way out of the difficulty this time. "If you'll tell me what language 'fiddle-de-dee' is, I'll tell you the French for it!" ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... tour through the Highlands, 1772, says that, at a death, the friends of the deceased meet with bagpipe or fiddle, when the nearest of kin leads off a melancholy ball, dancing and wailing at the same time, which continue till daybreak, and is continued nightly till the interment. This custom is to frighten off or protect the corpse from the ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... marvellous—until some expert told Mrs Swann that playing solely from ear was a practice to be avoided if she wished her son to fulfil the promise of his babyhood. Then he had lessons at Knype, until he began to teach his teacher. Then he said he would learn the fiddle, and he did learn the fiddle; also the viola. He did not pretend to play the flute, though he could. And at school the other boys would bring him their penny or even sixpenny whistles so that he might show them of what wonderful feats a ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... peculiarity was the clerk and the singing. The metrical Psalm chosen was invariably one for the day of the month whatever it might be. The clerk would give it out, "Let's sing to the praise and glory of God," and then would read the first two lines. The usual village band—fiddle, trombone, etc. etc.—would accompany him, which thing done, the next two lines would follow, and so on. Usually the number of verses was four, but sometimes the clerk would go on to six, or even seven. ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... Neroes men, like Nero arm'd With Lutes and Harps and Pipes and Fiddle-cases, Souldyers to th'shadow traynd and ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... we had a dance, and here I became useful, being able to play Scotch reels and Irish jigs on the fiddle. Then we had songs and yarns again. Some could tell of furious fights with whales that made our blood boil; others could talk of the green fields at home, until we almost fancied we were boys again; and some could not tell stories ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... It is like that in this life. You wake up, feeling as fit as a fiddle; you look at the window and see the sun, and thank Heaven for a fine day; you begin to plan a perfectly corking luncheon party with some of the chappies you met last night at the National Sporting ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... augury to both the "high contracting parties." Publisher and author were for the nonce on the best of terms. The latter, no doubt, saw his opening; was more than ready to undertake the work, and had no quarrel with the remuneration offered. But even then he was not the man to play second fiddle to anybody. Before they parted, he had quite succeeded in turning the tables on Seymour. The original proposal had been that the artist should produce four caricatures on sporting subjects every month, and that the letter-press should be in illustration of the caricatures. Dickens got ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... brave-hearted boys for the most part. I might have had their names on my bills as long as their fingers could hold a pen, but slit me if I like bleeding my own companions. They might have found a place for me, too, had I consented to play second-fiddle where I had been used to lead the band. I' faith, I care not what I turn my hand to amongst strangers, but I would fain leave my memory sweet ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Sally's face assumed, convinced Uncle Peter that he had failed in his attempts at speaking grammatically, and with a sudden determination never again to try, he precipitately left the house, and for the next two hours amused himself by playing "Bruce's Address" upon his old cracked fiddle. From that time Sal gave up all hopes of educating Uncle Peter, and confined herself mostly to literary efforts, of which we shall ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... a poor cottar high among the mountains. He had a daughter, Aslaug, who had inherited his cleverness. Though she could not play his fiddle, there was music in everything she did—in her talk, her singing, her ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... said Cadge, beaming with satisfaction. "I never like that Opera assignment—dresses and society, second fiddle to the music man—but I wouldn't have missed last night! Minute I saw you in the Van Dam box I knew there'd be the biggest ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... could not put it out of it. The lilt of it captured him, and suddenly he began thinking of the wonderful brain that musicians must have to compose music. And then his thoughts switched to a picture he had seen of a man in a garret with a fiddle ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Cima da Conegliano in the original frame made by Vittore da Feltre. In the central arched compartment the Virgin sits enthroned with the Child on her knees and angels at her sides; on the steps below are two child angels with mandoline and fiddle. The lower range of panels has full-length figures of SS. Anna, Mary Magdalene, Joachim, and Catherine. In the upper are half-lengths of SS. Chiara, Francis, Jerome, and Nazario, with Christ between SS. Peter and Andrew in the centre. It has been restored. ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... Hargrave, beating a tiny hand on the arm of her chair. "Fiddle-dee-dee and fiddlesticks with your 'lowering influences'! What did you do but leave her to her own thoughts and no one to talk to but a stiff old woman and a houseful of servants? Well, you have done it! What are you doing to ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... to great straits and had to live after the Indian fashion. A party of Loyalists who came before us late in the spring, had gone up the river further, but they were no better off than those at St. Ann's. The men caught fish and hunted moose when they could. In the spring we made maple sugar. We ate fiddle heads, grapes and even the leaves of trees to allay the pangs of hunger. On one occasion some poisonous weeds were eaten along with the fiddle heads; one or two died, and Dr. Earle had all he could do ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... the happiness, the secret of which you burnt to impart to others. That happiness was the revelation of the Holy Spirit dwelling in you as He dwells in all Christian souls. I am sure that the eloquent exposition I lately overheard of the propriety of fiddle-backed chasubles and the impropriety of Gothic ones doesn't mean that you are in any real danger of supposing chasubles to be anything more important relatively than, say, the uniform of a soldier compared with his valour ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... his place at the head of the table, where he had sat ever since the father left it. Uncle Neil was very much beloved, but he was in no sense the head of the family. He was a gay, easy-going body, given to singing songs and playing the fiddle, and not at all calculated to keep a virile group of boys and girls in order. So, John, the eldest son at home, was the real head of the family, and his mother's support. For John was wise and strong and many, many years older than ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... the fiddle up under his chin. He drew the bow over the strings and began a gentle melody that reminded one of rain ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... He blurted finally, "Like hell you will. There's not enough money in the system to fiddle with the awarding of the Medal of Honor. There comes a point, Demming, where even your ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... went there—and Udaipur, last year. She's death on getting Vincent transferred. And the Burra Sahibs are as wax in her hands. If they happen to be musical, and she applies the fiddle, they haven't an earthly——!" ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... people in the boat seemed to understand all that. There were two men rowing, and one steering with an oar, and a fourth standing up, as if to give directions; though in truth he knew nothing about it, but hated even to seem to play second fiddle. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... his own and Lady Massulam's. Cars were fighting for room in front of the blazing facade of the Metropolitan Theatre, across which rose in fire the title of the entertainment, Smack Your Face, together with the names of Asprey Chown and Eliza Fiddle. Car after car poured out a contingent of glorious girls and men and was hustled off with ferocity by a row of gigantic and implacable commissionaires. Mr. Oswald Morfey walked straight into the building at the head of his guests. Highly expensive ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... that they get used up, body and mind, in a few months. Depend upon it, the same thing is true in other arts. I once taught a fiddler that used to get a hundred guineas for playing two or three tunes; and he told me that it was just the same thing with the fiddle—that when you laid a tight hold on your fiddle-stick, or even set your teeth hard together, you could do nothing but rasp like the fellows that play in bands for a few ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... between his separate players, as the conductor does between the instruments in his orchestra. If he does not bring them entirely under his influence, if he (because, like the conductor of a pot-house band, he himself is the first fiddle) does not subordinate himself as carefully to the requirements of the composition, the result will be worthless as a whole, no matter what individual talents may glitter out of it. What should we say if the first fiddle insisted on having a cadenza ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... wants known. One son, Fuchs said, was well-grown, and strong enough to work the land; but the father was old and frail and knew nothing about farming. He was a weaver by trade; had been a skilled workman on tapestries and upholstery materials. He had brought his fiddle with him, which wouldn't be of much use here, though he used to pick up money by it ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... ballast trim, with a black hull, bright waist, and wales painted white. Her bows flare very much, and are sharp and symmetrical; the cut-water stretches, with a graceful curve, far out beyond them toward the long sweeping martingal, and is surmounted by a gilt scroll, or, as the sailors call it, a fiddle-head. The black stern is ornamented by a group of white figures in bas relief, which give a lively air to the otherwise sombre and vacant expression, and beneath the cabin-windows is painted the name of the ship, and her port of register. The lower masts ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... stately and beautiful as Lady Cheverel. For the time was far off in which he had trod the stage in satin and feathers, the primo tenore of one short season. He had completely lost his voice in the following winter, and had ever since been little better than a cracked fiddle, which is good for nothing but firewood. For, like many Italian singers, he was too ignorant to teach, and if it had not been for his one talent of penmanship, he and his young helpless wife might have starved. Then, just after their third child was born, fever came, swept away ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... and he would pass his fingers among the broad strings, and ever and anon he would produce from one of them a low, melancholy, almost unearthly sound. And then he would pause, never daring to produce two such notes in succession,—one close upon the other. And these last sad moans of the old fiddle were now known through the household. They were the ghosts of the melody of days long past. He imagined that his visits to the box were unsuspected,—that none knew of the folly of his old fingers ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... I commented on the cat's behaviour to some friends who had also been to the Folies-Bergere on different nights. "But," said the first friend, "the evening I went, that cat did wonderful things; came down the ladder on her ball, played the fiddle, and stood ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... at the shallow porch of the hut and Milo Standish had thrown open its iron door letting out a gush of golden melody from the violin. At his hail. the music ceased. And Rodney Hade, fiddle in ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... school of so many English boys. The fact that he attended there helped to give rise to the proverb that "Waterloo was won on the cricket fields of Eton"—but as a matter of record the boy was not interested in this sport. He preferred the fiddle to the racquet, as he had inherited his father's love ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... last of its solo performance. It persevered with undiminished ardour; but the Cricket took first fiddle, and kept it. Good Heaven, how it chirped! Its shrill, sharp, piercing voice resounded through the house, and seemed to twinkle in the outer darkness like a star. There was an indescribable little trill and tremble in it at its loudest, which ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... the prelates, they imposed their yoke upon them, or ruined them hopelessly;—thus the Sulpicians grew apace. None amongst them could compare in any way with the Abbe de Fenelon; so that he was able easily to play first fiddle, and to make for himself protectors who were interested in advancing him, in order that they ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... bless and to abide with her long beyond the tarrying of the spirit in the flesh. "He said I looked nice. I met him the first time I wore the purple dress. It was at a corn-husking party at Jerry Grumb's barn. Some man played the fiddle and we danced." ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... Look at 'em," laughed the captain. "It's a most noble sight! Watch the old fellow playing the fiddle, and I'll lay my eyes that in a half minute or so you'll have some ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... be going," said the doctor. "You two can chat for a while. Don't tire yourself out, young man, and in a day or two you will be fit as a fiddle. Wish I had your physique! That system of yours is a natural shock absorber. We run across them once in a long while—half-killed one day and back the next hunting for ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... fields we till, And the homes of ancient stories, the tombs of the mighty dead, And the wise men seeking out marvels and the poet's teaming head. And the painter's hand of wonder, and the marvellous fiddle-bow, And the banded choirs of music—all those that do and know. For all these shall be ours and all men's, nor shall any lack a share Of the toil and the gain of living in the days when the ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... "Please don't fiddle with those candlesticks. They're the rarest American workmanship, and if you were to break one of them Aunt Marion would kill me. I'll feel safer about you ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... steel, stiff and unyielding. Both sails were snow-white, semi-transparent and supple in movement, like the ivory sails on the model ships in Rosenborg Palace. The mast seemed to bend slightly and the stays were as taut as fiddle-strings. The boat quivered like a leaf. The waves pounded hard against the thin strakes of the boat's side. I could feel them on my cheek, though their dampness never penetrated; but in between these hammer blows their little pats were wonderfully friendly. Every now and then I could see the white ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... we see not, is: and God, who is not, we see: Fiddle, we know, is diddle: and diddle, we ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... open air; but towards nightfall the wind freshened, the rain began to fall, and the sea rose so high that it was difficult to keep one's footing on the deck. I have spoken of our concerts. We were indeed a musical ship's company, and cheered our way into exile with the fiddle, the accordion, and the songs of all nations. Good, bad, or indifferent—Scottish, English, Irish, Russian, German or Norse,—the songs were received with generous applause. Once or twice, a recitation, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trespassed and pried and pervaded, snatching a scant impression from sorry material enough, clearly, the sacred edifice enjoyed a credit beyond that of the profane; but when both were finished and opened we flocked to the sound of the fiddle more freely, it need scarce be said, than to that of the psalm. "Freely" indeed, in our particular case, scarce expresses the latter relation; since our young liberty in respect to church-going was absolute and we might ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... Christianized Hottentots was in complete contrast to that of a Dutch family whom he visited as a medical man one Sunday. There was no Sunday; the man's wife and daughters were dancing before the house, while a black played the fiddle. ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... in the pound, Lead up the jolly Round, While Cornet shrill i' th' middle Marches, and merry fiddle, Curtal with deep hum, hum, Cries we come, come, And theorbo loudly answers, Thrum, thrum, thrum, thrum, thrum. But, their fingers frost-nipt, So many notes are o'erslipt, That you'd take sometimes The Waits for the Minster chimes: Then, Sirs, to hear their musick Would make both me and you sick, ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... was hard to stand! The music-master could not stand it, But rushing forth with fiddle-stick in hand, As savage as a bandit, Made up directly to the tattered man, And thus in broken sentences began: "Com—com—I say! You go away! Into two parts my head you split— My fiddle cannot hear himself ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... what fiddled when Rome was burning," Abe replied. "He's got nothing on you. You would fiddle if Rome, ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... broad meadows below the bend; the half-breeds sauntered about, flashing bright teeth and wicked dark eyes at whom it might concern; the traders gazed stolidily over their little black pipes, and uttered brief sentences through their thick black beards. Everywhere was gay sound—the fiddle, the laugh, the song; everywhere was gay color—the red sashes of the voyageurs, the beaded moccasins and leggings of the metis, the capotes of the brigade, the variegated costumes of the Crees and Ojibways. Like the wild roses around the edge of the muskegs, this brief ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... as if I'd been a girl. I could make myself as smart as any one when I was going to a dance, or to a party where I was likely to meet pretty girls; but I should have laughed myself to scorn if I'd stood fiddle-faddling at a glass, smirking at my own likeness, all ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... For that once, said Sir Aymeris, I should bid them disobey their lady. Said Birdalone: And how if they disobeyed thee, and obeyed me? Quoth Sir Aymeris: If they bring thee back safe, they may chance to sing to the twiggen fiddle-bow, that they may be warned from such folly; but if they come back without thee, by All-hallows the wind of wrath shall sweep ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... always your million-and-one favorite melodies which nobody but that all-around musical amateur, the Auto-Comrade, can so exquisitely whistle, hum, strum, fiddle, blat, or roar. There is also a universe full of new ones for him to improvise. And he is the jolliest sort of fellow musician, because, when you play or sing a duet with him, you can combine with the exciting ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... you bother about me!" he objected trying hard to smile, though racked with pain. "I'll be O. K., fit as a fiddle, in no time. Perfect health and all that sort of thing, you know. It'll ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... reeling off in a mixture of dancing and by-play as fantastic as the music. The pianist seems to get excited and to want to prove himself a Hans von Bulow of rapid execution. The fiddler weaves excitedly over his fiddle. The cornetist toots in a screech like a car-engine whistle. The movements of the dancers grow licentious and more and more rapid. They have begun the Cancan. Feet go up. Legs are exhibited in wild abandon. Hats fly off. There are occasional exhibitions of nature that would ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... Which is accuser? Which is the accused? On whom shall their suspicion settle—on whom their pity? All are silent—almost speechless— and even the current of their thoughts is frost-bound by fear. Suddenly the sound of a fiddle or a viol is caught from a distance—it swells upon the ear—steps approach—and in another moment in rushes the elderly gentleman, grave and gloomy as his audience, but capering about in a frenzy of excitement. For half an hour he continues to perform all possible evolutions ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... red and yellow and green they are melting away in the white; Hey! but the wise old world was wrong and my idiot heart was right; Yes; and the merry-go-round of the stars rolls to my cracked old tune, Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... to! Why, she was in the kitchen talkin' and fiddle-faddlin' with them eggs; she thinks I ain't up to 'em. There warn't nothin' on earth the matter with her then. She had sot the table in here and fixed up the fire, and then she come in to the kitchen and went to work ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... ascends over the high moors, here open and grassy in contrast to the heather of the Peak, and shortly after crossing the county boundary, reaches the head of the pass well known by the name of an inn, the Cat and Fiddle, at its ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... spin! when they truly begin; Each dancer as airy and bright as a doll; While the music complete, keeps time to their feet, With its fiddle-dee-diddle and tol-de-rol-ol! ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... succession of miscellaneous pieces; he succeeded Southey as poet-laureate in 1843; he is emphatically the poet of external nature and of its all-inspiring power, and it is as such his admirers regard him; Carlyle compares his muse to "an honest rustic fiddle, good and well handled, but wanting two or more of the strings, and not capable of much"; to judge of Wordsworth's merits as a poet the student is referred to Matthew Arnold's ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... conscience is not at ease? My son, you are as strong as a Flemish work horse. I limped to mass for the next fortnight, and my gown was in fiddle-strings,—you may send me another. As for the rest, we need new altar hangings. Now, come, come, come. Tell ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... brother eight years old, who has a great wish to learn to play the violin. The other night he said to papa, "I wish I was a king." "Why?" asked papa. "Because a king has so much money, I would choose a man who had plenty of sense to rule, while I played the fiddle." Papa gets Harper's Young People for him, and is going ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... staid with us till late; forgot his stick: we dismissed him with Macpherson's Farewell. Macpherson (see Burns) was a Highland robber; he played that Tune, of his own composition, on his way to the gallows; asked, "If in all that crowd the Macpherson had any clansman?" holding up the fiddle that he might bequeath it to some one. "Any kinsman, any soul that wished him well?" Nothing answered, nothing durst answer. He crushed the fiddle under his foot, and sprang off. The Tune is rough as hemp, but strong as a lion. I never hear it without something of emotion,—poor Macpherson; ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... inside of a hearse. There was a stand in one corner, and a large extension table in the middle of the room, with chairs placed about it. In the corner across from the stand was a spiritualist medium's cabinet; and hanging on the walls were a guitar, a banjo and a fiddle. A bell stood in the middle of the table, and there were writing materials, slates, and other things scattered about, which theatrical people call "properties," I am told. I tore the black draperies down, and searched ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... was seated on a sea-chest with a fiddle under his left ear. He was playing the "Shan van vaught," and accompanying the tune, punctuating it, with blows of his left heel on ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... physicist is not considered fully educated until he has reached his middle or even late twenties. Yet instead of speeding up the curriculum in the early school years, we have introduced such important studies as social graces, baton twirling, interpretive painting and dancing, and a lot of other fiddle-faddle which graduates students who cannot spell, nor read a book, nor count above ten without taking off their shoes. Perhaps such studies are necessary to make sound citizens and graceful companions. I shall not contest the point. However, I contend that a sound and ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... ancestry. Hall-Sun, Wood-Sun, Sunbeam, and Bowmay are wholesome women to meet in a story, and Thiodolf, Gold-mane, Iron-face and Hallward are every inch men for book-use or to commune with every day. Weaklings, too, abide in these stories, and Penny-thumb and Rusty and Fiddle and Wood-grey lend humanity to ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... the middle, From the orchestra comes the first squeak of a fiddle. Then the bass gives a growl, and the horn makes a dash, And the music begins with a flourish and crash, And away to the zenith goes swelling and swaying, While we tap on the box to keep time to the playing. And we ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... allegro "Perpetual Motion." The celebrated twenty-four violin capricci, written early in Paganini's career, have been rendered familiar by their transcriptions to the pianoforte by Schumann and Liszt. Paganini died from the results of dissipation. He left his famous Guarnero fiddle ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... it, and gave chase again. He ran and ran, but this time he couldn't catch the fox up; so he returned home and wept bitterly, because he was now all alone. At last, however, he dried his tears and got him a little fiddle, a little fiddle-bow, and a big sack, and went to the fox's hole and ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... door open she found herself greeted in the half-light by a chorus of equine whinnying such as she had never before experienced, and the sound thrilled her. There stood the team of great Clydesdale horses, their long, fiddle heads turned round staring at her with softly inquiring eyes. She wanted to cry out in her joy, but, restraining herself, walked up beside the nearest of them and patted its glossy sides. Her touch was a caress which more than gave expression ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... servant, is a colored gentleman of much experience and varied accomplishments. He has been a barber on a Mississippi river steamboat, and a daguerreian artist. He knows much of the South, and manipulates a fiddle with wonderful skill. He is enlivening the hours now ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... Connie and immediately taken her into his confidence regarding his aspirations toward some day playing in "a big band." He had also obligingly favored her with a solo of marvelous shrieks and squawks on his much tortured "fiddle." Mary loved children, and this, perhaps, went far toward stilling the jealousy, which, so far, only faintly stirring, bade fair to one day ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... work in one way, it can only produce one kind of result (genetic character), but the particular form or quality (Lamarckian "acquired character") of the result will depend upon the hand that works the machine (environment), just as the quality of the sound produced by a fiddle depends entirely upon the hand which plays upon it. It would be improper to apply the term "mutation" to those genetic characters which are not new characters or new variants of old characters, but such genetic characters are of the same nature as those characters ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... blood, nor in good truth cared one fig about the matter. He "thought an accountant the greatest character in the world, and himself the greatest accountant in it." Yet John was not without his hobby. The fiddle relieved his vacant hours. He sang, certainly, with other notes than to the Orphean lyre. He did, indeed, scream and scrape most abominably. His fine suite of official rooms in Threadneedle-street, which, without any thing very substantial appended to them, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... she said, "that I was as lithe and limber as you are, and was called Jaunty Peg. And now poor old Moll cooks collops for those that are born to dance jigs in chains for the north-east wind to play the fiddle to. Time was when a whole army followed me, when I beat the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... off now. I was treated more like one of the family, and there was a couple of good-looking daughters. One of them was clean gone on me. There are some grand girls down that way. I always got on well with the girls, because I could play the fiddle and sing a bit. They'll be glad to see me when I get back there again, I know. I'll be all right—no more bother about tucker. I'll just let things slide as soon as I spot the house. I'll bet my boots the kettle will be boiling, and everything in the house will be on the ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... Goody Muse! on thee I call, Pro more, (as do poets all,) To string thy fiddle, wax thy bow, And scrape a ditty, jig, or so. Now don't wax wrathy, but excuse My calling you old Goody Muse; Because "Old Goody" is a name Applied to every college dame. Aloft in pendent dignity, Astride her magic ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... "Fit as a fiddle, thanks to you and Ju—Mrs. Goring," replied Gordon, in a voice that rang with the pressure of clean, healthy lungs. "I want to do something. I'm infernally weary of this booby trap, playing hospital, and climbing trees to go to bed, and laying around like a ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... stuff!—it takes a mighty deal of cross-cornered swearing to turn it into property. The only way ye can drive the peg in so the lawyers won't get hold on't, is by sellin' out to old Graspum-Norman, I mean—he does up such business as fine as a fiddle. Make the best strike with him ye can—he's as tough as a knot on nigger trade!—and, if there's any making property out on 'em, he's just the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... loved my little sister Anna, too. But what did they do to her behind those marble walls? Did you fiddle for her? What was she when they let her go? My pretty little Anna! The fires of hell for those damned green stones of yours, Stefani! She heard of them and wanted to see them, and ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... 'Oh, fiddle-de-dee!—every woman, unless she is a fool, knows intuitively what flirtation means, and can put it in practice. But it struck me last night that Aunt Margaret rather encouraged George to pay attention to Gladys. Of course it was ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... matters, also, they are on the same level, and about the only genuine shouting Methodists that remain are to be found in the colored churches. Indeed, I fear the negro tries to ignore or forget himself as far as possible, and that he would deem it felicity enough to play second fiddle to the white man all his days. He liked his master, but he likes the Yankee better, not because he regards him as his deliverer, but mainly because the two-handed thrift of the Northerner, his varied and wonderful ability, completely ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... more narrer channels, then more broad ones. By Fiddler's Elbow, named Heaven knows for what purpose, for no fiddle nor no elbow wuz in sight, nothin' but island and water and rock all crowned with green verdure. Mebby it dates back to the time we read of when the stars sung together, and if stars sing, why shouldn't islands dance, and if islands dance it stands to reason they must have a fiddle and one on 'em ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... the boards and trestles, and cleared the floor and stood against the wall; then the big chieftain beside Hallblithe arose and cried out: "Now let man dance with maid, and be we merry! Music, strike up!" Then flew the fiddle-bows and twanged the harps, and the carles and queens stood forth on the floor; and all the women were clad in black raiment, albeit embroidered with knots and wreaths of flowers. A while they danced and then suddenly the music fell, and they all went back ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... admit the imitation of familiar objects. But to think by the help of painted trees and caverns, which we know to be painted, to transport our minds to Prospero, and his island and his lonely cell;[1] or by the aid of a fiddle dexterously thrown in, in an interval of speaking, to make us believe that we hear those supernatural noises of which the isle was full: the Orrery Lecturer at the Haymarket might as well hope, by his musical glasses cleverly stationed out of sight ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... never would stop. The crazy throng shouted amidst the din; the noise still rings in my ears. There was no end to the games and dancing. The lads tossed their brown, blue and red-stockinged legs in the air, just as the fiddle played—the coat-tails flew and, holding a girl clasped in the right arm and a mug of beer high over their heads till the foam spattered, the throng of men whirled round and round. There was as much screaming ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... left the moonlit crests and hollows of the sand-dunes, to the right the rocky shore with its inky shadows and its crystalline coves. Rilla and her partner swung in among the dancers; she drew a long breath of delight; what witching music Ned Burr of the Upper Glen was coaxing from his fiddle—it was really like the magical pipes of the old tale which compelled all who heard them to dance. How cool and fresh the gulf breeze blew; how white and wonderful the moonlight was over everything! This was life—enchanting life. ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... He was the man who had the future. When we were students he beat me all along the line. He got the prizes and the scholarships that I went in for. I always played second fiddle to him. If he'd kept on he'd be in the position I'm in now. That man had a genius for surgery. No one had a look in with him. When he was appointed Registrar at Thomas's I hadn't a chance of getting on the staff. I should have had to become a G.P., ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... company, and a censor, armed with a hand-bell, was appointed to mark and punish instantly any infraction of the rule. But at the stroke of twelve all this was changed. Constraint gave way to license; pious hymns were replaced by Bacchanalian ditties, and the shrill quavering notes of the village fiddle hardly rose above the roar of voices that went up from the merry brotherhood of the Green Wolf. Next day, the twenty-fourth of June or Midsummer Day, was celebrated by the same personages with the same noisy gaiety. One of the ceremonies ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... a married man, without family. He obtained his livelihood by giving lessons on the flute, on the guitar, and in teaching French during the day, and at night was engaged as second violin in the orchestra of the Opera House; so that he had many strings to his bow, besides those of his fiddle. His wife, a pretty little lively woman, taught young ladies to make flowers in wax, and mended lace in the evenings. They were a very amiable and amusing couple, always at good-natured warfare with each other, and sparring all day long, from the time they met ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... you will, let us have a real frolic," I said to my friends. A word was enough. A quart of ale, and the fiddle was set going, and I sang in Romany, and the rustic landlord and his household wondered what sort of guests we could be. That they had never before entertained such a mixed party I can well believe. Here, on one hand, were indubitable ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... two sweethearts, then—one from the city and one from the country, a married woman and this poor girl," said he, in a jeering tone; "does little Reine know that she is playing second fiddle?" ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... his ancestors, in their antiquated dresses, and slender, tarnished, antiquated frames. In his drawing-room you will find none of your new grand pianos and fashionable couches and ottomans; but an old spinet and a fiddle, another set of those long-legged, tall-backed chairs, two or three little settees, a good massy table, and a fine large carved mantle-piece, with bright steel dogs instead of a modern stove, and logs of oak burning, if it be cold. At table, all his plate is ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... voices be gladly blent With a watery jingle of pans and spoons, And a motherly chirrup of sweet content, And neighborly gossip and merriment, And old-time fiddle-tunes! ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... in Hanover County, Virginia, He received instruction in Latin and mathematics from his father, but seemed to develop a greater fondness for hunting, fishing, and playing the fiddle than for study. Twice he was set up in business, and twice failed before he was twenty-four. He was then admitted to the bar after six weeks' study of the law. He got no business at first in his profession, but lived with his father-in-law. His wonderful powers ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the lieutenant; it being the custom of the service for the commander to "carry on" on such occasions and the officer of the watch, whoever he might be, to "play second fiddle," as the saying goes, which part the "first luff," took in the present instance, proceeding at once to his proper ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... a figure on the stage; tall and thin, he wore a powdered wig, with cannons at the ears, and a pigtail. Ruffles at the breast and wrists, white waistcoat, black silk or velvet shorts, white silk stockings, large silver buckles, and a pale blue coat completed his costume. He had a little fiddle on which he played, called a kit. My first lesson was how to walk and make a curtsey. "Young lady, if you visit the queen you must make three curtsies, lower and lower and lower as you approach her. So—o—o," leading me on and making me curtsey. "Now, ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... to a force under Sullivan, attempted to capture the British post at Newport, but oil and vinegar would not mix. The Parley-voos wanted to monopolise all the honour by having the Americans play second fiddle to them, but to this they 'd not consent; and while the two were quarrelling over it, like dogs over a bone, in steps the British, drubs the two of them, and carries off the prize. That gone, they've set to quarrelling as to whose fault it was. The feeling now is ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... and {99} carrying a sword, and another attired as a lady in a white dress and ribbons, played the part of the "Lord and Lady." Other attendants upon these followed in similar, but less imposing, attire. With fiddle, clarionet, fife and drum, a substantial contribution from the townspeople was acknowledged with music and dancing, and a variety of clownish tricks of ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... interlude in church, I pray God that I may be forgiven for the fiddle-faddle that I have strummed on organs, in the name ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... feticxismo. Fetid malbonodora. Fetter kateno. Feud malpacego. Feudal feuxdala. Feudality feuxdaleco. Fever febro. Feverish febra. Few kelkaj, malmultaj. Fiance fiancxo. Fiance fiancxino. Fiasco fiasko. Fibre fibro. Fickle sxangxebla. Fictitious fiktiva. Fiddle violono. Fiddler violonisto. Fidelity fideleco. Fidget movadigxi. Fie! fi! Field kampo. Fierce kruelega. Fiery fervorega. Fife fifro. Fig figo. Fight batali. Figure (represent) figuri. Figure (cipher) cifero. Figure (image) figuro. Filament fibro. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... contradict her. You puff and blow like a seal when you come upstairs; your paunch rises and falls like the diamond on a woman's forehead! It is pretty plain that you served in the dragoons; you are a very ugly-looking old man. Fiddle-de-dee. If you have any mind to keep my respect, I recommend you not to add imbecility to these qualities by imagining that such a girl as I am will be content with your asthmatic love, and not look for youth and good looks and pleasure ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... at Dr Hake's house to find another caller in the person of Mr Theodore Watts-Dunton, and they "went through a pleasant trio, in which Borrow, as was his wont, took the first fiddle . . . Borrow made himself agreeable to Watts [-Dunton], recited a fairy tale in the best style to him, and liked him." Borrow did not recognise in Mr Watts-Dunton the young man whom he had seen bathing on the beach at Great Yarmouth, pleased to be near his hero, but too much afraid to venture ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... late for that," he answered. "The puir man's thairms (fiddle-strings) are a' hingin' lowse, an' there's no grip eneuch i' the pegs to set them up again. He wad but think I had gane ower to the enemy, an' haud oot o' my gait as eident (diligently) as he hauds oot o' hers. Na, it wad du naething ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... into something like order, the first week commonly passes in reconnoitring, cool civilities, and cautious concessions, to yield at length to the never-dying charities; unless, indeed, the latter may happen to be kept in abeyance by a downright quarrel, about midnight carousals, a squeaking fiddle, or some ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... roaring furnaces, and between them they turn out a machine that does the ploughing for them. What is the sense of it? Of course some things are useful. I would like a motor-car, and railways and steamboats are all right; but it seems to me that half the fiddle- faddles we fancy we want we'd be just as well, if not better, without, and there would be all that time and energy to spare for the sort of things that everybody ought to have. It's everywhere just like it was at school. They kept us so hard at it, studying Greek roots, we hadn't time to learn English ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... children ran naked as Indians—to weave their own clothes, make rugs, tan leather, grow straw for hats,—all of which they do to this day, so that you may enter a habitant house and not find a single article except saints' images, a holy book, and perhaps a fiddle, which the habitant has not himself made. "The Jesuits assume too much authority," wrote the King. Talon lessened their power by inviting the Recollets to come back to Canada and by encouraging the Sulpicians. ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... grain' push you forward to glorious deeds of heroic daring—of skull-breaking, dancing, or of story-telling; so that for all intents and purposes you have nothing left worth chronicling—you are getting like the rest of the world!" "Aisy a bit," say I, "the fiddle and the bagpipes have just the same charms to 'put the capers in our heels' as in whisky's balmiest days; and as for story-telling, that we can do equally well over a good cup of fine hot coffee. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... you can tell me, Tony, but 'tis such an easy way to get a living; I could enjoy such glorious indolence; could fish, and hunt, and shoot, and play the fiddle, and attend feasts and merry-makings, with such a happy consciousness of being found in the path of duty, that it would give a double zest to enjoyment. Now don't be envious, my dear demure cousin, and forestall me in my project. I am sure to gain my father's ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... far too much absorbed in the dancing which was going on busily—I can't say gaily—in the two hollow squares. In one of these an elderly, pinched little man who looked almost half-witted, was monotonously scraping a battered fiddle, for two solemn couples to dance round and round, always on the same axis. But the other "dancing salon" was more lively. There a man dressed like a buffoon, with a tall hat, a lobster claw for a nose, a uniform with ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... of his ilk Hissed on the hounds and smeared his bread with blood; Lebon, man-fiend, that vampire-ghoul who drank Hot blood of headless victims, and compelled Mothers to view the murder of their babes; At whose red guillotine, in Arras raised, The pipe and fiddle played at every fall Of ghastly head the ribald "Ca Ira;" And fiends ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... the subject to Toledo, and that faithful official had nearly every miner in camp at the schoolhouse that same evening. The judge brought a fiddle, Uncle Hans came with a cornet, and Yellow Pete came grinning in with his ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... None of these new jigs and not wear any clothes to speak of. We covered our hides in those days; no tight skirts like now. You could take three or four steps inside our skirts and then not reach the edge. One of the boys would fiddle a while and then some one would spell him and he could get a dance. Sometimes they would dance ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... uncommon, quite a few maids and matrons among the households of the absent soldiery quite willing to be consoled and comforted. There were bright lights, therefore, further along the edge of the steep, beyond those of the hospital, and the squeak of fiddle and drone of 'cello, mingled with the plaintive piping of the flute, were heard at intervals through the silence of the wintry night. No tramp of sentry broke the hush about the little rift between the heights—the major holding that none was necessary where there were so many dogs. ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... being made manifest daily that the housing of so many people for any length of time in the over-crowded mines was opt of the question. But that was a consideration to which the "Military Situation" could not resonably be expected to play second fiddle. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... early hour by Don Severiano's live stock, who hold their musical matinee in the big yard exactly under my open window. The bloated and presumptuous turkey-cock, 'guanajo,' is leading tenor in the poultry programme. First fiddle is the 'gallo Ingles,' or English rooster. Then come the double-bass pigs, who have free access to the balcony and parlour. A chorus of hens, chickens, and guinea-fowls, varies the entertainment; while the majestic 'perjuil,' or peacock, perched on his regal box, the guano roof, applauds ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... dead. Killed flying. My god, Tony, impossible to think of him as dead, just a few days ago we were flying together and calling on senoritas and he playing the fiddle and laughing, always so polite, like he used to fiddle us into good nature when we got discouraged at Bagby's school. Seems like it was just couple minutes ago we drove in his big car through Avenida de Mayo and everybody cheered him, ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... the stammerer, indignantly. "Ain't got no nerves. G-gr-gramma says so, and she knows. She's older 'n you, an' she's got 'em worst kind. Always gets 'em when I play the f-f-fiddle." ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... There was invariably some musical genius present who could play the fiddle. The dances were what were called three or four handed reels, or square sets and jigs. With all sorts of grotesque attitudes, pantomime and athletic displays, the revelry continued until late into the night, and ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... contemporary. Still I cannot conceive of her as a woman. To me she is always a child. Ninette grown up, with a draggled dress and squalling babies, is an incongruous thing that shocks my sense of artistic fitness. My fiddle is my only mistress, and while I can summon its consolation at command, I may not be troubled by the pettiness of a merely human love. But once when I was down with Roman fever, and tossed on a hotel bed, all the long, hot night, ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... ought to be worked up to the proper pitch for this scene. You know—lights dimmed, throbby music from the bull fiddle and kettle drums, and the ushers seatin' nobody durin' the act. Belasco stuff. The stage showin' the private office of the Corrugated Trust. It's a case of the big ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... minstrel, dressed in a sort of garment which was no longer an overcoat and had not yet assumed the shape of a shortcoat. He was strumming on a wretched fiddle; but his voice was good, and the ballad he sang had the full ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... loud, Some a mazurka occupies, Crushing and a confusing noise; Spurs of the Cavalier Guard clash, The feet of graceful ladies fly, And following them ye might espy Full many a glance like lightning flash, And by the fiddle's rushing sound The ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... "Dance!" called the fiddle, Its strings loudly giggled, The bailiff's man wriggled Ahead for a spree. "Hold!" shouted Ola And tripped him to tumbling, The bailiff's man ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... music of maiden voices rising upon the wintry air, and the tumbling of glossy curls underneath the hoods and sealskin caps as they sped through the delightful hours. Tullie Wasson was out there with his string band—Tullie with his old black fiddle, and Jim Grey with his cornet, and his son with his wondrous bass violin, and Tullie knew all the good old tunes, and a few fancy waltzes and polkas, but he was at his best in the Virginia Reel, and it was a pretty sight to see the joyous couples ranging off to ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... of famous Neil, The man who play'd the fiddle weel; He was a heartsome merry chiel', And weel he lo'ed the whisky, O! For e'er since he wore the tartan hose He dearly liket Athole brose![63] And grieved he was, you may suppose, To ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... Paton to that of the Scotch Highlander; and it is not without strong points of resemblance. "He is brave in battle, highly hospitable; delights in simple and plaintive music and poetry, his favourite instruments being the bagpipe and fiddle; unlike the Greek, he shows little aptitude for trade; and, unlike the Bulgarian, he is very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... audience, late in the evening, had suddenly demanded a popular song from Mr. Nokes, he (Triplet), seeing the orchestra thinned by desertion, and nugatory by intoxication, had started from the pit, resuscitated with the whole contents of his snuff-box the bass fiddle, snatched the leader's violin, and carried Mr. Nokes triumphantly through; that thunders of applause had followed, and Mr. Nokes had kindly returned thanks for both; but that he (Triplet) had hastily retired to evade the manager's ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... meal of black bread, whilst in the mill-house all the children of the village sang and laughed, and ate the big round cakes of Dijon and the almond gingerbread of Brabant, and danced in the great barn to the light of the stars and the music of flute and fiddle. ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)
... in his address. His grandfather had married a French lady, and although this union had not sensibly diluted the Westcote blood, Endymion would refer to it to palliate a youthful taste for playing the fiddle. He spoke French fluently, with a British accent which, when appointed Commissary, he took pains to improve by conversation with the prisoners, and was fond of discussing heredity with the two most distinguished of them—the Vicomte ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... popular legend. When Sir Herbert Tree revived the play, he repaired the poet's omission by means of an inserted tableau. Even Shakespeare had not the hardihood to let Caesar fall without saying, "The Ides of March are come" and "Et tu, Brute!" Nero is bound to fiddle while Rome burns, or the audience will know the reason why.[4] Historic criticism will not hear of the "Thou hast conquered, Galilean!" which legend attributes to Julian the Apostate; yet Ibsen not only makes him say it, but may almost be said to find in the phrase the keynote ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... thar'," George Olver explained to me. "I don't want 'em to skeer him off, for it ain't every night Lute takes kindly to his fiddle. There's times he won't touch it for days and days. Talkin' about Lute's fiddlin'—I suppose it's true—there was some fellows out from Boston happened to hear him playin' one night, up to Sandwich ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... summer, my child! Who can say how rich we shall be next summer? A party could be given in this barn with mother to play the piano and Mr. Popham the fiddle. The refreshments would be incredibly weak lemonade, and I think we might 'solicit' the cake, as they ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... day of his triumph came. At the end of the month the master read off the class-list, and, much to his disgust, George Dawkins found himself playing second fiddle to Young Stupid. ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... laughing. "It would end in my playing third fiddle, and you must know this place is Norah's Ark; I am chief manager." She went off gayly, pausing at the door to ask, "You do not mind my speaking to ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... open space was a large tree. Backed up against this tree, and looking straight at the little boy, with fiddle in position for playing, and uplifted bow, was a ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine
... consists of a solitary terminal or axillary raceme 1 to 2 inches long; joints are shorter than the spikelets, excavate on one side and with a pore which is hidden by the sessile spikelet. The sessile spikelet consists of four glumes. The first glume is somewhat fiddle-shaped, dilated above the middle into an orbicular wing, and towards the base into two auricles joined by a transverse ridge, scaberulous, 5-nerved. The second glume is somewhat membranous, ovate, acute and 3-nerved. The third glume is hyaline, thin, oblong, obtuse and nerveless. ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... finger post, at last!' and then—'Well, here we are at the "Cat and Fiddle;" I thought ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... pooh man dance One night in de yeah; Pooh man foh de rich man prance All times, do yuh heah? Pooh man play de violin While de rich man swing; Pooh man squeeze de fiddle in When he wants toh sing! Mistah rich man, hab yoh fun Makin' grub foh us; Min' dat stohy ez yuh run 'Bout ole Lazaruss! Guess yuh'll dance some ober dah, Jes' ez like ez not; Swing dem pahtnehs fas' en fah 'Foh ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... and of angels, and have not charity, I am as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal" (1 Cor. 13:1). Just thus it is with him who has gifts, but wants grace. Shall I be proud, because I am sounding brass? Is it so much to be a fiddle? Hath not the least creature that hath life, more of God in it than these?-(Grace Abounding, No. 297-300). Some professors are pretty busy and ripe, able to hold you in a very large discourse of the glorious Gospel; but, if you ask them concerning heart work, and its sweet ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... with chin on breast and sombre eyes until his mother laid her hand on his shoulder. "Howat," she protested, "you are too glum for the comfort of any one near you. I think you must make a pose of being black. I'd almost called one of the servants to fiddle in your ear." ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... but will he perform? You see, if he was an Englishman he might, but I never knew an American yet who liked to play second fiddle in anything. But there, sir, you're chief, and I don't see how, short of going back again to set him ashore, you could have ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... of the season, when Siegmund's fingers had pressed too hard, when Siegmund's passion, and joy, and fear had hurt, too, the soft body of his little beloved, the violin had sickened for rest. On that last night of opera, without pity Siegmund had struck the closing phrases from the fiddle, harsh in his impatience, ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... to his daughter's wedding,' interpreted one of the sailors who stood by; 'you and the fiddle.' ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... they make a fiddle-faddle About a Hessian horse or saddle. No more of continental measures No more of wasting British treasures. Ten millions, and a vote of credit, 'Tis right. He can't ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the cat and the fiddle The cow jumped over the moon. The little dog laughed to see the sport, And the dish ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... reconnoitring, cool civilities, and cautious concessions, to yield at length to the never-dying charities; unless, indeed, the latter may happen to be kept in abeyance by a downright quarrel, about midnight carousals, a squeaking fiddle, or ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... institution of the true critics was of absolute necessity to the commonwealth of learning. For all human actions seem to be divided like Themistocles and his company. One man can fiddle, and another can make a small town a great city; and he that cannot do either one or the other deserves to be kicked out of the creation. The avoiding of which penalty has doubtless given the first birth to the nation of critics, ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... shoulder, while another gentleman (who had prevented many cases of typhoid by removing old plumbing from houses) lay on the floor at the musician's feet and endeavored to assist him by plucking the strings of the fiddle. ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... chess, women, poetry, eloquence, music, and all such fiddle-faddle. What is the use ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... whistling, singing, he brings the atmosphere of a perpetual holiday along with him. His weather-worn coat covers a heart full of music. He has two talents which make him a marked man among his comrades. He plays the fiddle to the delight of all the balls and weddings through the country-side; and he speaks English to the admiration and envy of the other guides. But like all men of genius he is modest about his accomplishments. "H'I not spik good ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... nigger to be; but to have him sitting in that office, writing letters for the boss, and going over the books, and superintending the accounts of the fellows, so that he knows just what they get on Saturday nights, and being as fine as a fiddle, is what the boys won't stand; and they swear they'll leave, every man of 'em, unless he has his ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... General can manage this thing without help. He only wanted to open your eyes a little, and get you ready for your day's work. You fellows who fiddle around with a few goods need waking up occasionally. Now, Toll, go off and let the General get up. I must have a railroad before night, or I shall not be able ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... magic with a dream, And I hear the tones from voices like the murmur of a stream; And oh, the heart seems young again and from its anguish free When I gaze upon these pictures that are ever dear to me; Then I see the darkies dancing, I can hear the fiddle ring As they gathered in the cabin and they cut the pigeon-wing; I can smell the 'possum roasting, I can see the cider flow, When memory takes me back again to scenes ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... very sumptuous but a comfortable table in honor of the day, and in the evening gave the men a drink of spirits, which was the last of our stock. Some of them appeared sensible to the effects of even so small a quantity; and as is usual among them on all festivals, the fiddle was produced and a dance begun, which lasted till nine o'clock, when it was interrupted by a heavy shower of rain. They continued their merriment, however, ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... he pretends himself to be fast asleep, and sometimes does nothing in the World but laugh at me; sometimes he catches up his Fiddle that has but three Strings, scraping upon it with all his Might, and drowns the Noise of ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... is a groupe suited to Teniers, a cluster of out-of-door customers of the Rose, old benchers of the inn, who sit round a table smoking and drinking in high solemnity to the sound of Timothy's fiddle. Next, a mass of eager boys, the combatants of Monday, who are surrounding the shoemaker's shop, where an invisible hole in their ball is mending by Master Keep himself, under the joint superintendence of Ben Kirby and Tom Coper, Ben showing much verbal ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... Ebery pussen on de place frum de littlest chile ter de oldest man er woman wud clean dey selves up en put on dey best clo's for ter "go befo de King", dats whut us called it. All wud gather in bak of de big house under de big oak trees en Marse Tom he wud cum out wid he fiddle under he arm, yo kno Marse Tom he war a grete fiddler, en sot hisself down in de chere whut Uncle Joe done fotched fer im, en den he tell Uncle Joe fer ter go git de barrel er whiskey en he wud gib em all er gill er two so's dey cud ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... cannot think that the Italian lad does not smoke the mock tobacco that must tempt him upon each ear. If he does, he apes a habit no less American in its origin than the maize itself. So the American lad playing with a 'shoe-string bow' or a 'corn-stalk fiddle' would turn to Italy ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... see you for a pumpkin, no one would contradict her. You puff and blow like a seal when you come upstairs; your paunch rises and falls like a diamond on a woman's forehead! It is pretty plain that you served in the dragoons; you are a very ugly-looking old man. Fiddle-de-dee. If you have any mind to keep my respect, I recommend you not to add imbecility to these qualities by imagining that such a girl as I am will be content with your asthmatic love, and not look for youth and good looks and pleasure ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... been very comfortable here, listening to that d——d monologue which elderly gentlemen call conversation, and in which my pious father-in-law repeats himself every evening, except when he plays upon the fiddle. However, they have been very kind and hospitable, and I like ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the stranger resumed their journey; and, by and by, they came to a house by the roadside, where some people were making merry. Young men and rosy-cheeked girls, with smiles on their faces, were dancing to the sound of a fiddle. ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... let him feed, and he is sharp set at an argument when he should cut his meat. He is discarded for a gamester at all games but one and thirty,[41] and at tables he reaches not beyond doublets. His fingers are not long and drawn out to handle a fiddle, but his fist clunched with the habit of disputing. He ascends a horse somewhat sinisterly, though not on the left side, and they both go jogging in grief together. He is exceedingly censured by the inns-of-court ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... are sharp and symmetrical; the cut-water stretches, with a graceful curve, far out beyond them toward the long sweeping martingal, and is surmounted by a gilt scroll, or, as the sailors call it, a fiddle-head. The black stern is ornamented by a group of white figures in bas relief, which give a lively air to the otherwise sombre and vacant expression, and beneath the cabin-windows is painted the name of the ship, and her port of register. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... apparently too busy selling fruit and fruit lands to lay out nuts to trap eastern nibblers. But the allurements of pecan growing in the South are spread before us with our bread and butter and morning coffee. The orange and pomelo properties have been banished from the stage, or made to play second fiddle, and now we see in the limelight the pecan plantation, with a vista of provision for old age and insurance for our children. And there shall be no work nor care nor trouble about it at all. Only something down and about ten dollars ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... glanced at her teacher, and then lowered her eyes. Her beautiful little face was beginning to have its usual effect upon most of the ladies present. Some of the stony despair had left it; the color came and went in her cheeks. She ceased to fiddle with her apron, and clasped her two little ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... uproar, and confusion; yet nothing seemed to advance, while the rage and impetuosity of the squire continued fermenting to the highest degree of exasperation, which he signified, from time to time, by converting some newly-unpacked article, such as a book, a bottle, a ham, or a fiddle, into a missile against the head ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... around a heap of corn. Husking over, we eat pudding, baked beans, mince, apple, and pumpkin pie, and top off with pop-corn, apples, and cider. After supper the girls clear away the dishes; then we push the table into one corner of the kitchen, Julius Caesar mounts it with his fiddle, and we dance jigs and quicksteps. The girl who first found a red ear while husking, and was kissed before she could throw it into the basket, is privileged to lead ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... rang the bell directly and sent for the fiddle. It came. David took it and tuned it, and made it discourse. Lucy leaned a little back in her chair, wore her "tout m'est egal face," and Eve watched her like a cat. First her eyes opened with a mild ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... Paganini, was receiving an enthusiastic reception from audiences "panting for the music which is divine." Upon this particular evening Dr. Pyne sat next to me, when he suddenly exclaimed: "If honorary degrees were conferred upon musicians, Ole Bull would be Fiddle D.D." At another time, when Dr. Edward Maynard, a well-known Washington dentist, was remodeling his residence on Pennsylvania Avenue, now a portion of the Columbia Hospital, Dr. Pyne was asked to what ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... from all our invalids. Punch has lost only his fiddle and he is still smiling and well gilded. Lolo's baby has had misfortunes, but its clothes dress other dolls. As for me, I can flap only one wing, but I kiss ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... touching engagement she had ever heard of." To which speech her mother, the Dowager Lady Combmartin, replied, with the directness of statement which made her acquaintance so cautious of differing from her:—"Touching? Romantic? Fiddle-de-dee! You ought to be ashamed of yourself for thinking so at your age, Dorothy. A bargain's a bargain, and in my opinion the bride has got much the best of it. For she's a mawkish, milk-and-water, little schoolgirl, while he is charming—all there is of him. If there'd been a little more I declared ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... of these things let him off; and when the fateful evening came, Simon, with his beloved fiddle tucked beneath his arm for companionship, and a lantern, appeared at the inn. They wished him good luck and pleasant dreams, doubting nevertheless that he would have either; and the landlord, a kindly soul, slipped a cold snack and a jug of his ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... the chance was that the one specimen of the Grand Nation familiar to our childhood proved a poor migr who gained a precarious livelihood as a dancing-master, cook, teacher, or barber, who was profuse of smiles, shrugs, bows, and compliments, prided himself on la belle France, played the fiddle, and took snuff. A more dignified view succeeded, when we read "Tlmaque," so long an initiatory text-book in the study of the language, blended as its crystal style was in our imaginations with the pure and noble character of Fnelon. Perhaps the next link in the chain of our estimate was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... her companion wondered a person so eprouvee could have kept so much of her freshness, her interest in life. Into this freshness of Madame Merle's she obtained a considerable insight; she seemed to see it as professional, as slightly mechanical, carried about in its case like the fiddle of the virtuoso, or blanketed and bridled like the "favourite" of the jockey. She liked her as much as ever, but there was a corner of the curtain that never was lifted; it was as if she had remained after all something ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... into the meadows and woods a half day's journey for our disport, how then? For that once, said Sir Aymeris, I should bid them disobey their lady. Said Birdalone: And how if they disobeyed thee, and obeyed me? Quoth Sir Aymeris: If they bring thee back safe, they may chance to sing to the twiggen fiddle-bow, that they may be warned from such folly; but if they come back without thee, by All-hallows the wind of wrath shall sweep ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... coat; but from his little cocked-hat, which he wore perched over one ear in military fashion, a long narrow ribbon of black crape fluttered backwards and forwards in the wind. Around his waist he had buckled a black sword-belt; but instead of a sword he had stuck a long fiddle-bow into it. A creepy shudder ran through my limbs: "He's insane," thought I, as I slowly followed them. The Councillor's companions led him as far as his house, where he embraced them, laughing loudly. They left him; and then his glance fell upon me, for I now stood near him. He stared at ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... finds, almost at the last moment, that one of her guests is unavoidably detained and will not be able to attend the dinner, she may call upon a friend to take the vacant place. The friend thus invited should not feel that he or she is playing "second-fiddle" and the fact that she was not invited at first should not tempt her to refuse the invitation which would be a serious discourtesy, indeed. Quite on the contrary, she should accept cordially, and then do her utmost to make ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... buried his face in his hands. "That was ignorance, an' I'm payin' for it by havin' you turn away an' snap my future like a fiddle string! Oh, how could my hand a-struck yoh people—even in ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... at the wide-flung door Stand mute as men of wood. Gleams like a pool the ballroom floor— A burnished solitude. A hundred waxen tapers shine From silver sconces; softly pine 'Cello, fiddle, mandoline, To music deftly wooed— And dancers in cambric, satin, silk, With glancing hair and cheeks ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... comes the Times and eleven strikes (it does) already, and I have to go to Town, and I have no alternative but that this story of the Critic and Poet, 'the Bear and the Fiddle,' should 'begin but break off in the middle'; yet I doubt—nor will you henceforth, I know, say, 'I vex you, I am sure, by this lengthy writing.' Mind that spring is coming, for all this snow; and know me ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... took out a little fiddle and began playing on it. When the bear heard the music he could not help dancing, and after he had danced some time he was so pleased that he said to the tailor, 'I say, is fiddling difficult?' ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... out av doors till I get rid av this cough," he answered. "And ye know I can do a stunt in the band. Don't take giants to fiddle and fife. Little runts can do that. Who do you reckon come to ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... said, directly after. "If Bob were here, he would not like to knuckle under and play second fiddle. Well, I shouldn't either. Perhaps it's best is it is, I'm captain, and can do as I like, only it isn't always nice to do as one likes, and I often feel as if it would be much nicer to have some one ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... playing, but that's not doing anything; and, if he had done nothing, there would ha' been no fiddling. You understand me, miss, I know: work comes before music, and makes the soul of it; it's not the music that makes the doing. I'm a poor hand at saying without my fiddle, miss: ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... forms and costumes of the princes and princesses of ancient France? Why, the dark-skinned old-clo' men, who hang their cast-off raiment in Brattle Street, would be mobbed, if they paraded such vestments at their doors; and Papanti would break his fiddle-bow over the head of any awkward lout who should unfortunately assume such ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon. The little dog laughed To see such a craft, And the dish ran away ...
— Chenodia - The Classic Mother Goose • Jacob Bigelow
... his tall young height and glanced uncertainly from his host to the lighted room from which came the sounds of fiddle and stamping feet. It was a little hard for a prophet on his own mountain-top to be sent to play with the children; yet ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... bent, to give their strides the greater force. After the men had all started, the captains of companies followed, even more fantastically dressed; and last of all came the great Colonel Congow, a perfect Robinson Crusoe, with his long white-haired goat-skins, a fiddle-shaped leather shield, tufted with white hair at all six extremities, bands of long hair tied below the knees, and a magnificent helmet, covered with rich beads of every colour, in excellent taste, surmounted with a plume ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... emotions of the sublime was when he stood upon one of the summits of the Cordillera, and surveyed the magnificent prospect all around. It seemed, as he quaintly observed, as if his nerves had become fiddle strings, and had all taken to rapidly vibrating. This remark was only made incidentally, and the conversation passed into some other branch. About an hour afterwards Mr. Darwin retired to rest, while I sat up in the smoking-room ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... glad to see you, Mr. Brandreth," Annie said. "Then Mrs. Munger has subscribed already, and I'm only second fiddle, after all," she thought. ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... so much as guarded and elaborately conditioned statements. The immense popularity and influence of Macaulay had been due to his hatred of half-lights, of "perhapses"; and little as Mr Arnold liked Macaulay's fiddle, he was wise enough to borrow his rosin, albeit in disguise. If a critic makes too many provisos, if he "buts" too much, if he attempts to paint the warts as well as the beauties, he will be accused ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... of prophesying with pipes, tabrets, and horns—of prophesying with harps, with psalteries, with cymbals, and with every other instrument of music then in fashion. Were we now to speak of prophesying with a fiddle, or with a pipe and tabor, the expression would have no meaning, or would appear ridiculous, and to some people contemptuous, because we have changed the meaning ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... protesting violently, come beyond the angle of the wall. Nicky was evidently trying to turn it in the direction of the main road, but the leader had other views, and gave expression to them by sitting down suddenly on his haunches, with his white-stockinged forelegs struck straight out, his fiddle-head, with the white blaze between his wicked eyes, looking round over his shoulder at the invisible Nicky, whose remarks came floating up to Ishmael on the breeze. Finally the leader was made to see the error of his ways, and the light dog-cart swung round the corner, ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... gun," he hoarsely whispered, "an' it's fine as a fiddle. Lock, stock, an' barrel just a-shinin'. An' all that heap o' leather fixin's. Must a-cost a lot o' money. Said he wasn't fit to use 'em! Lept the fence like a panther, an' cut dirt across the corn field. An' left me the gun! Well! Well! Well! Wonder what I said? ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... a new string for my fiddle, And call to the neighbours to come, And partners shall dance down the middle Until the old pewter-wares hum: And we'll sip the mead, cyder, ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... and soon have things as fit as a fiddle," said Tom, throwing off some of his superfluous garments so as to be ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... genius, had been able to pay his way through Cambridge University by the scholarships and prizes which he had won. One beautiful little dark-eyed daughter of seven was playing in a West End Theatre as the dormouse in "Alice in Wonderland." She was second fiddle to Alice herself, also, and could sing all her songs. Her pay was some five pounds a week, poor enough for the attraction she proved, but more than all the rest of the family put together earned. At that time I never went to theatres. Acquaintances had persuaded me that so many of the girls were ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... hunting and fishing, and promised to be a good sportsman from a very early age. Their grandfather's ship was sailing for Europe once when the boys were children, and they were asked, what present Captain Franks should bring them back? George was divided between books and a fiddle; Harry instantly declared for a little gun: and Madam Warrington (as she then was called) was hurt that her elder boy should have low tastes, and applauded the younger's choice as more worthy of his ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sweethearts, then—one from the city and one from the country, a married woman and this poor girl," said he, in a jeering tone; "does little Reine know that she is playing second fiddle?" ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... so,' she says quiet; 'the noise o' the children use' to bother me terrible. When they reely got to goin' I use' to think I couldn't stand it, my head hurt me so. But now,' s'she, 'I get to thinkin' sometimes I wouldn't mind a horse-fiddle if some of 'em ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... the basement the janitor and his family and probably all his relatives were celebrating. A fiddle squeaked in there; there was a steady tumult ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... of the stage and the orchestra was located in the rear of the stage. The orchestra would attract attention anywhere. The music was a cross between the noise made by a boiler shop during working hours and a horse fiddle ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... retorted the Friend of the Flag. "It would be odd if the master-fiddler would not fiddle ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... incongruities germinated upon the sacred soil. Thus, in Beverley Minster, we have a monkey riding upon a hare—a bedridden goat, with a monkey acting as doctor; and at Winchester a boar is playing on the fiddle, while a young pig is dancing.[47] Even scenes of drunkenness and immorality are not always excluded. But the principal representations attributed human actions to birds and beasts—people who could laugh at stories of this kind, could also at depictions of them. It may be maintained ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... perseverance. In his eighth year, under the superintendence of his father, he had written a sonata, which, however, along with many other juvenile productions, he lately destroyed; and as he played about three times a week in the churches and at private musical parties, upon a fiddle nearly as large as himself, he soon began to make himself known among his townsmen. At this time he received much benefit from one Francesco Gnecco, who died in 1811, and whom he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... the shop, one summer afternoon, had come for an hour the perpetual scrape, scrape of Peter's fiddle. He jumped up at last, suddenly, bow in hand, and went to the doorstep, where his stepdaughter sat sewing. From the words he had overheard in the next room he was sure that the decisive hour of life had just struck for the girl, and there she was stitching ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... been walking nearly the whole day, and now the sun was low in the west, and long level rays of yellow light were spreading over the country, striking the windows of a farmhouse here and there into sudden flame, or resting more softly on tree-tops and hanging slopes. They were like fiddle-bows, Marie thought; and at the thought she held closer something that she carried in her arms, and murmured over it a little, as a mother coos over her baby. It seemed a long time since she had run away from the troupe: she would forget ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... the city strolled Sir Vagabond, his fiddle in his hand, his heart again as light as a feather. Some day—ah, some day! he would see her again on the road. It was always the way. Then he would tell her how unhappy he had been—for a minute. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... adjoining regions of Smithfield, there is nothing going on but gossiping and gadding about. The late quiet streets of Little Britain are overrun with an irruption of strange figures and faces; every tavern is a scene of rout and revel. The fiddle and the song are heard from the taproom morning, noon, and night; and at each window may be seen some group of boon companions, with half-shut eyes, hats on one side, pipe in mouth and tankard in hand, fondling ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... once said to me, "Sir, you are like a ghost: you never speak till you are spoken to."' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 20, 1773. Boswell writing of this Tour said:—'I also may be allowed to claim some merit in leading the conversation; I do not mean leading, as in an orchestra, by playing the first fiddle; but leading as one does in examining a witness—starting topics, and making him pursue them.' Ib. Sept. 28. One day he recorded:—'I did not exert myself to get Dr. Johnson to talk, that I might not have ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Granahan and John Smith the Tory,—will you forget them, or Robbie John whom the fiddle called away, or Ebenezer McKie and Francey Moore, Protestant and Catholic, who together lay in wait for the hated landlord and shot him as he passed through the glen; or John Murray, good man, and his bauchle ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... can quite understand how you feel. And with most folks you'd be right. There's very few women that can judge character, and if you started to try and settle something at once they'd just set you down as a wrong 'un. But I'm not like that. I don't expect any fiddle-faddle. What I like is plain sense and plain dealing. We both want to get married, so it would be silly to pretend we didn't, wouldn't it? And it would be ridiculous of me to look for courting and a proposal, and all that sort of thing, just ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... her; even Johnny Whitelamb looked, with a face as long as a fiddle. The comment was quiet, but the note of scorn in it could not be mistaken. Molly in revolt! Molly, of all persons! Molly sat trembling. She knew that among them all Johnny was her one ally—and a hopelessly distressed and ineffective one. He had ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... heard in the entry, and the door opened to admit the figure of Gabriel Oak, followed by the maid of the inn bearing a candle. He stared sternly at the one lengthy and two round faces of the sitters, which confronted him with the expressions of a fiddle and a couple of warming-pans. Joseph Poorgrass blinked, and shrank several ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... of the grief of the bookmaking host At the sound of the summons to go to the post— For down to the start with her thorough-bred air As fit as a fiddle ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... Senator, strolling up and down, "the things to see in London are the Crystal Palace and the Albert Memorial. Especially the Albert Memorial. That was a man who played second fiddle to his wife, and enjoyed it, all his life long; and there he sits in Hyde Park to-day, I understand, still receiving the respectful homage of the nation—the only case ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... he, "wife may as well hang up her fiddle about me; can't make a whistle out of a pig's tail, man, I tell ye! She may fuss up the young'un as much as she's a mind to, but it'll be labor lost over an old chap like me. I feel more at home down here in the old place, and ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... preparation in the big back kitchen, where supper was served. When all had enough, including the dogs and Maisie's pussies, the older folk moved to the front room. In a jiffy dishes and temporary tables disappeared in that big back kitchen, and the youngsters began their games. By-and-by a fiddle was heard, and I am afraid there was dancing. We had a happy evening. Two-handed cracks, stories, jokes, songs, made the time pass too quickly. It was a novelty to me that all the guests were either Irish or English; fine people, ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... discredits de imbimin' of awjus liquors. De imbimin' of awjus liquors, de wiolution of de Sabbaf, de playin' of de fiddle, and de usin' of bywords, dey is de fo' sins of de conscience, an' if any man sin de fo' sins of de conscience, de debble done sharp his fork fo' dat man.—Ain't dat ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... the audience, late in the evening, had suddenly demanded a popular song from Mr. Nokes, he (Triplet), seeing the orchestra thinned by desertion, and nugatory by intoxication, had started from the pit, resuscitated with the whole contents of his snuff-box the bass fiddle, snatched the leader's violin, and carried Mr. Nokes triumphantly through; that thunders of applause had followed, and Mr. Nokes had kindly returned thanks for both; but that he (Triplet) had hastily retired to evade the manager's acknowledgments, preferring ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... Lotta, shut the door, my violin I fear is wetted. Now, Dear, bring a light. This clasp is very much too worn and thin. I'll take the other fiddle out to-night If it still rains. Tut! Tut! my child, you're quite Clumsy. Here, help me, hold the case while I— Give me the ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... Sat the Parliament-house, To hatch the royal gull; After much fiddle-faddle The egg proved addle, And Oliver came ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... therefore, may appear light and trifling in our country of philosophers and politicians; but if they possess merit in the class of literature to which they belong, it is all to which I aspire in the work. I seek only to blow a flute accompaniment in the national concert, and leave others to play the fiddle and ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... morning sun shines on it, as you pass to school—expect to see me in those fair domains no more! Henceforth I am a wanderer, and am homeless. In my bark, named in past days the Rebecca, I will seek some foreign clime, and nevermore return to these shores. I'll buy me a fiddle in Italy, and hobnob with gondoliers, singing the songs of Tasso on Venetian waters. Never again expect to see my face at the window as you go on merrily—I leave my native shore to-morrow, ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... said Meggy, looking pityingly after him. "We let him try to help us because it seems to amuse him, but he really doesn't know how to work with his hands. His fingers were made for the fiddle." ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... of Grand Old VILL-I-AM, at fust vos pal most chummy, But second fiddle vos not quite the instrument for Brummy. Says he, "Old VILL vants his own vay, the vicked old vote-snatcher! But that arrangement vill not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various
... struck up between Frohman and Stoddart, who, in a way, was a character. He played the violin, and when business was bad and the company got in the dumps Stoddart added to their misfortunes by playing doleful tunes on his fiddle. But that fiddle had a virtue not to be despised, because it was Stoddart's bank. In its hollow box he secreted his modest savings, and in more than one emergency they were drawn on for company bed and board. When the ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... called the Vines, and assisted—in the French sense—at the performance of two waltzes, two polkas, and three Irish melodies, before I thought of my inn any more. However, I returned to it then, and found a fiddle in the kitchen, and Ben, the wall-eyed young man, and two chambermaids, circling round the great deal ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens
... amidst subsiding applause and adjust those obstinate glasses and thrust back the wings of his frock-coat and rest his hands upon his hips and speak his fragment with ever and again an incidental Zzzz. His hands would fret about him as he spoke, fiddle his glasses, feel in his waistcoat pockets; ever and again he would rise slowly to his toes as a sentence unwound jerkily like a clockwork snake, and drop back on his heels at the end. They were the very gestures of our first encounter when he had stood before the empty fireplace in his ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... after some persuasion, I forced him to go with me to one of those sparkling risquee little comedies at the Palais Royal which he loved, and so on to supper at the Cafe de la Paix, where that great gipsy, Boldi, warms the heart with his fiddle. ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... Frenchmen who had escaped injury quickly recovered their spirits, and might have been seen toeing and heeling it at night to the sound of Bob Rosin's fiddle; and Bob, a one-legged negro, who performed the double duty of cook's second mate and musician-general of the ship, was never tired of playing as long as he could get any one to dance. The style of performance of the two nationalities was very different, but both received their share of ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... she saw a way out of the difficulty this time. "If you'll tell me what language 'fiddle-de-dee' is, I'll tell you the French for ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... just as pleased to gossip with lumberjacks and mill-men, or even with Indians who might come in for tobacco or tea and were reputed to have vast knowledge of the land to the North. Once he half promised to come to a barn-dance in which Scotty Humphrey would play the fiddle, and she watched for him, eagerly, but he never turned up, explaining a few days later that his dog Maigan, an acquisition of a couple of months before, had gone lame and that it would have been a shame to leave the ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... person in his house, he puts at the side of the page a clay pipe, rudely drawn; an entry of the payment of wages to another servant has a jug of ale; another a quill pen; another a couple of brooms, as the housemaid; a fiddle for the dancing master for his daughter; payment made to the sexton or parish-clerk has a representation of the village church by its side, and the window-tax a small lattice-window; and on the days that they brewed, a small ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various
... itself, since women came to the front. No materialist like a woman; give her a voice in the control of things, and good-bye to all our ideals. Hard cash, military glory, glittering and clanging triumph—these be the gods of a woman's heart. Thought and talk drowned by a scream; nerves worried into fiddle-strings. We had our vain illusion; we were generous in our manly way. Open the door! Let the women come forth and breathe fresh air! Justice for wives, an open field for those who will not or cannot wed! We meant well, but it was a letting out of the waters. There's ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... certain miracle on May-day. The Major had taken Chad to the festival where the dance was on sawdust in the woodland—in the bottom of a little hollow, around which the seats ran as in an amphitheatre. Ready to fiddle for them stood none other than John Morgan himself, his gray eyes dancing and an arch smile on his handsome face; and, taking a place among the dancers, were Richard Hunt and—Margaret. The poised bow fell, a merry tune rang out, and Richard Hunt bowed low to his little ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... sometimes hears ignorant persons speak of technique with a certain supercilious contempt, as though it were a mere negligible and inferior element in an artist's equipment and not the art itself, the mere virtuosity of an accomplished fiddler who seems to say anything with his fiddle, and has never really said anything in his whole life. To the artist technique is another matter. It is the little secret by which he reveals his soul, by which he reveals the soul of the world. Through technique the stuff ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... at night, no chimes, no bells, no Christmas carols, no pianos, in fact no musical instruments of any kind, save the bell of the Fort. On one occasion a dance and supper were determined on, but where was the band? Nothing but Mr. Tod and his fiddle existed. Mr. Tod, a good soul, peace be with him, ever ready to assist, assisted. Mr. Tod had a peculiarity; when playing he would cast off a shoe, and kept time by stamping the resounding floor with his stockinged foot. However, an employee came forth, "I can help you, sirs; give me ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... by what was come and gane. And, indeed, my gudesire, of his ain accord, lang foreswore baith the pipes and the brandy—it was not even till the year was out, and the fatal day past, that he would so much as take the fiddle, or ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... along this moving thoroughfare in my fiddle-case of a canoe, I also was beginning to grow aweary for my ocean. To the civilized man, there must come, sooner or later, a desire for civilization. I was weary of dipping the paddle; I was weary ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my face, and offered to do business with me at a fiddle.{6} "Tush, tush," said Peter Principal to the increasing multitude which now barred our passage, "we are only come to take a look, and watch the operation of the market." "Dividend hunters{7} I suppose," ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... much they eat and drink better there, which our neighbors will not believe, and laugh at them for saying so. They by no means endure our exercises of hunting and hawking, nor indeed can their tender bodies endure those violent motions. They have a guitar or some other fiddle, which they play upon commonly an hour or so in their beds before they rise, and have at least one French fellow to wait upon them, to shave them, and comb their periwig; and he is sent into the kitchen to dress some little dish, or to make some sauce for dinner, ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... voyage and required trained crews for their navigation. The bargemen were at once the envy and terror of the simple folk along the shores. A wild, turbulent class, ready to fight and to dance, equally enraptured with the rough scraping of a fiddle by one of their number, or the sound of the war-whoop, which promised the only less joyous diversion of a fight, they aroused all the inborn vagrant tendencies of the riverside boys, and to run away with a flatboat became, for the Ohio ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... married to some body else, or run quite away; so that I am resolv'd if this same Lucretia proves not right, I'll e'en forswear this Town and all their false Wares, amongst which, zoz, I believe they vent as many false Wives as any Metropolitan in Christendom, I'll say that for't, and a Fiddle for't, i'faith:—come give me my Watch out,—so, my Diamond Rings too: so, I think I shall appear pretty ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... between Quidam, in whom the audience recognised Sir Robert Walpole, and four patriots, to whom he gives a purse which has an instantaneous effect upon their opinions. All five then go off dancing to Quidam's fiddle; and it is explained that they have holes in their pockets through which the money will fall as they dance, enabling the donor to pick it all up again, "and so not lose one Half-penny ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... brought the wrong book, sir?' chimed in Haymoss, kindly. 'I've knowed music early in life and late,—in short, ever since Luke Sneap broke his new fiddle-bow in the wedding psalm, when Pa'son Wilton brought home his bride (you can mind the time, Sammy?—when we sung "His wife, like a fair fertile vine, her lovely fruit shall bring," when the young woman turned as red as a rose, not ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... Heroes and Peace Seem'd to smile at the sound of the fiddle, Proud to fill up each tall shining space Round the lanthorn[1] that stood in the middle. And GEORGE'S head too; Heav'n screen him! May he finish in peace his long reign! And what did we when we had seen him? Why—went round and ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... a dance, and here I became useful, being able to play Scotch reels and Irish jigs on the fiddle. Then we had songs and yarns again. Some could tell of furious fights with whales that made our blood boil; others could talk of the green fields at home, until we almost fancied we were boys again; and some could ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... day I commented on the cat's behaviour to some friends who had also been to the Folies-Bergere on different nights. "But," said the first friend, "the evening I went, that cat did wonderful things; came down the ladder on her ball, played the fiddle, and stood on ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... question heavy on her mind now, and finds it hard to keep up with others and at the same time out of debt, she has the right to hope that by and by she will be so good an actress, and so valuable to the theatre, that a fat salary will make the clothes matter play second fiddle, as is right and proper it should, to the question of ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... Massulam's. Cars were fighting for room in front of the blazing facade of the Metropolitan Theatre, across which rose in fire the title of the entertainment, Smack Your Face, together with the names of Asprey Chown and Eliza Fiddle. Car after car poured out a contingent of glorious girls and men and was hustled off with ferocity by a row of gigantic and implacable commissionaires. Mr. Oswald Morfey walked straight into the building at the head of his ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... well, too, for a little un!" he added, with another glance aloft, where the sails could be seen distended to their utmost extent and tugging at the bolt-ropes, while the topgallant-masts were bent almost into a curve with the strain upon them and the stays aft were stretched as tight as fiddle-strings. ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... of check, and tallowed hair, The fiddler sits in the bulrush chair Like Moses' basket stranded there On the brink of Father Nile. He feels the fiddle's slender neck, Picks out the note, with thrum and check; And times the tune with nod and beck, And thinks it a weary while. All ready! Now he gives the call, Cries, "Honor to the ladies!" All The jolly tides of laughter fall And ebb in ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... and pork were served and the care-free hours given over to dancing and general merry-making. "Uncle Dock" recalls that his master, Dan Wilborn, who was a good-natured man of large stature, derived much pleasure in playing his "fiddle" and that often in the early summer evenings he would walk down to the slave quarters with his violin remarking that he would supply the music and that he wished to see his "niggers" dance, and dance they would for hours and as much to the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... a many things in my time Mrs Trotman," said Chaffing Jack as he took the pipe from his mouth in the silent bar room of the Cat and Fiddle; "but I never see any like this. I think I ought to know Mowbray if any one does, for man and boy I have breathed this air for a matter of half a century. I sucked it in when it tasted of primroses, and this tavern ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... partner, and with such terrible kindness—as Noble twice saw her smile—this was like a calamity happening to her white soul without her knowing it. If she should ever marry that man—well, it would be the old story: May and December! Noble shuddered, and the drums, the fiddles, the bass fiddle, and the saxophone seemed to have an ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... fire for Jerrine and me. After making sure there were no moths in them, I spread blankets over them and put a sleepy, happy little girl to bed, for he had insisted on making molasses candy for her because they happened to be born on the same day of the month. And then he played the fiddle until almost one o'clock. He played all the simple, sweet, old-time pieces, in rather a squeaky, jerky way, I am afraid, but the music suited the time and ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... manifest daily that the housing of so many people for any length of time in the over-crowded mines was opt of the question. But that was a consideration to which the "Military Situation" could not resonably be expected to play second fiddle. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... of the old men and not a few of the old women were smoking clay or corncob pipes; the children laughed, cried, played with each other, rolled upon the ground, and disported themselves as children, white, black, or particolored, do all the world over; the occasional twang of a banjo and a fiddle was heard, and everything looked like enjoyment and anticipation. Of course, the huts of the future brides constituted the centre of attraction: from the chattering of tongues within we inferred that the wedding dresses were exposed for the admiring ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... have to shut the door upon his dominating thought, unless something occurred to open it during the evening. Women liked to play with fire, and he wondered if Mrs. Wilder would show any inclination to fiddle with gunpowder, but he hardly expected that she would, though she had played some part in the extensive drama that reached from Heath's bungalow to the Colonnade in the Chinese quarter, leaving a gap between that his brain struggled with ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... a kind of minstrel, dressed in a sort of garment which was no longer an overcoat and had not yet assumed the shape of a shortcoat. He was strumming on a wretched fiddle; but his voice was good, and the ballad he sang had the full ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... the opposite wing-covers differ from each other in structure (Fig. 13), and the action cannot, as in the last family, be reversed. The left wing, which acts as the bow, lies over the right wing which serves as the fiddle. One of the nervures (a) on the under surface of the former is finely serrated, and is scraped across the prominent nervures on the upper surface of the opposite or right wing. In our British Phasgonura ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... went many on crutches Who now on the tight-rope bound, And many play now on the fiddle Had ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... clar'net and a fiddle and a bass viol," he said reflectively. "Never kept time—the bass viol didn't. Couldn't never get it into his head. He wasn't never any shakes of a player—and he ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... When they halted for the midday meal it was like a great picnic in the soft warm sunshine, and when evening came the Jayhawkers rollicked around their fires or gathered where one of their number had tuned up his fiddle. William Isham was his name, a great bearded fellow who hailed originally from Rochester, New York; he would sit by the hour on the tongue of his wagon playing "Oh Susannah" and other lively airs, or strike up a jig tune while Negro Joe, who had fled ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... and the sordid spirit of a money-amassing philosophy would meet any proposition for the fostering of art, in a genial and extended sense, with the commercial maxim,—Laissez faire. Paganini, indeed, will make a fortune, because he can actually sell the tones of his fiddle at so much a scrape; but Mozart himself might have languished in a garret for any thing that would have been ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... missions, to the terror of any of the women who happened to be caught gossiping. "What, now, should make Dr. Ransford cause flowers to be laid on the grave of a total stranger? A sentimental feeling? Fiddle-de-dee! There ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... ought to! Why, she was in the kitchen talkin' and fiddle-faddlin' with them eggs; she thinks I ain't up to 'em. There warn't nothin' on earth the matter with her then. She had sot the table in here and fixed up the fire, and then she come in to the kitchen and went to work at the supper. There ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... that time and tune were both sacrificed. As if by mutual impulse, Ruby and Dove began to dance! But this was merely a spurt of feeling, more than half-involuntary. In the middle of a bar Joe flung down the fiddle, and, springing up, seized Ruby round the neck and hugged him, an act which made him aware of the fact ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... waited for fifteen minutes, and had a smoke out of a pipe that one of them left in reach; then the crossing was finished, and they stumped back and had a drink around and went to talking and singing again. Next they got out an old fiddle, and one played and another patted juba, and the rest turned themselves loose on a regular old- fashioned keel-boat break-down. They couldn't keep that up very long without getting winded, so by and by they settled around the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... worst of it was, that, like good Father Philip, in the romance of "The Monastery," they seemed utterly unable to change their tune. "Cherry ripe!" "Cherry ripe!" was the universal cry of all the idle in the town. Every unmelodious voice gave utterance to it; every crazy fiddle, every cracked flute, every wheezy pipe, every street organ was heard in the same strain, until studious and quiet men stopped their ears in desperation, or fled miles away into the fields or woodlands, to be at peace. This plague ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... men were ranged on the long benches called "deacons' seats," or lounged on the springy browse in their bunks. A man, with one leg crossed over his knee, and flapping it to beat his time, was squawking a lively tune on a fiddle, and a perspiring youth danced a jig on a square of planking before the roaring fire. The air was dim with the smoke of many pipes and with the steam from drying ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... I suppose! possibly an October breeze coming—low banks of cirri-cumuli above the horizon—clear overhead with streaks of rusty red cloud fine as hair—the evening is cold, here is an attempt at it with a brush. And we had music in the place for music on deck; an Irish lady played the fiddle and played so well with a piano accompaniment to an audience of six—if the Bay keeps quite the audience ought to increase. After the sunset, dinner—what a tedious business it is; the waiting is perfectly planned, but ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... pleasure of the next set with becoming ease and suavity of manner; she knew her worth, and managed accordingly. When the favoured gallant stood by her side waiting for the rudely scraped tune from a screeching fiddle, satisfaction, joy, and triumph over his rivals were pictured ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... told How Satan[1] the old Came here with a beard to his middle; Though he changed face and name, Old Will was the same, At the noise of a can and a fiddle. ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... what comfort is, I tell you: A bed on the floor, a bit of rosin, A fire to thaw our thumbs (poor fellow, The paw he holds up there has been frozen), Plenty of catgut for my fiddle, (This outdoor business is bad for strings), Then a few nice buckwheats hot from the griddle, And Roger and ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... place with too much time on my hands, reading a lot and forgetting everything; and here you came in, gave me something to do, made the little I know of any use, and ran a pretty gold wire down the rusty fiddle of life. If there are any speeches of gratitude to be made, they are mine, they ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... overweigh, overmatch; top, o'ertop, cap, beat, cut out; beat hollow; outstrip &c 303; eclipse, throw into the shade, take the shine out of, outshine, put one's nose out of joint; have the upper hand, have the whip hand of, have the advantage; turn the scale, kick the beam; play first fiddle &c (importance) 642; preponderate, predominate, prevail; precede, take precedence, come first; come to a head, culminate; beat all others, &c bear the palm; break the record; take the cake [U.S.]. become larger, render larger &c (increase) 35, (expand) 194. Adj. superior, greater, major, higher; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... others another, and every fellow has to work hard to learn those things which belong, as it were, to the other fellows. There are chaps, I suppose, like the Admirable Crichton, who are born good all round, and can play the fiddle, polish off Euclid, ride, shoot, lick anyone at any game, all without the slightest trouble, but one does not come across them often, thank goodness. I say, do ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... was opened the Congress at Vienna, where Lord Castlereagh, as the representative of the King of England, attended, and where it is generally believed he played second fiddle to ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... Peter that he had failed in his attempts at speaking grammatically, and with a sudden determination never again to try, he precipitately left the house, and for the next two hours amused himself by playing "Bruce's Address" upon his old cracked fiddle. From that time Sal gave up all hopes of educating Uncle Peter, and confined herself mostly to literary efforts, of ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... simply went on with their ordinary tasks and amusements as if nothing personal had happened. Before these two gentlemen retired, however, they had to take part in a dance in the coach-house, at which old Styles played the fiddle, and the constable called out the figures, while Mr. Pilgrim groaned in the ears of Mrs. Hill over the worldly spirit that was sapping the foundations of spiritual life. When the drawing-room people ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... Harrison wasn't fooling. I looked at Sol, on the seat next to me; I thought I had heard him snicker. He began to fiddle with his camera without looking at me. I pushed the "talk" button and told Harrison where I was. It pleased him very much; I wasn't more than six blocks from where this big rumble was going on, he told me, and he made it very clear that I ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... from his reverie. "I have her!" he said to himself; "I have her in a vice! She cannot escape me; she cannot let the old man die! Those curs have served my purpose well; they are as easy to play on as a fiddle, and I am a good player. Yes, and now we are getting to the end ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... to sing songs of John Brown, and other songs of liberty. When the trains proceeded towards the Potomac freighted with these people they commingled songs of freedom and the religious hymns peculiar to their race with the universal but more cheerful music of the fiddle and banjo. ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... title, achieves her chief social success. As for the conversation with which the Prince is credited, it is of the most amazing kind. We find him on one page gravely discussing the depression of trade with Mr. Ezra P. Bayle, a shoddy American millionaire, who promptly replies, 'Depression of fiddle-sticks, Prince'; in another passage he naively inquires of the same shrewd speculator whether the thunderstorms and prairie fires of the West are still 'on so grand a scale' as when he visited Illinois; and we are told ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... on the cat's behaviour to some friends who had also been to the Folies-Bergere on different nights. "But," said the first friend, "the evening I went, that cat did wonderful things; came down the ladder on her ball, played the fiddle, and stood ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... slaves were grouped so as to give occasion for a general frolic. Thus Daniel R. Tucker in 1858 sent a general invitation over the countryside in central Georgia to a sextuple wedding among his slaves, with dinner and dancing to follow.[2] On the whole, the fiddle, the banjo and the bones were not ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... ashamed to have spent as much time at my looking-glass as if I'd been a girl. I could make myself as smart as any one when I was going to a dance, or to a party where I was likely to meet pretty girls; but I should have laughed myself to scorn if I'd stood fiddle-faddling at a glass, smirking at my own likeness, all for ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a fiddle, and ah was a good fiddlah. Used to be a fiddlah fo' the white girls to dance. Jes' picked it up, it was a natural gif'. Ah could still play if ah had a fiddle. Ah used to play at our hoe downs, too. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... added, with another glance aloft, where the sails could be seen distended to their utmost extent and tugging at the bolt-ropes, while the topgallant-masts were bent almost into a curve with the strain upon them and the stays aft were stretched as tight as fiddle-strings. ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... bride, the bridegroom with the best maid, leading the way—marched in slow procession in the moonlight night to Tibbie's new home, between lines of hoarse and eager onlookers. An attempt was made by an itinerant musician to head the company with his fiddle; but instrumental music, even in the streets, was abhorrent to sound Auld Lichts, and the minister had spoken privately to Willie Todd on the subject. As a consequence, Peter was driven from the ranks. The last ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... news, Valdor," cried one or two eager voices, while several heads leaned forward in the direction of the fiercely- moustached man who sat next to Lotys. "Where have you been with your fiddle? Do you arrive among us to-night infected by the pay, or the purple ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... about the trip I 'd have taken you. It was just what you needed—a week of lolling around a deck in the hot sun with the sea winds blowing over your face. That's what you want to do—get out under the blue sky and soak it in. If you don't believe it, look at me. Fit as a fiddle; strong as a moose. You said you wanted to sprawl in the sunshine,—why the devil don't you take a ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... this being a character frequent in my own country; but I was scandalised at the indecency of his behaviour, which appeared in the oaths he swore, and the bawdy songs which he sung. At last, to make amends in some sort, for the damage he had done to the unwary boors, he pulled out a fiddle from the lining of his gown, and, promising to treat them at dinner, began to play most melodiously, singing in concert all the while. This good humour of this parson inspired the company with so much glee that the farmers soon forgot their losses, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... Quidam, in whom the audience recognised Sir Robert Walpole, and four patriots, to whom he gives a purse which has an instantaneous effect upon their opinions. All five then go off dancing to Quidam's fiddle; and it is explained that they have holes in their pockets through which the money will fall as they dance, enabling the donor to pick it all up again, "and so not lose one Half-penny by ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... as is not utterly uncommon, quite a few maids and matrons among the households of the absent soldiery quite willing to be consoled and comforted. There were bright lights, therefore, further along the edge of the steep, beyond those of the hospital, and the squeak of fiddle and drone of 'cello, mingled with the plaintive piping of the flute, were heard at intervals through the silence of the wintry night. No tramp of sentry broke the hush about the little rift between the heights—the major holding that none was necessary where there were so many dogs. Most of the ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... fashion. A party of Loyalists who came before us late in the spring, had gone up the river further, but they were no better off than those at St. Ann's. The men caught fish and hunted moose when they could. In the spring we made maple sugar. We ate fiddle heads, grapes and even the leaves of trees to allay the pangs of hunger. On one occasion some poisonous weeds were eaten along with the fiddle heads; one or two died, and Dr. Earle had all he could do to ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... through sa, like a fiddle, and hope a please you when we get you through sa. Old 'ooman at home sa:' chuckling very much. 'Outside gentleman sa, he often remember old 'ooman at home ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... upon the profound truth conveyed by this finale, at the instant when the composer delivers his last note and the author his last line, when the orchestra gives the last pull at the fiddle-bow and the last puff at the bassoon, when the principal singers say "Let's go to supper!" and the chorus people exclaim "How lucky, it doesn't rain!" Well, in every condition in life, as in an Italian opera, there comes a time when the joke is over, ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... which the opera plays. The use of an Oriental interval, beloved of Poles and Gipsies, characterizes the melos of the first act; the rhythm of a peasant dance inspires the ballet, which is not an idle divertissement, but an integral element of the play, and Gipsy fiddle and cimbalom lend color and character to the music which tempts Manru to forget his duty. The contest in Manru's soul has musical delineation in an extended orchestral introduction to the last act, in which Gipsy and Polish music are at war, while clouds and moon struggle for the mastery ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Reekie[28] ring, Mak rustic poets o' him sing; For nane can touch the fiddle-string Sae weel as Patie Birnie. He cheers the sage, the sour, the sad, Maks youngsters a rin louping mad, Heads grow giddy, hearts grow glad, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... grey coat; but from his little cocked-hat, which he wore perched over one ear in military fashion, a long narrow ribbon of black crape fluttered backwards and forwards in the wind. Around his waist he had buckled a black sword-belt; but instead of a sword he had stuck a long fiddle-bow into it. A creepy shudder ran through my limbs: "He's insane," thought I, as I slowly followed them. The Councillor's companions led him as far as his house, where he embraced them, laughing loudly. They left him; and then his glance fell ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... of those noble sciences. He becomes a compleat connoisseur in dressing hair, and in adorning his own person, under the hands and instructions of his barber and valet de chambre. If he learns to play upon the flute or the fiddle, he is altogether irresistible. But he piques himself upon being polished above the natives of any other country by his conversation with the fair sex. In the course of this communication, with which he is indulged from his tender years, he learns like a parrot, by rote, the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... the one specimen of the Grand Nation familiar to our childhood proved a poor migr who gained a precarious livelihood as a dancing-master, cook, teacher, or barber, who was profuse of smiles, shrugs, bows, and compliments, prided himself on la belle France, played the fiddle, and took snuff. A more dignified view succeeded, when we read "Tlmaque," so long an initiatory text-book in the study of the language, blended as its crystal style was in our imaginations with the pure and noble character of Fnelon. Perhaps the next link ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... voice, which was undoubtedly of singular beauty; the second was an extraordinary musical aptitude, which led him to sing expressively and perfectly in tune the airs he heard his father and mother sing. Mathias, by the way, accompanied himself on the harp; and Joseph, long before he had a fiddle of his own, imitated the fiddling of his elders with two bits of wood, so the family orchestra was complete. The last accident was the arrival of one Frankh, a distant relative. This was long before the magical feats of the baby Mozart ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... spirit of a money-amassing philosophy would meet any proposition for the fostering of art, in a genial and extended sense, with the commercial maxim,—Laissez faire. Paganini, indeed, will make a fortune, because he can actually sell the tones of his fiddle at so much a scrape; but Mozart himself might have languished in a garret for any thing that would have ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... was leifer to have at his bedde's hedde Twenty books clothed in blacke or redde Of Aristotle and his philosophie Than robes riche or fiddle or psalterie." ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... were men indeed well furnished, but with more moral principles, they would disdain to be led about like apes by such mimic marmosets. It is a most unworthy thing for men that have bones in them to spend their lives in making fiddle-cases for futilous women's fancies; which are the very pettitoes of infirmity, the giblets of perquisquilian toys.... It is no little labor to be continually putting up English women into outlandish casks; who if they be not shifted ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... gallipots of the Athenian apothecaries; the grotesque figures of owls and apes were painted on their exterior, but they contained within precious balsams. The man of genius amidst many a circle may exclaim with Themistocles, "I cannot fiddle, but I can make a little village a great city;" and with Corneille, he may be allowed to smile at his own deficiencies, and even disdain to please in certain conventional manners, asserting that "wanting all these things, he was not ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... by experience, that they are exceedingly troublesome, commonly expensive, and very seldom satisfactory at last, to the persons who gave them; some you cannot refuse, to people to whom you are obliged, and would oblige in your turn; but as to common fiddle-faddle commissions, you may excuse yourself from them with truth, by saying that you are to return to Paris through Flanders, and see all those great towns; which I intend you shall do, and stay a week or ten days at Brussels. Adieu! A good journey to you, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... of the village. In the evening our musicians were called for. Then the absence of Griffin Leeds was regretted, as he played the violin; but Cobbington declared that he had played that instrument for years before he left home: only he had no fiddle. Fortunately, Landy Perkins, who played the violoncello, and was learning to play the violin, had one, and our ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... musicians, who played upon tom-toms, instruments like a fiddle, and one that was very nearly a hurdy-gurdy, with lutes and flutes. They gave the preliminary strains, and the dancers formed the semicircle. The performance was similar to that the party had seen at the hotel, though it was more finished, and the attitudes and posturing appeared ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... never be able to see a red-capped fiddler, fiddling under a blossoming sloe bush. You might even see him, and then indulge yourself in a fit of common-sense or doubt of your own eyes, in which case the wee dancers would never flock to the sound of the fiddle or gather on the fairy ring. This is the reason that I shall never take you to Knockma, to Glen Ailna, or especially to the hyacinth wood, which is a little plantation near the ruin of a fort. Just why the fairies are so fond of an old rath ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... with a shrug. "It's meself that's second fiddle this moment, when 'twas the whole orchestra I expected to be. Take me away, somebody, before I break down altogether, and show me some of the old haunts until tea ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... promiscuous charity, and these dicta Margaret parroted glibly enough, to do her justice, so long as there was no immediate question of dispensing alms. But for all that the next whining beggar would move her tender heart, his glib inventions playing upon it like a fiddle, and she would give as recklessly as though there were no such things in the whole wide world as soup-kitchens and organised charities and common-sense. "Because, you know," she would afterward salve her conscience, "I couldn't ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... light conversations at dusk, and all that sort of rot. And all the while, outside his door the guns were booming; at the gates of the world a perilous storm had broken. The earth was on fire; but while Rome burned, he, like Nero, played a fiddle—and was content. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... beautiful house at Richmond he played second fiddle to his clever wife with imperturbable BONHOMIE; he lavished jewels and luxuries of all kinds upon her, which she took with inimitable grace, dispensing the hospitality of his superb mansion with the same graciousness with which she had welcomed the ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... trout fishing, which was a strong bond of union between him and me, and discoursed on the proper methods of fishing chalk streams. "Your flies can't be too big, but they must be on small gut, not on base viol fiddle strings, like those you brought down to Farnham last year. I tell you gut is the thing that does it. Trout know that flies don't go about with a ring and a hand pole through their noses, like so many ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... terrace with a wild garden all round. It must have been very pretty before the war, even in its deserted state it is very nice; forget-me-nots and bits of lake and stream everywhere. I feel as fit as a fiddle and am as brown as ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... very well-devised beginnings. At the fifth Sir Richmond was suddenly conclusive. "It's no use," he said, "I can't fiddle about any more with ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... Mord whose surname was Fiddle; he was the son of Sigvat the Red, and he dwelt at the "Vale" in the Rangrivervales. He was a mighty chief, and a great taker up of suits, and so great a lawyer that no judgments were thought lawful unless he had a hand in them. He had an only daughter, named Unna. She was a fair, ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... in silk from head to foot; ain't it a relishin' sight to see her settin' there as fine as a fiddle, and hear folks calling little Amy 'Mis. Laurence!'" muttered old Hannah, who could not resist frequent "peeks" through the slide as she set the table in a ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... said Dan, returning the gift with precision. "Ef you don't like my music, git out your fiddle. I ain't goin' to lie here all day an' listen to you an' Long Jack arguin' 'baout candles. Fiddle, Tom Platt; or I'll learn Harve here ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... conflict started, Freyberg realised that he might do better in Europe. He therefore deserted Villa, and set out afoot for San Francisco. His splendid constitution stood him in good stead, and he arrived there as fit as a fiddle, soon afterwards winning enough money in a swimming race to take him to London. In the English capital he received a commission as a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Division, and ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... dreaming. From the mufflers in which his father, the mountebank, has wrapped the child, to carry him across the heath, a little tumbling-boy emerges in soiled tights. He is half asleep. His father scrapes the fiddle. The boy shortens his red belt, kisses his fingers to us, and ties himself into a knot among ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... spare on the morning of the dance. The dancing sometimes began at nine o'clock in the morning. The three black men from Cedar House who played for the dancing were in their places long before that hour, with their instruments already in tune. One had an old fiddle, another the remnant of a guitar, and the third a clumsy iron triangle which he had made himself. Nevertheless they were famous for their dance music and known throughout the wilderness to all the dancers. Those ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... is long past the, closing hour of one and the tango parlors are dark, suppose we blow this 'Who's Who in Pittsburg' and taxi-cab it out to a roadhouse where the bass fiddle is still inhabited and the second generation is trotting ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... has a rather good-looking face you go over to her side. I'm not at all sure that I like her. Anyhow, I'm not going to play second fiddle to her. There now, Dave, go and play. We're here on sufferance, so be on your good behavior. As to me, you need not be the least uneasy. I wish to remain at Sleepy Hollow, so, of course, the passions won't ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... fine old Scottish family motto, "Thou shalt starve ere I want." Let us be under no illusions, then. So long as unlimited multiplication goes on, no social organization which has ever been devised, or is likely to [212] be devised, no fiddle-faddling with the distribution of wealth, will deliver society from the tendency to be destroyed by the reproduction within itself, in its intensest form, of that struggle for existence the limitation of which is the object of society. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... machine, may have agreeable sensations; for instance, he may have pleasure in musick.' JOHNSON, 'No, sir, he can not have pleasure in musick; at least no power of producing musick; for he who can produce musick may let it alone: he who can play upon a fiddle may break it: such a man is not a machine.' This reasoning satisfied me. It is certain, there cannot be a free agent, unless there is the power of being evil as well as good. We must take the inherent possibilities of things into consideration, in our reasonings ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... hand-bell, was appointed to mark and punish instantly any infraction of the rule. But at the stroke of twelve all this was changed. Constraint gave way to license; pious hymns were replaced by Bacchanalian ditties, and the shrill quavering notes of the village fiddle hardly rose above the roar of voices that went up from the merry brotherhood of the Green Wolf. Next day, the twenty-fourth of June or Midsummer Day, was celebrated by the same personages with the same noisy gaiety. ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Pierson in some ways, for she managed to get on better with Mrs. Partridge. But as for poor Mrs. Partridge, she didn't trouble us much, for her rheumatism got so very bad that all that winter she couldn't walk up-stairs though she managed to fiddle about down-stairs in her own rooms and to keep on the housekeeping. And this, by the by, brings me to the one big thing that happened, which you will see all came from something that I told you about almost at the beginning of ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... come back to me in this way. The first time I ever thought of writing his love story as an old man's gift to a little maid since grown tall, was one night while I sat alone in the school-house; on my knees a fiddle that has been my only living companion since I sold my hens. My mind had drifted back to the first time I saw Gavin and the Egyptian together, and what set it wandering to that midnight meeting was my garden gate shaking ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... young scamp, just because he had a title to his name. I hope that I shall never live to see the day when there is any such nonsense tagging to my label as they string on to theirs. How much better George Washington sounds than the Honorable Alexis Fiddle Faddle, &c." ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... or lodgings without paying for them? Again, whilst a wanderer, does he insult helpless women on the road with loose proposals or ribald discourse? Does he take what is not his own from the hedges? Does he play on the fiddle, or make faces in public-houses, in order to obtain pence or beer? or does he call for liquor, swallow it, and then say to a widowed landlady, "Mistress, I have no brass"? In a word, what vice and crime does he perpetrate—what low ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... when all was done, so the kitchen was cleared, the candles lighted, Patience's door set open, and little Nat established in an impromptu orchestra, composed of a table and a chair, whence the first squeak of his fiddle proclaimed that the ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... to be a fiddle-headed, heavy-shouldered brute, whose long experience of jumping in shows where they give points for pace—as if the affair was a steeplechase—had taught him to get the business over as quickly as ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... agreed; "but there's an old bear that I want first. He's got a foot as big as a fiddle; I'll bet he weighs ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... continental syndicate, out with the desert column? He was a regular Christmas-tree of contraptions when he took the field in full fig, with his water-bottle, lanyard, revolver, writing-case, housewife, gig-lamps, and the Lord knows what all. He used to fiddle about with 'em and show us how they worked; but he never seemed to do much except fudge his ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... resort on account of its remarkable view is the Cat and Fiddle Inn, on the Macclesfield ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... feel happy till they are back home here under the roofs of thatch. And what a work their women folks make with them when they return! What feasting and merrymaking! What screwing of fiddle-pegs, nimble motion of elbows and long-sustained dancing and skipping. I don't deny that there is clink of glasses, too, at times, to aid the passage of the hours far past the ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... one more word which seems to me quite as good a candidate as any of the others, viz. roteur, a player on the rote, i.e. the fiddle used by the medieval minstrels, Chaucer ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... wan morning, an' de pilot geev us warning, "W'en you come on Rapide Cuisse, ma frien', keep raf' she's head on shore, If you struck beeg rock on middle, w'ere le diable is play hees fiddle, Dat's de tam you pass on some place, you don't never ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... violins, and ran himself into debt because he bought so many and such good ones. Once, when visiting his father's house at Ipsden, he shocked the punctilious old gentleman by dancing on the dining-table to the accompaniment of a fiddle, which he scraped delightedly. Dancing, indeed, was another of his diversions, and, in spite of the fact that he was a fellow of Magdalen and a D.C.L. of Oxford, he was always ready to caper and ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... to it,—it was most cruel to hear; and then the look of him, those eyes, like dropsical oysters, and the hair standing every way, like a field of insane flax, and the mouth with a curl in it like the slit in the side of a fiddle. A pleasant fellow that for a mess that always boasted the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... way down and he had the Boston morning paper in his hand. Of course he was filled to the brim with war news. We discuss little else in Bayport now; even the new baby at the parsonage has to play second fiddle. ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... listened to the others; applauded in the old way. "You are beyond my teaching, lads," he said—and they played exquisitely. "You excel your master now. Well, well, my mellow old fiddle is better here with you." But he would never once look at ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... something kind to the poor boy, but there was a bar to this, as neither understood each other's language. Paul followed, guessing this, and hoping that his knowledge of French might be put into requisition. Alphonse, with his fiddle tucked under his ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... Negro songs, those that he has remembered best, are religious and other worldly. "It is a singular fact," says Krehbiel, "that very few secular songs—those which are referred to as 'reel tunes,' 'fiddle songs,' 'corn songs' and 'devil songs,' for which slaves generally expressed a deep abhorrence, though many of them no doubt were used to stimulate them while in the fields—have been preserved ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... the limousine. Hop into it, will you, and meet me at the Fiddle and Horseshoe, between Shepherd's Bush and Acton? It's only half-past three and the limousine can cover the distance in less than no time. Can't go with you. Got to round up my men here, first. Join you shortly, ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... the more because I am now in the greatest of all my dirt. My Will also returned to-night pretty well, he being gone yesterday not very well to his father's. To-day I received a letter from my uncle, to beg an old fiddle of me for my Cozen Perkin, the miller, whose mill the wind hath lately broke down, and now he hath nothing to live by but fiddling, and he must needs have it against Whitsuntide to play to the country ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... wasn't fooling. I looked at Sol, on the seat next to me; I thought I had heard him snicker. He began to fiddle with his camera without looking at me. I pushed the "talk" button and told Harrison where I was. It pleased him very much; I wasn't more than six blocks from where this big rumble was going on, he told me, and he made it very ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... not,' said Stella meditatively. 'He only told me not to let Bear and Tedo know, because they make a row. He is only up over the back warehouse, where he used to play the fiddle to ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him with, "I must know what you are doing here. It's not possible that Lady Walderhurst is fretting herself into fiddle-strings because her husband chooses to have ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Why, she was in the kitchen talkin' and fiddle-faddlin' with them eggs; she thinks I ain't up to 'em. There warn't nothin' on earth the matter with her then. She had sot the table in here and fixed up the fire, and then she come in to the kitchen and went to work at the supper. ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... of this powerful occasion for rejoicing, Henry, whose heart was particularly affectionate, had one grief which eclipsed all the happiness of his new life;—his brother William could not play on the fiddle! consequently, his brother William, with whom he had shared so much ill, could not ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... that we had a fiddle: Nay, I must sing too, heigh, dery, dery, dery. I can do but laugh, my heart is so merry: I will be minstrel myself, heigh, didle, didle, didle; But lay there a straw I began to be weary. But hark; ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... romance. Yonder—somewhere in the breath-taking radiance—danced his Queen with all her Court about her. Queen and Court, thought William, and nothing less exorbitant could have expressed his feeling. For seventeen needs only some paper lanterns, a fiddle, and a pretty girl—and ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... nonsense or other song. Then he says, pointing to one of the players, "and the first violin played this simple melody," whereupon the two sing the verse over again, the player imitating with his arms the movements of a violin player, and with his voice the sound of a squeaking fiddle. Then the conductor says, pointing to another player, "and the big trombone played this simple melody." Then the three sing together, the second player imitating the sound of a trombone and the appearance of a ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... days the negroes had quiltings, dances, picnics and everybody had a good time, Aunt Arrie said, "an' I kin dance yit when I hears a fiddle." They had their work to do in the week days, but when Sundays came there was no work, everybody rested and on "preachin' days" went to Church. Her father took them all to old Rehoboth, the neighborhood white church, and they worshiped together, white and black, the negroes in the gallery. That ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... said the captain. "The men seem to like the sounds on these long, dark nights. I wish we had some one who could play the fiddle, too." ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... not, time alone can tell. At present we are admiring plain silver and are perhaps exacting that it be too plain? The only safe measure of what is good, is to choose that which has best endured. The "King" and the "Fiddle" pattern for flat silver, have both been in use in houses of highest fashion ever since they were designed, so that they, among others, must have merit to ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... "Binnorie." The ballad here ends abruptly; doubtless the fiddler made fiddle-strings of the lady's hair, and a fiddle of her breast-bone, while the instrument probably revealed the cruelty of the sister. Other extant versions are composite or interpolated, so this fragment (Sharpe's) has ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... the sort of man you are?" The priest tried to run away, but he could not go far, for the instrument he had tried to tune to the girl's fiddle was caught in the noose, at which he was much frightened, and did not know what had happened to him. His master pulled the cord more tightly, which would have given him great pain if his fear and alarm had not conquered ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... at large the saxophone has its friends and its foes. Its detractors agree that the late Emperor Nero was a maligned man; cruel, perhaps, in some of his aspects, but not so cruel as has been made out in the case against him. It was a fiddle he played while Rome burned—it might have been a saxophone. But to the melody-loving heart of the black race in our land the mooing tones of this long-waisted, dark-complected horn carry messages as of ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... peculiar native aptitude, or tendency, to any one calling or pursuit over all others. A man may have a genius for governing, for killing, or for curing the greatest number of men, and in the best possible manner: a man may have a genius for the fiddle, or his mission may be for the tight-rope, or the Jew's harp; or it may be a natural turn for seeking, and finding, and teaching truth, and for doing the greatest possible good to mankind; or it may be a turn equally natural for seeking, and finding, and teaching a lie, and doing the maximum ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... at her; he never was sure when that girl was laughing. "Fiddle-sticks! For four months now I've been shopping every day with you women, and you can't ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... with the success of his stratagem. He had just transformed the Rose Princess into a fiddle and was about to transform Files into a fiddle bow, when the dragon appeared to interrupt ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... to the little dark hut and the meal of black bread, whilst in the mill-house all the children of the village sang and laughed, and ate the big round cakes of Dijon and the almond gingerbread of Brabant, and danced in the great barn to the light of the stars and the music of flute and fiddle. ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... in the surgeon's cabin. He doctored my broken arm, and advised me not to "fiddle about with ghosts and things" any more. The captain was very silent, and never sailed again in that ship, though it is still running. And I will not sail in her either. It was a very disagreeable experience, and I was very badly frightened, which is a thing I do not like. ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... day, had little desire to eat. I did not, like the others, partake of the pork, but got my dinner entirely off the body of a squirrel which had been shot the day before by a chal {43a} of the name of Piramus, who, besides being a good shot, was celebrated for his skill in playing on the fiddle. During the dinner a horn filled with ale passed frequently around; I drank of it more than once, and felt inspirited by the draughts. The repast concluded, Sylvester and his children departed to their tent, and Mr. Petulengro, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... of a far city,—those two atoms shaken into contact while the gods affected to be engaged with weightier matters,—the cultured widow of that derelict recalled the name of a gentleman in the East who was accustomed to buy tall clocks and fiddle-backed chairs, in her native New England, paying prices therefor to make one, in that conservative locality, rich beyond the ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... of thy own kind to follow about in the world?" inquired the father, tauntingly. "Feathers on the head and rattles in the hand! Cockahoops and fiddle-de-lorums! Thee'll be back soon with thy folly cured after I have bailed thee from the calaboose! Then thee'll stick to thy forge and ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... noticed that," she replied, gravely smiling. "When I was small I used to go to the river-drivers' camps with my brother, and they were always kind to us. They used to sing and play the fiddle, and joke; but I didn't think then that they were rowdy, and I don't now. They were never ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... he was continually exclaiming to Jack. "They stop all day now. Have trial in my house. Maybe stay to-night, too. I wish we had a fiddle. We could dance. But we can ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... from across the vale the shouts of the merrymakers and the music of a fiddle. Allan Ritson lifted his head, nodded it aside jauntily, and smiled feebly through the mist that was gathering about ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... period. Even when the immigrants lived in daily dread of the tomahawk of the Indians, and when their homes were but log huts in the midst of the forest, this form of amusement was not unknown. The music for dances was at times furnished by negroes, who had acquired skill upon the fiddle. There is evidence of the presence of dancing masters in the colony even during the 17th century. One of these was Charles Cheate. This man wandered through the colony for some time giving lessons, but he was forced to flee from ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... small farmer who played the fiddle well. The boy is said at the age of ten to have carved over the door a Latin distich, which, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... in Nicholas suddenly, "poor, seedy-lookin' chaps, these artists; it's a wonder to me how they live. Now, there's young Flageoletti, that Fanny and the girls are always hav'in' in, to play the fiddle; if he makes a hundred a year it's as much as ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to his tall young height and glanced uncertainly from his host to the lighted room from which came the sounds of fiddle and stamping feet. It was a little hard for a prophet on his own mountain-top to be sent to play with the ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... ears, and from those sounds he could tell the figures of the dance just as he could tell the gait of an unseen horse thumping a hard dirt road. He leaned over the yard fence—looking, listening, thinking. Through the window he could see the fiddler with his fiddle pressed almost against his heart, his eyes closed, his horny fingers thumping the strings like trip- hammers, and his melancholy calls ringing high above the din of shuffling feet. His grandfather was standing before the fireplace, his grizzled hair tousled and his ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... smooth-faced Coney," she said, "that I was as lithe and limber as you are, and was called Jaunty Peg. And now poor old Moll cooks collops for those that are born to dance jigs in chains for the north-east wind to play the fiddle to. Time was when a whole army followed me, when I beat the drum before the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... "I fiddle a little. I try to learn something different for them every time. The last time I learned to do conjuring tricks. They'd get tired of me if I didn't bring something new. I'm thinking of learning the penny whistle before ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... de oldest man er woman wud clean dey selves up en put on dey best clo's for ter "go befo de King", dats whut us called it. All wud gather in bak of de big house under de big oak trees en Marse Tom he wud cum out wid he fiddle under he arm, yo kno Marse Tom he war a grete fiddler, en sot hisself down in de chere whut Uncle Joe done fotched fer im, en den he tell Uncle Joe fer ter go git de barrel er whiskey en he wud gib em all er gill er two so's dey cud all feel rite good, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... he hoarsely whispered, "an' it's fine as a fiddle. Lock, stock, an' barrel just a-shinin'. An' all that heap o' leather fixin's. Must a-cost a lot o' money. Said he wasn't fit to use 'em! Lept the fence like a panther, an' cut dirt across the corn field. An' left me the gun! Well! Well! Well! Wonder what ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... simplest dreams, He is the greatest poet Who will renounce all art And take his heart and show it To any other heart; Who writes no learned riddle, But sings his simplest rune, Takes his heart-strings for a fiddle, And plays ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... a certain miracle on May-day. The Major had taken Chad to the festival where the dance was on sawdust in the woodland—in the bottom of a little hollow, around which the seats ran as in an amphitheatre. Ready to fiddle for them stood none other than John Morgan himself, his gray eyes dancing and an arch smile on his handsome face; and, taking a place among the dancers, were Richard Hunt and—Margaret. The poised bow fell, a merry tune rang out, and Richard Hunt bowed low to his little ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... old-fashioned and a very simple entertainment I'm going to give. Just the things that I play to myself when I'm weary of listening to humanity tell of its ills and aches—the egotist! Then I look down into the beautifully clean inside of my fiddle, its good old mechanism without a flaw, and listen to the things it has to tell.... Thank you, just the same, Miss Maude; this is not a theme worthy of your brilliant rendition, but, as I said, a simple, old-fashioned playing of the fiddle. I'll supply the old-fashioned part, and Sissy here ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... boudoir are assuming the shape of elongated O's—an epidemic that has extended to the Wall-flowers; the "harp" has accompanied his instrument with fitful snores; the "violin" scarcely knows the back from the front of his fiddle, or the "cornet" which end to blow into;—yet, upon being asked for "Roger de Coverley," they make a desperate effort to awake, for they know it to be the last dance—which is supported by the whole strength of the company,—Captain de Camp leading ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... a most pig-headed sot! (aloud) Young man, you cannot know the risk you run. Th' alternative's in earnest—not in fun. Dame Turandot will spin you a tough riddle, That's not to be "got thro' like any fiddle." Not such as this, which any child might guess— (Though the Emperor could not, I must confess;) "What gives a cold, cures a cold, and pays the doctor's bill?" Not short enigmas lightly disentangled; Hard nuts you'll have to crack, fresh made, new-fangled; And if you ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... or the Anecdotes would have been a much more racy book. Spence was certainly an amiable, but I think a very weak man; and it appears to me that his learning has been overrated. He might indeed have been well designated as "a fiddle-faddle bit ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... ill luck of any kind. When they halted for the midday meal it was like a great picnic in the soft warm sunshine, and when evening came the Jayhawkers rollicked around their fires or gathered where one of their number had tuned up his fiddle. William Isham was his name, a great bearded fellow who hailed originally from Rochester, New York; he would sit by the hour on the tongue of his wagon playing "Oh Susannah" and other lively airs, or strike up a jig tune while ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... regular musical diversion is going to church on Sunday morning and betting on where the veteran soprano in the choir is going to hang on to the key or skid on the high turns. You laugh at me because I can't eat down-town unless I am encouraged by a bull fiddle, and because I gulp at free concert tickets like a young robin swallowing worms. But if most of your life had been spent listening to Mrs. Sim Estabrook jumping for middle C about as successfully as a dog jumps for a squirrel in a hickory tree, you'd splash around in melody, too, while you ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... at the chapel is strong, lively, and congregational. Sometimes there is more cry than wool in it; but taken altogether, and considering the place, it is creditable. There is neither an organ, nor a fiddle, nor a musical instrument of any sort that we have been able to notice, in the place. All is done directly and without equivocation from the mouth. The members of the choir sit downstairs, in a square place fronting the pulpit; the young men—in their quiet moments—looking ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... serious accident, but no one moved from the table. The Duke sat like a rock in his place and finished what he was saying, though no one noticed it. Miss Skeat clutched her silver fruit-knife till her knuckles shone again, and she set her teeth. Mr. Barker, who had a glass of wine in the "fiddle" before him, took it out when the sea struck and held it up steadily to save it from being spilled; and Lady Victoria, who was not the least ashamed ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... and Peace Seem'd to smile at the sound of the fiddle, Proud to fill up each tall shining space Round the lanthorn[1] that stood in the middle. And GEORGE'S head too; Heav'n screen him! May he finish in peace his long reign! And what did we when we had seen him? Why—went round and ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... to their winged sweethearts from the middle of the circle. And the voice grew, not so much in loudness as in sweetness (though it grew louder, too), till it was so sweet that you wanted to cry with pleasure just at the sound of it. It was like nightingales, and the sea, and the fiddle, and the voice of your mother when you have been a long time away, and she meets you at the door ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... me all, and more than all. I was still fiddle-faddling with the girth strap, the better to impose upon my Indian horse-guards, when suddenly there arose a yelling hubbub of laughter in the camp behind. I turned to look and beheld a thing laughable enough, no doubt, and ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... any trivial symptom. Being a tough, open-air fellow, who was always as hard as a nail, it was seldom that there was anything amiss with him; but at last the drink began to tell, and he woke one morning with his hands shaking and all his nerves tingling like over-stretched fiddle-strings. He had been dining at some very wet house the night before, and the wine had, perhaps, been more plentiful than choice; at any rate, there he was, with a tongue like a bath towel and a head that ticked like an eight-day clock. He was very alarmed at his own condition, and he sent for ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... than mine. Mine would have whinnied for the camp and watched for short cuts to it. Another advantage was the moon, and the hour was hardly beyond midnight when I saw a light in a window and heard the scraping of a fiddle. At the edge of a clearing enclosed by a worm fence I came to a row of slave-cabins. Mongrel dogs barked through the fence, and in one angle of it a young white man with long straight hair showed himself so abruptly as to startle my horse. Only the one cabin ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... creature is stirring," said Adrian, "not even a mouse. Sellers—oh, what men daily do, not knowing what they do!—is shut up in the scullery, I suppose, torturing his poor defenceless fiddle. That 's what it is to be a musical boot-and-knife boy. And Wickersmith will be at his devotions. He tells me he never gets leisure for his morning meditation till luncheon 's cleared away. And that's what it is to be a pious butler. I 'm doubting whether there ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... preserve their place, While softer sounds delight thee; The fiddle shall our wedding grace, But horns shall never fright thee. Come, come away, Love chides thy stay, Oh! prithee come ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... Trimble, a very merry fellow, the fiddle of the society, who called him 'Mad Trimble.' M. Stokes of 1531 wrote ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 30. Saturday, May 25, 1850 • Various
... sufficiently accurate idea, both of the sizes and the use of viols, if he will consider the treble viol to have corresponded closely with our modern violin, the tenor viol to the modern viola [which is also called Alto, Tenor, or Bratsche—i.e., braccio, 'arm' fiddle], and the bass-viol, or viol-da-gamba [so called because held between the knees], to the ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... riglar way, instead o' doin' as we do, tumblin' in a drop powder, spittin' a ball out your mouth down the muzzle, and hittin' the stock on the pommel of the saddle to send it home. And he had them miserable things—the somethin' 'cussion-caps, and used to fiddle away with them while we were knockin' over the cattle in all directions. Moreover, he had a notion that it was altogether wrong to let go his reins even for a moment, and so, what between the ramrod and the 'cussion-caps and the reins, he was worse ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... to be back looking for another job," he regretfully observed to Allison, "but I like it here, and besides, I want to hear you play on your fiddle before I go." ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... they were going to supper, an old man, with a fiddle in his hand, tottered into the garden, and down the lawn. He was a very queer-looking old man. He had long white hair, and ...
— The Birthday Party - A Story for Little Folks • Oliver Optic
... and to fence, by the masters of those noble sciences. He becomes a compleat connoisseur in dressing hair, and in adorning his own person, under the hands and instructions of his barber and valet de chambre. If he learns to play upon the flute or the fiddle, he is altogether irresistible. But he piques himself upon being polished above the natives of any other country by his conversation with the fair sex. In the course of this communication, with which he is indulged from his tender ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... enough to melt the belly out of my fiddle," said Johnny Mears to his wife, who sat on a three-legged stool by the rough table in the little whitewashed "end-room", putting a patch of patches over the seat of a pair of moleskin knickerbockers. He lit his pipe, moved a stool to the side of the great empty fireplace, ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... nothing but ancient history; who projected twenty great poems, and finished only one or two; who spent his life in commenting upon Plato and studying botany, and in writing letters to his friend Mason; and who with a real touch of Pindar in his nature, was content to fiddle-faddle away his life. He died at last of a most unpoetical gout in the stomach, leaving behind him a cartload of memoranda, and fifty fragments of fine things; and yet I, a stranger from a far distant shore, was about to make a little pilgrimage ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... Johnny Whitelamb looked, with a face as long as a fiddle. The comment was quiet, but the note of scorn in it could not be mistaken. Molly in revolt! Molly, of all persons! Molly sat trembling. She knew that among them all Johnny was her one ally—and a hopelessly distressed and ineffective one. He ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... awkwardly on his chair. "I ain't got around to getting another pianny since I moved in here. Maybe we can, some day, after the hay gets turned. I used to play the fiddle some, but I ain't got no fiddle now, neither. Some play the fiddle better'n what I do. A mouth harp's a good thing when you're alone a good deal. Most any one can play a mouth harp some. Lots of fellers do out here, nights, ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... for the dance the shepherd dressed, In ribbons, wreath, and gayest vest Himself with care arraying: Around the linden lass and lad Already footed it like mad: Hurrah! hurrah! Hurrah—tarara-la! The fiddle-bow was playing. ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... genius. I have only to add a word of advice to the Painters,—that, however excellent they may be in painting naturally, they would not flatter themselves very much upon it; and to the Connoisseurs, that when they see a cat or a fiddle painted so finely, that, as the phrase is, it looks as if you could take it up, they would not for that reason immediately compare the Painter to Raffaelle ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... him as clost as he can; that act, that a woman would resent as a deadly insult and her incensed relatives avenge with the sword, if it occurred in any other place than the ball-room and at the sound of the fiddle. The utter inconsistency of her meetin' it with smiles, and making frantic efforts to get more such affronts than any other woman present — her male relatives ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... resourceful in ideas and brisk in movement stands in front of and facing the other players and rapidly repeats this verse, performing some action that the other players immediately imitate—such as beating a drum, playing a fiddle, sawing wood. Without pausing he varies his actions, the others continuing to follow his movements. Rapidity of time and vivacity determine the success ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various
... she had a sort o' queer, say-little way about her that caught my eye. I was a gawky boy, as green as a gourd, and never had been about with women. Dick was just the opposite: he was a reckless, splurging chap that dressed as fine as a fiddle, wasn't afraid to talk, joke, and carry on, and he could dance to a queen's taste; so he naturally had all the gals after him. I was afraid he was going to cut me out, and I was fool enough to—well, I used to hope, when ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... grunted, as he gave the wheel a quick, savage turn to the right. "Say, I nearly ran through that salmon net. It's too fer out, blamed if it isn't. Yes, I know Eben's fond of drawin', an' that's the trouble. He'd fiddle around all day with a paper an' pencil if I'd let him, an' not do a ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... hiding-place, dim-lit by flickering lanthorn, I passed many weary hours, while all about me was a stir and bustle, a confused sound made up of many, as the never-ending tread of feet, the sound of hoarse voices now faint and far and anon clear and loud, the scrape of a fiddle, snatches of rough song, the ceaseless ring and tap of hammers—a very babel that, telling of life and action, made my gloomy prison the harder to endure. And here (mindful of what is to follow) I do ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... there, but we readily admit the imitation of familiar objects. But to think by the help of painted trees and caverns, which we know to be painted, to transport our minds to Prospero, and his island and his lonely cell;[1] or by the aid of a fiddle dexterously thrown in, in an interval of speaking, to make us believe that we hear those supernatural noises of which the isle was full: the Orrery Lecturer at the Haymarket might as well hope, by his musical glasses cleverly stationed out ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... and a funny little piano," said Norah. "They had quite an exciting time getting the piano up into the loft with the block and pulley. But the music sounds very well up there. The only trouble is old Andy Ferguson, the fencer—he's always been accustomed to fiddle for them, and he's very crushed because we've got out these men. Dad says he'd never have got them if he'd dreamed how ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... attested stories of some Negroes flinging themselves at the feet of an European playing on a fiddle, entreating him to desist, unless he had a mind to tire them to death; it being impossible for them to cease dancing, while he continued playing. Such is the irresistible passion for ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... miserable drinking-booth half buried in the snow where we halted for the refreshment of man and beast. Here, I remember, I discovered a very definite connection between the characteristic run of the tsimbol, the peculiar bite of the Zigeuner's bow on his fiddle-string, and some distinctive points of Turanian tongues. In other countries, in Spain, for instance, your gypsy speaks differently on his instrument. But, oddly enough, when I later attempted to put this observation on paper I could find no ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... play for you a little tune on the fiddle. I imagine there is nothing better and finer in the world than to be able to play on the fiddle. What? Perhaps it is not so? I don't know how it is with you. But I know that since I first reached the age of understanding, my heart longed for a fiddle. I loved as my life any musician whatever—no ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... hornpipes? And, besides this, there was a grand band hired from Rosseter, who, with their wonderful wind-instruments and puffed-out cheeks, were themselves a delightful show to the small boys and girls. To say nothing of Joshua Rann's fiddle, which, by an act of generous forethought, he had provided himself with, in case any one should be of sufficiently pure taste to prefer dancing to ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... dozen musicians, who played upon tom-toms, instruments like a fiddle, and one that was very nearly a hurdy-gurdy, with lutes and flutes. They gave the preliminary strains, and the dancers formed the semicircle. The performance was similar to that the party had seen at the hotel, though it was more finished, and the attitudes and posturing ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... laughed his friend. "But she's a right smart filly; she looks much the best of the lot. Dixon's got her as fit as a fiddle string. When you're done with that man you might turn him over ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... long, black Norman sea-boat bows on, over chocks through the low surf to the grey swell beyond. The little vessel had been beached by the stern, with a slack chain hooked to her sides at the water-line, and a long hawser rove through a rough fiddle-block of enormous size, and leading to a capstan set far above high-water mark and made fast by the bight of a chain to an anchor buried in the sand up to the heavy wooden stock. And now a big old man with streaming grey ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... strings of the old fiddle will tighten up a good deal, if I abstain from attempting to play upon the instrument at present—but that a few jigs now will ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... amusements; they were far too much absorbed in the dancing which was going on busily—I can't say gaily—in the two hollow squares. In one of these an elderly, pinched little man who looked almost half-witted, was monotonously scraping a battered fiddle, for two solemn couples to dance round and round, always on the same axis. But the other "dancing salon" was more lively. There a man dressed like a buffoon, with a tall hat, a lobster claw for a nose, a uniform with ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... and yellow and green they are melting away in the white; Hey! but the wise old world was wrong and my idiot heart was right; Yes; and the merry-go-round of the stars rolls to my cracked old tune, Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... forgotten that in prouder days he had personated Alexander—the specious form of John Palmer, with the special effrontery of Bobby—Bensley, with the trumpet-tongue, and little Quick (the retired Dioclesian of Islington) with his squeak like a Bart'lemew fiddle. There are fixed, cold as in life, the immovable features of Moody, who, afraid of o'erstepping nature, sometimes stopped short of her—and the restless fidgetiness of Lewis, who, with no such fears, not seldom leaped o' the other side. There hang ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... get you through sa, like a fiddle, and hope a please you when we get you through sa. Old 'ooman at home sa:' chuckling very much. 'Outside gentleman sa, he often remember old 'ooman at home sa,' ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... that fine thing; but it can't evidently charm a landlord, as at present constructed, into the faith that the notes of a fiddle, a clarionet, a bugle, or a trombone are negotiable at the corner grocery, or ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... looking-glass as if I'd been a girl. I could make myself as smart as any one when I was going to a dance, or to a party where I was likely to meet pretty girls; but I should have laughed myself to scorn if I'd stood fiddle-faddling at a glass, smirking at my own likeness, all for my ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... say, and he would then be attended to, he did not seem satisfied, but continued to demand the calling of the officers together. Colonel Earle told him to go on with his duty. Captain Carmichael still took no notice of these orders; but said his feelings were "worked up to a fiddle-string." Still disobeying Colonel Earle's commands, he was told "to go home if he could not do his duty." He was then heard to say that the officers, or some of the officers, were "a set of blacklegs." For this offence Captain Carmichael ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... nibblers. But the allurements of pecan growing in the South are spread before us with our bread and butter and morning coffee. The orange and pomelo properties have been banished from the stage, or made to play second fiddle, and now we see in the limelight the pecan plantation, with a vista of provision for old age and insurance for our children. And there shall be no work nor care nor trouble about it at all. Only something down and about ten dollars a month for ninety-six months. And the intercropping ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... ancestors, in their antiquated dresses, and slender, tarnished, antiquated frames. In his drawing-room you will find none of your new grand pianos and fashionable couches and ottomans; but an old spinet and a fiddle, another set of those long-legged, tall-backed chairs, two or three little settees, a good massy table, and a fine large carved mantle-piece, with bright steel dogs instead of a modern stove, and logs ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... to me having overprimed his musket, with the consequence that when he fired, my face being so close, the powder flew up and caught my wound, which though only originally a slight one soon made me dance for a time without a fiddle. ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... good-natur'd Modesty: so that the wildest of his Flights are thought rather diverting than troublesome. He is an hourly Foundation for Laughter, from the Top of the House to the Parlours: and, to borrow an Attribute from the Reverend Mr. Peters, (tho' without any Note of his Musick) plays a very good FIDDLE in the Family. I have told you the History of this Tom-tit of a Prater, because, ever since my first reading of PAMELA, he puts in for a Right to be one of her Hearers; and, having got half her Sayings by heart, talks in no other Language but hers: and, what really surprises, and has charm'd ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... his face in his hands. "That was ignorance, an' I'm payin' for it by havin' you turn away an' snap my future like a fiddle string! Oh, how could my hand a-struck yoh people—even ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... big fiddle," was the prompt reply. "Doesn't he look like a grasshopper with that long-tailed coat and all that shirt front? If he just had feelers on his head, he'd be perfect. Don't you ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... do so hang about ye, So whimper, and so hug, I know it Gentlemen, And so intice ye, now ye are i'th' bud; And that sweet tilting war, with eyes and kisses, Th' alarms of soft vows, and sighs, and fiddle faddles, Spoils all our trade: you must forget these knick knacks, A woman at some time of year, I grant ye She is necessarie; but make no business ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10) - The Humourous Lieutenant • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... great masters; because they sometimes put in some of those round characters of clouds, they must do the same; but if you look at any of their skies, they either assist in the composition or make some figure in the picture—nay, sometimes play the first fiddle.... ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... would a-wooing go Gave a party, you must know; And his bride, dressed all in green, Looked as fine as any queen. Their reception numbered some Of the best in Froggiedom. Four gay froggies played the fiddle,— Hands all round, ...
— The Nursery, February 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... you to play second fiddle, and no mistake," laughed George Ramsey, "for I did think I would make Miss Edgham a little call. But, after all, the second fiddle is an indispensable thing, and you and I are ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... my heart is a fiddle; the strings are rozend with ioy that my other young Mr. is come home, & my tongue the sticke that makes the ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... to facilitate the sluicing, more men were added to the force shovelling in the creeks, and this made our work heavier. An exceedingly cranky foreigner, as head cook, presided over the big coal range in the mess-house, and we women "played second fiddle," so to speak. However, we all had enough hard work, as a midnight supper for the second force had to be prepared and regularly served, and at this we ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... unfloored abysses, while we trespassed and pried and pervaded, snatching a scant impression from sorry material enough, clearly, the sacred edifice enjoyed a credit beyond that of the profane; but when both were finished and opened we flocked to the sound of the fiddle more freely, it need scarce be said, than to that of the psalm. "Freely" indeed, in our particular case, scarce expresses the latter relation; since our young liberty in respect to church-going was absolute and we might range at will, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... with the horror. And whiles we crawled thus round and round within this narrow space, ever and anon above the stealthy rustle of his movements, above his stertorous breathing and evil muttering, above the wild throbbing of my heart rose the wail of the fiddle and the singing: ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... had taken to pieces and put together again, strengthened, soldered, tinkered, mended, and braced every accordion, guitar, melodeon, dulcimer, and fiddle in Edgewood, Pleasant River, and the neighboring villages. There was a little money to be earned in this way, but very little, as people in general regarded this "tinkering" as a pleasing diversion in which they could indulge him without danger. As an example ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fifteen decayed baronets, eight yellow admirals, forty-seven major-generals on half pay (who narrate the whole Peninsular War), twenty-seven dowagers, one hundred and eighty-seven old maids on small annuities, and several unbeneficed clergymen, who play a little on the fiddle. All the above play at cards, and usually with success if partners. No objection to cards on Sunday evenings or rainy mornings. The country gentleman to allow the guests four feeds a day, and to produce claret if a Scotch or Irish ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... kitchen, where supper was served. When all had enough, including the dogs and Maisie's pussies, the older folk moved to the front room. In a jiffy dishes and temporary tables disappeared in that big back kitchen, and the youngsters began their games. By-and-by a fiddle was heard, and I am afraid there was dancing. We had a happy evening. Two-handed cracks, stories, jokes, songs, made the time pass too quickly. It was a novelty to me that all the guests were either Irish or ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... dodging it, and so were the smaller children. Without any fear of it they were all sitting on the hearth at the old woman's feet,—Ben and Melissa popping corn in the ashes, and Tom and Andy watching Barney's deft fingers as he made a cornstalk fiddle for them. ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Scot, a Highlander of the Isles, sat upon a barrel-head sawing at a fiddle, and the shrill scream of it filled the barn. Tone he did not aspire to, but he played with Caledonian verve and swing, and kept the snapping time. It was mad, harsh music of the kind that sets the blood ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... branches and luxuriant foliage, composed a very pleasing image. The manner in which the sod was partially worn under most of them, explained their nightly purpose; or if there could yet be any doubt, the flute and fiddle, pendant in almost every house, spoke a still more ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... one of the crew. The prospect of another year after the Alert should sail was rather "too much of the monkey.'' About seven o'clock the mate came down into the steerage in fine trim for fun, roused the boys out of the berth, turned up the carpenter with his fiddle, sent the steward with lights to put in the between-decks, and set all hands to dancing. The between-decks were high enough to allow of jumping, and being clear, and white, from holystoning, made a good dancing-hall. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... of a hearse. There was a stand in one corner, and a large extension table in the middle of the room, with chairs placed about it. In the corner across from the stand was a spiritualist medium's cabinet; and hanging on the walls were a guitar, a banjo and a fiddle. A bell stood in the middle of the table, and there were writing materials, slates, and other things scattered about, which theatrical people call "properties," I am told. I tore the black draperies down, and searched for a place where my mother might be—in ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... got the dancers out upon the lawn, and then they managed to go through one quadrille. But it was found that it did not answer. The music of the single fiddle which Crosbie had hired from Guestwick was not sufficient for the purpose; and then the grass, though it was perfect for purposes of croquet, was not pleasant ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... slipping along this moving thoroughfare in my fiddle-case of a canoe, I also was beginning to grow aweary for my ocean. To the civilized man, there must come, sooner or later, a desire for civilization. I was weary of dipping the paddle; I was weary of living on the skirts of life; I wished to be in the thick ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Van Olden Barnavelt Mawmets ( puppets) Mawmett ( Mahomet) Meath (A curious corruption of Mentz. Old printers distorted foreign names in an extraordinary manner.) Mechall Mention ( dimension) Mew Middleton, quotation from his Family of Love Minikin ( fiddle) Mistris Moe Monthes mind Mooncalf More hayre than wit Morglay Mosch Mother Motion ( suggestion, proposal) Mouse Much (ironical) Mumchance Muscadine Muschatoes ( moustaches) Mushrumps ( mushrooms) Music played between the acts Muskadine with an ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... now, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. The authorities have sent them away. But we've Jews that play the cymbals and the fiddle in the village, so one might send for them. ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... large fiddle-shaped instrument held between the legs. It was very fashionable in the eighteenth century, and was generally to be found in the sitting-rooms of the upper classes for the use of any guests who could perform on it. It ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... snow-white Hair, as it waved in the wind; and the jolly face of the fiddler Glowed like a living coal when the ashes are blown from the embers. Gayly the old man sang to the vibrant sound of his fiddle, Tous les Bourgeois de Chartres, and Le Carillon de Dunkerque, And anon with his wooden, shoes beat time to the music. Merrily, merrily whirled the wheels of the dizzying dances Under the orchard-trees and down the path to ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... go back to fiddle over the ruins. But who knows? At all events, I'll go back and carry with me all that your country had done for three generations of my ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... a profound silence in the small room. The runners of a sleigh scraped the icy street below, its horses' hoofs cracked noisily. The music of a fiddle sounded in the distance. Babe's voice humming a waltz tune rose from the ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... possibilities of plaintive Negro melodies, which they of course capitalized. In New York late in 1842 four men—"Dan" Emmett, Frank Brower, "Billy" Whitlock, and "Dick" Pelham—practiced together with fiddle and banjo, "bones" and tambourine, and thus was born the first company, the "Virginia Minstrels," which made its formal debut in New York February 17, 1843. Its members produced in connection with their work all sorts of popular songs, one of Emmett's being "Dixie," ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... given his name because he always smiled over a crust of bread, even when he was a baby. Now that he was a little lad of ten with a great flock of ewes and lambs to tend and drive through sun and storm, he had smiles and kind words for all, and he played his fiddle all day long until its sweet tunes filled ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... his strange advent momentarily silenced the quarrel; but soon it leaped up again, under the shelter of the noisy music,—the common, tedious, tippler's quarrel. It rose higher and higher. The fiddler looked askance at it over his fiddle. Chirac cautiously observed it. Instead of attending to the music, the festal company attended to the quarrel. Three waiters in a group watched it with an impartial sporting interest. The English voices grew ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Nerves gone to fiddle-strings. What a day we're having! (Tenderly putting his hand on G.'s shoulder.) My David, how long have you known this Jonathan? Would I come up here to make a fool of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... horses, with new saddles and bridles, all English too, with a good deal of ammunition and baggage. The consternation of the tories was so great that they never dreamt of carrying off anything. Even their fiddles and fiddle bows, and playing cards, were all left strewed around their fires. One of the gamblers, (it is a serious truth) though shot dead, still held the cards hard gripped in his hands. Led by curiosity to inspect this strange sight, a dead gambler, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... a difference. Anyways, he didn't at first ketch on to her being about the freshest-made widow he'd ever tumbled to in a dancing-party. But he got there all right when the square dance was over, and Jose flourished his fiddle and sung out for the Senores and Senoritas to take partners for a valsa, and the Hen brought up Kerosene to foot it with him—telling him she was the organist who was going to play the melodeon when they got it, and he'd find her ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... tormented him a lot," admitted her husband. "He's a great hand at the fiddle and likes company. He goes to the harbour a good deal. But they say he takes sulky spells when he hasn't a word to throw to a dog. 'Twouldn't be any wonder, living with the Gordons. They're all as queer ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... produced. Their Mother tells them, that such an one commanded in such a Sea Engagement, that their Great Grandfather had a Horse shot under him at Edge-hill, that their Uncle was at the Siege of Buda, and that her Mother danced in a Ball at Court with the Duke of Monmouth; with abundance of Fiddle-faddle of the same Nature. I was, the other Day, a little out of Countenance at a Question of my little Daughter Harriot, who asked me, with a great deal of Innocence, why I never told them of the Generals and Admirals that had been in my Family. As for my Eldest Son Oddly, he ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... on the balcony hang over the railings. The figures on the floor go reeling off in a mixture of dancing and by-play as fantastic as the music. The pianist seems to get excited and to want to prove himself a Hans von Bulow of rapid execution. The fiddler weaves excitedly over his fiddle. The cornetist toots in a screech like a car-engine whistle. The movements of the dancers grow licentious and more and more rapid. They have begun the Cancan. Feet go up. Legs are exhibited in wild abandon. Hats fly off. There are occasional exhibitions of nature ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... a man named Mord whose surname was Fiddle; he was the son of Sigvat the Red, and he dwelt at the "Vale" in the Rangrivervales. He was a mighty chief, and a great taker up of suits, and so great a lawyer that no judgments were thought lawful unless he had a hand ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... to the smells of the earth. They learned the ways of birds and bugs, why birds have wings, why bugs have legs, why the gladdywhingers have spotted eggs in a basket nest in a booblow tree, and why the chizzywhizzies scrape off little fiddle songs all summer long ...
— Rootabaga Stories • Carl Sandburg
... three girls went out walking, she was always in the middle, with Esther and Mellicent hanging on an arm at either side. Robert was her sworn vassal, and Max and Oswald her respectful and, on the whole, obedient servants. Altogether, the prospect of playing second fiddle to this strange girl was by no means pleasant. Peggy tilted her chin, and spoke in a ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... he exclaimed as I ended. "Why, you might have blown each other to pieces. Powder wants using only by an experienced man, and young Chowne, who seems to have played first fiddle, seems to know more about his father's powders than that out of a keg. Humph! So you blew down one of ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... executed; and he thus coolly expressed his intention in another of his letters:—"You write me word, that I'm out of favour with a certain poet, whom I have admired for the disproportion of him and his attributes. He is a rarity which I cannot but be fond of, as one would be of a hog that could fiddle, or a singing owl. If he falls on me at the blunt, which is his very good weapon in wit, I will forgive him if you please; and leave the repartee to ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... shops, and the market. I bought all sorts of common curiosities, little articles of everyday life, some of which will be sure to amuse and interest my English friends. Among my purchases were a wooden pillow, some joss candles, a two-stringed fiddle, and a few preserved eggs, which they say are over a hundred years old. The eggs are certainly nasty enough for anything; still it seems strange that so thrifty a people as the Chinese should allow so much capital to lie dormant—literally buried ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... in chess, women, poetry, eloquence, music, and all such fiddle-faddle. What is the use of mediocrity ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... realized that if he knew what was good for him he had better give Giraffe a wide berth while he was strumming away with his "old fiddle," as some of the boys sneeringly described the fire outfit that continually refused to "fire" even ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... weave their own clothes, make rugs, tan leather, grow straw for hats,—all of which they do to this day, so that you may enter a habitant house and not find a single article except saints' images, a holy book, and perhaps a fiddle, which the habitant has not himself made. "The Jesuits assume too much authority," wrote the King. Talon lessened their power by inviting the Recollets to come back to Canada and by encouraging the Sulpicians. Instead of outlawing young Frenchmen ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... sawed away at the kite line, which was as taut as a string on a bass fiddle. Suddenly there was a loud snap and the cord parted. Sam and Dick fell back from the edge of the cliff, while the entangled kites soared away for ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... adorn a boudoir. He does every thing with a flourish. If he has never painted Nero performing that celebrated violin-solo over Rome, it is because he despaired of conveying an idea of the tremulous flourish of the fiddle-bow. He reads nature, and translates her, without understanding her. He will prove to you that the cattle of Rosa Bonheur are those of the fields, while he will object to Landseer that his beasts are those of the guinea cattle-show. He blows up grand facts in the science of art with gunpowder, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... G1 A flute (fiddle, staff, knife) which apparently brings to life again the dead woman. G2 The dead mother killed a second time, and paid for by the ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... No stranger has a right to all the doctor. (rises and stands by table R., making notes in book) All right, Master Robjohns, you shall play the fiddle to-morrow night. ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... small fiddle; to crowd v. to grate as the two ends of a broken bone, to make a flat creaking; Crowder s. ...
— A Glossary of Provincial Words & Phrases in use in Somersetshire • Wadham Pigott Williams
... looks of you, I should say it was wearing your nerves to fiddle-strings. Ever take anything ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... the road opened, there was a rush of hurdy-gurdy girls for dance-halls; but that did not modify the rough chivalry of an unwritten law. These hurdy-gurdy girls, who tiptoed to the concertina, the fiddle, and the hand-organ, were German; and if we may believe the poet of Cariboo, they were something like the Glasgow girls described by Wolfe as 'cold to everything but a bagpipe—I wrong them—there is not one that does not melt away ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... both sides, in order to avoid the expense of a regular wedding. The principal amusement on Sundays and holidays is the choro ([Greek: choros]), which is danced on the village green to the strains of the gaida or bagpipe, and the gusla, a rudimentary fiddle. The Bulgarians are religious in a simple way, but not fanatical, and the influence of the priesthood is limited. Many ancient superstitions linger among the peasantry, such as the belief in the vampire and the evil eye; witches and necromancers ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... grand clatter and scramble and string of jumps, up and down, back and forward, one hand over the other, like a stampede of rats and mice more than like anything I call music. I like to hear a woman sing, and I like to hear a fiddle sing, but these noises they hammer out of their wood and ivory anvils—don't talk to me, I know the difference between a bullfrog and a ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... early experience: scores of things that an ordinary educated Englishman learns with considerable surprise were to him the merest matters of course. When an English composer resolves to write an opera, in the spirit in which a sculptor may decide to paint a picture or a flute-player to play the fiddle, he has to learn all, or as much as he can, about the requirements of the stage, and even then if his work comes to rehearsal he has to accept corrections and make alterations at the instance of those who have been through the proper early training. No one had anything to teach ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... University by the scholarships and prizes which he had won. One beautiful little dark-eyed daughter of seven was playing in a West End Theatre as the dormouse in "Alice in Wonderland." She was second fiddle to Alice herself, also, and could sing all her songs. Her pay was some five pounds a week, poor enough for the attraction she proved, but more than all the rest of the family put together earned. At that time I never went ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... had been shot off in battles with the Indians. After it healed he moved to this place, and lived on the vegetables he could raise in a little garden, besides what people gave him. Every night he came out and sat on the log by the door, playing on an old fiddle. Then the school children would collect around him, and give him pennies, or fruit, and such things. Sometimes he told them stories; for he had travelled in many lands, and knew a great deal about them. In the summer nights, father says, ...
— The Summer Holidays - A Story for Children • Amerel
... the King of the rath, "I thought it was no harm. He said he was tired of being by himself, and you know how handy he is with the fiddle or the pipes. If he'd been a fir darrig, that's always playing tricks and making trouble everywhere, why, then, of course—but he was only a ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... I'll put this photograph of the Hermes in here in place of this fiddle-de-dee Art Calendar. She'll like ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... that love for vengeance, he could not tell. The embers of a man's passions will suddenly burst into flame, and he will fiddle madly while the fire burns his soul. He had avenged her as well as himself; but had he avenged her, now that he held Isaac Worthington in his power? By crushing him, had he not added to her trouble and her sorrow? She had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... golden days of her youth when Love had come to her to bless and to abide with her long beyond the tarrying of the spirit in the flesh. "He said I looked nice. I met him the first time I wore the purple dress. It was at a corn-husking party at Jerry Grumb's barn. Some man played the fiddle and we danced." ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... Redd eache moment) how was y^e Action? y^e Tone? how manie Stopps? Wh^at She growinge gretelie Confus'd, I led Her into y^e Churche, & show'd Her y^t there was no Organ, y^e Choire beinge indeede a Band, of i Tuninge-Forke, i Kitt, & i Horse-Fiddle.—At this She fell to Smilinge & Blushinge att one Tyme.—She perceiv'd our Errandes were y^e Same, & crav'd Pardon for Her Fibb.—I tolde Her, If She came Thither to be Witness at her Frend's Weddinge, 'twas no ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... pulled for all they were worth. But no power of man could make such a creature stir unless it wanted to. It braced its fore legs and stood immovable, then shook its mighty head till the lasso twanged like a fiddle-string, but did not give an inch. Finally the steer caught sight of its tormentors outside the yard, and rushed. At once the rope became slack and the watchful men pulled it tight again, and soon the great beast was jammed up against ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... employment to turn his hand to. That very night, I remember, he dined with me. We went to the play together, and afterwards looked in at Lady ALICIA PARBOIL's dance. Dear Lady ALICIA, how plump she was, and how good-natured, and how well she married her fiddle-headed daughters. Her husband too, that clumsy, heavy-witted oaf, how cunningly and how successfully withal she schemed for his advancement. Quid plura? you knew her well, she was devoted to you. I only speak of her to remind you that it was in her hospitable rooms that GERVASE BLENKINSOP ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... unyielding. Both sails were snow-white, semi-transparent and supple in movement, like the ivory sails on the model ships in Rosenborg Palace. The mast seemed to bend slightly and the stays were as taut as fiddle-strings. The boat quivered like a leaf. The waves pounded hard against the thin strakes of the boat's side. I could feel them on my cheek, though their dampness never penetrated; but in between these hammer blows their little pats were wonderfully friendly. Every now and then I could see ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... after a certain miracle on May-day. The Major had taken Chad to the festival where the dance was on sawdust in the woodland—in the bottom of a little hollow, around which the seats ran as in an amphitheatre. Ready to fiddle for them stood none other than John Morgan himself, his gray eyes dancing and an arch smile on his handsome face; and, taking a place among the dancers, were Richard Hunt and—Margaret. The poised bow fell, a merry tune rang ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... of her freshness, her interest in life. Into this freshness of Madame Merle's she obtained a considerable insight; she seemed to see it as professional, as slightly mechanical, carried about in its case like the fiddle of the virtuoso, or blanketed and bridled like the "favourite" of the jockey. She liked her as much as ever, but there was a corner of the curtain that never was lifted; it was as if she had remained after ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... too, for a little un!" he added, with another glance aloft, where the sails could be seen distended to their utmost extent and tugging at the bolt-ropes, while the topgallant-masts were bent almost into a curve with the strain upon them and the stays aft were stretched as tight as fiddle-strings. ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... I have. I have noticed nothing else. Why, she is dressed as fine as a fiddle. She is 'taking notice.' She 'll be giving Old Caesar a successor. Then what will you do? I thought that fat darky I have seen going in at the back gate with a silk hat and a long-tailed coat looked like a preacher. You 'd better look out for him. You ...
— Mam' Lyddy's Recognition - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... signs of the strange, long-past agitation. In dimensions it was similar to the dining-room, running from front to back of the house. Here, too, was another elaborate candelabrum, somewhat smaller than the first, queer, spindle-legged, fiddle-backed chairs, beautiful cabinets and tables, and an old, square piano, still open. The chairs stood in irregular groups of twos and threes, chumming cozily together as their occupants had doubtless done, ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... reverence for the fine arts; and the sordid spirit of a money-amassing philosophy would meet any proposition for the fostering of art, in a genial and extended sense, with the commercial maxim,—Laissez faire. Paganini, indeed, will make a fortune, because he can actually sell the tones of his fiddle at so much a scrape; but Mozart himself might have languished in a garret for any thing that would have been done for ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... supper?' Heigho, &c. 'A roasted potato and a roll o' butter.' Terry heigho, &c. Supper was laid down to dine, Heigho, &c. Changed a farthing and brought up wine, Terry heigho, &c. First come in was a nimble bee, Heigho, &c. With his fiddle upon his knee, Terry heigho, &c. Next come in was a creeping snail, Heigho, &c. With his bagpipes under his tail, Terry heigho, &c. Next came in was a neighbour's pig, Heigho, &c. 'Pray, good people, will ye play us a jig?' Terry heigho, &c. Next come in was a neighbour's hen, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... who either from choice or ill-health lingered on into the winter, made a speech. There were declamations, debates, the interminable, singsong ballads of the frontier, usually accompanied by French harp or fiddle. Families were few, bachelors much in the majority; I remember that at one of the community affairs there were eighteen bachelors out of a total attendance of thirty persons! But as the region settled up, ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... handsome black fellow, with white teeth and bright eyes, and he could play the fiddle and pick the banjo, and knock the bones and cut the pigeon-wing, and, besides all that, he was the best hoe-hand, and could pick more cotton than any other negro on the plantation. He had amused himself by courting and flirting with all of the ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... their voices be gladly blent With a watery jingle of pans and spoons, And a motherly chirrup of sweet content, And neighborly gossip and merriment, And old-time fiddle-tunes! ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... "Uh-huh—fiddle and er banjer, and the feller that plays the banjer kin tear more music out o' it and stomp on the floor harder'n any other perfesser in the mountains. Better come if Paw ain't run you-all ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... over, we eat pudding, baked beans, mince, apple, and pumpkin pie, and top off with pop-corn, apples, and cider. After supper the girls clear away the dishes; then we push the table into one corner of the kitchen, Julius Caesar mounts it with his fiddle, and we dance jigs and quicksteps. The girl who first found a red ear while husking, and was kissed before she could throw it into the basket, is ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... numerous parasites who minister to his vanity or pleasure. The foreign element (which Hogarth in his heart detested) is here to the front in the figure of the French dancing-master, trying a new step, with the fiddle in his hand; behind him the maitre d'armes, Dubois, is making a lunge with his epee de combat, while Figg, a noted English prize-fighter, watches his movements with an expression of contempt. Another portrait is Bridgman, a well-known landscape ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... dinner, once when I was dining with the Mitfords, when he knew that his time had come, to turn to Mrs. Bourke, who was famous only as shining in his reflected light, and say: "Mrs. Bourke, won't you play us something, and I will just come in with my fiddle?" Rubinstein's playing I never liked. To me he seemed only the most violent of all the piano-bangers of the world; but he was literally worshipped by his admirers, and was grand to look at—as fine as Beethoven ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... degree. Is it the body brings it on the mind, or the mind that inflicts it upon the body? I cannot tell; but it is a severe price to pay for the Fata Morgana with which Fancy sometimes amuses men of warm imaginations. As to body and mind, I fancy I might as well inquire whether the fiddle or fiddlestick makes the tune. In youth this complaint used to throw me into involuntary passions of causeless tears. But I will drive it away in the country by exercise. I wish I had been a mechanic: a turning-lathe or a chest of ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... artist and musician. Music, tone, sound, colour, vibrate in every page of your romances. Had your parents taught you harmony, the piano, and the fiddle, your music would have burst forth along its normal lines. As they merely taught you the alphabet and grammar, your creative faculty turned to literature; you wrote romances full of music, instead of composing music full of romance. It is a distinction without a difference. But, now that you ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... the town. If the town is to keep the money (as it has) the Mayor must once in every five years form a procession and march up to this monument. There ten girls, natives of the town, and two widows must dance around the monument to the playing of a fiddle and a drum, the girls dressed in white. This ceremony has gone on, once in five years, all this time and the ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... and hubbub was Carlisle city that day; yet, as the two entered the courtyard of the castle, James was aware of another sound, rising clear above the tumult of the town—strains of music, surely, that came from a fiddle. As they stepped under the inner gateway and approached the Norman Keep, the fiddler himself came in sight playing with might and main, under a barred window about six feet from the ground. By the fiddler's side, urging him on, was a huge, burly ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... it. He's not even told one of his fine friends what his brother does; he says it's for the sake of his school. He's living a lie for his own pride. He's got himself made master of a college, fine as a fiddle, and he cares more about that than about his brother. With all his prayers and his sermons in church every Sunday, he'd let me go to the dogs rather than live out the truth. He thinks I've gone to the devil now, because I left him in a rage, and I told him I'd go and learn ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... that the grotesque humour of the Reader would play upon the risible nerves of his hearers, as, according to Mr. Disraeli's phrase, Sir Robert Peel used to play upon the House of Commons, "like an old fiddle." Determined to Go Into Society in style, with his twelve thousand odd hundred, Mr. Chops, we are told, "sent for a young man he knowed, as had a very genteel appearance, and was a Bonnet at a gaming-booth. Most respectable brought up," adds Mr. Magsman—"father having been imminent in the ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... difficult to imagine. Only one street lamp in three is lighted, and the cafes, which close at 10.30, are put on half-allowance of gas. To mend matters, everyone who likes is allowed to put up a shed on the side walk to sell his goods, or to collect a crowd by playing a dirge on a fiddle. The consequence is that the circulation is rendered almost impossible. I suggested to a high authority that the police ought at least to interfere to make these peripatetic musicians "move on," but he told me that, were they to do so, they would be accused of being "Corsicans ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... my story for you, the life-story of old Rosin the Beau, your friend and true lover. Some day, not far distant now, my fiddle and I shall be laid away, in the quiet spot you know and love; and then (for you will miss me, Melody, well I know that!) this writing will be read to you, and you will hear my voice still, and will learn to know me better even ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... family. Across the street was a movie between two lurid posters, and there was a dance hall overhead. The windows were all open, and faintly above the roar of the street he could hear the piano, drum, fiddle and horn. The thoroughfare each moment grew more tumultuous to his ears, with trolley cars and taxis, motor busses, trucks and drays. A small red motor dashed uptown with piles of evening papers; a great black motor hearse ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... ungovernable, impenitent, or self-sufficient, especially Taberner, Phipps, and Church, who, as I am informed, have, in violation of my sub-dean's and chapter's order in December last, at the instance of some obscure persons unknown, presumed to sing and fiddle ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... Macora provided a varied entertainment for his guests. It included a grand feast, with songs and dancing, the latter done to the sounds of the tom-tom drum, and one-stringed African fiddle. ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... one thing easily and others another, and every fellow has to work hard to learn those things which belong, as it were, to the other fellows. There are chaps, I suppose, like the Admirable Crichton, who are born good all round, and can play the fiddle, polish off Euclid, ride, shoot, lick anyone at any game, all without the slightest trouble, but one does not come across them often, thank goodness. I say, do ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... row-boat up Loch Katrine, though both on that and Loch Lomond you may go in a hateful little steamer with a squeaking fiddle to play Rob Roy MacGregor O. I walked almost all the way through the pass from Loch Katrine to Loch Lomond; it was a distance of six miles; but you feel as if you could walk sixty in that pure, exhilarating air. At Inversnaid we took boat ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... quaint child had gravely informed her that she looked like Connie and immediately taken her into his confidence regarding his aspirations toward some day playing in "a big band." He had also obligingly favored her with a solo of marvelous shrieks and squawks on his much tortured "fiddle." Mary loved children, and this, perhaps, went far toward stilling the jealousy, which, so far, only faintly stirring, bade fair to one day burst ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... is the pride O' chaps an' maidens vur an' wide; They can't keep up a merry tide, But Bob is in the middle. If merry Bob do come avore ye, He'll zing a zong, or tell a story; But if you'd zee en in his glory, Jist let en have a fiddle. ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... is a catgut in a fiddle. No fiddle without catgut—no music without cats. Don't talk to me about soul or musical ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... throng that steps to the tune of a fiddle, that hangs on the moods of a caterer, whose inspiration is a good dinner, whose aspiration is a new dance,— that crowd is never missed by any one who really delights in the manifold attractions ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... slang. One is a good hand at construing, another at climbing. Some boys are peculiarly skilled at casting accounts, others in casting stones. Here we have a boy of a small appetite and many words, there one of a large appetite and few words. Sometimes precocious talent is evinced for playing the fiddle, sometimes for playing a stick; sometimes, again, a strong propensity is discovered for playing the fool. This boy makes verses, as it were, by inspiration; that boy shows an equal capacity in making mouths. The most peculiar talent, however, ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... there. Another blow! Managing to dodge Willie, he hurried home to meet the second morning delivery. Nothing again! . . . His mother's anxious questions as to his health irritated him, and he so far lost his temper as to ask his sister why she was wearing a face like a fiddle. Poor Jeannie! For half the night she had been weeping for her hero and wishing the most awful things for ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... reverie. "I have her!" he said to himself; "I have her in a vice! She cannot escape me; she cannot let the old man die! Those curs have served my purpose well; they are as easy to play on as a fiddle, and I am a good player. Yes, and now we are getting to the end ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... infancy, and, disdaining a subordinate existence, boldly seceded from the society of harlequin and the tumblers, and met the world as an independent institution. Singers organized themselves into quartet bands; added a fiddle and tambourine to their instruments—perhaps we should say implements—of music; introduced the hoe-down and the conundrum to fill up the intervals of performance; rented halls, and, peregrinating from city to city and from town to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... making sleds after the manner of the country. They are made of a single plank turned up at one end like a fiddle head, and the baggage is lashed on in bags and sacks. Two other Indians arrived from the woods. Engaged ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... said. "But—they're far from silent. That waistcoat—" He stopped and gave me another nervous, timid look. He found it hard to believe a man of my sort, so self-assured, would stand the truth from a man of his second-fiddle sort. ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... don't teach you that direct appeal in Paris," he thought. "It's British. Come, I am going to sleep, I must wake up, I must aim higher—aim higher," cried the little artist to himself. All through his tea and afterward, as he was giving his eldest boy a lesson on the fiddle, his mind dwelt no longer on his troubles, but he was rapt into the better land; and no sooner was he at liberty than he hastened with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in him till being persuaded to play the fiddle he sat in the "social room," and sawed away on "Honest John," "The Devil's Dream," "Haste to the Wedding," and "The Fisher's Hornpipe." He lost all sense of being a millionnaire, and returned to his simple, unsophisticated ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
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