|
|
|
More "Staccato" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from the first, typifies the appeal for mercy made by the women in the drama. No contrast could be stronger than that between these two themes—the first, impulsive, staccato, of sweeping range, and in the minor; the second, suave, legato, restrained and in the major. They show indeed how powerfully Beethoven's imagination was impressed by the subject. After an eloquent expansion of the second theme there follow several ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... the hall, tried to put on Mr. Wheeler's instead in his excitement. Also, becoming very dignified after the overcoat incident, and making an exit which should conceal his wild exultation and show only polite pleasure, he stumbled over Micky, so that they finally departed to a series of staccato yelps. ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... honorable member for Blackberry Pastures responded by some keen and graphic observations, while the Olympian host, anxious that so much material should be spun into something, beamed smiling encouragement upon all parties. But the conversation became more and more staccato. Hawthorne, a statue of night and silence, sat a little removed, under a portrait of Dante, gazing imperturbably upon the group; and as he sat in the shadow, his dark hair and eyes and suit of sables made him, in that society, the black thread of mystery which he weaves into his ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... mode of musical execution known as the staccato, appropriate to energetic passages—to passages expressive of exhilaration, of resolution, of confidence. The action of the vocal muscles which produces this staccato style is analogous to the muscular action which produces the sharp decisive, energetic movements of body indicating these states of mind; and therefore it is that the staccato style has the meaning we ascribe to it. Conversely, slurred intervals are expressive of gentler and less active feelings; ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... the thicket of currant bushes, and, from the remarks which Stanley barked out in yelping staccato, he punctured that gentleman's person in several places with the fine shot of which the charge consisted. He would have fired again if the recoil had not thrown him quite off his balance, and it is possible that someone would have been killed as a result. For Stanley began firing ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... high above the hum of the betting ring rose the notes of a bugle. The last field of the season was being called to the track and instead of the usual staccato summons ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... he would dance a hornpipe, whistling his own music in sharp staccato notes, as from a piccolo. He could likewise "present arms" with a little straw musket which I had provided for him; besides feigning to be dead, and allowing you to take him up by the legs, his head hanging down, apparently lifeless, the while, without stirring—although ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... their number were prostrated by the storm, while the dry channels on the mountain-side became raging, foaming torrents. Suddenly the winds changed, a chilling blast swept across the plateau, and to the rush of the wind, the roar of the thunder, and the crash of falling timber was added the sharp staccato of swiftly descending hail. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... minutes the biplane hummed on and on in long rising and falling slants, like a swallow skimming the surface of a lake. The even staccato of the exhaust, echoless in that height and vacancy, rippled with cadences like a monster mowing-machine. And Stern was beginning to consider himself as good as in Boston already—was beginning to wonder where the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... ponderous. In the vague light, it looked misshaped and discolored. A piece of equipment that had taken a bad beating of some kind. But it was functioning. As he stared, intermittent bursts of clicking noises rose from it, like the staccato of ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... Street at nine o'clock levels all distinctions of rank as impartially as the grave. Again and again I loitered at the heels of a couple of resplendent beings, only to overhear, when I expected the level voice of culture, the staccato "Sez he," "Sez I" that is the mark of the white ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... the water was fast assuming the proportions of a motor-launch. He noticed too that the approaching craft was coming at a high rate of speed and was swerving shoreward. Tugging harder at the nets, he worked doggedly on, listening to the staccato bark of the speed-craft as Mascola drew close. They were hauling at the last string when he ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... dress. His, however, was as little conventional as possible, and while he nervously adjusted it he could not help recognizing that it was exceedingly becoming. He tore a tie and destroyed two collars, however, before the result satisfied him, and his nerves were at leaping pitch when staccato chords upon the piano announced that the concert had begun. He found a seat in the farthest corner of the saloon, and waited, penciling feverish circles upon the green-topped table ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... from the excellent violinist Slavik. With the exception of Paganini, I never heard a violin-player like him. Ninety-six staccato notes in one bow! It is almost incredible! When I heard him I felt inclined to return to my lodgings and sketch variations on an Adagio [which they had previously agreed to take for ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... always queer." This was spoken in a staccato, snapping-turtle way. But when one has lived all one's life with a snapping-turtle, one doesn't mind. Julia did not mind. She was curious to know what was the matter with her uncle, Andrew Anderson. ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... theirs at the spring under the knoll where Carley had camped with Glenn and the Hutters. Carley watched the golden rosy sunset, and as the day ended she breathed deeply as if in unutterable relief. Supper found her with appetite she had long since lost. Twilight brought cold wind, the staccato bark of coyotes, the flicker of camp fires through the cedars. She tried to embrace all her sensations, but they were so rapid and many ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... woman you meant?" said the General, turning to Boris. He spoke as if he were on the parade-ground, every word sharp, caustic, staccato. ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... word "Moderato" was written in by the Composer's direction, without any request from the editor. Later, the words "With feeling" and the mark of expression "pp," were obtained in the same way. Ties, grace-notes, and staccato-marks were insisted upon, here and there, with great vigor ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... advise you to fasten a quarrel upon me." Montgomery was speaking in the hard, staccato voice of a man who is holding himself in with difficulty. "You'll save trouble if you'll go quietly. If you don't you'll be hurt. Ah, ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... peering out into the darkness of the cloud-enshrouded night, there came to him from across the water, like a slap in the face, so sudden and unexpected was it, the sharp staccato of an exchange of shots and then the scream of ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... absence of vibratory media the noises of the reef are isolated. furtive, echoless—staccato accidentals and dull dissonances out of tune with the soothing theme of the sea. Hence, when, as I wandered absorbed in an inspection of minor details, and a mellow whistle, constant but varying in volume, broke in upon my musings, it was ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... a quick staccato and then descended to long-drawn tones, deep and full. "This is better, but I have never played it for you because that it is Polish, and to make it in English and so sing it is hard. You have ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... the side car and barked a few crisp, sharp orders that brooked no hesitation. The responsive little motor roared its staccato eagerness as the machine lurched forward, ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... Now, I say cauliflower exactly as it is spelled but that isn't right. It is "Culliefleur," said staccato. And honey—one day I wanted honey and after I had sung "Hunnie, hunnie" in high C, and he didn't understand, I went around and picked out a jar of it. "Oh," he said reproachfully, ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... than usual from the office, had found, on the hall-table, a note which, since morning, had been under his mother's observation. The envelope, fashionable in tint and texture, was addressed in a rapid staccato hand which seemed the very imprint of Miss Verney's utterance. Mrs. Peyton did not know the girl's writing; but such notes had of late lain often enough on the hall-table to make their attribution easy. This ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... slouched warily round the house and came in view of the stoep she emitted a staccato whistle of dismay. Tethered out upon the vagabondish grass was—not one motor-car, but three! An opulent thing of blinking brass and crimson leather arrogated to itself the exclusive shade of the largest tree; a long grey torpedo affair of two seats occupied the pasturage of the Kerry cow; ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... with perfect self-restraint, said a few things a trifle staccato, defining Man, his dual destiny, his hope of heaven, and all the great business in which he himself had fought hard. But from a fine military tradition, he said nothing of his actions, nor even of his shrine in Normandy, of which he is ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... pointed; he stood with his shoulders well thrown back, and with a lateral curve of his person when he talked about art which would alone have carried conviction, even if he had not had a thick, dark bang coming almost to the brows of his mobile gray eyes, and had not spoken English with quick, staccato impulses, so as to give it the effect ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... anything I had ever heard, I was thrown into an ecstasy of delight, and could not imagine from what kind of bird larynx so quaint a medley could emanate. The song opened with a loud, fine, piercing whistle, and ended with an abrupt staccato gurgle much lower in the musical staff, sounding precisely as if the soloist's performance had been suddenly choked off by the rising of water in the windpipe. It was something after the order of the purple martin's melodious sputter, only the tones were richer and fuller and the music better defined, ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... his chair like a tiger. His hand dropped to his pocket, so swiftly that my eyes did not follow it. And as it dropped, a single staccato shot split the darkness of the room. The scientist slumped forward in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... father, attempting to find some way out of the blackness. As usual with Wells, the best feature of the novel is the way in which he expresses the point of view of the average man. He has the trick of recording reflections in a sort of staccato style, with gaps here and there—just the way that one does think. There is some rot in the book, but on the whole it is very ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... Staccato, hurried, nervous, brisk, Cascading, intermittent, choppy, The brittle voice of Mrs. Fiske Shall serve me now as copy. Assist me, O my Muse, what time I pen a bit ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... meanings, they ARE meanings through their power of direct suggestion and induction. They may become what they signify. Nor is this power confined to words alone; on its possession by the phrase, sentence, or verse rests the whole theory of style. The short, sharp staccato, the bellowing turbulent, the swimming melodious circling sentence ARE truly what they mean, in their form as in the objective sense of their words. The sound-values of rhythm and pace have been in other chapters fully dwelt upon; the expressive power of breaks and variations ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... Polly Sparkes throughout her leisurely toilet was moved to irritation and curiosity by the sound of frequent laughter on the other side of the party wall—uproarious peals, long chucklings in a falsetto key, staccato bursts ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... to see any doctors," the woman said, in tones crisp and staccato with pain and irritation. "Go away. Good night. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... in pleasant contrast to the shrill staccato accents I had heard in that gloomy underground room of the Foreign Office at Berlin.... I could see at a glance that his present attitude was not a pose,—his simplicity, like his courage and democracy, was GENUINE.... It explains the reason for his composure at ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... opposite corner of the same block. There was quite an excitement here when we came in. Two men and two girls were playing on native instruments—one of the men on a sort of fiddle, and the other on a rude guitar; the girls, one striking, in sharp staccato fashion, a wooden perforated bowl inverted on a standard or post, and the other a kind of cymbal; they were singing in the same shrill, monotonous way we had heard before. We counted eight girls here. There was a piece of unpainted tin ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... accent; it keeps peeping out here and there, and when they chatter together they are like a bevy of peacocks. Nothing is more amusing than to watch two American girls greeting each other in a drawing-room or in the Row. They are like children with their shrill staccato cries of wonder, their odd little exclamations. Their conversation sounds like a series of exploding crackers; they are exquisitely incoherent and use a sort of primitive, emotional language. After five minutes they are left beautifully breathless and look at each other half in amusement ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... in the silence shuffling and staccato footsteps were heard, announcing the approach of a youthful art class and their teacher. "Jade," said the voice of the lady, "one of the hardest of known substances, has yet been beautifully worked ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... train emerge from the tunnel, felt it jar to a standstill in the station of Modane, and, in obedience to staccato French outcries on the platform, alighted in the frontier town. Followed by Van Blarcom and preceded by our porters, I strolled in leisurely fashion towards the customs shed. The air was clear, chilly, invigorating; snowy peaks were thick and near. And the scene was picturesque, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... When the staccato beats of the ponies' hoofs ceased, he shouted: "Come on, boys, make this your home. Everything goes, and the Sweetwater outfit is ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... essay on Cobbett and the magnificent diapason in which he unrolls the panorama of Coleridge's mind. In both passages there is the same sentence-norm. In the first, the periods, not bound by any connecting words, strike distinctly, sharply, with staccato abruptness. The movement is that of a clean-limbed wrestler struggling with confident energy to pin down a ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... drop that little game at once, you young monkey!" struck in the sharp staccato of a semi-excited voice. "Interfering with young ladies, eh? Let's have a look at you. Don't be afraid, Miss Lorne—nobody's going ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... his board, reading instruments and keying controls. So he was back on the job. Mannion sat, head bent, monitoring his recorder. The room was filled with the keening staccato of the alien transmission. ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... turned abruptly and began to play again. A nervous little staccato scherzo fell from his fingers, but it dropped almost at once into a quieter melody, and ended with something that sounded very much like the last strain of "Home, Sweet Home." Then he wheeled about ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... explanation, and again Boris caught the sound of his voice, noticing that sometimes he spoke shortly, staccato—sometimes drawled as if he were singing, and then rapped out his words smartly ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... is the most facile of all orchestral wind instruments; and the device of double tonguing, the quick repetition of notes by taking a staccato T-stop in blowing, is well known. The flute generally goes with the violins in the orchestra, or sustains long notes with the other wood wind instruments, or is used in those conversational passages with other instruments that ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... portiere aside with a curved hand and gracefully separated fingers; it was a staccato movement, and her body followed it after an instant's poise of hesitation, head thrust a little forward, eyes inquiring, and a tentative smile, although she knew precisely who was there. You would have been aware at once that she was an actress. She entered the room with a little stride, ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... assembled at five o'clock. There were no ladies present except Speranski's little daughter (long-faced like her father) and her governess. The other guests were Gervais, Magnitski, and Stolypin. While still in the anteroom Prince Andrew heard loud voices and a ringing staccato laugh—a laugh such as one hears on the stage. Someone—it sounded like Speranski—was distinctly ejaculating ha-ha-ha. Prince Andrew had never before heard Speranski's famous laugh, and this ringing, high pitched ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Lewis's attempts to depict passion or describe character. Bold, flaunting splashes of colour, strongly marked, passionate faces, exaggerated gestures start from every page, and his style is as extravagant as his imagery. Sometimes he uses a short, staccato sentence to enforce his point, but more often we are engulfed in a swirling welter of words. He delights in the declamatory language of the stage, and all his characters speak as if they were behind the footlights, shouting ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... performed on an instrument incapable of modulation (this was not a pedal Harp), when another visit from Abel brought him back to the Viol da Gamba. He now saw the imperfection of sudden sounds that instantly die away—if you wanted staccato, it was to be had by a proper management of the bow, and you might also have notes as long as you please. The Viol da Gamba is the only instrument, and Abel the prince of musicians! This, and occasionally ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... shout, and the bark of a dog. She had a blurred consciousness of a whole troupe of men scrambling down the choked ravine, of glad questions and joyous answers, of a delirious dog leaping on board and yelping staccato assurances that everything was all right in a most wonderful world. Then she found herself in Courtenay's arms, and heard him say ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... arms on the top of her music-book, she rested her chin upon them, and sat looking seaward, singing a difficult passage, in the midst of which her nimble voice tripped on an E flat, and, missing the staccato step, rolled helplessly down in a legato flood of melody; whereupon, with an impatient grimace she shut her eyes, weary of watching the wave-shimmer that almost dazzled her. After a few seconds, when she opened them, there stood just on the edge ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... of hearing you read," she said, at last. "You do read abominably. First you go along in staccato jerks, then you drone in a monotone. Philip is a fine reader. I love to hear Philip read. I wish he'd come in to-day. I wonder why he doesn't? Probably because you're here. He must have taken a violent dislike to ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... means of the folds or membranous valves the mouths of the bronchial tubes may be opened widely or almost closed, and in this way, to quote from Mr. Thompson, "the bird is enabled to measure in the nicest manner the amount of air thrown from the lungs into the trachea." In producing a staccato, for example, the valves flop up and down, doling out the air at the proper intervals and in ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... pressed their hands to their bosom or voluptuously outspread their arms, which seemed to flutter as the wings of Iris or Nephthys, dragged their limbs, bent the knee, displayed their swift feet with little staccato movements, and followed every undulation of the music. The maids, standing against the wall to leave free space for the evolutions of the dancers, marked the rhythm by snapping their fingers or clapping ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... back, half closed his eyes; again pain, fatigue seemed creeping over him. Outside sounded the clicking and clinking of glasses, a staccato of guffaws, tones vivace. "The harm's been done so far as you are concerned; you, as a factor, ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... ballooned about her, the ruffle of her collar stood out like a little frill of white neck feathers. She had a fixed, foolish expression, maintained an energy of motion that was persistent and amazing, and gave out at regular intervals a short, staccato squeal that was scarcely human ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... leather, became, by the interposition of a piece of cloth between the hammer and the strings, the piano, harp, or celeste. The more complete sourdine, which muted all the strings by contact of a long strip of leather, acted as the staccato, pizzicato, or pianissimo. The Germans further displayed that ingenuity in fancy stops Mersenne had attributed to them in harpsichords more than a hundred and fifty years before, by a bassoon pedal, a card which by a rotatory half-cylinder just impinging upon the strings produced a reedy twang; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... all was close packed about a swarthy young chap whose bushy hair waved in response to the violence of his oratory. He, too, was perspiring with his ideas. He had a marvellous staccato method of question and answer. He would shoot a question like a rifle bullet at the heads of his audience, and then stiffen back like a wary boxer, both clenched hands poised in a tremulous gesticulation, and before any one could answer his bullet-like ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... out of nowhere, tottered, was edged sideways, and of a sudden disappeared helplessly out through the open window with a frightened, fragmentary cry that died staccato on the bosom of the clamor. By the faint light streaming from the building backing on the area Edith had a quick impression that it had been the tall soldier with ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and it points an excellent moral; but it is chiefly interesting as a whimsical freak of verse, an extravaganza in staccato. The rhyming is of its kind almost incomparable as a sustained effort in double and triple grotesque rhymes. Not even in Hudibras, not even in Don Juan, is there anything like them. I think all other experiments of the ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... We thronged the windows, leaning out that we might miss nothing. Through the half mile of people that stretched between us and the music a shudder of excitement was running. Then came cheers—the deep-throated babel of men's voices and the shrill staccato of women's. "They're coming," some one cried; then I ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... re-read it, repeating it, with noiseless lips. The tune it went to seemed inadequate, the more so as in our church tunes were always dragged to the limit of non-conformist dolorousness. The stanza seemed to me, even then, happy, hopeful, staccato, jubilant. I wonder what I should have thought had I known its author was a Methodist? Could good come out of Nazareth, after all? Instead, I fell to wondering about the after life in the sky. Heaven I pictured as a city builded on a cloud. If, on a very clear day, the cloud should dry ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... myrtle blooms; The thrush, poor wanderer, dropping meekly down, Clad in his remnant of autumnal brown; The oriole, drifting like a flake of fire Rent by a whirlwind from a blazing spire. The robin, jerking his spasmodic throat, Repeats, imperious, his staccato note; The crack-brained bobolink courts his crazy mate, Poised on a bulrush tipsy with his weight; Nay, in his cage the lone canary sings, Feels the soft air, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... adjusted; Koku whirled the propeller blades. There was a staccato succession of explosions, a rushing, roaring sound, and then the craft rose like a bird, and Tom circled about, making a straight course for the distant town, while below him the creek rose higher and higher as the dam continued ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... all right after a cup of tea." And Sally, after an intricate movement with a safety-pin, an openwork lace cuff that has lost a button, and a white wrist, goes down three accelerandos of stair-lengths, with landing pauses, and ends with a dining-room door staccato. But she isn't long gone, for in two minutes the door reopens, and she comes upstairs as fast, nearly, as she went down. In her hand she carries, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... as inspector-general. He certainly was a most indefatigable fellow, and went at his work with an enthusiasm that made him very useful for a time. It was worth something to see a man who worked with a kind of dash,—with a prompt, staccato movement that infused spirit and energy into all around him. He would drill all day, and then spend half the night trying to catch sentinels and officers of the guard at fault in their duty. My first impression was ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... as the hunters were sure they were coming in our direction we hurried to the bottom of the gorge and began the sharp ascent on the other side. It was almost straight up and before we had gone a hundred feet we were all gasping for breath and my legs seemed like bars of lead, but the staccato yelps of the dogs sounding closer and closer ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... often preferable to music made by earthly hands. Let it be abolished. Electrocute the composer and banish the music-critic. Then let there be elected a supervisory board of trusty guardians, men absolutely above the reproach of having played the concertina or plunked staccato tunes on a banjo. Entrust to their care all beautiful music and poetry and prohibit the profane, vulgar, the curious, gaping herd from even so much as a glance at these treasures. For the few, the previous elect, the quintessential in art, let no music be sounded throughout the ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... gentle humor, and his cheeks reddened as he felt the calm scrutiny of the woman's searching glances. He was now determined to take the whip hand, and to keep it. His accents were staccato as he said, "Tell me now who you are, and what you wish of me!" A clock, hung high over them on the dreary, drab walls, ticked away brusquely, as the angered woman gazed ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... Mohammedan feast of Ramadhan. During the feast, which lasts a month, night is turned into day. No food is allowed, in theory, from sunrise to sunset. Drums beat, dogs howl, cocks crow and the revellers shout and wail and clap their hands in long, rhythmic, staccato periods, and explosions of powder occur under ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... unfamiliar noises. From one of the balconies near at hand, though unseen, a gong, a pipe, and some kind of stringed instrument wailed and thundered in unison. There was a vast shuffling of padded soles and a continuous interchange of singsong monosyllables, high-pitched and staccato, while from every hand rose the strange aromas of the East—sandalwood, punk, incense, oil, and the smell ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... swung to that side," Steinmetz admitted in his rather affected staccato. "At all events he's out of my beat." His beat was the respiratory tract and his treatment the last word in vaccines ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... head, and on the moment out flew the rope, whirled into space with a skilful jerk which sent the noose flying wide, and with an accuracy of aim which brought it right round the neck of the new-comer. She squealed indeed, but horror of horrors! she squealed in French, with such staccato "Oh's" and "Ah's" of astonishment as could only have come from one person in the house. It was Mademoiselle herself! and lifting her glance she beheld six horrified faces peering at her over the banisters, six pairs of startled eyes, ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the front room of the little cottage that squatted in the black shadow below Judge Maynard's huge house on the hill. No sound broke the heavy silence save the staccato clip-clip of the long shears in the fingers of the girl who was leaning almost breathlessly over the work spread out on the table beneath the feeble glow of the single oil-lamp, unless the faint, monotonous murmur which came in an endless sing-song from the lips of ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... In attempting to do so, therefore, I hope I shall be excused if I don't make the difference so apparent in the description as it is in reality. The latter part of the note of the Grey Wagtail when flying is higher in the musical scale than the former part, and is very staccato, thus: [BAR OF MUSIC] generally being uttered as the bird makes a spring in the air, [10] whilst the latter part of the note of the summer-bird is lower in the scale than the former part, which is more prolonged than in the note of the Grey Wagtail, and is ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... her but rather thinks aloud looking into space. HETTY, however, looks at HARRIET, talks intently and shadows her continually. The same is true of MARGARET and MAGGIE. The voices of the cultured women are affected and lingering, the voices of the primitive impulsive and more or less staccato. When the curtain rises HARRIET is seated right of tea table, busying herself with ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... talk at the speed that they were making, with their own horses breathing heavily, O'Rourke's especially; the guns thundering along behind them and the advance-guard clattering in front, and their attention distracted every other minute by the noise of volleys on ahead and the occasional staccato rattle of independent firing. The whole sky was now alight with the reflection of the burning barracks and they could see the ragged outlines of the cracking walls silhouetted against the blazing ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... crosses on the German's wings stand out clearly. You think of him as some sort of big bug. Then you hear the rapid tut-tut-tut of his machine gun. The man that dived ahead of you becomes mixed up with the topmost German. He is so close it looks as if he had hit the enemy machine. You hear the staccato barking of his mitrailleuse and see him pass from ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... continued Breede, in staccato explosions, "that the 'quipment is nes'ry part of road, without which road would be tot'ly crippled, you will note these first moggige 'quipment bonds take pri'rty over first-moggige bonds, an' gov'n y'sef ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... certainly a fine subject, in spite of her sulkiness, and he grew absorbed in his work, and painted away, with Miss Snell at his elbow making little staccato remarks of admiration as the sketch progressed. Suddenly he jumped up, realizing how long he had kept ...
— Different Girls • Various
... padded seclusion of the president's inner office, while two blocks away swelled a storm, whose echoes only reached them in the sharp staccato of the ticker in the corner as it vomited a strip of white paper. Wimperley stood there, the strip slipping between his fingers, while selling orders began to pour in to Philadelphia, and the price of Consolidated crumbled like dust. He could visualize the scene on the floor of the ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... in queer staccato sentences. "Shouldn't have much difficulty, though; responsibility lies between two men. Here all last night. Nobody else. Callahan and O'Brien holdin' 'em. One 's Page's private secretary; fellow named Burke—Alexander ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... noon whistle shrieked its high, staccato note from the engine-house, they went up to the mess, and seated themselves at the head of the table. As a whole, the men were fairly satisfactory. Bill stared coldly down the table, and appeared to be mentally tabulating those who would draw but one pay-check, and that when their "time" ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... as far as to say he used to be a Boche pilot in that fuss across the big water," continued Perk, reflectively, as though certain memories of the long-ago had awakened in his brain—recollections that breathed of action, staccato machine-gun fire, exploding shells, and the terrible odor of gas that had poisoned so many of his ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... thinking noisy thoughts. Noisy thoughts, jarring thoughts, stunts like the concentration-interrupter of playing the first twenty notes of Brahms' Lullaby in perfect pitch and timing and then playing the twenty-first note in staccato and a half-tone flat. Making mental contact with Barcelona was approximately the analogue of eavesdropping upon the intimate cooing of a lover sweet-talking his lady in the middle of a sawmill working on an order three days late under a high priority and ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... word simile [Transcriber's Note: Corrected error "similie"] (sometimes segue) indicates that a certain effect previously begun is to be continued, as e.g., staccato playing, pedalling, style of bowing in violin music, etc. The word segue is also occasionally used to show that an accompaniment figure (especially in orchestral music) ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... had a voice like Mere Ursule's lovely soprano, and Mr. Pepys a pretty tenor; and you can imagine nothing more silvery sweet than the union of the two voices to the staccato notes of the viol, dropping in here and there like music whispered. The setting was Mr. Pepys' own, and he seemed overcome with pride when we praised it. When the song was over, Fareham came to the bench where Papillon and I were sitting, and asked me what I thought of ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... double-bass!" cried Andy; and the whole orchestra, except the first violin of the leader, burst into a boisterous rendering of a popular street song, in which Just sawed forth the leading part, while the others kept up a rattling staccato accompaniment. Evelyn and Lucy became breathless with laughter, and Mr. and Mrs. Birch, who had just slipped into the room, joined ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... warehouses who found their buildings useless, once the overtopping elevator went up alongside—from small buyers who found themselves being driven out of the market with the flat warehouses. But these voices were drowned in the swish of grain in the chutes and the staccato of the elevator engines—lost in the larger exigencies of the wheat. The railway company held to their promises and the tall grain boxes reared their castor tops against the sky in ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... contribution. The text has been edited for private circulation, and it is this text which is followed here. A few modifications, of a technical nature, have been made in the stage directions; but even with these slight changes, the directions are staccato, utilitarian in conciseness, rather than ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... backing, and that he stood high in the councils of the range. When Van Horn spoke, men listened. His eye flashed with his words and his long, straight hair shook defiance at opposition. He swore with a staccato that really meant things and cut like a knife. When once started, ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... her, already he had risen and was pacing restlessly about the room, peering out the windows, addressing staccato questions in French to Piqueur. He pulled the shabby silken rope at the doorway and a bell trilled ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... the five fingers rested on the notes E, F sharp, G sharp, A sharp and B, and without change of position required the practice of exercises calculated to insure independence. The pupil was instructed to go through these exercises first staccato, effected by a free movement of the wrist, an admirable means of counteracting heaviness and clumsiness, then legato-staccato, then accented legato, then pure legato, modifying the power from pp to ff, and the ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... in the mountains it roared and whistled. From somewhere in the distance came the low rumble of a pack of wolves, punctuated at intervals by the sharp individual barking that a favorable gust of wind threw up into high staccato. ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... who I am! I won't! I won't!" she swore and reswore in a dozen different staccato accents. The whole daring passion of the Orient that costumed her seemed to have permeated every fiber ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... long gleaming folds of the portieres hung motionless. Still, a sharp and staccato clatter of hoofs that had risen in the street, might have ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... ahead, was barking in staccato volleys. There was another sound, a faint shout, unmistakably; human. The men looked at ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... audience and all eyes turned towards the grand pavilion. When the trumpet blew the second time, just before the Emperor came in sight, the hush deepened and the spectators watched intently. When his head appeared as he mounted the stairs the audience burst into the short, sharply staccato song of welcome, something like a tuneful, sing-song college yell, with which Roman crowds greeted their master. This vocal salute, a mere tag of eight or nine syllables, each with its distinctive note, was repeated over and over until the Emperor ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... well adapted to express the gravity of the thought, with the rapid and accelerated movement of "Hail to thee, blithe spirit!" so full of a quick joyousness. Or compare the light legato movement of "Bird of the wilderness, blithesome and cumberless," with the heavy staccato movement of "Waste endless and boundless ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... his domineering way. He was not quite so illiterate as his accent and his general air of uncouthness seemed to imply. In his speech, the broad vowels of the Lancashire dialect were grafted on to the clipped staccato of a Cockney. He would scoff at anyone who told him that knives and forks had precise uses, or that table-napkins were not meant to be tucked under the chin. In England, especially in the provinces, some men of affairs cultivate these ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... opens weirdly with the hollow strokes of the hour. There is a light, staccato passage suggesting the spectres tiptoeing from their graves to take their places in the fantastic circle. Then comes one of the most strikingly realistic passages in the composition—Death attempting to tune up his fiddle, an effect that is repeated at intervals throughout the ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... rainbow, for there were tears in her eyes. "No," she answered, "no." And with that he caught her in his arms: her smile, her slim shoulders, her head, they were all there, close, crushed against him. The bees hummed over the roses in the sunshiny garden; the locust sang his staccato song and stopped suddenly; petals of a rose floated against the black dress; but the two figures did not appear to breathe. Time and space, as the girl had said once, were fused. Then she stirred, pushed away his arms, and stood ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... shouted to his wolves in Eskimo; he cracked his whip, he flung his great arms over his head, and twice there rolled out of his chest deep peals of strange laughter. They had been traveling more than two hours when he gave voice to a sudden command that stopped the pack, and at a second command—a staccato of shrill Eskimo accompanied by the lash of his whip—the panting wolves sank upon their bellies in ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... costumes darted here and there-they were the aviators who were soon to risk life and limb for glory and gold. Most of them were nervously smoking cigarettes. The air was filled with guttural German or nasal French, while now and then the staccato Russian was heard, and occasionally the liquid tones of a Japanese. For men of many nations ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... Meredith, and even in these books the influence of the master is apparent. There is the apt use of an occasional archaic or unusual word, the short, strong descriptions, the striking metaphors, the somewhat staccato fashion of speech. Yet, in spite of this flavour, they have quite individuality enough to constitute a school of their own. Their faults, or rather perhaps their limitations, lie never in the execution, ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... more or less resonant medium; by the use—when the voice is employed—of conventional verbal symbols instead of the elements of significant speech; and—where actual verse has been spoken—by a treatment of the words in formal staccato scansion, or by the beating of time throughout the utterance. The last of these methods is a halting between two courses which casts doubt on the results as characteristic of either type of activity. There is ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... heard was Piet's voice pitched so low that she could not catch a word. Then came Jerry's in sharp, staccato tones. He seemed to be surprised at something, surprised and indignant. Twice she heard him fling out an emphatic denial. And, while she still listened with a panting heart, there came the tread of their feet upon the stairs, ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the crowd could be heard the sharp staccato click of the telegraph wires. Special trains were coming from Omaha, came the news. The police force had tried to keep the crowds from smothering each other, but they had torn down the gate of the station and rushed through, ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... on the fingers when the word genius was pronounced. Mentally and physically a German, he spoke English with a French accent. His hair was cropped en brosse, and in his brown Japanese face only the eyes, staccato, furtive, and drunk with curiosity, could be seen. He was direct, opinionated, bristling with energy, one of those tireless workers who disdain their youth and treat it as a disease. His entry into the group of his more socially ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... tune, at all events,—for the first ten or fifteen minutes Jerry dashed along to his heart's content, and his driver even urged him on,—then with other sleighs left far behind and a hill before him, Jerry brought the tune to a staccato, and Mr. Linden spoke. But the words were not very relevant ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... Her staccato warning deflected his mind from the course toward which it might have turned. He held up his head, listening. The slap of footsteps on a board walk could be plainly heard. A voice lifted itself in question into the night. The door of ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... fade. Sometimes, to complete the imposture, the names of Mendelssohn and Mozart are invoked, and, under cover of doing honor to an immortal composer, a chorus of young people assemble for periodical flirtation. On the whole, it is wise not to attempt too much. Miss Quaver, with her staccato notes and semi-professional minauderies, is not exactly a queen of song. Nor does it give one any exquisite delight to hear Sir Raucisonous Trombone give tongue in a French romance. The talented ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... ambition to see with his own sharp puncturing little eyes (Aileen said they reminded her of a sewing-machine needle playing staccato) several of the most flagrant examples of capitalistic extravagance where parasitic femalehood idled away their useless lives and servitors battened. In other words the extremely comfortable or the shamelessly luxurious homes built ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... were congregating, and issued his orders accordingly. Young Eames, the officer passing the orders to the gunners, stood very upright, close to the battery telephonist, and let his voice ring out in crisp staccato tones that would have won him full marks at Larkhill or Shoeburyness: "Aiming point top of tower. All guns ... Four 0 degrees Right.... Concentrate Two 0 minutes on Number One.... Corrector 152.... Why didn't you shout out your Fuze ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... these staccato jottings by what he knew of the character of his love, Trenholme's mind was sore with curiosity about it all, especially with regard to the character of ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... attention. Especially the words of the original German with their drastic alliteration may be commended to those who still doubt Wagner's powers as a poet. The music is mostly taken from the sailor's song (No. 5), but quite changed in character; the rapid staccato movement with the strongly marked figure of the bass have transformed the peaceful ditty into a dance of furies. The entry of the trombones at the words Heran zu Kampfe is characteristic of Wagner's employment of the brass throughout ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... the dog's head, and Binks licked her fingers once to show that he was grateful for what she'd done. But—and this was a big but—she was only a stop-gap. Now—and with another scurry of feet, he was once again jumping round the only one who really mattered. A series of short staccato yelps of joy too great to be controlled; a stumpy tail wagging so fast that the eye could scarcely follow it; a dog. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... shot the words at him staccato-fashion, as if they were things known from Great Primer days. The young druggist scratched ...
— The Day Time Stopped Moving • Bradner Buckner
... another sound. It was the deep staccato of the exhaust of an automobile, with opened muffler. It was tearing along ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... affrighted air of suspense was apparent. And there at the river-brink the author of this breathless dismay, some lithe flesh-eater, would stride, shadow-like, through the high reeds to drink. Now and then the woman-like scream of the wildcat, or the harsh staccato laugh of the hyena would startle the marshes into silence. Sometimes retiring shapes would halt and gaze with emberous eyes at the boat ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... floated the staccato note of a staff beating its surface, and the clanking tinkle of an iron ring against ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... to be condemned to read nothing but Ossian for a year. The short staccato sentences, the difficulty of getting hold of anything definite amid so many moonbeams, gliding ghosts, whistling reeds, and feasts of shells, has a very debilitating effect on the mind. There is too much weeping: one is constantly saying with Tennyson, "Tears, idle ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... before the slip, the plane turned and went away, making a complete circle, then coming to rest. To the surprise of every one, the rapid staccato bark of the Lewis gun broke the silence. Kennedy was evidently firing, but at what? ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... awoke, and after washing his lips at the tank, sounded the soldiers' clarion call, the "Reveille." Instantly the whole bivouac was alive, but scarcely had the bugle notes died away when the telephone buzzer began to give forth a series of sharp, staccato sounds. The Czech operator gave a sharp ejaculation, like "Dar! Dar! Dar!" looking more serious as the sounds proceeded. He then calmly hung up the speaking-tube on the tree that supported our home and began to explain to my interpreter, Lieutenant Bolsaar, ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... gurgled softly in the desert stillness—a stillness sharply broken. From afar off came a strange call, the long-drawn howl of a coyote. It was not alone. Instantly from a point dead ahead rose another, grooving into the echo of the first in a staccato yelp. Then the first opened up with a choking whine that lifted steadily into an ecstatic mating-call, and Pat saw a black something, blacker even than the night, leap against the far, faint skyline, dangle ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... but with an added air of tested capability that inspired all beholders. Only their German musicians still seemed fresh from the mint, and oh! in what unlucky taste, considering the ecclesiastics, the song they brayed forth in jaunty staccato. ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... turned into the cloak-room to remove their wraps. The air of vivacity pervading the place, or possibly it was her daughter's staccato liveliness, entered the blood of Mrs. Heth: she was imperious with the ladies' maid who assisted with the unwrapping. Carlisle, strolling about as she unbuttoned her gloves, came to the elaborate screen which sheltered the doorway and glanced out. Directly ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... elaborate hoax. Several of these distinguished gentlemen had never seen a wireless apparatus before, and showed some excitement as Hood made ready to send the most famous message ever transmitted through the ether. At last he threw over his rheostat and the hum of the rotary spark rose into its staccato song. Hood sent out a few V's ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... filled with incredulous wonder, stunned disbelief, Norhala for an instant faltered. Then out of her white throat, through her red lips pelted a tempest of staccato buglings. ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... a shout of "'Ware fire!" he sprang back and laid his match to the touch-hole. There was a spurt of flame as the long nine roared above the staccato bark of the musketry. Then they saw a section of the pirate's upper rail leap clear of her deck and fall overside. "Too high," said Job shortly, though Ghent and Curtis had cheered at the shot, for the distance was a good half-mile. Job worked feverishly ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... reflections on the respective national temperaments, fanciful perhaps, but interesting. It is not, however, under the figure of the etcher's art or of the process of the mint that we can fully represent Bergson's resources of style. These suggest staccato effects, hard outlines, and that does not at all represent the prose of this writer. It is a fine, delicately interwoven, tissue-like fabric, pliant and supple. If one were in the secret of M. Bergson's private thoughts, ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... C, from the Sonata in G, opus 14, are easy and pleasing. The theme itself affords a very pretty contrast between the staccato of the first period and the close legato of the second period. Then the sweetness of it is relieved by the strong syncopations which break it up, toward the end (measures 17 and 18). The first variation has the melody in ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... bethought him of throwing chunks of ice overboard, and as none among the natives had ever seen ice before, their amazement may well be imagined. The first boy to pick up a piece of the glittering whiteness let it drop with a howl, and when he caught his breath again warned the others in shrill staccato tones that he had been burned, that it was hot, muy caliente, wringing his hands as if, indeed, they had been scorched. Presently, finding that the burn left no mark and had stopped hurting, he shamefacedly ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... later, clear and distinct, that same wailing howl at the beginning—but ending in a staccato of quick sharp yelps that stirred his blood at once into a fiery excitement that it had never known before. The same instinct told him that this was the call—the hunt-cry. It urged him to come quickly. A few moments ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... thinks and lives gangasrotogati [Footnote: Like the river Ganges: presto.] among those only who think and live otherwise—namely, kurmagati [Footnote: Like the tortoise: lento.], or at best "froglike," mandeikagati [Footnote: Like the frog: staccato.] (I do everything to be "difficultly understood" myself!)—and one should be heartily grateful for the good will to some refinement of interpretation. As regards "the good friends," however, who are always too easy-going, and think that as friends they have a right to ease, one ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... another said that it suggested the biting realism of Brieux, he never, in his most secret thoughts, questioned the acumen of either lady. Harold's speech, even if you heard it in the next room and could not see him, told you that he had no sense of the absurd,—a throaty staccato, with never a downward ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... of wood out of his pocket, also a steel nail, and with the latter tapped several times upon the bit of veneering. Immediately they saw the sitting boy begin to fumble, as though he might be getting something out of his pocket. Then came an answering series of staccato taps, ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... that P. Sybarite entertained any misapprehensions as to the nature of the institution into which he had stumbled. He had not needed the sound, sometimes in quieter moments audible from upstairs, of a prolonged whirr ending in several staccato clicks, to make him shrewdly cognisant of its ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... larghetto, andante, andantino^; alla capella [It]; maestoso^, moderato; allegro, allegretto; spiritoso^, vivace^, veloce^; presto, prestissimo^; con brio; capriccioso^; scherzo, scherzando^; legato, staccato, crescendo, diminuendo, rallentando^, affettuoso^; obbligato; pizzicato; desto^. Phr. in notes by distance made more sweet [Collins]; like the faint exquisite music of a dream [Moore]; music arose with its voluptuous swell [Byron]; music is ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the trill or staccato tones the pressure of the breath must be felt even before the sound is heard. The beautiful, clear, bell-like tones that die away into a soft piano are tones struck on the apoggio and controlled by the steady soft pressure of the breath emitted through ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... nerves? Is not the blood taken from vital centers where Nature meant it to go for the upbuilding of womanhood and forced into the brain at a period when Nature meant that brain to be the very paradise of joyous dreams and happy imaginings? While we may thus gain a staccato smartness, a jerky and inconsequent brilliancy, do we not lose something of the natural woman and the delicious heartiness, spontaneous wit and instinctive wisdom of her? I venture no opinion here—I merely suggest the query. Why don't the doctors begin a crusade ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... tremendous and sounding epic of life. Valhalla itself could not be more glorious and sonorous. The classic marble on which we ate, the great, light-flooded, vitreous front, adorned with snow-white scrolls; the grand Wagnerian din of clanking cups and bowls, the flashing staccato of brandishing cutlery, the piercing recitative of the white-aproned grub-maidens at the morgue-like banquet tables; the recurrent lied-motif of the cash-register—it was a gigantic, triumphant welding of art ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... the platform, amid the enthusiastic applause of the audience, and performed his solo. Then Blind Tom sat down and played it after him so accurately, with the same staccato, old-fashioned touch of Auber, that no one could have told whether Auber was still at the piano. Auber returned and bowed to the wildly excited public and to us. He said, "This is my first appearance as a pianist, and ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... valves the mouths of the bronchial tubes may be opened widely or almost closed, and in this way, to quote from Mr. Thompson, "the bird is enabled to measure in the nicest manner the amount of air thrown from the lungs into the trachea." In producing a staccato, for example, the valves flop up and down, doling out the air at the proper intervals and in precisely the ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... which ached fiercely. His pony, having worked off its excess of spirit, settled down into a tireless pace that tested the picked mounts the planters had selected as their best, and the miles passed in silence save for staccato pounding of hoofs on hard packed earth and the swish of underbrush that lined the narrow ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... heaviness, until, Near sunless noon, we heard the ship's bell beating A melancholy staccato on dead metal; Saw the bare-footed watch come running aft; Felt, far below, the sudden telegraph jangle Its harsh metallic challenge, thrice repeated: 'Stand to. Half-speed ahead. Slow. Stop her!' They stopped. The plunging pistons sank ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... at once, replying to Nick in short, staccato tones. "I've had a message—just come through. It's the ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... had bespoken. Polly Sparkes throughout her leisurely toilet was moved to irritation and curiosity by the sound of frequent laughter on the other side of the party wall—uproarious peals, long chucklings in a falsetto key, staccato bursts of mirth. ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... visitor, in high staccato, oblivious of the fact that Claudius Tiberius had scooted in between his feet; "it will be my pleasure to claim your hospitality for ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... at his board, reading instruments and keying controls. So he was back on the job. Mannion sat, head bent, monitoring his recorder. The room was filled with the keening staccato of the alien transmission. ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... every noise was magnified as by a sounding-board. There were cheery hails, yachtsmen bawled over the mist-gemmed brass rails interchange of the day's experiences, and frisking yacht tenders, barking staccato exhausts, began to carry men to and fro on errands of sociability. In the silences Captain Candage could hear the popping of ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... Charlotte could not wait. She began to wave—no short, staccato, pump-handle wave, but a sweep indicative of breadth, like the horizon line. Raven, while they were jingling up to the house, took one more look at it, recognizing, with a surprise that was almost poignant, how much it meant to him. He might ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... cried Andy; and the whole orchestra, except the first violin of the leader, burst into a boisterous rendering of a popular street song, in which Just sawed forth the leading part, while the others kept up a rattling staccato accompaniment. Evelyn and Lucy became breathless with laughter, and Mr. and Mrs. Birch, who had just slipped into the room, ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... of his partner's advice he broke into English. "Shtay here," he repeated in loud, staccato accents. "I would ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... lazy afternoon breeze come the concerted yells of a bayonet class, practising frightfulness further down the valley; also the staccato chatter of Lewis guns punching holes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... he shot out in quick staccato, "Did you ever hear of Dr. Carrel's most recent discovery of accelerating the healing of wounds so that those which under ordinary circumstances might take ten days to heal might be healed in ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... at his desk, endeavouring to balance the firm's accounts from a paying-in book and a cheque-book, the counterfoils of which were only occasionally filled in, heard the staccato "Swindle! ... Swindle!" and knew that Bones had reached the pages whereon were displayed ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... the staccato notes of "Assembly" rang across the terrace as Polly sounded the call upon her bugle. The girls came hurrying from every direction and the ensuing hour and a half, usually free for recreation, was cheerfully given ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... now cast back, as though Old Scrubs slept feverishly. The drunkards were getting noisy. Handy Solomon still reeled off the verses of, his song. The others joined in, frightfully off the key; or punctuated the performance by wild staccato yells. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... misty meditation, at the second changin'-station, Suffered sudden dislocation, fled before the tuneless jar Of a Wagner obbligato, scherzo, doublehand staccato, Played on either pony's saddle by ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... whipped about in his chair like a tiger. His hand dropped to his pocket, so swiftly that my eyes did not follow it. And as it dropped, a single staccato shot split the darkness of the room. The scientist slumped ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... thus engaged, and chatting, that the staccato exhaust of a motor-boat drew their attention to the Island of Pipes. From the other side, a boat was poking around into the passage leading ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... for an hour, connecting and disconnecting, testing and listening and testing still again, before the right wire fell under his thumb. Then he listened intently, with a little start, for he knew he was reading an operator whose bluff, heavy, staccato "send" was as familiar to his long-practiced ear as a well-known face would be to his ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... Herbert—showed the greatest readiness to converse. Chlorine says that he spoke in a quick staccato. He was certainly voluble, and this ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... nearest box-car, spring to the platform of the Nadia and kick lustily at the locked door. The door was opened immediately by some one within, and the fugitive plunged to cover—but not before the Mexican's revolver had barked five times with the rapid staccato of a machine gun. ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... and their Kro-lu allies stood waiting for the word from Du-seen that would launch that barbed avalanche of death upon us, when there broke from the wood beyond the swamp the sweetest music that ever fell upon the ears of man—the sharp staccato of at least two score rifles fired rapidly at will. Down went the Galu and Kro-lu warriors like tenpins before ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... bugle glistening by his side. The sleeper awoke, and after washing his lips at the tank, sounded the soldiers' clarion call, the "Reveille." Instantly the whole bivouac was alive, but scarcely had the bugle notes died away when the telephone buzzer began to give forth a series of sharp, staccato sounds. The Czech operator gave a sharp ejaculation, like "Dar! Dar! Dar!" looking more serious as the sounds proceeded. He then calmly hung up the speaking-tube on the tree that supported our home ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... Nettie dropping into his store now and then to hear him practise over difficult bits from his piece that he was going to render at the musical entertainment for the Belgians, with him asking her if she thought he shaded the staccato passage a mite too heavy, or ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... was torn with the quick staccato of guns upon every hand. Abdul and Tarzan fired only at the flashes—they could not yet see their foemen. Presently it became evident that the attackers were circling their position, drawing closer and closer in as they began to realize ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... think of him as some sort of big bug. Then you hear the rapid tut-tut-tut of his machine gun. The man that dived ahead of you becomes mixed up with the topmost German. He is so close it looks as if he had hit the enemy machine. You hear the staccato barking of his mitrailleuse and see him pass from under the ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... of the room where the black shadows lay flicked a long tongue of flame. Muffled, staccato, came the report. And the yellow face at the window was ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... quiet in the front room of the little cottage that squatted in the black shadow below Judge Maynard's huge house on the hill. No sound broke the heavy silence save the staccato clip-clip of the long shears in the fingers of the girl who was leaning almost breathlessly over the work spread out on the table beneath the feeble glow of the single oil-lamp, unless the faint, monotonous murmur which ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... out the two words in a high staccato. He hated to be questioned, particularly by his wife. His hands reached for the satchel ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... contest as to which could drown the other's instrument, and the snapping time grew faster, until the dancers gasped, and men with long boots encouraged them with cries and stamped a staccato accompaniment upon the benches or on the floor. It was savage, rasping music, but one player infused into it the ebullient verve of France, and the other was from the misty land where the fiddler learns the witchery of the clanging reel and the swing of the Strathspey. It is doubtless ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... natural, and winning is the diction and the rise and fall of the sentence, and yet how varied the rhythm and how nervous the phrases; and then turn to a page of Macaulay, and wince under its stamping emphasis, its over-coloured tropes, its exaggerated expressions, its unlovely staccato. Southey's History of the Peninsular War is now dead, but if any of my readers has a copy on his highest shelves, I would venture to ask him to take down the third volume, and read the concluding pages, of which Coleridge used to say that they were ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... mournful, moaning, the deep-toned whistle poured forth its warning on the night, and before the long blast had died away, up from the depths of the dense fog bank ahead arose an echo, accentuated with sharp, staccato shrieks. Then came a sudden, startling cry at the bow; then deep down in the bowels of the ship the clang of the engine gong; then, shouts, and rushings to and fro at the hidden forecastle; and Loring started to his feet only to be hurled headlong ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... these oo-o-ah exercises are insufficient because the throatiness of tone is partly brought about by a stiffening of the throat in general. The oo-o-ah must then be preceded by staccato exercises upon the syllable Koo, which have the effect not only of throwing the tone forward, but also of making the throat supple. Make the experiment before a mirror and you ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... with a skilful jerk which sent the noose flying wide, and with an accuracy of aim which brought it right round the neck of the new-comer. She squealed indeed, but horror of horrors! she squealed in French, with such staccato "Oh's" and "Ah's" of astonishment as could only have come from one person in the house. It was Mademoiselle herself! and lifting her glance she beheld six horrified faces peering at her over the banisters, six pairs of startled eyes, six mouths ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... three-inch rifles barked their message of death into the sky. For agonizing seconds nothing happened. The guns roared again. Below and behind the fleeing plane, two puffs of white smoke appeared in the sky. The staccato calls of the observers came from the control station and the guns roared again and again. Now above and now below the Russian plane appeared the white puffs that told of bursting shells, but ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... reedy staccato voice, that gave polish and relief to every syllable, tried to come to her aid by questioning her affably about her family and the friends she had made in New York. But the caryatid-parent, who exists simply as a filial prop, is not a fruitful theme, and ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... to show that he was grateful for what she'd done. But—and this was a big but—she was only a stop-gap. Now—and with another scurry of feet, he was once again jumping round the only one who really mattered. A series of short staccato yelps of joy too great to be controlled; a stumpy tail wagging so fast that the eye could scarcely follow it; a dog. . ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... distant speck on the water was fast assuming the proportions of a motor-launch. He noticed too that the approaching craft was coming at a high rate of speed and was swerving shoreward. Tugging harder at the nets, he worked doggedly on, listening to the staccato bark of the speed-craft as Mascola drew close. They were hauling at the last string when he came ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... were inspired, now, with the full intoxication of the chase; they strained forward fretfully, their gray plumes waving, their tongues lolling, their staccato chorus adding to the general disturbance. When the word came to go, they leaped into their harness, and with a musical jingle of bells they swept down toward the river; over the steep bank they poured, and were gone. A shout of encouragement ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... aloud looking into space. HETTY, however, looks at HARRIET, talks intently and shadows her continually. The same is true of MARGARET and MAGGIE. The voices of the cultured women are affected and lingering, the voices of the primitive impulsive and more or less staccato. When the curtain rises HARRIET is seated right of tea table, busying herself with ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... and trampled therefore. He was bearing down on them from the left, with his wicked little eye red, his great horn down and his tail like a jury-mast behind him. For a minute Ugh-lomi was minded to slip off and dodge, and then behold! the staccato of the hoofs grew swifter, and the rhinoceros and his stumpy hurrying little legs seemed to slide out at the back corner of Ugh-lomi's eye. In two minutes they were through the bushes of May, and out in the open, going fast. For a space he could hear the ponderous paces in pursuit receding behind ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... music, of a sort. A trombone blatted—there was the staccato tuck of a snare drum, and the boom of a bass drum came in ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... but it was rather like that soft complaint of the woody fibres in a table which disembodied spirits are about to visit, and which continues to exhale from it till their peculiar vocabulary utters itself in a staccato of muffled taps. No one who has heard that sound can mistake it for another, and the unreal editor knew at once that he confronted in the Easy Chair ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... all the intentions of the composer faithfully rendered. Here comes more energetic passages, the feeble child will find strength necessary, and the voice of the instrument assumes a fullness of tone which one could not look for in the diminutive violin. Effects of double stopping, staccato, rapid arpeggios—everything is executed with the same precision, the same purity, the same grace. Repeatedly interrupted by applause and acclamations, she was saluted at the end by salvos of bravos and ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... back a little of what we owe her. I want to give his name, Robert Cardell Toms, because it is good for us to know that we have brave and tender gentlemen. On this long haul, as always, he drove with extreme care, changing his speed without the staccato jerk, avoiding bumps and holes of the trying road. When we reached the hospital, he ran ahead into the ward to prepare the bed. The officer beckoned me to him. He spoke with some difficulty, as the effort caught him in the wound of ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... extraordinary what she had learned from him in those few minutes. He had gone on remorselessly, in his staccato manner, as if addressing a parade, which I knew so well, putting before her the dry yet vital facts of ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... shrieked its high, staccato note from the engine-house, they went up to the mess, and seated themselves at the head of the table. As a whole, the men were fairly satisfactory. Bill stared coldly down the table, and appeared to be ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... relation to each other. The word "Moderato" was written in by the Composer's direction, without any request from the editor. Later, the words "With feeling" and the mark of expression "pp," were obtained in the same way. Ties, grace-notes, and staccato-marks were insisted upon, here and there, with ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... hundred years from now, it will be possible for students of it to imagine in detail the salient features of the art of Coquelin. It will be evident to them that the actor made love luringly and died effectively, that he was capable of lyric reading and staccato gasconade, that he had a burly humor and that touch of sentiment that trembles into tears. Similarly we know to-day, from the fact that Shakespeare played the Ghost in Hamlet, that he must have had a voice that ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... teach me?" The master's voice rose angrily. "Teach me, who learned descant and counterpoint in the Gallo-Belgic schools, sir; the best in all the world! Thou, who knowest not a staccato ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... The air was very windless, and the river lay like a sheet of grey steel at her feet, save where a little spreading feather of black ripple showed the course of some water-rat. Bats wheeled and dipped like some company of nocturnal swallows, pursuing their minute prey, and uttering their little staccato cries so high in the scale that none but the acute ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... of what the boys call pluck (no word is more eloquent than that), and a fund of quiet humor that tided her safely over many a slough of despond. If any one could have read Bessie's thoughts a few minutes after the laboring engine had ceased to work, they would have been as follows, with little staccato movements and pauses: ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... bunk-house, wondering what had become of the Mexican, Tony. He determined to search for him, but became dizzy, and, crawling to a bunk, lay back groaning as the dull pain in his head leaped intermittently to blinding stabs of agony. It seemed ages before he heard the quick staccato of hoofs on the road. He raised himself on his elbow as Shoop and Corliss rode up on their mud-spattered and steaming ponies. Sundown called as ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... a swimming interval they heard him moving. "Cuckoo!" he called; a level flame stabbed the dark; something fell, thudding through the staccato uproar of the explosion. At the same moment the outer door opened on the crack and Carfax's ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... With mingled feelings of admiration and childish envy he had watched them drill for many weeks, but they had never seemed such real, grand soldiers until now, as they came marching by with quick, firm steps, keeping time to the clear, staccato notes, marching off to real battle-fields. It was all so beautiful, splendid, and gay—the music, the soldiers, the people, the hurrahing! It stirred his sentient little body through and through with a kind of joy, and he thought it so strange that his ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... rest before the slip, the plane turned and went away, making a complete circle, then coming to rest. To the surprise of every one, the rapid staccato bark of the Lewis gun broke the silence. Kennedy was evidently firing, but at what? There was ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... it was a soliloquy rather than a conversation—a soliloquy accompanied by an obligate of general mental disagreement from the wife of his bosom, who expressed herself in sniffs and snorts and scornful staccato interjections as the soliloquy ran on. Here are a few bars of ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... speaking in quick, staccato jerks, "if I told you what I'd seen and heard in the last fortnight, I couldn't make you believe it. Proofs! Proofs! I've wasted thirty years. I might have had her—the best part of her—all this time. You think I'm ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... hands were of exceptional size and strength, and enabled him to execute the most difficult double stops and stretches with the greatest facility. Even in quick passages he preserved a broad, full tone, and his staccato was brilliant and effective. He disliked the use of the "springing bow," which came with the modern style ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... suggestive of the Nashville's than of any other, but so decidedly different as never for a moment to be confounded with it. "When you hear it," a friend had said to me several years before, "you will know it for something new." It is long (I speak comparatively, of course), very sprightly, and peculiarly staccato, and is made up of two parts, the second quicker in movement and higher in pitch than the first. I speak of it as in two parts, though when my companions came to hear it, as they did the next day, ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... The thin, staccato voice broke off abruptly, and three out of the five other men present being the Master's pupils, remained silent, knowing he had not finished. But Mr. Toovey, a young don overflowing with ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... name coulant. Everything is thrown in just as it comes, and sometimes the pell-mell is enough to persuade us that Pope did not exaggerate when he said that no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.... Apart from his difficult staccato, Emerson is not free from secondary faults. He uses words that are not only odd, but vicious in construction; he is sometimes oblique and he is often clumsy; and there is a visible feeling after epigrams that do not always come. When people say ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the rat was captured. A jerk of the long head and there was proof of Bobby's prowess to lay at his good friend's feet. Made much of, and in a position to ask fresh favors, the little dog was off to the door with cheerful, staccato barks. His reasoning was as plain as print: "I hae done ye a service, noo tak' me ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... staccato conversation with Lady Maitland, who was holding her own with emphatic shakes of a massive head, to touch finger-tips and introduce him to his sister—the whole done cholerically and with the air of transacting a great deal of tiresome ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... her out of nowhere, tottered, was edged sideways, and of a sudden disappeared helplessly out through the open window with a frightened, fragmentary cry that died staccato on the bosom of the clamor. By the faint light streaming from the building backing on the area Edith had a quick impression that it had been the tall soldier with tie ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... those embodiments of noise and disquiet are in the mountains. This group of pretty darlings consists of three sweet little girls, slender, straight, and white as ivory wands, moving with an incessant and staccato (do you remember our old music lessons?) activity which always makes me ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... hoped, unwarranted names, and suddenly began to burrow under the tram, wriggling his way after the manner of a serpent until nothing could be seen of him but two unrestful feet. His voice, though muffled, was still tolerably distinct. It cursed, in an unceasing staccato and with admirable ingenuity, the tram, the conductor, the sacred dog of an impediment which had got itself wedged into one of the trucks, and ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... place visited the night previous, on the opposite corner of the same block. There was quite an excitement here when we came in. Two men and two girls were playing on native instruments—one of the men on a sort of fiddle, and the other on a rude guitar; the girls, one striking, in sharp staccato fashion, a wooden perforated bowl inverted on a standard or post, and the other a kind of cymbal; they were singing in the same shrill, monotonous way we had heard before. We counted eight girls here. There was a piece ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... fashion, set down a record of the winter's happenings. Tautuk's voice, slow and very deliberate in its unfailing effort to master English without a slip, had in it a subdued note of satisfaction and triumph, while Amuk Toolik, who was quick and staccato in his manner of speech, using sentences seldom of greater length than three or four words, and who picked up slang and swear-words like a parrot, swelled with pride as he lighted his pipe, and then rubbed his hands with a rasping sound that always ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... can't bite," scoffed the Prince. "See! I'm not afraid of 'em. Look at this one." He held up a wriggler and she fled to the rock. She happened to glance at Truxton's averted face and was conscious of a broad grin; whereupon she laughed in the quick staccato of embarrassment. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Cobbett and the magnificent diapason in which he unrolls the panorama of Coleridge's mind. In both passages there is the same sentence-norm. In the first, the periods, not bound by any connecting words, strike distinctly, sharply, with staccato abruptness. The movement is that of a clean-limbed wrestler struggling with confident energy to pin down a ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... chimney leaned drunkenly against it, raging with fire and smoke, while through the chinks winked red gleams of warmth and wild cheer. With a revel of shouting and noise, the music suddenly ceased. Hoarse staccato cries and peals of laughter shook the old hut, and as the boy stood there peering through the black trees, abruptly the door flew open and a flood of light illumined ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... realized his ambition to see with his own sharp puncturing little eyes (Aileen said they reminded her of a sewing-machine needle playing staccato) several of the most flagrant examples of capitalistic extravagance where parasitic femalehood idled away their useless lives and servitors battened. In other words the extremely comfortable or the shamelessly luxurious homes built for the most part by still ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... for a lyrical poem, in English: Soothern in 1584, and Daniel in 1592 had preceded him; but he was the first to give the name popularity in England, and to lift the kind as Ronsard had lifted it in France; and till the time of Cowper no other English poet showed mastery of the short, staccato measure of the Anacreontic as distinct from the Pindaric Ode. In the Odes Drayton shows to the fullest extent his metrical versatility: he touches the Skeltonic metre, the long ten-syllabled line of the Sacrifice to Apollo; ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... had been stationed with a rifle on a butte overlooking the desert maze, gave a sudden shout. The next instant his rifle was at his shoulder and he began shooting into the air as fast as he could. As the rapid staccato volley of sound rattled forth all ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... through the open window, Madame Mauer, who was perpetually in mourning, literally darkened my doorway. Seeing Follet she became nervous—he did affect women, as I have said. What with her squint and her smile, she made a spectacle of herself before she panted out her staccato statement. Doctor Mauer was away with a patient on the other side of the island; and French Eva had been wringing her hands unintelligibly on the Mauers' porch. She—Madame Mauer—couldn't make out what the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... humming. Erickson shot the words at him staccato-fashion, as if they were things known from Great Primer days. The young druggist scratched ...
— The Day Time Stopped Moving • Bradner Buckner
... broadly contrasting masses of light and shade. It does not depend for its effect upon intellectual quality beyond a rigorous sense of simplicity, or upon refinement of conception or detail, but rather upon size, picturesque mass, and staccato light and shade. The proportion of capital to column in quantity of surface was very slight. The proportion of voussoirs to arches naturally depended upon the size of the arch,—large voussoirs to large arches, small voussoirs to small arches. Columns were only grouped around piers and ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 04, April 1895 - Byzantine-Romanesque Windows in Southern Italy • Various
... on the frozen Severn, there came faint yells, followed by the staccato of revolver and rifle shots. Just as suddenly, all the life in the factory came to a dead stop, as everyone listened for more shots by which to make sure of the direction. Three minutes later, the additional reports ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... elevator went up alongside—from small buyers who found themselves being driven out of the market with the flat warehouses. But these voices were drowned in the swish of grain in the chutes and the staccato of the elevator engines—lost in the larger exigencies of the wheat. The railway company held to their promises and the tall grain boxes reared their castor tops against the ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... save confusion, we called him from the first by the pretty Scotch equivalent of Evan's first name) is of a wholly masculine mould, and like his father in light hair, gray eyes, and determination. His very speech is quick and staccato, his tendency is to overcome, to fight rather than assuage, though he is the champion of everything he loves. From the time he could form distinct sounds he has called me Barbara, and no amount of reasoning ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... the responses to the almost staccato words of the clergyman. The ceremony was hurried through at a lively rate, but to Eddie it seemed to take hours. Her fingers felt like a closed fan in his own pulseless hand. He replied "I do" and "I will" without really being aware of the fact, and all the time he ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... nice?" cried Robin in delighted staccato. "It's just made for what we want. Look—a fireplace!" To be sure, it was nothing more than a gap in the wall. "And these darling windows. We can put a seat way across, all comfy." She promptly saw, in her mind, Susy curled upon it with a beautiful picture book and a handful of cookies. "Oh, ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... the Mexican to his feet at once. The Indian lost the half moment which was his own. Again the two engaged, White Calf now seeking to disconcert the Mexican, whom he discovered to be less agile than himself. Darting in and out, jumping rapidly from side to side, and uttering the while the sharp staccato of his war call, he passed about the Mexican, half circling and returning, his eye fixed straight upon the other's, and his war club again and again hurtling dangerously close to his opponents head. One shade more of courage, one touch more of the daring necessary ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... The list of possible Mrs. Van Twillers was carefully examined by experienced hands, and a check placed against a fine old Knickerbocker name here and there, but nothing satisfactory arrived at. Then that same still small voice of rumor, but now with an easily detected staccato sharpness to it, said that Van Twiller was in love—with an actress! Van Twiller, whom it had taken all these years and all this waste of raw material in the way of ancestors to bring to perfection—Ralph Van Twiller, the ...
— Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... unsounded. The days for such singing are, alas! long gone. The noble rhythm, the stately movement, the continuous curving stream of melody, that once marked the praise service of the old Scottish church, have given place to the light, staccato tinkle of the revival chorus, or the shorn and mutilated skeleton ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... wisdom tell upon Dorothea, and calling her down from her rhapsodic mood by reminding her that people were staring, not listening. Celia was not impulsive: what she had to say could wait, and came from her always with the same quiet staccato evenness. When people talked with energy and emphasis she watched their faces and features merely. She never could understand how well-bred persons consented to sing and open their mouths in the ridiculous manner ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of ships on the river and the staccato exhaust of a tugboat, the river flowed with nothing to remind one of the two tragedies of only ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... toward the doorway. The tableau persisted but for an instant. Then the would-be murderer rushed madly upon his victim, the latter's hand leaped from beneath the breast of his torn coat—there was a flash of flame, a staccato report and Dopey Charlie crumpled to the ground, screaming. In the same instant The Oskaloosa Kid wheeled and ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... The Airedale Fox, a wonderful dog, routed out a she-coyote that evidently had a den somewhere, for she barked angrily at the dog and at us. Fox could not catch her. She led him round in a circle, and we could not see her in the thick brush. It was fine to hear the wild staccato ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... half-executed, the final beauty of his neck-cloth half-achieved, while he listened with surprise and indignation upon his large, comely, fresh-complexioned face. Below, the decorous hum of Jermyn Street had been broken by the sharp, staccato, ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her voice penetrating the staccato fragments all about her and gathering them into a whole. "Say, who's the heroine of this picture? I come in in the middle ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... resonant medium; by the use—when the voice is employed—of conventional verbal symbols instead of the elements of significant speech; and—where actual verse has been spoken—by a treatment of the words in formal staccato scansion, or by the beating of time throughout the utterance. The last of these methods is a halting between two courses which casts doubt on the results as characteristic of either type of activity. There is no question that the rhythmic forms of ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... which separated the final words brought a sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach, and the discomfort of a fencer, dueling in the dark—a swordsman who recognizes that his cleverness is outmatched. His question came with a staccato abruptness. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... I saw the company pass me gaily down the road, preceded by the hounds, trotting with a staccato step and their noses in ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... I see!" exclaimed Mr. Day in staccato fashion, and evidently very much relieved. "Mrs. Watkins is ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... memorandize. I almost fancy he knows me. Three days later.—My second kingfisher is here with his (or her) mate. I saw the two together flying and whirling around. I had heard, in the distance, what I thought was the clear rasping staccato of the birds several times already—but I couldn't be sure the notes came from both until I saw them together. To-day at noon they appear'd, but apparently either on business, or for a little limited exercise only. No wild frolic now, full of free fun and motion, up and down for an hour. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... And Sally, after an intricate movement with a safety-pin, an openwork lace cuff that has lost a button, and a white wrist, goes down three accelerandos of stair-lengths, with landing pauses, and ends with a dining-room door staccato. But she isn't long gone, for in two minutes the door reopens, and she comes upstairs as fast, nearly, as she went down. In her hand she ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... overtopping elevator went up alongside—from small buyers who found themselves being driven out of the market with the flat warehouses. But these voices were drowned in the swish of grain in the chutes and the staccato of the elevator engines—lost in the larger exigencies of the wheat. The railway company held to their promises and the tall grain boxes reared their castor tops against the ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... of a smooth, brown head, and on the moment out flew the rope, whirled into space with a skilful jerk which sent the noose flying wide, and with an accuracy of aim which brought it right round the neck of the new-comer. She squealed indeed, but horror of horrors! she squealed in French, with such staccato "Oh's" and "Ah's" of astonishment as could only have come from one person in the house. It was Mademoiselle herself! and lifting her glance she beheld six horrified faces peering at her over the banisters, six pairs of startled eyes, six mouths agape with dismay. She looked, and ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... cried Robin in delighted staccato. "It's just made for what we want. Look—a fireplace!" To be sure, it was nothing more than a gap in the wall. "And these darling windows. We can put a seat way across, all comfy." She promptly saw, in her mind, Susy curled upon it with a beautiful picture book ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... talks very much as she writes, and those who have enjoyed her Summer Hours can imagine the bright staccato strain of her conversation. She seemed when in the White House to be always longing for what she used to call her "little old house on the Holland Patent, with the village on the one side and the hills on the other." She remarked one day to a lady visitor: "I wish that ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... magic zone the throb of the engine, the hiss of the carburettor, the swift brush of the tires upon the road—three rousing tones, yielding a thunderous chord, were curiously staccato. The velvet veil of silence we rent in twain; but as we tore it, the folds fell back to hang like mighty curtains about our path, stifling all echo, striking reverberation dumb. The strong, sweet smell of the woods enhanced ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... road floated the staccato note of a staff beating its surface, and the clanking tinkle of an iron ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... substances—which may be coins or keys—nervously and intermittently. Surveyor, a burly mass of broadcloth and big watch-chain, carries an intimidating note-book, and a menacing pencil, making mems. in a staccato and stabbing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... my misty meditation, at the second changin'-station, Suffered sudden dislocation, fled before the tuneless jar Of a Wagner obbligato, scherzo, doublehand staccato, Played on either pony's saddle by the ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... was abruptly upset by James Polder's familiar, staccato utterance. The precipitant young man! It stamped out all Howat Penny's humorous condescension; his sensitive ear was conscious of a note, almost, of desperation. He avoided looking at Mariana. Damn it, the thing unexpectedly cut at him like ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... asked, jerking out the two words in a high staccato. He hated to be questioned, particularly by his wife. His hands reached for the satchel he ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... The staccato cheers of Princeton rocketed along the other side of the field, and the eleven from Old Nassau ran briskly over the turf and wheeled into line for a last rehearsal of their machine- like tactics. Henry Seeley was finding it hard to breathe, just as it had happened in other ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... reading instruments and keying controls. So he was back on the job. Mannion sat, head bent, monitoring his recorder. The room was filled with the keening staccato of the alien transmission. ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... biplane hummed on and on in long rising and falling slants, like a swallow skimming the surface of a lake. The even staccato of the exhaust, echoless in that height and vacancy, rippled with cadences like a monster mowing-machine. And Stern was beginning to consider himself as good as in Boston already—was beginning to wonder where the best ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... relieve the strain on his eyeballs, which ached fiercely. His pony, having worked off its excess of spirit, settled down into a tireless pace that tested the picked mounts the planters had selected as their best, and the miles passed in silence save for staccato pounding of hoofs on hard packed earth and the swish of underbrush that lined the narrow ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... tales that go to make up the volume are wild, exotic glimpses of Latin-America. I doubt whether the color and spirit of that region have been better rendered than in Stephen Crane's curious, distorted, staccato sentences. ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... pitiful eyes were on him perpetually, trying to make him out, to acquaint herself with this new personality, which spoke in these harsh staccato phrases—to reconcile it with the exciteable, sanguine, self-confident man whom she had deserted in ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... continued, the words leaving her lips with a sort of staccato incisiveness, crisp and emotional. "No! you are here, and you shall answer. Who are you who come here to mock us all; because it is a dead man who speaks with your voice, and looks with your eyes? You will not dare to say that you are ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as they made no sound, the brute wheeled suddenly, made a complete circle at a nervous trout, uttered a series of short, staccato sounds that, when he became older, would become deeper, more of an ominous roar than a ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... trampled therefore. He was bearing down on them from the left, with his wicked little eye red, his great horn down and his tail like a jury-mast behind him. For a minute Ugh-lomi was minded to slip off and dodge, and then behold! the staccato of the hoofs grew swifter, and the rhinoceros and his stumpy hurrying little legs seemed to slide out at the back corner of Ugh-lomi's eye. In two minutes they were through the bushes of May, and out in the open, going fast. For a space he could hear the ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... I," he said, in his usual swift, staccato manner, "because we've agreed that you are the best man in the Service to handle the mission we have ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... the distant speck on the water was fast assuming the proportions of a motor-launch. He noticed too that the approaching craft was coming at a high rate of speed and was swerving shoreward. Tugging harder at the nets, he worked doggedly on, listening to the staccato bark of the speed-craft as Mascola drew close. They were hauling at the last string when he came ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... come from the excellent violinist Slavik. With the exception of Paganini, I never heard a violin-player like him. Ninety-six staccato notes in one bow! It is almost incredible! When I heard him I felt inclined to return to my lodgings and sketch variations on an Adagio [which they had previously agreed to take for their ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... remove our shoes and put on sandals. Instead of sitting down on chairs we took any position we could on the floor mats that were placed at our disposal. At the first sound from the throat of a famous singer in a staccato "E-E-E-E," we all sprang to our feet thinking she was possibly going into some sort of a fit. With a twang on the strings of the flattened out little instrument, we subsided, concluding that the concert had ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... somewhere out on the frozen Severn, there came faint yells, followed by the staccato of revolver and rifle shots. Just as suddenly, all the life in the factory came to a dead stop, as everyone listened for more shots by which to make sure of the direction. Three minutes later, the additional ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... in the Place d'Armes, squads of conscripts are busily drilling, running hither and thither with unflagging energy, and the air resounds with the hoarse staccato cries of "Un! Deux! Trois!" wherewith they accompany their movements, cries that, heard from a short distance, exactly resemble the harsh barking of a ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... hangar calling to Burnside excitedly. It was only a moment later, that he began to issue orders in his sharp staccato. His men swarmed forward and took the torpedo from the spot where they had been examining it, adjusting it ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... save where a little spreading feather of black ripple showed the course of some water-rat. Bats wheeled and dipped like some company of nocturnal swallows, pursuing their minute prey, and uttering their little staccato cries so high in the scale that none but the acute ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... who had made his way in the world and perhaps exaggerated his achievement. He expected people to be interested also in meeting him. He expected from the great genius a reciprocal buoyancy. Madame von Marwitz bent her brows upon him. Irony grew in her smile, a staccato crispness in her utterance. Cool and competent as he was, Bertram presently looked disconcerted; he did not easily forgive those who disconcerted him, and, making no further effort to carry on the conversation, he sat silent, ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... noises had run across the shivering surface of the ice. Through the foggy nights, a muffled intermittent booming went on under the wild scurrying stars. Now and then a staccato crackling ran up the icy reaches of the river, like the sequent bickering of Krags down a firing line. Long seams opened in the disturbed surface, and from them came a harsh sibilance as of a line of cavalry ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... of the crowd could be heard the sharp staccato click of the telegraph wires. Special trains were coming from Omaha, came the news. The police force had tried to keep the crowds from smothering each other, but they had torn down the gate of the station and rushed through, ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... great building two sounds deafened an unfamiliar ear: a steady roar, deep and persistent, and through it, like a staccato pulse, a louder, more painful, more penetrating din. The bass to this harsh treble arose from humming belts and running wheels; the crash that punctuated their deep-mouthed riot broke from the drawing heads ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... any doctors," the woman said, in tones crisp and staccato with pain and irritation. "Go away. Good night. We ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... stationed with a rifle on a butte overlooking the desert maze, gave a sudden shout. The next instant his rifle was at his shoulder and he began shooting into the air as fast as he could. As the rapid staccato volley of sound rattled forth all ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... had come at last. Its glare was upon the sky at night, and all day long reiterated its persistent staccato menace: ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... its high, staccato note from the engine-house, they went up to the mess, and seated themselves at the head of the table. As a whole, the men were fairly satisfactory. Bill stared coldly down the table, and appeared ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... things I'll tell you." In quick, staccato sentences, his tired eyelids shut half the time, he sketched his adventure at Lar Tantril's ranch, explaining how, even though captured, he had destroyed the figures, telling of the location of Leithgow's laboratory; and a slight smile appeared on his ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... Speranski's little daughter (long-faced like her father) and her governess. The other guests were Gervais, Magnitski, and Stolypin. While still in the anteroom Prince Andrew heard loud voices and a ringing staccato laugh—a laugh such as one hears on the stage. Someone—it sounded like Speranski—was distinctly ejaculating ha-ha-ha. Prince Andrew had never before heard Speranski's famous laugh, and this ringing, high pitched laughter ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... before seven, three staccato rings would come at the front-door bell. At her sewing or what not, Mrs. Becker would glance up ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... with his reedy staccato voice, that gave polish and relief to every syllable, tried to come to her aid by questioning her affably about her family and the friends she had made in New York. But the caryatid-parent, who ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... her words, a woman's voice ranging swiftly the staccato gamut of terror and cracking discordantly on its most ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... until, Near sunless noon, we heard the ship's bell beating A melancholy staccato on dead metal; Saw the bare-footed watch come running aft; Felt, far below, the sudden telegraph jangle Its harsh metallic challenge, thrice repeated: 'Stand to. Half-speed ahead. Slow. Stop her!' They stopped. The plunging pistons sank like a stopped heart: She held, she swayed, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... confusion, we called him from the first by the pretty Scotch equivalent of Evan's first name) is of a wholly masculine mould, and like his father in light hair, gray eyes, and determination. His very speech is quick and staccato, his tendency is to overcome, to fight rather than assuage, though he is the champion of everything he loves. From the time he could form distinct sounds he has called me Barbara, and no amount of reasoning will make him do ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... and chisels were executing a blithe staccato movement in the yard below, and making the sparks dance. No one walking among the diligent gangs, and observing the placid faces of the men as they bent over their tasks, would have suspected that they were awaiting the word that meant bread and ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Ottensen, "I'll ride a little way with you." He asked Senior-lieutenant Frommelt politely for permission, and sent his men back in charge of a sergeant. Then he joined the battery, chattering away gaily in his droll, staccato fashion, and making his horse leap the ditch from time to time. He sat his magnificent steed splendidly, and with his slender, neatly-made figure, looked the perfect model of ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... grievances. I think the shots must have stimulated his nerve centres, for he had abandoned the languid drawl with which, in happier moments, he was wont to comment on life's happenings, and was dealing with the situation with a staccato briskness. ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... balconies near at hand, though unseen, a gong, a pipe, and some kind of stringed instrument wailed and thundered in unison. There was a vast shuffling of padded soles and a continuous interchange of singsong monosyllables, high-pitched and staccato, while from every hand rose the strange aromas of the East—sandalwood, punk, incense, oil, and ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... in 1584, and Daniel in 1592 had preceded him; but he was the first to give the name popularity in England, and to lift the kind as Ronsard had lifted it in France; and till the time of Cowper no other English poet showed mastery of the short, staccato measure of the Anacreontic as distinct from the Pindaric Ode. In the Odes Drayton shows to the fullest extent his metrical versatility: he touches the Skeltonic metre, the long ten-syllabled line of the Sacrifice to Apollo; and ascends from the smooth and melodious rhythms of the New Year through ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... tall like his son, but here the resemblance ceased, for while Ballard the younger was round of visage and jovial, the banker was thin of face and repressive. He had a long, accipitrine nose which imbedded itself in his bristling white mustache, and he spoke in crisp staccato notes as though each intonation and breath were carefully measured by their monetary value. He paid out to me in cash a half an hour, during which he questioned and I replied while Jack grinned in the background. And at the end of that period ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... little game at once, you young monkey!" struck in the sharp staccato of a semi-excited voice. "Interfering with young ladies, eh? Let's have a look at you. Don't be afraid, Miss Lorne—nobody's ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... much. Cairn Street at nine o'clock levels all distinctions of rank as impartially as the grave. Again and again I loitered at the heels of a couple of resplendent beings, only to overhear, when I expected the level voice of culture, the staccato "Sez he," "Sez I" that is the mark of the white servant-girl all ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... moustaches—artificial affairs which he had contrived to become possessed of—and glared at his comrades through that pair of big-rimmed spectacles which so completely altered his appearance. Then he talked to them—cross-questioned his friends in the gruff, staccato accents one might have expected from such an individual as he represented ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... safely buckled to their seats, Joe ran his engine a bit, to satisfy himself that she was producing just the right music. The other five triplanes had been waiting. When Joe had satisfied himself that his machine was in perfect condition the word was given for the start. A series of staccato pops announced that the whole fleet was getting under way and they were soon circling the hangars and climbing off in the direction of the trenches. ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... epic of life. Valhalla itself could not be more glorious and sonorous. The classic marble on which we ate, the great, light-flooded, vitreous front, adorned with snow-white scrolls; the grand Wagnerian din of clanking cups and bowls, the flashing staccato of brandishing cutlery, the piercing recitative of the white-aproned grub-maidens at the morgue-like banquet tables; the recurrent lied-motif of the cash-register—it was a gigantic, triumphant welding of art and sound, a deafening, soul-uplifting pageant of heroic and ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... he heard the loud bang of Grizzie's closure of the great door, the wind rushed all at once against the house, with a tremendous bellow, that threatened to drive the windows into the room. An immediate lull followed, through which as instantly came strange sounds, as of a distant staccato thunder. The moment the laird heard the douf thuds, he started to his feet, and made for the door, and ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... four the staccato notes of "Assembly" rang across the terrace as Polly sounded the call upon her bugle. The girls came hurrying from every direction and the ensuing hour and a half, usually free for recreation, was cheerfully given ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... came another sound. It was the deep staccato of the exhaust of an automobile, with opened muffler. It was tearing ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... chlorodyne gum, at about twenty to nine, when all the other men were at work. He was a thin, sallow man with a red nose, quick, staccato, and smartly but stiffly dressed. He was about thirty-six years old. There was something rather "doggy", rather smart, rather 'cute and shrewd, and something warm, and something slightly ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... modified form of singing: the principal difference being in the fact that in singing the vowel sounds are prolonged and the intervals are short, whereas in speech the words are uttered in what may be called "staccato" tones, the vowels not being specially prolonged and the intervals between the words being more distinct. The fact that in singing we have a larger range of tones does not properly distinguish it from ordinary speech. In speech we have likewise a variation ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... workers was putting up the steel frame-work for one of the new buildings. Nearby the brick-layers were busy with mortar and trowels. Carpenters were swarming over a roof, their hammers beating staccato. ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... that the terms were misunderstood. 'Presto' signifies 'turn over,' 'Lento' 'with style.' 'Staccato' was said to mean 'stick on the notes,' or 'notes struck ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... against the canon wall. Words came to him indistinctly, muffled by the thick air. The tones of the voices were unmistakable. Three voices there were, each with its own peculiarity, none of them Gratton's. First a big, booming voice; then a sharp, staccato-quick voice; thereafter a high-pitched, querulous utterance, nervous and irritable. Disagreement, if not out-and-out quarrel, had already come to camp. King moved a few paces nearer, pushed aside a low branch from which the snow dropped ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... the round-bodied, anxious mothers; loved the grade geldings and fillies and the registered stock that he kept close to home in fenced pastures; loved the broom-tail bronks that ranged far afield and came in a dust cloud moiling up from their staccato hoof beats, circled by hoarse, shouting riders seen ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... answered the visitor, in high staccato, oblivious of the fact that Claudius Tiberius had scooted in between his feet; "it will be my pleasure to claim your hospitality for ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... taken from vital centers where Nature meant it to go for the upbuilding of womanhood and forced into the brain at a period when Nature meant that brain to be the very paradise of joyous dreams and happy imaginings? While we may thus gain a staccato smartness, a jerky and inconsequent brilliancy, do we not lose something of the natural woman and the delicious heartiness, spontaneous wit and instinctive wisdom of her? I venture no opinion here—I merely suggest the query. ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... Court ladies of the old Russian school. Her knowledge of people and events was extremely limited; but she used to patronise every one who came in contact with her. There was a story that when she died and left the Millionaya for Heaven she addressed St. Peter in her formal staccato French: 'Je suis la Princesse Lor-i-koff. Il me donne grand plaisir a faire votre connaissance. Je vous en prie me presenter au Bon Dieu.' St. Peter made the desired introduction, and the Princess addressed le Bon Dieu: 'Je suis la Princesse Lor- i-koff. Il me donne grand plaisir a faire votre ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... of "'Ware fire!" he sprang back and laid his match to the touch-hole. There was a spurt of flame as the long nine roared above the staccato bark of the musketry. Then they saw a section of the pirate's upper rail leap clear of her deck and fall overside. "Too high," said Job shortly, though Ghent and Curtis had cheered at the shot, for the distance was a good half-mile. Job worked feverishly at his reloading, helped by others of ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... breathing heavily, O'Rourke's especially; the guns thundering along behind them and the advance-guard clattering in front, and their attention distracted every other minute by the noise of volleys on ahead and the occasional staccato rattle of independent firing. The whole sky was now alight with the reflection of the burning barracks and they could see the ragged outlines of the cracking walls silhouetted against the blazing red within. One mile or less from the burning buildings they could see, too, ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... vibrant—yet giving so little away beyond his admiration. The song faded, silence fell, then a door opened and closed. Vassie's voice was raised, this time in welcome. He guessed the visitor to be Phoebe from the fluttered feminine quality of the sounds below—staccato sentences whose words he could not catch, but whose very rhythm, broken and eager, betrayed them. A moment later, and a knock ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... swept over Clee as it did so, and in the midst of it he felt a series of sharp, staccato thoughts—thoughts which did not seem to be composed of words, and ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... laughter, that it was pretty, that it was endearingly nooky, cornery, curvy, with the enchantment of trees and flowers everywhere mixed with its civic turmoil, and the song of birds heard through the staccato of cabs, and the muffled bellow of omnibuses. You may not like London, but you cannot help loving it. The monuments, if I may keep coming back to them, are plain things, often, with no attempt upon the beholder's emotions. In the process of time, I suspect that the Albert Memorial will ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... bronchial tubes may be opened widely or almost closed, and in this way, to quote from Mr. Thompson, "the bird is enabled to measure in the nicest manner the amount of air thrown from the lungs into the trachea." In producing a staccato, for example, the valves flop up and down, doling out the air at the proper intervals and in precisely the ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... mountain of muslins and laces. The only thing visible was the shop-girl's mussed black hair and sly suburban expression. Mme. Derline backed away, wishing to place herself against the, wall; but a tryer-on was there, a large energetic brunette, who spoke authoritatively in a high staccato. "At once," she was saying—"bring me ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... manufactured worth-while screen dramas, when any subject longer than a reel had to be of rare excellence, such as the art films imported from France for the Licensed program. In those days, Stella rose rapidly to prominence. Her large wistful eyes had set the hearts of many of us to beating at staccato rate. ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... The second boat gave the varsity some sharp brushes while the coxswains barked and the coach shouted staccato objurgation and comment through his megaphone, and the rival oarsmen swung backward and forward in the expenditure of ultimate power ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... complexion the color of old parchment, with sandy, stubby hair shot with gray, and a stubby gray beard shot with red. His lips were a wide straight line, as grim as judgment day. He walked with a slight stoop, but with a quick staccato step which betokened great nervous energy, a quality which the alert expression of his beady eyes ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... before the two dragging the stretcher could move in a last desperate rush for safety, before they could rise from their prone position, they heard the rattle of fire increase swiftly to a trembling staccato roar. But, miraculously, no bullets came near them, no whistling was about their ears, no ping and smack of impacting lead hailed about them—except, yes, just the fire of one rifle or two that sent aimed bullet after bullet hissing over ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... McGee sprang into the side car and barked a few crisp, sharp orders that brooked no hesitation. The responsive little motor roared its staccato eagerness as the machine lurched forward, leaving ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... the front door suggested to Peggy that it was not intended for daily use, and she made her way around to the side and knocked. A child not far from Dorothy's age, with straight black hair, and elfish eyes, opened the door, looked her over, and shrieked a staccato summons. ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... tingle In staccato notes that mingle Musically with the jingle- Haunted winds that lightly fan Mellow twilights, crimson-tinted By the sun, and picture-printed Like a book that sweetly hinted Of the ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... smouldering fire over which somebody had suspended a big blackened kettle. The crash of the last falling trunk had died away, and there was silence in the bluff; but a drumming of hoofs rose in a sharp staccato from ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... was barking in staccato volleys. There was another sound, a faint shout, unmistakably; human. The men looked at each ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... on the notes E, F sharp, G sharp, A sharp and B, and without change of position required the practice of exercises calculated to insure independence. The pupil was instructed to go through these exercises first staccato, effected by a free movement of the wrist, an admirable means of counteracting heaviness and clumsiness, then legato-staccato, then accented legato, then pure legato, modifying the power from pp to ff, and the movement from ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... shoulders, swelled out their breasts like doves, knelt and rose, pressed their hands to their bosom or voluptuously outspread their arms, which seemed to flutter as the wings of Iris or Nephthys, dragged their limbs, bent the knee, displayed their swift feet with little staccato movements, and followed every undulation of the music. The maids, standing against the wall to leave free space for the evolutions of the dancers, marked the rhythm by snapping their fingers or clapping their hands together. Some of these ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... would alight near him, scratched his ear with the manner of one who has neglected such matters overlong; reversed his position; slept again. The young corn, deep green in the bottomland, moved with a staccato flurry, and the dust ghost of a mad whirling dervish sped up the main road to vanish at the bridge in a climax of lunacy. The stirring air brought a smell of blossoms; the distance took on faint lavender hazes which blended the outlines of the fields, lying like square coverlets upon the long ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... overboard, and as none among the natives had ever seen ice before, their amazement may well be imagined. The first boy to pick up a piece of the glittering whiteness let it drop with a howl, and when he caught his breath again warned the others in shrill staccato tones that he had been burned, that it was hot, muy caliente, wringing his hands as if, indeed, they had been scorched. Presently, finding that the burn left no mark and had stopped hurting, he shamefacedly ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... up the river and touched the leaves and grass to life. The young corn, deep green in the bottom-land, moved with a [v]staccato flurry; the stirring air brought a smell of blossoms; the distance took on faint lavender hazes which blended the outlines of the fields, lying like square coverlets on the long slope of rising ground beyond the bottom-land, and empurpled the blue ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... Certain staccato epithets meant merely that Subrosa was objecting to the crupper. A sudden stamping testified that Belle had approached Rosa with the bridle. A high-keyed, musical voice chanting man-size words of an intimidating nature followed which proved that the harnessing was progressing as well as could ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... Emperor's presence that I forgot my part and remained staring in stupefaction at the apparition. The other was seemingly too busy with his thoughts to notice my forgetfulness, for he spoke at once, imperiously, in the harsh staccato ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... corners. The dancers stood in a circle, men and women alternately, and the circle sometimes became a square, as in a quadrille, and sometimes two parallel rows, as in Sir Roger de Coverley. One of the men dancers, shouting in dialect, gave short staccato directions which the others carried out. This brightened up the party, and some of the women began to look less gloomy, but a week of contraddanze would not have brought the best of them up to the standard of Brancaccia. I approached her ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... least before her figure showed there. Walking up! And that fellow's grin! The boy—! He turned abruptly from the window. He couldn't spy on her. If she wanted to keep things from him—she must; he could not spy on her. His heart felt empty, and bitterness mounted from it into his very mouth. The staccato shouts of Jack Cardigan pursuing the ball, the laugh of young Mont rose in the stillness and came in. He hoped they were making that chap Profond run. And the girl in "La Vendimia" stood with her arm akimbo and her dreamy eyes looking past him. 'I've done all I could for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... most facile of all orchestral wind instruments; and the device of double tonguing, the quick repetition of notes by taking a staccato T-stop in blowing, is well known. The flute generally goes with the violins in the orchestra, or sustains long notes with the other wood wind instruments, or is used in those conversational passages with other instruments that lend such a charm to orchestral ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... upon the girl with a curious exhilarating effect. She felt stirred and excited, expectant of new experiences, perhaps adventures. The wild barley brushed about the wheels with a silky rustle; the beat of hoofs rang in a sharp staccato through the deep silence; and the touch of the faint night wind ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... coquetted with the season as a young girl with her lover; smiling with the brightness of a western sun; frowning with the fierceness of a sudden snow-squall, strangely out of place in contrast to the greenery of the mountain "parks"; creeping slowly up the gullies from the prairie in staccato notes of bursting buds; at last lifting its many voices in the old swelling song of delight over the birth of new loves and new desires among ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... a drum. The air in springtime afternoons Is filled with sharp staccato notes Whose echoes clear reverberate From precipice and timbered hills. No fifer plays accompaniment; No pageant proud or marching throng Keeps step to this deep pulsing bass Whose ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... Dallam in her usual staccato, following Honora's gaze, "at the piano, in ashes of roses. She's stopped mourning for her husband. Trixy told her to-night she'd discarded the sackcloth and kept the ashes. He's awfully clever. I don't wonder that she's crazy about him, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... for the stage. I was trying to get it into harmony with your magnificent shoulders and antique head. That's all." His intonation was caressing, the speech of a cultivated man, and his accent slightly Scandinavian; at times his voice seemed to her as sweetly staccato as a mandolin. He gazed with all his vibrating artistic soul into the girl's humid blue eyes; half frightened she looked down at her pretty, dimpled hands—the hands of a baby ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... shooting right and left. Glass fell like hail; dogs vamosed; chickens flew, squawking; feminine voices shrieked concernedly to youngsters at large. The din was perforated at intervals by the /staccato/ of the Terror's guns, and was drowned periodically by the brazen screech that Quicksand knew so well. The occasions of Calliope's low spirits were legal holidays in Quicksand. All along the main street in advance of his coming clerks were putting ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... while Blake vaulted to the forward saddle and began to work the pedals to start the motor. The cylinders were still hot from the recent run, and at the first revolution the staccato ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... pacing the red carpet in angry staccato strides. His napkin dropped from his waistcoat to the floor and he kicked it out ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... along the edge of the jungle rousing all the sleepy heads with sharp interrogative whistles before there is the least paling of the Eastern sky. He scents the sun as the ghost of Hamlet's father the morning air. His version of "Sleepers, wake," echoes in the silence in sharp, staccato notes. Seldom heard during the heat of the day, they are oft repeated at dusk and late in the evening. Of all the birds of the day his voice is the last as well as the first, and from that the natives ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... must have cost at this season—though of course it's the sentiment one cares about!" the lady was saying in a sighing staccato as Archer came in. ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... pointed out little personal signs by which I was to know that each man was on edge. He might have spared himself. The House was ready to snap before a bone had been thrown. A sullen minister rose to reply to a staccato question. His supporters cheered defiantly. 'None o' that! None o' that!' came from the Back Benches. I saw the Speaker's face stiffen like the face of a helmsman as he humours a hard-mouthed yacht after a sudden following sea. The trouble was barely met in time. There came a fresh, apparently ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... for me to do nawthin', an' even if 'twas I'd do it!" He sang each word in an argumentative staccato, and in high passages you could see his wisdom teeth. Between stanzas he spoke stimulating exhortations: "Louder, brethren and sisters, louder; the fate of immortal souls may be a-hangin' on the ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... do that, I don't say anything. I may make musical sounds, but I express nothing. I may even execute the notes with a good staccato or legato (again illustrating with his voice) and still, having no words to go by, I make ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... brokenhearted mourner. But Long's sheer, precipitous face and the lofty cliffs around me formed a vast amphitheater about which echoes raced, crossing and recrossing, intermingling. For a full minute the coyote howled, his sharp staccato notes rising higher and higher, the echoes returning from all directions, first sharply, then blurred, faint, fainter. The higher the sounds climbed the gorge the longer were the intervals between echoes, for the canyon walls sloped back and were wider apart ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
