"Fiddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of. digne, worthy. don, do. eek, also. embrowded, embroidered. encres, increase. everychon, every one, all. farsed, stuffed. ferne, distant, foreign. ferre, farther. ferthing, small portion. fetysly, neatly, well. fithel, fiddle. Flaundrische, Flemish. flotynge, fluting, playing. flour-de-lys, fleur-de-lis. for-pyned, much wasted. forster, forester. frere, friar. gawded, having gawds. gepoun, short cassock. goost, ghost. ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... will be woe indeed, lords; the sly whoresons Have got a speeding trick to lay down ladies. A French song and a fiddle has ...
— The Life of Henry VIII • William Shakespeare [Dunlap edition]
... reflected upon the profound truth conveyed by this finale, at the instant when the composer delivers his last note and the author his last line, when the orchestra gives the last pull at the fiddle-bow and the last puff at the bassoon, when the principal singers say "Let's go to supper!" and the chorus people exclaim "How lucky, it doesn't rain!" Well, in every condition in life, as in an Italian opera, there comes a time when the joke is over, ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... the line of rope, now taut, and resembling a huge "fiddle string," as Bandy-legs remarked, testing it as he passed along. It led them to the brow of an abrupt little descent, a sheer drop of perhaps twenty feet. Down this slope they followed the rope with their eyes and then discovered it was attached to a large and heavy barrel that ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... day or two at Derby, and then went on in Mrs. —— carriage to see the beauties of Matlock. Here I stayed from Tuesday to Saturday, which time was completely filled up with seeing the country, eating, concerts, &c. I was the first fiddle, not in the concerts, but everywhere else, and the company would not spare me twenty minutes together. Sunday I dedicated to the drawing up my sketch of education, which I meant to publish, to try to get ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... stood there thunderstruck. He saw that he had a successful rival: the reference to Madame made it obvious that this was the Duc de Guise, and left him in no doubt that his sister was to play second fiddle to the Princess de Montpensier. Jealousy, frustration and rage joining to the dislike which he already had for the Duc roused him to a violent fury; and he would have given there and then some bloody mark of ...
— The Princess of Montpensier • Madame de La Fayette
... had a passion for violins, and ran himself into debt because he bought so many and such good ones. Once, when visiting his father's house at Ipsden, he shocked the punctilious old gentleman by dancing on the dining-table to the accompaniment of a fiddle, which he scraped delightedly. Dancing, indeed, was another of his diversions, and, in spite of the fact that he was a fellow of Magdalen and a D.C.L. of Oxford, he was always ready to caper and to display ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... at the supper table, Mr. Pollock politely informed him that Alix Crown had returned from Michigan, looking as fit as a fiddle. ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Fiddle-de-dee!" cried Keawe. "An old rogue, I tell you, and an old ass to boot. For the bottle was hard enough to sell at four centimes; and at three it will be quite impossible. The margin is not broad enough, the thing begins to smell of scorching—brrr!" said he, and shuddered. "It is true I bought it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to supper, an old man, with a fiddle in his hand, tottered into the garden, and down the lawn. He was a very queer-looking old man. He had long white hair, ...
— The Birthday Party - A Story for Little Folks • Oliver Optic
... consideration, therefore, together with some others, were, for the most part, as a maul on the head of pride, and desire of vain glory; what, thought I, shall I be proud because I am a sounding brass? Is it so much to be a fiddle? Hath not the least creature that hath life, more of God in it than these? Besides, I knew it was love should never die, but these must cease and vanish; so I concluded, a little grace, a little love, a little of the true fear of God, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of auditors. Nobody, however, seemed to take any notice. Very often a whole band of musicians will strike up,— passing a hat round after playing a tune or two. On board the ferry, until the coldest weather began, there were always some wretched musicians, with an old fiddle, an old clarinet, and an old verdigrised brass bugle, performing during the passage, and, as the boat neared the shore, sending round one of their number to gather contributions in the hollow of the brass bugle. They were a very shabby set, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with a hundred other of his ilk Hissed on the hounds and smeared his bread with blood; Lebon, man-fiend, that vampire-ghoul who drank Hot blood of headless victims, and compelled Mothers to view the murder of their babes; At whose red guillotine, in Arras raised, The pipe and fiddle played at every fall Of ghastly head the ribald "Ca Ira;" And fiends unnamed and ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... to think of both countries, and every time I have left France it has been with more admiration of that lively land; {171} but Frenchmen, during this visit, looked at by us for the twentieth time, had evident signs of wounded vanity: they were conscious of playing second fiddle ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... planter's son returning after a long absence, joyfully welcomed and kissed by the aged mulatto nurse. On rivers, boatmen safely moored at nightfall, in their boats, under shelter of high banks, Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle—others sit on the gunwale, smoking and talking; Late in the afternoon the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal Swamp-there are the greenish waters, the resinous odour, the plenteous moss, the cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree. —Northward, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... good sportsman from a very early age. Their grandfather's ship was sailing for Europe once when the boys were children, and they were asked, what present Captain Franks should bring them back? George was divided between books and a fiddle; Harry instantly declared for a little gun: and Madam Warrington (as she then was called) was hurt that her elder boy should have low tastes, and applauded the younger's choice as more worthy of his name and lineage. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... berth, across the narrow passage under the bridge, there was, in the iron deck-structure covering the stokehold fiddle and the boiler-space, a storeroom with iron sides, iron roof, iron-plated floor, too, on account of the heat below. All sorts of rubbish was shot there: it had a mound of scrap-iron in a corner; rows of empty oil-cans; ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... enigma, We shall guess it all too soon; Failure brings no kind of stigma— Dance we to another tune! String the lyre and fill the cup, Lest on sorrow we should sup. Hop and skip to Fancy's fiddle, Hands across and down the middle— Life's perhaps the only riddle That we shrink from ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... in the middle, From the orchestra comes the first squeak of a fiddle. Then the bass gives a growl, and the horn makes a dash, And the music begins with a flourish and crash, And away to the zenith goes swelling and swaying, While we tap on the box to keep time to the playing. And we hear the old tunes as they follow and mingle, ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... turned to the third queen and asked, "What are you quarrelling about?" The queen answered, "Why should I do nothing but fiddle about the nursery?" Vasishta thought for a while and said, "In a former life, O Queen, you were a maid of a jungle tribe. Every Monday you used to fast yourself and offer the choicest fruits that you picked to the god Shiva. ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... me how, by three-fold scoff, When cares of life perplex us, To smoke, or sleep, or fiddle them off, And scorn the ills that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the shepherd dressed, In ribbons, wreath, and gayest vest Himself with care arraying: Around the linden lass and lad Already footed it like mad: Hurrah! hurrah! Hurrah—tarara-la! The fiddle-bow was playing. ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... hospital, a very modern and up-to-date motor ambulance came down and whisked us all off to that institution. I couldn't speak Spanish, nor could Ben; but those medicos could talk English after a fashion, and soon Ben was fixed fine in a private room and the doctors declared he'd be fit as a fiddle ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... beside the fire with a greasy pack of cards; or to listen to the peevish grumbling of Lashman in the bunk below him. Lashman had taken to his bed six weeks before with scurvy, and complained incessantly; and though they hardly knew it, these complaints were wearing his comrades' nerves to fiddle-strings—doing the mischief that cold and bitter hard work and the cruel loneliness had hitherto failed to do. Long Ede lay stretched by the fire in a bundle of skins, reading in his only book, the Bible, open now at the Song of Solomon. Cooney had finished patching a pair of trousers, and ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... such, but I know not who of his friends are able to judge of it.' GOLDSMITH. 'He is what is much better: he is a worthy humane man.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, that is not to the purpose of our argument[660]: that will as much prove that he can play upon the fiddle as well as Giardini, as that he is an eminent Grecian.' GOLDSMITH. 'The greatest musical performers have but small emoluments. Giardini, I am told, does not get above seven hundred a year.' JOHNSON. 'That ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Mr. Elwin and his wife were a most delightful couple, models of old-fashioned courtesy and heart-kindness. He knew Borrow well, and quite discredited the innuendoes and insinuations of many Norwich folk about him. It was a joke with the Murray circle that "big Borrow was second fiddle at his home, and there is ample testimony that his wife was a capable manager and looked after his affairs, literary as well as domestic." Though Borrow boasted of his proficiency in the Norfolk dialect, Mr. Elwin told him that he had not ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... fiddle out, and fiddled till he woke the echoes round. After a time a wolf came through the thicket and trotted up to ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... forty-five miles ain't to be sneezed at, an' when you throw in fifteen miles of desert an' a sand-storm to boot, it's what I call a pretty good day's work; yet I'm feelin' fine as a fiddle," he said in a tone of satisfaction, after which he made an apology for a ...
— Dick in the Desert • James Otis
... Eph took his fiddle and scraped away to his heart's content in the parlor, while the girls, after a short rest, set the table and made all ready to dish up the dinner when that exciting moment came. It was not at all the sort of table we see now, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... pieces; he succeeded Southey as poet-laureate in 1843; he is emphatically the poet of external nature and of its all-inspiring power, and it is as such his admirers regard him; Carlyle compares his muse to "an honest rustic fiddle, good and well handled, but wanting two or more of the strings, and not capable of much"; to judge of Wordsworth's merits as a poet the student is referred to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... has been pent up for years come out at last). You're surprised! Surprised! You would be. You've never stopped to think what other people are thinking; you take it for granted that they all love you, and that's all you care about. Do you think I liked playing second fiddle to you all my life? Do you think I've never had any ambitions of my own? I suppose you thought I was quite happy being one of the crowd of admirers round you, all saying, "Oh, look at Gerald, ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... the examination in the House, inquired who Mrs. Clarke was? He had heard nothing of it. He had evaded this omnipresence by utter insignificancy! The Duke should make that man his confidential valet. I proposed locking him up, barring him the use of his fiddle and red pumps, until he had minutely perused and committed to memory the whole body of the examinations, which employed the House of Commons a fortnight, to teach him to be more attentive to what concerns the public. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... high 'corn.' We cannot think that the Italian lad does not smoke the mock tobacco that must tempt him upon each ear. If he does, he apes a habit no less American in its origin than the maize itself. So the American lad playing with a 'shoe-string bow' or a 'corn-stalk fiddle' would turn to Italy ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... all come to hear it, Jean!" cried they: "but take care of your fiddle or you will get it crushed in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... inanity; flap-doodle; rigmarole, rodomontade; truism; nugae canorae[Lat]; twaddle, twattle, fudge, trash, garbage, humbug; poppy-cock [U.S.]; stuff, stuff and nonsense; bosh, rubbish, moonshine, wish-wash, fiddle-faddle; absurdity &c. 497; vagueness &c. (unintelligibility) 519. [routine or reflexive statements without substantive thought, esp. legal] boilerplate. V. mean nothing; be unmeaning &c. adj.; twaddle, quibble, scrabble. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... this ukeke, the Hawaiian fiddle, are tuned to [e]; to [b] and to [d]. These three strings are struck nearly simultaneously, but the sound being very feeble, it is only the first which, receiving the sharp impact of the blow, gives out enough volume ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... flour and dried meat with them as fairly as possible and decided we would try the trail. When our plans were settled we felt in pretty good spirits again, and one of the boys got up a sort of corn-stalk fiddle which made a squeaking noise and in a little while there was a sort of mixed American and Indian dance going on in which the squaws joined in and we had a pretty jolly time till quite late at night. We were well pleased that these wild folks ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... considered fully educated until he has reached his middle or even late twenties. Yet instead of speeding up the curriculum in the early school years, we have introduced such important studies as social graces, baton twirling, interpretive painting and dancing, and a lot of other fiddle-faddle which graduates students who cannot spell, nor read a book, nor count above ten without taking off their shoes. Perhaps such studies are necessary to make sound citizens and graceful companions. I shall not contest the point. However, I contend that a sound and basic schooling should be included—and ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... are a born artist and musician. Music, tone, sound, colour, vibrate in every page of your romances. Had your parents taught you harmony, the piano, and the fiddle, your music would have burst forth along its normal lines. As they merely taught you the alphabet and grammar, your creative faculty turned to literature; you wrote romances full of music, instead of composing ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... professional danseuses, the female characters in the ballet having previously been sustained by men." Lully, the celebrated composer, was manager of the opera house, where he amassed a very large fortune. He made himself greatly dreaded by his orchestra, whom he used to belabour over the head with his fiddle. In this manner he is said to have broken scores of violins, and one unlucky clarionet-player, in particular, who was never either in time or tune, cost him a vast number of instruments. They shivered like glass upon the obdurate noddle ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... called Cagnotte, whom it had been found impossible to bring with us. His absence told on me to such an extent that one morning, having first chucked out of the window my little tin soldiers, my German village with its painted houses, and my bright red fiddle, I was about to take the same road to return as speedily as possible to Tarbes, the Gascons, and Cagnotte. I was grabbed by the jacket in the nick of time, and Josephine, my nurse, had the happy thought to tell me that Cagnotte, tired of waiting ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... to her to bless and to abide with her long beyond the tarrying of the spirit in the flesh. "He said I looked nice. I met him the first time I wore the purple dress. It was at a corn-husking party at Jerry Grumb's barn. Some man played the fiddle and we danced." ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... Gaston brought his fiddle along, and those were wonderful tunes he drew from the strings. Sometimes he explained what they meant, his words running along in monotone that yet kept time ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... so," said Mrs. Cafferty. "Not a foot do you stir out of that bed till your daughter comes home, ma'am, said I. For do you see, child, many's the time you'd be thinking you were well and feeling as fit as a fiddle, and nothing would be doing you but to be up and gallivanting about, and then the next day you'd have a relapse, and the next day you'd be twice as bad, and the day after that they'd be measuring you ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... tall, handsome black fellow, with white teeth and bright eyes, and he could play the fiddle and pick the banjo, and knock the bones and cut the pigeon-wing, and, besides all that, he was the best hoe-hand, and could pick more cotton than any other negro on the plantation. He had amused himself by courting and flirting with all of the negro girls; but at last he had been caught himself ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... under different skies, but never such a one as this. So far, far from all that one associates with this evening. I think of the merriment round the bonfires at home, hear the scraping of the fiddle, the peals of laughter, and the salvoes of the guns, with the echoes answering from the purple-tinted heights. And then I look out over this boundless, white expanse into the fog and sleet and the driving wind. Here is truly no trace of ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... great a happiness that he thought he should never be tired of a life where there was so much music and dancing, to which he had been always addicted; and, as he phrased it himself, he thought he was in another world when he got with a set of men and maids in a barn with a fiddle among them. ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... a-wooing go Gave a party, you must know; And his bride, dressed all in green, Looked as fine as any queen. Their reception numbered some Of the best in Froggiedom. Four gay froggies played the fiddle,— Hands all round, and down ...
— The Nursery, February 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... on the stoop didn't use up so much of a man's wind! You should get your harp, sir; not but what a fiddle is best." ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... good natured, feckless lad, about eighteen or twenty years of age, and the only thing he appeared to be able to make anything of was playing the fiddle. Wherever he went his violin accompanied him. While fiddling he was happy, but it was pitiful to watch him trying to work at or take an interest in any employment which he could ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... "Fiddle-de-dee, with the Flying Dutchman. What arrant fools the men must be to think of such nonsense," exclaimed the colonel, in a contemptuous tone. "Come, Ada, let us go on deck before you return to your cabin, and we will have ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... everything—the exclamation which you explained deceitfully, and all! Forgive the harsh word, Elfride—forgive it.' He smiled a surface smile as he continued: 'What a poor mortal I am to play second fiddle in everything and to be deluded ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... in the outfit, so when they came to land again they rubbed off as much water as they could with their handkerchiefs, and finished drying by turning about fifty Catherine-wheels on a sunny patch of the bank. When they were dressed again, they were glowing with warmth, felt as fit as a fiddle, and were ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... can do one thing easily and others another, and every fellow has to work hard to learn those things which belong, as it were, to the other fellows. There are chaps, I suppose, like the Admirable Crichton, who are born good all round, and can play the fiddle, polish off Euclid, ride, shoot, lick anyone at any game, all without the slightest trouble, but one does not come across them often, thank goodness. I say, do ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... two never is," laughed his friend. "But she's a right smart filly; she looks much the best of the lot. Dixon's got her as fit as a fiddle string. When you're done with that man you might turn him over ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... would have been a much more racy book. Spence was certainly an amiable, but I think a very weak man; and it appears to me that his learning has been overrated. He might indeed have been well designated as "a fiddle-faddle ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... Court, Glasgow,[36] belonging co the Hunterian collection, in which King David is represented, as usual in the 12th century, playing or rather tuning a harp, surrounded by musicians playing bells, rebec, guitar fiddle (in 'cello position), quadruple pipes or ganistrum, and a bag-pipe with long chaunter having a well-defined stock. The insufflation tube appears to have been left out, and there are no ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... sounds of dancing feet soon came to his ears, and from those sounds he could tell the figures of the dance just as he could tell the gait of an unseen horse thumping a hard dirt road. He leaned over the yard fence—looking, listening, thinking. Through the window he could see the fiddler with his fiddle pressed almost against his heart, his eyes closed, his horny fingers thumping the strings like trip- hammers, and his melancholy calls ringing high above the din of shuffling feet. His grandfather was standing before the fireplace, his grizzled hair tousled and his face red with ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... should have thought that you knew him better than that, Manutoli. To him a woman is a voice, and nothing else. If the same sounds could be got out of a flute or a fiddle he would like it much better, and think it far more convenient. I don't think my uncle Lamberto ever knew whether a woman was pretty or plain. I wish to heaven he would get caught for once in his life; it would suit my book very well. He would ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... of course—the Lord Lieutenant's family wish to hear you in private." "Caro amico," rejoined he, with petrifying composure, "Paganini con violino e Paganini senza violino,—ecco due animali distinti." "Paganini with his fiddle and Paganini without it are two very different persons." I knew perfectly what he meant, and said, "The Lord Lieutenant is a nobleman of exalted rank and character, liberal in the extreme, but he is not Croesus; nor do I think you could with any consistency ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... interesting as the last dying glow of symbolism, derivative as they are from Huysmans and Mallarme. I cannot regard them as successful stories, but they have a certain experimental value which comes nearest to success in "The Cardinal's Fiddle." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Dan, returning the gift with precision. "Ef you don't like my music, git out your fiddle. I ain't goin' to lie here all day an' listen to you an' Long Jack arguin' 'baout candles. Fiddle, Tom Platt; or I'll learn Harve ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... so many people for any length of time in the over-crowded mines was opt of the question. But that was a consideration to which the "Military Situation" could not resonably be expected to play second fiddle. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... George Beaumont, on the contrary, furnishes, in the anecdotes given of him in Constable's life, a melancholy instance of the degradation into which the human mind may fall, when it suffers human works to interfere between it and its Master. The recommending the color of an old Cremona fiddle for the prevailing tone of everything, and the vapid inquiry of the conventionalist, "Where do you put your brown tree?" show a prostration of intellect so laughable and lamentable, that they are at once, on all, and to all, students of the gallery, a satire and a warning. ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... the O.C., could carry a weight of five hundred pounds on his shoulders. After the gymnastic performance, we had a concert, and a man sang, or rather made a hideous nasal sound, to the accompaniment of something that looked like a three stringed fiddle. The song, which greatly delighted the Chinese listeners, consisted of an interminable number of verses; in fact we never heard the end of it, for the O.C. stopped it and told the musicians that the officers had to leave. He ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... "Oh, fiddle-de-fudge, Roger! I'm not interfering, and it is my affair. Mona is my affair, and so are you; and now your Aunt Patty is going to ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... right, old chap. Just lie still for a minute, till I go and get you a taste of brandy. Be back like a shot. Don't move. You'll be all right. Fit as a fiddle when you've had something ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... "Fiddle!" cried the iron pillars of the deep, dark hold. "Who ever heard of curves? Stand up straight; be a perfectly round column, and carry tons of good solid weight—like that! There!" A big sea smashed on the deck above, and the ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... then that same thing will be serviceable to the Church. But how far we must depend upon new friends, I have learnt by long practice, though I think among great Ministers, they are just as good as old ones. And so I think this important day has made a great hole in this side of the paper; and the fiddle-faddles of tomorrow and Monday will make up the rest; and, besides, I shall see Harley on Tuesday ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... piped, "and I've just had the very gloriousest tramp and I feel as fine as a—what is it they say? Oh, as fine as a violin—I—I mean fiddle. I walked miles and miles—perhaps not quite so far—and the wind was blowing a blue streak right in my face. Ugh! first it made me shiver and creep up into my collar. But bimeby I got nice and warmy, and my cheeks tingled. I felt as if I could walk from here to the place where the ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... issue, he was the most eligible and most pathetically sought-after marriageable man in all Hawaii. A clean-and-strong-featured brunette, tall, slenderly graceful, with the lean runner's stomach, always fit as a fiddle, a distinguished figure in any group, the greying of hair over his temples (in juxtaposition to his young- textured skin and bright vital eyes) made him appear even more distinguished. Despite the social demands upon his time, and despite his many committee meetings, and meetings ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... of his neighbor, there is a great deal of dancing going on. Here and there a ring is formed, carved out, as it were, from the solid mass of human beings, in which some half dozen couples are revolving more or less in time to the braying of a bagpipe or scraping of a fiddle, executing something which has more or less semblance to a waltz. The mode in which these rings are formed is at once simple and efficacious. Any couple who feel disposed to dance link themselves together and begin to bump themselves against their immediate neighbors. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... had been able to pay his way through Cambridge University by the scholarships and prizes which he had won. One beautiful little dark-eyed daughter of seven was playing in a West End Theatre as the dormouse in "Alice in Wonderland." She was second fiddle to Alice herself, also, and could sing all her songs. Her pay was some five pounds a week, poor enough for the attraction she proved, but more than all the rest of the family put together earned. At that time I never went to theatres. Acquaintances had persuaded me that so many of the girls were ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... third fiddler was different. He was a man after Buster Bumblebee's own heart. He seemed to love to make music and never tired of coaxing the jolliest tunes out of his old fiddle that anybody could hope to hear. He only laughed when his fellow fiddlers lay back in their chairs and mopped their red faces. And just to keep the company in good spirits—and because he couldn't help it—this frolicsome fiddler would start right ahead and play something that was ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... news that Tom Double The nation should bubble, Nor is't any wonder or riddle, That a parliament rump Should play hop, step, and jump, And dance any jig to his fiddle. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Look here, Adolph, chuck your job, and go on a walking tour with me. Let's travel through France and along the Riviera to Italy. I'm sick of cities. There's lots of money for us both, and if we run short, why, bring your fiddle along and ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... tones from voices like the murmur of a stream; And oh, the heart seems young again and from its anguish free When I gaze upon these pictures that are ever dear to me; Then I see the darkies dancing, I can hear the fiddle ring As they gathered in the cabin and they cut the pigeon-wing; I can smell the 'possum roasting, I can see the cider flow, When memory takes me back again to scenes ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... "Precisely the fiddle-stick, Mr Forster! you did mean it, and you do mean it, and this is all the return that I am to expect for my kindness and anxiety for your welfare—slaving and toiling all day as I do; but you're incorrigible, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... late that is, for a country dance. It was after nine o'clock when, riding Comet, he saw the schoolhouse lamps winking at him through the oaks and heard the merry music of fiddle and guitar in the frolic of a heel-and-toe polka. Already he made out here and there the saddle horses which had brought so many "stags" so many miles to the dance, and which stood tied to tree and shrub. Also there ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... evidence that the hurdy-gurdy sets the world to dancing—like the fiddle in the Turkish tale where even the headsman forgot his business—despite such evidence there are persons who affect to despise its melody. These claim such perceptivity of the outer ear and such fineness of the channels that the tune is but a ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... for she managed to get on better with Mrs. Partridge. But as for poor Mrs. Partridge, she didn't trouble us much, for her rheumatism got so very bad that all that winter she couldn't walk up-stairs though she managed to fiddle about down-stairs in her own rooms and to keep on the housekeeping. And this, by the by, brings me to the one big thing that happened, which you will see all came from something that I told you about almost at the ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... to make bombs or automatic bankrobbers; he just wanted to fiddle with the stack, see what it would do. He turned it over in his hands a couple of times, then shrugged, got up, went over to his closet, and put the thing away. There wasn't anything he could do with it until he'd bought a cryostat—a liquid helium ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... I reckon," said the jailer, lifting up his head on hearing an unusual bustle amongst the crew. "I am fain to see it, for I am waundy qualmish dancing to this up-an'-down tune, wi' nought but the wind for my fiddle." ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... de Whoopin' Cough, De Bluebird died wid de Measles; 'Long come a Nigger wid a fiddle on his back, 'Vitin' Crows fer to dance ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... bless you, he had a tune with wooden turns to it,—it was most cruel to hear; and then the look of him, those eyes, like dropsical oysters, and the hair standing every way, like a field of insane flax, and the mouth with a curl in it like the slit in the side of a fiddle. A pleasant fellow that for a mess that always boasted the best-looking chaps ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... as light she tript upstairs, Were in the cloak-room seen assembling— When, hark! some new outlandish airs, From the First Fiddle, set ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... noise and bustle again on the road and in the house. The picnickers were returning; yes, and from the direction of Elsinore new guests came by bicycle and carriage, and already one could hear in the room below a fiddle tuning up and a clarinet executing nasal runs by way of practice ... Everything promised to make it ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Augustus Holyoke, of Salem, who died in 1829, aged one hundred and one years. It was recalled by an old lady that the scholars in the school of her youth marched through Boston streets, to the music of the fiddle played by "Black Henry," to Concert Hall, corner Tremont and Bromfield streets, to practice dancing; and that Mr. Turner walked at the head of the school. His advertisements may be seen in Boston ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... not a word for my life—not breathe, even—to plase you! becaase I've a little business to mintion to the lady. Sixty guineas to resave from Mr. Gilbert, yonder. Long life to you, miss! But I'll say no more till this Scotchman has done with his fiddle and his musics. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... mistake some of our great masters; because they sometimes put in some of those round characters of clouds, they must do the same; but if you look at any of their skies, they either assist in the composition or make some figure in the picture—nay, sometimes play the first fiddle.... ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... are other things to do in life besides feeding lions," he said; and taking up his fiddle he became interested in it. He played it all the way across the Atlantic, and everyone said there was no reason why he should not play in the opera house. But an interview with the music conductor dispelled illusions. Ned learnt from him that improvisations were not admissible in an opera house; ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... several cried in an eager chorus; for their nerves had been wrought up to a high tension by all they had gone through, and they felt, as Seth aptly expressed it, "like fiddle strings keyed to next door ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... the singing as sweet as a dream And the fiddle that climbs to the sky, With head 'neath the curtain she stares out—O hark! The music so strange ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... had rallied from her usual gloom and begged the privilege of acting as lady's maid. 'Poleon Campbell, an old-time Negro fiddler, whom Peter had resurrected from some obscure cabin, oiled his rheumatic joints, tuned his fiddle and rosined his bow, and under the inspiration of good food and drink and liberal wage, played through his whole repertory, which included such ancient favourites as, "Fishers' Hornpipe," "Soldiers' Joy," "Chicken in the Bread-tray," and the "Campbells ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... baronets, eight yellow admirals, forty-seven major-generals on half pay (who narrate the whole Peninsular War), twenty-seven dowagers, one hundred and eighty-seven old maids on small annuities, and several unbeneficed clergymen, who play a little on the fiddle. All the above play at cards, and usually with success if partners. No objection to cards on Sunday evenings or rainy mornings. The country gentleman to allow the guests four feeds a day, and to produce claret if a Scotch or Irish peer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... wild turkey-gobbler so busily breakfasting out of the hopper that he was able to creep quietly up and catch him with his hands. The people all worked together in cultivating their respective lands; coming back to the fort before dusk for supper. They would then call on any man who owned a fiddle and spend the evening, with interludes of singing and story-telling, in dancing—an amusement they considered as only below hunting. On Sundays the stricter parents taught their children the catechism; ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... insure the presence of Quirk's three boys. Supper over, a fresh horse was furnished me, and we set out for the dance, covering the distance in less than two hours. I knew nearly every one in the settlement, and got a cordial welcome. I played the fiddle, danced with my former sweethearts, and, ere the sun rose in the morning, rode home in time for breakfast. During that night's revelry, I contrasted my former girl friends on the San Antonio with ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... among the broad strings, and ever and anon he would produce from one of them a low, melancholy, almost unearthly sound. And then he would pause, never daring to produce two such notes in succession,—one close upon the other. And these last sad moans of the old fiddle were now known through the household. They were the ghosts of the melody of days long past. He imagined that his visits to the box were unsuspected,—that none knew of the folly of his old fingers which could not keep themselves from touching the wires; but the ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... after all, is a more useful post, and a more lucrative one.' But Lancelot had not as yet 'Galliolised,' as the Irish schoolmaster used to call it, and cared very little to play a political ninth fiddle. ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... that night a long, long time ago when all the people under the protection of the newly erected fort, gathered here for a house-warming. How clearly I could hear that squawking, squeaking, good-natured fiddle and the din of dancing feet! Only the sound got mixed up with the dim, weird moonlight, until you didn't know whether you were hearing or seeing or feeling it—the music of the fiddles and the feet. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... overbalance, overweigh, overmatch; top, o'ertop, cap, beat, cut out; beat hollow; outstrip &c. 303; eclipse, throw into the shade, take the shine out of, outshine, put one's nose out of joint; have the upper hand, have the whip hand of, have the advantage; turn the scale, kick the beam; play first fiddle &c. (importance) 642; preponderate, predominate, prevail; precede, take precedence, come first; come to a head, culminate; beat &c. all others, bear the palm; break the record; take the cake * [U. S.]. become larger, render larger &c. (increase) 35, (expand) 194. Adj. superior, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Smallbones. "My sister in Iowa has got a fiddle; an' I know she plays five toons on it—I've heerd her. She's got a mouth organ, too, an' a musical-box—electric! One 'ud think nobody had got nuthin' but Will Henderson." He strode back to the bar in dudgeon, filled to the ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... expectation. All are seated—all look at each other in ominous anxiety. Which is accuser? Which is the accused? On whom shall their suspicion settle—on whom their pity? All are silent—almost speechless— and even the current of their thoughts is frost-bound by fear. Suddenly the sound of a fiddle or a viol is caught from a distance—it swells upon the ear—steps approach—and in another moment in rushes the elderly gentleman, grave and gloomy as his audience, but capering about in a frenzy of excitement. For half ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... for your groat; L2,000 to one, L3,000 a year to another, has been nothing. And for what? Is there one of them that yet knows what a commonwealth is? And are you yet afraid of such a government in which these shall not dare to scrape for fear of the statute? Themistocles could not fiddle, but could make of a small city a great commonwealth: these have fiddled, and for your money, till they have brought a great ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... these shapeless things the forms and costumes of the princes and princesses of ancient France? Why, the dark-skinned old-clo' men, who hang their cast-off raiment in Brattle Street, would be mobbed, if they paraded such vestments at their doors; and Papanti would break his fiddle-bow over the head of any awkward lout who should unfortunately assume such ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... "Fiddle-dee-dee! if I didn't use any slang, I couldn't talk at all! And suitor isn't exactly slang; it's the word in current fashion for any pleasant young gentleman who sends flowers, or otherwise favors any pleasant young lady. Everybody in society knows what it means, ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... Gartley's heart swelled with delight, translating her confidence into his power. He was no longer the second person in the compact, but had taken the place belonging to the male contracting party! For he had been painfully conscious now and then that he played but second fiddle. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... groupe suited to Teniers, a cluster of out-of-door customers of the Rose, old benchers of the inn, who sit round a table smoking and drinking in high solemnity to the sound of Timothy's fiddle. Next, a mass of eager boys, the combatants of Monday, who are surrounding the shoemaker's shop, where an invisible hole in their ball is mending by Master Keep himself, under the joint superintendence of Ben Kirby and Tom Coper, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... good a nurse," he answered, stroking her hand, "not to be as fit as a fiddle by now. You must be tired yourself, Laura. Why, for whole days there—and nights, too, they tell me—you never ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... was Carlisle city that day; yet, as the two entered the courtyard of the castle, James was aware of another sound, rising clear above the tumult of the town—strains of music, surely, that came from a fiddle. As they stepped under the inner gateway and approached the Norman Keep, the fiddler himself came in sight playing with might and main, under a barred window about six feet from the ground. By the fiddler's side, urging him on, was a ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... would be done by Do what you will but do something all day long Either do not think, or do not love to think Equally forbid insolent contempt, or low envy and jealousy Even where you are sure, seem rather doubtful Every virtue, has its kindred vice or weakness Fiddle-faddle stories, that carry no information along with them Flattery of women Forge accusations against themselves Forgive, but not approve, the bad. Frank, open, and ingenuous exterior, with a prudent interior Gain the affections as well as the esteem Generosity ...
— Widger's Quotations from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son • David Widger
... to the whizbangs concert party last night. It was A1—one chap makes his fiddle absolutely speak. He played that Volunteer Organist and parts of Henry VIII., the basso sang 'Will o' the Wisp,' and most of the other songs were old 'uns. I tell you, you wouldn't believe we had such things a couple of miles ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... sorry, for all old men need some one to talk to and at, else they fret and grow peevish. Besides, I was anxious to put my young masters to the test. I have a grand piano of good age, with a sounding-board like a fine-tempered fiddle. The instrument, an American one, I handle like a delicate thoroughbred horse, and, as my playing is accomplished by the use of my fingers and not my heels, the piano does not really ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... (fiddle, staff, knife) which apparently brings to life again the dead woman. G2 The dead mother killed a second time, and paid ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... plays the fiddle fit to tear the heart out of your body, and reads big books till God knows what hour in the mornin'. His father, he says he don't know what to do with him ... There's a big, bad devil of a Polack down to the works that wants him to ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... Hrolfur. The fore-sail resembled a beautifully curved sheet of steel, stiff and unyielding. Both sails were snow-white, semi-transparent and supple in movement, like the ivory sails on the model ships in Rosenborg Palace. The mast seemed to bend slightly and the stays were as taut as fiddle-strings. The boat quivered like a leaf. The waves pounded hard against the thin strakes of the boat's side. I could feel them on my cheek, though their dampness never penetrated; but in between these hammer blows their little pats were wonderfully ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... had failed in his attempts at speaking grammatically, and with a sudden determination never again to try, he precipitately left the house, and for the next two hours amused himself by playing "Bruce's Address" upon his old cracked fiddle. From that time Sal gave up all hopes of educating Uncle Peter, and confined herself mostly to literary efforts, of which we shall ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... have thought he was using Dryfoos, when Dryfoos was using him, and he may have supposed he was not afraid of him when he was very much so. His courage hadn't been put to the test, and courage is a matter of proof, like proficiency on the fiddle, you know: you can't tell whether you've got it till ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Since your ladyship commands me, madam, I dare disobey no longer. My lodgings are in St Lucknor's Lane, at the Cat and Fiddle. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... the cold plunge," admitted Georgiana, laughing. "And I'm 'fit as a fiddle,' as Jimps says. He sent his good-bye to you and told me to tell you he'll ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... women and affront the men whom he met, and sometimes to beat them, and sometimes to be beaten by them. This was one of his imperial nocturnal pleasures; his chiefest in the day was to sing and play upon a fiddle, in the habit of a minstrel, upon the public stage; he was prouder of the garlands that were given to his divine voice (as they called it then) in those kind of prizes, than all his forefathers were of their triumphs over nations. He did not ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... and clear blue eyes, very beautiful teeth, and a golden beard. His appearance was grave, but not morose, as if he were always examining things and people without condemning them. It was evident that he expected to take the upper hand in general, to play the first fiddle, to hold the top saw, to "be helped to all the stuffing of the pumpkin," as dear Uncle Sam was fond of saying. Of moderate stature, almost of middle age, and dressed nicely, without any gewgaws, which look so common upon a gentleman's front, he was likely to please more people than ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... this. I did not even correct proof-sheets; nay, could not, for I have cancelled two sheets, instante Jacobo, and I myself being of his opinion; for, as I said yesterday, we must and will take pains. The fiddle-faddle of arranging all the things was troublesome, but they give a good account of my affairs. The money for the necessary payments is ready, and therefore there is a sort of pleasure which does not arise out of any mean source, since it has for its object the prospect ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... holes in the mud, and in them await your coming, and more often than not baffle your ingenuity to extricate them. Among other stalked-eyed crustaceans is that with one red, shielding claw, absurdly large, and which scuttles among the roots, making a defiant clicking noise—the fiddle or soldier crab (GELASIMUS VOCANS). Oysters seal themselves to the roots, and various sorts of shell-fish gather together—two or three varieties appear to browse upon the leaves and bark of the mangroves; some excavate galleries ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... of the open space was a large tree. Backed up against this tree, and looking straight at the little boy, with fiddle in position for playing, and uplifted bow, was a ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine |
