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More "Prelude" Quotes from Famous Books



... again, was stormy. We stayed quietly under shelter, preparing for our real journey after so much prelude. The Isaac Newton's steam-whistle had sent up the curtain; the overture had followed with strains Der-Frei-schutzy in the Adirondacks, pastoral in the valleys of Vermont and New Hampshire, funebral and andante in the fogs of Mollychunkamug; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... this prelude that I have come into Aunt Mary-zone again. Well, I have: we have not visited her yet; but she has been to New York on business and I know just how old I am, how many freckles I have on my nose, that my hair is shades darker than ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... hands while he spoke. I was not quite certain that I did hear the breakers, the noises on board the tumbling vessel making it difficult to distinguish sounds. Shortly after this there came a lull, but we thought it only the prelude to ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston

... tripod is going to break down here. I could tell you exactly what the difficulty is;—which would be as intelligible and amusing as a watchmaker's description of a diseased timekeeper to a ploughman. It is enough to say, that I found just what I expected to, and that I think this attack is only the prelude of more serious consequences,—which expression means you very ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... to Mrs. Delarayne's occasional affectation of valetudinarian peevishness, alleged ill-health as a fact. As a rule it was the prelude to the request for a favour on a grand scale, and being a man of very great wealth, and therefore somewhat tight-fisted, he was always rendered unusually solemn by his friend's ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... bridal couple. Two by two they came, and the air rang with their laughter and joyous chatter. Then another sound arose, and if the secretary and the pedagogue could have guessed of what that beating of hoofs was to be the prelude, they had scarce smiled so easily as they watched the ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... European civilisation, and with a much more developed proletariat, than that of England was in the seventeenth, and of France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

... the Back laid that Officer dead upon the Spot: And as it had been before concerted, the Spaniards of the Place at the same Time fell upon the poor, weak Soldiers, killing several; not even sparing their Wives. This was but a Prelude to their Barbarity; their savage Cruelty was only whetted, not glutted. They took the surviving few; hurried and dragg'd them up a Hill, a little without the Villa. On the Top of this Hill there was a Hole, or Opening, ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe

... farce over, as contrast and prelude, the curtain rising for the tragedy, I can, from my good seat in the pit, pretty well front, see again Booth's quiet entrance from the side, as, with head bent, he slowly and in silence, (amid the tempest of boisterous hand-clapping,) walks down the stage to the footlights ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... murmur, prelude of the coming storm, ran through the theatre, and Professor van Huysman permitted himself to snort distinctively, for which he was very promptly, though quietly, called to order by his daughter, who was sitting in front of the platform between ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... answer inconsistent with the first, thus showing that the definition was too narrow or too wide, or defective in some essential condition. [Footnote: Grote, part ii. ch. 68.] The respondent then amended his answer; but this was a prelude to other questions, which could only be answered in ways inconsistent with the amendment; and the respondent, after many attempts to disentangle himself, was obliged to plead guilty to his inconsistencies, with an admission that he could make no satisfactory ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... the prelude to the real struggle. The nomination was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, of which Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, was chairman. The latter was very much out of humor with the President, because he had fully expected that Judge Phelps, of his own State, was to receive the honor, and he ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... the sword; I warn'd thee, but in vain, for well I knew What perils youthful ardour would pursue, That boiling blood would carry thee too far, Young as thou wert to dangers, raw to war. O curst essay of arms, disastrous doom, Prelude of bloody fields and fights to come! Hard elements of unauspicious war, Vain vows to heaven, and unavailing ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... half-hour preceding dinner, the dining-room was the scene of another struggle, only a little less desperate than that which had been the prelude to lunch, and again an appeal to the head of the house was found necessary. Muscular activity and a liberal imitation of the jeremiads once more subjugated the rebel—and the same rebellion and its suppression in a like manner took place the ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington

... through the prelude to Tristan and Isolde, trying vainly to conjecture what that seething turmoil of strings and winds might mean to her, but she sat mutely staring at the violin bows that drove obliquely downward, like the pelting ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... After a prelude of some moments a clear and sweet voice accompanied the instrument, and the words of the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... motif is the stealing of the fairy-woman's clothes. The idea is the same as that found in stories where the fisherman steals the sea-woman's skin canoe as a prelude to making her his wife, or the feather cloak of the swan-maiden is seized by the hunter when he finds her asleep, thus placing the supernatural maiden in his power. Among savages it is quite a common and usual circumstance for the spouses not to mention each other's names for months ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... wide diffusion of the songs in question before the date assignable to the earlier of the two MS. authorities. But while this is so, it must be observed that the Carmina Burana are richer in compositions which form a prelude to the Renaissance; the English collections, on the other hand, contain a larger number of serious and satirical pieces ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... there came to their ears a prelude of Chopin, played surely by more than mortal fingers—like the rustling of summer trees, under a summer wind. And suddenly they heard ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... a limit to what I can endure. If you mean to make any promise of that kind a prelude to my father's freedom from persecution, we may as well end this conversation now as later. He would rather rot in prison than have his child sacrifice herself in such ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... me show you the 'outcome' of all this wise and learned chat, with which you edify one another. You know she beguiled me into giving her lessons on the organ, as well as the piano, and yesterday when I went over to the church at instruction hour, I was astonished at a prelude, which she had evidently improvised. Screened from her view, I listened till she finished playing. Of course I praised her (for really she has remarkable talent), and asked her when she began to compose, to improvise. Now what do you suppose she answered? A brigade ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... the crash of my unlucky fall seemed to release all the prisoned noises of the house. A faint scream within the room was but a prelude, lost the next moment in the roar of dismay, the clatter of weapons, and volley of oaths and cries and curses which, rolling up from below, echoed hollowly about me, as the startled knaves rushed to their weapons, and charged across ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... are common enough all over the world, but this was no holiday review. Every one knew that it was the prelude to war, and there was an appropriate gravity and silence in the conduct of spectators. It was deeply impressive, too, to watch the long lines and masses of troops,—each unit full of youth, strength, energy, enthusiasm, hope,—standing perfectly silent, absolutely motionless, like statues, for ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... of big plans was the prelude to nothing! Yet it was by no means a farce when enacted. Philip fully intended to make this crusade the crowning event of his life, and his proceedings immediately after the great fete were all to further that end. To obtain allies abroad, to raise money at home, and to ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... little act of kindness was only a prelude to a greater one. That is to say, it was the introduction to a sumptuous dinner, composed of flesh and fish of every description, in which there was no lack of turkeys and capons. All set out with the intent of manifesting to us the abundance ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... and have still destructive work to do. The 'once more' began when Jesus came, but the final 'shaking' lies in front still. Every smaller revolution in thought or sweeping away of institutions is a prelude to that great 'shaking' when everything will go except the kingdom that cannot be moved. Its result shall be that the treasures of the nations shall be poured at His feet who is 'worthy to receive riches,' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... have played accompaniments gladly for anybody else, but she considered that Bess had already received quite enough attention in one afternoon. For her own credit, however, she must do her best, so she concentrated her energies on the prelude. When the first strains of the violin joined in, her musical ear recognized immediately that Bess's playing was of a very high quality. The tone was pure, the notes were perfectly in tune, and there was a ringing sweetness, a crisp power of expression, and ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... evidently to what was an opening prelude, for several different subjects were introduced and only partially ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... very good comes from this impulse, for the purpose to "tell the world" that my vision of America is startlingly different from what I have read about America is identical with that break with the past which has again and again been prelude to a new era. I do not wish to discuss the alleged new era. Like the younger generation, it has been discussed too much and is becoming evidently self-conscious. But if the autobiographical novel is to be regarded as its literary herald (and they are all prophetic Declarations of Independence), ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... be seen of the enemy, which at present was nothing. Their battlefield at Cedar Run had been reoccupied by Northern troops and Pope was now confirmed in his belief that his men had won a victory there. And this victory was to be merely a prelude to another and ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler

... dark. The great wonder began—the amazing prelude with its brooding, its surmisals, its storms, its pounding hooves remorselessly pursuing, and flashes of the horn, like the blare of lightning. She surrendered herself, and as the curtain rose settled down to ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... of prelude, the first great parliamentary conflict between the parties, which have ever since contended, and are still contending, for the government of the nation, took place on the twenty-second of November, 1641. It was moved by the opposition, that the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the graceful performers. The music stirred him a good deal; he had also been introduced to one or two young persons as Mr. Hopkins, the poet, and he began to feel a kind of excitement, such as was often the prelude of a lyric burst from his pen. Others might have wealth and beauty, he thought to himself, but what were these to the gift of genius? In fifty years the wealth of these people would have passed into other hands. In fifty years all these beauties would be dead, or wrinkled ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... some part of the harbour, but fell harmlessly in the sea. The aeroplane then went home. Three days later, on the 24th, a single aeroplane again dropped a bomb, this time on English soil near Dover. This was the prelude to a formidable series of air raids, which, however, were not made in strength till well on ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... push your boat round some acute angle of water, with willows and tall rushes obscuring your course, and then suddenly shoot out into the open, with a view, perhaps, of an old church or manor-house, or of stately fields and trees—things which a boy feels may be the prelude to the romance of his life. So strong with me, indeed, was this feeling that fate was waiting round the corner, not to stick a knife into me, but perhaps to crown me, that when I wrote my unfinished novel, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... the summer of 1788 brought him back to his old school in the vale of Esthwaite, and either this or the next of his undergraduate summers restored him to the society of his sister at Penrith. This meeting is thus described in the 'Prelude:'— ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... the merest prelude, and then the theme, which appeared, disappeared and re-appeared again and again to be woven about every emotion, at once ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich

... no second invitation, and a moment later had forgotten everything in the delightful prelude to the "break-down." He did not even observe that Mr Armstrong had not returned ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed

... although they did not have a role in the action. Their function was to interject comical comments from time to time. The comments aimed to be witty, but were generally gross, coarse, and obscene. Late in the fifteenth century, in France, a buffoon recited a prelude containing licentious jests to an ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... the child, Yea, saw the child's smile on the lips of death, That magic, mystic, smile! O heart of man, What strange capacities of grief and joy Are thine! How vain, how ruthless such, if given For transient things alone! O life of man! What wert thou but some laughing demon's scoff, If prelude only to the eternal grave! 'Deep cries to deep'—ay, but the deepest deep Crying to summits of the mount of God Drags forth for echo, 'Immortality.' It was the Death Divine that vanquished death! Shorn of that Death Divine the Life Divine, Albeit its feeblest tear had cleansed all ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... the details of the task which lay before him. With the notes he had thrust into his pocket a little handful of business papers involving a knotty and delicate point of business, and he intended that the discussion of the point they raised should act as the prelude to the disclosure and the restitution he desired to make. He could not, even in his newfound heroism, and with whatever hysteric hardihood he was prepared to meet the stroke of fate, he could not as yet encounter Brown, and lay bare before him the plot of the melancholy farce he had played an hour ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... had inundated the world, and to the inordinate covetousness of kings,[23] there were not wanting considerations to mitigate the disappointment of the people. Chief among them, doubtless, in the view of shrewd observers, was the fact that the assembling of the States was the invariable prelude to an increase of taxation, and that never had they met without benefiting the king's exchequer at the expense of the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... return to Graywater Park is destined to live in my memory for ever. The storm, of which the violet rainfall had been a prelude, gathered blackly over the hills. Ebon clouds lowered upon us as we came racing to the gates. Then the big car was spinning around the carriage sweep, amid a deathly stillness of Nature indescribably gloomy and ominous. I have said, a stillness of ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... the tragedy that is happening under the cover of the cocoon. The flacid and faded larva is the mason bee's. A month ago, in June, having finished its mess of honey, it wove its silken sheath for a bedchamber wherein to take the long sleep which is the prelude to the metamorphosis. Bulging with fat, it is a rich and defenseless morsel for whoever is able to reach it. Then, in spite of apparently insurmountable obstacles, the mortar wall and the tent without an opening, the flesh-eating larvae appeared in the secret retreat and ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... mind of the captive queen with terror, which prepared her to listen with avidity to any schemes, however desperate, for her own deliverance and the destruction of her enemy; and proved the prelude to that tragical castastrophe which was now advancing fast ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... in office by a counter-charm. But where is such a charm, or counter-charm, to be found? Throughout, as usual in so provident a writer as Plato, the answer to that leading [263] question has had its prelude, even in the ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... and made her ask if he had ever fallen into his old habits while they were away. The Major and Glenarvan exchanged smiling glances, and Paganel burst out laughing, and protested on his honor that he would never be caught tripping again once more during the whole voyage. After this prelude, he gave an amusing recital of his disastrous mistake in learning Spanish, and his profound study of Camoens. "After all," he added, "it's an ill wind that blows nobody good, and I don't regret ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... The pianist made discursive prelude, then Mr. Coppock gave forth a ditty of the most sentimental character, telling of the disappearance of a young lady to whom he was devoted. The burden, in which all bore a ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... mustard, rub smooth and add one-half teaspoonful of vinegar, one tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce and the juice of one small lime. Lay the tripe in this sauce as soon as it is removed from the fire. Serve with buttered toast. An excellent prelude to this dish is a plate of ...
— Joe Tilden's Recipes for Epicures • Joe Tilden

... is heightened by the rapid subsidence of the passion that inspires them and the quick advent of a calmer mood. We have hardly turned the page ere denunciations of Catherine and Frederick William give place to prayerful invocations of the Supreme Being, which are in their turn the prelude of a long and beautiful contemplative passage: "In the prim'val age, a dateless while," etc., on the pastoral origin of human society. It is as though some sweet and solemn strain of organ music had succeeded to the blast of ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... that advancing wood must be checked, else the horrors of fire would be the prelude to one of the most awful massacres that ever took ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables

... something singularly appalling in all the circumstances which formed the prelude to this contemplated tragedy. Hitherto the Queen-mother had created dangers for herself—had started at shadows—and distrusted even those who sought to serve her; while her son, silent, saturnine, and inert, had patiently submitted to the indignities and insults ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... the name of Heaven is coming now," he said to himself, "that calls for so ominous a prelude? It must be something more than usually serious. May the good Lord give me courage ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... other points along our border line, and excitement was consequently as intense. It was felt at the time, and subsequently confirmed as correct, that the diversion of Gen. O'Neil at Fort Erie was only a prelude to cover more formidable attacks along the line of the St. Lawrence, and the frontier of the Eastern ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald

... and stood erect and stiff, with her arms folded. Ina fixed her deep eyes on her, playing a liquid prelude all the time, then swelled her chest and sung the old Venetian cauzonet, "Il pescatore de'll' onda." It is a small thing, but there is no limit to the genius of song. The Klosking sung this trifle ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... beside them, they had lost their accustomed leaders, shrapnel and heavy shell were bursting among them, and when the cry for bombs and bombers was given, it must have seemed to many to be but the prelude to disaster, the vain cry for further and useless sacrifice. What is it then that stops the individual from hanging back, from letting others lead, from justifying himself to himself by continuing to fire in comparative safety at longer ranges? Who would ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous

... McClellan in a position where he will have neither partner nor censor in his plans and movements. The graceful and appropriate manner in which the old veteran leaves the field, which age and infirmity will no longer allow him to command, is but a fitting prelude to the military rule of one upon whose brow the dew of youth still rests, and who brings to his responsible task the highest qualities, combined with a veneration for the noble virtues and an emulation of the magnanimous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... spared them. He sacrificed them to his impulses from mere selfish indifference. With their wives and mistresses Henry VIII. and George IV. were governed by the same self-indulgent despotism—the same animal disgusts. Henry VIII. had six wives, and sent one to the scaffold as the prelude to his marriage with another. George IV. had only one wife, but she suffered the persecutions of six; and if she escaped decapitation or divorce, it was from no failure of inclination or instruments. Henry ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various

... meditation, she never lectured her attendants, knowing probably that sermons in example are more impressive than sermons in words. In illustration of the freedom they enjoyed in her presence and hearing, one of them, behind the curtain, touched a stringed instrument—a cithern—and followed the prelude with a ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... said, "it is the prelude to 'L'Arlesienne' that they should play for you and me. Yes, I think ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... was exasperated by insults showered upon him by the inhabitants, but the story cannot go far to excuse the massacre which followed the capture of the town. After more than a century of peace, the first important act of war was marked by a brutality which was a fitting prelude to more than two centuries of fierce and bloody fighting. On Edward's policy of "Thorough," as exemplified at Berwick, must rest, to some extent, the responsibility for the unnecessary ferocity which distinguished the Scottish War of Independence. It was, from a military ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait

... their men as soldiers had never fought on the American continent before; and the third day, when for an hour a hundred cannon on Seminary Ridge belched hell-fire at a hundred cannon on Cemetery Ridge, prelude, in the natural key, to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... incessant activity it has often been difficult for me, as the reader has probably observed, to round off my narratives, and to give those final details which the curious might expect. Each case has been the prelude to another, and the crisis once over the actors have passed for ever out of our busy lives. I find, however, a short note at the end of my manuscripts dealing with this case, in which I have put it upon record that Miss Violet Smith did indeed inherit a large fortune, and that she is now the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... a mere meaningless prelude to a sentence this word is overtasked. "Well, I don't know about that." "Well, you may try." ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce

... of chapters of "Artemus Ward" is a prelude to such a deed as this, the book should be filed among the archives of the nation, and the author should be canonized. Henceforth I see the light and ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... Carlos' eye, and in the yearning curl of his finger round the trigger, which told the Spaniard that the least sign of hesitation would be fatal; and, with the fear of death upon him, he instantly halted and flung up his hands. Had he only known to what that was the prelude he would probably have kept them down and ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... The announced expedient and prelude to an alliance with France and Spain against ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... A great crowd was slowly filling the room and an orchestra in a balcony on the left of the dais began to make delightful music on instruments the strangers had never before seen. After an entrancing prelude a sound of singing was heard, and far up in a grand dome, lighted like the one the captives had just admired over the central court of the palace, they saw a bevy of maidens, robed in white, moving about in ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... by way of prelude, 'You must have many lovers—' when Bella checked her with a little ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... time that you will go to India all this prelude will have vanished, you will rattle through in a train-de-luxe from Calais, by way of Baku or Constantinople; you will have none of this effect of a deliberate sullen approach across limitless miles ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... fear'd. She rais'd her head, and, with deep sighs, Shook the large tear-drops from her eyes; And, ere they dried upon her cheek, Before she gather'd force to speak, Convulsively her fingers play'd, While his proud heart the prelude met, Aiming at calmness, though dismay'd, A loud, high measure, like a threat; Soon sinking to that lower [Errata: slower] swell Which love and sorrow ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... notable personages, but notable events have been engendered under the shadow of these hills. The Suffolk Resolves, which were the prelude of the Declaration of Independence, were adopted at the Vose House, which still stands, square and unadorned, easy of access from the sidewalk, as is suitable for a home of democracy. The first piano ever made in this country received ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... Dick, sharply, and the Nilghai opened his eyes. The old chanty whereof he, among a very few, possessed all the words was not a pretty one, but Dick had heard it many times before without wincing. Without prelude he launched into that stately tune that calls together and troubles the hearts of ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... wandered here A-strolling through this sordid city, And piping to the civic ear The prelude of some pastoral ditty! The demigod had crossed the seas,— From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr, And Syracusan times,—to these Far shores and ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... of America ended the war; and the treaty of peace with the United States was a prelude to treaties of peace with the Bourbon powers. Their actual gains were insignificant. France indeed won nothing in the treaties with which the war ended; Spain gained only Florida and Minorca. Nor could they feel even in this hour of their triumph that the end at which they aimed ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green

... in the history of the Vaudois forms a fitting prelude to the advent of a yet more substantial token of good-will on the part of their sovereign. I mean that edict of emancipation which, while it did justice to the people of the valleys, also, by the circumstances ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold

... against this narrowing down of life, though it be done with the faultless skill and taste of the most cultured genius. The children of men are not orphaned. Our Creator is still "Emmanuel—God with us." Earthly existence is but the prelude of our life, and even from this the Divine artist can take much of the discord, and give an earnest of ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... arise" William Drummond Hymn of Apollo Percy Bysshe Shelley Prelude to "The New Day" Richard Watson Gilder Dawn on the Headland William Watson The Miracle of the Dawn Madison Cawein Dawn-angels A. Mary F. Robinson Music of the Dawn Virginia Bioren Harrison Sunrise on Mansfield ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... sentiment with which he approached the place he says: "In the avenue leading to the house, the spreading trees just opening into leaf, with spring flowers around and beneath—yellow cowslips and blue forget-me-nots—and the song of birds in the branches overhead, seemed a fitting prelude to all that followed. Shortly after I was seated in the ante-room, the poet's son appeared, and, as his father was engaged, he said, 'Come and see my mother.' We went into the drawing-room, where the old lady was reclining on a couch. Immediately the lines beginning 'Such age, how ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... verse we should, I hold, go farther even than the Revisers. As you know, much of the poetry in the Bible, especially of such as was meant for music, is composed in stanzaic form, or in strophe and anti-strophe, with prelude and conclusion, sometimes with a choral refrain. We should print these, I contend, in their proper form, just as we should print an English poem in ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... should go to the deanery, after a residence of six months with Lady Linlithgow. At the deanery of course she would see Frank; and she also understood that a long visit to the deanery would be the surest prelude to that home of her own of which she ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... appearances of each of these four elderly ladies, their distinct idiosyncrasies, and their former high position as members of a now moribund nobility, left a lasting impression on my memory. One might expect, perhaps, from such a prelude, to find in the old Marquise traces of stately demeanour, or a regretted superiority. Nothing of the kind. She herself was a short, square-built woman, with large head and strong features, framed in a mob cap, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... the door were noiselessly drawn, and that of the lock forced back; then the two little parties stole out, in the order in which they had been directed. The guerillas had just begun to fire heavily, as a prelude, Terence had no doubt, to a serious attack upon the church. Fortunately there were no houses at the back of the church, and no shout indicated that the party were seen. They therefore kept together, until fifty or sixty yards from the door; then they separated, and continued ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty

... portion of this lecture has been taken up with the past. But even so rough and brief a review as I have attempted is a necessary prelude to a just estimate, both of our present position and of our future prospects. It is often supposed, indeed, that the study of history predisposes a man's mind to a conservative view. He studies the slow development of institutions, or the gradual influence of movements, and the trend of ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various

... eyes not been held I might have known that that broken muttering over the fire was the swan-song of Charlie Mears. But I thought it the prelude to fuller revelation. At last and at last I should cheat the Lords ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... succession to the throne, "or to advise as to the means of establishing a uniformity of coins, weights, and measures;" he was perfectly aware that the authority of burgherdom would be of great assistance to him in the accomplishment of acts so grave. And the three estates played the prelude to the formation, painful and slow as it was, of constitutional monarchy, when, in 1338, under Philip of Valois, they declared, "in presence of the said king, Philip of Valois, who assented thereto, that there should be no power to impose or ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... into the shanty suspended the conversation for a moment only, and then General Sherman, without prelude, rehearsed his plans for moving his army, pointing out with every detail how he would come up through the Carolinas to join the troops besieging Petersburg and Richmond, and intimating that my cavalry, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... the Day of Judgment; and at length the Senta motive enters triumphantly, and with the redemption of the wanderer the thing ends. That, one can see, is the chain of incidents Wagner has translated into tones, or illustrated with tones; but as a prelude to the opera, it is the atmosphere of the sea that counts: the roar of the billows, the "hui!" of the wind, the dashing and plunging. When the curtain rises the storm goes on while Daland's men, with their hoarse "Yo-ho-ho," ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... wandering, forever grieves Low overhead, Above grey mosses whispering of leaves Fallen and dead. And through the lonely night sweeps their refrain Like Chopin's prelude, sobbing 'neath the rain. ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... minds insensible to every other consideration; the principal members caballed secretly on the perils by which they were surrounded; and the sullen concord which now marked their deliberations, was beheld by the Committee rather as the prelude to revolt, than the indication of continued obedience. In the mean while it was openly proposed to concentrate still more the functions of government. The circulation of newspapers was insinuated ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... she was made by fate an Empress. The crown, so far from tempting her, filled her with fear. She yearned to descend as her husband yearned to rise. The proclamation of the Consulate for life, the prelude of the Empire, filled her with gloom and apprehension, Neither the pomp of Saint Cloud, nor the triumphal trip in Belgium. robbed her of her wise and modest ideas. She much preferred Malmaison to any splendid ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... change was greeted with little enthusiasm by the old soldiers in our midst, but old soldiers are invariably pessimists, and imagine that every inspection is the prelude to more "dirty work at the cross-roads" and that every change made in their dispositions is for ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry

... registered lobbyist in Washington, representing foreign commercial interests. He is a chief architect of President Kennedy's 1962 tariff-and-trade proposals—which would internationalize American trade and commerce, as a prelude to amalgamating our economy with ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot

... the apparently deceased comes back to life. The tarsi quiver, those of the fore-legs first; the palpi and the antennae move slowly to and fro: this is the prelude to the awakening. Now the legs begin to kick. The insect bends slightly at its pinched waist; it buttresses itself on its head and back; it turns over. There it goes, jogging away, ready to become an apparent corpse once more if I renew ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... fighting actually taking place. It is true that there is a theoretical exception to this in the fact that a violation of the rules of a demilitarized zone is equivalent to a resort to war; but this exception is more apparent than real for the violation of a demilitarized zone would be only a brief prelude to hostilities. ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller

... desirable to prelude the story by a reminder to the reader that the general characteristics of these various sources were "harlequin" in their diversity of apparent colour. The Amadis romances and, indeed, all the later examples of that great kind, such as Arthur of Little Britain, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... show was given first as a sort of prelude to the games which were to follow, and in these even the older girls joined with spirit. The main idea seemed to be that everyone should do his or her best to make the party a success and to give the poorer children as good a time as possible. Ben, ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard

... gave egress to a staid matron, of high stature, and sharp countenance; I would have pledged my existence on her shrewishness from the first moment I beheld her. When I had placed a chair for her, and reseated myself, this prelude to my ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various

... were but the prelude to a harsher sound which interrupted and annihilated them: the Court-house bell clanging out twelve. "All right," said Joe. "It's noon and I'm ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... Back of every word we utter is a life we have lived. We have been spending years in preparing for that word. Perhaps when the time comes to speak it, it is not the word we thought we were going to speak, it was not the prelude to the action we thought that we were going to perform; it reveals a character other than the character that we thought we had. How often the Gospel brings that before us! We see the young Ruler come running with his brave and perfectly sincere words about inheriting eternal ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... she put on her mackintosh, it was very wet and misty, got out her car, and lit her lamps, her face was still fretful and her mind disturbed. For now, as she looked back on it, Beaumaroy's conversation with her at Old Place seemed just a prelude to this summons, and meant to prepare her for it. Perhaps that too was pardonable diplomacy, and no reference to it could be expected in a letter which she was at liberty to show to Dr. Irechester. She wondered, uncomfortably, how ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony

... The prelude to such phenomena of Nature as the majestic flight of birds, the ferocity of wild beasts, the song of the nightingale, the variegated beauty of the butterfly's wings, is the preparation in the secret places of a nest or a den, or in the motionless intimacy of the cocoon. ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... dunce of more renown than they, Was sent before but to prepare thy way; And, coarsely clad in Norwich drugget, came To teach the nations in thy greater name. My warbling lute, the lute I whilom strung, When to king John of Portugal I sung, Was but the prelude to that glorious day, When thou on silver Thames didst cut thy way, With well-timed oars before the royal barge, Swell'd with the pride of thy celestial charge; 40 And big with hymn, commander of an host, The like was ne'er in Epsom blankets toss'd. Methinks ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... interim venders went about holding up photographic portraits of the tamer, lustily shouting his professional and private virtues. Their voices were, however, soon drowned in the clash of the brass band, which played a prelude to what was coming. At the conclusion of this a lone and last voice cried out, "Ice-cold lemonade," but it was promptly suppressed by those near the crier, ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... you saw," said Pet, and viciously started to change the subject, so that Prissy had to jump the prelude. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... at Covent-Garden theatre, but was performed only a few nights. It was imprudently ushered in by a prelude, in which the author treated the newspaper editors as a set ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... had brought the strings into some order, and after a short prelude, asked his host whether he would choose a "sirvente" in the language of "oc", or a "lai" in the language of "oui", or a "virelai", or a ballad in the vulgar ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... the enemy's cavalry was a fitting prelude to the events of the memorable sortie of ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... Probably he is the elect of Fortune, because of that notable faculty of being intent upon his own business: "Which is," says The Pilgrim's Scrip, "with men to be valued equal to that force which in water makes a stream." This prelude was necessary to the present ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... of their profound studies in the schools of popular Composers? Surely they may; and was I not pleased with Mr. DE KOOEN (whose name seems to suggest "the voice of the turtle,"—the dove, not the soup) when his prelude to the Third Act distinctly recalled to my attentive mind the celebrated unison effect in L'Africaine, only without the marvellous jump, which, when first heard, thrilled the audience, and compelled an enthusiastic encore? Then Miss VIOLET CAMERON sang a song ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various

... during the night between the advanced parties, with scarcely any other effect than to discover the situation of the armies, evince the intention of the generals, and serve as a prelude to the events ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall

... gets into the spirit of his theme by means of a dreamy prelude, so the poet by means of this introduction intends to suggest the spirit of the poem ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson

... modulation! That all languages designate the melody of birds as singing (though according to Blumenbach man only sings, while birds do but whistle), demonstrates that it has been felt as, what indeed it is, a tentative and prophetic prelude of something yet to come. With this conjoin the power and the tendency to acquire articulation, and to imitate speech; conjoin the building instinct and the migratory, the monogamy of several species, and the pairing of almost all; and we shall have collected new ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... situated within the line of fire of Fort Quelin; so, as may be imagined, their destruction was hailed with a ringing cheer by the besiegers. The artillerymen in the fort, however, apparently anticipating an attack in force of which this explosion was but the prelude, were on the alert at once; and, soon after sunrise, they began to pour in a heavy rain of fire on the German works, which the conflagration of the buildings and removal of intervening obstacles now clearly disclosed. Whole broadsides of projectiles from the great ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... become extinct—to feel no surprise at the comparative rarity of one species with another, and yet to call in some extraordinary agent and to marvel greatly when a species ceases to exist, appears to me much the same as to admit that sickness in the individual is the prelude to death—to feel no surprise at sickness—but when the sick man dies, to wonder, and to believe that he ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... Germans! we pant to give you glorious evidence of this. And, as a prelude to the friendly relations we hope to form with your governments, we seek to alleviate as much as possible the pains of captivity to some officers and soldiers belonging to various states of the Germanic Confederation, who fought in ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... The expectations of the clergy were soon realized. In the first Convocation of his reign Henry declared himself the protector of the Church and ordered the prelates to take measures for the suppression of heresy and of the wandering preachers. His declaration was but a prelude to the Statute of Heresy which was passed at the opening of 1401. By the provisions of this infamous Act the hindrances which had till now neutralized the efforts of the bishops to enforce the common law were utterly taken away. ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... with warmth, and it began to dawn upon him, with a sort of slow surprise, that the country was beautiful, the heather purple, and the far-away hills all marbled with sun and shadow. Wordsworth, in a beautiful passage of the "Prelude," has used this as a figure for the feeling struck in us by the quiet by-streets of London after the uproar of the great thoroughfares; and the comparison may be turned the other way with as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... towards ten, when Leonora had gone up to bed. It had been a very hot day, but there it was cool. The man called Bagshawe had been reading The Times on the other side of the room, but then he moved over to me with some trifling question as a prelude to suggesting an acquaintance. I fancy he asked me something About the poll-tax on Kur-guests, and whether it could not be sneaked out of. He was that ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... dress, or not having yet quite recovered an unlucky extra tumbler of exciting fluids, and the green curtain has therefore unduly delayed its ascent, you perceive that the thorough-bass in the orchestra charitably devotes himself to a prelude of astonishing prolixity, calling in "Lodoiska" or "Der Freischutz" to beguile the time, and allow the procrastinating histrio leisure sufficient to draw on his flesh-colored pantaloons and give himself the proper complexion for a Coriolanus or Macbeth,—even so had Sir Sedley made that long ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Confederate lines caissons were blown up by the fire, riderless horses dashed hither and thither, the dead lay in heaps, and throngs of wounded streamed to the rear. Every man lay down and sought what cover he could. It was evident that the Confederate cannonade was but a prelude to a great infantry attack, and at three o'clock Hunt ordered the fire to stop, that the guns might cool, to be ready for the coming assault. The Confederates thought that they had silenced the hostile artillery, and for a few minutes their firing continued; then, suddenly, it ceased, and ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt

... slavery of their wives and children. Such was the extraordinary document, which, from this time forward, was read by the Spanish discoverers to the wondering savages of any newly-found country, as a prelude to sanctify the violence about to be ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... as these form a hesitating prelude to an expression of opinion on a controverted question. They will serve, however, to indicate the limits within which the said opinion is supposed to be hazarded. And in fact, neither in this nor in any historical ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... he did begin: "Ladies and gentlemen, I am to have the honor of reading to you this evening the trial-scene from Pickwick, and a Christmas Carol in a prelude and three scenes. Scene first, Marley's Ghost. Marley was dead, to begin with." These words, or words very similar, were spoken in a husky voice, not remarkable in any way, and with the English cadence in articulation, a ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... declining health, began at last to rally, and it is to this first gush of the recovery of his once splendid bodily condition that we owe not only "The Gay Science", which in its mood may be regarded as a prelude to "Zarathustra", but also "Zarathustra" itself. Just as he was beginning to recuperate his health, however, an unkind destiny brought him a number of most painful personal experiences. His friends caused him many disappointments, which were the more bitter to ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... a lute from which there pulsing came A lively prelude, fashioning the way In which her voice should wander. 'T was a lay More subtle-cadenced, more forest-wild Than Dryope's lone lulling ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... moved past the town we saw neither any of our troops nor those of the enemy, and heard no firing. Although there was complete absence of the usual prelude to battle, still the apprehension came over us that something serious in that line was not very remote, either in time or place. The commanders of both armies were conscious of the importance of the impending contest, which perhaps explains ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore

... fleet were also in the town, and other officers came there every day, so that Brest afforded a most animated spectacle. Admiral Truguet and the commander-in-chief held a number of brilliant receptions, scenes that have often been the prelude to war. ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... sum which he receives from the trade and customs of Constantinople. On these terms, I may allow him to reign. If he refuses, it is war. I am not ignorant of the art of war, and I trust the event to God and my sword." [56] An expedition against the despot of Epirus was the first prelude of his arms. If a victory was followed by a defeat; if the race of the Comneni or Angeli survived in those mountains his efforts and his reign; the captivity of Villehardouin, prince of Achaia, deprived the Latins of the most ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... such an overbearing spirit that a war broke out. The real desire of France was to obtain the much-coveted frontier of the Rhine, and the Emperor heated their armies with boastful proclamations which were but the prelude to direful defeats, at Weissenburg, Woerth, and Forbach. At Sedan, the Emperor was forced to surrender himself as a prisoner, and the tidings no sooner arrived at Paris than the whole of the people turned their wrath on ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge

... moulting season, still less that a day would come when I should envy the ducks their domestic ease and the unthinking tranquillity of their lives. A little boy may be excused for not realising that Hans Andersen's story is only the prelude to a sadder story that he had not the heart ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton

... of 1777-8 upon the bleak hill-sides of Valley Forge. Dancing assemblies, theatrical entertainments, and various gaieties marked the advent of the British in Philadelphia, all of which formed a fitting prelude to the full-blown glories of the Meschianza, which burst upon the admiring inhabitants on ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... organist with vaguely melodious hints foreshadows in his prelude the musical motifs which he means to vary and elaborate in his fugue, so Kielland lightly touched in these "Novelettes" the themes which in his later works he has struck with a fuller volume and power. What he gave in this little book was a light sketch of his mental ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... among the players falling wholly on Goldsmith, for the manager seems to have withdrawn in despair; while all the Johnson confraternity were determined to do what they could for Goldsmith on the opening night. That was the 15th of March, 1773. His friends invited the author to dinner as a prelude to the play; Dr. Johnson was in the chair; there was plenty of gaiety. But this means of keeping up the anxious author's spirits was not very successful. Goldsmith's mouth, we are told by Reynolds, became so parched "from the agitation of his mind, that he was unable to swallow a single ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... Valentine an artful story, as a prelude to draw his secret from him, saying that Valentine knew he wished to match his daughter with Thurio, but that she was stubborn and disobedient to ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... yellow mountains of the over thrust's eastern edge, including two afternoons among the fighting trout of Kennedy Creek and Slide Lake, and two nights in camp among the wild bare arroyos of the Algonkian invasion of the prairie—an interesting prelude to the fulness of ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... bed at once. A doctor was sent for, and found him suffering from heart disease, which had already reached an advanced stage. In spite of every attention the patient became rapidly worse. He would not infrequently fall into fits of unconsciousness, which were the prelude to a state of coma in which he would ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... said was a friend of yours—he is my friend now too, and I have learned to sing some of his songs. I am going to sing one now." She seemed to have no timidity at all, but stood quietly, with a half smile, while a young man with a Russian name played a strange minor prelude. Then she sang, her voice a wonderful contralto, cold at times, and again lit up with gleams of passion. The music itself was fitful, now full of joy, now tender, and ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie

... grew strong enough to walk, he went with her across to the native pastor's house, where together they stood up before the Rev. Tavita Singua and were married. This was the prelude to another and more binding ceremony before the American Consul in Apia, whither they both went in a canoe borrowed from Faalelei. The official books were withdrawn from the safe and the thirty-six Americans in Samoa were increased by two new ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... came to a hamlet which had always been one of his favourite resorts, so peacefully it lay amid the exquisite rural landscape. The cottages were all closed and silent; hark for the reason! From the old church sounded an organ prelude, then the voice of the congregation, joining in one of the ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... immediately produced a political change in the shape of the proclamation of the regency of the future King Frederick, and the granting of a constitution. This event filled me with such enthusiasm that I composed a political overture, the prelude of which depicted dark oppression in the midst of which a strain was at last heard under which, to make my meaning clearer, I wrote the words Friedrich und Freiheil; this strain was intended to develop gradually and ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... was the complete and harmonious embodiment. Of this procession we have still in the frieze of the Parthenon a marble transcript. There we may see the life of ancient Athens moving in stone, from the first mounting of their horses by isolated youths, like the slow and dropping prelude of a symphony, on to the thronged and trampling ranks of cavalry, past the antique chariots reminiscent of Homeric war, and the marching band of flutes and zithers, by lines of men and maidens bearing sacrificial urns, by the garlanded sheep and oxen destined ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... with him, indoors and out of doors. She weaned him from the embittering brawl of politics, and warded away the sourness and despair, which, at one time, seriously threatened to possess him. In the "Prelude," he ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... have forbid your coming into this country; they are under no control, but, in open defiance of the Gerad, do and act just as they like: indeed, every head man is a Gerad here, and those who are strongest carry the day." This was the prelude to another farce; presently the men came of whom Husayn Hadji spoke, and, surrounding my camp, boisterously demanded to know what I was doing in their country against their orders. A violent altercation then ensued. They must ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... of the wind in the forest swelled and sank, and drew near them with a running rush, and died away and away in the distance into fainting whispers. Nearer hand, a bird out of the deep covert uttered broken and anxious notes. All this seemed but a halting prelude to speech. To Otto it seemed as if the whole frame of nature were waiting for his words; and yet his pride kept him silent. The longer he watched that slender and pale hand plucking at the grasses, the harder and rougher grew the fight between pride ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... mountain of self-knowledge, said the Victorine mystics, is the necessary prelude to all illumination. Only at its summit do we discover, as Dante did, the beginning of the pathway to Reality. It is a lonely and an arduous excursion, a sufficient test of courage and sincerity: for ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill

... cannot tell a man what to do to become an orator, I can tell him a few things not to do. There should be no introduction to an oration. The orator should commence with his subject. There should be no prelude, no flourish, no apology, no explanation. He should say nothing about himself. Like a sculptor, he stands by his block of stone. Every stroke is for a purpose. As he works the form begins to appear. When ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... accordance with the continual practice of the German armies, pillaging is only a prelude to incendiarism, the sub-officer Hermann Levith (160th Regiment of Infantry, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... teaspoonful of vinegar, one tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce and the juice of one small lime. Lay the tripe in this sauce as soon as it is removed from the fire. Serve with buttered toast. An excellent prelude to this dish is ...
— Joe Tilden's Recipes for Epicures • Joe Tilden

... where shall we find an example so impressive as Abraham Lincoln, whose career might be chanted by a Greek chorus as at once the prelude and the epilogue of the most imperial theme ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... and torture was forced into doing great exploits. Moreover, Romulus's greatest achievement was the slaying of one man, the despot of Alba, whereas Skeiron, Sinis, Prokrustes, and Korynetes were merely the accompaniments and prelude to the greater actions of Theseus, and by slaying them he freed Greece from terrible scourges, before those whom he saved even knew who he was. He also might have sailed peacefully over the sea to Athens, and had no trouble with those brigands, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... "This is, indeed, the reason why I begged you to alter the order of the questions." The public astonishment had reached its height. There was no longer any deceit or bravado in the manner of the accused. The audience felt that a startling revelation was to follow this ominous prelude. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... and not a State. Douglas then made this "mammoth moneyed corporation" the scapegoat for all that had happened in Kansas. The Missouri Blue Lodges were defensive organizations, called into existence by the fear that the "abolitionizing" of Kansas was the prelude to a warfare upon slavery in Missouri. The violence and bloodshed in Kansas were "the natural and inevitable consequences of such extraordinary systems ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... outside, which were many, were gazing with silent wonder at it, and in the second moment, all the rest had joined them in their confused contemplation. But the third moment witnessed a drastic change in their behavior, for their initial bewilderment wore off and suddenly, with a united prelude of the drawing in of a breath, they all began speaking at once, resulting in a clamorous din that lasted for a few moments, before things hushed again and we could hear a few individual voices discussing ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn

... sea, including in his fire area the whole of the trenches we had taken from him from Umbrella Hill to Sheikh Hasan. Many observers of this bombardment by all the Turks' guns of heavy, medium, and small calibre declared it was the prelude not of an attack but of a retirement, and that the Turks were loosing off a lot of the ammunition they knew they could not carry away. They were probably right, though the enemy made no sign of ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey

... only by the crack and rustle of the fire. Then, into the silence, crept the first dew-clear notes of Chopin's F Sharp Major Nocturne. The liquid beauty of the last bars had scarcely died away, when the unseen piano gave forth, tragically exultant, the glorious chords of the Twentieth Prelude—climbing higher and higher in a mournful triumph of minor chords and sinking at last into the final solemn splendor of the closing measures. The old gentleman turned on the piano-stool to find Kirk weeping passionately and silently into the ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price

... been casting earth's kingdoms into new moulds, and have still destructive work to do. The 'once more' began when Jesus came, but the final 'shaking' lies in front still. Every smaller revolution in thought or sweeping away of institutions is a prelude to that great 'shaking' when everything will go except the kingdom that cannot be moved. Its result shall be that the treasures of the nations shall be poured at His feet who is 'worthy to receive riches,' even as other prophecies have foretold that 'men shall bring unto ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... pity, of trials undergone in common. And as she knew that she was always in demand in society because of her talent, because of the artistic entertainment she furnished at select parties, being always ready to lay her long gloves and her fan on the piano, as a prelude to some portion of her rich repertory, she labored constantly, passed her afternoons turning over new music, selecting by preference melancholy and complicated pieces, the modern music which is no longer content to be an art but is becoming a science, and is much better ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... moment death disentangled them from the world. "This little one in her shroud," he said, "is an eloquent sermon. She passed through the dark valley without fear; and sits, like Mary, at the feet of our Saviour." Of this life, he said: "It is but an imperfect prelude to the next." Of death: "It is only a brief sleep: some sunny morning we shall wake up with the child Bell, ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... the lightening of the pressure, the slight recoil, which could only be a prelude to another assault upon his last stronghold. He clutched his three facts to him as a shield, groping for others which might have afforded a weapon ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... "khir" according to the taste of his customers. Hardly has dessert ended when an elderly Mahomedan in shabby garb falls out of the group and clearing his throat to attract attention commences to recite a flowery prelude in verse. He is the "Dastan-Shah," own brother (professionally) of the "Sammar" or story-teller of Arabia and the "Shayir" of Persia and Cairo: and his stories, which he delivers in a quaint sing-song fashion, richly interspersed with quotations from the poets of Persia, are usually ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... this last mission for those we love and esteem. I realized for a moment the difficult task and during the reading of the scriptures the battle was raging within me. When the moment came and the organ began the prelude, I arose as in a dream, and casting my eyes away from the beloved form, I began in a low voice the beautiful song (by Felix Marti) "By the River." As I sang I forgot all earthly sorrow and directed my thought above the ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... cats heard fighting was propitious only during the first watch of the night; if heard later in the night it was known as 'Kali ki mauj' or 'Kali's temper,' and threatened evil, and if during the daytime as 'Dhamoni [707] ki mauj,' and was a prelude of great misfortune; while if the cats fell from a height while fighting it was worst of all. The above shows that the cat was also the animal of Kali and is a point in favour of her derivation from the tiger; and on this hypothesis the importance of the omen of the cat is explained. If they ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... Such prelude spoken to the gods in full, To you I turn, and to the hidden thing Whereof ye spake but now: and in that thought I am as you, and what ye say, say I. For few are they who have such inborn grace, As to look up with love, and envy not, When stands another on the height of weal. Deep ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... was a Phantom of delight," they were less remarkable than those of the two preceding, and the three following years. Wordsworth's poetical activity in 1804 is not recorded, however, in Lyrical Ballads or Sonnets, but in 'The Prelude', much of which was thought out, and afterwards dictated to Dorothy or Mary Wordsworth, on the terrace walk of Lancrigg during that year; while the 'Ode, Intimations of Immortality' was altered and added to, although it did not receive its final form ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... find my heart so full of grief and indignation that I must beg pardon not to finish the last part of my discourse, that I may drop a tear as the prelude to so ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... from the rout of Trasimene. Silius succeeds in making one of the noblest stories in history lifeless and dull. The narration opens with the description of a melodramatic struggle between Regulus and a monstrous serpent in Africa, scarcely an harmonious prelude for the simple and solemn climax of the hero's life, his return to his home to fix 'the Senate's wavering will', his departure unmoved to Carthaginian captivity, with the certainty of death and torture before him. Silius treats this tragic episode simply and severely; there ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... that April day, whose events form my prelude, to give me remembrance of the handsome telegraph boy. The next time I saw him, which was near midnight in July—the place Hyde ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... case of Don Juan; and in all the revelation made has resembled rather an escapade or a partial confession than a systematic and slowly-consolidated life. The mere circumstances, too, of life have been more regarded than the inner current of life itself. We class the 'Prelude' at once with Sartor Resartus—although the latter wants the poetic form—as the two most interesting and faithful records of the individual experience of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... automobile industry in wonder over its expansion, and with admiration for the men behind it. Clear-cut youth, fresh vigor, compelling action galvanize it. Yet what seems to be a miracle at the end of less than ten years of growth may only be the prelude ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... big plans was the prelude to nothing! Yet it was by no means a farce when enacted. Philip fully intended to make this crusade the crowning event of his life, and his proceedings immediately after the great fete were all to further that end. To obtain allies abroad, to ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... same anxiety for the same end expressed by Mrs Morgan in the regions below, threw no great obstacles in the way. After the doctor had taken his departure, Mrs Bellingham cleared her throat several times. Mr Bellingham knew the prelude of old, and ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... on fire was to bring fair weather for our journey.- We collected our horses readily and set out at an early hour this morning. one of our guides complained of being unwell, a symptom which I did not much like as such complaints with an indian is generally the prelude to his abandoning any enterprize with which he is not well pleased. we left them at our encampment and they promised to pursue us in a few hours. at 11 A.M. we arrived at the branch of hungary creek where we found R. & J. Feilds. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... and Miss Nora, they could not understand why the breaking of half-a-dozen hearts should not be the prelude to every marriage. That, they said with much conviction, was always the case in America, and a girl was thought all the more of who had ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... Gulam Nohiuddin has resigned his Honorary Magistrateship, I hope that both these patriots will not consider that they have done their last duty by their acts of renunciation, but I hope they will regard their acts as a prelude to acts of greater purpose and greater energy and I hope they will take in hand the work of educating the electorate in their districts regarding boycott of councils. I have said elsewhere that never for another century will India be faced with a conjunction of events that faces it to-day. The cloud ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... light breaking into a vault a few notes of prelude were struck upon the piano in the parlor below, and a sweet voice, softened by ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... time to get its pace on before it is pounced upon by the more active hawk, but it must be aloft, traveling from point to point, probably from the fish-stream to the heronry. Thus to catch the bird on passage was the prelude of all good sport. The object to which the Prince had pointed was but a black dot in the southern sky, but his strained eyes had not deceived him, and both Bishop and King agreed that it was indeed a heron, which grew larger every instant as it flew ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... commonly advance on any subject is at any rate a defence against the worst pests of society. On the other hand, the ingenuous confession that she really knows nothing about it can be turned by a smile into a prelude to the most engaging conversation, and into an implied flattery of the neatest kind to the favored being whose superiority is acknowledged. Ignorance, in fact, of this winsome order is one of the stock ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... having thrown his lot into the urn among the rest, took his turn, and entered, attended by the prefects of the pretorian cohorts bearing his harp, and followed by the military tribunes, and several of his intimate friends. After he had taken his station, and made the usual prelude, he commanded Cluvius Rufus, a man of consular rank, to proclaim in the theatre, that he intended to sing the story of Niobe. This he accordingly did, and continued it until nearly ten o'clock, but deferred the disposal of the crown, and the remaining part of the solemnity, until the next ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... l'attention, le crime n'est comparativement rien. Mais lorsque nous voyons representer ces choses, les actes sont comparativement tout, et les mobiles ne sont plus rien. L'emotion sublime ou nous sommes entraines par ces images de nuit et d'horreur qu'exprime Macbeth; ce solennel prelude ou il s'oublie jusqu'a ce que l'horloge sonne l'heure qui doit l'appeler au meurtre de Duncan; lorsque nous ne lisons plus cela dans un livre, lorsque nous avons abandonne ce poste avantageux de l'abstraction ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck

... have a creepy feeling that he won't come back!" cried Harry. "He may at this moment be past human aid, Tom, and that may be but the prelude ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock

... in the waters, offered a sacrifice to the gods, casting some portions of the victim into the lake, and before leaving carved his own image on the surface of a commanding rock. On his homeward march he received tribute from Gilzan. This expedition was but the prelude of further successes. After a few weeks' repose at Nineveh, he again set out to make his authority felt in the western portions ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... a prelude. Now for old Maguire and his horse. Some years ago, in the interior of Ohio, there did live an old Irish jintleman, who not only had a fine estate, but likewise a saw-mill, and as fine an old black ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... mean? I said; the prelude or what? Do you not know that all this is but the prelude to the actual strain which we have to learn? For you surely would not regard the skilled ...
— The Republic • Plato

... the harbour, but fell harmlessly in the sea. The aeroplane then went home. Three days later, on the 24th, a single aeroplane again dropped a bomb, this time on English soil near Dover. This was the prelude to a formidable series of air raids, which, however, were not made in strength till well on ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... eleven years of age when his father died. During his minority he was nurtured in learning and piety[51] by his mother, Blanche of Castile, whose devotion to her son, and firm and wise regency were a fitting prelude to the reign of a saintly king. Even after he attained his majority, St. Louis always sought his mother's counsel and was ever respectful and submissive to her will. When the news of her death reached him in the Holy Land, he went to his oratory, fell on his knees before the altar, submissive ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... therefore without control, or very nearly. No doubt he came to Carthage with a strong desire to increase his knowledge and get renown, but still more athirst for love and the emotions of sentiment. The love-prelude was deliriously prolonged for him. He was at that time so overwhelmed by it, that it is the first thing he thinks of when he relates his years at Carthage. "To love and be loved" seems to him, as to his dear Alexandrine poets, the single object of life. Yet he was not ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... story-telling was in order. This cattle-buyer with us lived in Kansas City and gave us several good ones. He told us of an attempted robbery of a bank which had occurred a few days before in a western town. As a prelude to the tale, he gave us the ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams

... Boucherie was so complete a hieroglyph. Thus, the Roman abbey, the philosophers' church, the Gothic art, Saxon art, the heavy, round pillar, which recalls Gregory VII., the hermetic symbolism, with which Nicolas Flamel played the prelude to Luther, papal unity, schism, Saint-Germain des Pres, Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie,—all are mingled, combined, amalgamated in Notre-Dame. This central mother church is, among the ancient churches of Paris, a sort of chimera; it has the head of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... alack! the ravisher— He leaps from boat to beach, he draweth near! Away, thou plunderer accurst! Death seize thee first, Or e'er thou touch me—off! God, hear our cry, Our maiden agony! Ah, ah, the touch, the prelude of my shame. Alas, my maiden fame! O sister, sister, to the altar cling, For he that seizeth me, Grim is his wrath and stern, by land as on the sea. Guard us, O king! [Enter the HERALD ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... experiment, as I interpret it, is not opposed to the theory of these echoes which I have ventured to enunciate. But, as I have indicated, not only to see but to vary such an experiment is a necessary prelude to grasping ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... loathsome operatic brood which it spawned, Not matched by the composer or his imitators since, Mascagni's account of how it came to be written, et seq.—Verga's story, et seq.—Story and libretto compared, The Siciliano, The Easter hymn, Analysis of the opera, et seq.—The prelude, Lola's stornello, The intermezzo, "They have killed ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... instead of being committed to a common jail, would be sent to the asylum at South Boston, and there taught a trade; and in the course of time he would be bound apprentice to some respectable master. Thus, his detection in this offence, instead of being the prelude to a life of infamy and a miserable death, would lead, there was a reasonable hope, to his being reclaimed from vice, and becoming a ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... the early outbreak, the latter are soon forgotten; if they herald a new birth of power, they are fixed in the memory of a world which, however slow and cold, loves to feel the fresh impulse of the awakening human spirit. The wild days at Weimar were the prelude to a long life of sustained energy and of the highest productivity; "The Robbers" was soon distanced and eclipsed by the noble works of one of the noblest of modern spirits; and to the extravagance of the ardent French Romanticists ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... accustomed to Mrs. Delarayne's occasional affectation of valetudinarian peevishness, alleged ill-health as a fact. As a rule it was the prelude to the request for a favour on a grand scale, and being a man of very great wealth, and therefore somewhat tight-fisted, he was always rendered unusually solemn by ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... the clamouring bells! they seemed to know that he was listening at the door, and to proclaim it in a crowd of voices to all the town! Would they never be still? They ceased at last, and then the silence was so new and terrible that it seemed the prelude ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood

... my withered cheeks lose their ashen hue, and burn again with the hot, tumultuous blood of youth and shame. But I may as well tell it with all the resolution a man summons before plunging into an icy bath at midwinter. It came, the unexpected prelude to one long, sweet song. It ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... back from evening service. The clock in the belfry of the Svyatogorsky Monastery pealed out its soft melodious chimes by way of prelude and then struck twelve. The great courtyard of the monastery stretched out at the foot of the Holy Mountains on the banks of the Donets, and, enclosed by the high hostel buildings as by a wall, seemed now ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... gets him with his back to the wall. He vanishes in the shining cloud of a witty abstraction when cornered. His prose is full of winged neologisms, his poetry heavy with the metaphysics of ennui. Remy de Gourmont speaks of his magnificent work as the prelude to an oratorio achieved in silence. Laforgue, himself, called it an intermezzo, and in truth it is little more. His intellectual sensibility and his elemental soul make for mystifications. As if he knew ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... and waving and crossing a pair of umbrellas in a thousand invisible patterns. But this political announcement or advertisement, though more intelligent than our own, had, as I could readily believe, another side to it. I was told that it was often a prelude to ordinary festivals, such as weddings; and no doubt it remains from some ancient ritual dance of a religious character. But I could imagine that it might sometimes seem to a more rational taste to have too religious a ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... many of their comrades lay dead beside them, they had lost their accustomed leaders, shrapnel and heavy shell were bursting among them, and when the cry for bombs and bombers was given, it must have seemed to many to be but the prelude to disaster, the vain cry for further and useless sacrifice. What is it then that stops the individual from hanging back, from letting others lead, from justifying himself to himself by continuing to fire in comparative safety at longer ranges? Who would ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous

... later became, suffered its first outbreak in that early century. The persecutions of the Jews by the Visigothic kings of Spain and the Bishops Avitus of Clermont and Agobard in France (sixth to the ninth century) were the prelude to the more systematic and the more bloody cruelties of subsequent days. The insignificant numbers of the European Jews and the insecurity of their condition stood in the way of forming an intellectual centre of their own. They ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow

... these people commenced that long series of losses and troubles to which their conduct formed the prelude. They were to live in the little shanty that we had just left, and work the farm. Moodie was to find them the land, the use of his implements and cattle, and all the seed for the crops; and to share with them the returns. Besides this, they unfortunately were allowed ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... possible, to surprise their enemies; and, in the second, to endeavour to alarm and confound them. This latter is doubtless partly the purpose of the song and dance, which form with them the constant prelude to the assault, although these vehement expressions of passion operate also powerfully as excitements to their own sanguinary valour and contempt ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik

... remembered how at that very moment two swallows shot by the open window, uttering their eager little note; the room swam with him, and he thought he was going to reel and fall. For a moment he saw nothing and knew nothing, except that he had reached the end of the short prelude on the lute, and that he must find voice to sing for his liberty and Ortensia's, if not for ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... fallen into his old habits while they were away. The Major and Glenarvan exchanged smiling glances, and Paganel burst out laughing, and protested on his honor that he would never be caught tripping again once more during the whole voyage. After this prelude, he gave an amusing recital of his disastrous mistake in learning Spanish, and his profound study of Camoens. "After all," he added, "it's an ill wind that blows nobody good, and ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... elevation of the pulpit, agitated the people and inspired it, in all the horror of a constitutional and schismatic priesthood, with hatred of the government which protected it. This was not actually persecution or civil war, but the sure prelude ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... a pretty prelude to a wedding festival. They were all at their wit's end. While the doctor scratched their arms, they discussed the situation, excitedly and with desperation. Jean was the first to stop chattering and ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke

... the active operation of different minds, facts are observed, examined, and the precise conditions of their appearance determined. All such work in science is the prelude to other work; and the efforts of Boyle and Hooke cleared the way for the optical career of Newton. He conquered the difficulty which Hooke had found insuperable, and determined by accurate measurements ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... become extinct — to feel no surprise at the comparative rarity of one species with another, and yet to call in some extraordinary agent and to marvel greatly when a species ceases to exist, appears to me much the same as to admit that sickness in the individual is the prelude to death — to feel no surprise at sickness — but when the sick man dies to wonder, and to believe that he ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... come. I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes.' He laugh'd, and I, tho' sleepy, like a horse That hears the corn-bin open, prick'd my ears; 45 For I remember'd Everard's college fame When we were Freshmen: then at my request He brought it; and the poet little urged, But with some prelude of disparagement, Read, mouthing out his hollow oes and aes, 50 Deep-chested music, and to ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... and at night, huddling his greasy tatters about him, he would crawl into some miserable lair of leaves and refuse, where, dirty, cold, and hungry, he passed, in broken ghost-haunted slumbers, a wretched night as a prelude to another wretched day. Such was the only human being deemed fit to associate at arm's length with one who had paid the last offices of respect and friendship to the dead. And when, the dismal term of his seclusion being over, the mourner was about to mix with his fellows ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... worm,' was alone callous to the prelude of the forthcoming song. (37) Let him live on in remorse and self-contempt. (38) Neither should we weep that Adonais has 'fled far from these carrion-kites that scream below.' His spirit flows back to its fountain, a portion of the Eternal. (39) Indeed, he is ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... rising tide. What had happened in one part of the world might happen in another, for the Stuart policy was the same. It aimed not at securing toleration but at asserting unchecked supremacy. Its demand for an inch was the prelude to its seizing an ell, and so our forefathers understood it. Sir Edmund's formal demand for the Old South Meeting-House was flatly refused, but on Good Friday, 1687, the sexton was frightened into opening it, and thenceforward Episcopal ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... these two examinations was unquestionably very great in spreading consternation and bewilderment far and wide; but they were only the prelude to the work, to that end, arranged for the day. The public mind was worked to red heat, and now was the moment to strike the blow that would fix an impression deep and irremovable upon it. It was Thursday, Lecture-day; and the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... observation; and was never more apparent than in the present narrative. Every aera of Johnson's life is fixed by his writings. In 1744, he published the life of Savage; and then projected a new edition of Shakespeare. As a prelude to that design, he published, in 1745, Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with remarks on sir Thomas Hanmer's edition; to which were prefixed, Proposals for a new Edition of Shakespeare, with a specimen. Of this pamphlet, Warburton, in the preface to Shakespeare, has given ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... not due to any conscious discontent with my life and work in Dursley. I must suppose it was the beginning of that restless temperamental itch which all through life has made me regard everything I did as no more than the necessary prelude to some more or less vague thing I meant presently to do, which should be much better worth doing. A praiseworthy doctrine I have heard it called. It may be. But I would like to be able to warn all and sundry who cultivate or inculcate it in this ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... purpose. He is not to be placed with the professional litterateurs of his country, Boston novelists, New York poets and the like. He stands apart, and the chief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. He has begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. As a man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroic and spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... gold into the greens: the night-dews gleamed upon the firs and grasses, while a luminous haze dimmed the dark glint of the waters to pearly gray, softened the grimness of the mountain-faces and wrapped them—sea and mountains, as soul and body in a vision of mystery, a prelude to the blaze of golden glory that was suddenly outpoured on land ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... occupied by the Russian fleet at that moment. No sooner was the message decoded and its purport made known than mutual congratulations were exchanged; for even as the fall of 203 Metre Hill into the hands of our soldiers had been the prelude to the surrender of Port Arthur, so now the fact of the Russian fleet being in square 203 on the chart was accepted as an ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood

... closely through the prelude to Tristan and Isolde, trying vainly to conjecture what that seething turmoil of strings and winds might mean to her, but she sat mutely staring at the violin bows that drove obliquely downward, like the pelting streaks of rain in a summer shower. Had this music any message for ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... took a lute from which there pulsing came A lively prelude, fashioning the way In which her voice should wander. 'T was a lay More subtle-cadenced, more forest-wild Than Dryope's lone lulling of her ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... correlative duties; the impeachment of Warren Hastings showed that we had scruples about treating India simply as a place where 'nabobs' are to accumulate fortunes; and the slave-trade suggested questions of conscience which at the end of the period were to prelude an ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... the Reverend Mr. Arnold shrank into the furthest corner of Surgeon-Major Livingstone's box, and knew all the misery of outrage. Pilate and the slave-maidens, Pilate's fat wife and an unspeakably comic centurion, offered as yet hardly more than a prelude, but the monstrosity of the whole performance was already projected upon Arnold's suffering imagination. This, then, was what Patullo had done with it. But what other, he asked himself in quiet anger, ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... desperation, he pressed the flute to his lips and blew again, if anything, more feebly; but the sound of the notes seemed to send a thrill through his nerves, and the next came deep, rich-toned, and pure, as he ran through a prelude, from which he imperceptibly glided into a sweet old Irish melody. He played it with such earnestness and feeling that his hearers were electrified, and the applause came again loudly, amidst which he dashed off into a series of variations, bright, sad, martial, and wailing, till, ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... are frightened by this outburst, which is no more than a prelude to bargaining. The women extol and Salam decries the goods on offer; both praise Allah. Salam assures them that the country of the "Ingliz" would be ruined if its inhabitants had to pay the prices they ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan

... obey her commands. He took a small harp in his hand, and sate down in the vacant chair next to Sir Bryan de Bareilles. The rest of the company composed themselves to listen; and, after a short prelude, Lorimer, in a fine manly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... of experiment and change. Assuredly the nights had their charm, whether they were spent by some great camp-fire on the winding Lachlan, in the darkness of a pine forest in British Columbia, or on the fo'c'sle-head of a ship upon the sea; and yet the night was the night, the prelude to sleep, and not to activity, the chief joy ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... life the chief record is to be found in "The Prelude." He did not distinguish himself as a scholar, and if his life had any incidents, they were of that interior kind which rarely appear in biography, though they may be of controlling influence upon the life. He speaks of reading Chaucer, Spenser, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... grieves Low overhead, Above grey mosses whispering of leaves Fallen and dead. And through the lonely night sweeps their refrain Like Chopin's prelude, sobbing 'neath ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... proved to be the prelude to an attempted storm. At 5 a.m. there was a big bombardment of the front line trenches, and the Turks made a gesture of defiance. The gesture did not go beyond fixing bayonets and shouting "Allah!" and the only result has been to render Suvla more ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... way, or to contradict his accusers or their witnesses, Pilate having naturally no idea that the prisoner conceives himself as going through an inevitable process of torment, death, and burial as a prelude to resurrection. Before the high priest he has also been silent except that when the priest asks him is he the Christ, the Son of God, he replies that they shall all see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... proposed was itself of vast importance, and was, moreover, but a prelude to things still more far-reaching. But, critical as it was, Maxwell was prepared for it. During the later years of his friend Hallin's life the two men had constantly discussed the industrial consequences of democracy with ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... birth has no tendency to prelude the favour of God. In this respect, he "seeth not as a man seeth," but, in the past dispensations of his mercy, appears to have preferred the lowly as objects of high and distinguishing manifestations. This is the case in the Christian era, and to the present ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... success of the army under the command of General Wayne, whether we regard it as a proof of the perseverance, prowess, and superiority of our troops, or as a happy presage to our military operations against the hostile Indians, and as a probable prelude to the establishment of a lasting peace upon terms of candor, equity, and good neighborhood. We receive it with the greater pleasure as it increases the probability of sooner restoring a part of the public resources to the desirable object ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson

... he was about to turn back when a strange sound suddenly arrested his steps. It was a concert of voice and instruments, which in this lost solitude seemed to him like a dream, or a miracle. The music was good-even excellent. He recognized a prelude of Bach, arranged by Gounod. Robinson Crusoe, on discovering the footprint in the sand, was not more astonished than Camors at finding in this desert so lively a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the programme, as arranged by the Committee, the first number is a prelude by the President and the last a hymn by the Society. The Committee evidently intended to begin and end with music. What particular solo they expect me to perform I am somewhat uncertain. But the truth is you have already had a part of the music and you will have the rest when I am ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... his army to receive the assault of General McClellan. Jackson, marching with his customary promptness, joined him with a portion of the detached force on the next day (September 16th), and almost immediately those thunders which prelude the great struggles ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... hurry; but I was thinking how I could best begin without startling you. But I may as well get it out without any prelude. Miss Challoner, to Mrs. Williams I am only Mr. Dancy; but my real ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... or more, as has been said, passed before the curtain rose again, but the snarling trumpets of the orchestra played a fitting prelude. Cynthia's feelings and Cynthia's life need not be gone into during this interval knowing her character, they may well be imagined. They were trying enough, but Brampton had no means of guessing them. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... auspicious prelude to each ensuing season. You have this day to declare yourself head of a nation. 'And now, O Lord, my God, thou hast made thy servant ruler over the people. Give unto him an understanding heart, that he may know how to go out and come in before this great people; that he may discern between ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... the time that you will go to India all this prelude will have vanished, you will rattle through in a train-de-luxe from Calais, by way of Baku or Constantinople; you will have none of this effect of a deliberate sullen approach across limitless miles of sea. But that is how I went to India. ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... wheresoever My vision strays—o'er sky, and sea, and river— Sleeps, like a happy child, In slumber undefiled, A premonition of sublimer days, When war and warlike lays At length shall cease, Before a grand Apocalypse of Peace, Vouchsafed in mercy to all human kind— A prelude and a prophecy combined! ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... this volume is the mere prelude of a mind growing in power, we have in it the promise of a fine poet.... In 'The Wandering Soul,' the verse describing Socrates has that highest note of critical poetry, that in it epigram becomes vivid with life, and life reveals ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris

... years of the reign of King Charles I., when already there were signs of those disorders which were the prelude to the Great Rebellion, one of the most prominent gentlemen at his majesty's court ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... it was hard for them to appear unconscious of it. A great crowd was slowly filling the room and an orchestra in a balcony on the left of the dais began to make delightful music on instruments the strangers had never before seen. After an entrancing prelude a sound of singing was heard, and far up in a grand dome, lighted like the one the captives had just admired over the central court of the palace, they saw a bevy of maidens, robed in white, moving about in ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... the ladies know;— I have my doubts. No matter,—here we go! What is a Prologue? Let our Tutor teach: Pro means beforehand; logos stands for speech. 'Tis like the harper's prelude on the strings, The prima donna's courtesy ere she sings;— Prologues in metre are to other pros As worsted ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... with some alterations; but the walk down from the statues into Erewhon is reminiscent of the Leventina Valley in the Canton Ticino. The great chords, which are like the music moaned by the statues are from the prelude to the first of Handel's Trois Lecons; he used ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones

... the silent, brooding forest witnessed a like gathering, nor its dark mysterious depths re-echoed with such unfamiliar sounds. But that camp-fire scene was merely a prelude to the tide of progress already setting, when unnamed rivers, hidden lakes, crouching valleys, lofty hills, and secret woodland depths would know those sounds, and ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody

... I can see or hear each separate incident in its detail, can indeed see or hear little else. So much in this place do men live by pain that my friendship with you, in the way through which I am forced to remember it, appears to me always as a prelude consonant with those varying modes of anguish which each day I have to realise, nay more, to necessitate them even; as though my life, whatever it had seemed to myself and others, had all the while been a real symphony of sorrow, passing through its rhythmically linked movements ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... no further opposition, and commenced the prelude. The emperor leaned back his head, and closed his eyes, as he was accustomed to do, when listening attentively. Reclining among the purple-velvet cushions of his luxurious arm-chair, Leopold presented a handsome picture of imperial comeliness. His fine figure ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... Pronunciation of Proper Names Prologue Act First Act Second Prelude to Act Third Act Third Prelude to Act Fourth Act Fourth Act Fifth Prelude to Act Sixth Act Sixth ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... his name in history; but his hard-earned success was but the prelude of a harder task. Herculean labors lay before him, if he would realize the schemes with which his brain was pregnant. Bent on accomplishing them, he retraced his course, and urged his canoes upward against the muddy current. The party were famished. They had ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... petticoat and shift, whilst my thighs were, by an instinct of nature, unfolded to their best; and my desires had so thoroughly destroyed all modesty in me, that even their being now naked and all laid open to him, was part of the prelude that pleasure deepened my blushes at, more than same. But when his hand, and touches, naturally attracted to their center, made me feel all their wantonness and warmth in, and round it, oh! how immensely different a sense of things, ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... "Without further prelude, I shall now introduce to your notice each one of my figures, beginning, as usual, with the ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger

... specious amiability. It was not long before he detected a patronizing tone that stirred his gall and confirmed him in his bitter Republicanism, a phase of opinion through which many a would-be patrician passes by way of prelude to his ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... as may be imagined, their destruction was hailed with a ringing cheer by the besiegers. The artillerymen in the fort, however, apparently anticipating an attack in force of which this explosion was but the prelude, were on the alert at once; and, soon after sunrise, they began to pour in a heavy rain of fire on the German works, which the conflagration of the buildings and removal of intervening obstacles now clearly disclosed. ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... in the comeliness of manhood. At length the death-stricken old man lay quietly in the torpor of mental and bodily exhaustion, with an imperceptible pulse, and breath that grew fainter and fainter, except when a long, deep, and irregular inspiration seemed to prelude ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... scenes in Hastinapur, an ancient and vanished city, formerly situated about sixty miles north-east of the modern Delhi. The Ganges has washed away even the ruins of this the metropolis of King Bharat's dominions. The poem opens with a "sacrifice of snakes," but this is a prelude, connected merely by a curious legend with the real beginning. That beginning is reached when the five sons of "King Pandu the Pale" and the five sons of "King Dhritarashtra the Blind," both of them descendants ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... piano stood open. Karen went to it and, standing over it, played softly the dearly loved notes of the prelude in D flat. ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... the Jacobins stood for Anarchy. War was declared between the two. The Girondins arraigned Marat and Robespierre for complicity in the September massacres, and thereby precipitated their own fall. The triumphant acquittal of Marat was the prelude to the ruin of the Girondins, and the proscription of twenty-nine deputies followed at once as the first step. These fled into the country, hoping to raise an army that should yet save France, and several of the fugitives made their way to Caen. Thence by ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... a few bars of a prelude, as if to get himself into harmony with the recollection of what he had heard the master play, and then began a lively melody, in which he seemed as usual to pour out his soul. Long before he reached the end of it, Mary had ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... would be the most glorious act of his life. No one could imagine, from the calm and subdued conversation, and the quiet appetite with which these distinguished men partook of the entertainment, that this was their last repast, and but the prelude to a violent death. But when the cloth was removed, and the fruits, the wines, and the flowers alone remained, the conversation became animated, gay, and at times rose to hilarity. Several of the youngest men of the party, in sallies of wit and outbursts ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... to the first edition of The Prelude, published in 1850, it is stated that that work was intended to be introductory to The Recluse: and that The Recluse, if completed, would have consisted of three parts. The second part is The Excursion. The third part was only planned; but the first book of the first part was left in manuscript ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater

... imagine that I could compare with that!" thought Corinna with amusement. Her sense of defeat was humorous rather than resentful; yet she realized that it contained a disagreeable sting. Was her long day over at last? Had the sun set on her conquests? Had her adventurous return to power been merely a prelude to the ultimate Waterloo? Lifting her eyes suddenly from her plate she met the deep meditative gaze of John Benham across the marigolds on the table; and the faint flush that kindled her face made her eyes glow like embers. ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... club afterwards, for long wholesome days in the country—very jolly days, too. We're better men in our small way for the child's coming, Arnold. You can take that for granted. Now, go on with what you have to say. I suppose this is all a prelude ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... lute from which there pulsing came A lively prelude, fashioning the way In which her voice should wander. 'T was a lay More subtle-cadenced, more forest-wild Than Dryope's lone lulling of ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... can yet be given. It was of course at once observed that between Mars and Jupiter one place is vacant, and it has now been ascertained that this is occupied by a zone of Minor Planets, the first of which was discovered by Piazzi on January 1, 1801, a worthy prelude to the succession of scientific discoveries which form the glory of our century. At present over 300 are known, but certainly these are merely the larger among an immense number, some of ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... is preceded by a series of false promises and followed by a series of calumnies. Between such a prelude and such a finale, you may perform a symphony of frightfulness with Dr. Strauss' orchestration—it will sound as innocent and artless as the three notes of a shepherd's pipe. The violation of Belgian neutrality is bad enough, but if you begin to lull Belgium to slumber by repeating, on every ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts

... told us how, on one occasion, she had gone out at night for a storm-walk, and Chopin, being too ill, or disinclined to go, remained at home. Upon her return she found him in a conniption, he having composed a prelude to ward off an attack of cold feet, and was now ready to scream through fear that something had happened to her. As she entered the door he arose, staggered and fell before ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... nightingales. Commencing with a strong, rich whistle, like the high notes of a fife, "Cheo-cheo-cheo-cheo," repeated over and over as if to make perfect the start of a song he is about to sing, suddenly he stops, and you learn that there is to be no glorious performance after all, only a prelude to — nothing. The song, such as it is, begins, with both male and female, in March, and lasts, with a brief intermission, until September — "the most melodious sigh," as Mr. Allen calls it. Early in May the cardinals build a bulky and ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... at the time of the arrival of the "collaress" and must therefore be presented at the first opportunity. The marchesa, with a few kindly remarks about her dancing, would have let her return to her partners, but the duchess moved ponderously aside on the sofa, making a place for Nina. Without prelude she began, "Is it true that you have five hundred thousand dollars a year? Or is rumor mistaken—is it only five ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post

... pointed out above, the proem (Book I., cc. i-iii.) is a prelude to the treatment of the whole subject covered by the Ethics and the Politics together. It sets forth the purpose of the enquiry, describes the spirit in which it is to be undertaken and what ought to be the expectation of the reader, ...
— Ethics • Aristotle

... noises of our day A low, sweet prelude finds its way; Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of fear, A light is ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... lord, who is driven by idleness and ennui to deceive a poor drunkard, can make no better use of his situation than the latter, who every moment relapses into his vulgar habits. The last half of this prelude, that in which the tinker, in his new state, again drinks himself out of his senses, and is transformed in his sleep into his former condition, is from some accident or other, lost. It ought to have followed at the end of the larger piece. The occasional remarks ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... will say is that you are a remarkable young woman," answered Mrs. Zane, who saw plainly that Betty's violent outburst was a prelude to a storm of weeping. "I don't believe a word you have said. I don't believe you hate ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... face, as she stepped out to join him, struck a buffet of warm air; a heavy scent of narcissus rose from the flower-boxes on the terrace; and from a garden far below came the sharp thin prelude of a nightingale. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... tone of the successive intimations chance had sent me, and which in this great concert of misfortunes were like a prelude of mournful modulations to a funereal theme, the mighty cry of expiring love, I cried out: "Surely you believe that this pure lily cut from ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... continue, for the courtiers, on hearing this from my mouth, and on discovering that the stranger's odd appearance was but a prelude to the real diversion, could not restrain their mirth. The king, concealing his own amusement, turned to them with an angry air, and bade them be silent; and the Gascon, encouraged by this, and by the bold manner in which I had stated his grievance, ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... for silence in such a place, but not for the sounds which I commence to hear. First of all an osprey sounds the prelude, above my head and so close to me that it holds me trembling throughout its long cry. Then other voices answer from the depths of the ruins, voices very diverse, but all sinister. Some are only able to mew on two long-drawn notes: some yelp like jackals ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... and men are visibly strained by the crisis. They all know that they are sitting on a volcano. The prelude is all icy suspicion."—Mr. JAMES DOUGLAS in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various

... while she put on her mackintosh, it was very wet and misty, got out her car, and lit her lamps, her face was still fretful and her mind disturbed. For now, as she looked back on it, Beaumaroy's conversation with her at Old Place seemed just a prelude to this summons, and meant to prepare her for it. Perhaps that too was pardonable diplomacy, and no reference to it could be expected in a letter which she was at liberty to show to Dr. Irechester. She wondered, uncomfortably, how Irechester ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony

... had assaulted the editor of a Washington newspaper; another pro-slavery member, from Arkansas, had violently attacked Horace Greeley on the street; a third pro-slavery member, from California, had shot an unoffending waiter at Willard's Hotel. Was this fourth instance the prelude of an intention to curb or stifle free Congressional debate? It is probable that this question was seriously considered at the little caucus of Republican Senators held that night at the house of Mr. Seward. The Republicans had only a slender minority in ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... these two lads aged eight and ten, and one dear little girl of seven. Miss Witherton, who is now my wife, was governess to this little girl. I was tutor to the two boys. Could there be a more obvious prelude to an engagement? She governs me now, and I tutor two little boys of our own. But, there—I have already revealed what it was which I gained ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... happy be, O lucky Bridegroom and your Bride, To celebrate your Nuptials I've prepar'd A Rural Dance, and Magick Harmony, To serve for Prelude to your ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym

... revulsion of the pulse, this alteration of strain, this change of tune a prelude, a transition to a new piece of music? Every living creature exists to be devoured by another; man alone has apparently eluded these barrack-regulations, this military duty, and fattens himself up for the earth, that shattered chaos of ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... find the lunatic in that crowd. It was plain in a flash that the change had fallen on him like a thunderbolt; that he, at least, had never had the wildest notion that the tale of the Vanishing Squire had been but a prelude to that of the vanishing trees. The next half hour was full of his ravings and expostulations, which gradually died away into demands for explanation and incoherent questions repeated again and again. He had practically to be overruled at last, in spite of the respect in which he was held, ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton

... their infirmity, and more simplicity of heart; and would in their penitence shun the concourse that besets them, and hide their heads in some retired quiet spot of peace, out of reach of this assault of temptation. And this, Eusebius, is the best prelude I can devise to the story I have to tell you. It is of a poor old woman; shall I magnify her offence? It was magnified indeed in her eyes. Smaller, therefore, shall it be—because of its very largeness to her. But it will not do to soften offences, Eusebius. I see already ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... for rest (k), seems to implore the Almighty to send the Day of Judgment; and at length the Senta motive enters triumphantly, and with the redemption of the wanderer the thing ends. That, one can see, is the chain of incidents Wagner has translated into tones, or illustrated with tones; but as a prelude to the opera, it is the atmosphere of the sea that counts: the roar of the billows, the "hui!" of the wind, the dashing and plunging. When the curtain rises the storm goes on while Daland's men, with their hoarse "Yo-ho-ho," add even more colour. The motion of the sea is ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... rampant blady grass. The country was decidedly hostile to the climber, though far from actually forbidding, and with Wylo in the lead—for I held myself in reserve for the final clamber up the ravine, to which the ascent to the base of the Sentinel was merely a prelude—the pace was respectable and sure. Closer acquaintance forced a certain sort of respect for the Sentinel, which was more massive, more venerable and time-worn than could be imagined from afar off, while all the scene below ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... alleged to be the almost invariable initiatory prelude to fitness for membership in all secret orders, means, first of all, that the would-be initiate must have control over his lower sexual desires. If he cannot control the goat instincts within his nature, he stands small chance of taking the higher ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... a share in the great "moralities," although they did not have a role in the action. Their function was to interject comical comments from time to time. The comments aimed to be witty, but were generally gross, coarse, and obscene. Late in the fifteenth century, in France, a buffoon recited a prelude containing licentious jests to an edifying ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... and violently transferred from one fierce guardian to another; each regarding the possession of his person as a sanction to tyranny. He had been introduced to the two winsome young Douglases only as a prelude to their murder, and every day brought tidings of some fresh violence; nay, for the second time, a murder was perpetrated in the ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... his mind, when, first one and then another, with every variety of pace and voice—one deep as the bell from a cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz—the clocks began to strike the hour ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... and at a cathedral city too; and it was quite a godsend to him to find any one who knew a word about the institutions at which he had been railing weekly for years. So nothing would serve him but my writing a set of articles on the universities, as a prelude to one on the Cathedral Establishments. In vain I pleaded the shortness of my stay there, and the smallness of ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... slowly up the steep incline of a slate like an ungreased wagon up the Alleghanies broke the silence. Strange it was that this sound, so noticeable at other times, no one heard. Like a piece of grand opera music this formed a sort of a musical prelude before the villain appeared. But mark you the villain was not in front of the desk but back of it, revolving like a pin wheel in an autumn gale. Suddenly there was a ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... gloom, under or above ground, from the extreme north to the farthest south of London; alighting at length with such a ringing of the ears, such an impression of roar and crash and shriek, as made the strangest prelude to a feast of music ever devised in the world's history. Their seats having been taken in advance, they entered a few moments before the concert began, and found themselves amid a scanty audience; on either side of them were vacant places. Alma did not ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... Independence was the avowed expedient and prelude for an alliance with France and Spain against the Mother Country; proofs and illustrations; the secret and double game played between the Congress and France, both before and after the Declaration ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... fixed upon the future. No two women had ever been loved as they were loved. All this work, this washing and ironing, it resembled nothing more than the opening scene in an opera: a sort of prelude, for the sake of contrast. They would see—O-o-oh, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... will listen to a simple melody after anything so brilliant,' said Miss Temple, as she touched a string, and, after a slight prelude, sang these words:— ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... as has been said, passed before the curtain rose again, but the snarling trumpets of the orchestra played a fitting prelude. Cynthia's feelings and Cynthia's life need not be gone into during this interval knowing her character, they may well be imagined. They were trying enough, but Brampton had no means of guessing them. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... this is not so strong a contrast; for, after all, mankind in the main has always regarded reason as a bit of a joke. Lear introduces his unmeaning words and his amorphous creatures not with the pomp of reason, but with the romantic prelude of ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... friend of yours—he is my friend now too, and I have learned to sing some of his songs. I am going to sing one now." She seemed to have no timidity at all, but stood quietly, with a half smile, while a young man with a Russian name played a strange minor prelude. Then she sang, her voice a wonderful contralto, cold at times, and again lit up with gleams of passion. The music itself was fitful, now full of joy, now tender, ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie

... attendant a silver salver, on which was a glass of slivovitsa, a plate of rose marmalade, and a large Bohemian cut crystal globular goblet of water, the contents of which, along with a chibouque, were the prelude to breakfast, which consisted of coffee and toast, and instead of milk we had rich boiled kaimak, as Turkish clotted cream ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... youth was forced to stop for a few seconds to rest. Just then several pieces of ice, the size of a man's head, rushed down the couloir and dashed close past him. They served to show the usual direction of an avalanche. Fearing they were the prelude to something worse, he quickly cut his way to the side of the couloir. He was not a moment too soon. Glancing up in alarm, he saw the foundations of one of the largest ice-masses give way. The top bent over slowly ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... summoned by a wizard's wand from the land of shadows, to march by the central figures of these volumes; to dance, flutter, love, hate, intrigue, and die before our eyes. It is the largest and most varied showbox in all history; a prelude to a series of battle-pieces—Rossbach, Leuthen, Molwitz, Zorndorf—nowhere else, save in the author's own pages, approached in prose, and rarely rivalled out of ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... leading to the house, the spreading trees just opening into leaf, with spring flowers around and beneath—yellow cowslips and blue forget-me-nots—and the song of birds in the branches overhead, seemed a fitting prelude to all that followed. Shortly after I was seated in the ante-room, the poet's son appeared, and, as his father was engaged, he said, 'Come and see my mother.' We went into the drawing-room, where the old lady was reclining ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... together it was certainly enough to rivet her whole attention, and make her leave unopened the rest of the correspondence, for such a prelude to adventure had seldom sounded in Riseholme. It appeared, even as her husband had told her at lunch, that Mrs Quantock found her cold too obstinate for all the precepts of Mrs Eddy; the True Statement ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... and let us hear what it is about," cried Frank. "Leave out the 'Once upon a time.' We are all ready. Just plunge at once into the story—don't give us a long-winded prelude, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... at this time by both Erland of Jura and Sweyn of Colonsay — vassals both of Hakon of Norway — was shown in the conversation that was the prelude to the murder of the good Earl Hamish of Bute. Of the attitude held by these two island kings towards Scotland, Kenric, however, knew nothing, and though it may be that he was eager enough to meet ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton

... of a prelude. Now for old Maguire and his horse. Some years ago, in the interior of Ohio, there did live an old Irish jintleman, who not only had a fine estate, but likewise a saw-mill, and as fine an old black mare as ever the rays of a noonday's sun lit down upon. "Bonny Doon," Maguire's ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... accentuated proudly by the liveried servants, and announced in a resounding voice, sounded in Jenkins's drawing-rooms like the clash of a cymbal, one of those gongs which, in fairy pieces at the theatre, are the prelude to fantastic apparitions. The light of the chandeliers paled, every eye sparkled at the dazzling perspective of the treasures of the Orient, of the showers of the sequins and of pearls evoked by the magic syllables ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... and that on the street outside. He had heard the same undertone of leisurely moving life—the scuffling of feet, the closing of doors, distant voices, the rumble of traffic. Then, after this lazy prelude, he had been swept on and on to the final ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... why they stayed together so long," he said. "They complemented each other." He leaned forward, the inevitable prelude to a confidential remark. "I'll tell you something off the record, Mister," he said. "Those two were smarter than they knew. Their partnership was never legalized, it was never anything more than a piece of ...
— The Risk Profession • Donald Edwin Westlake

... than there had been after Hiroshima, four-hundred-and-fifty-odd years ago. Why, he had even been considering just where, against the mountains back of Bwork, he would drop a demonstration bomb as a prelude to a surrender demand. ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... education in music and gymnastic is wholly inadequate. We must proceed first to the science of numbers, then of geometry, then of astronomy. And after astronomy, there is the sister science of abstract harmonics—not of audible sounds. All of which are but the prelude to the ultimate supreme science of dialectic, which carries the intelligence to the contemplation of the idea of the good, the ultimate goal. And here to attempt further explanation would be ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... and splendid and divine things of life are wonderfully simple." (Quotation marks again.) "When I have to do my aphorisms," Mr. Barbecue-Smith continued, "I prelude my trance by turning over the pages of any Dictionary of Quotations or Shakespeare Calendar that comes to hand. That sets the key, so to speak; that ensures that the Universe shall come flowing in, not in a continuous rush, but in aphorismic ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... need not repeat that the latest Gothic or romantic schools have all been taking Keats' direction rather than Scott's, or even than Coleridge's. Rossetti's work, I should say, e.g., in such a piece as "The Bride's Prelude," is a good deal more like "Isabella" and "The Eve of St. Agnes" than it is like "The Ancient Mariner" or "Christabel" or "The Lay of the Last Minstrel." Rossetti got little from Milton and Dryden, or even from Chaucer and Spenser. Wordsworth he valued hardly ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... Sparks and Miss Nora, they could not understand why the breaking of half-a-dozen hearts should not be the prelude to every marriage. That, they said with much conviction, was always the case in America, and a girl was thought all the more of ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... the Nilghai opened his eyes. The old chanty whereof he, among a very few, possessed all the words was not a pretty one, but Dick had heard it many times before without wincing. Without prelude he launched into that stately tune that calls together and troubles the hearts of ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... of the battle left the Confederates in doubt whether their victory was final, or only a prelude to a fresh Union attack. But as the Union forces not only retreated from the field, but also from Centreville, it took on, in their eyes, the proportions of a great triumph; confirming their expectation of achieving ultimate independence, ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... was right, though he little guessed then why he was so thoroughly justified in assuming that he and the other survivors of the Andromeda had not yet gone through half, or quarter, or more than a mere curtain-raising prelude to the strange human drama in which they were destined to be the ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... should disavow the papal jurisdiction, declare himself head of the Church within its realm, and obtain a divorce from his own ecclesiastical courts. But the new minister looked on the divorce as simply the prelude to a series of changes which he was bent upon accomplishing. In all his checkered life, that had left its deepest stamp on him in Italy. Not only in the rapidity and ruthlessness of his designs, but in their larger scope, their admirable combination, the Italian ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... and it began to dawn upon him, with a sort of slow surprise, that the country was beautiful, the heather purple, and the faraway hills all marbled with sun and shadow. Wordsworth, in a beautiful passage[15] of the "Prelude," has used this as a figure for the feeling struck in us by the quiet by-streets of London after the uproar of the great thoroughfares; and the comparison may be turned the other way ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... on the programme, as arranged by the Committee, the first number is a prelude by the President and the last a hymn by the Society. The Committee evidently intended to begin and end with music. What particular solo they expect me to perform I am somewhat uncertain. But the truth is you ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... rose from the table, and leaving the men—all except the captain of the "Rosalie" and Mr. Mouse, who would have remained had he not seen a shake of the broad pennant's finger—went into the saloon. Then there was a brilliant prelude on the piano, a touch of a guitar by stronger fingers, an air from an opera, a song or two, much conversation—while Reefer Mouse slept on the sofa—and coffee. Then it was late; every one was fatigued, bon soirs were said, and ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... With this general prelude let us turn to what Mr. Williams has to say about the industries connected with iron and steel. He opens by referring to a visit of the English Iron and Steel ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox

... in Egypt and Italy, Gustavus Adolphus, had performed the prelude, by numerous wars against his neighbors, to the grand enterprise which was to render his name illustrious. Vanquished in his struggle with Denmark in 1613, he had carried war into Muscovy, conquered towns and provinces, and as ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... tears coursed down the cheeks of the loving girl, or the young, neglected wife; how they moistened the eyes of the young man, enamoured of and eager for glory. Can we not fancy some young beauty asking him to play a simple prelude, then, softened by the tones, leaning her rounded arms upon the instrument to support her dreaming head, while she suffered the young artist to divine in the dewy glitter of her lustrous eyes the song sung by ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands

... Russia will avoid any appearance of treachery towards her Allies, and will endeavour to find a method which will practically lead to a state of peace between herself and the Central Powers, but outwardly will have the appearance of the union of both parties as a prelude ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... easily imagined than described. A yell that must have been heard miles off was the prelude to a stampede of the most lively nature. It was intensified, if possible, by the further action of the negress, who, seizing the blunderbuss, pointed it at the flying crowd, and, shutting both eyes, fired! Not a buckshot took effect on the savages, for Buttercup, ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... returned in the second half of 2007, driven largely by unsterilized capital inflows and by rising food costs, and approached 12% by year-end. In 2006, Russia signed a bilateral market access agreement with the US as a prelude to possible WTO entry, and its companies are involved in global merger and acquisition activity in the oil and gas, metals, and telecom sectors. Despite Russia's recent success, serious problems persist. Oil, natural ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... of this change was greeted with little enthusiasm by the old soldiers in our midst, but old soldiers are invariably pessimists, and imagine that every inspection is the prelude to more "dirty work at the cross-roads" and that every change made in their ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry

... great deal, and the twelve years that have passed since we lost it forever have not lessened its value for us. Ours is a sadder world since we have ceased to hear the memorable and unmistakable knock and ring at our front door, the prelude to the talk, rousing the whole house until every tenant in the other chambers and the housekeeper in her rooms below knew when Whistler came to see us. Our nights, since those he animated and made as "joyous" as he liked to be in his hours of play and battle, have lost their savour. We are perpetually ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... to Alister to seem for a moment to follow the example of the recreant chiefs whose defection to feudalism was the prelude to their treachery toward their people, and whose faithlessness had ruined the highlands. But unlike Glengarry or "Esau" Reay, he desired to sell his land that he might keep his people, care for them, and share with them: his people safe, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... endure for a season should be nothing to thee. Wealth, and honor, and power are only the gildings of a groaning and sin-cursed earth. The shouts of mirth and revelry borne upon the midnight air, are only the prelude to tears and sighs and mourning. Behind thee is the blackness of despair, before thee the everlasting sunshine. Away, away! tarry not to sip water from the broken cistern, for the living fountain gushes forth, clear as crystal; and the invitation is for ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson

... A good example of the fertility and variety of the individual effort obtained at Hellerau was seen at the Auffuehrung given on December 11, 1911. Two pupils undertook to realize a Prelude of Chopin, their choice falling by chance on the same Prelude. But hardly a movement of the two interpretations was the same. The first girl lay on the ground the whole time, her head on her arm, expressing in gentle ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze

... as she says, contrary to her own expectation: the attempt being at first but the intended prelude to a more promising one, which she had ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... England. The presence of a large party, with all its aimless and agitated displacements, had served only to isolate the pair and give them (at least to the young man's fancy) a deeper feeling of communion, and their days there had been like some musical prelude, where the instruments, breathing low, seem to hold back the waves of sound ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... tell me that he was here at the founding of this Institution. But instead of bringing those volumes of Bancroft's here, and reading them to you on this occasion, I will let the reporters publish them as the prelude to what ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... beautiful scene, in all the white mystery of moonlight, enhanced by the white-blossomed trees and the soft outlines of slumbering sheep. One of the birds, in a bush close to them, began prolonging its drawn-in notes in a continuous prelude, then breaking forth into a varied complex warbling, so wondrous that there was no moving till ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... that sing only in the night come with a double charm to our ears, because they are harmonized by silence and hallowed by the hour that is sacred to repose—in like manner does the Song-Sparrow delight us in tenfold measure, because he sings the sweet prelude to the universal hymn ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... of the reader by the suggestive art of the poet. The "stop-short" is the converse of the epigram, which ends in a satisfying turn of thought to which the rest of the composition is intended to lead up; it aims at producing an impression which, so far from being final, is merely the prelude to a long series of visions and of feelings. The last of the four lines is called the "surprise line"; but the revelation it gives is never a complete one: the words stop, but the sense goes on. Just as in the pictorial ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... my crib in a closet within her room. The night passed in quietness; quietly her doom must at last have come: peacefully and painlessly: in the morning she was found without life, nearly cold, but all calm and undisturbed. Her previous excitement of spirits and change of mood had been the prelude of a fit; one stroke sufficed to sever the thread of an existence ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... Mr. Gough's famous story of the orator who, with a great flourish of rhetoric as prelude, announced to his audience the startling fact that there was a "gre—at difference in people?" On the strength of this original statement, it has been supposed that there were a variety of tastes to be suited in selecting for the readers of "Gypsy Breynton" the ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... sympathy it transplanted itself to my own sleep, settled itself there, and is to this hour a part of the fixed dream scenery which revolves at intervals through my sleeping life. This it was:—She would hear a trumpet sound —though perhaps as having been the prelude to the solemn entry of the judges at a town which she had once visited in her childhood; other preparations would follow, and at last all the solemnities of a great trial would shape themselves and fall into settled images. The audience was assembled, the judges ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... interruptions, he hastened immediately to his destination. He crossed a narrow bridge and passed through a gap into the garden, taking his station on one side of the house, where he commenced a low prelude by way of ascertaining if the lady were within hearing, and likewise the situation of her chamber. To his inexpressible delight a window, nearly opposite the tree under which he stood, was gently opened, and he could distinguish ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... horizon of apple-trees and heads of barley, and he was about to turn back when a strange sound suddenly arrested his steps. It was a concert of voice and instruments, which in this lost solitude seemed to him like a dream, or a miracle. The music was good-even excellent. He recognized a prelude of Bach, arranged by Gounod. Robinson Crusoe, on discovering the footprint in the sand, was not more astonished than Camors at finding in this desert so lively a symptom ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... cellar-door. The accounts of his ferocity as related by Mrs. Sowerberry and Charlotte, were of so startling a nature, that Mr. Bumble judged it prudent to parley, before opening the door. With this view he gave a kick at the outside, by way of prelude; and, then, applying his mouth to the keyhole, said, in a deep ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... wood must be checked, else the horrors of fire would be the prelude to one of the most awful massacres that ever took ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables

... SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH VARIA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA}, from the Athletae's using only their hands in it, without taking hold of the body, as in the other kinds; and this exercise served as a prelude to the greater combat. It consisted in intermingling their fingers, and in squeezing them with all their force; in pushing one another, by joining the palms of their hands together; in twisting their fingers, wrists, and other joints of the arm, without the assistance of any other member; ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... Israel's Messianic Hopes. Eternal hopefulness is a marked characteristic of the Hebrew race. Throughout most of their history the greater the calamities that overtook them the greater was their assurance that these were but the prelude to a glorious vindication and deliverance. This hopefulness was not merely the result of their natural optimism, but of the belief, formed by their experiences in many a national crisis, that a God of justice was overruling the events of history, and that he was working not ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... down in order in writing, without omitting aught, all he had noted of the nymphs that turned into witches and the old man with horns on his brow, whose voice quavered in the woods like a last sigh of the Classic flute and a first prelude of the Christian harp. While he wrote, the birds sang; and night closed in slowly, blotting out the bright colours of the day. The Monk lighted his lamp, and went on with his writing. As he recounted each several marvel he had made acquaintance with, he carefully expounded its ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... help it. But where music is concerned,—hands off! I will not suffer you to debase the loveliness of the world by heaping up in the same basket things holy and things shameful, by giving, as you do at present, the prelude to Parsifal between a fantasia on the Daughter of the Regiment and a saxophone quartette, or an adagio of Beethoven between a cakewalk and the rubbish of Leoncavallo. You boast of being a musical people. You pretend to love music. What sort of music do you ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... loud-sounding phrases of philosophic liberalism he had a most profound contempt. "Attend to your military duties," he was wont to say to his officers before his accession; "don't trouble your heads with philosophy. I cannot bear philosophers!" The tragic event which formed the prelude to his reign naturally confirmed and fortified his previous convictions. The representatives of liberalism, who could talk so eloquently about duty in the abstract, had, whilst wearing the uniform of the Imperial Guard, openly disobeyed the repeated orders of their superior officers ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... confess the question startled me a little, as I am not over fond of making confessions of my amorous follies; and, above all, should never dream of choosing my friend Master Simon for a confidant. He did not wait, however, for a reply; the inquiry was merely a prelude to a confession on his own part, and after several circumlocutions and whimsical preambles, he fairly disburthened himself of a very tolerable story of his having been ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... out of her sufferings very soon," he replied sadly; and then Cecil knew that the end was at hand. Was it because the peace, the profound serenity which sometimes is the prelude of death, filling her being, penetrated his, that he grew so strangely calm? An inexpressible solemnity came to him as he looked at her, and all ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... the something witnessed to. If we by chance know more, we have still no right to make it more prominent than it was with her. And the smell of the glass was odious; it disgraced her. She had an impulse to pocket the spoon for a memento, to show it to grandchildren for a warning. Even the prelude to the morality to be uttered on the occasion sprang to her lips: "Here, my dears, is a spoon you would be ashamed to use in your teacups, yet it was of more value to me at one period of my life than silver and gold in pointing out, etc.": the conclusion was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... general—raising "the black flag." etc.—which his confidential aid officers declare that he never for a moment entertained.) The fierce battles round Richmond and Manassas he had looked upon as merely the prelude to more resolute efforts. After he had defeated Banks at Winchester he had urged his friend Colonel Boteler to inform the authorities that, if they would reinforce him, he would undertake to capture Washington. The message ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... The "Prelude" to the first part is beautiful because it contains so much that cannot but touch the heart of every one, however he may dislike poetry. A great poem like this cannot be read hastily, nor must we stop with reading it once. Great poetry must be read so many ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody

... silent—quite motionless—waiting, so it seemed to himself, for some fuller revelation to which these exquisite sounds were but a prelude. ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... guileless child upon its father's knee. Alas! that all the best is found beyond the grave,— That gate of green which Gimle opens; vile is all, Contaminated all that dwells beneath the stars. And yet there is atonement found in life itself,— A humble prelude to the peace of heaven above. 'Tis like the broken chords the minstrel strikes upon The harp, when he with skillful fingers wakes the song; The tone attuning with a gentle hand, before With firmer touch he grasps the golden strings,— ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner

... I gaz'd,—the Hautbois shrieking sound, With swelling Clarions through the Dome resound; And, in brisk, airy, measure, lightly play A Prelude to the business of the day. The Music ceas'd—and, in a treble tone, Thus spake the Royal Puppet on ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe

... was suddenly invaded with the sound of some few, solemn notes, issuing from the organ which seemed to feel the impulse of an invisible hand ... reason shrunk before the thronging ideas of his fancy, which represented this music as the prelude to something strange ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... was only the prelude to the real struggle. The nomination was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, of which Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, was chairman. The latter was very much out of humor with the President, because he had fully expected that ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... announced expedient and prelude to an alliance with France and Spain against the Mother Country. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... allowed a bride by her parents, she expects to spend it on her toilets or pleasures. This condition of the matrimonial market exists in no other country; even in England, where mariages de convenance are rare, “settlements” form an inevitable prelude to conjugal bliss. ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... with a shudder, that these remarks are the prelude to something that will harrow up your feelings. Not so. They are merely the apology, if apology be needed, for the introduction of ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... misery, thinking of it. What had she done? She could hear afar off the sounds of the camp; an occasional outcry, a snatch of laughter. And the cry and the laughter rang in her ears, a bitter mockery. This summer camp, to what was it the prelude? This forbearance on her husband's part, in what would it end? Were not the one and the other cruel make-believes? Two days, and the men who laughed beside the water would slay and torture with equal zest. A little, and the ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... climax of what had preceded, and a further though yet gentle rebuke of the Baptist's defective comprehension of the Messiah's mission. "Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me," said the Lord. Misunderstanding is the prelude to offense. Gaged by the standard of the then current conception of what the Messiah would be, the work of Christ must have appeared to many as failure; and those who were looking for some sudden manifestation of His power in the conquest of Israel's ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... a different language, and are sadly at a loss for a common interpreter between them. Perhaps the Ordinary of Newgate bids as fair for this office as any one. What should Mr. Bentham, sitting at ease in his arm-chair, composing his mind before he begins to write by a prelude on the organ, and looking out at a beautiful prospect when he is at a loss for an idea, know of the principles of action of rogues, outlaws, and vagabonds? No more than Montaigne of the motions of his cat! If sanguine and tender-hearted philanthropists have set on foot an inquiry into ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... their deliverance; and in the first effort of the conspirators, the praefect was slain, and the prisons were forced open: the emissaries of Leontius proclaimed in every street, "Christians, to St. Sophia!" and the seasonable text of the patriarch, "This is the day of the Lord!" was the prelude of an inflammatory sermon. From the church the people adjourned to the hippodrome: Justinian, in whose cause not a sword had been drawn, was dragged before these tumultuary judges, and their clamors demanded the instant death of the tyrant. But Leontius, who was already clothed with the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... brilliant events that recall the famous names of Chatham, Clive, and Wolfe, and that gave to England a mighty empire in Asia and America. Wolfe's signal victory on the heights of the ancient capital was the prelude to the great drama of the American revolution. Freed from the fear of France, the people of the Thirteen Colonies, so long hemmed in between the Atlantic Ocean and the Appalachian range, found full expression for their love of local self-government when England asserted her imperial ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... course of instruction in the fascinating art of representing in wax the floral beauties of nature, I deem it necessary to prelude by a brief explanation as to my pretensions, and the cause of my offering such instructions to the notice ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey

... well as angels, can learn to use the world spiritually—can learn to see how rough, common things are part of "the divine exchequer"; how a grain of sand exhibiteth the wisdom of God and manifesteth His glory.[33] With this prelude, Traherne gives his glowing account of the true, spiritual ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... chief cities to carry out her will. They were by no means disposed to submit. As early as 1770 a mob in Boston attacked an English guard and drew upon themselves its fire, which caused bloodshed in the city's streets. This was the prelude of the American Revolution. A brief lull came in the storm. But as Britain still insisted on the right to tax the colonies and made an impost on tea the test of her right, rebels in Boston accepted the challenge and were inflamed to violence; they swarmed ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood

... horizontal one. The experiment, as I interpret it, is not opposed to the theory of these echoes which I have ventured to enunciate. But, as I have indicated, not only to see but to vary such an experiment is a necessary prelude to ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... woods, lasted for one brilliant moment, and vanished. The thunder followed, like a pursuing wild beast, close on the traces of the vanishing light; as if the darkness were hunting the light from the earth, and bellowing with rage that it could not overtake and annihilate it. Without the usual prelude of a few great drops, the rain poured at once, in continuous streams, from the dense canopy overhead; and in a few moments there were six inches of water all round the house, which the force of the ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... fast only when we employ or enjoy the moments. The autumn blast was beginning to lend a thousand bright colors to the trees, and the giddy leaves, like giddy mortals, threw off their simple green for the gaudy livery that was but a prelude to their fall—for the beauty that, like the dying note of the swan, was but the beauty of death. It was the season of all others for the chase, that health-giving but dangerous pastime, which our ancestors pursued with almost incredible ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... by Lord Bacon. We shall give it in his own words: "The queen was mightily incensed against Haywarde, on account of a book he dedicated to Lord Essex, being a story of the first year of Henry IV., thinking it a seditious prelude to put into the people's heads boldness and faction:[*] she said, she had an opinion that there was treason in it, and asked me if I could not find any places in it that might be drawn within the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... that I can see or hear each separate incident in its detail, can indeed see or hear little else. So much in this place do men live by pain that my friendship with you, in the way through which I am forced to remember it, appears to me always as a prelude consonant with those varying modes of anguish which each day I have to realise, nay more, to necessitate them even; as though my life, whatever it had seemed to myself and others, had all the while been ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... a painful prelude to these glories. Alice Robinson came to spend the night with Rebecca, and when the bedroom door closed upon the two girls, Alice announced her intention of "doing up" Rebecca's front hair in leads and rags, and braiding the back ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... pause in the service when the people bent their heads, and seemed to wait; or rather followed upon that impressive moment as did the organ prelude, and the first notes of a glorious voice—the voice of a ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... of Thursday, September 13, 1916, the British forces won German trenches to the southeast of Thiepval and a heavily fortified place known as Wunderwerk. This was the prelude to a series of brilliant victories won by the British troops which had not been surpassed during the entire fighting in the Somme area. At 6 a. m. on September 15, 1916, the British attacked on a front of about six miles, extending from Bouleaux Wood east of Guillemont to the north of the Albert-Bapaume ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... between the chatter of civilized men and the deliberations of barbarians. With La Hontan, the Baron de Saint-Castin would have led up to his business by a long prelude on other subjects. With Madockawando, he waited until the tobacco had mellowed both their spirits, and ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... Son,' 1565; and 'La Commedia Spirituale dell' Anima' ('The Spiritual Comedy of the Soul'), printed at Siena, without date, in which there are near thirty personifications, besides Saint Paul, Saint John Chrysostom, two little boys who repeat a kind of prelude, and the announcing angel, who always speaks the prologue in these old mysteries. He is called l'angelo che nunzia, and his figure is almost always given in a wooden cut on the title-page of printed copies. Here, among the interlocutors, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... indoors and out of doors. She weaned him from the embittering brawl of politics, and warded away the sourness and despair, which, at one time, seriously threatened to possess him. In the "Prelude," ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... Greece in 1828. On the 4th of June he addressed a memorial to the Duke of Clarence, then Lord High Admiral, who just two years afterwards was to become King of England. This memorial, eloquent in its simplicity and earnestness, the prelude to many others that were to be presented in later years, claims to be here quoted in full. "To his Royal Highness the Lord High Admiral," it ran, "the memorial of Lord Cochrane humbly showeth;—That for fourteen years your ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... played with a firm, elastic touch, the opening chords struck, and a great shining voice, masterful, like a golden trumpet, filled the room. Caroline sat dumb; Miss Honey, instinctively humming the prelude, got up from her foot-stool and followed the music, unconscious that she walked. She had been privileged to hear more good singing in her eight years than most people have in twenty-four, had Miss Honey, and she knew that this was no ordinary occasion. She did not ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... jangling, the harmonium began a quavering prelude, and from a door at the back, behind the little platform and desk, three men entered: first Mr. Thurston; then a little crooked man who must, Maggie knew, be Mr. Crashaw; finally, in magnificent contrast, Mr. Warlock. A quiver of emotion passed ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... do less than bow to this flattery, but he wondered what such a curious prelude foreshadowed. "It means no good to me," he thought, "or he would not begin with such praise." But ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... Summer is here made to embrace the prelude of many good things that come within the wider scope ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various

... mighty claws, He lies, half shrouded by his mane, His grand head resting on his paws, And heeding little save his pain, As o'er his eyes, so sad and deep, The film of death begins to creep,— The prelude to ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... "Arundines Cami," musical as they are, have lent no prelude to these harmonies of science, we must say in a few plain words of prose our own first thought as to the work the commencement of which lies before us. We believe, that, if completed according to its promise, it is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... beneath the palaces and temples of pagan Rome the birth of Christ was celebrated, this early undermining of paganism by Christianity being, as it were, the germ of the final victory, and the secret praise, which came like muffled music from the Catacombs in honour of the Nativity, the prelude to the triumph-song in which they shall unite who receive from Christ the ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... opinion, both within the English Church, and among Nonconformists. There were many persons who drew back with apprehension from measures which a year or two before they had looked forward to with hope. They knew not what they might lead to. Salutary changes might be the prelude to others which they would witness with dismay. Moreover, changes which might have been salutary under other circumstances, would entirely lose their character when they were regarded as the triumph of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... left him than he came to Louisa, thinking it his duty to give her warning of the count's design, and that it would be a proper prelude to something else he had to say. As the servants knew she was not perfectly well, they told him, they believed she would see no company; but on his entreating it, and saying he had something of moment to impart, one of them went in and repeated what ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... is certain to the pure and true: success to falsehood and corruption, tyranny and aggression, is only the prelude to a greater and an irremediable fall.—STUBBS, Seventeen Lectures, 20. The Carlylean faith, that the cause we fight for, so far as it is true, is sure of victory, is the necessary basis of all effective activity for good.—CAIRD, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... day begin, Ere the heart's wide door is open for the world to enter in, Ah, then, alone with Jesus, in the silence of the morn, In heavenly sweet communion, let your duty-day be born. In the quietude that blesses with a prelude of repose Let your soul be smoothed and softened, as the dew ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... the west. In the afternoon it was heard to descend from the east, and that with an incredible quickness; and though the noise seemed to bear on the water, yet without agitating it, or discovering any more wind on the river than before. This frightful noise was only the prelude of a most violent tempest. The hurricane, the most furious ever felt in the province, lasted three days. As it arose from the south-west and north-east, it reached all the settlements which were along the Missisippi; and was felt for some leagues more ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... tragedy that is happening under the cover of the cocoon. The flacid and faded larva is the mason bee's. A month ago, in June, having finished its mess of honey, it wove its silken sheath for a bedchamber wherein to take the long sleep which is the prelude to the metamorphosis. Bulging with fat, it is a rich and defenseless morsel for whoever is able to reach it. Then, in spite of apparently insurmountable obstacles, the mortar wall and the tent without an opening, the ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... situated close to the Grecian. This was one of the places to which he had his letters addressed, and the house figures in one of his essays as the resort of a certain young fellow who, whenever he had occasion to "ask his friend for a guinea, used to prelude his request as if he wanted two hundred, and talked so familiarly of large sums" that no one would have imagined him ever to be in need of small ones. It was the same young fellow at George's who, whenever he wanted credit for a new suit from his tailor, used to dress himself ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... "staff of life" for certain human beings. In their unfaltering faith in God's enduring and proximate actuality lies their sole source of security and trust. For such persons a lapse or a lack of faith is the prelude to utter collapse. A vague general assurance of the dependability of the future is, for most people, a prerequisite for a sane and untroubled existence. Even those who live in unreflective satisfaction with the fruits of the moment would find these ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... father'—at the critical age of sixteen, when Easterns are older than we, in the flush of early manhood, he awoke to deeper experiences and felt the need for a closer touch of God. A career thus begun will generally prelude a life pure, strenuous, and blessed with a clearer and clearer vision of the God who is always found of them that seek Him. Such a childhood, blossoming into such a boyhood, and flowering in such a manhood, is possible to every child among us. It will 'still ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... however, that, both Justin and Philo, unlike the prelude to the Fourth Gospel (i. 1), place the Logos in a secondary position to God the Father, another point indicating a less advanced ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler

... dare say, for the old-time "sod," past participle of "seethe." But I by no means speak with authority—my deduction is from the premise of fifty dinners, each it seemed to me uniquely excellent. After this prelude come ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams

... court as this man in the witness-box gave this answer. It signified many things—that there were people present who had expected some such dramatic development; that there were others present who had not; that the answer itself was only a prelude to further developments. And Spargo, looking narrowly about him, saw that the answer had aroused different feelings in Aylmore's two daughters. The elder one had dropped her face until it was quite hidden; the younger was sitting bolt ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher

... for Anarchy. War was declared between the two. The Girondins arraigned Marat and Robespierre for complicity in the September massacres, and thereby precipitated their own fall. The triumphant acquittal of Marat was the prelude to the ruin of the Girondins, and the proscription of twenty-nine deputies followed at once as the first step. These fled into the country, hoping to raise an army that should yet save France, and several of the fugitives made their way to Caen. Thence by pamphlets and oratory they laboured ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... country. The courage of the rebels was farther increased by succours which the Silesian States despatched to their assistance. Between these and the Imperialists, several battles were fought, far indeed from decisive, but only on that account the more destructive, which served as the prelude to a more serious war. To check the vigour of his military operations, a negotiation was entered into with the Emperor, and a disposition was shown to accept the proffered mediation of Saxony. But before the event could prove how little sincerity there was in these proposals, the Emperor was removed ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... teaspoonful of made mustard, rub smooth and add one-half teaspoonful of vinegar, one tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce and the juice of one small lime. Lay the tripe in this sauce as soon as it is removed from the fire. Serve with buttered toast. An excellent prelude to this dish is a ...
— Joe Tilden's Recipes for Epicures • Joe Tilden

... Eagle Swoops and the Corkscrew Dips, which so often serve as a Prelude to a good First Page Story with a picture of the Remains being sorted out from the Debris, most of the Spectators gasped and felt their Toes curling inside of their Shoes, but Wifey never batted an Eye. With only one little Strand of Wire or perchance a Steering Knuckle standing between ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade

... embodiment. Of this procession we have still in the frieze of the Parthenon a marble transcript. There we may see the life of ancient Athens moving in stone, from the first mounting of their horses by isolated youths, like the slow and dropping prelude of a symphony, on to the thronged and trampling ranks of cavalry, past the antique chariots reminiscent of Homeric war, and the marching band of flutes and zithers, by lines of men and maidens bearing sacrificial urns, ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... continental expeditions beyond the first mission of Lord Arundel and his forces, yet it is impossible not to suspect (as the French at the time anticipated) that this decided interference, on the part of England, with the affairs of France, may have been a prelude to the enterprise of the next reign. Who can say that the battle and victory at St. Cloud passed away without any influence on the course of events which made Henry V. heir to the ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... seedy autumn. The Russo-Turkish campaign, which had been unjustifiably allowed, by foreign Powers, to drain Egypt of her gold and life-blood—some 25,000 men since the beginning of the Servian prelude—not only caused "abundant sorrow" to the capital, but also frightened off the stranger-host, which habitually supplies the poorer population with sovereigns and napoleons. The horse-pest, a bad typhus, after raging in 1876 and early 1877, had died out: unfortunately, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... note first, in this passage, the prelude, including verses 1, 2, and 3. We need not discuss the grammatical connection of these verses, nor the relation of verses 2 and 3 to the following section. However that be settled, the result, for our present purpose, is the same. Mark considers that John's ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... witness of the first onset, which came in the late afternoon—an immediate shock of massed clouds without throwing forward of skirmishers or any prelude of the vanguard. Our home looked down upon a gentle incline of open grassy land to a broad belt of jungle in the middle distance; here the undergrowth and small trees had been newly cleared away, opening out a dim far view ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... three short tales besides the title story: "The Grand Duke's Riches," an account of an ingenious robbery at the Brevoort, "A Maid of Athens," and "Fausta," a story of love, revenge, and death in Cuba. If the final cadence of the book is a dagger thrust the prelude is a subtle poison, rafflesia, a Sumatran plant, intended for the hero, Tancred Ennever, but consumed with fatal results by his faithful fox terrier, Zut Alors. The story is arresting and, as frequently happens in Saltus romances, a man finds ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... our slumbers by the hissing of shells in the streets we awoke to a sense of what was real. In the blackness of the early morning it was hard to connect the booming of cannon with reality. The shells were falling and bursting in rapid succession. It was the inauguration of a nerve-ordeal; the prelude to a terrible day; the beginning of a ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... over. At last, Lambert showing no signs of surrender, Ingoldsby and Streater advanced, Ingoldsby ready to charge with his horse, but Streater marching the foot first with beat of drum to try the effect of a close approach. There was the prelude of a few shots, which hurt one or two of Lambert's troopers; but the orders were that the general fire should be reserved till the musketeers should see the pikemen already within push of the enemy. Then it was ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... largely due. The next year, 83, the Marian party was joined by the Samnites, and the war raged more fiercely than ever. At length, however, Sulla was victorious under the walls of Rome. The city lay at his mercy. His first act, an order for the slaughter of 6,000 Samnite prisoners, was a fit prelude to his conduct in the city. Every effort was made to eradicate the last trace of Marian blood and sympathy from the city. A list of men, declared to be outlaws and public enemies, was exhibited in the Forum, and a succession of wholesale murders ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell

... themselves what is good for them." Linda was now altogether astray in her thoughts and anticipations. Her aunt had very frequently spoken to her in this strain; nay, a week did not often pass by without such a speech. But then the speeches would come without the solemn prelude which had been made on this occasion, and would be caused generally by some act or word or look or movement on the part of Linda of which Madame Staubach had found herself obliged to express disapprobation. ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope

... portions which they were supposed to embellish. Harmony was then first struck between the works of the horticulturist—the garden-maker—and those of the architect—the builder in stone and wood. This was the prelude to those majestic ensembles of which Le Notre was ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... all I will say is that you are a remarkable young woman," answered Mrs. Zane, who saw plainly that Betty's violent outburst was a prelude to a storm of weeping. "I don't believe a word you have said. I don't believe you hate ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... which sets the bellows going, and then proceeds to take off his shoes. This done, he takes his seat, reaches for the pedals with his stockinged feet, tries an experimental 32-foot CCC, and then wanders gently into a Bach toccata. It is his limbering-up piece: he always plays it as a prelude to a wedding job. It thus goes very smoothly and even brilliantly, but when he comes to the end of it and tackles the ensuing fugue he is quickly in difficulties, and after four or five stumbling repetitions of the subject he hurriedly improvises a crude coda ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken

... After school opened next morning Jeff was called up and publicly thrashed for playing truant. As a prelude to the corporal punishment the principal delivered a lecture. He alluded to the details of the fight gravely, with selective discrimination, giving young Farnum to understand that he had reached the end of his rope. If any more such brutal affairs were reported ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... collected our horses readily and set out at an early hour this morning. one of our guides complained of being unwell, a symptom which I did not much like as such complaints with an indian is generally the prelude to his abandoning any enterprize with which he is not well pleased. we left them at our encampment and they promised to pursue us in a few hours. at 11 A.M. we arrived at the branch of hungary creek where we found R. & J. Feilds. they had not killed ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... evening was only the prelude for a horrid day, a day doubly horrid due to the mystery ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue

... and skirmishes were but the prelude to a far more serious attack. In July the British captains Caldwell and McKee came down from Detroit with a party of rangers, and gathered together a great army of over a thousand Indians [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Letter from Capt. Caldwell, August 26, 1782; and letter of Captain ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... extinct — to feel no surprise at the comparative rarity of one species with another, and yet to call in some extraordinary agent and to marvel greatly when a species ceases to exist, appears to me much the same as to admit that sickness in the individual is the prelude to death — to feel no surprise at sickness — but when the sick man dies to wonder, and to believe that he ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... subject of language will fitly prelude a consideration of the training in the schools and colleges of Atlantis. During the first map period Toltec was the universal language, not only throughout the continent but in the western islands and that part of the eastern continent ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot

... roof of the church resounded with their shouts of Hurrah for the king! There was the same welcome on the part of the dwellers in the country when Henry repaired to the valley of Montmorency and to Montmartre to perform his devotions there. Here, then, was religious peace, a prelude to political reconciliation between the monarch and the great ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... evening more fervently than I had prayed since quitting Monte Orsaro. It was as if all the influences of my youth, which lately had been shaken off in the stir of intrigue and of rides that had seemed the prelude to battle, were closing ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... Philip. "I am very grateful. No doubt you are right. It seems to me, now that I am detached from it, as if it were only a sort of prelude to something else." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... her a set of forget-me-nots to match those which she intended to wear herself, and which had been long ago given to Lady Cecilia by the dear good dean himself. This was irresistible to Helen, and they were accepted. But this was only the prelude to presents of more value, which Helen scrupled ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... thanks and homage of the newly-created noble, Henry descended from the canopy, and passed into an inner room with the Lady Anne, where a collation was prepared for them. Their slight meal over, Anne took up her lute, and playing a lively prelude, sang two or three French songs with so much skill and grace, that Henry, who was passionately fond of music, was quite enraptured. Two delightful hours having passed by, almost imperceptibly, an usher approached the king, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... atomically small. In the ninth Heaven surrounded by the nine orders of pure spirits God is represented "as an indivisible atomic Point radiating light and symbolizing the unity of the Divinity as a fitting prelude to the more intimate vision of the Blessed Trinity which will be vouchsafed in the Empyrean." "A Point I saw that darted light so sharp no lid unclosing may bear up against its keenness. On that Point depend the heavens and the ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... "righteousness exalteth a nation." Relative to this intermingling of former foes, whatever our estimate of the results of human action may be, we cannot unerringly divine impurity of motive; hence respect for honest conviction must be the prelude to that unity of patriotism which is ever the safeguard to ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... formed two long lines, extending from the gateway of the palace to the water's edge. A thick rayed cloth or carpet was then unfolded, and laid down between them by attendants in the gold-and-crimson liveries of the prince. This done, a flourish of trumpets resounded from within. A lively prelude arose from the musicians on the water; and two ushers with white wands marched with a slow and stately pace from the portal. They were followed by an officer bearing the civic mace, after whom came another carrying the city's ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the Parsis to-day regard as the capital event in the history of the world. It was the immediate prelude to the revelation of the Law which ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... Prelude General Summary Army Headquarters Study of an Elevation, in Indian Ink A Legend of the Foreign Office The Story of Uriah The Post that Fitted Public Waste Delilah What Happened Pink Dominoes The Man Who Could Write Municipal A Code of Morals The ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... of apology-explanation in the lines prefixed to the collected edition, and entitled "The Promise in Disturbance." I am not sure that there is any single place where a parallel excuse-defiance musters itself up in the novels: but there are scores (the prelude to The Egoist occurs foremost) where it is scattered about all of them; and it is certainly much more required there. Indeed as far as the narrow sense of "style" goes, the peculiarity, whether they admit it to be a ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... can do is to get back to town," he said kindly to that young man; "you need a little sleep. It is not a pleasant prelude to your marriage. By the way, that is to-morrow, is it not?" ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace

... reader knows well what is coming after this prelude. He is accustomed to the phrases with which the plausible visitor, who has a subscription book in his pocket, prepares his victim for the depressing disclosure of his real errand. He is not unacquainted with the conversational amenities of the cordial and interesting stranger, who, ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... understood, consequently, how inevitably these big corporations strengthen one another's hands; and it must be added that they had political as well as economic motives for so doing. Although the big fellows sometimes indulge in the luxury of fierce fighting, such fights are always the prelude to still closer agreements. They are all embarked in the same boat; and surrounded as they are by an increasing amount of enmity, provoked by their aggrandizement, they have every reason to lend one another constant ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... the foregoing strain of sentiment. Who could suppose it a prelude to detailed reminiscence on the author's part of sensual pleasures—the basest—enjoyed in the past? The venerable voluptuary keeps himself in countenance for his lascivious vein, by ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... formed a lake beneath the castle walls. On the surface of the lake were little boats, painted and gilt, so pretty and dainty that the princess challenged the ambassadors to a voyage. None hesitated to do so, for they thought it was all a gay pastime, and a merry prelude to the marriage festivities. But no sooner had they embarked than boats, fountains, and lake vanished, and the ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault

... the chatter of civilized men and the deliberations of barbarians. With La Hontan, the Baron de Saint-Castin would have led up to his business by a long prelude on other subjects. With Madockawando, he waited until the tobacco had mellowed both their spirits, ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... forth fire and smoke, and slander to his neighbour. At length I was fain to request my guide to permit me to move on; the floor was impure with saliva and spilt drink, and I was apprehensive that certain heavy hiccups which I heard, might be merely the prelude to something more disagreeable. ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... and the wise, and the witty, and even of the gay. Regnard, the author of the last French comedy after Moliere, was atrabilious; and Moliere himself, saturnine. Dr. Johnson, Gray, and Burns, were all more or less affected by it occasionally. It was the prelude to the more awful malady of Collins, Cowper, Swift, and Smart; but it by no means follows that a partial affliction of this disorder is to terminate like theirs. But ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... flushed with wine, I forgot my prudence. Snatching the guitar from him, after a prelude which created the greatest astonishment of all present, I commenced one of my most successful airs: I sang it in my best style, and it electrified the whole party. Shouts proclaimed my victory, and the defeat of my relative. Some embraced me in their enthusiasm, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... of pity, of trials undergone in common. And as she knew that she was always in demand in society because of her talent, because of the artistic entertainment she furnished at select parties, being always ready to lay her long gloves and her fan on the piano, as a prelude to some portion of her rich repertory, she labored constantly, passed her afternoons turning over new music, selecting by preference melancholy and complicated pieces, the modern music which is no longer content to be an art but is becoming a ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... passport into houses, and when they spy a convenient opportunity, they seldom fail to avail themselves of it. It is necessary to watch them strictly, as articles frequently disappear in a mysterious manner whilst Gitanas are telling fortunes. The bahi, moreover, is occasionally the prelude to a device which we shall now attempt to describe, and which is called HOKKANO BARO, or the great trick, of which we have already said something in the former part of this work. It consists in persuading some credulous person to deposit whatever ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... without the use of his hands; and at night, huddling his greasy tatters about him, he would crawl into some miserable lair of leaves and refuse, where, dirty, cold, and hungry, he passed, in broken ghost-haunted slumbers, a wretched night as a prelude to another wretched day. Such was the only human being deemed fit to associate at arm's length with one who had paid the last offices of respect and friendship to the dead. And when, the dismal term of his seclusion being over, the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... abbe, Lyodot and D'Eymeris at Vincennes are a prelude of ruin for my house. I repeat it—I arrested, you will be imprisoned—I imprisoned, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... had it not recalled to my mind something I had previously heard concerning a singular custom among these islanders. Though the country is possessed by various tribes, whose mutual hostilities almost wholly prelude any intercourse between them; yet there are instances where a person having ratified friendly relations with some individual belonging longing to the valley, whose inmates are at war with his own, may, under particular restrictions, venture with impunity into the country of ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... Kate Sparks and Miss Nora, they could not understand why the breaking of half-a-dozen hearts should not be the prelude to every marriage. That, they said with much conviction, was always the case in America, and a girl was thought all the more of who had ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... man what to do to become an orator, I can tell him a few things not to do. There should be no introduction to an oration. The orator should commence with his subject. There should be no prelude, no flourish, no apology, no explanation. He should say nothing about himself. Like a sculptor, he stands by his block of stone. Every stroke is for a purpose. As he works the form begins to appear. When the statue ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... that they are capable of being reformed, since no man can heartily pursue an object at war with his inward beliefs; no man can earnestly strive to accomplish what in his heart he despairs of accomplishing. Doubt is the prelude of failure; confidence a guaranty of success. Nothing so weakens moral forces as unbelief; nothing imparts to them such vigor as faith. 'Be it unto thee according to thy faith,' is the statement of a fundamental principle ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby

... the ten-hour basis. But the dispute in October, which was marked by a complete lack of ill-feeling on the part of the men and was one of the most peaceable labor disputes of the year, was in reality a mere prelude to a second disturbance which broke out in the plant of Swift & Company on November 2 and became general throughout the stockyards on November 6. The men demanded a return to the eight-hour day, but ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman

... is very delicate and plaintive,—a thin, wavering, tremulous whistle, which disappoints one, however, as it ends when it seems only to have begun. If the bird could give us the finishing strain of which this seems only the prelude, it would stand first among ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... Shakspeare has begun by placing before us a lively picture of all the impulses of the play; and, as nature ever presents two sides, one for Heraclitus, and one for Democritus, he has, by way of prelude, shown the laughable absurdity of the evil by the contagion of it reaching the servants, who have so little to do with it, but who are under the necessity of letting the superfluity of sensoreal power fly off through the escape-valve of wit-combats, and of quarrelling ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... women, of the vast majority, the clatter and clash of housewifery prelude and postlude the spring song of their years. And the rattle of dishes, of busy knives and forks, the quick tapping of Maud's attendant feet, the sound of young and ravenous jaws at work: these sounds were in Joan's bewildered ears, and the sights which they accompanied in her bewildered eyes, just ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt

... the assertion of individual right, and these united the widely variant elements of the community in a loyal union. It was the amalgamation of such spirits in Virginia in 1676 which demanded the right of personal liberty, of universal suffrage, and of representation; and here was fought the prelude of that great drama one hundred years later, when a Virginian, in the name of a whole nation, penned the immortal words which proclaimed to all the world the "inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Here were the Lees, the Patrick Henrys, ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various

... pale and still, That holds so passionless a sway? Lies death in this ethereal chill, New life, or prelude of decay? ...
— Songs of Angus and More Songs of Angus • Violet Jacob

... enhancing our gratifications. I was, beside, desirous of administering a fund, and regulating an household, of my own. The short distance allowed us to exchange visits as often as we pleased. The walk from one mansion to the other was no undelightful prelude to our interviews. I was sometimes their visitant, and they, ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... A low murmur, prelude of the coming storm, ran through the theatre, and Professor van Huysman permitted himself to snort distinctively, for which he was very promptly, though quietly, called to order by his daughter, who was sitting in front of the platform between him and Lord Leighton. ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... the facts of the Haymarket meeting and the events which lead up to it. What the press made of it was the prelude to one of the rawest frame-up trials ...
— Labor's Martyrs • Vito Marcantonio

... comparativement rien. Mais lorsque nous voyons representer ces choses, les actes sont comparativement tout, et les mobiles ne sont plus rien. L'emotion sublime ou nous sommes entraines par ces images de nuit et d'horreur qu'exprime Macbeth; ce solennel prelude ou il s'oublie jusqu'a ce que l'horloge sonne l'heure qui doit l'appeler au meurtre de Duncan; lorsque nous ne lisons plus cela dans un livre, lorsque nous avons abandonne ce poste avantageux de l'abstraction d'ou la lecture domine la vision, et lorsque nous voyons sous nos yeux, un homme ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck

... themselves at Bruges, where they remained in peace for a few years, till the Austrian Government drove them out. The same fate overtook the inmates of many monasteries and convents at Bruges in the reign of Joseph II., whose reforming zeal led to that revolt of the Austrian Netherlands which was the prelude to the invasion of Flanders by the army of the ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond

... a fitting prelude to the captain's tales afterwards, and Mr. Chalk, with the stem of his long pipe withdrawn from his open mouth, would sit enthralled as his host narrated picturesque incidents of hairbreadth escapes, or, drawing ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... it, but Stevens was an epicure in beauty. He insisted on our closing our eyes till we came to just the spot where the view was most perfect, and then he drew in his horses, gave the word, and we looked on a valley as lovely as a dream. I am glad that we saw it as we did, after a long prelude of shaded roads and sentinel trees. Nowadays you rush to it madly by train and motor. Then it was a dear secret hidden away in ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... act of kindness was only a prelude to a greater one. That is to say, it was the introduction to a sumptuous dinner, composed of flesh and fish of every description, in which there was no lack of turkeys and capons. All set out with the intent of manifesting ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... escaped the keen search of men armed not only with immense power, but with great sagacity and intelligence. The hopes which had wakened in the general's heart seemed justified as he listened to the vague echo of a tender and melancholy air, 'La Fleuve du Tage,'—a ballad whose prelude he had often heard in Paris in the boudoir of the woman he loved, and which this nun now used to express, amid the joys of the conquerors, the suffering of an exiled heart. Terrible moment! to long for the resurrection of a lost ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... country the destinies of which he no longer could help to control. The spark of enthusiasm which he and the followers of Mirabeau had tried to kindle in the hearts of an oppressed people had turned to raging tongues of unquenchable flames. The taking of the Bastille had been the prelude to the massacres of September, and even the horror of these had since paled beside the ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... stillness was broken by a prelude from the organ, which dropped to a low tone, a ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... America ended the war; and the treaty of peace with the United States was a prelude to treaties of peace with the Bourbon powers. Their actual gains were insignificant. France indeed won nothing in the treaties with which the war ended; Spain gained only Florida and Minorca. Nor could they feel even in this hour of their triumph that ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green

... the great and splendid and divine things of life are wonderfully simple." (Quotation marks again.) "When I have to do my aphorisms," Mr. Barbecue-Smith continued, "I prelude my trance by turning over the pages of any Dictionary of Quotations or Shakespeare Calendar that comes to hand. That sets the key, so to speak; that ensures that the Universe shall come flowing in, not in a continuous rush, but in ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... us. "Strange," said a gifted metaphysician once, "that the barrel organ, man, should terminate every tune with the strain of immortality!" Not strange, but divinely natural. It is the tentative prelude to the thrilling music of our eternal bliss written in the score of destiny. When at night we gaze far out into immensity, along the shining vistas of God's abode, and are almost crushed by the overwhelming prospects that sweep upon our vision, do not some pre monitions of our own unfathomed greatness ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... bending a bow sent as a challenge by the Shah of Persia, and which had baffled the efforts of all the pelhwans or champions of the Ottoman court. His first advancement to the post of equerry was only a prelude to the attainment of higher honours, and he became successively governor of Buda and of Egypt, capitan-pasha and serasker in Candia. His exploits in the latter capacity had endeared him to the troops, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... overdoing. This ideal necessitates far larger athletic grounds than most of our colleges have reserved. It may necessitate the abolition of some of the big contests that have been the excitement of many thousands. But it must not be forgotten prelude and preparation for life; they must not be allowed to usurp the chief place in a man's thoughts or to unfit him for his greatest after-usefulness. [Footnote: Cf. Atlantic Monthly, vol. 90, p. 534; Outlook, vol. 98, p. 597.] Is it wrong to smoke? Statistics ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... be very proud," I was beginning, as the mere prelude to resolute excuses; but the eye of Raffles opened wide upon me; and I hesitated weakly, to ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... fall of the Soga and the abdication of the Empress Kogyoku, her son, Prince Naka, would have been the natural successor, and such was her own expressed wish. But the prince's procedure was largely regulated by Kamatari, who, alike in the prelude and in the sequel of this crisis, proved himself one of the greatest statesmen Japan ever produced. He saw that the Soga influence, though broken, was not wholly shattered, and he understood that the great administrative reform which he contemplated might ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... lids of dusk are falling O'er the dreamy eyes of day, And the whippoorwills are calling, And the lesson laid away,— May Mem'ry soft and tender As the prelude of the night, Bend over you and render As ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... fear of impinging on Mr. Young's copyright that prevents me reprinting the graphic ballad of The Wanderer and the prologue of The Strollers, which reads like a page from the prelude to some Old-World miracle play. The setting of these things is frequently antique, but the thought is the thought of today. I think there is a new generation of readers for such poetry as Mr. Young's. I venture the prophecy that it will not lack for them later when the time comes for the inevitable ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... warning him continually when he is in danger of making a fool of himself. Thus, whenever through mere idleness I begin to waste the irrecoverable moments of eternity, I always think of that masterly phrase (from, I think, the "Prelude," but I will not ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... by the heels along the floors, that he should not stir nor make offer to oppose them, further than by mild words to expostulate with them, until Minerva from heaven should give the sign which should be the prelude to their destruction. And Telemachus promising to obey his instructions departed; and the shape of Ulysses fell to what it had been before, and he became to all outward appearance a beggar, in base ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... the appearance of that rough flatboat that made me wish I had hailed her quiet crew; for, strange to say, they did not send after me a shower of slang phrases and uncouth criticisms, the usual prelude to conversation among flatboat-men when they desire to cultivate the acquaintance of a fellow-voyager. In fact, it was rather startling not to have the usual greeting, and I wondered why I heard no friendly expressions, such as, "Here, you river thief, ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... each of these four elderly ladies, their distinct idiosyncrasies, and their former high position as members of a now moribund nobility, left a lasting impression on my memory. One might expect, perhaps, from such a prelude, to find in the old Marquise traces of stately demeanour, or a regretted superiority. Nothing of the kind. She herself was a short, square-built woman, with large head and strong features, framed in a mob cap, with a broad frill ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... long night, Cordova soon fell asleep; but Alzura and I sat up chatting till within an hour or two of dawn. We could hear the hostile skirmishers peppering away at each other at intervals, and somehow the sounds seemed to be the prelude to a coming battle. ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... of that time he emphasised his appreciation by making her a present of a valuable violin. She still continued her regular studies with Jokisch, until, acting on the advice of her friends, she obtained a hearing from Ysaye, and played for him Bach's prelude and fugue ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee

... early, just after the morning had been born, so as to miss nothing. And first of all we had a quick rush through the flowery valley of Wawona—a kind of prelude to the music of the great redwoods. And I think it helped me to appreciate and understand them. We saw Stellar Lake, named by inspiration, for it looks a blue sky half full of stars; and I had my first sight of a fish hatchery. I'd no notion it could be so exciting to watch the career ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... army under the command of General Wayne, whether we regard it as a proof of the perseverance, prowess, and superiority of our troops, or as a happy presage to our military operations against the hostile Indians, and as a probable prelude to the establishment of a lasting peace upon terms of candor, equity, and good neighborhood. We receive it with the greater pleasure as it increases the probability of sooner restoring a part of the public resources to the desirable object of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson

... Then, as they whirled round a bend they suddenly, and without warning, found themselves sweeping through a gorge with vertical, rocky, fern-grown banks on either hand. Too well they knew what that sort of thing was the prelude to. There were rapids ahead, almost to a dead certainty, and they had missed their chance of inspecting before attempting to shoot them, for there was no landing on either of those vertical banks; while as ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... a fine ethical purpose. He is not to be placed with the professional litterateurs of his country, Boston novelists, New York poets and the like. He stands apart, and the chief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. He has begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. As a man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroic and spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy will take note ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... the end of that morning in the woods, was quite aware that she was in love. She wondered why she had not thought of it before, and concluded that in the prelude she had been merely fascinated by the first enthralling man she had known. The trap-door of her heart was not jealously guarded; nevertheless, it was not yawning for an occupant. Just how and when Trennahan slipped in, she ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... to be effected by the present System of solitary Travellers; but by a grand Plan, with a numerous Company; beginning with Commerce, as the natural Prelude to Discovery, the Fore-runner of Civilization, and a preliminary Step, indispensable to the Conversion of ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... history of the Vaudois forms a fitting prelude to the advent of a yet more substantial token of good-will on the part of their sovereign. I mean that edict of emancipation which, while it did justice to the people of the valleys, also, by the circumstances of their inclusion, made the kingdom of Sardinia ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold

... river— Sleeps, like a happy child, In slumber undefiled, A premonition of sublimer days, When war and warlike lays At length shall cease, Before a grand Apocalypse of Peace, Vouchsafed in mercy to all human kind— A prelude and a ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... which, by Rousseau, and many people, have been pronounced to be the happiest; by others, the only happy days of existence; and which, by some privileged or prudent few, have been found to be but the prelude to the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... our feelings have been under such trying conditions, with that mountain of matter alongside to which so much sheer hard labour had to be done, while the sky was getting greasy and the wind beginning to whine in that doleful key which is the certain prelude ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... Some members cried "Yes! Yes!"; others shouted "No! he is establishing the fact." The wrangling was at last brought to an end by the Speaker's declaration, that the petition must lie over for the present. But the scene had been only the prelude to one much longer, fiercer, and more exciting. No sooner was the document thus temporarily disposed of than Mr. Adams rose and presented the petition of forty-five citizens of Haverhill, Massachusetts, ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... years of steadily declining health, began at last to rally, and it is to this first gush of the recovery of his once splendid bodily condition that we owe not only "The Gay Science", which in its mood may be regarded as a prelude to "Zarathustra", but also "Zarathustra" itself. Just as he was beginning to recuperate his health, however, an unkind destiny brought him a number of most painful personal experiences. His friends caused him many disappointments, which were the more ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... declaration of war. She will find the empire ready. Here at home and in the far-off dominions the sure instinct of our peoples teaches them that the ruin of France or of the Low Countries would be the prelude to our own. We can no more tolerate a German hegemony in Europe than we can tolerate the hegemony of any other power. As our fathers fought Spain and France in the days of their greatest strength to defeat their pretense to Continental ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... comprised Patrick O'Shea, Annie Rooney, Spotted Tail, etc. This petition was followed by two others of similar character, bearing Indian names of such significance as the wit of the opposition could invent. After this dignified prelude the House discussed the measure at length, and defeated it by a vote of 38 ayes, 39 noes. A reconsideration was moved and the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... touching some moving chords, he could see how the furtive tears coursed down the cheeks of the loving girl, or the young, neglected wife; how they moistened the eyes of the young man, enamoured of and eager for glory. Can we not fancy some young beauty asking him to play a simple prelude, then, softened by the tones, leaning her rounded arms upon the instrument to support her dreaming head, while she suffered the young artist to divine in the dewy glitter of her lustrous eyes the song sung by her ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands

... the voyage. Mr. Pratt has here endeavored to picture in a symphonic prelude "the peaceful progress upon the waters, the jubilant feeling of Columbus, and a flight of birds"—subjects dissimilar enough certainly to lend variety to any orchestral composition. The part, in addition to this prelude, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... robust, and in particular that he could not write without intolerable physical uneasiness. We should probably not be wrong in connecting his physical weakness with his rule of waiting for favorable moments. His next start with "The Prelude," in the spring of 1804, was more prosperous; he dropped it for several months, but, resuming again in the spring of 1805, he completed it in the summer of that year. But still the composition of the great work ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... of fact, struck sooner than Damaris anticipated, the sound and sight of it reaching her without prelude or opportunity of preparation. For early in the afternoon of the second day she spent downstairs, as, sitting at the writing table in the long drawing-room, she raised her eyes from contemplation of the house-keeping ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... vanish past the curtain, thought: 'What a lovely thing she is!' And he got up too, but instead of following, went to the piano, and began to play Mendelssohn's Prelude and Fugue in E minor. He had a fine touch, and played with a sort of dreamy passion. It was his way out of perplexities, regrets, and longings; a way ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... every point of her territory by her warlike foe, so that she could hardly hope more from subsequent efforts, however strenuous and united, than to postpone the inevitable hour of dissolution. The cruel treatment of Malaga was the prelude to the long series of persecutions, which awaited the wretched Moslems in the land of their ancestors; in that land, over which the "star of Islamism," to borrow their own metaphor, had shone in full brightness for nearly eight centuries, but where it was now fast descending ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... with these people commenced that long series of losses and troubles to which their conduct formed the prelude. They were to live in the little shanty that we had just left, and work the farm. Moodie was to find them the land, the use of his implements and cattle, and all the seed for the crops; and to share with them the returns. Besides this, they unfortunately ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... care on the part of the doctor and the nurse might have kept him alive long enough to permit his case to be recorded by virtue of his having escaped alive from the operating table, as one of those exasperatingly smug things known to the profession as a "successful operation,"—sardonic prelude ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon

... peace—Gameiro took upon himself the execution of the spurious ministerial decree issued by Barbosa on the 27th of February, 1824, which had been abrogated by the Emperor, through the same minister, in the July following, as a prelude to my employment in the tranquillisation of the Northern provinces. Gameiro did not venture previously to apprise me of the act lest I should resist it—but insultingly sent an order to the officers of the Piranga to "disengage themselves from all obedience to my command." (Se desligao de toda subordinacao ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... science, of which the Church of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie was so complete a hieroglyph. Thus, the Roman abbey, the philosophers' church, the Gothic art, Saxon art, the heavy, round pillar, which recalls Gregory VII., the hermetic symbolism, with which Nicolas Flamel played the prelude to Luther, papal unity, schism, Saint-Germain des Pres, Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie,—all are mingled, combined, amalgamated in Notre-Dame. This central mother church is, among the ancient churches of Paris, a sort of chimera; it has the head of one, the limbs of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... other thus, may he not be who would part you! Be of good cheer and keep your eyes cool and clear." At this they both rejoiced and Naomi called for a lute and, when they brought it, she took it and tuned it and played a lively measure which enchanted the hearers, and after the prelude sang these couplets, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... broke, a cry of grief was heard, the icy kiss of death conquered; the prelude ended; so that the drama of life might ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen

... method and structure. Neither his avowal of cold-blooded artifice, nor his subsequent avowal to friends that an exposure of this artifice was only another of his intellectual hoaxes, need be wholly credited. If he had designed the complete work in advance, he scarcely would have made so harsh a prelude of rattle-pan rhymes to the delicious melody of the second stanza,—not even upon his theory of the fantastic. Of course an artist, having perfected a work, sees, like the first Artist, that it is good, and sees why it is good. A subsequent analysis, coupled with a disavowal of any ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe

... have endeavoured to show that the public betrothal or formal 'troth-plight' which was at the time a common prelude to a wedding carried with it all the privileges of marriage. But neither Shakespeare's detailed description of a betrothal {23} nor of the solemn verbal contract that ordinarily preceded marriage lends the contention much support. Moreover, the whole circumstances of the case ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... ancient Beadsman heard the prelude soft; And so it chanc'd, for many a door was wide, From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft, 30 The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide: The level chambers, ready with their pride, Were glowing to receive a thousand guests: The carved angels, ever ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... A prelude was played on the piano, and Legras standing there in his velvet jacket sang "La Chemise," the horrible song which brought all Paris to hear him. All the lust and vice that crowd the streets of the great city appeared ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... This kind of prelude and formula was familiar to him. It was usually followed by, "Promise me that you will never swear again," or, "that you will go straight home and wash your face," or some other irrelevant personality. But nobody with that sort of eyes had ever ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... to himself, was a youngish, somewhat plump woman who had arrived at the last moment. He had not been introduced to her, nor to the four other strangers, for it had lately reached Bedford Park that introductions were no longer the correct prelude to a meal. A hostess who wished to be modern should throw her guests in ignorance together and leave them to acquire knowledge by their own initiative. This device added to the piquancy of a gathering. Moreover, there was always a theory that each individual was well ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... Carroll works by the pure reason, but this is not so strong a contrast; for, after all, mankind in the main has always regarded reason as a bit of a joke. Lear introduces his unmeaning words and his amorphous creatures not with the pomp of reason, but with the romantic prelude of rich ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... before him. With the notes he had thrust into his pocket a little handful of business papers involving a knotty and delicate point of business, and he intended that the discussion of the point they raised should act as the prelude to the disclosure and the restitution he desired to make. He could not, even in his newfound heroism, and with whatever hysteric hardihood he was prepared to meet the stroke of fate, he could not as yet encounter Brown, and lay bare before him the plot of the melancholy ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... began my opera at the end. When I received the first chorus of my libretto by post (I composed the Siciliano in the prelude later) I said in great good humor ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... and Judy show was given first as a sort of prelude to the games which were to follow, and in these even the older girls joined with spirit. The main idea seemed to be that everyone should do his or her best to make the party a success and to give the poorer children as good a time as possible. Ben, be ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard

... a common word for a Prelude (often extempore), intended as a kind of introduction to two or three more formal movements. The Italian for a peal of bells is tocco di campana, and we have the word in English under the form tocsin, an alarm bell. The trumpet-call known as 'Tucket,' which occurs seven times in the stage directions ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor

... valuable, or even necessary, by way of illustration,—disfigure the printed page; and some prefer that they should be thrown all together at the end of each volume, or at the close of a series; such as—in Wordsworth's case—"The River Duddon," "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," 'The Prelude', 'The White Doe of Rylstone', etc. I do not think, however, that many care to turn repeatedly to the close of a series of poems, or the end of a volume, to find an explanatory note, helped only by an index number, and when perhaps even that does not meet his eye at the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... Thursday, September 13, 1916, the British forces won German trenches to the southeast of Thiepval and a heavily fortified place known as Wunderwerk. This was the prelude to a series of brilliant victories won by the British troops which had not been surpassed during the entire fighting in the Somme area. At 6 a. m. on September 15, 1916, the British attacked on a front of about six miles, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... "moralities," although they did not have a role in the action. Their function was to interject comical comments from time to time. The comments aimed to be witty, but were generally gross, coarse, and obscene. Late in the fifteenth century, in France, a buffoon recited a prelude containing licentious jests to an edifying morality ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... chords from the piano melted into a rippling prelude, and Winifred breathed easier when her friend began to sing. Her voice was sweet and excellently trained, and there was a deep stillness of appreciation when the clear notes thrilled through the close-packed hall. No one could doubt that the first part of the aria was a success, for half-subdued ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... anxious eagerness; and from the 3rd of July, public criers, walking the streets of Cairo, announce each morning what progress it has made since evening. More or less authentic traditions assert that the prelude to the opening of the canals, in the time of the Pharaohs, was the solemn casting to the waters of a young girl decked as for her bridal—the "Bride of the Nile." Even after the Arab conquest, the irruption of the river ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... verse, of the sun sinking to rest amid the splendours gathered round him in his fall. The poem is charged with mystic symbolism, the main thought of which is that human life, ending apparently in death, is but the prelude of preparation for a more glorious day ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon

... alter or abolish it and institute new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Here was the prelude to the historic drama of democracy—a challenge to every form of government and every privilege not founded ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... utterance free. 'Other than this, O Pallas! was thy promise to thy father, that thou wouldst not plunge recklessly into the fury of battle. I knew well how strong was the fresh pride of arms and the sweetness of honour in a first battle. Ah, unhappy first-fruits of his youth and bitter prelude of the war upon our borders! ah, vows and prayers of mine that no god heard! and thou, pure crown of wifehood, happy that thou art dead and not spared for this sorrow! But I have outgone my destiny in living, to stay ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... destroyed to prepare us for better things. The failure of the caterpillar is the birth of the butterfly; the passing of the bud is the becoming of the rose; the death or destruction of the seed is the prelude to its resurrection as wheat. It is at night, in the darkest hours, those preceding dawn, that plants grow best, that they most increase in size. May this not be one of Nature's gentle showings to man of ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan

... the first days, as a measure of precaution, European women and children had been hurriedly collected into places of refuge lest the horrible excesses perpetrated by the Indian mob at Amritsar might prove the prelude to a repetition of Cawnpore. The hardships and anxiety they underwent and the murderous outrages actually committed on not a few Europeans moved most of their fellow countrymen and countrywomen to unmeasured resentment, and not until they gained at last ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... to abandon that purpose. In 403 he was overtaken and again defeated by Stilicho at Verona, Alaric himself barely escaping capture. Stilicho, however, permitted him—some historians say, bribed him—to withdraw to Illyricum, and he was made prefect of Western Illyricum by Honorius. Such is the prelude, followed in history by the amazing exploits of Alaric's second invasion ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... some sorrowful element, and Mary's national, as well as natural desire, as therefore toward an elaborate festal ceremony. As soon as this intention was put into words their very echo seemed to be a prelude to ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr

... to excite the public curiosity respecting his future Shakspeare: he liberally presented Dr. BIRCH with his MS. notes for that great work the "General Dictionary," no doubt as the prelude of his after-celebrated edition. Birch was here only a dupe: he escaped, unlike Theobald, Hanmer, and Grey, from being overwhelmed with ridicule and contempt. When these extraordinary specimens of emendatory and illustrative criticism appeared ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... cayenne, and one teaspoonful of made mustard, rub smooth and add one-half teaspoonful of vinegar, one tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce and the juice of one small lime. Lay the tripe in this sauce as soon as it is removed from the fire. Serve with buttered toast. An excellent prelude to this dish is a plate ...
— Joe Tilden's Recipes for Epicures • Joe Tilden

... are beginning to be wise. Remember that knowledge of evil was the prelude to the Fall. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... play upon the pipe organ. I find my music. The stool is a kettle of water with a board over it. A stream of water comes from the organ. There is a horse near which kicks or bites me. Again:—I play on the piano to a friend who is a German scholar the opening theme of the Tristan and Isolde Prelude. My friend tells me the pronunciation of the title of the opera and it sounds to me like Froebel. That the name of the world-famous music drama, the apotheosis of passion, should be transformed to that of the notable child educator is nonsense or otherwise according to the observer's point ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... arose from the west. In the afternoon it was heard to descend from the east, and that with an incredible quickness; and though the noise seemed to bear on the water, yet without agitating it, or discovering any more wind on the river than before. This frightful noise was only the prelude of a most violent tempest. The hurricane, the most furious ever felt in the province, lasted three days. As it arose from the south-west and north-east, it reached all the settlements which were along the Missisippi; and was felt for some leagues more or ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... side door, and carefully bolted it. Then he resumed his seat, and, resting his ponderous, seamy jaw upon the flat of his hand, waited for her to begin. He was used to all sorts of devices as a prelude to requests for office or emolument, and his expression betokened little interest or expectation. Had not the serious character of the communication she was about to make rendered coquetry at the moment distasteful to Mrs. Carey, she would assuredly ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... Bride's Prelude," a story in verse, after merely glancing at the opening of the tale, devotes eight stanzas to description introduced for the purpose of background and atmosphere. Two of them ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith

... moment's thought, he began: "In order to give you a quiet, and therefore a more artistic prelude to the tragedy of the battle, I shall touch lightly on some of the incidents of our march to the field. I will take up the thread of our experiences on the 15th of June, for I think you were quite well informed of what occurred before that date. The 15th was one ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... of the events, not important in themselves, but which seem to have the relation of a prelude to the great tragedy, was derived from three persons, Mr. Conkling, Mr. Blaine, and Mr. Marshall Jewell. At the request of the President, Mr. Conkling called upon him the Sunday preceding the day of catastrophe. The President gave Mr. Conkling ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell

... stool is a kettle of water with a board over it. A stream of water comes from the organ. There is a horse near which kicks or bites me. Again:—I play on the piano to a friend who is a German scholar the opening theme of the Tristan and Isolde Prelude. My friend tells me the pronunciation of the title of the opera and it sounds to me like Froebel. That the name of the world-famous music drama, the apotheosis of passion, should be transformed to that of the notable child educator is nonsense or otherwise according to the observer's point ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... noticed the stranger standing in the shadow, followed her dear Fraeulein. The door was left open, and Willibald could hear a cover laid back cautiously and a chair pushed gently in place. Then she began a low prelude. The sounds which the old worn out spinet gave forth were tremulous and thin, and made one think of an ancient harp; but the maiden's voice recalled the lark's song ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... suspected it, but Stevens was an epicure in beauty. He insisted on our closing our eyes till we came to just the spot where the view was most perfect, and then he drew in his horses, gave the word, and we looked on a valley as lovely as a dream. I am glad that we saw it as we did, after a long prelude of shaded roads and sentinel trees. Nowadays you rush to it madly by train and motor. Then it was a dear secret hidden away in ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... with the guttural ejaculation, Ho! and ranged himself with the rest, squatted on the earthen floor or on the platform along the sides of the house. The kettles were slung over the fires in the midst. First, there was a long prelude of lugubrious singing. Then the host, who took no share in the feast, proclaimed in a loud voice the contents of each kettle in turn, and at each announcement the company responded in unison, Ho! The attendant squaws filled with their ladles the bowls of all the guests. There ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... the status of surgery during his time. He also explains the reasons that forced him to write on this topic and why he wished to include, as he did, precautions, advice, instructional notes, and beautifully illustrated surgical drawings. For example, the prelude to the treatise mentions four incidents that he witnessed, all ending with tragic results because of the ignorance of physicians who attempted to operate on patients without the proper training in anatomy and surgical manipulation. ...
— Drawings and Pharmacy in Al-Zahrawi's 10th-Century Surgical Treatise • Sami Hamarneh

... like the prelude of a song to her. She listened for more, with a smile, a real smile, no more wise, but foolish. It had the foolishness of all love in it, so easily and completely could he give her ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton

... they might guide themselves by the sun during the day, and by the pole-star at night, but if once the sky was overcast, they would become entirely at a loss for their bearings. Hence the discovery of the polar tendency of the magnetic needle was a necessary prelude to any extended voyages away from land. This appears to have been known to the Chinese from quite ancient times, and utilised on their junks as early as the eleventh century. The Arabs, who voyaged to Ceylon and Java, appear to have learnt its use from ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs

... natives use their arms against the wild animals of the forest. The dangers and difficulties they encounter in overcoming them form a kind of prelude to war, and perfect them in the use of their weapons. The rifle of the North American Indian would never be so much dreaded did he not depend upon its produce for his subsistence. I have myself (during my travels through North America) had many opportunities of witnessing the ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle

... exposure to the noxious atmosphere of the jungle, proved inimical to the constitution of the king. On his return to Bangkok he complained of general weariness and prostration, which was the prelude to fever. Foreign physicians were consulted, but at no stage of the case was any European treatment employed. He rapidly grew worse, and was soon past saving. On the day before his death he called to his bedside his nearest relatives, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... was only a prelude, followed on 6 June by a blockade of the Greek coasts, established in pursuance of orders from Paris and London—pourpeser sur la Grece et lui montrer qu'elle etait a notre merci.[14] Even this measure, ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... managed to secure himself against the competition of any rival. The capture of Shirpurla must have been one of his earliest achievements, for its proximity to Gish-khu rendered its reduction a necessary prelude to any more extensive plan of conquest. But the kingdom which Lugalzaggisi ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... certain to the pure and true: success to falsehood and corruption, tyranny and aggression, is only the prelude to a greater and an irremediable fall.—STUBBS, Seventeen Lectures, 20. The Carlylean faith, that the cause we fight for, so far as it is true, is sure of victory, is the necessary basis of all effective activity for good.—CAIRD, Evolution ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton

... over me. I can remember the struggle, the exertion it was to dress for the party. Twenty times I was tempted to send a message saying I was too unwell to go, but my better angel prevailed—and I went. To what an eventful period was that evening but the prelude! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... secured from the love of it; you must insure their magnanimity in office by a counter-charm. But where is such a charm, or counter-charm, to be found? Throughout, as usual in so provident a writer as Plato, the answer to that leading [263] question has had its prelude, even in ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... obliged either to admit that every act of Congress is without any force in a State until it has obtained the tacit approval of the people of that State, or else it will be driven to the necessity of obtaining the enforcement of the law by arms. Such employment of force would of course be but the prelude to secession. Indeed, South Carolina, in her Ordinance of Nullification, declared that she would secede, if the United States did not repeal the obnoxious laws, or if she should attempt to enforce the collections of the tariff duties provided ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby

... flowers of which the hot-houses had been despoiled, and which were redundant with all the luxuriance of unequaled beauty; the perfect harmony of everything which surrounded them, and which indeed was no more than the prelude of the promised fete, more than charmed all who were there, and who testified their admiration over and over again, not by voice or gesture, but by deep silence and rapt attention, those two languages of the courtier ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... place, if possible, to surprise their enemies; and, in the second, to endeavour to alarm and confound them. This latter is doubtless partly the purpose of the song and dance, which form with them the constant prelude to the assault, although these vehement expressions of passion operate also powerfully as excitements to their own sanguinary valour and ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik

... Pan himself had wandered here A-strolling through this sordid city, And piping to the civic ear The prelude of some pastoral ditty! The demigod had crossed the seas,— From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr, And Syracusan times,—to these Far shores and ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... Cami," musical as they are, have lent no prelude to these harmonies of science, we must say in a few plain words of prose our own first thought as to the work the commencement of which lies before us. We believe, that, if completed according to its promise, it is to be one of the monumental labors ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... fact, no answer was necessary or wise. He walked forward, and, partly from his half-blindness, partly from his disorganized state of mind, passed to windward of Snelling, the second mate, who was coming aft to dinner. Snelling said nothing in the way of prelude, but crashed his fist on Rogers's already mutilated face, and sent him again to the deck. As Rogers struggled ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... movements over, M. le Duc d'Orleans, rising a little in his seat, said to the company, in a tone more firm, and more like that of a master than before, that there was another matter now to attend to, much more important than the one just heard. This prelude increased the general astonishment, and rendered everybody motionless. After a moment of silence the Regent said, that the peers had had for some time good grounds of complaint against certain persons, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... death would be the most glorious act of his life. No one could imagine, from the calm and subdued conversation, and the quiet appetite with which these distinguished men partook of the entertainment, that this was their last repast, and but the prelude to a violent death. But when the cloth was removed, and the fruits, the wines, and the flowers alone remained, the conversation became animated, gay, and at times rose to hilarity. Several of the youngest men of the party, in sallies of wit and outbursts of laughter, endeavored ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... free, is to introduce the principle and the notion of liberty into the heart of slavery; the blacks, whom the law thus maintains in a state of slavery from which their children are delivered, are astonished at so unequal a fate, and their astonishment is only the prelude to their impatience and irritation. Thenceforward slavery loses in their eyes that kind of moral power which it derived from time and habit; it is reduced to a mere palpable abuse of force. The northern states had nothing to fear from the contrast, because in them the blacks ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... admirably fitting prelude to another historic event of that same week. On the last anniversary we shall ever keep of our venerable Queen's birthday, on May 24th, the Orange River Colony was formally annexed to the British Empire, and Victoria was proclaimed its gracious ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... thing to Alister to seem for a moment to follow the example of the recreant chiefs whose defection to feudalism was the prelude to their treachery toward their people, and whose faithlessness had ruined the highlands. But unlike Glengarry or "Esau" Reay, he desired to sell his land that he might keep his people, care for them, and share with them: his people ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... this is only a preliminary. These Tartars have been, and might still he troublesome neighbors. The Muscovites are driving them off, finding their country would be a convenient extension of their own limits; and as a prelude to another revolution, the throne ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... of Independence was the avowed expedient and prelude for an alliance with France and Spain against the Mother Country; proofs and illustrations; the secret and double game played between the Congress and France, both before and after the Declaration of ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... detail, can indeed see or hear little else. So much in this place do men live by pain that my friendship with you, in the way through which I am forced to remember it, appears to me always as a prelude consonant with those varying modes of anguish which each day I have to realise, nay more, to necessitate them even; as though my life, whatever it had seemed to myself and others, had all the while been a real symphony of sorrow, passing through its rhythmically linked movements ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... soprano is the principal part, and that the other voices, while somewhat melodic, tend rather to support and follow the melody than to be independent. If, now, we play a piece of counterpoint like the G-Minor Prelude by Bach,[47] we shall have quite a good piece of counterpoint, as far as separate melodies being combined is concerned. Let us play the voice-parts separately. We shall find equal melodic interest in each. The ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper

... of 1826, closing the life of one of the longest parliaments in modern times, was the prelude to a very eventful year. The general election brought into prominence the two burning questions of catholic relief and the corn laws, and unseated for the moment Brougham, Cobbett, Hunt, and Lord John Russell, but it produced no material ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... have? Why, I never dances to but one tune," and Jake started the first line of "Oh, plantation gals, can't you look at a body," while Bacchus was giving a prelude of scrapes and twangs. Jake made a circle of somersets, and come down on his head, with his heels in the air, going through flourishes that would have astonished an uninitiated observer. As it was, Jake's audience were in a high condition of enjoyment. They were in a constant state ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman

... which I was from this time forward embarked.' In other words, if he could have interpreted and classified his own intellectual type, he would have known that it was the Reflective. Reflection is a faculty that ripens slowly; the prelude of its maturity is often a dull and apparently numb-witted youth. Though Pattison conceived his ideal at the age of twenty, he was five-and-forty before he finally and deliberately embraced it and shaped his life in conformity ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley

... incapable of being vanquished in battle even by all the celestials and the Asuras (fighting together). We think, however, that he should be vanquished in a personal struggle with bare arms. In me is policy, in Bhima is strength and in Arjuna is triumph; and therefore, as prelude to performing the Rajasuya, we will certainly achieve the destruction of the ruler of Magadha. When we three approach that monarch in secret, and he will, without doubt, be engaged in an encounter with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... that pulled out his purse, And a doctor that took the sum; But he let them be—for he knew that the "fee" Was a prelude ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... against herself. She recoiled, without well knowing why, before the ferocious passions of her kinsman, and was convinced that she had nothing to hope from his implacable temper. But her alarm was the prelude of firmness, and not ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... in all the circumstances which formed the prelude to this contemplated tragedy. Hitherto the Queen-mother had created dangers for herself—had started at shadows—and distrusted even those who sought to serve her; while her son, silent, saturnine, and ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... lady, gazing around upon her victims with a benignant smile, "without further prelude, I will inform you for what object I have asked you to honor me with your ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... finally, the obtaining of undisputed sovereignty over a great part of the anthracite coal mines. The warfare now began without those fanciful ceremonials, heralds or proclamations considered so necessary by Governments as a prelude to slaughter. These formalities are ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... saw," said Pet, and viciously started to change the subject, so that Prissy had to jump the prelude. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... which you edify one another. You know she beguiled me into giving her lessons on the organ, as well as the piano, and yesterday when I went over to the church at instruction hour, I was astonished at a prelude, which she had evidently improvised. Screened from her view, I listened till she finished playing. Of course I praised her (for really she has remarkable talent), and asked her when she began to compose, to improvise. Now what do you suppose ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... from the arm of Ione, still cast round her, as if that soft embrace embarrassed; and placing her light and graceful instrument on her knee, after a short prelude, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... a common bird all through this region. Its song is very delicate and plaintive,—a thin, wavering, tremulous whistle, which disappoints one, however, as it ends when it seems only to have begun. If the bird could give us the finishing strain of which this seems only the prelude, it would stand ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... small plant, but just as I got it started a tremendous storm came up, and every bit of that black sand went out to sea. During the twenty-eight years that have intervened it has never come back." This incident was really the prelude to the development set forth ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... law, not to be lightly broken by either rich or poor. Its non-observance usually implied some sorrowful element, and Mary's national, as well as natural desire, as therefore toward an elaborate festal ceremony. As soon as this intention was put into words their very echo seemed to be a prelude to ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr

... Architectural League. In this fountain the idea of man's evolution takes a subtler and more profound significance. In general, it shows the development and growth of love from its lower to higher forms and the upward effect of that spiritualization upon the life of the earth. In the secondary group, a prelude and epilogue to the main composition, on the prow of the Ship of Earth are grouped the loves, greeds, passions, griefs and spiritual cravings of man and woman, who come and go from the Unknown to the Unknowable. The great arms of Destiny, pushing and pointing, giving and taking, ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry

... well on her way up river before she was seen. "Although it was a starlight night," wrote Lieutenant Perkins, who by her commander's direction was piloting the ship, "we were not discovered until well under the forts; then they opened upon us a tremendous fire." It was the prelude to a drama of singular energy and grandeur, for the Confederates in the forts were fully on their guard, and had anticipated with unshaken courage, but with gloomy forebodings, an attack during that very night. "There will be no to-morrow for New ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... early childhood, like a beautiful dawn, the prelude of a bright day. Already they partook with their mothers the cares of the household. As soon as the cry of the wakeful cock announced the first beam of the morning, Virginia arose, and hastened to draw water from a neighbouring spring; then ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... Hencastle" is not mine. It is a free translation from the German of Victor Bluethgen, by Major Yeatman-Biggs, R.A., to whom I am indebted for permission to include it in my volume, as a necessary prelude to "Flaps." The story took my fancy greatly, but the ending seemed to me imperfect and unsatisfactory, especially in reference to so charming a character as the old watch dog, and I ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... mention that Fuddle, in his love of decorum—though he scarce ever sat in judgment without absorbing his punch the while—never permitted in his forum the use of those knock-down arguments which were always a prelude to ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... daily. At the end of that time he emphasised his appreciation by making her a present of a valuable violin. She still continued her regular studies with Jokisch, until, acting on the advice of her friends, she obtained a hearing from Ysaye, and played for him Bach's prelude and fugue ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee

... heard of men needing an introduction to a beautiful song. Prose before poetry is an unmeaning interruption; for poetry is perhaps the one thing in the world that explains itself. The only possible prelude for songs is silence; and I shall endeavour here to imitate the brevity of the silence as well as ...
— Eyes of Youth - A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum, Shane Leslie, A.O. • Various

... winter of 1761 the Earl of Bute, then Secretary of State, gave vent to an outburst of unaccustomed profanity. Mr. Robert Calverley, who represented England at the Court of St. Petersburg, had resigned his office without prelude or any word of explanation. This infuriated Bute, since his pet scheme was to make peace with Russia and thereby end the Continental War. Now all was to do again; the minister raged, shrugged, furnished a new emissary with ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... either party, insisting upon due insurances, ensuring private incomes for each partner, securing the welfare of the children, and laying down equitable conditions in the event of a divorce or separation. Such a treaty ought to be a necessary prelude to the issue of a licence to marry. And given such a basis to go upon, then I see no reason why, in the case of couples who remain childless for five or six years, let us say, and seem likely to remain childless, the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... castle walls. On the surface of the lake were little boats, painted and gilt, so pretty and dainty that the princess challenged the ambassadors to a voyage. None hesitated to do so, for they thought it was all a gay pastime, and a merry prelude to the marriage festivities. But no sooner had they embarked than boats, fountains, and lake vanished, and the ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault

... and her son gazed on the debutante—they had no word, no look for each other: for they recognised in her voice the tones of a grief of which long ago they heard the prelude—and every note found its echo in the bishop's ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur

... leave my rivers in the shadow. After all, this life is only a prelude, a beginning: we pass on to where "the rivers and streams make glad the city of God." But if we will not listen here how ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless

... looked at her, and set down the half-finished cup without opening her lips. If the speech had come from any other than Wark, it would have been easy to believe it merely the prelude to complaint of a fellow-servant or plea for a rise in wages. But if Wark objected to a fellow-servant, her own view of the matter had always been that the other one should go. Her mistress knew ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... always! The words come back to me as I lie here in this great, dreary bedchamber, with a cold-faced priest muttering comfortless prayers by my side; dying alone, without a single kindly face to lighten my passage to the grave. Yet, do not read this as a reproach! Read it only as the prelude to this my last appeal to you! Marry me, Martin! It would cost you so little: just a hurried journey here, a few sentences over my bedside, a week's waiting at the most, and you could see me in my grave, and feel yourself free again. Is it too great a thing ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Coming, sometimes with immense prelude and preparation, as when King Charles himself arrived to replace an image disfigured by profane Huguenots, sometimes with the secrecy and suddenness of an apparition vanished before the public was aware, the pilgrims ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... Two-fold, for the Dead, for the Living—for the Dear Poet, for the Beloved Mother! The linking of their names together, under this Spray of Kentucky Pine—culled by a hand most loving—is like unto finding the other half of a broken Chord, in some Prelude Elusive: for James Whitcomb Riley, deeply endeared himself, to the Dear Lady Here, while he and her son were a long while away, on their Reading Tour. Out of sheer Kindliness, out of Goodness of Heart, he ...
— A Spray of Kentucky Pine • George Douglass Sherley

... took part, was or threatened to be a reproduction of the Mutiny. In the first days, as a measure of precaution, European women and children had been hurriedly collected into places of refuge lest the horrible excesses perpetrated by the Indian mob at Amritsar might prove the prelude to a repetition of Cawnpore. The hardships and anxiety they underwent and the murderous outrages actually committed on not a few Europeans moved most of their fellow countrymen and countrywomen to unmeasured resentment, and not until they gained at last a fuller ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... of this paper was the prelude to much calamity in New England for many years; but how well it has justified itself! Such words are a living power, surviving the lapse of many generations, and flaming up fresh and vigorous above the decay of centuries. The patriotism which they express is of more avail than the ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... past summer's prime, When other throats have ceased to chime, Thy faithful tree-top strain; No brilliant bursts our ears enthrall— A prelude with a "dying fall," That soothes ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... representer ces choses, les actes sont comparativement tout, et les mobiles ne sont plus rien. L'emotion sublime ou nous sommes entraines par ces images de nuit et d'horreur qu'exprime Macbeth; ce solennel prelude ou il s'oublie jusqu'a ce que l'horloge sonne l'heure qui doit l'appeler au meurtre de Duncan; lorsque nous ne lisons plus cela dans un livre, lorsque nous avons abandonne ce poste avantageux de l'abstraction d'ou la lecture domine ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck

... creations, but mainly the product of a judicious eclecticism. Sir William Hamilton was a vast polyhistor long before he could be called a philosopher, or even thought himself one. Researches the most persistent in nearly every department of letters were with him the indispensable prelude ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... arguments to me? In Miquelon champagne's eighteen dollars a case and—" The skipper lurched into his seat as an organ-prelude silenced him. ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... the best-reputed older musicians, a friend and companion of Mendelssohn (whom I have already mentioned apropos of the tempo di menuetto of the eighth symphony), [Footnote: Ferdinand Hiller] to play the eighth Prelude and Fugue from the first part of "Das Wohltemperirte Clavier" (E flat minor), a piece which has always had a magical attraction for me. [Footnote: i.e. Prelude VIII., from Part I. of Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues.] He very kindly complied, and ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)

... came from the parlor, with a sound of fright in it. "I can sing it without the music." The piano keys twittered the prelude and ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells

... splendid prelude to his play of Henry V., is a spirited appeal to his audience not to waste regrets on defects of stage machinery, but to bring to the observation of his piece their highest powers of imagination, whereby alone can full justice be done ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... seeing her disorder, and having little time to waste, came quickly forward and took her in his arms without apology or prelude, as is (they say) wisest in ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... eyes were fixed upon the future. No two women had ever been loved as they were loved. All this work, this washing and ironing, it resembled nothing more than the opening scene in an opera: a sort of prelude, for the sake of contrast. They would see—O-o-oh, yes, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... physical as well as the spiritual plane—is immoral because it is "unnatural." Again and again it will be found to lead to a violent reaction of feeling—a repulsion which is as intense and violent as the devotion which was its prelude. ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden

... despised; now they were all cutting bits out of China for themselves, extracting from the government one privilege after another, and quite openly dividing China into "spheres of interest", obviously as the prelude to annexation of the ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... forward, to the Haynes-Cooper plant and the fight that was before her. There settled about her mouth a certain grim line that sat strangely on so young a face. The service marched on. There came the organ prelude that announced the mourners' prayer. Then Rabbi Thalmann began to intone the Kaddish. Fanny rose, prayer book in hand. At that Clarence Heyl rose too, hurriedly, as one unaccustomed to the service, and stood with unbowed ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... silent obedience of a man-of-war's man, Hockins went off, and, without prelude, began. Dead silence was the instant result, for the small bird-like pipe seemed to charm the very soul of every one who heard it. We know not whether it was accident or a spice of humour in the seaman, but the tune he played was "Jock o' Hazeldean!" And as Mark hurried off to see ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne

... singing, just for pleasure. At such times the long series of notes do not come forth with a rush; he begins deliberately with a series of musical chirps uttered in a measured manner, like those of a wood wren, the prelude to its song, the notes coming faster and faster and swelling and running into the loud chuckling performance. This performance, like the lost drake's call, was repeated in the same deliberate or leisurely manner at intervals again and again, until my curiosity was aroused and I went ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... Rosas, in Catalonia. It has already been observed that the French general, St Cyr, had entered that country, and, having taken Figueras and Gerona, was looking with a wistful eye on the castle of Trinity, on the south-east side, the capture of which would be a certain prelude to the ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... remaining there quietly for a year, regaining her health and spirits, and had now returned to her uncle's home, lightening her mourning, going out a little, taking up her old interests again one by one—a fitting and dignified prelude for a new establishment of her own. She could not help being pleased and gratified at the warmth of her reception; and she found, as Austin had predicted, that "New York looked pretty good to her." ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes

... Germany had, in fact, to choose between national unity and State unity; and she chose the latter, partly because Prussia really decided the matter for her, partly because she realised that the establishment of a strong German State was the essential prelude to the creation of a strong united nation. Austria had to be shut out in 1866 in order that she might be received back again at some later date on Germany's own terms. In the second place Austria ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... through the crannies at his back; how his body tingled all over with warmth, and it began to dawn upon him, with a sort of slow surprise, that the country was beautiful, the heather purple, and the far-away hills all marbled with sun and shadow. Wordsworth, in a beautiful passage of the 'Prelude,' has used this as a figure for the feeling struck in us by the quiet by-streets of London after the uproar of the great thoroughfares; and the comparison may be turned the other way with as ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... older generation of Giggleswick boys look back with peculiar affection to the days when they were in his form—The Transitus—as it was then called. They remember his enthusiasm and his loyalty and his conscientious devotion to the School. Many had hoped that his retirement from active work would prelude some years of life released from anxiety, but death has claimed him with the hope unfulfilled. In May, 1912, he made his last visit to the School and two days ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell

... the war was of the greatest consequence, as it raised the spirits and confidence of the British, while it proportionably depressed the enemy, and proved the prelude of that succession of victories which at length crushed the power of France and secured the ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... and the Nilghai opened his eyes. The old chanty whereof he, among a very few, possessed all the words was not a pretty one, but Dick had heard it many times before without wincing. Without prelude he launched into that stately tune that calls together and troubles the hearts of the gipsies of ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... Both nations were preparing for strife; the occasion seemed good for fishing in troubled waters. D'Argenson notes that it is a fair opportunity to make use of Charles. Now we scrape acquaintance with a new spy, Oliver Macallester, an Irish Jacobite adventurer. {286} Macallester, after a long prelude, tells us that his 'private affairs' brought him to Dunkirk in 1755. On returning to London he was apprehended at Sheerness, an ungrateful caitiff having laid information to the effect that our injured hero 'had ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... chords, he could see how the furtive tears coursed down the cheeks of the loving girl, or the young, neglected wife; how they moistened the eyes of the young man, enamoured of and eager for glory. Can we not fancy some young beauty asking him to play a simple prelude, then, softened by the tones, leaning her rounded arms upon the instrument to support her dreaming head, while she suffered the young artist to divine in the dewy glitter of her lustrous eyes the song sung by her ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands

... unusual to make it within a few hours of the time fixed for the execution. The Home Secretary was, of course, unable to comply with Mr. Bright's prayer, but this scene in the House of Commons was undoubtedly a solemn one, more solemn and impressive than the tragedy to which it was the prelude. Donald and I, when the House at last rose, sauntered slowly through the streets, taking note of that night side of London, which was novel to both of us. In the early hours of the morning we found ourselves at Covent Garden, where we watched the unloading of the vegetable ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... about holding up photographic portraits of the tamer, lustily shouting his professional and private virtues. Their voices were, however, soon drowned in the clash of the brass band, which played a prelude to what was coming. At the conclusion of this a lone and last voice cried out, "Ice-cold lemonade," but it was promptly suppressed by those near the crier, as ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... explained tearfully, and stuck to her story, even when the sorely tried superintendent led her to the tracks and showed her that said track absolutely and finally ended there, without argument or compromise. And she was furious. Her former outburst was a mild prelude to what poured forth now. She would not stay there until morning when the next train left. She demanded a special train; she ordered a handcar with which to overtake the recreant train; she called for a taxi to chase ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... Thus, without prelude:—Age and zeal—my office— And good intent must plead my privilege; Our near, though not acquainted neighbourhood, May also be my herald. Rumours strange, And of unholy nature, are abroad, 30 And busy with thy name—a noble name For centuries: may he who ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... said the barber, "I give my word here and before God that I will not repeat what your worship says, to King, Rook or earthly man—an oath I learned from the ballad of the curate, who, in the prelude, told the king of the thief who had robbed him of the hundred gold crowns and his ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... lumbering, and undermanned. The subsequent career of the United States ship "Wasp," and the audacious exploits of several privateers, recall the impunity of Paul Jones a generation before, and form a sequel to the brief prelude, in which the leading part, though ultimately disastrous, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... satisfaction, but the indispensable "staff of life" for certain human beings. In their unfaltering faith in God's enduring and proximate actuality lies their sole source of security and trust. For such persons a lapse or a lack of faith is the prelude to utter collapse. A vague general assurance of the dependability of the future is, for most people, a prerequisite for a sane and untroubled existence. Even those who live in unreflective satisfaction with the fruits of the moment would ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... gentleman at this moment fell forward with such weight, that Tamar ran from behind him, and dropping down on her knees, received his head on her shoulder, then, putting one arm round him, she was glad to hear a long, deep sigh, the prelude of his returning to partial consciousness; and as he opened his eyes, he said,—"Ah, Rachel, is it you? You have been gone ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]









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