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Bass   /bæs/  /beɪs/   Listen
Bass

adjective
1.
Having or denoting a low vocal or instrumental range.  Synonym: deep.  "A bass voice is lower than a baritone voice" , "A bass clarinet"



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"Bass" Quotes from Famous Books



... pounds for the biggest game fishes, them's black sea-bass," the man answered; "leastways there was an eight-hundred pounder brought in, and lots of ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... "Eleven," remarked the bass voice comfortably. "But I married very young, before I left Guy's. Now I'll go up again. You needn't be ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... did not answer. His eager, dark eyes were turned upon the scene ahead, marking every dearly familiar point. Already he could see, through an opening in the forest, the soft gleam of Lake Algonquin. There was Rock Bass Island where he and his father and Peter Fiddle used to fish, and the slash in the middle of it whither he rowed Aunt Kirsty every August to help harvest the blackberries. A soft golden haze hung over the water, reminding him of that illusive gleam he had followed, one evening so long ago, ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith

... in spite of themselves. But how long do you suppose they will keep it? and in what way? As the good formalist fasts on Friday, with dishes of oysters escalloped deliciously on the shell, with toasted crabs, and bass baked in port wine. Will Florimonde forego her low necks or Maudita her blonde powder? Will there be any less excitement or rivalry in their private theatricals and concerts for charity? Will the flirtations be any less extraordinary at the high ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... pacu and piranha an ordinary bass hook will do. For the latter, because of its sharp teeth, a hook with a long shank and phosphor-bronze leader is the best; the same character of leader is best on the hook to be used for the big fish. A tarpon hook will hold most of the great fish of the rivers. A ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... forms an essential part of the composition or not. The term obbligato or obbligato accompaniment is also used for an independent instrumental solo accompanying a vocal piece. Owing to the early custom of only writing the accompaniment in outline, by means of a "figured bass,'' to be filled in by the performer, and to the changes in the number, quality and types of the instruments of the orchestra, "additional'' accompaniments have been written for the works of the older masters; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... things, big and little, he had many strange adventures before he came to the sea. But great was his disappointment to find no water-babies there to play with, though he asked the sea-snails, and the hermit crabs, and the sun-fish, and the bass, and the porpoises. But though one fish told him that he had been helped the previous night by the water-babies, Tom could find no trace of them ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... of involuntary interior humming in him, like a live beetle. His cranium is a dome full of reverberations. The hollows of his very bones are as whispering galleries. He is afraid to speak loud, lest he be stunned; like the man in the bass drum. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... hour after hour passed, and still lie wrote on, apparently unaware of the flitting time. At mid-day the bell, which had not rung since early dawn, began to swing quickly to and fro in the chapel turret,—the deep bass of the organ breathed on the silence a thunderous monotone, and a bee-like murmur of distant voices proclaimed the words: "Angelas ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... and think only of the poetry, we shall admit that it has never been surpassed in energy and magnificence. Sophocles made the Greek drama as dramatic as was consistent with its original form. His portraits of men have a sort of similarity; but it is the similarity, not of a painting, but of a bass-relief. It suggests a resemblance; but it does not produce an illusion. Euripides attempted to carry the reform further. But it was a task far beyond his powers, perhaps beyond any powers. Instead of correcting what was bad, he destroyed what was excellent. He substituted crutches for stilts, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... The floor is covered with ancient grave-stones, of which the inscriptions are not now legible; and without, some of the chief families still continue the right of sepulture. The altar is not yet quite demolished; beside it, on the right side, is a bass-relief of the virgin with her child, and an angel hovering over her. On the other side still stands a hand-bell, which, though it has no clapper, neither presbyterian bigotry, nor barbarian wantonness, has yet taken away. The ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... Opera. There was Lumley Limpiter (Lord Tweedledale's son), one of the most accomplished tenors in town, and who, we have heard, sings with the professionals at a hundred concerts; and with him, too, was Captain Guzzard, of the Guards, with his tremendous bass voice, which all the world declared to be as fine as Porto's, and who shared the applause of Baroski's school with Mr. Bulger, the dentist of Sackville Street, who neglected his ivory and gold plates for his voice, as every unfortunate individual will do who is bitten ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... rose where I sat, and in a voice that sounded thin as a fly's after the oratorical bass of the last ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... years received instruction gratis from the organist at the Cathedral, who, originally attracted by her lovely voice singing in the choir, took her up with enthusiasm, and taught her harmony and thorough bass. Thus, instead of only practising a desultory accomplishment, she was able to compose and arrange her tuneful ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... well cultivated farm in the course of two or three years, on which we produced wheat, corn and potatoes, and had an excellent garden. We found plenty of wild cranberries and whortleberries, which we dried for winter use. The lakes were full of good fish, black bass and pickerel, and the woods had deer, turkeys, pheasants, pigeons, and other things, and I became quite an expert in the capture of small game for the table with my new gun. Father and uncle would occasionally kill a deer, ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... approached the grey old stones they became aware of a certain agitation among them. A voice, an authoritative bass voice, was audible, crying, "Anthony!" A nurse appeared remotely going in the direction of the aeroplane sheds, and her cry of "Master Anthony" came faintly on the breeze. An extremely pretty young woman of five or six and twenty ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... magnitude running through it; this was the Oxsable, which was dry during a part of the year. All was one vast forest of heavy timber, that would compare well with that of Western New York. Beech, maple, ash, elm, oak, whitewood, bass, balm of gilead, &c. The soil was good for corn, wheat, rye, oats, and most kinds of the grain and vegetables raised in New York, and was a superior grazing country, about fifteen miles from London. This was a village containing perhaps thirty dwellings, ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward

... are excellent. The river affords great numbers of perch, black bass, pike, and muscalonge; and the numberless little streams that intersect the country fairly swarm with trout, and the woods abound in game. This attracts sportsmen from other places; and the Julia Burton, the little steamer that plies up and down the river, frequently brings large ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon

... a deep bass voice replied: 'Elesi-a-ah!' while at the same moment the tench sprang from the cave, and, champing its jaws, wriggled and wriggled back to ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... into the Isaac or Kasan cathedrals, both splendid structures, and wonder at the taste that marred their effect, by the profusion of the gilding lavished everywhere. He was delighted by the singing, which was unaccompanied by instruments, the bass voices predominating, and which certainly struck him as being much finer than anything he had ever heard in an English cathedral. There was no lack of amusement in the evening. Some of his English friends at once put Godfrey up as a member of the Skating Club. ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... unexpected shrillness. Heyst started, and there ensued a moment of suspended animation, during which the thunder's deep bass muttered distantly and the doorway to the right of Mr. Jones flickered with bluish light. At last Heyst shrugged his shoulders; he even looked at his hand. He didn't put it in his pocket, however. Mr. Jones, glued against ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... we walked to the theatre, where we saw La Sonnambula well put on the stage, and well sung and acted by an Italian opera company. The prima donna, contralto, baritone, and bass were all good, but the scenery was occasionally somewhat deficient. The house, which is highly decorated—perhaps too much so for the ladies' dresses—looked well by night, though if it had been full the effect ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... some new fancy of variegated painting. The high, square pews are turned into low-backed seats, that flame on a summer Sunday with such gorgeous millinery as would have shocked the grave people of thirty years ago. The deep bass note which once pealed from the belfry with a solemn and solitary dignity of sound has now lost it all amid the jangle of a half-dozen bells of lighter and airier twang. Even the parson himself will not be that grave man of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... sang many songs. They were surprised how much talent they had in their own family circle. Aunt Bettie and Edith both had good soprano voices and Ruth a fair contralto. Bob sang tenor and his uncle bass. It was Maria, though, that surprised them with ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson

... their cunning hands have wrought. Or, again, more often still, before his dinner he waits on a client, copies the page of a newspaper, or carries to the doorkeeper some goods that have been delayed. Every other day, at six, he is faithful to his post. A permanent bass for the chorus, he betakes himself to the opera, prepared to become a soldier or an arab, prisoner, savage, peasant, spirit, camel's leg or lion, a devil or a genie, a slave or a eunuch, black or white; always ready to feign joy or sorrow, pity or astonishment, ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac

... itself, or for itself, but purgatorial, remedial, and preparatory. She hated all devices of pleasure as her ancestors did the abominations of popery. A fiddle she could tolerate only in the shape of a bass-viol; and dancing, if practised at all, must be called "calisthenics." The drama was to her an invention of the Enemy of Souls—and if she ever saw a play, it must be at a museum, and not within the walls of that temple of Baal, the theatre. None but ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... know me? do you know me?" She called each by name, and beckoned to her daughter, held her by the hand. I, poor faithless one, was wondering what does this mean? One of the sons took me by the hand saying, "Oh! Mr. Bass, God heard and answered that prayer." I sung the hymn, "There is a fountain filled with blood," Mrs. M. singing to the close, and then, apparently exhausted, sank back on the pillow, speechless and unconscious. The physicians were ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... cast a briefly grateful glance at her, "if you may only really understand! For, just as there are all colors for the painter to use, so are there all of the same within music. There is from darkness far below the under bass to the dazzle of sun in the high over the treble, and in between there are gray, and rose, and rain, and twilight, so that with my bow I may make you all a sad picture between the clefs or a gay one of flowers blooming from G to upper ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner

... letters, because this one scraped a fiddle, and that splashed sheets of white paper, more or less, with sepia, and the other was president of a local agricultural society, or was gifted with a bass voice that rendered Se fiato in corpo like a war whoop—Mme. de Bargeton amid these grotesque figures was like a famished actor set down to a stage dinner of pasteboard. No words, therefore, can describe her joy at ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... out of the stronghold of Mfuto, with waving banners denoting the various commanders, with booming horns, and the roar of fifty bass drums, called gomas—with blessings showered on us by the mollahs, and happiest predications from the soothsayers, astrologers, and the diviners of the Koran—who could have foretold that this grand force, before a week passed over its head, would be hurrying into that same stronghold ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... (Lacepede). DM 16, 17, 21, 30, 32, 34, 37. The largemouth bass occurs throughout the drainage at present, and should become established without supplemental stocking in future reservoirs. The absence of this species in early collections suggests that widespread stocking of bass in various impoundments ...
— Fishes of the Wakarusa River in Kansas • James E. Deacon

... was one I knew. Many a time had she crooned it in the old days as I rowed her in the boat. Once, on a specially happy evening, she had sung it in the attic on the Quai Necker in Paris, and had laughed when I put in a rough bass. ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... milk not dry upon his lips," cried the girl, with a crow of derisive fury, planting as she spoke a sounding smack on a broad tanned face bent towards her. The little officer grew pink. "Come, my men, do your duty," he thundered, in his deepest bass. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... are," cried Groot Willem in his hearty bass roar, as he leaped to the ground and seized Hans Marais by the ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... was the invention of these Florentine reformers. The voices are accompanied by a violin, chitarone (a large guitar), lira grande, liuto grosso, and gravicembalo or harpsichord, which filled in the harmonies indicated by the figured bass. The instrumental portions of the work are poor and thin, and the chief beauty lies in the vocal part, which is often really pathetic and expressive. Peri evidently tried to give musical form to the ordinary inflections of the human voice, how successfully ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... girl, but stumble and do a slide on her profile half way across the O.P. side, just as the tenor was starting the chorus to his song, 'Bevey in Little Children.' He being a nervous party springs a blue note that got the musical director hysterical and he forgot to give the bass drum man his cue and the whole thing ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey

... the voices of the chorus, above the drums and bass strings of the orchestra, above the highest notes of the sopranos, above the great chandelier itself, came two notes distinct and plain, and the words to ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... by carelessly trying to help the dear Lord take care of his little organ. A key was silent, and yesterday Marie tried to remedy it. There was a good deal of taking out of keys, and dusting—result, two keys silent now, and one that won't be silent, but goes on in a bass wail through every song. So much for meddling with the dear Lord's work. We trust Him, when the lesson is learned, to set the little machine all right again.... The dear Lord cured the little organ this afternoon while we ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... Adelaide, with her maid, had made the voyage in her. The boat was now on her way to Australia, somewhere to the south of the Suez Canal. Her officers were the same as in '95, with one exception. The first officer, Mr. Jack Croker, had been made a captain and was to take charge of their new ship, the BASS ROCK, sailing in two days' time from Southampton. He lived at Sydenham, but he was likely to be in that morning for instructions, if we cared to wait ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... chattering flourish of the bob-o'-link, the soft whistle of the thrush, the tender coo of the wood-dove, the deep, warbling bass of the grouse, the drumming of the partridge, the melodious trill of the lark, the gay carol of the robin, the friendly, familiar call of the duck and the teal, resound from tree and knoll and lowland, prompting the expressive exclamation ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... great force, when revived by some association. Charlton stepped out on the piazza with his microscope in his hand and stopped a moment to take in the scene—the rawness and newness and flimsiness of the mushroom village, with its hundred unpainted bass-wood houses, the sweetness, peacefulness, and freshness of the unfurrowed prairie beyond, the calmness and immutability of the clear, star-lit sky above—when he heard a voice round the corner of the building that put out his eyes and opened his ears, if I may so speak. Somebody was ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... inmost judgments." And suddenly he was aware of how far away he really was from them. Through all his ministrations had he ever come to know their hearts? And now, in this dire necessity for knowledge, there seemed no way of getting it. He went at random into a stationer's shop; the shopman sang bass in his choir. They had met Sunday after Sunday for the last seven years. But when, with this itch for intimate knowledge on him, he saw the man behind the counter, it was as if he were looking on him for the first time. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Embassy] Gambia, The Banks Island Canada Banks Islands (Iles Banks) Vanuatu Barcelona [US Consulate General] Spain Barents Sea Arctic Ocean Barranquilla [US Consulate] Colombia Bashi Channel Pacific Ocean Basilan Strait Pacific Ocean Bass Strait Indian Ocean Batan Islands Philippines Bavaria (Bayern) Germany Beagle Channel Atlantic Ocean Bear Island (Bjornoya) Svalbard Beaufort Sea Arctic Ocean Bechuanaland Botswana Beijing [US Embassy] China Beirut [US Embassy] Lebanon Belau Pacific Islands, Trust ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... they began to see a great many large white birds flying about, stretching out their long necks, and their papa told them that these were called Solan geese, and that they had their nests on a great rock, standing out in the sea, called the Bass Rock. They soon came in sight of it, and when they passed near it they could see that its sides were all white with hundreds of these geese that were sitting there, and great numbers were flying in the air over it and round it. When they were able to ...
— Adventure of a Kite • Harriet Myrtle

... echoing with the excited supplications of some one who was borne out of himself by the terrible pressure of events around him, whilst, mingling with his pathetic, beseeching tones as he prayed for his country, came the shrill notes of the fife, and the thundering din of the inevitable bass drum from the company marching in on the other side. In the Senate chamber a company was quartered, and the senators were there supplying them with paper and pens, with which the boys were writing their farewells to ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... are clasped across his waistcoat, and his head is so tilted that I can see nothing above his collar save a tangled bristle of luxuriant beard. He shakes with the vibration of his own snoring. Summerlee adds his occasional high tenor to Challenger's sonorous bass. Lord John is sleeping also, his long body doubled up sideways in a basket-chair. The first cold light of dawn is just stealing into the room, and everything ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Drexley said, his deep, bass voice trembling with barely-restrained passion, "that we are all your puppets—that you have but to touch the string and we dance to your tune. Leave young Jesson alone, Emily. He has been man enough to strike out a line for himself. Let him ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim

... grunted the younger gentleman, in a bass voice, so incongruously large for him that it seemed to have been a ventriloquistic contribution ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... Give it tongue, brother Langman!" cried Billy, as a stevedore within the hold broke forth into a stentorian bass that ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... in Goswell Street, there's row on Holborn Hill, There's crush and crowd, and swearing loud, from bass to treble shrill; From grazier cad, and drover lad, and butcher shining greasy, And slaughter men, and knacker's men, and policemen ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... and a perfect tempest of coal-black hair in flakes upon his forehead, has a most extraordinary soprano—sound as a bell, strong as a trumpet, well-trained, and true to the least shade in intonation. Piero, whose rugged Neptunian features, sea-wrinkled, tell of a rough water-life, boasts a bass of resonant, almost pathetic quality. Francesco has a mezza voce, which might, by a stretch of politeness, be called baritone. Piero's comrade, whose name concerns us not, has another of these nondescript voices. They sat together with their glasses and cigars before them, sketching ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... superciliously at the documents, as if to intimate he could read them were he so disposed, he threw them down on the table, and, thrusting his gigantic paws into his capacious trouser-pockets, remarked slowly and decisively, in something deeper than a double-bass voice, "You'll have ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... Brady, in his deep, bass voice, "we'll trust to Providence. It's amazing how events happen in your favor when you ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... loudly.] Booth led boldly with his big bass drum— (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) The Saints smiled gravely and they said: "He's come." (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) Walking lepers followed, rank on rank, Lurching bravoes from the ditches dank, Drabs from the alleyways and drug fiends pale— Minds still passion-ridden, ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay

... night there were two or three violins, two 'cellos, a tenor viol, double bass, hautboy, clarionets, serpent, and seven singers. It was, however, not the choir's labours, but what its members chanced to witness, that particularly ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... said a flat bass voice deep below; "it's this confounded cargo that's breaking my heart. I'm the garboard strake, and I'm twice as thick as most of the others, and I ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various

... Classical "tuck" from Italian "toccata," the preluding "touch" or flourish, on any instrument (but see Johnson under word "tucket," quoting "Othello"). The deeper Scottish vowels are used here to mark the deeper sound of the bass drum, as in ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... earth," sang the bass, Mr. Edwin Goodno, of the meat market and the Boy Scouts. "Heaven and earth, are full—" His chin, large and fleshy, buried itself deep; his eyes were glued on the music sheet ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... were now and then snatches of merry song, and now and then the notes of a somewhat squeaky and asthmatical violin, invariably followed by some one shouting, "Stop that awful fiddle!" "Hit 'im in the eye with a bit o' biscuit!" or "Grease his bow!" Then a deeper bass voice, evidently Scotch, and just as evidently a junior surgeon's, saying, "Let the laddie practise.—Fiddle away, my boy; I'll thrash all hands if they ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables

... which is sharpened to thrust through the skull while the other is stapled or clinched to a bit of board round or oval shape. The skin of the base of neck is fastened to this by sewing back and forth across the back. Heads of fish like bass and pike are prepared by cutting off just back of the gills and cleaning from the back all brains ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham

... opportunity. He has travelled perhaps two hundred miles and has been twenty days on the trail, for cattle may only be driven about ten miles a day; he has been up day and night and slept half the time in the saddle; he has made himself hoarse singing "Sam Bass" and "The Dying Ranger" to keep the cattle quiet and stave off stampedes; he has ridden ten ponies to shadows in his twenty days of driving, wherefore, and naturally, your cowboy feels ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... freightage of precious spices lading the breeze with gracious and mysterious odours of the Orient. Of course, the little coaster-captain hopped into the shrouds and squeaked a hail: 'Ship ahoy! What ship is that, and whence and whither?' In a deep and thunderous bass came the answer back, through a speaking trumpet: The Begum of Bengal, a hundred and twenty-three days out from Canton homeward bound! What ship is that?' The little captain's vanity was all crushed out of him, and most ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... exclaimed, his heavy bass voice pitched just above a whisper, "let me in, will you, huh? Say, will you? I'm regularly starving, and I haven't slept in a Christian ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... general exodus of the finny tribes from the whole lower part of the river; it was like the spring and fall migration of the birds, or the fleeing of the population of a district before some approaching danger: vast swarms of cat-fish, white and yellow perch and striped bass were en route for the fresh water farther north. When the people along shore made the discovery, they turned out as they do in the rural districts when the pigeons appear, and, with small gill-nets let down through holes in the ice, captured them in fabulous numbers. On the heels ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... periods, urns and elf-arrow heads, Roman armour, &c., have been disinterred by the ordinary labours of the field. Within a short distance of its route lies the Hill of Barra, where the famous battle was fought, anno 1308, between the "Bruce" and the "Comyn;" the Bass at Inverary, the Hill of Benachie, with the remains of a fortification on its summit, said to have been erected by the Picts; the field of Harlaw, famed in song, where the battle was fought in 1411, in which Donald of the Isles was defeated. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various

... platform was a flute-player of consumptive appearance, who most conscientiously dribbled away—what am I saying?—piped, I mean—a piece also of consumptive tendency; two persons shouted bravo! Then a stout gentleman in spectacles, of an exceedingly solid, even surly aspect, read in a bass voice a sketch of Shtchedrin; the sketch was applauded, not the reader; then the pianist, whom Aratov had seen before, came forward and strummed the same fantasia of Liszt; the pianist gained an encore. He bowed with one hand on the back of the chair, and after each bow he shook ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... you think?" called Frenchy. "Channel bass are running. Whistler and Torry are going out in the Sue Bridger. What d'you know about that? Bridger's let 'em have his cat for the day. Never was known to do such a thing before," and Frenchy chuckled. "Oh, boy! aren't ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson

... man came to him again, and then read to him and wrote till dinner. The writing was as much as the reading" (Aubrey). Then he took exercise, either walking in the garden, or swinging in a machine. His only recreation, besides conversation, was music. He played the organ and the bass viol, the organ most. Sometimes he would sing himself or get his wife to sing to him, though she had, he said, no ear, yet a good voice. Then he went up to his study to be read to till six. After six his friends were admitted to visit him, and ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... studied indifference, and open and vulgar infidelity. Philip made no pretence to care for his wife. She was older in years, she was ungainly in person, she possessed no charm of manner or grace of speech, her very voice was the deep bass of a man. In the days of her joyous entrance into London, amid the acclamations of the populace, her high spirit, her kind heart, and the excitement of adventure lent a passing glow to her sallow cheeks. But ill-health and disillusion followed. She became morbid and sullen, sometimes ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... was driven home. Driven home in the shape of a big, loose-limbed, deep-jowled brute of a dog, as unlike the ordinary native curs as it well could be. It did not come silently, or suddenly, for it growled full warning in a terrible bass; but the ratel showed contempt, and teeth that glistened beautifully in the red light of the dying fire the sleeping sentry ought to have seen to, but had not. Moreover, it did not come alone, for the camp ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... Russian song in chorus, and struck up: 'Down the river Volga'... Bersenyev, Zoya, and even Anna Vassilyevna, joined in—Insarov could not sing—but they did not keep together; at the third verse the singers were all wrong. Only Bersenyev tried to go on in the bass, 'Nothing on the waves is seen,' but he, too, was soon in difficulties. The boatmen looked at one another ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev

... not your voice that I take down to the State House with me," broke in their representative. "Freight charges on it would more than eat up my mileage allowance. Now let's call off this bass-drum solo business. Pull down your kite. To business!" He snapped his fingers ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... His rich bass voice broke into "Bless Be the Tie that Binds," and as the volume of the hymn, swelled by the full chorus of the congregation, rolled away to the rafters of the little church, the people rose and marched solemnly round, ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... HANCOCK out. The Governor came with his Lighthorse Troop And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop; Halberds glittered and colors flew, French horns whinnied and trumpets blew, The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth, And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath; So he rode with all his band, Till the President met him, cap in hand. The Governor "hefted" the crowns, and said,— "A will is a will, and the Parson's dead." The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he,— "There is your p'int. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... still herbs were flung on the fire, till the smoke rose in a great cloud, through which the priest loomed misty and huge. Out of the smoke-wreaths his voice came high and strange. It was as if some treble stop had been opened in a great organ, as against the bass drone of the cataract. ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... choice (The company's demand was an emphatic one, For the old Bishop had a glorious voice), In a quartet he joined—an operatic one. Harmless enough, though ne'er a word of grace in it, When, lo! that curate came and took the bass in it! ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... to hum under his breath a sweet wandering melody. And suddenly he sprang up, and ran to the piano. He played the air with his left hand, embroidering it with delicate arabesques and variations, catching a bass here and there with a flying touch, suggesting marvellously what had once been a rich and complete whole. The injured hand, which had that day been very painful, lay helpless in its sling; the other flashed over the piano, while the boy's blue eyes shone beneath his vivid ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... has some fine Ayala—'93, in magnums—unless it is all drunk by now. There must be something about the cellars of these out-door places peculiarly favourable to beer, for no pale ale in the world can compare with that drawn at the bars of the Epsom grand-stand, and in Belgium there is no bottled Bass so fresh and palatable as that which one ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard

... was running a slow bass scale on a sort of two-stringed horse-fiddle of a strange shape. Average Jones' still untouched glass, almost full of the precious port, trembled and sang a little tentative response. Up-up-up mounted the thrilling ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... a blacksmith's forge, And in the neat little inn's trim garden The old men, each with his own churchwarden, Bent and grey, but gossipy fellows, Sip their innocent pints of beer, While the anvil-notes ring high and clear To the rushing bass of the mighty bellows. And thence they look on a cheerful scene As the little ones play on the Village Green, Skipping about With laugh and shout As if no Darville could ever squire them, And nothing on earth ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... Captain Bream's smile expanded and broke forth at last in one of his bass broadsides of laughter, which gave Ruth great delight for she had, as a little girl, enjoyed these thunderous laughs excessively, and her taste for ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne

... was the best time for fishing. For the next two hours our thoughts were of quivering rods and leaping bass. ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey

... Southern night. Quite the opposite are the croaking of frogs, the screeching of owls, the jerking call of tree-crickets, and the bellowing of the alligator. Still, the ear accustomed to such sounds is not jarred by them. They are but the bass notes, needed to complete ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... I was saying, as soon as I thought of Burwell I made up my mind at once to borrow one of his hounds. It was late when I got to his house. When I knocked at the door both Pompey and Caesar began sub-bass solos of growls, and Burwell was awake in a minute. I told him I wanted a dog for private business and took Caesar off with me. He found the trail with no difficulty, and followed it in a bee-line down to the water, where he raised his big muzzle and howled in dismal impotency. The ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... one night after we had both been out all day for fish, went down alone to feed the seals. It was nearly dark, and he closed the outside door without catching it. When he opened the inside door and began to distribute the bass, Nab took advantage of the dusk to steal every fish he could get his nose in reach of. It seemed impossible to get a mouthful to any other seal in the lot; and father, at last quite out of patience, gave him a smart cut over his stubby little ears ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... stood six feet four and a half inches in height, and his girth was proportionate; he had enormous hands and feet, large features, and a magnificent long dark brown beard; owing to this beard his necktie was never seen. But the most magnificent thing about him was his bass voice, acknowledged to be the finest bass in the town, and one of the finest even in Hanbridge, where, in his earlier prime, James had lived as a 'news comp' on the "Staffordshire Signal." He was now a 'jobbing comp' in Bursley, because Bursley was his native town and ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... the coquetry of women. In truth, as we soon found it was her boast that she was the equal of men, her complaint that the foolish way of the world (which she said had gone all askew) would not let her skipper a schooner, which, as she maintained in a deep bass voice, she was more capable of ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... darts forth and seizes a black insect as it flies in the sunshine. The bee, too, is abroad, and once now and then a yellow butterfly. From the copse on the warmer days comes occasionally the deep hollow bass of the wood pigeon. On the very topmost branch of an elm a magpie has perched; now he looks this way, and then turns that, bowing in the oddest manner, and jerking his long tail up and down. Then two of them flutter across the field—feebly, ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... speak, the whole overture to Wilhelm Tell. We must admit that the voice in which he sang the andante of the Swiss mountaineer's chorus resembled a reed pipe more than a hautboy; but, to make amends when he reached the presto, his voice, a rather good bass, struck the horse's ears with such force that the latter redoubled his vigor as if this melody had produced upon him the effect of a trumpet sounding the charge on the day ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... Secretary performed on the horn, while his Treasurer was superb upon the great drum. Every time the Royal Council met, the minutes of the last meeting, all set to music, were sung by the Secretary; and when the King made a speech, he always sung it in a magnificent bass voice, accompanied by a full orchestra. If any one wished to present a petition, he was always sure of having it granted, if he could but sing it excellently well, and even folks who were good at whistling were ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton

... party preferred to go out on the river to fish, for some fine black bass could be caught here. Dimple, however, preferred to stay behind with Mrs. Dallas and one or two of the other ladies, even though Mr. Atkinson said he would bait her hook for her, and would lend her his finest line ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard

... few seconds, except for the startled clucking of the fowls. Then a heavy bass voice boomed out ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... more to sneak rapidly along, using the stone parapet as a traverse to save you from the enfilading fire, which is coming from heavens know where. The bullets were singing in all manner of tones here as I ran, the iron ones of old-fashioned make muttering a deep bass; the nickel-headed modern devils spitting the thinnest kind of treble as they hastened along. It was almost amusing to gauge their speed. Some had already travelled so far that with a flop which raises a little cloud of dust they dropped exhausted ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... hear the crackers popping, I hear the bass drums throb; I sit at Boynton's right hand, And ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard

... any course for the purpose of maintaining the authority of the House and of the Chair." And so it was on many occasions. When Mr. Bradlaugh did rush up to the table of the House, escorted by Mr. Labouchere and Mr. Bass, and went through the amusing part of taking the oath, he brought the book which he kissed and the papers which he signed, and then rushed back into his seat. The House witnessed the scene indescribable by either pen or pencil. But here again Mr. Gladstone ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... spring a boy came to me and said: "Dad, let's go fishing; I saw the bass jumping in the lake just now, and that means ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... did not long go unserenaded, though a visitor was not indeed needed to excuse a serenade. Of a summer night, young men would bring an orchestra under a pretty girl's window—or, it might be, her father's, or that of an ailing maiden aunt—and flute, harp, fiddle, 'cello, cornet, and bass viol would presently release to the dulcet stars such melodies as sing through "You'll Remember Me," "I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Halls," "Silver Threads Among the Gold," "Kathleen Mavourneen," or "The ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... sticks, and made a shift to play a jig, to the great satisfaction of both their majesties; but it was the most violent exercise I ever underwent; and yet I could not strike above sixteen keys, nor consequently play the bass and treble together, as other artists do; which was a great ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... To his notice the Bass Drum. (The two Grooms dance about the horse, banging a drum and clashing cymbals, at which he shies consumedly. Gradually he appears to realise that his lines have fallen among lunatics, and that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, July 2, 1892 • Various

... lonesome here, and you are idling, you say, and why should we not be good friends for the summer? The men in town annoy me, and the girls here are not bright enough for you. Let us be cronies, will you not? Take me fishing to-morrow. I want you to teach me how to catch bass in the river. I heard some one say once you knew better than any one else how that is done. Is not this a good idea of mine? It will help both ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... eyes were red; her face was very pale. The General's face was scarlet. He advanced a few steps, like an actor about to address his audience; cast fierce glances on all sides of him, and cleared his throat with a sound that echoed like the bass notes of a grand piano. Then he spoke in a voice ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the choir of Saint Peter's should obtain even such creditable results. At a moment's notice an organist and about a hundred singers are called upon to execute a florid piece of music which many have never seen nor heard; the accompaniment is played at sight from a mere figured bass, on a tumble-down instrument two hundred years old, and the singers, both the soloists and the chorus, sing from thumbed bits of manuscript parts written in old-fashioned characters on paper often green with age. No one has ever denied the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... "Cod, haddock and bass," replied the fishmonger, who seemed as lean and well starved as his horse, which was of a light sorrel color, and presented so pitiable a pack of bones that no real philanthropist could have looked upon ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... tough Fibre which about While clings my Being;—let the Canine Flout Till his Bass Voice be pitched to such loud key It shall unlock the ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten • Oliver Herford

... could not. But now, as the second man could not possibly know what his leader was talking about, he must be allowed to produce his under stratum of Walladmor, without the least earthly reference to the upper stratum: his thorough-bass must go on without any relation to the melodies in the treble. Yet this was awkward: and, when all was finished, the most skilful artist might have found it puzzling to harmonize the whole. To meet this dilemma therefore, ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey

... "He who sings thinks not of evil." Tomaseo thought their folk-songs richer than those of any other nation, ranging as they do over all manner of subjects. They are generally heroical or amorous in character, divided into short verses and sung in two parts; the bass delivers a kind of recitative, and the baritone joins in, the long final note with which each finishes dying away in a full chord. It is extraordinary how serious the men are over it, even when singing over their wine, in which they ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... which we found in the Frenchman's cabin. Further, we looked long and hard at our charts, which seemed well marked for the passage we were bound on. The English fellow, we discovered, had been several times that way; and, though he was no pilot, he said he yet knew the Bass Rock from a mud bank, and, provided we fell in with neither pirates, tempest, nor the Spaniard, could put us into Leith Roads right side uppermost as well as any man. Whereat we felt easier in our minds than we ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed



Words linked to "Bass" :   percoidean, percoid fish, striper, low-pitched, low, continuo, freshwater fish, bombardon, bull fiddle, pitch, voice, vocalizer, saltwater fish, sousaphone, vocaliser, singing voice, percoid, musical instrument, bombard, vocalist, singer, tuba, part, instrument



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