"Fiddling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... smashed, not by falling off the ladder, but by a row in the fair, I was obliged to give it up, for how could I run up the ladder with a patten on my foot, which they put on to make my broken leg as long as the other. Well, your hanner; being obliged to give up my bricklaying, I took to fiddling, to which I had always a natural inclination, and played about the streets, and at fairs, and wakes, and weddings. At length some Orange men getting acquainted with me, and liking my style of playing, invited me to their lodge, where they gave me to drink, and tould me that ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... spot where they appear he nears, Surprised at these unwonted signs of idling, He hears—alas! no music of the spheres, But an unhallow'd, earthly sound of fiddling! A melody which made him doubt his ears, The cause being past his guessing or unriddling; A pipe, too, and a drum, and shortly after, A most unoriental ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... for over our heads, sailing very comfortably through the windy stars, was the ship that had passed the summer in landlord's field. Her port-holes and her bay-window were blazing with lights, and there was a noise of singing and fiddling on her decks. "He's gone!" shouted landlord above the storm, "and he's taken half the village with him." I could only nod in answer, not having lungs like bellows ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... its deadening heat was over; September, bright, sunny and tonic, was come to revive the world. Rank foliage was shaking off the summer dust, and a myriad noisy insects were strumming, chirping, fiddling, buzzing, screeping in the dense undergrowth. It was evening when they boarded the train for the West and took the trail that both had taken before, but never with such a background of events or such an eagerness for what was in the future. As the train roared through ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... away from the gate, back where she could not see him, and stood fiddling with his cinch a bit, although it required no ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... only an indistinct remembrance of yesterday's disasters, and longing more than ever to do everything in his power to please the lady of the castle. But in spite of his good-will, the sheep strayed away as before, and he spent a toilsome day in vainly running after them, and fiddling away to no purpose. As before they seemed to merge into mist at the close of the day, and it was with a heavy heart he presented himself at the foot of the hill where the lady was awaiting him. Again she gave him a draught of the delicious wine, and ...
— Up! Horsie! - An Original Fairy Tale • Clara de Chatelaine
... pleasurings of ours that brought down on us the severest anathemas. We were idlers forever singing and fiddling and dancing when honest folk were at work. This criticism was in part true. We certainly did devote more time and more attention to recreation than was customary among working folk. The two half-holidays of the week were set apart ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... would come to the laundry girls, and the cooking-class, and all the rest with me, and we should not have a dreary moment. Have you done fiddling over ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... throughout All countries of the Catholic persuasion,[195] Some weeks before Shrove Tuesday comes about, The People take their fill of recreation, And buy repentance, ere they grow devout, However high their rank, or low their station, With fiddling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masquing, And other things which ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... amusements, I'll tell you I don't know. They'd have little dances about like they do now. And they give quiltings and they'd have a ring play. My mother never knew anything about dances and fiddling and such things; she was a Christian. They had churches you know. My white folks didn't object to the niggers goin' to meetin'. 'Course they had to have a pass to go anywhere. If they didn't they'd git a brushin' from the pateroles if they got caught and the masters were likely to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... his hand. "Here, some of you, where's my yellow handkerchy? Oh, I know; I left it in that there apple-wood, and I'd lay sixpence, he's picked it up and swallowed it because it's yellow and he thinks it's the skin of a big orange. Got out of his cage, he did, sir, that there lion—been fiddling all night, I suppose, at the bolts and bars—and we followed him up to where he got in the loose-box of a gentleman's stable; and there was the poor horse down—a beauty he was—and that there lion—Arena his name was—lying on him with his face flattened out and teeth buried in the poor ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... cut down to the quick, it is a shrewd sign that the man is a mechanic, to whom long nails would be troublesome, or that he gets his bread by fiddling; and if they are longer than his fingers ends, and encircled with a black rim, it foretells he has been laboriously and meanly employed, and too fatigued to clean himself: a good apology for want ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... trench and trod upon a wounded man who screamed beneath his heel, and climbed out on the further side. The air was musical with hooting shell and singing shot and hissing bullet as if a whole diabolic orchestra were fiddling and bugling. Polson found the fallen body of his foe, and hugged it in his arms, and raced back as hard as he could tear. He tumbled into the trench of the first parallel almost anyhow; but he gripped the man he hated, and in his soul was a great rejoicing. He tore up the opposite side, and ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... ma'am, we are never in the room with the queen! that's the drawing-room, beyond, where the queen sits; we go no farther than the fiddling-room. As to the queen, we don't see her week after week sometimes. The king, indeed, comes there to us, between whiles, though that's all as it happens, now Price is gone. He used to play at ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... arranged the wood so that from time to time it fell in, and hence it kept on burning up more brightly. But it looked dull to Rob and then black, for in spite of yells and screams and bellowings, the piping and fluting of frogs, the fiddling of crickets, and the drumming of some great toad, which apparently had a big tom-tom all to itself, Rob's eyes had closed, and fatigue made him sleep as soundly as if he ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... away from her. I began fiddling with my pens and papers. I trailed long slip-proofs under her eyes, pretending that I had work to do. But she saw through my pretences ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... their fires. Then leaving our horses under a small guard, we advanced quite near them, in the dark without being discovered; for so little thought had they of Marion, that they had not placed a single sentinel, but were, all hands, gathered about the fire: some cooking, some fiddling and dancing, and some playing cards, as we could hear them every now and then bawling out, "Huzza, at him again, damme! aye, that's the dandy! ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... the talking ceased. There was only one more house now between him and the mouth of the creek, where he would be safe, and he made up his mind to dash by it. That house, too, was lighted and the sound of fiddling struck his ears. He would give them a surprise; so he gathered his reins and Winchester in his left hand, drew his revolver with his right, and within thirty yards started his horse into a run, yelling like an Indian and firing his pistol in the air. As he swept by, ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... with the brightness of the morning sun which was reflected mildly from the glassy windows. There was a silent composure about it all, with no sound save the footfalls of the passing horse or the rattle of the business wagon. Somewhere across the street the man with the violin continued his fiddling. ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... falsehood. The quarrels between sects and divisions, the petty subjects which rouse the ire of the orthodox mind, the persistent quibbling over insignificant details of faith and service, have strained rationalistic patience to the breaking-point. The Church has been found fiddling ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... and the direction of a few negro slaves. Not to dwell on the sacrifice of mother and sons, your own learning, fortune, and extraordinary mental powers—your genius for dealing with men—are here employed, not in the service of mankind, but in—" Burr was tempted to say "fiddling," but he substituted the words—"gazing at the stars through a telescope. Pardon me for speaking strongly. It is only a few hours since we first met, but I am drawn to you. I admire and esteem you, and my motive in this perhaps impertinent appeal, is ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... so plain that all desire left me. I looked her all over, to which she made no objection, remarking as she pulled up her clothes, "Ah, you may look, I am as clean as any woman although I am what I am." I went on looking at, and fiddling her about, but no erection came. She gave an uneasy motion with her bum and said, "Oh! you are tickling me so, why don't you get on?" I said I did not want it yet, which so astonished her, that she sat upright, and looked at me and at my tool. Then she made me lay down on the poor ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... long while past, and has got all the world to believe of it along with him. Unhappy Dryasdust, thrice-unhappy world that takes Dryasdust's reading of the ways of God! But what else was possible? They that could have taught better were engaged in fiddling; for which there are good wages going. And our damage therefrom, our DAMAGE,—yes, if thou be still human and not cormorant,—perhaps it will transcend all Californias, English National Debts, and show itself incomputable in ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... the most necessary purposes of the state. When you see the people of this republic banishing and murdering their best and ablest citizens, dissipating the public treasure with the most senseless extravagance, and spending their whole time, as spectators or actors, in playing, fiddling, dancing, and singing, does it not, my lord, strike your imagination with the image of a sort of complex Nero? And does it not strike you with the greater horror, when you observe, not one man ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... cork for some purpose or other, or maybe just to look neat, we had some fight to get it torn away, but at last we succeeded. I had turned about for a jug, and the wife was rummaging for the screw, while Benjie was fiddling away with his fingers at the cork—Save us! all at once it gave a thud like thunder, driving the cork over poor Benjie's head, while it squirted there-up in his eyes like a fire-engine, and I had only just time to throw down the jug, and up with ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... and Dennis edged his pony in between us, and said, 'What shall I do? What shall I do? Tell me what to do, you fellows.' We didn't take much notice; but his pony tried to bite me in the leg, and I said, 'Pull out a bit, old man, till we've settled the attack.' He kept edging in, and fiddling with his reins and his revolvers, and saying, 'Dear me! Dear me! Oh, dear me! What do you think I'd better do?' The man was in a deadly funk, ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... the church of her youth: "After awhile there was a bass-viol Introduced and brought into meeting and did not suit the Old people; one Old Gentleman got up, took his hat off the peg and marched off. Said they had begun fiddling and there would be dancing soon." Another church-member, in derisive opposition to a clarinet which had been "voted into the choir," brought into meeting a fish-horn, which he blew loud and long to the complete rout of the clarinet-player and the singers. When reproved for this ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... a time," says Keith, the notorious Fleet parson, "I was at a public-house at Ratcliffe, which was then full of Sailors and their Girls. There was fiddling, piping, jigging and eating. At length one of the Tars starts up and says: 'Damn ye, Jack! I'll be married just now; I will have my partner.' The joke took, and in less than two hours Ten Couples set out for the Flete. ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... our serious feelings, you know,—not our tastes nor our passions. I don't advocate fiddling while Rome is burning. In fact it's only poor, unsatisfied devils that are tempted to fiddle. There is one feeling which is respectable and honorable, and even sacred, at all times and in all places, whatever they may be. It doesn't ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... shattered and seeded, One brittle leaf scrapes against another, Fiddling echoes of a rush of petals. Now only you and ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... the evenings with our French confreres, (whom I have mentioned as "nondescripts," from the circumstance of their being under no regular engagement with the Company,) playing cards or fiddling and dancing. We were on one occasion engaged in the latter amusement en pleine midi—our Deputy Bourgeois being one of the party, and all of us in the highest possible glee, when lo! in the midst of our hilarity, the hall door flew open and the great man stood sternly before us. The hand-writing ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... companion's name. She had sisters Adeline and Eveleen, and brothers Osric and William, and she had a cousin a prizefighter. 'That's what I'll be,' said I. Fiddling for money was not a prospect that charmed me, though it was pleasant lying in Kiomi's arms to hear Osric play us off to sleep; it was like floating down one of a number of visible rivers; I could see them converging and breaking away while I floated smoothly, and a wonderful fair ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... scene, the dead and dying, the horrible injuries inflicted, the loss and misery. However, not even the miserable scene of the Chasse de Patay is so painful as the reverse of the dismal picture, the halls of the royal habitation where, while men died for him almost within hearing of the fiddling and the dances, the young King trifled away his useless days among his idle favourites, and the musicians played, the assemblies were held, and all went on as in the Tuileries. We feel as if we had fallen ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... old masters, the sublime history of Rome remains unpainted! They painted Virgins enough, and popes enough and saintly scarecrows enough, to people Paradise, almost, and these things are all they did paint. "Nero fiddling o'er burning Rome," the assassination of Caesar, the stirring spectacle of a hundred thousand people bending forward with rapt interest, in the coliseum, to see two skillful gladiators hacking away each ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... evil? Could she put into words what she was afraid of? The world would laugh at her, even as Mrs. Dearmer did, or label her a wench of Puritan stock, as her aunt, Lady Bolsover, was inclined to do. She must talk to Martin, who had taught her so many things; but even Martin was away fiddling at some festival that rustics might dance. Barbara was disposed to resent his absence at a time when ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... No amount of fiddling and dancing, however, could quite drown apprehension concerning the safety of the post and the security of the English hold upon the great region over which this fort and its distant neighbors stood sentinel. ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... written in the saddest mood, and, but for that saddest mood, perhaps had never been written at all. To say truth, it would be but a shocking vagary, should the mariners on board a ship buffeted by a terrible storm, employ themselves in fiddling and dancing; yet sometimes much such a part ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... sweet and rich discovery—that the adventures of the last ten days had been so real and meant so much to him. No man of action, leading a deep, full life of actual experience, felt the need of scribbling, painting, fiddling. "Glorious, by Jove!" he exclaimed between great puffs of smoke. "I've struck a fact!" He had been so busily creating these last days that he had lost the yearning to describe merely what others did. The children had caught him body ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... re-entered their boat before the monster had gained much headway and ere long reached the Paradise of Birds, where they enjoyed the music made by thousands of little creatures with their wings—a music like fiddling. After this came visits to a den of griffins; to a land of grapes such as the Norsemen told about; to a mountain country aflame with the forges of one-eyed people, or cyclops. Twice, on Easter Sunday, they put ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... been visited in turn by both British and Boer patrols, and between the two enormous damage had been wrought. It must be pointed out, however, that the mischief done by our men was in no way authorised—was, in fact, against express orders, whereas the British now burn our houses to the joyful fiddling of the London Times, and with a righteous unction ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... desirability of Government aid for tree-planting, the trouble which the farmers experience in getting native labour, and so forth, and so on; but we must not derive from all this peripatetic fustian the erroneous impression that His Honour has been vacuously fiddling on the eve of a conflagration. The real business which took him to Lydenburg and Middelburg has no doubt been satisfactorily accomplished. Boer sentiment has been tested in secret, and the usual professions of fervid patriotism and of readiness for target practice with the Uitlander ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... gaily through the crevices or windows of the Shian, and sounds of revelry came forth, among which fiddling was conspicuous. The tune played at that ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... that "he was very well amused; although balls and concerts were necessarily a little dull to one who came from a fine old place like Warlock Manor-house, and it was not the same thing that pleased young ladies (for, to them, that fiddling and giggling till two o'clock in the morning might be a very pretty way of killing time) and ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pulled him off the stove, and set him to work fiddling. He played three years, though it seemed to him only three days. Then he ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... flowers. As I ate my luncheon I felt as if I were consuming what was their property, and pondered the supposition that some day the spell might be broken, and the stone-bound couple came down from those high pedestals, and go dancing and fiddling ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that he was not rich, but at heart she was delighted to see him spending his whole substance for her. Indeed, this was the only proof of love which had power to touch her. Meanwhile she was fiddling away at the comfit dish, opening it and shutting it in her desire to see how ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... appreciated myself the enormous disadvantage of having worked with a bad instrument, though thought a few years since the best. Please to observe that without you call especial attention to this point, those ignorant of Natural History will be sure to get one of the fiddling instruments sold in shops. If you thought fit, I would point out the differences, which, from my experience, make a useful microscope for the kind of dissection of the invertebrates which a person would be likely to attempt on board a vessel. But pray again believe that I feel the absurdity ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... several pairs of slippers at the Christmas dance, but she had never achieved her stocking feet in the first round until now, and she was in high glee over it. If she had been admired before, she was looked upon as a raving, tearing beauty to-night—and so she was. Fortunately 'Pollo had his fiddling to do, and this saved him from any conspicuous folly. But he kept his eyes on her, and when she grew too ravishingly lovely to his fond vision, and he couldn't stand it a minute longer in silence, he turned to the man next him, who played the ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... to go, but he took hold of one of the ends of my little check silk tie, and kept fiddling it about between his ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... for whom is our baron showing off—for whom? Our baron with the soiled tie and the made-up eyes, fiddling coldly, elaborately for a handful of annoyed flappers, amused shoe clerks and bored home lovers sitting stolidly in the dark, waiting stolidly and defiantly to ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... bed. Towards morning, I suppose it was, I dreamed of the various scenes I had gone through since I came to sea, among others of the earthquake at Savannah, and then I was looking out into the barrack-yard, and there was Larry fiddling away, with soldiers and blacks dancing to his music,—everything seemed so vivid that I had no doubt about its reality. Then Mr Talboys and Lucy and Captain Duffy came in and joined in the dance. I thought it very good fun, ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... fiddling with his chin, a trick he had when undecided. "I don't zactly know; fine day, you see; want to see that hedge grubbed; want to fill up the gaps; want to go over to ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... the young man declared, "and I am sure we are very sorry to trouble you. In a week or two's time you can go into business again as much as you like. It's only while we are fiddling around here that the Admiral's jumpy about things. May my man have a cup of coffee, sir? I'd like to be on the way back in ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... vast map of the railroad holdings in the country about Bonneville and Guadalajara, the alternate sections belonging to the Corporation accurately plotted. Ruggles was cordial in his welcome of Annixter. He had a way of fiddling with his pencil continually while he talked, scribbling vague lines and fragments of words and names on stray bits of paper, and no sooner had Annixter sat down than he had begun to write, in full-bellied script, ANN ANN all over his ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... fashion merely, but likewise a young man of ideas. That he had written, or at least was going to write, or else that he painted or was about to paint, was quite manifest. The indications, however, were not sufficiently pronounced to permit one to suspect him of fiddling, or even of being about ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... canvas she stood idly watching him. He was in paint-smeared, baggy trousers and a soft shirt whose open collar gave a glimpse of a deep chest matted with hair and whose rolled-up sleeves revealed forearms that seemed absurdly large to be fiddling with those slender sticks. A crowbar would have seemed more in harmony. He was unromantically old—all of thirty-five Maggie guessed; and with his square, rough-hewn face and tousled, reddish hair he was decidedly ugly. But for the fact that he really ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... it was furnished by two very old men, relics of the days when there were contests in fiddling; a stout fellow of middle age, with cheeks swelled almost to bursting as he thundered out terrific blasts on a slide trombone; a youth who rattled two sticks on an overturned dish-pan in lieu of a drum, and a cornetist ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... time for social diversions, but even when they were full of sleep the cowboys would draw up around the camp-fire, to smoke and sing and "swap yarns" for an hour. There were only three musical instruments in the length and breadth of the Bad Lands, the Langs' piano, a violin which "Fiddling Joe" played at the dances over Bill Williams's saloon, and Howard Eaton's banjo. The banjo traveled in state in the mess-wagon of the "Custer Trail," and hour on hour, about the camp-fire on the round-up, Eaton ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... together," to hit upon some mode of putting a stop to the frolicking at the village on the approaching May-day. It drew, he said, idle people together from all parts of the neighbourhood, who spent the day fiddling, dancing, and carousing, instead of staying at home to work ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... be; on the contrary, I think there is evidence that they are worse. But anyhow, even granting that we could make things a bit better, what would be the use of doing it in a world like this? If the whole structure of the universe is bad, what's the good of fiddling with the details? You might as well waste your time in decorating the saloon of a sinking ship. Granting that you can improve the distribution of property, and raise the standard of health and intelligence and all the rest ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... bailing water from the boat, and Gunnar was fiddling with the motor that had conked out again, the dwarf looked back at the cliff. It was shadowy now. Dust was still rising as it shook ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... distinctive Scotch pibrochs were played I was quite conscious of an Eastern clash in them which no Scot could or would have given. Again: eighteen months ago I found a camp of English gypsies in the Rocky Mountains a little beyond Golden. One man was leaning against a tree fiddling negro melodies to the birds, but negro melodies with the flavor of the tent instead of the cabin. At my request he played "Yankee Doodle," and imparted to it a revolutionary dash, a piquant mocking defiance, which convinced me that he knew its history and was interpreting it from his own ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... from my bunk, as I lay, you understand. I must have almost dropped off once when I heard him fiddling around out here in the cabin, and then he said something in a whisper, just to find out if I was still awake, I suppose. I asked him what the matter was. He came and poked ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... arranged, such great profit may arise from a small degree of human reliance on oneself, and such, in particular, is the happy star of this trade of writing, that it should combine pleasure and profit to both parties, and be at once agreeable, like fiddling, and useful, ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cause why they come not forward, Which maketh them daily to draw backward; And yet[414] is a thing they cannot forbear; The trimming and pinning up their gear; Specially their fiddling with the tail-pin; And when they would have it pricked[415] in, If it chance to double in the cloth, Then be they[416] wood[417], and sweareth[418] an oath. Till it stand right they will not forsake it, Thus though it may not, yet would[419] they make it. But be ye sure ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... instant now that a time of accounting had come, she looked at him miserably, her eyes downcast, her hands fiddling with the reins. ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... I think I can sleep anywhere; and ef you'll jest lend me Toby there, I'll teach him to dance to my fiddling, and that'll earn more sous than I shall want. Is it a bargain then? Shall I go with you two mites and help you to find this ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... door had been left open, and as she lay in her bed she could hear the fiddlers fiddling away and the tramp of ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... been his usual form of speech on such occasions, that 'he had, he feared, disagreeable news to announce, viz., that Mr. Newman was elected Fellow of Oriel, and that his immediate presence was required there,' the person addressed merely answered, 'Very well,' and went on fiddling. This led the man to ask whether, perhaps, he had not gone to the wrong person, to which Mr. Newman replied that it was all right. But, as may be imagined, no sooner had the man left than he flung down ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... talk and can lead to nothing, fair sir," said he, turning away and fiddling with the keys of his strong boxes. "Yet I have no wish to be hard on you. Take my outside price, which ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to me, fiddling with the revolvers for a good five minutes, during which time I heard him tear his handkerchief in two, and wondered what in the world he was going to do next. What he did was to turn round and go on fiddling ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... to the door and ring, instead of fiddling out there in the cold!" demanded Burns. "Do you think we're heathen, to shut anybody out on a ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... no occasion to repent of their movements; for in one corner of the tap-room sat Billy Waters, a well-known character about town, a Black Man with a wooden leg was fiddling to a Slaughterman from Fleet-market, in wooden shoes, who, deck'd with all the paraphernalia of his occupation, a greasy jacket and night-cap, an apron besmeared with mud, blood, and grease, nearly an inch thick, and a leathern girdle, from which was ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... First Saturday in May, dawned warm and clear with a fast, dry track forecast for post time. The doorbell woke me up and I dredged my apartment to identify Nora fiddling in my two-bit kitchen with ham and eggs. Outside it was Lieutenant Delancey practising kinematics by pressing the button with a levitated pencil instead of shoving on the thing directly. (I'd changed the combination on the ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... below, Bramble and I, now that there was no chance of our being seen by the sentinels, ascended the tower. It commanded a view of the town and harbour: we looked down upon the main street—all was mirth and revelry; fiddling and dancing and singing were to be heard from more than one house; women in the street laughing, and now and then running and screaming when pursued ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... sound except the throbbing of their machinery, and a fairy fiddling of unseen crickets, which seemed to make the silence more intense, under the great sparkling dome that hung over ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... early friend and companion of Jefferson. He was a jovial young fellow noted for mimicry, practical jokes, fiddling and dancing. Jefferson's holidays were sometimes spent with Henry, and the two together would go off on hunting excursions of which each was passionately fond. Both were swift of ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... I hate both the names Spencer and Grenville—your invitation is meant kindly, but—the city in the summer-time for me. Here, while the bourgeoisie is away, I can live as Nero lived— barring, thank heaven, the fiddling—while the city burns at ninety in the shade. The tropics and the zones wait upon me like handmaidens. I sit under Florida palms and eat pomegranates while Boreas himself, electrically conjured up, blows upon me his Arctic breath. As for trout, you know, yourself, ...
— Options • O. Henry
... If you want fiddling you must go elsewhere, To the Green Dragon and the Admiral Vernon, And other such disreputable places. But the Three Mariners is an orderly house, Most orderly, quiet, and respectable. Lord Leigh said he could be as quiet here As at the Governor's. And have I not King ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... louts—coddling that girl, Rebecca, who is a good-hearted creature enough, but not fit for respectable people to touch their hands to; and associating with such conceited boors as that George Olver, and that grinning clown, Harvey, and that poor fool, Lovell Barlow, and that what-d'ye-call him—that fiddling young devil with the ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... tradesman's counter. The children make a great noise, and one hears bowling of ninepin alleys half the night through our walks up and down the street; and talks aloud, and sees the stars shoot in the high heaven. The foreign musicians, who wend their way homeward toward midnight, go fiddling along the street to their quarters, and the whole neighborhood runs to the window. The extra posts arrive later, and the horses neigh. One lies by the noise in the window and droops asleep. The post-horns awake him and the whole starry heaven hath spread itself open. O God! ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... them busy fiddling with the sails; and when those were flattened like a racing yacht's, Dan had to wait on the big topsail, which was put over by hand every time she went about. In spare moments they pumped, for the packed fish dripped brine, which does not improve a ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... to ruin and decay. And certainly whose degenerate arts and shifts, whereby many counsellors and governors gain both favor with their masters, and estimation with the vulgar, deserve no better name than fiddling; being things rather pleasing for the time, and graceful to themselves only, than tending to the weal and advancement of the state which they serve. There are also (no doubt) counsellors and governors which may be held sufficient (negotiis pares), ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... the poor king ambled up and down the apartment in a piteous state of uncertainty, which was made more ridiculous by his shambling circular mode of managing his legs, and his ungainly fashion on such occasions of fiddling with the bunches of ribbons which fastened the lower ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... it! Sure of it! I've known my cousin Gwen from a child—so have you, for that matter!—and I know it's useless. If she will, she will, you may depend on't; and if she won't she won't, and there's an end on't. You'll see, she'll consent to go fiddling about for three months or six months to Wiesbaden or Ems or anywhere, but she'll end by fixing the day and ordering her trousseau, quite as a matter of course! As for his changing—pooh!" Mr. Pellew laughed aloud. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... do really think that the Government, from the conciliatory measures wisely adopted, will stand their ground against the adherents of Buonaparte. We are to have a great rejoicing to-morrow. All Paris will be dancing, fiddling, and singing. They are a light-hearted people. I wish I could join in their fun. I was hopeful that I should; but the cursed recollection of the injustice that has been done to me is never out of my mind; so that all my pleasures are blasted, from whatever source they might be expected ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... much molested by the enthusiasm of the people. I looked forward with a great deal of joy to the day when we should make our entry into the city, and I thought it would be much more beautiful; but now I am greatly tired of the whole thing; I should be glad if they would cease fiddling, and clear a passage for the carriage to move on more rapidly. I am hungry, and I would I were already at the tavern of ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... stole quickly and softly after the boots and the spur-clank. He peeped into the upper room. The man was there - and it was Jakin, all dripping with moat-water, and he was fiddling about with the machinery which Robert felt sure worked the drawbridge. Robert banged the door suddenly, and turned the great key in the lock, just as Jakin sprang to the inside of the door. Then he tore downstairs and into ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... want of fat. Bring them in, the Cimabues With all or each that horribly true is, Francias, Giottos, Masaccios, That tread on the tops of their bony toes, And every one with a long sharp arrow Cleverly shot through his spinal marrow, With plenty of gridirons, spikes, and fires And fiddling ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... other sweet and fresh things as though some heavenly censer swung there. The thrushes and the blackbirds were singing their wildest as is their custom about sunset; and below their triumphant songs you could hear the whole chorus of the little birds' voices as well as the fiddling and harping of the myriad field-crickets and grasshoppers. Then from the field beyond the wood I could hear the corncrakes sawing away in the yet unmown grass, and there were a great many wood-doves ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... executed for Narcissus' monograph; and her harp she played in her own room. Now and then Endymion would enquire how she progressed with her music, would listen to her report and observe: "Ah, I used to do a little fiddling myself." But he never put her ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tired out with all the fiddling and singing, and the long journey, that he could scarcely eat; and as soon as he reached the big bedroom where he was to pass the night with his protector, he was asleep the moment he had put ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... with fear, and expecting nothing less than that their heads were all to fall, had been kept waiting for an hour, the door opened, and he, nearly naked, appeared with a fiddle in his hand, and, after fiddling and dancing to his quaking audience for an hour, dismissed them to their homes uninjured. The air seems to keep a sort of spiritual scent or trail of these old deeds, and to make them more real here than elsewhere. The old horrors of the Amphitheatre can be made real to any person of imaginative ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... formal invitation, No gold-laced coat, no stiff cravat, No feast in contemplation, No silk-robed dames, no fiddling band, No flowers, no songs, no dancing,— A tribe of red men, axe in hand,— Behold the guests advancing! How fast the stragglers join the throng, From stall and workshop gathered! The lively barber skips along And leaves a chin half-lathered; ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... been in my life a day, an hour, a moment when I have not loved her! To see her once was all that I had craved,—as a lost soul might covet, ere the Pit take him, one splendid glimpse of Heaven and the Nine Blessed Orders at their fiddling. And I find that she loves me—me! Fate must have her jest, I perceive, though the firmament crack for it. She would have been content enough with Noel, thinking me dead. And with me?" Contemplatively he spat out of the window. "Eh, if I dared hope ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... man alive has seen me, But women hear me play, Sometimes at door or window, Fiddling the souls away— The child's soul and the colleen's ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... remittances from their friends or had money of their own, and were able to support themselves in a genteel manner.' They were allowed to have plays with a stage and scenery once a month, and also 'had their schools for teaching the arts and sciences, dancing, fencing, and fiddling.' He criticises them severely: 'They drink, sing and dance,' and, with a fine allusion to emphasise his point, declares: 'But the Americans have not that careless volatility, like the cockle in the fable, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... hurrying; it would be all right if he got to the sheriffs office at nine o'clock; and then commenced descanting upon the fine time he would have at the jail. "There's a right good lot of comrades there, me boy; ye'll have fiddling and dancing, plenty of gals, and a jolly time; and ye a'n't a criminal, ye know, so it won't be any thing at all, only keep up a stiff under-lip. Come, let us take another drink; I feel mighty husky this ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... Count's lands. Here they stopped at an inn, and they were married by the priest that day. But they did not stop in this village; they sought a further country, beyond reach of all pursuit. They settled in a village, and the fiddler earned his bread by his fiddling, and Elisinde kept their cottage neat and clean. For awhile they were as happy as the day was long; the fiddler found favour everywhere by his fiddling, and Elisinde ingratiated herself by her gentle ways. But one ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... good-natured tolerance acceding to requests which promised many forgetful hours at a time when the land was shadowed by war. So it happened that Jeff was often at the more pretending residences of the neighborhood, sometimes fiddling in the detached kitchen of a Southern mansion to the shuffle of heavy feet, again in the lighted parlor, especially when Confederate troops were quartered near. It was then that his strains took on their most inspiring and elevated character. He gave wings to the dark-eyed Southern girls; ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... though this one is not covered with sand. About twenty years ago a brig was wrecked near by, and three or four fishermen were put to watch the deserted hulk through the darkness. At midnight they saw sitting on a stone at the cave's mouth two red-capped fiddlers fiddling with all their might. The men fled. A great crowd of villagers rushed down to the cave to see the fiddlers, but the ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... might attain this joy—that this book might find shelter beneath roofs of thatch, and that the village girls, as they spin and turn the wheel, humming the while their much-loved verses, of the girl who so loved to make music that while fiddling she lost her geese, or of the orphan, who, fair as the dawn, went to drive home the birds at eventide—if even those village girls might take into their hands this ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... Reisenburg was an enthusiastic lover of music, and his people were consequently music mad. The whole city were fiddling day and night, or blowing trumpets, oboes, and bassoons. Sunday, however, was the most harmonious day in the week. The Opera amused the Court and the wealthiest citizens, and few private houses could not boast their family concert or small party of performers. In the tea-gardens, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... neglect the boy that's come to do a day's work with you. (Going to the door) Many's the day I put in with the scythe in Ireland, and in England too; I did more than stroll with the fiddle, and I saw more places than where fiddling brought me. (Brian MacConnell comes to the door) I was just going out to you, Brian. I was telling the girl here that it's not right to neglect the boy that's giving you a day's work out of ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... A cat came fiddling out of a barn, With a pair of bagpipes under her arm; She could sing nothing but fiddle cum fee, The mouse has married the bumble-bee. Pipe cat—dance, mouse, We'll have a wedding at ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... anybody to buy fiddles, and collect a number, being in no wise given to fiddling, nor fond of music: or if, being no cobbler, he collected awls and lasts, or, having no mind for sea-adventure, bought sails, every one would call him a madman, and deservedly. But what difference is there between such a man and one who lays by coins and gold, and does not ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the poet, if he tries to do it, is certain to put down his spade every five minutes, to look at the prospect, and pick flowers, and moralise on dead asses, till he ends a Neron malgre lui-meme, fiddling melodiously while Rome is burning. And perhaps this is the secret of Raleigh's failure. He is a fanatic, no doubt, a true knight-errant: but he is too much of a poet withal. The sense of beauty enthrals him at every step. Gloriana's fairy court, with ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... ancestor, the gallant Marquis who came over with Baron Castine to America, what would the whole line of ancestors, from the crusaders down, say to see their descendant in such a place as this? He has always held his head high, though he has earned his bread by fiddling, varied by shoemaking in the winter-time. He has always kept good company, he would tell you, and would rather go hungry any day than earn a dinner among people who do not regard the decencies of life. Even in this place, people come to feel ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... Pantiles, where, a hundred years since, so much good company came to take its pleasure. Is it possible, that in the past century, gentlefolks of the first rank (as I read lately in a lecture on George II. in the Cornhill Magazine) assembled here and entertained each other with gaming, dancing, fiddling, and tea? There are fiddlers, harpers, and trumpeters performing at this moment in a weak little old balcony, but where is the fine company? Where are the earls, duchesses, bishops, and magnificent embroidered gamesters? A half-dozen of children and ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on a summer meadow, a white silence fell from his imagination across that fiddling, jigging, gleaming atmosphere, and everywhere the dead sat around him, watching in a trance strange antics of the grimacing dead. Curiously, in these moods, he never thought of himself as dead. Alas! life was too cruel to release him so soon ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... to marry you, you know—can you? I want to see the world. I don't want any tiresome man bothering after me. If I ever do marry, it will be because—oh, because—" and I stopped and began fiddling with the ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... half gone before all the wild creatures in Pleasant Valley had heard all about Kiddie Katydid and his fiddling. At least twenty-seven people came to Mr. Frog at different times and told him the news. And ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... I shoot him?" asked the one-eyed Hendrik, smacking his lips at the thought, and fiddling with the rusty lock of the old ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... which some students will devote to fiddling is almost incredible. We have known a clever man to practise every waking hour in the day, rising early and sitting up late, and sparing hardly one hour in the twenty-four for meals, for two years together, in ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... youngest of his sisters, who came running out, and, speaking in a constrained voice, as if to stifle some emotion, called out to him, "What are ye doing there, Hobbie, fiddling about the naig, and there's ane frae Cumberland been waiting here for ye this hour and mair? Haste ye in, man; I'll take ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... cat came fiddling out of a barn With a pair of bagpipes under her arm; She could pipe nothing but fiddle-cum-fee, The mouse hath married the bumble-bee. Pipe, cat; dance, mouse; We'll have ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... success. Even the intensely critical small fry dancing on the pavement without to the scraping and fiddling of the string band, had to admit that. So far as they were concerned it was all right, but what shall we say of the guests within? They who glided easily over the canvassed floors, bowed, and scraped and simpered, "just like the big folks on the Avenue," who ate the ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... her. "That's where it is," he said: "I've done nothing for your people. It's all very well to go playing and playing, but that's not doing anything; and, if he had done nothing, there would ha' been no fiddling. You understand me, miss, I know: work comes before music, and makes the soul of it; it's not the music that makes the doing. I'm a poor hand at saying without my fiddle, miss: ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... Graham's Celestial-Bed? Happiness of an approving Conscience! Did not Paul of Tarsus, whom admiring men have since named Saint, feel that he was "the chief of sinners"; and Nero of Rome, jocund in spirit (wohlgemuth), spend much of his time in fiddling? Foolish Word-monger and Motive-grinder, who in thy Logic-mill hast an earthly mechanism for the Godlike itself, and wouldst fain grind me out Virtue from the husks of Pleasure,—I tell thee, Nay! To the unregenerate Prometheus Vinctus of a man, it is ever the bitterest aggravation ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... again, sir. Perhaps you are to be pardoned, Mr. Bascomb. You have been so long dancing to the fiddling of an Evarts that you don't realize how impossible it is for a gentleman ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... large meadow by the river, where a small town of booths, tents, &c., is erected, and where shooting at targets with wooden darts, sham railway-trains and riding-horses, confectionery of every kind, beer of every name, strength, and colour, pipes, cigars, toys, gambling, organ-grinding, fiddling, dancing, &c., goes on incessantly. The great attraction, however, is the shooting at the bird, which occupies the attention of every Saxon, and is looked upon as the consummation of human invention and physical science. A great ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is,' thought Felix. 'Up to a point, they'll move—not up to THE point. It's all fiddling. One won't give up his shooting; another won't give up his power; a third won't give up her week-ends; a fourth won't give up his freedom. Our interest in the thing is all lackadaisical, a kind of bun-fight of pet ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... bottom, when there arose in Dick's mind a minor misery lest the tune should end before they could work their way to the top again, and have anew the same exciting run down through. Dick's feelings on actually reaching the top in spite of his doubts were supplemented by a mortal fear that the fiddling might even stop at this supreme moment; which prompted him to convey a stealthy whisper to the far-gone musicians, to the effect that they were not to leave off till he and his partner had reached the bottom of the dance once ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... urged Dick; "the matches are burning much more rapidly than I anticipated; and if we are not pretty lively we shall be caught by the first explosions. That's your sort; that will do, Parsons, don't stand there fiddling with that match, it is burning all right. Now, lads, away you go; over with you; I ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... of embarrassment. "Oh, she's here, naturally—we're in Paris, kids and all. In a pension, where we can polish up the lingo. But I hardly ever lay eyes on her, because she's as deep in music as I am in paint; it was as big a chance for her as for me, you see, and she's making the most of it, fiddling and listening to the fiddlers. Well, it's a considerable change from New Hampshire." He looked at her dreamily, as if making an intense effort to detach himself from his dream, and situate her in the fading past. "Remember the bungalow? And Nick—ah, ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... good-looking waiter?" Tobin tried to plead guilty, feeling the desire to blow the foam off a crock of suds, but when he felt in his pocket he found himself discharged for lack of evidence. Somebody had disturbed his change during the commotion. So we sat, dry, upon the stools, listening to the Dagoes fiddling on deck. If anything, Tobin was lower in spirits and less congenial with his misfortunes than ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... course, out of mere envy, mere spite, mere jealousy, would try to overturn that harmony that is not to be broken so easily—that unity that is not to be severed, no, not for a hundred Spohfs! "Go—go, sir, to your fiddling garret-friend—go and blow his hurdigurdy!—Go, sir!—Tell him the affections of innocent females are not to be played upon like a base vile!—Tell him there are ears to pull, horsewhips to be had, ay, and noble gentlemen ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... if he'd been taking some of the Venus drugs. But after one long, hungry look at me, he faced the captain. "Yes, sir. This guy came down here ahead of me. Didn't think nothing of it, sir. But when he started fiddling with the panel there, I got suspicious." He pointed to the external control panel for the engine room, to be used in case of accidents. "With all that's been going on, how'd I know but maybe he was gonna dump the fuel? And then I seen he had keys. ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... come into the world with a fiddle in his hand," says Mrs. Warrington, with a toss of her head. "I am sure I hated the harpsichord when a chit at Kensington School, and only learned it to please my mamma. Say what you will, dear sir, I can not believe that this fiddling is work for persons ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... being inconspicuous. He has told us that his usual method in a poor man's cabin was to make them forget that he was there, but in Aran on these visits he always tried to add to the fun, and to his personal prestige with conjuring tricks, fiddling, piping, taking photographs, etc. Some of the Islanders were much attached to him. I suppose that their main impression was that he was a linguist who had committed a crime somewhere and had ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... as if I was bound to have a rum shop and a sailor's boarding-house under my nose. There'll be a crowd of men hanging round and fiddling and carousing half the night. I don't see what's getting into Boston! Places that were good enough twenty year ago are only fit for tramps, and decent people have to get out of the way, whether they ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... thundered down on him, and kept him down for two or three days till he was discovered. To get to him we went in a small canoe, and paddled ourselves with shingles or wooden tiles, used to cover roofs. On the way I saw a man on a roof fiddling; only a bit of the roof was above water. He was waiting for deliverance. Many and strange indeed were all the scenes and incidents of that inundation, and marvellous the legends which were told of other freshets ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... I took a resolution to rise early in the morning, and so I rose by candle, which I have not done all this winter, and spent my morning in fiddling till time to go to the office, where Sir G. Carteret did begin again discourse on Mr. Holland's proposition, which the King do take very ill, and so Sir George in lieu of that do propose that the seamen should have half in ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... penniless,' says she, 'and in want for the barest necessities; and this man fiddling his time away! I had a struggle persuading him to give up his wretched toy; but I've handled harder cases. You should of seen the light in the mother's wan face when he consented! The twelve dollars won't be much, though it will do something for her and those ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... songs; they had a greeting for every boat that passed. By-and-by, we came to an island with a little landing-place where a score or two of boats were moored against the alders by the water's edge. A tall flag-staff gay with streamers peeped above the tree-tops, and a cheerful sound of piping and fiddling, mingled with the hum of many voices, came and went with the passing breeze. As Dalrymple rested on his oars to listen, a boat which we had outstripped some minutes before, shot past us to the landing-place, and its occupants, five in ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... therefore had to spread out comparatively few words over a vast expanse of music. The result is that a great part of the time the performers are on the stage is devoted to thought, the orchestra doing a tremendous amount of fiddling, etc., while the actors wander drearily around, with their arms folded across their pulmonary departments, and their minds evidently absorbed ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... them. "Mamma" Valerius treated Christine as her daughter. As for Daae, he began to pine away with homesickness. He never went out of doors in Paris, but lived in a sort of dream which he kept up with his violin. For hours at a time, he remained locked up in his bedroom with his daughter, fiddling and singing, very, very softly. Sometimes Mamma Valerius would come and listen behind the door, wipe away a tear and go down-stairs again on tiptoe, ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... Some mincing artificer, I trow, fiddling away with wood and wire to make gauds for the fair-day! Hast got him here? If I like him, and she likes him, I'll bring her back when ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... either, but there's such a thing as havin' what you've said misjudged by wimmen. Where the wimmen ain't strong-headed, you know." He hesitated for a time, fiddling his forefinger under his nose. "There was just one woman I made talk to in my life such as a gent shouldn't have made without backin' it up. If she'd been stronger in her head I reckon she'd have realized that bein' sick, like I was, and not used to wimmen, and bein' so ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day |
