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More "Prelude" Quotes from Famous Books



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

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

... and redeem and restore, snatch Saul, the mistake, Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now,—and bid him awake from the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set clear and safe in new light and new life,—a new harmony yet to be run and ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... by the sound of martial music close below my windows. I went down and stood at the door. A military band was marshalled upon the little square before the exchange. It was preparing to beat the retreat. After the prelude, which was admirably executed, the tall leader gave a flourish with his stick, and strode forward up the street, followed by the whole company of noble looking fellows and a crowd of admiring listeners. The cymbals clashed, the horns screamed, and the kettle-drum emitted its deep ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... delaying only to close the door (and to see that it latched) began with a foreword which was followed by a preface and then by a prelude, but he had hardly reached the main introduction when Mr. Starkweather put up his hand. "To make a long story short, Mix—how much do ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall

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

... years." Have they? 'Tis well! Christianity requires no man to step into logical contradiction and stand there. They have done this "for fifteen hundred years." Well, it has been about that long since men, in the prelude of the dark ages, began to speculate foolishly about the subject of the Divine existence. There was a purer atmosphere in the first centuries of the Christian era, in which primitive Christians enjoyed better ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880

... twin doors facing on a triangular alcove. In the recess between these portals stood a washstand, surmounted by a china basin and pitcher—a declaration of affluence. From the interior of the house came the sounds of fiddling, though these strains of "Turkey in the Straw" were only by way of prelude. Lescott felt, though he could not say just what concrete thing told him, that under the shallow note of merry-making brooded the major theme of a troublesome problem. The seriousness was below the surface, ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... inarticulate period, when there seems to a man to be a dearth of ideas, a mental drought, acts as a sort of incubation in which a thought is slowly conceived and perfected. Sometimes a long period of repression stores force at high pressure. The lean years are often the prelude, even the cause, of the years of fatness, when the exhausted and overteemed earth has lain fallow and still, storing ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Scriptures tell us, But awful was the silence at that time; A prelude of the wrath of God most jealous, Expressed in ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... of the artificial limbs which owe their perfection to his skill and long-continued labor has led us a little beyond its first object, and finds its natural prelude in some remarks on the natural limbs and their movements. Accident directed our attention, while engaged with this subject, to the efforts of another ingenious American to render the use of our lower extremities ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... those appearances which in the rocks, the veins, and solid stones, give such evident, such universal testimony of the power of fire, in bringing bodies into fusion, or introducing fluidity, the necessary prelude to solidity ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton

... wrote to him. During the history of the next ten years of my life, I shall have frequently to record circumstances that have occurred between the Baronet and myself; it is, therefore, but justice to myself, as well as to the reader, to make the above declaration, as a prelude to that part of my Memoirs, as it may save the Rump the trouble of circulating a great number of falsehoods, of which they will ultimately, with many other base transactions, stand convicted. When I say I was never indebted to or solicited ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... even to himself, but the effect of being actually in the presence of this man of world-wide fame, and in the midst of such palatial surroundings, was to deprive him of his usual easy flow of words. Gorham's remark, however, as was intended, served to relieve him, but the oratorical prelude which he had carefully rehearsed coming up on the electric 'bus had vanished from his mind, and he plunged, as had still another "gentleman" before him, ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... the prelude to the disasters that were to befall the Spaniards. The Mexicans made desperate assaults upon the Spanish quarters, in which both sides suffered severely. At last Montezuma, at the request of Cortes, tried to interpose. But his subjects, in fury at what they considered his desertion of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

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

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

... be lost. I enter at the prescribed door, and find myself close to my appointed place. Every one—such is the admirable arrangement—seems to do likewise. In a few minutes about one thousand persons are seated without confusion. The theater is darkened, the footlights are lowered, the prelude begins. ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis

... broken by the sound of a few chords struck very lightly and softly upon a guitar. The sound came from the clump of trees, the shadows of which Agnes had just been admiring; and she supposed they were the prelude to a serenade. Her heart whispered to her who the musician might be, for though she had never heard him, with whom her thoughts had been busy, touch the guitar, yet with his ardent love for music, she did not doubt ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely

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

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

... said the duke, 'no matter; stay with me a while. I wish your counsel about some affairs that concern me nearly.' He then told Valentine an artful story, as a prelude to draw his secret from him, saying that Valentine knew he wished to match his daughter with Thurio, but that she was stubborn and disobedient to his commands, 'neither regarding,' said he, 'that she is my child, nor fearing me as if I were ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

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

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

... we have the same thing said by another man in another key. 'Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.' The prelude to the assertion makes all the difference. Here is the warranted ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... prelude of Sebastian Bach's Wohltemperirte Klavier expresses nothing, and yet that is one of the marvels of music. The Venus de Milo expresses nothing, and it is one of the ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... is the prelude to maternity. On its healthful recurrence depends present comfort and future health; and not these alone, but also happiness in marriage, easy child-beds, and the constitution of children to a degree the thoughtless girl and even the mature woman rarely understand. She, therefore, who neglects ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... support of the United Nations, now entering its second decade with a wider membership and ever-increasing influence and usefulness. In the release of our fifteen fliers from Communist China, an essential prelude was the world opinion mobilized by the General Assembly, which condemned their imprisonment and demanded their liberation. The successful Atomic Energy Conference held in Geneva under United Nations ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

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

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

... music of the night is rising up! My neighbour's house is all a flame of song. I must abide until the prelude closes, Until his heart has ceased its preparation And he comes forth into the dying year, Leaves his house of inspiration empty, And with a loneliness of heart creeps forth Eagerly into the night, and ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... condition of a great country, will be better discussed hereafter. We have simply narrated the course of a terrible necessity, which, against the desires of this country, has made the ravages of war a bloody but unavoidable prelude to the beneficent functions of peace. The conflict was not of our seeking. Be the consequences what they may, the Sikhs will have themselves to blame, should it so happen, for the illustration of the maxim, that "when lenity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

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

... The victories of Louisbourg and Quebec belong to the same series of brilliant events that recall the famous names of Chatham, Clive, and Wolfe, and that gave to England a mighty empire in Asia and America. Wolfe's signal victory on the heights of the ancient capital was the prelude to the great drama of the American revolution. Freed from the fear of France, the people of the Thirteen Colonies, so long hemmed in between the Atlantic Ocean and the Appalachian range, found full ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... Reserve Line, which must be held at all costs. Some of the N.C.O.'s and men grumbled a little at what they called giving up the front line, more especially as patrols reported that the enemy was busy strengthening his wire, which did not seem the prelude to an attack. Finally, by 2-0 a.m. on the 25th all was ready. The Staff at Corps Headquarters, ten miles back, slept in their boots, all support and reserve Battalions moved to "battle" positions and stood to, we in the line behaved very much as ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... quick birr of wings like an old-fashioned church congregation fluttering to their feet when the minister after giving out the hymn says, "Let the congregation arise and sing." Alighting on nearby trees, they sing with a hearty vengeance, bursting out without any puttering prelude in gloriously glad concert, hundreds or thousands of exulting voices with sweet gurgling baumpalees mingled with chippy vibrant and exploding globules of musical notes, making a most enthusiastic, indescribable ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir

... Scotch stubbornness—and not a damn thing to back it up! Where's your coat? Here. Git into it." Without any prelude, any apology, he wrested the stick of wood from her, pulled her coat off a nail near by, and held it outspread, the armholes convenient to her hands. With her chin shivering, Mary Hope obeyed the brute strength of the man. She dug her teeth into her lip and thrust her ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

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

... see how good he can do it," said Bob, with no small amount of pride; and Leander, with his head held so high that it was almost impossible to see his instrument, struck one or two notes as a prelude, while Joe took his station at a point about as far distant from the ring as the door of the ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis

... year so valuable,—the Judgment, for which it ought to be a preparation. In fact, if we observe, we shall see that these Sundays in Advent are much more regarded by the Church as the beginning of a new year, than as a mere prelude to the celebration of the festival of Christmas. That is, Christmas-day is regarded, so to speak, in a two-fold light, as representing both the comings of our Lord, his first coming in the flesh, and his second coming to judgment. ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold

... solemn, mysterious, elevating inward moment it creates in us! To ascend to that peak, to carry the reader thither with him, that is the flight of a great poet, of one who has been—as in that choice poem, "The Prelude," Wordsworth, with an electric stroke of poetic imagination, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

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

... the owner of the sun-bonnet in a quick, sharp voice that seemed the prelude to "Don't ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell

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

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

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

... of Manresa proved eminently fruitful for the future method of Ignatius. It was here that he began to regard self-discipline and self-examination as the needful prelude to a consecrated life. It was here that he learned to condemn the ascetism of anchorites as pernicious or unprofitable to a militant Christian. It was here that, while studying the manual of devotion written ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

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

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

... poor and worn. Even a poet, therefore, can give of love but a meagre expression, while the philosopher, who renounces dramatic representation, is condemned to be avowedly inadequate. Love, to the lover, is a noble and immense inspiration; to the naturalist it is a thin veil and prelude to the self-assertion of lust. This opposition has prevented philosophers from doing justice to the subject. Two things need to be admitted by anyone who would not go wholly astray in such speculation: one, that love has an animal basis; the other, that it has an ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

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

... spoke, a phosphorescent gleam sped through the trees, like a passing soul; and a threatening growl rumbled up from the South. It was the prelude. Two minutes later, rocks, stems, branches, and the minutest fir-needles that flickered against the grey, showed like ink-strokes on tarnished silver as a forked flash, leaped, quivering, from the heart of a blue-black cloud. The report that followed, after scarce five ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... her foot, spun about, and dashed into a stormy prelude, modulating into the accompaniment to the refrain of Sullivan's Once Again, which she sang ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

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

... different parts of the house people applauded heartily. In embarrassment, Carter shoved back his chair and pulled the curtain of the box between him and the audience. But he was not so easily to escape. Leaving the orchestra to continue unheeded with the prelude to the next verse, Miss Winter walked slowly and deliberately toward him, smiling mischievously. In burlesque entreaty, she held out her arms. She made a most appealing and charming picture, and of that fact she was well aware. In a voice loud enough to reach ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis

... to some public place, usually the Parvis-Notre-Dame, and there, in an audible voice, avowing his crime and professing repentance. No rank of society, not even the monarch himself, was exempt from this punishment, which frequently was only the prelude to execution. The chief criminal, in this case, took refuge in Brabant, and there, to revenge himself, envoulta ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

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

... will and to work, and a career of prosperous activity was before him. The day had more than fulfilled its promise; what had seemed its great triumph appeared now to be valuable only as an introduction and a prelude to something larger and more real. Already he was looking back with some surprise on the extreme gravity which he had attached to his little Blinkhampton speculation. He grew very readily where he was given room to grow; ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

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

... in the score as the antithesis of the "Counter-Charm" mentioned in the analysis of the prelude. It illustrates an ingenious constructive device. Desiring to send Gretel on an errand a moment later, the Witch disenchants her with ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... concerned in the Bill. Nobody, he said, with his usual bright audacity, but himself "who was altogether born in sin," saw the true scope of the measure. "All those people who designed the Act as a blow to the Dissenting interests in England are mistaken. All those who take it as a prelude or introduction to the further suppressing of the Dissenters, and a step to repealing the Toleration, or intend it as such, are mistaken.... All those phlegmatic Dissenters who fancy themselves undone, and that persecution ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

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

... invariable. His pupil will neither be credulous, rash, nor profligate; and he certainly will not be indolent; his habitual and his rational belief will, in all circumstances, agree with each other; his hope will be the prelude to exertion, and his fear will restrain him only in situations where action ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

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

... bird sits in the nest and sings A shy, soft song to the morning light; And it flutters a little and prunes its wings. The song is halting and poor and brief, And the fluttering wings scarce stir a leaf; But the note is a prelude to sweeter things, And the busy bill and the flutter slight Are proving the ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

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

... and observed in an historic spirit, where shall we find an illustration more impressive than in Abraham Lincoln, whose life, career and death might be chanted by a Greek chorus as at once the prelude and the epilogue of the most imperial theme ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... the girl's hand, von Schalckenberg, who was an accomplished as well as an enthusiastic musician, led her to the piano, at which he forthwith seated himself and at once proceeded to play, with crisp yet delicate touch and manifest enjoyment, the prelude to ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... played her prelude rather nervously; then she sang one of the songs which she had sung in The Cottage at Shorne Mills—one of the songs to which Drake had never seemed tired of listening. There was a lull in the lifeless, perfunctory conversation, and one or two of the sleepy women murmured: ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... acknowledged that the present section can only be considered as a species of introduction or prelude to an intended narrative of an expedition: Yet such actually is the first article in Sir William Monson's celebrated Naval Tracts, as published in the Collection of Churchill; leaving the entire of the narrative ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

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

... suffer me to pass rapidly over the remainder of this sad tale, my dear Lucie. It was long before your mother revived to perfect consciousness; and the shock which she had received was only a prelude to still deeper misery. The conduct of de Courcy was too soon explained. Yielding to the fatal error, that she had given her affections to the Count de ——, in the excitement of his passion, he sent a challenge, which was instantly accepted. They met; and the Count was carried, as his attendants ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... though sleepy, like a horse That hears the corn-bin open, pricked my ears; For I remembered Everard's college fame When we were freshmen: then, at my request, He brought it; and the poet, little urged, But, with some prelude of disparagement, Read, mouthing out his hollow oes and aes, Deep-chested music, and ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

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

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

... he had a happy out-door childhood. He spent long days playing about in garden and orchard, or on the banks of the Derwent, with his friends and brothers and his sister Dorothy. In one of his long poems called The Prelude, which is a history of his own young life, he tells of these happy childish hours. In other of his poems he tells of the love and comradeship that there was between himself and his sister, though she was two ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... cultivated. Volitional recollection, or forcing the mind to reproduce a train of impressions, strengthens what we may call the mental will; while if multifarious impressions which excite at the time are left to take their chances, at best, fragmentary reproduction, incipient amnesia, the prelude of mental decay, may be soon detected. Few can endure the long working over of ideas, especially if at all fundamental, which is needful to full maturity of mind, without grave moral danger. New standpoints and ideas require new combinations of the mental elements, with constant ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... "It's a prelude to the 'Queen of Sheba,'" said Andrews. "If you didn't think the same as M. Emile Faguet and everyone else about St. Antoine, I'd tell you ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... election results were apparently dictated more by fear than by hope. One party would be raised up and the other party cast down, not because the one was trusted more than the other, but because it was for a while less odious. Thus a party success might well be a prelude to a party disaster because neither party knew how to improve its political opportunity. The record of party fluctuation in Congress during this period is almost unparalleled ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford

... when uttered independently as a mark of surprise, or as the prelude to an emphatic question which it does not ask, becomes an interjection; and, as such, is to be parsed merely as other interjections are parsed: as, "What! came the word of God out from you? or came it unto you only?"—1 Cor., xiv, 36. "What! ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... meal makes a delicious prelude to our comfortable dejeuner a la fourchette at one o'clock, when the Little Genius, if not absorbed in some unusually exacting piece of work, joins us and gives zest to the repast. Her own breakfast, she explains, is a dejeuner a la thumb, the sort enjoyed by the peasant who ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... report," which begins with a flying prelude, to which the lady of the tree "carves out her dainty voice" with ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... inform the said Indians of the dispositions of the General Government on this subject and of their reasonable desire that there should be a cessation of hostilities as a prelude to a treaty. If, however, notwithstanding your intimations to them, they should continue their hostilities or meditate any incursions against the frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania or against any of the troops or posts of the United States, and it should appear to you that the time of execution ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson

... of politicians, speculators, and would-be captains of industry, who were more often than not, rogues in the disguise of public benefactors. Nearly all of them were citizens of Kansas. The cessions of 1854, negotiated by George W. Manypenny, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, were but a prelude to the many that followed. For years and years there was in reality never a time when some sort of negotiation, sub rosa or official, was not going on. The order of procedure was pretty much what ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

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

... in England was, however, only the prelude to the total abolition of the Mass. Early in 1548 a series of questions had been addressed by Cranmer to the bishops regarding the value of the Mass as a religious service apart from the Communion.[53] The bishops were asked ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... I am sending you a Prelude and a three-voiced Fugue (Kochel, No. 394)....It is awkwardly written; the prelude must come first and the fugue follow. The reason for its appearance is because I had made the fugue and wrote it out while I was thinking ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel

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

... time, Dryden resumed, with new courage, the opera of "Albion and Albanius," which had been nearly finished before the death of Charles. This was originally designed as a masque, or emblematical prelude to the play of "King Arthur;" for Dryden, wearied with the inefficient patronage of Charles, from whom he only "received fair words," had renounced in despair the task of an epic poem, and had converted one of his themes, that of the tale of ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... shoulders haughtily. It was apparent that she took this curious idea more seriously than the prelude would suggest. ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard

... future airgonation, supposing that it will not only be perfected, but will depose navigation. I did not finish it, because I am not skilled, like the gentleman that used to write political ship-news, in that style which I wanted to perfect my essay: but in the prelude I observed how ignorant the ancients were in supposing Icarus melted the wax of his wings by too near access to the sun, whereas he would have been frozen to death before he made the first post on that ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... The Christians of the East were scandalized by the worship of fire, and the impious doctrine of the two principles: the Magi were not less intolerant than the bishops; and the martyrdom of some native Persians, who had deserted the religion of Zoroaster, [63] was conceived to be the prelude of a fierce and general persecution. By the oppressive laws of Justinian, the adversaries of the church were made the enemies of the state; the alliance of the Jews, Nestorians, and Jacobites, had contributed to the success ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... Such prelude spoken to the gods in full, To you I turn, and to the hidden thing Whereof ye spake but now: and in that thought I am as you, and what ye say, say I. For few are they who have such inborn grace, As to look up with love, and ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... his rescue. He felt intuitively—what we now know with historical certainty—that this work was born of the same spirit which bore Faust, and thus in him also this "ever restless spirit seeking for something new" was called into being and activity. The overture to Faust, in reality the prelude of a Faust symphony, tells us in tones of mighty resolve that his power to do and to will still lived, and would not yield till it had performed its part. This was toward the close of ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl

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

... the side of the wooded river, under shadow of the old gateways and churches, it was not very hard to realize how the love of nature and of art grew up in the mind of the young student, and how this city of the past proved a fitting prelude to a noble life-work which set as its goal the revival of what was best and most beautiful in ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson

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

... return to Norway, Ibsen's correspondence became very scant, and we have no letters dating from the period when he was at work on The Master Builder. On the other hand, we possess a curious lyrical prelude to the play, which he put on paper on March 16, 1892. It is said to have been his habit, before setting to work on a play, to "crystallise in a poem the mood which then possessed him;" but the following is the only one of these keynote poems which ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen

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

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

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

... warmed their chilled hearts again! Surely Isaka's dream had heralded a measure of restored joy for him that morning, if nothing better and more lasting. He spoke of his dream, and of how it came first as the prelude of that Banquet, and of how his heart had danced on that Banquet morning, and the sun had danced in his sight at the sunrise. His friend was allowed to stay by him, for the transport officer was kindly, and they talked on and on. Isaka knew now that ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps

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

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

... left is a door. There are many books in the room, hardly any pictures, a statuette perhaps. The owner evidently sets beauty of form before beauty of colour. It is a woman's room and it has a certain delicate austerity. By the time you have observed everything MRS. FARRANT has played Chopin's prelude opus 28, number ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker

... A brief orchestral prelude, less than twenty measures in length, introduces the opening scene of the first act. Divided and muted 'cellos, double-basses, and bassoons intone, pp, a solemn and brooding theme[6] designed to evoke the thought of the forest, which, sombre, mysterious, ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman

... that when a war is determined on in Ashantee, solemn ceremonies precede it. Among other things, the bones of the king's mother are laved with human blood. As a prelude to the war, the king ordains an onslaught upon his own metropolis, as if to excite the ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit

... Amos thunders against the misrule of the king of Israel, Isaiah denounces the landlords and the usurers, Micah charges them with blood-guiltiness; Jeremiah and the latter prophets, though they strike a more intimate note of personal repentance, strike it as the prelude to that national restoration for which they ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... Elizabeth, they asserted it now. "Let your Majesty be pleased to receive public information from your Commons in Parliament, as well of the abuses in the Church as in the civil state and government." Words yet bolder, and which sound like a prelude to the Petition of Right, met the claim of absolutism which was so frequently on the new king's lips. "Your majesty would be misinformed," said the address, "if any man should deliver that the kings of England have any absolute power in themselves, either ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

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

... going home, and promised to pay him a visit. On entering his room D'Harmental went straight to the window. Nothing was changed; it was evidently a plan, and he resolved to employ the last means which he had reserved. He sat down to the piano, and after a brilliant prelude sang the air of the cantata of Night which he had heard the evening before, and of which he had retained every note in his memory. Meanwhile he did not lose sight for an instant of the inexorable window; but there was no sign. The opposite room had ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

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

... at last; that no God-born soul will be able to go on trying to satisfy himself with the husks that the swine eat, or to refrain from thinking of his Father's house, and wishing himself within its walls even in the meanest place; or that such a wish is prelude to the best robe and the ring and the fatted calf, when the Father would spend himself in joyous obliteration of his son's past and its misery—having got him back his very own, and better than when he went, because ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... found it hard to scold severely, however grave he might try to look to please Aunt Susan; and it was perfectly well known in the house that she had no liking for those grave debates that formed the prelude to the supper downstairs. It was like enough she would linger without as long as she dared, and then spend as much time as possible strewing her rushes and dressing herself, so that she should not have long to listen to ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... contains, among other articles: The Prelude, Wordsworth's Autobiographical Poem; Rejoicings on the Birth of the Son of James II.; The Castle and Honour of Clare (with Engravings); Original Letters of Bishop Bedell; Memoir of Thomas Dodd, author of the "Connoisseur's ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various

... shelving shore, only to be transformed, as the melting of the snow continued, into torrents or cascades. Light vapors gathered on the horizon, and clouds were formed and carried rapidly along by breezes to which the Gallian atmosphere had long been unaccustomed. All these were doubtless but the prelude to atmospheric disturbances of a more startling character; but as indications of returning spring, they were greeted with a welcome which no apprehensions for the future could ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... the horses down stream. Then the muddy roads began. The constant rains had long ago reduced them to a state of paste, and although some attempt had been made to stiffen them with a filling of dried cocoanut-husks, the sucking sound made by the ponies' hoofs was but a prelude to our final floundering in the mud. There was a narrow ridge on one side near a thorny hedge, and, balancing ourselves on this, we made slow progress, meanwhile tearing our clothes to shreds. Skim had considerable difficulty with his long legs, for he could have touched the ground ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... he was here at the founding of this Institution. [Laughter.] But instead of bringing those volumes of Bancroft's here, and reading them to you on this occasion, I will let the reporters publish them as the prelude to what I ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... the young man made the round of the Bines properties. The former nursed a forlorn little hope of exciting an interest in the concerns most vital to him; to the latter the leisurely tour in the private car was a sportive prelude to the serious business of life, as it should be lived, in the East. Considering it as such he endured it amiably, and indeed the long August days and the sharply cool nights were not ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... illuminated by a broad stream of silvery light that filtered softly in through the white and tightly drawn blinds. A feeling that there was something unnatural in the air, that the stillness was but the prelude to some strange and startling event, gradually came over me. I strove to reason with myself, to argue that the feeling was wholly due to the novelty of my surroundings, but my efforts were fruitless. And soon there stole ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell

... that in time of peace a brave knight like Acton should turn his thoughts from war to love-making, and therefore I shall make no excuse for relating a little experience of his which must be introduced as a prelude to the account of the formation of ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery

... the town to be imposed upon by scribblers. In the pit, they exerted themselves with great spirit and vivacity; called out for the tunes of obscene songs, talked loudly at intervals of Shakespeare and Jonson, played on their catcalls a short prelude of terrour, clamoured vehemently for a prologue, and clapped with great dexterity at the first ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... of Cesar Franck's earthly existence, he produced several masterpieces. Among them the Violin Sonata, composed for Eugene and Theophile Ysaye, the D minor Symphony, the String Quartet, the two remarkable piano pieces, Prelude, Chorale and Fugue, Prelude, Aria and Finale, and finally the Three Chorales for organ, his swan song. His health gradually declined, due to overwork and an accident, and he passed quietly away, ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... The prelude to a beast-fight was frequently rather a "hunt," amounting to a demonstration of skill in dealing with wild animals which could hardly be said to fight, but which were difficult to capture or kill. Success with javelins or arrows required somewhat more skill and daring than ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

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

... to assist in the devotional exercises. At this moment the organ—a fine-toned instrument—struck up, and the choir sang some piece—known, I presume, only to themselves, for no others joined in it. This prelude I have since found is universal in America. In all places of worship provided with an organ, a "voluntary" on that instrument is the first exercise. In the present instance the choir had no sooner ceased than the Doctor stood up, having his cloak still resting upon his shoulders, and stretched ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... intended merely as a prelude to a narrative I am about to lay before the public, of one of the most memorable instances of the infatuation of gain to be found in the whole history of commerce. I allude to the famous Mississippi Bubble. It is a matter that has passed into a proverb, and become a phrase in ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... spectator of all musical time and existence, to whom it is not of the smallest importance whether a thing be new or old, so long as it is true. It is doubtful whether even the forms most peculiar to him (such as the arpeggio-prelude) are of his invention. Yet he left no form as he found it,—not even that most conventional of all, the Da Capo Aria, which he did not outwardly alter in the least. On the other hand, with every form he touched he said the last word. All the material that could be assimilated into a mature art ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... failures, or be discouraged by them, because many times the discouraging outlook is but the prelude to a bounteous harvest. Work with an undaunted faith in the mighty Invisible, knowing that you serve the only Power, are governed by the one Principle, Infinite Justice, that ever rewards according to service. Doing your ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... one jerk always led to another, so one blow was usually the prelude to a thrashing. Johnnie saw that he must stop the thing right there; must have instant help in diverting Barber. Taking a quick, deep breath, he sounded his call for aid—a ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... put in her lines, all leading up to, and centering in, the wish for the young gazelle's light footfall, the rest being only a prelude ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne

... the place. She had sunk back against the altar that was behind her. Her eyes were closed, her face a white mask of anguish; she looked as though about to swoon. Bough hailed the symptoms as favourable. Fainting was the prelude to caving in, with the women he knew. But when he stirred, her eyes were wide and preternaturally bright, and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... discharged, along with a sharper cracking of small arms. Pandemonium broke loose in Glidden's gang. No doubt, at least, of the effectiveness of the shot-guns! A medley of strange, sharp, enraged, and anguished cries burst upon the air, a prelude to a wild stampede. In a few seconds that lighted spot where the I.W.W. had grouped was vacant, and everywhere were fleeing forms, some swift, others slow. So far as Kurt could see, no one had been fatally injured. But many had been hurt, and that fact ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... in whose eyes the Modernist faith was a mere beggarly remnant, Meynell turned to the sceptic for whom it was only a modified superstition. An eloquent prelude, dealing with the preconceptions, the modern philosophy and psychology which lie at the root of religious thought to-day—and the rest of the sermon flowed on into what all Christian eloquence must ultimately be, the simple "preaching ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... helping to launch Claude in a new and suitable life. And behind the light absurdity of this quite unnecessary meal there was intention, grave and intense. The wasted two months must be made up for, the hours given to the French Revolution be redeemed. This meal was only the prelude to ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... capture of Vincennes was to be a prelude to taking Detroit. In both 1779 and 1780 he planned marches to the center of British western power. Neither time could he bring off a coordinated attack. The frontier was under too heavy pressure from the Ohio Indians led by Tory Henry Bird and the ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education

... does not appear to make a direct petition, but indirectly praises the grandeur of Montezuma and expresses his own ardent love for his native Huexotzinco. The song would appear to be used as a delicate prelude to the more serious negotiations. It is one of the few historical songs in the collection. From the references in verses 1 and 3 we infer that this singer held in his hand the painted book from which he recited the couplets. This may explain ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton

... not yet left his bed, sat by his wife's bedside a prey to anxiety and grief; for although she had resisted the first attack she was now, thirty-six hours after it had seized her, fast sinking. Gradually her sight and power of speech faded, and she sank into the state of coma which was the prelude of death, and lay quiet and motionless, seeming as if life had already departed. Suddenly Walter was surprised by the sound of many heavy feet ascending the stairs. He went out into the ante-room to learn the cause of this strange tumult, when five armed men, ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty

... to offer. He was no longer watching Maude. The dancing had ceased, and the floor had cleared. The orchestra had already commenced the prelude to a vaudeville turn, and the drop curtain ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

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

... Benjamin Beddome sounds like a prelude to the grand rally of the Christian Churches a generation later for united advance into foreign fields. It was an after-sermon hymn—like so many of Watts and Doddridge—and spoke a good man's longing to see all sects stand shoulder to shoulder ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... Marjorie's Prelude, Evie's Nocturne, Stephanie's Mazurka, and Gertie's recitation all went off without a hitch, and received their due reward of appreciation. It was now Rona's turn. For a moment she grew pale as she mounted the platform, then the coral flushed back into her cheeks. She had no time ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... was only a prelude, followed on 6 June by a blockade of the Greek coasts, established in pursuance of orders from Paris and London—pourpeser sur la Grece et lui montrer qu'elle etait a notre merci.[14] Even this measure, however, did not seem to M. Briand sufficient. He advocated intervention ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... nobility is not chimerical. Such titles must be found indeed, in the years which are to come; yet the prelude of their fame distinguishes these men from the crowd. Whenever the rightful possessor appears, will not the eyes of all spectators be fixed on him? I allude to scenes which I have witnessed. Will not even literary honours ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... trouble me, and has never ceased troubling me since that fatal day. The book the publisher puts asunder the author may not bring together, and I shall write to no purpose in one preface that "Evelyn Innes" is not a prelude to "Sister Teresa" and in another that "Sister Teresa" is not a sequel to "Evelyn Innes." Nor will any statement of mine made here or elsewhere convince the editors of newspapers and reviews to whom this book will be sent for criticism that it ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

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

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

... it fell, and we were wet through all day. The snow underfoot, however, was so much less and so much harder that we were able to proceed without preliminary trail breaking. But it was a most disagreeable day and the prelude to a more disagreeable night. Soft, wet snow clings to everything it touches. The dogs are soon carrying an additional burden; balls of snow form on all projecting tufts of hair; masses of snow must continually ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... too, my hearty, or I shan't be able to fiddle. Come, what will you have this fine morning?" said Harness, tuning his instrument. As soon as it was in tune he flourished a prelude from the top of the scale to the bottom, ending with an "Eh-haw! eh-haw!" in imitation of ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

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

... was a prelude, bright and childlike; her hands, that had just now twisted and twined the aromatic greenery, exhaled the pungency of crushed herbage, and recalled her old girlish ramblings through the wildness of the ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

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

... bitter air and foul, Still list'ning to my escort's warning voice, "Look that from me thou part not." Straight I heard Voices, and each one seem'd to pray for peace, And for compassion, to the Lamb of God That taketh sins away. Their prelude still Was "Agnus Dei," and through all the choir, One voice, one measure ran, that perfect seem'd The concord of their song. "Are these I hear Spirits, O master?" I exclaim'd; and he: "Thou aim'st aright: these ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... habitual prelude. "You see," she said, and stopped and began again. She wanted to tell them and with a clumsy simplicity she told them how these Hostels had arisen out of her desire that they should have something better than the uncomfortable lodgings in which they lived. ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... very angry. Presently the man on the balcony drew a revolver, it shone in the doubtful light, and he threatened the man below; but nothing further happened and presently the crowd dispersed, the man on the balcony retired and all was quiet. Perhaps this was the prelude to a murder, and I may have read about it afterwards in the newspaper without knowing how near I ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... general thing, a first fault draws many others in its train. As an impalpable flake is the beginning of an avalanche, so an imprudence is often the prelude to a ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

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

... prove an auspicious prelude to each ensuing season. You have this day to declare yourself head of a nation. 'And now, O Lord, my God, thou hast made thy servant ruler over the people. Give unto him an understanding heart, that he ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... first Discourse, delivered to the Academy students on the 10th of December, 1879, the new President took occasion to estimate the modern predicament and general position of Art, as a prelude to the consideration of its special developments, in later Discourses. "I wish in so doing," he said, "to seek the solution of certain perplexities and doubts which will often, in these days of restless self-questioning in which we live, ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys

... he received at the Academy was merely the prelude to that which awaited him at the National theatre. As soon as his carriage was seen at a distance, there arose a universal shout of joy. All the curb-stones, all the barriers, all the windows, were crammed with spectators, and scarcely was the carriage stopped when people were ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... fanciful variations upon the ancient creeds of the Christian Church, with which transatlantic religionists amuse themselves, might inspire morbid imaginations in Europe as well as in America; but before they can disturb the solemn harmony HERE they must prelude by a defiance, not only to common sense, but what is infinitely more appalling, to common usage. They must at once rank themselves with the low and the illiterate, for only such prefer the eloquence of the tub to that of the pulpit. The ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

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

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

... the welcome dusk blotted out the long shadows on the railroad tracks and the "Tigers" filed stealthily out of the yard to commence the skirmishing before supper, which always came as a prelude to the more important evening campaign. They darted up and down steps, rang doorbells, and raised eery cat-calls which echoed between the houses, and pelted pedestrians to their ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... theme—a cause he and his friends could understand and appreciate—and both before starting and at every pause he has something to say that is apposite and suggestive. His country's wintry state is the key-note of the first Introduction, which is an appropriate prelude to a great national tragedy; weird Border legends and the touching and mysterious silences of lone St. Mary's Lake fitly introduce the 'mysterious Man of Woe'; the third and the fourth Introductions, with their features of personal ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... allowed their claims, and imputed the severity of their judge to the partial malice of religious persecution. These present hardships, intolerable as they might appear, were represented as a slight prelude of the impending calamities. The Christians considered Julian as a cruel and crafty tyrant; who suspended the execution of his revenge till he should return victorious from the Persian war. They ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... the field daily, and no one overdoing. This ideal necessitates far larger athletic grounds than most of our colleges have reserved. It may necessitate the abolition of some of the big contests that have been the excitement of many thousands. But it must not be forgotten prelude and preparation for life; they must not be allowed to usurp the chief place in a man's thoughts or to unfit him for his greatest after-usefulness. [Footnote: Cf. Atlantic Monthly, vol. 90, p. 534; Outlook, vol. 98, p. 597.] Is it wrong to smoke? Statistics ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... moreover, a dangerous policy to insist on measures for which even Christian opinion was not ripe, and it led directly to the gravest troubles in the churches—troubles of which no man then living was to see the end. The first half century of prelude was a war of giants; but the main contest opened at Nicaea is not ended yet, or like to end before the Lord himself shall come to end it. It was the decision of Athanasius which made half the bitterness ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin

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

... time questions were over, following on the prelude of private business, the evening was getting on. Members evidently tired out; had crowded in to vote on the Pump-handle question; sat in serried rows during the squabbles of question-time; and as soon as business was actually reached, House swiftly emptied, leaving about a score of Members. TIME ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various

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

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

... Bancroft, and I should be equally credulous if President Lane should tell me that he was here at the founding of this Institution. [Laughter.] But instead of bringing those volumes of Bancroft's here, and reading them to you on this occasion, I will let the reporters publish them as the prelude to what I am going ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... of garments on the part of some of the company indicated that the prelude was near an end. Slowly the assembly was ushered from the room, along a hall, up a wonderful staircase, and at last into the august presence of His Serene Highness. Mac took note of the contortions through ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... book, and commenced, after a short prelude, one of my own songs. Surprise and pleasure overpowered me more utterly than the soft southern melodies had done. I was on the point of springing up and leaving the room, when my raptures were checked by our host, who turned round, and stopped short ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

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

... gentleness in that last scene in the arbour of Will's inn. The wafted scent of the heliotropes, which had never been planted in the garden since Marjory's death, the light in the room that had been hers, prelude the arrival at the gate of the stranger's carriage, with the black pine tops standing above it like plumes. And Will o' the Mill makes the acquaintance of his physician and friend, and goes at last upon his travels. In ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh

... was the signal for the degradation and dispersion of his whole race. His two surviving brothers, Demetrius and Thomas, reigned as despots of the Morea in Greece; but the ruin of the empire was the gloomy prelude to their own misfortunes. Demetrius became the pensioner of the new Turkish emperor Mohammed, and received a city of Thrace and some adjacent islands for his own maintenance and that of his followers. In this state of humiliating dependence he remained until death ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various

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

... Perforce they chaunt in spirit, not wars of clans: Yea, one day, conscious, they shall sing that song; One day by river clear of south or north, Pagan no more, the laurelled head shall rise, And chaunt the Warfare of the Realm of Souls, The anguish and the cleansing, last the crown - Prelude of ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... less imposing than the assemblage which listened to Mr. Bonar Law at Balmoral on Easter Tuesday, 1912; and the latter occasion, though never surpassed in splendour and magnitude by any single gathering, was in significance but a prelude to the magnificent climax reached in the following September on the day when the Covenant was signed ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... pleasures of the festive board, to which it is indeed as indispensable a prelude, as an overture is to an opera: and the host will thus acquire an additional claim to the gratitude of his guests. We urge this point more strongly, because, from want of attention to it, we have seen more than once persons whom many kindred ties would have drawn closely together, pass an entire ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... roof, and only separated from them by a partition, there brooded another human being helplessly awaiting a message which would never come, and listening, but how vainly, for the step and voice for which he hungered, though they were the prelude to further shame and ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

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

... that Richard Geyer to know his Bach so well! Yet the resemblance is far fetched, is only a hazy similarity. The triad of E-flat minor is common property, but something told me Wagner had been browsing on Bach; on this particular prelude had, in fact, got a starting point for the Norn music. The more I studied Wagner, the more I found Bach, and the more Bach, the better the music. Chopin knew his Bach backwards, hence the surprisingly fresh, vital quality of his music, despite its pessimistic coloring. Schumann loved Bach ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... and mellow chime had merged into the stillness did the intruder dare again to draw breath. Coming as it had the very moment that the door had closed noiselessly behind her, the double stroke had sounded to her like a knell: or, perhaps more like the prelude to the wild alarum of a tocsin, first striking her heart still with terror, then urging it ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

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

... Governor Micheltorena issued a decree which restored San Diego Mission temporalities to the management of the padre. He explained in his prelude that the decree was owing to the fact that the Mission establishments had been reduced to the mere space occupied by the buildings and orchards, that the padres had no support but that of charity, etc. Mofras gives the number of Indians ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... him in the place. She had sunk back against the altar that was behind her. Her eyes were closed, her face a white mask of anguish; she looked as though about to swoon. Bough hailed the symptoms as favourable. Fainting was the prelude to caving in, with the women he knew. But when he stirred, her eyes were wide and preternaturally bright, and held ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... this part of this country, Mister?" asked Uncle Nathan, who seemed to make the question a prelude to other inquiries. ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... the duke, 'no matter; stay with me a while. I wish your counsel about some affairs that concern me nearly.' He then told Valentine an artful story, as a prelude to draw his secret from him, saying that Valentine knew he wished to match his daughter with Thurio, but that she was stubborn and disobedient to his commands, 'neither regarding,' said he, 'that she is my child, nor fearing me as if I were her father. And I may say to thee, this ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... a solemn prelude rolled its waves of harmony through the peaceful sunny room, but soon the strains of the beautiful Motet "Cast thy burden on the Lord," swelled like the voice of some divine consoler. Watching the stately figure of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

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

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

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

... interest to us for another reason. It was the prelude to the first scene of Indian warfare which the eyes of Europeans were to behold in the northern region of the American continent. The Spaniards had been long established in the south, but no English settlement had yet been made on the shores of the New ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... know what I say. I sit here writing to you, and receiving all the town, who flock to this house; Sir Robert has already had three levees this morning, and the rooms still overflowing-they overflow up to me. You will think this the prelude to some victory! On the contrary, when you receive this, there will be no longer a Sir Robert Walpole: you must know him for the future by the title of Earl of Orford. That other envied name expires next ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

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

... spot where the doctor was standing, and said, "Why, doctor, what has happened? You look almost as happy as I feel. And little Fanny, too, is really looking quite rosy. I should not be surprised if my wedding should be a prelude to another." ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... Schwerin, who commands on that side, assaults accordingly; with the due steadfastness and stormfulness: throwing shells and balls by way of prelude. Friedrich, with some group of staff-officers and dignitaries, steps out on the Bubenetsch post, to see how this affair of the Ziscaberg will prosper: the Praguers thereabouts, seeing so many dignitaries, turn cannon on them. "Disperse, IHR ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

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

... long prelude, stating how fortunate Monette was to have such a friend as himself, a man who knew everybody and everything, he proceeded to inform him of the pleasing intelligence that his daughter was in the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

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

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

... "the whole thing seems to have inspired her with terror rather than grief. What you say about the man is true, or it should be; but then, you see, the excitement and jealousy that was the prelude to this tragedy had made an evil and feverish element round about him, from which he does not seem to be able to escape. However, we have advised him to go away—in fact, to cross the seas; but he is in such a state that I do not think he can go unless someone ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... said Indians of the dispositions of the General Government on this subject and of their reasonable desire that there should be a cessation of hostilities as a prelude to a treaty. If, however, notwithstanding your intimations to them, they should continue their hostilities or meditate any incursions against the frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania or against any of the troops or posts of the United States, and it should appear ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson

... by which means the enemy still advances and gains ground, similar to the case (exteriorly) of that once famous and flourishing city and temple of Jerusalem, when it was by Titus Vespasian utterly demolished[17].—All which seem to prelude or indicate, that the Lord is about to inflict these long-threatened, impending but protracted judgments[18] upon such a sinning land, church and people. And as many of these worthies have assured us, that judgments are abiding this church and nation; so our present condition ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... Now, although, from the point of view of those bodies who adopt it, such a policy has many advantages, and is perhaps a tactical necessity, this levelling down of labour to the minimum of individual efficiency is denounced by many critics as a prelude to industrial suicide, and the alarm which these persons feel is doubtless intelligible enough. It is, however, largely superfluous. The levelling process in question must of course involve a certain amount ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

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

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

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

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

... subsequent avowal to friends that an exposure of this artifice was only another of his intellectual hoaxes, need be wholly credited. If he had designed the complete work in advance, he scarcely would have made so harsh a prelude of rattle-pan rhymes to the delicious melody of the second stanza,—not even upon his theory of the fantastic. Of course an artist, having perfected a work, sees, like the first Artist, that it is good, and sees why it is good. A subsequent analysis, coupled with a disavowal ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe

... were dark days for Gladys. Her father, whom she loved—and, until now, had never realized how much she loved—lay seriously ill. He had had a stroke which, although fortunately slight, must, as the doctor said, be regarded as a prelude to what would happen, unless he was kept very quiet. And to keep him quiet was not an easy thing to do. His mind continually reverted to what had just taken place, and he was for ever asking Gladys to tell him whether anything further had occurred in connection with it, whether there ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... been cited by Cullere, is the fear of stealing objects in view, and is often the prelude of kleptomania. The latter disease has gained notoriety in this country, and nearly every large store has agents to watch the apparently growing number of kleptomaniacs. These unfortunate persons, not seldom from the highest classes of society, are unable to combat an intense desire ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... fact, to choose between national unity and State unity; and she chose the latter, partly because Prussia really decided the matter for her, partly because she realised that the establishment of a strong German State was the essential prelude to the creation of a strong united nation. Austria had to be shut out in 1866 in order that she might be received back again at some later date on Germany's own terms. In the second place Austria was in no sense the oppressor of Germany as she had been of Italy. She was simply ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... God, I do, noble lady," said he. "Ah, how wonderfully has everything fallen out! How thoughtlessly have we sipped joys and sorrows from the full cup now drained to the last drop; and we might fancy the past a mere prelude to the real scene for which we now wait armed by experience. How different has been the reality! Yet let us not regret the past, but rather rejoice that we have not lived in vain. As respects our old friend also, I have a firm hope that ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.

... admiration he awakened in the minds of many to whom such "strumming" as his was infinitely more delightful than more practiced, finished playing. Just now he seemed undecided,—he commenced a dainty little prelude of Chopin's, then broke suddenly off, and wandered into another strain, wild, pleading, pitiful, and passionate,—a melody so weird and dreamy that even the stolid Macfarlane paused in his toddy-sipping, and Duprez ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

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

... common to the Bards, not only of that age, but subsequently. Or it may be that the banquet, at which the British leaders were undoubtedly entertained in the hall of Eiddin, was looked upon as the sure prelude to war, and that in that sense the mead and wine ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin

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

... Monteith, set in its woods, with its magical shadows and soft gleams. There is a loveliness, a gentleness and peace about it more like "lone St. Mary's Lake," or Derwent Water, than of any of its sister lochs. It is lovely rather than beautiful, and is a sort of gentle prelude, in the minor key, to the coming glories and intenser charms of Loch Ard and ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... began she heard, clear above the murmur within, the roar of the crowds outside, who still demanded their God. Then, with a crash, the huge organ awoke, pierced by the cry of the trumpets and the maddening throb of drums. There was no delicate prelude here, no slow stirring of life rising through labyrinths of mystery to the climax of sight—here rather was full-orbed day, the high noon of knowledge and power, the dayspring from on high, dawning in mid-heaven. Her heart quickened to meet it, and her reviving confidence, ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... choruses repeated; but not a word was intentionally spoken to give offence to our guards. They were, nevertheless, evidently dissatisfied with our proceedings, as will soon appear. Their moroseness was a prelude to what was to follow. We were, in a short time, forbidden to pass along the common gangway, and every attempt to do so was repelled by the bayonet. Although thus incommoded our mirth still continued. Songs were still sung, accompanied ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

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

... the overture to some strange and wizard spectacle, closes this opening prelude. Wilt thou hear more? Come with thy faith prepared. I ask not the blinded eyes, but the awakened sense. As the enchanted Isle, remote ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

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

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

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

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

... hollers. The silence began to frighten them, when suddenly the quiet air was shattered by a shriek which would have done credit to the biggest of boat-birds or of lions, but which was—the children discovered after a moment's panic—only the prelude to an outburst of grief on the chaperon's part. When the inarticulate stage of her sorrow was passed, she demanded instant speech with her mamma. She would seem to have expressed a sentiment common to the majority, for three ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly

... changing landscape and the little adventures of the caravansaries; both loved most of all the men and women they met. Once only Synge seems to have forgotten humanity when he took to the road, that time which he has recorded in "Prelude":— ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

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

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

... by the narrative power displayed in Erewhon that she urged Butler to write a novel, and we shall probably not be far wrong in regarding the biography of John Pickard Owen as Butler's trial trip in the art of fiction—a prelude to The Way of All Flesh, which ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... he remembered how at that very moment two swallows shot by the open window, uttering their eager little note; the room swam with him, and he thought he was going to reel and fall. For a moment he saw nothing and knew nothing, except that he had reached the end of the short prelude on the lute, and that he must find voice to sing for his liberty and Ortensia's, ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat; O'er-importuned brows becloud the mandate, Carelessness or consciousness—the gesture. For he bears an ancient wrong about him, 90 Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces, Hears, yet one time more, the 'customed prelude— "How shouldst thou, of all men, smite, and save us?" Guesses what is like to prove the sequel— "Egypt's ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... which a stair led skyward, passing the neighbourhood of the organ, and having a door to its loft. As he ascended, came a pause in the music;—and then, like the breaking up of a summer cloud in the heavenliest of rain-showers, began the prelude to the solo in the Messiah, THOU DIDST NOT LEAVE HIS SOUL IN HELL. Up still the curate crept softly. All at once a rich full contralto voice—surely he had heard it before—came floating out on the torrent, every tone bearing a word of ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... the piece, given in the Preface, is variously corroborated, and has not been called in question by any critic. Perhaps this brief ode was sung as a prelude to the dance, or it may be that the seven lines are only a fragment. This, indeed, is most likely, as we have several odes in the next decade, all said to have been used at ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

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

... forthwith began to trouble me, and has never ceased troubling me since that fatal day. The book the publisher puts asunder the author may not bring together, and I shall write to no purpose in one preface that "Evelyn Innes" is not a prelude to "Sister Teresa" and in another that "Sister Teresa" is not a sequel to "Evelyn Innes." Nor will any statement of mine made here or elsewhere convince the editors of newspapers and reviews to whom this book will be sent ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... of "Two Lovely Black Eyes" came forth, but ended abruptly in a squeak. That, they were told, was his wife, Eliza, who had come out and slapped him. Eliza had joined the Salvation Army and sang only hymns. This was the prelude to "Where is My Wandering Boy To-night?" rendered in a way, Bill remarked sotto voce, calculated to keep him wandering. But Beppo and Ben sat on the edge of their chairs, entranced. It was evidently ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... Colombini, who founded the Order of the Gesuati or Brothers of the Poor in Christ; the blessed Bernardo, who founded that of Monte Oliveto; were all Sienese. Few cities have given four such saints to modern Christendom. The biography of one of these may serve as prelude to an account of the Sienese monastery of ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

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

... asked her in the presence of her mother where she would spend the night with me, there or at my house. The mother said that we would settle it after supper, and I made no objection, not liking to tell her that in my house the supper would be more succulent, and a better prelude for the kind of exercise I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... back to a certain soft September night last year, when he and Blaikie had stood on the eastern outskirts of Bethune listening to a similar overture—the prelude to the Battle of Loos. But this overture was ten times more awful, and, from a material British point of view, ten times more inspiring. It would have thrilled old Blaikie's fighting spirit, thought Wagstaffe. But Loos had taken his friend from him, and he, Wagstaffe, only was ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

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

... gamelioi theoi]. Secondly, on account of the great expiatory celebration of the Lemuria, when women abstained from the bath and the careful cosmetic decoration of their persons so necessary as a prelude to marriage rites. Thirdly, as some say, because May was the month of old men, Majus a Majoribus, and therefore June, being thought to be the month of the young, Junius a Junioribus, was to be preferred. The Romans, however, held other seasons ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various

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

... very still. Only hard by One bird-throat poured its passion through the gloom, And the whole night breathlessly listened. A twig Snapped, the song ceased, the intense dumb night was all One passion of expectation—as if that song Were prelude, and ere long the heavens and earth Would burst into one great triumphant psalm. The song ceased only as if that small bird-throat Availed no further. Would the next great chord Ring out from harps in flaming seraph hands Ranged ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... which was like the prelude to a solemn piece of music, gave Fan the idea that something of very great importance was about to follow. But, alas! the mixture, and the rose-honey sweetness of hope, failed to prevent the attack which Constance had feared, and he coughed so long and so violently ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

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

... special privileges which had been conferred upon him by Artabanus III., and resume the ordinary status of a Parthian feudatory. Izates, who feared that if he yielded he would find that this demand was only a prelude to others more intolerable, replied by a positive refusal, and immediately prepared to resist an invasion. He sent his wives and children to the strongest fortress within his dominions, collected all the grain that his ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... position held at this time by both Erland of Jura and Sweyn of Colonsay — vassals both of Hakon of Norway — was shown in the conversation that was the prelude to the murder of the good Earl Hamish of Bute. Of the attitude held by these two island kings towards Scotland, Kenric, however, knew nothing, and though it may be that he was eager enough to meet Earl Sweyn the Silent in mortal combat, yet he did not forget ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton

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

... shines, we must love it and think of its treasures of wealth to the world. When the cloud rises, we must admire its somber glory, for it is big with blessings. The morning must be accepted as a rosy blessing, the evening as a quiet prelude to repose; the day as an opportunity for achievements worthy of us, and the night ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... hear the prelude,— I was thinking of these old things. She is fairer and wiser and older ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

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

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

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

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

... illustration more impressive than in Abraham Lincoln, whose life, career, and death might be chanted by a Greek chorus as at once the prelude and the epilogue of the most imperial theme of modern times? Born as lowly as the Son of God, in a hovel; of what real parentage we know not; reared in penury, squalor, with no gleam of light, nor fair surrounding; a young manhood ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... liberated her foot, spun about, and dashed into a stormy prelude, modulating into the accompaniment to the refrain of Sullivan's Once Again, which ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

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

... from this period comprises the three songs of opus 11 ("Mein Liebchen,"[2] "Du liebst mich nicht," "Oben, wo die Sterne gluehen"); the two songs of op. 12 ("Nachtlied" and "Das Rosenband"); the Prelude and Fugue (op. 13); the second piano suite (op. 14)—begun in the days of his Darmstadt professorship; the "Serenade" (op. 16); the two "Fantasiestuecke" of op. 17: "Erzaehlung" and the much-played "Hexentanz"; the "Barcarolle" and "Humoreske" of op. 18; and the "Wald-Idyllen" ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman

... which is, like the wampum-belt, a common tongue for tribes and peoples not speaking any language but their own. They were set to old airs—lullabies, chansons, barcarolles, serenades, taken out of the folk-lore of many lands. Time and again had these simple arcadian airs been sung as a prelude to some tribal act that would not bear the search-light of civilisation—little by the Indians east of the Rockies, for they have hard hearts and fierce tongues, but much by the Shuswaps, Siwashes, and other tribes of the Pacific slope, whose natures are for peace ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

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

... the door closed, the bashful Prosper felt the murky eyes of the widow fixed upon him. A gentle cough, accompanied with the resigned laying of a black mittened hand upon her chest, suggested a genteel prelude to conversation, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... to them! And while she was there, with us, how short the time seemed and how it dragged when she had gone. The worst thing possible for me, this seeing her and being with her; I knew it. I knew it perfectly well. But, knowing it, and realizing that it could not last and that it was but the prelude to a worse loneliness which was sure to come, made no difference. I dreaded to be well again, fearing that would mean the end of ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... which first glowed in the cheeks of Cecilia from expectation, now rose yet higher from resentment: she thought herself already insulted by a prelude so ostentatious and humiliating to the proposals which were to follow; and she angrily determined, with whatever pain to her heart, to assert her own dignity by refusing them at once, too well satisfied by what she now saw ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... the argument, the overture, the prelude, there could be a sailing schooner with sails all set coming into the Golden Gate, in the full brilliant sunlight, or mysteriously through a fog, or against a sunset sky. It should be "full and by" like that beautiful painting by Coulter in the stock exchange ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey

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

... must live Knowing that he grows wiser every day Or else not live at all, and seeing too Each little drop of wisdom as it falls Into the dimpling cistern of his heart: For this unnatural growth the trainer blame, Pity the tree,"— "The Prelude," ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

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

... he can do it," said Bob, with no small amount of pride; and Leander, with his head held so high that it was almost impossible to see his instrument, struck one or two notes as a prelude, while Joe took his station at a point about as far distant from the ring as the door of the tent would ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis

... upon by scribblers. In the pit, they exerted themselves with great spirit and vivacity; called out for the tunes of obscene songs, talked loudly at intervals of Shakespeare and Jonson, played on their catcalls a short prelude of terrour, clamoured vehemently for a prologue, and clapped with great dexterity at the first entrance ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... prologue, four acts, and epilogue, words by the composer, was first performed at La Scala, Milan, in 1868. The "Prologue in the Heavens" contains five numbers, a prelude, and chorus of the mystic choir; instrumental scherzo, preluding the appearance of Mephistopheles; dramatic interlude, in which he engages to entrap Faust; a vocal scherzo by the chorus of cherubim; and the Final Psalmody by the penitents ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton

... beautiful with its floral decorations on this festival. The altar shone with sacramental silver, and rare was the music that quickened the hearts of the great congregation to harmonious tunefulness. The boys in their choral, Miss Ives in her solos, above all, the organist, in voluntary, prelude, and accompaniment, how glorious! If a soul in the church escaped thankfulness in presence of those flowers, in hearing of that music, I know not by what force it could have been conducted that bright morning to the feet of Love. It was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... to Norway, Ibsen's correspondence became very scant, and we have no letters dating from the period when he was at work on The Master Builder. On the other hand, we possess a curious lyrical prelude to the play, which he put on paper on March 16, 1892. It is said to have been his habit, before setting to work on a play, to "crystallise in a poem the mood which then possessed him;" but the following is the only one of these keynote poems which has been published. I give ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen

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

... our credit that after such an evening dish-washing was no longer a task, but rather a delightful prelude to another mythological feast. We wandered with Ulysses and shuddered at Polyphemus; we went in quest of the Golden Fleece, and watched the sack of Troy; we came to know Orpheus and Eurydice and Pyramus and Thisbe; and we sowed dragon's teeth and saw armed men spring up before us. Since ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

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

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

... It had been the prelude to many a storm. She got up and turned to the window. "You can read them all if you like," she said. "I see Dad on the terrace. I am just going to speak ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... a prelude that Beatrix bowed in recognition of her cousin's introduction. Even as she bowed, there came a swift realization that she was facing no anticlimax. And yet the man before her was in no wise the ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray

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

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

... fire, being the male influence, would assimilate with and act as an antidote upon the mephitic smoke, which was a female influence.[36] Besides this, as a further charm to exorcise the portent, the dance called Sambaso, which is still performed as a prelude to theatrical exhibitions by an actor dressed up as a venerable old man, emblematic of long life and felicity, was danced on a plot of turf in front of the Temple Kofukuji. By these means the smoke ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

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

... sympathy it transplanted itself to my own sleep, settled itself there, and is to this hour a part of the fixed dream-scenery which revolves at intervals through my sleeping life. This it was:—She would hear a trumpet sound—though perhaps as having been the prelude to the solemn entry of the judges at a town which she had once visited in her childhood; other preparations would follow, and at last all the solemnities of a great trial would shape themselves and fall into settled images. The audience was assembled, the judges were arrayed, the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... expression, while the philosopher, who renounces dramatic representation, is condemned to be avowedly inadequate. Love, to the lover, is a noble and immense inspiration; to the naturalist it is a thin veil and prelude to the self-assertion of lust. This opposition has prevented philosophers from doing justice to the subject. Two things need to be admitted by anyone who would not go wholly astray in such speculation: one, that love has an animal basis; the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... inquisitive people will, I do not doubt, be asking, after all this prelude, if my pictures are true pictures? The question—the courteous reader will allow me to say—is an impertinent one. It is but a shabby truth that wants an author's affidavit to make it trustworthy. I shall ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... which preceded the Renaissance. It was thus that the necessary milieu was prepared. The organization of the five great nations, and the levelling of political and spiritual interests under political and spiritual despots, formed the prelude to that drama of liberty of which the Renaissance was the first act, the Reformation the second, the Revolution the third, and which we nations of the present are still evolving in the establishment of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... As prelude to the scene, as means to aid Our younger comrades in its construing, Pray spread your scripture, and rehearse in brief The reasonings here of late—to whose effects Words of to-night ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... the war-song, and danced with the same frightful gesticulations that we had seen used in more serious circumstances, to work themselves up into a degree of that mechanical fury, which, among all uncivilized nations, is the necessary prelude to a battle; for dispassionate courage, a strength of mind that can surmount the sense of danger, without a flow of animal spirits by which it is extinguished, seems to be the prerogative of those who have projects of more lasting importance, and a keener sense of honour and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... to Paul some little insight into her own history. It would be a prudery, she said, to pretend to be sensitive about it any longer—the whole world knew the sordid and melancholy truth; and this sounded like a prelude to a much fuller explanation than she was for the moment disposed to make, and it helped Paul to understand the hints in which she chose to set forward the fact that she was a person of a lonely heart, that ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... in a church at New Laodicea. The bell had ceased pealing and the great organ began its prelude with deep bass notes that vibrated through the stately building. The members of the choir were all in their places in the rear gallery, and prepared in order their music in the racks before them. Below the ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock

... brought him in, and gave him a place among the musicians, and commanded that he should give them a trial of his powers. So the minstrel, after playing a prelude on his harp, sang a song of the land ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... suffer, and endure, to keep myself in, and progress in this condition; but my sufferings, struggles, and endurances, being for love and in love and because of love, were and are in themselves beautiful, and leave in the recollection nothing inharmonious. They are the difficult prelude to a glorious melody. ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley

... A plaintive prelude followed the command, and she sang. No description could do justice to the magnificent voice, as it swelled deep and full in its organ-like tones; now thrillingly low in its wailing melody, and ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... the age of 54, and finding himself in first-class physical and mental condition, except for a high blood pressure, which was certainly the prelude to a later arterio-sclerosis, decided that he would be doing himself a service, and put himself in a better position to write with some authority upon the effects of the goat-glands, if ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower

... the exact time at which Courtship begins? It may or may not be preceded by Love; it may coincide with the birth of the tender passion; it may possibly be well in advance of Cupid's darts; or, sad to say, it may be little more than the prelude ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux

... heard: a modern, welcome sound, breaking in distractingly on the primeval silence. Kurt hastened to the road and saw the encouraging prelude of dust. The passing tourist gave him the requisite supply of gasoline and continued on ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... quickly in the direction of the mission, Pomponio guarded by a man on each side, grasping his pinioned arms. Alas! Was this the end of his long, long planning; was this the outcome of the insurrection which was to have been the prelude to a glorious victory, that he should have been caught through his own carelessness and carried off ignominiously to prison? Pomponio could have sacrificed his life gladly for the cause he had so much at heart; but to be ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... to it. It would be ample to live on till the men could set to work and earn a maintenance for them. No word was spoken of her marriage, but it lay in the offing of their argument as the happy finale that the long toil of the return journey and the combination of resources were to prelude. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... impossibility of anchoring at this island, occasioned a general melancholy on board; for we considered it as little less than the prelude to our destruction; and our despondency was increased by a disappointment we met with the succeeding night; for, as we were plying under top-sails, with an intention of getting nearer to the island, and of sending our boat on shore to load with cocoa-nuts ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... this, in the swing of tendencies, a left revolutionary movement began to take shape, but in Italy it never went further than the "field of phrases," whereas in Russian Socialistic circles it became the prelude of Bolscevism. "Reformism," "revolutionarism," "centrism," this is a terminology of which even the echoes are now spent—but in the great river of Fascism are currents which flowed from Sorel, from Peguy, from Lagardelle and the "Mouvement Socialiste," from Italian syndicalists which were ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various

... and wine instead of being the body of their feasts, as with other nations, it is but the spice used to add a flavor to the whole. I know not that these remarks of mine have aught to do with my story, but I throw them out by way of a prelude to—some will say excuse ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... youth applied - "Cast, my dear lad, that cursed gloom aside: There are for all things time and place; appear Grave in your pulpit, and be merry here: Now take your wine—for woes a sure resource, And the best prelude to a long discourse." James half obey'd, but cast an angry eye On the fair lass, who still stood watchful by; Resolving thus, "I have my fears—but still I must perform my duties, and I will: No love, no interest, shall my mind ...
— Tales • George Crabbe

... was played with a firm, elastic touch, the opening chords struck, and a great shining voice, masterful, like a golden trumpet, filled the room. Caroline sat dumb; Miss Honey, instinctively humming the prelude, got up from her foot-stool and followed the music, unconscious that she walked. She had been privileged to hear more good singing in her eight years than most people have in twenty-four, had Miss Honey, and she ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... hear, Those thrilling sounds that call the might Of old Clan-Alpine to the fight. Thick beat the rapid notes, as when The mustering hundreds shake the glen, And hurrying at the signal dread, 'Fine battered earth returns their tread. Then prelude light, of livelier tone, Expressed their merry marching on, Ere peal of closing battle rose, With mingled outcry, shrieks, and blows; And mimic din of stroke and ward, As broadsword upon target jarred; And groaning pause, ere yet again, Condensed, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... sight. It had been the dreariest of days. My eyes had followed the course of solitary drops rolling down the window-panes, until my head ached. Toward nightfall I could distinguish a low, wailing tone, moaning through the air; a quiet prelude to a coming change in the weather, which was foretold also by little rents in the thick mantle of cloud, which had shrouded the sky all day. The storm of rain was about to be succeeded by a storm of wind. Any change would be ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

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

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

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

... woefully, from his own and his people's point of view, did he overestimate his strength at the outset. For the time he contents himself with the backwater of Nish for the scene of his oratory of conquest. His vainglorious words may well prove in their environment the prelude of a compulsory confession of failure, which is likely to come at a far briefer interval than the eighteen months which separate the imaginary hope of Paris from ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... prospects. Russia's economy grew 6.6% in 2006 and inflation growth was below 10% for the first time in the past 10 years. Russia shows signs of increasing its ties to the global economy, having signed a bilateral market access agreement with the US as a prelude to possible WTO entry. Nevertheless, serious problems persist. Oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80% of exports, leaving the country vulnerable to swings in world commodity prices. Russia's manufacturing base is dilapidated and must be replaced or ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

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

... value. In his "Policratic" is found a satire on a sort of personage who was then beginning to play his part again, after an interruption of several centuries, namely, the curialis, or courtier; a criticism on histrions who, with their indecent farces, made a rough prelude to modern dramatic art; a caricature of those fashionable singers who disgraced the religious ceremonies in the newly erected cathedrals by their songs resembling those "of women ... of sirens ... of nightingales and parrots."[281] He ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

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

... Austrian crown. Frederick openly and cynically announced the maxim which seems in secret to have guided many monarchs, that personal honesty had no part in the business of being a king. His rash and conscienceless seizure of Silesia was successful, but it proved the prelude to a quarter-century of repeated wars which involved almost the whole of Europe and brought his own country to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... boy that Richard Geyer to know his Bach so well! Yet the resemblance is far fetched, is only a hazy similarity. The triad of E-flat minor is common property, but something told me Wagner had been browsing on Bach; on this particular prelude had, in fact, got a starting point for the Norn music. The more I studied Wagner, the more I found Bach, and the more Bach, the better the music. Chopin knew his Bach backwards, hence the surprisingly fresh, vital quality of ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... and wondered which she loved best—the calm that lay upon the sea at dawn, or the calm that was the prelude to the night. Silvery were these dawns of the summer days. Here and there the waters gleamed like the scales of some lovely fish. Mysterious lights, like those in the breast of the opal, shone in the breast of the sea, stirred, surely travelled ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... begged to state that his father was quite as respectable as Mr. Gunter's father; to which Mr. Gunter replied that his father was to the full as respectable as Mr. Noddy's father, and that his father's son was as good a man as Mr. Noddy, any day in the week. As this announcement seemed the prelude to a recommencement of the dispute, there was another interference on the part of the company; and a vast quantity of talking and clamoring ensued, in the course of which Mr. Noddy gradually allowed ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... own; but it forms no proper part of the history of the Reformation. It was a separate phenomenon, provoked by the same causes which produced their true fruit at a later period; but it formed no portion of the stem on which those fruits ultimately grew. It was a prelude which was played out, and sank into silence, answering for the time no other end than to make the name of heretic odious in the ears of the English nation. In their recoil from their first failure, the people stamped their hatred of heterodoxy into their language; and in the word miscreant, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... deep meditative state. Her gaze was directed inward; the gentle depths of her eyes became expressionless. She gave a certain sigh, the prelude to the ecstatic breathless trance. For a time she had fled to the questionless realm, ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

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

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

... of Mr. and Mrs. Buxton, Mr. and Mrs. Cobden Unwin (in conjunction with Mrs. Saul Solomon), Lady Scott of Westminster, Mrs. S. J. Colenso of Amersham, and Mr. H. E. Wood, J.P., of Camberwell (the latter being a prelude to a successful meeting of the delegates with the Baptist Council of England), Sir Albert Spicer, M.P., and Lady Spicer, and Mr. and Mrs. Harris of Dulwich, receptions — some of them attended by English and Colonial guests — held at the residences ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... you sang what life has found The falsest of fair tales. Earth blew a far-horn prelude all around, That native music of her forest home, While from the sea's blue fields and syren dales Shadows and light noon spectres of the foam Riding the summer gales On aery viols plucked ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... save and redeem and restore, snatch Saul, the mistake, Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now,—and bid him awake from the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set clear and safe in new light and new life,—a new harmony yet to be run and continued ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... much of his hair out of his eyes as he could reach with one hand, cleared his throat, looked dreamily over the top of the piano at a photograph of Archie's father-in-law, Mr. Daniel Brewster, played a prelude, and began to sing in a weak, high, composer's voice. All composers sing exactly alike, and they have to be ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... listen, reluctantly and ungraciously. There was a pause. "Now she's going to stop. It's time," he muttered. But the piano began again — a short prelude which he knew, and the voice was soon in the midst of the Dream Song from "La ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

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

... movements, their varying rhythms and the strange thrill of their wild dissonances are absolutely enthralling. Charles Boner, in his work on Transylvania, says that even the aged find it impossible to resist the dance when a gypsy band invites them to it. Their prelude is slow and sonorous, the music quickens, there is a rush of tones, the fantastic melody hastens on at a head-long pace—every one, old and young, is under ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

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

... only natural that in time of peace a brave knight like Acton should turn his thoughts from war to love-making, and therefore I shall make no excuse for relating a little experience of his which must be introduced as a prelude to the account of the formation of the ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery

... village of Ossossane, where a pit ten feet deep by thirty feet wide had been dug. There on scaffolds about the pit they placed the bodies and bones, carefully wrapped in furs and covered with bark. The assembled mourners then gave themselves up to feasting and games, as a prelude to the final act of this drama of death. They lined the pit with costly furs and in the centre placed kettles, household goods, and weapons for the chase, all these, like the bodies and bones, supposed to be indwelt by spirits. They laid the dead bodies in rows on the floor of the pit, and threw ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis

... regret, at first, I found him alone; but I derived consolation from the assurance, that, wherever the engaging boy had gone, his mother had accompanied him. Even more than at my first visit, the artist was frigidly reserved and full of warning-off politeness. With but a brief prelude of courteous commonplaces, he called me to the business of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

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

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

... says my father sternly, 'what is the meaning of yours and your sister's playing thus upon my weakness? It is what I can upon no account forgive. It looks as if you were weary of me, and wanted to break my heart. To what purpose is all this prelude of yours, to introduce to me somebody, who, by her likeness to my daughter, may expose me to your scoff and raillery? This is a disobedience I never ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... leave. As the door closed, the bashful Prosper felt the murky eyes of the widow fixed upon him. A gentle cough, accompanied with the resigned laying of a black mittened hand upon her chest, suggested a genteel prelude to ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

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

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

... misnomer could scarcely be conceived. Well, there was no choice; so I took my place upon the crowded deck of the little craft, and in a drizzling shower of chilly rain, and amid more noise, confusion, and bustle, than would prelude the launch of a line-of-battle ship, we "sidled," goose-fashion, from the shore, and ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever

... was not merely a new way of considering human beings in their public capacity; it meant also a new kind of sensitiveness to their environment. If we turn, say, from Pope's 'The Rape of the Lock' to Wordsworth's 'The Prelude', it is as if we have passed from a saloon crowded with a bewigged and painted company, wittily conversing in an atmosphere that has become rather stuffy, into the freshness of a starlit night. And just as, on stepping ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow

... joy, the buoyancy, the resilience, the indomitable and irrepressible hopefulness of Youth are compacted in the lines of the play. The keynote is sounded, with subtle symbolism, in the Prelude, in which the King ranks above all matters of State or of Humanity the circumstances that two gray hairs had made their appearance behind the ear that morning.... Dramatic power, philosophy and lyric charm are brilliantly blended in a work of art that has ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

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

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

... the court-martial was in keeping with that prelude. No effort was spared in stifling all the evidence on Lord Cochrane's side, and in adducing false testimony against him. Logbooks and witnesses alike were tampered with. In support of his scheme for annihilating the whole French fleet, Lord Cochrane produced in ...
— 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

... His prelude, played on flageolet, In clear and clarion tones, broke through The still of dawn and fell on ears Of foes, who crept upon him, the ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

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

... with a description of the ruins of eastern America. Although the Martians who survived terrestrial bacteria have left the planet, astronomical observations show a recurrence on the red planet of the same lights that were a prelude to the first onslaught. The conclusion is inevitable: a second invasion is on the way. Serviss pictures the gathering together of the most famous scientists of the day—Edison, Roentgen, Lord Kelvin and others. The Martian machines ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss

... yet in his mind when, first one and then another, with every variety of pace and voice—one deep as the bell from a cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz—the clocks began to strike the hour ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Lovely Black Eyes" came forth, but ended abruptly in a squeak. That, they were told, was his wife, Eliza, who had come out and slapped him. Eliza had joined the Salvation Army and sang only hymns. This was the prelude to "Where is My Wandering Boy To-night?" rendered in a way, Bill remarked sotto voce, calculated to keep him wandering. But Beppo and Ben sat on the edge of their chairs, entranced. It was evidently a novel evening ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... frivolous—who held that the best course for the Government would be to withdraw from Ireland for the time being and leave Ulster and the Rest to come to an agreement of their own, either with or without a bloody prelude. And there were other critics—not much more frivolous—who replied that, if we walked out of Ireland and left Ulster and the Rest to come to terms, they might get to understand one another to such good purpose that we should ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various

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

... after observing them more closely, we should ourselves seek a communication. Such seemed to have been the conduct of these Australians; and I am persuaded that their appearance on the morning when the tents were struck was a prelude to their coming down, and that had we remained a few days longer, a friendly communication would have ensued. The way was, however, prepared for the next ship which may enter this port, as it was to us in King George's Sound by captain Vancouver and the ship Elligood, ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders

... note, there was a brusqueness in the gesture which would have surprised his ordinary acquaintances, and did remind Mr. Scratchley of certain "warm nights" in the House. "You know the contents of this, Mr. Scratchley?" he said without prelude, and in a tone which matched ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

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

... impending general European revolution, the more candid publicists of Social-Revolutionary tendencies are already expressing unceremoniously their hope that the Russian movement of hostility to the Government only presents a prelude to that general European upheaval which, among other things, is to destroy utterly the monarchical order of contemporary Europe. When one places oneself on this standpoint, one cannot help perceiving ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf

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

... allegiance, alliance *Linquo, lictum leave delinquent, relict, derelict *Litera letter illiterate, obliterate Locus place collocation, dislocate Loquor, locutus speak soliloquy, elocution Ludo, lusum play prelude, illusory /Lux, lucis light lucid, luminary Lumen, luminis / *Magnus great magnate, magnificent *Malus bad, evil malaria, malnutrition Mando order mandatory, commandment Manus hand manual, manufacture *Mare sea maritime, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

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

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

... hum of the boys reciting their lessons, comes back to me even now. If I could properly train up a number of dogs, tigers and other ferocious beasts, and put a few lines of these on the field of battle, that, I thought, would serve very well as an inspiriting prelude. With our personal prowess let loose thereafter, victory should by no means be out of reach. And, as the picture of this wonderfully simple strategy waxed vivid in my imagination, the victory of my ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

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

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

... standing room to one horse and cart, bloomed—not by right of lease, but by permission of the railway company—a wealth of annual flowers, the lowest (pansies and such like) at the outer edge, the tallest against the unsightly fence. This was the prelude. In the alley the fence was clothed with vines; the windows—of which there were two—were decked with boxes of plumbago—pink, violet, white and blue, and of lady-ferns and maiden-hair. The back yard was a soft, smooth turf wherever there were not flowers. Along the back doors and windows of ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable

... must remind the reader is Thursday night, on Tuesday morning we left London, spent one day in Paris, and are now sleeping among the Alps, sharpish work, but very satisfactory, and a prelude to better things by and by. The next day we made rather a mistake, instead of going straight on to Briancon we went up a valley towards Mont Pelvoux (a mountain nearly 14,000 feet high), intending to cross a high pass above La Berarde down to Briancon, ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler

... to volcanic fires was but the prelude to a period of eruptive action which has not been paralleled ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... I would not go back. I would not lift a finger, or say a word, to restore the past time, for fear lest in doing so I might be retarding a movement which, when I can put these sentiments aside, looks like the prelude to a renaissance of the ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

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

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

... A few miles further on, the railway enters a country of pine and juniper, a stately prelude to the majesties and grandeurs of the Kohonino (Coconino) Forest. Here it seems as if one were suddenly transported to England, and were passing through a succession of landed estates, without, however, finding the accompanying mansions. ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... constant rains had long ago reduced them to a state of paste, and although some attempt had been made to stiffen them with a filling of dried cocoanut-husks, the sucking sound made by the ponies' hoofs was but a prelude to our final floundering in the mud. There was a narrow ridge on one side near a thorny hedge, and, balancing ourselves on this, we made slow progress, meanwhile tearing our clothes to shreds. Skim had considerable difficulty with his long legs, for he could ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... Introduction (lines 1-88) he tears from its present place and puts it before the Fifth Book, where it serves as the prelude to the Calypso tale. The rest of the Telemachiad is the work of another poet. Indeed the rest of the First Book (after the Introduction) is not by the same man who produced the Second Book. Then the Second Book is certainly older than the First, and ought somehow to be placed before ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

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

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

... divert ambition from the state to the Church, and to make it not only safer, but more profitable to be a great ecclesiastic than a successful soldier. A violent competition, for the chief offices was the consequence—a competition, the prelude of that still greater one ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

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

... operations of the mineral region must correspond to those appearances which in the rocks, the veins, and solid stones, give such evident, such universal testimony of the power of fire, in bringing bodies into fusion, or introducing fluidity, the necessary prelude to ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton

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

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

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

... others. Viglius escaped this indignity by being absent froth indisposition. This bold measure was hailed by the people with unusual joy, as the signal for that total change in the government which they reckoned on as the prelude to ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... our Lord of us! How gracious is He to us! What blessed provision doth He make for us! If pilgrims are attacked by Giant Grim, and terrified with the sight of lions, they may be sure that it is only a prelude to some sweet enjoyment of their Lord's love, and that they are near to some asylum, some sanctuary of rest, peace, and comfort. Some bitter generally precedes the sweet, and makes ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

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

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

... traveler states that when a war is determined on in Ashantee, solemn ceremonies precede it. Among other things, the bones of the king's mother are laved with human blood. As a prelude to the war, the king ordains an onslaught upon his own metropolis, as if to excite the ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit

... linger over the fond reflection, eyeing one another uneasily. It was, we felt, but the prelude ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... now said, without any prelude, "four years ago I was affianced to your sister, Dame Blanch. You stipulated that Gascony be given up to you in guaranty, as a settlement on any children I might have by that incomparable lady. I assented, and yielded you the province, upon ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell

... marry,' fit prelude for the tale of that heroic pair. For in life—Lilamani told them—marriage is the beginning, not the end. That is ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... preference but its result. In order to live men will work disproportionately and eat all manner of filth without pleasure; curiosity as often as not leads to illusion, and argument serves to foster hatred of the truth; finally, love is notoriously a great fountain of bitterness and frequently a prelude to crime and death. When we have skimmed from life its incidental successes, when we have harvested the moments in which existence justifies itself, its profound depths remain below in their obscure commotion, depths that breed indeed a rational efflorescence, but which are far from exhausted ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

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

... thee, but in vain; for well I knew, What perils youthful ardour would pursue: That boiling blood would carry thee too far; Young as thou wert to dangers, raw to war! O curst essay of arms, disastrous doom Prelude of bloody fields, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

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

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

... some study of an age must ever prelude and accompany the study of its individuals, if comprehension is to wait upon our labours. To proceed otherwise is to judge an individual Hottentot or South Sea Islander by the code of manners that obtains in Belgravia ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

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

... No prelude did I there perceive To a drama at all, Or foreshadow what fortune might weave From beginnings so small; But I rose as if quicked by a spur I was bound to obey, And stepped through the casement to her ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy

... dear Mr. Hartel, to make known to you, as a kind of curiosity, a very long piece I composed last winter on the chorale "Ad Nos" from the "Prophete." If by chance you should think well to publish this long Prelude, followed by an equally long Fugue, I could not be otherwise than much obliged to you; and I shall take advantage of the circumstance to acquit myself, in all reverence and friendship, of a dedication to Meyerbeer, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated

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

... tone, 'My poor old nose again; well, there, it's chronic!' By the time it had been brought round a storm was blowing, and though they continued to march, the drift was so thick that at any moment they might have walked over the edge of a precipice—a fitting prelude to what, by general consent, was admitted to be the most adventurous day ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

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

... right or wrong, but brute force, glossed over with a little religious hypocrisy and archiepiscopal advice. His principles did not change with his situation and professions. His adventure on Gadshill was a prelude to the affair of Agincourt, only a bloodless one; Falstaff was a puny prompter of violence and outrage, compared with the pious and politic Archbishop of Canterbury, who gave the king carte blanche, in a genealogical tree of his family, ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... to kiss the ladies who had been good enough to entertain them,—little imagining he would take me at my word. Guess then my horror, when I suddenly saw him, with an intrepidity I envied but dared not imitate, first embrace the mamma, by way of prelude, and then proceed, in the most natural manner possible, to make the same tender advances to the daughter. I confess I remained dumb with consternation; the room swam round before me; I expected the next minute we should be packed neck and crop into the street, ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... would not have permitted any direct method of attack; and Kate had to sit through the usual prelude of ejaculation and anecdote. Presently, however, the elder lady's voice gathered significance, and laying her hand on Kate's she murmured: "I have come to talk to you of this ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton

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

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

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

... it, in the very agony of a public, but not for him, a shameful death. This was Robert, youngest brother of Thomas Addis Emmet, whose emeute of 1803 would long since have sunk to the level of other city riots, but for the matchless dying speech of which it was the prelude and the occasion. This young gentleman was in his 20th year when expelled with nineteen others from Trinity College, in 1798, by order of the visitors, Lord Clare and Dr. Duigenan. His reputation as a scholar and debater ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... boomed at once; then the second barrels were discharged, along with a sharper cracking of small arms. Pandemonium broke loose in Glidden's gang. No doubt, at least, of the effectiveness of the shot-guns! A medley of strange, sharp, enraged, and anguished cries burst upon the air, a prelude to a wild stampede. In a few seconds that lighted spot where the I.W.W. had grouped was vacant, and everywhere were fleeing forms, some swift, others slow. So far as Kurt could see, no one had been fatally ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

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

... rallied, remembering that, after all, she was a woman, and alone with him in the place. She had sunk back against the altar that was behind her. Her eyes were closed, her face a white mask of anguish; she looked as though about to swoon. Bough hailed the symptoms as favourable. Fainting was the prelude to caving in, with the women he knew. But when he stirred, her eyes were wide and preternaturally bright, and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

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

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

... will be prompt, exact, invariable. His pupil will neither be credulous, rash, nor profligate; and he certainly will not be indolent; his habitual and his rational belief will, in all circumstances, agree with each other; his hope will be the prelude to exertion, and his fear will restrain him only in situations where action ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

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

... Heale could have watched Tom's face as he read, much more could she have heard his words as he finished, all jealousy would have passed from her mind: for as he read, the cynical smile grew sharper and sharper, forming a fit prelude for the "Little fool!" which was ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... in, and gave him a place among the musicians, and commanded that he should give them a trial of his powers. So the minstrel, after playing a prelude on his harp, sang a song of the land ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... bursting of a fifteen-hundred-pound shell that had gone hurtling through the air with its hoarse, ponderous scream. All the slope up to the Ridge was merged in the blanket of night. Out of it came the regular flashes of guns for a while as the prelude to the unloosing of the tornado before ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... waltz-tune, and ends conventionally, but it contains a movement in negro-tone that gives it importance. In this the strings are abetted by a tambourine, a triangle, and a gong. It is in march-time, and, after a staccato prelude, begins with a catchy air taken by the second violins, while the firsts, divided, fill up the chords. A slower theme follows in the tonic major; it is a jollificational air, dancing from the first violins with a bright use of harmonics. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... Romantic Movement was not merely a new way of considering human beings in their public capacity; it meant also a new kind of sensitiveness to their environment. If we turn, say, from Pope's 'The Rape of the Lock' to Wordsworth's 'The Prelude', it is as if we have passed from a saloon crowded with a bewigged and painted company, wittily conversing in an atmosphere that has become rather stuffy, into the freshness of a starlit night. And just as, on stepping into the open air, the splendours of mountain, sky, and sea may enlarge ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow

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

... rousing one of her maidens, she opened the window. The rich melody came upon her senses through the balmy odour of myrtle boughs and leaves of honeysuckle. The chords were touched with a skilful hand, and the prelude, a wild and extempore commentary on the ballad, was succeeded by the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

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

... a word to say when their host's speech was concluded; but a sniff from Miss Osla, which might be the prelude to tears and sentiment, warned Dr. Holtum not to leave the silence for her ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... saw John Fiske happier than once at Concord. Our host had invited us for a day and had prepared a programme that only Concord could furnish. The prelude was a performance of the Andante to a Sonata of Rubinstein, Opus 12, rendered exquisitely by the daughter of our host. I saw the great frame of my fellow-guest heave with emotion while his breath came almost in sobs as his spirit ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... but that the attempt to do so often brings greater strength to the sins that we seek to cast out, just as the more you mow the grass, the thicker and the stronger it grows. So I come with the great message which Jesus Christ Himself struck as the keynote and prelude of His whole ministry, when in the synagogue He said, 'The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me ... to preach deliverance to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.' He, and He only, will break every yoke and let the oppressed ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... preached by Peter and John before people and rulers. It is not the most vital conception of our Lord's nature and work. The prophet does not here pierce to the core, as in his fifty-third chapter with its vision of the Suffering Servant, but this is prelude to that, and the office assigned here to the Servant cannot be fully discharged without that ascribed to Him there, as the prophet begins to discern almost immediately. The text gives us a striking view of the purpose of Messiah's mission ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... thought had been a prelude, he saw the rocket loom before them as the Great Dane ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw

... seriously, "that this intrusion of armed men is only a prelude. I have little doubt of the hostility of Morris's; I am sure that the men who hid in the hold are spies from Morris's. I do not yet know the motive for this hostility. But the Jasper B. is in the midst of dangers and mysteries. There is before us an affair of some ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis

... His fullness must perforce neither think of himself, nor remember himself, nor have any consciousness of himself, but be in perpetual ecstasy (ekstasis) outside of himself, in a condition of alienation. And the ecstasy that the mystics describe is a prelude ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... early life appears to have been irregular, and to the end he was a weak, vain, discontented man. His chief work is De Regimine Principum or Governail of Princes, written 1411-12. The best part of this is an autobiographical prelude Mal Regle de T. Hoccleve, in which he holds up his youthful follies as a warning. It is also interesting as containing, in the MS. in the British Museum, a drawing of Chaucer, from which all subsequent portraits have ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... for danse allemande, or German dance), a name for two kinds of dance, one a German national dance, in 2-4 time, the other somewhat resembling a waltz. The movement in a suite following the prelude, and preceding the courante (q.v.), with which it is contrasted in rhythm, is also called an allemande, but has no connexion with the dance. The name, however, is given to pieces of music based on the dance movement, examples of which are found in Beethoven's German dances ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... salvo; crash after crash; and in the rare moments of stillness, in this nerve-shattering prelude to the Great Push, I could hear the sweet warblings of a lark, as it rose higher and higher in the murky, ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins

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

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

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

... left his bed, sat by his wife's bedside a prey to anxiety and grief; for although she had resisted the first attack she was now, thirty-six hours after it had seized her, fast sinking. Gradually her sight and power of speech faded, and she sank into the state of coma which was the prelude of death, and lay quiet and motionless, seeming as if life had already departed. Suddenly Walter was surprised by the sound of many heavy feet ascending the stairs. He went out into the ante-room to learn ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty

... and robs the peasant whom he harangues on the rights of the people—this republican baptism will give no new power to the conversion. The German phlegm will kick, the French vivacite will scourge, and then alone will the true war begin. Yet all this may be but the prelude. When the war of weapons has been buried in its own ashes, another war may begin, the war of minds—the struggle of mighty nations, the battle of an ambition of which our purblind age has not even a glimpse—a terrible strife, yet worthy of the immortal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... was thus that the necessary milieu was prepared. The organization of the five great nations, and the levelling of political and spiritual interests under political and spiritual despots, formed the prelude to that drama of liberty of which the Renaissance was the first act, the Reformation the second, the Revolution the third, and which we nations of the present are still evolving in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... the United States can know: we honor your friendship, we rely on your counsel, and we depend on your help. Division among free nations is a primary goal of freedom's enemies. The concerted effort of free nations to promote democracy is a prelude ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... expected, the Recluse departed, the scenes shifted; there, alone on the stage, looking white in the glare of the footlights, was a bedizened, big-eyed, panting little Zingara, and the syncopated prelude began. ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

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

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

... party of gentlemen stood by, to supply the ladies with arrows. Three ladies shot, but widely from the mark; a fourth tried her skill, but no applause ensued; a fifth came forward, a striking figure, elegantly dressed, who, after a prelude of very becoming diffidence, drew her bow, and took aim in the most ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... an assent, and her aged admirer conducted her to the instrument with the most ceremonious politeness. After a brilliant prelude, executed with artistic delicacy and skill, she dashed off into a superb Italian air, which raised her listener (who was passionately devoted to music,) into the ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... up as I chose, but that it belonged to the world. When he said that, cold shivers trickled down my spine. He looked so solemn, and he made me feel so solemn, as though I were being turned, like Wordsworth in The Prelude, ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley

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

... Neither has he overlooked the irony which the subject naturally suggested: the great lord, who is driven by idleness and ennui to deceive a poor drunkard, can make no better use of his situation than the latter, who every moment relapses into his vulgar habits. The last half of this prelude, that in which the tinker, in his new state, again drinks himself out of his senses, and is transformed in his sleep into his former condition, is from some accident or other, lost. It ought to have followed at the end of the larger piece. The occasional remarks of the tinker, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... Company, which is, like the wampum-belt, a common tongue for tribes and peoples not speaking any language but their own. They were set to old airs—lullabies, chansons, barcarolles, serenades, taken out of the folk-lore of many lands. Time and again had these simple arcadian airs been sung as a prelude to some tribal act that would not bear the search-light of civilisation—little by the Indians east of the Rockies, for they have hard hearts and fierce tongues, but much by the Shuswaps, Siwashes, and other tribes ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... which have been cited by Cullere, is the fear of stealing objects in view, and is often the prelude of kleptomania. The latter disease has gained notoriety in this country, and nearly every large store has agents to watch the apparently growing number of kleptomaniacs. These unfortunate persons, not seldom from the highest classes of society, are unable to combat an ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... her vanish past the curtain, thought: 'What a lovely thing she is!' And he got up too, but instead of following, went to the piano, and began to play Mendelssohn's Prelude and Fugue in E minor. He had a fine touch, and played with a sort of dreamy passion. It was his way out of perplexities, regrets, and longings; a way which never ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... repeated; but his manifest disturbance of mind, and his long pondering with the bonnet in hand, as if almost alarmed, seemed to touch another chord in her heart—that chord of pity which is so often the prelude of love, that finer pity that grieves to wound anything nobler or tenderer than ourselves. Next day, when he came to his accustomed place of prayer, a little card was pinned against the tree just where he knelt, ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton

... to love, in the trust that the God of the universe is love. "If Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain." But if the seeming triumph of wrong over right, of ignorance over truth, of selfishness over sacrifice, which took place at Golgotha be but the prelude to a vaster victory, then the Lord of earth has cleared Himself, and proved Himself worthy of the confidence ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin

... the night is rising up! My neighbour's house is all a flame of song. I must abide until the prelude closes, Until his heart has ceased its preparation And he comes forth into the dying year, Leaves his house of inspiration empty, And with a loneliness of heart creeps forth Eagerly into the night, and gropes his way With outstretched nerveless hands ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

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

... of voices' from the sitting-room stopped instantly. A double knock was a rare occurrence on that door, and was usually the prelude to the sudden disappearance of the fairer portion of the family, while a small boy was told off to answer it, under dire penalties if he officiated ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs

... I but be certain This is no prelude to such persecution Of the sire as has fallen upon the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

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

... English, and immediately, without further prelude, we fell to a most remarkable conversation. Madame Beck (for Madame Beck it was; she had entered by a little door behind me, and being shod with the shoes of silence, I had heard neither her entrance nor approach)—Madame Beck had exhausted her command of insular speech ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... "Phoebus, arise" William Drummond Hymn of Apollo Percy Bysshe Shelley Prelude to "The New Day" Richard Watson Gilder Dawn on the Headland William Watson The Miracle of the Dawn Madison Cawein Dawn-angels A. Mary F. Robinson Music of the Dawn Virginia Bioren Harrison Sunrise on Mansfield Mountain Alice ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... him, doubtful whether to believe in his sincerity or no. It was difficult for me to refrain from some softening towards him as he thus spoke, and yet I asked myself whether these fair words were not the prelude to some new piece of knavery or treachery, for which he stood in need ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... presented the appearance of myriads of glowworms or of thousands of stars glittering in the night. When the officers had rejoined their different regiments, thirteen cannon were again fired, as a prelude to the general feu-de-joie which immediately succeeded. Three times was it repeated, and the reverberations sounded among the hills with tremendous effect, darkness adding grandeur to the scene, as the flashing of the musketry of the army ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson

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

... Reformation. It was a separate phenomenon, provoked by the same causes which produced their true fruit at a later period; but it formed no portion of the stem on which those fruits ultimately grew. It was a prelude which was played out, and sank into silence, answering for the time no other end than to make the name of heretic odious in the ears of the English nation. In their recoil from their first failure, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

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

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

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

... was chewing a toothpick and talking with du Tillet on Tortoni's portico, where speculation held a little Bourse, a sort of prelude to the great one. He seemed to be engaged in business, but he was really awaiting the Comte de la Palferine, who, within a given time, was certain to pass that way. The boulevard des Italiens is to-day what the Pont Neuf was in 1650; all persons known to fame pass along it once, at ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... liberty and democracy and the reactions of President and people to the great developments of the times. The second Inaugural Address with its sense of solemn responsibility serves as a prophecy as well as prelude to the declaration of war and the message to the people which ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson

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

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

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

... Longstreet's corps had effected the passage of Thoroughfare Gap and united with Jackson; and on that day these corps engaged with Pope's advance in a terrific fight, lasting from midday till dark—the prelude to the great drama that was next day to deluge the field of Manassas a second time with the blood ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... inexperience with which the instrumental score is filled up, the opening scene of 'Norma' in the dim druidical wood bears the true character of ancient sylvan antiquity. There is daybreak again—a fresh tone of reveille—in the prelude to 'I Puritani.' If Bellini's genius was not versatile in its means of expression, if it had not gathered all the appliances by which science fertilizes Nature, it beyond all doubt included appreciation of truth, no less than instinct ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... they were the prelude to one of the most stirring periods in the history of the war—the first great De Wet hunt. It is beside the purport of this volume to discuss the advantages of British infantry pursuing mounted Boers. It has often been maintained that the result of such an apparently ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring

... resplendent on that beautiful morning of the 4th of May, in honor of the procession and religious services to be held as a sort of prelude to the formal opening of the States-General the following day. From the Church of Our Lady to the Church of Saint Louis, where M. de la Farre, Archeveque of Nancy, was to celebrate mass, the streets through which the procession was to pass were one mass of silken banners and the richest ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... conceive "the man of God" as a hermit. They imagined that all the holy personages had had their days of penitence, of solitude, and of austerity.[3] The retreat to the desert thus became the condition and the prelude of ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... of an Englishman has not tumbled yet! The court here? A grand ball? What else can it mean but that Madame is celebrating a victory to come? If the archbishop has those consols, she will wage war; and this is the prelude." He jogged along. He had accomplished a third of the remaining distance, when he was challenged. The sentry came ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

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

... two swallows shot by the open window, uttering their eager little note; the room swam with him, and he thought he was going to reel and fall. For a moment he saw nothing and knew nothing, except that he had reached the end of the short prelude on the lute, and that he must find voice to sing for his liberty and Ortensia's, ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... in the kirks, and the beautiful memorial windows of stained glass were not for the purpose of looking out, he did not see a dramatic incident that occurred in the kirkyard after three o'clock in the afternoon. The prelude to it really began with the report of the timegun at one. Bobby had insisted upon being let out of the lodge kitchen, and had spent the morning near Auld Jock's grave and in nosing about neighboring slabs and thorn bushes. ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson

... sat down at the piano, meditated a minute, and began to play the rich chords of Rachmaninof's "Prelude." He got about half through, when Zip-bang! a small shell burst down the street. The dark fellow threw open the French window. The poilus were scurrying to shelter. The pianist continued with ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... yawned and expressed a desire for the bed. Soon she was left alone, and she stole from her couch and knelt at the hearthstone and read the missive eagerly and flushed not a little at Count Cantemir's warm words of love that were a prelude to the weightier matters appertaining. She crept back noiselessly and lay pondering of many things. It seemed to her as if all earth breathed of love; that she was the nucleus around which all flowers and perfume and ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

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

... of the last Great Indian Council lifted cones of white on the edge of these radiant trees. Sombre winds uttered a melancholy note through the dying reeds on the river bank, and all of it seemed a prelude to an opening grave, and significant of the closing words uttered to me ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon

... to be a prelude to the ceremonies. The bonzes, fifteen in number, left the vestry to the sound of shrill, noisy music. They took their stations before the altar, where they made many genuflexions and gestures. They then ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... "that a very good poem might be written on the Saga of King Olaf, who converted the North to Christianity." Two years later he completed the lyrics that compose "The Musician's Tale" in The Tales of a Wayside Inn, published in 1863, and in this work "The Challenge of Thor" serves as a prelude. The pieces after this prelude are not imitations of the Icelandic verse, but are like Tegner's Frithjof's Saga, in that each new portion has a meter of its own. There is not, either, a consistent effort to put the flavor ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby

... her "schall" (a vestment of which Madame de Stael also was fond), and her crowning in the Capitol, where the crown tumbles off—an incident which in real life would be slightly comical, but which here only gives Nelvil an opportunity of picking it up—form a similar prelude to a long series of extravagances. The culmination of them is that altogether possible-improbable visit to England, which might have put everything right and does put everything wrong, and the incurable staginess which makes her, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... and started off quickly in the direction of the mission, Pomponio guarded by a man on each side, grasping his pinioned arms. Alas! Was this the end of his long, long planning; was this the outcome of the insurrection which was to have been the prelude to a glorious victory, that he should have been caught through his own carelessness and carried off ignominiously to prison? Pomponio could have sacrificed his life gladly for the cause he had so much at heart; but to be captured before the blow for liberty had been struck was unbearable. He had ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... of his countrymen at home with their lives of toil and privation in war, after a practise common to the Bards, not only of that age, but subsequently. Or it may be that the banquet, at which the British leaders were undoubtedly entertained in the hall of Eiddin, was looked upon as the sure prelude to war, and that in that sense the mead and wine were to them ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin

... were not slow to comprehend that Bautista's coming with priests at his command was but a prelude to Spanish territorial conquest, which would naturally retard their hoped-for emancipation from the Spanish yoke. [30] Therefore, in their own interests, they forewarned the Governor of Nagasaki, who prohibited Bautista from continuing his propaganda ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... perfection,—succeed, with life's dayspring, death's minute of night? Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul, the mistake, {280} Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now,—and bid him awake From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set Clear and safe in new light and new life,—a new harmony yet To be run and continued, and ended—who knows?—or endure! The man taught enough by life's dream, of the rest to make sure; By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... Prelude: meadow land standardized to meadow-land (lads had crossed the sunny meadow-land of childhood ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen

... this revolting subject, we must state that, whatever punishment was inflicted upon a culprit, it was very rare that its execution had not been preceded by the amende honorable, which, in certain cases, constituted a distinct punishment, but which generally was but the prelude to the torture itself. The amende honorable which was called simple or short, took place without the assistance of the executioner in the council chamber, where the condemned, bareheaded and kneeling, had to state that "he had falsely said or done something ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

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

... and sorrow. The songs that suit modern drawing-rooms and concert-halls, as a rule, are those that are full of sham sentiment—a real, strong, throbbing HEART pulsing through a song is too terribly exciting for lackadaisical society. Listen!" And, playing a dreamy, murmuring prelude like the sound of a brook flowing through a hollow cavern, he sang Swinburne's "Leave-Taking," surely one of the saddest and most beautiful ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... lions; nor, in hours Of civil outbreak, when I knew the twain Would each waste each, and bring on both the yoke Of stronger states, was mine the voice to curb The madness of our cities and their kings. Who ever turn'd upon his heel to hear My warning that the tyranny of one Was prelude to the tyranny of all? My counsel that the tyranny of all Led backward to the tyranny of one? This power hath work'd no good to aught ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

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

... astonished consternation of his classmates, the sneers of the marines and the jeers of the civilians there at the gate, who had seen his disgrace. Almost in tears now, he realized at last this was but a prelude to years of being scorned and vilified as a ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans

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

... the twenty-eighth, according to my reckoning," said Slavens, appearing before him and speaking without prelude. ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... murmurings and complaints, and anticipating the worst results and consequences from what had occurred. Silius, they said, was an ambitious and dangerous man, and the audacious deed which he had performed was the prelude, they believed, to some deep ulterior design. They feared for the safety of Claudius; and as they knew very well that the downfall of the emperor would involve them too in ruin, they were naturally much alarmed. ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... interesting prelude to the letter which came to Charlie Collins at Calgary, Canada, five days later. Charlie was one of the boys whom the General had proposed to take with him to Africa. Born in Nova Scotia, he had tramped his way across the continent at the age of seventeen, when his ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney

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

... feeling was so strong that he declares to Curio that he does not think that the welfare and fortunes of one man were ever so dear to another as now were those of Milo to him. Milo's success is the only object of interest he has in the world. This is interesting to us now as a prelude to the great trial which was to take place in the next year, when Milo, instead of being elected Consul, was ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... him to be one of the elders, going to give out the hymns, or to assist in the devotional exercises. At this moment the organ—a fine-toned instrument—struck up, and the choir sang some piece—known, I presume, only to themselves, for no others joined in it. This prelude I have since found is universal in America. In all places of worship provided with an organ, a "voluntary" on that instrument is the first exercise. In the present instance the choir had no sooner ceased than ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... could he do? How could he begin to tell the truth? His home should be her home, if she would come to him,—not as his wife. That idea of some half-valid morganatic marriage had again been dissipated by the rough reproaches of the priest, and could only be used as a prelude to his viler proposal. And, though he loved the girl after his fashion, he desired to wound her by no such vile proposal. He did not wish to live a life of sin, if such life might be avoided. If he made his proposal, it would be but for her ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... will come. I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes." He laughed, and I, though sleepy, like a horse That hears the corn-bin open, pricked my ears; For I remembered Everard's college fame When we were freshmen: then, at my request, He brought it; and the poet, little urged, But, with some prelude of disparagement, Read, mouthing out his hollow oes and aes, Deep-chested ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... rows of faces of the familiar medical student type. Apparently the great hospitals had each sent down their contingent. The behavior of the audience at present was good-humored, but mischievous. Scraps of popular songs were chorused with an enthusiasm which was a strange prelude to a scientific lecture, and there was already a tendency to personal chaff which promised a jovial evening to others, however embarrassing it might be to the recipients of ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... lightened as he threw a glance of sarcastic meaning at his companion. But Iron Heart was undaunted. He knew very well now, that this was only a prelude to the drama which would follow; and though he had suffered a sharp pang of anxiety at first, he saw that his Royal friend was playing with commendable realism. Naturally, when beautiful young actresses ventured into the forest unchaperoned, to dine with fascinating princes, the least that ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson

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

... from the assurance, that, wherever the engaging boy had gone, his mother had accompanied him. Even more than at my first visit, the artist was frigidly reserved and full of warning-off politeness. With but a brief prelude of courteous commonplaces, he called me to the business ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

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

... Among these adverse surroundings of the "court of Circe," he threw off Beppo, Mazeppa, and the early books of Don Juan. The first canto of the last was written in November, 1818, the second in January, 1819, the third and fourth towards the close of the same year. Beppo, its brilliant prelude, sparkles like a draught of champagne. This "Venetian story," or sketch, in which the author broke ground on his true satiric field—the satire of social life—and first adopted the measure avowedly suggested ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... Germans began a violent bombardment as a prelude to another attempt to capture Hill 340. On the following day, about 2 p. m., their assaulting waves were hurled against the French positions on the counterslope north of the hill. The bombardment had been so destructive that large numbers of French soldiers were buried in the trenches. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

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

... in a soft sarcastic tone which she was wont to assume when stung to the quick, and which her friend knew from experience was the prelude to a burst of passion, "I may be wrong as usual, but as you have never seen or conwersed with this Scotsman, an' don't know nothink about 'im, perhaps you will condescend to give me ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne

... this standard and observed in an historic spirit, where shall we find an illustration more impressive than in Abraham Lincoln, whose life, career and death might be chanted by a Greek chorus as at once the prelude and the epilogue of the most ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... Yonge censured the harsh language of Sir Samuel Romilly, who had applied the terms rapine, robbery, and murder to those, who were connected with the Slave-trade. He considered the resolution of Mr. Fox as a prelude to a bill for the abolition of that traffic, and this bill as a prelude to emancipation, which would not only be dangerous in itself, but would change the state of property in ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... When this fine prelude is ended, the minister's part begins; and, unless he is a man of extraordinary bearing and talents, every one present is conscious of a kind of lapse in the tone of the occasion. Genius composed the music; the "first talent" ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... me that music is wrong before a play or during intermissions. But it is necessary until our dramatists provide some other prelude. That prelude must be a beautiful setting of silence for a few moments showing the protagonist under the light of eternity. In the beginning all words contained a spiritual "import,"—were angels. At Babel many fell. Now all our spiritual words are material words ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton

... all, she was a woman, and alone with him in the place. She had sunk back against the altar that was behind her. Her eyes were closed, her face a white mask of anguish; she looked as though about to swoon. Bough hailed the symptoms as favourable. Fainting was the prelude to caving in, with the women he knew. But when he stirred, her eyes were wide and preternaturally bright, and held him. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

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

... rerum," can take away. He really gains nothing by a title—no, not even Tennyson; as in the next world, so in this, "his works do follow him," and the "Well done, good and faithful" from this lower world which he has served is but the prelude of his welcome to that higher world wherein he hears the same "good and faithful" from the mouth of ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... Hebrew poet had no more reason to go abroad for a romantic plot than Hosea, or the author of Ruth, or the writer of the royal Epithalamium (Psalm xlv), an almost certainly pre-Exilic composition. This Psalm has been well termed a "prelude to the Song of Songs," for in a real sense Canticles is anticipated and even necessitated by it. In Ruth we have a romance of the golden corn-field, and the author chooses the unsophisticated days of the Judges as the setting of his tale. In Canticles we have a contrasted picture between ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... from Dumfries to Lincluden seems like a quiet prelude to a lovely burst of music, so gentle and pretty it is. Then suddenly you come to the promontory stitched on to the mainland with great silver stitches of rivers, the Cluden and the Nith; and there are old earthworks, fallen into ruin, which guard the Abbey as the ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

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

... that exciting prelude, when the moon had set and slow dawn, like a lifting curtain, had been drawn to reveal the landscape of a world outside the little chamber of my own being, I had been cast from my heights of exaltation into a gloomy pit of disgrace. Fate, with a fastidious particularity, had hauled me back to the ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... with fascinating conversational eloquence, that he was to receive and encounter. When we reached the Heath, I have present the rising and accelerated step, with the gradual subsidence of all talk, as we drew towards the cottage. The interview, which stretched into three "morning calls," was the prelude to many after-scenes and saunterings about Caen Wood and its neighborhood; for Keats was suddenly made a familiar of the household, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... With this prelude, he took a few seeds and began to coax the bird, until it, in point of fact, performed various tricks, on the stage, clasping in its beak a mask ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... how good he can do it," said Bob, with no small amount of pride; and Leander, with his head held so high that it was almost impossible to see his instrument, struck one or two notes as a prelude, while Joe took his station at a point about as far distant from the ring as the door of the ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis

... spark of spitefulness or, at all events, of mischief. Perhaps we had better not investigate this point too closely, for we should not find anything very flattering to ourselves. We should see that this movement of relaxation or expansion is nothing but a prelude to laughter, that the laugher immediately retires within himself, more self-assertive and conceited than ever, and is evidently disposed to look upon another's personality as a marionette of which he pulls the strings. In this presumptuousness ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson

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

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

... as the great revealer of the council of peace, called upon him in the voice of mercy, saying, "Adam, where art thou?" It was he that, pleasing himself in the forethoughts of his future incarnation, and as a prelude thereto, condescended at different times to appear in a human form, and speak unto the fathers. By him, as the messenger of the covenant, were the lively oracles delivered to the Israelitish church; and by his Spirit in the prophets, successively raised up to instruct his church in ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery

... Dulman[232] started at the sound, Gaped, rubb'd his eyes, and stared around. Much did he wish to know, much fear, Whence sounds so horrid struck his ear, 630 So much unlike those peaceful notes, That equal harmony, which floats On the dull wing of City air, Grave prelude to a feast or fair: Much did he inly ruminate Concerning the decrees of Fate, Revolving, though to little end, What this same trumpet might portend. Could the French—no—that could not be, Under Bute's active ministry, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

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

... is that which is too elusive, too subtile to remain under any of these heads, and this indefinite something attracted and touched Nannie to-day. Fog and mist, cloud and rain had softened the soil into which these seeds fell. Pain is a strong note in the prelude to life. ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

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

... "Oh fatal prelude!" interrupted he, "what on earth can quiet my mind that leads to our separation?—Give to me no condescension with any such view,—preserve your indifference, persevere in your coldness, triumph still in your power of inspiring those feelings ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... on the part of some of the company indicated that the prelude was near an end. Slowly the assembly was ushered from the room, along a hall, up a wonderful staircase, and at last into the august presence of His Serene Highness. Mac took note of the contortions through which his predecessors passed, made ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... escape related in the last chapter was but the prelude to a night of troubles. Fortunately, as we have before mentioned, night did not now add darkness to their difficulties. Soon after passing the bergs, a stiff breeze sprang up off shore, between ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... of liberty into the heart of slavery; the blacks whom the law thus maintains in a state of slavery from which their children are delivered, are astonished at so unequal a fate, and their astonishment is only the prelude to their impatience and irritation. Thenceforward slavery loses, in their eyes, that kind of moral power which it derived from time and habit; it is reduced to a mere palpable abuse of force. The Northern States had nothing to fear from the contrast, because in ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... forerunner of a disastrous revolution, the appearance of this fantastic personage in the capital of civilisation was at once dismal and prophetic. Unconsciously, he was the prophet of disaster. Unconsciously, he was the prelude—half-solemn, half-grotesque—of a bloody and diabolical saturnalia. History, both profane and inspired, tells us that when the Euphrates forsook its natural channel, and the hostile legions trampled under its gates at nightfall; when the revellers ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

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

... That was the first sound in the song of love! Scarce more than silence is, and yet a sound. Hands of invisible spirits touch the strings Of that mysterious instrument, the soul, And play the prelude of our fate. We hear The voice prophetic, and are ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... all musical time and existence, to whom it is not of the smallest importance whether a thing be new or old, so long as it is true. It is doubtful whether even the forms most peculiar to him (such as the arpeggio-prelude) are of his invention. Yet he left no form as he found it,—not even that most conventional of all, the Da Capo Aria, which he did not outwardly alter in the least. On the other hand, with every form he touched he said the last ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... instinctive turning of his nose in the direction of the lady's house, led him thither, to an accompaniment of celestial growls, which impressed him, judging by that naughty-girl face of hers and the woman's tongue she had, as a likely prelude to the scene to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

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

... suite de ballet from "Acanthe et Cephise" and the Prelude to the third act of R. Strauss's opera "Guntram" given by the Symphony ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee

... represented as tyrannical. He could not venture to violate the fundamental laws of Holland at the very moment at which he was drawing the sword against his father in law for violating the fundamental laws of England. The violent subversion of one free constitution would have been a strange prelude to the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

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

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

... mystification. In a letter to Henry Bright he admitted that he had no very definite scheme in his mind in regard to Miriam's previous history, and this is probably the reason why his readers feel this vague sense of dissatisfaction with the plot. I have myself often tried to think out a prelude to the story, but without any definite result. Miriam's persecuting model was evidently a husband who had been forced upon her by her parents, and would not that be sufficient to account for her ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

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

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

... remark was prelude to the disaster; and had the speaker guessed what his jest must presently mean in terms of human misery, grief, and horror, it is certain enough that he would not ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... fortune; indeed, it was the prelude to a disaster worse than any that McClellan had suffered. Pope advanced by the route of the original invasion, and reached exactly the point where McDowell's army had been routed. Here he paused and waited. While he lay there Jackson ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... driven beyond the walls after breakfast and stranded at the very spot where the pilgrims always said "Ecco Roma," as they caught the first glimpse of St. Peter's dome. This melodramatic entrance into Rome, or rather pretended entrance, was the prelude to days of enchantment, and I returned to Europe two years later in order to spend a winter there and to carry out a great desire to systematically study the Catacombs. In spite of my distrust of "advantages" I was ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... near the entrance to the bridge. We lingered on for the sunset, which first appeared as a flaming ball of fire, succeeded by myriad shades of rainbow hues, these fading into softer tints and later into those more delicate tones that prelude the twilight. Then silence seemed to brood over the ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... in the trench and caused thirty-five casualties, including all the sergeants of the company. On the eve of an attack such an occurrence was calculated to affect the morale of any troops. That the company afterwards did well was specially creditable in view of this demoralising prelude. ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose

... slipped indoors and was playing a grave prelude and fugue of Bach's. The three older people joined the children in the balcony, and sat quietly listening till she ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton

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

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

... apart. After they had been talking some little time, the people were greatly surprised to see Sir Charles stand motionless and his bride cry and faint away in the stranger's arms. This seeming grief, however, was only a prelude to a flood of joy which immediately succeeded; for you must know, gentle reader, that this gentleman, so richly dressed and bedizened with lace, was that identical little boy whom you before saw in the sailor's habit; in short, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... in their impious songs the subjection of France, and invoked the destruction of the national assembly; tell him, that in his own palace, courtiers danced to the sound of that barbarous music, and that such was the prelude to the massacre of Saint Bartholomew! Tell him that the Henry of his ancestors, whom he wished to take as his model, whose memory is honoured by all nations, sent provisions into a Paris in revolt when besieging the city himself, while the savage advisers ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

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

... it forms no proper part of the history of the Reformation. It was a separate phenomenon, provoked by the same causes which produced their true fruit at a later period; but it formed no portion of the stem on which those fruits ultimately grew. It was a prelude which was played out, and sank into silence, answering for the time no other end than to make the name of heretic odious in the ears of the English nation. In their recoil from their first failure, the people stamped their hatred of ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... economic prospects. Russia's economy grew 6.6% in 2006 and inflation growth was below 10% for the first time in the past 10 years. Russia shows signs of increasing its ties to the global economy, having signed a bilateral market access agreement with the US as a prelude to possible WTO entry. Nevertheless, serious problems persist. Oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80% of exports, leaving the country vulnerable to swings in world commodity prices. Russia's manufacturing ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... and nocturne, prelude and polonaise Clamour and wander and wail on the opiate air, Piercing our hearts with echo of passionate days, Peopling a top front lodging with shapes of care. And as our souls, uncovered, would shamefully hide away, ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... to be near enough to hear what she could guess: her enemy's artless prelude followed by gradual modulations to her main ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... sharper cracking of small arms. Pandemonium broke loose in Glidden's gang. No doubt, at least, of the effectiveness of the shot-guns! A medley of strange, sharp, enraged, and anguished cries burst upon the air, a prelude to a wild stampede. In a few seconds that lighted spot where the I.W.W. had grouped was vacant, and everywhere were fleeing forms, some swift, others slow. So far as Kurt could see, no one had been fatally injured. But many ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

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

... Parliament, what he had seen in Venice during the last few days; and, when dinner was over, Lady Nora, who had been all attention, said: "Sing for us, Phelim," and they had gone below, Phelim stooping to save his head; and he had struck those mysterious chords upon the piano, by way of prelude, that silence talk, that put the world far away, that set the men to glancing at the women, and the women to glancing at the floor and making sure of their handkerchiefs, and then—he ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith

... the reception was a quiet one, only notabilities and guards of honour occupying the Navy Yard, but this quietness was only the prelude to ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

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

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

... represented by Mr. Tenby, who posed mainly as a listener, however, and asked very few questions. Nothing fresh was solicited. Mrs. Rickett repeated her story, and the letter from the murdered woman, which the prisoner admitted having lost, was put in evidence. The proceedings being merely a prelude to a higher court, the jurors rendered an undecisive verdict. They found that the deceased had been murdered by a person or persons unknown, but that suspicion strongly pointed to her husband, John Vernon. They advised, moreover, that the police should try to find ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... the recitative being ended, and the last chord struck, the melody begins, of which the former was the prelude. Watch the movements of the supple figure of the first violin, standing in the centre of the other musicians, who accompany him softly. How every nerve is en rapport with his instrument, and how his very soul is speaking through it! See how gently he draws the bow across the trembling strings, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... Mr. Noddy begged to state that his father was quite as respectable as Mr. Gunter's father; to which Mr. Gunter replied that his father was to the full as respectable as Mr. Noddy's father, and that his father's son was as good a man as Mr. Noddy, any day in the week. As this announcement seemed the prelude to a recommencement of the dispute, there was another interference on the part of the company; and a vast quantity of talking and clamoring ensued, in the course of which Mr. Noddy gradually allowed his feelings to overpower him, and profest that he had ever entertained a devoted personal attachment ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... It has completely upset my system of fatalism. I thought, if crushed, he would have fallen, when fractus illabitur orbis, [11] and not have been pared away to gradual insignificance; that all this was not a mere jeu of the gods, but a prelude to greater changes and mightier events. But men never advance beyond a certain point; and here we are, retrograding, to the dull, stupid old system,—balance of Europe—poising straws upon kings' noses, instead ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... feudalism which preceded the Renaissance. It was thus that the necessary conditions and external circumstances were prepared. The organization of the five great nations, and the leveling of political and spiritual interests under political and spiritual despots, formed the prelude to that drama of liberty of which the Renaissance was the first act, the Reformation the second, the Revolution the third, and which we nations of the present are still evolving in the establishment ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

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

... After a brief prelude, which, to his trained ear, revealed her perfect touch, her voice rose with a sweet, resonant power that held those near spellbound, and swelled in volume until people in distant parts of the house paused and listened as if held by ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... in the closing hours of this age and as a prelude to their final restoration, they should bud and blossom and fill the face of the whole world ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman

... by these dismal forebodings, she at length shook the ropes leading from her own perch to Samoa's; adopting this method of arousing his attention to the heinousness of what was in all probability going on in the cabin, a prelude most probably to the invasion of her own end of the vessel. Had she dared raise her voice, no doubt she would have suggested the expediency of shooting us so soon as we emerged from the cabin. But failing to shake Samoa ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

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

... his life in best of the Muses, as he deemed, to the composition of poetry, with all faith in himself, and slowly but surely bringing round his admirers to the same conclusion; he began his career in literature by publishing along with Coleridge "Lyrical Ballads"; finished his "Prelude" in 1806, and produced his "Excursion" in 1814, after which, from his home at Rydal Mount, there issued a long succession of miscellaneous pieces; he succeeded Southey as poet-laureate in 1843; he is emphatically ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

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

... part you! Be of good cheer and keep your eyes cool and clear." At this they both rejoiced and Naomi called for a lute and, when they brought it, she took it and tuned it and played a lively measure which enchanted the hearers, and after the prelude ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

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

... by a few women, or men in women's clothes, at the palace gates of Versailles. The guards refused them entrance, from an order they had received to that effect from La Fayette. The consternation produced by their resentment was a mere prelude to the horrid tragedy ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe

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

... without any pose, forgetting to be self-conscious in the English way. He had passed a whole summer on the bay of Naples, and he had told her all about it. And in the telling he had revealed a good deal of himself. The prelude in Soho had no doubt prepared the way for such talk by carrying them to Naples on wings of music. They would not have talked just like that after a banal dinner at Claridge's or the Carlton. Craven had shown the enthusiasm that was in him for the sun, the ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

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

... the courtiers, on hearing this from my mouth, and on discovering that the stranger's odd appearance was but a prelude to the real diversion, could not restrain their laughter. The King, concealing his own amusement, turned to them with an angry air and bade them be silent; and the Gascon, encouraged by this and by the bold manner in which I had stated his grievance, scowled at them famously. ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... guilt he felt inwardly had expressed itself in his face there would have been no need of confession. At length he braced himself to tell it all; but just as he cleared his throat by way of prelude Morris was summoned to the cutting-room and remained there until closing-time. Thus, when Abe went home his secret remained locked up within his breast, nor did he find it a comfortable burden, for when he looked at the quotations of curb ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass

... Browning, standing on the ruined palace-step at Venice, had taken Humanity for his mate, opened an epoch in his poetic life to which the later books of Sordello form a splendid prelude. For the Browning of 1840 it was no longer a sufficient task to trace the epochs in the spiritual history of lonely idealists, to pursue the problem of existence in minds themselves preoccupied with its solution. "Soul" ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

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

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

... him, that if the prisoner escaped he would kill him. And when Ahab had said that he would justly die, he took off the binding about his head, and was known by the king to be Micaiah the prophet, who made use of this artifice as a prelude to his following words; for he said that God would punish him who had suffered Benhadad, a blasphemer against him, to escape punishment; and that he would so bring it about, that he should die by the other's means [41] and his people by the other's army. Upon which Ahab was very angry at the prophet, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... national purposes, we have been steadfast in our support of the United Nations, now entering its second decade with a wider membership and ever-increasing influence and usefulness. In the release of our fifteen fliers from Communist China, an essential prelude was the world opinion mobilized by the General Assembly, which condemned their imprisonment and demanded their liberation. The successful Atomic Energy Conference held in Geneva under United Nations auspices and our Atoms ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

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

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

... Rev. Benjamin Beddome sounds like a prelude to the grand rally of the Christian Churches a generation later for united advance into foreign fields. It was an after-sermon hymn—like so many of Watts and Doddridge—and spoke a good man's longing to see all sects stand shoulder to shoulder in a ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... reflection lighted one half of the apartment. He then proceeded to the alcove, and drew forth from it his violin. The strings were thrummed to make sure of their accord, the heel was set in the hollow of the shoulder, and the bow executed a rapid prelude. The old man smiled as if satisfied with the cunning of his hand, and well he might, for these simple touches revealed ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... comfort. Hundreds of cooing doves, stumbling over the roof of the barn, helped to fill the air with their peaceful murmur. It was a strange overture to a battle, but in time I learned to not listen for any more martial prelude. The Boer does not make a business of war, and when he is not actually fighting he pretends that he is camping out for pleasure. In his laager there are no warlike sounds, no sentries challenge, no bugles call. He has no duties ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis

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









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