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Vocal   /vˈoʊkəl/   Listen
Vocal

noun
1.
Music intended to be performed by one or more singers, usually with instrumental accompaniment.  Synonym: vocal music.
2.
A short musical composition with words.  Synonym: song.



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"Vocal" Quotes from Famous Books



... In delineating and drawing to life the representation of my assailant, aggressor, and barefaced calumniator. I have preferred the natural order, free, and familiar style, to the artificial order, grave, solemn, and antiquated style; and in so doing, I have had occasion to have reference to the vocal metaphrase of some words. With a due circumspection of the use of their synonymy, taking care that the import and acceptation of each phrase and word should not appear frequently synonymous. Again. I have applied the whip unsparingly ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... lambs rollicked out their short-lived youth around them, and no premonition floated over from the adjoining pea-patch, nor any misgiving of approaching mutton marred their happy heyday. Straight through the piny forests, straight past the vocal orchards, right in among the robins and the jays and the startled thrushes, we dashed inexorable, and made harsh dissonance in the wild-wood orchestra; but not for that was the music hushed, nor did one color fade. Brooks leaped in headlong chase down the furrowed sides of gray old rocks, and glided ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... was vocal with astonishment. The man looked from husband to wife for signs of quarrelling, but Elizabeth returned his gaze quietly, and without signs of anger, and John also gave no indication of anything but surprise. After a gasping instant, during which his ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... to say about the discussion that is going on over "silent poets" is that, though the strength of feeling may be the same in those who are silent as in those who are vocal, that has nothing to do with poetry. Poetry is not a matter of feeling, it is ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore

... accomplishment. To the prima ballerina the dancing is more important than the dance, to the actors the playing than the play, to many painters the facture than the picture, and so on. Music has been the main sufferer, particularly on the vocal side, and certain kinds of opera have been buried under the vocal acrobatics of the singers. One sees occasionally in shop windows, and, it may be, in human habitations, a species of abominable clock that has no ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... to him. His sweet whistle rang out in answer like a vocal salute, and in a moment she was seated again in front of him, with that deft, tail-like left leg of his steering them down, down over cross-street, through teams and sleighs and unwary pedestrians; past the miners coming off shift; past the lamplighter ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... with this drama, quaked silently like a large coffee jelly, and with that there happened a high, rich, protracted sound which was laughter, but laughter not to be imitated of any vocal chords of a white race. The delicious note soared higher, higher it seemed than the scale of humanity, and was riotous velvet and cream, with no effort or uncertainty. Lance dropped his ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... onto eight weeks before ever Turkey Track is heard of 'round town ag'in. Also, it's in the Bird Cage Op'ry House he hits the surface of his times. The Mockin' Bird has jest done drove the vocal picket-pin of 'Old Kentucky Home,' when, bang! some loonatic shoots at her. Which the bullet bores a hole in the scenery not ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... three wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly decrepit and infirm; and—not to forget the library—on some shelves, a score or two of volumes of the Acts of Congress, and a bulky Digest of the Revenue laws. A tin pipe ascends through the ceiling, and forms a medium of vocal communication with other parts of the edifice. And here, some six months ago—pacing from corner to corner, or lounging on the long-legged stool, with his elbow on the desk, and his eyes wandering up and down the columns of the morning newspaper—you ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... accompaniment on the piano while I played the air on my fiddle and Monroe joined in with an obligato on the organ. So, in a very delightful way, to me at least, the evening was passed until four bells chimed out, when we closed the concert by rendering "Hail, Columbia!" with all the vocal and instrumental ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... was driven at first into the loft of the inn, of which the cottage was a dependency. Here the vocal music of the inhabitants was somewhat muffled, but the opportunities for studying natural history were rather excessive. A swarm of bees had established themselves in a corner where they could not be dislodged, and they had a way of crawling over the floor that kept my expectations ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... the beech-trunk, our knees raised to keep the fierce heat of the flames from our faces. From time to time we heard the barking of the wolves, now distant, now uncomfortably near. When the moon came up, much later, the woods seemed alive with strange vocal noises and ominous rustlings in the leaves and brakes. It was my London companion's first night in the open wilderness; but while he was very acute to note new sounds and inquire their origin, he seemed to be in ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... war,—I mean those who protested against it. Fewer they were than I could wish, for one might imagine America to have been colonized by a tribe of those nondescript African animals the Aye-Ayes, so difficult a word is No to us all. There is some malformation or defect of the vocal organs, which either prevents our uttering it at all, or gives it so thick a pronunciation as to be unintelligible. A mouth filled with the national pudding, or watering in expectation thereof, is wholly incompetent to this refractory monosyllable. An abject ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... occupied by Schicht, and before him by no less a person than Sebastian Bach. By education he belonged to the old Italian school of music, and had studied in Bologna under Pater Martini. He had made a name for himself in this art by his vocal compositions, in which his fine manner of treating the parts was much praised. He himself told me one day that a Leipzig publisher had offered him a very substantial fee if he would write for his firm another book of vocal exercises similar to the one which ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... African sun this amazing crowd stood assembled to welcome Sakr-el-Bahr; and welcome him it did, with such vocal thunder that an echo of it from the mole reached the very Kasbah on the hilltop to herald ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... delightful voice, and a perfect knowledge of music; which was properly denied; and that he knew nothing of the matter, and had no voice at all, roundly asserted. They sang together once more; and Emma would then resign her place to Miss Fairfax, whose performance, both vocal and instrumental, she never could attempt to conceal from herself, was infinitely superior ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... above his head. She was spare, and yet withal a roundness left to the cheek and forearm. Long-waisted and with a certain swing where it flowed down into straight hips, there was a bony, Olympian kind of bigness about her. Beneath the washed-out blue shirtwaist dress her chest was high, as if vocal. She was not without youth. Her head went up like a stag's to the passing of a band in the street, or a glance thrown after her, or the contemplation of her own freshly washed yellow hair in the sunlight. She wore a seven glove, but her nails had great depth and pinkness, and each ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... seen—a depth stretching as far below his power to fathom as those persons ascend beyond his powers to pursue—God speaks to their hearts by dreams and their tumultuous grandeurs. Even by solitude does God speak to little children, when made vocal by the services of Christianity, as also he does by darkness wheresoever it is peopled with visions of His almighty power. For a pagan child, for a Greek child, solitude was nothing; for a Christian ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... /interj./ If someone tells you about some new improvement to a program, you might respond: "Feetch, feetch!" The meaning of this depends critically on vocal inflection. With enthusiasm, it means something like "Boy, that's great! What a great hack!" Grudgingly or with obvious doubt, it means "I don't know; it sounds like just one more unnecessary and complicated thing". With ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... and irresistibly English, as not less tonically English was our principal host there, with whom we had moreover, my father and I, thanks to his office, such personal and genial relations that I recall seeing him grace our board at home, in company with his wife, whose vocal strain and complexion and coiffure and flounces I found none the less informing, none the less "racial," for my not being then versed in the language ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... under average acoustical conditions, a military officer cannot get across to five hundred men, he needs to improve his voice placement. It is remarkable what miracles can be worked by consistent exercise of the vocal cords. ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... Early Years Born 1808 Mary Peterkin The brilliant red poppies Left-handed Patrick's birthday Vocal performance A wonderful escape Events of the war The French prisoners Entry of the 42d into Edinburgh Bleaching "claes" on the Calton The Greenside workshops The chimes of St. Giles' The Edinburgh Market The caddies The fishwives The "floore" ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... exists no real sound perception. In other words, those persons are meant who may be regarded as either totally deaf or practically totally deaf.[1] With such deafness there is not infrequently associated an inability to speak, or to use vocal language. Hence our attention may be said to be directed to that part of the community which, by the want of the sense of hearing and oftentimes also of the power of speech, forms a special and distinct class; and is known, more or less ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best

... thing: but the girls suddenly became dumb; their eyes were fixed on vacancy, all looking towards the same spot; and their whole appearance gave assurance of the truth of what they said. In a short time, Mary Warren recovered the use of her vocal organs, and exclaimed, "There are three men, and three women, and two children. They are all in their winding-sheets: they look pale upon us, but red upon Tookey,—red as blood." Again, she exclaimed, in a startled and affrighted manner, "There is a young child under ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... dim lines of warehouses lining the insecure wharves of rotten piles, half filled in—that had ceased to be wharves, but had not yet become streets,—their treacherous yawning depths, with the uncertain gleam of tarlike mud below, at times still vocal with the lap and gurgle of the tide. I remember the weird stories of disappearing men found afterward imbedded in the ooze in which they had fallen and gasped their life away. I remember the two or three ships, still left standing where they were beached a year or two before, built in between warehouses, ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... the little red schoolhouse? The occasion was the last rehearsal of the Eastborough Singing Society, which had been studying vocal music assiduously for the last three months under the direction of Professor Obadiah Strout, and was to give its annual conceit the following evening at ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... dreary one. Contrary to what they had ever before experienced, in jaunts of this length through the woods, not a single hunting adventure occurred, to enliven the tedium of the way. For, although the heavens above were made vocal with the screams of wild geese, still pouring along in their hurried flight to the south, to escape the elemental foe behind, like the rapidly succeeding detachments of some retreating army, yet not a living creature, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... concert of picked talent" at the opera house. The Moonstone Orchestra, under the direction of Professor Wunsch, was to play, and the most talented members of each Sunday School were to take part in the programme. Thea was put down by the committee "for instrumental." This made her indignant, for the vocal numbers were always more popular. Thea went to the president of the committee and demanded hotly if her rival, Lily Fisher, were going to sing. The president was a big, florid, powdered woman, a fierce W.C.T.U. ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... have listened to the incomparable melody of the mock-bird—the full, charming notes of the blue song-thrush—the sweet warbling voices of the silvias, finches, and tanagers, that not only adorn the American woods with their gorgeous colours, but make them vocal with never-ending song? ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... ground on which rests our whole social fabric. There's "virtue" for you if you like!... Of course the accent must be attended to. The right accent. That's very important. The capacious lung, the thundering or the tender vocal chords. Don't talk to me of your Archimedes' lever. He was an absent-minded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad

... your wintry beds, ye flowers, Again ye'll flourish fresh and fair; Ye birdies dumb, in with'ring bowers, Again ye'll charm the vocal air. But here, alas! for me nae mair Shall birdie charm, or floweret smile; Fareweel the bonie banks of ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... from her unawares—a throb of the heart made vocal. It roused her to reality, to the fact that she had been standing rigidly in the middle of the room,—how long she knew not,—seeing nothing, hearing nothing, but the voice of ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... of his lofty contempt of them, whirled suddenly and picked up a rock. Johnny could pitch a very fair ball for an amateur, and the rock went true without any frills or curving deception. It landed in the middle of Bud Norris's back, and Bud's vocal efforts ended in ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... mule-pack would not contain them. The question remained, then, whether I should sacrifice these new possessions, already dear, or whether I should doom my mule to carry a greater burden. The attendant intimated that Swiss mules preferred heavy loads, and had they the vocal gifts of Balaam's ass, would demand them. Swayed by my desires and his arguments, I changed my pack for a larger one. After more than an hour in the shop, we tore ourselves away, leaving word that the things should be sent by post to Lucerne. We then repaired to the Bear Pit, by way of the Clock, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... hung over him wonderfully, lightly kissed his forehead without disturbing his deep sleep. Then she went to bathe herself in the pool, and to bind up her hair. The woodland was jewelled with dew, it went in misty green and yellow, all vocal of the joy she had. She was ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... assemblies was of all kinds, both instrumental and vocal. The English trials hardly mention music, possibly because the Sabbath had fallen into a decadent condition; but the Scotch and French trials prove that it was an integral part of the celebration. The Devil himself was ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray

... say the same of the Southampton, though it stands on classic ground, and is connected by vocal tradition with the great names of the Elizabethan age. What a falling off is here I Our ancestors of that period seem not only to be older by two hundred years, and proportionably wiser and wittier than we, but hardly ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... abstract studies should be relieved by the lighter branches of literature; music should be assiduously cultivated; nothing more refines and exalts the mind; not the mere performance of mechanical difficulties, either vocal or instrumental, for these, unless pursued with extreme caution, enlarge the hand and fatigue the chest, without imparting the advantages we ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore

... though it throbbeth in silent veins, 'Tis vocal without noise; It gushed o'er Manassas' solemn plains From the blood of the Maryland boys. That blood shall cry aloud and rise With an everlasting threat— By the death of the brave, by the God in the skies, "There's life in ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... and on the decks of many craft, a realization of what had happened dawned in the minds of thousands of people at about the same instant. A great, combined cheer shot up—a cheer that was a vocal cyclone! ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham

... indispensable to your greatest progress in speech culture. Reading aloud, properly done, compels you to pronounce the words, instead of skimming over them as in silent reading. It gives you the additional benefit of receiving a vocal impression of the rhythm ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser

... these people, but especially the women, are fond of music, both vocal and instrumental. Some of them might be said to be passionately so, removing their hair from off their ears, and bending their heads forward, as if to catch the sounds more distinctly, whenever we amused them in this manner. Their own ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... flatter and amuse her. But her diseased mind required stronger stimulants, and sought them in gallantry, in basset, and in usquebaugh. [212] While Charles. flirted with his three sultanas, Hortensia's French page, a handsome boy, whose vocal performances were the delight of Whitehall, and were rewarded by numerous presents of rich clothes, ponies, and guineas, warbled some amorous verses. [213] A party of twenty courtiers was seated at cards round a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... background, for which I need only mention the names of Descartes, who died in 1650, and Gassendi, who died in 1655. And then there was also the new methodological approach, that critical empiricism whose most vocal exponent was Francis Bacon, which led directly to the founding of the Royal Society in 1660 and its subsequent incorporation. These phases of seventeenth-century thought and activity I do ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer

... a young commonwealth must by a similar device consult Nature's first law of self-preservation. The dictator saves liberty by temporarily abrogating it: by momentary gagging of the legislative power he renders it truly vocal. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... so filled with complexities as yours, for the reason that owing to the high development of the mental faculties thoughts are almost as audible as words. Hence, converse between individuals on our planet is not altogether a series of vocal ejaculations. On the contrary, among the older members of the race, communication between individuals is in some ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... earth are you driving at?" I asked in a passion. I put my hat on my head (he never offered a seat to anybody), and as he seemed for the moment struck dumb by my irreverence, I turned my back on him and marched out. His vocal arrangements blared after me a few threats of coming down on the ship for the demurrage of the lighters, and all the other expenses consequent upon the delays arising ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad

... the wisdom of the ancients. Professor Lehwess says that he uses deep breathing not only as a health remedy but as a cure for muscular convulsions, especially chronic spasms; and he says that he bases his method for the cure of stuttering mainly upon respiratory and vocal exercises, "whereby," he says, "we work on enervated muscles, and make their function bring them into permanent activity and make them obedient to our will." Thus not only will the respiratory system be enlarged and quickened, and the lungs strengthened, but the blood circulation is promoted ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... throats Flung upward at a fountain's pitch, The fervour of the four long notes, That on the fountain's pool subside, Exult and ruffle and upspring: Endless the crossing multiplied Of silver and of golden string. There chimed a bubbled underbrew With witch-wild spray of vocal dew. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... inheritance." "'Tis the convinced belief of mankind," wrote Francis Thompson with a sardonic smile, "that to make a poet sing you must pinch his belly, as if the Almighty had constructed him like certain rudimentarily vocal dolls." "No artist," declares Arnold Bennett, "was ever assisted in his career by the yoke, by servitude, by enforced monotony, by economic inferiority." And Bliss Carman speaks out loud and bold: "The best poets who ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... English traveller, Mr. Wilkinson, has discovered the secret of the vocal Memnon. There was a cavity in which a person was concealed, and struck a stone, which gave a ringing sound like brass. The Arabs, who stood below when Mr. Wilkinson performed the miracle, described sound just as the author of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... covers of the supper room were visible. Here a high-light gleamed upon a bare shoulder; there, a stalwart male back showed, blocked out in bold black upon the bright canvas. Waiters flitted noiselessly about. The drone of that vocal orchestra filled the place: the masculine conversation, the brass and wood-wind—the sweeter tones of women, the ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer

... national oil companies of China, the Philippines, and Vietnam signed a joint accord on marine seismic activities in the Spratly Islands; China occupies some of the Paracel Islands also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan; China and Taiwan have become more vocal in rejecting both Japan's claims to the uninhabited islands of Senkaku-shoto (Diaoyu Tai) and Japan's unilaterally declared exclusive economic zone in the East China Sea, the site of intensive hydrocarbon prospecting; certain islands in the Yalu and Tumen rivers are in an uncontested ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... is not confined, It is incomparable; It comes from four quarters; It will not be advised, It will not be without advice. It commences its journey Above the marble rock, It is sonorous, it is dumb, It is mild, It is strong, it is bold, When it glances over the land, It is silent, it is vocal, It is clamorous, It is the most noisy On the face of the earth. It is good, it is bad, It is extremely injurious. It is concealed, Because sight cannot perceive it. It is noxious, it is beneficial; It is yonder, it is here; It will discompose, But will not repair ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest

... mistake; the word comes from a Norse root which refers to his moss-browsing habit. The "rein" with which he is driven is a rope tied around one of his horns. He has no cognisance of "gee" and "haw," nor of any other vocal direction, but must be yanked hither and thither with the rope by main force; while to stop him in his mad career, once he is started, it is often necessary to throw him with the rope. In Lapland there are doubtless individual deer better trained; the Lap herders tell of them with pride; ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... order of processions, the service of the priests and deacons, the variety and change of sacerdotal garments. Till the last days of his life, he officiated in the canon of the mass, which continued above three hours: the Gregorian chant [70] has preserved the vocal and instrumental music of the theatre, and the rough voices of the Barbarians attempted to imitate the melody of the Roman school. [71] Experience had shown him the efficacy of these solemn and pompous rites, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... a great deal to passion: more than men ever realize. Wasn't it Darwin who once even risked the conjecture that the vocal organs themselves were developed for sexual purposes, the object being to call or charm one's mate. Hence—perhaps—only animals that were continuously concerned with their matings would be at all likely to form an elaborate language. And without ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day

... the general chorus, were performers of no especial note, like our tree-creepers, pine warblers, and chipping sparrows. The great spring chorus had already begun to subside, but the woods and fields were still vocal with beautiful bird music, the country was very lovely, the inn as comfortable as possible, and the bath and supper very enjoyable after our tramp; and altogether I passed no pleasanter twenty-four hours ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... darkeys came down it, tuning their voices to our native ragtime. Or a balladist, man or woman, took the centre, and sang towards our compassionate windows. Or a musical husband and wife placed their portable melodeon on the opposite sidewalk, and trained their vocal and instrumental attack upon the same ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... stranger, I should not have insisted. One of the best singers I ever knew was so morbidly shy that on the platform she was an absolute failure. Her vocal chords became so contracted that she sang quite out of tune, and yet among friends ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... personal display and made the least intellectual demand. It supplied also to the society in the boxes at the San Carlo, the Pergola, the Scala, the Italiens, and Her Majesty's, the entertainment, in the persons of famous prima-donnas, of an extraordinary vocal performance. ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... do a great deal, and does very little. The whole orchestra dislike him. To-day, Sunday, I heard a mass of Holzbauer's, which is now twenty-six years old, but excellent. He writes very well, and has a good church style, arranges the vocal parts as well as the instrumental, and writes good fugues. They have two organists here; it would be worth while to come to Mannheim on purpose to hear them—which I had a famous opportunity of doing, as it is the custom here for ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

... as a vocal performer, we have Mrs. Seymour, who possesses much sweetness and melody of tone, and whose modest and unassuming manner of giving her songs is not their ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... this spectacle is at all seasons, it is never more so than in that bleak interval between sunset and dark, when the shrill scream of the factory whistle seems to have concentrated all the hard, unsympathetic quality of the climate into one vocal expression. Add to this the appearance of one or two pedestrians, manifestly too late for their dinners, and tasting in the shrewish air a bitter premonition of the welcome that awaits them at home, and you have one of those ordinary views from my balcony which ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte

... that? And leaning down over a foaming window-box, one stopped another hurrying past, and upstairs they went and down they went, until a sort of fulness settled on the court, the hive full of bees, the bees home thick with gold, drowsy, humming, suddenly vocal; the Moonlight Sonata answered by ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... that such local and homely renown would have been more to our simple hero's taste than the laurel and the throne. I groaned in spirit over the monstrous playhouse, with its pretentious Teutonic air; I walked through the churchyard, vocal with building rooks, and came to the noble church, full of the evidences of wealth and worship and honour. I do not like to confess the breathless awe with which I drew near to the chancel and gazed on the stone that, nameless, with its rude rhyme, ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... descried, Where Sadness, gazing on time's ravage, hung, And Silence to Destruction's trophy clung - Save that as morning songsters swell'd their lays, Awaken'd Echo humm'd repeated praise: The lark on quavering pinion woo'd the day, Less towering linnets fill'd the vocal spray, And song-invited pilgrims rose to pray. Here at a pine-press'd hill's embroider'd base I stood, and hail'd the Genius of the place. Then was it doom'd by fate, my idle heart, Soften'd by Nature, gave access to Art; The Muse approach'd, her syren-song I heard, ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe

... religion; inculcating some new doctrines and ceremonials among those who are more simple than himself. He has already made proselytes of one-fifth of the camp; beginning by working on the women, the children, and the weak-minded. His followers are all dancing on the plain, to their own vocal music. The more knowing ones of the tribe look on and laugh; thinking it all too foolish to do harm; but they will soon find that women, children, and fools, form a large majority of every community, and they will have, eventually, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... of the vocal organs and organs of respiration may be directly traced to this barbarous method of breathing, and the straining of delicate organs caused by this method, often results in the harsh, disagreeable voices heard on all sides. ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka

... were so full of "vocal groves and feathered choirs," that George Steevens broke out with ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... classification of languages. Two periods in the development of the language may be clearly distinguished. In the older period the vocalization of the language was completely carried out, and the collision of two consonants was almost without exception avoided.(2) By throwing off the vocal and consonantal terminations, and by the weakening or rejection of the vowels, this soft and melodious language was gradually changed in character, and became intolerably harsh and rugged.(3) They changed for example -ramu*af- into -ram*a-, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... francs; but what relief from misery could mitigate a quarter of a century of darkness for a man who had looked out at the world with such vivifying eyes? His father had followed the trade of a glazier, but was otherwise vocal than in the emission of the rich street-cry with which we used all to be familiar, and which has vanished with so many other friendly pedestrian notes. The elder Daumier wrought verses as well as window-panes, and M. Champfleury ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... interception everybody turned suddenly and looked at the Lay Reader. His mouth was twisted very slightly to one side. It gave him a rather unpleasant snarling expression. If this expression had been vocal instead of muscular it would have shocked ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... so empty and meaningless. Think of the undreaming sleep of a corpse which dissolution is winding in its chemical embrace. A moment ago that hand was uplifted to clasp yours, intelligent accents were vocal on those ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... offender, and silence tended to syncope of the language. The causes of either fault were in his opinion far to seek, and lay less in the nature of the individual than in the essence of orthography and diction. Tautology was the blemish of written and vocal speech. Too many symbols were used to express an idea, and nothing was left to the imagination of the reader or hearer. Redundancy of expression was the vade mecum of the bore, and on the other hand there was no reason to believe that the sound ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... HOLY NAME SOCIETY.—On the evening of Nov. 23, in Union Park Hall, Boston, a vocal and instrumental concert took place under the direction of Mr. Calixta Lavallee, assisted by Miss Helen O'Reilly, soprano, and Mr. Charles E. McLaughlin, violinist. Dancing and refreshments followed. The society was present in full strength, and the entertainment ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... Dexter. "Do you suppose I haven't ruptured my vocal cords more than once? I might just as well put my head out of the front window and whisper it as to ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... widely considered to be one of the pre-eminent classical music figures of the Western world. This German musical genius created numerous works that are firmly entrenched in the repertoire. Except for a weakness in composing vocal and operatic music (to which he himself admitted, notwithstanding a few vocal works like the opera "Fidelio" and the song "Adelaide,"), Beethoven had complete mastery of the artform. He left his stamp in 9 symphonies, ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven

... on each side of the causeway, raised with turf; and whilst their Majesties and the company were passing through the great salon, they danced. On their passage by water, the barges were followed by other boats, having on board vocal and instrumental musicians, habited like Nereids, singing and playing the whole time. After landing, the shepherdesses I have mentioned before received the company in separate troops, with songs and dances, after the fashion and accompanied by the music of the provinces they ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... but that an articulate voice, and such express words, and language so clear and exact and elaborate, should proceed from inanimate things, is, in my judgment, a thing utterly out of possibility. For it was never known that either the soul of man, or the deity himself, uttered vocal sounds and language, alone, without an organized body and members fitted for speech. But where history seems in a manner to force our assent by the concurrence of numerous and credible witnesses, we are to conclude that an impression distinct from sensation affects the imaginative part of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... reach The sacred organ's praise? Notes inspiring holy love, Notes that wing their heavenly ways To mend the choirs above. Orpheus could lead the savage race, And trees uprooted left their place Sequacious of the lyre: But bright Cecilia raised the wonder higher: When to her Organ vocal breath was given An angel heard, and straight ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... bearing heavy burdens till they drop from exhaustion, these little beasts are of incalculable value to the laboring classes of southern Europe, Egypt, Mexico, and similar lands. If they have failed to win affection, it is, perhaps, because of their one infirmity,—their fearful vocal tones, which in America have won for them the sarcastic ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... is no other point at which children so frequently and readily learn control as in the matter of speech. The family where all speak at once, where a babel of sounds leads to a rivalry of vocal organs, is not only a nuisance to the neighbors, it is a school of uncontrolled action to the children. Just to learn to wait, even after the thought is formed into words, until it shall be my turn or my opportunity to speak is a fine discipline of control. ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... to you," he said curtly. His rich, musical voice, for all its deepness, held a faint hint of the tremulous, birdlike notes heard in the voice of a young child who has not used his vocal chords long enough for them to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... Prescott and Putnam and Warren, the chiefs of the day, and the colored man, Salem, who, is reported to have shot the gallant Pitcairn, as he mounted the parapet. Cold as the clods on which it rests, still as the silent Heaven to which it soars, it is yet vocal, eloquent, in their ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... variety of more pacific and elegant accomplishments, which were intended to render him a delightful companion in the hall, as the others were calculated to make him a formidable enemy in the field. The science of music, both instrumental and vocal; the composition and recitation of ballads, roundelays, and other minor pieces of poetry; an acquaintance with the romances and the writings of the popular poets of the times; were all essential branches in the system of education ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various

... music of its fellows, but henceforward will chime in. Probably there is also a subsidiary, but in its context not less prominent meaning—namely, that, while the several poets (such as Chatterton, Sidney, and Lucan) had each a vocal sphere of his own, apposite to his particular poetic quality, the sphere which Keats is now to control had hitherto remained unoccupied because no poet of that special type of genius which it demanded ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... substantiate his statement, the raucous voice, accompanied by resounding chords strummed on a banjo, sounded again. The vocal and instrumental chaos was frequently punctured by revolver reports, as the ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... instance, is at perfect liberty to declare himself so. Nobody will say that he is not within his rights if he should think it worth while to practise this liberty, though of course he will have to face the obloquy which attends all opinion that is not shared by the more demonstrative and vocal portions of the public. It is true that in every stable society a general conviction prevails of the extreme undesirableness of constantly laying bare the foundations of government. Incessant discussion of the theoretical ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... There is no place that I know on the earth which has the peculiar, bright, ineffable calm of the plain of these Colossi. It takes you into its breast, and you lie there in the growing sunshine almost as if you were a child laid in the lap of one of them. That legend of the singing at dawn of the "vocal Memnon," how could it have arisen? How could such calmness sing, such patience ever find a voice? Unlike the Sphinx, which becomes ever more impressive as you draw near to it, and is most impressive when you sit almost at its feet, the Colossi lose in ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... horror, a picnic ruthlessly invaded my sanctuary. With a roar of Boeotian hilarity, it tore up the hillside as if it were a storming party, and half a day the sacred woods were vocal with silly catcalls and snatches of profane song. I locked up my hermitage, and, taking my stick, sought refuge in flight, like the other woodland creatures; only coming back at evening with cautious step and peering glance, half afraid lest it should still be there. No! It was gone, but its voices ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... emphasized the words maintained in a continuous stream of tone, because it calls attention to one of the numerous resemblances between the style of Chopin and that of Wagner, who in his music dramas similarly keeps up an uninterrupted flow of richly colored harmonies to sustain the vocal part. Schumann relates that he had the good fortune to hear Chopin play some of his etudes. "And he played them very much a la Chopin," he says: "Imagine an AEolian harp provided with all the scales, commingled by ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... and down, and said, "Oh, you Beauty!" and then went off into various inarticulate sounds, which I recommend to the particular study of the new philosophers: they cannot have been invented after speech; that would be retrogression; they must be the vocal remains of that hairy, sharp-eared quadruped, our Progenitor, who by accident discovered language, and so turned Biped, and went ahead of all the other hairy quadrupeds, whose ears were too long or not sharp ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... for the good man's beautiful example, Who in the vilest saw Some sacred crypt or altar of a temple Still vocal with ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... approach of spring the red squirrels got under my house, two at a time, directly under my feet as I sat reading or writing, and kept up the queerest chuckling and chirruping and vocal pirouetting and gurgling sounds that ever were heard; and when I stamped they only chirruped the louder, as if past all fear and respect in their mad pranks, defying humanity to stop them. No, you don't—chickaree—chickaree. ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... to face or voice to voice; surely then, if he set his mind to the task, he could make himself more than a mere string of words over a telephone. Heretofore he had been working wholly with his fingers, his ear-drums, and his vocal cords; he determined henceforth to exercise his intelligence, if he had any. It was indeed high time, for Miss Harris was undoubtedly slipping away, lured by luxuries no clerk could afford, and, moreover, he, Mitchell, was growing old; ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... an opera-house of gigantic proportions, which is annually graced by the highest vocal talent of Europe; Wood's minstrels, and Christy's minstrels, where blacks perform in unexceptionable style to unwearied audiences; and comic operas. There are al fresco entertainments, masquerades, concerts, restaurants, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... and with nothing to weight him down, his feet felt light as feathers. He trudged briskly along the smooth highway, every sense alive to the delights of the forest. All about him the woods were vocal with the calls of birds. The wind whispered and sighed in the pine tops. And sometimes, when the air in the bottom was still as sluggish water, Charley could hear the wind roaring among the trees far up on the hillsides. The scent of spring was ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... rapidity, and the next instant the door was thrown open, and the best friend that I possessed in the world was shaking my hand and patting me on the back, as though I was an infant strangling with lacteal fluid, while Rover circled around us, and made the air vocal with his joyous barks, until anxious to distinguish himself, and perhaps thinking that Mr. Brown was not getting his share of the reception, he suddenly welcomed that gentleman with a slight nip on the seat of his pantaloons, that caused him to utter ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... childish fancies. How they sing! They "bring down the house" with their thumping on the wooden desks as an accompaniment to the "big bass drum," whilst a certain youngster's rendering of a juvenile ditty, known as "The Muffin Man," is calculated to make one remember his vocal efforts whenever the hot and juicy muffin is put on the breakfast table. Little Mary still trips it neatly. She can't quite forget the days and nights when she used to accompany her mother round the public-houses and dance for coppers. Jane is also ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... they all advance And form to measured airs the mazy dance; To Phemius was consign'd the chorded lyre, Whose hand reluctant touch'd the warbling wire; Phemius, whose voice divine could sweetest sing High strains responsive to the vocal string. ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... ceremony Tido. The Arabs also appear to have held similar opinions as to the power of music. They boast of Ishac, Kathab Al Moussouly, Alfarabi, and other musicians, whom they relate to have worked miracles by their vocal and instrumental performances. With the Arabs, music was interwoven with philosophy; and their wise men imagined a marvellous relation to exist between harmonious sounds and the operations of nature. Harmony was esteemed the panacea, or universal remedy, in mental and even bodily affections; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... itself in a perfect chord. Her voice is like a thing detachable from herself, a thing which she takes in her hands like a musical instrument, playing on the stops cunningly with her fingers. Prose, when she speaks it, becomes a kind of verse, with all the rhythms, the vocal harmonies, of a kind of human poetry. Her whisper is heard across the whole theatre, every syllable distinct, and yet it is really a whisper. She comes on the stage like a miraculous painted idol, all nerves; she runs through the gamut of the ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons

... arrival found him. He was sitting moodily listening to a concert of vocal music performed by some of the ladies of his harem, who were posted out of sight and at some little distance in a small grove. Just as Giafer entered the garden the Caliph clapped his hands and said to a slave who ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin

... this part of the country, is first heard in May, and continues vocal until the middle of July. He begins to sing at dusk, and we usually hear his note soon after the Veery, the Philomel of our summer evenings, has become silent. His song consists of three notes, in a sort of triple or waltz time, with a slight pause after the first ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... active unhappiness, let alone misery like that of the previous night, that moved Finn to this vocal display; but only a kind of gentle melancholy such as we call home-sickness, and after five minutes of it, he curled up beside one of the ricks, after scratching and turning round and round sufficiently to make a kind ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... speak much in large rooms,—the mistaken effort at loudness. This results in tightening and straining the throat, finally producing nasal head-tones or a voice of metallic harshness. And it is entirely unnecessary. There is no need to speak loudly. The ordinary schoolroom needs no vocal effort. A hall seating three or four hundred persons demands no effort whatever beyond a certain clearness and definiteness of speech. A hall seating from five to eight hundred needs more skill in aiming the voice, ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant

... sounds must have been employed in tone language, if not also a few consonants. Eventually the action and reaction of receptual intelligence and conventional sign-making must have ended in so far developing the former as to have admitted of the breaking up (or articulation) of vocal sounds, as the only direction in which any improvement in vocal sign-making was possible." Romanes continues his sketch by referring to the probability that this important stage in the development of speech was greatly assisted by the already existing ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott

... him by now was so widespread and vocal, that his friends, fearing that soon it would pass from words to deeds, urged him to take precautions, advised the wearing of a shirt of ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... the song would cease simultaneously for a moment, and an exclamation at highest vocal pitch would take the ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... founder of that excellent place of publick amusement, Vauxhall Gardens, which must ever be an estate to its proprietor, as it is peculiarly adapted to the taste of the English nation; there being a mixture of curious show,—gay exhibition,—musick, vocal and instrumental, not too refined for the general ear;—for all which only a shilling is paid[906]; and, though last, not least, good eating and drinking for those who choose to purchase that regale[907]. Mr. Thomas Tyers was bred to the law; but having a handsome fortune, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... undoubtedly distinguishes listening from mere hearing; and although psycho-physiology seems still at a loss for the precise adjustments of the inner ear corresponding to the minute adjustments of the eye, it is generally recognised that auditive attention is accompanied by adjustments of the vocal parts, or preparations for such adjustments, which account for the impression of following a sequence of notes as we follow the appearance of colours and light, but as we do not follow, in the sense of connecting by our activity, consecutive sensations ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee

... its tricks close by: at every shot the poor little creature stopped fiddling and looked over its shoulder with a distressed air of "If I'm not hit this time!" Hand-organs, penny trumpets and rattles quite drowned the voice of a street-songstress with a large assortment of vocal music before her, from which she was giving the public a selection. Whether the songs had any reference to the pictures that formed her background we did not discover, but, at all events, the latter were tragic in the extreme. "The twenty-four-year-old murderer of his mother and six brothers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... tragedy is silence. Serbia's tragedy needs no rhetoric, no language to describe it, to exalt it. For silence, and not rhetoric, makes tragedy greater. Serbia's silence to-day is as deep as her tragedy is dark. The most silent suffering is the most vocal suffering at the same time. The most silent suffering is like a screw boring into the conscience of the makers of the suffering. Such silent suffering is the severe judge of the world who makes all ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic

... derived from the Mexican chocolatl. The Mexicans used to froth their chocolatl with curious whisks made specially for the purpose (see page 6). Thomas Gage suggests that choco, choco, choco is a vocal representation of the sound made by stirring chocolate. The suffix atl means water. According to Mr. W.J. Gordon, we owe the name of chocolate to a misprint. He states that Joseph Acosta, who wrote as early as 1604 of chocolatl, was made by the printer to write chocolate, ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp

... MUSICIANS, or scientific criticisms on vocal and instrumental performers, operas, and new music, on the Continent as well as in ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous

... away, all things have become new.' It was like entering another world, a new state of existence. Natural objects were glorified, my spiritual vision was so clarified that I saw beauty in every material object in the universe, the woods were vocal with heavenly music; my soul exulted in the love of God, and I wanted everybody to share in ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... landlord, who had picked up a small table cheap at a sale, and installed it in the clubroom, hoping to profit thereby. Again Caldew was conscious of the same distinct air of constraint immediately he entered. Two or three men who were talking and laughing loudly became as mute as though their vocal organs had been suddenly smitten with paralysis. The village butcher, who was at the billiard table in the act of attempting some complicated stroke, stopped abruptly with his cue in mid air, and gazed at the detective with open mouth ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... clown under cover of the applause that greeted his vocal effort. And his associates looked down from their perches high in the air, gazing in wonder upon the clown who was bowing so low that, each time he did so, he was obliged to turn a somersault ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... observation on some rock of the Thebaid; and that the music of the rocks there led to the jugglery of the priests in the statue of Memnon? Perhaps, when, "the rosy-fingered Aurora rendered her son, the glorious Memnon, vocal,"* (* These are the words of an inscription, which attests that sounds were heard on the 13th of the month Pachon, in the tenth year of the reign of Antoninus. See Monuments de l'Egypte Ancienne.) the voice was that of a man hidden beneath ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... since anything edible could have been found on board the Livorno. Yet I hardly think I should exaggerate if I said that two thousand birds rose circling from various points of vantage about the derelict as we approached her sides. That this winged and highly vocal congregation resented our intrusion was not to be doubted for a moment. Short of actually attacking us with beak and claw, the creatures could hardly have given more practical expression to their sentiments. The circumstance was trivial, of course, but I think it somewhat ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... father's. True the father had not spoken so kindly as he might, but had he known his son, he would often have spoken severely. From the habit of seeking clear and forcible expression in writing, he had got into a way of using stronger vocal utterances than was necessary, and what would have been but a blow from another, was a stab from him. But the feelings of Cornelius in no case deserved consideration—they were so selfish. And now he considered that mighty self of his insulted as well as wronged. What right had his father to ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... of the vocal systems among the animals form a subject well worthy of the deepest study, not only as another character by which to classify the animal kingdom correctly, but as bearing indirectly also on the question of the origin of animals. Can we suppose that characteristics ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... was quickly thwarted by these self-licensed prowlers, who intercepting our associates in the carriage-way, encircled them in such a manner, as to preclude the possibility of extrication; and raised, at the same time, a discoid of sounds, compared with which the vocal minstrelsy of the long-eared braying fraternity would have been the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... no cessation of the fetes and games. A dance was executed to the sound of two drums, or rather of two hollow trunks, by a hundred and five performers, supported by a vocal choir. Cook reciprocated these demonstrations by putting his soldiers through their artillery exercises, and letting off fireworks, which produced indescribable astonishment in ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... was laughing as though his vocal cords would snap—there was neither tragedy nor illusion in the apparition of Raffles. A life-size Jack-in-the-box, he had thrust his head through a lid within the lid, cut by himself between the two iron bands that ran round the chest like the straps of a portmanteau. He must have ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung

... of sweet thing it could be. From various arms of this tree hung cages of different kinds. In one, a large wicker cylinder with a ring at top, revelled a mocking bird; in another an oriole; in a third the impudent bobolink—while three or four more delicate prisons were loudly vocal with canaries. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Christian hymnology of India is already a rapidly growing power. Every important vernacular has one or more Protestant Christian hymn books, which reveal to what a large extent our faith has inspired and made vocal the praises of Zion in that land. Nearly all of these Christian hymns in South India and many in North India are the compositions of native Christians and manifest considerable poetic power and high sentiment. ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... would be obliged to relax his pace; he could not sprint down that thoroughfare without attracting undue attention. Behind, the pursuer called out; he was, however, too short of breath for compelling vocal effect. ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... doctor and forced him into the chair and Slavatsky started the generator. The violet light bathed Dr. Bird's head and he felt a stiffness and contraction of his neck muscles, and as he tried to shout out his knowledge of Slavatsky's treachery, he found that his vocal chords were paralyzed. Through a gathering haze he could see Carson approaching with an anesthesia cone and the sweet smell of lethane assailed his nostrils. He fought with all his force, but strong hands held him, and he felt himself ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... two or three days, and has seen his ward, Hamlet, behave most princelike on Newark Hill and elsewhere. He promises to be a real treasure.[79] Notwithstanding, Mr. Magrath went to Bowhill with me one day, where his vocal talents gave great pleasure, and I hope will procure him the notice and protection of the Buccleuch family. The Duke says my building engrosses, as a common centre, the thoughts of Mr. Atkinson and Mr. Bullock, and wishes ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... indeed for want of vocal nous The stage had banished him when he 'tempted it, For though his voice completely filled the house, It also emptied it. However, there he stools Vociferous—a ragged don! And with his iron pipes laid on— A row ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... blessed morning! Sounds of mirth, From the vocal vales ascending, Hail thy birth. Happy birds in echoing bowers, Waken all their tuneful powers, And spontaneous music springs From all animated things,— Verdant hills, Tuneful ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)

... beyond—while, from time to time, the deep low of cattle reverberates from afar. Or if you are where the still and speechless creatures inhabit, open your eye to gaze and examine, and it shall be filled with the visible, as the ear with the vocal signs of living enjoyment. Walking at the edge of the ebbing tide, you tread on life at every step—shelly tribe on tribe of fish pressing together, while in the clear water, other tribes noiselessly swim and ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... consisted of a few ragged and well-thumbed volumes abstracted from the tremendous chronicles bequeathed to the world by those Froissarts and Holinsheds of crime—the Ordinaries of Newgate. His vocal collection comprised a couple of flash songs pasted against the wall, entitled 'The Thief-Catcher's Prophecy,' and the 'Life and Death of the Darkman's Budge;' while his extraordinary mechanical skill was displayed in ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... desperately through the masses of femininity, and resisting all attempts to engage him in the vocal fray, emerged at length into the darkened hall where the air was, as he told himself in a frenzied flight of the imagination, less like a combination of a menagerie and a perfume shop. Here, in a quiet corner, sat Lydia's father, alone. ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... countless multiplication of thy species, so that, while sailing through the interplanetary spaces, we may indulge in endless flights of fancy on the number and variety of thy descendants who will ere long render the Selenitic atmosphere vocal ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... among Cornish speakers a tendency to a somewhat blurred sound of certain letters, as though there were an obstruction of some sort in their vocal organs, not altogether unlike that attributed on the stage and in fiction, with some foundation in fact, to the Hebrew race. This is shown by the tendency to turn s and z into sh and zh, and to insert b before m, and d before n. In the English spoken in Cornwall at the present ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner

... cause of the deplorable neglect of science is to be sought elsewhere. The fundamental difficulty is that which has been already indicated, that public taste and judgment deliberately prefers the type known as literary, or as it might with more propriety be designated, "vocal." In the schools there is no lack of science teaching, but the small percentage of boys whose minds develop early and whose general capacity for learning and aptitude for affairs mark them out as leaders, rarely have much instinct for science, and avoid such teaching, finding it irksome and unsatisfying. ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... mind, my subtlety of consideration. It seems to me that when I go to see a man, I go to see him—to enjoy his presence. If he is my friend, the sight of him healthy and happy is enough for me. I don't want him to keep his vocal cords, and I don't want to keep my own vocal cords, in incessant vibration all the time I am in his company. If I go to see a man, it distracts me to have to talk and it distracts me to hear him talking. I can't imagine why one should not go and sit about in people's ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... proceeded line by line, with all the emotional swells and cadences that had of old characterized the tune: and the body of vocal harmony that it evoked implied a large congregation within, to whom it was plainly as familiar as it had been to church-goers of a past generation. With a whimsical sense of regret at the secession of his once favourite air Somerset moved ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... astonishment and a blush of warm blood leapt to her face. He himself was surprised at his own voice; for it sounded unfamiliar, as though some intelligent thing had suddenly possessed him and was using his vocal ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... songs, and then, just as day was breaking, stopped abruptly and sprawled suddenly on the floor as if he had been struck asleep. He was vocal even in his sleep. A cock in the far corner began crowing and ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... divine, Made vocal by him with new beauties did shine; His choice conversation with children and men, Was often enriched with a song from ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... the sound of a trumpet: he noticed the recently cut notches, five feet asunder, on the bark of the trees, and he saw the smoke of fires. He inferred that they possessed some unusual method of climbing, or that their stature was gigantic. In the sound, the colonist recognises the vocal cooey of the aborigines, and learns from the steps "to the birds' nests," that they then hunted the opossum, and employed that method of ascent, which, for agility and daring has never been surpassed. Thus, during more than 150 years, this country was forgotten; ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... the darling!" cried Maggie, the "Jack-in-the-middle" of the five little sisters, and the first to reach the small aspirant to vocal honours. "She shall stand on the table," she continued, struggling breathlessly with "Towzer," as she tried to lift her in her ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... red glow of light seemed to betoken a great ultimate conflagration in which the fabric of an ancient honor was cracking and burning on every side. The shy early beginnings of gaiety, of which Fauchery one April evening had heard the vocal expression in the sound of breaking glass, had little by little grown bolder, wilder, till they had burst forth in this festival. Now the rift was growing; it was crannying the house and announcing ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... peoples, Ootah possessed the soul of a poet—nature was vocal with him, and the disembodied beings of other worlds made themselves manifest and spoke in the light and in the clouds. To him everything lived; the clouds were the habitation of spirits, the waves were alive, all the animals and fish possessed souls; the very winds were endowed ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre

... musical instruments playing all the while. These are quite of another form than those used among us; but, as many of them are much sweeter than ours, so others are made use of by us. Yet in one thing they very much exceed us: all their music, both vocal and instrumental, is adapted to imitate and express the passions, and is so happily suited to every occasion, that, whether the subject of the hymn be cheerful, or formed to soothe or trouble the mind, or to express grief ...
— Utopia • Thomas More

... on which occasion he presided at the performance of his exercise for these degrees. This consisted of an anthem, with an overture, solos, recitatives and choruses, accompanied by instruments, besides a vocal anthem in eight parts, which was not performed. In 1769 he published An Essay ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... With roots that groped about eternity, And in each drop of dew upon each blade The mirror of the inseparable All. The first voice, then the second, in their turns Had sung me captive. This voice sang me free. Therefore, above all vocal sons of men, Since him whose sightless eyes saw hell and heaven, To Wordsworth be my homage, thanks, and love. Yet dear is Keats, a lucid presence, great With somewhat of a glorious soullessness. And dear, and great with an excess of soul, Shelley, the hectic flamelike rose of verse, ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... corresponded in music. Their emotions, too deep and strange to be conveyed in words, like articulate thoughts, they expressed in tones. Seating themselves at their instruments, they would for hours carry on an intercourse perfectly intelligible to each other, and more adequate and delicious than any vocal conversation. When Felix, at Naples, at Rome, or in London, sent to Fanny a letter composed in notes, she translated it first with her eyes, then with her piano. The most charming transcripts of these affectionate and musical souls were thus made in music. Sweeter or more divinely gifted beings ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger



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