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It was the most cracked and venerable pipe that ever tickled the throat of old age, a mingling of wailing falsettos and of hollow gasping growls, the whole very weak. I threw the clothes off him, and said, "Do you wish to rise? I will bring your breakfast here if you wish." He looked at me, but made no answer.
Not that one that should undervalue the half-recitative of doubtful barytones, or the brilliant escapades of slightly unmanageable falsettos, or the concentrated efforts of the proprietors of two or three effective notes, who may be observed lying in wait for them, and coming down on them with all their might, and the look on their countenances of "I too am a singer."
They were anything but gentle to the meat with which they had been favoured by good fortune and the wisdom of Bashti. For a time they sat about, all pulling at clay pipes and chirruping and laughing in queer thin falsettos at the events of the night and the previous afternoon.
Suddenly the dance was discontinued, and indeed in time, for the lingers of the non-combatant musicians, sharing in the general nervousness, had already given notice, by numerous falsettos, of their inability to proceed much longer.
Suddenly the dance was discontinued, and indeed in time, for the lingers of the non-combatant musicians, sharing in the general nervousness, had already given notice, by numerous falsettos, of their inability to proceed much longer.
People with enviable nerves and unenviable tastes often enjoy sounds in the ratio of their lack of melody say, such everyday thoroughfare music as the slap and bang of coach-wheels on the cobble-stones; the creaking of street-cars round a sharp curve, like Milton's infernal doors "grating harsh thunder;" the squeaking falsettos of the cries by old-clothes' men, itinerant glaziers, fishmongers, fruiterers, tinkers and what not; the yells of rival coachmen at the railway-stations, giving one an idea of Bedlam; the street-fiddlers and violinists with horribly untuned instruments; the Italian open-air singers hoarsely shouting, "Shoo Fly" or "Viva Garibaldi! viva l'Italia!" the gongs beaten on steamboats and by hotel-runners at stations on the arrival of trains; the unearthly squeals and shrieks of new "musical instruments" sold cheap by street-peddlers; the horrible noise-producers which boys invent for the torture of nervous people such, for example, as this present season's, which is happily styled "the devil's fiddle," or "the chicken-box," whose simplest form is an emptied tomato-can, with a string passed through the end and pulled with the rosined fingers.
Steps of dancing with rattle of iron-shod boot-heels clicking over sanded floors, the hoarse shout of the "caller-off," and now and again angry tones with cracked feminine falsettos broke on the air; and all the time the soft rain fell and the steam seemed to rise from the sewage-laden streets.
I never wish to hear a fine singer; I always agree with Dr. Johnson in wishing that the difficulties had been impossibilities, with all their falsettos and tortures of affectation to which they put themselves.
"But what is it you want?" asked the mayor, somewhat nettled because O'Brien, instead of backing him up, was busy piling three million golden dollars on the floor in stacks two and a half feet high. "We want to be left alone!" The reply came in a chorus of trebles, pipings, quavers, and adolescent falsettos that caused the mayor to lift his hands to his forehead entreating silence.
Marquesans think our singing strange and no wonder! Theirs is a prolonged chant, a monotone without tune, with no high notes and little variance. But loving distraction, they listened with deep amusement to my rendering of American airs, as we might listen to Chinese falsettos.
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