United States or New Zealand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
On that eve, such an impulse had inspired the limbs of the Mormon emigrants. Scarcely had the debris of the supper been removed, ere a space was cleared midway between the blazing fires; music swelled upon the air the sounds of fiddle, horn, and clarionet and half a score of couples, setting themselves en quadrille, commence treading time to the tune.
He was an old man, who played wretchedly on the French horn and clarionet, both of which, as well as a double-barrelled gun, were called into operation, and there is no denying that the effect was fine. Four reverberations followed each blast; all of them clear and distinct, as if four separate instruments had spoken.
The inhabitants of Orbajosa heard in the twilight vagueness of their morning slumbers the same sonorous clarionet, and they opened their eyes, saying: "The soldiers!" Some murmured to themselves between sleeping and waking: "At last they have sent us that rabble." Others got out of bed hastily, growling: "Let us go take a look at those confounded soldiers."
He has also his cabinet councillors in the village, with whom he is very busy just now, preparing for the May-Day ceremonies. Among these is the village tailor, a pale-faced fellow, that plays the clarionet in the church choir; and, being a great musical genius, has frequent meetings of the band at his house, where they "make night hideous" by their concerts.
The river continued unheeding. The phrase was repeated and a listener might know it was a fragment of the Tune of tunes. Nobler instruments accepted it, the clarionet protected, the brass encouraged, and it rose to the surface to the whisper of violins. In full unison was Love born, flame of the flame, flushing the dark river beneath him and the virgin snows above.
The feminine attraction, a rose in her hair, with a man's overcoat protecting her against the freshness of the evening air over her ballet-dancer's dress, played at the same time the cymbals and the big bass-drum a desperate accompaniment to three measures of a polka, always the same, which were murdered by a blind clarionet player; and the ringmaster, a sort of Hercules with the face of a galley-slave, a Silenus in scarlet drawers, roared out his furious appeal in a loud voice.
The fiddle and the flageolet were neither of them interesting; their faces were of the ordinary type among the blind earnest, attentive, and grave. Not so the clarionet player; any artist or philosopher must have come to a stop at the sight of him. Picture to yourself a plaster mask of Dante in the red lamplight, with a forest of silver-white hair above the brows.
Hannibal might have rejoiced. He was a very exceptional man. But here's a poor creature still playing the clarionet down the street, on the pretence of giving pleasure worth a penny. Yes, my boy, I know you're out of work, and that is why you play the "Last Rose of Summer" and "When other Lips." I am out of work, too, and I can't play anything.
There was a sudden, though not loud, sound of hollow brass chinking under the four-post bed. "Now then, can't you keep still?" said the clarionet in a hoarse whisper. "It's cramp in my leg," growled the trombone. "I'd have had to come out if he hadn't guv me this chance." "Won't you hold your tongues?" whispered Gildart from the closet, the door of which he opened slightly.
At half-past four on the morning after our arrival in the mountains, I was roused from a profound sleep by the sound of the bugle. A solitary performer was blowing spiritedly into his instrument; what piece of music he was trying to execute I could not make out, but that his primary object was to "murder sleep" was evident, and he succeeded. Losing all note of time and place, I thought for a moment I was in London, and that this was a visit from the Christmas waits. But there was a liveliness in the tones incompatible with the season when the clarionet, trombone, and cornet-
Word Of The Day