Tenor Singing Quotes

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lay loooo-yah! A-layyyy-loo yah!” He had abandoned his tenor and was singing in a wavering falsetto.
John Berendt (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil)
In the far corner, a tenor began to sing, Zsadist's crystal-clear voice sailing up toward the warrior paintings on the ceiling far, far above them all. At first John didn't know what the song was...although if he'd been asked what his name was, he would have said Santa Claus, or Luther Vandross, or Teddy Roosevelt. Maybe even Joan Collins.
J.R. Ward
Sing, then. Sing, indeed, with shoulders back, and head up so that song might go to the roof and beyond to the sky. Mass on mass of tone, with a hard edge, and rich with quality, every single note a carpet of colour woven from basso profundo, and basso, and baritone, and alto, and tenor, and soprano, and also mezzo, and contralto, singing and singing, until life and all things living are become a song. O, Voice of Man, organ of most lovely might.
Richard Llewellyn (How Green Was My Valley)
That is very much like asking: "Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?" Obviously, the man who can sing tenor.
Henry Ford (My Life and Work)
At the prosecution table, Flagler gave me his Ivy League snicker. If I wanted, I could dangle him out the window by his ankles. But then, I was picking up penalties for late hits while he was singing tenor with the Whiffenpoofs. Okay, so I’m not Yale Law Review, but I’m proud of my diploma. University of Miami. Night division. Top half of the bottom third of my class.
Paul Levine (Lassiter (Jake Lassiter, #8))
In front of the group was a legless man on a small wheeled trolley, who was singing at the top of his voice and banging two saucepans together. His name was Arnold Sideways. Pushing him along was Coffin Henry, whose croaking progress through an entirely different song was punctuated by bouts of off-the-beat coughing. He was accompanied by a perfectly ordinary-looking manin torn, dirty and yet expensive looking clothing, whose pleasant tenor voice was drowned out by the quaking of a duck on his head. He answered to the name of Duck Man, although he never seemed to understand why, or why he was always surrounded by people who seemed to see ducks where no ducks could be. And finally, being towed along by a small grey dog on a string, was Foul Ole Ron, generally regarded in Ankh-Morpork as the deranged beggars' deranged beggar. He was probably incapable of singing, but at least he was attempting to swear in time to the beat, or beats. The wassailers stopped and watched them in horror. People have always had the urge to sing and clang things at the dark stub of the year, when all sorts of psychic nastiness has taken advantage of the long grey days and the deep shadows to lurk and breed. Lately people had taken to singing harmoniously, which rather lost the affect. Those who really understood just clanged something and shouted. The beggars were not in fact this well versed in folkloric practice. They were just making a din in the well-founded hope that people would give them money to stop. It was just possible to make out consensus song in there somewhere. "Hogswatch is coming, The pig is getting fat, Please put a dollar in the old man's hat If you ain't got a dollar a penny will do-" "And if you ain't got a penny," Foul Ole Ron yodeled, solo, 'Then- fghfgh yffg mfmfmf..." The Duck man had, with great Presence of mind, clamped a hand over Ron's mouth.
Terry Pratchett (Hogfather)
The chorus was filing on to be A Busy Marketplace, in which various jugglers, gypsies, sword swallowers and gaily dressed yokels would be entirely unsurprised at an apparently drunken baritone strolling on to sing an enormous amount of plot at a passing tenor.
Terry Pratchett (Maskerade (Discworld, #18; Witches, #5))
The bishop thought that night, while Rachel was singing, that if the world of sinful, diseased, depraved, lost humanity could only have the Gospel preached to it by consecrated sopranos and professional tenors and altos and basses, he believed it would hasten the coming of the Kingdom quicker than any other one force.
Charles Monroe Sheldon (In His Steps)
He drew a mouth on the cat and filled it with sharp teeth, so it looked a little like a mountain lion, and as he drew he began to sing, in a reedy tenor voice, “When I were a young man my father would say It’s lovely outside, you should go out to play, But now that I’m older, the ladies all say, It’s nice out, but put it away…” Morris
Neil Gaiman (Anansi Boys)
We sat on a crate of oranges and thought what good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world--temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud-laughing, and healthy. Once in a while one comes on the other kind--what used in the university to be called a 'dry-ball'--but such men are not really biologists. They are the embalmers of the field, the picklers who see only the preserved form of life without any of its principle. Out of their own crusted minds they create a world wrinkled with formaldehyde. The true biologist deals with life, with teeming boisterous life, and learns something from it, learns that the first rule of life is living. The dry-balls cannot possibly learn a thing every starfish knows in the core of his soul and in the vesicles between his rays. He must, so know the starfish and the student biologist who sits at the feet of living things, proliferate in all directions. Having certain tendencies, he must move along their lines to the limit of their potentialities. And we have known biologists who did proliferate in all directions: one or two have had a little trouble about it. Your true biologist will sing you a song as loud and off-key as will a blacksmith, for he knows that morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers. Sometimes he may proliferate a little too much in all directions, but he is as easy to kill as any other organism, and meanwhile he is very good company, and at least he does not confuse a low hormone productivity with moral ethics.
John Steinbeck (The Log from the Sea of Cortez)
Handel’s “He Shall Feed His Flock Like a Shepherd,” a popular anthem with elaborate part singing that the congregation performed faultlessly. As hundreds of tenor voices soared across the
Ken Follett (Fall of Giants (The Century Trilogy #1))
Halt glared at his friend as the whistling continued. 'I had hoped that your new sense of responsibly would put an end to that painful shrieking noise you make between your lips' he said. Crowley smiled. It was a beautiful day and he was feeling at peace with the world. And that meant he was more than ready to tease Halt 'It's a jaunty song' 'What's jaunty about it?' Halt asked, grim faced. Crowley made an uncertain gesture as he sought for an answer to that question. 'I suppose it's the subject matter' he said eventually. 'It's a very cheerful song. Would you like me to sing it for you?' 'N-' Halt began but he was too late, as Crowley began to sing. He had a pleasant tenor voice, in fact, and his rendering of the song was quite good. But to Halt it was as attractive as a rusty barn door squeaking. 'A blacksmith from Palladio, he met a lovely lady-o' 'Whoa! Whoa!' Halt said 'He met a lovely lady-o?' Halt repeated sarcastically 'What in the name of all that's holy is a lady-o?' 'It's a lady' Crowley told him patiently. 'Then why not sing 'he met a lovely lady'?' Halt wanted to know. Crowley frowned as if the answer was blatantly obvious. "Because he's from Palladio, as the song says. It's a city on the continent, in the southern part of Toscana.' 'And people there have lady-o's, instead of ladies?' Asked Halt 'No. They have ladies, like everyone else. But 'lady' doesn't rhyme with Palladio, does it? I could hardly sing, 'A blacksmith from Palladio, he met his lovely lady', could I?' 'It would make more sense if you did' Halt insisted 'But it wouldn't rhyme' Crowley told him. 'Would that be so bad?' 'Yes! A song has to rhyme or it isn't a proper song. It has to be lady-o. It's called poetic license.' 'It's poetic license to make up a word that doesn't exist and which, by the way, sound extremely silly?' Halt asked. Crowley shook his head 'No. It's poetic license to make sure that the two lines rhyme with each other' Halt thought for a few seconds, his eyes knitted close together. Then inspiration struck him. 'Well then couldn't you sing 'A blacksmith from Palladio, he met a lovely lady, so...'?' 'So what?' Crowley challenged Halt made and uncertain gesture with his hands as he sought more inspiration. Then he replied. 'He met a lovely lady, so...he asked her for her hand and gave her a leg of lamb.' 'A leg of lamb? Why would she want a leg of lamb?' Crowley demanded Halt shrugged 'Maybe she was hungry
John Flanagan (The Tournament at Gorlan (Ranger’s Apprentice: The Early Years, #1))
Needed: some tenors! Our group is short two tenors for our turn caroling in the square! All are welcome. Please message me if you can sing! ~Randolph Clark posted to the What’s up Neighbor app
Annabeth Albert (The Geek Who Saved Christmas)
I’ve discovered that Kell has a pleasant tenor singing voice, and Runt is actually an accomplished mime, a skill that few know is widespread on his homeworld of Thakwaa. By integrating modern holographic technology with traditional song-and-dance routines, we could capture the warlord’s attention—” By now the other Wraiths were snickering. Wedge caught Face’s eye and glowered. “Perhaps you could give us the set of conclusions you turned in to me, Loran?” Face had the gall to look surprised. “Oh, those. Sorry.” He sobered. “I
Michael A. Stackpole (The X-Wing Series: Star Wars Legends 10-Book Bundle: Rogue Squadron, Wedge's Gamble, The Krytos Trap, The Bacta War, Wraith Squadron ,Iron Fist, Solo Command, ... Mercy Kill (Star Wars: X-Wing - Legends))
Next door to the Bensons is Emmet Frag, a retired pacemaker who is credited with inventing the notion of happiness. He’s currently working on a method for categorising ducks based on their singing voice. He’s also the owner of the world’s largest collection of tenor geese.
St. John Morris (The Bizarre Letters of St John Morris)
Every time, it’s a miracle. Here are all these people, full of heartache or hatred or desire, and we all have our troubles and the school year is filled with vulgarity and triviality and consequence, and there are all these teachers and kids of every shape and size, and there’s this life we’re struggling through full of shouting and tears and laughter and fights and break-ups and dashed hopes and unexpected luck—it all disappears, just like that, when the choir begins to sing. Everyday life vanishes into song, you are suddenly overcome with a feeling of brotherhood, of deep solidarity, even love, and it diffuses the ugliness of everyday life into a spirit of perfect communion. Even the singers’ faces are transformed: it’s no longer Achille Grand-Fernet that I’m looking at (he is a very fine tenor), or Déborah Lemeur or Ségolène Rachet or Charles Saint-Sauveur. I see human beings, surrendering to music.
Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)
Singing is of course a form of aggression. The wet open mouths and glistening teeth of the singers are ardent to devour the victim-hearer. Singers crave hearers as animals crave their prey. Intoxicated by their own voices they now roared it out, round and round, Gilbert's fruity baritone, Titus's pseudo-Neapolitan tenor and Rosina's strong rather harsh contralto. I shouted, 'Stop! Stop that bloody row!' But they went on singing at me, their bright eyes, moist with laughter, fixed upon me, waving their arms in time to the tune; until at last they wearied, stopped, and went off into another crazy laughing fit.
Iris Murdoch (The Sea, the Sea)
We listen to the old radio shows. Light flares and spreads across the blue-banded edge, sunrise, sunset, the urban grids in shadow. There is a sweetness in the tenor voice of the young man singing, a simple vigour that time and distance and random noise have enveloped in eloquence and yearning. Every sound, every lilt of strings has this veneer of age.
Don DeLillo (The Angel Esmeralda)
U2’s music was never really rock ’n’ roll. Under its contemporary skin it’s opera—a big music, big emotions unlocked in the pop music of the day. A tenor out front who won’t accept he’s a baritone. A small man singing giant songs. Wailing, keening, trying to explain the unexplainable. Trying to release himself and anyone who will listen from the prison of a human experience that cannot explain grief.
Bono (Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story)
Then he would ask for songs and I would pluck them out for him on a lute I borrowed from my father’s wagon. He would even sing from time to time. He had a bright, reckless tenor that was always wandering off, looking for notes in the wrong places. More often than not he stopped and laughed at himself when it happened. He was a good man, and there was no conceit in him. Not long after he joined our troupe, I asked Abenthy what it was like being an arcanist. He gave me a thoughtful look. “Have you ever known an arcanist?
Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1))
you bet yours on the gray!” Even in songs Ma did not approve of gambling, but her toe could not stop tapping while Pa played such tunes. Then every evening they all sang one round. Mr. Boast’s tenor would begin, “Three blind mice,” and go on while Mrs. Boast’s alto began, “Three blind mice,” then as she went on Pa’s bass would join in, “Three blind mice,” and then Laura’s soprano, and Ma’s contralto, and Mary and Carrie. When Mr. Boast reached the end of the song he began it again without stopping, and they all followed, each behind the other, going round and round with words and music. “Three blind mice! Three blind mice!              They all ran after the farmer’s wife               She cut off their tails with the carving knife, Did you ever hear such a tale in your life Of three blind mice?” They kept on singing until someone laughed and then the song ended ragged and breathless and laughing. And Pa would play some of the old songs, “to go to sleep on,” he said. “Nellie was a lady, last night she died, Oh, toll the bell for lovely Nell, My old—Vir-gin-ia bride.” And, “Oh, do you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?              Sweet Alice with eyes so brown,
Laura Ingalls Wilder (By the Shores of Silver Lake (Little House, #5))
friends and I used to play an invented parlor game called the Worst Records Never Made. The point was to hypothesize the most stunningly inappropriate albums we could imagine—pairings of artists and material so horrific that even the famously dunderheaded major labels would hardly consider making them. Most of our inspirations have been lost to memory, but the notion of discs like “Yodel with the Berlin Philharmonic,” “The Three Tenors Sing Gilbert and Sullivan,” and—my favorite—“The Chipmunks Present Your Favorite Spirituals” can still inspire what P. G. Wodehouse used to call “the raised eyebrow,
Tim Page (Parallel Play)
Flute music, she thought with frustration, and would not look at Arin. Her opening notes were awkward. She paused, then gave the melody over to her right hand and began inventing with her left, pulling dark, rich phrases out of her mind. Kestrel felt the counterpoint knit itself into being. Forgetting the difficulty of what she was doing, she simply played. It was a gentle, haunting music. When it ended, Kestrel was sorry. Her eyes sought Ari across the room. She didn’t know if he had watched her play. He wasn’t looking at her now. His gaze was unfocused, directed toward the garden without really seeming to see it. The lines of his face had softened. He looked different, Kestrel realized. She couldn’t say why, but he looked different to her now. Then he glanced at her, and she was startled enough to let one hand fall onto the keys with a very unmusical sound. Arin smiled. It was a true smile, which let her know that all the others he had given her were not. “Thank you,” he said. Kestrel felt herself blush. She focused on the keys and played something, anything. A simple pattern to distract herself from the fact that she wasn’t someone who easily blushed, particularly for no clear reason. But she found that her fingers were sketching an outline of a tenor’s range. “Do you truly not sing?” “No.” She considered the timbre of his voice and let her hands drift lower. “Really?” “No, Kestrel.” Her hands slid from the keys. “Too bad,” she said.
Marie Rutkoski (The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy, #1))
When natural music is heightened and polished by art there man first beholds and can with great wonder examine to a certain extent, (for it cannot be wholly seized or understood) the great and perfect wisdom of God in His marvellous work of music, in which this is most singular and indeed astonishing, that one man sings a simple tune or tenor (as musicians call it), together with which three, four or five voices also sing, which as it were play and skip delightedly round this simple tune or tenor, and wonderfully grace and adorn the said tune with manifold devices and sounds, performing as it were a heavenly dance, so that those who at all understand it and are moved by it must be greatly amazed, and believe that there is nothing more extraordinary in the world than such a song adorned with many voices.
Martin Luther
When natural music is heightened and polished by art, there man first beholds and can with great wonder examine to a certain extent (for it cannot be wholly seized or understood) the great and perfect wisdom of God in His marvellous work of music. In which this is most singular and indeed astonishing: that one man sings a simple tune or tenor (as musicians call it), together with which three, four, or five voices also sing, which, as it were, play and skip delightedly round this simple tune or tenor, and wonderfully grace and adorn the said tune with manifold devices and sounds, performing as it were a heavenly dance, so that those who at all understand it and are moved by it must be greatly amazed and believe that there is nothing more extraordinary in the world than such a song adorned with many voices.
Martin Luther
When natural music is heightened and polished by art”, he said once, “there man first beholds and can with great wonder examine to a certain extent, (for it cannot be wholly seized or understood) the great and perfect wisdom of God in His marvellous work of music, in which this is most singular and indeed astonishing, that one man sings a simple tune or tenor (as musicians call it), together with which three, four or five voices also sing, which as it were play and skip delightedly round this simple tune or tenor, and wonderfully grace and adorn the said tune with manifold devices and sounds, performing as it were a heavenly dance, so that those who at all understand it and are moved by it must be greatly amazed, and believe that there is nothing more extraordinary in the world than such a song adorned with many voices.
Martin Luther
Sing, then. Sing, indeed, with shoulders back, and head up so that song might go to the roof and beyond to the sky. Mass on mass of tone, with a hard edge, and rich with quality, every single note a carpet of colour woven from basso profundo, and basso, and baritone, and alto, and tenor, and soprano, and alto and mezzo, and contralto, singing and singing, until life and all things living are become a song. O, Voice of Man, organ of most lovely might.
Richard Llewellyn (How Green Was My Valley)
Hear you, then, the voice of your brothers and sisters, deep as the seas, as timeless, as restless, and as fierce. Tenors spear the clouds with blades that had their keenness from the silversmiths of heaven. Baritones pour gold, and royal contralto mounts to reach the lowest note of garlanded soprano. And under all, basso profundo bends his mighty back to carry all wherever melody shall take them. Sing then, Son of Man, and know that in your voice Almighty God may find His dearest pleasure.
Richard Llewellyn (How Green Was My Valley)
Patricide. The stuff of the great operas. U2’s music was never really rock ’n’ roll. Under its contemporary skin it’s opera—a big music, big emotions unlocked in the pop music of the day. A tenor out front who won’t accept he’s a baritone. A small man singing giant songs.
Bono (Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story)
Lendler has come down through the decades to enjoy a place of its own in the distinctive argot of Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens. When you rented rooms from a lendler, you became his tenor. Singing had nothing to do with it.
Leo Rosten (The New Joys of Yiddish: Completely Updated)
He would even sing from time to time. He had a bright, reckless tenor that was always wandering off, looking for notes in the wrong places.
Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1))
line. That doesn’t mean she was not often arbitrary and temperamental and even ridiculous. There were plenty of times when her temper, always quick, flew away from her. Once she flung the music book at my head, and ordered me out of her sight. ‘And don’t come back. I will teach you no more.’ I took her at her word. Next day Georges, her old valet, came round to the hotel with a note. She demanded to know why I had not presented myself that morning for my lesson as usual. But she could be loving and even tender, too. ‘You know how much I love you, my dear Frances,’ she wrote me after I was singing in Brussels and was officially at least, no longer under her direction. ‘I have proved it to you, and I love you like my own child. But there are times when it is necessary to tell the truth to those whom one loves . . .’ and she went on to give me stern and sound advice about my voice and my care of it. ‘Toujours
Frances Alda (FRANCES ALDA: Men, Women and Tenors)
They all want to sing, but not to study.
Frances Alda (FRANCES ALDA: Men, Women and Tenors)
Now, my dear Frances, take the advice of Maman Marchesi: 1—Sign up for next year. That marks your success. Melba did that. 2—Do not sing four times a week. That tires the voice and makes it tremble, and the public ends by treating you with indifference. With tenderness, MATHILDE MARCHESI
Frances Alda (FRANCES ALDA: Men, Women and Tenors)
Listen to me, Eddy,’ I said. ‘Maybe you think you can’t sing this afternoon. Maybe you’ll sing like a pig. But you’ve got to sing. That’s the point. You’ve got to do it, no matter how scared you feel, because if you don’t—if you give in to it—you’ll never sing again.
Frances Alda (FRANCES ALDA: Men, Women and Tenors)
Taita,’ she called to me, ‘sing with me!’ And when I obeyed she smiled with pleasure. My voice was one of the many reasons that, whenever she was able, she kept me near her; my tenor complemented her lovely soprano to perfection. We sang one of the old peasant love songs that I had taught her, and which was still one of her favourites: My heart flutters up like a wounded quail when I see my beloved’s face and my cheeks bloom like the dawn sky to the sunshine of his smile
Wilbur Smith (River God (Ancient Egypt, #1))
Many Christians remain in bondage to fears and anxieties simply because they do not avail themselves of the Discipline of study. They may be faithful in church attendance and earnest in fulfilling their religious duties, and still they are not changed. I am not here speaking only of those who are going through mere religious forms, but of those who are genuinely seeking to worship and obey Jesus Christ as Lord and Master. They may sing with gusto, pray in the Spirit, live as obediently as they know, even receive divine visions and revelations, and yet the tenor of their lives remains unchanged. Why? Because they have never taken up one of the central ways God uses to change us: study. Jesus made it unmistakably clear that the knowledge of the truth will set us free. “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). Good feelings will not free us. Ecstatic experiences will not free us. Getting “high on Jesus” will not free us. Without a knowledge of the truth, we will not be free.
Richard J. Foster (Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth)
Something was gnawing at my brain; gnawing like one of those tiny carpet beetles that crawls inside your ear when you're asleep and lays a hundred thousand eggs and when they hatch, you decide to become a TV Evangelist--it was like that, but with less bad singing.
Mark Schweizer (The Tenor Wore Tapshoes (The Liturgical Mystery #3))
after Gordon MacRae sings “I Only Have Eyes for You” in his beautiful tenor voice, his
Tom Santopietro (Considering Doris Day: A Biography)
Caruso (one of the world’s greatest tenors) were once told by the experts that they couldn’t sing? 51. Do you believe that the “She sells seashells by the seashore” tongue twister refers to a real woman who was digging
Dr. Shh (Illustrated Would You Rather? (Silly Kids and Family Scenarios 1))
Those voices blend, or at least interweave, in a kind of wildly indiscriminate polyphony, as if an early Baroque vocal trio, an Appalachian band, a couple of Viennese tenors piping twelve-tone Lieder, and a jazz crooner or two were all singing out together; but what all have in common, and what somehow forges a genuine harmony out of all that ecstatic clamor, is the vibrant certainty that history has been invaded by God in Christ in such a way that nothing can stay as it was, and that all terms of human community and conduct have been altered at the deepest of levels.
David Bentley Hart (The New Testament: A Translation)
Ephraim did not care whether he heard singing ever again. No voice could be as beautiful, no tenor as bright, and no lips as perfectly formed as his Ferdinand’s—and they would never grace the halls again. Such dismal, empty chambers lacking life and luster—for all the gilded molding and brightly painted walls, for all the murals on the arched ceilings and tapestries draped beside ostentatiously tall windows—it was no longer a palace. It was a tomb.
Sirius . (The Red Star Society: The Intimate Journals, Letters, and Recollections of Her Majesty's Astronomer Sopespian Slaine (The Draonir Saga: Iconoclasts))
He tried to get them to sing, but they could not hit the note and had no sense of the musical rhythm of white people, but only the subtle and constantly varying beat of Comanche songs, the floating tenor. Samuel counted out pennies into their hands and sent them to the sutler’s store for hard candy so they could understand the meaning of money but when they came back they put the hard candies beneath their blankets in the army tent and did not eat them. They were afraid of being poisoned. Jiles, Paulette. The Color of Lightning: A Novel (p. 302). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition.
Paulette Jiles (The Colour Of Lightning)
Before embarking on this project, I doubt I ever truly properly appreciated precisely how urgent the various voices of the New Testament authors are, or how profound the provocations of what they were saying were for their own age, and probably remain for every age. Those voices blend, or at least interweave, in a kind of wildly indiscriminate polyphony, as if an early Baroque vocal trio, an Appalachian band, a couple of Viennese tenors piping twelve-tone Lieder, and a jazz crooner or two were all singing out together; but what all have in common, and what somehow forges a genuine harmony out of all that ecstatic clamor, is the vibrant certainty that history has been invaded by God in Christ in such a way that nothing can stay is it was, and that all terms of human community and conduct have been altered at the deepest of levels.
David Bentley Hart (The New Testament)
Pavarotti is dead and the streets are full of arias, my brother. Every window a tenor leans, there are sopranos in the olive branches. And all across the globe the world turns to crescendos.
Sean Thomas Dougherty (Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line (American Poets Continuum, 125))
Then followed a most charming surprise. William mastered his timidity and began to sing. His voice was a little faint and frail, like the family daguerreotypes, but it was a tenor voice, and perfectly true and sweet. I have never heard Home, Sweet Home sung as touchingly and seriously as he sang it; he seemed to make it quite new; and when he paused for a moment at the end of the first line and began the next, the old mother joined him and they sang together, she missing only the higher notes, where he seemed to lend his voice to hers for the moment and carry on her very note and air. It was the silent man's real and only means of expression, and one could have listened forever, and have asked for more and more songs of old Scotch and English inheritance and the best that have lived from the ballad music of the war. Mrs. Todd kept time visibly, and sometimes audibly, with her ample foot. I saw the tears in her eyes sometimes, when I could see beyond the tears in mine. But at last the songs ended and the time came to say good-by; it was the end of a great pleasure.
Sarah Orne Jewett (The Country of the Pointed Firs)