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prelude
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  • Williams had staged it, Lawton suggested, as a prelude for murdering Hansford a month later.†   (source)
  • I recognized the Prelude, from Handel's Messiah—"I know that my Redeemer liveth."†   (source)
  • A cold December drizzle was falling as I stood in my place and listened to the loud blare of the prelude music for our daily exercises.†   (source)
  • He could think of nothing better, and feared the silence that might come down, and the awkwardness that would be a prelude to her telling him that it had been nice to meet up again.†   (source)
  • But I was so determined not to try, not to be anybody different that I learned to play only the most ear-splitting preludes, the most discordant hymns.†   (source)
  • If it were not the prelude to a tragedy, their back-and-forth would resemble an Abbott and Costello comedy routine.†   (source)
  • That means that this good-bye is both a goodbye for the past ten thousand years and a prelude to what will come.†   (source)
  • Maybe it was just I'd sobered up a bit, no longer the chronic waste and splendor of those blazing adolescent drunks, our own little warrior tribe of two rampaging in the desert; maybe this was just how it was when you got older, although it was impossible to imagine Boris (in Warsaw, Karmeywallag, New Guinea, wherever) living a sedate prelude-to-adulthood life such as the one I'd fallen into.†   (source)
  • And then the fact that he was actually saying something that sounded like it might be a prelude to asking me out"well, I nearly threw up.†   (source)
  • The Prelude to Ice Cream The hospital was on a hill outside of town, the way hospitals are in movies about the insane.†   (source)
  • Nearly a prelude, but not quite.†   (source)
  • The Consul concentrated on a difficult section of the Prelude and ignored the approach of storm and nightfall.†   (source)
  • The questions are only a prelude to what he really wants: trouble.†   (source)
  • Some felt it was not a prelude to arrest.†   (source)
  • Jail in the barrio is only a prelude; for many homeboys the walls would soon taste of San Quentin, Folsom and Soledad, the pathway through The Crazy Life.†   (source)
  • In this new world, where everything that had been of permanent value a month ago was destroyed, the simplest things, things you hardly noticed before, took on enormous significance: a comfortable, solid armchair, the soothing look of a white-tiled stove on which you could rest your eyes, the creak of the floorboards — a comfortable prelude to the atmosphere of peace and quiet at home.†   (source)
  • Nathaniel is playing Bach's Cello Suite No. I: Prelude, and eventually picks up the bow to give that a go.†   (source)
  • So that her wedding, one of the most spectacular of the final years of the last century, was for her the prelude to horror.†   (source)
  • This is a prelude to death, I thought.†   (source)
  • "And I'm not the type of woman who goes all mushy and gooey over flowers, or sees them as an apology for an argument, a prelude to sex, or any of the other oft-perceived uses."†   (source)
  • That one I called Prelude.†   (source)
  • I didn't want to disappoint a ghost, especially as he was beginning to glow more brightly, which in magic is often a prelude to exploding.†   (source)
  • If the cat had been poisoned, might not this act have been a small, malicious prelude to the murders?†   (source)
  • The council resolved that the ANC would hold demonstrations on April 6, 1952, as a prelude to the launching of the Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws.†   (source)
  • But the seduction is merely a prelude to the feast.†   (source)
  • We always get in here and to our places before the organ prelude.†   (source)
  • "And now," my mother said, smiling at Don, who hadn't stopped grinning since the organist had started the "Prelude" for the ceremony two hours earlier, "please, enjoy yourselves!"†   (source)
  • Vosch draws out the word, a prelude.†   (source)
  • I'd already recorded it once, along with a Chopin etude and a Bach prelude and fugue, but I wasn't happy with the sonata and wanted to record it again.†   (source)
  • And all of this was merely a prelude to the big street dance that would begin at midnight and end at one in the morning.†   (source)
  • "All the Preludes," I say at last.†   (source)
  • Just when my thoughts were coming in illogical sequences, a prelude to sleep, I felt someone lifting up the mosquito net.†   (source)
  • I tried to imagine how it would feel to be Shay—hurt, aching, and confused—whisked away to an unfamiliar place for what seemed to be a prelude to his own execution.†   (source)
  • And so thousands upon thousands of Jews in both eastern and western Europe began to look upon the Chmielnicki disaster as the prelude to the coming of the Messiah.†   (source)
  • Why the people found this a reason for such celebration, she couldn't understand, but they lined the street ten deep, peering and taunting and laughing as if it were a circus rather than a prelude to an execution.†   (source)
  • Concerned that the burning city could be the prelude to a night attack by the rebels, the Howes held back from sending more soldiers and seamen to fight the blaze until daybreak, and by ten o'clock the fire had burned itself out.†   (source)
  • Maybe this whole charade is a prelude to the real trap he's setting for you.†   (source)
  • It sounded like the prelude to a typical Blomkvist adventure.†   (source)
  • Now that he'd had time to think about what had happened, the synesthesia seemed to be but prelude to some revelation that was going to be more shattering and humbling than he had previously imagined.†   (source)
  • It could well be the prelude to another attack upon the city.†   (source)
  • The sounds like creeping footsteps never brought anything into view, the tapping was no prelude to anything at all, nor were the occasional dragging noises; they were beyond explanation, but also, luckily, apparently beyond manifestation, too, and at length, in spite of them all I found my eyes blinking as I swayed on my stool.†   (source)
  • Each event so far had been a prelude to the real invasion.†   (source)
  • I don't like your attitude," said Boyle, in a sudden tone of righteousness, with a look which, in a barroom, would have signified a prelude to a fist fight.†   (source)
  • That's a prelude to sex if ever there was one."†   (source)
  • The pause was prelude.†   (source)
  • Was this magical flight just a prelude to a fiery death?†   (source)
  • But the icy wind and the snow were only a prelude to the low temperatures they found in Canada.†   (source)
  • bk 1 of the Forgotten Realms Series — Icewind Dale — 01 The Crystal Shard (R.A. Salvatore) Prelude The demon sat back on the seat it had carved in the stem of the giant mushroom.†   (source)
  • Maybe it was on one of those nights, when I heard their voices muffled and unintelligible, that I came up with the Helen Keller game, the prelude to all those afternoons I spent blindfolded in my room as I remembered Angela and that day at the beach.†   (source)
  • Sophie was utterly confounded, watching him, having thought that the by-play with the chocolate might have been the prelude to something more intimate.†   (source)
  • The foregoing investigation into the nature of the idea of Texas is put down as a prelude to my journeying across Texas with Charley in Rocinante.†   (source)
  • He knew for certain now why the strange gift had been made, knew what it signified: the prelude to a jamboree, the dressing-up that heralded the start of a ritual dance.†   (source)
  • At the age of five I had become a skeptic and began to sense that any happiness that came my way might be the prelude to some grim cosmic joke.†   (source)
  • He figured, in one capacity or another, in the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the prelude to the Civil War.†   (source)
  • But memory tightened about her easily, without any prelude of warning or even despair.†   (source)
  • Rudy understood nothing, and that night was the prelude of things to come.   (source)
    prelude = something that prepares for or introduces what is to follow
  • Years before, they often went there as prelude to a romantic night.†   (source)
  • "Sounds good, but the book you were to bring here today was Wordsworth's Preludes.†   (source)
  • Grim faces would prelude their predictions—"loss of speech, loss of movement, paralysis."†   (source)
  • Leona Cassiani thought it was the prelude to death.†   (source)
  • After a while I played a Bach Prelude on the Steinway, buttoned up the ship, and rose into space.†   (source)
  • He stepped forward to sniff her, which she hoped wasn't the prelude to taking a good, hard bite.†   (source)
  • Jason brought the drink to his lips, a prelude to dismissal.†   (source)
  • Perhaps this step, this quitting, was the prelude to my next decision, my greater shame.†   (source)
  • Soon it would drop behind the Shenandoah mountains, twilight descending, prelude to darkness.†   (source)
  • "The Prelude to what?" says Tarquin interestedly.†   (source)
  • It was also apt prelude to much that would follow.†   (source)
  • It was part of the countdown, rigid, irreversible, prelude to his departure.†   (source)
  • The sedan's motor was switched on and gunned, prelude to a quick and sudden departure.†   (source)
  • But the hour was right for another kind of strike, at least the prelude to it.†   (source)
  • I love the … er … sonorous melodic strands which interweave in the Prelude.†   (source)
  • He gasped, the audible intake of breath a prelude to running.†   (source)
  • She kissed his cheek, her prelude to discussion.†   (source)
  • Conklin's left hand gripped the cane; it was a prelude to firing, steadying a crippled foot.†   (source)
  • Dreadfully sorry time preludes proper introductions, young fellow.†   (source)
  • He sometimes does this, lying on his back, and keeps at it until he falls asleep in the middle of something beautiful, perhaps the Bach Prelude No. 1 or one of his old standbys, the Bloch Prayer or the Schubert Arpeggione.†   (source)
  • It does not matter what prelude begins the service; I will always hear Handel's Messiah—and my mother's not-quite-trained soprano singing, "I know that my Redeemer liveth."†   (source)
  • I knew from past experience that this was the prelude to a contest about the hardness of their mothers' lives, and that soon they would be onto the subject of laundry.†   (source)
  • Bod had listened to all kinds of music: the sweet chimes of the ice-cream van, the songs that played on workmen's radios, the tunes that Claretty Jake played the dead on his dusty fiddle, but he had never heard anything like this before: a series of deep swells, like the music at the beginning of something, a prelude perhaps, or an overture.†   (source)
  • She insists I lay on my back for three years crying for Leah to stay close and play with me, until finally one day without prelude I rolled off the couch and limped after her.†   (source)
  • But Florentino Ariza pursued the discussion to its end, and only then did he ask the question that the Captain thought was the prelude to a solution: "And speaking hypothetically," he said, "would it be possible to make a trip without stopping, without cargo or passengers, without coming into any port, without anything?"†   (source)
  • They may even have been glimpsed out by the Camp Grounds, which was an almost certain sign of dubious behaviour, or the prelude to it — though he couldn't vouch for this, as he hadn't witnessed it himself.†   (source)
  • After the first few months of publicity the siege seemed to lift, but this was only the prelude to the second act.†   (source)
  • The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below.†   (source)
  • The instrument of record will be the British treaty that expires in 1997, his commission a supposedly reasonable prelude to annexation and control.†   (source)
  • Or even a prelude to one.†   (source)
  • Beset by morbid premonitions, she imagined their separation as prelude to the "still more painful one" of his death, or her own.†   (source)
  • I knew he'd begun with others, but I couldn't remember the inconsequential prelude, especially not while my brain was so clouded with exhaustion.†   (source)
  • Although I did not respond to these overtures, the mere fact that they were talking rather than attacking could be seen as a prelude to genuine negotiations.†   (source)
  • When the time comes to perform the act, I will do it without any prelude or prologue, and may simply walk up River Road one afternoon, arrive at Brimmler's Bridge, calmly climb the parapet or whatever it's called, and let myself plummet to the riverbed below.†   (source)
  • In a life that was merely a prelude to death, Thomas found he looked forward to Ross's visit, to the short man's daily rituals.†   (source)
  • He would take one, perhaps two, pressing them at the point of a knife or jamming a silenced gun into their ribs to elicit the information he needed; a false look in the eyes would tell him that the conference was a prelude to execution.†   (source)
  • All was prelude.†   (source)
  • While I once again reiterated that these were my views and not those of the ANC, I suggested that if the government withdrew the army and the police from the townships, the ANC mightagree to a suspension of the armed struggle as a prelude to talks.†   (source)
  • States, was but a prelude to what would be Burke's most famous book, Reflections on the French Revolution, published late in 1790.†   (source)
  • All the building and remodeling he had done thus far—the renovation of rented houses in Paris, New York, and Philadelphia, even the initial construction of Monticello itself—had been but prelude to what was now under way.†   (source)
  • Is there more than one Prelude?†   (source)
  • Everything now was precision, the "tragic accident" merely a prelude to the horror that would take place at Villa Twenty in less than an hour.†   (source)
  • And I'll mug up a bit about the Preludes, so that if he asks me which one again, I'll know exactly what to say.†   (source)
  • The storm that had battered the central Leeward Islands two nights before was only a prelude to the torrential rain and winds that swept up from the Grenadines, with another storm behind it.†   (source)
  • I was half drunk and undergoing the queerest sense of dislocation and exhaustion (prelude to what might have been true alcoholic hallucinosis, I later realized) I had ever felt when I sank into one of Walter B. Cooke's commercial pews and listened to Reverend DeWitt "sermonize" above Nathan's and Sophie's coffins.†   (source)
  • At college and elsewhere I had played out this solemn little cultural charade too many times to be unaware that it was a prelude, a preliminary feeling-out of mutual sensibilities in which the substance of what one said was less important than the putative authority with which one's words were spoken.†   (source)
  • Which is always a prelude to the age of the cave.†   (source)
  • For this is a prelude, it is only a beginning.†   (source)
  • This is the necessary prelude; the salute of old friends.†   (source)
  • This is the prelude, this is the beginning.†   (source)
  • And I shall pass, incredible as it seems, into other lives; this is only an escapade perhaps, a prelude only.†   (source)
  • I had the distinct impression, rather, that all this was a prelude and a preparation, that everything was pushing eagerly forward, that the gist of the matter was to come.†   (source)
  • But others like it, and find in it mystery and fascination, and prelude to adventure, and an intimation of the unknown.†   (source)
  • The hilarious gaiety changed swiftly at the closing bars, and the drummer rattled his sticks in the inevitable prelude to God Save the King.†   (source)
  • There were long lonely preludes to winter in the splendid pines, and a whistling of wind in the long grasses.†   (source)
  • Virtue is but the pedagogical prelude to the culminating insight, which goes beyond all pairs of opposites.†   (source)
  • She laid her free hand on the hand of mine she held, and when a woman makes that kind of a sandwich out of one of your hands it is always a prelude to something.†   (source)
  • Moreover, if you consider any great figure of the past, like Sappho, like the Lady Murasaki, like Emily Brontë, you will find that she is an inheritor as well as an originator, and has come into existence because women have come to have the habit of writing naturally; so that even as a prelude to poetry such activity on your part would be invaluable.†   (source)
  • This brings us to the final crisis of the round, to which the whole miraculous excursion has been but a prelude—that, namely, of the paradoxical, supremely difficult threshold-crossing of the hero's return from the mystic realm into the land of common day.†   (source)
  • The dolorous prelude to a journey—the wet platform eyes, the sudden radiation of hectic warmth, the declarations of love at sound of the whistle—left him this time unmoved.†   (source)
  • The cold washed the colors of the earth, revealing that they were not colors but only the elements from which color was to come, the dead brown not a full brown but a future green, the tired purple an overture to flame, the gray a prelude to gold.†   (source)
  • The contemplation of the life thus should be undertaken as a meditation on one's own immanent divinity, not as a prelude to precise imitation, the lesson being, not "Do thus and be good," but "Know this and be God."†   (source)
  • They are a prelude to exile, and into their nightmare chaos no other purpose may be read than the blind groping of a soul toward freedom and isolation.†   (source)
  • [He sits down in his former place, and preludes].†   (source)
  • We were all silent, for we knew instinctively that this was only a prelude.†   (source)
  • A violin, in solo, offered a fanciful prelude.†   (source)
  • He knew that the tale was a prelude and his mind waited for the sequel.†   (source)
  • All were silent, expectant of what was to follow, for this was dearly only a prelude.†   (source)
  • Sonya struck the first chord of the prelude.†   (source)
  • The audience felt that a startling revelation was to follow this ominous prelude.†   (source)
  • Sonya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude to Denisov's favorite barcarolle.†   (source)
  • A sudden burst of music issued from the ark, the prelude of a waltz: and when the side door closed again the listener could hear the faint rhythm of the music.†   (source)
  • For a moment the voices cheered the heart of Tess, till she reasoned that this interview had its origin, on one side or the other, in the same attraction which had been the prelude to her own tribulation.†   (source)
  • Hippolyte said to me, without any prelude, that the general had promised the widow four hundred roubles.†   (source)
  • The experience was not lost on the painters, and doubtless some of the sketches of the 'Prelude to the Great Storm' will grace the R. A and R. I. walls in May next.†   (source)
  • Yet, after some time, he wearied of them, and would sit in his box at the Opera, either alone or with Lord Henry, listening in rapt pleasure to "Tannhaeuser," and seeing in the prelude to that great work of art a presentation of the tragedy of his own soul.†   (source)
  • That last prelude!†   (source)
  • The man called Bagshawe had been reading The Times on the other side of the room, but then he moved over to me with some trifling question as a prelude to suggesting an acquaintance.†   (source)
  • This was a prelude to his cigar, a Maria Mancini, a very tasty brand from Bremen—we shall come to speak about that again—whose spicy toxins blended so satisfyingly with those of his coffee.†   (source)
  • Indeed, his mind was so crowded with dreams of athletic prowess at school that he considered this visit only as a rather tiresome prelude to the great adventure.†   (source)
  • To be all day with them in the open air, to sleep at night under their roof, had seemed the supreme joy of life, and had led to that abandonment of personality that is a possible prelude to love.†   (source)
  • If the pianist suggested playing the Ride of the Valkyries, or the Prelude to Tristan, Mme. Verdurin would protest, not that the music was displeasing to her, but, on the contrary, that it made too violent an impression.†   (source)
  • Thus in one neighborhood in which they had lived, when he was but a child of seven, his father, having always preluded every conversation with "Praise the Lord," he heard boys call "Here comes old Praise-the-Lord Griffiths."†   (source)
  • A lively prelude arose from the musicians on the water; and two ushers with white wands marched with a slow and stately pace from the portal.†   (source)
  • I watched her closely through the prelude to Tristan and Isolde, trying vainly to conjecture what that seething turmoil of strings and winds might mean to her, but she sat mutely staring at the violin bows that drove obliquely downward, like the pelting streaks of rain in a summer shower.†   (source)
  • Then she played the prelude and said "Now, Maria!" and Maria, blushing very much began to sing in a tiny quavering voice.†   (source)
  • THE culmination of this meeting was but the prelude, as both Clyde and Roberta realized, to a series of contacts and rejoicings which were to extend over an indefinite period.†   (source)
  • The pianist, who was 'down' to play two pieces by Chopin, after finishing the Prelude had at once attacked a Polonaise.†   (source)
  • Each lift of his eyes, each parting of the thatched lip from the clean-shaven, must prelude the tenderness that kills the Monk and the Beast at a single blow.†   (source)
  • As the piano had twice begun the prelude to the first figure Mary Jane led her recruits quickly from the room.†   (source)
  • Purely instrumental, with no vocals, it was a symphonic prelude of French provenance, scored for a small ensemble, at least by modern standards, yet fitted out with all the tricks of modern tone coloring and cleverly calculated to set the soul spinning a web of dreams.†   (source)
  • And so Mme. des Laumes could let her head sway to and fro, fully aware of the cause, with a perfect appreciation of the manner in which the pianist was rendering this Prelude, since she knew it by heart.†   (source)
  • Gabriel recognised the prelude.†   (source)
  • It was an elfin prelude, endless and formless; and, as it grew wilder and faster, the flames leaping out of time, he seemed to hear from under the boughs and grasses wild creatures racing, their feet pattering like rain upon the leaves.†   (source)
  • When he had finished the Liszt Intermezzo and had begun a Prelude by Chopin, Mme. de Cambremer turned to Mme. de Franquetot with a tender smile, full of intimate reminiscence, as well as of satisfaction (that of a competent judge) with the performance.†   (source)
  • The first step toward evil, toward lust and death, was doubtless taken when, as the result of a tickle by some unknown incursion, spirit increased in density for the first time, creating a pathologically rank growth of tissue that formed, half in pleasure, half in defense, as the prelude to matter, the transition from the immaterial to the material.†   (source)
  • Then I observed the rare, almost archaic phrases which he liked to employ at certain points, where a hidden flow of harmony, a prelude contained and concealed in the work itself would animate and elevate his style; and it was at such points as these, too, that he would begin to speak of the "vain dream of life," of the "inexhaustible torrent of fair forms," of the "sterile, splendid torture of understanding and loving," of the "moving effigies which ennoble for all time the charming…†   (source)
  • On the grim Pequod's forecastle, ye shall ere long see him, beating his tambourine; prelusive of the eternal time, when sent for, to the great quarter-deck on high, he was bid strike in with angels, and beat his tambourine in glory; called a coward here, hailed a hero there!†   (source)
  • To declare that all the negroes born after a certain period shall be free, is to introduce the principle and the notion of liberty into the heart of slavery; the blacks whom the law thus maintains in a state of slavery from which their children are delivered, are astonished at so unequal a fate, and their astonishment is only the prelude to their impatience and irritation.†   (source)
  • But thereupon he immediately began to prelude, and fell into the tune which he knew would be taken as a special compliment by Mr. Lammeter.†   (source)
  • To be called into notice in such a manner, to hear that it was but the prelude to something so infinitely worse, to be told that she must do what was so impossible as to act; and then to have the charge of obstinacy and ingratitude follow it, enforced with such a hint at the dependence of her situation, had been too distressing at the time to make the remembrance when she was alone much less so, especially with the superadded dread of what the morrow might produce in continuation of…†   (source)
  • Unfortunately, as he advanced, his anger increased at every step; and instead of the proper and lofty speech he had prepared as a prelude to his challenge, he found nothing at the tip of his tongue but a gross personality, which he accompanied with a furious gesture.†   (source)
  • "Goodness gracious!" aunt Pullet exclaimed, after preluding by an inarticulate scream; "keep her at the door, Sally!†   (source)
  • [Illustration] [Illustration: =Prelude at the Theatre=] MANAGER DRAMATIC POET MERRY-ANDREW MANAGER You two, who oft a helping hand Have lent, in need and tribulation.†   (source)
  • PRELUDE Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors?†   (source)
  • Miss Ingram, who had now seated herself with proud grace at the piano, spreading out her snowy robes in queenly amplitude, commenced a brilliant prelude; talking meantime.†   (source)
  • Mr. Joshua Rann, having a slight touch of rheumatism, did not join in the ringing of the bells this morning, and, looking on with some contempt at these informal greetings which required no official co-operation from the clerk, began to hum in his musical bass, "Oh what a joyful thing it is," by way of preluding a little to the effect he intended to produce in the wedding psalm next Sunday.†   (source)
  • What you say about the man is true, or it should be; but then, you see, the excitement and jealousy that was the prelude to this tragedy had made an evil and feverish element round about him, from which he does not seem to be able to escape.†   (source)
  • It was what is said in the bower, a prelude to what will be said in the chamber; a lyrical effusion, strophe and sonnet intermingled, pleasing hyperboles of cooing, all the refinements of adoration arranged in a bouquet and exhaling a celestial perfume, an ineffable twitter of heart to heart.†   (source)
  • I had already been out many hours and felt the torment of a burning thirst, a prelude to my other sufferings.†   (source)
  • , the hermetic symbolism, with which Nicolas Flamel played the prelude to Luther, papal unity, schism, Saint-Germain des Prés, Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie,—all are mingled, combined, amalgamated in Notre-Dame.†   (source)
  • With this view he gave a kick at the outside, by way of prelude; and, then, applying his mouth to the keyhole, said, in a deep and impressive tone: 'Oliver!'†   (source)
  • The words of Sam and Humphrey on the harmony between the unknown and herself had on her mind the effect of the invading Bard's prelude in the "Castle of Indolence," at which myriads of imprisoned shapes arose where had previously appeared the stillness of a void.†   (source)
  • The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European civilisation, and with a much more developed proletariat, than that of England was in the seventeenth, and of France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.†   (source)
  • With this prelude, Mr Meagles went through the narrative; the established narrative, which has become tiresome; the matter-of-course narrative which we all know by heart.†   (source)
  • He would say it was a warm evening, or ask his partner to take an ice, with a tone as sad and confidential as if he were breaking her mother's death to her, or preluding a declaration of love.†   (source)
  • Hepzibah involuntarily thought of the ghostly harmonies, prelusive of death in the family, which were attributed to the legendary Alice.†   (source)
  • At length the death-stricken old man lay quietly in the torpor of mental and bodily exhaustion, with an imperceptible pulse, and breath that grew fainter and fainter, except when a long, deep, and irregular inspiration seemed to prelude the flight of his spirit.†   (source)
  • The knight in the meantime, had brought the strings into some order, and after a short prelude, asked his host whether he would choose a "sirvente" in the language of "oc", or a "lai" in the language of "oui", or a "virelai", or a ballad in the vulgar English.†   (source)
  • And now the drums were beaten and the trumpets brayed all together, as a prelude to the proclamation of universal and eternal peace and the announcement that glory was no longer to be won by blood, but that it would henceforth be the contention of the human race to work out the greatest mutual good, and that beneficence, in the future annals of the earth, would claim the praise of valor.†   (source)
  • These words were uttered with an indefinable sound which startled the girl; it struck her as the prelude to something grave: she had heard the sound before and she recognised it.†   (source)
  • The two ladies entered the drawing-room with that sort of official stiffness which preludes a formal communication.†   (source)
  • They were the prelude to the first reception of Mr and Mrs Gowan at dinner, and they skilfully placed Gowan on his usual ground in the new family.†   (source)
  • The unhappy Jew eyed their countenances and that of Front-de-Boeuf, in hope of discovering some symptoms of relenting; but that of the Baron exhibited the same cold, half-sullen, half-sarcastic smile which had been the prelude to his cruelty; and the savage eyes of the Saracens, rolling gloomily under their dark brows, acquiring a yet more sinister expression by the whiteness of the circle which surrounds the pupil, evinced rather the secret pleasure which they expected from the…†   (source)
  • As Fagin stepped softly in, the professional gentleman, running over the keys by way of prelude, occasioned a general cry of order for a song; which having subsided, a young lady proceeded to entertain the company with a ballad in four verses, between each of which the accompanyist played the melody all through, as loud as he could.†   (source)
  • But Solomon was already impatient to prelude again, and presently broke with much spirit into "Sir Roger de Coverley", at which there was a sound of chairs pushed back, and laughing voices.†   (source)
  • So did all the rest of Brussels—where people felt that the fight of the day before was but the prelude to the greater combat which was imminent.†   (source)
  • She had no wish, however, that for the moment such a prelude should have a sequel, and she said as gaily as possible and as quickly as an appreciable degree of agitation would allow her: "I'm afraid there's no prospect of my being able to come here again."†   (source)
  • So still and subdued and yet somehow preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of reverie lurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed resolved into his own invisible self.†   (source)
  • At that preluding moment, ere the boat was yet snapped, Ahab, the first to perceive the whale's intent, by the crafty upraising of his head, a movement that loosed his hold for the time; at that moment his hand had made one final effort to push the boat out of the bite.†   (source)
  • There was a buzz of voices through the house, as Miss Nancy entered, mingled with the scrape of a fiddle preluding in the kitchen; but the Lammeters were guests whose arrival had evidently been thought of so much that it had been watched for from the windows, for Mrs. Kimble, who did the honours at the Red House on these great occasions, came forward to meet Miss Nancy in the hall, and conduct her up-stairs.†   (source)
  • Making so long a passage through such unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways impelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all these seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous and desperate scene.†   (source)
  • So far her improvement was sufficient—and in many other points she came on exceedingly well; for though she could not write sonnets, she brought herself to read them; and though there seemed no chance of her throwing a whole party into raptures by a prelude on the pianoforte, of her own composition, she could listen to other people's performance with very little fatigue.†   (source)
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