Key

“ At the present hour we stand on the threshold of mysteries, with the rusted key in our hands which will open the closed door. Four thousand years ago man halted here, with the key in his hand, only it was new and glittering then, and used to that easily turned lock. ”

“ When we say of one that he speaks in a high key, we should be understood as meaning that his pitch is prevailingly high; and that the [46] reverse is true when we say of one that he speaks in a low key. While it is true that the key differs in individuals, yet experience shows that within a note or two we all use the same keys in expressing the same states of minds. The question for us is, What determines the key? ”

“ One after another they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him; and now they have him, as it were, bolted in with a lock of every key—the keys in the hands of a hundred different men, and they scattered to a hundred different and distance places; and they stand musing as to what invention, in all the dominions of mind and matter, can be produced to make the impossibility of his escape more complete than it is. ”

“ As the index on the dial notes down the sun’s course in the heavens, as a key, revolving through the intricate wards of the lock, opens for us a treasure-house, so let us, if we can, provide ourselves with some ready expedient to serve as a true record of the system of objective truth, and an available rule for interpreting its phenomena ”

“ When the divinity-student had gone, and the Little Gentleman found himself alone with Iris, he lifted his hand to his neck, and took from it, suspended by a slender chain, a quaint, antique-looking key,—the same key I had once seen him holding. ”

“ And to recover the actual original key-word may, at times, provide some insight into the habits or mental make-up of the person who selected it, and who may select others like it, or might, conceivably, make use of this same key-word in some other kind of encipherment. If the key is short, it is practically always possible to recover more than one word; but with long keys, we seldom, if ever, recover more than the one word on which the numbers were actually based. ”

“ So to my office, but missing my key, which I had in my hand just now, makes me very angry and out of order, it being a thing that I hate in others, and more in myself, to be careless of keys, I thinking another not fit to be trusted that leaves a key behind their hole. ”

“ It shows how rich it is in discoveries. If it is right at all, it is a compliment to say that it's elaborately right. A stick might fit a hole or a stone a hollow by accident. But a key and a lock are both complex. ”

“ Upon the cross of matter that forms our bodies, hangs the key to all the mysteries of creation. It is our duty to take this key and with it unlock the door that conceals from us the unknown. This key is the spirit. ”

“ In describing what is small, delicate, nice, we often note the tendency to use a rather high key. This is no doubt due to the tension that results from unconscious imitation. The voice is to a certain extent squeezed in endeavoring to express the smallness of the idea, with the result that the key is raised. Note how the child’s key rises when he asks for a “leetle, teeny bit.”
[2] The rising inflection will be heard only on the last syllable of this word. Note the discreet skip of the voice between the first and second syllables. ”

“ Every key has a history, and there are many kinds of keys - a chamberlain's key, a watch key, Saint Peter's key. We could tell you about all the keys; but now we will only tell about the councilor's gate key.
It had come into being at a locksmith's, but it might well have believed it had been made by a blacksmith, the way the man had worked on it with hammer and file. It was too large for one's trouser pocket, so it had to be put into the overcoat pocket. There it often lay in utter darkness ”

“ We never pretended that it was anything but a common key. It is a common key to unlock a common lock. You remember that evidence, the lock was hanging onto the hasp, showing that they had not a key to unlock it. It does not matter whether it was a common lock or a common key or not. The key that unfastened that lock had blood upon it and it was found in the Carlson cottage, with paint upon it, or what seemed to be paint, of the same color as the paint that was upon the floor. ”

“ A key is an harmonic system in which there is never any doubt as to which note or triad shall be the final note of music in that system, nor of the relations between that note or chord and the other notes or chords. (In this sense the church modes are either not keys or else they are subtle mixtures of keys.) ”

“ In an enormous majority of cases the keys will be tonic and dominant. We saw in the last chapter that if the subject were in the key of the tonic, and remained in it, the answer would be and remain in the key of the dominant. The third voice will almost invariably enter with the subject, and the fourth, if there be four, with the answer. ”

“ I’ll make a copy of this drawing, placing the draft for each key on a separate piece [142] of paper. You keep the originals. I’ll leave a draft of key number one with a mechanic that I know, the drawing of number two with a locksmith in another part of the city. In fact, I’d better have the other two keys made in other towns, as their guilds bring workmen together and word might get about of our orders, for these keys are very curious in their design, and will cost a good deal of money.”
“As to that,” says Guy, “I’ve got plenty for the business.” ”

“ But,” I added bitterly, “the secret being in cipher I cannot obtain knowledge of it.”
“And have you no key?” smiled the hard-faced old seafarer in the thick reefer.
“None—unless,” and at that moment a strange thought flashed for the first time upon me, “unless the key is actually concealed within that rhyme!” I repeated the couplet aloud. Yes, all the cards of that piquet pack were mentioned in it—king, eight, knave, queen, seven, nine, ten!
My heart leapt within me. Could it be possible that by arranging the cards in the following order the record could be read? ”

“ Some writers, wishing to limit it more strictly, use it for the actual moment of passage from one key to another; and again it is sometimes used to distinguish those short subordinate flights out of one key into another, which are so often met with in modern music, from the more prominent and deliberate changes of key which form an important feature in the structure of a movement. ”

“ Peering here and there, considerably chagrined, in the hope of discovering the key, I came, in the alcove, upon the full-sleeved waistcoat in which the artist usually worked, and, diving eagerly into the pockets thereof, found, not the key indeed, but some scraps of paper, much scribbled over, which instantly aroused my curiosity, and, presently, my amusement.
“Ho-ho!” thought I, “you are inspired in other than the pictured arts, are you, my gentleman? ”

“ Let us then imagine the word iiiiiiiiii presenting itself in a cryptograph to an individual without the proper key-phrase; or, if this be a supposition somewhat too perplexing, let us suppose it occurring to the person for whom the cipher is designed, and who has the key-phrase. What is he to do with such a word as iiiiiiiiii? In any of the ordinary books upon Algebra will be found a very concise formula (we have not the necessary type for its insertion here) for ascertaining the number of arrangements in which m letters may be placed, taken n at a time. ”

“ At the same time, however, there is a certain PITCH or key, which seems, on the whole, to prevail.
This keynote, or governing note, as it may be called, is that upon which the voice most frequently dwells, to which it usually returns when wearied, and upon which a sentence generally commences, and very frequently ends, while, at the same time, there is a considerable play of the voice above and below it.
This key may be high or low. It varies in different individuals, and at different times in the same individual, being governed by the nature of the subject and the emotions of the speaker. ”

“ Lock the counting-house, you dog, and bring me the key.'
The other boy, to whom this order was addresed, did as he was told, and was rewarded for his partizanship in behalf of his master, by a dexterous rap on the nose with the key, which brought the water into his eyes. ”

“ Such examples might be indefinitely multiplied, but having placed the key in the hands of the reader, we leave him to unlock the treasure houses of suggestive thought, which he will find profusely lying in his daily paths. ”

“ The lock and key of this are in themselves a marvel, for the little triangle screwed key weighs no more than a shilling, and yet it bolts and unbolts an hundred bolts through fifty staples round about the chest, and as many more from both sides and ends, and at the self-same time shall fasten it to a place beyond a man's natural strength to take it away. ”

“ Again: the scales of the keys of G flat and of F sharp are the same—are played on precisely the same keys of the organ or piano—yet they are placed on different lines and spaces of the staff, and the signature of the first is six flats, and of the second six sharps.
Think of the disheartened state of the victim of this notation when he has learned to read comfortably in one key, and then, taking up a piece of music written in another key, finds that he has all the lines and spaces to relearn! The wonder is that he does not lose his wits altogether. ”

“ When the key is missed, if you say it doesn’t matter—if you point out that the door is locked, and tell the servants not to trouble themselves about finding the key—there will be no disturbance in the house ”

“ Stone informed her. "It is a well known plan and is much used by our own government and by others. It is the safest sort of a cipher if the key word is carefully guarded. To make it clear to you, I will put on this paper the alphabet block." ”

“ I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus ”

“ Key, kē, n. an instrument for shutting or opening a lock: that by which something is screwed or turned: the middle stone of an arch: a piece of wood let into another piece crosswise to prevent warping: (mus.) one of the small levers in musical instruments for producing notes: the fundamental note of a piece of music: that which explains a mystery: a book containing answers to exercises, &c.—ns. Key′board, the keys or levers in a piano or organ arranged along a flat board; Key′-bū′gle, a bugle with keys, having a compass of two octaves including semitones.—adjs. Key′-cold (Shak.) ”

“ Though the Disposition of the Wards be ever so artful, novel, and judicious, a skilful Workman, having Access to the Entrance, will be at no Loss to fabricate a Key, which shall tally as perfectly with them as if the Lock had been open to his Inspection ”

“ It is from this application of the word to these levers in musical instruments that the term is also used of the parts pressed by the finger in typewriters and in telegraphic instruments.
A key is the insignia of the office of chamberlain in a royal household (see Chamberlain and Lord Chamberlain) . The “power of the keys” (clavium potestas) in ecclesiastical usage represents the authority given by Christ to Peter by the words, “I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. xvi. 19) . ”

“ After awhile, suddenly, a sound as of the turning of a key fell gently on his ear. "What!" thought he, "has the key of the gaol dropped down?" Instantly he roused himself, felt about for the tube of his hukâ, but could not find it. ”

“ If you commence in too high a key, you cannot keep it up long. First, you cannot modulate it as the occasion may require; and you fall into an unpliable, tedious monotony, and all natural cadence, and emphasis is lost. Without attuning the voice into the natural key, effective oratory is impossible. ”

“ As he said this he looked up through the glass of the conservatory to a high building I could see towering at the end of the garden. It was the building in which I had first seen that box, and I now understood how this connection had been made.
Mr. S——‘s movement had been involuntary.
Dropping his eyes, he finished by saying, with an almost imperceptible bow, “You may speak before this lady; she is the holder of a key.”
“The connection was broken because suspicion was aroused; to your other question you will find an answer in the box. Shall I open it for you?” ”

“ If one whose musical keynote is in the minor is given to periods of marked depression, the Major of the same key should be substituted.
If a person is studying music, and is practicing, it is frequently advisable to put all his exercises in his own key at the beginning of the practice hour, that he may commence his task in this harmonious key, and work out from that. ”

“ The significant inscription found on an old key,—"If I rest, I rust,"—would be an excellent motto for those who are afflicted with the slightest taint of idleness. Even the industrious might adopt it with advantage to serve as a reminder that, if one allows his faculties to rest, like the iron in the unused key, they will soon show signs of rust, and, ultimately, cannot do the work required of them. ”

“ A key is long or short according to its employment as a 'natural' or 'sharp,' and will be referred to here accordingly, although in practice a sharp is also a flat, and the written sharp or flat occasionally occurs upon a long key. ”