"Piano" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Wilkinses in Boston, I'm pretty sure to find Mr. Wilkins all smiles and Sunshine, or Mrs. Wilkins all gentleness and politeness. I am entertained delightfully, and after tea little Miss Wilkins shows me her photograph album, and plays the march from "Faust" on the piano for me. I go away highly pleased with my visit; and yet the Wilkinses may fight like cats and dogs in private. I may no sooner have struck the sidewalk than Mr. W. will be reaching for Mrs. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... young lady who played well on the piano, and was very ready to weep over any fictitious tale of suffering. I was present when one of her slaves lay on the floor in a high fever, and we feared she might not recover. I saw that young lady stamp upon ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... in rather a large way of business, who (to judge finally by her cultivated voice, her knowledge of languages, and her generally distinguished air) has spared no expense in the matter of her education. I shouldn't wonder a bit if she could even play the piano." ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... The ladies were grouped together at one end, near the piano. Margot was among them. She was, as usual, dressed in white, and round the bottom of her gown there was an edging of snow-white fur. As we came in, she moved away from the piano to a sofa at some distance, and sank ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... crept away stealthily downstairs into the drawing-room, and through the window at the far end out into the courtyard, where he had sat that day by the hydrangea, listening to the piano-organ. Very dark and cold and eerie it was there, and he hurried across to his studio. There, too, it was cold, and dark, and eerie, with its ghostly plaster presences, stale scent of cigarettes, and just one glowing ember of the fire he had left when ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... case is that of an unmarried woman of twenty-eight, who walked in her sleep first in her sixth year and the second time when she was nine years old. "I got up when the full moon was shining, climbed over a chair upon the piano and intended to go to the window to unfasten it. Just then my father awoke and struck me hard on my buttocks, upon which I went back and again fell asleep. I often arose, went to each bed, that of the parents and those of the brothers and sisters, looked at them and went back again. Between ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... a boudoir upholstered in light gray silk damask, with bouquets of flowers. This is Madame Desvarennes's favorite room. A splendid Erard piano occupies one side of the apartment. Facing it is a sideboard in sculptured ebony, enriched with bronze, by Gouthieres. There are only two pictures on the walls: "The Departure of the Newly Married Couple," exquisitely painted by ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... the unfair sex addicted to clewless conduct and views that madden to crime. The genus has a wide geographical distribution, being found wherever sought and deplored wherever found. The maiden is not altogether unpleasing to the eye, nor (without her piano and her views) insupportable to the ear, though in respect to comeliness distinctly inferior to the rainbow, and, with regard to the part of her that is audible, bleating out of the field by the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... girls. Some were cooking the dinner, some ironing, others reading English aloud; but each occupation seemed a pastime, and whenever they spoke to the Sisters they clung about them as if they were their mothers. I heard them read the Bible and an historical lesson, as well as play on a piano and sing, and they wrote some very difficult passages from dictation without any errors, and in a flowing, legible handwriting that I am disposed to envy. Their accent and intonation were pleasing, and there was a briskness and emulation about their style of answering questions, rarely found ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... house and the stairs and the girl with the large hat. It was small, badly arranged, disordered, ugly, bare, comfortless, and, if not very dirty, certainly not clean; not a home, but a kennel—a kennel furnished with chairs and spotted mirrors and spotted engravings and a small upright piano; a kennel whose sides were covered with enormous red poppies, and on whose floor was something which had once been a carpet; a kennel fitted with windows and curtains; a kennel with actually a bed! ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... me," replied Allie, as they started to skate slowly up the creek towards home, and Howard and Marjorie dropped a little in the rear. "He was thirteen last summer, and papa says he's a real, true musician. He'll bring his own piano with him; but I don't know where he'll find room to put it, for our house is full as can be, now. Then he sings, too,—at least, he used to,—in a boy choir. Haven't you seen his picture, Ned? It's homely, but it looks as if he might ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... be of no interest on this side; but events have shown that in that conclusion we were mistaken. At all events, we have also arrived at the conclusion that we have nobody to blame but ourselves. As it is, we have realized by the sale of the book and the piano score in London about $7,500 apiece, and under those circumstances I do not think we need to be pitied. [Laughter.] For myself, I certainly do not pose as an ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... and the violin Quivered and shook with the strain it bore, While the swelling forth of the sounds within Rose with a sweetness unknown before, And the chords fell soft and low. Piano! ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... work, in whatsoever line that might lie. "Alas!" said a widow, speaking of her brilliant but careless son, "he has not the gift of continuance." Wanting in perseverance, such volatile natures are outstripped in the race of life by the diligent and even the dull. "Che va piano, va longano, e va lontano," says the Italian proverb: Who goes slowly, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... that one learns without surprise that she is a strict Anglican. She lives in the neighbourhood of Cadogan Square, and has five daughters, of whom two are married, to a well-known surgeon and a minor canon respectively. The beauty of the family is Joan, who plays the piano and is considered intellectual and artistic. She spent a year at the Conservatoire in Brussels, and often uses French words in conversation. Effie, the youngest, is an adept at games, and rather alarms her mother by her ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... garrulous, "neighbourly" woman, or one who can do little save strum on the piano or make embroidery as intricate as it is useless, means divorce or murder. For him, sweetness, gentleness, self-control, sound common sense, shrewdness, and domestic virtues are incomparably superior ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... withdrawing room, used when there was so small a party, Mrs. Winlow had gone to the piano and was playing to herself, for Lady Casterley, Lady Valleys, and her two daughters had drawn together as though united ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the cheap actress, Miss Fotheringay, the story carries one along in the leisurely way of the last century. All the people are a delight, from Captain Costigan to Fowker, and from the French chef, who went to the piano for stimulus in his culinary work, to Blanche Amory and her amazing French affectations. But Pendennis ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... the hail, opened the door of the room to which he had been directed, and made his way towards the piano. Esther was there, playing softly to herself with eyes half closed. He came and stood by her side, and she stopped abruptly. Her eyes questioned him. Then her fingers stole once more over the keys, more ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... knew what "practice" meant, for a girl whom they knew took music lessons, and she had to go in and practice playing on the piano every day. ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope
... the lead, and suddenly coming over a ridge above a steep ice-fall, I caught sight of the Mackellar Islets and the old "Piano" berg. Just at the same instant the spur of ice on which I was standing collapsed, and down I went into a crevasse. The others quickly had me out, and, as soon as I was in the upper air, I gave them the news: "There are the Islands!" Being twenty feet farther back on the rope they had ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... angry with him," said Mr. Dinsmore; "I was the culprit. You cannot have forgotten your fall from the piano-stool which came so near making me childless? It was he who ran in first, lifted you, and laid you on the sofa with the blood streaming from the wounded temple over your curls and your white dress. Ah, I can never forget the sad sight, or the pang that shot through my heart with the thought ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... a look at him through those green, luminous, devilish eyes of hers, she had taken her seat at the piano and begun one of her divine songs, as if she thought the magic of her art might ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... was in Cork Street. As soon as they entered it the man remarked on its warmth and its cosiness, so agreeable after the November streets. Christine only smiled. It was a long, narrow flat—a small sitting-room with a piano and a sideboard, opening into a larger bedroom shaped like a thick L. The short top of the L, not cut off from the rest of the room, was installed as a cabinet de toilette, but it had a divan. From the divan, behind which was a heavily curtained window, you could ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... a good voice-that. I see her face, for there is a candle on the piano. I come close and closter to the house. There is big maple-trees —I am well hid. A man is beside her. He lean hover her an' put his hand on her shoulder. 'Sing it again, Kat'leen,' he say. 'I cannot to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... parlor, including piano, with front and back bedrooms on second floor; front basement; gas, bath, hot and cold water, stationary tubs; rent ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... several forms of punka, all made to the same size, and, for purposes of comparison, we shall drive them all at the same speed. And in order that their effects may be visible to you, I have prepared an indicator which resembles more than anything else the keyboard of a piano. It consists of a series of balanced levers with blades or keys attached, forming a keyboard four feet long. The levers, each three feet long, are delicately hung on fine brass centers, and each lever is counterbalanced by a weight hung in a vessel ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... such of them as were old enough to hope and discuss their hopes—talked over their golden future. The tall grown girls whispered to each other of possible Barchester parties, of possible allowances for dress, of a possible piano—the one they had in the vicarage was so weather-beaten with the storms of years and children as to be no longer worthy of the name—of the pretty garden, and the pretty house. 'Twas of such things it most behoved them ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... me at the outset. You see, out in California we're not so up and down as you are here. If you were used to spending your days in the shade of yellow walls, with your choice of hammocks, and with nothing to do but feed the parrot and play the piano, why, I guess you'd—" ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... they could go and lay their hands on it in the darkest night. I'll bet they could in our house. From end to end it is kept looking as if we had shut it up and gone to Europe,—not a book, not a paper, not a glove, or any trace of a human being in sight; the piano shut tight, the bookcases shut and locked, the engravings locked up, all the drawers and closets locked. Why, if I want to take a fellow into the library, in the first place it smells like a vault, and I have to unbarricade windows, and unlock ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of the room stood an American piano, and beside it a harp of surpassing richness. Here Carlton and Florinda were seated at this time in all the confidence and enjoyment ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... of him. When she is twenty-one her aunt will tell her about him. If she knew he was the great Savelli, she would rush off and join him to-morrow, she is so impulsive. She has the music madness of both father and mother. Her aunt tells me she is a remarkable performer on both violin and piano." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... from the platform and some applause, and then a dark-looking man emerged from the sloping gangway underneath the organ and sat down at the piano. He played Mascagni's Pavana delle Maschere, and while he played it, John took some writing paper from his pocket and prepared to note down his opinions ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... of Hermitage, was a single man. He was old, feeble, and notoriously grasping, yet the dirty, ill-smelling room which Religion entered was strewn with choicest books, sheets of music lay on the table and chairs, and several rare violins lay on a piano, whose mother-of-pearl keys glowed in ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... tenor in his bath before dinner. We all know the reason, but we don't take the obvious remedy. The only thing to do is to take all the furniture out of the drawing-room and put it in the bathroom—all except the piano and a few cane chairs. Then we shouldn't have those terrible noises in the early morning, and in the evening everybody would be a singer. I suppose that is what ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... upon their attention. Here is a generalization that explains the reason why many things, harmless in themselves are unpleasant to and offend the taste of cultivated people. No really cultivated young girl will, for instance, open and play upon a piano in a hotel parlor or any other parlor at inappropriate times or when it is occupied by strangers. She will never perform in public any of the duties of the toilet, such as cleaning her nails or using a tooth-pick. She will not eat peanuts or ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... the piano, and struck a few notes. There was something caressing in the way in which she touched the keys; whoever she was, she knew how to make sweet music; sad music, too, full of that undefinable longing, like the holding out of one's arms to one's friends ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... I'll do my best; but tell Nora to be sure and get the fiddler from Hollymount. It's so stupid for her to be sitting there at the piano ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... piano was taking cruel punishment at the hands of a flashily dressed, sharp-faced man of horsey type. Flanking him, two young women of the world, with that insouciance which appertains—in Limehouse—to sweet sixteen, ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... youth of Norway would adopt it enthusiastically; but that he was still puzzled over the very necessary word to fit the strongly marked refrain. However, he was not going to give it up. Next morning, when Grieg was in his room peacefully giving a piano lesson to a young lady, a furious ringing was heard at his front-door bell, as if the ringer would tear the bell from its wires, followed by a wild shout of "'Fremad! Fremad!' Hurrah, I have got it! 'Fremad!'" Bjornson, for of course the intruder was he, rushed into ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... now, and has to leave school because her chest is delicate, and she has come home to be coddled. She don't like it a bit—leaving school, I mean—so it seems that none of us are contented. She's clever, in music especially; plays both violin and piano uncommonly well for a girl of ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... around the saloon. On one side is the bar, at which several persons are standing, drinking with some of the sweet-voiced houris. The barkeeper and proprietor, both in their shirt sleeves, are behind it. On one side of the bar is a slightly-raised platform, upon which is a piano-player, a violinist and a shrill fifer. This is the music that charms and attracts. Around the room are men of all kinds, sailors, laboring men, seedy individuals, lovers, thieves, a few poor gamblers, fellows ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... seen them. I went along briskly, and in a few minutes came to the tavern. The door was shut, the weather being cold, but I knew by the lights shining through the windows that a hospitable fire was burning on the hearth. There was no need to knock at the door. I heard the jangling piano playing an accompaniment to the flute-like whistling of Harry Herndon's negro. Remembering his carelessness, I felt like going into the tavern and giving him a frailing. The inclination was so strong that I held my hand on the door-knob until the first flush of anger had subsided. ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... Blow the spirit-stirring harp like anything! Let the piano's martial blast Rouse the Echoes of the Past, For of AGIB, ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... two daughters, 'Both creatures ', Schiller wrote, 'are attractive, without being beautiful and please me much. You find here considerable acquaintance with recent literature, also refinement, feeling and intelligence. They play the piano well, which gave me a delightful evening.' The elder daughter, Karoline, was married unhappily to a Herr von Beulwitz, from whom she afterwards separated to marry Wilhelm von Wolzogen. She was a woman of much literary talent, which found employment later in a novel, 'Agnes von Lilien', ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... in through the door of the Pagoda. A bedlam of noise surged out at him—a tin-pan piano and a mandolin were going furiously from a little raised platform at the rear; in the centre of the room a dozen couples were in the throes of the tango and the bunny-hug; around the sides, at little tables, men and women laughed and applauded and thumped time on the tabletops with their ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... house, she was at the time receiving her young-lady education at the Convent of St. Ursula, where, in the vine-covered, red-brick convent on the summit of Charlestown, she learned, under the guidance of the nuns, to sing, play the piano, the harp, and the guitar, to speak French, and read Spanish and Italian. But her life on Mt. Benedict was suddenly terminated when the convent was burned. So she entered earlier than would otherwise ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... should love her—love her so dearly as to die for her, was to her romantic imagination strange as it was beautiful. Adelaide Lyster could play upon her feelings and emotions skilfully as she played upon the chords of a piano. ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... have to wait very long. These people are beggars for punishment and like to start early. It is customary to lead off the program with a selection on the piano by a distinguished lady graduate of somebody-with-an-Italian-name's school of piano expression. Under no circumstances is it expected that this lady will play anything that you can understand or that I could understand. ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... reserve. Hilliard had no choice but to converse with Patty, who was as gay and entertaining as ever. In the course of their gossip he learnt that Miss Ringrose was employed at a music-shop, kept by her uncle, where she sold the latest songs and dances, and "tried over" on a piano any unfamiliar piece which a customer might think of purchasing. It was not easy to understand how these two girls came to be so intimate, for they seemed to have very little in common. Compared with ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... could now do without it. To the Great House accordingly they went, to sit the full half hour in the old-fashioned square parlour, with a small carpet and shining floor, to which the present daughters of the house were gradually giving the proper air of confusion by a grand piano-forte and a harp, flower-stands and little tables placed in every direction. Oh! could the originals of the portraits against the wainscot, could the gentlemen in brown velvet and the ladies in blue satin have seen what was going on, have been conscious of such an overthrow ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... standing over near the piano when the leading lady galloped in. Believe me the dog she put on would make you think that she had every other star looking like a twinkle, and before she landed where she is now she was leading lady ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... lights in the heavy crystal chandelier and the green-shaded electric lamps in their gilt sconces on the plain white-panelled walls coldly lit up the formal, little-used room with its gilt furniture, painted piano, and ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... and slippers didn't get scorched," said Prudy; "and the piano sounds as sweetly as ever it did. It sounds to me just as if there was a ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... we need a piano!" she exclaimed. "I wonder if we can't get up an entertainment and raise money to buy one. How many ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... at Saluda Seminary took place on Friday evening, May 1. Visitors overflowed the schoolrooms before the appointed hour. After the introductory march had been rendered by one of the music pupils on the beautiful Estey piano which adorned the platform, there was not a standing place left for seeing nor hearing. The young people kept everybody interested and pleased for three hours, by readings, recitations, instrumental ...
— American Missionary, Volume 50, No. 8, August, 1896 • Various
... near, the girls were singing their quaint wild songs. Thus heard, the rondinella sounds well: it is of the woods and deserts; strange, barbaric, oriental, bacchantic, what you please, save dawdling drawing-room and piano-ic. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... astronomical meditations, and thinking more about the celestial than the terrestrial world, when a distant sound aroused him from his reverie. He listened attentively, and to his great amaze, fancied he heard the sounds of a piano. He could not be mistaken, for he distinctly ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... woods with Jim; she had beauty and a curious primitive strength. Jim leaned forward, smiling as he talked to her; they talked confidentially, like tried comrades. Evelyn was moved to something near anger and went to the old grand piano Jim had brought from the drawing-room when he found that Carrie could play ragtime airs. Evelyn had a talent for music and meant to make an experiment. If Jim was what she thought, ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... it. His doctor had been visiting him for years; but he didn't seem to get any better, and he thought he should have to give him up, or lose all the money he had. O dear! the room was too warm, he could not breathe; that door must be opened; that singing distracted him; he loved the piano once—now his nerves could not stand it. He thought it became young people to be very serious and devout in the prospect of an affliction which might be as melancholy as his was. But he could not remain any longer; he was afraid of stopping out nights, ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... dear Count, you have understood nothing of that stupendous musical drama," said Gambara, airily, as standing in front of Andrea's piano he struck the keys, listened to the tone, and then seated himself, meditating for a few minutes as if ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... then, at the rear of the house, to watch the high-jinks going on in front. Standish had ousted the three-piece orchestra, and taken over the piano; two other volunteers had flanked him, and the revelry began with a favourite ditty to proclaim that all reports to the contrary notwithstanding, Henry was style all the while, ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... how glad he was to have seen him. In the evening, however, one of the young ladies began to play a hornpipe, the music of which Sir Henry, not without difficulty, had procured for her. True Blue pricked up his ears, and then, running to the piano, exclaimed, "You play it very well indeed, Miss Julia—that you do; but I wish that you could just hear Sam Smatch with his fiddle—he'd take the shine out of you, I think you'd say. Howsomdever, my lady, if you and the young ladies and Sir Henry please, ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... Out of the twilight; over the grey-blue sand, Shoals of low-jargoning men drift inward to the sound— The jangle and throb of a piano ... tum-ti-tum ... Drawn by a lamp, they come Out of the glimmering lines of their tents, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... delighted surprise. "Oh, Dick, if you should find a piano, please—please bring it ashore for me. I am passionately fond of music, and a piano would be such ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... was broken, however, on week days. Southern Puritanism differed from the early New England Puritanism in a certain affectionateness and sociability. The mother could play well on the piano, and frequently sang with the children hymns and popular melodies. Between the two brothers there was from the first the most beautiful relation, as throughout the rest of their lives: comrades in boyhood, comrades during the War, comrades in their first literary work, and to the end. ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... down pleasantly, and then ho, for bed," said Mr. Maynard. So when they had recovered their breath, Mrs. Maynard and Grandma returned, Rosy Posy having already gone to her little crib. Mrs. Maynard sat at the piano, and they all gathered round ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... of influence, by sympathetic action, may also be seen in another direction; consider the fact that if we are in a room with a piano and we sing a certain note, say E flat, we not only hear that note coming back from the piano, but, if we examine the strings, we find that all the E flats are actually vibrating in sympathy, because they are in perfect harmony with the note ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... pair of property bloomers she found herself one of a party of girls advancing, retreating, and wheeling at the arbitrary command of an excitable little man in his shirt-sleeves, who hammered out the time on a rattling piano. ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... later, magnificent chords sounded through the house. The piano was old, but tuned to the middle of the note, and the keys were swept by a master hand. The wires were not hammered; they were touched knowingly as by the player's own fingers, and so they sang—and from ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... struck softly the chords of the piano and thought how foolish she was to feel as she did. Suppose Morris had loved her once, he probably did not now, and even if he did, it could do no good, for she was the same as dead to all that kind of thing. She had tried matrimony, and found it—she did not say what. She ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... illustration of the latter trouble is showing itself in a young Indian boy, who is at present undergoing an examination of his vision as a probable cause for his headaches. This boy is studying music; one year ago he practiced two hours daily on the piano and studied from three to five hours besides. This year his work has been increased; he is now troubled with severe headaches, and after continued near work for some time letters become blurred and run together. This boy is far sighted and astigmatic; ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... old piano in my sitting-room. It is a masterpiece of an instrument, I can tell you; for one of the legs is gone and I propped it up with two empty boxes, and the keys are all black except those that have lost the ivory—and those are green. ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... me, my dear. I have n't heard it this many a day." Polly did n't like to sing before strangers, for she had had no teaching but such as her busy mother could give her; but she had been taught the utmost respect for old people, and having no reason for refusing, she directly went to the piano, and did as she ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... peculiar qualities of each piece were explained to them afterwards. Little Mary Susan also received encouragement in the practice of her music, for I see this entry on March 7, 1875: "My little daughter and I played piano and violin together to-day for the ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... frequently to serenade their friends in the cool and brilliant moonlit evenings of the dry season, playing French and Italian marches and dance music with very good effect. The guitar was the favourite instrument with both sexes, as at Para; the piano, however, is now fast superseding it. The ballads sung to the accompaniment of the guitar were not learned from written or printed music, but communicated orally from one friend to another. They were never spoken of as songs, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... hairs which have to do with the production of sound answered to the notes of the tuning-fork, and these vibrated at the rate of five hundred and twelve vibrations per second. Other hairs vibrated to other notes, which were those of the middle octave of the piano and the next above it. Mayer also found that certain of these vibrations corresponded with the notes produced by the 'song' of the female mosquito. Consequently, when she begins to 'sing,' her tune, like the tuning-fork, sets in motion those hairs on the antennae of the male which are tuned to ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... cool and dark, and sometimes when the garden is hot and sunny, I go to the parlor, and try to amuse myself, but oh, I wish I had someone to play with. When I try to pick out a tune on the piano, the notes sound so loud, I turn around to see if Aunt Rose is provokt, but she never folows me. There's a portrate of a funny old man that hangs at the end of the parlor, and I always think he's watching me. When I smile, he seems to smile, ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... (obstinately). I do not care about the cause, I only look to the result—the rich are divided from the poor. It is ridiculous that an orange-girl should play the piano, and a ploughman ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... of. The boys of Battery D collected the sum of $175 for the purchase of a piano for barrack 019. Phil Cusick, of Parsons, Penna., was the one generally sought out to keep the ivories busy. November 19th witnessed the first gathering together of the regiment on the parade grounds for a big song ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... Yetts," which followed, was as irresistible as the playing of the Piper of Hamelin. The beautiful clear light came into her eyes; her lips quivered with emotion; she forgot herself, rose, and crossed the room to the piano, where she asked eagerly for song after song. The sisters begged her to come and see them the next morning, when they would sing as long as ever she liked; and she promised gladly and thankfully. But on reaching the house ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... you! She might have saved herself the trouble, for Miss Blake simply set things going without any bother at all, and before Nan realized what was happening, she saw the governess and big John Gardiner leading in a lively game, while the music of a piano and some violins, which were hidden away out of sight, fell upon her delighted ear. She followed the sound, and it took her to the glass extension, which, to her astonishment, was all alight, and fragrant with flowering plants and towering palms. The "old ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... even as late as the last quarter of a century, there were strait-laced Baptist preachers (my own blood kin among them) who would not permit an organ in the church. But today it is quite the vogue for young evangelistic couples to hold forth with piano-accordion and guitar. "It peps up the joiners," the evangelist says. On the other hand, in remote churches, where preachers still hold that note-singing and hymn books with notes are the works of the Devil, these same fellows will play up the hysteria of the audience with the "Holy Bark," the "And-ah," ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... to time the buzz of voices was temporarily broken by the crash of the piano, but always before the end of each performance it rose again, and steadily swelled in volume. In truth, the excellence of the performance was no great inducement to listen, and Mrs Willoughby's forehead showed a pucker of anxiety. She drifted ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... friends at the time made record of his admiration in writing,—"Tutor Lanier is the finest flute-player you or I ever saw. It is perfectly splendid—his playing. He is far-famed for it. His flute cost fifty dollars, and he runs the notes as easily as any one on the piano." ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... fixed, and the response certain and automatic. For example, we sit at the table, and the response of eating follows, with all its complex acts, as a matter of course. We lie down in bed, and the response of sleep comes. We take our place at the piano, and our ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... of making life more complex and subtle. We have the piano, the violin, the orchestra. Yet we also have rag-time, which is a reaction from the nervous tension of American commercial life, a swinging back to the old days when man, though a brute, was free. There ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... later to breakfast, and they seemed not to go to school; some of them had piano lessons in their rooms. Their mothers did not go out much; sometimes they went to church or the theatre, and they went shopping. But they had apparently no more social than domestic life. Now and then they had a friend to lunch or dinner; if a lady was absent, it was known to Mrs. Harmon, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... dinner knives, decanters, chimney ornaments, books, purses, lead pencils, corkscrews, my silver-mounted flute, with all the mounts gone, and the cruets minus their silver tops. Also all the silver spoons, the electros being turned out upon the heap as "non-negotiables." The piano had been split open and gutted—it was an unredeemed Grand—the burglar or burglars having been seized with the suspicion that I had secreted articles of value in the body of the instrument. And so I had! one valuable in particular being a ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... back of the house, to which the jingle of the boarding-house piano could yet penetrate, she sat for a time in deep thought. The past had held a few friends, folk who had been kind to her. Pride had held her back; she had never asked help of any of them. She thought of the Australian uncle ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... returned to her place, and sat down in her favourite pose—Turkish fashion. Both kept silent. In the distance, several rooms away, a broken-down grand piano was tinkling; somebody's vibrating laughter floated in; while from the other side—a little song, and rapid, merry talking. The words could not be heard. A cabby was rumbling by ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... rate. Now try again with Oswald while I play. Ossie, I'm proud of you! Last Christmas you were a perfect duffer at it. Don't you remember how you sat out at the Warings'? You've improved immensely. Now go on!" and Ulyth began to play, with her eyes alternately on the piano and on ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... covered by a lace scarf upon which are to be seen glasses, bric-a-brac and family mementos of various kinds. On the wall above hang family photographs. Between the oven and the door that leads to the outer hall stands an old-fashioned grand piano and an embroidered piano-stool. The keyboard of the instrument is turned toward the tile oven. Above the piano there are glass cases containing a collection of butterflies. In the foreground, to the ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... of change and variety, rudely outspoken, lively, and original, producing laughter with her own good-humour and affection. She was her father's pet child. He delighted in hearing her sing, telling her to go to the piano, with his ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... comfortable in this lodging. There are lovely flowers in the garden, and the birds wake me in the morning delightfully. I have hired a reasonably good piano. The only man I care two straws about—don't be alarmed; he was laid in his grave many a long year ago, under the name of BEETHOVEN—keeps me company, in my lonely hours. The landlady would keep me company, too, if I would only let her. I hate women. ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... the well-known song with greater sweetness than usual—she was decidedly in good voice; both Charlie and Harry listened with great pleasure as they stood by her side; Jane was also sitting near the piano, and seemed more interested in the music than usual; it was a song which the young widow had so often heard, in what she now looked back to as the happy days of her girlhood. More than one individual in the room thought it charming to listen to Elinor and look ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... my brain," she said, and began to pace about the room, up and down, up and down. Her mother watched her anxiously. Angelica closed the piano. Dr. Galbraith and the bishop came in from the dining room, and then Edith declared that driving in the open air had made her so sleepy ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the piano was playing the melody my mother most often played. My agony was beyond bearing. Repentance again swept over me, and eased me. It had been many years since I had heard that old-fashioned tune. ...
— Futurist Stories • Margery Verner Reed
... furnishing—leopard-skins from Bechuanaland; lion-skins from Matabeleland; silver-mounted tusks of elephants from Eastern Cape Colony and Portuguese East Africa; statues and statuettes of classical subjects; two or three Holbeins, a Rembrandt, and an El Greco on the walls; a piano, a banjo, and a cornet; and, in the corner, a little roulette-table. It was a strange medley, in keeping, perhaps, with the incongruously furnished mind of the master of it all; it was expressive of tastes and habits not yet settled ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Pathetic Drama, in One Act, called The Sorrows of Werther. (N.B. This Piece was damned at Covent Garden Theatre.) [Caste follows.] Brothers and Sisters of Charlotte, by six Cherubims got for the occasion. Orchestra. Leader of the Band, Mr. Knight, Conductor, Mr. E. Knight. Piano Forte, Mr. Knight, Jun. Harpsichord, Master Knight (that was). Clavecin, by the Father of the Knights, to come. Vivat Rex! No Money returned (because none will be taken). On account of the above surprising Novelty, not an ORDER can possibly be admitted:— ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of playing the piano as an example of the kind of action we are in search of, we observe that a practised player will perform very difficult pieces apparently without effort, often, indeed, while thinking and talking of something quite other than his music; yet he will play accurately ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... no sign of me;—but now my heart beat so thickly, when I thought of him passing me in the dance, that, could I sit there still, I feared 'twould of itself betray me, and that warned me to question if the hour were not ready for the dances, and I rose and stole to the piano and sat awaiting my mother's word. But scarcely was I there when one came quietly behind me, and a head bent and almost swept my shoulder; then he stood ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... unpleasant by the pernicious '106' fuzes, with which the enemy's artillery was well supplied. From Robecq, which was steadily being shelled to ruins and through which one passed with reluctance, a disinterested salvage party, consisting of Stanley and the officers of B Company, brought a piano, which was destined to be an historic instrument. On more than one occasion the Battalion returned from its spell in the front line to the St. Venant Asylum, a large institution said to be the second largest of the kind in France. Its protesting inmates ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... Street in New York City there is a piano dealer by the name of Wise. On every window of his store he ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... entrance, while he himself made a tour of the ground-floor windows. For half an hour the empty house was loud with strange sounds. McGuffog, who was a giant in strength, filled the passage at the verandah end with an assortment of furniture ranging from a grand piano to a vast mahogany sofa, while Saskia and Sir Archie pillaged the bedrooms and packed up the interstices with mattresses in lieu of sandbags. Dougal on his turn saw fit ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... of butt or glued jointing to the building up of the core of a piano fall previous ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... cried. "You don' know? I'm goin' buy beeg stan'! Candy! Peanut! Banan'! Make some-a-time four dollar a day! 'Tis a greata countra! Bimaby git a store! Ride a buggy! Smoke a cigar! You play piano! Vote a Republican!" ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... gentleman, he was, if ever a man was. Ed'cated at no end of expense. Went into the Marshal's house once to try a new piano for him. Played it, I understand, like one o'clock—beautiful! As to languages—speaks anything. We've had a Frenchman here in his time, and it's my opinion he knowed more French than the Frenchman did. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... into which my feet sank as though it were moss, and a tall silver and crystal vase, full of gorgeous roses, was placed at the foot of a standing mirror framed in silver, so that the blossoms were reflected double. The sitting-room was provided with easy chairs, a writing-table, and a small piano, and here, too, masses of roses showed their fair faces from every corner. It was all so charming that I could not help uttering an exclamation of delight, and the maid who was unpacking my things ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... from the white, set look of her face as the monotonous months dragged on that she was no nearer to accomplishing that task than on the day of her arrival. Nothing that Knight could do made any difference. When an upright cottage piano appeared one day, the girl seemed ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... There was a piano in the room, and she sat down and sang to her own accompaniment, with a sweet, low voice, one of the soft, sad ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... circumstances do, without a thought of using my knowledge for any practical purpose. I could speak very fair English; but how I did it, or why, I didn't know,—all the technical rules of grammar had passed from my head like a dream. I could play a little on the piano, and sing a few songs; but I did not know enough of music to venture to propose myself as a teacher; and so with every other study. All the situations of profit in the profession of teaching are now crowded and blocked by girls who have been studying ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Tannis was what she seemed to be—a fairly well-educated, up-to-date young woman with whom a friendly flirtation was just what it was with white womankind—the pleasant amusement of an hour or season. It was a mistake—a very big mistake. Tannis understood something of piano playing, something less of grammar and Latin, and something less still of social prevarications. But she understood absolutely nothing of flirtation. You can never get an Indian to see the ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... must be contented to know that there was a magnificent reception-room, and in this reception-room a piano, whose chords were permeating the mansion's warm atmosphere when ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... Kinderscenen, were inspired by Clara; and it is well known that his love became the incentive to the composition, in one year, of over a hundred wonderful songs—his previous compositions, up to 1840, having all been for the piano alone. In the last letter of this collection he says: "Sometimes it appears to me as if I were treading entirely new paths in music;" and there are many other passages showing that he realized well that the very things ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... funeral of a great friend of his. As Cecil (his real name was Blount) was having his bath, he was suddenly inspired with some idea for a song; so, pulling his sponge-bath into the adjoining sitting-room closer to the piano, he placed a chair in it, and sat down to try it over. A friend, rushing in to fetch him to the funeral, found him so seated, singing and playing, balancing the dripping sponge on the top ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... replied, "music has always been my chief companion. The dreams that other girls confide in chums, I have told to my piano." ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... for a moment upon the keyboard of the piano before which she was seated, awaiting Lessingham's arrival. Then she glanced at the clock. It was ten minutes ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... before the piano, ran his fingers through his long hair, and was soon weeping over a sonata ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... rose from the piano with unexpected suddenness remarking SOTTO VOCE that if he had known he was to play on a spinet he would have brought some Lulli with him. He was beaming all over, none the less, and soon making arrangements with other guests for a series of picnics and boating excursions—getting on ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... playing with her children (and she had two lovely ones—the eldest six years old), or teasing her calm and meditative husband, or pouring out extempore verses, or rattling over airs which she never finished, on the guitar or piano—or making excursions on the lake—or, in short, in whatever occupation she appeared as the Cynthia of the minute, she was always gay and mobile—never out of humour, never acknowledging a single care or cross ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sumptuously-dressed worshippers, have on our feelings. The great glare of Gothic windows; the massive curtains of orange-colored satin that, veiled with lace, pend in undulating folds over them; the cloudlike canopy that overhangs a dias at the further end of the parlor; the gorgeously-carved piano, with keys of pearl, that stands in dumb show beneath the drapery; the curiously-carved eagles, in gilt, that perch over each window, and hold daintily in their beaks the amber-colored drapery; the chastely-designed tapestry of sumptuously-carved ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... was to receive the rest of her education from her sisters, and Mr Barker thought that what was left could not be better applied than in the purchase of furniture for the parlour and school-room. The twenty-five guineas which the girls had themselves earned was the means of procuring them a good piano-forte; a thing which was quite necessary in their new establishment, but which could not at present have been afforded if their own industry had ...
— Principle and Practice - The Orphan Family • Harriet Martineau
... 1/5. Leonardo osservo probabilmente soltanto la prima" (UZIELLl).]; the second is that two third ones above are over the two third ones below [Footnote 10: terze di sotto: "Intende qui senza dubbio parlare di foglie decussate, in cui il terzo verticello e nel piano del primo" (UZIELLI).]; and the third way is that the third above is over the third below [Footnote 11: 3a di ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... wear gloves, lest he should remind them of their condition. Sensitive and weak in body as he was, Nelson was not more fearless. It was equally characteristic of another quality of his, the open hand, that he gave a grand piano to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he said, "needs to recuperate. To feed on such a night as this in some low-down hostelry on the level of the street, with German waiters breathing heavily down the back of one's neck and two fiddles and a piano hitting up ragtime about three feet from one's tympanum, would be false economy. Here, fanned by cool breezes and surrounded by passably fair women and brave men, one may do a certain amount of tissue-restoring. Moreover, there is little danger up here of being slugged by our moth-eaten acquaintance ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... on the following morning we reached Moldeoen, where the steamer landed us on a rock on which were a few acres of grass and half a dozen wooden houses. We had a good deal of luggage with us, also some casks, cases, and barrels of provisions, and a piano-forte, as our place of sojourn is somewhat out of the way and far removed from civilised markets. A few poverty-stricken natives stood on the rude stone pier as we landed, and slowly assisted us to unload. At ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... leading-note of a minor scale. La is always the dominant of a minor scale or the sixth of a major scale. Thus the letters indicate fixed terms in our system of music, and the syllables indicate terms homologous to the similar relations in different keys. The letters show the keys on the piano, and the syllables the degrees in the scale. French musicians have made a strange muddle of this. They have confused the meaning of the syllables with that of the letters, and while they have unnecessarily given us two sets of symbols for the keys of the piano, they have left none for ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... a great bunch of the fragrant roses, and hurried down to the parlor, where she found the others waiting, Mrs. Ellsworth alone in an easy-chair, Olive and Love at the piano with Ela, who was playing the accompaniment for a sentimental song that Olive sang ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... the platform to the window whose latch he had loosened, he softly raised it, listened, and climbing through, dropped noiselessly to the floor. Feeling his way in the darkness amid the bales and boxes, he reached a nook behind a piano-case he had previously noted, and settling down, prepared to await ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... in a waiter stood by a tuneless piano, upon which a bloated "professor" was beating a tattoo of cheap syncopation accompaniment of the advantages of "Bobbin' Up An' Down," which was warbled with that peculiarly raucous, nasal tenor so popular in Tenderloin resorts. The musical ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... that I have an undeveloped faculty of music within me. For, thrumming, in my wild way, on my friend A.'s piano, the other morning, while he was engaged in an adjoining parlour,—on his return he was pleased to say, "he thought it could not be the maid!" On his first surprise at hearing the keys touched in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... came in now with the box. Secret springs released the drawers and in these were cards, large and gilded, such as one never sees now. Then he opened the piano. It had landscapes painted on the inside of the lid. It was very hoarse but the old man could play on it and he sang ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... was killed and robbed, and in spite of his venerable age, he was nailed up in a box and sent from Petersburg to Moscow in the luggage van, and while they were nailing him up, the harlots sang songs and played the harp, that is to say, the piano. So this is that very von Sohn. He has risen from the dead, hasn't ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... one of the wildest spots imaginable. It was very cold. To-day it pours so that I hardly know if we shall be able to get out, or home even. We are not snowed, but rained up. Our little Shiel is very snug and comfortable, and we have got a little piano in it. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... friends were sitting at the piano, and Ticellini marked several songs and duets, ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... I saw one happy day, And more than now I care to name; Here, lately shut, that workbox lay, There stood your own embroidery frame. And over this piano bent A Form, from some pure ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... and with a couple of "Annuals" besides, which flank it on the same table, represents the art of the house; perhaps there is a portrait of the master of the house in the dining-room, grim-glancing from above the mantel-piece; and of the mistress over the piano up stairs; add to these some odious miniatures of the sons and daughters, on each side of the chimney-glass; and here, commonly (we appeal to the reader if this is an overcharged picture), the collection ends. The family goes to the Exhibition once a year, to the National Gallery once in ten years: ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... books of yellow-paged music, containing, 'The Battle of the Prague,' 'The Maiden's Prayer,' 'Cherry Ripe,' and 'The Canary Bird's Quadrilles.' Such tinkling melodies had been the delight of Miss Whichello's youth, and—as she had a fine finger for the piano (her own observation)—she sometimes tinkled them now on the jingling old piano when old friends came to see her. Also there were Chippendale cupboards with glass doors, filled with a most wonderful collection of old china—older even than their owner; Chinese jars heaped up with dried rose ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... The piano was heard. Dr. Middleton laid his hand on the banisters, and remarked: "The ladies ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Working Association of Piano Forte Makers, not far from Drury Lane. These men were not long since working for an employer on the old plan, when he failed, threw them all out of employment, and deprived a portion of them of the savings of past years ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... Schwabacher gathered about the piano those well enough to be about (after the storm had been raging for two days and nights), playing old-fashioned songs, to try to raise ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer
... construction of this machine; which might have required but thirteen movements, as shown in the above analysis, unless some variety of musical note was to be added to the vocality produced in the larynx; all of which movements might communicate with the keys of a harpsichord or forte piano, and perform the song as well as the accompaniment; or which if built in a gigantic form, might speak so loud as to command an army ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... no lesser or greater fete day can pass without the gipsy band having ample work to do in the form of playing for the people. Their instruments are the fiddle, 'cello, viola, clarinet, tarogato (a Hungarian specialty), and, above all, the cymbal. The tarogato looks like a grand piano with the top off. It stands on four legs like a table and has wires drawn across it; on these wires the player performs with two little sticks, that are padded at the ends with cotton-wool. The sound ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... There were a player-piano and a fine phonograph in the big drawing-room. The windows of this room opened down to the floor, and the cowboys from the bunk house, the Mexicans, and even Ah Foon, gathered on the side porch to ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... appears that such articles were not a necessity, if the wife has objected to the purchase and notified the seller that she will not pay for the same. "Expenses of the family," are not limited to necessary expenses, but whatever is kept or used in the family is included in the term. A piano, an organ, a watch and other jewelry, a cook stove and fixtures, have all been held to come within the term "family expense," for which the property of the wife is liable. But a reaping machine, ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... enough, I hope, to tell the Board to get rid of their latest craze. You'll hardly believe it," she went on, turning to 'Bias, "but I happened to pass the Girls' School the other day, and if there wasn't a piano going!—yes, actually a piano! When you come to think that the parents of some of those children don't earn ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... I can sing, and play on the piano, and write valentines,' sais she, 'so get out.' And she walked away, quite dignified, muttering to herself, 'Make a pudding, eh! ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... station-yard, Miss Mapp looked to see what vehicles were standing there. It was already ten minutes past four, and the Ardingly motors must have been there by this time, if there was anything "doing" by the 4.15. But positively the only vehicle there was an open trolly laden with a piano in a sack. Apart from knowing all about that piano, for Mrs. Poppit had talked about little else than her new upright Bluthner before her visit to Buckingham Palace, a moment's reflection convinced Miss Mapp ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... (carrying budded boughs of trees; they march and countermarch in simple march figures, while piano plays "Campbells are coming," or "Narcissus." They form in line, each saluting queen as he ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... garlands of composition. The style of the Regency with its use of musical instruments for decorative motifs is also attractive. The chairs should be comfortable, the lights soft and well shaded side-lights, with a plentiful supply near the piano. ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... 'argument' (to a function), used so often as to have become a new word (like 'piano' from 'pianoforte'). "The sine function takes 1 arg, but the arc-tangent function can take either 1 or 2 args." Compare {param}, ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... daughter, I will permit you not to marry her. But I shall betroth you to the daughter of Eli Witebski, the great merchant. You are longing for learning—flu! I am going to give you a very well educated wife. Her parents keep her in a boarding school at Wilno; she speaks French and plays the piano. Nu! if you are so difficult to please, that girl ought to suit you. She is sixteen years old. Her father will give her a big dowry, and immediately after the wedding ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... became—quite genuinely—a nervous, hesitant, pale little thing. However, the suppliant hostess bore her off, and presently her rich contralto notes passed through the garden, adding to its passion and mystery, and through the open French windows, John could see her standing against the wall near the piano, her head thrown back, her eyes half-closed, her creamy throat swelling in the very abandonment ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... big churches had good clothes and nice houses to live in, and money to spend for luxuries, and could go away on summer vacations and all that, while the people outside the churches, thousands of them, I mean, die in tenements, and walk the streets for jobs, and never have a piano or a picture in the house, and grow up in misery ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... depending on this man's punctuality, she has bought in London clothes and trinkets—chiefly for me, indeed—and she has no immediate means of paying these debts; but, if she will only keep her mind tranquil, all will yet be well. You flatter me that I play tolerably on the piano-forte and the harp; you will recommend me, and I can endeavour to teach music. So that, if mamma will but be well, we shall not be in any great distress—except in leaving you; that is painful, but must be done. Yes, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... and when there is company here, remember, I shall always expect you to sit quietly, and listen to the conversation, as it is very improving to young girls to be in really good society. You will have a music teacher, and practice on the upright piano in the library, instead of the large one in the parlor. One thing more, if you want anything, come to me, and ask for it, and I shall be very much displeased if you talk to the servants, or encourage them to talk to you. Now, everything is understood, and I hope you will ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... we had time enough for such things, though we lost many a free hour in music lessons. Ludo was learning to play on the piano, but I had chosen another instrument. Among our best friends, the three fine sons of Privy-Councillor Oesterreich and others, there was a pleasant boy named Victor Rubens, whose parents were likewise friends of my mother. In the hospitable house of this agreeable family I had heard ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... comfortable about her presence there at all, she was pleased with the effect she produced. When the Contessa sang there suddenly appeared out of the midst of the crowd a slim, straight figure in a black gown, which instantly sat down at the piano, played the accompaniments, and disappeared again without a word. The spectators thronging round the piano saw that this was a girl, as graceful and distinguished as the Contessa herself, who passed away without a word, and disappeared when her office was ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... its piano, books and pictures and other scattered evidence of culture and refinement, showed the manner in which the Blaines liked to live. Through the open window, affording a fine view of Central Park, with its rolling lawns, winding paths and masses of green foliage, ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow |
