"Spinet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pictorial almost without intermission—there was a companion picture, when the Vicar reads, at his fireside, a letter announcing the restitution of his estate; while his wife and children and Mr. Burchell are assembled around the spinet singing an old song. The repose with which Henry Irving made that scene tremulous, almost painful, in its suspense, was observed as one of the happiest strokes of his art. The face and demeanour of Dr. Primrose, changing from the composure of resignation to ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... through the whole range of cymbal and spinet, "flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music," stand literally before me, and a strange revelation it is. Is it the same faculty which produces that grand piano of Bechstein's, and that clarion organ of Silbermann's, and that African drum dressed out with skulls, ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... with claw-feet or spindle-legs, that one had to be careful not to overturn their loads of Chinese dragons, ivory carvings, grotesque Delft beasts, and fans, French or Spanish or of the Orient. There was also a spinet, and a corner closet of books, of which every packet brought her a variety. Upstairs was a fair room full of volumes, big and little, as I found to my joy rather later, and these were of all kinds: some good, and some of them queer, or naughty. Over the wide, ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... not to another region of existence; we had, too, some of the last new songs, (at least half a century old, but which were not the less touching,) and a duet of Geminiani, performed by the two elder proficients on a spinet which might have been among the "chamber music" of the Virgin Queen; all slight matters to speak of, and yet which contributed to the quietude of a mind longing for rest—sights of innocence and sounds of peace, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... you don't know what that is!" said Miss Lois, when she saw the little girl inspecting it. "That's a harp. Young ladies played on it when we were young ourselves. And they had a spinet. I believe it's altered now and called ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... understood of the people.[70] This development was furthered by the perfecting of two groups of instruments: The violins, by the great Italian masters; and those precursors of our modern pianoforte, the harpsichord, clavichord and spinet. We find, consequently, the Italians—of whom Corelli was most prominent—combining these dances into groups called Sonate da Ballo: and the French composers Couperin and Rameau, developing the possibilities of keyed stringed instruments ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... desired should go to Newtake. The piano, indeed, had never been there before. It was a present to Damaris from her dead husband, who purchased the instrument second-hand for five pounds at a farm sale. Its wiry jingle spoke of evolution from harpsichord or spinet to the modern instrument; its yellow keys, from which the ivory in some cases was missing, and its high back, stained silk front, and fretted veneer indicated age; while above the keyboard a label, now growing indistinct, set forth that one "William Harper, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... It," said Graves. "She wouldn't like it—if she understood." Then he whispered words that were Greek to me, and the womankin laughed aloud. Her laugh was sweet and tinkly, like the upper notes of a spinet. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... step back. I noticed something new just beside the door: a high-legged, short-keyboard piano. Then I saw that the legs were those of a table. The piano was just a box with yellowed keys. Spinet? Harpsichord? ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... living for months on end the life of a savage among the wigwams of the Sacs and the Foxes, foul livers and foul talkers, ever squatting like toads around their fires. Then when I have come back to Albany where my folk then dwelt, and have heard my sisters play upon the spinet and sing, and my mother talk to us of the France of her younger days and of her childhood, and of all that they had suffered for what they thought was right, then I have felt what a good woman is, and how, like the sunshine, she draws out of one's soul all ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... about two hundred years ago by Cristofori (1651-1731), an Italian. It was an enormous improvement over the types of keyboard instrument that were in use at that time (clavichord, harpsichord, spinet, virginal) and has resulted in an entirely different style of composition. See ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... floors had been polished till they appeared to be the finest parquet; gilt chairs deeply cushioned, and also of that delicate yellow colour which the favourite loved, had been brought from Paris; a spinet with a beautifully painted case stood near the window; a quaint sixteenth-century stove which had been in the state room at the castle had been chosen by her as harmonising well with the yellow hangings, being made of light blue tiles. In an alcove, especially constructed by grumbling, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... room all the time we were there. There were two or three old-fashioned cabinets or bureaux; there was a regular four-post bedstead, with the gloomy curtains still hanging round it; and ever so many spider-legged chairs and rickety tables; and I rather think in one corner there was a spinet. But there was nothing particularly curious or attractive, and we never thought of meddling with the things or 'poking about,' as girls sometimes do; for we always thought it was by mistake that this room had not been locked ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... effect, Or be so artfully applied, Insensibly came on her side. It was an unforeseen event; Things took a turn he never meant. Whoe'er excels in what we prize, Appears a hero in our eyes; Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. When miss delights in her spinet, A fiddler may a fortune get; A blockhead, with melodious voice, In boarding-schools may have his choice: And oft the dancing-master's art Climbs from the toe to touch the heart. In learning let a nymph delight, The ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... garden directly in front of the Tuileries. The family scene at the house of Duplay the carpenter was exceedingly well managed; old Duplay, smoking his pipe, listening to his daughters playing on a spinet and singing sentimental songs of the Rousseau period, was perfect. The old carpenter and his family evidently felt that the golden age had at last arrived; that humanity was at the end of its troubles; and that the world was indebted for it all to their lodger Robespierre, who sat in ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... important improvement was introduced, the instrument changed its name, just as in our day the melodeon was improved into the harmonium, then into the organ-harmonium, and finally into the cabinet organ. The virginals of 1600 became the spinet of 1700,—so called because the pieces of quill employed in twanging the strings resembled thorns, and spina, in Latin, means thorn. Any lady who will take the trouble to mount to the fourth story of the Messrs. Chickering's piano store in the city of New ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... men in rich doublets, their hands on their swords; women in elaborate dresses of a hundred tucks, and hooped out prodigiously. He was especially struck by one, a lady in green, who played with long white hands on a spinet. But the massive and numerous oak bookcases, strictly wired with strong brass wire, and the tall oak fireplace, surmounted with a portrait of a man in a red coat holding a letter, whetted the edge of his depression, and Mike looked round with a pain of loneliness upon his ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... in those days were more at home in a kitchen than a drawing-room. They did better execution at a tub than at a spinet, and could handle a rolling-pin more satisfactorily than a sketch-book. At a pinch, they could even use a rake or fork to good purpose in field or barn. Their finishing education was received at the country school along ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... Shawm and other collections of vocal music adapted for the use of societies and churches. Nearly everybody sang by note, and she was dull of ear or wits who could not bear her part at sight in any simple church tune. The pianoforte took the place of our grandmother's spinet and harpsichord, and every girl in every family was taught to play upon it after a fashion. She who had not taste or talent for music gave it up after her marriage. In this particular she was no more derelict than the "performer" of our times, whose florid flourish of classic ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... real estate in and around Friendship, and the contents of the house, all of which will have to be sold and divided among his first cousins or their heirs. The only bequests made besides the money to the hospital are to Celia Fair and Allan Whittredge. Celia is to have the spinet, and Allan that beautiful old ring, if ever it comes to light again. I wish Cousin Thomas had left Celia some money. She was one person for whom he ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... that other thing. Your uncle, or great-uncle Thomas, started a subscription for a chime of bells. The family all loved music—that is what makes your father play the violin. Your Great-uncle Thomas loved music in the air. You may be able to buy a spinet for Jenny ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... her finger-tips, the lock of her soft, shining hair.How could any one so fine have thriven amid conditions so exhausting? Those hard toiling fingers, now grasping the heavy hoe, once used to tinkle over the spinet; the small, sensitive feet, now covered with coarse shoe-packs tied with leather thongs, once shone in rainbow hues of satin slippers and silken hose. A sunbonnet for the tiara of osprey plumes; a dress spun and woven by her own hand out of her own flax, instead ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... green, with a festoon pattern of pink roses, covered two-thirds of the blocked, polished floor. The empanelled walls were white, with here a gilt mirror, flanked on either side by a girandole in ormolu. A spinet stood open in mid-chamber, and upon it were sheets of music, a few books and a bowl of emerald-green ware, charged now with roses, whose fragrance lay heavy on the air. There were two or three small tables of very dainty, fragile make, and ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... were raised to admit of the freer entrance of the cool and balmy air of the night. From within there issued forth bright lights, together with the exhilarating sound of merry voices laughing and talking, or perhaps a song accompanied by the tinkling music of a spinet or of a guitar. An occasional group of figures, clad in light and summerlike garments, and adorned with gay and startling colors, passed him through the moonlight; so that what with the brightness and warmth of the night, together with all these unusual sights ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... son to become a lawyer, and so tried to discourage his fondness for music. But the boy got an old spinet and practiced on it secretly in a hayloft. When the doctor visited a brother in the service of the Duke of Weisenfelds, he took his son with him. The boy wandered unobserved to the organ in a chapel, and soon had a private ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... dear soul knew that music was a very sovereign balm; She had sprinkled it over Sorrow and seen its brow grow calm, In the days of slender harpsichords with tapping tinkling quills, Or caroling to her spinet with its ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... sanctum, "into which no one is ever allowed to come except my wife, for anyone rushing in here when I was composing or thinking out a sketch would inevitably drive every single idea from my head," and we went upstairs together. Here in the drawing-room he set himself down to a spinet which bore the date of 1770, and he struck a few exceedingly sweet-sounding, if slightly tinkling, chords from it. "And this," said he, "is the oldest Broadwood in England. You can see for yourself ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... knew that music was a very sovereign balm; She had sprinkled it over Sorrow and seen its brow grow calm, In the days of slender harpsichords with tapping tinkling quills, Or carolling to her spinet with its ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... practised, the finer pursuits of mental powers had been totally neglected. Books were unknown at Tregunter, excepting a few magazines or periodical publications, which at different periods Miss Robinson borrowed from her juvenile neighbours. There was, however, an old spinet in one of the parlours. Music had been one of my early delights, and I sometimes vainly endeavoured to draw a kind of jingling harmony from this time-shaken and neglected instrument. These attempts, however, frequently ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... early musicians and their works. Treatises upon the violin are fairly numerous;[85] but I do not remember having come across many works on the Jew's harp or ocarina. There are interesting old books on the virginals, harpsichord, and spinet. Before the end of the fifteenth century a number of Missalia, Gradualia, Psalteria, and Libri Cantionum ('quas vulgo Mutetas appellant') had appeared from the press. The 'Theoricum Opus Musice Disciplina' ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... grass. annual; perennial, biennial, triennial; exotic. timber, forest; wood, woodlands; timberland; hurst^, frith^, holt, weald^, park, chase, greenwood, brake, grove, copse, coppice, bocage^, tope, clump of trees, thicket, spinet, spinney; underwood, brushwood; scrub; boscage, bosk^, ceja [Sp.], chaparal, motte [U.S.]; arboretum &c 371. bush, jungle, prairie; heath, heather; fern, bracken; furze, gorse, whin; grass, turf; pasture, pasturage; turbary^; sedge, rush, weed; fungus, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... whose widow, before 1679, married Charles Hansford, of York, owned two violins. It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that guests at his hostelry were frequently entertained with music from that instrument. The virginal (a small rectangular spinet without legs) was the most common of instruments known to have been in possession of the colonists, while they also owned and played the fiddle, both small and large, the cornet, the recorder (a flageolet or old type ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... prince wished, before all, that I should learn to speak French. Madame Girard was my French instructress, and taught me to play the guitar and spinet also." ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... young men, accompanied by a like number of females, some of whom were playing at dice and cards, some drinking, others singing Bacchanalian melodies, others dancing along the aisles to the notes of a theorbo and spinet. Leonard was so inexpressibly shocked by what he beheld, that unable to contain himself he mounted the steps of the pulpit, and called to them in a loud voice to desist from their scandalous conduct, and no longer profane the house ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... mentions that in reading aloud his translation of the Herakles, he, like Pope in reading a passage of his Iliad, was moved to tears. Dr Furnivall tells of the mounting excitement with which he once delivered in the writer's hearing his Ixion. When at La Mura after his dreamy playing, on a spinet of 1522, old airs, melodious, melancholy airs, Browning would propose to read aloud, it was not his own poetry that he most willingly chose. "No R.B. to-night," he would say; "then with a smile, 'Let us have some real poetry'"; and the volume would be one by Shelley or Keats, or Coleridge ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... learnt in my youth to play a little upon the spinet.[74] Glumdalclitch kept one in her chamber, and a master attended twice a week to teach her. I called it a spinet, because it somewhat resembled that instrument, and was played upon in ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... by joy and surprise, had not noticed the stranger standing in the shadow, followed her dear Fraeulein. The door was left open, and Willibald could hear a cover laid back cautiously and a chair pushed gently in place. Then she began a low prelude. The sounds which the old worn out spinet gave forth were tremulous and thin, and made one think of an ancient harp; but the maiden's voice recalled the ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner |
