"Grand piano" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... paquet," which she wanted to send by the valise to Berlin, when the Comte de St. Vallier was French ambassador there. He agreed willingly to receive the package addressed to him, which proved to be a grand piano. ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... had had a dinner-party that day, as was testified by the appearance of lights in the drawing-room windows, the sound of an improved grand piano, and an improvable cabinet voice issuing therefrom, and a rather overpowering smell of meat which pervaded the steps and entry. In fact, a couple of very good country agencies happening to come up to town, at the same time, an agreeable little party had been got ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... afforded by a gift is contained in the way it is given. There is an exquisite art in giving. Many people choose a present just because they happen to like the thing themselves, whereas a gift should be selected entirely with a view to the pleasure or use it will afford to its future owner. A grand piano is no good to a girl who will not have {79} a room large enough to hold it and herself. Costly china is only an encumbrance to a woman who is going to follow the fortunes of her soldier husband, and who will not have a settled home for years. There must ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... Chopin left Warsaw on the 9th of September, 1828, and after five days' posting arrived in Berlin, where they put up at the Kronprinz. Among the conveniences of this hotel our friend had the pleasant surprise of finding a good grand piano. He played on it every day, and was rewarded for his pains not only by the pleasure it gave him, but also by the admiration of the landlord. Through his travelling companion's friend and teacher, M. H. K. Lichtenstein, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... while he read, a strange expression stole Over his features. "Now what is it, father?" Then with a sigh which her quick ear detected As one that masked a pleasurable thought, He said: "Poor little Linda!"—"And why poor?" "Because she will not be so rich again In wishes unfulfilled. That grand piano You saw at Chickering's—what was the price?" "Twelve hundred dollars only."—"It is yours! That painting you admired so—that by Church— What did they ask for it?"—"Two thousand dollars." "'Tis cheap at that. We'll take it. Whose ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... throats. He must train himself to many things, just as he trains himself to classical music and grand opera. To do these things he must forget, as much as he can, the sweet melodies and the sweeter women who are sinking into oblivion together. He must accept life as a Grand Piano tuned by a new sort of Tuning Master, and unless he can dance to its music he is a misfit. That is what my friend said to extenuate her. She fitted into this kind of life splendidly. He was in the other groove. She ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... fled from porch and lawn, And the bugle died from the fort on the hill, And the twitter of girls on the stairs is gone, And the grand piano ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... opposite the door was littered with maps, books and journals; there was a secretaire book-case in Chippendale by the side of the enormous fire-place, in which a great coal fire burned; and above this was an ivory overmantel of exquisite work. A grand piano, open and bearing music, was the chief ornament of the left-hand corner; while another Chippendale cabinet, filled with a multitude of rare curiosities, completed an apartment which had many of the characteristics of a salon and not a ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... a second-hand baby grand piano in Jordan's living room. Daniel played on it in the evening, and the sisters listened. Gertrude was like a woman wrapt in peaceful slumber, her every wish having been fulfilled, with kindly spirits watching over her. Eleanore, however, was wide ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... pictures were of value, and were the loot of some superior officer. A large cabinet had evidently been smashed with the butt-end of a musket, but the beautiful china it contained was intact. The grand piano stood uninjured, presumably because it afforded entertainment. The floor was ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... into the house. Then, off a wide passage, a door was opened, and they found themselves in a great saloon with polished oak floor. There was hardly any furniture—three or four chairs, some benches against the walls and a grand piano. The mantelpiece was covered with photographs, and there were life-sized photographs in frames on the walls. Owen pointed to one of a somewhat stout woman in evening-dress, and ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... beneath a mantelpiece surmounted by a Gainsborough. Two portly men, half hidden by a cased harp, discussed, over sheaves of typewritten documents, the terms of some contract. A knot of matrons talked servants—Irish versus German—across the grand piano. A youth ravaged an old bookcase, while beside him a tall girl stared at the portrait of a woman of many loves, dead three hundred years, but now leaping to life and warning under the shaded frame-light. In a corner half-a-dozen ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... most costly. But one of the conveniences of having six thousand pounds a year is that you need not deny yourself the best mechanical player because it happens to be the most costly. He bought a Pianisto, and incidentally he bought a superb grand piano and exiled the old ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... other articles of luxury with which the Captain furnished his house we must not omit to mention an extremely grand piano, which occupied four-fifths of Mrs. Walker's little back drawing-room, and at which she was in the habit of practising continually. All day and all night during Walker's absences (and these occurred all night and all day), you might hear—the whole ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the vast room and Karns said: "All the comforts of home and a couple of bucks' worth besides. Wall-to-wall carpeting an inch and a half thick. A grand piano. Easy chairs and loafers and davenports. Very fine reproductions of our ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... G. Budlong took all the gifts she had gleaned, and piled them on and around the baby grand piano in the back parlor. There was a piano lamp there, one of those illuminated umbrellas—about as large and as useful as ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... the hot attic, with wasps buzzing around him; and he spent his pennies for catgut, and he learned to mend fiddle-strings; and finally came a proud Wednesday afternoon when there were visitors in Madame's school, and he stood on the platform, with Miss Acton playing an accompaniment on the baby grand piano, and he managed a feeble but true tune on his violin. It was all for little Lucy, but little Lucy cared no more for music than his mother; and while Jim was playing she was rehearsing in the depths of her mind the little poem which later ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... thought to refuse, but somehow the pride that was in her came to the rescue, and the feeling that she would show her friend that she was not a timid country girl gave her the needed courage, and she arose and stepped across the room to the grand piano that stood in one corner. Her cheeks were flushed, and a defiant curl was on her lips, and then without a moment's hesitation she seated herself and sang "The Last Rose of Summer." She had sung it many, many times before, and every trill and exquisite quiver ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... for a common thief to dishonoring his adored one's name, he ran into the drawing-room, felt on the tables and what-nots, filled his pockets at random with valuable bric-a-brac, and then cowered down behind the grand piano, which barred the corner of a ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the innumerable dramas of her motherhood had been enacted. Tom, her eldest, the thin, spectacled lawyer, had, as a boy of seven, rampaged on that identical Turkey hearthrug, when it was new, a quarter of a century earlier. He was now seated at the grand piano with the youngest child, Alicia, a gawky little treasure, always alternating between pertness and timidity, aged twelve. Jimmie and Johnnie, young bloods of nineteen and eighteen, were only present in their mother's heart, being in process of establishing, ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... through a wood of pines, swinging in the tempest, and repeat Coleridge's "Ode to Schiller." He can, lying on a twilight hill, with twilight mountains darkening into night around him, and twilight fields and rivers glimmering far below, and one cataract, touching the grand piano of the silence into melancholy music, turn round and see in the north-east the moon rising in that "clouded majesty" of which Milton had spoken long before. He can take the "Lady of the Lake" to the same summit, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... young maestro, one of the most promising of our recent English school"—vigorous entrance of the drums, etc.—the whole character of Jimson and his music arose in bulk before the mind of Gideon. What more likely than Jimson's arrival with a grand piano (say, at Padwick), and his residence in a houseboat alone with the unfinished score of Orange Pekoe? His subsequent disappearance, leaving nothing behind but an empty piano case, it might be more difficult to account for. And yet even that was susceptible of explanation. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... director, or perhaps he was only a property boy, rushed up frantically the moment he saw Drexel. "Miss Miller's on a rampage because the grand piano you promised to get for her isn't at her apartment yet, and Bessie Terry's in tears because she left her parrot here overnight, as you suggested, and some one taught the bird to swear." The intruder, ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... to be realised, even by musical people, that the clavecin music of, for instance, Bach, loses at least half its charm, almost its identity, when played on the modern grand piano; that the exquisite music of Rameau and Couperin, the brilliant and beautiful music of Scarlatti, is almost inaudible on everything but the harpsichord and the viols; and that there exists, far earlier than these writers, a mass of English and ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... a man to tune Mrs. Lampeter's piano, he replied at once that he would, provided I could satisfy him as to my efficiency. Thereupon he asked me a few questions about music, of which some I could answer and some I could not. Next he took me into the shop, set me a stool in front of a grand piano, and told me to play. I could not help trembling a good deal, but I tried my best. In a few moments, however, the tears were dropping on the keys; and, when he asked me what was the matter, I told him it was months since I had touched a piano. ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... half-started forward to take the honor of turning Paula's music, but saw in time that Dar Hyal had already elected to himself that office. Graham glimpsed the scene with quiet curious glances. The grand piano, under a low arch at the far-end of the room, was cunningly raised and placed as on and in a sounding board. All jollity and banter had ceased. Evidently, he thought, the Little Lady had a way with her and was ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... flashing up the familiar spectacle of Louis Fourteenth and the interior decorator's turpitude; a deep-pink brocade divan backed up by a Circassian-walnut table with curly legs; a maze of smaller tables; a marble Psyche holding out the cluster of pink grapes; a gilt grand piano, festooned in rosebuds. Around through these Mr. Ross walked quickly, winding ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... with my people; he in rooms on a second floor in St. James's Street; he had a semi-grand piano, and luxurious furniture, and bookcases already well filled, and nicely colored lithograph engravings on the walls—beautiful female faces—the gift of Lady Archibald, who had superintended Barty's installation with kindly maternal interest, but little appreciation ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... stairs. I entered. My eyes swept the long, dim apartment. In the confusion of profuse luxury I could not distinguish anything at first,—but soon saw the grand piano at the extreme end of the rooms. I impetuously strode the whole length of the two parlors,—and she rose before me ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... man en blouse was seated at a piano playing the "Marseillaise" to an admiring audience (the "Marseillaise" had been forbidden in Paris for many years). Elsewhere a party of gamins were turning over a magnificent scrapbook. In the next room was a grand piano, on which four men were thumping at once. In another, a party of working-men were dancing a quadrille, while a gentleman played for them upon a piano. At every chimney-piece and before every work of art stood a guard, generally ragged ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... you do not rise until eleven, smoke cigarettes in the dining-room before lunch, smash the grand piano in the drawing-room, lame his favourite cob in the Row, and upset all his documents in the study, what answer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... afternoon in late February. A feeling of spring had been in the air all day. In the living-room a lingering sun cast a path of light upon the mahogany surface of a grand piano. In my living-room, I should say. For I am Mrs. Maynard, wife of Doctor William Ford Maynard of international guinea-pig fame; sister of Ruth Chenery Vars; one-time confidante of Robert Hopkinson Jennings. I haven't any identity of my own. I'm ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... some old relics near the front door they came upon the head housemaid who was cleaning the church pew chairs (they were carried in while the church was being repaired), and she was near a very old grand piano. The lady asked in such a jeer, "And is this the housemaid's piano"? The gentleman looked very hard at the housemaid, for we were sure that he was very annoyed at her, but we did not hear his answer; but the housemaid had ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... studio, and watch a French play acted by the Sixth. It was at the close of this performance that (when friends had taken their departure, and Dr. Linton, who had conducted the singing class, had closed the grand piano and had hurried across to the Abbey to keep an appointment with an organ pupil) a certain piece of news leaked out, and began to circulate round the school. Verity had the proud importance of carrying ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... with a faint but special smile for her husband on the end of it and then deliberately seated herself with a "No, don't bother; this is all right," at the end of the little sofa that stood in the curve of the grand piano, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... so I learned afterwards, for the use of Ascher's guests. We ascended a short flight of stairs and entered the music room. Unlike the dining-room it was only partially lit. A single lamp stood on a little table near the fireplace, and there were two candles on a grand piano in the middle of the room. These made small spots of light in a space of gloom. I felt rather than saw that the room was a large one. I discerned the shapes of four tall, curtainless windows. I saw that except the piano and a few seats near the fireplace there ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... boarders were out walking, the teachers, except the surveillante of the week, were in town, visiting or shopping; the suite of divisions was vacant; so was the grande salle, with its huge solemn globe hanging in the midst, its pair of many-branched chandeliers, and its horizontal grand piano closed, silent, enjoying its mid-week Sabbath. I rather wondered to find the first classe door ajar; this room being usually locked when empty, and being then inaccessible to any save Madame Beck and myself, who possessed a ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... guest asked Mlle. Catrina to play. He opened the grand piano in the inner drawing-room with such gallantry and effusion that the sanguine countess, post-prandially somnolescent in her luxurious chair, began rehearsing different modes of mentioning her ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... voice of the speaker, the quickness with which she had grasped the situation and leveled her revolver, brought The Hopper to an abrupt halt in the middle of the room, where he fell with a discordant crash across the keyboard of a grand piano. He turned, cowering, to confront a tall, young woman in a long ulster who advanced toward him slowly, but with every mark of determination upon her face. The Hopper stared beyond the gun, held in a very ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... gifted musician became generally known when classical strains from a grand piano were wafted through the Duranta hedge which encompassed his grounds, riveting passers-by to the roadway at some sacrifice to personal dignity, that they might listen and admire. Sometimes he was heard to sing to his own accompaniment in a voice of ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... kind to her. The congregation subscribed and gave a grand piano for a wedding-present. Wasn't that good? She is very musical, you know, and plays the violin beautifully. That'll be very useful ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... have a good mind to make you buy me a new grand piano for your naughty suspicions ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... easily one's possessions carry in that fashion; as if it were indeed that automatic baggage on legs I have long contemplated inventing—I set off to the neighboring mine of "Peregrina." As the peon was accustomed to carry anything short of a grand piano, he did not complain at this half-day excursion under some twenty pounds. Being drawn out, he grew quite cheery on this new fashion of carrying—"when the load is not much." In the cool morning air, with a wind full of ozone sweeping across the high country, the trail ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... Columbus, Lincoln, and "Jews at the Wailing place." Down-stage, about a yard from the left wall, stands DAVID'S roll-desk, open and displaying a medley of music, a quill pen, etc. On the wall behind the desk hangs a book-rack with brightly bound English books. A grand piano stands at left centre back, holding a pile of music and one huge Hebrew tome. There is a table in the middle of the room covered with a red cloth and a litter of objects, music, and newspapers. The fireplace, ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... grand piano, with her arms waving as she sang, repeating, by the expression of her eyes, the question she had asked and to which she had received no answer, she was singing the verses she considered nonsense with as much point as if she had understood them, thanks to the ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... bust Revivify the failing pressure-gauge? Chop up the grand piano if you must, And burn the East ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... Amusing also are the sketches of the aristocratic settlers in Policy and Passion and Outlaw and Lawmaker who try to apply the principles of aestheticism to the crude surroundings of their new-made homes in the backwoods—Dolph Bassett with his ornamental bridges and rockeries and his grand piano; Lord Horace Gage explaining with his maxim, 'If we can't be comfortable, let us at least be artistic,' a neglect to fill up the chinks in his ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... first occasion, she was practising at a grand piano which stood before one of the windows. She rose at once, and, having greeted him warmly, made him sit down among the comfortable cushions that lined the sofa. Then she took cups and saucers from a cupboard in the wall, and prepared ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... sale, and disembowelled into a species of deceptive bed. I think the hint might put "people about to marry" up to a dodge in the way of spare beds. Everybody now sees through the old chiffonier and wardrobe turn-up impositions, but the grand piano would beat them; only it should be kept locked, for fear any one given to harmony might commence playing a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 25, 1841 • Various
... a pretty little slate-coloured kitten belonging to the house, which was calmly sitting upon the grand piano after dinner, when the ladies were alone in the drawing-room. After the gentlemen joined us, I was deep in conversation with my host (a remarkably interesting and intelligent man), when I noticed a small black kitten run past my dress. ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... at him was fond, her voice not faltering; she laid her hand under his arm and walked round the spacious room, praising the general design, admiring the porcelain, the ferns, friezes, hangings, and the grand piano, the ebony inlaid music-stands, the firegrates and plaques, the ottomans, the tone of neutral colour that, as in sound, muted splendour. He told her it was a reception night, with music: and added: 'I miss my . . . ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... home we wanted, but we were willing to begin humbly. This was not because we were averse to starting at the top. Both Mother and I had then, and have now, a fondness for the best things of life. We should have liked a grand piano, and a self-making ice box, and a servant, and an automobile right off! But less than five hundred dollars capital and twenty-eight dollars a week salary do not ...
— Making the House a Home • Edgar A. Guest
... saw many things that were eloquent of these vanished people—glimpses through shattered windows and beyond demolished house-fronts; here a table set for dinner, with plates and tarnished cutlery on a dingy cloth that stirred damp and lazily in the wind, yonder a grand piano, open and with sodden music drooping from its rest; here ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... room for his coals), and a lithographic artist. On the plate which, in size and situation, took precedence of all the rest, I read, MR. TURVEYDROP. The door was open, and the hall was blocked up by a grand piano, a harp, and several other musical instruments in cases, all in progress of removal, and all looking rakish in the daylight. Miss Jellyby informed me that the academy had been lent, last night, for ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... comfort wore, so demurely, the mask of a perfectly consistent medievalism. And there were some effects that were really magnificent. The view of the drawing-room, for instance, from the recessed dais at the far end of it, where the grand piano stood—a piano that contrived to look as if it might have been played upon by the second wife of Henry VIII,—down toward the magnificent stone chimney at the other; the octagonal dining-room with the mysterious audacity of its lighting; the kitchen ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the room was a grand piano, open, and covered with the latest music, and sometimes played on in a surprisingly graceful manner by the fat fingers of Matthew Maltboy. On the walls hung some pictures, that were not unpleasant to look at. There were two portraits of ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... from Brinton with that bit of brill we've been eating, for they hadn't got an ounce of turbot, which I wanted, a luggage-train was standing at Riseholme station, and they had just taken out of it a case that could have held nothing but a grand piano. And if that's not enough for you, Colonel, there were two big dress-baskets as well, which I think must have contained linen, for they were corded, and it took two men to move each of them, so Mary said, and there's nothing so heavy as linen properly packed, unless it's plate, and there printed ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... impressionist etchings and engravings of undraped ladies of French origin, terra-cotta statuettes principally of the young Apollo, will be placed in every corner, and a marble bust of the young AUGUSTUS will occupy the place of honour next to the grand piano, on which, will be ranged the framed cabinet photographs of interesting young men. Each photograph will bear upon it an appropriate inscription, announcing it to be, for instance, a gift "From BOBBY to TODDLEKINS." Nothing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... over-decorated, drawing-room. Grand piano drawn conspicuously to center of floor. Rows of camp-chairs. It is ten minutes before the hour of invitation. The Hostess, a large woman, is costumed in yellow satin, embroidered in spangles. Her diamonds are ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... door—hatted; hatted in henna, that being the season's chosen colour. A small dark foyer, overcrowded with furniture; a studio living-room, bright, high-ceilinged, smallish; one entire side was window. There were Japanese prints, and a baby grand piano, and a lot of tables, and a davenport placed the way they do it on the stage, with its back to the room and its arms to the fireplace, and a long table just behind it, with a lamp on it, and books, and a dull jar thing, just as you've seen it in ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... more handsome than he was to-day. A pastel of the boys' lovely heads hung opposite it, between two windows, and photographs of Jim and Derry and their father were everywhere: on the desk, on the little grand piano, under the table lamp. This was Rachael's own domain, and in asking Magsie to come here she consciously chose the environment in which she would feel ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... a Malay creese on the mantel-piece and hid it behind a picture-frame. I locked a door leading to another drawing-room where there was a grand piano, and above it a trophy of swords, daggers, battle-axes, etc., and put the key in ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... long windows from floor to ceiling that were like three luminous and bedraped columns. The bent gilt legs and backs of the furniture shone in indistinct curves. The tall marble fireplace had a cold and monumental whiteness. A grand piano stood massively in a corner; with dark gleams on the flat surfaces like a sombre and polished sarcophagus. A ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... tale out of Ouida: but such things happen, and this thing happened. . . . Denistoun scaled the twenty steps of the Ionic portico, cleft his way through the cobwebs and briers that were living and dying for Dixie, kicked over the grand piano that Dinah's duster still reverentially spared, and carried off the enchanted Princess across the seas to Yorkshire: where in due course she bore him a daughter, Constantia, and, some years later, a son who eventually came into the property but doesn't ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... what I had done? Nettie was looking at the photograph when I shut the door on 'em. 'The soul behind the wood and wire,' she murmurs. I looked closer then and what do you reckon it was? Just as true as I set here, it was Wilbur, leaning forward all negligent and patronizing on a twelve-hundred-dollar grand piano, his hair well forward and his eyes masterful, like that there noble instrument was his bond slave. But wait! And underneath he'd writ a bar of music with notes running up and down, and signed his name to it—not plain, mind you, though he can write a good ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... around her rooms, littered with photographs of people well known to the public through the society journals, with its high bright silver vases, its odd gifts of porcelain, its grand piano taking up more than ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... over a polished oak floor into a long, almost empty apartment with turreted windows at each end, and a grand piano near one of them that shone darkly in the shaded lamplight. Underfoot were Persian rugs, exquisite of tint and rich of texture. Two or three deep divans completed the furniture of the room giving it a look of Eastern magnificence that ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... hard luck tale out of him. It was a case of sendin' a boy with a pushcart to bring home a grand piano. The Old Man had done it. He's kind of sore on the way Mr. Robert lugged Mallory in by the hair, 'cause I heard him growlin' somethin' about makin' a kindergarten out of the Corrugated; so he springs this on him. He calls for Mallory ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... much obliged to you," observed Charley Roy, who had joined the Empress, and was now senior mate on board. "I suspect that they would rather remain comfortably on shore. Perhaps you'd like a grand piano, a ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... great!' poor Peter cried. 'Yet I must sell my Sunday wig— The scarf-pin that has been my pride— My grand piano—and my pig!' Full soon his property took wings: And daily, as each treasure went, He sighed to find the state of things Grow less and ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... sofas and ottomans scattered through the room, and a grand piano in one corner, the furniture being covered with yellow, or amber—coloured velvet, with broad heavy draperies of gold fringe, like the bullion of an epaulet. There was a small round table near the stove, on which stood a silver candlestick, with four branches filled ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... A grand piano was so placed that the light from either window or candles would fall comfortably upon the music-desk; and on a stool beside it rested ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... before the fire in the great drawing room, but Jo's attention was entirely absorbed by a grand piano, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... the full during the few days she was there. And one thing more, the grand piano in the music-room. The first evening of their arrival she was drawn by the far-off sounds, and Mrs. Carleton seeing it went immediately to the music-room with her. The room had no light, except from the moonbeams ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... blissfully when the last liquid ripples of a Chopin waltz had died away. "I don't see how you ever learned to play like that! But what in the world are you going to do now?" For Phyllis had jumped up with an impatient exclamation, laid back the cover of the grand piano, and was hunting frantically in the music ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... read, but was unable. Then she went to the big salon and, seating herself at the grand piano, played snatches of Grand Opera. But she was too anxious, too impatient for midnight to come ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... when he first became sick, in a peasant's hut, beside a brook, sleeping with open doors, spending hours, every day, reciting Greek poems to the murmur of the stream. The princess of Homburg, who greatly admired his genius, and his deep, pure sentiment, had made him a present of a grand piano. In the coming-on of his madness he cut most of the strings. On the few keys that still sounded he continued to fantasy until his insanity grew so engrossing, that it was necessary to remove him to an asylum. Silvio Pellico, the story of whose sufferings in the ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... start, my dear fellow,' said Montague, 'to show you how correct your judgment is, we had a couple of unlucky deaths that brought us down to a grand piano.' ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... them taken by luckier fellows! You wouldn't have me marry Sally Warner, would you—or any of the other half-dozen Sally Warners? I might as well marry a gas chandelier, a grand piano, and a code of immorals—but the standard of such women is so different from the ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... adjusted himself to this when an old gentleman entered the room, and with only the most casual glance at the two pilgrims walked to the grand piano, shook back his cuffs, and began playing Mendelssohn's "Spring Song," as though that particular melody were the one great passion of his life. When he had concluded he rose ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... one sank almost to the ankles, as into a thick bed of soft moss; chairs, couches, and divans of exquisite shape and seductive capacity were scattered here and there about the apartment, and at its fore or wider end stood, close together, a grand piano and a chamber organ, both in superbly modelled aethereum cases, and both, it need scarcely be said, of the finest quality and workmanship obtainable; while the narrower or after end was almost filled by a capacious electric ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... German artist, Willielm Bachaus, was comfortably seated in his spacious apartments at the Ritz, New York, when this question was asked. A grand piano stood close at hand, and the pianist ran his fingers lightly over its keys from time to time, or illustrated some technical ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... and save your postage expenses. But you must be discreet; and you must be exceeding vague. A Mahatma is nothing if he is not vague. You must also be elusive. Can you elude? It is no light matter to prove one's spiritual capacity by materialising a cigarette inside a grand piano. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various
... carried on. Valentine very seldom used his drawing-room. Sometimes pretty women came to tea with him, and he did them honour there. Sometimes musicians came. Then there was always a silent group gathered round the Steinway grand piano. For Valentine was inordinately fond of music, and played so admirably that even professionals never hurled at him a jeering "amateur!" But when Valentine was alone, or when he expected one or two ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of his boys in Edom—a bulky, cushiony, youngish man who was billed on the advertising posters of the Gus Levy All-Star Shamrock Vaudeville as "Samson the Second," with a portrait of himself supporting on the mighty arch of his chest a grand piano, upon which were superimposed three sizable ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... you understand," the promoter said, "I will give a coupon, and when you have smoked three thousand of them you may bring the coupons to me and exchange them for a grand piano." ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... her showy drawing-room up at the Manor Farm, thought over the event all day in her own critical way, and predicted evil as the result. There was an old Broadwood grand piano in the room where she sat, covered with a pile of old music—Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Haydn, and all the composers whose music Miss Sabina disliked. This music had belonged to Fred's mother, a fair and unfortunate creature, whose own story I shall some day write. Miss Sabina's ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... this state of things, amateur concerts and acted charades came into fashion. The billiard-room was crowded from breakfast till dinner time. It was a charmingly composite apartment—having one long wall lined with bookshelves, sacred to the most frivolous ephemeral literature, and a grand piano in an arched recess at one end of the room—and in wet weather was the chosen resort of every socially-disposed guest at Hale. Here Clarissa learned to elevate her pretty little hand into the approved form of bridge, and acquired some acquaintance ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... day long, there is a retinue of mouldy gigs and chaise-carts in the street; and herds of shabby vampires, Jew and Christian, over-run the house, sounding the plate-glass minors with their knuckles, striking discordant octaves on the Grand Piano, drawing wet forefingers over the pictures, breathing on the blades of the best dinner-knives, punching the squabs of chairs and sofas with their dirty fists, touzling the feather beds, opening and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... and were descending when Geoffrey stopped, with his eyes on the grand piano which stood in the ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... door of still another room, in one corner of which was a grand piano. He seated himself ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... result of the inquiries I had instituted at that time ultimately brought one forward, which has been secured by the curator of the Brussels Museum, M. Victor Mahillon. This instrument, with Stein's action and two unison scale, is dated 1780. Mozart's grand piano, preserved at Salzburg, made by Walther, is a nearly contemporary copy of Stein, and so also are the grands by Huhn, of Berlin, which I took notes of at Berlin and Potsdam; the latest of these is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... the appearance of things, tons of water must have flooded the place. Even now, when it had had time to drain away to a small extent, the lee side of the room was flooded to the depth of fully four feet, and chairs, ottomans, table, grand piano, organ—the latter capsized—in fact, everything movable had settled away to leeward, and now lay in a confused heap in the water. The rich carpet was everywhere sodden, several of the electric-light shades were smashed, two or three of the pictures had fallen; in short, the destruction ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... was once prosperous, where people lived and traded and only wanted to be left alone. Now grass is growing in the streets. Shops have their merchandise strewn and rotting in all directions. On one fragment of a wall a family portrait was still hanging, and a woman's undergarments. A grand piano, and a perambulator tied in a knot were trying to get down through a coal chute. To wander through a village like this one that has been smashed up, and with the knowledge that the smashing up may be ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... leaning his elbows on the grand piano, facing her, was devouring her with his eyes and saying in an undertone every ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... the stolid, permanent sitting of stout, comfortable bodies. There were too many photographs on view of persons distinguished for their solidity rather than for their good looks, the portraits of the guests whom one would expect to find installed in those chairs. A grand piano was there; but the absence of any music in its neighbourhood indicated that its purpose was chiefly to symbolize harmony in the home life, and to provide a spacious crush-room for the knick-knacks overflowing from many tables. These were dominated by ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... himself sidewise, with his elbow supported on the back, in an easy attitude of attention. Marion Grimston withdrew to the more distant part of the room, where, with her hands behind her, she stood leaning against the grand piano, with the bearing of one only indirectly, and yet intensely, concerned. Bienville left the task of beginning to Diane. In spite of his determination to be self-possessed, a trace of compunction was visible in his face as he contrasted the subdued little woman before ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... asking for a blessing on the new life, and there was something like a tear in his eye and a suspicious huskiness in his voice as he called out "Come in" in answer to a hurried knock at the door and flung open the lid of a grand piano which was littered with music and songs, running his hands over the keys ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... dispenses with the luxuries of civilisation; when he pours a jug of water over himself instead of lying in ecstasy in an enamelled bath; eats a meal of two undefined courses instead of one of five or six; twangs a banjo to the moon instead of ravishing his ear with a sonata upon the grand piano; rolls himself in a blanket instead of sitting over the library fire; turns in at 9 P.M. and rises ere the sun has topped the hills instead of keeping late hours and lying abed; sleeps on the ground or upon a narrow ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... the feeling that life was commonplace and unromantic, and that a splendid vision had been somewhere just round the corner, only unfortunately missed. He allowed his artistic temperament to run loose during the holidays. He would go up to Bella Vista and play for hours on the Macleods' new grand piano, improvising beautiful airs, and sending Fay ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... brought forward little gilt chairs of a French design which seemed oddly out of place in this room of the East, and the three seated themselves. Out of place, too, seemed the grand piano which Arlee's eyes, roving now past her hostess, discovered for the ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... than to confess with reluctance that she had tried it by herself at Greycroft, strumming the accompaniment with careless fingers. She heard, with a sort of dismay, the dashing introduction rendered faultlessly by the competent Marcon, and she stood beside the shining grand piano in no very pleasant frame ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... into one corner of the room; in another corner was a smaller table on which was a graphophone; a rocker and several chairs were set about the room and against the north wall; between two doors, evidently opening into twin bedrooms, was an upright grand piano—. ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... The side-spectacle that struck me most when I walked by myself through Combles was that of a solitary Royal Engineer playing a grand piano in the open street, with not a soul to listen to him. The house from which the instrument had been dragged was smashed beyond repair; save for some scrapes on the varnish the piano had suffered no ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... once at London, address to Ferdinand Prager, 31, Milton Street, Dorset Square. I shall stay with him till I have found a convenient lodging. Could you give me an introduction to the London Erard and ask him to put a nice grand piano in my room? I shall be glad to see Klindworth. Farewell for today. Give me another pleasure soon, ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... pleasantly of cigar smoke. The parlour had once been two rooms, and the floor was swaybacked where the partition had been cut away. The wind from without made waves in the long carpet. A coal stove glowed at either end of the room, and the grand piano in the middle ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... equally true of those in the Oklahoma reservation who boomed the luxury trades when oil was discovered on their land. There it was no uncommon sight to see a gaudy limousine parked outside a tepee and a grand piano on the ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... than that carpet; it was so sweetly faded, amiable, and flat, that its sole mission in the world seemed to be to make things smooth for the chairs. The wall-paper looked like pale green silk, and the candles were reflected in it as they were reflected in the crystals of the chandelier. The grand piano, a Collard and Collard, made a vast mass of walnut in the chamber, incongruous, perhaps, but still there was something in its mild and indecisive tone that responded to the furniture. It, too, spoke of Evangelicalism, the Christian ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... over the house and grounds with the caretaker, and when there was nothing more to see, Penelope had prevailed on the woman to open the Venetians in the music-room. There was a grand piano in the place of honor, presided over by a mechanical piano-player; and Penelope went into ecstasies ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... respectability, and it burst, it blossomed into Poppy before your eyes. Portraits of Poppy on the walls, in every conceivable and inconceivable attitude. Poppy's canary in the window, in a cage hung with yellow gauze. Poppy's mandoline in an easy chair by itself. Poppy's hat on the grand piano, tumbling head over heels among a litter of coffee cups. On the tea-table a pair of shoes that could have belonged to nobody but Poppy, they were so diminutive. In the waste paper basket a bouquet that must have been Poppy's too, it was so enormous. And on the table in the window a Japanese ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... plants, botetes, etc. On the river side, through fantastic arches, half Chinese, half European, were glimpses of a terrace, with trellises and arbors, illuminated by little colored lanterns. Brilliant chandeliers, reflected in great mirrors, lighted the apartment. On a platform of pine was a superb grand piano. In a panel of the wall, a large portrait in oil represented a man of agreeable face, in frock coat, robust, straight, symmetrical as the gavel between ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... fascinating and elegant, so also was her home. The drawing-room, which seemed to occupy most of the second floor, was furnished in European fashion with deep chairs and couches, Oriental rugs and rich hangings. There was a grand piano near the windows, and on the walls were the rarest and most beautiful Japanese prints. It was a blending of the East and West and was one of the most artistic and delightful apartments the girls had ever seen. In ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... few logs and timbers left by the afterwash of the flood, there is nothing remaining upon the outer edge of the flat, including two of the four long streets of the city, except the brewery mentioned before and a grand piano. The water-marks on the brewery walls show the flood reached twenty feet up its sides and it stood on a little higher ground than buildings ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... curtain-cornices as by rays of a pale sun. Curly rosewood sofas and arm-chairs, and marbled and mirrored chiffonniers, and the like, were in such profusion upstairs as to do away with the air of bleakness common to a right-angled chamber of large size and middle-class arrangement. A fine grand piano stood open in a prominent place. Four large shaded lamps and four piano candles pleasantly irradiated the whole; while three French windows, opening on a balcony, still stood ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... chairs and lounges were deep and comfortable. A large davenport stood before the fireplace, which had been rebuilt for logs. There was a victrola in one corner, for Miss Dwight was amenable if her guests were seized with the desire to jazz, and a grand piano stood near the lower windows. The only evidence of sheer femininity was a tea table furnished with old pieces of silver she had picked up in France. The dining-room below was a trifle gayer in effect; the walls ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... The grand piano stood out from the grey-green background of the walls beyond, there was a bronze statuette of Orpheus with his lute on a twisted Byzantine column of white and gold mosaic, and a long cushioned divan set on one side broke the long lines of ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... external aspect and I was wasting time in displaying my plans and projects before her. She was keenly interested in knowing which would be her room, what paper she would have in the room, why I had an upright piano instead of a grand piano, and so on. She examined carefully all the little things on my table, looked at the photographs, sniffed at the bottles, peeled the old stamps off the envelopes, saying she wanted them ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... hotel. Entrance from the corridor in the centre; also side doors. In front to the right a window with heavy closed curtains. To the left a grand piano. Behind the piano a Japanese screen covering the fireplace. Big open trunks are standing around. Enormous laurel wreaths on several upholstered armchairs. A mass of bouquets are distributed about the room, some of them being piled up on ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... the spinet, and of almost equal antiquity, was an instrument in the form of a grand piano, called in Italy the clavicembalo, and in England the harpsichord. In Germany it was called the flugel or wing, from its being shaped like the wings of a bird. These also, in the earlier times, were made very small, and were rested upon the table. The essential ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... large one, and it was full of beautiful and valuable things, but the furniture was huddled about in disorder. A large chamber-organ, a grand piano, a mandolin, and two violins, pictures on the floor as well as on the walls, many photographs scattered about everywhere, and the mirror over the mantelpiece fringed with invitation-cards, which were stuck between the glass and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... rear drawing-room the grand piano sent upwards to Mrs. De Peyster its first strains, they were rapid, careless scales and runs. Quite as she'd expected. Then the player began Chopin's Ballade in G Minor. Mrs. De Peyster listened ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... grand central reception hall was done in tones of ivory, green, and gold, with floor of tile. The medallion center of the tile was the great seal of the State. At one side of the broad staircase was a raised platform, on which stood a grand piano. The elevated apartment served as a reception ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... a large stone fireplace; in a corner stood a grand piano; the center was dominated by a simple, flat-topped desk, across which much of the traffic of the ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... furniture of all kinds, such as bedsteads, with their bedding, wardrobes, dressing and other tables, chests of drawers, domestic utensils of every kind, cutlery, china and glass, carpets, a huge pier glass, and, to Flora's infinite delight, a magnificent Kaps grand piano. Then there was more clothing—enough to last them both for the remainder of their lives—a case of repeating rifles and revolvers, another case containing ammunition for the same, and a quantity of valuable ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... and her grandchildren had not been created all at once, though the nucleus dating forty years back was a handsome building. She had added more rooms as necessity or fancy dictated, now a library with bedrooms over it, now a music room for Lady Lesbia and her grand piano—anon a billiard-room, as an agreeable surprise for Maulevrier when he came home after a tour in America. Thus the house had grown into a long low pile of Tudor masonry—steep gables, heavily mullioned casements, grey stone walls, curtained with the rich growth of passion-flower, ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... lotus-eaters might dwell. Windows and doors were wide open to the breeze, and the songs and fragrances blew lazily in and out. The walls were hung with tapa-cloths. Couches with grass-woven covers invited everywhere, and there was a grand piano, that played, I was sure, nothing more exciting than lullabies. Servants— Japanese maids in native costume—drifted around and about, noiselessly, like butterflies. Everything was preternaturally cool. Here was no blazing down of a tropic sun upon an unshrinking sea. It was too good to be true. ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... down at the grand piano and played Chopin's Nocturne in G major, flinging out that elaborate filigree of sound with an impetuosity and superb ABANDON which caused the ladies to exchange astonished glances behind his back. The transitions from the light and ethereal ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... willing to take care of the Schombergs' goods, which, to tell the truth, were not likely to oppress her either in number or value, with the exception of one cherished article, one relic of former days—a good semi-grand piano, which M. Schomberg had purchased for his daughter, about a year before his death. Miss Webster looked very much confused as Emilie bade her good-bye, and said—"Miss Schomberg, you have not, I see, left your ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... dinner was over to open the grand piano for Valentine, to fetch her music, and listen while she talked of operas he had never heard. It was pleasant to watch her as she sat in the evening gloaming, her superb beauty enhanced by the delicate evening dress of fine white lace; the shapely shoulders were polished and white, the exquisite ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... suits the room and makes it beautiful. Can you imagine it furnished with a 'suite' and ordinary pictures, and draped curtains at the windows and silver photograph frames and a grand piano? It would simply be no sort of room at all. All its individuality would be gone. But won't you sit down and rest? That hill up from the ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... Wiesbaden!!" At Frankfort, one morning, he writes: "I felt an extraordinary longing to play on a piano. So I calmly went to the nearest dealer, told him I was the tutor of a young English lord who wished to buy a grand piano, and then I played, to the wonder and delight of the bystanders, for three hours. I promised to return in two days and inform them if the lord wanted the instrument; but on that date I was at Ruedesheim, drinking Ruedesheimer." ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck |
