"Piano" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sent them a piano, and many fine pictures ornamented the walls from famous persons. An old English lady who spends her summers up there seemed much amused at the prank of the girls, and evidently wondered ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... it's all right," Clara Belle replied soberly. "I'll have a good home and father can't keep us all; but it's kind of dreadful to be given away, like a piano or ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... ladies and gentlemen were sent to bed to get a good sleep for the good of their health, and the keepers and keeperesses took their place and romped, and made such a row, sleep was not easy within hearing of them. They sat on the piano, they sang songs to a drum accompaniment played on the table, they danced, drank, flirted, and enjoyed themselves like schoolboys. Hayes alone was gloomy and morose: so the Robin and Garrett consoled him, drank with ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... there, and sang divinely. She sings her husband's songs; he accompanies her. It is awfully fine to see the light on his blind face as he listens, while her glorious voice comes pouring forth. When the song is over, he gets up from the piano, gives her his arm, and apparently leads her off. Very few people realise that, as a matter of fact, she is guiding him. She gave, as an encore, a jolly little new thing of his—quite simple—but everybody wanted it twice over; an air like summer wind blowing through a pine wood, with an accompaniment ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... desirable cause, and close upon it the desirable effect, rids us of doubt and makes our minds strongly intuitive. That was the process going on in poor Rosamond, while she arranged all objects around her with the same nicety as ever, only with more slowness—or sat down to the piano, meaning to play, and then desisting, yet lingering on the music stool with her white fingers suspended on the wooden front, and looking before her in dreamy ennui. Her melancholy had become so marked that Lydgate felt a strange timidity before it, as a perpetual silent reproach, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of chairs has got to be moved—there he is, in the wings—see the piano ain't dragged down too far! Leon, got your mute on your pocket? Please Mr. Ginsberg—you must excuse—Here, Leon, is your glass of water. Drink it, I say. Shut that door out there, boy, so there ain't a draft in the wings. Here, Leon, your violin. Got neckerchief? ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... was so real!" she sobbed. "I can see it now. We were back in the old house, in the library, don't you remember it? and Walter was at the piano, and Louis had just asked me how to finish his last story. Did I answer out loud? Oh, which is the dream, for that ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... teams and people were passing over it, that a part of all the toll which they paid, would, in the end, come to her. She thus took the same kind of pleasure in having purchased a house, and shares in a bridge, that any lady in a city would take in an expensive new carpet, or a rosewood piano, which would cost about the same sum; and then she had all the profit, in the shape of ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... successful new medium has traded off its artifact-ness — the degree to which it was populated by bespoke hunks of atoms, cleverly nailed together by master craftspeople — for ease of reproduction. Piano rolls weren't as expressive as good piano players, but they scaled better — as did radio broadcasts, pulp magazines, and MP3s. Liner notes, hand illumination and leather bindings are nice, but they pale in comparison to the ability of ...
— Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books • Cory Doctorow
... you ought, you must," said Sir Tancred. "But one thing I do beg of you; do not have her taught the piano—the barrel-organ if you ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... his shell to the proper size and thickness and determines its ridges and whorls. Some kinds of shells take two to five years to reach maturity. Others keep growing all their lives. Color tubes are spaced like holes on a player piano roll allowing pigments to tint the shell at the right spots in the growing design. Many shells are covered with a self-made brown ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... learnt how to behave like a real gentleman, and can hold a cup of afternoon tea on his knee without spillin' it all over himself, then he may aspire to higher things, and want a wife who can play the violin as well as the piano, and speak all the languages ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... mode of treatment may arrest the attention of some minds which are apt to be frightened at a learned method, and may induce them to take more heed of the judgments which they are hourly passing on a great variety of subjects. If we still persist in saying when some one jingles some jig upon the piano that it is "charming," if we say of every daub in the Academy that it is "lovely," if every new building or statue is pronounced "awfully jolly," if the fastidious rubbish of the last volume of poetry is "grand," if the slip-shod grammar of the last new novel is "quite ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... be afraid of it. It is only being alone with a man whom you have bewitched. You would be mistress of the situation if you only knew how to manage a lover. It is far easier than managing a horse, or skating, or playing the piano, or half a dozen other feats of ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... the fairy tales, all things become possible. You know that a lady in a mob-cap and panniers is playing inside that shyly curtained window. Hark! You can hear the thin, delicate notes quite plainly: this is such a quiet little street. A piano rather out of tune? Perish the thought! Dear friend, it is a spinet,—a harpsichord. Almost ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... admirably built, leaving nothing whatever to be desired. The cabins are roomy, and comfortably fitted up; there is an excellent library, containing the classics of European literature; various musical instruments, from a beautiful grand-piano [24] to flutes and guitars; then chess, draughts, etc.—all for the recreation of ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... any harm here," he declared indignantly. "And we'll get out, but we're not afraid of you, even if you have got piano legs!" ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... gait, and to himself he was in terror lest his broad shoulders should collide with the doorways or sweep the bric-a-brac from the low mantel. He recoiled from side to side between the various objects and multiplied the hazards that in reality lodged only in his mind. Between a grand piano and a centre-table piled high with books was space for a half a dozen to walk abreast, yet he essayed it with trepidation. His heavy arms hung loosely at his sides. He did not know what to do with those arms and hands, and when, to his excited ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... truth, painfully and anxiously occupied by the illness of her mother. Mr. Percy, aware of her engagement for the evening, had ridden over early in the afternoon and spent an hour or two lounging beside her, at the piano or on the verandah. At last, when it grew nearly time for her to start for Mrs. Scott's, he rose ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... some of whom afterwards became eminent musicians. Among these were Beethoven, Hummel, Moscheles and Josef Weigl (1766-1846). Albrechtsberger died in Vienna on the 7th of March 1809. His published compositions consist of preludes, fugues and sonatas for the piano and organ, string quartets, &c.; but the greater proportion of his works, vocal and instrumental, exists only in manuscript. They are in the library of the Vienna Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Probably the most valuable service he rendered to music was in his theoretical Works. In ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... house for a great many years, and a little girl grew up there, the daughter of my landlady. She used to slide down the bannisters very well, and she used to play the piano very badly. These two things worried me many a time. She used to bring me my meals in the morning and the evening, and often enough she'd stop to talk with me while I was eating. She was a very chatty girl and I was ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... she knew the way, would just show Lord Magellan the piano nobile, dismiss him at the grand staircase, and return. Lord Magellan made ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mere fun, followed them—thus they insisted on their mother hearing them their daily tasks; they insisted on going regularly twice a week to a certain old Miss Martineau, who gave them lessons on an antiquated piano, and taught them obsolete French. Primrose was considered by her sisters very wise indeed but Primrose also thought Jasmine wise, and wise with a wisdom which she could appreciate without touching; for Jasmine had got some gifts from a fairy wand, she was touched with the spirit of Romance, ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... tradition of their generation, considered that a room was not quite 'nice' unless it was 'properly' furnished. It held, therefore, eleven chairs, a sofa, three tables, two cabinets, innumerable knicknacks, and part of a large grand piano. And now, occupied by Mrs. Small, Aunt Hester, by Swithin, James, Rachel, Winifred, Euphemia, who had come in again to return 'Passion and Paregoric' which she had read at lunch, and her chum Frances, Roger's daughter (the musical Forsyte, the one who ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... her fingers were moving softly over the piano keys; melodies in minor, sad and haunting and elusive, melodies that had never been put on paper and would always be her own: in them she might leap from comedy to tragedy, from laughter to tears, and only she would know. The midnight adventure was ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... Aunt Jan's playing, the piano seems alive, With all the notes as busy as the bees are in a hive; And when it's time for Bedfordshire, as sweetly as a lark She sings that God is waiting to protect ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... stories of your early days that you have told us, you have not yet described your life in Pennsylvania," said Ida one evening, when we were gathered about the piano. "Do tell us about it. You have once or twice merely alluded to living in the woods, and my curiosity is quite excited. Were they veritable forests? I do not remember hearing ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... melodies with the slurring vowels and wandering aspirates of East London, and then lifted a face one-half blackened, the appeal to the love of humor was more effective than the other could have been. A company of young men in masks with a piano in their boat, which one played while another led the singing in an amazing falsetto, were peculiarly successful in collecting their reward, and were all the more amusingly eager because they were, as our English friends believed, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... head, and, opening the piano, struck a light chord. After a moment he sat down and played softly, and the air he played came straight from the high rocks that guard the Afghan frontier. Like a breeze that springs up at evening, the little love-song lilted and whispered under his compelling ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... taken everything. How can I get along now! My piano is gone and how can I give lessons without it! I will have to go back ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... you may have heard of. Take a block of ice. Connect a couple of ten-pound weights together with a few feet of piano wire and loop it across the ice block to that the weights hang free on either side, with the wire over the top of the block. The wire will cut right through the ice in a short time. The trouble is that the ice block ...
— Thin Edge • Gordon Randall Garrett
... late acquisition of Eulalie's made observation, compassionately, one evening, seeing Elvira nod over her uncongenial Battenberg-ing by the piano lamp. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... want your company this afternoon for a drive," she said to Dawn; "this morning the library, piano and garden are at your disposal, to use at your pleasure. I have domestic duties to perform, and hope you will make yourself as ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... same as at the pensions, viz 200 francs, or 8 pounds per month, which includes everything but wine and fuel. The establishment is certainly very well conducted. There is a salon, next to the table d'hote, large enough to hold 200 people, well warmed and lighted, handsomely carpeted, with piano, books, prints, newspapers, card tables, etcetera. Indeed, there is everything you wish for, and you are all independent of each other, I was there for two or three days, and found it very pleasant; I was amused with a circumstance ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... his son-in-law, coloured violently with something of a frightened look. He told Talboys that only a few months after his departure he and Helen came to live at Southampton, where she had obtained a few pupils for the piano; but her health failed, and she fell into a decline, of which she died. Broken-hearted, Talboys started for Liverpool to take ship for Australia, but failed to catch the steamer; returned to London, and accompanied Robert Audley on a long ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Blue could talk of nothing but the King, and 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 ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... the grand piano that stood in the back drawing-room. He went up to her (meeting with a nervous smile Flossie's inquiring look as he passed). He stood a moment with one arm on the chimney-piece, and waited, looking down at Lucia. Presently ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... habits and who are determined you shall not force religion down their throats. How are we to capture the attention of this mass of men and hold them? Will they bolt or stand fire? The time has come to begin the meeting and we plunge in. "Come on, boys, let's have a sing-song; gather round the piano and let's sing some of the old camp songs." Out come the little camp song books, and we start in on a few favorite choruses. A dozen voices call for "John Brown's Body," "Tennessee," "Kentucky Home," "A Long, Long Trail," etc. Soon we have several hundred men ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... take a note on the piano enunciating the vowels in their natural order ([a], ay, ee, o, oo) on this note. Then proceed to the next note; the whole of the octave may thus be gone over. Choose an octave most consonant with the range of ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... throat while the other hand felt the movements of my lips. I was pleased with anything that made a noise and liked to feel the cat purr and the dog bark. I also liked to keep my hand on a singer's throat, or on a piano when it was being played. Before I lost my sight and hearing, I was fast learning to talk, but after my illness it was found that I had ceased to speak because I could not hear. I used to sit in my mother's lap all day long and keep my ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... saucers, she would improvise a gallant line of march from the kitchen table to the pantry, heading an imaginary procession, and whistling a fife-tune that would stir your blood. Then she would trippingly return, rippling her rosy fingers up and down the keys of an imaginary portable piano, or stammering flat-soled across the floor, chuffing and tooting like a locomotive. And she would gravely propound to herself the most intricate riddles—ponder thoughtfully and in silence over them—hazard the most ridiculous answers, ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... and forlorn in the drawing-room, and Lady Martindale tried to make conversation. Did she play, or draw? Matilda played, Caroline drew, she had been learning; and in horror of a request for music, she turned her eyes from the grand piano. Was she fond of flowers? O, yes! Of botany? Caroline was. A beautifully illustrated magazine of horticulture was laid before her, and somewhat relieved her, whilst the elder ladies talked about their fernery, in scientific terms, that sounded ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... beheld two unkempt Italians having a piano-organ and a violin. The music was not fine, but it touched a chord in Ayrault's breast, for he had waltzed with Sylvia to that air, and it ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... 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
... We glanced at our programme and saw that the play was the "Moon Princess," and that Afrid, a genie, figured in the cast. It was then, at least, Oriental, though it could hardly be Malay, and our spirits rose. But the orchestra quickly damped them; there was a piano, a violin, a 'cello, a clarionet, and a cornet, and from beginning to end of the performance they were never in tune with themselves or with the singers. And the music? It was sometimes Italian, sometimes Spanish, never, as far as I could ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... River, the towns of Everett and Revere, and East Boston Creek, rejoicing, on the south, west, north, and east of it, respectively, that they had got inside; while the rest of the world peeped in enviously through a knot hole. In the middle of this cherished area piano factories—or was it shoe factories?—proudly reared their chimneys, while the population promenaded on a rope walk, saluted at every turn by the benevolent inmates of the Soldiers' Home on ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... wilderness, and on the maps a blank. Striking the famous "sand-papered roads " at Framingham - which, by the by, ought to be pumice-stoned a little to make them as good for cycling as stretches of gravelled road near Springfield, Sandwich, and Piano, Ill.; La Porte, and South Bend, Ind.; Mentor, and Willoughby, O.; Girard, Penn.; several places on the ridge road between Erie and Buffalo, and the alkali flats of the Rocky Mountain territories. Soon the blue intellectual haze hovering over " the Hub ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... caterer's art, had been transformed into a kind of jewel-box glowing with flowers, silver, gold, tinted glass, and the snowy whiteness of linen. It reminded her of an opal flashing all its soft fires. She went into the general reception-room, where was a grand piano finished in pink and gold, upon which, with due thought to her one accomplishment—her playing—she had arranged the songs and instrumental pieces she did best. Aileen was really not a brilliant musician. For the ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Karpovna announced suddenly in her German Russian, 'music greatly loves, and herself very beautifully plays the piano, only she likes not to play the piano when she is greatly pressed ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... reasonable. I received the birds, and they were the heroes, in their boudoir under the piano, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... western addition. He was star boarder, and as such made free with Mrs. Meagher's little private parlor. A fire always burned there on cool evenings, and moreover, he escaped the ragtime that nightly filled the community room where the piano was, the interminable arguments anent the European war, and the coy advances ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... post-prandial promenade on the poop until the latter hour, when, the air getting cool, the whole party would adjourn to the saloon, and, Dr and Mrs Henderson producing their violins and Mr Gaunt his flute, Mrs Gaunt or Miss Stanhope would open the piano which formed part of the saloon furniture, and the sounds of a very capital chamber concert would float out upon the evening air, to the great delectation of Captain Blyth, the officer of the watch, the helmsman, and—in a lesser degree, because less perfectly ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... are times when soft music hath not charms; when it is put to as base uses as Imperial Caesar's dust and is taken to fill horrid pauses. Angelica Forey thumped the piano, and sang: "I'm a laughing Gitana, ha-ha! ha-ha!" Matilda Forey and her cousin Mary Branksburne wedded their voices, and songfully incited all young people to Haste to the bower that love has built, and defy the wise ones of the world; but the wise ones of the world were in a majority ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ask her to help, because she hasn't been nice to any of the Phi Sigma Tau, but we asked Miss Tebbs and Miss Kane, two of the teachers who are helping with this, to ask Eleanor to do something. You know she plays so well, both on the violin and piano, then, too, the greater part of her life has been spent abroad, so she surely must have lots of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... similar in form to the piano were in use several hundred years ago. The virginal, shaped like an old-fashioned square piano, was a favorite instrument at the time of Queen Elizabeth of England, and by some authorities is supposed to have been named in honor of the Virgin Queen, as she was called. The harpsichord, much in ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... his elbows on the grand piano, facing her, was devouring her with his eyes and saying in an ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... confessors had decided that music was a Christian art, born of the Catholic Church and developed within her. The two Maries were therefore permitted to study music. A spinster in spectacles, who taught singing and the piano in a neighboring convent, wearied them with exercises; but when the eldest girl was ten years old, the Comte de Granville insisted on the importance of giving her a master. Madame de Granville gave all the value of conjugal obedience to this needed concession,—it is part of ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... play away. It's good to hear the piano going again. And, between ourselves, I'm beginning to feel depressed by the stillness of the house. It's difficult to believe that this is home since we took on hospital work. Between ourselves, I sha'n't be sorry when Ormsby says good-bye. ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... at all," she said, laying the paper aside and returning to her former place near the piano. Her face was drawn and white, and there was a hard, metallic note perceptible ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... scoffers Given by Turkey in this year of grace, The unexpected homage that she offers To the piano holds the foremost place. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... house, the stepmother of those children, she found it impossible. Despite the fact that her attention had been focussed so strongly on them, the fringe of her vision had included their surroundings, the costly furniture, the piano against the farther wall, the music rack. Evidently the girl was learning to play. She felt a renewed, intenser bitterness against her own lot: she was aware of something within her better and finer than the girl, than the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were in their glory, and as soon as the breakfast things were out of the way, they prepared for a grand cooking-time. They were handy girls, though they had never heard of a cooking-school, never touched a piano, and knew nothing of embroidery beyond the samplers which hung framed in the parlor; one ornamented with a pink mourner under a blue weeping-willow, the other with this pleasing verse, each word being done in a different color, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... at her in a strange way, as if he liked her terse creed, and would fain have heard it a second time. Then suddenly he leant back with his head against a corner of the piano. The fronds of a maidenhair fern hanging in delicate profusion almost hid his face. He was essentially muscular in his thoughts, and did not make the most of his dramatic effects. The next remark was made by a pair ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... the way of invention was his machinery for making steel wire for pianos,—a branch of the business which was urged upon him by the late Jonas Chickering, piano manufacturer, of Boston. The most careless glance at the strings of a piano shows us that the wire must be exquisitely tempered and most thoroughly wrought, in order to remain in tune, subjected as they are to a steady pull of ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... windows of the V.A.D. hospital were brilliantly lighted up, and through them floated the strains of a piano and occasional bursts of laughter. Number One Ward, however, was quite empty except for my friend, Private McPhee, stalking majestically up and down as if on sentry go, wearing a "fit of the blues" several sizes too large for him and an expression which would, I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... They were toil-worn and stained; their clothing was in rags. But beneath their sandy hair more than one pair of eyes gleamed from time to time with a sudden anger, with an intelligence made for higher things than spade and oar. As they sat there they were like the notes of a piano, and Kosmaroff played the instrument with a sure touch that brought the fullest vibration out of each chord. He was a born leader; an organizer not untouched perchance by that light of genius which enables some to organize the ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... sister telling of young Arthur's infatuation for 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. ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... five years old the 21st of January, and I had such a happy birthday. In the morning when I got up I found at the foot of my crib six books of natural history full of pictures for little folks, a piano, a box of colors, and two dancing bears, one black and one brown. And when I went down to the dining-room, on my tray was a beautiful cup and saucer, and on the cup, in gold letters, "A Gift." And in my chair was a box with twenty-five things in it from my auntie Lou; and in the afternoon ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... this one wants a little "animation," that one "sings out of tune." Miss So-and-So plays the piano "with faultless manipulation, the only drawback being a slight preponderance of pedal," and so on. He generally has as good an ear for music as a parish priest who only knew two tunes: one of which ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... stamped velvet was two shades richer in tone than the pale dead-red of the floorcloth. Small pictures in light frames harmonized with a green paper of long interlacing leaves. On the right, the grand piano and the slender brass lamps; and the impression of refinement and taste was continued, for between the blue chintz curtains the river lay soft as a picture of old Venice. The beauty of the water, full of the shadows of hay and sails, many forms of chimneys, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... in a general way to every state and every home. Look about, where you are sitting now. How many things are there in the room just where you are,—there is a table, a chair, a shoe, a coat, a necktie, a cigar, a lampshade, a piano, a basket—for all of these ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... forth with conveying and disponing all and whole the estate and lands of Singleside and others, with the lands of Loverless, Liealone, Spinster's Knowe, and heaven knows what beside, 'to and in favours of (here the reader softened his voice to a gentle and modest piano) Peter Protocol, clerk to the signet, having the fullest confidence in his capacity and integrity—these are the very words which my worthy deceased friend insisted upon my inserting—but in TRUST always (here the reader recovered his voice and style, and the visages of several of the hearers, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the ward kitchen. This laughter that sounded so strange because it was so late reminded Ellen of the first New Year's Eve that she and her mother had spent in Edinburgh. They had had no friends to first foot them, but they had kept it up very well. Mrs. Melville had played the piano, and Ellen and she had sung half through the Student's Song Book, and they had had several glasses of Stone's Ginger Ale, and there really had been a glow of firelight and holly berry brightness, for Mrs. Melville, birdlike in everything, had a wonderful ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... piano, Gertrude sat down and swung around toward the keys. Glover took music from the table. Unwilling to admit a trace of the unusual in the beating of her heart, or in her deeper breathing, she could not entirely control either; there was something too fascinating in defying the light ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... popular in Picardy and Artois, and when they left women kissed and cried, in spite of laughter, and joked in a queer jargon of English-French. In the estaminets of France and Flanders they danced with frowzy peasant girls to the tune of a penny-in-the-slot piano, or, failing the girls, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... shall these Thy pearly teeth grow like piano keys Yellow and long; while thou, all skin and bone, Angles and morals, in a sky-blue veil, Shalt hosts of children to the sermon hale, Blare hymns, read chapters, ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... in short, a woman of character. There you are, Miss Blunt, at full length,—emphatically the portrait of a lady. After tea, she gave us some music in the parlor. I confess that I was more taken with the picture of the dusky little room, lighted by the single candle on the piano, and by the effect of Miss Blunt's performance, than with its meaning. She appears to possess a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... balcony, was the reading-room. This was a high, cool, spacious apartment comfortably furnished with easy-chairs, pictures, maps, hanging book-cases, a big library table covered with periodicals, and an American piano. The periodicals were not of very recent date, and the piano was somewhat out of tune, but I was so delighted with the shady, flower-bordered courtyard and the comfort and apparent cleanliness of the club ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... we bought an upright grand piano, and after we had had it a few months we noticed that one of the keys would stay down when touched, unless struck very quickly and lightly, and the next day another acted in the same way. That evening, after the boys had gone to bed, father and myself were sitting by the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... and then Mary went over to the piano and played. It was a rather welcome relief, under ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... the cafe in Paris, a chanson, entitled Coffee, reproduced here, was set to music with accompaniment for the piano by M.H. Colet, a professor of harmony at the Conservatoire. Printed in the form of a placard, and put up in cafes, it received the approbation of, and was signed by, de Voyer d'Argenson, at that time (1711) lieutenant of police. The poetry is not irreproachable. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... times, she was accustomed to talk over household affairs with the maid, and after breakfast would visit the kitchen and make a tour of the grounds and garden. The remainder of her day would be spent in reading, in playing the piano, in doing little household tasks, or in walking about the grounds with her father. Yes, sometimes the yogi would join them, and there would be long discussions. After dinner, in the library, there would also be long discussions, but the girl ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... room in the parish house resounded to the twenty voices of the choir. The choir master at the piano kept time with his head. Earnest and intent, they filled the building with the Festival Te Deum of Dudley Buck, Opus 63, ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... dangerous dark, he went about the library at home in his thought and placed each familiar belonging where he had known it all his life. And as he finished, his mother's head shone darkly golden by the piano; her fingers swept over the keys; he heard all their voices, the dear never-forgotten voices. Hark! They were singing his hymn— little Alice's reedy note lifted above the others—"God shall ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... 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 sotto: ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... the conservatory and making his way towards the piano, as though irresistibly fascinated. For her encore the singer was giving a simple ballad that had been very popular some years before. The last time Peveril heard it was when cruising along ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... the perfect polish of that table! It's like the finish of a rosewood piano." He touched ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... Victor—his hand trembled—hers was steady. Captain Hammond asked her for a Scotch song. She went to the piano and sang, never more clearly and sweetly in ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... the sounds, the brightness, the buzz of conversation and laughter surrounding her. In one section of the parlor floor was the dining-room, and from the clink of dishes one could tell that supper was being prepared. In another was the parlor proper, and there some one came to play on the piano. That feeling of rest and relaxation which comes before the evening meal pervaded the place. It touched the heart of the innocent working-girl with hope, for hers were the years, and poverty could not ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... it!" he exclaimed. "Cross your fingers everybody," and once more he did the street-piano act, as Ed termed it. The engine only ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... "Bless my piano keys!" exclaimed Mr. Damon, "if I can get just one elephant, and pull out his big ivory teeth, I'll be satisfied. I want a nice pair of tusks to set up on either side of ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... a rich contralto voice which had been carefully cultivated. Every evening in the twilight, with only the flickering of the wood fire in the room, she would sit at the piano and sing. Lane would close his eyes and let the mellow voice charm his every sense. It called up his highest feelings; it lingered in his soul, thrilled along his heart and played on the chords of love and hope. It dispelled the heavy gloom that so often pressed down upon him; it vanquished ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... 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 shutting all the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... little house and garden in the country all to himself. His idea is somewhere near half an acre of ground. He would like a piano in the best room; it has always been his dream to have a piano. The youngest girl, he is convinced, is musical. As a man who has knocked about the world and has thought, he quite appreciates the argument that by co-operation the material side of life can be ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... boy aged eighteen is not too old to learn how to play the piano, violin or any other musical instrument. There are thousands of stenographers who did not take up that profession until they were twenty-five or thirty years of age. They were firm believers in the adage, "It is never too late to learn." 2. Munson's appears to be the most popular system ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... more 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 ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... walked with him to the landing, where she kept him for about ten minutes complaining of the awful worry she had had about the under-housemaid, and of the sickening impossibility of getting a piano-tuner to attend to the instrument properly without ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... is lovely, but it sounds particularly soft and true out in the open air this way, and without a piano to accompany her. Mine doesn't—I'm all right to sing in a crowd, but when I try to sing by myself, it's just a sort of screech. There isn't any beauty to my tones at all, and I know it and don't ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... the dining room. The tables had been moved to one end where they were piled on top of one another; the chairs were arranged in a row along the wall; the floor, newly waxed, shone like glass. A small upright piano manipulated by an elderly female in glasses; a tremendous bass viol in charge of a small man, and a violin played by a ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... have a fell purpose, and when you learn what it is I expect you to move the piano out—that's what always happens in the play when the heroine is dispossessed. Well, then, I've been sent by The Review to bare all the disgraceful secrets ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... not alone interested in the reading-room's affairs. There was the matter of a new piano for the Sunday-school room. The instrument in use had been a second-hand one when the Sunday School obtained it; and it ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... ... 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
... advances during the first few days after his arrival at Houston Mansion. Despite Miss Husted's oft-repeated inquiries after the professor's health (the title had been conferred on him by virtue of his possessing a violin and on the arrival of a piano for his room), despite her endeavours to direct conversation into a channel which might lead to a discussion of his personal affairs, Herr Von Barwig remained tacit; hence a mystery attached itself to the personality ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... one, believes all earth privy to his soul—was put down by Mr. Sperrit to quite different causes. He led him into a morning-room. The rest of the house seemed to be full of people, singing to a loud piano idiotic songs about cows, and the ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... la Compagnie!'" said Telford, seating himself at the piano, and playing the first bars of that well-known air, to which, in our meetings, we were accustomed to ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... up in alarm, but met Mrs. Clyde's reassuring glance. "Not this time, dear," she returned to Blue Bonnet. "So far you have had all play and no work. The piano hasn't ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... George. "I myself know a child of seven who can play most difficult piano compositions without ever having been taught, or knowing in the ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... systematically."[78] From the psychological point of view, perhaps, Mason is justified in looking upon the great inventor as "an epitome of the genius of the world." To develop a Krag-Joergensen from a bow and arrow, a "velvet-tipped" lucifer match from the primitive fire-stick, or a modern piano from the first crude, stringed, musical instrument has involved much the same intellectual processes as have been operative in transforming fetishism and magic into religion and philosophy, or scattered fragments of ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... fronts south by north, qualifications of, lessening, wooden leg (and head) useful to. Cape Cod clergyman, what, Sabbath-breakers, perhaps, reproved by. Captains, choice of, important. Carolina, foolish act of. Caroline, case of. Carpini, Father John de Piano, among the Tartars. Cartier, Jacques, commendable zeal of. Cass, General, clearness of his merit, limited popularity at 'Bellers's.' Castles, Spanish, comfortable accommodations in. Cato, letters of, so called, suspended naso adunco. C.D., friends of, can hear of him. Century, nineteenth. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... game will be intrusted; the others will have to try to guess it. I shall remain in the room with the rest of you, and my assistant will go out. During her absence I shall place my hand on the shoulder of some girl, or upon the piano, or on my own shoulder, and when she returns she shall tell you who has ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... bandage, and shouting with merriment. It was a pleasanter sight, later in the evening, to see him leading out Hildegarde for a quadrille, and taking his place at the head of the figure with stately, old-fashioned grace. Mrs. Grahame, turning round a moment from her place at the piano, saw his fine face aglow with pleasure, and felt a corresponding warmth at her own heart. She thought of the gloomy, solitary man he had been a year ago, living alone with his servants, scarcely seeing or speaking to a soul ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... giving to the gloom a mysterious, palpitating effect. The room beyond was the dining-room, richly paneled in wine-colored mahogany. This was better; it was cheerful. A log crackled in the fireplace. There were plenty of candles. There was a piano, too. This belonged to the castle; a heavy tarpaulin covering lay heaped at one side. There was a mahogany sideboard that would have sent a collector of antiques into raptures, and a table upon which lay the remains of a fine supper. My mouth watered. I counted over the good things: ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... there is no piano," said Loiseau as a crowning point to the situation, "we might have finished up ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... showed them that their flat was well-provisioned, well-furnished, heated and lighted. There were a few books and magazines, a piano, a writing desk, even a pack of ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... motive, and all the dreary mysteries of the world of will. To his chamber of horrors Madame Tussaud's is nothing. With proud, prosperous, healthy men, Mr. Hawthorne has little sympathy; he prefers a cracked piano to a new one; he likes cobwebs in the corners of his rooms. All this peculiar taste comes out strongly in the little book in whose praise I am writing. I read "The Minister's Black Veil," and find it the first sketch of "The Scarlet ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... was ajar. She called for him to come in, as he halted in the hall. Beth came forth from the little room, after a moment, and stood before him, leaning against the piano. Her face was grayish-white, but ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... would take a very large corner for him to back into. And he is so big and heavy that not even ten men could lift up his front legs. So they just hitch a rope around his head, and then men, hauling on the rope and pulleys, lift the front of the elephant, as men hoist up a piano. ...
— Umboo, the Elephant • Howard R. Garis |
