"Concertina" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... everything, down to the order of the words—the natural order of the words: and (remember this) though the harp be superseded, the voice never forgets it. You may take up a Barrack Room Ballad of Kipling's, and it is there, though you affect to despise it for a banjo or concertina:— ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... could have been held—and where, indeed, many a one was held, when all the young farmers and stockmen and shearers from far and near brought each his lass and tripped it from early night to early dawn, to the strains of old Andy Ferguson's fiddle and young Dave Boone's concertina. Norah had been allowed to look on at one or two of these gatherings. She thought them the height of human bliss, and was only sorry that sheer inability to dance prevented her from "taking the floor" with Mick ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... to hear Patti; to hear Nilsson, he had deserted a ship and two months' wages; and he was ready at any time to walk ten miles for a good concert, or seven to a reasonable play. On board he had three treasures: a canary bird, a concertina, and a blinding copy of the works of Shakespeare. He had a gift, peculiarly Scandinavian, of making friends at sight: an elemental innocence commended him; he was without fear, without reproach, and without money or ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... continued his dragoman, "is occupied by the small yet noisy Fifth Party. These are they who play the cornet and tambourine, big drum and concertina, descendants of the Old Prophet, and survivors of those who, following a younger prophet, joined them at the time of the Great Skirmish. In a form ever modifying with scientific discovery they hold that 'the good' is a superman, bodiless ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... fellow (shamefully delighting in the imminent downfall of a fellow-creature—and that a woman!) went into the front room as he had been bidden. On one of the family of chairs, in a corner, was a black octagonal case. He opened this case, which was not locked, and drew from it a concertina, all inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Then he went to the desk, and from under a pile of rent books he extracted several pieces of music, and selected one. This selected piece he reared up on the mantelpiece against ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... clung like a leech. The animal left the ground and jolted down stiff-legged on all fours. The impact was terrific. He felt as though a piledriver had fallen on his head and propelled his vital organs together like a concertina. Before he could set himself the sorrel went up again with a weaving, humpbacked twist. The rider ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... from a nothingness of ignorant impotence to a little somethingness of highly self- conscious, arduous performance, and thence to the unselfconsciousness of easy mastery. I saw one year a poor blind lad of about eighteen sitting on a wall by the wayside at Varese, playing the concertina with his whole body, and snorting like a child. The next year the boy no longer snorted, and he played with his fingers only; the year after that he seemed hardly to know whether he was playing or not, it came so easily ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... and Ned Anstruther, both of whom, like myself, had passed through the chrysalis stage of midshipmen and came within the category of oldsters, the one with a banjo, and the other handling a broken-down concertina, very wheezy about the gills; with little Tommy Mills, who was only a "midshipmite" still, in every sense of the word, accompanying them with a rattling refrain from a pair of ivory castanets which he had purchased for a paper dollar in a ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Susan noticed a rug whose design was an immense brown dog, a lamp with a green, rose-wreathed shade, a carved wooden clock, a little mahogany table beautifully inlaid with white holly, an enormous pair of mounted antlers, and a large concertina, ornamented with a mosaic design in mother-of-pearl. The wooden floor here, and in the hall, was unpainted, but immaculately clean and the effect of the whole was ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... after the harmonium. The timbre of the accordion is coarse and devoid of beauty, but in the hands of a skilful performer the best instruments are not entirely without artistic merit. Improvements in the construction of the accordion produced the concertina (q.v.), melodion and melophone. las Accordion in kurzer Zeit richtig spielen zu erlernen (Wien, 1834). See also FREE REED VIBRATOR. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... flushed, bucking a faro bank. Yank suggested that he join us, but he shook his head impatiently, and we moved on. In a tremendous tent made by joining three or four ordinary tents together, a very lively fiddle and concertina were in full blast. We entered and were pounced upon by a boisterous group of laughing men, seized by the shoulders, whirled about, ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... Christmas hymn in Tsimshean, which I managed to prepare for the occasion. About 1.30 on Christmas morning we reassembled, when Mr. Collison and myself accompanied the twenty waits to sing round the village, carrying the harmonium and concertina with us. We sang in seven different places, and three hymns in each place. The village was illuminated, and the singing was hearty and solemn. This was the first attempt of the Indians at ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... it that maybe she was dead, and that maybe she was taken by the fairies, and that maybe she went away with the travelling man that had the musical instrument. She said it was a concertina, but I think myself it was ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... fiddle; though here, again, having no complete knowledge of all the traditional dancers still left among us, we offer no precise statement as to the instruments still in use. One Morris-man we knew made music on a concertina. See plate opp. ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... of course: excuse my vulgarity: a concertina. Theres one in a shop in Green Street, ivory inlaid, with gold keys and Russia leather bellows; and Bobby knew I hankered after it; but he couldnt afford it, poor lad, though I knew he just longed to ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... work the blowpipe should be mounted on a special table connected up with cylindrical bellows operated by a pedal. That figured (Fig. 12) is made by mounting a teak top 60 cm. square upon the uprights of an enclosed double-action concertina bellows (Enfer's) and provided with a ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... waving his hand again. 'Good-night!' and with that he fell down between a new bureau and a patent portable blacksmith's forge, and putting his head on a concertina, went sound asleep. ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... year, when her opportunity of a furlough was lost. She said she would have to hold on now for another winter—or go up higher. In September she completed thirty-six years as a missionary, and took humorous stock of herself: "I'm lame and feeble and foolish; the wrinkles are wonderful-no concertina is so wonderfully folded and convulated. I'm a wee, wee wifie, verra little buikit—but I grip on well, none the less." "Ay," said an old doctor friend to her, "you are a strong woman, 'Ma.' You ought to have been dead by ordinary rule long ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... Lucy to allow her to take Kate to her home. Lucy, ever alive to Kate's welfare, joyfully sent her off, and the child spent several health-giving months in the country. To help her happily to occupy her time, the good friend bought Kate a cheap concertina. By the hour she would sit in the sunshine, mastering the keyboard, and soon she could play simple Army tunes. How richly our Heavenly Father blesses the gifts of love! All unconsciously, the good soldier was preparing ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... me left foot, an' thin slept like the dead. Wanst I half-roused, an' begad the noise in my head was tremenjus—roarin' and rattlin' an' poundin', such as was quite new to me. 'Mother av Mercy,' thinks I, 'phwat a concertina I will have on my shoulders whin I wake!' An' wid that I curls mysilf up to sleep before ut should get hould on me. Bhoys, that noise was not dhrink, 'twas the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... reproduces the droning of the priest in a little chapel, recreates the scene almost cruelly. And the score of "Petruchka" is alive marvelously with the rank, garish life of a cheap fair. Its bubbling flutes, seething instrumental caldron, concertina-rhythms and bright, gaudy colors conjure up the movement of the crowds that surge about the amusement booths, paint to the life the little flying flags, the gestures of the showmen, the bright balloons, the shooting-galleries, the gipsy tents, the ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... not a few of that good-humoured and musically-inclined company were waiting arrived. Clear above the babel of voices sounded a chord, and the poor old concertina player began singing in a voice that was ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... their stride—but what becomes of Nipper and Sandy down in the twentieth squad? Half the time, you see, they are running to catch up. So the effect is to jam the troops together on an upgrade and to stretch them out going down—you know—like a concertina." ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... and down his staircase. Bars of it were softly hummed in his ear while he tried to note the important truths which the lecturers impressed upon their classes. One night five musicians relieved each other at the task of playing the tune on a concertina outside his door. They commenced briskly at eight o'clock in the evening, and the final sleepy version only died away at six ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... said; "don't we get enough rowing, without having to give up holidays to it? besides, what's the fun of sitting in a tent, or eating your food among all the wasps and gnats up in that place? You surely aren't going to take that wretched concertina; that'll be enough to give us the blues, even if it doesn't rain, which it's pretty sure to do. I suppose you know the island's about the ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... admitted. "We ought to have had five nice wins on form. But they weren't trying, Joan. The way Camomile was pulled. I expected to see his neck shut up like a concertina." ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... elegant'—Soames and Irene were seated at dinner. A hot dinner on Sundays was a little distinguishing elegance common to this house and many others. Early in married life Soames had laid down the rule: 'The servants must give us hot dinner on Sundays—they've nothing to do but play the concertina.' ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Johnny. There's no get out of it. Here's Jim Mason with me, and we've got orders to stun you and pack you if you show fight. The blessed fiddler from Mudgee didn't turn up. Dave Regan burst his concertina, and they're in ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... the Jingo drum, Nor the "Imperial" trumpet. (The country to their call won't come, However much you stump it.) They're out of fashion; 'tis not now As in the days of "BEAKEY." People dislike the Drum's tow-row. And call the Trumpet squeaky. So I the Concertina try, As valued friends advise me. What's that you say? It's all my eye? Well, well,—you do ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... her husband on his claim till she died, and many other women lived in the camps with their husbands. When the road opened, there was a rush of hurdy-gurdy girls for dance-halls; but that did not modify the rough chivalry of an unwritten law. These hurdy-gurdy girls, who tiptoed to the concertina, the fiddle, and the hand-organ, were German; and if we may believe the poet of Cariboo, they were something like the Glasgow girls described by Wolfe as 'cold to everything but a bagpipe—I wrong them—there is not one that does not melt away {90} at the ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... remained facing the American, Madden might have done so, but it feels foolish to rail at a profile. Madden wheeled angrily, tramped across the bridge, then down the high side of the dock toward the ladder. From far below him came Hogan's voice, a concertina, and the sound of clacking feet. Apparently the Irishman had induced someone to dance ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... up in the bow, and one of them was playing a concertina. Mr. Rogers paced the deck, casting a look aloft from time to time to see that the sails were drawing well. The wind had a slight musical sound as it swept through the rigging, and this blended with the regular slapping of the water against her ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... bore it very well, however, and after dinner, when my friend, in spite of his long tramp and a "job" half done upstairs in the studio, played the piano, and did conjuring tricks with a handkerchief and a glass of water, and then got out a concertina which had often wakened the echoes of King's Road, Chelsea, in the small hours, they were in raptures. The concertina certainly impressed them as "a divine box of sounds." After "Church Bells in the ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... auditors too near for his sense of dignity. Since the invention of the metal reed, however, which, under various modifications and combinations, supplies the sole utterance of the harmonicon, celestina, seraphina, colophon, accordian, concertina, &c. &c. and which does away with the necessity for pipes, the street hand-organ has assumed a different and infinitely worse character. Some of them yet remain what the old Puritans called 'boxes of whistles'—that is, they are all pipes; but many of them might with equal propriety be called ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... them. The boats had floated a hundred yards when, behind the mournfully drooping willows on the sloping banks, huts and a herd of cows came into sight; they began to hear songs, drunken shouts, and the strains of a concertina. ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Dick; "always take the card with me since I was kicked out of a miner's hop at Broken Hill because I forgot it. 'No gentleman will be admitted in a paper shirt' was mentioned on it, I remember. A concertina, and candles in bottles. Ripping while it lasted. I ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley |
