"Piano" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... am carrying back a hundred new books and forty new records for the piano-player. Whenever I feel particularly gregarious, I take the launch and run over to Copeley's and play poker for a couple of days. Lonesomeness isn't my worry. I can't keep a good man beyond three pay-days. They ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... farewell stroke to all their silky backs as they crowded in my lap. I had tenderly kissed my own peculiar favourites, the pair of snow-white fantails; I had played my last tune on the old familiar piano, and sung my last song to papa: not the last, I hoped, but the last for what appeared to me a very long time. And, perhaps, when I did these things again it would be with different feelings: circumstances might be changed, and this ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... even in English; and he had, besides, a conviction that she was angry with him for upsetting her cousin, who was gravely conversing with Miss Goff. Suddenly a horrible noise caused a general start and pause. Mr. Jack, the eminent composer, had opened the piano-forte, and was illustrating some points in a musical composition under discussion by making discordant sounds with his voice, accompanied by a few chords. Cashel laughed aloud in derision as he made his way towards the door through the crowd, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... to the drawing-room and Kitty and Vandeloup both sang, and treated one another in a delightfully polite way. Madame Midas and Calton were both clever, but how much cleverer were the two young people at the piano. ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... would discover it for themselves, with immense satisfaction. It was the chamber of intimacy and of confidences; it was a refuge from the public life of the Cedars, and, to a certain extent, from the piano. Two women, newly acquainted, and feeling a mutual attraction, would say to each other: "Shall we go up to the little room?" "Oh yes, do let us!" And they would climb the stairs in a fever of anticipation. "Quite the most charming room in the house, dear Miss Gailey!" another ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... a bass-drum, with one beating-stick, with which any one may keep time, is, I suppose, the sort of music most classes in gymnastics will use at first. And it has advantages. While it is less pleasing than some other instruments, it secures more perfect concert than any other. The violin and piano are excellent, but on some accounts the hand-organ ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Ide, "instead of keeping it shut up, except for best, just because Mr. Trowbridge's ma did before her. It's a real pretty room. There's a Brussels carpet with roses on the floor, and a handsome suite of red velvet furniture, and a piano, and a marble table. Patty practises her music there, but aside from that none of us see the room, only to sweep and dust, till Thanksgiving and Christmas, when the relations come, or when Mis' Trowbridge has company to tea in winter. Would you like ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... She sat at the piano, running her fingers lightly over the keyboard, listening to what was being said, watching with happy interest everything that was going on around her, and casting an occasional glance over her shoulder and upward to where Neville ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... Mozart, quite a large collection of names. The girl, Maria, was four years older. When Maria was seven years old her father began to give her lessons on the clavier, which was an instrument very much like the piano, and the girl soon won the highest reputation for her playing. When she began to play, her small brother Wolfgang, or Woferl as he was called in nickname, although only three years old, constantly watched her, and whenever ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps at night, Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all, Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding, (No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,) Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return'd, Launch'd o'er the prairies wide, across the lakes, To the free skies unpent and glad ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... was to live with her and be supported. And though Caroline's income had also been used, it had gone rather in luxurious enjoyments than in necessary expenses; in the keep of a horse, for instance, in a journey to Jerusalem, in a new grand piano, and such like. Now there might naturally be a doubt whether under altered circumstances this allowance from Mr. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... corner, the prints upon the walls, and the books on the little table, spoke of a pathetic attempt to reproduce the surroundings of luxurious art without the large outlay that art demands. At one side of the room stood a piano with music lying carelessly about. In another corner was Iola's guitar, which she seldom used now except when intimate friends gathered for one of the little suppers she loved to give. Then she took it up to sing ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... he had accepted one of those invitations which meant the acknowledgment of his lionizing in Fashion's world of music. Paul had little in common with those struggling men whose passion for violin or piano leads them through poverty and hunger in pursuit of their bays. But to face and stir with his art's hypnosis an audience of the smartest men and women in town, was meat and drink to his soul—was ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... large and luxurious salon, which seemed to my astonished eyes like a wonderful museum. The walls were crowded with pictures, a charming composition by Gustave Moreau was lying on the grand piano, waiting until a nook could be found for it to hang. Renaissance bronzes and the work of eighteenth century silversmiths jostled one another on brackets, and on a table lay a handsome violin-case. The pale blinds were drawn ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... murmured. "All goes well." And while the wonderful register, like a thing of life, still whizzed, clicked and delivered its magic scroll, covered with characters unintelligible to all but him for whose eye they were designed, he touched a spring, and a row of ivory keys resembling those of a piano-forte was revealed. Then rapidly touching them with the fingers of one hand, while he held up before him the endless slip of paper in the other as it was evolved, he transferred its cabalistic contents, character by character, to ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... had time enough for such things, though we lost many a free hour in music lessons. Ludo was learning to play on the piano, but I had chosen another instrument. Among our best friends, the three fine sons of Privy-Councillor Oesterreich and others, there was a pleasant boy named Victor Rubens, whose parents were likewise friends of my mother. In the hospitable house of this agreeable family ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was sitting near the fire, rose up. Lord Mount- Primrose, who was standing near the piano, sat down. The Lady Mary Sutton paused in the doorway. Mrs. Loveredge crossed the room to ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... dress; they wore no especial dress at the hunt. Before dinner the Empress used to receive a few specially invited guests to drink tea. All day the Emperor left the company perfectly free. In the evening there was dancing to the music of a piano like a hand-organ, of which a chamberlain turned the handle. The Emperor was treated with great deference, but no one feared him, because his words were always marked by great affability. Napoleon I., on the other ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... are billeted a cavalry officer and four soldiers. The only thing the American has had to complain of up to now is that every morning at six o'clock the officer wakes him up by playing the "Pilgrims' Chorus" from "Tannhauser" on the piano. ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... Frederick, as he returned to the musicians, "we will take our parts, and you, Quantz, take your place at the piano." ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... piano-music, the Medium said he felt no power from this 'battery,' and asked Mrs. E.D. Gillespie to take Miss Irwin's place. Hands and curtain were ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... and bright eyes ran across the yard. She was followed by an old black mammy, whose anxiety for fear her charge might get her clothes soiled was plainly evident; from the parlor came the notes of an old piano, sadly out of tune, and Jud could hear the fine voice of another daughter singing ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... little old man, who sat in a kind of wooden pavilion in a small garden behind a house in one of the purlieus of the city, composing tunes upon a piano. The walls of the pavilion were covered with fiddles of various sizes and appearances, and a considerable portion of the floor occupied by a pile of books all of one size. The publisher introduced him to me as a gentleman scarcely less eminent in literature than in music, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... horse came from a small five-toed animal, not much larger than a rabbit. The piano and the gun are brother and sister, born of the bow and arrow, yet how different the ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... idea had occurred to me." She laughed also, and sitting down at the piano struck a few chords. Captain Chariot, who had his foot on the threshold, turned back—Simone had described the scene to her grandmother afterward. "Some of the brutes, it seems, are musical," the old lady explained; "and this was one of them. While he was listening, some soldiers appeared ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... good spirits, and very 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, ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... went on, he was intrusted with the often needed miscellaneous musical instruments which form no part of the regular band of a boulevard theatre. For a very small addition to his stipend, Schmucke played the viola d'amore, hautboy, violoncello, and harp, as well as the piano, the castanets for the cachucha, the bells, saxhorn, and the like. If the Germans cannot draw harmony from the mighty instruments of Liberty, yet to play all instruments of music comes to them ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... London, a very different person, with very different feelings, and in very different circumstances. It was one of the angels of the earth—a pure-hearted and very beautiful girl; who, after a day of peaceful, innocent, and charitable employment, and having just quitted the piano, where her exquisite strains had soothed and delighted the feelings of her brother, harassed with political anxieties, had retired to her chamber for the night. A few moments before she was presented to the reader, she had extinguished ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... go into Exeter yesterday. I got there about sunset, transacted my business, and turned to walk home again through the warm twilight. In Southernhay, as I was passing a house of which the ground-floor windows stood open, there sounded the notes of a piano—chords touched by a skilful hand. I checked my step, hoping, and in a minute or two the musician began to play that nocturne of Chopin which I love best—I don't know how to name it. My heart leapt. There I stood in the thickening dusk, the glorious sounds floating about me; and I trembled ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... the poetic stage, at Lambeth, Clerkenwell, or Shoreditch, anywhere indeed, without risk of committal to gaol. It was no longer necessary to call a play a "burletta," or to touch a note upon the piano, now and then, in the course of a performance, so as to justify its claim to be a musical entertainment; all subterfuges of ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... have hesitated; but that evening she was so at rest about Mr. Arbuton, so sure she cared nothing for his liking or disliking anything she did, that she sat down at the piano, and sang a number of songs, which I suppose were as unworthy the cultivated ear as any he had heard. But though they were given with an untrained voice and a touch as little skilled as might be, they pleased, or else the singer pleased. The simple-hearted ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... sounding apparatus of the expedition on leaving Cape Columbia comprised two wooden reels of a length equal to the width of the sledge, a detachable wooden crank to go on each end of the reel, to each reel a thousand fathoms (six thousand feet) of specially made steel piano wire of a diameter .028 inches, and one fourteen-pound lead having at its lower end a small bronze clam-shell device, self-tripping when it reached the bottom, for the purpose of bringing up samples of ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... in lungo incerto Sonno gemo! ma poi quando la bruna Notte gli astri nel ciel chiama e la luna E il freddo aer di mute ombre e coverto; Dove selvoso e il piano e piu deserto Allor lento io vagando, ad una ad una Palpo le piaghe onde la rea fortuna E amore e il mondo ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... coffee, or Rhine wine, or Tokay, or perhaps something stronger," asked Raffles Haw, stretching out his hand to what looked like a piano-board projecting from the wall. "I can recommend the Tokay. I have it from the man who supplies the Emperor of Austria, though I think I may say that I get the cream ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he was amazed at the glorified vision of everyday things. In Herr Gottfried's flat there was a model of Beethoven in plaster of Paris, a bed, and a tin wash-hand stand, a tiny bookshelf containing some tattered volumes of Reclame's Universal Bibliothek, a piano and six cane-bottomed chairs covered at the moment by the stout bodies of the six musicians—nothing here to light the world with wonder!—and yet to-night, Peter, sitting on a cushion in a dark corner watched the glories ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... JERRYMAN, "why, there's nothing you can't send by post in Switzerland, from a house full of furniture, down to a grand piano or cage of canaries. You've only got to clap a postage-stamp on it, and there you are!" And the arrival of the Bath-chair certainly seemed to indicate that he was telling ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... furniture is mission; there goes the table," and Mrs. Fayre noted details with a housekeeper's eye. "And here comes the piano. I can't bear to see men move a piano; I always think it's going to ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... among the Z. P. seems to prove conclusively that as a general and all but invariable rule he wears it pinned to the lining of his coat, or under his lapel, or on the band of his trousers, or on the breast of his shirt, or in his hip pocket, or up his sleeve, or at home on the piano, or riding around at the end of a string in the baby's nursery; though as in the case of all rules this one too has ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... full blast. Elbowing their way through the crowd, Manning and his companion soon found themselves in a large, brilliantly lighted room, almost entirely bereft of furniture. At one end was a raised platform, on which were seated the orchestra, consisting of a piano, sadly out of tune, a cracked violin, and a cornet which effectually drowned out the music of the other two instruments. Around the sides of the room were ranged rows of tables and wooden chairs, which were occupied by men and women, all busily occupied ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... decorated with tawdry curtains, and in the larger of the two dancing was going on. Here the crowd was denser and of the same heterogeneous kind. It was a festival of high jinks—a sway of riotous, unbridled merriment. A performer at the piano, with a bottle of beer within easy reach, rapped out the inspiriting chords of a popular melody. Couples glided over the polished floor, some lightly, some galloping, and all reckless of colliding with the onlookers. There was a touch of the risque in the dancing, ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... papa; he drinks sweet port wine for which he would curse the steward and the whole committee of a club; he bears even with the cantankerous old maiden aunt; he beats time when darling little Fanny performs her piece on the piano; and smiles when wicked, lively little Bobby upsets the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... piazza singing a drinking song. When they were gone a church clock struck eleven. Roma put on a hat and a veil. Her impatience was now intense. Being ready to go out she took a last look round the rooms. They brought a throng of memories—of hopes and visions as well as realities and facts. The piano, the phonograph, the bust, the bed. It was all over. She knew she ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... the far end was a bar for beer and other liquors less popular, and an entrance from a main street, screened and indirect, down steps at another level than the rear or stage door. Where Claudius sat was a small stage with footlights and curtain complete, and an orchestra for a miniature piano such as are used in yachts, and six musicians; the performers sat to face the audience respectfully in the good ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... room were the terrors of a nervous boy, lying alone in the dark, creeping downstairs to sit—a tiny white-robed figure—as near as possible to the drawing-room door, to get comfort from the hum of talk or thunder of the four-handed piano pieces ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... a great bunch of the fragrant roses, and hurried down to the parlor, where she found the others waiting, Mrs. Ellsworth alone in an easy-chair, Olive and Love at the piano with Ela, who was playing the accompaniment for a sentimental song that Olive sang while Love turned ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... in Alabama. I had a home on it. I lost it. We brought a suit for water damage. We lost it, I reckon. They fixed a dam that ruined my place. I left and went to the North—to Springfield, Ohio. I started public work and worked three or four months in a piano factory. I liked farming the best and come back to it. My boys hope me down hill. I got two boys. My girl left me all I got now. She is dead. I got a home and twenty-five acres of ground. She made the money washing, ironing and farming. I 'plied for the old folks' pension but didn't ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... a patent tray for sea use, fitted with holders for a couple of decanters, water-jug and glasses. The glitter of these things caught my eye first; but what I saw next was the captain down there, alone as far as I could see; and I could see pretty well the whole of that part up to the cottage piano, dark against the satin-wood panelling of the bulkhead. And I remained looking. I did. And I don't know that I was ashamed of myself either, then. It was the fault of that Franklin, always talking of the man, making free with him to that ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... Vaughan breakfasted alone at nine o'clock. At such 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 had no idea what they were about. She heard a fragment ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... are listening to him or not. He is not a fool. A fool is occasionally amusing— Longrush never. No subject comes amiss to him. Whatever the topic, he has something uninteresting to say about it. He talks as a piano-organ grinds out music steadily, strenuously, tirelessly. The moment you stand or sit him down he begins, to continue ceaselessly till wheeled away in cab or omnibus to his next halting-place. As in ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... "There was a piano in one corner, and muslin curtains—I give you my word, muslin curtains, besides the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... bond of harmony between our two eyes, which makes them act in unison. Likewise there is an unbreakable continuity of relation in the physical world between heat and cold, light and darkness, motion and rest, as between the bass and treble notes of a piano. That is why these opposites do not bring confusion in the universe, but harmony. If creation were but a chaos, we should have to imagine the two opposing principles as trying to get the better of each other. But the universe is not ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... upstairs, we'll come out of our hiding-places and play the piano, and sing her a welcome song. Ethel Todd, one of the Scouts, has written a dandy—a parody on ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... cool, dusky interior, and was shown to the left into a dim, long room. He perched on a mahogany chair, and had time to notice the bookcases with the white owl atop, the old piano with the yellowing keys, the haircloth sofa and chairs, the steel engravings, and the two oil portraits, when Orde's large ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... table: at the upper end of which, sat a chairman with a hammer of office in his hand; while a professional gentleman with a bluish nose, and his face tied up for the benefit of a toothache, presided at a jingling piano in ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... myself as being well pleased at this description, and then inquired a little anxiously if there were room for my piano and ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and small incomes will find the MATRIMONIAL AGENCY OFFICE well worthy their attention; and young ladies who play the piano, speak French, and measure only eighteen inches round the waist, cannot better consult their own interests than by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... There was an old piano on board, and the boys and girls often amused themselves at this, singing and playing. As there were no other passengers, they had the ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... three-inch planks, was upheaved in several places; the gangways leading to the sleeping-cabins at the sides were shot away; the handrails were gone, and the elegant carpet was concealed beneath a chaos of fragments of finery. The books on the shelves of the library remained unmoved; the piano was thrown on one side; and the floor presented huge upheaved and rent chasms, through which might be seen the still greater ruin in the lower cabin. Below the saloon, or drawing-room, is the saloon of the lower deck, which was, of course, traversed by the same funnel as the one above it. On each ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... mother a slight pang every time it was brought home to her, although she made fun of it and pretended she didn't care. Music had been her young heart's dream. It was the only art for which she showed a genuine regard. And two of her pet grievances were that she didn't have a piano, and that, if she had one, she could not play ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... slept. At two o'clock in the morning the lights in the gambling rooms of the Belmont and the Plaza were still flickering streams out into the desert night; weak strains of discord were being drummed out of a piano in a dance hall; the shuffling of feet smote the dead, flat silence of the night with an odd, weird resonance. Here and there a light burned in a dwelling or store, or shone through the wall of a tent-house. But Manti's one street was deserted—the ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... hearing the piano's notes in the mess-room he glanced inside. It was a rest period between drills, and a soldier seated at the instrument strummed his way through the air of a mournful ditty. It's an odd thing that when the average soldier is wholly cheerful he ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... Selections from the operas then known and now forgotten, were given in the dining room; parts, with all the characters and choruses, from "Zampa," "Norma" and the "Caliph of Bagdad" recur to my mind. Two public concerts were given to pay for a new piano, and as the proceeds did not quite fill the bill, we all gave up butter, selling the entire product of the dairy for three months to make up the deficit. That was just like Brook Farm. The most ambitious performance in my time was the rendition of the Oratorio of ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... white, was fond of having his own way; and, as long as it did not conflict with that of his imperious father, he was indulged to the fullest extent. Miss Edith was fond of repose, and could not even speak French or play upon the piano, because it was too much trouble to obtain these accomplishments, though private tutors had labored sedulously for several years to meet the ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... sumptuously-dressed worshippers, have on our feelings. The great glare of Gothic windows; the massive curtains of orange-colored satin that, veiled with lace, pend in undulating folds over them; the cloudlike canopy that overhangs a dias at the further end of the parlor; the gorgeously-carved piano, with keys of pearl, that stands in dumb show beneath the drapery; the curiously-carved eagles, in gilt, that perch over each window, and hold daintily in their beaks the amber-colored drapery; the chastely-designed tapestry of sumptuously-carved ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... circumstances, highly educated, handsome, attractive, with a mezzo-soprano voice of rare beauty and great skill as a piano-forte accompanyist, she had not only suitors who took her rejection without bitterness, but hosts of friends. She knew all the nice London people of her day: Lady Feenix, who in some ways resembled her, Diana Dombey, who did not quite approve of ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... imagine. I can't describe it. The hair is all put out of sight, turned back, and no border to the cap, very unbecoming and very singular, tied under the chin with a pink ribbon—blue for the married, white for the widows. Here was a Piano forte and another sister teaching a little girl music. We went thro' all the different school rooms, some misses of sixteen, their teachers were very agreeable and easy, and in every ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... there, longing so, in the 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 ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... mail-steamer, the bait being a "cavalle," a local white fish of some 3 lbs. My nephew played the tarpon for nearly two hours; the fish fought splendidly, shooting continuously into the air, a curved glittering bar of silver, 180 lbs. of giant gleaming herring, when the line (a stout piano wire) suddenly snapped as he was being reeled in. A tarpon fisherman has a leathern "bucket" strapped in front of him, in which to rest the butt of his rod, otherwise the strain would be too great. Whilst my nephew was playing his tarpon, I was fortunate enough to hook a large shark, and there ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... soltanto la prima" (UZIELLl).]; the second is that two third ones above are over the two third ones below [Footnote 10: terze di sotto: "Intende qui senza dubbio parlare di foglie decussate, in cui il terzo verticello e nel piano del primo" (UZIELLI).]; and the third way is that the third above is over the third below [Footnote 11: 3a di sotto: ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... become arrogant. She gossiped without cessation, and always, as it were, to restore the proper balance of the world, to pull down the mighty from their high places, to lift the humble only that they in their turn might be pulled down. She played fluently and execrably on the piano. She spent her day in ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... his duty again, in the soothing delight of finding himself, once more free, in all but heart, in the company of Ghita. In this manner the yawl moved ahead, though with materially diminished speed, until, by the formation of the heights, and the appearance of the lamps and candles on the piano, Ghita knew that they were drawing quite near to the indentation of the coast on which is ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Woodford another three months had done. She was unusually keen and alert, intuitive to a degree, and while Aunt Lucinda's manner was all that could be desired, she felt that she had been a disappointment in some way. She rose a little wearily and going to the piano ran ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... country—in the hunting field, in the gardens about her home, of afternoons spent among the books and prints and pictures in her father's quiet, book-lined library at Holt, of the evenings in the drawing-room at the piano, of hours of pleasant talk in the beautiful conservatories and on the grassy terraces, and by the lake-side below the tennis lawn. What, I thought, would life be like when at last I had her always with me, brightening my life, filling my own ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... The player showed refined feeling in her interpretation of the music, genius in her skill on the piano, and thorough understanding of the composer's purposes ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... edge of this circling, wrestling melee, down to the corner where the orchestra held forth. They seemed actuated by the same frenzy which possessed the dancers. The piccolo player lay on his back on top of the piano, piping his shrill notes at the ceiling. And Lane made sure this player was drunk. On the moment then the jazz came to an end with a crash. The lights flashed up. The dancers clapped and ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... great drawing-room is a boudoir upholstered in light gray silk damask, with bouquets of flowers. This is Madame Desvarennes's favorite room. A splendid Erard piano occupies one side of the apartment. Facing it is a sideboard in sculptured ebony, enriched with bronze, by Gouthieres. There are only two pictures on the walls: "The Departure of the Newly Married Couple," ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... other hand, the relations between lord and servant are faithfully portrayed by Madame Calderon de la Barca. Speaking of life in a hacienda, she describes how the lady of the house sat at the piano, while the employees and servants performed the typical dances of the country for the benefit of guests and relatives, without suggesting any idea of equality or disrespect, more or less in the fashion of the Middle Ages, when the lord and ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... consisted in witnessing the daily apparelling of Eliza and Georgiana, and seeing them descend to the drawing-room, dressed out in thin muslin frocks and scarlet sashes, with hair elaborately ringletted; and afterwards, in listening to the sound of the piano or the harp played below, to the passing to and fro of the butler and footman, to the jingling of glass and china as refreshments were handed, to the broken hum of conversation as the drawing-room door opened ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... some of the sisters played a few pieces at the piano, and Miss Forrester sang a few songs. Mr Hall in the meantime went fast asleep. John Gordon couldn't but tell himself that his evenings at Kimberley were, as a rule, quite as exciting. But then Kattie Forrester did not belong to him, and he had not found ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... when I crept away to my bed, the tom-tom and the piano were both sounding out with almost undiminished vigor. It was a night to remember and I do remember it with the pleasure an old man has in the days of his early manhood—not so very early either for I was on the ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... arms escaped; her short fair hair a little tumbled; her big grey eyes grave; her full lips shaping with a strange daintiness round every word—and they not many; brilliant red shades over golden lights dotting the black walls; a blue divan; a little black piano flush with the wall; a dark polished floor; four Japanese prints; a white ceiling. He was conscious that his own khaki spoiled something as curious and rare as some old Chinese tea-chest. He even remembered what they ate; lobster; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... conversation and high ideals. From her I began to catch a glimpse of the nobler things of life, things that to me, being but poorly educated and in a foreign land, had been denied. She was a sweet singer and an excellent performer on the piano, and somehow when she sang I was able to understand the ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... is gone; now for the surprise. At a signal from the Duchess, the author of Roxelane took his place at the piano and swept his beard over the keys as he struck two penetrating chords. Immediately at the far end of the rooms the curtains were drawn from the door, and down the vista of brilliant apartments, tripping along on the tips of her little gilt slippers, came a charming brunette ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... whether it be an elk or a deer. I am very much pleased with your project on the Harmonica, and the prospect of your succeeding in the application of keys to it. It will be the greatest present which has been made to the musical world this century, not excepting the Piano-forte. If its tone approaches that given by the finger as nearly only as the harpsichord does that of the harp, it will be very valuable. I have lately examined a foot-bass newly invented here, by the celebrated Krumfoltz. ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... eleven passed all too slowly. Mrs. Smith and Barracombe played cribbage; Kate was restless, opening a book, laying it down, touching the piano, going to the window and peering out ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... yacht was a regular floating Waldorf-Astoria—she winks at me and says, 'What's the use to borrow trouble, Mr. Fly Cop? Here's hoping you may live to eat the hen that scratches on your grave.' There was a piano on board, and she sat down to it and sung better than you give up two cases to hear plenty times. She knew about nine operas clear through. She was sure enough bon ton and swell. She wasn't one of the 'among others present' kind; she belonged ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... At the West end of this flat the rooms both front and back are parlours, with folding doors between, so that while one may be used for conversational purposes or such like, the other may be fitted with a piano and also with games, such as chess, draughts, &c. The upper flat, which contains also very handsome rooms, beautifully finished, is divided into two portions, one to be occupied exclusively by the Secretary, and containing dining and drawing ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... evening he came he found her entertaining four or five other farmers' daughters and a couple of young men. She was playing the piano to them and talking and laughing louder and faster than ever he had heard her in his life. He sat moody a little while and watched her uneasily, but soon took his line, and exerting his excellent social powers became the life of the party. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... she was nine she could play quite creditably a number of simple Etudes on the tinkly old piano which had lost some of its ivories. Her daily practicing was one of the few things about which Barbara was strict. So much attention had been given to her own education in music that she found joy in keeping up her interest in it, and wanted to make it one of Georgina's chief sources of pleasure. ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... piano). I am not in a mood for talking to-night. I really am not. How horrid of you to smile! Where are the cigarettes? Thanks. How exquisite these single daffodils are! They seem to be made of amber and cool ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... married to a young gentleman who dealt in coals and played the violin (for N——- was a very musical town), had just joined her for the purpose of extorting "The Swiss Boy, with variations," out of a sleepy little piano, that emitted a very painful cry under the awakening ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he was no longer in his first youth, a poor young noblewoman of the neighbourhood, a very nervous and sickly person, who had been reared in one of the government institutes for gentlewomen. She played far from badly on the piano; she spoke French in boarding-school fashion; she was given to enthusiasm, and still more addicted to melancholy, and even to tears.... In a word, she was of an uneasy character. As she considered that her life had been ruined, she could not ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... select few, who hold communion in the love of classical quartet and trio music by the great masters,—in the piano poems of Chopin, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven, there will be abundant opportunities. The Mendelssohn Quintette Club, the German Trio, Mr. Satter, the pianist, and would we might add Otto Dresel, will give series of concerts in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... 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 fantasia ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 25, 1841 • Various
... so high a standard as Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, The Honeysuckle and the Bee, &c., and we hum them while soaking in our morning tub, we whistle them as we go down to breakfast, we strum them on the piano after breakfast, we hear them rattled outside by a barrel organ, as many times as there are forthcoming pennies from windows, while we are having lunch, we hear them pathetically sung at afternoon parties by hired ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... 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, which ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... glanced about the dreary room, with its piano laden with tattered music, the children's toys littering the lame sofa, the bunches of dyed grass and impaled butterflies flanking the cast-bronze clock. Then he had turned to Susy and asked simply: "Why ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... he may expect to be ushered into spacious and luxuriously-furnished parlors, where, seated in comfortably-padded rocking-chairs, and contemplating marble tables, on which gorgeously- bound volumes are artistically arranged; thousand-dollar piano-fortes, and mirrors capable of abashing a modest man to utter speechlessness, he will tarry the advent of stately dames, whose dresses rustle as with conscious opulence. He will precede them—they being scrupulous as to exposure of ankles—up broad staircases to handsome apartments, ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... to learn from his mother that his Uncle Union's house in Haverhill had tall columns, green blinds on the white woodwork, and a wide hall running down the centre. For it made him feel more at home at the Culpeppers'. But when the Hendricks' piano came, after they moved into the big house, the boy's heart was opened afresh; and he spent hours with Bob Hendricks at the piano, when he knew he would be welcome at the Culpeppers'. He leased his town herd in the summer to Jimmie Fernald—giving him the right to take the cows to the commons ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... render her voice soft, but only succeeded in making it very deep. A portion of her words was lost in the transit from her larynx to her lips, as though on a piano where ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... say that I do not admire your taste," laughed Phil. "It's the most hideous discord of noises I ever heard. I never did like the steam piano, but a circus wouldn't be a ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... and the brackets, the piano and hangin' lamps and baskets and crystal bead lambrequins, her father had gin her, moved 'em all into a good, sensible, small house, and went to work to get a practice and a livin'. He ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... wall on the right, a wide stove of dark porcelain, a high-backed arm-chair, a cushioned foot-rest, and two footstools. A settee, with a small round table in front of it, fills the upper right-hand corner. In front, on the left, a little way from the wall, a sofa. Further back than the glass door, a piano. On either side of the doorway at the back a whatnot with terra-cotta and majolica ornaments.— Against the back wall of the inner room a sofa, with a table, and one or two chairs. Over the sofa hangs the portrait of a handsome elderly man in a General's ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... confirmation I went for a fortnight to Brunswick, to a sister of my father, where I became attached to a young female, who was a Roman catholic. My time till Midsummer 1821 was spent partly in study, but in a great degree in playing the piano-forte and guitar, reading novels, frequenting taverns, forming resolutions to become different, yet breaking them almost as fast as they were made. My money was often spent on my sinful pleasures, through which I was now and then brought into trouble, so that once, to satisfy my hunger, I ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... all well enough—"due to decency," in fact—to wear "mourning," and now and then look grave; but "this idea of closing your house," observed our philosopher, "and silencing your piano, and abstaining from your customary amusements and habits for months [only think of it!], because some one has departed from misery to happiness, is not alone supremely ridiculous [though that is bad enough], but it is sublimely ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... thing the Judge did for me. He hired a violin for me to practice on here. He said he thought it would pass the time for all of us. There's a piano, too, already in the house, and Molly can play real nice on that. Her Auntie Lu plays mag-nifi-cently. I wrote that out in syllables so as to get it right and to make it more—more impressiver. I'm dreadful tired and have been finishing this letter ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... at Slocomb-on-Sea. There were six rooms on the same floor, all communicating, as shown in the diagram. The rooms they took were numbers 4, 5, and 6, all facing the sea. But a little difficulty arose. Mr. Dobson insisted that the piano and the bookcase should change rooms. This was wily, for the Dobsons were not musical, but they wanted to prevent any one else playing the instrument. Now, the rooms were very small and the pieces of furniture ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... who played well on the piano, and was very ready to weep over any fictitious tale of suffering. I was present when one of her slaves lay on the floor in a high fever, and we feared she might not recover. I saw that young lady stamp upon her with her feet; and the only remark her mother made was, 'I am afraid Evelina ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... jolly companion; a fellow who could pitch into any kind of sport and play an uncommonly good game at almost anything. More than that, he could rattle off ragtime untiringly and his nimble fingers could catch up on the piano any tune he heard whistled. What wonder he speedily became the idol of Colversham? He was a born leader, tactfully marshaling at will the boys who were his own age, and good-naturedly bullying those who ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... heard the three willow whistles and he turned and began to whistle back—oh such a pretty song. It was really prettier than the sound of the three willow whistles for it had different notes and a tune like the songs Mother plays on the piano. ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... that ferry and into that room crowded with redolent humanity to hear an absurd little man string together vivid, gross words about religion, words that made me tingle all over," I answered as I threw my coat on a chair, lifted my hat from my head and sat down on the seat before the dark old piano. "I think religion is the most awful thing in the world and I am as afraid of it as I am of—of death. I'm going ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... 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 texture of melody to the simple, more concrete theme, which ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... riotous juniors rushed upstairs to the Officers' Lounge, a large room with a bar at one end, and a piano at the other. Some congregated near the bar to order liqueurs, while others surrounded the piano to roar rag-time choruses that one of their number was playing. This artist had a whole manual of rag-time tunes, and seemed to have begun at Number ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... his dark, passionate mother, who played the piano and the mandolin so wonderfully, and he was happy that she did not grieve over his doubtful position among men. On the other hand, however, he realized that his father's anger was much more estimable and respectable, and although he was censured by his father, he was at bottom quite in ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... with greater sweetness than usual—she was decidedly in good voice; both Charlie and Harry listened with great pleasure as they stood by her side; Jane was also sitting near the piano, and seemed more interested in the music than usual; it was a song which the young widow had so often heard, in what she now looked back to as the happy days of her girlhood. More than one individual in the room thought it charming to listen to Elinor and look at Jane, at the same instant. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... desk, and a girl sat before it pushing down some black and white strips that looked like sticks, and making her feet go, and singing with all her might. The curious box made music, the same music the people were singing. Was it a piano? she wondered. She had heard of pianos. Her father used to talk about them. O, and what was that her mother used to want? A "cab'net-organ." Perhaps this was a cab'net-organ. At any rate, she was ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... laughter, and voices, and music came from within now, breaking the evening stillness; for everyone had gone indoors to the salon, where the gas was lighted, chairs and tables pushed out of the way, and Mademoiselle Cecile, the fat good- natured daughter of the proprietaire, already seated at the piano. The hall outside fills with grinning waiters and maids, who have their share of the fun as they look in through the open door. Round go the dancers, sliding and twirling on the smooth polished floor, and Mademoiselle Cecile's fingers fly ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... of chords from the piano melted into a rippling prelude, and Winifred breathed easier when her friend began to sing. Her voice was sweet and excellently trained, and there was a deep stillness of appreciation when the clear notes thrilled through the close-packed ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... me to sing, and though I protested violently, they got me down at the piano. I didn't get up any more until the party was over for they made me sing every song I knew and some I didn't. I sang some things so hoary with age that they were decrepit! The purser so far forgot himself as to ask me to ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... admit to himself that his nerves seemed to be about as taut as piano wires. He told himself that possibly he was "up against it," and yet he had stood on the brink of disaster so often during his college career without acquiring vertigo, that the experience of the afternoon was like a joyous ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... he hesitated—but I cannot feel sure that I observed him correctly. It matters little. With or without hesitation, he followed her to the piano. ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... livest on, cease thou thy weeping," says Omar Nameh, who was born at Bagdad in the year 412 of the Mohammedan era as the son of a cobbler. For that matter, I know a man who is only thirty-eight. He has buried two wives and seven children, not to speak of grandchildren. And now he is playing the piano in a shabby little Prater[1] restaurant, while artists of both sexes show off their tights and their fluttering skirts on the platform. And recently, when the pitiful performance had come to an end and they were turning out the ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... singleness of heart. He had never before spoken of his personal history or home life. Several times I had spent the evening at his house, but on these occasions I had seen only himself. Certain womanly belongings, however, which I had noticed, and the sound of a piano once or twice, had suggested that the house might not be without a feminine presence. The professor now told me that long ago in France, for a few short, blissful years, he had been the husband of the sweetest of women. She had left behind a daughter, the sole companion ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... it being kept in the drawing-room, as otherwise she forgot all about it; and Vane had a vivid recollection of a large and incredibly stout bird with a watery and furtive eye ensconced on cushions near the piano. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... smoke. The hall is an immensely large one, with gleaming chandeliers, frescoed nymphs and cupids on the walls, a regular stage and a regular orchestra. A venerable man in gray hair and spectacles saws away at the big bass; a long-haired, professor-looking person struggles laboriously with the piano; there are two violinists, a horn, a trombone, a flute and a flageolet. On the wall is a placard where we read that the price for the first consommation is fifteen sous, but that subsequent consommations ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Jay, "a much louder noise than that old piano. The pictures are so horribly quiet. Just an underfed man turning a handle, and an underfed woman hitting an underfed piano. At a play you can at least pretend that the actors are having a little fun too, but the pictures—there's only two sad people without smiles at the bottom ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... hat with an angry vehemence, and, seating herself at the piano, literally stormed the keys, while the Doctor re-entered his carriage and quietly proceeded to ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... first visit we were to be the guests of Professor Max Muller, at his fine residence in Norham Gardens. We met there, at dinner, Mr. Herkomer, whom we have recently had with us in Boston, and one or two others. In the evening we had music; the professor playing on the piano, his two daughters, Mrs. Conybeare and her unmarried sister, singing, and a young lady playing the violin. It was a very lovely family picture; a pretty house, surrounded by attractive scenery; scholarship, refinement, simple elegance, giving distinction to a home which to us seemed a pattern ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... boots on the floor in the next room, I realized that I was left all alone with their charming daughter. All my fears of the early part of the evening tried to crowd on me again, but were calmed by the girl, who sang and played on the piano with no audience but me. Then she interested me by telling her school experiences, and how glad she was that they were over. Finally she lugged out a great big family album, and sat down aside of me on one of these ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... are musical should 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 ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... Mothers!—English mothers! who bring your daughters abroad to finish their education—do you well to expose them to scenes like these, and force the young bud of early feeling in such a precious hot-bed as this? Can a finer finger on the piano,—a finer taste in painting, or any possible improvement in foreign arts and foreign graces, compensate for one taint on that moral purity, which has ever been (and may it ever be!) the boast, the charm of Englishwomen? ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... said his host; "you look tired." Then he got on his feet, and said good night with an alacrity which showed how much he "wished he was asleep"! But he was not permitted to sleep. Maurice, swinging round from the piano, said, with ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... breast! (At this part of the lecture Artemus pretended to tell a story—the piano playing loudly all the time. He continued his narration in excited dumb-show—his lips moving as though he were speaking. For some minutes the audience ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... d' Ango " Manoir de Vitanval " Porch of Church at Beuvreil Pavements, Two Florentine Palermo, Capella Palatina, Pulpit in "P.D.'s" The Perugia, Chamber of Commerce, Panel from " Renaissance Panels from " S. Pietro, Panels from Personals Piano Case, Competition for Pulpits of Southern Italy Ravello, Cathedral, Pulpit and Ambo in " S. Giovanni, Pulpit in Ravenna Museum of Acad. Bel. Arti, Cap from S. Vitale, Caps from Ravenna Capitals Reproduction of Architect's Drawings Roman Scholarship ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, 1895 • Various
... the window of the aviary in an expectant attitude, an expression of profound despair on her contracted features. As soon as she saw Fabrice she signaled to him that all was lost; then, hurrying to her piano, and adapting her words to the accompaniment of a recitative from a favorite opera, in accents tremulous with her emotion and the fear of being overheard by the sentry beneath, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... ability to use natural conditions as means to ends. It is an active control of the environment through control of the organs of action. We are perhaps apt to emphasize the control of the body at the expense of control of the environment. We think of walking, talking, playing the piano, the specialized skills characteristic of the etcher, the surgeon, the bridge-builder, as if they were simply ease, deftness, and accuracy on the part of the organism. They are that, of course; but the measure of the value of these qualities lies in the economical ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... drawing-room, roses and sweet-peas, cut by Christine—her fairy daughter—lay ready to hand. Between them they filled the lofty room with fragrance and harmonies of delicate colour. Then Christine flew to her beloved piano; and Lilamani wandered away to her no less beloved rose-garden. Body and mind were restless. She could settle to nothing till she knew what had passed between Nevil and Roy. His boyish confidences and adorations of the night before had ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... re-creation rather than relaxation, and is no more fit to succeed a long, exhausting day of study than a sermon, or a disputation, or any other change of intellectual exercise. Still more is the study of music, and the practice necessary to acquire command over so difficult an instrument as the piano, a very great tax upon the nervous strength of our young people. Many mothers consider the music lesson only as the using up of so many minutes of time, and think it may rightfully be put into any hour of holiday or rest. I have heard music teachers say that their ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... little brother of three years old, who at once gave tokens of a degree of genius far surpassing all experience, and really bordering on the marvellous. In his fourth year he could play all sorts of little pieces on the piano. He only required half an hour to learn a minuet, and one hour for a longer movement; and in his fifth year he actually composed some pretty short pieces, several of which are ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... Indeed, than Burnham no man of my acquaintance to my knowledge has devoted himself to his life's work more earnestly, more honestly, and with such single-mindedness of purpose. To him scouting is as exact a study as is the piano to Paderewski, with the result that to-day what the Pole is to other pianists, the American is to all other "trackers," woodmen, and scouts. He reads "the face of Nature" as you read your morning paper. To him a movement ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... was a 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
... before he had been three minutes in the place everybody was listening to him; and once or twice as he spoke there was a murmur of applause, now and then a laugh, and once a burst of cheering. Just as this broke out he caught sight of me standing in the dimness of the corner by the old piano, and peered at me as if uncertain of my identity. When he recognized me he turned away and spoke no more, and I thought it was anger at me which flushed his face at first and then made it paler than ever. I was sorry for ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... certain of that, too. It was in the early part of the evening, and I had to wait until the people in the parlor would disperse. She saw what I was waiting for, and stayed, too; she told me with her eyes that she remembered. After a while she went to the piano, and played and sang 'Kate Kearney.' Then I was satisfied that she would not leave me before I had spoken to her. As soon as the opportunity came, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... 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
... should be fitted with Sir William Thompson's Sounding Machine (see picture in B. J. Manual). This machine consists of a cylinder around which are wound about 300 fathoms of piano wire. To the end of this is attached a heavy lead. An index on the side of the instrument records the number of fathoms of wire paid out. Above the lead is a copper cylindrical case in which is placed ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... cool and quiet and softly pretty in that long parlor. The shades were down, the piano was open, the chairs were low and softly cushioned. I leaned back and ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... aren't hollow trees enough to hold them all. I have only noticed two hollow trees in the orchard, and that's where the owls live, and they kill the song birds. [Elis is heard playing the piano inside. Eleonora and Benjamin listen for a few moments.] Poor Elis, who thinks that Christine has gone from him, but I know that ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... Summer Homeward came the fair Miranda. How the village people wonder'd At her fashions, and her movements, How she made the new piano Tremble to its inmost centre With andante, and bravura, What a piece she had to show them Of Andromache the Trojan, Wrought in silks of every color, And 'twas said a foreign language Such as princes use in Paris, ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... as graceful as a Roe Slips from the mountain in the month of June, And opening her Piano 'gan to play Forthwith—"It was a Friar ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... she went into the dimly lighted house, through the drawing-room, which was quite dark, into the music-room beyond; and there she sat down upon a chair by the piano—a little gilded chair that revolved as she pushed herself idly, now to the ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... technical terms. At Naples, I would learn the art of making macaroni; at Nice, the principles of making candied fruit. I never went to the opera without first buying the book of the piece, and making myself acquainted with the principal airs by picking them out on the piano with one finger." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... read books and played the piano and made themselves pretty clothes and went visiting and had parties, ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... American Negro songs possess distinct characteristics. One of these is a very prevalent use of the pentatonic or five-tone scale, corresponding to the black keys of the piano. If one comes upon a group of colored men unconsciously humming or whistling at work, most often it is the five-tone scale that utters their musical thoughts. This scale—along with other scales—is heard in black Africa also, and in the music of many simple peoples in different ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... opened a door she had never happened to enter before—a dingy door with the glass frosted. Just inside there was a fetid little bar; view of the rest of the room was cut off by a screen from behind which came the sound of a tuneless old piano. She knew Clara would not be in such a den, but out of curiosity she glanced round the screen. She was seeing a low-ceilinged room, the walls almost dripping with the dirt of many and many a hard year. In a corner was the piano, battered, about to fall to pieces, its ancient ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Cropped hair watered down, humdrum neckties, composing away from the piano, no animals—it's all against me except ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... rooms in London—most of which he had had at Oxford—my own piano, our books, and various little worktables, chairs, pictures, and knicknacks appertained to us; also, we brought what belonged to the little one's nursery, and put him in the large room. His grand nurse—Earl though he was—could not ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kids all swear by Hayne because he's a good fellow and sings a jolly song and plays the piano—and poker. One of these days he'll swamp you all, sure as shooting. He's in debt now, and it'll fetch him before you know it. What he needs is to be under a captain who could discipline him a ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... think I'm made of—money?" his father had demanded. "You'll stay where you are until you've learned to read, and write, and figure: then you'll help me with the cattle. Next thing you'll be wantin' to play a flute or the piano." ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... that in any pinch she could take care of herself. She had learned to ride and shoot, to sleep out and cook in the open, to ride the ranges after dark by instinct and the stars—she had learned these things while other girls of her age learned the rudiments of fancy-work and the scales of the piano. ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... two friends were sitting at the piano, and Ticellini marked several songs and duets, a ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... to have the piano set across the window in the parlor, and the carters brought it in, and ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... family aboard the boat that served him as a workshop, and there were certain localities on his route where they looked for him regularly—he was, it seemed, a jack-of-all- trades, and could after a fashion even tune a piano ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... chairs for the comfort of the women. Parties are given by the employer to the employees, which he himself attends. He has thrown himself into whatever schemes his director has suggested. The director complained that the reason the new lunch room was not more popular was because a piano was needed. A second-hand one would not do, for that would cultivate bad taste in music. This showed the employer that soon everything would be expected from the "big house on the hill." An event which happened at the time when the pressure ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... heard unheeding the small village sounds that stole to her ears. The laughter of two children playing hide and seek behind the bushes across the way; the call of their mother summoning them to bed. The tinkle of a piano down the street; the whine of a Victrola in another home; the cry of a baby in pain; the murmur of talk on the porch next door; the slamming of a door; the creak of a gate; footsteps going down the brick pavement; the swinging to and fro of a hammock holding happy lovers under ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... Cranston's fireside. Sanders suggested that the Parson seemed to be "taking notice" again. But Davies went back to his station and Miss Loomis went on about her daily avocations, reading aloud while Margaret's busy needle flew, or playing sweet old melodies at the piano. The young officers were rather afraid of her. She was "a somewhat superior old maid," said a youngster whom she had found it expedient to repress. Some women declared her a trifle unapproachable, unsympathetic perhaps, but even that did not seem to disconcert her. Something ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... give her all the pleasure I can for it....' To make his wife happier he took up with the officials and any kind of rubbish. And they couldn't have company without giving food and drink, and they must have a piano and a fluffy little dog on the sofa—bad cess to it.... Luxury, in a word, all kinds of tricks. My lady did not stay with him long. How could she? Clay, water, cold, no vegetables, no fruit; uneducated people and drunkards, with no manners, and she was a pretty pampered ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... splendidly, and that he believed all the youth of Norway would adopt it enthusiastically; but that he was still puzzled over the very necessary word to fit the strongly marked refrain. However, he was not going to give it up. Next morning, when Grieg was in his room peacefully giving a piano lesson to a young lady, a furious ringing was heard at his front-door bell, as if the ringer would tear the bell from its wires, followed by a wild shout of "'Fremad! Fremad!' Hurrah, I have got it! 'Fremad!'" Bjornson, for of course the ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson |
