"Piano" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well as in the sailor's sanctuary or the stifled cabin, in days when accompaniments to vocal music were not considered necessary, when the full melodious sound of the human voice, THE NOBLEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD, was not strangled, drowned, or travestied by the noise of the everlasting piano, played with artistic skill to these spirit-stirring songs of the forecastle was commerce indebted for many of the finest and best sailors ever sprinkled with ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... unbearable to the subjects of the constitutional dislike. It has occurred to me that possibly you might have some such natural aversion to the sounds of the street, or such as are heard in most houses, especially where a piano is kept, as it is in fact in almost all of those in the village. Or it might be, I imagined, that some color in the dresses of women or the furniture of our rooms affected you unpleasantly. I know that instances of such antipathy have been recorded, and they would account ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Cecilia was at first extremely painful; but time and constancy of mind soon lessened its difficulty. She amused herself with walking and reading, she commissioned Mr Monckton to send her a Piano Forte of Merlin's, she was fond of fine work, and she found in the conversation of Mrs Delvile a never-failing resource against languor and sadness. Leaving therefore to himself her mysterious son, she wisely ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... Commandant at Rethel showed me a letter from a friend demanding "some easy chairs and a piano for his trench house," and the Major said, "I hear they have music up on the Yser, but the French are too ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... with its piano, books and pictures and other scattered evidence of culture and refinement, showed the manner in which the Blaines liked to live. Through the open window, affording a fine view of Central Park, with its rolling lawns, winding paths and masses ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... the door—even glanced at it from time to time directly, like a besieged commander pleased to verify the good estate of his defenses. But in truth he was at peace. The rain falling in the street sounded natural and pleasant. Presently, on the other side, the notes of a piano were wakened to the music of a hymn, and the voices of many children took up the air and words. How stately, how comfortable was the melody! How fresh the youthful voices! Markheim gave ear to it smilingly, as he sorted ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... drawing-room. His moose-hide moccasins sank luxuriantly into the deep carpet, and his eyes were caught by a Turner sunrise on the opposite wall. And there were other paintings and things in bronze. Two Dutch fireplaces were roaring full with huge back-logs of spruce. There was a piano; and somebody was singing. Frona sprang from the stool and came forward, greeting him with both hands. He had thought his sun-picture perfect, but this fire-picture, this young creature with the flush and warmth of ringing life, quite eclipsed it. It was a whirling moment, as he held her two ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... induced him to sing for company if his voice had been as harsh and cracked as hers, but he said it was a fact that everybody seemed to enjoy her noise more than his music; that when she took up her position on top of the piano to sing, they crowded around and called her "nice Bessie," "nice lady," and praised her, and gave her bits of sugar, as if she were the finest singer in the world. The admiral thought they showed very poor taste, for her ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... less than five minutes the organ was disintegrated, and the luckless minstrel flying with torn trousers down a side street. For the next few days la haute gomme promenaded with fragments of the piano organ suspended from watch chains as trophies of victory. But this was not all. Paris broke out into poetry over l'affaire Narcisse, and here is a journal sent to me by my friend which contains a poem in forty-nine stanzas by Aristophane le Beletier, the cher maitre of ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... once when our lady's brother was showing a visiting lady some old relics near the front door they came upon the head housemaid who was cleaning the church pew chairs (they were carried in while the church was being repaired), and she was near a very old grand piano. The lady asked in such a jeer, "And is this the housemaid's piano"? The gentleman looked very hard at the housemaid, for we were sure that he was very annoyed at her, but we did not hear his answer; but the housemaid had the good ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... various friends with violins and a flute. They come to a piano, and one begins softly to tune his violin, while ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... theology or law, the children would study quietly for probably an hour or more. Then, their lessons prepared, they would draw up in a little group to listen to a story, possibly from the Arabian Nights, or would gather about the piano in the parlor where Henry would sing to them the popular songs of that day. Sometimes the music would become so irresistibly gay that the children would begin to dance to its accompaniment and to awaken the echoes of the staid old ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... well as in their cellars at home, and their trim tidy wives. Eight or ten Irish children came also,—Bridget, Rosanna, Patrick, and Michael, and Mr. And Mrs. O'Brien themselves. Aunt Kindly had her piano there, and ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker
... turns, and secluded nooks, and a low and smoky ceiling. And nothing could have been more rudimentary than its decorations. The walls had simply been placarded with posters of violent hues, some of the crudest character, showing the barest of female figures. Behind a piano at one end there was a little platform reached by a curtained doorway. For the rest, one simply found a number of bare wooden forms set alongside the veriest pot-house tables, on which the glasses containing various beverages left round and sticky marks. There was no luxury, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... that was his favourite game. Then, did I say just now he was fond of music? He didn't care for the kind that Percy likes, but he would rarely send a piano-organ away, and he even encouraged the German bands. How fond he was of books too—and reading, and that sort of thing! Percy gets his fondness for books from his father. Clifford too is fond ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... its rarity. We misuse the word, for we fail to draw the necessary distinctions. We fail to recognize the plain and simple truth that many of us are not able to love—just as there are many who are not able to play the piano or to sing. We raise up our voices and make a sound, but it is not singing. We marry and we give in marriage, but it is not loving. Love is like a color—say, blue. There are a thousand shades of blue, and the outer shades are at last not blue at all, but ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... that my Grace adorns With flowers and with her presence, which is far Above the fragrant presence of all flowers. Grace sits at her piano; on her lips A song of twilight and the evening star. There as the shadows slowly gather round, Gianni comes, and stops a moody hour; She, ice to his approaches; he, despair; But ere he goes, he places ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... at one time to learn the piano, as in that day every girl was, to the saddening of human existence and the torturing of human nerves. After taking a few lessons Barbara was shrewd enough to discover that she had no musical gifts worth cultivating. ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... Dora, unaccompanied for once, swept into the place. Dora was gorgeously and flashily dressed and fairly scintillated with jewels. She seated herself not far from the door and ordered a cocktail. Then she whistled a bar of music suggestively to the piano-player, who immediately caught it, and the "orchestra" with a show of animation strummed out her suggestion. She sent over drinks for them and was rewarded with more ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... The naked walls were covered with fine paintings, in handsome frames; rich curtains were hung in the windows, and upon the floors were laid beautiful carpets.—The mirrors, sofas, chairs and cabinets were of the costliest kind; a magnificent piano was placed in the parlor, and the lady took care that the chamber which she intended to occupy was fitted up with all possible elegance and taste. A voluptuous bed, in which Venus might have revelled, ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... such of them as were old enough to hope and discuss their hopes—talked over their golden future. The tall grown girls whispered to each other of possible Barchester parties, of possible allowances for dress, of a possible piano—the one they had in the vicarage was so weather-beaten with the storms of years and children as to be no longer worthy of the name—of the pretty garden, and the pretty house. 'Twas of such things it most behoved them ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... shelf of books from the library. Then I brought the piano, because the youngsters wanted ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... a turn or two in the moonlight to get rid of the excitement of the evening, bent our steps in that direction. There were about as many persons assembled as the little drawing-room would hold, and Clara, having forgotten her headach, and looking as lovely as ever, was seated at a wretched piano, endeavouring to accompany herself in her favourite songs. Willingham and myself stood by, and our repeated requests for some of those melodies which, unknown to us before, we had learnt from her singing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... Winslow's runaway horse just at that ugly turn in the levee below the south tower. Cold-hearted, said many of the women, until Baby Brainard's fatal illness, when he watched by the little sufferer's side and brought her flowers and luscious fruit from town, and would sit at her mother's piano and play soft, sweet melodies and sing in low tremulous tone until the wearied eyelids closed and the sleep no potion could bring to that fever-racked brain would come at last for him to whom child-love was incense and music at once ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... enough to be able to point out why the harmonograph is so called. In the case just mentioned the period rates of A and B are as 2: 3. Now, if the note C on the piano be struck the strings give a certain note, because they vibrate a certain number of times per second. Strike the G next above the C, and you get a note resulting from strings vibrating half as many times again ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... get a little cool on the porch and the company were invited into the large double parlors to play some games. After enjoying a variety of games for an hour, it was proposed to have some music. The Hernes had a fine-toned piano, and it was always kept in tune. Several young gentlemen asked Miss Grace Nettleton for a song, and all the other members of the company joined in the request. Miss Nettleton said she would like some one to play the accompaniment, and Prof. French ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... drawing-room, which was exquisitely done up in Eastern style, with an arched roof, screens of wonderfully carved wood brought from Upper Egypt, Persian hangings and embroideries, divans and prayer rugs, on which nobody ever prayed. Lord Reggie and Mr. Amarinth both played the piano in an easy, tentative sort of way, making excess of expression do duty for deficiencies of execution, and covering occasional mistakes with the soft rather than with the loud pedal. Lord Reggie played a hymn of his own, which he frankly acknowledged was very beautiful. ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... restored with the appearance of the steak, which was found to have survived the period of waiting, and to be incredibly juicy and tender. Presently we were all settled once more in the great beamed living room, Sis at the piano, the two men smoking their after-dinner cigars with that idiotic expression of contentment which always adorns the masculine ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... Haydn's instrumental works. From the want of any generally-accepted consecutive numbering, and the fact that several are in the same key, this is particularly the case with the symphonies. Different editions have different numberings, and the confusion is increased by a further re-numbering of the piano symphonic scores arranged for two and four hands. In Breitkopf & Hartel's catalogue many works are included among the symphonies which are also found among the smaller compositions, and others are catalogued ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... produced in your home by Dr. Minot's heresies carries me back to the first act in that shadow fight, for I too was brought up by the strictest of parents, and, indeed, was myself, as a boy, a veritable prodigy of piety. What would you think of me as a preacher expounding the gospel over a piano-stool for pulpit to a rapt congregation of three? I could show you a sermon of that precocious Mr. Pound-text printed in the New York Observer when he was as much as nine years old—and the sermon ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... sedentary; as the best opening medicines in the world are an abundance of exercise, of muscular exertion, and of fresh air. Unfortunately, poor girls in this enlightened age must be engaged, sitting all the while, several hours every day at fancy work, the piano, and other accomplishments; they, consequently, have little time for exercise of any kind. The bowels, as a matter of course, become constipated; they are, therefore, dosed with pills, with black draughts, ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... soaked with a trampled conglomerate of mud and water, oil and filth, the debris left by the feet of the maddened, howling crowd, were entirely ruined; beds and bedding, mirrors, and smaller articles had been carried away, the grand piano had had a fire kindled on the key-board, as had the sofas and chairs upon their velvet seats, fires that were, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... Street. As soon as they entered it the man remarked on its warmth and its cosiness, so agreeable after the November streets. Christine only smiled. It was a long, narrow flat—a small sitting-room with a piano and a sideboard, opening into a larger bedroom shaped like a thick L. The short top of the L, not cut off from the rest of the room, was installed as a cabinet de toilette, but it had a divan. From the divan, ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... finally by her cultivated voice, her knowledge of languages, and her generally distinguished air) has spared no expense in the matter of her education. I shouldn't wonder a bit if she could even play the piano." ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... realized he was doing this, would abruptly look at the floor. In her handsome evening dress she appeared supremely lovely, and this John Kenyon admitted to himself with a sigh, for her very loveliness seemed to place her further and further away from him. Somebody played something on the piano, and this was, in a way, a respite for John. He felt that nobody was looking at him. Then a young man gave a recitation, which was very well received, and Kenyon began to forget his uneasiness. A German gentleman with long hair sat down at the ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... other girls. Her intimate friends had gone with the basket-ball team. No study hour was observed Friday evening. The parlors and library were open. Hester, from her room, could hear the sound of the piano and the school songs. Instead of enlivening her, it had ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... naphtha lamps they use in circuses. Going over to the tent, we learned that there was dancing within, whereupon we paid our fifteen cents apiece and entered. I have forgotten what produced the music—it may have been a mechanical piano or a hurdy-gurdy—but there was music, and it was loud, and there was a platform laid over the cobble-stones of the street, and on that platform ten or more couples were "ragging," their shoulders working ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... seated at the piano, improvising. Madame stood before the fireplace, arranging the pieces on a chess board. In the center of the room was a table littered with books, magazines and ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... acquired only in boarding schools, and boarding schools, as we know, hold the three principal subjects which constitute the basis of human virtue to be the French language (a thing indispensable to the happiness of married life), piano-playing (a thing wherewith to beguile a husband's leisure moments), and that particular department of housewifery which is comprised in the knitting of purses and other "surprises." Nevertheless changes and improvements ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... forget the evening when the young Polish violinist, whom I have already mentioned, asked me to play with him Beethoven's sonata for piano and violin, dedicated to Kreuzer, his favourite piece, which he had long been unable to play for want of a ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... rats and mice were having their innings in the schoolrooms, and the big bell was getting rusty for want of exercise. The door of the Lower Third had not had a panel kicked out of it for a whole week, and Dr Allsuch's pictures and sofas and piano were all stacked up in the Detention Room while their proper quarters ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... told me nearly everything except where we have our piano," Helen returned. "I don't suppose your diagram ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... French doll, as she giggled behind her hand, so Uncle Clem began hammering the eight keys on the toy piano with all his might until a noise was ...
— Raggedy Ann Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... 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 ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... father, William Wiedemann, a ship-owner, was a Hamburg German settled in Dundee, and has been described by Mr. Browning as an accomplished draughtsman and musician. She herself had nothing of the artist about her, though we hear of her sometimes playing the piano; in all her goodness and sweetness she seems to have been somewhat matter-of-fact. But there is abundant indirect evidence of Mr. Browning's love of music having come to him through her, and we are certainly justified in holding ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... 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 ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... habits. Generally the British troops were 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, danced with ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... known as "Bert's Place," and was shocked on staring through his show window to observe the Honourable George and Cousin Egbert waltzing madly with the cow-persons, Hank and Buck, to the strains of a mechanical piano. The Honourable George had exchanged his top-hat for his partner's cow-person hat, which came down over his ears ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... seating himself upon a piano-stool, and screwing himself up until he was near the ceiling and on a level with the singer's head. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... these people to the bottom, there was various testimony as to the period when the girl had last been seen. Some said that it was four days since there had been a trace of her; but an English lady, in the second piano of the palace, was rather of opinion that she had met her, the morning before, with a drawing-book in her hand. Having no acquaintance with the young person, she had taken little notice and might have been mistaken. A count, on the ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not all Naples-bay and half Sicily, shore and inland, come flocking once a year to the Piedigrotta fete only to see the blessed King's Volanti, or livery servants all in their best; as though heaven opened; and would not I engage to bring the whole of the Piano (of Sorrento) in likeness to a red velvet dressing gown properly spangled over, before the priest that held it out on a pole had even begun his story of how Noah's son Shem, the founder of Sorrento, threw it off to swim ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... a tea equipage fit for an empress! It is perfect, and I do not know how to thank you. Yes. I forgive you for writing. Have I really helped you to play? I am so glad. You say Chopin, so I suppose it is the piano? I must tell you that I remember all the stories you told me of Siena, and they add to the interest of my days. I give English lessons, and am making enough money to keep myself, but in the intervals of grammar and 'I Promessi Sposi' (no less than three of my ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... 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," exquisitely painted by Lancret; ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... 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 ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... conscious that as his residence was "detached," no obtrusive neighbor could either warn him to desist, or set up an opposition nuisance next door by constant practice on the distressingly over-popular piano. One thing very much in his favor was, that he never manifested any desire to perform in public. No one had ever heard him play, . . he pursued his favorite amusement in solitude, and was amply satisfied, if when questioned on ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... set forth, but a storehouse with varied and almost irresistible windows enticed us and we went no farther. It was a mighty department store and we were informed that we need not pass its doors again until we had selected everything we needed from a can-opener to a grand piano. We didn't, and ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... over to the open piano in one corner of the room. Nora had taken music and so was the pianist of the family. She struck the opening chords, and then they all joined in ...
— The Quest of Happy Hearts • Kathleen Hay
... in other instruments, too. The violin seems beautifully alive as it responds to the lightest wish of the master. The distinction between its notes is more delicate than between the notes of the piano. ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... at a grand piano, playing BACH and moodily reflecting on these matters, when Ralph Wonderson himself entered the room, vaulting lightly over piano and performer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... transfixed, something within her responding to the hidden singer, as she had once heard a closed piano sound to a voice that sang near it. Soon she could get broken glimpses of him as he wound down the trail, now turning around the end of a fallen tree, then passing behind a giant spruce, now leaning ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... baths, cheap and good, and sundry coiffeurs who were much in demand, for they made you smell sweetly. Then there was a little blue and white cafe. The daughter of the house was well-favoured and played the piano with some skill. One of us spent all his spare time at this cafe in silent adoration—of the piano, for his French was exiguous in the extreme. There was a patisserie crammed full of the most delicious cream-cakes. The despatch rider who went to Hinges about 3.30 P.M. and did not ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... sovereigns welded together. We also collected a quantity of silver, all welded together, scarcely a spoon or fork retaining its shape; still it was valuable, and I disposed of it afterwards in Toronto. Among the chief valuables destroyed were our piano, recently brought from England, the harmonium, a library of 500 volumes, and all our stores for the winter which had just been laid in. The whole loss was estimated at about L1300. The carpenters had only been out a day or two, and ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... moved to the piano, Brown looked up at The Don. His handsome, haughty face was set hard and in his eyes burned a light that Brown had often seen there on ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... the drawing-room. The ladies were grouped together at one end, near the piano. Margot was among them. She was, as usual, dressed in white, and round the bottom of her gown there was an edging of snow-white fur. As we came in, she moved away from the piano to a sofa at some distance, and sank down upon it. Professor Black, who had entered ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... looked back on those Sunday afternoons with a shadow of regret, for her feet found a sweeter, holier path. Marie prided herself on a little tinge of scepticism, but they rarely touched on that ground. The twilight shadows gathered about the old piano in the corner, and the pictures grew dimmer on the wall, and Marie would play soft love-songs on her guitar, and sometime Beth would recite ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... a powder gun to shoot right at my sister Annie, and a big trumpet I can toot just awful loud at granny. I want a dreffle big false face to scare in fits our ba- by. I want a pony I can race around the parlor, maybe. I want a little hatchet, too, so I can do some chopping upon our grand piano new, when mamma goes a-shopping. I want a nice hard rub- ber ball to smash all into flinders, the great big mirror in the hall an' lots an' lots of winders. An' candy that'll make me sick, so ma all night will hold me an' make pa get the doctor quick ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... pastures, precipices all around, and snow-clad summits continually unfolding themselves; Murray is right in calling the valley above Venosc a scene of savage sterility. At Venosc, in the poorest of hostelries was a tuneless cracked old instrument, half piano, half harpsichord—how it ever found its way there we were at a loss to conceive—and an irrelevant clock that struck seven times by fits and starts at its own convenience during our one o'clock dinner; we returned to Bourg d'Oisans at ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... time would spend days at his piano engrossed in the creation of new tunes. Showers of melody would stream from under his dancing fingers, while Akshay Babu and I, seated on either side, would be busy fitting words to the tunes as they grew into shape to help to hold them in our memories.[34] This is how ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... After some 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
... will embarrass a woman and what won't. I remember when the Jocelyn house burned down, and nothing was saved but a piano (at which Peter Reddy seated himself and played the "Fire Music") and a scuttle of coal, how Mrs. Jocelyn, usually the shyest and most easily shocked person in the world, came down a ladder in nothing but a flimsy nightgown, and stood among us utterly unselfconscious and calmly making the best ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... different with us. Our minister now performs the function of the Greek poet at marriages and funerals. Our funeral sermons and newspaper paragraphs have taken the place of the Greek encomiums. Our fiddles or piano do duty instead of the Greek dithyrambs, hyporchems, and other dancing songs. Our warriors are either left unsung, or celebrated in verse that reads much better than it sings. The members of the "Benevolent Pugilistic Association" do not stand ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... do! I can drive a car. I can ride anything that goes on four legs. I can dance, and skate, and arrange flowers with taste. I can re-trim a hat, and at a pinch make a whole blouse. I can order a nice meal, and grumble when it is spoiled. I can strum on the piano and paint Christmas cards. I can entertain ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 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 situated ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... The idea however started by her, was immediately pursued by Colonel Brandon, who was on every occasion mindful of the feelings of others; and much was said on the subject of rain by both of them. Willoughby opened the piano-forte, and asked Marianne to sit down to it; and thus amidst the various endeavours of different people to quit the topic, it fell to the ground. But not so easily did Elinor recover from the alarm into which it ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... take pleasure in society, from the dejection and introversion peculiarly characteristic of opium's revenges. This comprehends a suite of parlors where ladies and gentlemen can meet in the evening on just the same refined and pleasant terms that belong to an elegant home elsewhere; furnished with piano to dance to, play, or sing with; first-class pictures as fast as our own funds, aided by donations and bequests, can procure them for us—but bare wall or handsome paper or fresco rather than any daub to fill a panel; fine engravings in portfolios; cosy open ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... had his station at the business-table in the midst. Valuable rows of books looked down upon the place of torture; and I could hear sparrows chirping in the garden, and my sprightly cousin already banging the piano and pouring forth an acid stream of song from the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Front parlor, including piano, with front and back bedrooms on second floor; front basement; gas, bath, hot and cold water, stationary tubs; rent reasonable. ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... was at the piano. Her gown, of burlaps, made Patty think it had been made from an old coffee sack. But it had a marvelous sash of flaming vermilion velvet, edged with gold fringe, and in her black hair was stuck a long, bright red quill feather, that gave her an ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... skirts of which his legs, as he slewed round, showed like the lower limb of the letter O. Through the closed skylight windows I could get a sort of watery view of the cuddy passengers—as they were then called—reading, playing at chess, playing the piano, below. There were some scores of steerage and 'tween-deck passengers, deeper yet in the bowels of the ship, but hidden out of sight by the ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... was what she seemed to be—a fairly well-educated, up-to-date young woman with whom a friendly flirtation was just what it was with white womankind—the pleasant amusement of an hour or season. It was a mistake—a very big mistake. Tannis understood something of piano playing, something less of grammar and Latin, and something less still of social prevarications. But she understood absolutely nothing of flirtation. You can never get an Indian to see the sense ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... consisting of some four thousand complex arches, which increase regularly in length and diminish in height. They are connected at one end with the fibres of the auditory nerve, and Helmholtz has suggested that the waves of sound play on them, like the fingers of a performer on the keys of a piano, each separate arch corresponding to a different sound. We thus obtain a glimpse, though but a glimpse, of the manner in which perhaps we hear; but when we pass on to the senses of smell and taste, all we know is that ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... set into a saloon listening to that Lady that sings high up—higher than any piano can go. I've set and listened till I didn't know where I was settin'—of course I had to buy a drink, you understand, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... she repaired to the chambers, which she swept and dusted, arranging the furniture, and making everything ready for the comfort of the travelers. Then descending to the parlors, she went through the same process there, filled the vases with fresh flowers, looped back the curtains, opened the piano, wheeled the sofa a little to the right, the large chair a little to the left, and then going to the dining-room, she set the table in the most perfect order, doing all so quietly that her aunt knew ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... to the grass. Two foot-passengers were talking together on one side of the pavement before the houses, and an idle little boy was leading an idle little dog along by a string on the other. I heard the dull tinkling of a piano at a distance, accompanied by the intermittent knocking of a hammer nearer at hand. These were all the sights and sounds of life that encountered me when ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... Burnt, or the Dreadful Conflagration." It won such success among the farm-house gentry that the singer returned for another ballad and obtained it. Some years later Mr. Cooper was invited to a tea-party in a near village, when a young lady, led to the piano for music, began to sing, much to the author's disturbing amazement, "Buffalo Burnt, or the ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... discussed by ordinary men, and then to read Buchanan, there is as much difference as in listening to a novice performing on a piano, and then to a Chevalier Gluck ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... marvellous representations of Scripture history, and was protected by a very tall green guard; the chairs were much of the same date, solid and heavy, the seats in faded carpet-work, but there was a sprinkling of lesser ones and of stools; a piano; a globe; a large table in the middle of the room, with three desks on it; a small one, and a light cane chair by each window; and loaded book-cases. Flora began, "If you don't ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... he broke uncounted crockery, involved us in innumerable quarrels with our neighbors, and fattened upon meat at ten cents a pound, like the favorite of a Chinese epicure. At the very altar, or rather, I should say, the piano, before which we stood to be married, he interfered with the happy arrangement of the bridal party, with his ill-timed blandishments; but afterward did rue good service by getting under the feet of my groomsman, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... when he knew that his time had come, to turn to Mrs. Bourke, who was famous only as shining in his reflected light, and say: "Mrs. Bourke, won't you play us something, and I will just come in with my fiddle?" Rubinstein's playing I never liked. To me he seemed only the most violent of all the piano-bangers of the world; but he was literally worshipped by his admirers, and was grand to look at—as fine as ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... shrank backward as Putney suddenly entered through the window and gained the corner of the piano at a dash. He stayed himself against it, slightly swaying, and turned his flaming eyes from one to another, as if questioning ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... never lasted later than a few minutes after ten, but when once Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy and Miss Kendal had possession of the piano and guitar, there was no conclusion. Song succeeded song, they wanted nothing save their own harmony, and hardly waited for Miss Goldsmith's sleepy thanks. The vicar hated late hours, and the Kendals felt every song a trespass upon their hosts, but the musicians had their backs to ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Christmas Present knew it. The way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage on the credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping up against the piano, smothering himself amongst the curtains, wherever she went, there went he! He always knew where the plump sister was. He wouldn't catch anybody else. If you had fallen up against him, (as some of them did) on purpose, he would have made a feint of endeavoring to seize you, which ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... 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 ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... of the war her chateau was occupied by a lot of officers, who got gloriously drunk and smashed up pretty well everything in the drawing-room and dining-room. One of them, with a fine sense of humour, took a piece of hard chalk and wrote on the top of her piano in large letters: Deutschland ueber alles! The crowd left the place in the morning without trying to cover their traces, and Madame B—— came in to put things to rights. The first thing she did was to get a large piece ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... 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 ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... bought cheap at a sale, and disembowelled into a species of deceptive bed. I think the hint might put "people about to marry" up to a dodge in the way of spare beds. Everybody now sees through the old chiffonier and wardrobe turn-up impositions, but the grand piano would beat them; only it should be kept locked, for fear any one given to harmony might commence playing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... saw 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.
... that purpose," added Aunt Agatha fairly, "but he did it, anyway. I can't for the life of me see why it is that young Mr. Wherry is perpetually making scratches where his feet rest. And I'm sure he left his footprint on the piano and thundered through every roll on the player, for they're all out of place, and the Williston caretaker heard him, though like as not it was Carl for that matter. He's a Westfall, and he'd do it if he felt like it, dear ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... on; Mrs. Leigh proceeded with the turning of an old merino dress; Miss Opie adjusted her spectacles, and read Good Words. Bluebell sat down to the piano and executed a selection from Rossini's 'Messe Solennelle' with ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... carriage whirled away. Then she rose up with the queerest expression of victorious mischief glittering in her green eyes. She burst out laughing once or twice to herself, as she sat at work, and sitting down to the piano, she rattled away a triumphant voluntary on the keys, which made the people pause under her window to listen to her ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... skeleton keys; ingenious upholsterers who indulged in paper-hanging on the sly; shoemakers who did half-soling and heeling, their day's work set to dry on the window-sill, not to mention those addicted to the use of the piano, banjo, or harp, as well as the wig and dress makers who lightened the ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... against the weaker sex, the tones of the female (called feminine tones even to-day) were discarded in favour of those of the male bird. The latter, the basis of Chinese music, correspond to the black keys of our piano, while the former were equivalent to the white, or diatonic, ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... too many photographs on view of persons distinguished for their solidity rather than for their good looks, the portraits of the guests whom one would expect to find installed in those chairs. A grand piano was there; but the absence of any music in its neighbourhood indicated that its purpose was chiefly to symbolize harmony in the home life, and to provide a spacious crush-room for the knick-knacks overflowing from many tables. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... told me nothing. The only way I can tell whether it is good or bad is by smoking it. Even then I could not tell you (without the assistance of the band) whether it was a Sancho Panza or a Guoco Piano. I could only tell you whether I liked it or not, a question of no ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... couldn't pack a Broadwood half a mile," but the Wilson home gives the lie direct to this, blithe line. In a corner of the drawing-room stands an old-fashioned piano with a history. The honourable ancestress of all the modern square pianos and baby-grands of Canada, this little instrument came long years ago in the hold of a sailing ship to Hudson Bay, and by interior ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... necessary. The perfection of certain instruments, too, is the cause of modifications in the music written for them. The limited compass of the pianoforte, for example, was certainly the sole reason why Beethoven failed to continue in octaves the entire ascending scale in one of his sonatas. Had the piano in his day possessed its present compass, he would undoubtedly have written the passage throughout in octaves, i.e., as modern pianists play it. If a rigid adherence to the printed letter of ancient music is to ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... with music, and Miss Rose went to the piano. The minute she began to play, Clematis stood up, and stared ...
— Clematis • Bertha B. Cobb
... unsatisfactory, but worst of all was his customary couch in the study. That couch was dreadful to him, probably because of the oppressive thoughts he had had when lying there. It was unsatisfactory everywhere, but the corner behind the piano in the sitting room was better than other places: he had never slept ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the following years Garlan used often to come to Vienna on business, and never omitted to visit Bertha's family on such occasions. After supper it was Bertha's custom to play the piano for Garlan's entertainment, and he used to listen to her with an almost reverent attention, and would, perhaps, go on to talk of his little nephew and niece—who were both very musical—and to whom he would often speak ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... years. The work is dedicated to Goethe, who wrote an almost enthusiastic review of it for the Literary Gazette of Jena. "Every lover or master of musical art," he says, "should have this volume upon his piano." ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... revelations of my sorrows to be dragged from me with as many grimaces as a young lady allows herself before sitting down to the piano, so conscious are they of the annoyance that will follow. As you may imagine, the necessity for overcoming my dislike to speak had induced the Countess to strengthen the bonds of our intimacy; but she found in me so exact a counterpart of her own antipathy to love, that I fancied ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... freely of it. The consequence was that I soon became helplessly intoxicated. I can indistinctly remember the dancing lights, the popping of champagne corks—the noise, the confusion, the thrumming of a piano, and the boisterous laughter—and then I fell into a condition of ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... excited... They have hundreds of red, round hands, Still, large, without end Placed around their high, motley bellies. Most people are drinking yellow beer. Grocers, their cigarettes burning, gape. A fine young woman sings vulgar songs. A young Jew plays the piano with ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... was left to wait puzzled Gillian. All the familiar tapestries and cushions and rare knick-knacks which wontedly converted the further end of it into a charming reception room were gone. The chairs were covered in plain holland, the piano sheeted. But the big easel, standing like a tall cross in the cold north light, was swathed in a dust-sheet. Gillian's heart misgave her. Was she too ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... piano stands near the open window, a few comfortable chairs, a desk with a hanging lamp above it, and an arm-chair in front of it, a quaint old fireplace, a Dutch wall clock with weights, a sofa, a hat-rack, and ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco |
