"Keyboard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over, the worshipers sat down. Captain Eben took a figured handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. The thin, nearsighted young woman who had been humped over the keyboard of the melodeon, straightened up. The worshipers relaxed a little ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was at a loss when it developed ailments; and to these it was prone, being a machine of temperament and airs, inclined to lose spirit, to sulk, even irritably to refuse all response to Dave's fingering of the keyboard. Dave was sincerely startled when his son one day skillfully restored tone to the thing after it had disconcertingly rebelled. Sam Pickering, on the point of wiring for the mechanic who had installed ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... her when I see that she is obliged to labor till she gasps, not because she is unapt, but because she can't help it,—she is used to playing so, nobody ever taught her differently. I said to her mother and her that if I were her regular teacher, I would lock up all her music, cover the keyboard with a handkerchief, and make her practice both hands at first slowly on nothing but passages, trills, mordents, etc., until the difficulty with the left hand was remedied; after that I am sure I could make a real clavier player out ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... been typing all the time with my eyes on the keyboard, and I hadn't once glanced at the finished work. Now I looked at it I saw that she was right. I had been typing letters all along when I should have been printing figures. And then something queer about the letters struck me. My heart gave ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... election and get this job for the two years of unexpired term, you'll be court stenographer—pays fifteen hundred a year." The girl glanced quickly at him again, with fire in her eyes, then looked conspicuously down at the keyboard ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... spent several health-giving months in the country. To help her happily to occupy her time, the good friend bought Kate a cheap concertina. By the hour she would sit in the sunshine, mastering the keyboard, and soon she could play simple Army tunes. How richly our Heavenly Father blesses the gifts of love! All unconsciously, the good soldier was preparing the Angel Adjutant of the future to win the hopeless and despairing of many great cities ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... of the sunlight, the glory of colour, the songs of sweet birds, the fragrance of flowers, and the exquisite vibrations of the light and air. Like two notes of a perfect chord we sound our lives on the keyboard of the Infinite— and we know that the music will become fuller and sweeter as the eternal seasons roll on. If it is asked why there should have been any necessity to pass through the psychic ordeal imposed on me by Aselzion, I reply—Look at ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... an exhaustive examination of the letters, and as Kennedy called off the various characteristics of each type on the standard keyboard we checked them up. It did not take long to convince us, nor would it have failed to convince the most sceptical, that both had come from the same source ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... many curious musical instruments which are now entirely obsolete. Of these the most popular was the pianoforte, a large wooden box with a long horizontal keyboard, which the player struck with his fingers. Considerable and sometimes even distressing dexterity was attained by the performers, who indulged in all sorts of strange antics and gestures. The exercise was found to be remarkably beneficial to the ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various
... There were near green hills, and far blue mountains, and certain rocky eminences in the middle distance, but nothing of grandeur. Poplars marched along with us on either side, primly on guard, and puritanical, though all the while their myriad little fingers seemed to twinkle over the keyboard of an invisible piano, playing ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... systems: unsociable. Used to describe a program that rudely steals the resources that it needs without considering that other TSRs may also be resident. One particularly common form of rudeness is lock-up due to programs fighting over the keyboard ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... while rippling runs and sonorous harmonies filled the room to overflowing, as if under the fingers of the player there were—not the keyboard of a piano—but the violins, flutes, cornets, trombones, bass viols and kettledrums ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... hold his mind. The shading of the lights, the patches of dark shadows, the vagueness of some parts, the sharp outlines of others, the quietness of some parts of the picture as against the vehement movement of others all play on the keyboard of our mind and secure the desired ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... command a sergeant plugged in certain stops upon a keyboard and then when the Colonel, taking a hand telephone up from a table, had talked into it in German he passed it into ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... put aside that half-hour between dinner and the moment for my appointment to run up and down my mental keyboard under what to me are the most favorable conditions possible—an evening walk through the streets of a great city. Some men can invite their souls only in sylvan solitudes, but the flare of light, the clash of traffic, the kaleidoscopic procession of humanity, with its challenging contrasts shifting ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... are famed for their ability to open doors by pulling latch-strings. And not a few cats show a strong desire to study music by walking up and down the keyboard of a piano! ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... swung himself back to the keyboard again, pounding out a few bars of the dance music in Strauss' Salome, of which the score lay open before him. He was a good-looking young man of twenty-two, of whom any mother, not too exacting, might be proud. Very blond—with well-chiselled features and waving hair—not ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... the church to play the organ—a neat little instrument of some eight or ten stops; and it was while "giving out" the familiar tune of Antioch that I noticed, in the reflection of a little mirror placed above the keyboard, that Mr. Bronte had entered the church, and was passing up the aisle. He wore the customary black gown, and the lower part of his face was quite buried in an enormous white neckcloth—the most monstrous article of the kind I had ever beheld. The reflection ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... O Malines, The master of the bells unseen Has climbed to where the keyboard stands,— To-night his heart is in his hands! Once more, before invasion's hell Breaks round the tower he loves so well, Once more he strikes the well-worn keys, And sends aerial harmonies Far-floating through the twilight dim In patriot song ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... until every tooth in his head showed, making his mouth look like the keyboard of ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... records of output of a typist who was using a different keyboard every day, if there were that many kinds of keyboards. It is easy for anyone to conceive the great advantages of standard keyboards for such machines, but only those who have made a study of output ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... snapped on the code-index, found the symbol he wanted, and then punched it on the keyboard. "Special Chief's Assistant Verkan Vall," he identified himself. "Speaking from office of Tortha Karf, Chief Paratime Police. I want a complete hypno-mech on Venusian nighthounds, emphasis on wild state, special emphasis domesticated nighthounds ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... evening, as I have felt sure since, that Chopin himself, aristocrat of the soul as he was, would have received Diaz as an equal, might even have acknowledged in him a superior. For Diaz had a physique, and he had a mastery, a tyranny, of the keyboard that Chopin could not have possessed. Diaz had come to the front in a generation of pianists who had lifted technique to a plane of which neither Liszt nor Rubinstein dreamed. He had succeeded primarily by his gigantic and incredible technique. And then, when his technique had astounded ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... pains and pleasures of life, merely manipulated by the imagination and the memory, have too little variety or magnitude in them without further aid. Art without the moral sense to play upon, is like a pianist whose keyboard is reduced to a ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... room, hung with mirrors and containing a piano, a perfect room for banquetting. The lieutenant opened the piano with his sword, and before Theodore knew where he was, he was sitting on the music-stool, and his hands were resting on the keyboard. ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... her, jerked out my guns, and reached around both sides of her to the pianner. I run the muzzles up and down the keyboard two or three times, and then shot ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... dinner,' she reflected, 'and it was all-important to us who should turn over our leaves for us, and we generally blushed and hesitated before we sat down to the piano at all. Last night Jane almost fought with Peter for the larger portion of the keyboard of the piano; and they played music without any tune in it, to my way of thinking, and there is no seriousness at all about ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... attained middle tones shall again be universally perceived. At the present moment our instrumental art has, in this particular, fallen under the tyranny of piano manufacturers and makers of wind instruments. When the keyboard of the grand piano has been made longer by a few keys, the composers think they are remaining "behind the times" if they do not immediately introduce these new high treble tones into their next work, and when the wind instruments have been enriched by several new valves and regulators the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... I am quite stunned," said the Count as he left the house. "A child dancing on the keyboard would make better music." ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... came to an untimely close. In the year 1847, while conducting the little choir that she led on Sundays, she met an end as sudden as it was unexplained. Her hands dropped in an instant from the keyboard of the piano, and fell limp at her side. In spite of medical aid, death came after a short interval. It is highly probable that the early exertions of herself and her brother, which made their talents so wonderful, resulted in ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... heard a single note on the 'high C.' He groped his way to the keyboard, but there ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... really fitted for anyone to spend his whole time there. There was none of the accumulation of property that would fit any permanent residence. He went out of the bedroom, passing the typewriter desk. The typewriter was an old, standard Olympia—a German machine he'd refitted with the Dvorak keyboard which he had learned for greater efficiency. He was sure nobody else would ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... he walked over toward it, with an air of cautious determination, of readiness for anything, that made Paula want to laugh. He dropped down sidewise on the bench, turned up the lid and dug his fingers into the keyboard. ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... not looking at the music before her, but up at nothing, while her hands ran over the keyboard, playing an old sailor's "chantey" which Lowell has taught us. It carries with it all the sweep and murmur of ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... to-day is the invention of M. Dietz, of Brussels. His grandfather was one of the first manufacturers of upright pianos, and being struck with the difficulties and defects of the harp, constructed, in 1810, an instrument a cordes pincees a clavier—the strings connected with a keyboard. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... that what I had taken for the keyboard of the organ was no keyboard but only a slit, and one of the little Lords dropped a plaque of metal into it. And then the angels played and the world turned round and the organ made a noise and the people began killing one another ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... it travelled into the depth of the room beyond the circle of the lamp-light, where the grand piano stood. Its keyboard shone in an even band of white, its massive body merged ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... realized it before, but from that episode when he fled to Hamilton from his lunch with her had sprung the root of every succeeding chapter of tragedy—and for her he had lost Marcia! Then he led her to a place of vantage and went to the keyboard. ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... on receiving his take places it on the copy-holder of his linotype or monotype machine and begins composing it into type. The linotype machine consists of a keyboard not unlike that of the typewriter, which actuates a magazine containing matrices or countersunk letter molds, together with a casting mechanism for producing lines or bars of words. By touching the keys, the compositor releases letter by letter an entire line of matrices, which ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... tapestries and costly oil paintings. Over Editor Woodsit's desk appears the legend, "The Pen Is Mightier Than the Sword." Near the desk are rows of nickel-plated tubes, about six feet in height and two feet in diameter; the lids or covers to these tubes are opened by means of a keyboard in front of the editor. The tubes themselves contain the heads of the departments of the State ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... down obediently to the instrument. He watched her for a few moments from the toe of her kid slipper on the pedals to the swell of her shoulders above the keyboard, with a strange, abstracted face. Presently she stopped and ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... every human feeling. I have heard Burns in the writing of this poem likened to a composer at an organ improvising a piece of music in which, before he has done, he has used every stop and touched every note on the keyboard. Even the weakest lines of the piece, which mark a dramatic pause in the rapid narration, have a distinctive beauty and are the most frequently quoted lines of the poem. In artistic word-painting and graphic phrasing Burns is here at his best. His description of the horrible is worthy of Shakspeare; ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... piano, where Mr Armstrong, still in the clouds, was roaming at will over the chords, and laid his father's letter on the keyboard. ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... in this night of spring, one was calling to its mate. The Commandant heard it, and struck its note on the upper keyboard. ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... returned Alene, slipping her hand from the keyboard to give Ivy's brown fingers a ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... inhabitants; or looks up to see mischievous eyes watching a chance to stop the uninteresting writing; or feels, suddenly, soft arms round one's neck, as a baby, strayed from her own domain, climbs unexpectedly up from behind and makes dashes at the typewriter keyboard. Such little living interruptions are too frequent to allow of these ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... besides being a great musician, he made organs of lead with his own hand. In S. Domenico he made one of cardboard, which has ever remained sweet and good; and in S. Clemente there was another, also by his hand, which was placed on high, with the keyboard below on the level of the choir—truly with very beautiful judgment, since, the place being such that the monks were few, he wished that the organist should sing as well as play. And since this Abbot loved his Order, like a true minister ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... withdrawals without calculations of interest or other incidents whatever. In fact, Mr. West, so simple and invariable are the conditions that the accounts are kept automatically by a machine, the accountant merely playing on a keyboard." ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... this assertion by seating himself at the keyboard and rattling off some popular melodies. With music and laughter the long twilight fled, for O'Neil's "boys" flung themselves into the task of entertaining ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... winter. Yet I was able to wring pure joy out of Rachmaninoff's playing at Carnegie Hall, with a great man making music for music's sake. I loved the beauty and balance and splendid sanity of that playing, without keyboard fire-works and dazzle and glare. But Rachmaninoff was the exception. Even Central Park seemed smaller than of old, and I couldn't remember which drives Dinky-Dunk and I had taken in the historic old hansom-cab after our equally historic marriage by ricochet. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... and fit themselves to his purpose, and he learns to transfer the stress from his throat to his lungs as easily and quickly and instinctively as the pianist passes his fingers from the treble to the base notes on the keyboard. ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... her fingers on the keyboard as he bent to her, first kissing her hair, then slowly turning her face up to his and kissing ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... the salon of the Countess Komar, Delphine's mother, he played one evening the portraits of the two daughters of the house. When it came to Delphine's he gently drew her light shawl from her shoulders, spread it over the keyboard, and then played through it, his fingers, with every tone they produced, coming in touch with the gossamer-like fabric, still warm and hallowed for him ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... elements, in color and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... the music-room when the crowd had congested the hall. People were introduced to her, and sank down into the nearest chairs. Mrs Antrobus took up her old place by the keyboard of the piano. Everybody seemed to be expecting something, and by degrees the import of their longing was borne in upon Olga. They waited, and waited and waited, much as she had waited for a cigarette the evening before. She looked at the piano, and ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... chap I was speaking to you about," said Captain Bob, pointing to a wounded Highlander, whose head was enveloped in a bandage. "He's a regular genius on the keyboard; that is why there are such a lot of chaps here to-night. He only blew in a couple of days ago from the brigade on our right when he heard we were lucky enough ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... For long after the keyboard became an indistinguishable blur Peters played on untiringly. But at last he rose, closed the piano and turned on an electric lamp that ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... universal interest in it have affected the national thought and character. The whole people have acquired a certain metropolitan temper; they feel everything at once and in common; a single pulse sends anger, grief, or triumph through the whole country; one man sitting at the keyboard of the telegraph in Washington sets the chords vibrating to the same tune from sea to sea; and this simultaneousness, this unanimity, deepens national consciousness and intensifies popular emotion. Every man ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... may cost you a great deal—it might cost you your life perhaps." He paused significantly, and there was a second outburst, this time from the younger men, which came so suddenly that it was as though Louis had played upon certain chords on a keyboard, and the sounds he wanted had answered ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... staff applies the names and spellings from the Chiefs of State link on the CIA Web site. The World Factbook is prepared using the standard American English computer keyboard and does not use any special characters, symbols, or most diacritical markings in its spellings. Surnames are always spelled with capital letters; they may appear first ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... with the Western Union. He had to wait a few days, and during this time he seized the opportunity to study the indicators and the complicated general transmitter in the office, controlled from the keyboard of the operator on the floor of the Gold Exchange. What happened next has been the basis of many inaccurate stories, but is dramatic enough as told in Mr. Edison's own version: "On the third day of my arrival and while sitting ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... before a Mr. Bailey, who boarded in the house, and whose daughter was taking music lessons, had tried to purchase her piano, telling her that so fine a player as herself ought to have one with a longer keyboard. Ethie had thought so herself, wishing sometimes that she had a larger instrument, which was better adapted to the present style of music, but she could not bring herself to part with Aunt Barbara's present. Now, however, the case was different. Money ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... light which lightens the darkness of the future, a presentiment of the sacred joys of a shared love, the certainty of mutual comprehension. Above all, it is like the touch of a firm and able hand on the keyboard of the senses. The eyes are fascinated by an irresistible attraction; the heart is stirred; the melodies of happiness echo in the soul and in the ears; a voice cries out, "It is he!" Often reflection casts a douche of cold water on this boiling ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... hopelessly out of order, but Mottram managed to bring the rebellious notes into a sort of agreement, and there rose from the ragged keyboard something that might once have been the ghost of a popular music-hall song. The men in the long chairs turned with evident interest as Mottram banged ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... a formula of words which some genius had devised for the fingering practice it gave one on the keyboard, and Joe Harned had written it hundreds of times before, just as thousands of others had done, without giving a thought to its meaning, or the significance that the substitution of a single word would ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... china had been lifted from the lower shelves of the china closet, and placed upon the table, the window seats, and even the piano boasted two dainty cups that the visitor, whoever it might be, had placed upon the keyboard. ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... which the money of all varieties is raked, tossed and flung about the board by the croupiers, with apparently the utmost recklessness and without mistakes. They have spent their lives at it and know it the way Paderewski knows his keyboard. Three men are employed at each table to follow all the betting, and they watch like hawks every one playing. So perfectly is the whole thing done that never a word is spoken; it's all action—simply the placing of the coin on the spot. Most of the players have systems they follow, and prick ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... at each end of the line are identical. Each includes a keyboard like a piano manual, with a key for each letter or character. On each machine is a type wheel, which has the characters engraved in relief upon its face. With the wheel a "chariot" as it is termed also rotates. The type wheels at both ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... splendidly achieved in the soft, shimmering liquidity of the music. Then there are two abrupt, but soft, short chords that will represent, to the imaginative, the quick fixing of the eagle's heart on some prey beneath; and there follows a sudden precipitation down the keyboard, fortississimo, that represents the thunderous swoop of ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... the piano, sat carelessly, sidewise, on its stool, and, thrumming at the keyboard, fell to humming in a slurring, reminiscent fashion, the ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... bodies of tone are played successively, a number of melody lines are being described,—as many, in fact, as there are tones in each body. For example, in playing a hymn-tune we describe (on the keyboard) the four separate melodies known as the soprano, alto, tenor and bass voices. In a duet, unaccompanied, there are two melodic lines; if accompanied, other melodic lines are added to these. Thus we recognize the same system ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... an old recollection. My sister used to sing. I remembered where her piano had stood in the great drawing-room. It had been carted away during those dreadful weeks and her music all burned; but the vision of her graceful figure bending over the keyboard was one not to be forgotten even by a thoughtless child. Could it be—oh, heaven! if this voice were hers! Her future was certain; she ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... arms went out instinctively across the keyboard, as if she would protect the instrument ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... keyboard set in the control room of the Comet and stared down at the keys. The equation was set and ready. All he had to do was tap that key and they would know, beyond all argument, whether or not they had dipped into the awful heart of material energy; ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... astral plane. For that matter, the skilled and advanced occultist is able to function on the astral plane by simply shifting his consciousness from one plane to another, as the typist shifts from the small letters of the keyboard to the capital letters, by a mere pressure on the shift-key of ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... was the White Hope of the Brownstone Court House—declared Mr. Tutt's summation was the greatest that ever they heard. For the shrewd old lawyer had an artist's hand with which he played upon the keyboard of the jury and knew just when to pull out the stops of the vox humana of pathos and the grand diapason of indignation and defiance. So he began by tickling their sense of humor with an ironic description of afternoon tea at Mr. Hepplewhite's, ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... fiercely for some minutes more, leaning close over the keyboard, and throwing her very soul, as Elma could plainly see, into the tips of her fingers. Then, suddenly she rose, and came over, well pleased, to the sofa where Elma sat. With a motherly gesture, she took Elma's hand; she smoothed her dark hair; she bent down with ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... Shakespeare in his best verses, and Milton at the keyboard of his organ. Shakespeare's language is no longer the mere vehicle of thought; it has become part of it, its very flesh and blood. The pleasure it gives us is unmixt, direct, like that from the smell of a flower or the flavor of a fruit. Milton ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... first aimed at effect and posed as the Paganini of the piano; Chopin, on the other hand, seemed never to concern himself [se preuccuper] about the public, and to listen only to the inner voices. He was unequal; but when inspiration took hold of him [s'emparait de hit] he made the keyboard sing in an ineffable manner. I owe him some poetic hours ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... themselves with zeal to try their 'prentice hands at the task of organ blowing. The church was open, and Monica was already waiting for them in the porch. She soon showed them how to work the bellows, and after telling them to stop and rest as soon as they were tired, seated herself at the keyboard and began her practice. Both the younger girls felt it a decidedly novel and interesting experience to be in the little space behind the pipes, working away at a long handle. As they took it in turns they were able to keep the organ going fairly steadily, ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... a swift glide up the notes, and other sounds were lost. The window was half open; the lawyer walked to it and looked out. At that moment the two men were back to back. Hugh Ritson's head was bent over the keyboard. Mr. Bonnithorne's eyes were on the tranquil landscape lying in the sun outside. The faces of both wore ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... in a matted maze, Hand firm as iron, eyes all ablaze; Bystanders timidly, breathlessly gaze, As o'er the keyboard boldly ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... confined beneath a glass dome. It looked rather like a groundhog and had seven fingers on each of its six limbs. But it was larger and hairier than the glass one he had seen at the gift store. With four of its limbs it tapped on an intricate keyboard ...
— The Perfectionists • Arnold Castle
... average successful painter. Again, consider our implements of music—our pianofortes, for example. Nobody but an acrobat will voluntarily spend years at such a difficult mechanical puzzle as the keyboard, and so we have to take our impressions of Beethoven's sonatas from acrobats who vie with each other in the rapidity of their prestos, or the staying power of their left wrists. Thoughtful men ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... thin, and one day they come to him where he sits before the keyboard of his many enterprises, and tell him she is dying. He comes and stands beside the bed, and the child's eyes open and turn towards him; and, as he draws nearer, her little arms stretch out towards him, pleading dumbly. But the man's ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... invalid; yet in the gloom of the alcove where he was sitting his complexion seemed bronzed, as if from a life in the sun. His sensitive face, disfigured by his sufferings and his thoughts, leaned forward; his eyes were fixed on the keyboard of the piano. ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... multiple-choice method was devised by me three years ago as a means of obtaining strictly comparable objective data concerning the problem-solving ability of various types and conditions of animals. The method was first tried with human subjects in the Psychopathic Hospital, Boston, with a crude keyboard apparatus which, however, proved wholly satisfactory as a means of demonstrating its value. It has since been applied by means of mechanisms especially adapted to the structure and activities of the organisms, to the study ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... from harpsichord or spinet to the modern instrument; its yellow keys, from which the ivory in some cases was missing, and its high back, stained silk front, and fretted veneer indicated age; while above the keyboard a label, now growing indistinct, set forth that one "William Harper, of Red Lion Street, Maker of piano-fortes to his late Majesty" was responsible for the instrument very early ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... argument was reasonable and rational. A titillating sensation suffused his being. In fancy he saw the little dining-room, which adjoined her boudoir; he saw her at the piano, her white fingers tripping, as in the old days, over the keyboard; he heard her singing one of her gay and reckless songs; he saw her dainty feet tripping through the dance he so ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... strain or tension; the sound-board, which is the resonance factor; and the bridge, connecting it with the strings. The strings, sound-board, and bridge are indispensable, and common to all stringed instruments. The special fact appertaining to keyboard instruments is the mechanical action interposed between the player and the instrument itself. The strings, owing to the slender surface they present to the air, are, however powerfully excited, scarcely audible. To make them sufficiently ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... writer lady! No more interviews with actresses! No more slushy Sunday specials! No more teary tales! Oh, my! When may I begin? To-morrow? You know I brought my typewriter with me. I've almost forgotten where the letters are on the keyboard." ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... a whirl of soap-suds in a hand-basin. Then she pushed up her cuffs as if she was going to fight for the champion's belt. Then she worked her wrists and her hands, to limber 'em, I suppose, and spread out her fingers till they looked as though they would pretty much cover the keyboard, from the growling end to the little squeaky one. Then those two hands of hers made a jump at the keys as if they were a couple of tigers coming down on a flock of black-and-white sheep, and the piano gave a great howl as if its tail had been trod ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... comes to that," said Mr. May, "I can accompany some of them myself, when I'm not operating the film. I'm not an expert pianist—but I can play a little, you know—" And he trilled his fingers up and down an imaginary keyboard in front of Alvina, cocking his eye at her ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... is easy, least of all the art of letters. Apply the musical analogy once more to the instrument whereon literature performs its voluntaries. With a living keyboard of notes which are all incessantly changing in value, so that what rang true under Dr. Johnson's hand may sound flat or sharp now, with a range of a myriad strings, some falling mute and others being added from day to day, with numberless permutations and ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... behind the curtain, and played an accompaniment to the music box on the guitar. We could see plainly the movements of the hand, arm, and fingers, as it manipulated the strings of the instrument. It did not appear necessary to finger the strings on the keyboard, although the air was in a key that made it impossible to tune the guitar so that an accompaniment could be performed WITHOUT fingering. However, but one hand was visible, and it was picking the strings. After the tune was finished, the hand left the in- strument, and moved out into the room ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... instructor, she found the simple chords of "Annie Laurie," and wrote beside each note the letters that would enable Agnes to find them on the keyboard. "This isn't the right way to begin," she said, with a laugh, "but we'll take this short cut just to surprise Miss Marietta. You can come back aftahward and learn about time and all the othah things that ought to come first. I'll give you a lesson every week for awhile, ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... edge of the mountains, so that I could see underneath the soles of their boots as their legs dangled in the air. In the midst of all, a precipice that rose from out of the glaciers shaped itself suddenly into an organ, and there was one whose face I well knew sitting at the keyboard, smiling and pluming himself like a bird as he thundered forth a giant fugue by way of overture. I heard the great pedal notes in the bass stalk majestically up and down, like the rays of the Aurora that go about ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... the speaker, the quickness with which she had grasped the situation and leveled her revolver, brought The Hopper to an abrupt halt in the middle of the room, where he fell with a discordant crash across the keyboard of a grand piano. He turned, cowering, to confront a tall, young woman in a long ulster who advanced toward him slowly, but with every mark of determination upon her face. The Hopper stared beyond the gun, held in a very steady hand, ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... get some conception of its shape and size, of the space it occupied in primeval night. It was cold and hard, and like nothing else in his black universe. He went back to its mouth, began at one end of the keyboard and felt his way down into the mellow thunder, as far as he could go. He seemed to know that it must be done with the fingers, not with the fists or the feet. He approached this highly artificial instrument through a mere instinct, and coupled ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... to his mind it was like this, and he began to toss his arms wildly about. Haydn tried every way he could think of to represent the ocean, but Kurz was not satisfied. At last he flung his hands down with a crash on each end of the keyboard and brought them together in the middle. "That's it, that's it," cried the manager and embraced the youth excitedly. All went well with the rest of the opera. It was finished and produced, but did not make much stir, a fact which was not displeasing to the ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... another range than the one needed for their earlier efforts. But it is an open question whether the performer's instrument really changed. It must either have been wrongly classified at one of the two periods, or the vocal keyboard—so to speak—transposed a little higher or lower. The character of the instrument remains the same; a viola strung as a violin would still retain its ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... has features which remind us of something else, which play, as it were, upon the keyboard of our associations, and it thus calls up the pictures with which we proceed to enliven it. The sea does nothing of this, and the best proof of that is, that no painter has ever yet used the sea by itself for his model. Did you ever know of an artist who painted ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... statue of Shakespear. The fireplace is on the right, with an armchair near it. A small round table, further forward on the same side, with a chair beside it, has a yellow-backed French novel lying open on it. The piano, a grand, is on the left, open, with the keyboard in full view at right angles to the wall. The piece of music on the desk is "When other lips." Incandescent lights, well shaded, are on the piano and mantelpiece. Near the piano is a sofa, on which the ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... time; nor was the room at any time, big as it was, more than large enough for this young lady a pleine voix. Besides, Mr. Torrens was not in force, on that score. In fact, at the end of this one song he dropped his fingers on his knees from the keyboard, and said in a tone that professed amusement at his own exhaustion: "That's all I'm good ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... when he sat down at the piano. How long he played he never knew, for when they found him several hours later, it was quite dark and the old man was completely unconscious; his head had fallen on his arm which rested on the keyboard of the piano. ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... ultra-modern as those of Wagner's "Parsifal" may be found in some of the mazurkas of Chopin. He was, as Rubinstein called him, "the soul of the pianoforte." No one before or after him knew how to make that instrument speak so eloquently. By ingeniously scattering the notes of a chord over the keyboard while holding down the pedal, he practically gave the player three or four hands, and greatly enlarged the harmonic and coloristic possibilities of the pianoforte. Liszt, Rubinstein, Paderewski, and others have gone farther still in the same direction, but he showed ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... the hand and led him to the keyboard of the organ, at which the young fellow seated himself prettily, after the manner of women. "Ah! sweet coz," cried Bertha, as soon as the first notes tried, the lad turned his head towards her, in order that they might sing together. ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... psychic sphere, is the theory of association. Generally speaking, colour is a power which directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... his afternoons in the room of the English girl. The performances of the Mozart festival were ended. Miss Gordon needed daily the spiritual uplift of music. She had a piano in her reception room, and a roll of opera scores which accompanied her on her travels. Jaime sat near, before the keyboard, trying to accompany the pieces she was interpreting, ever those of the same author, the god, the only! The hotel was near the station, and the noise of drays, carriages and street cars annoyed the English woman and she closed the windows. Her stout companion had gone to her own apartment, rejoiced ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez |
