"Accordion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... night, there was something awe-inspiring—even to these who lived onboard them—in the stupendous fighting outlines limned against the last of the light. Complete darkness reigned on board, but once a dog barked, and the strains of an accordion drifted across the water as reminders that each of these menacing mysteries was the habitation of their fellow-men. A tiny pin-point of light winked from a yard-arm near by to another pin-point in the Cruiser line: Somebody was answering an invitation to dinner at 7.45 ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... had taken to pieces and put together again, strengthened, soldered, tinkered, mended, and braced every accordion, guitar, melodeon, dulcimer, and fiddle in Edgewood, Pleasant River, and the neighboring villages. There was a little money to be earned in this way, but very little, as people in general regarded this "tinkering" as a pleasing diversion in which they could indulge him without danger. ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a practical but peculiar costume; the thickly-pleated skirt has a bright-coloured border, while the close-fitting bodice is adorned with embroidery, and pretty antique buttons. A folded cotton kerchief and accordion-pleated apron give a daintiness to the whole dress. The head-dress, however, gives the most singular finish to the costume. A dark, checked-bordered handkerchief tied over a stiff, cambric frame, entirely envelops the head. The four ends of this handkerchief are tied in ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... would be visible, here they were not. Certainly if such mirrors are the only medium of reflection the people of Reyker possess, they will not grow vain of their personal attractions. The room also contained a barometer and an accordion. In most of the houses we entered we found the latter instrument, which the people, being fond of music, amuse themselves with during the long winter evenings. Curiously enough, there is little or no native music, however. A bookcase on the wall contained quite a small library ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... leaving the rest very white with moonlight. The facades of the houses, with their blank windows, might be carved out of ice. In the dark of a doorway a woman sits hunched under a brown shawl. Her head nods, but still she jerks a tune that sways and dances through the silent street out of the accordion on her lap. A little saucer for pennies is on the step beside her. In the next doorway two guttersnipes are huddled together asleep. The moonlight points out with mocking interest their skinny dirt-crusted feet and legs stretched out over the icy pavement, ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... occupational therapy for me, too, as my pricked and calloused fingertips testify. I think I must have stitched up or darned half the costumes in it this last twelvemonth, though there are so many of them that I swear the drawers have accordion pleats and the racks extend into the fourth dimension—not to mention the boxes of props and the shelves of scripts and prompt-copies and other books, including a couple of encyclopedias and the many thick volumes of Furness's Variorum Shakespeare, which as Sid had guessed I'd been boning ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... door, six men were shaking dice and wagering little and bigger sums recklessly; a little fellow with a wooden leg and a terribly scarred face was drawing shrieking rag time from an old and asthmatic accordion while four men, their big boots clumping noisily upon the bare floor, danced like awkward trained bears when the outer door, closed against the chill of the evening, was flung open and a stranger to MacLeod's ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... cheapest marble, was a window labelled "Bureau." Behind this window, in a cagelike room, sat the proprietor at a desk, adding up figures in a large book. He was very fat, and his chins went all the way round his neck in grooves, as if his thick throat might pull out like an accordion. There was something curiously exotic about him, as there is in persons of mixed races; an olive pallor of skin, an oiliness of black hair, and a jetty brightness of eye under ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... animal affected them profoundly. No one—even the youngest—smiled; every one—even the youngest—became suddenly attentive. Turning over the leaves of the hymnbook, he then gave out the first two lines of a hymn. The choir accordion in the front side bench awoke like an infant into wailing life, and Cissy Appleby, soprano, took up a little more musically the lugubrious chant. At the close of the verse the preacher joined in, after a sailor fashion, with a breezy bass that seemed to fill the little building with ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... garters, a pair of outsize ladies' drawers of India mull, cut on generous lines, redolent of opoponax, jessamine and Muratti's Turkish cigarettes and containing a long bright steel safety pin, folded curvilinear, a camisole of batiste with thin lace border, an accordion underskirt of blue silk moirette, all these objects being disposed irregularly on the top of a rectangular trunk, quadruple battened, having capped corners, with multicoloured labels, initialled on its fore side in white lettering B. C. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... where everything you don't want is to be found in a state of dilapidation, together with a very hungry-looking proprietor, who, for want of customers upon whom to exercise his ingenuity, pulls away all day long upon the accordion to the tune of We're a' noddin'. The other end of Our Terrace has its butcher, its public-house, its grocer, and a small furniture-shop, doing a small trade, under the charge of a very small boy. Let ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... other words Tin. Nobody at the table knows I speak English or am American. Hell, that's a good one on nobody. That's a pretty fat kind of a joke on nobody. Think I'm French. Talk mostly with those three or four Frenchmen going on permission to somewhere via New York. One has an accordion. Like second class. Wait till you see the gratte-ciels, I tell 'em. They say "Oui?" and don't believe. I'll show them. America. The land of the flea and the home of the dag'—short for dago of course. My spirits are constantly improving. Funny Christmas, second day out. Wonder if we'll ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... opposite chair, Mr. G. Darwin on the medium's right, Mr. Huxley on his left, Mr. Z between Mr. Huxley and Mr. (Darwin) Y. The table was small enough to allow these five people to rest their hands on it, linking them together. On the table was a guitar which lay obliquely across it, an accordion on the medium's side of the guitar, a couple of paper horns, a Japanese fan, a matchbox, and a ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... music of an accordion, denotes that you will engage in amusement which will win you from sadness and retrospection. You will by this means be enabled to take ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... softening influence of music on the ranch. One-eyed Joe played the accordion, and that was all the music they had. The school saw visions of the transformed Margarite, dressed in white, sitting before the piano in the twilight singing softly the "Rosary," while Guardie watched her with folded arms; and the cowboys, ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... dance music is quite different. A rhythmic beating is kept up on a drum made of a barrel or hollow log and rude fiddles or guitars or an accordion play an accompaniment. To the traveler, riding along his road at night, the deep regular rumbling of the drums of distant "bailes" comes with indescribable weirdness. In some dances the participants engage in a monotonous ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... cut such funny antics by clapping his cymbals together, standing first on one leg and then on the other, jiggling his hands and feet, that the Cat went into mews of laughter and the Rabbit chuckled until his pink nose seemed to wrinkle all up like an accordion. ...
— The Story of Calico Clown • Laura Lee Hope
... the compositions of the great European masters in such a grotesque manner. The executants are five in number; one plays the tambourine, Mr. Germon, who is the leader; another the bone castanet; the third, the accordion; and the two others, the banjo, or African guitar. The castanet player does not sing; but his four colleagues have good voices, and, in glees, harmonize charmingly. In a quartet, the parody on the Phantom Chorus, from Bellini's 'Sonnambula'; and in a glee, 'You'll See Them on the Ohio,' nothing can ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... had a wheezy accordion and he relieved the monotony of the evening with some German airs. The big shed was unlighted, save as each man was his own lamp-post. Each made his own bed by the light of the lamp on his cap. As he undressed, the cap was the last article to be set ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... desire to be useful to those with whom I am associated in my daily relations. I not unfrequently practise the divine art of music in company with our landlady's daughter, who, as I mentioned before, is the owner of an accordion. Having myself a well-marked barytone voice of more than half an octave in compass, I sometimes add my vocal powers to her ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... wonderful erections of curls and ringlets which crowned their heads, the Minoan ladies, if one may judge from the Petsofa figurines, wore hats of quite modern type, and fairly comparable in size even with those of the present day. A seal from Mycenae, representing three ladies adorned with accordion-pleated skirts, shows that heels of a fair height were sometimes worn on the shoes. Necklaces, bracelets, and other articles of adornment were in general use, and the workmanship of some of the surviving specimens is astonishingly ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... tortillas every day; and at last I got the curse of drink lifted from Clifford Wainwright. He lost his taste for it. And in the cool of the evening him and me would sit on the roof of Timotea's mother's hut, eating harmless truck like coffee and rice and stewed crabs, and playing the accordion. ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... and we played well on into the night, seated in groups round the saloon table. One or other of us might go to the organ, and, with the assistance of the crank-handle, perform some of our beautiful pieces, or Johansen would bring out the accordion and play many a fine tune. His crowning efforts were "Oh, Susanna!" and "Napoleon's March Across the Alps in an Open Boat." About midnight we turned in, and then the night watch was set. Each man went on for an hour. Their most trying work on watch seems to have been writing ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... diplomatic complications would make me about as popular in Allied circles as the proverbial skunk at a bridge-party. So I took the final alternative, and jammed her into the teeth of it for all I thought she could stand without imitating an opera hat or an accordion. And, glory be, she made it, the blessed little old cross between a porpoise and a safety-razor blade! Whether the gale really moderated, or I got more nerve, I don't know; but anyhow I gave her more and more, half a knot at a time, until we were actually ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... men's hands, when she had landed on her feet after an uncommonly venturous whirl of the blue skirts in mid-air, came out of their deep pockets; but they seasoned their applause with coarse jokes which they flung, with a cruel relish, into the pitifully-aged face. A cracked accordion and a jingling tambourine were played by two hardened-looking ruffians, seated on their heels beneath a window—a discordant music that could not drown the noise of the peasants' derisive laughter. But the latter's ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... harmonium in the gallery filled the church with its drawling tones, like an enlarged accordion, and the nuns standing beside it intoned the old chant, rhythmical as a march, the "Adeste Fideles," while below the novices and the faithful repeated after each stanza the sweet chorus of invitation, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... the innumerable shrines and queer shops, and frescoed walls, where extraordinary lions and tigers, and Rajput warriors, riding in wide petticoats on prancing steeds, were depicted in flaming colours. I wanted, too, to gaze at the native women, in their accordion-pleated, dancing frocks of crimson or dark blue; but it seemed to be the correct thing for a 'Personage' to drive as fast as possible, and try to run over a few people just to show them what unconsidered trifles they were. Well, we were received at the entrance to the Palace by ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... either—for dancing, and on a small platform sat the strangest looking youth, like Peter Pan never to grow old, like the Monna Lisa a boy of a thousand years, without emotion or expression of any sort. He was playing an accordion; the bag-pipe, symbol of the bal, hung disused on the wall over his head. His accordion, manipulated with great skill, was augmented by sleigh-bells attached to his ankles in such a manner that a minimum of movement produced a maximum of effect; he further added ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... was pleased, for she herself felt rather uncomfortable. Her dress, which was made with low neck and short sleeves, was of red silk gauze, with multifold short skirts, accordion-plaited, and edged with thick, full ruches. Great golden butterflies were embroidered at intervals all over the dress, while ribbons and flowers were attached wherever a place could be found ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... you a drink," said Mrs. Brown. In her bag she had a little drinking cup, that closed up, "like an accordion," as Bunny said. And, taking this out, Mrs. Brown walked to the end of the car where the water was kept in a tank, to ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... in the Nebula opened and a huge hose came slowly down. Odin watched it on the screen. It seemed to have been pleated and shoved together like an accordion. Now it opened out in little jerking movements, extending itself about two feet at each writhing twitch. As it grew longer it expanded and was nearly three feet across when it reached the top of the first car. A round ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... on the edge of the seat, very upright in her black silk mantle with the accordion-pleated chiffon frills. She had sat like that since the train began to pull, ready to get out the instant it stopped ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... I tried to amuse myself with, being nothing less than music. I found an old banjo belonging to Tom Carr and an accordion which Andrew had left behind. The banjo I could not do much with, but when I saw the accordion I said to myself that if I could blow the bellows in my father's forge, I ought to be able to work an accordion. So I went at it, hammer and tongs, and soon could produce ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... being a deer; his hair had just been brushed. But he entered the rosery buoyantly between his offspring. His wife was standing precisely as he had imagined her, in a pale blue frock open at the neck, with a narrow black band round the waist, and little accordion pleats below. She looked her coolest. Her smile, when she turned her head, hardly seemed to take Mr. Bosengate seriously enough. He placed his lips below one of her half-drooped eyelids. She even smelled of roses. His children began to dance round their mother, and Mr. Bosengate,—firmly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... strange places. In one Illinois tornado two children and an infant were caught up. The dead bodies of the children were found only a few hundred feet distant, but the infant was picked up alive more than a mile away from the spot where the tornado swept the children up. An accordion that must have come a long distance—for it was never claimed—was found so entangled in the branches of a tree that it was alternately pulled apart and pressed together by the wind, thus creating such weird and uncanny music during a whole night that an already sufficiently scared settlement ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... killing the child. The mother was hit and instantly killed, force of the blow snapping her spine and tossing her against the house. The car plunged on into a tree, hitting it a terrible blow, crumbling the car's forward end so it looked like an accordion. The men were ...
— The Ultroom Error • Gerald Allan Sohl
... Oakhurst had cached his cards with the whiskey as something debarred the free access of the community, I cannot say. It was certain that, in Mother Shipton's words, he "didn't say cards once" during that evening. Haply the time was beguiled by an accordion, produced somewhat ostentatiously by Tom Simson, from his pack. Notwithstanding some difficulties attending the manipulation of this instrument, Piney Woods managed to pluck several reluctant melodies from its keys, to an accompaniment by the Innocent on a pair of bone castanets. But the crowning ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... cabin on the town's ragged fringe was crowded to suffocation. Within arose noisy shouts, loud songs, and raucous laughter; the scraping of a fiddle and whine of an accordion. Liquor began to appear and happy faces grew red-eyed and sodden as the dances whirled. At the edge of the orgy stood Zora, wild-eyed and bewildered, mad with the pain that gripped her heart and hammered in her head, crying in tune with the frenzied ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... to his face, pale eyes, and his beard trimmed with scissors. No man knew his country, beyond he was of English speech; and it was clear he came of a good family and was splendidly educated. He was accomplished too; played the accordion first-rate; and give him a piece of string or a cork or a pack of cards, and he could show you tricks equal to any professional. He could speak, when he chose, fit for a drawing-room; and when he chose he could blaspheme worse than a Yankee boatswain, and talk smart to sicken a Kanaka. The ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the fancy paper made accordion that the little girl had dropped beside her, and was making it squeak sadly as she pulled it with her brown, ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... been snowing for a long time, but Clyde says he will take me hunting when it stops. I don't want to go but reckon I will have to, because I don't want to come so far and buy a license to kill an elk and go back empty-handed, and partly to get a rest from Mr. Murry's everlasting accordion. ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... Day, 1907.—It is the custom here on New Year's Eve for the men to assemble soon after nightfall and visit each house. Several are fantastically dressed and equipped with every available instrument— violin, drum, concertina and accordion. And on this occasion even three old Martinis were brought into requisition and fired at frequent intervals throughout the night. Refreshment is given at each house, so we had a good brew of tea and biscuits ready for distribution at the first sound ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... lovely matrons, trailing draperies of brilliantly hued velvets, brocades and satins, drifts of adorable girls, their exquisite slimness enveloped in misty clouds of tulle or clinging lengths of accordion plaited taffetas; platoons of the brave and the gallant, the handsome and the gay of Peoria's golden youth, and substantial business men, in the correctest of evening garb, lent to the Jefferson Hotel a stunningly pictorial effect last ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... these early "Saturdayings," which gives a clear picture of the infectious character of the proceedings, telling how people who came out of curiosity to look on found themselves joining in the work, and how a soldier with an accordion after staring for a long time open-mouthed at these lunatics working on a Saturday afternoon put up a tune for them on his instrument, and, delighted by their delight, played on while the ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... which they are at present supplied." In spite of our traveller's philanthropic wish, things have not changed since his time. The negroes are just as fond of intoxicating drinks, and their petty kings still go about wearing on grand occasions hats the shape of an accordion, and blue coats with copper buttons, with no shirts underneath. The maternal sentiment did not seem to Laing to be very fully developed amongst the people of Timmannee, for he was twice roundly abused by women for refusing to buy their children of them. A few days later there was ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... mile and a half, with which to do their cooking and warm their tents. But notwithstanding the hardships they endured, the inclemency of the winter, and their severe picket duty, the men were gay. In many of the regiments, the sounds of the guitar and accordion could be heard every evening; and on pleasant afternoons and evenings, parties assembled in the company streets and danced cotillions, and polkas, and jigs, to the music of violins. When snow covered the ground, mimic battles with snowballs were a frequent amusement. ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... of malaria, and in turn had been traded from hand to hand, for four shillings to a blackbirder, for a turtle-shell comb made by an English coal-passer after an old Spanish design, for the appraised value of six shillings and sixpence in a poker game in the firemen's forecastle, for a second-hand accordion worth at least twenty shillings, and on for eighteen shillings cash to a little old withered Chinaman—so did pass Cocky, as mortal or as immortal as any brave sparkle of life on the planet, from the possession of one, Ah Moy, a sea-cock who, forty years before, ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... were constantly seeing ghosts, and whose equally black beard streamed down his breast like a cataract of ink. He was dressed in a blue shirt, corduroy trousers protected with cowboy "shaps," and heavy top-boots. In his hands was an accordion, at his side sat a collie dog, while in front of him, with his back to the fire—standing with his hands behind his back in the attitude of a schoolboy repeating a lesson—was a tousle-headed half-breed, whom he of the black beard was addressing in ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... Potato Face Blind Man used to play an accordion on the Main Street corner nearest the postoffice ...
— Rootabaga Stories • Carl Sandburg
... men and women in vehicles and on horseback, and in expectation of great fun, were wending their way to Yabtree—nearly every trap containing a fiddle, concertina, flute, or accordion in readiness ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... halting for the night at that place we continued our journey up the Pachitea with a strange medley of passengers on board. We had the Hungarian count, an Italian farmer, who was a remarkable musician and played the accordion beautifully; we had some Peruvians, a Spanish emigrant, a small Indian boy aged ten who acted as steward, and a young fellow ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... stentorian tones, vying with one another to produce excitement and induce patronage, while gas-jets are streaming into the air from the roofs and flaring from the sides of the stalls; children crying, children dancing to the strains of an accordion, children quarrelling, children scrambling for the refuse fruit. In the midst of this spectacle, this din and uproar, the women are chaffering and bargaining quite calmly, watching the scales to see that they ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... secure of his ship. I suppose he was about thirty: a powerful, active man, with a blue eye, a thick head of hair, about the colour of oakum and growing low over the brow; clean-shaved and lean about the jaw; a good singer; a good performer on that sea-instrument, the accordion; a quick observer, a close reasoner; when he pleased, of a really elegant address; and when he chose, the greatest ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... splendid painting by West, "Christ healing the Sick." We then visited the Musical Fund Hall, and heard the far-famed Ethiopian serenaders, Messrs. German, Hanwood, Harrington, Warren, and Pelham, upon the accordion, banjo, congo-tambo, and bone-castanets, in all of which they stand unrivalled in the world. They were representing Niggers' lives, with songs, &c. Home ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore
... pink frock, Puff-sleeved and accordion-pleated! He might have passed in July, And not ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... table, or on such cheap refuse as had come into the village from London music-halls or from the canteens at Aldershot. Street pianos in the neighbouring town supplied them with popular airs, which they reproduced—it may be judged with what amazing effect—on flute or accordion; but the repertory of songs was filled chiefly from the sources just mentioned. The young men—the shyest creatures in the country, and the most sensitive to ridicule—found safety in comic songs which, if produced badly, raised but the greater laugh. Only once or twice ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... had met Ragged Sailor before. He was quite a musician and carried his tiny golden accordion in the sailor blouse he ...
— Grasshopper Green and the Meadow Mice • John Rae
... emotions excited by those sensations will be expressed in the same way. For example, the sense of smell is peculiarly effective in exciting disgust. Anything which does violence to the sense of hearing exasperates, but does not disgust. If a man practises the accordion all day in the next room you do not loathe him, you only want to kill him. But anything that stinks excites pure disgust. Here you have the key to the fact that disgust and all feelings akin to it, disdain, ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... spoke of himself in the third person, as 'Dan.' When he was not in a trance we frequently had movements of objects in different parts of the room, with visible hands carrying flowers about and playing the accordion. On one occasion I was asked by Home to look at the accordion as it was playing in the semi-darkness beneath the table. I saw a delicate looking female hand holding it by the handle, and the keys at the lower end rising and falling as if fingers were playing on them, although I could not see ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... when suddenly I became conscious of music, if music it could be called. It was the most peculiar sound, and at first I could not find out from whence it came. It was evidently not caused by a wind instrument; I felt sure it was not a concertina or an accordion. This sound would go on for a minute or two, and then stop suddenly, only to begin again more loudly a few seconds later. At times I distinguished a few bars of a tune, then only disjointed notes followed. Could it be a child strumming ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... we could sleep for a couple of hours, but of course there's no hope of that. Stretch out here, like that—you can't rest folded up like an accordion—and I'll lie down diagonally across the room. There's just room for me that way. That's one advantage of weightlessness—you can lie down standing on your head, and go to sleep and like it. But I forgot—you've ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith |
