"Piano" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of this old-fashioned character, and most of her songs are such as are not at the present day to be found on the piano of a modern performer. I have, however, seen so much of modern fashions, modern accomplishments, and modern fine ladies, that I relish this tinge of antiquated style in so young and lovely a girl; ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... the piano, had a transitory look; two light wicker arm-chairs by the fire, the two frail stands of dark, polished wood, the couple of flimsy chairs, and the case of books in the recess—all seemed uneasy, as if they might be tossed out ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... ornamented with blue and white Dutch tiles bearing 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
... fingers were moving softly over the piano keys; melodies in minor, sad and haunting and elusive, melodies that had never been put on paper and would always be her own: in them she might leap from comedy to tragedy, from laughter to tears, and only she would know. The ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... a grand piano, playing BACH and moodily reflecting on these matters, when Ralph Wonderson himself entered the room, vaulting lightly over piano and performer as he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... whose fortunes were said to be ample, Miss Lily De Lusian may serve as a sample: She'd a smatter of French, and a languishing air, While of sense she possessed but a limited share. She played the piano remarkably well, And by all of her friends was considered a belle. And perhaps it was so, for she certainly 'told,' In the set where she moved, on ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... piano passage (A major, E in the bass) it would be well if eight soloists were to sing about eight bars by themselves; the neat, elegant piano cannot be done by a large chorus. ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... four feet in height with an appropriate shade provides an excellent lamp for reading purposes because it may be placed by the side of a chair or moved about independent of other furniture. A tall floor lamp often serves for lighting the piano, but small piano lamps may be found which are decorative as well as serviceable in illuminating ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... I could die," the pitiful old fellow whispered. "I will, soon, but, oh, what will my poor darling do then, Mr. Donald? After we first came here, I was that prosperous, sir, you wouldn't believe it. I gave Nan a good schooling, piano lessons, and fine dresses. We lived well, and yet we put by a thousand dollars in six years. But that's gone now, what with the expenses when the baby came, and my sickness that's prevented me from working. Thank God, sir, I have my three-quarter pay. It isn't much, but we're rent-free, ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... the contrary, leaning his elbows on the grand piano, facing her, was devouring her with his eyes and saying in an ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... suddenly felt ashamed that her cheeks were burning and that every one was looking at her; she flung the cards together on the table and ran out of the room. As she ran up the stairs and, reaching the upper story, sat down to the piano in the drawing-room, a murmur of sound reached her from below like the roar of the sea; most likely they were talking of her and of Pimenov, and perhaps Stinging Beetle was taking advantage of her absence to insult Varvarushka ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... baize, while his wife was seated in front of him. Between the speeches the ladies burst forth into a sort of plaintive ditty. The party was entertained by a band of musicians, consisting of three drummers and four performers on the marimba, a species of piano. It consists of two bars of wood placed side by side; across these are fixed fifteen wooden keys, each two or three inches broad and about eighteen long, their thickness being regulated by the deepness of the note required. Each of the keys has a calabash below it, the ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... wanted, getting nothing by any other means, and doing without what I could not get in that way. No softening, no refining influence came into my life. My one pleasure even then was music. I had a passion for it. Miss Vincent, the vicar's daughter, taught me to play the piano, and I used to spend hours in the deserted drawing-room, playing what I knew, and picking out tunes by myself, while my father was shut up in his study. We had no near relation, no one who cared enough to take pity on an unruly, troublesome, little girl, with a drunken ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... you are. You are an accepted lover, and will be allowed to do anything,—whip the creams, and tune the piano, if you know how. I'm only a half sort of lover, meditating a mariage de convenance to oblige an uncle, and by no means required by the terms of my agreement to undergo a very rigid amount of drill. ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... mischievous tricks, she descended to the drawing-room. Seated upon an ottoman, was no other than Clarence Delwood, who arose as she entered, taking her proffered hand with some little embarrassment, which was soon dispelled by the adroit Winnie, who took a seat at the piano, and with a rich full voice sang the last opera. "Your friend, Miss Santon, has an enviable voice," remarked Delwood to Natalie, regarding the lily buds which he recognized as of the bouquet which he had ordered his servant to place in the hands of her attendant, giving no ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... on her feet, and dressed in a white mist of pina, rode away in the new pony cart, the only one in town. The groom was dressed in baggy trousers, with a pink shirt and an azure tie. Most of the presents came from Chino Santiago's store; but the best one was a beautiful piano from Cebu. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... she said, "must have been a most respectable, motherly, hard-working creature. Really a nice person of her class." She could not quite visualize the "parlor," but it must have been warm and comfortable. And the pianola—a piano which you could play without even knowing your notes—What a clever invention! America seemed full of the most ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... position? When must I go, and—and can I take away the things that Uncle Walter has given to me from time to time? The pictures in my own rooms were given to me on certain birthdays and holidays; the piano he gave me new last Christmas, and I have a watch and ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... herself conscious of a certain constraint, and to dispel it asked Alice to sing, and Farnham adding his entreaties, she went to the piano, and said, as all girls say, "What shall ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... but a right jolly companion; a fellow who could pitch into any kind of sport and play an uncommonly good game at almost anything. More than that, he could rattle off ragtime untiringly and his nimble fingers could catch up on the piano any tune he heard whistled. What wonder he speedily became the idol of Colversham? He was a born leader, tactfully marshaling at will the boys who were his own age, and good-naturedly bullying those ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... West end of this flat the rooms both front and back are parlours, with folding doors between, so that while one may be used for conversational purposes or such like, the other may be fitted with a piano and also with games, such as chess, draughts, &c. The upper flat, which contains also very handsome rooms, beautifully finished, is divided into two portions, one to be occupied exclusively by the Secretary, and containing dining and drawing rooms divided by folding doors, four ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... starting some new fool thing. When I first met him he prided himself on having the finest collection of photographs of race-horses in England. Then he got a craze for model engines. After that he used to work the piano player till I nearly went crazy. And ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... did you go to such expense? And that piano too! I shall hardly have the heart to ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... once a powerful family, came at length to dust-became as nothing. It was a family the members of which were ever in favour of change, and devoted to anything that was new. In fact, they went and set up a piano! Well, of them only Valentine is still on his legs, and he (he is a doctor of less than forty years of age) is a hopeless drunkard, and saturated with dropsy, and fallen a prey to asthma, so that his cancerous eyes protrude horribly. Yes, the Kapustins, like the Polukonovs, may be ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... of the other men, it afterwards appeared, was most in his element at the piano; so that they had coffee and comic songs upstairs—the gentlemen, temporarily relinquished, submitting easily in this interest to Mrs. Lowder's parting injunction not to sit too tight. Our especial ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... me such a look as would have turned a mahogany piano leg into a mound of smoking ashes, and slammed ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... would seem to be, I have seen it ignored time and time again, usually with the same unhappy result. I have in mind the case of a couple whom we shall call the Browns. Doris Brown supplemented her husband's salary by giving piano lessons at home. They planned to have a baby and could well have managed to do so with but a short interruption to Doris' teaching activity. But—and this is what so many couples contemplating children overlook—complications ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... a general way to every state and every home. Look about, where you are sitting now. How many things are there in the room just where you are,—there is a table, a chair, a shoe, a coat, a necktie, a cigar, a lampshade, a piano, a basket—for all of these you are dependent ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... should be of a Practical description. The girl is destined to be a house-keeper, and yet she is, perhaps, doing almost nothing to prepare herself for that station. She thinks a knowledge of housewifery comes by instinct; and so it is that she cares more for her French and her piano than for those studies which would fit her for domestic duty. But in vain do this sex receive high degrees of culture, if they are still unable to apply their knowledge to any useful purpose. Why train the mind ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... la Compagnie!'" said Telford, seating himself at the piano, and playing the first bars of that well-known air, to which, in our meetings, we were accustomed to ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... all very nicely. One night a week Spatola went to play with two compatriots at their rooms; with piano, harp and violin, they gave vent to the harmony that was in them. That was the night for the trio, and Sagon knew it. But In his rage and his desire to prove his standing to Hume, Spatola had forgotten it. When he descended to Morris's rooms, the two criminals ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... and appeals to us like the illogical burden of a ballad. Here at least are the rhythms and raptures of poetry, if not always the beaten gold of speech. Sometimes Mr. de la Mare's verse reminds one of piano-music, sometimes of bird-music: it wavers so curiously between what is composed and what is unsophisticated. Not that one ever doubts for a moment that Mr. de la Mare has spent on his work an artist's pains. He has made a craft ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... 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 ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... passion in her was the flower of Hermes to Red Jim, keeping him from complete infatuation when she sang to him, playing her own lightly-touched accompaniment at the piano. He had never been entertained like this before. And when a girl sang a love ballad and at the same time looked at him with eyes at once serious and laughing, he had to set his teeth and shake himself to keep from taking the words of the poet too ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... upon tea- and card-tables. The younger women on the Strang veranda glanced at one another. The girl at the piano hesitated in her light stringing ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... others of our outfit in the street, scarcely recognizable in their killing rigs. The Rebel was itching for a monte game, but this not being a cow town there was none, and we strolled next into a saloon, where a piano was being played by a venerable-looking individual,—who proved quite amiable, taking a drink with us and favoring us with a number of selections of our choosing. We were enjoying this musical treat when our foreman came in and asked ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... of a quaint little house uptown, a great bronzed-faced man sat at a piano, a dead pipe between his teeth, and absently played the most difficult of Beethoven's sonatas. Though he played it divinely, the three men who sat smoking and talking in a near-by corner paid not the least attention to him. The player, it seemed, did not expect them to: ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... three years old capable of repeating the same exercise fifty times in succession; many persons are moving about beside him; some one is playing the piano; children are singing in chorus; but nothing distracts the little child from his profound concentration. Just so does the suckling keep hold of the mother's breast, uninterrupted by external incidents, and desists only when ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... were in their glory, and as soon as the breakfast things were out of the way, they prepared for a grand cooking-time. They were handy girls, though they had never heard of a cooking-school, never touched a piano, and knew nothing of embroidery beyond the samplers which hung framed in the parlor; one ornamented with a pink mourner under a blue weeping-willow, the other with this pleasing verse, each word being done in a different color, which gave the ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... a typewriter like it was a piano and get into the habit of not looking at what they are writing," Brennan explained. "He says the touch system has ruined more reporters ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... Well, I'll do my best; but tell Nora to be sure and get the fiddler from Hollymount. It's so stupid for her to be sitting there at the piano while we're dancing." ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... led a detached life, hence his art was bold and violent. Unlike Liszt he seldom sought the glamor of the theatre, and was never in such public view as his maternal admirer, Sand. He was Frederic Francois Chopin, composer, teacher of piano and a lyric genius of the ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... not love her because she goes to the altar with her head full of book learning, her hands of no earthly use, save for the piano and brush; because she has no conception of the duties and responsibilities of a wife; because she hates housework, hates its everlasting routine and ever recurring duties; because she hates children and will adopt every means to evade motherhood; because she loves her ease, loves ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... next door to her, was the real object of my admiration; she was very modest and shy, and would only favour me with an occasional smile, but there was a sweetness in that timid, blushing smile which surpassed that of all the roses of Andalusia. She used also to serenade me on the piano by playing God save the King, to which I responded politely by playing some of the national airs of Spain. This silent flirtation continued for some time, when one day while I was on my balcony, I was not a little ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... him and made the fear of what lay behind overpoweringly great. The lumps of ice gave way beneath him, and he had to leap from piece to piece; his feet moved as fast as fingers over the notes of a piano. He just noticed enough to take the direction toward the harbor breakwater. The others stood gaping on the beach while Pelle danced upon the water like a stone making ducks and drakes. The pieces of ice bobbed ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... leaning lightly against a pillar by the fountain. "I never hear a pianist, however great and famous, but I see the little cream-colored hammers within the piano bobbing up and down like acrobatic brownies. I never hear the plaudits of the crowd for the artist and watch him return to bow his thanks, but I mentally demand that these little acrobats, each resting on an individual pedestal, and weary from his efforts, shall appear to receive ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... of the sisters played a few pieces at the piano, and Miss Forrester sang a few songs. Mr Hall in the meantime went fast asleep. John Gordon couldn't but tell himself that his evenings at Kimberley were, as a rule, quite as exciting. But then Kattie ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... their flat was well-provisioned, well-furnished, heated and lighted. There were a few books and magazines, a piano, a writing desk, even a pack of ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... her piano and struck into a brilliant strain. For a few moments the music was of a forced and defiant character, loud, gay, but with no real or rollicking mirth in it, and it soon ceased. Then in a sharp contrast came a sad, weird German ballad, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... piano would add ever so much. Next time we'll have our practice at home, and give you ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... Porch of Church at Beuvreil Pavements, Two Florentine Palermo, Capella Palatina, Pulpit in "P.D.'s" The Perugia, Chamber of Commerce, Panel from " Renaissance Panels from " S. Pietro, Panels from Personals Piano Case, Competition for Pulpits of Southern Italy Ravello, Cathedral, Pulpit and Ambo in " S. Giovanni, Pulpit in Ravenna Museum of Acad. Bel. Arti, Cap from S. Vitale, Caps from Ravenna Capitals Reproduction of Architect's Drawings Roman Scholarship Rome, American School of Architecture ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, 1895 • Various
... in the parlor of a hotel, when others are by and may be discomforted, is a breach of politeness. Also it is not right that even an accomplished musician or singer should use the piano of the hotel parlor, if others are in the room, unless he has received a ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... chances. On the Saturday and Sunday we practically lived in a beastly little music-room at the offices of the publishers whose songs he proposed to use. A little chappie with a hooked nose sucked a cigarette and played the piano all day. Nothing could tire that lad. He seemed to take a personal interest ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Colorow society," laughed Serviss. Then, to clear the shadow which had gathered on the girl's face, he said: "I see a fine piano, and shelves of music books. This argues that you love music. Won't you sing for me? I am ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... got little help from Rodney, and after singing her plaintive requiem for the death of poetry by herself, she charmed herself into good spirits again by remembering the existence of Mozart. She begged Cassandra to play to her, and when they went upstairs Cassandra opened the piano directly, and did her best to create an atmosphere of unmixed beauty. At the sound of the first notes Katharine and Rodney both felt an enormous sense of relief at the license which the music gave them to loosen their hold upon the mechanism of behavior. They lapsed into the depths of thought. ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... goodness!" breathed Grace, referring to her "confession," as she smilingly turned to her piano practice, a duty indifferently done since her encounter with the writer of the ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... a young Indian boy, who is at present undergoing an examination of his vision as a probable cause for his headaches. This boy is studying music; one year ago he practiced two hours daily on the piano and studied from three to five hours besides. This year his work has been increased; he is now troubled with severe headaches, and after continued near work for some time letters become blurred and run together. This boy is far sighted and astigmatic; glasses will ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... upon his work of coloring the woodcuts in an odd volume of the 'Magasin Pittoresque', and wetting his brush from time to time in his mouth. The neighbors in the next apartment had a right to one-half of the balcony. Some one in there was playing upon the piano Marcailhou's Indiana Waltz, which was all the rage at that time. Any man, born about the year 1845, who does not feel the tears of homesickness rise to his eyes as he turns over the pages of an old number of the 'Magasin Pittoresque', or who hears some one play upon an old piano Marcailhou's ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... his own way; and when an army is divided up into several parts, the superior should always attend that one which he regards as most important. Some men think that modern armies may be so regulated that a general can sit in an office and play on his several columns as on the keys of a piano; this is a fearful mistake. The directing mind must be at the very head of the army—must be seen there, and the effect of his mind and personal energy must be felt by every officer and man present with it, to secure the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... has been his equal, with the possible exception of Handel. He was also an able performer on various stringed instruments, and his preference for the clavichord * led him to write a method for that instrument, which has been the basis of all succeeding methods for the piano. Bach's teachings and influence may be said to have educated a large number of excellent composers and organ and piano players, among whom were Emanuel Bach, Cramer, Hummel, and Clementi; and on his school of theory and ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... he came he found her entertaining four or five other farmers' daughters and a couple of young men. She was playing the piano to them and talking and laughing louder and faster than ever he had heard her in his life. He sat moody a little while and watched her uneasily, but soon took his line, and exerting his excellent social powers became the life of the ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... had married, when he was no longer in his first youth, a poor young noblewoman of the neighbourhood, a very nervous and sickly person, who had been reared in one of the government institutes for gentlewomen. She played far from badly on the piano; she spoke French in boarding-school fashion; she was given to enthusiasm, and still more addicted to melancholy, and even to tears.... In a word, she was of an uneasy character. As she considered that her life had been ruined, ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... in my presence as "a sore-eyed old maid"—I have forgotten who said it. Yet I can now recall occasions when her eyes, being "better", appeared unusually soft, and, had she not been an old maid, would sometimes have been beautiful—as, for instance, occasionally, when she was playing at the piano in the evenings before the candles were lighted. I recollect particularly once when she was singing an old French love-song. Another time was when on a certain occasion some one was talking about marriages and the reasons which led to or prevented them. She sat quite still and silent, looking ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... same size, and, for purposes of comparison, we shall drive them all at the same speed. And in order that their effects may be visible to you, I have prepared an indicator which resembles more than anything else the keyboard of a piano. It consists of a series of balanced levers with blades or keys attached, forming a keyboard four feet long. The levers, each three feet long, are delicately hung on fine brass centers, and each lever is counterbalanced by a weight hung in a vessel of water, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... 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 on. Dead stop—so still you could hear your hair growing. Then another jump, and another howl, as if the piano had two tails and you had trod on both ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... you are listening to him or not. He is not a fool. A fool is occasionally amusing— Longrush never. No subject comes amiss to him. Whatever the topic, he has something uninteresting to say about it. He talks as a piano-organ grinds out music steadily, strenuously, tirelessly. The moment you stand or sit him down he begins, to continue ceaselessly till wheeled away in cab or omnibus to his next halting-place. As in the case of his prototype, his rollers are changed about once a month to suit ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... gaze; then, as I have looked up in your eyes, I have sometimes had a flash of consciousness of a transfiguration in the very flesh of my face, just as I have a sense of rapturous strength sometimes in the very flesh and bone of my right hand, when I strike on the piano some of Beethoven's chords. But I know that, except in the light of your presence, I have no beauty. I had not so much to lose by illness as other women. But, dear one, that little is gone. I can read in the pitying looks of all my friends how altered ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... brilliant socially; at the same time she had fine intellectual powers. She was the delight of her teachers, for she could imbibe knowledge as a sponge absorbs water. On this particular day she was at her best during a very difficult lesson at the piano from a professor who came from London. Betty had always a passionate love of music, and to-day she revelled in it. She had been learning one of Chopin's Nocturnes, and now rendered it with exquisite pathos. ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... was not over. Games and dances followed the feast. The piano-top was lifted, and light fingers rattled out lively music to which a hundred flying feet quickly responded. Country-dances they were, the lancers and quadrilles. Round dances were still looked upon in that rural locality as an improper innovation. The good old major, in his frock coat and high ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... always been strong within me. I used to make noises, keeping one hand on my throat while the other hand felt the movements of my lips. I was pleased with anything that made a noise and liked to feel the cat purr and the dog bark. I also liked to keep my hand on a singer's throat, or on a piano when it was being played. Before I lost my sight and hearing, I was fast learning to talk, but after my illness it was found that I had ceased to speak because I could not hear. I used to sit in my mother's lap all day long and keep my hands on her face ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... out, and mother is going to a bridge party. I have an engagement, so here's the key. When you leave the flat, put it on the hall stand. Sophronia and mother will be back before I am, and they will let me in. I'll leave the centerpiece on the piano." ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... temper you have so much to expect,—your Billy, Sir!— would you, for the world, have called him JUDAS? Would you, my dear Sir," he would say, laying his hand upon your breast, with the genteelest address,—and in that soft and irresistible 'piano' of voice which the nature of the 'argumentum ad hominem' absolutely requires,—"Would you, Sir, if a 'Jew' of a godfather had proposed the name for your child, and offered you his purse along with it, would you have consented to such a desecration of him? O my God!" he would say, looking ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... hand, raises the forefinger of the other, turns her head sideways like a thrush watching a wriggling worm, and says, in a voice that rises as fast as the sound a mouse makes racing up the treble of the piano keys: 'Ump! whew! Didn't I tell you so? The minute my back was turned, of course you made ducks and drakes of all your promises. Show me a "Flying Jenney," that the tip end of any idiot's little finger can spin around, and I'll christen it Edward McTwaddle Singleton!' ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Where was there an apostle apter to receive this doctrine, so convenient for me as it was—beautiful Nature, and all that humbug? It is nothing but that. Well, the world was watching; and it saw "The Piano," the "White Girl," the Thames subjects, the marines ... canvases produced by a fellow who was puffed up with the conceit of being able to prove to his comrades his magnificent gifts, qualities which only needed a rigorous training to make their possessor to-day a master, instead of a dissipated ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... rested a moment, Mother invited them to march up-stairs again, for the "real" party. Johnnie Jones's auntie played the piano for them, and the children formed in line and marched to the room in which ...
— All About Johnnie Jones • Carolyn Verhoeff
... days," says Mrs Canning, her devoted friend, "she read sometimes to herself, and after dinner sat down to the piano. She taught Betty (her little niece) a little while, and played several slow movements out of her own head, with her usual expression, but with a very trembling hand. It was so like the last efforts of an expiring ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... her sewing, while de husband do his work on de easel. How you like dat portiere? I design him myself—oh, yes, I do all here; you keep them if you like; I go to Germany, perhaps not come back after some years, so I leave dem, not so? Now I show you my little chamber of the piano. See, I make an arched ceiling—groined arch, eh?—and I gild him; so I get pretty light and pretty sound, not? Ah! madame, I have not de happiness to be married, but I make my house so, dat if I get me a wife, she find all ready; but no wife come, so I give him over to ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... glare of Gothic windows; the massive curtains of orange-colored satin that, veiled with lace, pend in undulating folds over them; the cloudlike canopy that overhangs a dias at the further end of the parlor; the gorgeously-carved piano, with keys of pearl, that stands in dumb show beneath the drapery; the curiously-carved eagles, in gilt, that perch over each window, and hold daintily in their beaks the amber-colored drapery; the chastely-designed tapestry of sumptuously-carved ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... leave worthy works behind them,—Maria Parke and Mary Linwood. The former was the daughter of a famous oboist, who gave his child an excellent training. She became well known as a pianist and singer, and among other works produced songs, piano sonatas, violin pieces, and even a concerto for piano, or rather harpsichord. Miss Linwood devoted herself more entirely to vocal compositions, and published a number of songs and the oratorio, "David's First Victory." Two operas by her ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... with unpleasant feelings I arrived at this knowledge. Beyond doubt, the piano would be a difficult obstacle, if not a complete barrier, to my further progress in that direction. It was evidently one of the grandest of "grand pianos," far larger than the one I remembered to have stood in my mother's cottage parlour. Its upper side, or table, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... never been in the habit of reading signs. I don't like to read signs. I have never met a man that liked to read signs. I once invented a creature who could play the piano with a hammer, and I mentioned him to a professor in Harvard University whose peculiarity was Sanscrit. He had the same interest in my invention that I have in a certain kind of mustard. And yet this mustard has become a part of me. Or, ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... looking at a handsome new rose-wood piano when this question was addressed to me, and ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... of Summer Homeward came the fair Miranda. How the village people wonder'd At her fashions, and her movements, How she made the new piano Tremble to its inmost centre With andante, and bravura, What a piece she had to show them Of Andromache the Trojan, Wrought in silks of every color, And 'twas said a foreign language Such as princes use in Paris, ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... Harris; "another twenty, I suppose. Then we talked about the piano. Could you ever notice," said Harris, "any difference between one ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... includes three sonatas and three partitas (generally classed as six sonatas) for violin alone; six sonatas for violin and piano, a large quantity of chamber music of one sort and another, a few orchestral suites, and about ten large volumes of music for the clavier ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... morning after her arrival, having finished her piano-forte practice, touched her harp twice, and arpeggioed the Spanish Fandango on her guitar, Miss Betty read two paragraphs of "Gilbert" (for she was profoundly determined to pursue her tasks with diligence), ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... opposite end of the open space which answered the purpose of a market-place, and facing Lablache's store. Inside, it was gloomy, and the air invariably reeked of stale tobacco and drink. The bar was large, and at one end stood a piano kept for the purpose of "sing-songs"—nightly occurrences when the execrable whisky had done its work. Passing through the bar one finds a large dining-room on one side of a passage, and, on ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... Jacob Astor, At No. 81, Queen-street, Next door but one to the Friends Meeting-House, Has for sale an assortment of Piano fortes, of the newest construction, Made by the best makers in London, which he will sell on reasonable terms. He gives Cash for all kinds of FURS: And has for sale a quantity of Canada Beaver, and Beaver Coating, Racoon Skins, and ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... and into that room crowded with redolent humanity to hear an absurd little man string together vivid, gross words about religion, words that made me tingle all over," I answered as I threw my coat on a chair, lifted my hat from my head and sat down on the seat before the dark old piano. "I think religion is the most awful thing in the world and I am as afraid of it as I am of—of death. I'm ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... died, Shane?... I was playing and my house went on fire, and the servants fled.... When I came back from the theater a policeman said: 'We got everything all right, Miss O'Malley. Your dogs, your piano.' ... 'Where did you put the babies?' I asked.... They said: ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... worked like a Trojan at the athletic graces he should have cultivated in his younger days. He rode every morning; he practised every day at tennis and croquet; every evening he bowled; and every time some one sat at the piano and played dance music and the young people fell into impromptu waltzes and two-steps on the porch, he joined them and danced religiously with whomsoever he found to hand; usually ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... a difference it will make! I hope he will build a room where the girls can dine and rest and read, or have a piano; it would be ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a long time been anxious to take lessons upon the piano; but her father and mother had thought it best to defer it, as she was not very strong, and they had considered that her daily lessons at school were sufficient for her without the extra labor which music lessons and practising would involve. This decision had been ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... because besides fulfilling his nightly and matinee duties at the theatre, he gave piano lessons to a few pupils, and because those of us who could remember his long German surname ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Fairmount Water Works and Park, four objects which Americans cannot die peacefully, even in Naples, without having seen. But Ruth confessed that she was tired of them, and also of the Mint. She was tired of other things. She tried this morning an air or two upon the piano, sang a simple song in a sweet but slightly metallic voice, and then seating herself by the open window, read Philip's letter. Was she thinking about Philip, as she gazed across the fresh lawn over the tree tops to the Chelton Hills, or of that world which his entrance, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... the great salon clad in its summer garb, filled with flowers, the plush furniture swathed in white covers, the chandeliers draped in gauze, the shades lowered and the windows open, Madame Jenkins sits at the piano, picking out the last production of the fashionable musician of the day; a few sonorous chords accompany the exquisite lines, a melancholy Lied in unequal measures, which seems to have been written ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... played several fine dirges. The choir of St. Stephen's Church also appeared upon the platform and opened the proceedings by singing 'Come, Holy Spirit.' The choir consisted of Madame de Luzan, Mrs. Jennie Kempton, Dr. Bauos, and Herr Weinlich. Mr. H.B. Denforth presided at the piano. ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... poetic, mystic vocalization of the city's soul and meaning. You are the very chap to give me a hint. Some years ago a man got at the Niagara Falls and gave us its pitch. The note was about two feet below the lowest G on the piano. Now, you can't put New York into a note unless it's better indorsed than that. But give me an idea of what it would say if it should speak. It is bound to be a mighty and far-reaching utterance. To arrive at it we must take the tremendous crash of the chords of the day's traffic, the ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... His style is neither scientific, didactic, or philosophical. It is simply that of a man who is brimful of mirth, wit, and satire, and who is compelled to let it flow forth. Maintaining a very grave countenance himself, he plays upon the muscles of other people's faces as though they were piano- strings, and he the ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... deceived him— A mist with hands of mist blow down from the tree And open the door and enter and close it after? Who will say that he saw, as midnight struck Its tremulous golden twelve, a light in the window, And first heard music, as of an old piano, Music remote, as if it came from the earth, Far down; and then, in the quiet, eager voices? "... Houses grow old and die, houses have ghosts— Once in a hundred years we return, old house, And live once more." ... And then the ancient answer, In a voice not human, ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... among all the small creditors. Notwithstanding the energetic objections of Quigg and others, they rushed down stairs into the parlors, where the best furniture was kept, and commenced, taking possession. Rickarts, the shoemaker, seated himself on the top of the piano, and said he considered that his'n. But a second after, a man milliner, who had furnished two new bonnets to Miss Clementina on the strength of the brownstone front, took his seat on the other end of the piano, and gave Mr. Rickarts distinctly to understand that he was glued to it. The man ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... her to tell me about her school life. She began at once to enumerate all her different studies—piano, style, chronology of the Kings of France, sewing, drawing, catechism, deportment... I could never remember them all! She still held in her hands, all unconsciously, the two ends of her skipping-rope, and she ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... him in the young lady's estimation. He wisely thought it better to say nothing about Higson, except that he was the first lieutenant of his brother's ship. While supper was being prepared, Ivanowna, observing that the English officers were good enough to be pleased with her singing, went to the piano and sang several songs, with which Higson expressed himself highly delighted. Every moment his admiration of the young lady evidently increased. She was not, it must be acknowledged, possessed of what could be called classical beauty; she was fair, certainly, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... Honor's scales that day were anything but a satisfaction to Fraeulein Bernhardt, the piano teacher. Her mind was so abstracted that she kept continually playing wrong fingering, or even an occasional wrong note in the harmonic minors. Her study was little better, and her piece a dead failure. The mistress, with characteristic German patience, set her to work to try to conquer a couple ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... having nothing else to do, she wandered to the piano, and finding an old music book, turned its pages, playing snatches of "Monastery Bells" and "Listen to the Mocking-bird." She was putting a good deal of feeling into "I'm a Pilgrim, and I'm a Stranger," when a sound behind ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... do not wish to appear so," said the wife. "To complete this room, and make it look like other people's we want a piano ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... the after-end; a buffet loaded with richly-cut decanters and glass, backed up by a large gilt-framed mirror, occupied the whole space against the fore-bulkhead between the two entrance doors; and a very handsome piano, open, and with some music on it, occupied a similar position at the after-end of the saloon, two doors in the after-bulkhead proclaiming the existence of at least two more state-rooms. The apartment was lighted during the ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... skillful advice you can find, where you are; for if your swelling proceeds from a gouty, or rheumatic humor, there may be great danger in applying so powerful an astringent, and perhaps REPELLANT as brine. So go piano, and not without the best advice, upon a view ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... 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, was not the least attractive feature of that luxurious ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... defenseless against the rain and snow. Other houses were like those toy ones built for children, with the front open. They showed a bed with pillows, shelves supporting candles, books, a washstand with basin and pitcher, a piano, and ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... the dovecot; Hortense is drawing water from the well; and as all the rooms open into the court, you can see the white-capped cook over the furnace in the kitchen, and some idle painter, who has stored his canvases and washed his brushes, jangling a waltz on the crazy, tongue-tied piano in the salle-a-manger. "Edmond, encore un vermouth," cries a man in velveteen, adding in a tone of apologetic after-thought, "un double, s'il vous plait." "Where are you working?" asks one in pure white linen from top to toe. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... goodness!" And perhaps some of them were thinking, too: "We've lost the power to follow that recipe, if we ever had it." Poor women! With a sort of exultation he pitied them and their husbands. A chord was sounded on the piano. He stood still. The loud buzz of conversation died down. Was Rosamund going to sing again so soon? Perhaps some one had begged for something specially beloved. Jennie was playing a soft prelude as a gentle warning to a few of those who seem ever to find silence a physical ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Smedley would step into the drawing-room he would come in a few minutes. Smedley stepped into the dimly-lighted drawing-room accordingly, which, to his consternation, he found already had an occupant. The doctor's niece was at the piano. ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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 ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... Wales had sent them a piano, and many fine pictures ornamented the walls from famous persons. An old English lady who spends her summers up there seemed much amused at the prank of the girls, and evidently wondered what their ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... /n./ Abbreviation for 'argument' (to a function), used so often as to have become a new word (like 'piano' from 'pianoforte'). "The sine function takes 1 arg, but the arc-tangent function can take either 1 or 2 args." Compare {param}, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... comfort in the sound on such a hot day, and one listened for it half unconsciously; and tried not to hear, instead, Weber's "Invitation a la Valse," which came rippling in intermittent waves from the open window of the distant parloir, where Chardonnet was practising the piano. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Bible," said Mhor dreamily, as he screwed and unscrewed his steering-wheel, which was also the piano stool, "for Joseph was ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... come to the direct percussion of a string, as in the dulcimer, piano, etc., we at once perceive a possible connection between the hammer of the one and the rod or bow of the other: the accidental colliding of the bow with the strings of its accompanying instrument would soon suggest experiments ending in the forming of dulcimer-like ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... wife had retired a few moments, and a veteran piano commenced playing, while a spirited boy's voice struck up a hymn from the services of the Church,—"O Salutaris Hostia." It was her youngest son, whom she had not been able to resist showing off a little. Chrysler praised the voice, which was excellent, and the boy, attired ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... of good family, capricious, full of mischief, obstinate, wore out his whole family. The father, an official who played the piano, got to hate him, took him into a corner of the garden, flogged him with considerable pleasure, and then felt disgusted with himself. The son has grown up ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... of mind of a savage who might find upon a shore, washed up by the same storm, buoyant parts of a piano and a paddle that was carved by cruder hands than his own: something light and summery from India, and a fur overcoat from Russia—or all science, though approximating wider and wider, is attempt to conceive of India in terms of ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... drawing-room table of the middle classes, and with a couple of "Annuals" besides, which flank it on the same table, represents the art of the house; perhaps there is a portrait of the master of the house in the dining-room, grim-glancing from above the mantel-piece; and of the mistress over the piano up stairs; add to these some odious miniatures of the sons and daughters, on each side of the chimney-glass; and here, commonly (we appeal to the reader if this is an overcharged picture), the collection ends. The family goes to the Exhibition once a year, to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was the night of nights, when the purchases were made for the festival, and great ladies of the West, leaving behind their daughters who played the piano and had a subscription at Mudie's, came down again to the beloved Lane to throw off the veneer of refinement, and plunge gloveless hands in barrels where pickled cucumbers weltered in their own "russell," and to pick fat juicy olives ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... marry fast enough—a sweet, domestic woman, who plays the piano and does crochet-work; and he will talk to her about the price of iron and the integrity of the empire, and will think that he is making love, and she will think so too. And they will both of them go down to their graves without ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... to the parlor. Maud, being coaxed by her adoring father, played the piano. Then she sang. Then they all sang, all except Jed and the captain, that is. The latter declared that his voice had mildewed in the damp weather they had been having lately, and Jed excused himself on the ground that he had been warned not to sing because ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... mistress: and she sat down, staring uneasily round about her, as if wondering what was going to befall her next. Very silent was the little parlor; so small, that it was almost filled up by its large square piano, its six cane-bottomed chairs, and one easy chair, in which sat Miss Leaf with the great Book in ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... New York city.—This invention consists in placing the strings of an upright piano in an inclined position in the frame instead of a perpendicular one, as heretofore, for the purpose of enabling the hammer handle to be pivoted so near the strings that when the hammer head is driven up against them, it shall necessarily fall back ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... which, he took his wife by the arm and pushed her into the adjoining conservatory. Mildred reseated herself upon the inlaid piano-bench. The little man, his face now shiny with the sweat of drink and emotion, drew up a chair in front of her. He sat—and he was almost as tall sitting ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... look, and, trembling, I sat down to the piano. I was despicably nervous. Before the song was finished I had lost everything but honor; but I played that accompaniment to the most marvellous soprano ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... time I've 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
... directly, like a besieged commander, pleased to verify the good estate of his defences. 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 out the keys; and his mind was thronged with answerable ideas and images; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to two Hindoo families. They were from four or five to eight years old. They were very pleasant-looking, of olive complexions. Their hair was tied in a knot behind, with a wreath of flowers round the knot; they had large gold ear-rings and European dresses. One played very nicely on the piano, while the rest sang very nicely a funny song, which shows the native way of thinking about some of our customs. They sang some nice hymns, and repeated some pieces, as the 'Wreck of the Hesperus,' which was given at the examination of Oswell's ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... shining suit of broadcloth, and a silk hat equally shining and new, and went triumphantly to Washington, the sole drawback to his exultation being that he was obliged to leave Jenny behind him with the piano, the parlour furniture, and ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... mind. Observe your favourite pussy curled up in the arm-chair at such time as she knows the dishes have been cleared away, and there is no more chance of wheedling a titbit from you. You may play the piano, or the violin, or knock with a hammer, or shout your loudest, she will take no notice, no more than if she actually had no ears at all. Are you, therefore, to conclude she does not hear you? As well conclude ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... so much slower, and altogether a grosser, clumsier thing than light. But yet the waves or rays which make light correspond in some ways to the vibrations of sound. What corresponds to the treble on the piano is the blue end of the spectrum in light, and the bass is the red end. Now, when we are looking at the spectrum of any body which is advancing swiftly toward us, something of the same effect is observed ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... 1853.—Third quartet concert. It was short. Variations for piano and violin by Beethoven, and two quartets, not more. The quartets were perfectly clear and easy to understand. One was by Mozart and the other by Beethoven, so that I could compare the two masters. Their individuality seemed to become plain to me: Mozart—grace, liberty, certainty, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... place very much. The Rajah's nephew, Captain Brooke, was bringing out a bride; and her brother, Mr. Charles Grant, another. These four young people were expected in the early spring of 1857, and the Rajah was refurnishing his bungalow to receive these additions to his family. A new piano had arrived, and all sorts of pretty things, to brighten up the cool dark rooms of Government House. Mr. and Mrs. Crookshank were preparing a house for themselves also; and all their boxes, which had remained unopened while they lived with the Rajah, were moved up to their ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... fragrant matting; a table neither too low to be pretty nor too high to be useful; a couple of armchairs, hospitably embracing; a pair of silver candlesticks, quaint and homely; a goodly company of pleasant books; a piano, just escaping from its travelling-cage, with all its pent-up music in its bosom; a cosey little cot clinging to its ampler mother; a stream of generous sunlight from the window gilding and gladdening all,—behold our ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... man's; I could distinguish that much. He appeared to be bending over something, while his hands flew hither and thither, as if they were performing a quick-step upon a piano. But no sound of music ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... reach down to the brook in the meadow, and the hissing bursts of water poured down did at last check the flames before they had done much harm to the more modern portion of the house, though all the furniture was lying tumbled about in heaps on the lawn—Mary's piano, with the baby's cradle full of crockery on the top of it, and Edmund's writing desk in the middle of a washing ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but I did not tell him so, for such occurrences are taken as part of the day's work, and the sledge he safeguarded was of much more importance, for it held, as part of its load, the Commander's sextant, the mercury, and the coils of piano-wire that were the essential portion of the scientific part of the expedition. My kamiks (boots of sealskin) were stripped off, and the congealed water was beaten out of my bearskin trousers, and with a dry pair of kamiks, we hurried on to overtake the column. When we caught ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... piano, whilst her brother lay on the sofa, his hands clasped beneath his head. Dora did not play badly, but an absentmindedness which was commonly observable in her had its effect upon the music. She at length broke off idly in the middle of a passage, and began to linger ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... thrift, that existed about the cabin, notwithstanding his knowledge of French and other academic subjects. Another time, when riding on the outer edges of a town in the South, I heard the sound of a piano coming from a cabin of the same kind. Contriving some excuse, I entered, and began a conversation with the young colored woman who was playing, and who had recently returned from a boarding-school, where she had been studying ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... taken everything. How can I get along now! My piano is gone and how can I give lessons without it! I will have to go ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... who received so much per hundred cigars made; intelligent, bright-eyed and witty; many of them comely, with rosy cheeks and ruddy health; educated at the common schools, and able, their day's work over, to sit down at the piano ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... to come down first. He would thrum a little on the piano or take down some old volume. To-night it was Heine. He had not met any of the guests yet, which he considered a piece of good fortune. But God only knew what would happen when she saw him. He dreaded the moment, dreaded it with anguish. She was a woman, schooled in acting, ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... He tried the notes furtively on the piano, but they told him nothing. That day, however, there came to his mother's house a girl with whom he had had one of his numerous flirtations in bygone days. He asked her to play to him, and then to sing, hanging ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Several cheap oleograph copies of beautiful pictures adorn the walls, and the best parlour, which used to be kept in a condition of deadly propriety for state occasions only, is evidently used in the course of daily life. A brand-new piano, with a pretty little girl seated before it, suggests advancing refinement, and the expression of the child's face, while she attempts the impossible task of stretching an octave, indicates despair. There is ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... observed that Miss Keeldar looked pensive and delicate. This new phase in her demeanour smote him on his weak or poetic side. A spontaneous sonnet brewed in his brain; and while it was still working there, one of his sisters persuaded his lady-love to sit down to the piano and sing a ballad—one of Sir Philip's own ballads. It was the least elaborate, the least affected—out of all comparison the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the compositions which made up the life-work of Mozart; the few to which we have found space to refer are those connected with the chief episodes of his career. Much less can we convey an idea of his powers of improvisation. Hours snatched from sleep would be spent at the piano, and into the silence of the night drifted many a divine melody which no ear but his own was destined to hear. One who lived to be eighty, speaking of those wonderful improvisations, says: 'I still, in my old age, seem to hear the echo of those heavenly harmonies, and I go to my grave ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... 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; and "The ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... warmly for an hour or two: ladies of low degree scuttled like rats and panders dashed for safety, while "owners" in princely motorcars turned almost as white as their livers as they saw their "warehouses of virtue" going up in flame. Two incidents are very vivid—the sight of a grand piano tumbling out of a five-story window and one of the aforesaid "owners" trying to remonstrate with the avengers, and having his car run into the fire. The military police tried to interfere early in the game, but only made matters worse, as they ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... anything—just you. Don't go to the door yourself. Leave the front door open. Stand behind the end of the piano till you are awfully ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... 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 Beethoven must ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... bestowed themselves in "rooms yellow with sunshine from morning till night," in Casa Guidi, where, "for good omen," they looked down on the old gray church of San Felice. There was a large, square anteroom, where the piano was placed, with one large picture, picked up in an obscure street in Florence; and a little dining-room, whose walls were covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and of Robert Browning; a long, narrow room, wraith-like with plaster casts and busts, was Mr. Browning's ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... long et cetera, and, amongst the rest, Sheridan, were present.' The plays performed were The Wedding Day, and Who's the Dupe? Lawrence represented Lord Rakeland in the one, and Grainger in the other. The orchestra was behind the scenes. Lady Harriet Hamilton played the organ, Lady Maria the piano; Lady Catherine the tambourine, the Honourable Mr. Lamb the violoncello; other instrumentalists were hired—'a most perfect orchestra—with admirable scenery, and light as day.' 'The Prince then came in, and of course the orchestra struck up "God save the ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... we proceed uphill through the region of vines and olives, until we have passed the Punta di Scutolo, where begins our descent into that famous tract of country, the Piano di Sorrento, a plateau above the cliffs, some four miles in length by one in breadth. Poets of antiquity and bards of the Middle Ages alike have sung the delights of the Sorrentine Plain, and have painted in glowing colours of inspired ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan |
