"Piano" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was irregular, as that greasy Italian did not wheel his piano round every week. However I acquired sufficient proficiency to attract attention, and that is the great thing in life. The Italian offered me twopence a day to go on his round with him and dance while he turned ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... bought the brougham, and that the brougham belongs to some one else. Mrs. John Brown-Smith, who presides at our tubs from week to week, and who comes to us in a brilliant silk waist (removed for business), has just bought a piano to play Hold the Fort on, with one finger, when the neighbours are passing by—a fact which is not without national significance, which sheds light upon schools and upon college catalogues and learning-shows, ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... a fellow who could pitch into any kind of sport and play an uncommonly good game at almost anything. More than that, he could rattle off ragtime untiringly and his nimble fingers could catch up on the piano any tune he heard whistled. What wonder he speedily became the idol of Colversham? He was a born leader, tactfully marshaling at will the boys who were his own age, and good-naturedly bullying those who ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... the piano, not sorry that such should be Robert's conviction, and glad that he should not be disturbed in work that suited him so well as did St. Matthew's, but thinking him far too valuable for Lucy not to suffer in ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the reply that Miss de Laine expected, she momentarily hesitated: but the duchess profited by it to walk over to the piano and introduce herself. When she rose to go she invited Helen to luncheon with her the next day. "Come early, my dear, and we'll have a long talk." Helen pointed out hesitatingly that she was practically a guest of the de Laines. "Ah, well, that's ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... miles' distance from London, a very different person, with very different feelings, and in very different circumstances. It was one of the angels of the earth—a pure-hearted and very beautiful girl; who, after a day of peaceful, innocent, and charitable employment, and having just quitted the piano, where her exquisite strains had soothed and delighted the feelings of her brother, harassed with political anxieties, had retired to her chamber for the night. A few moments before she was presented to the reader, she had extinguished her taper, and dismissed ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... 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, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the wide-open door, Texas and Pat standing to welcome them. From one room to another Barbara ran in laughing delight, followed by the three, who were perspiring in an agony of suspense while Jefferson Worth looked on. The cook stove was not in the parlor, nor was the piano—out of place. In the proper room Barbara even found her trunks. There was a supply of provisions in the pantry and kindlings even ready by the kitchen stove for the morning fire. If there were little irregularities ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... you would feel what a divine consolation is music! And they shout for joy, they beam with happiness when a teacher says to them, "You will become an artist." The one who is first in music, who succeeds the best on the violin or piano, is like a king to them; they love, they venerate him. If a quarrel arises between two of them, they go to him; if two friends fall out, it is he who reconciles them. The smallest pupils, whom he teaches to play, regard him as a father. Then all go ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... furnished drawing-room. Double doors, centre, opening to hall and stairway. Grand piano at right, fireplace next to it, with large easy-chair in front. Centre ...
— The Naturewoman • Upton Sinclair
... to the main body of the house, which was two stories in height. The rooms were large and lofty; perhaps at first they looked rather bare of furniture, but in hot climates people generally keep their rooms more bare than they do in colder ones. I missed also the sight of a grand piano or some similar instrument, there being no means of producing music in any of the rooms save the larger drawing-room, where there were half a dozen large bronze gongs, which the ladies used occasionally to ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... from his sister telling of young Arthur's infatuation for the cheap actress, Miss Fotheringay, the story carries one along in the leisurely way of the last century. All the people are a delight, from Captain Costigan to Fowker, and from the French chef, who went to the piano for stimulus in his culinary work, to Blanche Amory and her amazing French affectations. But ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... these sent out to her this afternoon from a hothouse of the distant town by a half-frozen messenger. Near her head curtains of crimson brocade swept down the wall to the floor from the golden-lustred window cornices. At her back were cushions of crimson silk. At the other end of the sofa her piano stood and on it lay the music she played of evenings to him, or played with thoughts of him when she was alone. And other music also which she many a time ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... each reluctant step of his ascent: the tinkle of a piano accompaniment to a roaring jovial chorus from the canteen assuring him with plaintive, but futile ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... a most exemplary woman, both as a Christian and a member of society, had never tied her up in a fashionable corset to improve her figure, nor sent her to a fashionable boarding school to improve her mind; the consequence was that she knew nothing of the piano,—Virgil seems to have had the gift of prophecy with regard to this part of modern education, when he ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... side was a large stone fireplace; in a corner stood a grand piano; the center was dominated by a simple, flat-topped desk, across which much of the traffic of the ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... 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 ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... to sacrifice some of her present intelligence; it is impossible to imagine a genuinely intelligent human being becoming a competent trial lawyer, or buttonhole worker, or newspaper sub-editor, or piano tuner, or house painter. Women, to get upon all fours with men in such stupid occupations, will have to commit spiritual suicide, which is probably much further than they will ever actually go. Thus a shade of their present superiority to men will always remain, and with it a shade of their ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... and petted the pretty little daughter of his housekeeper, one of his serfs, whom he vaguely intended to set free. He passed hours playing with the pretty child, and even had an old French governess come to give her lessons. She taught little Natasha to dance, to play the piano, to put on the airs and graces of a little lady. So the years passed, and the old nobleman obeyed the girl's every whim, and his serfs bowed before her and kissed her hands. Gracefully and willfully she queened it over the ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... in his voice, "what had we to be grateful for? For ages of poverty, ignorance, and slavery? I think if anybody should be grateful, it is the people who have enslaved us and lived off our labor for generations. Captain, I used to know a poor old woman who couldn't bear to hear any one play on the piano." ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... carol surely did. The hair-cloth parlor of the Rattle-Pane House would have calmed anything. And the mousey smell of the old piano fairly jerked the dogs to its senile old ivory keyboard. Cocking their ears to its quavering treble notes,—snorting their nostrils through its gritty guttural basses, they watched Flame's facile fingers sweep from ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... floor, although she admitted that oilcloth or linoleum was easier to clean, but they were not so nice to the feet or the eye. Into all these improvements her daughter entered with the greatest delight. There was to be a red mahogany chest of drawers against one wall and a rosewood piano against the wall opposite. A fender of shining brass with brazen furniture, a bright, copper kettle for boiling water in, and an iron pot for cooking potatoes and meat; there was to be a life-sized picture of Mary over the mantelpiece and a picture of her mother ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... product. That is so as regards the functional products of human evolution. The hand was produced out of the animal forelimb with the primary end of grasping the things we materially need, but as a by-product the hand has developed the function of making and playing the piano and the violin, and that secondary functional by-product of the hand we account, even as measured by the rough test of money, more precious, however less materially necessary, than its primary function. It is, however, only in rare and gifted natures that transformed ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... some more of them, with a few hair raisers of his own invention, one of which consisted of apparently letting go the rope by accident and shooting skyward with a wild shriek, only to be caught at the end of a fine, especially woven piano wire cable attached to a spring safety belt, the cable being in turn fastened into ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... "Carol, Brothers, Carol," is to be sung behind the curtains, just before they are drawn for the second picture. A harp, violin, and triangle would assist the piano in making an orchestral effect. A solo voice supplies the closing air, "My Ain Countree." The piano may be played very softly whenever the reader pauses ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... a string of twenty neckties (borrowed from Uncle Guy's room) dangling around her waist, over a combination of pink crepe and bluebird pajamas. At the back of her neck, in savage glee, was propped the piano feather duster, the same being somewhat supported by another necktie of Kelly green hue, that banded ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... woman in a picture with a book, she seems to be doing precisely that for which she was born; the book gives such an expression of purity to the female figure. A large window, partially veiled by a white curtain, gives a view of a city at some little distance. On one side stand the harp and piano; there are just books enough for a lady's boudoir. There is no picture, except one of De Recamier herself, as Corinne. This is absurd; but the absurdity is interesting, as recalling the connection. You imagine her to have been reading one of De Stael's books, and to be now pondering what those brilliant ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... by the railroad where we practised with the guns. Another party accompanied Borwick to a secluded spot where he drilled them in machine-gun practice. Borwick was as skilful with a machine gun as with a piano. This was the highest praise ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... 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 home ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... in the little room, half parlour, half study, nearly filled with books and piano; and the furniture, though carefully protected with brown holland, looking the worse for wear, and as if danced over by ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Great bowls of roses, jars of pink carnations and occasionally a vase of pink orchids were on mantel, low bookcases or piano. And sometimes the odor of a cigarette or a burning pastille of Oriental fragrance, added to the Bohemian effect which is, oftener than not, discernible by ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... of making life more complex and subtle. We have the piano, the violin, the orchestra. Yet we also have rag-time, which is a reaction from the nervous tension of American commercial life, a swinging back to the old days when man, though a brute, was free. There is release and exhilaration in the barbaric, syncopated ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... onions is vulgar," said Irais languidly; "but it isn't, it is very good." She got up and walked to the piano, and, sitting down, began, after a little wandering ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... what I want at my dinners are young men, young men of very great fashion. I rather want young men at my dinners. I have some; Lord Languid always comes to me, and he is very fine, you know, very fine indeed. He goes to very few places, but he always comes to me.' Mrs. Montgomery Floyd quitted the piano, and seated herself by Mr. Temple. Mr. Temple was gallant, and Mrs. Montgomery Floyd anxious to obtain the notice of a gentleman whom Lady Bellair had assured her was of the first ton. Her ladyship herself beckoned Henrietta Temple to join her on the sofa, and, taking her hand very affectionately, ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... She moved like one in a dream; thought had ceased for her; all life was one delicious sensation, and at times she could not bear the delight of it in silence. She would tell it in low songs in the twilight; she would make her piano speak it in a hundred chords: and it would burst from her in some sudden glow of enthusiasm that made people wonder—the apparent cause being too slight to account for it. While this lasted nothing hurt her. She saw the sufferings ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... Sunday afternoon in Miss Patricia Doyle's pretty flat at 3708 Willing Square. In the small drawing room Patricia—or Patsy, as she preferred to be called—was seated at the piano softly playing the one "piece" the music teacher had succeeded in drilling into her flighty head by virtue of much patience and perseverance. In a thick cushioned morris-chair reclined the motionless form of Uncle John, a chubby little man in a gray suit, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... to employ a governess, Elsie preferred teaching her darlings her self. There was a large, airy room set apart for the purpose, and furnished with every suitable appliance, books, maps, globes, pictures, an orrery, a piano, etc., etc. There were pretty rosewood desks and chairs, the floor was a mosaic of beautifully grained and polished woods, the walls, adorned with a few rare engravings, were of a delicate neutral tint, and ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... but never mind. Perhaps you have fallen to Miss Pennycuick's piano? Did you hear it going as we ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... appearance, upset all conventional ideas of what a kite should be, resembling in its simplest form a mere box, minus the back and front. Nevertheless, these kites, in their present form, have carried instruments to heights of upwards of two miles, the restraining line being fine steel piano wire. ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... Hop. and I lighted our cigars and "railroaded" for awhile, then "Her Eyes" went to the piano and sang a dozen songs as only a trained singer can. Her voice was wonderfully sweet and low. They were old songs, but they seemed the better for that, and while she sang Hopkins's cigar went out and he just gazed ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... number. I like "The Moral Pirates" very much, and I was just wishing for a serial with girls in it, and the very next paper had the beginning of "Miss Van Winkle's Nap." I was delighted with it. I think the stories about Mr. Martin and Miss Pamela Plumstone's piano are so funny. ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... quite willingly, too. And these abortionists could double their trade and work the women in, if Capt. Saltmarsh could whirl a horse in, or a piano, or a guitar, in place of his cannon. The fact is, he fatigues the market with that cannon. Even the male market, I mean. These fourteen in the procession are not all satisfied. One is an old "independent" fireman, and he wants an engine in place of the cannon; another ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a piano. I will play valses. I will sing." He looked ardently at Vere, who was eagerly watching the ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... was prepared to project himself once again, in order to prove that it was erroneous to suppose that phantasms could not do all manner of physical actions. A deal table (upon which stood a tumbler and jug of water), a grandfather clock, and a piano were brought on to the stage, and Mr. Curtis once again projected his spirit form. The latter at once walked to the table, and, taking up the tumbler, filled it with water from the jug; after which it wound up the clock, and, sitting ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... Miles City, Bismarck, are more given to Doric banks than to gambling hells. But still are there hints of frontier days. Still trudge the prairie schooners; cowpunchers in chaps still stand at the doors of log cabins—when they are tired of playing the automatic piano; and blanket Indians, Blackfeet and Crows, stare at five-story buildings—when they are not driving modern reapers on ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... to see progress. He was like a musical person beginning to learn an instrument; for, just as surely as there are scales to be run upon the piano before your virtuoso can weave music, binding the gallery gods with delicious meshes of sound, so in prose-writing there must be scales run, fingerings worked out, and harmonies mastered. For in a page of lo bello ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... whilst some are chefs-d'oeuvre both in design and execution, and dazzlingly rich in material. Among these may be mentioned a pair of chimney ornaments, thickly hung with pendants of precious stones, a piano—which belonged to Marie Antoinette—the case of which is formed of tortoiseshell, richly decorated with gold; an inlaid cabinet, set with emeralds, sapphires, and other jewels; another composed of precious stones; chairs and couches crowned with exquisite tapestry of ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... into the parlour, and crawled into a dark corner under the piano, feeling that there was no place to go for comfort, since the one who had always kissed away her little troubles was ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... which any one who really enjoys painting finds in that art as distinct from sculpture is in this exquisite inlaying or joiner's work of it, the fitting of edge to edge with a manual skill precisely correspondent to the close application of crowded notes without the least slur, in fine harp or piano playing. ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... family and some of the other teachers. Here are business offices, a pleasant reading-room with an open fire upon its hearth, and a small library adjoining. In this house is a guest-chamber where all friends of the school are made welcome, and here are the music-rooms, one containing a piano ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 1, January 1888 • Various
... grovelling in the dust before her! You must prepare some pretty rooms for her, Spruce, those two at the top of the house that look right over the lawn and woods—and make everything as cosy as you can. I'll put the finishing touches. And I must send to London for a grand piano. There's only the dear old spinet in the drawing-room,—it's sweet to sing to, and Cicely will love it,—but she must have a glorious 'grand' as well. I shall wire to her to- day,—I know she'll come at once. She will arrive direct from Paris,—let me see!"—and she paused meditatively—"when ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... inspirar respeto la debilidad y la ignorancia? De hecho cuando la mujer estaba en aquel estado en que se tasaban sus conocimientos, porque se creia que un poco de culinaria, de bordado y de piano, a mas de saber el catecismo, eran suficientes para el matrimonio, unica carrera que se le permitia, el hombre le dispensaba toda clase de consideraciones y cortesias, pero estas no estaban inspiradas en un verdadero sentimiento de respeto sino mas bien en una especie ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... came home at dinner-time, I was alone in the parlor, practicing a. new piece of music which my fashionable teacher had left me. He was paid three dollars for every lesson. My father smiled as he laid a hundred-dollar bill on the keys of the piano. I started up, and kissing him, said, with the ardor of a ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... arranged room of a man who had confided such things to the better judgment and defter hands of a woman. There are fine statues and splendid paintings, and bric-a-brac enough to deceive anyone into believing it to be the home of a bevy of girls. There is a grand piano in the end of the room, and a violin in its case in the corner—this latter had been the faithful companion of Henry Rayne through many years of his life, and held as conspicuous a place in his drawing room as it did in his esteem. Upstairs again, we find the strangest ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... and elegancies which she had dispersed about the poorly-furnished room went to the heart of Nicholas! Flowers, plants, birds, the harp, the old piano whose notes had sounded so much sweeter in bygone times; how many struggles had it cost her to keep these two last links of that broken chain which bound her yet to home! With every slender ornament, the occupation of her leisure hours, replete with that graceful charm which lingers in every little ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... there, all apparently perfectly at home, and amusing themselves without restraint, according to their diversified inclinations. Some were examining the choice engravings that lay scattered on the tables; others were standing in a group round the piano, admiring some new music which Ella had that day received; while the elder members of the party were gathered round the fireside, enjoying its cheerful blaze, and merrily discussing the events of the season. Innocent amusement seemed to be the rule of the evening, and Agnes, though she ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... phrases, picked up from Bathurst, with mechanical precision; and Honor, still smiling, went over to the piano—a flamboyant instrument of rosewood and gold. After a second of hesitation Lenox followed, opened it for her, and resting a hand on the gilt back of her chair, bent down to speak to her before she began to play. ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... a passion for music—what is a true passion but a heavenly hunger?—which she indulged; relieved, strengthened, nor ever sated, by a continuous study of both theoretical and practical music, she approached both piano and organ with eager yet withholding foot, each as a great and effectual door ready to open into regions of delight. But she was gifted also with a fine contralto voice, of exceptional scope and flexibility, whose capacity of being educated into an organ of ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... as they called it in England, has expanded until now whole rooms, filled with ladies and gentlemen, are bodily carried up from the first story to the roof; a professional musician playing the while on the piano—not the old-fashioned thing our grandmothers used, but a huge instrument capable of giving forth all sounds of harmony from the trill of a nightingale to the thunders of an orchestra. And when ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... followed the good doctor's song. I turned to Miss Boulderstone, from whom I had borrowed a piano, and asked her to play a country dance for us. But first I said—not getting up ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... away and he joined the Episcopal Church. After we were married we decided to go on an extensive lecture tour. He had been a headsman in his own country and a prince. We took the customs of his people and his experiences as the subject of our lectures. I could sing, play the guitar, violin and piano, but I did not know his native language. He began to teach me and as soon as I could sing the song How Firm A Foundation in his language which ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... heard strains of music from the establishment known as "Bert's Place," and was shocked on staring through his show window to observe the Honourable George and Cousin Egbert waltzing madly with the cow-persons, Hank and Buck, to the strains of a mechanical piano. The Honourable George had exchanged his top-hat for his partner's cow-person hat, which came down over his ears in a ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... give a dozen illustrations the same persons had to impersonate more than one character. When the last were being decided upon, Roland took "Jack Be Nimble," and to show how well he understood the part he jumped over the piano stool for the "candlestick." It was not a difficult matter at all, but Roland landed wrong and strained his ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... quantity of the berry being furnished from the haversacks of my escort. By the time we got the coffee, rain was falling in sheets, and the evening bade fair to be a most dismal one; but songs and choruses set up by some of my staff—the two young women playing accompaniments on a battered piano—relieved the situation and enlivened us a little. However, the dreary night brought me one great comfort; for General Grant, who that day had moved out to Gravelly Run, sent me instructions to abandon all idea of the contemplated ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Panshin, with a peculiar bright and sweet smile, which came and went suddenly on his face. He drew up a chair with his knee, sat down to the piano, and striking a few chords began to sing, articulating the words ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... differ from evenings which had preceded it, in that the entire expense was to be borne by herself; and Mrs. Mills therefore only offered a feeble objection when the girl arranged that the front room upstairs was to be turned out, rout seats hired, and a few articles of furniture, including the piano-forte (which, at one perilous moment, threatened to remain for the rest of its life at the turn of the staircase), transferred from the shop parlour. Bulpert announced his intention of taking charge of the musical ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... believed also that instrumental music was the work of the devil. While a few believed that wind-instruments, like the organ, were proper and right, yet stringed instruments were harmful and tended to lascivious pleasings. Now there are churches that use the pipe-organ, but allow the use of a piano only in the lecture-room, or guildhouse. The United Presbyterians disunited from the main body by abjuring all music but that of the human voice, and then they split as to the propriety of using ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... mustachios and small incomes will find the MATRIMONIAL AGENCY OFFICE well worthy their attention; and young ladies who play the piano, speak French, and measure only eighteen inches round the waist, cannot better consult their own interests than by making an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... and secluded nooks, and a low and smoky ceiling. And nothing could have been more rudimentary than its decorations. The walls had simply been placarded with posters of violent hues, some of the crudest character, showing the barest of female figures. Behind a piano at one end there was a little platform reached by a curtained doorway. For the rest, one simply found a number of bare wooden forms set alongside the veriest pot-house tables, on which the glasses containing various beverages left round and sticky marks. There ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... said this was the only kind of lab-work in zoology in which Bob could get credit. A pile of plates warmed before the fire where Smith was toasting crackers at the end of a sharpened stick. At the piano, Pellams was softly playing "barber shop" chords. It was all very lazy and comfortable. ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... Sundays, so that one learns without surprise that she is a strict Anglican. She lives in the neighbourhood of Cadogan Square, and has five daughters, of whom two are married, to a well-known surgeon and a minor canon respectively. The beauty of the family is Joan, who plays the piano and is considered intellectual and artistic. She spent a year at the Conservatoire in Brussels, and often uses French words in conversation. Effie, the youngest, is an adept at games, and rather alarms her mother by her habit of using slang ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... 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 Prediction," ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... third, nothing at all. So he moped about the great house, lonesome as a forgotten dog. He wrote a sonnet on being lonesome, tore it up and flung the scraps into the waste-basket. Once, he seated himself at the piano and picked out with clumsy forefinger Walking Down the Old Kent Road. Kitty could play. Often in the mornings, while at his desk, he had heard her; and oddly enough, he seemed to sense her moods by what she played. (That's the poet.) When she played Chopin or Chaminade she went about gaily ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... little, came the body of the procession. First a carriage containing the Prophet, portly, strong-faced, easy of manner, as became a giant who felt kindly in his might. By his side was his wife, Amelia, the reigning favourite, who could play the piano and sing "Fair Bingen on the Rhine" with a dash that was said to be superb. Behind this float of honour came other carriages, bearing the Prophet's Counsellors, the Apostles, Chief Bishop, Bishops generally, Elders, Priests, and Deacons, each ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... a new influence came into their lives. It was a fine old Frenchman, who had drifted down to Jefferson from Alabama, where he had been a professor of piano teaching. His name was D'Archais, and by degrees they learned his history. But the immediate result of their meeting was to give their two little daughters, now eight and ten years old, to him ...
— The Little Immigrant • Eva Stern
... softly through the sky. But regularly they dipped their wings in pitch black; Notting Hill, for instance, or the purlieus of Clerkenwell. No wonder that Italian remained a hidden art, and the piano always played the same sonata. In order to buy one pair of elastic stockings for Mrs. Page, widow, aged sixty-three, in receipt of five shillings out-door relief, and help from her only son employed in Messrs. Mackie's ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... piano a man of bulk and stature was wearing two waistcoats on his wide chest, two waistcoats and a ruby pin, instead of the single satin waistcoat and diamond pin of more usual occasions, and his shaven, square, old face, the colour of pale ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... at Rethel showed me a letter from a friend demanding "some easy chairs and a piano for his trench house," and the Major said, "I hear they have music up on the Yser, but the French are too close ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... buttered-bun dishes crashed against each other in the hearth. The other philosophers were crouched in odd shapes on the sofa and table and chairs, and one, who was a little bored, had crawled to the piano and was timidly trying the Prelude to Rhinegold with his knee upon the soft pedal. The air was heavy with good tobacco-smoke and the pleasant warmth of tea, and as Rickie became more sleepy the events of the day seemed to float one by one before his acquiescent ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... for us," begged Kitty. "I will play for you, and you see that the piano is so placed that I can watch you at the same time. What shall I play? Some ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... interpretation of Sacred Prophecy. Looking back, it appears to me that this unusual mental exercise was almost their only relaxation, and that in their economy it took the place which is taken, in profaner families, by cards or the piano. It was a distraction; it took them completely out of themselves. During those melancholy weeks at Pimlico, I read aloud another work of the same nature as those of Habershon and Jukes, the Horae Apocalypticae of a Mr. Elliott. This was written, I think, in a less disagreeable style, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... a forlorn hope. As he lay there, longing so, in the dangerous dark, he went about the library at home in his thought and placed each familiar belonging where he had known it all his life. And as he finished, his mother's head shone darkly golden by the piano; her fingers swept over the keys; he heard all their voices, the dear never-forgotten voices. Hark! They were singing his hymn—little Alice's reedy note lifted above the others—"God shall ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... and a sunk balustered garden that lay at the foot of a terrace, I heard through the open windows of one brilliantly lighted room the click of billiard balls and the sound of men's light-hearted laughter, and through another the notes of a piano. ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... broken door. Who will say that he saw—or the dusk 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 ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... any that ever sparkled at a class-day lunch, though many collegians know the taste of it; and when the old lady was disposed of, he gladly turned to find the young one, bent on having a single word. He saw her standing by the piano now, idly turning over music as she talked with several gentlemen. Hiding his impatience under an air of scholastic repose, Demi hovered near, ready to advance when the happy moment came, wondering meantime why elderly persons persisted in absorbing young ones instead of sensibly sitting in corners ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... apartments were comfortable with chairs, lounges, and ottomans; a piano occupied one corner, while two or three good pictures hung upon the walls. In the bow-window was a window-seat piled high with cushions, from which by daylight one might have surveyed the passing show—dull enough ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... as regards all pleasures not comprised in the necessaries of life. He who wishes for a grand piano will enter the association of musical instrument makers. And by giving the association part of his half-days' leisure, he will soon possess the piano of his dreams. If he is fond of astronomical studies he will join the association of astronomers, with its philosophers, its observers, its calculators, ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... expects, though one sees some superb dark eyes and blue-black hair; they dress with a view to the latest French fashions, and sometimes rather a distant view. At last a lady takes her seat at the piano, then comes an eager rush of gentlemen into the room, and partners are taken for cotillons,—large, double, very double cotillons, here called contradancas. The gentlemen appear in scrupulous black broadcloth ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Crawford seated herself on a pink rose, about the size of a Jersey cabbage, with two colossal buds, and rested her tired back against a similar group. At the first notes of the piano her watchful and smiling face relaxed and she nodded wearily in the background. It did not matter much. The young master was grave, silent, patient, conscientious. In fact, it did not matter at all. Having slept through the earlier ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... for the sole purpose of giving the desired effect to any snatches from Herr Wagner's work they may take the notion to whistle. But in the sanctity of our homes, around our firesides, in the front-parlor, where the melodeon or the newly hired piano has been set up, it is there that Herr Wagner's name will be revered, and his masterpiece repeated o'er and o'er. The libretto is not above criticism; it strikes us that there is not enough of it. The probability is that Herr Wagner ran out of libretto before he ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... at Mr. Royal, saw he was watching the pair who were busy at the portfolio, and that the expression of his countenance was troubled. His eyes, however, soon had pleasanter occupation; for as soon as Rosa touched the piano, Floracita began to float round the room in a succession of graceful whirls, as if the music had taken her up and was waltzing her along. As she passed the marble Dancing Girl, she seized the wreath that was thrown over its arm, and as she went circling round, it seemed ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... were also set up and observations of the heavens occupied the astronomically inclined for an hour or two. Thus the moons of Jupiter were made to contribute to the evening's entertainment. The piano, too, was not the instrument of torture usually found masquerading in hotel-parlors, and we finally gravitated towards it and made night hideous with our music and college songs until, to pharaphrase the poet, in to-day already walked to-morrow ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... wrongs; Beatrice glanced over The Referee. Fanny, after twirling awhile in maiden meditation, turned to the piano and jingled a melody from 'The Mikado.' She broke off suddenly, and, without looking round, addressed ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... shops; with the muddy river for a street and the impenetrable jungle for a back yard. The home of the director at Dima is the proud boast of the entire Congo. And all they say of it is true. It did have a billiard table and ice, and a piano, and M. Fumiere invited me to join his friends at an excellent dinner. In furnishing this celebrated house, the idea had apparently been to place in it the things one would least expect to find in the jungle, or, ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... Battle of the Prague,' 'The Maiden's Prayer,' 'Cherry Ripe,' and 'The Canary Bird's Quadrilles.' Such tinkling melodies had been the delight of Miss Whichello's youth, and—as she had a fine finger for the piano (her own observation)—she sometimes tinkled them now on the jingling old piano when old friends came to see her. Also there were Chippendale cupboards with glass doors, filled with a most wonderful collection of old china—older even than their owner; Chinese jars heaped up with dried ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... reply, the piano was suddenly touched in the next room, and a sweet voice began to sing a cheerful melody. "Hush!" said Doctor Amboyne. "Surely I know that tune. Yes, I have heard ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... if she must rescue Arthur from Matilda at any cost, and succeeded in setting her down to the piano; and to secure his quiet, though feeling it a very presumptuous venture, she drew her chair near her father, and set herself to talk to him. Mr. Moss was quite amazed to find a woman—a daughter—capable ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the knife severed the remaining rope, already drawn as taut as a piano wire. But, as Jack's knife fell, the place became filled ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... there is no thought of the color of a man's skin. They mix together on the convoy trains going up to the front, and all sing together, sharing each other's dangers and their joys. It is not an uncommon sight to see a crowd of white doughboys around a piano in some 'Y' or Red Cross hut, singing to beat the band, with a colored jass expert pounding the stuffing out of the piano. The white boys enjoy immensely the wit of the colored comrades, and many a bleak ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... and other places of amusement, because of her bright conversation and high ideals. From her I began to catch a glimpse of the nobler things of life, things that to me, being but poorly educated and in a foreign land, had been denied. She was a sweet singer and an excellent performer on the piano, and somehow when she sang I was able to understand the soul-reaching ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... Chicago Defender for laborers. I am a young man and want to finish school. I want you to look out for me a job on the place working morning and evening. I would like to get a job in some private family so I could continue taking my piano lesson I can do anything around the house but drive and can even learn that. Send me the name of the best High school in Chicago. How is the Wendell Phillips College. I have finish the grammer school. I cannot come before ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... evening service. They sang hymns at the piano, selecting oftenest those which made best display of Miss Garnet's and Mr. March's voices. Hers was only mezzo-soprano and not brilliant, but Mr. March and a very short college girl, conversing for a moment aside, agreed that it was "singularly winsome." Another ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... possible that he is, in that tongue and atmosphere, all that he is not elsewhere. While he is writing with a pen I know his limitations as much as I admire his genius; and I know it is true to say that he does not appreciate romance. But while he is playing on the piano he may be cocking a feather, drawing a sword or draining a flagon for all I know. While he is speaking I am sure that there are some things he does not understand. But while he is listening (at the Queen's Hall) he may understand everything, including God and me. Upon this part of him I am a reverent ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... into the garden, where the parrot sat perched on her pole; pleasant nooks were arranged in the two sides of the bay window, with light chairs and small writing-tables, each with its glass of flowers; the piano stood across the arc, shutting off these windows into almost a separate room; low book-cases, with chiffonier cupboards and marble tops, ran round the walls, surmounted with many artistic ornaments. The central table was crowned with a tall ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dancing!' they exclaimed with glee—except Jinny, who was just a little offended and went to stand by the piano till it was over. For Mother danced as lightly as a child for all her pride of measurement, and no frigate ever skimmed the waves more gracefully than Mother ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... occurred. The 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, ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... that she never returned—it. We have another vivid picture of his irritation when she was waltzing in his presence at Matlock; then an account of their riding together in the country on their return to the family residence; again, of his bending over the piano as she was playing the Welsh air of "Mary Anne;" and lastly, of his overhearing her heartless speech to her maid, which first opened his eyes to the real state of affairs—"Do you think I could care for that lame boy?"—upon which he rushed out of the house, ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... our breath and still distinguish one short interval from another. It cannot be the heart beat, for we can beat time in a rhythm that cuts across the rate of the heart beat. When a singer is accompanying himself on the piano, keeping good time in spite of the fact that the notes are uneven in length, and meanwhile using his feet on the pedals, what has he got left to beat time with? No one has located the stimulus to which accurate time perception responds, though, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... gorgeous roses, was placed at the foot of a standing mirror framed in silver, so that the blossoms were reflected double. The sitting-room was provided with easy chairs, a writing-table, and a small piano, and here, too, masses of roses showed their fair faces from every corner. It was all so charming that I could not help uttering an exclamation of delight, and the maid who was unpacking ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... and hearing the piano's notes in the mess-room he glanced inside. It was a rest period between drills, and a soldier seated at the instrument strummed his way through the air of a mournful ditty. It's an odd thing that when the average soldier is wholly cheerful he ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... as any he had ever seen enmeshed in silken hose. Her hands, long, slender, taper-fingered, actually dainty, although brown and roughened by hard labor, were, it seemed to him, better fitted for the fingering of a piano's keys than for the coarse and heavy tasks to which he knew they must be well accustomed. He gazed at her in veritable wonder. How had she blossomed, thus, here ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... nonsense. In her life's isolation she centered on the child's head all her shattered, broken little vanities. She dreamed of high station; she already saw him, tall, handsome, clever, settled as an engineer or in the law. She taught him to read, and even, on an old piano, she had taught him two or three little songs. But to all this Monsieur Bovary, caring little for letters, said, "It was not worth while. Would they ever have the means to send him to a public school, to buy him a practice, or start him in business? Besides, with cheek a man ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... his sister was living in Genoa, a red- bearded man of great strength and stature, tanned by years in India, and his hands covered with barbaric gems, entered the room unannounced, as she was playing the piano, lifted her from her seat, and kissed her. It was her brother, suddenly returned out of a past that was never very clearly understood, with the rank of general, many strange gems, many cloudy stories of adventure, and next his heart, the daguerreotype of an Indian prince ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... place! Whose could it be? With a start, I stopped short, in the middle of that court, heedless of the crowd of pushing, shouting children who at once gathered about me. I had been struck by an old recollection. My sister used to sing. I remembered where her piano had stood in the great drawing-room. It had been carted away during those dreadful weeks and her music all burned; but the vision of her graceful figure bending over the keyboard was one not to be forgotten even by a thoughtless child. Could it be—oh, heaven! if this ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... all imbibing a dissertation on Plotinus from the attic lips of S.T.C. Suddenly a cry arose of "Fire—fire!" upon which all of us, master and disciples, Plato and [Greek: hoi peri ton Platona], rushed out, eager for the spectacle. The fire was in Oxford Street, at a piano-forte maker's; and, as it promised to be a conflagration of merit, I was sorry that my engagements forced me away from Mr. Coleridge's party before matters were come to a crisis. Some days after, meeting with my Platonic host, I reminded him of the case, and begged to know how that very ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... further, and, as he replied affirmatively: "Then the Con. of course?"—an enigmatic question that needed to be explained. "You're piano, are you not?" she went on. "I thought so. It is hardly possible to mistake the hands"—here she just glanced at her own, which, large, white, and well formed, were lying on the table. "With strings, you know, the right hand is ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... tells how, after some classical or fashionable music had been played, Landor would come closer to the piano and ask for an old English ballad, and when "Auld Robin Gray," his favourite of all, was sung, the tears would stream down his face. "Ah, you don't know what thoughts you are recalling to the ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... and Esther with her head haughtily up, led the way, and Jeff, following them, sat down as soon as they had given him leave by doing it, and looked about the room with a faint foolish curiosity to note whether it, too, had changed. Madame Beattie thrust out a pretty foot, and Esther, perched on the piano stool, looked rigidly down at her trembling hands. She was very pale. Suddenly she recovered herself, ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... True Blue could talk of nothing but the King, and how glad he was to have seen him. In the evening, however, one of the young ladies began to play a hornpipe, the music of which Sir Henry, not without difficulty, had procured for her. True Blue pricked up his ears, and then, running to the piano, exclaimed, "You play it very well indeed, Miss Julia—that you do; but I wish that you could just hear Sam Smatch with his fiddle—he'd take the shine out of you, I think you'd say. Howsomdever, my lady, if you and the young ladies ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... curls round her head." The abundance of her curling hair caused her much trouble, and she once cut it off, as Maggie Tulliver did, because it would not "lie straight." "One of her school-fellows," we are told, "recalls that the first time she sat down to the piano she astonished her companions by the knowledge of music she had already acquired. She mastered her lessons with an ease which excited wonder. She read with avidity. She joined very rarely in the sports of her companions, and her diffidence and shrinking sensibility prevented ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... ago we bought an upright grand piano, and after we had had it a few months we noticed that one of the keys would stay down when touched, unless struck very quickly and lightly, and the next day another acted in the same way. That evening, after the boys had gone to bed, father ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... never been followed out as they should be, and might be, if the subject were pursued scientifically as other questions in science are.) Again, might not telepathy be facilitated if we chose individuals of the same general temperament? If we chose two individuals to whom the same chord on the piano appealed (say the common chord of G minor or C sharp), and this chord were struck repeatedly, might not telepathic transmission be facilitated under such conditions? If both subjects were hypnotized, and the agent were told to "will" certain figures, etc., might not the percipient ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... 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 day by a large skylight filled in with painted glass—in which ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... poetry book was subscribed for by the Prince Regent and half the notables of the kingdom. Capital company at a dinner-table—stutters, begad, like a What-you-may-call-'em, and keeps everybody in a roar—and when he's had his whack of claret, he sings his own songs to the piano, you know, and all that sort of thing, and has quite put Tommy Moore's nose out of joint. Nobody knows much about him, but that don't matter with these literary chaps, does it now? Goes everywhere, ma'am—quite a favorite at Carlton House—a highly agreeable, ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... eyes. Beauty there was, grace there was, strength, and enough of the rest to drive better men than George Skinner to beat their heads on piano-tops—but for the new-found life of him Conroy could not feel one flutter of instinct or emotion that turned to herward. He put up his feet and fell asleep, dreaming of a joyous, normal world recovered—with interest on arrears. There were many things ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... describes him as 'a very handsome, gentlemanly, and amiable person. Mme. D'Arblay tells how one evening at Dr. Burney's home, when Signor Piozzi was playing on the piano, 'Mrs. Thrale stealing on tip-toe behind him, ludicrously began imitating him. Dr. Burney whispered to her, "Because, Madam, you have no ear yourself for music, will you destroy the attention of all who in that one point are otherwise gifted?"' Mrs. Thrale ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... unpleasant by the pernicious '106' fuzes, with which the enemy's artillery was well supplied. From Robecq, which was steadily being shelled to ruins and through which one passed with reluctance, a disinterested salvage party, consisting of Stanley and the officers of B Company, brought a piano, which was destined to be an historic instrument. On more than one occasion the Battalion returned from its spell in the front line to the St. Venant Asylum, a large institution said to be the second largest ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... her 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 midnight adventure was forgotten, and the hero ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... in the house, for in addition to my careful inquiries on this point, Mr. C. informed me that he had obtained the raps on the handle of his umbrella out of doors, when the child was by his side; and that the music-master complained of raps proceeding from inside the piano whenever the child was listless or inattentive at her music lesson. Mrs. C. told me that almost every night she heard the raps by the bedside of the child when she went to bid her good-night; and that after she had left ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... became frequent and friendly. There were horseback rides together in the mornings, sails in the afternoons, and duets on the piano in the evenings. Then her Parisian toilets made poor Sophy's Largo dresses look funnily dowdy, and her sharp questions and affected ignorances of Sophy's meanings and answers were cleverly aided by Madame's cold silences, lifted brows, and hopeless acceptance of such an outside barbarian. ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... 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 ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... she said, and began to pace about the room, up and down, up and down. Her mother watched her anxiously. Angelica closed the piano. Dr. Galbraith and the bishop came in from the dining room, and then Edith declared that driving in the open air had made her so sleepy she ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... for nine years in perfect happiness. Gaudissart, having become manager of a theatre, employed him in his orchestra, entrusted him with the work of making copies of the music, and employed him to play the piano and various instruments that were not used in the boulevard theatres: the viol d'amore, English horn, violoncello, harp, castanets, bells, saxhorns, etc. Pons made him his residuary legatee (April, 1845); but the innocent German ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... buildings were only canvas; and these, and the multitude of tents, gleamed dully like a great encampment. Voices sounded constantly, echoing across the water; hammering never ceased; music floated—strains of violin and trumpet and piano! From the water-front clear back up the sides of the hills San Francisco was alive by night as by day. And on the hour all the vessels in the harbor struck their bells, in a ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... pretty well filled with a sprinkling of miners, Mexicans, and ranchers. Men in blue overalls, flannel shirts, and wide-brimmed hats were playing the different games of chance or standing in groups in front of the bar. A harsh brass-sounding piano on a raised platform at the end of the room was being played by a short-haired individual in a dress suit, and a young lady who evidently did not object to the calsomining process to aid nature was singing a topical song. In the corner stood Wendell Harrison ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... have dances. They would have dances from one plantation to the other. The master didn't object. They had fiddles, banjo and quills. They made the quills and blowed 'em to beat the band. Good music. They would make the quills out of reeds. Those reeds would sound just like a piano. They didn't have no piano. They didn't serve nothing. Nothing to eat and nothing to drink except them that brought whiskey. The white folks made the whiskey, but the colored folks ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... at Slocomb-on-Sea. There were six rooms on the same floor, all communicating, as shown in the diagram. The rooms they took were numbers 4, 5, and 6, all facing the sea. But a little difficulty arose. Mr. Dobson insisted that the piano and the bookcase should change rooms. This was wily, for the Dobsons were not musical, but they wanted to prevent any one else playing the instrument. Now, the rooms were very small and the pieces of furniture indicated were very big, so ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... "When they was at the piano together that time and Sam said somethin' about their bein' a fine-lookin' couple?" ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... half-smile crept into his stolid countenance. Julia Cloud was so glad that she could have cried. She hated scenes, and she dreaded being at outs with her relatives. So she ate her chicken potpie and fresh pumpkin-pie thankfully, and forgot how weary she was. After supper Leslie sat down at the piano, and rattled off rag-time; and she and Allison sang song after song, while the children stood about admiringly, and even Herbert sat by as at a social function and listened. The atmosphere was really quite clear when at last they prepared to leave, and Julia Cloud had an inkling that ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... law, the children would study quietly for probably an hour or more. Then, their lessons prepared, they would draw up in a little group to listen to a story, possibly from the Arabian Nights, or would gather about the piano in the parlor where Henry would sing to them the popular songs of that day. Sometimes the music would become so irresistibly gay that the children would begin to dance to its accompaniment and to awaken the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... an important debate on he would tear up Birdcage Walk in a hansom, and spend an hour in the Duchess's amber drawing-rooms, enlightening Lady Mabel as to the latest aspect of the Policy of Conciliation, or standing by the piano while she ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... nigger serenader, and the others of his race, And the piano organist - I've got him on the list! And the people who eat peppermint and puff it in your face, They never would be missed - they never would be missed! Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... replied, with a tiny grin for my cleverness, "not a bit of it. She only insists on taking five baths a day and never touching any washable thing that's been handled. She wears five changes a day and cleans the piano keys before she ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... house, he found Emma getting supper, Martha setting the table and Ruth, with a candy box before her at the piano, going over her everlasting "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ahs" from "C to C" ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... agonies of want pressed, but it was too little. I trembled out, "I cannot." The gentleman invited me to dine, and when we were sitting over our wine, agreed to give me my price. His lady said, "But, my dear, where am I to put my piano?" and the bargain was at an end!' On the third day Sir George Beaumont and Mr. Holwell Carr came to the Exhibition, having been deputed to buy the picture for the British Gallery. While they were discussing its merits, one of the officials went over, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... the rector's wife, shudderingly, as she came into the room and going to the piano, turned ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... four thousand complex arches, which increase regularly in length and diminish in height. They are connected at one end with the fibres of the auditory nerve, and Helmholtz has suggested that the waves of sound play on them, like the fingers of a performer on the keys of a piano, each separate arch corresponding to a different sound. We thus obtain a glimpse, though but a glimpse, of the manner in which perhaps we hear; but when we pass on to the senses of smell and taste, all ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... his nose casually at the entire audience, and then amid shouts and hisses sat down at the piano and ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... intact. These walls were roofless and 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, ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... of the Providence (R. I.) Journal, gives an account of a horse in his neighborhood that was remarkably fond of music. "A physician," he says, "called daily to visit a patient opposite to my place of residence. We had a piano in the room on the street, on which a young lady daily practiced for several hours in the morning. The weather was warm, and the windows were open, and the moment the horse caught the sound of the piano, he would deliberately wheel about, ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... with herself, that loyal little Bep had recaptured from the enemy. She lay there, lulled by its presence; and slowly, slowly she was dropping off into real slumber when a sharply agonizing thought, an inescapable mental pin-prick, roused her. It was Number 9. She had not touched the piano during the whole of ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... you that at my lesson yesterday I played the Ernst F sharp minor concerto,—-the virtuoso, firework thing, you know, with Kloster putting in bits of the orchestra part on the piano every now and then because he wanted to see what I could do in the way of gymnastics. He laughed when I had finished, and patted my shoulder, and said, "Very good acrobatics. Now we will do no more of them. We will apply ourselves ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... drawing-room, which was exquisitely done up in Eastern style, with an arched roof, screens of wonderfully carved wood brought from Upper Egypt, Persian hangings and embroideries, divans and prayer rugs, on which nobody ever prayed. Lord Reggie and Mr. Amarinth both played the piano in an easy, tentative sort of way, making excess of expression do duty for deficiencies of execution, and covering occasional mistakes with the soft rather than with the loud pedal. Lord Reggie played a hymn of his own, which he frankly acknowledged ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... one else talk, Harry," interrupted Maimie, with cheeks flaming. "We are going to have some singing now. Here is auntie. Mayn't we use the piano?" ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... through the folding doors sideways and every time he sits down the man in the apartment below us kicks because we move the piano ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... friend. Hilary Meredith, spotlessly garbed, was lounging in the drawing-room, drinking in the strains of a Chopin Nocturne. Not only were his ears gladdened by romantic music, but his eyes were equally exercised by the radiant figure of Angela, bending over the piano, with the red-shaded lights throwing her bare shoulders into perspective and turning her hair to liquid gold. The nocturne ended, ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... secure designs for pianos at the least possible cost, as is the object of many competitions in design, but merely to attract the attention of designers to this special problem, and take one more step towards a better condition of things in the piano business. The Henry F. Miller Co. have for several years followed a policy the results of which are seen in some of their later designs. It has been the practice to turn special cases over to furniture and cabinet makers, entailing an expense that has been practically ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration - Vol 1, No. 9 1895 • Various
... it why don't you send him a piano, and an automobile, too, so he can ride home when he wants to? What do you mean—getting word to him? Don't you know that the beastly Huns will hold up the mail as they please, and anything else we might send. They don't ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... darkened parlour. It was small and rather stiff. As one's eyes became accustomed to the dim green light one noticed the incongruity of the furniture: the horsehair chairs and sofa, and large accountant's desk with ledgers; the large Pleyel grand piano; a bookcase, in which all the books were rare copies or priceless MSS. of old-fashioned operas; hanging against the wall an inlaid guitar and some faded laurel crowns; moreover, a fine engraving of a composer, twenty years ago the most ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various |
