"Accordion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... because, even if learning were general, there are people who prefer to examine things through a microscope to studying the starry heavens. Some like statues, some like pictures. A particular individual has no other ambition than to possess a good piano, while another is pleased with an accordion. The tastes vary, but the artistic needs exist in all. In our present, poor capitalistic society, the man who has artistic needs cannot satisfy them unless he is heir to a large fortune, or by dint of hard work appropriates ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... them on earth, the crew insisted that they should be allowed to enjoy themselves to the utmost. To this the captain, knowing only too well what that would mean, reluctantly gave his consent. A general pandemonium at once ensued, one of the men producing a mouth accordion and another a concertina, whilst the rest, selecting partners with much mock gallantry, danced to the air of a popular Vaudeville song till they could dance ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... for her night after night, until he actually fell asleep and dreamed of the log cabin on the prairie, where he had once danced a quadrille with Abigail Jones to the tune of Money-musk, as played by the Plympton brothers—the one on a cracked violin, and the other on an accordion. ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... voices. In general, however, his appreciation of music was subordinate to his study of syllabic movement in versification; and it was with reference chiefly to poetic measure, I have been told, that he acquired what mastery he had over the accordion and guitar. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... hawk’s nose to his face, pale eyes, and his beard trimmed with scissors. No man knew his country, beyond he was of English speech; and it was clear he came of a good family and was splendidly educated. He was accomplished too; played the accordion first-rate; and give him a piece of string or a cork or a pack of cards, and he could show you tricks equal to any professional. He could speak, when he chose, fit for a drawing-room; and when he chose he could blaspheme worse than a Yankee boatswain, and talk ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Howell, 646 Kentucky St., Lawrence, Kans., an accordion, a Waterbury watch, and a puzzle, for ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... Morris's dinner (within eight hours really of the time when he had been so thrilled by the singing of the Doxology), Jack was in his accustomed seat at the small, adjustable accordion-built table—it could be stretched out to accommodate twenty-four covers—when his uncle entered this room. Parkins was genuflecting at the time with his—"Cream, sir,—yes, sir. Devilled kidney, sir? ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... for by different institutions,) we saw the splendid painting by West, "Christ healing the Sick." We then visited the Musical Fund Hall, and heard the far-famed Ethiopian serenaders, Messrs. German, Hanwood, Harrington, Warren, and Pelham, upon the accordion, banjo, congo-tambo, and bone-castanets, in all of which they stand unrivalled in the world. They were representing Niggers' lives, with songs, &c. Home ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore
... practical but peculiar costume; the thickly-pleated skirt has a bright-coloured border, while the close-fitting bodice is adorned with embroidery, and pretty antique buttons. A folded cotton kerchief and accordion-pleated apron give a daintiness to the whole dress. The head-dress, however, gives the most singular finish to the costume. A dark, checked-bordered handkerchief tied over a stiff, cambric frame, entirely envelops the head. ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... is," agreed Joanna, warming and mollified, "and I've bought her a new gown that pulls out like an accordion, so as she can wave her ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... got the curse of drink lifted from Clifford Wainwright. He lost his taste for it. And in the cool of the evening him and me would sit on the roof of Timotea's mother's hut, eating harmless truck like coffee and rice and stewed crabs, and playing the accordion. ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... could sleep for a couple of hours, but of course there's no hope of that. Stretch out here, like that—you can't rest folded up like an accordion—and I'll lie down diagonally across the room. There's just room for me that way. That's one advantage of weightlessness—you can lie down standing on your head, and go to sleep and like it. But I forgot—you've ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... either—for dancing, and on a small platform sat the strangest looking youth, like Peter Pan never to grow old, like the Monna Lisa a boy of a thousand years, without emotion or expression of any sort. He was playing an accordion; the bag-pipe, symbol of the bal, hung disused on the wall over his head. His accordion, manipulated with great skill, was augmented by sleigh-bells attached to his ankles in such a manner that a minimum of movement produced a maximum of effect; he further added to the complexity of ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... edge of the seat, very upright in her black silk mantle with the accordion-pleated chiffon frills. She had sat like that since the train began to pull, ready to get out the instant ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... he had collected money for charities (particularly for the Deaf and Dumb Cats' League, in which he took special interest), by painting halves of salmon and ships on fire on the cold grey pavement! Armed with an accordion, and masked to the eyes, he had appeared at Eastbourne, and also at the Henley Regatta, as a Mysterious Musician. At the regatta he had been warned off the course, to his great pride and joy. Mrs Mitchell assured ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... whizzed past the innumerable shrines and queer shops, and frescoed walls, where extraordinary lions and tigers, and Rajput warriors, riding in wide petticoats on prancing steeds, were depicted in flaming colours. I wanted, too, to gaze at the native women, in their accordion-pleated, dancing frocks of crimson or dark blue; but it seemed to be the correct thing for a 'Personage' to drive as fast as possible, and try to run over a few people just to show them what unconsidered trifles they were. Well, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... take me hunting when it stops. I don't want to go but reckon I will have to, because I don't want to come so far and buy a license to kill an elk and go back empty-handed, and partly to get a rest from Mr. Murry's everlasting accordion. ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... two shipmates were conversing thus in low tones, enjoying the fresh air and the calm influences around them, the notes of an accordion came over the water in tones that were sweetened and ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... an open waistcoat with a frill all down his shirt- front, a white tie, shining boots, no thicker than a glove, a coat that made him look like a bird, and a hat that seemed as if it would open and shut like an accordion. ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... the goats would bleat, babies cry, and the "boys" and "mammies" talked, sang, quarrelled, beat tom-toms, and squeezed mournful groans out of the accordion of civilization. One would have thought we had anchored off a busy village rather than at a place where, before that night, the inhabitants had been only the beasts of the jungle ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... by those sensations will be expressed in the same way. For example, the sense of smell is peculiarly effective in exciting disgust. Anything which does violence to the sense of hearing exasperates, but does not disgust. If a man practises the accordion all day in the next room you do not loathe him, you only want to kill him. But anything that stinks excites pure disgust. Here you have the key to the fact that disgust and all feelings akin to it, disdain, contempt ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... a wheezy accordion and he relieved the monotony of the evening with some German airs. The big shed was unlighted, save as each man was his own lamp-post. Each made his own bed by the light of the lamp on his cap. As he undressed, the cap was the last article to be set aside and the extinguishing of the smoky, ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... Nebula opened and a huge hose came slowly down. Odin watched it on the screen. It seemed to have been pleated and shoved together like an accordion. Now it opened out in little jerking movements, extending itself about two feet at each writhing twitch. As it grew longer it expanded and was nearly three feet across when it reached the top of the first car. A round door opened. ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... kitchen to thaw, and have his breakfast. That was one also of the traditions of the chateau; the postman always breakfasted. On Sundays, when there was no second delivery, he brought his little girl and an accordion, and remained all the afternoon. He often got a lift back to La Ferte, when the carriage was going in to the station, or the chef to market in the donkey-cart. Now many ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... presented herself, and I followed her into the parlor, which was a decent apartment, with a smart centre-table, on which lay an accordion, a recent number of the "Pactolian," a gilt-edged, illustrated book or two, and a copy of the works of that distinguished native author, to whom I feel very spiteful, on account of his having, some years ago, attacked a near friend of mine, and whom, on Christian principles, I do not mention,—though ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... diplomatic complications would make me about as popular in Allied circles as the proverbial skunk at a bridge-party. So I took the final alternative, and jammed her into the teeth of it for all I thought she could stand without imitating an opera hat or an accordion. And, glory be, she made it, the blessed little old cross between a porpoise and a safety-razor blade! Whether the gale really moderated, or I got more nerve, I don't know; but anyhow I gave her more and more, half a knot at a time, until we were actually making appreciable ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... hear singing In clear, girlish voices— I know them all well: There's Natasha and Glasha, And Dariushka,—Jesus Have mercy upon them! Hark! steps and accordion; Then there is silence. 310 I think I had fallen Asleep; then I fancied That somebody entering Bent over me, saying, 'Sleep, woman of sorrows, Exhausted by sorrow,' And making the sign Of the cross on my forehead. I felt that the ropes ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... saw, were mostly boys. The average could not be over twenty, and some were not over sixteen. But they had the adaptability of youth. They had scattered themselves about in easy positions. One was playing an accordion, and another a fiddle. The ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... rancho was a bachelor establishment. Our visit was hailed with delight. The red wine was poured in tumblers for all, and the long dining-room was partly cleared for dancing. And the young fellows drank and danced with the girls to the strains of an accordion. To me that music was divine. I had never heard anything so glorious. The young Italian who furnished it would even get up and dance, his arms around his girl, playing the accordion behind her back. All of which was very wonderful for me, who did not ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... steward brought in the turtle soup there came the strains of a wheezy accordion from the main deck, and then three or four voices joined in a native chorus, broken now and then by a laugh, and the sound of naked feet stamping ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... the night as to lose them at sunrise. Then followed another day of a sky of brass above and a steaming wide expanse of oily sea below, and then, at nightfall, a sweet, cooling breeze from the north-east, and general happiness, accentuated by a native woman playing a dissolute-looking accordion, and singing 'Voici le Sabre,' in Tahitian French. No one cared to sleep that night. Dawn came almost ere we knew it, and again the blue peaks of Ascension ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... Her name's McChesney—Emma McChesney, and she sells T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoats. I'll give her her dues; she's the best little salesman on the road. I'll bet that girl could sell a ruffled, accordion-plaited underskirt to a fat woman who was trying to reduce. She's got the darndest way with her. And ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... wrinkles. She bears a dangling placard, stating, in letters of white upon a patent-leather background, what you might not otherwise suspect,—that she was a soldier under the great Napoleon, and fought with him at Waterloo. She also bears, since music goes with war, a worn accordion. She is the old woman to whose shrivelled, expectant countenance you sometimes offer up a copper coin, as she kneels by the flagged crossway ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... that that Oshkosh man used to coax his mules to stand on their legs by letting them hear music. It soothed them, he said. And so Patrick got a friend to come around and sit in the stall and calm our horse by playing on the accordion." ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... impelled him to step beyond the schoolhouse, where to his astonishment he found the adjacent woods empty and soundless. He was relieved, however, after penetrating its recesses, to hear the distant sound of small applause and the unmistakable choking gasps of Johnny Stidger's pocket accordion. Following the sound he came at last upon a little hollow among the sycamores, where the children were disposed in a ring, in the centre of which, with a handkerchief in each hand, Concha the melancholy!—Concha the devout!—was dancing that most extravagant ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... noble English families: 'the caresses of the great' may be lavished on athletes, and actors, and musicians, and Home's remarkable performances were quite enough to make him welcome in country houses. Moreover, he played the piano, the accordion, and other musical instruments. For his mysterious 'gift' he might be invited to puzzle and amuse royal people (not in England), and continental emperors, and kings. But he did much more than what Houdin or Alexis, a conjuror and a clairvoyant, could do. He successively ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... reckless confusion. The vendors cry their wares in stentorian tones, vying with one another to produce excitement and induce patronage, while gas-jets are streaming into the air from the roofs and flaring from the sides of the stalls; children crying, children dancing to the strains of an accordion, children quarrelling, children scrambling for the refuse fruit. In the midst of this spectacle, this din and uproar, the women are chaffering and bargaining quite calmly, watching the scales to see that they get their full pennyworth or sixpennyworth of this ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Reverencing His Majesty the Emperor. A Japanese schoolboy with an accordion in his hands, singing and playing the national anthem, or Kimiga. There is a little wind-bellows at the bottom of the toy; and when you operate it, the boy's arms move as if playing the instrument, and a shrill small voice is ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... against the glare—looked on quietly, every now and then making comments on the situation. One of the peasants tried to knock down the burning house with an axe. He failed. Someone not far off was playing an accordion and singing a ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... only an impromptu affair. A few nights later the house party was formally invited to a "ball" at the men's quarters. The big dining room next the bunk house was cleared out, two fiddles and an accordion obtained from Osaka, and the Rose Ranch outfit showed the visitors what a real cowboy ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... if one may judge from the Petsofa figurines, wore hats of quite modern type, and fairly comparable in size even with those of the present day. A seal from Mycenae, representing three ladies adorned with accordion-pleated skirts, shows that heels of a fair height were sometimes worn on the shoes. Necklaces, bracelets, and other articles of adornment were in general use, and the workmanship of some of the surviving specimens is astonishingly fine (Plate ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... there threatened to be trouble about the music; some wanted Uncle Tom, the old negro who usually fiddled at the dances, and others preferred to patronize home talent and have Jake Schultz, whose accordion could be heard at all ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan
... to pump. One could see the dead man's chest rise as it was inflated with oxygen forced by the accordion bellows from the tank through one of the tubes into the lungs. Then it fell as the oxygen and the poisonous gas were slowly sucked out through the other tube. Again and again the process was repeated, about ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... to walk about our seminary garden..." I would tell her. "If from some faraway tavern the wind floated sounds of a song and the squeaking of an accordion, or a sledge with bells dashed by the garden-fence, it was quite enough to send a rush of happiness, filling not only my heart, but even my stomach, my legs, my arms.... I would listen to the accordion or the bells dying away in the distance and imagine myself a doctor, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... means—my companions were too pleasant to admit of that. Our little world contained a large amount of talent! Mr Long had a magnificent bass voice and made good use of it. Then, Young played the violin, (not so badly), and sang tenor—not quite so well; besides which he played the accordion. His instrument, however, was not perfect. One of the bass notes would not sound, and one of the treble notes could not by any means be silenced! Between the two, some damage was done to the harmony; but we were not particular. As to Stout—he could neither sing nor ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... pipe and accordion, the brass and wood, now playing "Onward, Christian Soldier,"—which, if one forgot the words, was an especially carnal melody,—we tramped, singing a parody, through the street of Faatoai, and into a glorious cocoanut ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... African airs, especially as they have arranged the compositions of the great European masters in such a grotesque manner. The executants are five in number; one plays the tambourine, Mr. Germon, who is the leader; another the bone castanet; the third, the accordion; and the two others, the banjo, or African guitar. The castanet player does not sing; but his four colleagues have good voices, and, in glees, harmonize charmingly. In a quartet, the parody on the Phantom Chorus, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... powerful, active man, with a blue eye, a thick head of hair, about the colour of oakum and growing low over the brow; clean-shaved and lean about the jaw; a good singer; a good performer on that sea-instrument, the accordion; a quick observer, a close reasoner; when he pleased, of a really elegant address; and when he chose, the greatest brute upon ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... a bed fixed up for you in the cook tent, Schmidt," said Ernest. "You'll be safe if none of Mrs. von Minden's spirit friends bother you. She told me that she heard them playing the accordion in the ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... the crowd on the opposite corner came a tiny, dark-skinned Italian girl, with an accordion slung over her shoulder by a dirty ribbon; she made straight for the carnations and fearlessly cried, "Lady, please give me a flower!" She got one, and ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... was pleased, for she herself felt rather uncomfortable. Her dress, which was made with low neck and short sleeves, was of red silk gauze, with multifold short skirts, accordion-plaited, and edged with thick, full ruches. Great golden butterflies were embroidered at intervals all over the dress, while ribbons and flowers were attached wherever a place could ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... staggered drunkenly beneath the feet of the treasure seekers. Great trees in the adjacent forest fell with tremendous uproar. The slope of the whale's hump was ridged until it looked like a giant accordion. Crevasses opened, extending from the summit of the hill downward. Rocks came tumbling down by the score, and a column of smoke and flame rose from the crater to a height of two hundred feet ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... the fancy paper made accordion that the little girl had dropped beside her, and was making it squeak sadly as she pulled it with ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... for the man's knees, Buregarde went in a three-stride lope like an accordion folding and unfolding and then arched in a long leap with his snarling fangs aimed at the man's throat. Man and dog hit him low and high before he could open his mouth, before he could free the ...
— History Repeats • George Oliver Smith
... his companion—had come to an end against one of the two-hundred-foot masonry and concrete foundations the columns rest on. It had hit about halfway up and folded almost like an accordion, sliding down to the floor. With one thing and another, there is a lot of violent death around Port Sandor. I don't like to look at the results. It's part of the job, however, and this time it wasn't a ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... light properly placed in the sky, he spread his breech-clout over a few acres of volcano to dry, and took a nap on a mile or so of lava bed. This deity had the power of compressing himself into a small space, and likewise of pulling himself out to any desired length, like an accordion, so that there was not water in the eight seas deep enough to ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... out of their lives. Into some, indeed, it had never come. Years ago, Williams had been at a post where there was an accordion. Cummins had heard music when he went down to civilization for his wife, more than two years ago. To the others it was mystery which stirred them to the depths of their souls, and which revealed to them many things that had long been hidden in ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... combination of shops, where everything you don't want is to be found in a state of dilapidation, together with a very hungry-looking proprietor, who, for want of customers upon whom to exercise his ingenuity, pulls away all day long upon the accordion to the tune of We're a' noddin'. The other end of Our Terrace has its butcher, its public-house, its grocer, and a small furniture-shop, doing a small trade, under the charge of a very small boy. Let thus much suffice for the physiology of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... copyright legislation, the latest invention, or a new empiric practice, he rarely failed to have a burning interest in some anodyne that would provide physical or mental easement for his species. Howells tells how once he was going to save the human race with accordion letter-files—the system of order which would grow out of this useful device being of such nerve and labor saving proportions as to insure long life and happiness to all. The fountain-pen, in its first imperfect form, must have come along about the same time, and Clemens ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... tambourine very much, so her sulks gave place at once to smiles. The boys and girls sorted themselves into couples, Miss Inches took the head of the procession with an accordion, Willy Parker clashed the castanets as well as he could, and they all marched into the house. The table was beautifully spread with flowers and grapes and pretty china. Johnnie took the head, Willy the foot, and Dinah ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... furnace, grim and silent as the extinct crater of Popocatepetl; and the great hotel on the hill looks like the tower of Babel two thousand years after the confusion of tongues. The last of the speculators, with his blue nose and his old battered plug hat which resembles an accordion that has been yanked by a cyclone, stands on the corner and contemplates his old sedge fields which have shrunk in value from one hundred dollars a front foot, to one dollar for a hundred front acres, and balefully sings ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... the music of an accordion, denotes that you will engage in amusement which will win you from sadness and retrospection. You will by this means be enabled to take up your burden ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... the dance music is quite different. A rhythmic beating is kept up on a drum made of a barrel or hollow log and rude fiddles or guitars or an accordion play an accompaniment. To the traveler, riding along his road at night, the deep regular rumbling of the drums of distant "bailes" comes with indescribable weirdness. In some dances the participants engage in a monotonous ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... busby; the other a beardless youth in a threadbare cloth reefer jacket and muddy high boots. They are the owners of the goods. The old man sits, his legs stretched out before him, musing in silence; the young man half reclines and softly strums on a cheap accordion. A lantern with a tallow candle in it is hanging ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... which his toes appeared. With them came what were evidently the remains of the church choir, when there was a church, for they wore dirty fragments of surplices and sang what seemed to be a hymn tune to the strains of a decadent accordion. ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... to gather his shattered senses, the merry sound of voices and the music of an accordion hummed from the big living-room next to his. Presently heavy boots thumped on the floor of the hall; then a hand rapped ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... an accordion Florette ran out for her quick change. Freddy was waiting, with her dress hung over a chair. He flew to meet her. His eager, nimble fingers unfastened the blue frock. He slipped the next costume over her head without ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... American. Hell, that's a good one on nobody. That's a pretty fat kind of a joke on nobody. Think I'm French. Talk mostly with those three or four Frenchmen going on permission to somewhere via New York. One has an accordion. Like second class. Wait till you see the gratte-ciels, I tell 'em. They say "Oui?" and don't believe. I'll show them. America. The land of the flea and the home of the dag'—short for dago of course. My spirits are constantly improving. Funny Christmas, second day ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... words of the prayer were finished the man in the peaked cap tossed up his voice in another hymn, and the young woman joined him with an accordion: ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... fresh, sweet-scented beauty now, and no mistake, Joe,' said Jimmy Nowlett—he was going to play the accordion that night. 'You ought to fetch the girls now, Joe. But never mind, your face'll go down in about three weeks. My lower jaw is crooked yet; but that fight straightened my nose, that had been knocked crooked when I was a boy—so I didn't lose much ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... her head in shame. "I was one of them. I played a xylophone and a saxophone and an accordion—all sorts of things. Well, Lady Webling gave a little gasp when she saw me, and she looked at Sir Joseph—so she told me afterward—and then they got up and stole 'way up front just as I left the stage—to make a quick change, you know. I came back—in tights, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... again the screech of a fiddle could be heard or the lazy music of an accordion, coming from some "Sailors' Home." Steps of dancing with rattle of iron-shod boot-heels clicking over sanded floors, the hoarse shout of the "caller-off," and now and again angry tones with cracked feminine falsettos broke on the air; and all the time the soft rain fell and the steam ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... and violin, the guitar, and the accordion, alternated with the continual clashing of blades from the fencing lessons. Around a long, wide table the students of the Ateneo prepared their compositions or solved their problems by the side of others writing to their sweethearts on pink ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... cheery invitations and restless invasions of a wild tribe of the youth of Twickenham and its neighbourhood who had a tent in a field hard by, and whose joy at morning, noon, and night, was beer. These savages had an accordion and a penny whistle and other instruments of music wherewith to make the night unbearable and the day a heavy burden. They were known as 'The Tribe of the Scorchers,' and were a happy and a genial people, but their presence ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... Kettle got his accordion and went up on the hurricane deck and joined him, and till near on sundown the pair of them sat there giving forth music alternately. There was a fine contrast between them. The disreputable doctor deliberately forgot everything of the past, and lived only for the reckless present; ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... garters, a pair of outsize ladies' drawers of India mull, cut on generous lines, redolent of opoponax, jessamine and Muratti's Turkish cigarettes and containing a long bright steel safety pin, folded curvilinear, a camisole of batiste with thin lace border, an accordion underskirt of blue silk moirette, all these objects being disposed irregularly on the top of a rectangular trunk, quadruple battened, having capped corners, with multicoloured labels, initialled on its fore side in white lettering B. C. T. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... during the passage, and, as the boat neared the shore, sending round one of their number to gather contributions in the hollow of the brass bugle. They were a very shabby set, and must have made a very scanty living at best. Sometimes it was a boy with an accordion, and his sister, a smart little girl, with a timbrel,—which, being so shattered that she could not play on it, she used only to collect halfpence in. Ballad-singers, or rather chanters or croakers, are often to be met with in ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cached his cards with the whiskey as something debarred the free access of the community, I cannot say. It was certain that, in Mother Shipton's words, he "didn't say 'cards' once" during that evening. Haply the time was beguiled by an accordion, produced somewhat ostentatiously by Tom Simson from his pack. Notwithstanding some difficulties attending the manipulation of this instrument, Piney Woods managed to pluck several reluctant melodies from its keys, to an accompaniment by the Innocent on ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... mind, would only have still further harrowed us. A soul-moving harmony, correctly performed, we should have taken as a spirit-warning, and have given up all hope. But about the strains of "He's got 'em on," jerked spasmodically, and with involuntary variations, out of a wheezy accordion, there was something singularly human ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... then. It was a big, smooth face, with accordion-plaited chins. Her hair was white and her nose was curved, and the pearls in her big ears brought out every ugly spot on her face. Her lips were thin, and her neck, hung with diamonds, looked like a bed ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... cleared the broad kitchen floor for Sir Roger De Coverly, which we danced with the help of the maids' two swains and Skipper Tommy Lovejoy and Jacky, who had come out from the Lodge for the occasion (all being done to the tune of "Money Musk," mercilessly wrung from an ancient accordion by Timmie Lovejoy)—when, after that, we had all gathered before the great blaze in the best room, we told no tales, such as we had planned to tell, but soon fell to staring at the fire, ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... "absent-minded," and often forgot to hear some of our lessons, and we thought it would n't be polite to remind her of them. She had a soft and mournful voice, and a droopy sort of a look, especially about her hair. She dressed a little queer sometimes, and played on the accordion, so it was whispered about that she wrote poetry. I know she read it a good deal, and novels too. She had in her desk a very long romance, called "The Children of the Abbey," which she used to read at noontime and recess. She read it through, and then she appeared ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... was cleared and they promenaded for a dance—Sandy and Kate in the lead. They continued promenading until one of the well-sinkers called for the concertina—ours had been repaired till you could get only three notes out of it; but Jim Burke jumped on his horse and went home for his accordion. ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd |
