"Piano" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... way of looking at those who groaned unnecessarily and out of idle self-pity, which was conducive to silence, and therefore to the comfort of others. She smoothed no pillows and proffered no soft words of sympathy. But it was she who found out that the cure had a piano. She it was who took two hospital attendants to the priest's humble house and brought the instrument away. She had it placed inside the altar rails, and fought the cure afterwards in the vestry as to the heinousness ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... should like to be a piano teacher, when I grow up, for then I shall be able to learn to play many ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... the family. His father died and his mother married an actor, Ludwig Geyer. The stepfather became very fond of young Richard and intended to make a painter of him, but upon hearing him play some of his sister's piano pieces Geyer wondered if it were possible that he had ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... Gluck, a piano manufacturer of Munich, was a follower of Horace Fletcher, the American munching missionary. Unlike the Swiss, who craved raw food, Herr Gluck ate everything, but each mouthful only after thorough maceration, salivation, and slow deglutition. At breakfast he absorbed a glass of milk and a piece ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... moped along he beheld two unkempt Italians having a piano-organ and a violin. The music was not fine, but it touched a chord in Ayrault's breast, for he had waltzed with Sylvia to that air, and it made ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... to us, my dear Maestro, that I doubt if you could find a family where your name is spoken more often, or with greater enthusiasm. My niece sings and plays, she spends almost the whole day at her piano, knows your works by heart, and has had the greatest desire to meet you, particularly since the last of your concerts. She had been promised an invitation from Princess Gallizin, in Vienna, in a few ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... Hoboken safely. The sea was comparatively calm, but all of a sudden a waterspout arose close to the ship, and a great mass of water burst over the ladies' saloon, crushing through its roof and the roof of the deck below and hurling a piano down into ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... go. You've got your lessons to get. Well, now, mother, make up your mind if you're comin' along. Cora, what on earth are you doing out here in the night air with nothing around you? Now, you mosey right back into that parlor, and don't you make a move off that piano-stool till your hour's up. Do you hear me? No. Frank. I told you once you couldn't go and that ends it. Stop your whining! I can't have you running hither and yon all hours of the night, and we not know where you are. Well, hurry up, then, mother. ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... women clothed in red baize, while his wife was seated in front of him. Between the speeches the ladies burst forth into a sort of plaintive ditty. The party was entertained by a band of musicians, consisting of three drummers and four performers on the marimba, a species of piano. It consists of two bars of wood placed side by side; across these are fixed fifteen wooden keys, each two or three inches broad and about eighteen long, their thickness being regulated by the deepness of the note required. Each of the keys has a calabash below it, the upper portion of which, ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... it became the "tabernacle." Week-days it was known as the "schoolhouse," and at odd times it was spoken of as the "theatre," the "concert-hall," and the "Trigger Island court-house." In one corner stood the grand piano from the Doraine, regularly and laboriously tuned by the great Joseppi. Madame Careni-Amori gave vocal and instrumental lessons here every afternoon in the week, from three to six. Among the older children there were a number who had voices that seemed worth developing, and the famous ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the weather confined the girls to the house the following day. Harvey was absent at breakfast, and at dinner the chair opposite Irene's was still vacant. The afternoon wore away, and at dusk Louisa opened the piano and began to play Thalberg's ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... consideration of the design of furniture. Messrs. Broadwood's Grand Pianoforte (illustrated) was a rich example of decorative woodwork in ebony and gold, and may be compared with the illustration on p. 172 of a harpsichord, which the Piano had replaced about 1767, and which at and since the time of the 1851 Exhibition supplies evidence of the increased attention devoted to decorative furniture. In the Appendix will be found a short notice of the different phases through which the ever-present ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... favourable. It was understood that he painted pictures and played very finely on the piano, and every one could see that he dressed in the most fashionable manner and that he was handsome and light-hearted. But it could not be hid that he often came for money, which old Mr. Tresham had sometimes to borrow in St. Penfer for him. And business men noted ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... offices. Once I happened to say that I did not like the food as it was cooked at the boarding-house; and the next day, and for many days after, all sorts of dainties were sent to me, prepared by hands which were as skilful on the piano, or with a pencil, as they were in handling a saucepan. New books were lent to me, and I was never allowed to be without a beautiful bouquet. One young lady used constantly to walk in to town, some two or three ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... us. The young ladies invariably complain that they have neither music, nor drawing, nor dancing masters. There is evidently a great deal of musical taste among them, and, as in every part of Mexico, town or country, there is a piano (tal cual) in every house; but most of those who play are self-taught, and naturally abandon it very soon, for want of instruction or encouragement. We are now going to dine out, and in the evening we go to a concert in the theatre, given by the Senora Cesari ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... some of the business 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, ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... men trooping down the stairs, laughing and calling to one another as they went, and judging from this that they had departed for the night, he put out all the lights in the library and closed the piano, and lifted the windows to clear the room of the tobacco-smoke. He did not notice the beautiful photograph sitting upright in the armchair before the fireplace, and so left it alone in ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... a gifted musician became generally known when classical strains from a grand piano were wafted through the Duranta hedge which encompassed his grounds, riveting passers-by to the roadway at some sacrifice to personal dignity, that they might listen and admire. Sometimes he was heard to sing to his own accompaniment in a voice of extraordinary ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... impact of electrical waves, but he has succeeded in devising instruments which register that impact, and which make it perceptible to the organs of sight or of hearing. The operation of the electrical waves may be best explained, perhaps, by the analogy of sound. When the string of a piano is struck by its hammer it vibrates, and communicates its vibrations to the surrounding air; these vibrations, travelling outwards in waves, produce corresponding vibrations in the ear-drum of a listener. The string is tuned, by its tension and its weight, to a single ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... orchestral leader and composer of operas. His father was a professional singer, who took his son's musical education in hand at the age of four. At eight the boy was a fluent performer both on the violin and on the piano. When but ten years old Beethoven produced his first pianoforte sonata, and was installed as assistant organist in the Electoral Chapel at Bonn. When the lad visited Vienna, in 1787, his extemporizations on the piano made Mozart exclaim: ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... the tea thoughtfully. So far Mr. Travers had hardly spoken, but he cheered in true British fashion at the sight of the tea. Sara Lee, exceedingly curious as to the purpose of a very small stand somewhat resembling a piano stool, which the maid had placed at her knee, learned that it was ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... gentle womanhood," wrote George Eliot, "which supersedes all acquisitions, all accomplishments. You would never have asked at any period of Mrs. Amos Barton's life if she sketched or played the piano. You would perhaps have been rather scandalized if she had descended from the serene dignity of being to the assiduous unrest of doing." However, when he recalls the female singers he has known, any man will grant that they have been almost without exception ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... re-twisted before our friend found that he had twisted them enough; how many discordant scrapes gave promise of the coming harmony. How much the muslin fluttered and crumpled before Eleanor and another nymph were duly seated at the piano; how closely did that tall Apollo pack himself against the wall, with his flute, long as himself, extending high over the heads of his pretty neighbours; into how small a corner crept that round and florid little minor ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... I asked for a "match-girls' drawing-room." "It will want a piano, tables for papers, for games, for light literature; so that it may offer a bright, homelike refuge to these girls, who now have no real homes, no playground save the streets. It is not proposed to build an 'institution' ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... arose in the coal; Elsie luxuriated in the rocking-chair all to herself; while Francie and Sylvia—a tight fit—shared the big basket-chair. In a corner three chums were coaching each other in the speeches for a play, and a group collected round the piano were trying the chorus ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... agents rich all over the country. But women don't like clothes wringers; why? Because they require such hard work. All right—hitch on my Household Horse, and the power required is reduced three-fifths and a day's wash may be put on the line as easy as a girl could play The Maiden's Prayer on a piano—eh? Or, say, put it on a churn—same Horse—one's all that's needed to a house. Or make it an ice cream freezer or a cradle or a sewing machine, or anything on earth that runs by a crank—and 'y gory, man, you make housework a joy. I sold Laura one—traded her one for lessons ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... say who is more nervous that night, Hotlips or a certain piano player with my name. Frankie is smirking like always, and Stella Starlight is sitting and looking beautiful while she waits for her cue. Hotlips is fumbling with his trumpet like maybe he never sees one before. And I—even I am not exactly calm ...
— The Flying Cuspidors • V. R. Francis
... to have a house of my own, when I'm grown up," said pretty Del; "I shall have a red carpet and some curtains; my husband will buy me a piano." ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... course of the following years Garlan used often to come to Vienna on business, and never omitted to visit Bertha's family on such occasions. After supper it was Bertha's custom to play the piano for Garlan's entertainment, and he used to listen to her with an almost reverent attention, and would, perhaps, go on to talk of his little nephew and niece—who were both very musical—and to whom he would often speak of Fraulein Bertha as the finest pianiste ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... giving. Many people choose a present just because they happen to like the thing themselves, whereas a gift should be selected entirely with a view to the pleasure or use it will afford to its future owner. A grand piano is no good to a girl who will not have {79} a room large enough to hold it and herself. Costly china is only an encumbrance to a woman who is going to follow the fortunes of her soldier husband, and who will not have a settled home for ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... cannot feel sure that I observed him correctly. It matters little. With or without hesitation, he followed her to the piano. ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... whether or not she would sell or rent her hayfields kept her from coming to a conclusion. Music, in common with all other accomplishments, was viewed by Miss Miranda as a trivial, useless, and foolish amusement, but she allowed Rebecca an hour a day for practice on the old piano, and a little extra time for lessons, if Jane could secure them without payment of ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not that she has been a hypocrite,—it is that she is a transmigration. You marry a girl for her accomplishments. She paints charmingly, or plays like Saint Cecilia. Clap a ring on her finger, and she never draws again,—except perhaps your caricature on the back of a letter,—and never opens a piano after the honeymoon. You marry her for her sweet temper; and next year, her nerves are so shattered that you can't contradict her but you are whirled into a storm of hysterics. You marry her because she declares she hates balls and likes quiet; and ten ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hundreds of pounds, for the sum is unbelievable. These were young women, and they strode smartly along under these astonishing burdens with the air of people out for a holiday. I was told that a woman will carry a piano on her back all the way up the mountain; and that more than once a woman had done it. If these were old women I should regard the Ghurkas as no more civilized than the Europeans. At the railway station at Darjeeling you find plenty of cab-substitutes —open ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in London, Margaret was alone at her piano and Lushington was announced. Unlike the majority of musicians in real fiction she had not been allowing her fingers to 'wander over the keys,' a relaxation that not seldom leads to outer darkness, where the consecutive fifth plays hide-and-seek with ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... its piano, books and pictures and other scattered evidence of culture and refinement, showed the manner in which the Blaines liked to live. Through the open window, affording a fine view of Central Park, with its rolling lawns, winding paths ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... place at the piano after a while. It seemed that he had promised to sing for her—for her alone. He glanced apprehensively toward the windows, as if to estimate the distance which separated him from the highway. It was no part of their ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... of wheels and pinions, snails and racks, crystals, and faces and watches, cackling at each other. There were striking clocks which rung chimes or rocked like little vessels on apparent billows, or started off with notes like grasshoppers. A hundred of the most musical tree-frogs shut up in a piano might give a feeble notion of the tunes and thrummings assembled in this shop. It was the same day or night, and the power of Fithian Minuit over time-keepers was nearly miraculous. He appeared to be able to smile an old watch into action. Transferred ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... side of the room stood an American piano, and beside it a harp of surpassing richness. Here Carlton and Florinda were seated at this time in all the confidence and enjoyment ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... with stars. But the rain gave no promise of abating and late that afternoon he altered the detail of his rebellion. Fortunately there were other ways. When the dusk closed in and the old man watched the clock and waited, he would go boldly downstairs to the old piano and register his rebellion in music that Adam Craig could hear. He would spend his evening openly with Joan; he would go through fire and water; he would ride the whirlwind and direct the storm but what this time he would assure ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... heart the assurance that she should pass unscathed through the fiery furnace?) she arose with a calmer spirit, and began to survey the apartment in which she was confined. It was a large room, very elegantly furnished, containing a piano, and a profusion of paintings. On examining one of these, Fanny turned away with a burning cheek—for it was one of those immodest productions of the French school, which show how art and talent can be perverted to the basest uses. She looked at no more of the pictures, ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... freedom, conducive to dangerous theorizing and broody reflections on the inequality of the classes. The sun shines in a strip in the centre, yellow and elusive, like gold; someone is rattling a gay galop on a piano somewhere; there is a sound of mens' voices in a heated discussion, a long whiff of pipe-smoke trails through the sunlight from the bar-room; the clink of glasses, the chink of silver, and the high treble ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... wanted a third or fourth synonym. Again, though I have tried and failed to draw recognizable portraits of persons I have seen every day for years, Mr Bernard Partridge, having seen a man once, will, without more strain than is involved in eating a sandwich, draw him to the life. The keyboard of a piano is a device I have never been able to master; yet Mr Cyril Scott uses it exactly as I use my own fingers; and to Sir Edward Elgar an orchestral score is as instantaneously intelligible at sight as a page of Shakespear is to me. One man cannot, after trying for years, finger the flute fluently. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... that, too. But Clementina would not do that; she had tried often enough at home, when her brother Jim was drawing, and her father was designing the patterns of his woodwork; she knew that she never could do it, and the time would be wasted. She decided against piano lessons and singing lessons, too; she did not care for either, and she pleaded that it would be a waste to study them; but she suggested dancing lessons, and her gift for dancing won greater praise, and perhaps sincerer, than her accent won from Mademoiselle Blanc, though Mrs. Lander said that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... life that few letters passed between them. 'He was a true musician; not that he was a great performer on any instrument, but that he so truly appreciated all that was good and beautiful in music. He was a good performer on the piano, and could get such full harmonies out of the organ that stood in one corner of his entrance room at Little Grange as did good to the listener. Sometimes it would be a bit from one of Mozart's Masses, or from one of the finales of some one of his or Beethoven's Operas. And then at times ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... violin, which no violinist has ever been able to play. Victor Herbert has recently analyzed some of these compositions and shown that Paganini himself could never have played them without using four hands and handling two bows at once. So far, no one can play a duet on the piano; the hand can span only so many keys, and the attempt of Robert Schumann to improve on Nature by building an artificial extension to his fingers was vetoed by paralysis of the members. Two bodies can not occupy the same space at the same time; mathematics has its ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... places, with two separate sets of incidents going on; so now I seemed to be divided between two irreconcilable trains of thought; the gorgeous house, its elaborate furnishing, the little glimpses of yesterday's life, as seen in the open piano, with its sheet of music held in place by a lady's fan, occupying my attention fully as much as the aspect of the throng of incongruous and ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... she had just encountered the redskin! Miss Trim was a poor relation of Mrs Ravenshaw. She had been invited by her brother-in-law to leave England and come to Red River to act as governess to Tony and assistant-companion in the family. She had arrived that autumn in company with a piano, on which she was expected to exercise Elsie and Cora. Petawanaquat, being the first "really wild and painted savage" she had seen, made a deep impression ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... Norway would adopt it enthusiastically; but that he was still puzzled over the very necessary word to fit the strongly marked refrain. However, he was not going to give it up. Next morning, when Grieg was in his room peacefully giving a piano lesson to a young lady, a furious ringing was heard at his front-door bell, as if the ringer would tear the bell from its wires, followed by a wild shout of "'Fremad! Fremad!' Hurrah, I have got it! 'Fremad!'" Bjornson, for of course the intruder was he, rushed into the house ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... November, 1880, General and Mrs. Toombs celebrated their golden wedding, surrounded by their grandchildren and friends. It was a beautiful sight to see the bride of half a century with a new wedding ring upon her finger, playing the piano, while the old man of seventy essayed, like Washington, to dance the minuet. The old couple survived their three children, and lived to bless the lives of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They were fond and ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... the officers) I admired the ingeniousness with which our nurses have arranged for their wounded a quite charming assembly-room with a piano, some ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the room, scattered in places where even a prowling cat would have been surprised to find them. A straggling cluster of deep red roses in a marmalade jar bowed their heads over tobacco ashes and unwashed goblets. A chafing-dish stood on the piano; a leaf of sheet music supported a stack of sandwiches in a chair. Mary came in, dressed and radiant. Her gown was of that thin, black fabric whose name through the change of a single vowel seems to summon visions ranging between the extremes of man's experience. Spelled ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... of mechanism:—"Florence manufactures excellent silks, woollen cloths, elegant carriages, bronze articles, earthenware, straw hats, perfumes, essences, and candied fruits; also, all kinds of turnery and inlaid work, piano-fortes, philosophical and mathematical instruments, &c. The dyes used at this city are much admired, particularly the black, and its sausages are ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... sure that she was comfortable about her presence there at all, she was pleased with the effect she produced. When the Contessa sang there suddenly appeared out of the midst of the crowd a slim, straight figure in a black gown, which instantly sat down at the piano, played the accompaniments, and disappeared again without a word. The spectators thronging round the piano saw that this was a girl, as graceful and distinguished as the Contessa herself, who passed ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... may sympathize a little in my distresses, let me present him with the tableau before me. Seated upon the piano-stool was a young-lady of at most eighteen years: her face, had it not been for its expression of exuberant drollery and malicious fun, would have been downright beautiful; her eyes, of the deepest blue, and shaded by long lashes, instead of indulging the character of pensive and ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... was sitting behind the parlor curtains with Mrs. Trimmer's Roman History, and Grandmamma was sitting, looking very grave in her new black dress, with a pocket handkerchief and book in her lap, and sherry and sponge biscuits on a tray on the piano, for visitors of condolence, when Dr. Brown came in, looking very grave too, and took off one of his black gloves and shook hands. Then he took off the other, and put them both into his hat, and had a glass of sherry and a sponge ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... crumpled handkerchief on the piano keys. Again he was crushing it in the palm of his hand, and again the flood of humiliation and shame swept over him. He dropped the handkerchief, and the great law of his own life seemed to rise up in his face and taunt him. He was clean. That had been his greatest ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... him, he had closed the door and was jingling his spurs along the passage to a spiral stairway of broad concrete steps. As he left the head of the stairway, a dance-time piano measure and burst of laughter made him peep into a white morning room, flooded with sunshine. A young girl, in rose-colored kimono and boudoir cap, was at the instrument, while two others, similarly accoutered, in each ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... America. Doubtless there were other reasons than the lost popularity of needlework as an art, that in England it should have resulted in the life or death practice of necessary needlework, and in America, that the facile fingers of woman simply turned to the ivory keys of the piano for occupation. But the fact remains that starvation threatened the woman of one country, while in the other they were practicing scales. In England it was a period of stress and strain, of veritable ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... macaroni; at Nice, the principles of making candied fruit. I never went to the opera without first buying the book of the piece, and making myself acquainted with the principal airs by picking them out on the piano with one finger." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... goes on four legs. I can dance, and skate, and arrange flowers with taste. I can re-trim a hat, and at a pinch make a whole blouse. I can order a nice meal, and grumble when it is spoiled. I can strum on the piano and paint Christmas cards. I can ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of the Hinkle House was as neat a little parlor as there was in the black-waxy country. It was all willow rocking-chairs, and home-knit tidies, and albums, and conch shells in a row. And a little upright piano in one corner. ...
— Options • O. Henry
... over. Games and dances followed the feast. The piano-top was lifted, and light fingers rattled out lively music to which a hundred flying feet quickly responded. Country-dances they were, the lancers and quadrilles. Round dances were still looked upon in that rural locality as ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... cottage piano was a blue Canton ginger-jar filled with branches of feathery bamboo that spread its lace-like foliage far and wide over the ceiling and walls, quite covering the large spot where the roof had leaked. Various stalks of tropical-looking palms, distributed artistically about, ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... war, "that among the trades which have suffered most are fruiterers, breweries, public-houses, bars, cafes, chemists and perfumers, goldsmiths and silversmiths, jewellers, milliners, furniture and piano dealers, and music and booksellers. Landowners, land speculators, builders and the carrying trade have also suffered." We may also notice that in the early months of the war Florence, the great market of the shoddy "souvenir" and ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... and metre. The written poem is only poetry talking, and the statue, the picture, and the musical composition are poetry acting. Milton and Goethe, at their desks, were not more truly poets than Phidias with his chisel, Raphael at his easel, or deaf Beethoven bending over his piano, inventing and producing strains which he himself could ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... she was at the time receiving her young-lady education at the Convent of St. Ursula, where, in the vine-covered, red-brick convent on the summit of Charlestown, she learned, under the guidance of the nuns, to sing, play the piano, the harp, and the guitar, to speak French, and read Spanish and Italian. But her life on Mt. Benedict was suddenly terminated when the convent was burned. So she entered earlier than would otherwise have been the case upon the varied interests of her new and beautiful home. Here, in ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... note resulting was evidently higher than the range of the human ear, because no audible sound resulted. It was later estimated that the destructive note was several octaves higher than the highest note on a piano. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... colonel's defection, and Mr. Touchett, with somewhat of Mrs. Curtis's feeling that it was a backsliding in Lady Temple, suddenly grew absent in a conversation that he was holding with young Mr. Keith upon—of all subjects in the world—lending library books, and finally repaired to the piano, where Grace was playing her mother's favourite music, in hopes of distracting her mind from Fanny's enormity; and there he stood, mechanically thanking Miss Curtis, but all the time turning a melancholy eye upon the game. Alick Keith, meanwhile, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sub-normal grades entertained their friends. Promptly at 12 m., they filed into the chapel to a march from the piano. Music, recitations, gesture and sewing songs pleasantly filled an hour and a half. A composition, "The New Colony," weaving in, in a humming fashion, the surnames of some of the teachers and pupils, was highly appreciated by the crowded ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 08, August, 1885 • Various
... down at the grand piano and played Chopin's Nocturne in G major, flinging out that elaborate filigree of sound with an impetuosity and superb ABANDON which caused the ladies to exchange astonished glances behind his back. The transitions from the light and ethereal texture ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Dave's sister had always considered the senator's son a very promising young man. Consequently, it can well be imagined that the four young people spent a most enjoyable time that evening in the mansion. The girls played on the piano and all sang, and then some rugs were pushed aside, a phonograph was brought into action, and they danced a number of the latest steps, with the older ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... had Alfred reached the sill of the door than his hand went involuntarily to his head; he turned to the table where he had left his hat. His face wore a puzzled look. He glanced beneath the table, in the chair, behind the table, across the piano, and then he began circling the room with pent up rage. He dashed into his study and out again, he threw the chairs about with increasing irritation, then giving up the search, he started hatless toward the hallway. It was then that a soft babyish ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... musician of no mean quality, and there was always a piano in his studio, to which he often turned for rest. When Felix Mendelssohn was in Rome he made the sculptor's workshop his headquarters, and sometimes the two would play "four hands," or else Thorwaldsen would accompany the "Song ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... connection with surgical operations—comprised the entire furniture of the room. The bees were humming among a few flowers placed in pots outside the window; the birds were singing in the garden, and the faint intermittent jingle of a tuneless piano in some neighbouring house forced itself now and again on the ear. In any other place, these everyday sounds might have spoken pleasantly of the everyday world outside. Here, they came in as intruders on ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... she sat in the drawing-room playing the piano to her employer, in had walked the latter's son, a tall, nervous young man, perpetually clearing his throat and fiddling with a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, with the announcement that he had brought his friend, Mr. Rayner, to spend a few days in ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... selling water and syrups, cakes and confectionery, melon seeds and peanuts—others going about with halfpenny buttonholes of gelsomina, each neatly folded up in a vine-leaf to keep the scent in—three independent piano-organs and a brass band in the middle distance—an enthusiastic blind singer, a survival of Demodocus in the Odyssey, with a falsetto voice and no bridge to his nose keeping a group of listeners spellbound ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... a little, there arrived in town a vaulted box, in which the dullest fancy might conjecture a piano. Greatly indeed were heads shaken. If doom were easily invoked, Jane would hardly have lived to unpack the treasure and help to lift ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... no answer save to attempt to lift the cover from the piano, so that Lance was compelled ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... feverish interruptions which often characterized more dignified assemblies were absent here. There was no room for the lesser vices; there was little or no drunkenness; the gaudily dressed and painted women who presided over the wheels of fortune or performed on the harp and piano attracted no attention from those ascetic players. The man who had won ten thousand dollars and the man who had lost everything rose from the table with equal silence and imperturbability. I never witnessed any tragic sequel to those losses; I never ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... in the room of one of the girls if preferred. If possible, a piano is included in the furnishings, which may be as elaborate or as simple as desired. Two entrances must be provided, one covered by a square framework supposed to represent a bookcase. Books are across the top. In front of it hangs a ...
— The Belles of Canterbury - A Chaucer Tale Out of School • Anna Bird Stewart
... enough—"due to decency," in fact—to wear "mourning," and now and then look grave; but "this idea of closing your house," observed our philosopher, "and silencing your piano, and abstaining from your customary amusements and habits for months [only think of it!], because some one has departed from misery to happiness, is not alone supremely ridiculous [though that is bad enough], but it is sublimely ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... basso of the Opera, accompanied at the piano by one of the unclassified ladies, was just finishing Mephistopheles' drinking song out of Faust when ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... piano accompaniment, met with an ovation. Guido Savelli had been purposely placed last on the programme. "No one will care for anything else after he plays. The audience will have the memory of his music to take away with them," Grace had said wisely. Knowing the musician's horror of being lionized, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... good terms so quickly. We agreed about the wickedness of that boy, especially when Dave reported ingratitude on his part towards the sister, who was tending him, whom he smacked and whose hair he pulled. To think of his smacking that dear girl that played the piano so nicely all day! And pulling her back-tails so she called out when she was actually succouring his lacerated face. I gathered that her name may have been Matilda, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... openly took the field against the family of the butcher. It is true that the Lambs, having had the first start, had naturally an advantage of them in the fashionable career. They could speak a little bad French, play the piano, dance quadrilles, and had formed high acquaintances; but the Trotters were not to be distanced. When the Lambs appeared with two feathers in their hats, the Miss Trotters mounted four and of twice as fine colors. If the Lambs gave a dance, the Trotters were sure not to be behindhand; ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... to dusk, and day by day, did she keep those three keys clicking and clittering, as if her life depended on the result; and so in truth it did, to some extent, for her bread and butter depended on her performances on that very meagre piano. ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... to the sleeping-cabins at the sides were shot away; the handrails were gone, and the elegant carpet was concealed beneath a chaos of fragments of finery. The books on the shelves of the library remained unmoved; the piano was thrown on one side; and the floor presented huge upheaved and rent chasms, through which might be seen the still greater ruin in the lower cabin. Below the saloon, or drawing-room, is the saloon of the lower deck, which was, of course, traversed ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... nine o'clock. At such times, she was accustomed to talk over household affairs with the maid, and after breakfast would visit the kitchen and make a tour of the grounds and garden. The remainder of her day would be spent in reading, in playing the piano, in doing little household tasks, or in walking about the grounds with her father. Yes, sometimes the yogi would join them, and there would be long discussions. After dinner, in the library, there would also be long ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... reserve of energy, a dignified self-respect; there is never any self-abandonment. She has sung first in French, now she comes on in an Italian air, and afterwards is not too coyly reticent in taking an encore which is in English, to a piano accompaniment, and when that is over she hastens to bring the accompanist by the hand to her side before the audience, and bows, sweetly and graciously, with a gesture of the whole body, yet again with a certain reserve, not, ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... the elegantly furnished dining-room in carved oak, the cafe-au-lait upholstered drawing-room, with its superb Chinese vases of fragrant flowers, its cabinet of curiosities, its Delacroix pictures, its rosewood piano, and the portrait of the authoress by Calamatta. What struck him as much as anything was the bedroom in brown, with the bed on the floor in Turkish fashion. He was careful to assure his correspondent that, Chopin ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the house was not so cheerful and was much colder. An enlarged coloured photograph of the long-deceased Captain Bernard, in the uniform worn by the French artillery at the time of the Franco-Prussian War, hung on one of the walls, over an upright piano; it had a black frame, and was decorated with a wreath of everlasting daisies tied with a black bow. Underneath the portrait a tiny holy-water basin of old Tyrolese pewter was fastened to the wall. This Madame Bernard filled every year at Easter, when the parish priest came to ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... of a naive race, singing what they have seen or dreamed or felt during three hundred years. The work is dedicated to Goethe, who wrote an almost enthusiastic review of it for the Literary Gazette of Jena. "Every lover or master of musical art," he says, "should have this volume upon his piano." ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... unaware whether you are listening to him or not. He is not a fool. A fool is occasionally amusing— Longrush never. No subject comes amiss to him. Whatever the topic, he has something uninteresting to say about it. He talks as a piano-organ grinds out music steadily, strenuously, tirelessly. The moment you stand or sit him down he begins, to continue ceaselessly till wheeled away in cab or omnibus to his next halting-place. As in the case of his prototype, his rollers are changed about once a month to suit the ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... with him to the landing, where she kept him for about ten minutes complaining of the awful worry she had had about the under-housemaid, and of the sickening impossibility of getting a piano-tuner to attend to the instrument properly without making ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... wood and the worn red velvet—low bookshelves lining the walls, a grand piano on a cover by the window. In the dimness Jean's copper head shone like the halo of a saint. Mary decided that Derry was "queer-looking," until gathering courage, she went in and ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... sang and one of the ladies plucked a sparkling fandango, and then Chydister Lundsford was called upon for a speech. He was not at all embarrassed and he talked fairly well; and when he was done they called upon me. I got up with one hand resting on the piano, and stood there, nervous at first, but strangely steady later on. I told them that I could not make a speech, but that with their permission I would tell them a story, one of my own. They cried out that they would rather have a story than a speech, and I gave them ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... a piano in one corner, and muslin curtains—I give you my word, muslin curtains, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... centre of the room with a long paper wand, which can be made of a newspaper folded up lengthways, and tied at each end with string. The other players then join hands and stand round him in a circle. Someone then plays a merry tune on the piano and the players dance round and round the blind man, until suddenly the music stops; the blind man then takes the opportunity of lowering his wand upon one of the circle, and the player upon whom it has fallen has to take ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... unusually keen and alert, intuitive to a degree, and while Aunt Lucinda's manner was all that could be desired, she felt that she had been a disappointment in some way. She rose a little wearily and going to the piano ran her fingers over ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... pit for ever in her ears! I, Rameau, son of Rameau, the apothecary of Dijon, who is a good man and never yet bent his knee to a creature in the world! I, Rameau, who have composed pieces for the piano that nobody plays, but which will perhaps be the only pieces ever to reach posterity, and posterity will play them—I, I, must go! Stay, sir, it cannot be [and striking his right hand on his breast, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... when they are grown in pots; nor can there be so much re-arrangement and change when these are required—and what good housekeeper is not a natural born scene shifter, every once in so often rolling the piano around to the other side of the room, and moving the bookcase or changing the big Boston fern over to the other window, so it can be seen from ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... it, then, with cedah and polish it so well that laik the mirrors it will reflect her face as she walks about. Heah will be the music room. It shall have a piano made of the same rich wood. It will look as if it were built in the house. Theah shall be guitahs and mandolins. She plays the guitah a little, Cyclona, the Princess. You should see her small white hands as she fingahs the strings. I will have a low divan of many ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... going to sing,' she warned him as a gaunt girl went towards the piano; and sinking on to a convenient and sheltered couch, they resigned themselves to listen—or to endure. From that corner Rose had a view of the long room, mediocre in its decoration, mediocre in its occupants. She could see her ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... the apologetic air of Marie. The room looked as neat as I had imagined it, seeing it from the mirror of Marie's mind. I should say it scarcely needed that broom which still remained expectantly in Marie's hand. A piano, spider-legged, in the number and thinness of these supports, stood at one side of the room, weighed down with classic-looking music. A bouquet, that had been given by the hand of the prima donna to Marie, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... of chums, the love of your wife, and a new piano's tune— Which of the three will you trust at the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... the elaborately carved porch. She looked round the brown hall where deep shadows lurked. Oak chests and carved chairs, all more or less dusty, stood about, looking as if disorderly feasters had just left them. In one corner was an inlaid sideboard piano. ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... play, however, I must mention that my wife does not endorse all this. On the contrary, she tells me (she has a terse way of speaking) that it is "rank bosh." She declares that the Dirzee is the bane of her life, that he is worse than a fly, that she cannot sit down to the piano for five minutes but he comes buzzing round for black thread, or white thread, or mother-o-pearl buttons, or hooks and eyes, that every evening for the last month he has watched her getting ready for to drive, and just as her foot was on the carriage step, has reminded her, with a cough, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... up-to-date young woman with whom a friendly flirtation was just what it was with white womankind—the pleasant amusement of an hour or season. It was a mistake—a very big mistake. Tannis understood something of piano playing, something less of grammar and Latin, and something less still of social prevarications. But she understood absolutely nothing of flirtation. You can never get an Indian to see the sense ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... played on the piano and the children march from their seats in single file around the room. As soon as the music stops, all rush to get into their seats. The last one in, must remain in his seat during the second trial. If there is no piano in the room, drumming on the top of ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... him and often halted there on hunting expeditions, so they went into the house—very nicely furnished, a pretty parlour with muslin curtains, a piano, and everything pleasant; and Joel Lea called his wife, a handsome, fair young woman. Bertram says from the first she put him in mind of some one, and he was trying to make out who it could be. Then came the wife's mother, a neat little delicate, bent woman, with dark ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... moving garden, the sides being first wound with strong twine, and into this were thrust all sorts of flowers in great, loose bunches. Only the softest foliage, in branches, was utilized, as Tillie felt responsible for the luster of the "piano" polish, for which the Whirlwind was remarkable. The top of the car was like a roof garden, the effect being quite simply managed, for Tillie was resourceful. She had stretched across the roof of the car a strong sheet of pasteboard. Into this she placed a great variety of wild flowers, banking ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... at one time to learn the piano, as in that day every girl was, to the saddening of human existence and the torturing of human nerves. After taking a few lessons Barbara was shrewd enough to discover that she had no musical gifts worth cultivating. She therefore ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... sir, you hunt him up again—he will no doubt be in his office across the street. Get his consent, as I before suggested—Castleton is always obliging when you appeal to him directly; then take your supper, and be ready. I will be here at eight o'clock with my horse and a piano-box buggy. It will be a beautiful moonlight night, and let us not risk waiting until to-morrow. We will take with us some ice; also wine, beef extract, and a few other things intended to sustain the poor old ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... very ugly fashion it is. A lady does not know what to do with her two or three bouquets at a musicale or a dinner, so they are laid away on a table. The only thing that can be done is to sit after dinner with them in her lap, and the prima donna at a musicale lays hers on the grand piano. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... expression of unrestrained physical abandon. Lane walked along the edge of this circling, wrestling melee, down to the corner where the orchestra held forth. They seemed actuated by the same frenzy which possessed the dancers. The piccolo player lay on his back on top of the piano, piping his shrill notes at the ceiling. And Lane made sure this player was drunk. On the moment then the jazz came to an end with a crash. The lights flashed up. The dancers clapped and stamped ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... was five years old the 21st of January, and I had such a happy birthday. In the morning when I got up I found at the foot of my crib six books of natural history full of pictures for little folks, a piano, a box of colors, and two dancing bears, one black and one brown. And when I went down to the dining-room, on my tray was a beautiful cup and saucer, and on the cup, in gold letters, "A Gift." And ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... you I'd give you something better than the Journal would give you, and I am going to give you a happy day in the country. We're now on our way to this lady's house. You are my guest, and you can play golf, and bridge, and the piano, and eat and drink until the polls close, and after that you can go to the devil. If you jump out at this speed, you will break your neck. And, if I have to slow up for anything, and you try to get away, I'll go after you—it doesn't matter where it is—and break ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... rather a warm day in autumn. Aunt Cheerie had given the sewing-machine and the piano a holiday, and was sitting in the woodshed, paring apples for preserves. Wherever Aunt Cheerie was, the children were sure to be; and so there was Sunbeam, knife in hand, and Fairy, cutting a paring something less than half an inch thick, while the dear ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... close at hand. First the cornet picks out some air he has heard, note by note, and like a child who is learning the piano, always goes back to the beginning of the piece when he strikes a false note. After many trials the whole air is discovered. Then the trombones and bass instruments put in the accompaniment also by experiment, and in the end the result is really ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... Jemima Turnbull contributed in turn their share toward the evening's entertainment by singing "Hearts of Oak," "The Bay of Biscay," "Then farewell my trim-built wherry," and other songs of a similar character, to a somewhat uncertain accompaniment upon a discordant jangling old piano—the chief merit of which was that a large proportion of its notes were dumb. Their gallant father meanwhile sipped his grog and puffed away at his "church-warden" in a high-backed uncomfortable-looking chair in a ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... applies in a general way to every state and every home. Look about, where you are sitting now. How many things are there in the room just where you are,—there is a table, a chair, a shoe, a coat, a necktie, a cigar, a lampshade, a piano, a basket—for all of these ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... you mean? Why, Jamie, just a pencil and paper, so—that isn't like learning to play the piano or violin!" ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... wood, of the kinds used in delicate cabinet-work and were polished until they shone. The floor was covered with fine straw matting, and around the room were ranged easy-chairs and sofas of willow and rattan. In one corner stood a piano in an ebony case, and on a koa-wood centre-table were a number of fine photographs and works of art. Hanging baskets filled with blooming plants hung in each window and in the veranda. Altogether, it was the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... playing to your little boy, Mrs. Carr," she said with the manner which Miss Polly had described as "flighty." "He came into my room when he heard the piano, and it was a real ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... bare room in a boarding house. To the left is a bed, to the right a grand piano—the latter curiously out of keeping with the other cheap furnishings. The room ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... to appear so," said the wife. "To complete this room, and make it look like other people's we want a piano ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... question whether our intellects can grasp the subject. Are we perhaps like a child whose hand is too small to span an octave on the piano? Not only are the facts inhumanly complicated, but the natural ideals of people are so varied and contradictory that action halts in despair. We are putting a tremendous strain upon the mind, and the results are all about us: everyone has known the neutral thinkers who stand forever undecided ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... They are brought up with songs; for I wished early, as it were, to bathe their souls in harmony. Several of them, especially my first-born and Eva, are regular little enthusiasts in music; and every evening, as soon as twilight comes on, the children throng about me, and then I sit down to the piano, and either accompany myself, or play to little songs which they themselves sing. It is my Henrik's reward, when he has been very good for the whole day, that I should sit by his bed, and sing to him till he sleeps. He says that ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... very erect and ready for argument, watched her steadily from the piano stool of their joint sitting ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... a great bother, at best. I wish they could be abolished. They are always slamming, punching holes in the plastering with their knobs, creaking on their hinges, bruising the piano, pinching babies' fingers, and making old folks see stars when they get up in the night to look for burglars. Heavy curtains are infinitely more graceful, equally warm, and not half so stubbornly unmanageable. Then think of entering a room. ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... the dispassionate, if not of the philosophic, historian with which she always recorded the current incidents of her daughter's career. "She got dressed on purpose before dinner. But she's got a friend of hers there; that gentleman—the Italian—that she wanted to bring. They've got going at the piano; it seems as if they couldn't leave off. Mr. Giovanelli sings splendidly. But I guess they'll come before very long," concluded ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... supplies of munitions and engines of war were wormed through. The machine-guns in carefully numbered parts came in cases as "agricultural implements," the big guns travelled in the boilers of locomotives, the empty cases of the shells, large and small, were packed in piano-cases, or in straw-filled crates as "hardware"; the black powder and the cordite and the lyddite came in round wooden American cheese-boxes, with a special mark; and the Mauser cartridges were soldered in tins like preserved meat. How handsomely that ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... head-shaking, and gathering of lips, and reminiscences of ancient arguments, guaranteed to do all that leech could do in the matter. The old doctor did admit that Richard's constitution was admirable, and answered to his prescriptions like a piano to the musician. "But," he said at a family consultation, for Sir Austin had told him how it stood with the young man, "drugs are not much in cases of this sort. Change! That's what's wanted, and as soon as may be. Distraction! He ought to see ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... reached a narrow, five-storied brick house with gay window boxes at every window. A maid opened the door for them and showed them into a pleasant, rather small room where a little girl sat at the grand piano, practicing. ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White
... she was nine she could play quite creditably a number of simple Etudes on the tinkly old piano which had lost some of its ivories. Her daily practicing was one of the few things about which Barbara was strict. So much attention had been given to her own education in music that she found joy in keeping ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... with one consent, and all, as it were, moved by a sudden impulse, joined first in a country dance, then formed into sets for quadrilles, and finally waltzed away to the old-fashioned sound of Mrs. Meadowsweet's piano, played with vigor by the good lady herself, Captain Bertram, with a beseeching and deprecatory glance at Beatrice, who took care not to see it, led out Miss Matty Bell ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... very happily with commonplace wives, and Robert Worth had never regretted that his Maria did not play on the piano, and paint on velvet, and work fine embroideries for the altars. They had passed nearly twenty-six years together in more than ordinary content and prosperity. Yet no life is without cares and contentions, and Robert Worth had had to face ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... house and garden in the country all to himself. His idea is somewhere near half an acre of ground. He would like a piano in the best room; it has always been his dream to have a piano. The youngest girl, he is convinced, is musical. As a man who has knocked about the world and has thought, he quite appreciates the argument that by co-operation the material side of life can be greatly improved. He quite sees ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Piano and being unable to divide it fairly without a remainder went to law about it and continued the contest as long as either one could steal a dollar to bribe the judge. When they could give no more an Honest Man came along and by a single small payment obtained a judgment and took ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... are said to have used its bark for the roofs of cottages, for baskets, and for a kind of paper called Philyra. They also made bucklers of its wood, "on account of its flexibility, lightness, and resiliency." It was once much used for carving, and is still in demand for sounding-boards of piano-fortes and panels of carriages, and for various uses for which toughness and flexibility are required. Baskets and cradles are made of the twigs. Its sap affords sugar, and the honey made from its flowers is said to be preferred to any other. Its leaves are in some countries given to ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... many, whose fortunes were said to be ample, Miss Lily De Lusian may serve as a sample: She'd a smatter of French, and a languishing air, While of sense she possessed but a limited share. She played the piano remarkably well, And by all of her friends was considered a belle. And perhaps it was so, for she certainly 'told,' In the set where she moved, on ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... satisfied that the New England schools were good enough for her. This was Helen; but Katy was different. Katy was more susceptible of polish and refinement—so the mother thought; and as she arranged and rearranged the little parlor, lingering longest by the piano, Dr. Morris' gift, she drew bright pictures of her favorite child, wondering how the plain farmhouse and its inmates would seem to her after Canandaigua and all she must have seen during her weeks of travel since the close of the summer term. And then she ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... that—that Laurie thought very pretty, and she had a restless little way of playing with her fingers as if on a piano. Oh, my dear, it would have been too dreadful; and now, ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... becomes aware of people. Usually the crowds and their endless faces are a background. They circle around one the way ripples circle around a stone that has fallen into the water. The torments, elation of others; the ambitions, defeats of others; the bedlam of others—who the piano. A cornet, probably. Or a ukulele. Parbleu, what creates in the plunge from ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... old-fashioned hat rack flanked the door on one side, a tall clock on the other. I saw in passing framed steel engravings. The room beyond contained easy chairs, a sofa upholstered with hair cloth, an upright piano, a marble fireplace with a mantel, in a corner a triangular what-not filled with objects. It, too, was dim and curtained and faintly aromatic as had been the house of an old maiden aunt of my childhood, who used to give me cookies on the Sabbath. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... evening when the young Polish violinist, whom I have already mentioned, asked me to play with him Beethoven's sonata for piano and violin, dedicated to Kreuzer, his favourite piece, which he had long been unable to play for want of ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... and ennui were considered etiquette last winter, in a certain society, which was thrown into mourning by the July revolution. Reunions were very few; there were no balls or soirees; dancing in drawing-rooms to the piano was hardly permissible, even with intimate friends. When once I was installed in Mademoiselle de Corandeuil's drawing-room upon a friendly footing, this cessation of worldly festivities gave me an opportunity to see Clemence in a rather ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... secretary has computed the rate, if you listen closely you can almost hear the buzz of multiplications and additions which is going on in each man's head as he calculates exactly how much the addition will mean to him in taxes on his farm, his daughter's piano ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... probabilmente soltanto la prima" (UZIELLl).]; the second is that two third ones above are over the two third ones below [Footnote 10: terze di sotto: "Intende qui senza dubbio parlare di foglie decussate, in cui il terzo verticello e nel piano del primo" (UZIELLI).]; and the third way is that the third above is over the third below [Footnote 11: 3a di sotto: "Disposizione ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... Every successful new medium has traded off its artifact-ness — the degree to which it was populated by bespoke hunks of atoms, cleverly nailed together by master craftspeople — for ease of reproduction. Piano rolls weren't as expressive as good piano players, but they scaled better — as did radio broadcasts, pulp magazines, and MP3s. Liner notes, hand illumination and leather bindings are nice, but they pale in comparison to the ability of an individual ...
— Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books • Cory Doctorow
... Lord Garrow's tea and cut the leaves of the Revue des Deux Mondes, which he invariably read until he dressed for dinner, she stole away to the further room, where she could play the piano, write letters, muse over novels, or indulge in reverie without fear of interruption. But as she entered it that afternoon its air of peace seemed the bleakness of desolation. A terrible and afflicting grief ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... of mind of a savage who might find upon a shore, washed up by the same storm, buoyant parts of a piano and a paddle that was carved by cruder hands than his own: something light and summery from India, and a fur overcoat from Russia—or all science, though approximating wider and wider, is attempt to conceive of India in terms of an ocean island, and of Russia in ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... with D'Israeli, and in the afternoon we partly walked and partly rode to Islington, to drink tea with Mrs. Lindo, who, with Mr. L. and her family, were well pleased to see me. Mr. Cervetto was induced to accompany the ladies at the piano with his violoncello, which he did delightfully. We walked home at 10 o'clock. On Saturday we passed a very pleasant day at Petersham with Turner ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... out-curve, but in delivery the hand is brought almost directly over the shoulder. In all curves the pitcher must have extremely sensitive fingers and be able to control them with almost as much skill as one requires in playing a piano. We must keep in mind which way we desire the ball to spin to produce the required curve and then to give it just as much of this spin as we can without interfering ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller |
