"Keyboard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... night of spring, one was calling to its mate. The Commandant heard it, and struck its note on the upper keyboard. ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... to that," said Mr. May, "I can accompany some of them myself, when I'm not operating the film. I'm not an expert pianist—but I can play a little, you know—" And he trilled his fingers up and down an imaginary keyboard in front of Alvina, cocking his eye at ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... sounds, thoraxes, catguts, wire, wood, and brass? Consecutive-fifths are as harmless as blue laws compared with the relentless tyranny of the "media." The instrument!—there is the perennial difficulty—there is music's limitations. Why must the scarecrow of the keyboard—the tyrant in terms of the mechanism (be it Caruso or a Jew's-harp) stare into every measure? Is it the composer's fault that man has only ten fingers? Why can't a musical thought be presented as it is born—perchance "a bastard ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... "My education may be modern, on the whole; but it hasn't neglected the classics completely! Gentlemen forward!" she said, with a sudden cry, which sent Mrs. Bates's fingers back to the keyboard; "gentlemen forward to Mister Tucker!" Mrs. Bates pounded loudly, and Jane pirouetted up ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... applied for a position as operator with the Western Union. He had to wait a few days, and during this time he seized the opportunity to study the indicators and the complicated general transmitter in the office, controlled from the keyboard of the operator on the floor of the Gold Exchange. What happened next has been the basis of many inaccurate stories, but is dramatic enough as told in Mr. Edison's own version: "On the third day of my arrival and while sitting in the office, the complicated general instrument ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... power. Of political wisdom indeed in its larger and more generous sense Elizabeth had little or none; but her political tact was unerring. She seldom saw her course at a glance, but she played with a hundred courses, fitfully and discursively, as a musician runs his fingers over the keyboard, till she hit suddenly upon the right one. Her nature was essentially practical and of the present. She distrusted a plan in fact just in proportion to its speculative range or its outlook into the future. ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... to the keyboard, and the aged machine clattered rapidly for nearly a minute before Dr. Joachim paused again to consider ...
— Fifty Per Cent Prophet • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Great, Great to Pedal, Swell to Pedal, Choir to Pedal, Swell to Choir. New keyboards. New Pedal keyboard. New Drawstop knobs. New additional bellows. Five new Composition Pedals (three to Great organ, and two to ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... modulation such as Bach afterwards displayed. Then as to technique, we find here octaves and large chords comparatively rare,[61] while scale passages are more restricted. Like Beethoven, Emanuel Bach seized hold of additional notes to the keyboard. In 1742 his highest ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... The student has previously learned the letters found in the copy and can identify them upon the keys of the typewriter. Scrutiny enables him to find any particular key, and in the course of a few hours be develops a certain awkward familiarity with the keyboard and acquires some speed by utilizing these familiar muscular movements and available bits of knowledge. All these prelearned movements and associations are brought into service in the early stages of improvement, ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... lower room, Captain Folsom saw the singer seated at a great square piano, a giant of a man with a huge shock of dark brown hair and ferocious mustaches, while a coal black negro, even huger in size, lolled negligently at one end of the keyboard, his red lips parted wide in a grin of enjoyment and ivory white teeth showing between, and at the other end of the piano, with his elbows planted on the instrument and his head pressed between his hands, stood or rather leaned ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... is easy, least of all the art of letters. Apply the musical analogy once more to the instrument whereon literature performs its voluntaries. With a living keyboard of notes which are all incessantly changing in value, so that what rang true under Dr. Johnson's hand may sound flat or sharp now, with a range of a myriad strings, some falling mute and others being added from day to day, with numberless ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... woman's contentment. On the table were embroidery materials with which she had been working, and a lamp-shade half finished. A woman's magazine printed in a city four thousand miles away lay open at the fashion plates. There were other magazines, and many books, and open music above the white keyboard of the piano, and vases glowing red and yellow with wild-flowers and silver birch leaves. He could smell the faint perfume of the fireglow blossoms, red as blood. In a pool of sunlight on one of the big white bear rugs lay the sleeping cat. And then, at the far end ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... and through the Earth's magnetic field, using the fabric of space itself as the fulcrum against which it applied its power, was like the vibration of a note struck somewhere near the bottom of a piano keyboard, or the rumble ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... which we could not have expressed in words. It was like a scene of enchantment as we watched those immense bands of glowing colours changing so rapidly and synchronising with the chords of music. Merna informed us that the lights of each vessel were electrically controlled from the keyboard of one of the musical instruments on ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... he turned out the kerosene lamp, which was sputtering, and flung fresh logs upon the hearty fire. Overhead the rain droned, like monotonous fingers upon a keyboard, and beside her Sandy slept ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... in his best verses, and Milton at the keyboard of his organ. Shakespeare's language is no longer the mere vehicle of thought; it has become part of it, its very flesh and blood. The pleasure it gives us is unmixt, direct, like that from the smell of a flower or the flavor of a fruit. Milton sets everywhere his ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... himself back to the keyboard again, pounding out a few bars of the dance music in Strauss' Salome, of which the score lay open before him. He was a good-looking young man of twenty-two, of whom any mother, not too exacting, might be proud. Very blond—with well-chiselled features and waving hair—not so tall as to make ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... bastard'—for such was the name they gave me—was soon condemned to isolation. No one would associate with me during play-time. No one would sit beside me in the school-room. At the piano lesson, the girl who played after me pretended to wipe the keyboard carefully before commencing her exercises. I struggled bravely against this unjust ostracism; but all in vain. I was so unlike these other girls in character and disposition, and I had, moreover, been guilty of a great imprudence. I had been silly enough to show my companions the costly jewels ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... saw that what I had taken for the keyboard of the organ was no keyboard but only a slit, and one of the little Lords dropped a plaque of metal into it. And then the angels played and the world turned round and the organ made a noise and the people began killing one another ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... supposed to derive its name. Queen Elizabeth was fond of playing on it, but as it was in vogue before her time, there is no need to connect the name with the Virgin Queen. (Elizabeth's own Virginal is in South Kensington Museum.[10]) Its keyboard has four octaves, and the case is square, like that of a very old pianoforte. The strings of the virginal were plucked, by quills,[11] which were secured to the 'jacks' [see Sonnet cxxviii.], which in turn were set in motion by the keys. The strings were wire. The oldest country dance known, ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... opening with a syncopation. The first variation follows the harmony of the theme, but in a broken manner, not alone in the cutting up into sixteenth notes, but also in changes of position upon the keyboard. This tendency to excitement continues in the second variation, where the melody is in the bass, in octaves broken into sixteenth notes. The third variation changes the mode to minor, and the musical treatment ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... he would play tonight. Nor, maybe, was he conscious now of choosing. His fingers caressed the keyboard vaguely; and anon this ivory had voice and language; and for its master, and for some of his hearers, arose a vision. And it was as though in delicate procession, very slowly, listless with weeping, certain figures passed by, hooded, and drooping forasmuch as by the loss of him whom they were following ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... for five pounds at a farm sale. Its wiry jingle spoke of evolution from harpsichord or spinet to the modern instrument; its yellow keys, from which the ivory in some cases was missing, and its high back, stained silk front, and fretted veneer indicated age; while above the keyboard a label, now growing indistinct, set forth that one "William Harper, of Red Lion Street, Maker of piano-fortes to his late Majesty" was responsible for the instrument very ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... advanced violinist, should not have a place in the foreground of his consciousness. I heard Rubinstein play when a boy—what did his false notes amount to compared with his wonderful manner of disclosing the spirit of the things he played! Plante, the Parisian pianist, a kind of keyboard cyclone, once expressed the idea admirably to an English society lady. She had told him he was a greater pianist than Rubinstein, because the latter played so many wrong notes. 'Ah, Madame,' answered Plante, 'I would rather be able to play Rubinstein's ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... audiovisual newscast. Over across the room, the rest of the Times staff, Julio Kubanoff, was sitting at the composing machine, his peg leg propped up and an earphone on, his fingers punching rapidly at the keyboard as he burned letters onto the white plastic sheet with ultraviolet rays for photographing. Julio was an old hunter-ship man who had lost a leg in an accident and taught himself his new trade. He still wore the beard, now white, that ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... and pretty room, hung with mirrors and containing a piano, a perfect room for banquetting. The lieutenant opened the piano with his sword, and before Theodore knew where he was, he was sitting on the music-stool, and his hands were resting on the keyboard. ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... fingers on the keyboard as he bent to her, first kissing her hair, then slowly turning her face up to his and kissing her ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... system consists of four lamps mounted in a vertical line as high as possible. Each lamp is double, containing a red and a white light, and these lights are controlled from a keyboard. A red light indicates a dot in the Morse code and a white light indicates a dash. The keys are numbered and lettered, so that the system may be operated by any one. Various other systems employing ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... has its drawbacks. He tries to sit on my book when I am reading, and longs to lie on the keyboard of my machine when I am writing. If I try to read a paper when he is on my lap he immediately crawls under it, and gets between my eyes and the print. I am terribly flattered, but his affection has its inconveniences. ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... girl. The performances of the Mozart festival were ended. Miss Gordon needed daily the spiritual uplift of music. She had a piano in her reception room, and a roll of opera scores which accompanied her on her travels. Jaime sat near, before the keyboard, trying to accompany the pieces she was interpreting, ever those of the same author, the god, the only! The hotel was near the station, and the noise of drays, carriages and street cars annoyed the English woman and she closed the windows. Her ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of one who dreams at the piano—large flakes falling direct to the ground and lingering there like measured notes; and little white coveys suddenly eddying hither and thither, like aimless runs up and down the keyboard. ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... painter who produced an effect long desired by throwing his brush at a picture in rage and despair; of a musician who, after repeated failures in trying to imitate a storm at sea, obtained the result desired by angrily running his hands together from the extremities of the keyboard,—bear in mind that even this "luck" came to men as the result ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... a swoop with her fingers from one end of the keyboard to the other, just to get her bearings, as it were, and you could see the congregation set their teeth with the agony of it. Then, without any more preliminaries, she turned on all the horrors of the "Battle of Prague," that venerable shivaree, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Conferences with Renowned Masters of the Keyboard, Presenting the Most Modern Ideas upon the Subjects of Technic, ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... illustrate to-day is the invention of M. Dietz, of Brussels. His grandfather was one of the first manufacturers of upright pianos, and being struck with the difficulties and defects of the harp, constructed, in 1810, an instrument a cordes pincees a clavier—the strings connected with a keyboard. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... a swift glide up the notes, and other sounds were lost. The window was half open; the lawyer walked to it and looked out. At that moment the two men were back to back. Hugh Ritson's head was bent over the keyboard. Mr. Bonnithorne's eyes were on the tranquil landscape lying in the sun outside. The faces of ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... petite, some might deem her, for womanly perfection; but physical symmetry, ease, and a dignified bearing elevate the fairy figure to the true standard. She moves about with an airy grace, and nothing earthly is lighter than her footfall. Her small, delicate hands grace the keyboard, and music in her has ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... willingly go,' she said, 'but it is not necessary. I found two five-franc pieces at the back of the piano, that had slipped without your knowledge between the frame and the keyboard, and I laid them on ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... the usual demurrings from Ada, rather prettily pink, and Mrs. Turkletaub, with the threat of sobs swallowed, opening the upright piano to dust the dustless keyboard with her apron, and Nicholas, his sagging pipe quickly supplied with one of the rose-twined cuspidors for ash receiver, hunched down in the pink-velour armchair of ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... get this job for the two years of unexpired term, you'll be court stenographer—pays fifteen hundred a year." The girl glanced quickly at him again, with fire in her eyes, then looked conspicuously down at the keyboard of ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... understanding, and turned to the keyboard. Then, without notes, and with a delicate touch of perfectly modulated interpretation, she began to render "Trauemerei," as though she, too, had been dreaming of something ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... began housekeeping in a flat. It was a lonesome flat—something like the A sharp way down at the left-hand end of the keyboard. And they were happy; for they had their Art, and they had each other. And my advice to the rich young man would be—sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor—janitor for the privilege of living in a flat with your Art and ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... little inhabitants; or looks up to see mischievous eyes watching a chance to stop the uninteresting writing; or feels, suddenly, soft arms round one's neck, as a baby, strayed from her own domain, climbs unexpectedly up from behind and makes dashes at the typewriter keyboard. Such little living interruptions are too frequent to allow of these ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... midst of the Sepoy colonel (which was an excellent assumption, although inconsistent with the style of his make-up), his eye lighted on the piano. This instrument was made to lock both at the top and at the keyboard, but the key of the latter had been mislaid. Michael opened it and ran his fingers over the dumb keys. 'Fine instrument—full, rich tone,' he observed, and he ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... great musician, he made organs of lead with his own hand. In S. Domenico he made one of cardboard, which has ever remained sweet and good; and in S. Clemente there was another, also by his hand, which was placed on high, with the keyboard below on the level of the choir—truly with very beautiful judgment, since, the place being such that the monks were few, he wished that the organist should sing as well as play. And since this Abbot loved his Order, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... ranging through several octaves. These bells, rising tier above tier in a belfry, the smallest highest, the great, ponderous bells of the bass notes lowest, are not free to swing, but are fixed to huge beams, and are sounded by clappers connected by a wilderness of wires to a keyboard which is played upon ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... says I'm an old married woman now, that I'm settled, that I've eaten my pie! Perhaps I have. I'm not imaginative, so I must depend on others for my joy of living. I know now that I can never create, never really express myself in any way worth while, either on paper or canvas or keyboard. And people without imagination, I suppose, simply have to drop back to racial simplicities—which means I'll have to have a family, and feed hungry mouths, and keep a home going. And I'll have to get all my art at second-hand, from magazines and gramophone records and plaster-of-Paris ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... standard for so many computer margins), and the entire original edition we received in all caps was over 800,000 chars in length, including line enumeration, symbols for caps and the punctuation marks, etc., since they were not available keyboard characters at the time (probably the keyboards operated at baud rates of around 113, meaning the typists had to type slowly for the ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... sound-board, which is the resonance factor; and the bridge, connecting it with the strings. The strings, sound-board, and bridge are indispensable, and common to all stringed instruments. The special fact appertaining to keyboard instruments is the mechanical action interposed between the player and the instrument itself. The strings, owing to the slender surface they present to the air, are, however powerfully excited, scarcely audible. To make them sufficiently audible, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... was the White Hope of the Brownstone Court House—declared Mr. Tutt's summation was the greatest that ever they heard. For the shrewd old lawyer had an artist's hand with which he played upon the keyboard of the jury and knew just when to pull out the stops of the vox humana of pathos and the grand diapason of indignation and defiance. So he began by tickling their sense of humor with an ironic description of afternoon tea ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... the skylight, and, walking flat-footed, had returned softly to the very spot on the bridge he had occupied before. A slow, lingering grin exposed his set of big white teeth: they gleamed evenly in the shade of the awning like the keyboard of a ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... words which some genius had devised for the fingering practice it gave one on the keyboard, and Joe Harned had written it hundreds of times before, just as thousands of others had done, without giving a thought to its meaning, or the significance that the substitution of a single ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... toward the figure of the woman who is to hold his mind. The shading of the lights, the patches of dark shadows, the vagueness of some parts, the sharp outlines of others, the quietness of some parts of the picture as against the vehement movement of others all play on the keyboard of our mind and secure the desired effect ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... but we do not know how to produce vibrations of this rate. We can produce a definite vibration of one or two hundred or thousand per second; in other words, we can excite a pure tone of definite pitch; and we can demand any desired range of such tones continuously by means of bellows and a keyboard. We can also (though the fact is less well known) excite momentarily definite ethereal vibrations of some million per second, as I have explained at length; but we do not at present seem to know how to maintain this rate quite continuously. To get much faster rates of vibration than this we have ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... announced his text: "Let him who is without sin amongst you cast the first stone," there came a shifting of attention. Here was a man gifted with that quality of voice without which there can be no oratory; endowed with that magic of force under which human emotion is a keyboard responsive to the touch; commanding that power which can sway its hearers at will between smile and tear. His reputation was already known to them, but within five minutes after his voice sounded reputation ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... assertion by seating himself at the keyboard and rattling off some popular melodies. With music and laughter the long twilight fled, for O'Neil's "boys" flung themselves into the task of entertaining ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... not divulged here. He assented that he was a fellow-pupil of Liszt's under the beneficent, iron rule of Carl Czerny. But he never looked his age. Seemingly seventy, a very vital threescore-and-ten, by the way, he was as light on his feet as were his fingers on the keyboard. A linguist, speaking without a trace of foreign accent three or four tongues, he was equally fluent in all. Once launched in an argument there was no stopping him. Nor was he an agreeable opponent. Torrents and cataracts of ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... themselves to his purpose, and he learns to transfer the stress from his throat to his lungs as easily and quickly and instinctively as the pianist passes his fingers from the treble to the base notes on the keyboard. ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... the piano, sat carelessly, sidewise, on its stool, and, thrumming at the keyboard, fell to humming in a slurring, reminiscent fashion, the old ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... terror-stricken? His desultory mental queries suddenly stopped as he raised his eyes to the far corner of the room, for there, covered with an old shawl, he made out the lines of a piano. He opened the keyboard and struck a chord. It wasn't so bad—a little tuning—he could do ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... compared to the classically educated gentlemen who discuss politics in country houses at election time (and at no other time) after their day's earnest and skilful shooting. Think of the years and years of weary torment the women of the piano-possessing class have been forced to spend over the keyboard, fingering scales. How many of them could be bribed to attend a pianoforte recital by a great player, though they will rise from sick beds rather than miss Ascot ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... was speaking to you about," said Captain Bob, pointing to a wounded Highlander, whose head was enveloped in a bandage. "He's a regular genius on the keyboard; that is why there are such a lot of chaps here to-night. He only blew in a couple of days ago from the brigade on our right when he heard we were lucky enough to have ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... exclaimed one of the Adeles, as the industrious lady from next door, after a final bang, withdrew her hands from the keyboard. "And ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... dawn of speech the child ceases to be an animal we cherish, and crosses the boundary into distinctly human intercourse. There begins in its mind the development of the most wonderful of all conceivable apparatus, a subtle and intricate keyboard, that will end at last with thirty or forty or fifty thousand keys. This queer, staring, soft little being in its mother's arms is organizing something within itself, beside which the most wonderful orchestra one can imagine is a lump ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... music lessons. It was terrible work, like earning a living with the sweat of the brow. But the two of them—the young woman and the old man—bent to it heroically. For an hour, that first time, the cramped old fingers felt their way over the keyboard; for an hour Billy bent over them, patiently pointing the way. She had forgotten that she was not to think of piano-notes now—that she had signed the Wicked Compact. She had forgotten everything but her determination to teach Old '61 to play "Marching through Georgia." And ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... and dark To her eyes, sun-accustomed; the neighbors too near And too noisy. The medley of sounds hurt her ear. Sudden laughter; the cry of an infant; the splash Of a tenant below in his bath-tub; the crash Of strong hands on a keyboard above, and the light, Merry voice of the lady who lived opposite, The air intertwined in a tangled sound ball, And flung straight at her ear through ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Pacchierotti. He was received with the greatest favor by the queen, Marie Antoinette, and the court, and made the acquaintance of Gluck, who warmly admired the brilliant player who had so completely revolutionized the style of execution on instruments with a keyboard. Here he also met Viotti, the great violinist, and played a duo concertante with the latter, expressly composed for the occasion. Clementi was delighted with the almost frantic enthusiasm of the French, ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... I had been invited by the organist of the church to play the organ—a neat little instrument of some eight or ten stops; and it was while "giving out" the familiar tune of Antioch that I noticed, in the reflection of a little mirror placed above the keyboard, that Mr. Bronte had entered the church, and was passing up the aisle. He wore the customary black gown, and the lower part of his face was quite buried in an enormous white neckcloth—the most ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... one piece after another with untiring energy. She loved music, and now found that all she need do was to sit at the piano and listen and watch her hands twinkle over the keyboard. ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... snapped on the code-index, found the symbol he wanted, and then punched it on the keyboard. "Special Chief's Assistant Verkan Vall," he identified himself. "Speaking from office of Tortha Karf, Chief Paratime Police. I want a complete hypno-mech on Venusian nighthounds, emphasis on wild state, special emphasis domesticated nighthounds reverted to wild state in terrestrial surroundings, ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... 7—4.45 P.m. The first proper name ever set by this new keyboard was William Shakspeare. I set it at the above hour; & I perceive, now that I see the name written, that I either misspelled it then or I've misspelled ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... sat down. Captain Eben took a figured handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. The thin, nearsighted young woman who had been humped over the keyboard of the melodeon, straightened up. The worshipers relaxed a little and began to ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sofa had lost the greater part of its hair through the rents in its dark-green velvet covering. The unfortunate square piano had had no pity shown it; more out of tune and asthmatic than ever, it was now always open, and one could read above the yellow and worn-out keyboard a once famous name-"Sebastian Erard, Manufacturer of Pianos and Harps for S.A.R. Madame la Duchesse de Berri." Not only Louise, the eldest of the Gerards—a large girl now, having been to her first communion, dressing ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the sympathetic stroke of which has been felt by many men and many women. It is at once a light which lightens the darkness of the future, a presentiment of the sacred joys of a shared love, the certainty of mutual comprehension. Above all, it is like the touch of a firm and able hand on the keyboard of the senses. The eyes are fascinated by an irresistible attraction; the heart is stirred; the melodies of happiness echo in the soul and in the ears; a voice cries out, "It is he!" Often reflection casts a douche of cold water on this ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... ago all type was set in this manner; but several machines have now been invented which will do this work. In one of the best of them the operator sits before a keyboard much like that of a typewriter. When he presses key a, for instance, a mould or matrix of the letter a is set free from a tube of a's, and slides down to its place in the stick. At the end of the line, the matrices forming it are carried in front ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... on fiercely for some minutes more, leaning close over the keyboard, and throwing her very soul, as Elma could plainly see, into the tips of her fingers. Then, suddenly she rose, and came over, well pleased, to the sofa where Elma sat. With a motherly gesture, she ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... running her fingers lightly over the keyboard, listening to what was being said, watching with happy interest everything that was going on around her, and casting an occasional glance over her shoulder and upward to where ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... formed a keyboard unimaginably complex; a keyboard whose infinite combinations were like a Fourth Dimensional chess game. I saw that only the swarms of tentacles that were the Keeper's hands and these only could be masters ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... themselves into two styles of keyboard machine: in one the type bars strike the paper when the keys are depressed; in the other the type is arranged around a wheel which rotates in answer to the depressing of a keyboard letter, and prints the corresponding type ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... unfavorable conditions. A visitor to Amsterdam wished to hear the wonderful music of the chimes of St. Nicholas, and went up into the tower of the church to hear it. There he found a man with wooden gloves on his hands, pounding on a keyboard. All he could hear was the clanging of the keys when struck by the wooden gloves, and the harsh, deafening noise of the bells close over his head. He wondered why people talked of the marvellous chimes of St. Nicholas. To his ear there was no music in them, nothing ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... registry numbers, all the publications issues, dates, and volumes. No cost figures on tagging material on a per-megabyte basis were available. Because ACS's typesetting system runs from tagged text, there is no extra cost per article. It was unknown what it costs ACS to keyboard the tagged text rather than just keyboard the text in the cheapest process. In other words, since one intends to publish things and will need to build tagged text into a typography system in any case, if one does that in such a way that it can drive not only typography ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... human body may be likened to a musical instrument—an organ—the keyboard of which is composed of the various receptors, upon which environment plays the many tunes of life; and written within ourselves in symbolic language is the history of our evolution. The skin may be the "Rosetta ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... had every confidence in the accuracy of her ear; but last night her father had said that the modern musical ear was not nearly so fine as the ancient, trained to the exact intervals of the monochord, instead of the coarse approximation of the keyboard. ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... theatre at a cost of L500, constructed so that he might have a better command of his performers, and he had also acquired another instrument, which Jennens calls a "Tubalcain"—in other words a set of bells played from a keyboard—which he intended to use in the scene in which the Israelites welcome David after his victory over the Philistines. It is curious that Handel should have dramatised the insanity of Saul just after he had himself ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... the window to see if any of her playmates were in sight, while the kitten, left to amuse herself, walked slowly across the keyboard, and sat down upon ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... edge of the mountains, so that I could see underneath the soles of their boots as their legs dangled in the air. In the midst of all, a precipice that rose from out of the glaciers shaped itself suddenly into an organ, and there was one whose face I well knew sitting at the keyboard, smiling and pluming himself like a bird as he thundered forth a giant fugue by way of overture. I heard the great pedal notes in the bass stalk majestically up and down, like the rays of the Aurora that go about upon the face of the ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... out of order, but Mottram managed to bring the rebellious notes into a sort of agreement, and there rose from the ragged keyboard something that might once have been the ghost of a popular music-hall song. The men in the long chairs turned with evident interest as Mottram ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... the small keyboard in her desk, and lo the heavy double curtains swiftly and silently unrolled and covered the windows. At the same moment, the beautifully ornamented, dome shaped center of the lofty ceiling began to glow with a constellation of soft, phosphorescent ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... itself on the vocal instrument and expressing itself through it. The idea that the vocal instrument alone without mental guidance will produce beautiful tone is as fallacious as that a grand piano will produce good music whether the one at the keyboard knows how ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... off the type-writer, seized a sheet of paper, and began to manipulate the keyboard with the methodical carefulness of one unaccustomed to ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... long: we only discover afterwards and by accident their almost incredible brevity. May we not—must we not—infer from this that the body is an organ of many stops and more than one keyboard, and that in sleep it gives forth this richer music. The theory of a higher-dimensional existence during sleep accounts in part for the great longing for sleep. "What is it that is much desired by man, but which they know not while possessing?" again asks Leonardo. "It is ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... over the boy at the writing machine. His eyes were still glazed with the stupor of the hypnotic trance, but the slack jaw had stiffened, and the loose mouth was compressed in a purposeful line. As they watched, his hands went out to the keyboard in front of him and began to move over it, and as they did, letters appeared on the ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... the better to see her work, or rolling, between her fingers, little bread-pellets. As to the piano, the more quickly her fingers glided over it the more he wondered. She struck the notes with aplomb, and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the other end of the village when the window was open, and often the bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad bare-headed and in list slippers, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... thy belfry, O Malines, The master of the bells unseen Has climbed to where the keyboard stands,— To-night his heart is in his hands! Once more, before invasion's hell Breaks round the tower he loves so well, Once more he strikes the well-worn keys, And sends aerial harmonies Far-floating through the twilight dim In patriot song and ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... at each end of the line are identical. Each includes a keyboard like a piano manual, with a key for each letter or character. On each machine is a type wheel, which has the characters engraved in relief upon its face. With the wheel a "chariot" as it is termed also rotates. The type wheels at both stations are synchronized. When a ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... darkest corner of the room stood an old grand pianoforte, the top propped open, and the keyboard exposed as if it had been but recently employed. A chair with a ragged cushion on top of it was pushed a little back, and a sheet of music drooped from the stand towards the keys. My entrance had excited no regard, and I took ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... alive to Kate's welfare, joyfully sent her off, and the child spent several health-giving months in the country. To help her happily to occupy her time, the good friend bought Kate a cheap concertina. By the hour she would sit in the sunshine, mastering the keyboard, and soon she could play simple Army tunes. How richly our Heavenly Father blesses the gifts of love! All unconsciously, the good soldier was preparing the Angel Adjutant of the future to win the hopeless and despairing of ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... of the mazurkas of Chopin. He was, as Rubinstein called him, "the soul of the pianoforte." No one before or after him knew how to make that instrument speak so eloquently. By ingeniously scattering the notes of a chord over the keyboard while holding down the pedal, he practically gave the player three or four hands, and greatly enlarged the harmonic and coloristic possibilities of the pianoforte. Liszt, Rubinstein, Paderewski, and others have ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... I am quite stunned," said the Count as he left the house. "A child dancing on the keyboard would make ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... average successful painter. Again, consider our implements of music—our pianofortes, for example. Nobody but an acrobat will voluntarily spend years at such a difficult mechanical puzzle as the keyboard, and so we have to take our impressions of Beethoven's sonatas from acrobats who vie with each other in the rapidity of their prestos, or the staying power of their left wrists. Thoughtful men will not spend their lives acquiring sleight-of-hand. Invent a piano which will ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... range than the one needed for their earlier efforts. But it is an open question whether the performer's instrument really changed. It must either have been wrongly classified at one of the two periods, or the vocal keyboard—so to speak—transposed a little higher or lower. The character of the instrument remains the same; a viola strung as a violin would still retain its viola quality ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... interminable arguments, the snatches of poetry, the hasty rushes to the keyboard; a composer was in travail. At the end of a year, Rentgen professed his satisfaction; Van Kuyp stood on the highroad to fame. Of that there could be no doubt; Elvard Rentgen would say so in print. Alixe ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... me, and he liked me quite as well as he liked any of the women to whom he would be fitfully agreeable upon the voyage. Once or twice, during each crossing, he did his best and made himself very charming indeed, to keep his hand in,—for the same reason that he kept a dummy keyboard in his stateroom, somewhere down in the bowels of the boat. He practised all the small economies; paid the minimum rate, and never took a deck chair, because, as Horace was usually in the cardroom, he could sit ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... open arms and closed fists when excited, which is peculiar to the race of fishermen. The only time when he was perfectly still was when Tanrade worked in silence. He would then often sit beside him for hours waiting until the composer dropped his pen, swung round in his chair to the keyboard at his elbow, and while the piano rang with melody the little boy's eyes danced. He forgot during such moments of ecstasy that his father was either out at sea with his nets or back in the village good-naturedly ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... great stress on legato playing, and desires everything to be studied slowly, with deep touch and with full, clear tone. For developing strength he uses an exercise for which the hand is pressed against the keyboard while the wrist remains very low and motionless and each finger presses on a key, bringing, or drawing out as much ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... this evening Des Esseintes was not inclined to listen to this music. He confined himself to sounding one note on the keyboard of his organ, by swallowing a little ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... for their ability to open doors by pulling latch-strings. And not a few cats show a strong desire to study music by walking up and down the keyboard of a piano! ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... called the 'voice harmonium,' because the securing of perfect intonation brings the tones much nearer to the quality of the human voice. The instrument has been invented and patented by Mr. Colin Brown of Glasgow, Ewing lecturer on music. By the use of additional reeds and a most ingenious keyboard, he has succeeded in giving each key in perfect tune. The 'wolf' is banished altogether, without the privilege of a single growl. I do not need to say that the effect upon the ear is rich, and extremely ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... in a series of blurred hectic pictures.... She knew that Stillman was leading her toward the piano, but the living-room and its toned lights gave her a curious sense of unreality. She seated herself before the white keyboard and folded her hands with desperate resignation while she waited for Stillman to ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... of the instructor, she found the simple chords of "Annie Laurie," and wrote beside each note the letters that would enable Agnes to find them on the keyboard. "This isn't the right way to begin," she said, with a laugh, "but we'll take this short cut just to surprise Miss Marietta. You can come back aftahward and learn about time and all the othah things that ought to come first. I'll give you a lesson every ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... said the other, letting himself down on to the keyboard of the piano with a loud musical crash, and laughing heartily all the time. "Why don't you get on with your work? Anyone would think you were in training for a cat-gut scraper at a low theatre instead of for an officer and ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... begins to caper a bit, musically, roaring in basso profundo a morning song of its own. The result is grotesque in the extreme. I once heard a big-chested man sing "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep," while his accompanist jigged out an accompaniment on the highest octave to be found on the keyboard of the piano. The pond and the fishermen seem to be doing ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... of property that would fit any permanent residence. He went out of the bedroom, passing the typewriter desk. The typewriter was an old, standard Olympia—a German machine he'd refitted with the Dvorak keyboard which he had learned for greater efficiency. He was sure nobody else would ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... the time with my eyes on the keyboard, and I hadn't once glanced at the finished work. Now I looked at it I saw that she was right. I had been typing letters all along when I should have been printing figures. And then something queer about the letters struck me. My ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... the other hand, seemed never to concern himself [se preuccuper] about the public, and to listen only to the inner voices. He was unequal; but when inspiration took hold of him [s'emparait de hit] he made the keyboard sing in an ineffable manner. I owe him some poetic hours ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... because she can't help it,—she is used to playing so, nobody ever taught her differently. I said to her mother and her that if I were her regular teacher, I would lock up all her music, cover the keyboard with a handkerchief, and make her practice both hands at first slowly on nothing but passages, trills, mordents, etc., until the difficulty with the left hand was remedied; after that I am sure I could ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... calculator utilities that circulate on {BBS} systems: unsociable. Used to describe a program that rudely steals the resources that it needs without considering that other TSRs may also be resident. One particularly common form of rudeness is lock-up due to programs fighting over the keyboard interrupt. See {rude}, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... melodious of all harmonies and the sentiment of love is innate. Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it. How many monkeys—men, I mean—marry without knowing what a woman is! How many of the predestined proceed with their wives as the ape of Cassan did with his violin! They have broken the heart which they ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... a certain famous bell ringer was engaged by the authorities to play the bells from the clavecin. This is a sort of keyboard with pedals played by hand and foot, fashioned like a rude piano. The work is very hard, one would think, but I have heard some remarkable results from it. In former times the office of "carilloneur" was a most important position, and, as in the case of the Van den Gheyn family of ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... the green-filtered forest noon filled the room with a quiver of light. A chill stole upon Odo as he looked at the dust-shrouded furniture, the painted harpsichord with green mould creeping over its keyboard, the consoles set with empty wine flagons and goblets of Venice glass. The place was like the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton |
