"Piano" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... take joy in it," Cleek replied. "But why should we talk of unpleasant things when the future looks so bright? Come, may we not give ourselves a pleasant evening? Look, there is a piano, and—— Count, hold my puppy for me, and please see that no one feeds him at any time. I am starving him so that he may devour some of Clopin's parakeets, because I hate the sight of the little beasts. Thank you. Madame, do you like music? Listen, then; I'll sing you Mauravania's ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... to him, "you must ricollect you ain't at home. What 'ud yo' pa think?" Then she stopped suddenly, and Joe gulped his beer and Kitty went to the piano to relieve her embarrassment. ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... brass instruments, very effective, especially in the open air, though a little trying to nervous ladies in the front rows of an opera-house. This is the celebrated "KilkennischeKatzenMotiv" (Motive of Mortal Combat). It is a syncopated movement, and when given at the piano, is to be played furiously, first with one hand and then with the other, till the performer is ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Doggie Trevor began to feel appreciated. He could play the piano, the harp, the viola, the flute, and the clarionette, and sing a mild tenor. Besides music, Doggie had other accomplishments. He could choose the exact shade of silk for a drawing-room sofa cushion, and he had an excellent ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... look as would have turned a mahogany piano leg into a mound of smoking ashes, and slammed the key ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... tendency toward skeleton keys; ingenious upholsterers who indulged in paper-hanging on the sly; shoemakers who did half-soling and heeling, their day's work set to dry on the window-sill, not to mention those addicted to the use of the piano, banjo, or harp, as well as the wig and dress makers who lightened the ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... appropriate setting, and that the splendid apartment could not have been put to a more fitting use. Even the simple religious songs used at the beginning and close of the meetings were accompanied upon a grand piano of finest tone, whose richly inlaid case represented the expenditure of a moderate fortune. Mrs. Van Horne could command the best amateur musical talent, so that the little emotional Moody-and-Sankeys that Mrs. Frankland selected were so overlaid and glorified in ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... speak, or our throats to sing, and declare in a loud voice and with extended throat what we have completely said or sung to ourselves; or if we should stretch out and will to stretch out our hands to touch the notes of the piano, or to take up the brushes and the chisel, making thus in detail those movements which we have already done rapidly, and doing so in such a way as to leave more or less durable traces; this is all an addition, a fact which obeys quite different laws to the first, and with these laws we ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... the sixteenth week had become as rapid and certain as a reflex. At eight months, or a year before its first attempts at speaking, the infant distinguished between a tone and a noise, as shown by its pleasure on hearing the sounds of a piano; after the first year the child found satisfaction in itself striking the piano. In the twenty-first month it danced to music, and in the twenty fourth imitated song; but it is stated on the authority of other observers that some children have been able to sing pitch correctly, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... were wafted in. His house was a once fashionable mansion now cut up into flats. He had what were once the servants' quarters under the roof, three rooms and a bathroom. The windows of his front room looked out on the tops of trees. Here he worked. The room contained nothing but a table, a chair, a piano, and ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... present employment of labor? No, it is not. Luxuries and comforts are of course the objects of human wants; but a desire alone, without purchasing power, can not either buy or produce these commodities. To obtain a piano, one must produce goods, and this implies the possession of capital, by which to bring into existence goods, or purchasing power, to be offered for a piano. Nor is this sufficient. Even after a man, A, for example, offers purchasing ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... very much read. On several tables, among photographs and vases of flowers, were more books and many magazines, both English and foreign. A large writing-table was littered with notes and letters. An upright grand-piano stood open, with a quantity of music upon it. On the thick Persian carpet before the fire was stretched a very large St. Bernard dog, with his muzzle resting on his paws and his eyes blinking ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the drawing-room, which had been transformed into an impromptu ball-room by taking up the rugs and moving the piano to one end of it, ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... came from a small five-toed animal, not much larger than a rabbit. The piano and the gun are brother and sister, born of the bow and arrow, yet how different the children ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... piano was taking cruel punishment at the hands of a flashily dressed, sharp-faced man of horsey type. Flanking him, two young women of the world, with that insouciance which appertains—in Limehouse—to sweet sixteen, were chanting shrilly ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... of the night, and graciously said that perhaps that very prima donna would make amends, to him for his absence on the occasion. Vittoria checked a movement of revolt in her frame. She cast an involuntary look at Wilfrid. "Now it begins," she thought, and went to the piano: she had previously refused to sing. Wilfrid had to bend his head over his betrothed and listen to her whisperings. He did so, carelessly swaying his hand to the measure of the aria, with an increasing bitter comparison of the two voices. Lena persisted ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... instantly asked the young ladies to sing. Launce, in obedience to a sign from Natalie, volunteered to find the music-books. It is needless to add that he pitched on the wrong volume at starting. As he lifted it from the piano to take it back to the stand, there dropped out from between the leaves a printed letter, looking like a circular. One of the young ladies took it up, and ran her eye ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... language. Let their awful presences shame and transfigure, terrify and transport us, into reality of communication akin to their own! "I will express myself in music to you," said a great composer to a bereft woman, as he took his seat at the piano. He felt that he could not manifest otherwise the feeling in him that was so deep. By sound or by silence, let it be only the conviction of our heart we venture to offer to spirits before whom the meaning of all things ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... that room crowded with redolent humanity to hear an absurd little man string together vivid, gross words about religion, words that made me tingle all over," I answered as I threw my coat on a chair, lifted my hat from my head and sat down on the seat before the dark old piano. "I think religion is the most awful thing in the world and I am as afraid of it as I am of—of death. I'm going ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Wall to the head of the set, other children rushed for places, Mrs. Legrange seated herself at the piano, and the merry dance went on; but, when it was over, Minnie Wall returned to Mrs. Legrange's side, followed by two or three more, begging her to play the cachuca, and see how nicely 'Toinette could dance it. Half unwillingly the mother complied, and found really astonished as she noticed the ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... say. Look at the perfect polish of that table! It's like the finish of a rosewood piano." He touched ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... every day a young girl who seems to have no special gift. Her delicate health has prevented her from studying much, so although the wealth and position of her family have made it possible for her to have the best teachers all her life, her education is not far advanced. With all her piano lessons she will stumble over the simplest march if any one is listening to her; she replies to her French teacher in monosyllables; she has read few books: and as for her arithmetic, children in the primary schools could put her to shame. Nevertheless, she ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... lace on to make it a bit higher. Now I'm sorry I did, for I had to put in those snap fasteners instead of hooks. And if you don't get them to fit exactly they come loose. It's like when the film doesn't come right on the screen, and the piano player sounds a discord to call the operator's ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope
... happy and musical Fatherland, was just packing up its music stands some fifty yards lower down the street; whilst, as he mounted the steps of the house, two Dagos appeared round the next corner, trundling a piano organ, on the top of which was seated what was apparently a small and long-tailed relative of their own. His rooms, however—two on the first floor—though small, were quite cheerful for their kind, whilst the meat tea, which the landlady presently brought up, ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... them, and in splendid Chinese cages, birds of gorgeous plumage have learned to caress the rosy lips of their young mistress, or perch triumphantly on her snowy finger. Here are books, too, and music—a harp—a piano—while through a half open door leading from a little recess over which a multaflora is taught to twine its graceful tendrils, a glimpse may be caught of rosy silken hangings shading the couch where the queen of this little realm nightly ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... with a few hair raisers of his own invention, one of which consisted of apparently letting go the rope by accident and shooting skyward with a wild shriek, only to be caught at the end of a fine, especially woven piano wire cable attached to a spring safety belt, the cable being in turn fastened into ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... was only half finished when they chose me for the big plunge," he said. "Of course I was doing a lot of conducting then, too. Now I'd much rather just write." He hurried across the long, softly-lit room to the piano, came back with a sheaf of papers. "Do you read music? This is just what I've been doing recently. Can't get it quite right, ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... well expect An Influenza-cure from Demogorgon! Some dolts there be, no doubt, who would detect Anodyne influence in a barrel-organ; A febrifuge in a flat German Band, A prophylactic in a street-piano! Some quackery a man can understand, But Music I'll not take, even cum grano. I don't believe what classic noodles say, That Music stopped the haemorrhage of ULYSSES; That CATO'S stiffened joints attained free play From harmony ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... with one beating-stick, with which any one may keep time, is, I suppose, the sort of music most classes in gymnastics will use at first. And it has advantages. While it is less pleasing than some other instruments, it secures more perfect concert than any other. The violin and piano are excellent, but on some accounts the hand-organ is the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Lenox, if you had asked him whether Ormuzd was at peace with all the world, he would have retired into himself, for he hadn't the faintest idea. As for music, or any fine art, he never approached it but once, when he led me to the piano, begging for some native American melody, and not a German romance. Well, I played him 'God save the Queen,' with extravagant variations, which he took for 'Yankee Doodle.' No matter! I made a mistake when I spoke of his opinions; he hadn't any. He was what some call ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... unacknowledged longing possessed him to see how she would carry herself now. He caught up the book he had come for, and went downstairs to the piazza. Sylvia had vanished. Disappointed, he went back into the house. Straying to the piano, he sat down and began to play a Chopin prelude. It was John's one and only instrumental achievement, learned by ear, and dug out of the ivories, as one might say, by long hours of laborious ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... mother were awful rich. They brought her home in a great big ship! And gave her twelve new dresses and the front parlor and a brown piano! But she wouldn't stay in any of them! All she'd stay in was a little old blue silk dress she'd had before ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... charm for Sunny, and after a rather long ride, got out at a cross street and walked until they 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
... 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 ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... occupation with the sheep, he found time to play the piano, to read and to write. In the library of St. John's College, Cambridge, are two copies of the Greek Testament, very fully annotated by him at the University and in the colony. He also read the Origin of Species, which, as everyone knows, was published in 1859. He became "one ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... coffee, or Rhine wine, or Tokay, or perhaps something stronger," asked Raffles Haw, stretching out his hand to what looked like a piano-board projecting from the wall. "I can recommend the Tokay. I have it from the man who supplies the Emperor of Austria, though I think I may say that I get the ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the far distance, and the mysterious purple gloom which, like a rich robe, covered the intervening hills. By some strange coincidence the subject of music came up, and P. bitterly lamented the absence of that gentle muse from such grand surroundings. I don't believe there is a piano in the country except at the girls' school at Cetinje. The Scotchman had suggested the gusla as a substitute, and had been met with derisive laughter, for he had made the suggestion in all good faith. He was one of the most ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... interest as De Luxe Dora, unaccompanied for once, swept into the place. Dora was gorgeously and flashily dressed and fairly scintillated with jewels. She seated herself not far from the door and ordered a cocktail. Then she whistled a bar of music suggestively to the piano-player, who immediately caught it, and the "orchestra" with a show of animation strummed out her suggestion. She sent over drinks for them and was rewarded with ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... of the quarter-deck a stage had been hurriedly constructed—a rude affair of planks and spars that could be disposed of in a very few moments if necessity arose—that supported a piano. A canvas screen, stretched between two stanchions behind the stage, did duty as scenery, and afforded the performers a "green-room"—for, of all the ritual connected with appearing upon a stage, the ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... vertic rays of Summer Homeward came the fair Miranda. How the village people wonder'd At her fashions, and her movements, How she made the new piano Tremble to its inmost centre With andante, and bravura, What a piece she had to show them Of Andromache the Trojan, Wrought in silks of every color, And 'twas said a foreign language Such as princes use in Paris, She could speak ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... chords from the piano melted into a rippling prelude, and Winifred breathed easier when her friend began to sing. Her voice was sweet and excellently trained, and there was a deep stillness of appreciation when the clear ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... at the Black Cat—a real pianist, not just a person who plays the piano. She is a striking figure in a quaint, tunic-like dress, greying hair and a keen face, and a personal friend of half the frequenters. She has an uncanny instinct for the psychology of the moment. She knows just when "Columbia" will be the proper thing to play, and when the ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... at the piano and played a few bars softly to himself—a beautiful, airy sort of melody, as it shaped itself vaguely in his head at the moment, with a little of the new wine of first love running like a trill through the midst of its fast-flowing quavers and dainty ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... treasures associated with dear memories she would gladly have taken, but a strict sense of honor forbade her. She turned away, locking the door, but leaving the key in it, to be turned next by a stranger's hand. She drew up her music stool, and seating herself upon it touched the keys of her piano with a skillful hand, and ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... the point of ringing to send a question to her room, when this purpose quickly yielded to an unexpected sound—the sound of low music proceeding apparently from the saloon. She knew her aunt never touched the piano, and the musician was therefore probably Ralph, who played for his own amusement. That he should have resorted to this recreation at the present time indicated apparently that his anxiety about his ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... fairly well-educated, 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 ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... turned away her own and walked towards the piano, stopping on the way, however, to push forward a little table set forth with a steaming tea-urn and cups, matches and a tray, and to lift to its farther edge a bowl of heavy-scented violets. Her every motion was full of ministry, as ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... evenings together at Yule, with charades and punning contests, and music on the piano which Lincoln Lang had brought out through the gumbo against all the protests of nature. Mrs. Lang was an admirable cook and a liberal and hospitable hostess, which was an added reason for ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... the whole family adjourned to the parlor and were entertained with some good old-fashioned piano playing and homespun duets and solos. The veterans added their mite to the entertainment in the shape of a tolerably fair tenor and an intolerable bass. Singing in the open air, with a male chorus, is not the best preparation ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... woman court clavier player. Scarlatti and Bach. True art of clavier-playing. Sonata form. Where Haydn gained much. Mozart and Clementi. Pianoforte and improvements. Viennese school. Clementi school. Giant on lofty heights. Oscar Bie on Beethoven. Golden age of pianoforte. Piano composers and virtuosi, from Weber to the present time. Teachers and ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... glance, the beautiful girl began to read the will. Shawn leaned against the old piano and buried his face in his hands. Presently he felt two soft arms steal about his neck and a gentle voice saying, "Shawn, would it be the nobler course of a love that should change or turn against one, who was in no way responsible for the conditions of birth; to ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... would return to civilization, for he would have her to live for. He would build a home for her, with a garden and dogs and birds and flowers. With his silver-claim money he had fifteen thousand dollars laid away, and she would never know what it meant to be poor. He would educate her and buy her a piano and she would have no end of pretty dresses and things to make her a lady. They would be together and inseparable always, and when she grew up he prayed deep down in his soul that she would be like the older Isobel, ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... love her because she goes to the altar with her head full of book learning, her hands of no earthly use, save for the piano and brush; because she has no conception of the duties and responsibilities of a wife; because she hates housework, hates its everlasting routine and ever recurring duties; because she hates children and will adopt every ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... matter rather badly, but I suppose the most consummate tact on my part would not have changed things. I should have waited until I saw her alone, or until the party was breaking up; but I went directly I saw they had stopped dancing. She was leaning on the piano and letting Herbert fan her, and looking almost too beautiful for real life as she turned her face toward him, flushed with her exercise and beaming with excitement. There was something grand to me in the expression of individuality and proud insistence that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... may truly be called natural, as it is that into which the string naturally divides itself when stricken. An attentive ear can readily distinguish the succession of sounds as far as the small seventh. The longer bass strings of any piano of full tone and resonant sounding board will suffice for the experiment. These are also the natural notes as found, with differences in compass, in the simple horn and trumpet, and the phenomenon is visibly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... corn-husks and pumpkins on the barn floor, and dance by the light of tin lanterns. At least, that's the traditional thing. The actual thing is sitting around four sides of the room, giggling, whispering, looking at photograph albums, and coaxing somebody to play on the piano. The banquet is passed in the form of apples and water. I have assisted at some rural festivals where the apples were omitted. Upon the whole, I wonder our country people don't all go mad. They ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... Majoral, reaching down to the kernel of the matter, solved the difficulty with the question: "Have we the piano?" ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... fourteen"—or such of them as were old enough to hope and discuss their hopes—talked over their golden future. The tall grown girls whispered to each other of possible Barchester parties, of possible allowances for dress, of a possible piano—the one they had in the vicarage was so weather-beaten with the storms of years and children as to be no longer worthy of the name—of the pretty garden, and the pretty house. 'Twas of such things it most behoved them ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... grace" were found, was inaccessible to Light. In both classes he found free scope for his doctrine of Delicacy, one day remonstrating with a correspondent for "living in a place with the absurd, and worse, name of 'Marine Retreat'"; another, preaching that "a piano in a Quaker's drawing-room is a step for him to more humane life;" and again "liking and respecting polite tastes in a grandee," when Lord Ravensworth consulted him about Latin verses. "At present far too many of Lord Ravensworth's class are mere men of business, or mere farmers, or mere horse-racers, ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... their houses so that they could go and lay their hands on it in the darkest night. I'll bet they could in our house. From end to end it is kept looking as if we had shut it up and gone to Europe,—not a book, not a paper, not a glove, or any trace of a human being in sight; the piano shut tight, the bookcases shut and locked, the engravings locked up, all the drawers and closets locked. Why, if I want to take a fellow into the library, in the first place it smells like a vault, and I have to unbarricade windows, and unlock ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... overlooking the street from a projecting balcony, was the reading-room. This was a high, cool, spacious apartment comfortably furnished with easy-chairs, pictures, maps, hanging book-cases, a big library table covered with periodicals, and an American piano. The periodicals were not of very recent date, and the piano was somewhat out of tune, but I was so delighted with the shady, flower-bordered courtyard and the comfort and apparent cleanliness of the club as a whole that I felt no ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... he turned (the doctor noted) he bent an inscrutable look of pain on Nora. He sat down at the piano and struck a wild, sad chord. Instantly it became as if the people in the room were the instrument upon which he played,—as if the throbbing human hearts around him were directly connected by invisible strings with the ivory keys that pulsed beneath his fingers. What ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... pity there is no piano," said Loiseau as a crowning point to the situation, "we might have finished ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... dawning when we left Delianuova and began the long and weary climb up Montalto. Chestnuts gave way to beeches, but the summit receded ever further from us. And even before reaching the uplands, the so-called Piano di Carmelia, we encountered a bank of bad weather. A glance at the map will show that Montalto must be a cloud-gatherer, drawing to its flanks every wreath of vapour that rises from Ionian and Tyrrhenian; a west wind was blowing that morning, and thick fogs clung to the skirts of the peak. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... eats in my sleep. I want some more Childs' bucks. I want to see the electrics winking on the roofs. I want to smell wet asphalt and see the taxis whizzing by in the rain. I want to see a seven-foot Mick cop with a back like a piano-box and a paw like a ham and a foot like a submarine with stove-polish on it. I want to see the subway in the rush hour and the dips and mollbuzzers going through the crowd like kids in a berry patch. I want to see a ninety-story ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... about to be very advantageously married to a young gentleman who dealt in coals and played the violin (for N——- was a very musical town), had just joined her for the purpose of extorting "The Swiss Boy, with variations," out of a sleepy little piano, that emitted a very painful cry under the awakening fingers ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... sympathetic helper. Of her own accord she took to poetry and music. In effect, had Doris Martin attended the best of boarding-schools and training colleges, she would have received a smattering of French and a fair knowledge of the piano or violin, whereas, after more humble tuition, it might fairly be said of her that few girls of her age had read so many books and assimilated their contents so thoroughly. From her mother she inherited her good looks and a small yearly income, just sufficient to ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... he possessed, must be noticed here, for, with a lifetime's experience of dogs, no parallel can be recalled, or has been gatherable elsewhere. First of all, he was certainly musical, and often after a long day's work, when the landscape outside was wintry, dreary, and wet, and the piano was thrown open and thrashed for joy of sound and relief, Murphy would rise from his mat and come and lie close to his master's feet. He did not sing or howl on these occasions, in the way that with many dogs conveys the impression ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... and two footstools. A settee, with a small round table in front of it, fills the upper right-hand corner. In front, on the left, a little way from the wall, a sofa. Further back than the glass door, a piano. On either side of the doorway at the back a whatnot with terra-cotta and majolica ornaments.— Against the back wall of the inner room a sofa, with a table, and one or two chairs. Over the sofa hangs the portrait of a handsome ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... appeared with his bag in his hand. She inquired, with great simplicity, where he was going. He told her he was going away. She remonstrated, first tenderly, then almost angrily. "We all counted on you to play the violin. We can't dance to the piano alone." ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... accompany the hymns, but, since the rolls were scored rather for musical effect than for church services, the pianola was suddenly found to be playing something quite different from what was being sung. All through the expedition the want of some one who could play the piano was felt, and such a man is certainly a great asset in a life so far removed from all the pleasures of civilization. As Scott wrote in The Voyage of the Discovery, where one of the officers used to play each evening: "This hour of music has become an institution which none of ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... in the room where Dunk and Andy sat. Now and then, from some room would come the tinkle of a piano, or the hum ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... 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 it ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... mind. Perhaps you have fallen to Miss Pennycuick's piano? Did you hear it going as we passed ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... was lounging in the drawing-room, drinking in the strains of a Chopin Nocturne. Not only were his ears gladdened by romantic music, but his eyes were equally exercised by the radiant figure of Angela, bending over the piano, with the red-shaded lights throwing her bare shoulders into perspective and turning her hair to liquid gold. The nocturne ended, she swung ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... at last, letting her gaze wander vaguely over the music-room, about which the other guests were seated. They were lined on gilded settees against the white French-paneled walls, while a young man played Chopin's Ballade in A flat on a grand piano in the far corner. Not being in the music-room itself, but in the large, square hall outside, the two young people could talk in low tones without disturbing the company. If she betrayed emotion it ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... until late in autumn, a large, black hunting spider (Lycosa) dwelt in my piano. When I played andante movements softly, she would come out on the music rack and seem to listen intently. Her palpi would vibrate with almost inconceivable rapidity, while every now and then she would lift her ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... briskly, and in a few minutes came to the tavern. The door was shut, the weather being cold, but I knew by the lights shining through the windows that a hospitable fire was burning on the hearth. There was no need to knock at the door. I heard the jangling piano playing an accompaniment to the flute-like whistling of Harry Herndon's negro. Remembering his carelessness, I felt like going into the tavern and giving him a frailing. The inclination was so strong that I held my hand on the door-knob until the first flush of anger ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... made her aware of Peters standing beside her. He looked down silently on the card table for a few moments, pointed with a nicotine-stained finger to a move Miss Craven had missed and then wandered across the room and sat down at the piano. For a while his hands moved silently over the keys, then he began to play, and his playing was exquisite. Gillian sat and marvelled. Peters and music had seemed widely apart. He had appeared so essentially a sportsman; in spite of the literary tendency ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... with red, and the chairs and lounges were deep and comfortable. A large davenport stood before the fireplace, which had been rebuilt for logs. There was a victrola in one corner, for Miss Dwight was amenable if her guests were seized with the desire to jazz, and a grand piano stood near the lower windows. The only evidence of sheer femininity was a tea table furnished with old pieces of silver she had picked up in France. The dining-room below was a trifle gayer in effect; the ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... loyalty to the British Empire became too fervent to be restrained within the bounds of decency. "Remnants" of red, white and blue were ostentatiously sewn into a distant resemblance of the British flag; the parlour piano once more did its often unsatisfactory best with the British anthem; mamma's darling received strict injunctions not to play with that horrid little Dutch boy next door; and papa, jingling the sovereigns ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... the point. I am not a man of education. I don't know how to play the piano, and can scarcely manage a free-hand sketch of a cathedral. My Greek is shaky, and I speak French and German with an accent enough to drive a linguist mad. No, no, you take my word for it—this little incident ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... hesitated—but I 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
... curls round her head." The abundance of her curling hair caused her much trouble, and she once cut it off, as Maggie Tulliver did, because it would not "lie straight." "One of her school-fellows," we are told, "recalls that the first time she sat down to the piano she astonished her companions by the knowledge of music she had already acquired. She mastered her lessons with an ease which excited wonder. She read with avidity. She joined very rarely in the sports of her companions, and her diffidence and shrinking ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... have made two score before the dancing began. Twenty floating visions—each male and female. Twenty women, knit and growing to as many men, undulate, sway, and swirl giddily before us, keeping time with the delirious melody of piano, harp, and violin. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... sostenuto piano has been the dream of many a musician whose ardent desire it was to perform his music exactly as it was written. A sustained piano note is, indeed, the great mechanical desideratum for the music of the future. In music, as at present written and published for the piano, which is, and must ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... for a couple of decanters, water-jug and glasses. The glitter of these things caught my eye first; but what I saw next was the captain down there, alone as far as I could see; and I could see pretty well the whole of that part up to the cottage piano, dark against the satin-wood panelling of the bulkhead. And I remained looking. I did. And I don't know that I was ashamed of myself either, then. It was the fault of that Franklin, always talking of the man, making free with him to that extent that really he seemed to have ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... centre and were lashed to opposite sides of the triangle that served as a mast for the stay-wires that guyed the wings. The four ribs of each wing, enclosed in pockets in the fabric, radiated fanwise from the centre, and were each stayed by three steel piano-wires to the top of the triangular mast, and similarly to its base. These ribs were bolted down to the triangle at their roots, and could be easily folded back on to the body when the glider was not in use. A small fixed vertical surface was carried in the rear. The framework and ribs were ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... at Amsterdam, there was placed in the apartments of the Empress a piano so constructed as to appear like a desk with a division in the middle, and in this space was placed a small bust of the Emperor of Russia. Soon after, the Emperor wished to see if the apartments of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... you mean she sings, it's a shame I haven't got a piano," Miss Birdseye took upon herself to respond. It came back to her that the girl had ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... enjoy "Can a Little Child Like Me," "Brightly Gleams Our Banner," "Jesus Loves Me." "I Think When I Read That Sweet Story," and "For the Beauty of the Earth," though they will join gladly in the other hymns. Or, instead of using the phonograph, sit down quietly at the piano and play these hymns, with just enough emphasis for the children to catch the rhythm, and they will soon be standing at the piano ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... herself, with the others, sitting very quiet and listening to two girls playing a duet on the piano. Then one of them sang a Scotch song. There was warmth and richness, the warbling of birds, the melody of brooks, in the rendering, and Bernice heard a half-sigh close ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... comfortable in the corral, reasoning that if he were going to be watched, he would be watched no matter where he went; but he ate his supper in the dining room of the Plaza Hotel, and sat in the lobby talking with a couple of facetious drummers until the mechanical piano in the movie show across ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... for supper at the house of Colonel Bacon, an old man and Secessionist. The Colonel treated us politely, but while we were eating a number of ladies of the town assembled in an adjoining parlor in which there was a piano, threw the communicating door open, and proceeded to sing such Confederate war-songs as Stonewall Jackson's Away and My Maryland. We of course accepted good humoredly this concert for our benefit, but when we had finished supper, uninvited, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... magnitude, having to do with transactions which involve a daily expenditure of upward of $800,000. Fortunately, indeed, the stupendous progress of mechanic art in modern times makes it comparatively easy. Thanks to the Piano Electro-Reckoner, the most complex calculations can be made in a few seconds. In two hours Mr. Smith completed his task. Just in time. Scarcely had he turned over the last page when Dr. Wilkins arrived. After him came the body of Dr. Faithburn, escorted by a numerous ...
— In the Year 2889 • Jules Verne and Michel Verne
... left the room. After tripping gaily down the village street at Alois's urgent invitation, Pearl consented to visit the Eldon Maise mansion. The beautiful home captivated the orphan whose life in the circus had deprived her of all real comfort such as she saw here. But it was before the piano that she paused the longest. And when she sang for Alois, that young lady was much gratified to discover that Pearl's singing was as exquisite as the charm of ...
— Pearl and Periwinkle • Anna Graetz
... lit as soon as they got in. Vava had her lessons to do; but after their tea-supper, for which the landlady declined to cook anything but eggs—'London eggs,' as Vava said—Stella looked round for something to do. There was no piano, she had no books, nor was she fond of fancy-work, and of useful work she had none, for 'nursie' had always done most of the mending for her young ladies, though she had taught them both to work. Before they left home she had set their wardrobes in thorough order. ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... went into the drawing-room by themselves, and while she took a seat near the brightly-lit fire-place, he opened the piano at once and sat down. He turned up his cuffs, he took a look at the pedals, he threw back his head, shaking his long brown hair; and then, with a crash like thunder, his two hands struck the keys. He had forgotten all about that sonata: it was a fantasia ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... his own fancy. All this, in a city whose art had been the glory of the world for nigh half a thousand years, struck Ferris as yet more comically pathetic than the frescoed grape-arbor; he stared about him for some sort of escape from the pictures, and his eye fell upon a piano and a melodeon placed end to end in a right angle. Don Ippolito, seeing his look of inquiry, sat down and briefly played the same air with a hand upon ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... of this little room, with dark green walls, only relieved by some engravings and coats of arms, formed a pleasing contrast to Edward's eyes, after the glaring splendor of the other apartments. From behind a piano-forte, at which she had been seated in a recess, rose a tall, slender female form, in a ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... LINTER. Piano solo, 3s.: Duet, 4s. "Another of the admired sets by the author of the Canary Quadrilles and the Goldfinch Quadrilles, elegantly composed, as they ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... struggle, and comfortably conscious that as his residence was "detached," no obtrusive neighbor could either warn him to desist, or set up an opposition nuisance next door by constant practice on the distressingly over-popular piano. One thing very much in his favor was, that he never manifested any desire to perform in public. No one had ever heard him play, . . he pursued his favorite amusement in solitude, and was amply satisfied, if when questioned on the subject of music, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... leaning lightly against a pillar by the fountain. "I never hear a pianist, however great and famous, but I see the little cream-colored hammers within the piano bobbing up and down like acrobatic brownies. I never hear the plaudits of the crowd for the artist and watch him return to bow his thanks, but I mentally demand that these little acrobats, each resting on an individual pedestal, and weary from his efforts, shall appear to receive ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... very much now whenever I get a chance to. I think it is splendid and always amusing. I can play lots of little duets on the piano with ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... gave her a significant look. She pushed his hand from her arm and walked to the piano. But there was a wavering, an uncertainty in her face. He had been her comrade so long and she really ...
— The Heart of the Rose • Mabel A. McKee
... great musical talent, and used to amuse himself blowing trumpet calls on his father's French horn, although the instrument was almost as big as himself; he also achieved considerable mastery over the piano, the flute and the violin, but, though bright and intelligent enough, and always maintaining a creditable position at school, it was evident that nature had intended him for a musician, and that he could never succeed in anything prosaic or mechanical. Accordingly his father taught ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... upstairs as gently as possible, while the young ladies, the governess, the maids, are shown to their apartments. The eldest young lady, a slim black-haired young lass of thirteen, frisks about the rooms, looks at all the pictures, runs in and out of the veranda, tries the piano, and bursts out laughing at its wheezy jingle. She also kisses her languid little brother laid on the sofa, and performs a hundred gay and agile ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... sugar candy? Then rub your eyes, you ecclesiastical bats, and let me show you the 'outcome' of all this wise and learned chat, with which you edify one another. You know she beguiled me into giving her lessons on the organ, as well as the piano, and yesterday when I went over to the church at instruction hour, I was astonished at a prelude, which she had evidently improvised. Screened from her view, I listened till she finished playing. Of course I praised her (for really she has remarkable talent), ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... would not have understood me. Probably she would have thought me a fool. And indeed I am inclined to question whether it is an advantage to a maiden's after career to be dewy-roselike in her unsophistication. In order to play tunes indifferently well on the piano she undergoes the weary training of many years; but she is called upon to display the somewhat more important accomplishment of bringing children into the world without an hour's educational preparation. The difficulty ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... the West end of this flat the rooms both front and back are parlours, with folding doors between, so that while one may be used for conversational purposes or such like, the other may be fitted with a piano and also with games, such as chess, draughts, &c. The upper flat, which contains also very handsome rooms, beautifully finished, is divided into two portions, one to be occupied exclusively by the Secretary, and containing dining and drawing rooms divided by folding doors, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... slowly pale. "Your father," she at last succeeded in articulating. "Ach!" She lifted her arm, thick as a piano leg, and resumed the study of her ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... very erect and ready for argument, watched her steadily from the piano stool of their ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... Freshmen. I've seen nine frats, with a total of one hundred and fifty members, sitting up nights for a week at a time working out plans to despoil each other of a runty little fellow in a pancake hat, whose only accomplishment was playing the piano with his feet. One frat wanted him and ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... the grand piano and set it open; as she did so a thought of Sylvie came across her mind, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... but I had to make a start to get Rosey away from the piano. She's playing while Madge teaches some of the other seniors how to dance the latest step. I wish she'd hurry, I hate loosing my special bus." She glanced behind her and then stopped. "Here she ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... legs and arms in Europe; and her hair seemed to lose its wonderful lustre; and her skin, upon which Mrs. Burton had banked so much, became colorless and opaque and a little blotched around the chin. And she was so nervous and overgrown that she would throw you a whole fit of hysterics during piano lessons; and she prayed so long night and morning that her bony knees developed callouses; and when she didn't have a cold in her head she was getting ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... do my best; but tell Nora to be sure and get the fiddler from Hollymount. It's so stupid for her to be sitting there at the piano while ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... product. That is so as regards the functional products of human evolution. The hand was produced out of the animal forelimb with the primary end of grasping the things we materially need, but as a by-product the hand has developed the function of making and playing the piano and the violin, and that secondary functional by-product of the hand we account, even as measured by the rough test of money, more precious, however less materially necessary, than its primary function. It is, however, only in rare and gifted natures that transformed ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... Andante is going to give us the most trouble, for it is full of expression and must be played with taste and accurately as written in the matter of forte and piano. She is very clever and learns quickly. The right hand is very good but the left utterly ruined. I can say that I often pity her when I see that she is obliged to labor till she gasps, not because she is unapt, but because ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Mrs. Mary R. Scott of Pittsburgh became his teacher. She taught him his letters and first lessons in spelling and reading, giving him considerable time and attention, while the other boys were playing. Perceiving his special fondness for music, she taught him the chords on the piano, and thus gave him a start on that noble instrument, which has ever since been ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... at a corner pub and asked each other in to have a drink while waiting for the hearse. They passed away some of the time dancing jigs to a piano in the bar parlour. They passed away the rest of the ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... enough to know the difference between poverty and riches, I began to lose all interest in my simple home duties, and to cast longing looks at the great school building where girls like myself learned to speak like ladies and play the piano. Yet these ambitious promptings might have come to nothing if I had never met him. I might have settled down in my own sphere and lived a useful if unsatisfied life like my mother and my mother's mother ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... and ends of the cabin were formed of bulkheads, the fore bulkhead being occupied by a sort of sideboard on each side of the entrance door, while against the after bulkhead stood a very handsome pianoforte, open, with a quantity of music in a stand beside it. There was a door to the right of the piano, which, I conjectured, led to the captain's state-room, right abaft; and the side bulkheads, which like the rest of the woodwork of the cabin were painted in white enamel, were each pierced by two doors, close together, which, I had no doubt, ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... shop yesterday; the round rosewood table was in a painfully high state of polish; the morocco-bound picture books that lay on it, looked as if they had never been moved or opened since they had been bought; not one leaf even of the music on the piano was dogs-eared or worn. Never was a richly furnished room more thoroughly comfortless than this—the eye ached at looking round it. There was no repose anywhere. The print of the Queen, hanging lonely on the wall, in its heavy gilt frame, with a large crown at the top, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... secretary of the A. T. L. A. If you had only come sooner you could have met her. What were you asking? Oh, yes! about Gerald's music. Why, you could no more imagine Gerald without music, than you could think of a bird without wings. He would simply perish without a piano. When we are abroad we rent one if we are only going to be in a place ten days. His Papa can't understand this, but then Mr. Ivy is not musical, poor dear; he really doesn't know a fugue ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... to thumb his nose casually at the entire audience, and then amid shouts and hisses sat down at the piano and began ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... and went back to find the doctor and Helen all smiles, and ready to joke instead of scold. Then he went to the piano, and turned over the music, the airs and songs making him feel more and more sad, and again and again he ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... in their reading, of which there was a good assortment—the daily papers, the magazines and a choice collection of books furnished by the American Library Association. Other groups were intent upon chess or checkers, while in the piano corner were the musically inclined. Sometimes it was a piano or a baritone solo, but most often the boys were singing "Keep the Home Fires Burning," "The Long, Long ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West |
