"Grand piano" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gone all over the house and grounds with the caretaker, and when there was nothing more to see, Penelope had prevailed on the woman to open the Venetians in the music-room. There was a grand piano in the place of honor, presided over by a mechanical piano-player; and Penelope ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... lines of gold. She seemed tremendously at home and right just where she was, in that big hospitable room, cultured but Anglican, without pretensions or novelties, with a glow of bound books, with the grand piano that Miriam, his third daughter, was beginning to play so well, with the tea equipage of ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... great sweeping veranda, where lotus-eaters might dwell. Windows and doors were wide open to the breeze, and the songs and fragrances blew lazily in and out. The walls were hung with tapa-cloths. Couches with grass-woven covers invited everywhere, and there was a grand piano, that played, I was sure, nothing more exciting than lullabies. Servants— Japanese maids in native costume—drifted around and about, noiselessly, like butterflies. Everything was preternaturally cool. ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... triforium a passage leads into the chamber over the north porch. This is a large room, about 40 feet in length from north to south, and is now used as a practising room for the choir; it is fitted with benches and a grand piano, and has a modern wooden gallery ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... laid it on hers, burned her. When the waiters had left them alone she could stand the strain no longer, and she rose and strayed about the room, examining the furniture, the curtains, the crystal pendants, faintly pink, that softened and diffused the light; and she paused before the grand piano in the corner. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... breath at the remembrance of the grand piano in the drawing-room. "It is ever so much bigger than the one at the vicarage, which was always out of tune. I'll get my cousin Joe to send me a list of songs, and we will buy a harmonium, too, Philip. I can play ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... to read, but was unable. Then she went to the big salon and, seating herself at the grand piano, played snatches of Grand Opera. But she was too anxious, too impatient for midnight to come and ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... fetch whisky and glasses he took a look round the room. It filled him with amazement. He had never seen so many books. The shelves reached from floor to ceiling on all four walls, and they were closely packed. There was a grand piano littered with music, and a large table on which books and magazines lay in disorder. The room made him feel embarrassed. He remembered that Neilson was a queer fellow. No one knew very much about him, although he had been in the islands for so many years, but those who knew him agreed that he was ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... play his funeral dirge. Lady Mary, will you give us 'The Dead March in Saul,' or something appropriate? Never mind, Netta; I daresay cousin Howel will turn out a great man by-and-by;' this last clause was whispered to Netta, whilst the young hostess went towards a grand piano that stood invitingly open, and begged Lady Mary Nugent ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... will have to learn better," replied St. John sharply. Adding, with a grim smile: "One of my wedding-presents to Nan will be a full-sized grand piano." ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... spinet, inlaid with ebony and ivory, formed a centre for the arrangement of many other musical instruments—a viol, mandolins gay with ribbons, a theorbo, flutes and clarinets. Through the curtains, draped across an alcove, could be guessed the modern monstrosity of a grand piano. One tall closed cabinet was devoted to his collection of wall-papers. Another, open, to a collection of little dogs in china, porcelain, faience; thousands of them; he got them through dealers from all over the world. He had the finest collection in existence, and maintained a friendly ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... my people; he in rooms on a second floor in St. James's Street; he had a semi-grand piano, and luxurious furniture, and bookcases already well filled, and nicely colored lithograph engravings on the walls—beautiful female faces—the gift of Lady Archibald, who had superintended Barty's installation with kindly maternal interest, but little appreciation ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... to welcome them. After a little bustle of compliments and arrangement, chairs were found for the visitors at the far end of the room, and the meeting fell back into its former aspect. One of our unlooked-for visitors sat on the chair near the old grand piano, and I could see her white hand, ungloved and with a jewelled bracelet sparkling at the wrist, resting on the key-board. That corner of the long and narrow chamber was so dim, and the intervening lamps and candles sent ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... you understand," the promoter said, "I will give a coupon, and when you have smoked three thousand of them you may bring the coupons to me and exchange them for a grand piano." ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... squatter, and a couple of bicycle tourists turned up at Five-Bob that evening, and we had a jovial night. The great, richly furnished drawing-room was brilliantly lighted, and the magnificent Erard grand piano sang and rang again with music, now martial and loud, now soft and solemn, now gay and sparkling. I made the very pleasant discovery that Harold Beecham. was an excellent pianist, a gifted player on the violin, ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... could live without his wedded wife and her gold and her brocade, and the silk and the Persian rugs, and the grand piano and the carriages and the high silk hat from Piccadilly. Her husband had had the luxuries of wealth, and here he was living like a Spartan on his hill— and alone; though he had a wife whom men had beseiged both before and after ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the brilliant and picturesque hall I have before described to you. It looked more picture-like and dreamy than ever. The piano was on the flat stairway just below the broad central landing. It was a grand piano, standing end outward, and perfectly banked up among hot-house flowers, so that only its gilded top was visible. Sir George Smart presided. The choicest of the elite were there,—ladies in demi-toilet and bonneted. Miss Greenfield stood among the singers on the staircase, and excited a pathetic ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... they all were when I parted from them at Wiesbaden!!" At Frankfort, one morning, he writes: "I felt an extraordinary longing to play on a piano. So I calmly went to the nearest dealer, told him I was the tutor of a young English lord who wished to buy a grand piano, and then I played, to the wonder and delight of the bystanders, for three hours. I promised to return in two days and inform them if the lord wanted the instrument; but on that date I was at Ruedesheim, drinking Ruedesheimer." In another place ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... know, was coming back from Brinton with that bit of brill we've been eating, for they hadn't got an ounce of turbot, which I wanted, a luggage-train was standing at Riseholme station, and they had just taken out of it a case that could have held nothing but a grand piano. And if that's not enough for you, Colonel, there were two big dress-baskets as well, which I think must have contained linen, for they were corded, and it took two men to move each of them, so Mary said, and there's nothing so heavy as linen properly packed, unless it's plate, and there ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... Billy was not a big mind; it would no more have taken in an abstract idea than his gunyah would have accommodated a grand piano. He was as simple as sunlight, and to resolve his intellect into seven colours would want the most ingenious spectroscope. But he could make an inference from a positive fact, and, having made it, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... contralto, the 'cellist, the violinist, only waking up to something like enthusiasm when the infant prodigy, a quaint, painfully shy little creature, who bobbed a side curtsey at the audience, and looked much too small to tackle the grand piano, appeared and proceeded to execute wonderful things with her ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... particular evening, and now, at three o'clock on a beautiful April afternoon, she was almost frantic with fatigue and nervousness. The house had been cleaned thoroughly the day before, rugs shaken, mirrors polished, floors oiled; the grand piano had been closed, and pushed against the wall; the reading-table had been cleared, and wheeled out under the turn of the stairway; the pretty drawing-room and square big entrance hall had been emptied to make room for the ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... protruded on to the stage—three on either side—while benches and palms were scattered here and there to properly balance the picture. Then, as if to force into the scene an incongruity of some sort, a grand piano was pushed out of the darkness in the rear of the stage, to a place in the garden, where it stood, seemingly the ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... pleasure and profit. There was a shelf for books running round the dado, and the books therein were good of their kind and richly and handsomely bound. There were no small tables anywhere. Mr. Cardew was glad of that—he detested small tables; but there was a harp standing close to the magnificent grand piano, and several music stands, and a violin case on ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... at her over the shining surface of the grand piano and looked remarkably like an owl, an owl that had lost ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... taking the hand of Odalite, and leading her up to Mrs. Force, who stood before the grand piano, putting away the sheets of music before closing the instrument—"aunty, dear, I am not going ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... wee table with a coffee service upon it, and scattered on the floor beside was a typical European mail,—letters, postals and papers galore; the "Munchener Jugend," the "Town Topics," a "Punch," a "Paris-Herald," the "Fliegender-Blatter," three "Figaros," and two "Petit-Journaux." There was a grand piano across one corner of the room, and the priceless Stradivarius lay in its unlocked case beside it. Upon the music-rack was spread "Le Souvenir" of Vieuxtemps, with directions in pencil dashed across it here and there, and upward sweeps and great fortes and pianissimos indicated by the hand that ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... designed on broad lines for the stolid, permanent sitting of stout, comfortable bodies. There were too many photographs on view of persons distinguished for their solidity rather than for their good looks, the portraits of the guests whom one would expect to find installed in those chairs. A grand piano was there; but the absence of any music in its neighbourhood indicated that its purpose was chiefly to symbolize harmony in the home life, and to provide a spacious crush-room for the knick-knacks overflowing from many tables. These were dominated by a large signed photograph of Queen Victoria. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... his rolling gait, and to himself he was in terror lest his broad shoulders should collide with the doorways or sweep the bric-a-brac from the low mantel. He recoiled from side to side between the various objects and multiplied the hazards that in reality lodged only in his mind. Between a grand piano and a centre-table piled high with books was space for a half a dozen to walk abreast, yet he essayed it with trepidation. His heavy arms hung loosely at his sides. He did not know what to do with those arms and hands, and when, to his excited ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... things, amateur concerts and acted charades came into fashion. The billiard-room was crowded from breakfast till dinner time. It was a charmingly composite apartment—having one long wall lined with bookshelves, sacred to the most frivolous ephemeral literature, and a grand piano in an arched recess at one end of the room—and in wet weather was the chosen resort of every socially-disposed guest at Hale. Here Clarissa learned to elevate her pretty little hand into the approved form of bridge, and acquired some acquaintance with the mysteries of cannons ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... in henna, that being the season's chosen colour. A small dark foyer, overcrowded with furniture; a studio living-room, bright, high-ceilinged, smallish; one entire side was window. There were Japanese prints, and a baby grand piano, and a lot of tables, and a davenport placed the way they do it on the stage, with its back to the room and its arms to the fireplace, and a long table just behind it, with a lamp on it, and books, and a dull jar thing, just as you've seen it in ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... grand piano, with her arms waving as she sang, repeating, by the expression of her eyes, the question she had asked and to which she had received no answer, she was singing the verses she considered nonsense with as much point as if she had understood them, ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... some resting on the floor; handsome French bronzes, dainty china on Japanese teakwood tables, antique furniture, gold-embroidered clerical vestments, hand-painted screens, costly Oriental rugs, rare ceramics—all were confusedly jumbled together. On a grand piano in a corner of the room stood two tall cloisonne vases of almost inestimable value. On a desk close by were piled miniatures and rare ivories. The walls were covered with tapestries, armor, and trophies of ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... of the upper rooms. The one exception is a big room on the right of the house as one looks at it from the main road. This room I see with great distinctness. It is large and low, papered with a white paper and with a parquetry floor, designed for a music room. There is a grand piano, but what I see most clearly are a good many books, rather inconveniently placed in low white bookcases which run round most of the room, under the windows, with three shelves in each. It seems to me to be a bad arrangement, because it would be necessary to stoop down so much ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of the inquiries I had instituted at that time ultimately brought one forward, which has been secured by the curator of the Brussels Museum, M. Victor Mahillon. This instrument, with Stein's action and two unison scale, is dated 1780. Mozart's grand piano, preserved at Salzburg, made by Walther, is a nearly contemporary copy of Stein, and so also are the grands by Huhn, of Berlin, which I took notes of at Berlin and Potsdam; the latest of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... papier-mache bust Revivify the failing pressure-gauge? Chop up the grand piano if you must, And burn ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... said to be infused with this home spirit. It lacked that toleration and regard without which the home is nothing. There was fine furniture, arranged as soothingly as the artistic perception of the occupants warranted. There were soft rugs, rich, upholstered chairs and divans, a grand piano, a marble carving of some unknown Venus by some unknown artist, and a number of small bronzes gathered from heaven knows where, but generally sold by the large furniture houses along with everything else which goes to make the "perfectly ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... ceiling and walls, and the effect was somewhat dazzling. The room had a partition, and on the other side was an ample couch for his Majesty to rest upon. In each reception room is to be seen a splendid grand piano, the music of which, when good, the Shah is said passionately to enjoy. One of his aides de camp—a European—is ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... pretty little slate-coloured kitten belonging to the house, which was calmly sitting upon the grand piano after dinner, when the ladies were alone in the drawing-room. After the gentlemen joined us, I was deep in conversation with my host (a remarkably interesting and intelligent man), when I noticed a small black kitten run past my dress. Probably I should have ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... on his grand piano, that occupied a third of his sitting-room, and had then dropped off to sleep before his fire. He awakened suddenly to see the big man standing almost over him, ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... tradition of their generation, considered that a room was not quite 'nice' unless it was 'properly' furnished. It held, therefore, eleven chairs, a sofa, three tables, two cabinets, innumerable knicknacks, and part of a large grand piano. And now, occupied by Mrs. Small, Aunt Hester, by Swithin, James, Rachel, Winifred, Euphemia, who had come in again to return 'Passion and Paregoric' which she had read at lunch, and her chum Frances, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... hangings and prevailing colours; there were rugs, wide, comfortable chairs and lounges, bookcases, a picture or two in deep glowing colours, a baby-grand piano, and an open ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... preferring to be taken for a common thief to dishonoring his adored one's name, he ran into the drawing-room, felt on the tables and what-nots, filled his pockets at random with valuable bric-a-brac, and then cowered down behind the grand piano, which barred the corner ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the beautiful possessions with which the refined home is adorned, none other is so indicative of the owner's culture and musical taste as a GRAND Piano. Those first impressions of discriminating taste, instantly aroused by the simple beauty of the Kranich & Bach Grand, are confirmed and enhanced by the exquisite ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... soldiers could afford to be liberal. By one I was offered a great velvet sofa; another pressed a huge arm-chair, which had graced some Sebastopol study, upon me; while a third begged my acceptance of a portion of a grand piano. What I did carry away was very unimportant: a gaily-decorated altar-candle, studded with gold and silver stars, which the present Commander-in-Chief condescended to accept as a Sebastopol memorial; an old cracked China ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... stories which was always told of the Foreign Office was her "petit paquet," which she wanted to send by the valise to Berlin, when the Comte de St. Vallier was French ambassador there. He agreed willingly to receive the package addressed to him, which proved to be a grand piano. ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... look when placed next to a costly buhl clock on a table inlaid indeed with mother-of-pearl, but wanting in one leg; and so no valuable blue china was apt to pass unobserved upon the mantelpiece because it was generally found in company with a child's mug, a plate of crusts, or a painting-rag. A grand piano stood open, and was strewn with sheets of music; two sketching portfolios conspicuously adorned the hearth-rug. A tea-table was drawn up near the fire, and the firelight was reflected pleasantly in the gleaming silver ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... a week later. The scene represents a large dining-hall. The table is laid for tea and coffee, with a samovr. A grand piano and a music-stand are by the wall. Mary Ivnovna, the Princess and Peter Semynovich are ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... drawing-room of the Svetilovitches, in the lifeless light of three electric globes with lustrous bronze fittings, the green-blue upholsterings of the Empire furniture seemed illusively beautiful. The dark curves of the grand piano were gleaming. Albums were lying on a little table under the leaves of a palm. The portrait of an old man with a long, white moustache smiled down youthfully and cheerfully from its place on the wall above the sofa. The visitors gathered ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... season in the salon of Mrs. Sartoris, when the guests assembled in the lofty Roman drawing-room, full of "flowers and light, of comfort and color." She recalls how the swinging lamps were lighted, shedding a soft glow; how the grand piano stood open, and there was music, and "tables piled with books," and flowers everywhere. The hostess was in a pearl satin gown with flowing train, and sat by a round table reading aloud from poems of Mr. Browning, when the poet ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... a low-ceilinged, rambling apartment, "all old print and chrysanthemums," to use Lexman's description. Cosy armchairs, a grand piano, an almost medieval open grate, faced with dull-green tiles, a well-worn but cheerful carpet and two big silver candelabras were the principal features which attracted ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... attention from any except professed archaeologists. Indeed, the wicked have been known to scoff at them freely as mere accidental lumps of broken flint, and to deride the notion of their being due in any way to deliberate human handicraft. These are the sort of people who would regard a grand piano as a fortuitous concourse of atoms. But the shapely stone hatchet of the later neolithic farmer and herdsman is usually a beautifully polished wedge-shaped piece of solid greenstone; and its edge has been ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... bathrooms, a music-room, and electric lights. In Montgomery one bathroom had long been a summit-crowning achievement, to which the fortunate possessor might point with pride; and as for dedicating a room to music, and planting in it a grand piano flanked by a bust of Mozart, and shedding upon it a dim opalescent glow from concealed lights—no one in the community had ever before scaled such heights ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... you do not rise until eleven, smoke cigarettes in the dining-room before lunch, smash the grand piano in the drawing-room, lame his favourite cob in the Row, and upset all his documents in the study, what answer would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... Lady Niton who drew Isabel Fotheringham's attention to it loudly and repeatedly. It was she also who, at a pause in the dancing and at a hint from Mrs. Colwood, insisted on making Diana sing, to the grand piano which had been pushed into a corner of the hall. And when the singing, helped by the looks and personality of the singer, had added to the girl's success, Lady Niton sat fanning herself in reflected triumph, ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... apartments displayed the same taste and luxury. The sitting-room contained an instrument resembling a grand piano. ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... the smoke poured dense and black through the open windows, there were no flames to be seen yet. Furniture, books, and knick-knacks of every description were scattered about the lawn in wild confusion, and two men, half stifled with smoke, were struggling frantically with a grand piano, one hacking at the window-frame with an axe to widen the opening, the other trying desperately to unscrew the legs, as if that would mend matters. Seven people out of ten, at a fire, will leave untouched pictures and books that ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... sighed blissfully when the last liquid ripples of a Chopin waltz had died away. "I don't see how you ever learned to play like that! But what in the world are you going to do now?" For Phyllis had jumped up with an impatient exclamation, laid back the cover of the grand piano, and was hunting frantically in the music ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... the door ahead of her. They went through the hall to a long high room that had a grand piano and many old high- backed chairs, and in front of the French windows that opened on the garden, a round table of black mahogany littered with books. Two tall girls in muslin ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... the innumerable dramas of her motherhood had been enacted. Tom, her eldest, the thin, spectacled lawyer, had, as a boy of seven, rampaged on that identical Turkey hearthrug, when it was new, a quarter of a century earlier. He was now seated at the grand piano with the youngest child, Alicia, a gawky little treasure, always alternating between pertness and timidity, aged twelve. Jimmie and Johnnie, young bloods of nineteen and eighteen, were only present ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... laugh is fled from porch and lawn, And the bugle died from the fort on the hill, And the twitter of girls on the stairs is gone, And the grand piano is still. ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... the most promising of our recent English school"—vigorous entrance of the drums, etc.—the whole character of Jimson and his music arose in bulk before the mind of Gideon. What more likely than Jimson's arrival with a grand piano (say, at Padwick), and his residence in a houseboat alone with the unfinished score of Orange Pekoe? His subsequent disappearance, leaving nothing behind but an empty piano case, it might be more ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... operations were now being generally carried on. Valentine very seldom used his drawing-room. Sometimes pretty women came to tea with him, and he did them honour there. Sometimes musicians came. Then there was always a silent group gathered round the Steinway grand piano. For Valentine was inordinately fond of music, and played so admirably that even professionals never hurled at him a jeering "amateur!" But when Valentine was alone, or when he expected one or two men to smoke, he invariably sat in the tentroom, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... that greeted the visitor were those of Lincoln and Douglas. The grand central reception hall was done in tones of ivory, green, and gold, with floor of tile. The medallion center of the tile was the great seal of the State. At one side of the broad staircase was a raised platform, on which stood a grand piano. The elevated apartment served as a ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... room in a hotel. Entrance from the corridor in the centre; also side doors. In front to the right a window with heavy closed curtains. To the left a grand piano. Behind the piano a Japanese screen covering the fireplace. Big open trunks are standing around. Enormous laurel wreaths on several upholstered armchairs. A mass of bouquets are distributed about the room, some of them being piled up ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... parted the lips of royalty. In another room a man en blouse was seated at a piano playing the "Marseillaise" to an admiring audience (the "Marseillaise" had been forbidden in Paris for many years). Elsewhere a party of gamins were turning over a magnificent scrapbook. In the next room was a grand piano, on which four men were thumping at once. In another, a party of working-men were dancing a quadrille, while a gentleman played for them upon a piano. At every chimney-piece and before every work of art stood a guard, generally ragged and powder-stained, bearing a placard, "Death to Robbers!" ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... floor of a house, as we all do. But De Pretis is well-to-do, and he has a marble door plate, engraved in black with his name, and two sitting-rooms. They are not very large rooms, it is true, but in one of them he gives his lessons, and the grand piano fills it up entirely, so that you can only sit on the little black horsehair sofa at the end, and it is very hard to get past the piano on either side. Ercole is as broad as he is long, and takes snuff when he is not smoking. But it ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... group which had gathered in front of the first citizen's new mansion. "I own it scares me. Think how much that house must hev cost, and even them dogs," said Amanda, staring at the mastiffs with awe. "They tell me he has a grand piano from New York, and guests from Boston railroad presidents. I call Isaac Worthington to mind when he wahn't but a slip of a boy with a cough, runnin' after Cynthy Ware." She glanced down at Cynthia with something of compassion. "Just to think, child, he might ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Warren, but hardly more handsome than he was to-day. A pastel of the boys' lovely heads hung opposite it, between two windows, and photographs of Jim and Derry and their father were everywhere: on the desk, on the little grand piano, under the table lamp. This was Rachael's own domain, and in asking Magsie to come here she consciously chose the environment in which she ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... possessions carry in that fashion; as if it were indeed that automatic baggage on legs I have long contemplated inventing—I set off to the neighboring mine of "Peregrina." As the peon was accustomed to carry anything short of a grand piano, he did not complain at this half-day excursion under some twenty pounds. Being drawn out, he grew quite cheery on this new fashion of carrying—"when the load is not much." In the cool morning air, with a wind full of ozone sweeping across ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... Sybil's "Soldiers' Marching Song," and when he stepped on to the platform at the upper end of the gallery, people came swarming in from the other rooms. Lady Sybil herself was to play the accompaniment—the grand piano being fully opened so as to give free egress to the marshalled chords; and when she sat down to the keyboard, it was apparent that the tall, pale, handsome young lady was not a little tremulous and ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... them into an inner room in the centre of which stood an open grand piano. Keineth went straight to it and began to play. He ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... water-color sketch of himself, the hair a shade or two less flame-colored than was natural, and which even Hubert pronounced a very fair likeness. Then in the large, stately drawing-room, some of whose furnishing dated back a century or more, stood a fine, grand piano. Here I studied over again my school lessons, or tried new ventures from some of the masters. What dreams I had in that dim room in the pauses of my music; peopling that place again with the vanished ones who had loved and suffered there my own dead parents ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... father came on a visit to Antwerp with my mother and my youngest sister, Clara. Wherever my father took up his abode, even temporarily, a grand piano would in the natural course of events gravitate towards him, and a select circle of art lovers would soon be grouped around it. Amongst the friends in the Antwerp circle were—Van Lerius, Tadema, Baron Leys, ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... before the fire in the great drawing room, but Jo's attention was entirely absorbed by a grand piano, which ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... satisfy him as to my efficiency. Thereupon he asked me a few questions about music, of which some I could answer and some I could not. Next he took me into the shop, set me a stool in front of a grand piano, and told me to play. I could not help trembling a good deal, but I tried my best. In a few moments, however, the tears were dropping on the keys; and, when he asked me what was the matter, I told him it was months since I had touched a piano. The answer ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... lyre, was not a mere fancy; for the first stringed instrument of which we have any trace in ancient sculpture differed from an ordinary bow only in having more than one string. A two-stringed bow was, perhaps, the first step towards the grand piano of to-day. Additional strings involved the strengthening of the bow that held them; and, accordingly, we find the Egyptian harps, discovered in the catacombs by Wilkinson, very thick and massive in the lower ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... one, and it was full of beautiful and valuable things, but the furniture was huddled about in disorder. A large chamber-organ, a grand piano, a mandolin, and two violins, pictures on the floor as well as on the walls, many photographs scattered about everywhere, and the mirror over the mantelpiece fringed with invitation-cards, which were stuck between the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... "And a concert grand piano. Don't forget that. She tunes it herself, too. Did you notice the tools? A possible romance. You've quite a nose for such things, Sue. Couldn't you ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Queen Elizabeth of England, and by some authorities is supposed to have been named in honor of the Virgin Queen, as she was called. The harpsichord, much in use during the last century, was shaped almost exactly like a modern grand piano. The honor of having invented the hammer which plays upon the strings of the piano now in use is claimed by several nations, but the credit is probably due to Italy, although the first pianos are said to have been made in Germany, probably in the city of Freyburg. The piano was first called ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... sitting in the parlour, in front of the samovar, pouring out tea. To the left of the divan was the old English grand piano, on which my dark-complexioned sister, Liubotchka, eleven years old, was painfully practising Clementi's exercises. Near her Marya Ivanova, with scowls on her face, was loudly counting, and beating time with her foot. She frowned still more disagreeably at Karl as he entered, but he appeared ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... of the room was a grand piano, open, and covered with the latest music, and sometimes played on in a surprisingly graceful manner by the fat fingers of Matthew Maltboy. On the walls hung some pictures, that were not unpleasant to look at. There were two portraits ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... pianists of my time, I have never heard one who seemed to interpret the masterpieces of music more worthily. At Ann Arbor I now came to know him intimately. Once or twice a week he came to my house, and, as mine was the only grand piano in the town, he enjoyed playing upon it. His extemporizations were flights of genius. At these gatherings he was inspired by two other admirable musicians, one being my dear wife, and the other Professor Brunnow, the astronomer. Nothing could ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... the hall, too, for the front door flashed open, and Reggie was shut in the empty drawing-room before that confounded bell had stopped ringing. Strangely enough, when it did, the big room, shadowy, with some one's parasol lying on top of the grand piano, bucked him up—or rather, excited him. It was so quiet, and yet in one moment the door would open, and his fate be decided. The feeling was not unlike that of being at the dentist's; he was almost reckless. But at the same time, to his immense ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... and rainbow showers, entered the drawing-room of the dignified sixteenth-century chairs, which from the first had suffered an undeserved neglect, and passed thence into the familiar parlor of the multitudinous baubles and the grand piano and the portrait; performing in the contrary direction the pilgrimage on which, at a period which seemed so immemorably far as to have become legendary, Gerald had followed Aurora walking before him ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... carved and gilded and as costly as could be found. Between the windows at each end of the long room were mirrors in enormous gilt frames; the windows themselves, topped with cornices and heavy lambrequins, were hung with crimson brocade; a grand piano, very bare and shining, sprawled sidewise between the black columns of the arch, and on the wall opposite the fireplaces were four large landscapes in oil, of exactly the same size. "Herbert likes pictures," the bride said to herself ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... inference. The walls were covered with pictures. I remember Guido's Aurora, Michael Angelo's prophets, Raphael's sibyls, while all about were sketches, landscapes and crayon drawings, gifts from the most famous living painters, many of whom are friends of the house. A grand piano, opened and covered with music, indicated ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... and bade fair to be as good as ever for as many years to come. There was no wearing it out or putting it out of order, for, like most things made in those old times, it had strength if not elegance, and Shenac's mother was as careful of it as a modern musical lady is of her grand piano. ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... see that, like the hall, it was hung with heavy Persian rugs. The corners were filled with palms, and there was the unmistakable odor in the air of Russian cigarettes, and strange, dry scents that carried me back to the bazaars of Vladivostock. Near the front windows was a grand piano, and at the other end of the room a heavily carved screen of some black wood, picked out with ivory. The screen was overhung with a canopy of silken draperies, and formed a sort of alcove. In front of the alcove was spread the white skin of a polar bear, and ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... furniture was dark, formal, much of it carved; here and there on the white panelling of the walls were black Wedgwood plaques; black Wedgwood china stood audaciously upon and inside cabinets. A large grand piano and the cheerful blaze of a wood fire mitigated ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... to be considered. From Mrs. Woodruff's surplus stock of stylish gowns and garments the country girl's outfit was deftly concocted. The young wife could sew neatly and rapidly. When all was ready the sum of two hundred dollars lay in her writing desk. Her grand piano, too large for the new quarters, was removed from storage to a dealer's, and was sold for three hundred more. She wrote at once to an uncle in a Western city; told him of her little efforts, and asked what she might do with her mite. He was a real estate man and promptly invested it in ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... Lady Maulevrier had built for herself and her grandchildren had not been created all at once, though the nucleus dating forty years back was a handsome building. She had added more rooms as necessity or fancy dictated, now a library with bedrooms over it, now a music room for Lady Lesbia and her grand piano—anon a billiard-room, as an agreeable surprise for Maulevrier when he came home after a tour in America. Thus the house had grown into a long low pile of Tudor masonry—steep gables, heavily mullioned casements, ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... we shall be delighted," she told him. "And as I say, it will have a chastening effect on the Burnside family, who are thinking of furnishing our west wing and spending the summer with us. I'm sure they won't think of bringing a grand piano ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... leaning his elbows on the grand piano, facing her, was devouring her with his eyes and saying in an undertone every minute: ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... sofas and ottomans scattered through the room, and a grand piano in one corner, the furniture being covered with yellow, or amber—coloured velvet, with broad heavy draperies of gold fringe, like the bullion of an epaulet. There was a small round table near the stove, on which stood a silver candlestick, with four branches filled with wax tapers; and bottles ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... much obliged to you," observed Charley Roy, who had joined the Empress, and was now senior mate on board. "I suspect that they would rather remain comfortably on shore. Perhaps you'd like a grand piano, a ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... played and sang for him for days, in exchange for his feudal hospitality—more than that, the painter Paul Deschamps covered the ceiling of his music room with chubby cupids playing golden trumpets and violins—one adorable little fellow in the cove above the grand piano struggling with a 'cello twice as high as himself, and Carin painted the history of love in eight panels upon the walls of the old ballroom, whose frescoes were shabby enough, so I am told, when ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... for magnificent stone fireplace at rear centre. On either side of fireplace are generous, diamond-paned windows. Wide, curtained doorways to right and left. To left, front, table, with vase of flowers and chairs. To right, front, grand piano.] ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... on a sofa near the Steinway grand piano, which stood on a low dais, looked up at Max Elliot, and added, in quite a ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... fire-place built into one corner of the room; in another corner was a smaller table on which was a graphophone; a rocker and several chairs were set about the room and against the north wall; between two doors, evidently opening into twin bedrooms, was an upright grand piano—. ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... house, which was two stories in height. The rooms were large and lofty; perhaps at first they looked rather bare of furniture, but in hot climates people generally keep their rooms more bare than they do in colder ones. I missed also the sight of a grand piano or some similar instrument, there being no means of producing music in any of the rooms save the larger drawing-room, where there were half a dozen large bronze gongs, which the ladies used occasionally to beat about at random. It was not pleasant ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... on the outskirts of the group around the old grand piano, where he had placed both antiques, when she suddenly saw, through the long French windows, Marcelle Beaubien coming up the drive. The Dean was deep in a happy, explanatory speech and she slipped away unnoticed ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... Cromwell Road. Her lover, a beautiful youth of eighteen, in evening dress and cape, with a bunch of flowers and an opera hat in his hands, comes in alone. The door is near the corner; and as he appears in the doorway, he has the fireplace on the nearest wall to his right, and the grand piano along the opposite wall to his left. Near the fireplace a small ornamental table has on it a hand mirror, a fan, a pair of long white gloves, and a little white woollen cloud to wrap a woman's head in. On the other side of the room, near the ...
— How He Lied to Her Husband • George Bernard Shaw
... commonplace and unromantic, and that a splendid vision had been somewhere just round the corner, only unfortunately missed. He allowed his artistic temperament to run loose during the holidays. He would go up to Bella Vista and play for hours on the Macleods' new grand piano, improvising beautiful airs, ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... buhl-work writing-table opposite the door was littered with maps, books and journals; there was a secretaire book-case in Chippendale by the side of the enormous fire-place, in which a great coal fire burned; and above this was an ivory overmantel of exquisite work. A grand piano, open and bearing music, was the chief ornament of the left-hand corner; while another Chippendale cabinet, filled with a multitude of rare curiosities, completed an apartment which had many of the characteristics of a salon and not a few ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... not but feel that Phyllis intended to be friendly with him—even at the risk of being within audible distance of the strong man who was fighting a duel a outrance with a grand piano; and as he desired to be on friendly terms with a girl in whom he was greatly interested, he was very much pleased to find her showing no disposition to return to the tea room, or any other room, until quite half an hour had gone by very pleasantly. ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... must be discreet; and you must be exceeding vague. A Mahatma is nothing if he is not vague. You must also be elusive. Can you elude? It is no light matter to prove one's spiritual capacity by materialising a cigarette inside a grand piano. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various
... was very pale. The General's face was scarlet. He advanced a few steps, like an actor about to address his audience; cast fierce glances on all sides of him, and cleared his throat with a sound that echoed like the bass notes of a grand piano. Then he spoke in a ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... and of almost equal antiquity, was an instrument in the form of a grand piano, called in Italy the clavicembalo, and in England the harpsichord. In Germany it was called the flugel or wing, from its being shaped like the wings of a bird. These also, in the earlier times, were made ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... and the air smelled pleasantly of cigar smoke. The parlour had once been two rooms, and the floor was swaybacked where the partition had been cut away. The wind from without made waves in the long carpet. A coal stove glowed at either end of the room, and the grand piano ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... and Pansy and Judith, in extremely clinging vivid dresses, the former's hair piled high in an amber mass and Judith's drawn severely across her ears, were lovely. Linda thought of the tropical butterflies of the river Amazon, of orchids like those always on the dining-room table. A miniature grand piano stood against the drapery, and Judith often played. Linda learned to recognize some of the composers. Pansy liked best the modern waltzes; Judith insisted that Richard Strauss was incomparable; but Linda ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of surpassing beauty smiling from clouds, and peering between stars and crescents. The furniture appeared to be of very ancient Arabian design; each chair was a perfect masterpiece of wood-carving, picked out and inlaid with gold. The sight of a semi-grand piano, which stood open, brought me back to the realization that I was living in modern times, and not in a dream of the Arabian Nights; while the Paris Figaro and the London Times—both of that day's issue—lying on a side-table, demonstrated the nineteenth century ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... peculiar to the Brule Indians, but was equally true of those in the Oklahoma reservation who boomed the luxury trades when oil was discovered on their land. There it was no uncommon sight to see a gaudy limousine parked outside a tepee and a grand piano on the ground inside. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... when I shut the door on 'em. 'The soul behind the wood and wire,' she murmurs. I looked closer then and what do you reckon it was? Just as true as I set here, it was Wilbur, leaning forward all negligent and patronizing on a twelve-hundred-dollar grand piano, his hair well forward and his eyes masterful, like that there noble instrument was his bond slave. But wait! And underneath he'd writ a bar of music with notes running up and down, and signed his name to it—not plain, ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the room where the grand piano stood, for Mrs. Mumbray had gone to pass the day with friends at a distance. Serena said of ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... pretty girl hadn't moved. She hadn't even changed her facial expression. But a parlor grand piano stood ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... evening following, she was at the grand piano in the big drawing-room, her fingers lazily following the score of "Babes in Toyland," which Ella had left open upon the rack. Susan felt tired and subdued, wearily determined to do her duty, wearily sure that life, for the years to come, would be as gray and sad as to-day seemed. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... library of the entire world's best productions. The girl's harp—a masterpiece by Pestalozzi of Venice—stood at one side; on the other, a five hundred dollar Victrola, with a wonderful repertoire of records. But the grand piano itself dominated all, especially made for Catherine by Durand Freres, in Paris, and imported on the Billionaire's own yacht, the "Bandit." A wondrous instrument, this, finer even than the pipe-organ in an alcove at the far end of the room. It summed ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... understand that looks could be painted, but not words. The latter were of no use to her. But she led him on skilfully, and, from the unbounded power his love gave her, played upon his feelings as adroitly as she touched her grand piano. ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... to him was the tactile sense, that sense of touch wherewith man acquaints himself with this earth-clot swimming in space. Davos contemplated the tips of his fingers as he sat in the grateful cool, his ten voices as he named them. With them he sang, thundered, and thought upon the keyboard of his grand piano-forte. A miracle, indeed, these slender cushions of fat, ramified by a network of nerves, sinews, and bones as exquisite in their mechanism as the motion of the planets. If hearing is a miracle, so is touch; the ear is not a resonator, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... of answering, but at this moment Wilke came and brought some letters. One was from Kessin, from Innstetten. "Ah, from Geert," said Effi, and putting the letter in her pocket, she continued in a calm tone: "But you surely will allow me to set the grand piano across one corner of the room. I care more for that than for the open fireplace that Geert has promised me. And then I am going to put your portrait on an easel. I can't be entirely without you. Oh, how I shall be homesick to see you, perhaps even on the wedding tour, and most certainly in ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... such a simple thing to us to take up an upright baby grand piano that we never thought we were doing anything out of the common, until we looked down over the railing and saw that no less than fifty boats had ranged themselves in front of our house-boat, with as much curiosity in our proceedings as if we were going to have a trained animal exhibit. There were ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... no gracefulness like that of a graceful woman at a grand piano. There is a swimming loveliness of line that seems to merge with the running of the sound, and you seem, as you watch her, to see what you are hearing and to hear what you ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... elegance. A trim maid-servant opened the door and ushered him into a drawing-room of grey and silver, with a little faded blue in the silks of the French chairs. There were a few fine-point etchings upon the walls, a small grand piano in a corner, and very little furniture, although the little there was was French of the best period. There were no flowers and the atmosphere would have been chilly, but for the brightly burning fire. Tallente was scarcely surprised when Dartrey's entrance ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... only beginning to be realised, even by musical people, that the clavecin music of, for instance, Bach, loses at least half its charm, almost its identity, when played on the modern grand piano; that the exquisite music of Rameau and Couperin, the brilliant and beautiful music of Scarlatti, is almost inaudible on everything but the harpsichord and the viols; and that there exists, far earlier than these writers, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... had a dinner-party that day, as was testified by the appearance of lights in the drawing-room windows, the sound of an improved grand piano, and an improvable cabinet voice issuing therefrom, and a rather overpowering smell of meat which pervaded the steps and entry. In fact, a couple of very good country agencies happening to come up to town, at the same time, an agreeable little party had been got together to meet ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... but special smile for her husband on the end of it and then deliberately seated herself with a "No, don't bother; this is all right," at the end of the little sofa that stood in the curve of the grand piano, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... to the parlor which was a fine large room splendidly furnished, Lilian thought. There was a grand piano, an organ, two beautiful marbles, vases and pictures. There was a wide hall that was like another room. Here on the west side was the school and recitation rooms, the girl's dining room and ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... The side-spectacle that struck me most when I walked by myself through Combles was that of a solitary Royal Engineer playing a grand piano in the open street, with not a soul to listen to him. The house from which the instrument had been dragged was smashed beyond repair; save for some scrapes on the varnish the piano had suffered no harm, and its tone was agreeable to the ear. The ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... beside her, desolately wakeful under the night-light in the large, luxurious bedroom—three servants sleeping overhead, champagne in the cellar, furs in the wardrobe, valuable lace round her neck at that very instant, grand piano in the drawing-room, horses in the stable, stuffed bear in the hall—and her life was made a blank for want of fourteen and fivepence! And she had nobody to confide in. How true it is that the human soul is solitary, that content is the only true riches, ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... re-introduction of the guitar temporarily detracted from its glory. It was also indispensable in providing music for dancing-parties and concerts. When Esther Summerson went to call on the Turveydrops (B.H.) she found the hall blocked up with a grand piano, a harp, and various other instruments which had been used at a concert. As already stated, it was the sight of these instruments being carried up the stairs at The Bull in Rochester that aroused Mr. Jingle's curiosity (P.P.) and led to the discovery that ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... was taken out, and rout-seats were taken in. The linen-drapers of Hammersmith were astounded at the sudden demand for blue sarsenet ribbon, and long white gloves. Dozens of geraniums were purchased for bouquets, and a harp and two violins were bespoke from town, in addition to the grand piano already on the premises. The young ladies who were selected to show off on the occasion, and do credit to the establishment, practised incessantly, much to their own satisfaction, and greatly to the annoyance of the lame old gentleman over the way; and a constant correspondence was ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... when dinner was over to open the grand piano for Valentine, to fetch her music, and listen while she talked of operas he had never heard. It was pleasant to watch her as she sat in the evening gloaming, her superb beauty enhanced by the delicate evening dress ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... a door and entered without waiting. The room was very light, with bowls of cut flowers everywhere and a pair of green love-birds billing eternally on a brass standard: they chirped softly now and then. A miniature grand piano filled one corner, and the light fell richly on the tooled leather of low book-cases, and slipped into reflected pools of violet, green and blood-red on the polished floor. A great tiger skin stretched in front ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... he himself made a tour of the ground-floor windows. For half an hour the empty house was loud with strange sounds. McGuffog, who was a giant in strength, filled the passage at the verandah end with an assortment of furniture ranging from a grand piano to a vast mahogany sofa, while Saskia and Sir Archie pillaged the bedrooms and packed up the interstices with mattresses in lieu of sandbags. Dougal on his turn saw fit to ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... expression stole Over his features. "Now what is it, father?" Then with a sigh which her quick ear detected As one that masked a pleasurable thought, He said: "Poor little Linda!"—"And why poor?" "Because she will not be so rich again In wishes unfulfilled. That grand piano You saw at Chickering's—what was the price?" "Twelve hundred dollars only."—"It is yours! That painting you admired so—that by Church— What did they ask for it?"—"Two thousand dollars." "'Tis cheap at that. We'll take it. Whose turn-out Was it that struck your fancy?"—"Miss ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... hands. He can walk through a wood of pines, swinging in the tempest, and repeat Coleridge's "Ode to Schiller." He can, lying on a twilight hill, with twilight mountains darkening into night around him, and twilight fields and rivers glimmering far below, and one cataract, touching the grand piano of the silence into melancholy music, turn round and see in the north-east the moon rising in that "clouded majesty" of which Milton had spoken long before. He can take the "Lady of the Lake" to the same summit, while afternoon, the everlasting autumn of the day, is shedding its thoughtful ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... occupied the attention of cartoonists as fully as Paderewski at a later date. Liszt, his hair floating wildly, was represented as darting through the air on wide-stretched pinions with keyboards attached—a play on Fluegel, the German for grand piano. Thalberg, owing to his dignified repose, was caricatured as posing in a stiff, rigid manner before a box ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... wanted to be left alone. Now grass is growing in the streets. Shops have their merchandise strewn and rotting in all directions. On one fragment of a wall a family portrait was still hanging, and a woman's undergarments. A grand piano, and a perambulator tied in a knot were trying to get down through a coal chute. To wander through a village like this one that has been smashed up, and with the knowledge that the smashing up may be continued any time, is thrilling. ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... before a grand piano, and Faith sat down under the shadow of her harp, both being arranged on a dais within an alcove at one end of the room. A screen of ivy and holly had been constructed across the front of this recess for the games of the children on Christmas Eve, and it still remained there, a ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... you can tell us of. Did Beatrice enjoy her month's dissipation at Leghorn? And is the voice prospering? Don't let her quite forget us. We make rather a feeble attempt at musical Saturday evenings, having a new grand piano, which stimulates musical desires. But we want a good violin and violoncello—difficult to be found among amateurs. Having no sunshine one needs music all the more. It would be difficult for you to imagine very truthfully what sort of atmosphere we have been living in ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... blood upon the floor, and prints of bloody hands on walls and woodwork evidenced something of the frightfulness of the battle that had been waged within the narrow confines of the apartment. Across the baby grand piano lay the corpse of another black warrior, while before the door of Lady Jane's boudoir were the dead bodies of three more ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was the source of all wealth. That was to say, whether it was a sack of potatoes, a grand piano, or a seven-passenger touring car, it came into being only by the performance of work. Where the bunco came in was in the distribution of these things after labor had created them. He failed to see the horny-handed ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... the guest asked Mlle. Catrina to play. He opened the grand piano in the inner drawing-room with such gallantry and effusion that the sanguine countess, post-prandially somnolescent in her luxurious chair, began rehearsing different modes of mentioning ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... learned to mend fiddle-strings; and finally came a proud Wednesday afternoon when there were visitors in Madame's school, and he stood on the platform, with Miss Acton playing an accompaniment on the baby grand piano, and he managed a feeble but true tune on his violin. It was all for little Lucy, but little Lucy cared no more for music than his mother; and while Jim was playing she was rehearsing in the depths of her ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... for us," returned Nan, cheerfully. "If your mother consults me," she continued, addressing Dick, who visibly brightened at this, "I shall recommend her to empty the front drawing-room as much as possible. There is the grand piano, or the band might come in-doors; there will be plenty of room for the young people, and the non-dancers can be drafted off into the ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... Johannes Spinctus, Venice, 1500. It was a harpsichord with a square case, the strings running diagonally instead of lengthwise. When the spinet was of very small dimensions it was called a virginal; when it was in the shape of our modern grand piano, it was, of course, a harpsichord; and when the strings and sounding board were arranged perpendicularly, the instrument was called a clavicitherium. As early as 1500, then, four different instruments were in general use, the larger ones having a compass of about four octaves. ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... blessing on the new life, and there was something like a tear in his eye and a suspicious huskiness in his voice as he called out "Come in" in answer to a hurried knock at the door and flung open the lid of a grand piano which was littered with music and songs, running his hands over the keys and smiling ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... and handsome Turkey carpet, into which one sank almost to the ankles, as into a thick bed of soft moss; chairs, couches, and divans of exquisite shape and seductive capacity were scattered here and there about the apartment, and at its fore or wider end stood, close together, a grand piano and a chamber organ, both in superbly modelled aethereum cases, and both, it need scarcely be said, of the finest quality and workmanship obtainable; while the narrower or after end was almost filled by a capacious electric stove, or fireplace, with a most singularly handsome ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... place is pleasantly and prettily, though quite inexpensively, furnished. To the left, at angles with the distempered wall, is a baby-grand piano; the fireplace, in which a fire is burning merrily, is on the same side, full centre. To the right of the door leading to the dining-room is a small side-table, on which there is a tray with decanter and glasses; in front of this, a card-table, open, with two packs of cards ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... the grand piano, keep out of the finest chair, Stay out of the stylish parlor, don't run on the shiny stair; You may look at the velvet curtains which hang in the stately hall, But always and ever remember, they're not ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... and its texture was so fine and thick that it yielded like moss to the footstep. Crimson velvet curtains, lined with white satin and fringed with gold, draped the windows and excluded every breath of the wintry blast. Many costly pictures, rare works of art, covered the walls. A grand piano-forte, a fine harp, a guitar, and a lute were at hand. Rich inlaid tables were covered with the best new books, magazines, and journals. Indian cabinets were filled with antique shells, minerals, ossifications, and other curiosities, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... silks, his walls will be hung with impressionist etchings and engravings of undraped ladies of French origin, terra-cotta statuettes principally of the young Apollo, will be placed in every corner, and a marble bust of the young AUGUSTUS will occupy the place of honour next to the grand piano, on which, will be ranged the framed cabinet photographs of interesting young men. Each photograph will bear upon it an appropriate inscription, announcing it to be, for instance, a gift "From BOBBY to TODDLEKINS." Nothing more is necessary ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... hall door. She had unlocked it before she went out, for that entrance was hardly ever used. So she showed the Italian into the sombre drawing-room, with its high black bookshelves with rows and rows of calf-bound volumes, its old red and flowered carpet, its grand piano littered with music. Ciccio put down the things as she directed, and stood with his cap in his hands, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... and a lagoon. From the Japanese scene outdoors I passed indoors to a new Japan. Cezanne, Puvis de Chavannes, Beardsley, Van Gogh, Henry Lamb, Augustus John, Matisse and Blake—Yanagi has written a big book on Blake which is in a second edition—hung within sight of a grand piano and a fine collection of European music[108]. Chinese, Korean and Japanese pottery and paintings filled the places in the dwelling not occupied by Western pictures and the Western library of a man well advanced with an interpretative history of Eastern and Western ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... was far from the fire, with its back to the curve of a grand piano which was partially draped in some rich stuff. At one end of the divan, a tall bronze crane held in his beak a tray hanging by three chains like one side of a pair of scales, and on it lay a new book and a little Japanese scimitar—a waki-gashi—the ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... Leon. It was very unlikely her whereabouts would penetrate to the West; and she rarely went outside of the Ghetto by day, or even walked within it in the evening. In the twilight, unless prostrated by headache, she played on Hannah's disused old-fashioned grand piano. It had one cracked note which nearly always spoiled the melody; she would not have the note repaired, taking a morbid pleasure in a fantastic analogy between the instrument and herself. On Friday nights after the Sabbath-hymns she read The Flag of Judah. She was not surprised to find ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... U. S. G. Budlong took all the gifts she had gleaned, and piled them on and around the baby grand piano in the back parlor. There was a piano lamp there, one of those illuminated umbrellas—about as large and as useful as a ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... young gentleman struck a few chords on the piano, and all sprang up and voted for a dance. The lady of the house rang, four wild-looking men rushed into the room, snatched up the grand piano, and carried it off. The whole party swept through the hall to an apartment opposite. Anton was tempted to rub his eyes as he entered it. It was an empty room, with rough-cast walls, benches around them, and a frightful old ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... evening for Lady Winsleigh's "crush" came,—he looked regretfully round the lovely luxurious drawing-room with its bright fire, deep easy chairs, books, and grand piano, and wished he and his wife could remain at home in peace. He glanced at his watch—it was ten o'clock. There was no hurry—he had not the least intention of arriving at Winsleigh House too early. He knew what the effect of Thelma's entrance would be—and he ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... rooms, littered with photographs of people well known to the public through the society journals, with its high bright silver vases, its odd gifts of porcelain, its grand piano taking up more than its share ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... do my best to parry these mysterious blows of Fate. I remember when she first undertook to clean the drawing-room I took away everything that a mysterious agency might cause to 'come in two' in her hands. I left her alone with the grand piano and scrubbing materials, and went out to spend the afternoon with cheerful countenance. I returned rather late, and directly Elizabeth opened the door to me I saw that something ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... hard luck tale out of him. It was a case of sendin' a boy with a pushcart to bring home a grand piano. The Old Man had done it. He's kind of sore on the way Mr. Robert lugged Mallory in by the hair, 'cause I heard him growlin' somethin' about makin' a kindergarten out of the Corrugated; so he springs this on him. He calls ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford |
