"Piano" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... play and sing before he learnt to crawl: Piano, bones, or ophicleide—he played upon them all! Some talk of Paderewski, or of Dr Joachim— These artists meritorious are, but can't compare ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... tried to impart to her and her daughter some more exact information. When the conversation touched on Russian music, they begged him at once to sing some Russian air and showed him a diminutive piano with black keys instead of white and white instead of black. He obeyed without making much ado and accompanying himself with two fingers of the right hand and three of the left (the first, second, and little finger) he sang in a thin ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... flushed Priscilla. "That looks nice. You haven't got very far yet, have you? Never mind. Things go a lot faster after you've done 'em a while. Why, when I first tried to play the piano, my fingers went so slow, they just made me ache. Now ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... method, and the most satisfactory for small towns and farming regions. But in a great city such a plan grew to be suicidal. In New York, for instance, the price had to be raised to $240, which lifted the telephone as high above the mass of the citizens as though it were a piano or a diamond sunburst. Such a plan was strangling the business. It was shutting out the small users. It was clogging the wires with deadhead calls. It was giving some people too little service and others too much. It ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... voice soft, but only succeeded in making it very deep. A portion of her words was lost in the transit from her larynx to her lips, as though on a piano where some notes ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... a piano-forte, which two years ago cost three hundred and fifty dollars, be taken at its present value ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... that if foreign corn pays a duty, the price of every quarter grown here is raised, and this increased price goes into the farmer's or landlord's pocket: Why should I, or why should my men, pay twopence more for every loaf to buy Miss Wootton a piano?" ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... per hundred cigars made; intelligent, bright-eyed and witty; many of them comely, with rosy cheeks and ruddy health; educated at the common schools, and able, their day's work over, to sit down at the piano and ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... box supplied with flowers, such as apple-blossoms, cherry, spruce, maple, and so on. Also I kept her box disinfected, with plenty of good, fresh country dirt. But she stuck to the old wool and feathers, and the little piano-duster." ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... wandering through the old house, not intruding upon its aged mistress, save at stated times and seasons, but making a pleasant holiday of it; notwithstanding lessons with Miss Gordon again, and the strumming through of many scales and exercises on the piano. They never tired of roaming the terraces, where the peacocks eyed them askance, and spread out their beautiful tails at them as in proud disdain—those walking flowers of girls, who seemed to vie with them and their plumage in their pretty ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... of wood, or of anything else; a chump. The word is provincial in England, and colloquial in the United States. Cinder - Suende; sin. Clam - The popular name of a bivalvular shell-fish, the Venus. Clavier,(Ger.) - Piano. Colle belle,(Ital.) - With the beauties. Comedy - Committee. Conradin - The last of the imperial house of the Hohenstaufen - beheaded at Naples in 1268. Coot - (To cut) a dash, (to come out a "swell,") to dress extravagantly. Corned,(Amer.) - Made drunk. ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... exceedingly pretty. The hard-worked mother conceived high hopes for this favorite child. She was sent to a boarding-school, from which she returned entirely unsettled for life, having learned little except to be ashamed of her parents and to play on the piano. One of these instruments of torture was bought, and a room fitted up as a parlor for the daughter's use. As the family were fairly well-to-do, she was allowed to dress out of all keeping with her parents' position, and, egged on by her mother, tried her best to marry a rich ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... all right," Clara Belle replied soberly. "I'll have a good home and father can't keep us all; but it's kind of dreadful to be given away, like a piano or a horse ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... which he was wont to sing with a quiet and inimitable drollery, very refreshing to hear, and which those who heard them are not likely readily to forget. His love of music was part of his nature. His reposeful, wooing touch on the piano or organ, either when he was extemporising or when he interpreted one of the masters, expressed the inner working of his own gentle spirit. Whether in his own family, or among friends, or in the midst of his Foundry ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... the fictitious aids of language and of the emotional associations which are grouped about the peculiar timbre of the human voice. [64] At first the suggestion seems plausible; but on analogous grounds we might set the piano above the orchestra, because the piano gives us pure harmony and counterpoint, without the adventitious aid of variety in timbre. And it is indeed true that, for some such reason as this, musicians delight in piano-sonatas, which are above all things tedious and unintelligible to ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... execute any other."... Reding: "... Modern music did not come into existence till after the powers of the violin became known. Corelli himself, who wrote not two hundred years ago, hardly ventures on the shift. The piano, again, I have heard, has almost given birth to Beethoven." Campbell: "Modern music, then, could not be in ancient times for want of modern instruments, and, in like manner, Gothic architecture could not exist until vaulting was brought to perfection. Great ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... express themselves in terms of dollars for himself and others, is that of Mr. Joseph Hunter Dickinson, of New Jersey. Mr. Dickinson's specialty is in the line of musical instruments, particularly the piano. He began more than fifteen years ago to invent devices for automatically playing the piano, and is at present in the employ of a large piano factory, where his various inventions in piano-player mechanism are eagerly adopted in the construction of some of the finest player ...
— The Colored Inventor - A Record of Fifty Years • Henry E. Baker
... the parlors and stripped them of every ornament. Jennie's piano they dragged into the center of the floor, smashed its ivory keys and split its rosewood case into splinters. An officer slashed the portrait of Mrs. Barton into shreds and hurled the frame on the floor. Every portrait on the ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... a brass plate the legend "Boots neatly repaired," Mr. Tipping was engaged in giving one of those very music lessons. A dingy little maid-of-all-work opened the door, and said that Mrs. Tipping was out shopping, but would be back soon. From the front parlour came the lifeless tum-tumming of the piano, and Mr. Tipping's voice gruffly counting time to the cheerless five-finger exercises of ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... sound out of his bow, the tones leaped forth from the instruments, and, guided by his eye and hand, fell into a merry measure. The accuracy with which every instrument performed its part was truly marvelous. He could not have struck the measure or the harmony more certainly from the keys of his own piano than from that large band. The sounds struggled forth so perfect and distinct that one almost expected to see them embodied, whirling in wild dance around him. Sometimes the air was so exquisitely light and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... the time receiving her young-lady education at the Convent of St. Ursula, where, in the vine-covered, red-brick convent on the summit of Charlestown, she learned, under the guidance of the nuns, to sing, play the piano, the harp, and the guitar, to speak French, and read Spanish and Italian. But her life on Mt. Benedict was suddenly terminated when the convent was burned. So she entered earlier than would otherwise have been the ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... you will have really to go to the war, do you, John?" Amaryllis asked after she left the piano. "It will be all over, won't it, before the New Year, and in any case the Yeomanry are only for home defence, aren't they?" and she took a low seat and rested ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... bade me to their home,—a nest of a cottage, with gate and garden, hidden in London's endless rings of suburbs. I dimly recall through these years a room in cozy disorder, strewn with music—music on the floor and music on the chairs, music in the air as the master rushed to the piano now and again to make some memory ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... know where I was. The whole face of things in my room was completely changed. Flowers had been put in the china vases upon the tables—two handsome lamps, shaded with gauzes, stood upon the consoles —illustrated books, prints, and caricatures, were scattered about. A piano-forte had also, by some witchcraft, insinuated itself into a recess near the sofa—a handsome little tea service, of old Dresden china, graced a marquetry table—and a little picquet table stood most invitingly beside the fire. I had scarcely time to turn my eyes from one to the other ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... in your name, placing the room at her disposal. The paint is hardly dry yet, but will be ready this week, to receive the furniture if completed. I know no more about it than is contained in her note. I was also informed, last night, that a very handsome piano had been set up in the house, brought from Baltimore by the maker as a present from his firm or some friends. I have not seen it or the maker. This is an article of furniture that we might well dispense with under present circumstances, though I am equally obliged to those ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... and it will be such a pity to lose it all. I asked mamma the other evening, and she said she was sure she did not know; she might help me with my French, but she was afraid Cyril could not afford music-lessons. Besides, there would be the piano to hire; for of course I must practise. Oh dear! I don't see how I am to get on!' ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... through the sky. But regularly they dipped their wings in pitch black; Notting Hill, for instance, or the purlieus of Clerkenwell. No wonder that Italian remained a hidden art, and the piano always played the same sonata. In order to buy one pair of elastic stockings for Mrs. Page, widow, aged sixty-three, in receipt of five shillings out-door relief, and help from her only son employed in Messrs. Mackie's dye-works, suffering in winter with his chest, letters must be written, columns ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... more than settled down comfortably when the Chief found it necessary to make another trip down. When he mentioned going I played the piano so loud I couldn't hear him. I had no desire to go. Not while I could sit in my warm house and read and sew in my comfortable rocking chair. It was without a single qualm that I waved him a floury adieu from the midst of cookie-making. ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... apples in their cheeks as well as in their cellars at home, and their trim tidy wives. Eight or ten Irish children came also,—Bridget, Rosanna, Patrick, and Michael, and Mr. And Mrs. O'Brien themselves. Aunt Kindly had her piano there, and ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker
... 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 pianist possessed ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... sister Sue stood looking at the queer, big automobile. They had seen some like it once before passing through the town, loaded with tables, chairs, a piano and other things, when someone was moving. But this automobile ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on Grandpa's Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... never is the gent who gets ahead of that old silver tip—takin' the word from Peets in advance, sends over to Tucson for a coffin as fine as the dance-hall piano, an' it comes along in the stage ahead of Billy's mother. When she does get thar, Billy's all laid out handsome an' tranquil in the dinin'-room of the O. K. Restauraw, an' the rest of us is eatin' supper in the street. It looks selfish to go crowdin' a he'pless ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... father to go to Christ Church and stay with the Dodans. Mr. Dodan had frequently invited him, and Miss Dodan's brightness and her cheerful art at the piano would, I know, cheer him, inured too long to his lonely life, subject to the periodic returns of that bitter sadness, which was now only accentuated by his self-imposed exile from the home and scenes of ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... Minnie 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 ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... the daily life of a sailor on a little pleasure boat lacks interest, and if circumstances had been, different Ruggiero would probably have shipped before now as boatswain on board one of the neat schooners which are yearly built at the Piano di Sorrento, to be sold with their cargoes of salt as soon as they reach Buenos Ayres. But Ruggiero had contracted that malady of the heart which had taken him to the chemist's for the first time in his life, and which materially hindered the formation of any ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... he declared that he had been exceedingly funny. He had in the course of the evening recited "near upon five hundred extempore macaronic verses; composed and executed an oratorio and opera" upon a piano without strings, namely the center-table; drawn "an entirely original view of Nantasket Beach"; made a temperance address; and given vent to "innumerable jests, jokes, puns, oddities, quiddities and nothings," interrupted by his own laughter and that of his ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... to the rescue by introducing a new topic of conversation, that of a European tenor that was soon expected to startle New York. Daisy went to the piano, and played softly, talking in whispers to Roseleaf, who leaned feverishly over her shoulder. But she made no allusion to Hannibal, and he did his ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... or in the room of one of the girls if preferred. If possible, a piano is included in the furnishings, which may be as elaborate or as simple as desired. Two entrances must be provided, one covered by a square framework supposed to represent a bookcase. Books are across the top. In front of it hangs ...
— The Belles of Canterbury - A Chaucer Tale Out of School • Anna Bird Stewart
... again in the window seat. Her other guests faded here and there. For a time there were shadowy fancies from the piano, then the house was stilled. But outside an April rain was falling. It pelted the windowpanes as softly as driven petals. It made a fairy swish as of far-off waves, and we sat together in a dim light. Isabel's eyes ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... to marry her. But I shall betroth you to the daughter of Eli Witebski, the great merchant. You are longing for learning—flu! I am going to give you a very well educated wife. Her parents keep her in a boarding school at Wilno; she speaks French and plays the piano. Nu! if you are so difficult to please, that girl ought to suit you. She is sixteen years old. Her father will give her a big dowry, and immediately after the wedding ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... whispered to Miss Cleopatra Hungerschnitz, whereupon that young lady giggled her way over to the piano and began to ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... and they ascended half-a-dozen steps into the house. Then, off a wide passage, a door was opened, and they found themselves in a great saloon with polished oak floor. There was hardly any furniture—three or four chairs, some benches against the walls and a grand piano. The mantelpiece was covered with photographs, and there were life-sized photographs in frames on the walls. Owen pointed to one of a somewhat stout woman in evening-dress, and he whispered ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... easy to see from the white, set look of her face as the monotonous months dragged on that she was no nearer to accomplishing that task than on the day of her arrival. Nothing that Knight could do made any difference. When an upright cottage piano appeared one day, the girl seemed ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Go anywhere in England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really nice English people; and what do you always find? That the stables are the real centre of the household; and that if any visitor wants to play the piano the whole room has to be upset before it can be opened, there are so many things piled on it. I never lived until I learned to ride; and I shall never ride really well because I didn't begin as a child. There are only two classes ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... sometimes had a flash of consciousness of a transfiguration in the very flesh of my face, just as I have a sense of rapturous strength sometimes in the very flesh and bone of my right hand, when I strike on the piano some of Beethoven's chords. But I know that, except in the light of your presence, I have no beauty. I had not so much to lose by illness as other women. But, dear one, that little is gone. I can read in the pitying looks ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... caused people to stumble. A narrow hall separated the kitchen from the parlour, where Madame Aubain sat all day in a straw armchair near the window. Eight mahogany chairs stood in a row against the white wainscoting. An old piano, standing beneath a barometer, was covered with a pyramid of old books and boxes. On either side of the yellow marble mantelpiece, in Louis XV style, stood a tapestry armchair. The clock represented a temple of Vesta; and the ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... Where was there an apostle apter to receive this doctrine, so convenient for me as it was—beautiful Nature, and all that humbug? It is nothing but that. Well, the world was watching; and it saw "The Piano," the "White Girl," the Thames subjects, the marines ... canvases produced by a fellow who was puffed up with the conceit of being able to prove to his comrades his magnificent gifts, qualities which only needed a rigorous training to make their ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... was curious enough to ask her why she smiled. Lady Agatha at the piano was playing Wagner like a professional musician. Mrs. Morres's smile grew ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... of the older masters; such are Mozart's "additional'' accompaniments to Handel's Messiah or those to many of the elder Bach's works by Robert Franz. In common parlance any support given, e.g. by the piano, to a voice or instrument is loosely called an accompaniment, which may be merely "vamped'' by the introduction of a few chords, or may rise to the dignity of an artistic composition. In the history ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... at the funeral. They lifted the machinery out of him and buried him quietly in the cemetery. Whenever the Chubbs buy musical boxes now, they get them as large as a piano, and chain them to the wall. ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... her throat and lays a voluptuous cud of chewing gum upon the piano as the first notes of the accompaniment ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... of flight possessed him and made the fear of what lay behind overpoweringly great. The lumps of ice gave way beneath him, and he had to leap from piece to piece; his feet moved as fast as fingers over the notes of a piano. He just noticed enough to take the direction toward the harbor breakwater. The others stood gaping on the beach while Pelle danced upon the water like a stone making ducks and drakes. The pieces of ice bobbed under as ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... more misleading. In spite of Sir Hubert Parry and other writers, I cannot think that the Moors in Spain, for instance, covered poverty of thought beneath superficial ingenuity of design. The Alhambra outdoes in "passage work," in virtuoso arabesques, all that an army of Liszts could do in piano literature; and yet the Arabs were the saviours of science, and promoted the greatest learning and depth of thought known in Europe in their time. As for Liszt, there is such an astounding wealth of poetry and deep feeling beneath the somewhat "flashy," bombastic trick ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... mantelpiece, where rested an array of smoking-materials and a large silver cigarette-box, hung an ancestral-looking portrait, in a dull gilded frame, of an aged man, with a ruff round his neck, purchased for one guinea; there was a sofa and a set of chairs upholstered in a good damask: a black piano by Broadwood; a large oval gate-leg table; a bureau; shelves filled with very indiscriminate literature—law books, novels, Badminton, magazines and ancient school editions of the classics; a mahogany ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... Mr. Bowie, brother-in-law of the Hon. Reverdy Johnson, of Baltimore. The house was very handsome, with a fine, extensive grass-plot in front. We entered the yard, and, leaving our horses with the headquarters escort, walked to the house. On the front-porch I found a magnificent grand-piano, with several satin-covered arm-chairs, in one of which sat a Union soldier (one of McPherson's men), with his feet on the keys of the piano, and his musket and knapsack lying on the porch. I asked him what he was doing there, and he answered that he was "taking a rest;" this was manifest and I started ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... Look at the perfect polish of that table! It's like the finish of a rosewood piano." He touched ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... of form and invariable smallness of the hands of Gypsies, who have inherited their hands from high-cast Hindoos, and the so-called racial hands of real aristocrats. That hard work, even tumbling, piano playing, etc., should alter the form of a hand is self-evident, since muscles grow stronger with practice and the skin becomes coarser and drawn through friction, sharp wind and insufficient care. As is well known, physical properties ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... red brick row on the outskirts of the red brick town of Belfast, Mrs. Dennis McCullough, daughter of the south of Ireland, gave testimony that the goodheartedness of her neighbors prevails over their prejudice even in time of crisis. Her husband, a piano merchant, has been in some seven prisons for his political activities. He had told of plank beds, of food he could not eat, of the quelling of prison outbreaks by hosing the prisoners and then letting them lie in their wet clothes on cold floors. He had spoken of evading prison ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... it why don't you send him a piano, and an automobile, too, so he can ride home when he wants to? What do you mean—getting word to him? Don't you know that the beastly Huns will hold up the mail as they please, and anything else we might send. They don't even let the Red Cross packages go through until ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... the seeming dilettantism of their little piano pieces, and songs, and French chamber-music, which German art never deigned to notice, while Christophe himself had hitherto failed to see the poetic accomplishment of it all, he now began to see the fever of renovation, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... 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
... Aurora to Aeolus, as they sat o'er their bohea, Surrounded by Zephyruses—exactly three times three— "Olus, dear, a new piano is the thing of things we want." I regret to say Aeolus raised his eyes and said "We dont!" So unlike his mournful manner, when his sweet sad harp he plays; And he heav'd a sigh regretful as he thought of other days— As he thought of early moments, ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... from the divan, and would have hurried to the piano, but Marianne held him back. "Maestro," said she, "before we sacrifice to Apollo, let us give to life and mortality their rights. Prose awaits us in the dining-room, and we shall give her audience before we open the pages of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... and her heart began to go out to her in honest helpfulness from the first. She broke in upon the monotony of Marcia's days with the offices and interests of wholesome commonplace, and exorcised the ghostly silence with her first stroke on the piano,—which Bartley had bought on the instalment plan and had not yet ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... dramatic perception, did it in fact with such earnestness that she had no time to have an eye to the gallery at all, she simply contemplated herself and her own vigorous accomplishment. When she played the piano as she frequently did, (reserving an hour for practice every day), she cared not in the smallest degree for what anybody who passed down the road outside her house might be thinking of the roulades that poured from her open window: she was simply Emmeline Lucas, absorbed ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... (Cox being unable to accompany him on the piano or any other instrument, by reason of the severe weather) to hear STAVENHAGEN at St. James's Hall, Thursday last, the 22nd. Our Musical B. was nearly turned out of the hall, he was in such ecstasies of delight over a Beethovenly concerto, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... the elaborately carved porch. She looked round the brown hall where deep shadows lurked. Oak chests and carved chairs, all more or less dusty, stood about, looking as if disorderly feasters had just left them. In one corner was an inlaid sideboard piano. ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... we went to an entertainment at the house of Pepita. The cross which had stood at the door was now placed in a large saloon on the ground-floor, in which there is a piano, and Pepita presented us with a simple and poetic spectacle, one that I had seen when a child, ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... moreover, in full view of the bow window of Kildare Street Club, that the cup of the under-strapper's misfortunes brimmed over. To be sure he could not know that the new owner of the grey mare was in that window; it was enough for him that a quiescent and unsuspected piano-organ broke with three majestic chords into Mascagni's "Intermezzo" at his very ear, and that, without any apparent interval of time, he was surmounting a heap composed of a newspaper boy, a sandwich man, and a hospital nurse, while his hands held nothing save a red-hot memory of where ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... furniture. Messrs. Broadwood's Grand Pianoforte (illustrated) was a rich example of decorative woodwork in ebony and gold, and may be compared with the illustration on p. 172 of a harpsichord, which the Piano had replaced about 1767, and which at and since the time of the 1851 Exhibition supplies evidence of the increased attention devoted to decorative furniture. In the Appendix will be found a short notice of the different phases through which ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... possess special qualities of physical and emotional suggestiveness. Dangerous as it is to characterize the qualities of the sound of a word apart from the sense of that word, there is undeniably such a thing as "tone-color." A piano and a violin, striking the same note, are easily differentiated by the quality of the sound, and of two violins, playing the same series of notes, it is usually possible to declare which instrument has the richer tone or timbre. Words, likewise, ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... in the pond at the bottom of his garden, he had rabbits in the pantry, white mice in his piano, a squirrel in the linen closet and a hedgehog ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... her pretty lip, but made no answer. She took up the music, and seating herself at the piano, practised the airs. Lady Vargrave listened with emotion; and as Evelyn in a voice exquisitely sweet, though not powerful, sang the words, her mother turned away her face, and half unconsciously, a few tears stole ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book I • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... his mother that his Uncle Union's house in Haverhill had tall columns, green blinds on the white woodwork, and a wide hall running down the centre. For it made him feel more at home at the Culpeppers'. But when the Hendricks' piano came, after they moved into the big house, the boy's heart was opened afresh; and he spent hours with Bob Hendricks at the piano, when he knew he would be welcome at the Culpeppers'. He leased his town ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... the rear were two tiny rooms for the hired help. At the other bungalow Ben and his friends occupied three little rooms, while Mr. and Mrs. Basswood had a large apartment off to one side. At this bungalow there was an extra large living-room in which was placed, among other things, a small upright piano, somewhat out of tune but ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... of the other sex: a party never seemed complete from which he was absent: there was no one whose hand she more willingly accepted for the dance, or whose praise was more welcome when she rose from the piano: but though the emotions she felt in his presence were so agreeable, she had not suspected them to be those of love. Her brother had abruptly awakened her to the reality. In the simplicity of her innocence, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... house. (This may mean fifty pieces with two leaders or it may mean a piano, violin and drum, or ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... years old. I have no pets except a Maltese cat and a dog. I was very much interested in the dog and cat of Madelaine, the little French girl. I like "The Moral Pirates" and "Who was Paul Grayson?" best of all the stories. My father gave me a piano for my birthday present; and when I was seven years old he gave me a pony, and I named him Button. I dearly love to gallop over ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... hat with an angry vehemence, and, seating herself at the piano, literally stormed the keys, while the Doctor re-entered his carriage and quietly proceeded to his evening ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... little reception, forming the acquaintance, among others, of Miss Lou Hornsby, a fresh-looking young woman, who had an exclamation of surprise or a grimace of wonder for every statement she heard and for every remark that was made. Miss Hornsby also went to the piano, and played and sang "Nelly Gray" and "Lily Dale" with a dramatic fervor that could only have been acquired in a boarding school. The Rev. Arthur Hill was also there, a little gentleman, whose side-whiskers and modest deportment betokened both refinement and sensibility. ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... we were doing finely. One day we heard the boy playing the piano, and we got him a teacher. In a short time he was able to play for the smaller classes, the juniors. Then my friend Mrs. Bainbridge got him a better teacher. He improved rapidly, and now he is organist in the Fifty-seventh Street ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... which made it necessary for her to spend some portion of every month in the city. This threw the entire charge of house and store on me. As soon, therefore, as possible, she sent me to the city to school, where I realized my aspiration of studying ancient history and the piano, and devoured the contents of the text-book of natural philosophy with an avidity I had ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... a harpsichord, a spinet, and a piano, all tuned expressly for her. This amused her, as she had never seen either of the two older instruments in her life. She played on ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... shriek on shriek, again begin; Let us now visit him; after this strain He ever communes with himself again, And sees nor hears not any.' Having said 270 These words, we called the keeper, and he led To an apartment opening on the sea— There the poor wretch was sitting mournfully Near a piano, his pale fingers twined One with the other, and the ooze and wind 275 Rushed through an open casement, and did sway His hair, and starred it with the brackish spray; His head was leaning on a music book, And he was muttering, and his lean limbs shook; His lips were ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... criminous tomes weakly fascinated until I shivered and shook in my stocking soles. Often I longed to do something hysterically desperate, to rouse Raffles and bring the street about our ears; once I did bring him about mine by striking a single note on the piano, with the soft pedal down. His neglect of me seemed wanton at the time. I have long realized that he was only wise to maintain silence at the expense of perilous amenities, and as fully justified in ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... expect to be ushered into spacious and luxuriously-furnished parlors, where, seated in comfortably-padded rocking-chairs, and contemplating marble tables, on which gorgeously- bound volumes are artistically arranged; thousand-dollar piano-fortes, and mirrors capable of abashing a modest man to utter speechlessness, he will tarry the advent of stately dames, whose dresses rustle as with conscious opulence. He will precede them—they being scrupulous as to ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... 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
... say that she "seemed to him the connecting link between woman and angel." [Footnote: Jackson of Exeter, too, giving a description of her, in some Memoirs of his own Life that were never published, said that to see her, as she stood singing beside him at the piano-forte, was "like looking into the face of an angel."] The devotedness of affection, too, with which she was regarded, not only by her own father and sisters, but by all her husband's family, showed that her fascination ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... Anglais, a bas les Juifs. 'Conspuez Coco.' In less than five minutes the organ was disintegrated, and the luckless minstrel flying with torn trousers down a side street. For the next few days la haute gomme promenaded with fragments of the piano organ suspended from watch chains as trophies of victory. But this was not all. Paris broke out into poetry over l'affaire Narcisse, and here is a journal sent to me by my friend which contains a poem in forty-nine stanzas ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... Conneelys had done well in the Intermediate. Their elder brother was a priest. Father Tom's photograph was in the centre of the chimney-piece a-top of the clock. They could play the piano and violin and had fortunes when the time came for them to marry. Their mother would never have permitted them to serve in the bar nor even behind the drapery counter. They were black-haired, rosy, buxom girls, who set the fashions in Killesky. There had been ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... rettycule; and fetched and carried her handkercher, or her smell-bottle, like a well-bred spaniel. All night, at her ladyship's swarries, she thumped kidrills (nobody ever thought of asking HER to dance!); when Miss Griffing sung, she played the piano, and was scolded because the singer was out of tune; abommanating dogs, she never drove out without her ladyship's puddle in her lap; and, reglarly unwell in a carriage, she never got anything but the back seat. Poar Jemima! I can ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... aide-de-camp. Madame Duroc forgot herself, I have heard, so far as to beat her servants, and to bear herself in a most singular manner toward people who were in no wise her dependants. When M. Dubois came to tune her piano, unfortunately she was at home, and finding the noise required by this operation unendurable, drove the tuner off with the greatest violence. In one of these singular attacks she one day broke all the keys of his instrument. Another ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... at table, Herr Gluck, a piano manufacturer of Munich, was a follower of Horace Fletcher, the American munching missionary. Unlike the Swiss, who craved raw food, Herr Gluck ate everything, but each mouthful only after thorough maceration, salivation, and slow deglutition. At breakfast he absorbed a glass of milk and a piece ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... maid in the unromantic daylight, the restlessness she had engendered remained, replacing the settled bitterness which was all he had brought back from America. In the afternoon this restlessness drove him to the piano in the deserted dining-hall, and his fever sought to work itself off in a fury of practice. But the inner turbulence persisted, and the new thoughts clung round the old music. He was playing Schumann's Fantasiestuecke, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... what they have seen or dreamed or felt during three hundred years. The work is dedicated to Goethe, who wrote an almost enthusiastic review of it for the Literary Gazette of Jena. "Every lover or master of musical art," he says, "should have this volume upon his piano." ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... comforted. At a dance which we had one evening Poppi insisted upon being present, and in his efforts to keep out of the way and in the apprehensions he suffered he abandoned himself to moans and howls that sometimes drowned the piano. ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... clumpety-clump!" of a stamp-mill on a shoulder of a hill high above the camp, drowned the whir and chirp of night insects, and from the second story of a house they passed they heard the crude banging of a piano, and a woman's strident voice wailing, "She may have seen better da-a-ys," with a mighty effort to ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... have their origin in the will of the dancer alone, or in some outside force? The daisies in the meadow and the waves of the sea dance because they are agitated by the wind. The little cork automaton upon the sounding board of a piano dances because it is agitated by the vibrations of the strings. The little children in the alleys of a great city seem to be agitated in the same way ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... afternoon, and even then was too much fatigued to sit up long. I prepared for his use a large room on the south side of the house, with a smaller apartment within it; to this we carried his favorite books and pictures, his easy-chair and lounge. My piano stood in a recess; a guitar hung near it. When all was finished, it looked homelike, pleasant; and we removed William to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Englishman. He was reasonably willing to do the duty that confronted him, and loved but three forms of recreation,—to be with his two most intimate friends, Rita and Dic, to wander in the trackless forests, and to play upon his piano. His piano was his sweetheart, and often in the warm summer evenings, when his neighbors were in bed, would the strains of his music lull them to sleep, and float out into the surrounding forests, awakening the ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... serenader, and the others of his race, And the piano organist - I've got him on the list! And the people who eat peppermint and puff it in your face, They never would be missed - they never would be missed! Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... unexpected nature. It set forth with conveying and disponing all and whole the estate and lands of Singleside and others, with the lands of Loverless, Liealone, Spinster's Knowe, and heaven knows what beside, 'to and in favours of (here the reader softened his voice to a gentle and modest piano) Peter Protocol, clerk to the signet, having the fullest confidence in his capacity and integrity—these are the very words which my worthy deceased friend insisted upon my inserting—but in TRUST always (here the reader recovered his voice and style, and the visages of several of the ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... most kind and friendly, and were full of good offices. Once I happened to say that I did not like the food as it was cooked at the boarding-house; and the next day, and for many days after, all sorts of dainties were sent to me, prepared by hands which were as skilful on the piano, or with a pencil, as they were in handling a saucepan. New books were lent to me, and I was never allowed to be without a beautiful bouquet. One young lady used constantly to walk in to town, some ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... by the wiser mother, triumphed. In those days musical nuns played upon a dumb spinet, that they might not disturb the quiet of their convents. It was a sort of piano, and the strings were muffled with cloth. One of these spinets was smuggled into the garret of Dr. Handel's house. At night, George would steal up to the attic and practise upon it. But not a tinkle could ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... falsetto, and a grinding, singsong falsetto at that—the most disagreeable sound I ever heard in music—is very common, and highly esteemed. The instruments resemble banjos, and there is a harsh kind of drum accompaniment; but there is one larger string instrument, the Japanese piano, upon which much older women play, the younger girls not being sufficiently skilled to perform ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... process of making life more complex and subtle. We have the piano, the violin, the orchestra. Yet we also have rag-time, which is a reaction from the nervous tension of American commercial life, a swinging back to the old days when man, though a brute, was free. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... of the philosophic, historian with which she always recorded the current incidents of her daughter's career. "She got dressed on purpose before dinner. But she's got a friend of hers there; that gentleman—the Italian—that she wanted to bring. They've got going at the piano; it seems as if they couldn't leave off. Mr. Giovanelli sings splendidly. But I guess they'll come before very long," concluded ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... cheerless apartment, hot in the unshaded light of a tropical noonday. The tables were not alluring. The waiters were American negroes. A Filipino youth, dressed in a white suit, and wearing his black hair in a pompadour, was beating out "rag time" at a cracked old piano. ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... a vault a few notes of prelude were struck upon the piano in the parlor below, and a sweet voice, softened ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... of a remonstrance and an explanation. The remonstrance pointed out that his work was desultory and liable to be interrupted at any moment, for any caprice: that steady grind was incompatible with the giving away of whole mornings to musical dreams at the piano, or to rambles in the woods, a book of poetry in hand. The explanation was to the effect that the great prizes of the world are all within the reach of every clever lad who starts with a sufficiency of ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... no violinist has ever been able to play. Victor Herbert has recently analyzed some of these compositions and shown that Paganini himself could never have played them without using four hands and handling two bows at once. So far, no one can play a duet on the piano; the hand can span only so many keys, and the attempt of Robert Schumann to improve on Nature by building an artificial extension to his fingers was vetoed by paralysis of the members. Two bodies can not occupy the same space at the same time; mathematics has its limit, for you ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... wrecked that he was obliged to leave it; and in the house of another friend a heavy German stove on the upper floor, having been thrown over, had come down through the ceiling of the main parlor, crashing through the grand piano, and thence into the cellar, without injury to any person. One of the professors whom I afterward met told me that he was giving a dinner-party when, suddenly, the house was lifted and shaken to and fro, the chandeliers swinging, broken glass ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... on all of them some time," went on Songbird. "That Minnie Sanderson told me she plays the piano, and sings. I am going to get her to sing a new song I am writing. It ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... courtin' her mother. I don't believe I'd ever got her without that banjo," he added and laughed with great good humour. "Nancy don't think much of it," he went on. "She thinks it's nothin' beside the piano, but Raymond, here, is like me, he thinks it beats ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... "Mr. Arnold," she added, looking at me eagerly, "I can paint and sing and play the piano. Can't people earn money sometimes by doing these things? I would work—oh, I am not afraid to work. Couldn't I stay here ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I said. "The beautifully contrived, apparatus made of ever so many wooden keys like the inside of a piano—only those are set in circles. It fits close to the head and you can make it looser or tighter, and when you've got it on you look like a Siamese king in his crown. And when you take it off you tear out a piece of paper and that gives you the exact ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... any cast-offs she thought would fit Miss Smith. "They must wear about the same size, the girl is so slight," Howard said as he went to Amy's room, where he found her still standing by the window drumming upon the pane as if fingering a piano and humming softly to herself. She never touched the grand instrument in the drawing-room, and when asked to do so and sing, she answered, "I can't; I can't. It would bring it all back and shake up the bottle. I hate the ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... born were those in which you have played, in my hearing, the Drinking-song from La Traviata. Believe me, then, my devoted pupil, there can be nothing at all inconsistent with a prevalence of profound melancholy in your continued piano-playing; whereas, on the contrary, your sudden and permanent cessation might at least surprise your friends and the neighborhood into a light-heartedness temporarily oblivious of the memory of that dear, missing boy, to whom you could not, I hear, give the love ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... is by their contraction that we are enabled to pursue different employments. By their action the farmer cultivates his fields, the mechanic wields his tools, the sportsman pursues his game, the orator gives utterance to his thoughts, the lady sweeps the keys of the piano, and the young are whirled in the mazy dance. As the muscles bear so intimate a relation to the pleasures and employments of man, a knowledge of the laws by which their action is governed, and the conditions upon ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... Hector opened the piano, and Mrs. Rivington sat down and touched the keyboard. Then she looked around for silence, and it fell completely. All the eye-witnesses present are agreed that it was in the moment of this pause that the drawing-room door opened, and they heard ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... Hungarian wine of excellent flavour. The attentions of the bailiff and his lady were likewise unremitting; indeed, the latter was almost too kind, for she seemed anxious that we should eat of every dish, and drink out of every flask and bottle. We had a little music too,—for she played the piano; and the commissary, likewise a performer, paid us the compliment to dash off in very good style, "God save the King." But the circumstance which amused me most of all remains to be stated. I was asked if I played chess; and I replied in the affirmative, adding, however, as the facts of the ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... mounted the platform, followed by the orator from London (a florid gentleman in a frock-coat and dingy white waistcoat), the Vicar, Mr Hambly, Mr Pamphlett, Dr Mant, and Mr Rounsell. As they entered, Miss Rounsell, seated at the piano at the far end of the platform, struck the opening chords of "God Save the King." It seemed to take the audience by surprise: but they shuffled to their feet and, after a few bars, ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... small and rather stiff. As one's eyes became accustomed to the dim green light one noticed the incongruity of the furniture: the horsehair chairs and sofa, and large accountant's desk with ledgers; the large Pleyel grand piano; a bookcase, in which all the books were rare copies or priceless MSS. of old-fashioned operas; hanging against the wall an inlaid guitar and some faded laurel crowns; moreover, a fine engraving of a composer, twenty years ago the most popular man in Italy; lastly, an oil-colour portrait, by Winterman, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... insomnia it would be invaluable, and we therefore sleep a good deal, but most of the day is passed in the restaurant. Here the military element is generally engrossed in an interminable game of Vint[1] (during the process of which a Jew civilian is mercilessly rooked), but our piano is a godsend and most Russian women are born musicians. So after dejeuner we join the fair sex, who beguile the hours with Glinka and Tchaikovsky until they can play and sing no more. By the way, no one ever knows the time of day and no one particularly wants to. Petersburg time is kept throughout ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... ten years old when she joined her parents in Paris, where she was placed under the care of masters. She played with skill on the harp and piano, and being passionately fond of music, it became her solace and amusement at an advanced age. In her youth dancing was equally a passion with her. The grace with which she executed the shawl-dance suggested to Madame de Stael the dance-scene in "Corinne." It is said that great care was bestowed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Another assistant director, or perhaps he was only a property boy, rushed up frantically the moment he saw Drexel. "Miss Miller's on a rampage because the grand piano you promised to get for her isn't at her apartment yet, and Bessie Terry's in tears because she left her parrot here overnight, as you suggested, and some one taught the bird to swear." The intruder, a youth of ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... expects you to listen to him. This man is apparently unaware whether you are listening to him or not. He is not a fool. A fool is occasionally amusing— Longrush never. No subject comes amiss to him. Whatever the topic, he has something uninteresting to say about it. He talks as a piano-organ grinds out music steadily, strenuously, tirelessly. The moment you stand or sit him down he begins, to continue ceaselessly till wheeled away in cab or omnibus to his next halting-place. As in the case of his prototype, his rollers are changed about once a month to suit the popular taste. ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... far as A B ab, while she was at Miss Deeble's; but if she were backward with her book, her other faculties began to be acute. It was down in that empty kitchen that she first felt the enchantment of music. Some one suddenly played the piano overhead and Beth listened spell-bound. Again and again the player played, and always the same thing, practising it. Beth knew every note. Long afterwards she was trying some waltzes of Chopin's, and came upon one with which she was quite familiar. She knew that she had heard it all, over and ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... he lay down on one of the green velvet couches, relics of past Pullman glories, and there, with the rumble and roar of steel trains overhead, with the smart click of the billiard balls sounding in his ears, with the phonograph and the electric piano going full blast, with the boys dancing and larking all about the big room, he fell sound asleep as only a boy cub ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... again exclaimed Miss Pamela, "here is some money I didn't expect. Didn't I tell you, Kitty Plumstone, that Providence would send you some new music somehow? She plays on the piano, Master Ned; I really do think she is going to make quite a musician. I teach her myself, you know. I can't play any more because of the stiffness in my fingers, but Kitty can play 'Days of Absence,' and 'Come, Haste to ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... "The piano cover. That Persian silk, you know, that my brother sent me. I never knew how handsome it was before. The ruff, and those wonderful puffed sleeves, are mosquito-netting; the whole effect ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... that there was a new piano in the drawing-room, in addition to a number of those easier chairs which our grandmothers never knew. Cousin Peligros protested that they were unnecessary and even conducive to sloth and indolence. Still protesting, she took the ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... were there, too. Peter hardly ever plays on the big, old-fashioned grand-piano, but that night he was so bored he had to. The family always THINK they're very musical—you can know the style when I tell you that after Peter has been rambling through bits from Schumann and Richard Strauss they always ask him if ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... of treachery; and she slipped forthwith into a tiny conservatory behind the piano. It was her only refuge. She could but hope that no one had seen her retire thither. Her need for solitude just then was intense. She felt herself physically incapable of facing the crowd in the music-room any longer. The first crashing chords of the piano ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... guarded attitude toward me relented. "John mentioned your cultivation to us," she said. "In these tumble-down days it is rare to meet with one who still lives, mentally, on the gentlefolks' plane—the piano nobile of intelligence!" ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... beginning to live, and open our eyes, silly? Listen: Books, books, books, from top to bottom of the house, that is what I want first of all—except my piano." ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers |
