"Accordion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Tying up to trade, or to avoid the danger of night navigation, the boatmen became the heroes of the neighborhood. Often they invited all hands down to their boat for a dance, and by flaring torches to the notes of accordion and fiddle, the evening would pass in rude and harmless jollity, unless too many tin cups or gourds of fiery liquor excited the always ready pugnacity of the men. They were ready to brag of their valor, and to put their boasts to the test. ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... room, a game of solo in another; yonder, seen through an open door, six men were shaking dice and wagering little and bigger sums recklessly; a little fellow with a wooden leg and a terribly scarred face was drawing shrieking rag time from an old and asthmatic accordion while four men, their big boots clumping noisily upon the bare floor, danced like awkward trained bears when the outer door, closed against the chill of the evening, was flung open and a stranger to MacLeod's settlement stood a moment framed against the outside ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... see her. After a while, when the novelty had worn off, the old insuperable feeling of monotony returned, more particularly in the evening. Mr. Farrow never went near a public-house, but he never opened a book, and during the winter, when the garden was closed, amused himself with an accordion, or in practising his part in a catch, or in cutting with a penknife curious little wooden chairs and tables. This mode of passing the time was entertaining enough to him, but not so to Miriam, who was fatally deficient, ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... baby lived in a garret, and had not money enough to buy even a candle. The only instrument he had when he wrote the opera was an accordion. His little wife is nineteen, and the baby is one ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... hearing the music of an accordion, denotes that you will engage in amusement which will win you from sadness and retrospection. You will by this means be enabled to take up your burden ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... an end for the present. Parson Christian could not allow the fiddle to be heard in church. There a less secular instrument was required. The church was too poor for an organ; it had not yet reached the dignity of a harmonium; but it had an accordion, and among the parson's offices was the office of accordionist. So, throwing his gown over his head, he walked into the church, stepped into the pulpit, whipped up his instrument from the shelf where he kept it, and ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... walk about our seminary garden..." I would tell her. "If from some faraway tavern the wind floated sounds of a song and the squeaking of an accordion, or a sledge with bells dashed by the garden-fence, it was quite enough to send a rush of happiness, filling not only my heart, but even my stomach, my legs, my arms.... I would listen to the accordion or the bells dying away in the distance and ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... trench-tool; his round bags, pushed backwards; his swathed and hooded rifle; his knapsack, packed lengthways so as not to give a handle to the earth which goes by on either side; the blanket, the quilt, the tentcloth, folded accordion-wise on the top of each other, and the whole surmounted by the mess-tin, ringing like a mournful bell, higher than his head. What a huge, heavy and mighty mass the armed soldier is, near at hand and when one is looking ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... for the night at that place we continued our journey up the Pachitea with a strange medley of passengers on board. We had the Hungarian count, an Italian farmer, who was a remarkable musician and played the accordion beautifully; we had some Peruvians, a Spanish emigrant, a small Indian boy aged ten who acted as steward, and a young fellow of ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... practice, he rarely failed to have a burning interest in some anodyne that would provide physical or mental easement for his species. Howells tells how once he was going to save the human race with accordion letter-files—the system of order which would grow out of this useful device being of such nerve and labor saving proportions as to insure long life and happiness to all. The fountain-pen, in its first ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... dinner (within eight hours really of the time when he had been so thrilled by the singing of the Doxology), Jack was in his accustomed seat at the small, adjustable accordion-built table—it could be stretched out to accommodate twenty-four covers—when his uncle entered this room. Parkins was genuflecting at the time with his—"Cream, sir,—yes, sir. Devilled kidney, sir? Thank you, sir." (Parkins had been second man with Lord Colchester, so he ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... long time to her. Then suddenly Laura came whirling into the room. She had put on a little frock of pale-blue liberty silk that lay, skirt, bodice and tiny sleeves, in many little pleats—"accordion-pleated," Laura afterwards described it. Laura's neck and arms were bare. She wore blue silk stockings and little blue-kid slippers, heelless and tied across the ankles with ribbons. Her hair hung in a crimpy torrent ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... man with a passion—the accordion. He arrived with the instrument in a glossy black paper box, produced it at the first opportunity, and sat by the stove drawing it out to incredible lengths in the production of still more incredible sounds. He held one boxlike end, with its metallic stops, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... meditations were broken in upon by the cheery invitations and restless invasions of a wild tribe of the youth of Twickenham and its neighbourhood who had a tent in a field hard by, and whose joy at morning, noon, and night, was beer. These savages had an accordion and a penny whistle and other instruments of music wherewith to make the night unbearable and the day a heavy burden. They were known as 'The Tribe of the Scorchers,' and were a happy and a genial people, but their presence was inimical to the rising hopes of the drama. Nevertheless, ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... in stentorian tones, vying with one another to produce excitement and induce patronage, while gas-jets are streaming into the air from the roofs and flaring from the sides of the stalls; children crying, children dancing to the strains of an accordion, children quarrelling, children scrambling for the refuse fruit. In the midst of this spectacle, this din and uproar, the women are chaffering and bargaining quite calmly, watching the scales to see that they get their full pennyworth or ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of their lives. Into some, indeed, it had never come. Years ago, Williams had been at a post where there was an accordion. Cummins had heard music when he went down to civilization for his wife, more than two years ago. To the others it was mystery which stirred them to the depths of their souls, and which revealed to them many things that had long been hidden in the ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... just whizzed past the innumerable shrines and queer shops, and frescoed walls, where extraordinary lions and tigers, and Rajput warriors, riding in wide petticoats on prancing steeds, were depicted in flaming colours. I wanted, too, to gaze at the native women, in their accordion-pleated, dancing frocks of crimson or dark blue; but it seemed to be the correct thing for a 'Personage' to drive as fast as possible, and try to run over a few people just to show them what unconsidered trifles they were. Well, we ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... freshened, the rain began to fall, and the sea rose so high that it was difficult to keep ones footing on the deck. I have spoken of our concerts. We were indeed a musical ship's company, and cheered our way into exile with the fiddle, the accordion, and the songs of all nations. Good, bad, or indifferent—Scottish, English, Irish, Russian, German or Norse,— the songs were received with generous applause. Once or twice, a recitation, very spiritedly ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Englishman, his mother an Italian. He was born in Poland, and had lived nearly all his life in the United States. He was not the only musical genius that we had among us. There was a little girl at one of the tents who had taught herself to play on the accordion on the way out. She was really quite a prodigy, singing very sweetly, and accompanying herself with much skill ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... drunk with Languor—soft accordion-sigh, Delirious wine of Love in Idleness; Longings for tears come welling up and die, As slow or swift ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley |
