DICTIONARY ONE.COM • More 'Harmonium' Quotes from Famous Books

... the Prayer-Book. At intervals he allowed himself to be interrupted with a hymn, but resumed afterwards the steady flow of supplication. The eldest Miss Beecher—the Canon had altogether two daughters and three sons—played a harmonium. The other girl and the three boys, with the assistance of an uncertain bass from Mr. Quinn, gave utterance to the congregation's praise. Hyacinth tried to join in the first hymn, which happened to be familiar to him, ...

— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... fairly steady nerves, as you know, Mr. Holmes, but I give you my word that I got a shake when I put my head into that little house. It was droning like a harmonium with the flies and bluebottles, and the floor and walls were like a slaughter-house. He had called it a cabin, and a cabin it was sure enough, for you would have thought that you were in a ship. There was a bunk at one end, a sea-chest, ...

— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... more hours to field labour. One woman prepares a meal for a whole gang of her country people, and they live almost entirely on bread, potatoes, and brandy. They do not mix with the Germans, but spend their evenings and Sundays in playing the harmonium, dancing, and drinking. They return every year, are always foreigners in Germany, and are very industrious, religious, contented, and cheerful, but inclined to drink ...

— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... Sunday, not in strong drink and raving, but in imaginary draughts of blood. They met with twenty or thirty other darkened and unclean people, all dressed in dingy colours that would not show the dirt, in a little brick-built chapel equipped with a spavined roarer of a harmonium, and there solaced their minds on the thought that all that was fair and free in life, all that struggled, all that planned and made, all pride and beauty and honour, all fine and enjoyable things, were irrevocably damned ...

— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... large and straggling and ill arranged, and on this particular Sunday had been almost empty. There was in it an harmonium which Mrs. Puttock played when she was at home, but in her absence the attempt made by a few rustics to sing the hymns had not been a musical success. The whole affair had been very sad, and so the Paragon had felt it who knew,—and was remembering through the whole service, how these things ...

— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... followed Philip to the bare, uncarpeted platform that was to serve as altar. The girl saw to her dismay that there was no piano, not even a harmonium to assist her singing. Brother Bates acted as master of ceremonies. The peddler was evidently a man of great importance in the community, its one traveler, acquainted with ...

— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... ornamental zinc, and that the feet of the preachers couldn't get near it. Behind the pulpit there is a circular niche for the members of the choir, who, aided and abetted in musical matters by a pretty good harmonium, acquit ...

— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... exaggerating it on the purely sensuous side. That he can do what no other composer has done is proved by the score of his latest opera Ariadne at Naxos, given for the first time in Stuttgart. Here, with only thirty-six in the orchestra, a grand pianoforte and a harmonium included, he produces the most ear-ravishing tones, thus giving a negative to those who assert that without a gigantic orchestral apparatus he is ineffectual. Strauss received a sound musical education; he could handle the old symphonic ...

— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... instrumentality. The saints are of various orders. Even the diamond books which reflect the light of God so brilliantly may not be all of first water. We must allow for the hues in the less perfect prisms. Were the greatest musical genius in the world to sit before the key-boards he could not draw from a harmonium the notes of a Lucerne organ. The impact of a writing on our souls must be proportionate to the spiritual and ethical force with which it is charged. Everyone recognizes this practically. None of us, however orthodox, ...

— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... is laid for tea. Ernest enters with the tea-urn. He leaves the door open; through it comes the sound of an harmonium, accompanying the singing of a hymn. Fanny comes from her dressing- room. She is dressed more cheerfully than when we last saw her, but still "seemly." She has a book in her hand. She pauses, hearing the music, goes nearer to the open door, ...

— Fanny and the Servant Problem • Jerome K. Jerome

... the small harmonium is opened, and while the younger members of the family are singing sweet part-songs together, our hero turns over the leaves of a small book he has found lying on the table, a book of German quotations. His eyes are attracted by the following lines ...

— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... harmonium, which had been specially tuned for the occasion, and the choir enjoyed to the full their privileges of position and observation and made ample ...

— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... upper cloister, not wishing to forego this exercise to which their methodical existence had accustomed them. The rain would beat on the window of the little room, and in the dull grey twilight the musician would turn over his portfolios, or letting his hands wander over the harmonium, he would talk the while with Gabriel, who was seated on ...

— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... lineage of Maud's mamma. I seem to have heard it mentioned that Rudolf Roth was very versatile and, like most of his species, not unacquainted with the practice of music. He had been employed to teach the harmonium to Miss Neville-Nugent and she had profited by his lessons. If his daughter's like him—and she's not like her mother—he was darkly and dangerously handsome. So I venture rapidly to reconstruct ...

— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... to last been scanty. Among the artists who took part in this matinee musicale were Chopin, Liszt, the violinist Ernst, and the singers Mdlle. Heinefetter, Madame Degli-Antoni, and M. Richelmi. The programme comprised also an improvisation on the orgue expressif (harmonium) by Madame de la Hye, a grand-niece of J.J. Rousseau's. Liszt and Chopin opened the matinee with a performance of Moscheles' "Grand duo a quatre mains," of which the reporter of the "Gazette musicale" writes ...

— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... to leave us for to-day, and strolled about alone. In the early part of our walk we heard music—a harmonium and a well-known old hymn tune—and on entering a building found Rev. Dr. Hopper preaching in Chinese. We had entered at the wrong door, and were among the women, who are separated from the men by a high, solid wall; but Mrs. Hopper rose and ...

— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... all aglow with the light that seeks its way through her wet eyelashes (wet only with the rain). Very quiet she is,—so quiet that a radiant butterfly has settled on her shoulder, and basks there in the warm sun. Against her knee, on which her poor instrument of musical beggary rests (harmonium), leans another child, half her age—her guide;—indifferent, this one, either to sun or rain, only a little tired of waiting. No more than a half profile of her face is seen; and that is quite expressionless, and not the ...

— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... Years.'[68] I have always had the greatest affection for it—quite a passionate affection for it—in connection with Father Faber, and I always used to think that when I came to die, I should like to have it sung to me; and I want you to play it for me." Would a harmonium do? "Yes, a harmonium would be just the thing; perhaps one could ...

— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis

... they were met by mild sweet chords issuing from a harmonium, where Miss Willett, concealed from view by a baize curtain, struck emphatic chords with uncertain fingers. The sound spread through the chapel as the rings of water spread from a fallen stone. The twenty or twenty-five people who composed ...

— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... to grow bewildering. "—and will not be back until late to-night. As for me," he consulted his watch, "I am due in half an hour's time to conduct the rehearsal of a service of song at the Lady Huntingdon's Chapel, down the street, where I play the harmonium." ...

— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... way impaired, but rather enhanced and invigorated, by the mahogany bookcase full of imperishable printed matter, the horsehair sofa netted in a system of antimacassars, the waxen flowers in their glassy domes on the marble mantelpiece, the Canterbury with its spiral columns, the rosewood harmonium, and the posse of chintz-protected chairs. Mr. Knight, who was a sincere and upright man, saw beauty in this apartment. It uplifted his soul, like soft music in the ...

— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... and stroll across the line, and we should lose the Padre, a thing we could ill afford to do, for by this time he had taken us under his wing spiritually and bodily. On Sundays he would appear in our midst dragging a folding harmonium and hold Church Parade, leading the hymns in ...

— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various

... most scholarly concert-music. (15/16.) In the intimacy of the modest chamber which serves as the family salon, with its few shabby and old-fashioned pieces of furniture, he plays on an indifferent harmonium little airs of his own composition, the subjects of which were at first suggested by his own poetry. Like Rollinat, Fabre rightly considers that music should complete, accentuate, and release that which poetry has perforce left incomplete or indefinite. This is why ...

— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... was a great reader, and taught in the Sunday school to oblige the vicar; wrote a neat hand, and was a good arithmetician, kept all the house accounts and farm accounts. She was a musician, too,—not profound, but very correct. She would take her turn at the harmonium in church, and, when she was there, you never heard a wrong note in the bass, nor an inappropriate flourish, nor bad time. She could sing, too, but never would, except her part in a psalm. Her voice ...

— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... at 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

... methodical existence had accustomed them. The rain would beat on the window of the little room, and in the dull grey twilight the musician would turn over his portfolios, or letting his hands wander over the harmonium, he would talk the while with Gabriel, who ...

— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... passing through them, produced varied and pleasant sounds. As the notches in this cane were very numerous, the slits had been made all round, so that whichever way the wind blew it went through some of them. I can only compare the sound of this instrument to that of an harmonium." ...

— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... interesting man, you know, and up to the eyes in all sorts of movements. Just the sort of person to turn loose at a drawing-room meeting, or to send down to a mission-hall in some unheard-of neighbourhood. Given a sounding-board and a harmonium, and a titled woman of some sort in the chair, and he'll be perfectly happy; I must say I hadn't realised how overpowering he might ...

— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki

... prayers and lessons instead. A psalm was sung, portions of Scripture and short prayers were read, another straggler or two joining the little congregation as the service went on. The schoolmaster, who officiated, played the harmonium and sang exceedingly well, finally read a brief exposition on the portion of Scripture read, whereupon after further singing we ...

— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... their houses were plain, and the chief articles of dress, if substantial and comfortable, were of coarse homespun—the product of their own labour. The sources of amusement were limited. The day of the harmonium or piano had not come. Music, except in its simplest vocal form, was not cultivated; only the occasional presence of some fiddler afforded rare seasons of merriment to the delight both ...

— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... here! If it is not a harmonium, it is the next thing to it. An accordion makes itself heard in Caterna's hands. As an ancient mariner, he knows how to manipulate this instrument of torture, and here he is swinging out the andante from Norma with ...

— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... very considerable mechanical noise set up by choirs and orchestras) we have at last reached a point at which, for example, a person living in an English village where the church music is the only music, and that music is made by a few well-intentioned ladies with the help of a harmonium, can hear masses by Palestrina very passably executed, and can thereby be led to the discovery that Jackson in F and Hymns Ancient and Modern are not perhaps the last word of beauty and propriety in ...

— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... but its pulpit is of gold, and its walls, pews, floor, roof, harmonium, and its clock—which marks the days of the month as well as the hours of the day—are of glass. The inhabitants are clothed in the white shirts in which they were buried and in which they arose at the Call; and the language of God and his angels and of the Company of ...

— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans

... being, broke into song, like the first nightingale when winter is past. Though it mingled with the voices of a thousand other women and the notes of the organ, that voice stirred his nerves as though they vibrated to the too full and too piercing sounds of a harmonium. The Parisian turned round, and, seeing a young figure, though, the head being bent, her face was entirely concealed by a large white bonnet, concluded that the voice was hers. He fancied that he recognized ...

— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac

... monotonous disturbance of the bell had given way to the strain of a bass viol, that had been apparently pitched to the key of the east wind without, and the crude complaint of a new harmonium that seemed to bewail its limited prospect of ever becoming seasoned or mellowed in its earthly tabernacle, and then the singing began. Here and there a human voice soared and struggled above the narrow text and the monotonous cadence ...

— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte