The Piano.

Auckland Star, Volume XIX, Issue 23, 28 January 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Piano.

The piano, as is well-known, is now the last relic of those instruments of torture tha* were so popular during the dark ages. The original piano was used in the Tower of London some time in the fifteenth century. It was only used in extreme cases, although the modern instrument is used in both rosewood and walnut cases. The Tower piano was tried when the thumb-screws and the rack had failed, and Macaulay tells us that ital ways brought the tortured person to time. The warden of the Tower, whose business it was to work both the rack and the piano, would sit down at the latter instrument, and whack away at 'My Grandfather's Clock,' or the ' See Saw Waltz,' or something from ' Pinafore,' while the physician stood over the victim and estimated the amount he could stand. Since that time the death-dealing qualities of the piano have been very much improved, and the modern instrument is guaranteed to carry desolation over a much greater area than was thought possible in olden times. An able-bodied girl working the Wagner racket on a decrepit tin-pan of a piano has been known to depreciate real estate more than 50 per cent, for a couple of squares distance from the centre of disturbance o — " Detroit Free Press."