assing along under all the _damper lifters_, is raised by depressing
the loud pedal. The _soft pedal_ slides the whole keyboard along such a
distance that the hammers strike two only out of the three strings
allotted to all except the bass notes, which have only one string
apiece, or two, according to their depth or length. In some pianos the
soft pedal presses a special damper against the strings; and a third
kind of device moves the hammers nearer the strings so that they deliver
a lighter blow. These two methods of damping are confined to upright
pianos.

A high-class piano is the result of very careful workmanship. The
mechanism of each note must be accurately regulated by its tiny screws
to a minute fraction of an inch. It must be ensured that every hammer
strikes its blow at exactly the right place on the string, since on this
depends the musical value of the note. The adjustment of the dampers
requires equal care, and the whole work calls for a sensitive ear
combined with skilled mechanical knowledge, so that the instrument may
have a light touch, strength, and certainty of action throughout the
whole keyboard.

THE QUALITY OF A NOTE.

If two strings, alike in all respects and equally tensioned, are
plucked, both will give the same note, but both will not necessarily
have the same quality of tone. The quality, or _timbre_, as musicians
call it, is influenced by the presence of _overtones_, or _harmonics_,
in combination with the _fundamental_, or deepest, tone of the string.
The fact is, that while a vibrating string vibrates as a whole, it also
vibrates in parts. There are, as it were, small waves superimposed on
the big fundamental waves. Points of least motion, called _nodes_, form
on the string, dividing it into two, three, four, five, etc., parts,
which may be further divided by subsidiary nodes. The string, considered
as halved by one node, gives the first overtone, or octave of the
fundamental. It may also vibrate as three parts, and give the second
overtone, or twelfth of the fundamental;[28] and as four parts, and give
the third overtone, the double octave.

Now, if a string be struck at a point corresponding to a node, the
overtones which require that point for a node will be killed, on account
of the excessive motion imparted to the string at that spot. Thus to hit
it at the middle kills the octave, the double octave, etc.; while to hit
it at a point one-third of the length from one end stifles t