The fusion of two disparate and yet optically consonant objects, here hinging on the insignia "KOHLER & CHASE" NEW YORK provides at once the origin of the instrument and the port of the vessel. This point of convergence ensures the presence of a "spark," an energy passing between two distinct yet not entirely dissimilar poles. The piano and the boat occupy two conceptual planes, different enough to provoke surprise; but they are metonymically connected. They intersect in the title of the piece and in the form of the objects themselves.

Where they meet, both of them lose their functionality. This "piano boat" serves, in fact, neither as piano nor as boat. For the sake of the boat, the piano has forfeited its harp; for the sake of the piano, the boat has relinquished its hull and therewith its seaworthiness. As in O'Henry's The Gift, then, each object has sacrificed itself for the other, leaving a combination of pure non-utilitarian beauty.