"Teller" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... teller of the tale. "However, he went automobiling with the Montgomerys through to Chicago. And on the road he fell into some pond, or river, ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... capitol, conversing with some personal friends, and followed, as usual, by a large number of citizens. Just as he was passing in front of Demosthenes and Thucydides' drug store, he was observing casually to a gentleman, who, our informant thinks, is a fortune-teller, that the Ides of March were come. The reply was, "Yes, they are come, but not gone yet." At this moment Artemidorus stepped up and passed the time of day, and asked Caesar to read a schedule or a tract or something of the kind, which he had brought for his perusal. Mr. Decius Brutus also said ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Uncle Beamish very much, for he was not only a good story-teller, but he was willing to listen to my stories, and when I found he wanted to hire a horse and sleigh to go to the house of his married sister, with whom he intended to spend Christmas, and that his sister lived on Upper Hill turnpike, on which ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... gossip from whom one would expect all the formulas, "and then he says to the king, Sacred Crown," "and then the Prince walks, walks, walks, walks." "A company of knights in armour nice and shining," "three comely ladies in a green meadow," and so forth of the professional Italian story-teller—the same Carpaccio, who was also, and much more than the more solemn Giovanni Bellini, the first Venetian to handle oil paints like Titian and Giorgione, painted the fairy tale of St. George, with quite the most dreadful ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... the lawyer,[537] and the fortune-teller, The school-master, the midwife,[538] and the bawd, The conjurer, the buyer and the seller Of painting which with breathing will be thaw'd, Doth practise physic; and his credit grows, As doth the ballad-singer's auditory, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... fundamental,—yet in nearly all the most elaborate descriptions of attractive individuals it is the visible elements that are in most cases chiefly emphasized. Whether among the lowest savages or in the highest civilization, the poet and story-teller who seeks to describe an ideally lovely and desirable woman always insists mainly, and often exclusively, on those characters which appeal to the eye. The richly laden word beauty is a synthesis of complex impressions obtained through a single sense, and so simple, comparatively, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the present day the deep-seated faith in amulets and charms, which were thought to have brought about what would now be regarded as curious coincidences, or to place reliance upon the babbling utterances of some old crone who posed as a witch or a fortune-teller. Yet among such old-world stories there are germs of truth although misapplied. The emblems, amulets, and charms so implicitly believed in a few centuries ago are objects numbered among collectable curios, valued ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... dinner pipe, with one exception, it was proposed that this one, whom they called Amos, should tell them one of his stories. Amos, nothing loth, and, evidently accustomed to occupy the position of a story teller, without any apology commenced:— ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... named Astaroth, and of a black hen with bristling feathers, called Cleopatra or Bilouche. These two animals caught Gazonal's eye in 1845, when in company with De Lora and Bixiou he visited the fortune-teller's. The Southerner, however, asked only a five-franc divination, while in the same year Mme. Cibot, who came to consult her on an important matter, had to pay a hundred francs. According to Bixiou, "a third of the lorettes, a fourth of the statesmen and a half of the artists" consulted Mme. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... Achates, his boy Ascanius, his silly King Latinus, his ill-bred Amata, his insipid Lavinia, and some other characters much in the same strain, I think there cannot in nature be any thing more flat and disagreeable. I must confess I prefer Tasso far beyond him; nay, even that sleepy tale-teller Ariosto." ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... exclaimed Nathan, when told of the cashier's remark; "I will make these gentlemen see what sort of private persons we are." Three weeks later he presented a five-pound note at the bank at the opening of the office. The teller counted out five sovereigns, looking surprised that Baron Rothschild should have troubled himself about such a trifle. The baron examined the coins one by one, weighing them in the balance, as he said "the law gave him the right to do," put them ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... fine day, and was gone again upon a fresh mount with twenty-five miles between him and Rocky Bend. The clock at the bank marked forty-three minutes after two as Lee, leaving a sweating horse at the door on Main Street, presented his check at the paying teller's window. The money, in a small canvas bag, ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... mountain from Rieha, turned round its eastern corner, and in one hour from Rieha, reached the village of Kefr Lata [Arabic]. We were hospitably received at the house of the Sheikh of Kefr Lata, although his women only were at home. A wondering story-teller amused us in the evening with chanting the Bedouin history of the Beni Helal. Kefr Lata belongs to Ibn Szeyaf, one of the ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... most agreeable evening. I do not know how long it had been since I had tasted luxury and comfort and the true fruits of civilisation. The Baron was a most admirable teller of stories, with a capital sense of humour. After dinner the Baroness left us for half an hour, and the Baron became very pleasantly Rabelaisian, speaking of his experiences in Paris and London, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... reported, on reliable authority, that the original Mr. Black, whose Christian name was Andrew, was a famous teller of stories and narrator of facts regarding the persecution of the Covenanters, especially of the awful killing-time, when the powers of darkness were let loose on the land to do their worst, and when the blood of Scotland's martyrs flowed ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... is closely related (if I may use some of Mr. Howells' expressive language for the occasion) to "the lies swapped between men after the ladies have left the table." And the reason why the story-teller, when (as will happen at times) his invention runs dry, can take no comfort in the generous outpourings of his unknown friends, is just this—that the plots are merely plots, and the anecdotes merely anecdotes, and the difference between these and a story that shall reveal something concerning ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... The veteran story-teller paused, and looked at the clouds that were gathering in the sky. "'Twouldn't 'stonish me none," he remarked dryly, "ef we wuz ter have some ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... great boaster, He, the marvelous story-teller, He, the traveler and the talker, Made a bow for Hiawatha; From a branch of ash he made it, From an oak-bough made the arrows, Tipped with flint, and winged with feathers, And the cord he ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... certainly evolving what he supposed to be appropriate old British names from the depths of his own consciousness. His guesswork was on a par with that of the schoolboys who introduce 'Stirlingia' or 'Liverpolia' into their Ovidian elegiacs. That abandoned story-teller, Geoffrey of Monmouth, goes a step further, and concocts a Caer Lud for London and a Caer Osc for Exeter, whenever the fancy seizes him. The only examples amongst these pretended old Welsh forms ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Bradford, and in a lonesome glade we met the apparition of an Indian chief, dressed in appropriate costume of blanket, feathers, and paint, and armed with a musket. Almost at the same time, a young gypsy fortune-teller came from among the trees, and proposed to tell my fortune. While she was doing this, the goddess Diana let fly an arrow, and hit me smartly in the hand. The fortune-teller and goddess were in fine contrast, Diana being a blonde, fair, quiet, with a ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... here that the Doctor is a born story-teller and something of an actor as well. He seldom explains his characters or situations as he goes on by putting in "I said" and "he said" and similar expressions. You know by the tones of his voice who is speaking, and his gestures supply ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... was interrupted by the entrance of a blowsy Irish girl with a basket on her arm. The newcomer caused a momentary diversion, and when she had departed the old lady, who was evidently as intolerant of interruption as a professional story-teller, insisted on returning to the beginning of her complicated order, and weighing anew, with an anxious appeal to the butcher's arbitration, the relative advantages of pork and liver. But even her hesitations, and the intrusion on them of two or three other customers, were ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... city, which my mother visited when a girl, there came a celebrated fortune-teller, and led by curiosity, my mother and my aunt one day made two of the crowd that thronged the ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... prevalence of this fancy among the Algonquins in the remote parts of Canada is well established. The writer found it also among the extreme western bands of the Dahcotah. He tried, in the month of July, to persuade an old chief, a noted story-teller, to tell him some of the tales; but, though abundantly loquacious in respect to his own adventures, and even his dreams, the Indian obstinately refused, saying that winter was the time for the tales, and that it was bad to tell them ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... they are all saying! Nobody wants to go to heaven at all until they are a hundred years old, and too deaf and blind and tired out to do anything on earth. My heaven is here and now in my own happiness, and so is yours, Charlie; and I felt so convicted of being a story-teller that I couldn't hold the ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... comparing Kingsley the poet, preacher, and reformer, with Kingsley the laughing, genial teller of stories who never cherished a hobby in his life, would seem to be as superfluous on general grounds as it is premature in respect of the only possible question as to which of them is likely to be best remembered a generation or two hence. Only in ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... sprint for dear life. Returning safely to Abbeville, they would write hair-raising accounts of the dangers they had passed through to the motor-cycling papers. It is only right that I should here once and for all confess—there is no finer teller of tall stories than the motor-cyclist ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... events of Colonial or Revolutionary history are recorded in immediate connection with the town, though it is related that here is still preserved a small cannon known as "Old White," said to be the one which, at Teller's Point, compelled the British Vulture to slip her moorings and so leave Andre in the lurch. At one time mining operations were conducted at this point, but they came to naught, and now the town is noted as a resort ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... the cup, and continued, "Her head will be slightly in danger, but of this no appearance will remain half an hour afterwards." It was impossible to doubt the facts. They appeared so surprising to the King, that he desired some inquiry to be made concerning the fortune-teller. Madame, however, protected her from the pursuit of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... not help thinking, with a smile, that in spite of their early tribulations the sins for which the boys suffered had gotten a little mixed in their result, for fibbing Steve was now the tidy one, and careless Mac the truth teller. But such small contradictions will happen in the best-regulated families, and all perplexed parents can do is to keep up a steadfast preaching and practicing in the hope that it will bear fruit sometime, for according to an old proverb, Children ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... sand-pillars, some small, some large, were promenading about by dozens, looking much like the genie when the fisherman had just let him out of the bottle, and saw him with astonishment beginning to shape himself into a giant of monstrous size. Indeed I doubt not that the story-teller was thinking of such sand-pillars when he wrote that wonderful description. You may see them in the East by thousands. As they moved along, they sucked up small stones, dust, and leaves; and our driver declared ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... with the Indian folk-lore, and neither by coaxing nor by offers of money could an Indian be persuaded to relate a myth. In most instances, Professor Hartt was met with statements to the effect that some old woman of the neighborhood was the story-teller, who could make him laugh with tales of the animals; but he never could find ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... and overwrought mortals, he was often moody, depressed, and, worst of all, a victim to premonitions of his early demise. His superstitious temperament was constantly worrying him, as did his faith in the predictions of a gipsy fortune-teller who had correctly described his career up to the year 1805, and then stopping had said, "I can see no further." This creepy ending of the gipsy's tale was afflicting him with a dumb pain and depression when he unexpectedly came across his sister Catherine in London. She referred to his worn, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... fitting out at Boston, one small annoyance ruffled the auspicious undertaking. Three different crews were signed before a full complement could be persuaded to tarry in the forecastle. The trouble was caused by a fortune-teller of Lynn, Moll Pitcher by name, who predicted disaster for the ship. Now every honest sailor knows that certain superstitions are gospel fact, such as the bad luck brought by a cross-eyed Finn, a black cat, or going to sea on Friday, and these eighteenth ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... variously accomplished, and yet be a feeble poet. He may be a real poet, yet a feeble dramatist, he may have dramatic faculty, yet be a feeble novelist. He may be a good story-teller, yet a shallow thinker and a slip-shod writer. For success in any special kind of work it is obvious that a special talent is requisite; but obvious as this seems, when stated as a general proposition, it rarely serves ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... Heywood, and the same question was put to A. E. Bunker, teller, and Frank J. Wilcox, assistant bookkeeper, each of whom made ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... house-breaking, some new and highly artistic method of writing another man's autograph so that when appended to a check and presented at his bank it will bear the closest scrutiny to which the paying-teller will subject it, some truly Napoleonic method of entirely novel design for the sudden parting of the rich from their possessions. Any university which attempted to add a School of Peculation to its curriculum and ignored the daily papers as a positive ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... heard stories crediting Benjamin Butler with the authorship of the Woodhull Memorial, and rumors reached her of Victoria's unorthodox views on love and marriage and of her girlhood as a fortune teller, traveling about like a gypsy and living by her wits. Even so, Susan was ready to give Victoria the benefit of the doubt until she herself found her harmful to the cause, for long ago she had learned to discount attacks on the reputations ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... before that date. We may reasonably believe, however, that at some time the marshy ground in the forum gave way, as ground often does, and that there was difficulty in filling up the chasm. A grand opportunity was thus offered for a good story-teller to build up a romance, or to touch up the early history with an interesting tale of heroism. The temptation to do this would have been very ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... you my word, that if you tell me anything about me which is true, I will freely acknowledge it; so now, Mr Fortune-teller, here's my hand—it may be useful, you know, in ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... a winter's day. Eustace put his bundle of manuscript into my hands; and I skimmed through it pretty rapidly, trying to find out its merits and demerits by the touch of my fingers, as a veteran story-teller ought to know how ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to injure its temper or corrupt its judgment. It is a duty, therefore, which we owe to this younger class of students, to clear any important truth which may have been rendered questionable in their minds by such language, or any truth-teller against whom they may have been prejudiced by hasty epithets, from the impressions such words have left. Until this is done, they are not ready for the question, where there is a question, for them to decide. Even if we ourselves ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... passengers said he was a clairvoyant. Hah!" Morgan expressed the ultimate of disgust. "He was a fortune-teller! He didn't know there was anything better than that! A fortune-teller! But he's a Talent! He's a born charlatan, but he's an authentic Talent, and he doesn't know what that is! He thinks predictions as Madame Porvis thinks scandals! And they're just as crazy! But ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... for instance, could read the future as in a book, or one who, if your cow dried up, could name the evil spirit, the demon, who, among the peasants was exercising the curse. All this science was lost. A peasant would now be ashamed to bring his cow to a fortune-teller; all the village would laugh. Even the shepherds had lost the power of communing with the planets at night; and all the valley read the Petit Journal instead of consulting the vieilles meres. One must go as ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... vocation. And if Dickens showed the best of his power early in life, so did Thackeray the best of his intellect. In no display of mental force did he rise above Barry Lyndon. I hardly know how the teller of a narrative shall hope to mount in simply intellectual faculty above the effort there made. In what then was the difference? Why was Dickens already a great man when Thackeray was still a ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... for me by creole friends, with better success. To obtain them in all their original simplicity and naive humor of detail, one should be able to write them down in short-hand as fast as they are related: they lose greatly in the slow process of dictation. The simple mind of the native story-teller, child or adult, is seriously tried by the inevitable interruptions and restraints of the dictation method; —the reciter loses spirit, becomes soon weary, and purposely shortens the narrative to finish the task as soon as possible. It seems painful ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... double duty, To please his backers, yet play booty, [9] Ven, luckily for Jem, a teller Vos planted right upon his smeller [10] Down dropped he, stunned; ven time was called Seconds in vain the seconds bawled; The mill is o'er, the crosser crost, The losers von, ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... very complete account of the signification of moles is quoted from "The Greenwich Fortune Teller," in Brand's Popular Antiquities (Bonn's ed.), ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... novelists; the drawing of minor characters, for instance. Lockwood may be a little indistinct, but he is properly so, for he is not a character, he is a mere impersonal looker-on. But Nelly Dean, the chief teller of the story, preserves her rich individuality through all the tortuous windings of the tale. Joseph, the old farm-servant, the bitter, ranting Calvinist, is a masterpiece. And masterly was that inspiration that made Joseph chorus ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... as he got the money from my teller that day, he was rushing away. I followed him to the door—that part of my suite opened out on the sidewalk, for the convenience of my crowds of customers. "I'm just going to lunch," said ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... the law will not allow them. And so when we have anointed him with myrrh, and set a garland of wool upon his head, we shall send him away to another city. For we mean to employ for our souls' health the rougher and severer poet or story-teller, who will imitate the style of the virtuous only, and will follow those models which we prescribed at first when we began ...
— The Republic • Plato
... writes many more boys' books of equal merit with The Wreck of the Golden Fleece, more than one hitherto popular story-teller will have to look ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... ever enjoyed on a deathbed. It seemed so good that it was idle to expect anything better to follow. But something there was. It was the Division, in which ELCHO, walking up to the Table by side of WILFRID LAWSON, acted as co-teller whilst the figures were announced that abolished the Derby Day holiday in the House of Commons. ELCHO had had his jest, and the Opposition ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 11, 1892 • Various
... it's up to me to suggest somethin'." Mr. Gibney smiled benignly, as if a money-making idea was the easiest thing on earth to produce. "The last thing I remember before we went to that Turkish bath was us four visitin' a fortune teller an' havin' our fortunes told, past, present, an' future, for a dollar a throw. Anybody here remember ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... as 1883 he was appointed a clerk in one of the Departments at Washington by Secretary Teller. He held this position until under a Democratic administration he was for partisan reasons asked to resign. President Harrison, recognizing his ability, appointed him Postmaster ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... road, a bill-board flaunted a many-colored advertisement, but it did not distract his attention—it had lost its novelty from over-production. There was to be a Street Carnival beginning July first. There would be a Fortune Teller, a Lion Show, a Snake Den, etc. The Fourth of July would be the Big Day; a Day of Confetti, of Fireworks, of Riotous Mirth and patriotism—the last word was the only one ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... expedition from the arrival of Major Clarke's force at Corn Island, until Kaskaskia was captured. He relates that part of Simon Kenton's life history which is not usually touched upon either by the historian or the story teller. This is one of the most entertaining books for young people which ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... is in harmony with, or analogous to, the general type of faith prevailing in our own generation. Nobody could be persuaded now that a dead head could speak, or a wolf change his nature to protect it; but thousands will credit a fortune-teller, or believe that a mesmerized patient can have a mental perception of scenes and occurrences a ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... an ignoramus, a filthy story-teller, a monster. Seward is the brains of the administration. Without Seward, Lincoln would ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... thing that was not in his mind with the deplorable facility of the professional story-teller—"supposing that illness had been a sham, and they had really meant to ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... said Bevis, putting a pinch of powder on the touch-hole, "you know you are a wicked story-teller; you killed the poor leveret after I let you loose. Now!" and he went down on one knee, and put his cannon-stick on the other as a ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... be outwardly triumphant at the end of a play or of a novel is to require the dramatist or the novelist to falsify. It is to introduce an element of unreality into fiction. It is to require the story-teller and the playmaker to prove a thesis that common ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... is a prime cigar, Red. Better send for a fresh box, this one is drying up. Now, I'm going to tell you something: My mother was a fortune teller and maybe that's why it is, but anyway I can dope up what people are thinking lots of times. I hadn't any more than said Red Shandon to her than I got wise to that little girl's trouble. Say, Red, she's just naturally stuck on you! It's a fact! Now, when a woman's stuck on a guy, what's the ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... were the daily witnesses of the scenes for several years can best appreciate its nicety and drollery. The "veteran shipmaster," concerning whom Hawthorne says, "scarcely a day passed that he did not stir me to laughter and admiration by his marvelous gift as a story-teller," was Captain Stephen Burchmore, the public storekeeper. The stories of themselves were generally extravagant and grotesque. It was "the marvelous gift" of narration that carried people off their legs. I have known the company present to roar with ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... occasional anecdotes of "bustings-up" on the southern rivers, "making tracks" from importunate creditors, of practical jokes, and glaring impositions. There was a great deal of "liquoring-up" going on the whole time. The best story-teller was repeatedly called upon to "liquor some," which was accordingly done by copious draughts of "gin-sling," but at last he declared he was a "gone 'coon, fairly stumped," by which he meant to express that he was tired and could do no more. This assertion was met ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... given it a new claim to notice, for beneath it, according to Drake's Historic Middlesex, "Sam Lawson, the good-natured, lazy story-teller, in Oldtown Folks, put his blacksmith's shop. It was removed ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... living creature of gold, shining as a great mass of it, warm and bright and untarnished as a coin fresh from the pressure of the dies. I took her with me to Tuscany—stole her from an old vixen of a fortune-teller. Ah, I see she did not tell you all!—Never mind. There was no disgrace for her—she might well have told everything! She needed no blush for the story. It was the only pretty thing in ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... flattered Clara's languor. He had not compelled her to be watchful on her guard, and she was unaware that he passed it when she acquiesced to his observation, "An anticipatory story is a trap to the teller." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... least accident. They mutually congratulated each other upon it, and Miss Price, taking a beginning so prosperous as a good omen of their success, asked her companion what they were to do at the fortune-teller's, and what ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... turban with the money intact in the bird's nest, but that this should occur while the Khwajah's benefactors were his guests is—well, very extraordinary indeed! As to the pot of bran—why, some little license must be allowed a story-teller, that is all that need be said! The story from beginning to end is a most charming one, and will continue to afford pleasure to old ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... hands stretched out to give Kilquhanity a drink, for even the best story-teller of Pontiac could not have ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... liked the sudden flare-up of her manner. There was something convincing about it. Besides, he didn't want her to go off in that independent way as if she meant never to come back. It was she who had brought the Towncrier, that matchless Teller of ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... remember that one of his grandparents was a full-blooded negress. Dumas' literary work is essentially romantic; his themes are courage, loyalty, honour, love, pageantry, and adventure; he belongs to the tradition of Scott and Schiller, but as a story-teller excels every other. His plays and novels are both very numerous; the "OEuvres Completes," published between 1860 and 1884, fill 277 volumes. Probably "Monte Cristo" and "The Three Musketeers" are the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... have assumed nothing and proved all." In his preface he wrote: "To the few who love me and whom I love; to those who feel rather than to those who think; to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in the only realities—I offer this book of truths, not in the character of Truth-Teller, but for the beauty that abounds in its truth: constituting it true. To these I present the composition as an Art-Product alone:—-let us say as a Romance; or, if it be not urging too lofty a claim, as a Poem. What I here propound is true: therefore it cannot die: or it by any ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... me put in a word edgeways, Captain Danvers—'scuse me, I mean colonel. You spoke of Andy Jackson. He's not my stripe—I'm a Federalist yist'day, to-day and forever—but Old Hickory is a truth teller. What did Jackson say? I give you his upside dixit, word for word, ex litteratum, as they say. Andrew Jackson says, says he, 'Whatever may have been the project of Burr, James Wilkinson has went ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... execute well and worthily certain formularies of speech, in use from time immemorial. His wandering profession, which introduces the man into so many family circles, without allowing him to fix himself in his own, naturally serves to render him talkative and amusing, a ready story-teller, and an able man ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... I think of it, was a great story-teller. I have sometimes nearly half made up my mind, while casting about me, to find some new mine of stories for my young readers, that I would put my thinking cap on, and see if I could not recollect ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... there was a cave high up among the precipices on the southeast side of Nipple Top. He scarcely volunteered the information, and with seeming reluctance gave us any particulars about it. I always admire this art by which the accomplished story-teller lets his listener drag the reluctant tale of the marvelous from him, and makes you in a manner responsible for its improbability. If this is well managed, the listener is always eager to believe a great deal more than the romancer seems willing to tell, and always resents the assumed reservations ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... all in his power to precipitate the war. He had contrived to secure appointment as one of the Tellers of the Exchequer, was in close confederacy with Bennet, now Lord Arlington, and was scheming with him to oust the influence of the Chancellor and the Treasurer. His perquisites, as Teller of the Exchequer, were lessened by the assignment of taxes to the bankers in return for their advances, and as the proceeds of the taxes did not pass through the Exchequer, the percentage to the Tellers was thereby diminished. The position of Lord Southampton was difficult to assail. ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... the thought of the particular lives in which the wider interest of the book (as I take it to be) is firmly lodged. From a huge emotion that reaches us through the youth exposed to it, the war is changed into an emotion of our own. It is rendered by the story-teller, on the whole, as a scene directly faced by himself, instead of being reflected in the experience of the rising generation. It is true that Tolstoy's good instinct guides him ever and again away from the mere telling ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... that you are turning up your nose at me, Bertie. I can see you do it. But I'll come off the thin ice, and you shall have nothing but facts now. I'm afraid that I should never do for a story-teller, for the first stray character that comes along puts his arm in mine and walks me off, with my poor story straggling ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... required. During the five or six years that have elapsed, he has passed from the insurance office into a banking institution as book-keeper, at a salary of twelve hundred dollars, thence to the receiving teller's place, which he now holds at fifteen hundred dollars a year. As his means have gradually increased, his style of living has altered. From a house for which he paid the annual rent of one hundred and fifty dollars, ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... the four Gospels, and opened upon a text which he regarded as an oracular intimation to winter in Albania. Gregory, of Tours, also relates that Meroveus, being desirous of obtaining the kingdom of Chilperic, his father consulted a female fortune-teller, who promised him the possession of royal estates; but to prevent deception and to try the truth of her prognostications, he caused the Psalter, the Book of Kings, and the four Gospels to be laid upon the shrine of St. Martin, and after fasting and solemn prayer, opened upon passages which not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... lounging about in all sorts of easy attitudes,—some of them busy with their needles; others overhauling their clothes-bags, to which they had been given access that afternoon; others grouped about some more brilliant story-teller than the rest, eagerly drinking in the multifarious details of some exciting personal experience, or romantic adventure, or never-ending story of shipwreck or battle, or mystery—technically, yarns! Colonel Wilton was standing ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the balcony Where that fond Matron knew her Lover near, And here we sit, and wait for tea, and sigh, While the sad rain sobs in the sullen mere, And all our hearts go forth into the cry, Would that the teller ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... few square miles, and touches neither the Rhine nor the Loire, neither the mountains nor the sea. He never invents his subjects, but indolently takes them ready-made from elsewhere. But with all this what an adorable writer, what a painter, what an observer, what a humorist, what a story-teller! I am never tired of reading him, though I know half his fables by heart. In the matter of vocabulary, turns, tones, phrases, idioms, his style is perhaps the richest of the great period, for it combines, in the most skillful ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was born with few nerves. A region especially afflicted was the confluence of the Croton and the Hudson, for the Kitchawan burying-ground was here, and the red people being disturbed by the tramping of white men over their graves, "the walking sachems of Teller's Point" were nightly to be met on ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... his powers as story-teller, to suit his exacting audience, and was making his bear work havoc upon poor Tommy in a way captivating to all, even Joel, when, "Well, I declare," sounded Mrs. Pepper's cheery voice coming in upon them, "if ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... has been at school with a teller of stories knows what the wonder means—how he or she is followed about and besought in a whisper to relate romances; how groups gather round and hang on the outskirts of the favored party in the hope of being allowed to ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... wrote only two books, Native Tales of New Mexico and Indian Stories from the Pueblos, but as a delighted and delightful teller of folk ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... new romanticism. The poetry of Cowper, an ardent lover of nature, whose first volume appeared in 1781, though usually conventional in expression, is always sincere and sometimes exquisite. Crabbe, a story-teller and preacher, wrote some true poetry, along with much that is prosaic: rarely moved by an inspiration drawn from nature to desert the conventional couplet, he nevertheless had something of the spirit of ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... written essays, but he knows how inconsiderable have been their sales in comparison with those of his works embodying precisely the same principles, but placed before the world in the form of novels. To criticise him as a mere story-teller is arrant absurdity. ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... taught him to read, so did he teach me. Because he died shortly after from the pick-handle beating, Roger Vanderwater took me out of the slave pen and tried to make various better things out of me. I might have become an overseer in Hell's Bottom, but I chose to become a story-teller, wandering over the land and getting close to my brothers, the slaves, everywhere. And I tell you stories like this, secretly, knowing that you will not betray me; for if you did, you know as well as I that my tongue will be torn out and that I shall tell stories ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... — N. oracle; prophet, prophesier, seer, soothsayer, augur, fortune teller, crystal gazer^, witch, geomancer^, aruspex^; aruspice^, haruspice^; haruspex; astrologer, star gazer^; Sibyl; Python, Pythoness^; Pythia; Pythian oracle, Delphian oracle; Monitor, Sphinx, Tiresias, Cassandra^, Sibylline leaves; Zadkiel, Old Moore; sorcerer &c 994; interpreter, &c 524. [person ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... feeling of "the joyful faces, the sparkling eyes, the merry shouts that welcome the genuine story-teller"; he had a right to pronounce that "the child's desire and craving for tales, for legends, for all kinds of stories, and later on for historical accounts, is ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... story-teller heard it, but with different results. The latter stirred and looked about him, as though new hope and strength had come to him. The former, led by Tim and Judy, broke simultaneously into anxious speech. Maria, having slept profoundly since the first mention of the mouse in its cosy ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... whose name it bears, these portraits, so far from being disconnected or independent, are linked together in as close an interdependence as the personages of a regularly constructed drama. The effect of the reiterated story, told in some new fashion by each new teller of it, has been compared with that of a great fugue, blending, with the threads of its crossing and recrossing voices, a single web of harmony. The "theme" is Pompilia; around her the whole action circles. As, ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... Mr. Downcast, who was a church-member and had just come from the top of the tower, visited this fortune teller, and by her descriptions of his happy future on the Broad Highway he was induced to ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... me, Having to the spheres ascended Of the sacred throne of God, Live there in a world far better.— This, then, is the truth, which I Tell, because God makes me tell it, Much against my will, my practice Not being great as a truth-teller. [He falls swiftly, ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... receipted for, and I was ready to start back. Barrett walked to the railroad station with me, helping with the valise money bag, which was heavy with a good bit of coin for making change. We got better acquainted on the walk, and I warmed immediately to the frank, open-mannered young bank teller, little dreaming what this acquaintance, begun in pure business routine, was destined to lead ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... mystery and reserve survive the use of the same hot water bag and a joint concern about butter and egg bills? What remains, at least on the husband's side, is esteem—the feeling one, has for an amiable aunt. And confidence—the emotion evoked by a lawyer, a dentist ora fortune-teller. And habit—the thing which makes it possible to eat the same breakfast every day, and to windup one's watch regularly, and to earn ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... food or fuel are not so well appreciated as the respectful hearing which clothes the teller with self-respect, the kind word and loving sympathy that feed the heart, the inspiring consolations of religious faith that animate and warm the soul, and such gifts women of sympathetic Christian hearts ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... them on and walked out in a melancholy mood, regretting my lost happiness, and not knowing what I should do to recover it. As I strolled towards the palace, I beheld sitting in the street a fortune-teller, who had some written papers before him, and was casting omens for the bystanders. I advanced, and made him a salute, which he returned kindly; and after looking attentively in my face, exclaimed, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... chair and crossed one leg over his knee. He could hear Absalom closing the shop behind him, and he turned his curious, expressionless eyes upon the boy as he passed down the steps and mingled with the crowd in the street. Just opposite, a story-teller squatted on the ground in the centre of a group of men who laughed and clapped their hands, his flashing teeth and quick gesticulations adding to each point he made; it was still clear enough to see his alternating expression of assumed anger or amusement. It was clear enough to notice the coloured ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... Albany Times-Union says of this story of the South African diamond mines and adventures in London, on the sea and in America: "As a story teller Mr. Marshall cannot be improved upon, and whether one is looking for humor, philosophy, pathos, wit, excitement, adventure or love, he will find what he seeks, aplenty, in this capital tale." 12mo, ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... the great literary and social leaders of the eighteenth century was Mme. de Genlis, a prodigy in every respect, an amateur performer upon nearly every instrument, an authority on intellectual matters as well, a fine story teller, a consummate artist, entertainer, and general charmer. Authoress, governess of Louis-Philippe, councillor of Bonaparte, her success as a social leader established her reputation and places her in the file of great women, although she was not a salon leader such as ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... amusement, into the lower ranks of life, meets with adventures diverting to the reader or hearer, from the contrast betwixt the monarch's outward appearance, and his real character. The Eastern tale-teller has for his theme the disguised expeditions of Haroun Alraschid with his faithful attendants, Mesrour and Giafar, through the midnight streets of Bagdad; and Scottish tradition dwells upon the similar exploits of James V., distinguished during such excursions ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... There are no names or titles to the tales, so that every translator must give his own; and the endings are equally unsatisfactory, they usually content themselves, after "native" fashion, with "Intiha" finis, and the connection with the thread of the work must be supplied by the story-teller or the translator. Headlines were not in use for the MSS. of that day, and the catchwords are often irregular, a new word taking the place of the initial in ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... only wheaten rolls and makovniki [FOOTNOTE: Poppy-seeds cooked in honey, and dried in square cakes.] with honey in the other world!) could tell a story wonderfully well. When he used to begin on a tale, you wouldn't stir from the spot all day, but keep on listening. He was no match for the story-teller of the present day, when he begins to lie, with a tongue as though he had had nothing to eat for three days, so that you snatch your cap and flee from the house. As I now recall it,—my old mother was alive then,—in the long winter evenings when the frost was crackling out ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... did not quite fit in with all that her memory held in connection with that little scene at the Restaurant des Ambassadeurs. She made an effort to recall it in detail. Had not Lady Clifford said something about a visit to a fortune-teller of some sort? What was it? Of course! She said the woman went into a trance and described "Charles" lying ill in bed, with a doctor beside him ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... have stated, that before leaving St. Louis, I went to an old man named Frank, a slave, owned by a Mr. Sarpee. This old man was very distinguished (not only among the slave population, but also the whites) as a fortune-teller. He was about seventy years of age, something over six feet high, and very slender. Indeed, he was so small around his body that it looked as though it was not strong enough to ...
— The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave • William Wells Brown
... cabin for a time. Those who had scurvy, got worse; those who were well, became gloomy. Even Pepper, who was a tremendous joker, held his tongue, and Joe Davis, who was a great singer, became silent. Jim Crofts was in his bunk "down" with the scurvy, and stout Sam Baker, who was a capital teller of stories, could not pluck up spirit enough to open his mouth. "In fact," as Mr Dicey said, "they all had a most 'orrible fit o' the blues!" The captain and officers were in better health and spirits than the men, though they all fared alike ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... Barthius evidently wrote so much, that often he forgot what he had written, as happened to another great book-man, one Didymus, of whom Quintilian records, that on hearing a certain history, he treated it as utterly unworthy of credit; on which the teller called for one of Didymus's own books, and showed where he might read it at full length! That the work failed, we have the evidence of Clement in his "Bibliotheque curieuse de Livres difficiles a trouver," under the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... return'd. Then fairly I bespoke the officer To go in person with me to my house. By the way we met My wife, her sister, and a rabble more Of vile confederates: along with them They brought one Pinch; a hungry lean-faced villain, A mere anatomy, a mountebank, A threadbare juggler, and a fortune-teller; A needy, hollow-ey'd, sharp-looking wretch; A living dead man; this pernicious slave, Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer; And gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse, And with no face, as 'twere, outfacing me, Cries out, I was possess'd: ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... appears, so great at one time was its power, that persons every way qualified for the generative act, have been seen suddenly reduced to a humiliating nullity, in consequence of an impudent charlatan, a village sorcerer or a fortune-teller having threatened them with point-tying. Saint André, a French physician, gives an account of a poor weaver, who having disappointed Madame André in not bringing home some work was threatened by that lady with being point-tied by her husband the doctor. The poor fellow ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... thrice-blessed word, "Popocatapetl." Best of all, he has resisted the subtle temptation to be even momentarily too clever for his audience (you know the devastating effect that may be produced if a grown-up pauses on the edge of the circle and reminds the story-teller that he has a reputation for wit). In fine, this early dream of David's shows him fortunate in having an old family friend like Mr. Benson to write it down; also—what I must on no account ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... immediate payment of that debt in order to put herself in funds to prosecute this greatest of all wars. To use an illustration popular in Wall Street at the time, there was to be an unexpected run on Uncle Sam's Bank and the Stock Exchange was the paying teller's window through which the money was to be drawn out, so the window was closed to gain time. How to reopen this window in such a way as not to pay out any more money to the foreign creditor than would suit our own convenience was the ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... accomplished story-teller would look forward to this restaurant; already his thoughts would fix themselves on a cabinet particulier, and his fancy, if he were a naturalistic writer, would rejoice in recording the fact that the mirror was scrawled over with names of lovers, and he would select the ugliest names. ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... mother, with all the accuracy of a lecturer at the Royal Society. Like Plato, he adopts the dialogue as his mode of expression, 'putting words into other people's mouths,' he tells us, 'in order to gain breadth of view.' As a story-teller he is charming. The account of the visit of the respectable Confucius to the great Robber Che is most vivid and brilliant, and it is impossible not to laugh over the ultimate discomfiture of the sage, the barrenness of whose moral ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Englishman Canada The Call Coronation Poem and Prayer Two Voices A Ballade of the Unborn Dead The Truth Teller Just You Reflection Songs of Love and the Sea Acquaintance In India's Dreamy Land Rangoon Thoughts on leaving Japan On seeing the Diabutsu—at Kamakura, Japan The Little Lady of the Bullock Cart ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... "whom he does not understand, and at those English Authors, whose Excellencies he cannot reach; with him Voiture is flat and dull, Corneille a stranger to the Passions, Racine, Starch'd and Affected, Moliere, Jejune, la Fontaine a poor Teller of Tales; and even the Divine Boileau, little better than a Plagiary. As for the English Poets, he treats almost with the same Freedom; Shakespear with him has neither Language nor Manners; Ben. Johnson is a Pedant; Dryden little more than a tolerable ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... morality of the time; that it ought to concern itself with practical modern questions in a practical way; that it ought to present actual life, realistically. The same feeling affected a lesser poet, Mr. Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, who, being a story-teller in verse and a moralist, has been acclaimed as a powerful poet in both England and America. Mr. Gibson has not yet shown that he is a considerable poet. But Mr. Masefield undoubtedly does possess the poetic ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... and manners, prophesying, interpreting, talking unknown tongues, working miraculous cures, coming down with messages from God to the House of Commons. We have seen an old woman, with no talents beyond the cunning of a fortune-teller, and with the education of a scullion, exalted into a prophetess, and surrounded by tens of thousands of devoted followers, many of whom were, in station and knowledge, immeasurably her superiors; and all this in the nineteenth century; ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ever had or can ever have. It is moral, and it always has a tremendous stimulus to the imagination, and that is why stories and fire go together. You cannot tell a good story unless you tell it before a fire. You cannot have a complete fire unless you have a good story-teller along! ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... out the papers he required for his proposed transaction, set out for the Bourse; while I, disguised as one of his serving-men, accompanied Jacob to the abode of the old fortune-teller. Flemish being my native tongue, it must be remembered I had no difficulty in passing for the character I had assumed; and I thought that, probably, the Dame Barbara would ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... certainly find a man gathering sticks upon the Sabbath day, and the congregation gathering stones for his merciless punishment, but we look in vain for any mention of the moon. Non est inventus. Of many an ancient story-teller we may say, as Sheridan said of Dundas, "the right honourable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... and here I was tied; and I couldn't call Bella Dougherty without William Jones knowing it. It was hard, sir, for a man as innercent as a little babe to set there with that sweet and smooth old lady considering him a shameless story-teller and firing Barclay at him, now wasn't it, sir? Would you have called William Jones, sir, under them there circumstances, and his laughter and Bella Dougherty's still ...
— Frictional Electricity - From "The Saturday Evening Post." • Max Adeler
... which Mr. Bowlsby had derived from his nephew's letter, and though there was really no vacancy in the bank at the moment, Mr. Bowlsby lent himself to the illusion that he required a private secretary. A few weeks later a vacancy occurred unexpectedly, that of paying-teller—a position in which Lynde acquitted himself with so much quickness and accuracy, that when Mr. Trefethen, the assistant cashier, died in the December following, Lynde was promoted to ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... arrests attention. His ideal personages had been drawn in such a sketchy way, they presented so many imperfectly harmonized features, that they never became real, with the exception, of course, of the story-teller himself. But the vigor with which the presentment of the imperial ship-carpenter, the sturdy, savage, eager, fiery Peter, was given in the few opening sentences, showed the movement of the hand, the glow of the color, that were in due time to display on a broader canvas the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... it to be his special duty so to tell it that judge, and counsellors, and jury, should all catch clearly every point that was to be made,—how ill would that story be told, how would those points escape the memory of the teller, and never come near the intellect of the hearers! And how would the knowledge that it would be so, confuse your tongue or mine,—and make exquisitely miserable that moment of rising before the audience! But our Solicitor-General rose to his legs a happy man, with all ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... battlefield of Marston Moor. We drove out to the field in the highest spirits. I, in particular, was elated at the thought of my escape from the drudgery of my office, as well as by the prospect of the agreeable companionship of Black and Harte, not to speak of Shepard, who was an admirable teller of American stories, of which ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... the meeting of the doctors round the sick child's bed, of their quotations from Hippocrates, of the uncertainty and helplessness of the orthodox practitioners, and of the ready resource of the free-lance—who happens also to be the teller of the story—is a richly typical one.[75] "We, the physicians and the father of the child, met about seven in the morning, and Della Croce made a few general observations on death, for he knew that Sfondrato ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... if he had lived in these days, and a sentence from his latest chapter got into Paul's head and went round and round: 'There lay the fair, gifted, almost idolized girl.' In Mr. Smith's moving page the fair, gifted, almost idolized girl was dying, and Paul did not as yet know enough of the story-teller's craft of that day to be sure that she would recover in the next chapter. She mixed herself with the lady of the sandy ringlets who had described him as a dirty boy, and the pathos of the situation ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... service of a wealthy daimyo, but subsequently, like thousands of other samurai, found himself reduced to desperate straits by the social and political changes of Meiji. It was then that he became a fortune-teller,—an itinerant uranaiya,—travelling on foot from town to town, and returning to his home rarely more than once a year with the proceeds of his journey. As a fortune-teller he was tolerably successful,—chiefly, I think, because of his perfect sincerity, ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... most part, were somewhat sad. One of these stories a fellow scribe borrowed from me and read aloud to a company, whom it pleased so much that there were many who asked leave to copy it and publish it abroad. So by degrees I became known as a teller of tales, which tales I caused to be copied and sold, though out of them I made but little. Still my fame grew till on a day I received a message from the Prince Seti, my twin in Ra, saying that he had read certain of my ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... male sheep in regard to the other sin is venial blackness. Whether the teller of such a tale as this should say so outright, may be matter of dispute; but, unless he say so, the teller of this tale does not know how to tell his tale truly. Blackness such as that will be all condoned, and the sheep received into almost any flock, on ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... performance, giving an evidently faithful picture of society, and evincing the art of a true story-teller."—Philadelphia Telegraph. ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... up cultivating, and let things just go to rack and ruin. I was never up there myself, but from what I've heard my father say, I rather think that must be the Hoskins place. They say he consulted some fortune teller a couple of years ago, who told him he would some day discover a gold mine on his property that would make him a millionaire; and ever since the farmer has spent about all his time digging here and there, but up to now without ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... enjoying myself. When my friend the politician gets too far into the personal details of the quorum pars magna fui, I find myself all at once exclaiming in mental articulation, Popgun! When my friend the story-teller begins that protracted narrative which has often emptied me of all my voluntary laughter for the evening, he has got but a very little way when I say to myself, What wouldn't I give for a pellet from that popgun! In short, so useful has that ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... feminine love of children, called the girl to her and pointed out the shepherds and shepherdesses carved on the white Italian marble of the fireplace; she invented a little story about them to amuse the child, while the mother stood by and at the end thanked the story-teller with more enthusiasm than seemed called for. Mrs. Lee did not fancy her effusive manner, or her complexion, and was glad when Dunbeg ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... that you have never a smattering of such graceful accomplishments yourself. I believe you wish that you could turn love-songs, or sing other men's with a good grace; perceiving as you do what a thing it is to be in request. Nay, you could find it in you to play the wizard's, the fortune-teller's part; to deal in thrones and in millions of money. For these, too, you observe, make their way in the world, and are high in favour. Gladly would you enter on any one of these vocations, rather than be a useless castaway. Alas, even ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... say, Molly?' said Lady Harriet, suddenly turning her eyes on Molly's face. 'Don't you think we've lost some of our popularity,— which at this time means votes—by coming so late. Come, answer me! you used to be a famous little truth-teller.' ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... run by the house, with the superintendent as paying teller. He had to be consulted, particularly as it was past banking hours; but the affair having been succinctly put before him by a committee, of which Lem and Gimpy and Stretch were the talking members, he readily consented ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... keen," said the story-teller, "for it is a long way off. Well, he had never felt them so objectionable as on one particular night, when, the house being full of company, it was decided that the boys should sleep in 'barracks,' as they called it; that is, all in ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... told before. Hence the emphatic sentences marked in the good old (but deserted) Italic type; and hence, too, the frequent interposition of the reminding old colloquial parenthesis, 'I say,' 'Mind,' and the like, when the story-teller repeats what, to a practised reader, might appear to have been sufficiently insisted upon before: which made an ingenious critic observe, that his works, in this kind, were excellent reading for the kitchen. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... going on, and, from his point of view, his indignation was perhaps comprehensible. His son was openly, before one of the tenants and a parcel of farm-hands, making use of a superstitious device in which no sane person could believe. Weston, as I remember it, compared him to a gipsy fortune-teller, and went on through the gamut of impostor, mountebank and charlatan, before he commanded him to desist on the moment. I don't quite know what came next, though something was said about a lifted riding-crop, but within the week Clarence ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... indebted to Providence and you; I considered it as a favor lent me: you are now pleased to demand it back; I therefore willingly restore it. Behold the ring with which you espoused me; I deliver it you. You bid me take the dowry back which I brought you; you will have no need for a teller to count it, nor I for a purse to put it in, much less a sumpter horse to carry it away."... So she left his palace in that manner, and returned weeping to her father's, to the great grief ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... few questions of minor importance—paid her $2—and left, under the decided impression that going to the fortune teller's was just as good as going to the opera, and the cost scarcely a trifle more—ergo, I will disguise myself and go again, one of these days, when other amusements fail. Now isn't she the devil? That is to say, isn't she a right ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
