"Dancing-master" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a very little street, of very little houses, most of them with very large brass plates like Miss Squilsby's. Coal-merchants, architects and surveyors, two surgeons, a solicitor, a dancing-master, and of course several house-agents, occupy the houses—little two-storeyed edifices with little stucco porticoes. Goldmore's carriage overtopped the roofs almost; the first floors might shake hands with ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... guards, in their surprise, let me go, I started forward, leaping, and singing, and dancing, with the greatest extravagance, pointing to the way I saw the chief was going, and pretending to conduct him with many bows and flourishes worthy of a French dancing-master. Desperate as the device was, it appeared to have its effect, for neither the chief nor any of his companions again attempted to interfere with me, though they dragged poor Brian on as before. He, of course, could not ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... the extraordinary effect of music is related of a dancing-master of Alais, in the province of Languedoc. Being once over-fatigued in Carnival time by the exercise of his profession, he was seized with a violent fever, and on the fourth or fifth day, fell into a lethargy, which continued ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... returned the lieutenant; "but the vessel don't float the ocean that will tack under double-reefed topsails alone, against a heavy sea. Help her with her courses, pilot, and you shall see her come round like a dancing-master." ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... be a holiday at her cousins' school, on account of their dancing-master's ball, to which the Misses Piner were invited; and Mrs. Piner had promised Jemima she should be of the party. They rose in the morning with the pleasing hopes of enjoying a dance in the evening; and Ellen went a dozen times in the day to look at her new cap, ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... the cut glass mirrors, the crystal vases, and the bronze statuettes. In the meantime, and without fail, he had placed his right hand against his hip, giving the fine effect of right akimbo, and set one foot very elegantly a trifle more to the fore than the other: he looked like a provincial dancing-master. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. When miss delights in her spinnet, A fiddler may a fortune get; A blockhead, with melodious voice In boarding-schools can have his choice; And oft the dancing-master's art Climbs from the toe to touch the heart. In learning let a nymph delight, The pedant gets a mistress by't. Cadenus, to his grief and shame, Could scarce oppose Vanessa's flame; But though her arguments were strong, At least could hardly with them wrong. Howe'er ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... of some laughing cousin, are also advantages not always appreciated at the time, but which boys, when they have become men, often think over with gratitude, and a little remorse at the ungracious spirit in which they were received. Not even the dancing-master had afforded his mechanical aid to Coningsby, who, like all Eton boys of his generation, viewed that professor of accomplishments with frank repugnance. But even in the boisterous life of school, Coningsby, though his style was free and flowing, was always well-bred. His spirit ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... wits. Now, with thy outside and thy inside, thou art the very man to win a young girl's heart. Never doubt it! I tell thee it shall be so. Put but a bold face on the matter, sigh, smile, flourish thy hat, thrust forth thy leg like a dancing-master, put thy right hand to the left side of thy waistcoat, and pretty Polly ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Tettyx, the Dancing-Master, in Love with Olympia an Athenian Matron, threw himself from the Rock with great Agility, but was crippled ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... reserved, proud, and shy. His manners were not perfect, and he knew it; he was easily embarrassed, and, at such moments, he grew even more stiff and formal than before, while his feet mechanically performed upon the carpet a dancing-master's measure. Anxious as he now was to win the Queen's good graces, his very anxiety to do so made the attainment of his object the more difficult. He entirely failed to make any headway whatever with the haughty hostile girl before him. She coldly ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... the circumstance that she began early in life to be a belle, and age cannot stale such women. Brought up with board at her back, books on her head, to guard her complexion as if it were her fair name, to be diligent at harp practice and conscientious with the dancing-master, she is almost the last of a school that nursed but the single aim of subjugating man. To-night, at seventy-something, she is a bit of pink bisque fragility, bubbling tirelessly with reminiscence, her vivacity unimpaired, ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... limbs and to bend them like a stage-dancer, and this too although endowed with strength and might. And there is in this a very noble addition to nature, not to conduct themselves in a disorderly manner and disobediently towards the instructions of man; for after the dancing-master had made them expert, and they had learnt their lessons accurately, they did not belie the labour of his instruction whenever a necessity and opportunity called upon them to exhibit what they had been taught. For the whole troop came ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... good-bye, white man"), we rounded the point, and, with increasing pace, bore away through the outlying islands for the open sea. There was a strong trade blowing, making the old barky caper like a dancing-master, which long unfamiliar motion almost disagreed with some of us, after our long quiet. Under its hastening influence we made such good time that before dinner Vau Vau had faded into nothingness, mingling like the clouds with the soft ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... Lord Mayor's own daughters; Alderman Dobbins's gals; Sir Charles Hopper's three, who have the great house in Baker Street; and your humble servant, who was rather slimmer in those days—twenty-nine of us had a dancing-master on purpose, and practised waltzing in a room over the Egyptian Hall at the Mansion House. He was a splendid man, that ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... never be taught by a French dancing-master, whose art made him at once shudder and laugh. HORACE, by his own confession, was a very awkward rider, and the poet could not always secure a seat on his mule: METASTASIO humorously complains of his gun; the poetical sportsman ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Scar. A Mungrel Dancing-Master; therefore, Sir, since all the Injury's mine, I'll pardon him for a Dance, and let the Agility of his Heels save his Bones, with your ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... education I propose, I do not mean, in the slightest manner, to break in upon the moral system of the Quakers, as described in the first volume. I do not propose to them the polite arts. I do not recommend them to make children musicians, or that they should learn, under the dancing-master, to step gracefully. I advise only such knowledge as will be ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... he had recovered complete possession of his own impudence; his party-colored eyes twinkled cheerfully, and he accompanied his modest announcement of himself with a dancing-master's bow. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... he used to say that he wrote Love in a Wood at nineteen, the Gentleman Dancing-Master at twenty-one, the Plain Dealer at twenty-five, and the Country Wife at one or two and thirty. We are incredulous, we own, as to the truth of this story. Nothing that we know of Wycherley leads us to think him incapable of sacrificing truth to vanity. And his memory in the decline of his ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hugging the Bailiff in his Arms, and thrust eight Guineas into his Hand as a Reward, thinking he had brought him the News of a Five Hundred Pound Prize in the Lottery; and then capered about the Room like a Dancing-Master, calling in French to his Valet and Interpreter, who were in an adjacent Room, to come to partake of his Joy. By this time three dirty Ruffians like Street-Robbers were at the Chamber-door, and ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... as if in the dark one had clasped as she thought a sweetheart, to find when the light came that her arms were entwined around the dancing-master, or the tailor. But only for an instant. She was really touched and charmed. She became more and more ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... elections, he became a magistrate; and if Mrs Wilkins had had the politeness to die, he would have married Lady Diana O'Huggomy, the daughter of an Irish earl; but Mrs Wilkins did not die, and Lady Diana ran away with a dancing-master. His son had been eighteen years at the bar, and never had had a brief; his daughters had been twenty years on the world, and never had had an offer; but he still expected to see Richard lord chancellor, and his three girls peeresses. A country gentleman, a county magistrate, perfectly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... excess, parents are bound to regard the principle, which is involved in the petition, "Lead us not into temptation." Would it not be inconsistent, to teach this prayer, to the lisping tongue of childhood, and then send it to the dancing-master, to acquire a love for a diversion, which leads to constant temptations that so ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... the queen; 'she dares to answer! Tie her to my horse's tail and I'll just carry her at once to the best dancing-master in the town to learn how ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... society is so full of artificialities that men are deceived as to whom they are marrying, and no one but the Lord knows. After the dressmaker, and the milliner, and the jeweler, and the hair-adjuster, and the dancing-master, and the cosmetic art have completed their work, how is an unsophisticated man to decipher the physiological hieroglyphics, and make accurate judgment of who it is to whom he offers hand and heart? This is what makes so many recreant husbands. They make an honorable marriage ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... take rappee, and presented her with a snuff-box of papier mache — he supplied her with a powder for her teeth — he mended her complexion, and he dressed her hair in the Paris fashion — he undertook to be her French master and her dancing-master, as well as friseur, and thus imperceptibly wound himself into her good graces. Clinker perceived the progress he had made, and repined in secret. — He attempted to open her eyes in the way of exhortation, and finding it produced no effect had recourse to prayer. ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... for many a long year. Here we live in an old rumbling mansion, that looks for all the world like an inn, but that we never see company. Our best visitors are old Mrs. Oddfish, the curate's wife, and little Cripplegate, the lame dancing-master; and all our entertainment your old stories of Prince Eugene and the Duke of Marlborough. I hate ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... a French dancing-master. Let's go to Paris and learn the savate, Ned. It must be a new sensation to stand on one leg and knock a fellow's hat off with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... portion of it into a play; but it appears that, among other shifts to keep his disguise, the Lord Francis, who was highly skilled in all the accomplishments of the age, was fain to enter Mrs. Desaguiliers' school at Hackney in the habit of a dancing-master, and that as such he taught corantoes and rounds and qyres to the young gentlewomen. Whether the governante, who was herself a stanch royalist, winked at the deception, I know not; but her having done so is not improbable. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... saluted me with a bow which reflected great credit on his former dancing-master. He murmured the polite formula in a low tone, at the same time shooting another covertly laughing glance at me out of his eyes. As the door closed behind him, "Ah, that's a sleek devil!" said Grandpa Keeler, giving me a meaning glance ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... was with the daughters of his dancing-master, both of whom seemed inclined to draw unwarranted conclusions from the freedom of his intercourse with them. The closing scene of this little drama must be ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... probably return with a good knowledge of Greek, perfect master of metaphysics and the pipe, extravagant in his political opinions, a sceptic in religion, and with some such ideas of the poetry of thought, as a New England dancing-master has of the poetry of motion, or a teacher of psalmody, of the art of music. After all, this is better than sending a boy to England, whence he would come back with the notions of Sir William Blackstone to help to overturn ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... right afore the wind, you see, and the boat swings fore and aft, like a French dancing-master. If she had a swayed only a leetle grain, we might all have gone to ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... or some sort of optical delusion that made the tip of the huge berg seem to come lower and lower, then draw back again as if making a ceremonious bow like a dancing-master? ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... everything, in twenty lessons. Why should not one learn to dance? It is pure superstition! Here is mama, who used to get angry because the teacher was always clutching at my knees. That was because she is not cultured. Of what importance is it? He's only the dancing-master." ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... where he stays an hour and a half to bait—after which we see him lounging in the carriage of some fair compatriote with herself and daughters. If we are paying a morning visit, in he comes, "glissarding it" into the drawing-room, and bowing like a dancing-master; nor does he disdain to produce a small book of testimonials, in which the subscribers have agreed to give him a poetic character, and compare him to a torrent, to a nightingale, to an eagle, to an avalanche. They who love flattery as a bee loves honey, are all captivated, and almost ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... melody in phthisis, gout, hydrophobia, the bites of venomous reptiles, etc. There is a case in the Lancet of a patient in convulsions who was cured in the paroxysm by hearing the tones of music. Before the French Academy of Sciences in 1708, and again in 1718, there was an instance of a dancing-master stricken with violent fever and in a condition of delirium, who recovered his senses and health on hearing melodious music. There is little doubt of the therapeutic value of music, but particularly ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... introduction of quadrilles and country dances or contredanses, the inaptitude of nine-tenths of mankind for dancing was still more eminently demonstrated in the murders of the minuet. For (as Morall, the dancing-master of Marie Antoinette, used passionately to exclaim)—que de choses dans un minuet! What worlds of modest dignity—of alternate amenity and scorn! The minuet has all the tender coquetry of the bolero, divested of its licentious fervour. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... which had been carefully preserved, was taken down from the shelf for the amusement of the children; but though they were well enough pleased with it, the instrument was never brought from its place without creating alarm in the mind of their mother lest anybody should hear it. At length a dancing-master, who was giving lessons in the neighbourhood, borrowed the fiddle, and, to the great relief of the family, it was never returned. Many years later Mr. Fairbairn was present at the starting of a cotton mill at Wesserling in Alsace belonging to Messrs. Gros, Deval, and Co., for which his Manchester ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... of the large gymnasium of the Manhattan Trade School for Girls was secured, and every Saturday evening, from eight until eleven, young men and women come in and dance to excellent music, under the instruction, if they need it, of a skilled dancing-master. A small fee is charged, partly to defray expenses, and partly to attract a class of people who disdain philanthropy and settlements. The experiment is new, but it is undoubtedly successful. As many ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... man suppose that it matters little whether the most universally popular of the serious authors of a generation—and Macaulay was nothing less than this—affects style coupe or style soutenu. The critic of style is not the dancing-master, declaiming on the deep ineffable things that lie in a minuet. He is not the virtuoso of supines and gerundives. The morality of style goes deeper 'than dull fools suppose.' When Comte took pains to prevent any sentence from exceeding two lines of his manuscript or five of ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... entrance of the usher, who glided softly into the room on tiptoe, like a dancing-master, and handed a letter and a card to the minister who was still shivering in front of the fire. When he saw that envelope, of a satiny shade of gray, and of peculiar shape, the Irishman involuntarily started, while the duke, having opened ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... friend of yours, he should know better how to conduct himself, that's all. Har you a dancing-master, young feller, that you cut them there capers before gentlemen?" growled Mr. Moffat; who hated Mr. Billings, for the excellent reason that ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... went out quickly. Rufus sat biting the end of his quill. Halfman stepped forward and made him a series of extravagant salutations, which parodied the most elaborate congees of a dancing-master. ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... parents, their idol and joy. A dancing-school having opened near their home, the daughter, for accomplishment, was sent to it. She came from her home, modest, and her innate spirit of purity rebelled against the liberties taken by the dancing-master, and the men he introduced to her. She became indignant at the indecent attitudes she was called upon to assume, but noticing a score of young women, many of them from the best homes in the town, all yielding to the vulgar embrace, she cast aside that spirit of modesty which had been the development ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... affection equal to what Madame Denis entertained for her other two children. Thus poor Emilie, always afraid of being scolded, retained a natural awkwardness, which the repeated lessons of her dancing-master had not been able ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... three turns he became so dizzy that he was compelled to stop. "When I was at l'ecole militaire," added the Emperor, "I tried again and again to overcome dizziness which waltzing produced, but I could not succeed. Our dancing-master having advised us, in learning to waltz, to take a chair in our arms instead of a lady, I never failed to fall with the chair, which I pressed so lovingly that it broke; and thus the chairs in my room, and that of two or three of my companions, were destroyed, one after the other." This tale told ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... saw one. Had she been composed, she might have noticed the threadbare cleanliness of his dress, the odd cap that crowned his iron-gray locks, and the peculiar manner of his walk; for our little old maid had stumbled upon no less a person than Monsieur Jean Leclerc, the dancing-master of Dalton. Not that this accomplishment was much in vogue in the embryo city; but still there were a few who liked to fit themselves for firemen's balls and sleighing-party frolics, and quite a large class of children were learning betimes such graces as children in New England receive more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... that no woman alive can distinguish between a gentleman and a dancing-master! A posture or two, and you interpret worth. My dear ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little brown paw on his heart, bowed again, coughed, sneezed, and finally began an oration. If his appearance was too funny, his words and gestures were a hundred times more so. He rolled his eyes, he declaimed, he posed and pirouetted like a miniature dancing-master, and his little cracked voice rose higher and higher as his own fine words and expressions ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... opened in Dublin by John Ogilby,—dancing-master, theatrical manager, playwright, scholar, translator, poet,—now best known, perhaps, for the ridicule he inspired in Dryden's MacFlecknoe and Pope's Dunciad. At the beginning of his versatile career he was a successful London dancing-master, popular with "the nobility ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... dance, and she complied. The music would have stimulated an Egyptian mummy, Carley thought, and the subdued rose lights, the murmur of gay voices, the glide and grace and distortion of the dancers, were exciting and pleasurable. Morrison had the suppleness and skill of a dancing-master. But he held Carley too tightly, and so she told him, and added, "I imbibed some fresh pure air while I was out West—something you haven't here—and I don't want it ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... French romancer would have us believe, form a large class of the population around the Golden Gate. Nevertheless, the story is of the Crusoe order, and is concerned with the adventures of the restless young Californian, Godfrey Morgan, and his companion, the dancing-master, Tartlet, upon a strange island where they have been wrecked. The story is one of the most amazing efforts of Verne's genius, and certainly lacks neither interest nor amusement. The illustrations are very numerous and equal the text ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... manners might be unpleasant, he had claims on the indulgence of a young lady, who was at a loss how to employ her idle time. In the first place, he was a man. In the second place, he was not as old as the music-master, or as ugly as the dancing-master. In the third place, he was an admirer of Emily; and the opportunity of trying to shake his allegiance by means of a flirtation, in Emily's absence, was too good an opportunity ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... shoe-manufacturer,—and shoe-manufacturers, we all know, are highly respectable people, often become great men, and get sent to Congress. An apothecary might have figured as an M.D. A greengrocer might have been apotheosized into a merchant. A dancing-master would flourish on the family-records as a professor of the Terpsichorean art. A taker of daguerreotype portraits would never be recognized in "my great-grandfather the artist." But a barber is unmitigated and immitigable. It cannot be shaded off nor toned down nor brushed up. Besides, was greatness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... him and broke her promise, he would carry her back directly to England. They were pressed to stay for the great fete at St. Cloud; he excused himself, "because it would make him miss a music-meeting at Worcester;" and she excused herself from the fireworks at Madame Pompadour's, "because it was her dancing-master's hour." I will tell you but one more anecdote, and I think You cannot be imperfect in your ideas of them. The Mar'echale de lowendahl was pleased with an English fan Lady Coventry had, who very civilly gave it her: ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... tavern, which exists still, we believe, a venerable relic of the border past, was, in the year 1777, the abode of a "number of Quakers, together with one druggist and a dancing-master, sent to Winchester under guard, with a request from the Executive of Pennsylvania, directed to the County-Lieutenant of Frederick, to secure them." The reasons for this arrest and exile may be found in a Congressional ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke |
