"Minuet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you are not, Phil," said Kirkwood. "What you were trying to whistle is the 'Lucia Sextette' upside down. Rose, let's have the 'Mozart Minuet' we used to play. We ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... of Canada," said he. "I have no friends yet to offer you, though you shall have some young dogs like yourself very soon. What do you like?—riding, hunting, a quiet minuet on the terrace, eh? Ah me, the coquettes of ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... She had forced the Castilian pride to yield her the precedence. She had summoned Italian princes to prostrate themselves at her footstool. Her authority was supreme in all matters of good breeding, from a duel to a minuet. She determined how a gentleman's coat must be cut, how long his peruke must be, whether his heels must be high or low, and whether the lace on his hat must be broad or narrow. In literature she gave law to the world. The fame of her great writers filled Europe. No other country could ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Minister (religious) pastro. Minister (polit.) ministro. Ministry ministraro. Minor (age) neplenagxa. Minor (mus.) molo, mola. Minority (age) neplenagxo. Minority malplimulto. Minstrel bardo, kantisto. Mint mento. Minute menueto. Minuet (time) minuto. Minute (note) noto. Minute malgrandega. Minuti detaleto. Miracle miraklo. Miraculous mirakla. Mire sxlimo, koto. Mirror spegulo. Mirth gajeco, kun—. Miry sxlimhava. Misapply ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... little doubt that there are men capable of asking such a question; but we know no way of answering it but by asking in return why an Esquimaux Indian should not compose an overture equal to any of Handel's, or a Dutch boor dance a pas seul as well as Vestris, or a minuet as well ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... blue feather—and a pretty nag to ride on—and all the soldiers to present arms as you pass, and say, "There goes the Captain's lady"? What do you think of a side-box at Lincoln's Inn playhouse, or of standing up to a minuet with my Lord ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of our contemporary impatience with fixed stanzaic forms is due perhaps to the failure to recognize that the greater poets succeed in making over every kind of poetic pattern in the act of employing it, just as a Chopin minuet differs from a Liszt minuet, although both composers are using the same fundamental form of dance music. We must allow for the infinite variety of creative intention, technique and result. The true defence of rhyme and stanza against ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... for the promotion of civilization have engaged Mr. Tom Matthews to teach the Hottentots the minuet-de-la-Cour and tumbling. He departs with the other missionaries when the hot weather ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... ahead,[202] and was so feeble that he could scarcely drag himself upstairs. Attempts to teach him dancing failed from the extreme weakness of his knees.[203] He showed a taste for music, and could scrape a minuet on the fiddle at six years of age. He read all such books as came in his way. His parents objected to light literature, and he was crammed with such solid works as Rapin, Burnet's Theory of the Earth, and Cave's ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... a lady declares, 'that goodness and greatness are synonymous words;' and when his sister marries, she complains that her brother 'has long made all other men indifferent to her. Such an infinite difference!' In the evening, according to custom, she dances a minuet with her bridegroom, but whispers a friend that she would have performed better had she ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... know anything better than Fifth Avenue at Madison Square of a summer's night, with the hobos dozing already on the park benches, and people hanging round the entrance of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and the men lined up three deep at the Hoffman bar, and the girls walking by on their way to dance the minuet at the Haymarket up at Sixth Avenue and Thirtieth Street. I said the minuet. Do you get me?" There was an evil chuckle. "Across the Square Diana is twinkling up there in the sky, and beneath, in the Garden, they are pulling off a middle-weight bout to a decision. Just ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... Don Diego walked a minuet with Madam Clement; for whom, by this time, he had contracted an extraordinary degree of affection. Valentine had the honour to dance with the incomparable Serafina, whose beauty and attractions dazzled the eyes of the new-comers, and struck her bashful partner with awe and confusion; ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... the poor maidens of Leipzig, Witty simplicity come,—come, then, to glad us again! Comedy, oh repeat thy weekly visits so precious, Sigismund, lover so sweet,—Mascarill, valet jocose! Tragedy, full of salt and pungency epigrammatic,— And thou, minuet-step of our old buskin preserved! Philosophic romance, thou mannikin waiting with patience, When, 'gainst the pruner's attack, Nature defendeth herself! Ancient prose, oh return,—so nobly and boldly expressing All that thou thinkest and hast thought,—and what the reader ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... was an art to be acquired only with long study. It was a necessity that a gentleman should dance, and dance well, and the stately minuet required accuracy, grace, and dignity. Dancing in those days was an art; it has fallen grievously ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... Hospital inmates will usually be content with hurdy-gurdies, and the poorer classes may be supplied with ballads at their own homes. Some patients will recover with all the rapidity of a jig, while others will mend in minuet-time. And surely the public welfare will be eminently promoted, when our physicians' prescriptions are printed from music-type, and when we have nothing more nauseous to swallow than the words ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... beauty", daughters of "the Thirty-four", and the church of waiting ladies, the carpeted path between palms and exotics, and how the ticket- holders heard the organ tell the Cantilenet Nuptiale and Bennett's Minuet; and then the multitudinous stir: behold the bridegroom cometh!—the little necessary bridegroom of no importance, and then the white entry of bride and bridal train, while the choir knelt to sing "O ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... touched, however, by one of their lesser successes, that was called "Minuet," which seemed to have a ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... The world had been all shaken up and everything was confused and no one could put it to rights. All those dames whose ancestors had sailed unknown waters were in the front row of the chorus, and all the chorus girls were dancing a stately minuet at Old Point Comfort. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was trying to commit suicide by becoming a biological freak, and the Madonna of the Chair was wearing a smartly ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... fallen. For I had fancied, that for the freezing of the sound, it was necessary for it to be wrapped up, and, as it were, preserved in breath. But I found my mistake, when I heard the sound of a kit playing a minuet ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... much with the great, Handel was no flatterer. He once told a member of the royal family, who asked him how he liked his playing on the violoncello? "Vy, sir, your highness plays like a prince." When the same prince had prevailed on him to hear a minuet of his own composition, which he played himself on the violoncello, Handel heard him out very quietly; but when the prince told him, that he would call in his band to play it to him, that he might hear the full effect ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... city, and this afternoon we called on Cousin Dudley's friend, Professor Morales and his family. They were expecting us and as our coche drew up at the curb, the door flew open and el profesor flew out, seized Cousin Ada's hand, held it high, and led her into the house, minuet fashion. The senora, a mountainous lady with a rather striking mustache and the bosom of her black gown sprinkled with a snow fall of powder which couldn't find even standing room on her face, conducted Cousin ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... the public pulse," replied Carley. "The graceful waltz, like the stately minuet, flourished back in the days when people ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... like the maxum of it, Master Muggins. What, tho' I am obligated to dance a bear, a man may be a gentleman for all that. May this be my poison if my bear ever dances but to the very genteelest of tunes. 'Water parted'*, or the minuet ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... coffins, pouring in abundant spirits of wine.' The new Louis with his Court is rolling towards Choisy, through the summer afternoon: the royal tears still flow; but a word mispronounced by Monseigneur d'Artois sets them all laughing, and they weep no more. Light mortals, how ye walk your light life-minuet, over bottomless abysses, divided from you by ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... much assurance as though it had been a masterpiece of harmony. Then, what will scarcely be believed, but which yet is gospel truth, worthily to crown this sublime production, I tacked to the end thereof a pretty minuet which was then having a run on the streets.... I gave it as my own just as resolutely as though I had been speaking ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... called. Alas! how altered now! Tho' indeed my own Misfortunes do not make less impression on me than they ever did, yet now I never feel for those of an other. My accomplishments too, begin to fade—I can neither sing so well nor Dance so gracefully as I once did—and I have entirely forgot the MINUET DELA ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... back to the lovers, a reflected gleam from those fair autumn days illumined their thoughts. Mendelssohn's Minuet called up before them a vision of the villa by the sea, of rooms filled with the perfume of the terraced garden, of cypresses lifting their dark heads into the soft sky, of flaming sails upon ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... appurtenances of her aunt's toilet-box. And when the fragile thing, so soon to be swallowed up by the earth in its great earthquake, had been propped by pillows, she began to paint her wrinkled face as if going to dance a minuet with death. First the black rings about the languid eyes were whitened, then the earthen cheeks were rouged, and finally the livid lips and nostrils were pencilled with the rosy ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... splendid ball at the Abbey of Holyrood-house, on the Queen's birthday, given by Colonel Graeme. I exhibited my existence in a minuet, and as I was dressed in a full chocolate suit, and wore my most solemn countenance, I looked as you used to tell me, like the fifth act of a deep Tragedy. Lord K—— danced with Miss C——, by the fire of whose eyes, his ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... the favorites will the king throw his handkerchief? With which of the two will he converse most? Will he feel at ease as he treads the minuet under the eyes of the devotee? Or will he venture to recognize HER in presence ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... banquet was over, and the ladies had got some light shawls and gone out into the mild summer night, and when the long marquee was cleared, and the band installed at the farther end, then there was a murmured talk of a minuet. Who could dance ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... Cork, when it was goin' among the children, bad luck to them—I that was near dyin' of it when I was an infant; and I was the only officer in the regiment, when we were at Athlone, that was prevented going to the race ball—and I would not for a hundred pounds. I was to dance the first minuet, and the first country dance, with that beautiful creature, Miss Rose Cox. I was makin' a glass of brandy punch—not feelin' quite myself—and I dhressed and all, in our room, when Ensign Higgins, a most thoughtless young man, said something disrespectful about a beautiful mole she had on her chin; ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... deliberation, wore the green suit with yellow ribbons, since there was a ball that night in honor of his nearing marriage, and a confluence of gentry to attend it. Miss Vining and he walked through a minuet to some applause; the two were heartily acclaimed a striking couple, and congratulations beat about their ears as thick as sugar-plums in a carnival. And at nine you might have found the handsome dramatist alone upon the East Terrace of Ouseley, pacing to and fro in ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... let us hasten to find our hostess. They will be forming for the minuet directly, and you must dance it with me, sweet wife,—unless you prefer ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... join the enraptured audience whom Mrs. Jordan is delighting with her favourite part of Priscilla Tomboy in The Romp. You may assist at the concerts of Signer Venanzio Rauzzini and Monsieur La Motte; you may take part in a long minuet or country dance at the Upper or Lower Assembly Rooms, which Bunbury will caricature; you may even lose a few pieces at the green tables; and, should you return home late enough, may watch a couple of stout chairmen at the door of the "Three Tuns" in Stall Street, hoisting that seasoned toper, Mr. ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... Or is it meant that this airy gentry shall come in a Minuet step, and go off in a Jig? The phenomenon of a tripping crank is indeed novel, and ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... shock (for it was a great one to him) when he heard Abel on the Viol da Gamba. The Violin was hung on the willow; Abel's Viol da Gamba was purchased, and the house resounded with melodious thirds and fifths from 'morn to dewy eve!' Many an Adagio and many a Minuet were begun, but none completed; this was wonderful, as it was Abel's own instrument, and, therefore, ought to ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... grown-up dances," said Dorothy, "only the two-step and minuet. I think the minuet is the prettiest ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... consciousness of having marched well, fought well, deserved well. Down the pike, where Taylor kept the rear, burst a rattle of musketry. The Stonewall scrambled to its feet. "What's that? Darn it all! the Virginia Reel's beginning!" An officer hurried by. "Sit down, boys. It's just a minuet—reconnoissance of Fremont and Dick Taylor! It's all right. Those Louisianians are damned good dancers!" A courier quitting the knoll above the pike gave further information. "Skirmish back there, near the Capon road. Just a feeler of Fremont's—his ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... eleven o'clock when the car rolled down the main street of El Toro. From the sidewalk, sundry citizens, of diverse shades of color and conditions of servitude, observing Minuet Farrel, halted abruptly and stared as if seeing a ghost. Don Mike wanted to shout to them glad words of greeting, of affectionate badinage, after the fashion of that easy-going and democratic community, but he feared to make the girl at his side conspicuous; so he contented himself by uncovering ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... lived close by. We were merry enough before the evening was out. Bella Barnes played the piano middling, and Maddie could sing first-rate, and all of them could dance. The last thing I recollect was Starlight showing Maddie what he called a minuet step, and Jonathan and the old woman sitting on the ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... I danced a minuet with her at Bury that very night, before I lost my poor leg. And I quarrelled with your ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... home. She's marvellously pretty, to my mind. She looks a high-bred wench. Odd it is, Beauchamp, to see a lady's-maid now and then catch the style of my lady. No, by Jove! I've known one or two—you couldn't tell the difference! Not till you were intimate. I know one would walk a minuet with a duchess. Of course—all the worse for her. If you see that uncle of Miss Denham's—upon my honour, I should advise him: I mean, counsel him not to trust her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... poetry were inseparable. Dancing is the poetry of motion, and its connection with music, as the poetry of sound, occurs at all times. In our own day musical themes are marked by forms originally dance times, as waltz time, gavotte time, minuet time, etc. ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... little before daylight arrived, and after that were treated to an unusually elaborate grooming. Finn had an exciting sense of impending change and adventure, and even Tara seemed moved to a stately kind of restlessness which kept her pacing the den as though performing a minuet, instead of sitting or lying at her ease. Tara seemed to be a good deal moved and excited when two bright nickel chains, with queer little tin medals attached to them, were produced, and fitted on two new green collars ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... After a minuet had been paced to the gentle music of the lute and clavichord, a schottische succeeded to the martial skirl ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... these legs: there was no sitting cross-legged in a chair for St. George: he was not constructed along those lines. Hardly a week had passed before he had them across Spitfire's mate; had ridden to hounds; danced a minuet with Harry and Kate; walked half-way to Kennedy Square and back—they thought he was going to walk all the way and headed him off just in time; and best of all—(and this is worthy of special mention)—had slipped them into ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to invisible band-playing, and was trying to catch hold of the buttercups. I lay down at full length and looked off through the stems, and then I saw for the first time how close they were, and that they constantly swayed and touched, and sometimes locked fast together for a second. Stately as a minuet it looked, but joyous and loving as the wildest waltz I ever danced in your arms, my darling. Oh, how dare we presume to be so sure that the flowers are not glad as we are glad! On such a day as to-day I never doubt it; and I picked one as reverently and ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... aristocratic (stage) manners. She returns his tenderness, as it is extremely natural a young person so educated and brought up would return that of a criminal, who has made an impression on her heart by shooting her servants, rifling her trunks, and forcing her to dance a minuet with him on a deserted ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... and made a gushing little speech, with every eye upon her, in the middle of the room, without a thought of consequences. The Aide-de-Camp was also empresse, one would have thought that he was acting himself, the way he bowed and picked up Hilda's fan—a grace lingered in it from the minuet he had danced the week before, in ruffles and patches, with the daughter of the Commander-in-Chief. Duff got out of the way to enable the newly-introduced Head of the Department of Education to inform Miss Howe that he never went to the ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... that Life, and those Spirits, which formerly raised his Fancy, and fired his Imagination. The same Folly hinders a Man from submitting his Behaviour to his Age, and makes Clodius, who was a celebrated Dancer at five and twenty, still love to hobble in a Minuet, tho he is past Threescore. It is this, in a Word, which fills the Town with elderly ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... and arm gracefully high, in the old minuet pose, and laughed up at Clarence. He wasn't supposed to be her lover, and yet he saw through Gail ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... tableaux-vivants, or even acted. There was "Pattikin's House;" I am sure we had the greatest fun with those pictures, we being so many girls: and "The man all tattered and torn that married the maiden all forlorn;" that was on p. 652 of the volume for 1876: "The Minuet," in January, 1877: "Hagar in the Desert," in June, 1877; my aunty did that, and it was lovely: the little girl in "The Owl That Stared," in November, 1876; and "Leap-Year," in the same number. All these we had at our own home, but there are lots of others that might ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... single word remained with him.[88] He was absolutely without verbal memory, and he pronounces himself wholly incapable of learning anything from masters. Madame de Warens tried to have him taught both dancing and fencing; he could never achieve a minuet, and after three months of instruction he was as clumsy and helpless with his foil as he had been on the first day. He resolved to become a master at the chessboard; he shut himself up in his room, and worked night and day over the books with indescribable ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... strange, quaint old mirror in the cloak-room. The Assembly Room had been added to the inn, about a hundred years before, by the different county families, who met together there once a month during the winter to dance and play at cards. Many a county beauty had first swung through the minuet that she afterwards danced before Queen Charlotte in this very room. It was said that one of the Gunnings had graced the apartment with her beauty; it was certain that a rich and beautiful widow, Lady Williams, had here been smitten with the noble figure of a young ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... begins to mount through pine woods, I took in my right hand the unhallowed staff, and with a quaking spirit applied it to the donkey. Modestine brisked up her pace for perhaps three steps, and then relapsed into her former minuet. Another application had the same effect, and so with the third. I am worthy the name of an Englishman, and it goes against my conscience to lay my hand rudely on a female. I desisted, and looked her all over from head to foot; the poor brute's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Sir Robert, with his face now crimson, as he too sprang to his feet, and catching up another of the filled cups. "But he shall drink it, boys, or I'll slit his miserable ears. Do you understand plain English, you minuet-dancing puppy?" ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... Columbine into the bedroom, sweeps the clothes together into a neat pile and stands waiting by the door. There enters Lord Eglantine, the Beau. A trifle pale, disordered, calm. He has been gambling all night. To the rhythm of a minuet Harlequin takes his cloak, hat, and cane, takes off his coat and gets him into a gorgeous dressing-gown, and so into his chair. And there he sits looking for all the world like the bundle of clothes ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... was young in those days, and esteemed as a gentleman of refinement and sensibility, with a queer taste for escapades, pardonable by reason of his youth. It was his pride to bear his part in the graceful tactics of a minuet, while a saddled horse waited for him at the door. He delighted to vanish of a sudden from the lighted circle of his friends into the byways where none knew him, or held him of account, not that ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... the hot sun of St. Helena) went back to their jobs. The victory was duly celebrated with dinners, garden parties and balls at which the new and very shocking "waltz" was danced to the great scandal of the ladies and gentlemen who remembered the minuet of ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... quizzing the Chamberlain. "See that you give me fair warning, and I'll practise the accustomed and essential reel. Upon my soul, I haven't danced since Lady Mary left, unless you call it so that foolish minuet. You should have seen her Grace at St. James's last month. Gad! she footed it like an angel; there's not a better dancer in London town. See that your wife's a dancer, whoever she may be, Sim; let her dance and sing and play the harpsichord or the clarsach—they ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... reserve all their decorations for the inexplicable dumb show of the Wood Daemon (that diphthong is my delight), the Castle Spectre, &c. &c. The Bleeding Nun in Raymond and Agnes is ushered in with a pre-scent-iment of blue flame and brimstone. Angela's mother advances in a minuet step, to soft music, like Goldsmith's bear, and is absolutely enveloped in flames—none but a salamander, or Messrs. Shadrach and company can enact the part with safety. But when we are presented with ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... and the bee seemed to come questioning the silence of the woods and droning disappointed away. The first excess of any sad feeling is half voluntary. Emilia could not help smiling, when she lifted her head out of a musing fit, to find that she had composed part of a minuet for the languid dancing motes in the shaft of golden light at her feet. "Can I remember it?" she thought, and forgot ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 'The minuet is conjugal; but the wedlock is chivalric. Even so would Amadis wind slow, stately, calm, through the mazes of life, with Oriana, when he had made obeisances enough to ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... day, child, you will know better than to think so. George Austin, as I conceive him, and as he is regarded by the world, is one of the triumphs of the other sex. I walked my first minuet with him: I wouldn't tell you the year, child, for worlds; but it was soon after his famous rencounter with Colonel Villiers. He had killed his man, he wore pink and silver, was most elegantly pale, ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... for I was watching the sky. By and by I looked back at the pasture and the open places in the wood, and all alike were filled with a wavering crowd that seemed to trip lightly and noiselessly as if in a minuet. Little by little they blotted out familiar outlines till only the tallest of pines looming dark against the lighter horizon had form. All else was a void, not that of chaos but a soft ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... were hard and forbidding; but long before any of us were born this room was the scene of many revelries; the vacant hearths were bright with flame; the fiddlers bowed and scraped; the seats were filled with belles and beaux, and the stately minuet was danced ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... rotatory thumbs on silken knees, Call'd all her vital spirits into each ear To listen: unawares they flitted off, Busying themselves about the flowerage That stood from our a stiff brocade in which, The meteor of a splendid season, she, Once with this kinsman, ah so long ago, Stept thro' the stately minuet of those days: But Edith's eager fancy hurried with him Snatch'd thro' the perilous passes of his life: Till Leolin ever watchful of her eye Hated him with a momentary hate. Wife-hunting, as the ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... vocalism^; chaunt, chant; psalm, psalmody; hymn; song &c (poem) 597; canticle, canzonet^, cantata, bravura, lay, ballad, ditty, carol, pastoral, recitative, recitativo^, solfeggio^. Lydian measures; slow music, slow movement; adagio &c adv.; minuet; siren strains, soft music, lullaby; dump; dirge &c (lament) 839; pibroch^; martial music, march; dance music; waltz &c (dance) 840. solo, duet, duo, trio; quartet, quartett^; septett^; part song, descant, glee, madrigal, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... ye shall live, as it were to swellings of music, while a noble height grows upon your smooth foreheads, and the sum-total of the blending movements of your bodies and brains shall, as seen from heaven, appear the minuet of a people. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... 8th, or 9th of next month; I have dinner parties every day. You shall dine with me on the 8th, for then Lady Frederick dines with me, and she will taste you. You shall sit next to Lady Frederick, and mind you flirt with her. I wonder if you are as amusing as your grandfather. I remember dancing a minuet with him at Versailles seventy ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... that had occurred in my cabin after dinner; every minute since we left Colombo was laid bare to its minutest detail. Lascars slipped by me in the half-darkness, the voices of two lovers near alternated with their expressive silences, and from the music saloon there came the pretty strains of a minuet, played very deftly. Under the influence of this music my thoughts became less exact; they drifted. My eyes shifted to the lights of the 'Porcupine' in the distance, and from them again to the figures passing ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mean time, the musicians commenced to play the grave and at the same time coquettish minuet, and the officers drew near the ladies to lead them to the dance. This was done, however, in so bold and unconstrained a manner, with such manifest nonchalance, the request was made with such levity, the words were so little respectful, that the ladies drew back frightened. Princess Amelia called ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... find the speed of a piston per minute? A. Double the stroke and multiply it by the number of revolutions a minuet. Thus an engine with a 12 inch stroke would travel 24 inches, or 2 feet, at a revolution. If it made 200 revolutions a minute, the travel of piston would be 400 feet ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... that was! It began like a minuet and ended something like the haymakers. Griselda had not the least idea what the figures or steps were, but it did not matter. If she did not know, her shoes or something about her did; for she got on famously. The music was lovely—"so the mandarins can't be deaf, though ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... its long arms moving lazily in the light breeze, near touching the ground as they passed, for the mill was built in the Dutch fashion. I know not what moved me, but hearing Mr. Manners carelessly humming a minuet while my grandfather explained the usefulness of the mill, I seized hold of one of the long arms as it swung by, and before the gentlemen could prevent was carried slowly upwards. Dorothy screamed, and her father stood stock still with amazement and fear, Mr. Carvel ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... colonial step and air, both of them too are beautiful, as Nova Scotia girls generally are. The first is young and delicate, and as blooming as a little blush-rose. She holds out with each hand a portion of her silk dress, as if she was walking a minuet, and it discloses a snow-white petticoat, and such a dear little foot and ankle—lick! Her step is short and mincing. She has a new bonnet on, just imported by the last English steamer. It has a horrid name, it is called a kiss-me-quick. It is ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... consort to settle nice points of etiquette and maintain a dignity befitting His Majesty's chosen representative. How did the seigneurs rank among themselves and with the leading English-speaking people? Who were to dance in the state minuet? Should dancing cease when the bishops came in, and for how long? Was that curtsy dropped quite low enough to her viceregal self, and did that debutante offer her blushing cheek in quite the proper way to Carleton when he graciously gave her the presentation kiss? How immeasurably ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... pressed into service, providing suitable care is taken to avoid unpleasant side effects on the state of the processor: while the special-purpose register is being used to hold an intermediate value, a delicate minuet is required in which the previous value of the register is saved and then restored just before the official function (and value) of the special-purpose ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... early Georgian damsels possessed they certainly had straight backs and level shoulders. The backboard was admirable training for the carriage of the stately sacque, the graceful flirting of the fan and for the dancing of the grave and dignified minuet. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... air of a minuet, and swept a low curtsy, coming up to the recover with the prettiest little foot in the world pointed out. Her mother came in as she was in this attitude; my lady had been in her closet, having taken poor Frank's conversion in a very serious way; the madcap girl ran up to her mother, put her arms ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... minuet with Madge Haldimand!" broke in Ruyven; "will you lend me your gold stock-buckle, ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... so strange a country. Indeed, the ambassadress could see nothing; for Doddington(68) stood before her the whole time, sweating Spanish at her, of which it was evident, by her civil nods without answers, she did understand a word. She speaks bad French, danced a bad minuet, and went away—though there was a miraculous draught of fishes for their supper, for it was a fast-day—but being the octave of their f'ete-dieu, they dared not even fast plentifully. Miss Chudleigh desired the gamblers would go up into the garrets—"Nay, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... dilettanti at the Opera. With the sole exception of an old and pretty muddy poodle, very wretched looking, and a critic, no doubt, who barked out something about forgetting sound tradition, all the spectators proclaimed Zamore the Vestris of dogs and the god of dancing. Our artist had performed a minuet, a jig, and a deux temps waltz. A large number of two-footed spectators had joined the four-footed ones, and Zamore enjoyed the honour of ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... in this new abode, which were perhaps more remarkable for their mirth than their decorum. There was no sort of frolic in which Goldsmith would not indulge for the amusement of his guests; he would sing them songs; he would throw his wig to the ceiling; he would dance a minuet. And then they had cards, forfeits, blind-man's-buff, until Mr. Blackstone, then engaged on his Commentaries in the rooms below, was driven nearly mad by the uproar. These parties would seem to have been of a most nondescript character—chance gatherings of any obscure authors or actors whom he ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... there was a pretty boy who could do things to the piano, a funeral-faced duck that could tell funny stories, and a bunch of six or eight likely-lookin' ladies and gents who'd laid themselves out to prance through what they called a minuet. Lastly ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... had a great aversion to dancing; and one Daneau wrote a Traite des Danses, in which he maintains that "the devil never invented a more effectual way than dancing, to fill the world with ——." The bishop of Noyon once presided at some deliberations respecting a minuet; and in 1770, a reverend prelate presented a document on dancing to the king of France. The Quakers consider dancing below the dignity of the Christian character; and an enthusiast, of another creed, thinks all lovers of the stage belong to the schools of Voltaire ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... suggesting that of a grandfather clock, was quaintly decorated with garlands of red roses. It had beautifully pierced hands, small brass cherub's heads at the corners, and at the top a single small hand pointed to its musical repertoire which consisted of: cotillion, jig, minuet, song, ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... can still have Variations for two oboes and one English horn, on the theme from "Don Giovanni," "La ci darem la mano," and a Gratulation Minuet for a full orchestra. I should be glad, likewise, to have your opinion about the full ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... to see me. In dance after dance they vaguely embodied the story of life, its meetings, its passions, its partings. A student of Shakspere, I had learned something of every dance alluded to in his plays, and hence partially understood several of those I now saw—the minuet, the pavin, the hey, the coranto, the lavolta. The dancers were attired in fashion as ancient ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... the marriage of her brother was "greatly exaggerated"—she lived to be ninety-eight, a century lacking two years! Her mind was bright to the last—when ninety she sang at a concert given for the benefit of an old ladies' home. At ninety-six she danced a minuet with the King of Prussia, and requested that worthy not to introduce her as "the woman astronomer, because, you know, I was only the assistant of my brother!" William Herschel died in his eighty-fourth year, with his fame at full, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... strategic movement has come off. And now give me some news, if you can get in a word. Dear me, there is Robert coming back across the lawn. What a mercy that Tony did not leave the motor. Robert always walks as if he was dancing a minuet. Look, there is Og imitating him! Or is he stalking him, thinking he is an enemy. ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... for three weeks and then resigned. He went back to the garret and sweet liberty—having had his taste of luxury, but miserable in it all—wondering how a gavotte or a minuet could make a man forget that he was living in a city where thirty thousand human beings were constantly only one meal beyond ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... Bracondale Jean found extremely pleasant. The great house, with its luxuriously-furnished rooms, its fine picture-gallery, where, often, in her hours of recreation, she wandered; the big winter-garden with palms and exotic flowers, the conservatories, the huge ballroom—wherein long ago the minuet had been danced by high-born dames in wigs and patches—the fine suites of rooms with gilded cornices—all were, to her, full ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... my son, if you want your ninety pistoles, you must patch up this marriage! [He goes out. The three FIDDLERS, left alone, continue their minuet, ...
— The Romancers - A Comedy in Three Acts • Edmond Rostand
... shakes hands with nature with a pair of fashionable gloves on, and leads "his Vashti" forth to public view with a look of consciousness and attention to etiquette, as a fine gentleman hands a lady out to dance a minuet. He is delicate to fastidiousness, and glad to get back, after a romantic adventure with crazy Kate, a party of gypsies or a little child on a common, to the drawing room and the ladies again, to the sofa and the tea-kettle—No, I beg his pardon, not to the singing, well-scoured tea-kettle, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... attic and transfigures the haunted chamber with a sheen of silver mist. From the spinning-wheel come a soft hum and a delicate whir; then a long-lost voice breathes the first notes of an old, old song. The melody changes to a minuet, and the lady in the portrait moves, smiling, from the tarnished gilt frame that surrounds her—then a childish voice ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... I expect to dance first goddess; I will not dance under Miss Minuet; I am sure I shew more to the audience than ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... and drew about them a needy tribe of poets and philosophers, that filled their heads with wild notions of content, and contemplation, and virtuous obscurity. She therefore enjoined me to improve my minuet-step with a new French dancing-master, and wait the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... the fair— Order and elegance presided there— Each gay Right Honourable had her place, To walk a minuet with becoming grace. No racing to the dance with rival hurry, Such was thy sway, O famed ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... left the ball-room and repaired to the throne-room, where the first minuet was formed. It is only necessary to recall that most courtly of slow and graceful dances to judge how well suited it was for this ball. The Queen danced with her cousin, Prince George of Cambridge. Her Majesty wore a wonderful dress of cloth of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... at last, the gentlemen returned to the ladies. He found himself standing in a doorway beside an elderly man of the most polished hearing and graceful manners, who was watching a minuet. ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... caricatured the beauties of nature; and skies of sunny brightness, that mocked the golden hues of even an American sun. The experience of Miss Emmerson went no further than the simple evolutions of the country dance, or the deliberate and dignified procession of the minuet. No wonder, therefore, that her faculties were bewildered by the complex movements of the cotillion: and, in short, as the good lady daily contemplated the improvements of the female youth around her, she became each hour more convinced of her own inability ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... valiant soldier, that you are going to teach me the "Czardasz." I learned it years ago from Tassilo Esterhazy; but I asked you to come here to set me right about that half-minuet step that begins it. I believe I have got into the habit of doing the man's part, for I used to be Pauline Esterhazy's partner after ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... ballet, cotillion, quadrille, waltz, reel, fandango, polka, two-step, polonaise, mazurka, schottische, allemande cancan, minuet, courant, bolero, gavot. Associated ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... he was just under sixty, "my march at present is more like a dab-chick's." A lady has left a description of him entering a room, "knees bent, and feet on tiptoe as if afraid of a wet floor." When his feet were not swollen with the gout, they were so slender, he said, that he "could dance a minuet on a silver penny." He was ridiculously lean, and his hands were crooked with his unmerited disease. An invalid, a caricature of the birds, and not particularly well dressed in spite of his lavender suit and partridge silk stockings, he has nevertheless contrived to ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... spinster, and Lawrence, the happy father, became completely reconciled. Soothed by the grateful influences of barbecued meats and draughts of rum and sugar, Lawrence led Miss Culpeper through the minuet. ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... jigging; and Reuben and I showed them how white people danced— though neither of us had any exact notions on the subject. Ashatea sometimes joined us, and moved about very gracefully, performing figures of her own invention, which I have since discovered greatly resemble those of the minuet of Europe. ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... schottische, waltz, etc., there are many who strongly object, but, danced in private homes and in most cases under the eye of the young girl's mother, there can be found nothing dangerously objectionable in this favorite amusement. The minuet is a stately, beautiful old dance that is sometimes introduced, enabling both old and young to join in its ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... slowly at Nunsmere—from the grasping of an idea to the pace of the church choir over the hymns. Life there is no vulgar, tearing two-step, as it is in Godalming, London, and other vortices of human passions, but the stately measure of a minuet. Delights are deliberate and have lingering ends. A hen would scorn to hatch a chicken with the indecent haste of her sister in the ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... Thomas's, and yet was it so well conducted that nobody felt a crowd. He had taken off all his doors, and so separated the old and the young, that neither were inconvenienced with the other. The ball began at eight; each man danced one minuet with his partner, and then began country dances. There were four-and-twenty couple, divided into twelve a@d twelve: each set danced two dances, and then retired into another room, while the other set took ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole |
