"Dance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and complicate parts of animal bodies: they must possess a much greater degree of minuteness, than that which was ascribed to the devils that tempted St. Anthony; of whom 20,000 were said to have been able to dance a saraband on the point of the finest needle without incommoding ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... satisfied by this concession. He climbed into bed again, and lay watching the pink patch on the wall. Yellow bars began to appear and to dance in the ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... allowance? Lucky girl! It was simply agonising to have to buy everything you needed on a quarter's allowance. They had lain awake for hours considering the problem. They were in despair! Nan had given them each a dress for Christmas. Nan was an angel! They wanted Nan to give a dance for them while ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... conflict of gladiators presented in the Forum, Furius Leptinus, a man of praetorian family, entered the lists as a combatant, as did also Quintus Calpenus, formerly a senator, and a pleader of causes. The Pyrrhic dance was performed by some youths, who were sons to persons of the first distinction in Asia and Bithynia. In the plays, Decimus Laberius, who had been a Roman knight, acted in his own piece; and being presented on the spot with ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... perhaps surprise the present generation to learn that the well-known circus man Jacob Showles was once a fire-eater, and that Del Fugo, well-known in his day as a dancer in the music halls, began as a fire-resister, and did his dance on hot iron plates. But the reader has two keener surprises in store for him before I close the long history of the heat-resisters. The first concerns our great American tragedian Edwin Forrest (1806-1872) who, according to James Rees (Colley Cibber), once essayed a fire-resisting act. Forrest ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... there came a supper, extemporized out of the remains of the dinner; after which, papas and mammas began to look at their watches, and remonstrate with daughters, coming up with sparkling eyes and hair a little shaken out of place, and pleading for "just one more dance." "You have been going on ever since one o'clock," remonstrate the parents; "And are ready to go on till one to-morrow," replied the children. By degrees, however, the frequent sound of wheels was heard, and the dancers got thinner ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Sanserre at least thought him more worthy her regard than any of those, the richness of whose habits made her know were of a higher rank:—she took particular notice of him, made him dance with her, and said a thousand gallant things to him; but he could very well have dispensed with hearing them, and found little satisfaction in any thing that deprived him of entertaining his dear Charlotta, who he easily knew by her air and shape from all those who were habited ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... this billowy expanse, appeared blown, despite their efforts, on the wind that swept in gusts out of the west. On the lawn at Jordan's Journey the fallen leaves were dancing madly like a carnival in rough carousal. Watching them it was easy to imagine that they found some frenzied joy in this dance of death—the end to which they had moved from the young green of the bud through the opulent abundance of the summer. The air was alive with their sighing. They rustled softly under foot as Abel walked up the drive, and then, whipped by a strong gust, fled in purple and wine-coloured multitudes ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... State. The purpose was to secure strong, beautiful, and supple bodies, inured to hardship, as a preparation for the life of the soldier. The only intellectual education was music, which consisted in playing the lyre as an accompaniment to the dance. Reading and writing were despised as being ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... crowded house. The ruffling of the face of the sea before a storm. The Sisters Sigsbee, Coon Delineators and Unrivalled Burlesque Artists, have finished their dance, smiled, blown kisses, skipped off, skipped on again, smiled, blown more kisses, and disappeared. A long chord from the orchestra. A chord that is almost a wail. A wail of regret for that which is past. Two liveried menials appear. They carry sheets of cardboard. ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... now, whose ready rhymes. Like Tommy Moore's, came tripping to their places— Reeling along a merry troll of chimes, With careless truth,—a dance of fuddled Graces; Hear it—Gazette, Post, Herald, Standard, Times, I'd write an epic! Coffee for its basis; Sweet as e'er warbled forth from cockney throttles Since Bob Montgomery's ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the jovial cup around, Our joys it will enhance, If any one is mournful found, One sip shall make him dance. ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... the attempt, and if you think the illustration beneath the dignity of the subject, I can only plead the difficulty of mathematics as an excuse. Let us suppose that a ball-room is fairly filled with dancers, or those willing to dance, and that a merry waltz is being played; the couples have formed, and the floor is occupied with pairs who are whirling round and round in that delightful amusement. Some couples drop out for a while and others strike in; the ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... shouted, "I have no doubt you have hit it, Harry. I believe, after all, that we are going to find it. That is splendid! I shall dance at your wedding, Harry, which I had begun to think I ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... clusters of piles set to mark the deep-water channels, which undulate far away in spotty chains like the studded backs of huge sea-snakes, and by the quick glittering of the crisped and crowded waves that flicker and dance before the strong winds upon the unlifted level of the shallow sea. But the scene is widely different at low tide. A fall of eighteen or twenty inches is enough to show ground over the greater part of the lagoon; ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... this morning I have little appetite. I come to the pond for a very different reason. I have to dance to-day before the guests of my father, and I wish to practise ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... if we cannot make our girls healthy quite yet, we shall learn to do it by-and-by. Meanwhile we must hold hard to the conviction, that not merely decent health, but even a high physical training, is a thing thoroughly practicable for both sexes. If a young girl can tire out her partner in the dance, if a delicate wife can carry her baby twice as long as her athletic husband, (for certainly there is nothing in the gymnasium more amazing than the mother's left arm,) then it is evident that the female frame contains muscular power, or its equivalent, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... half-past nine on Saturday and be silly for an hour or two. We'll play games and dance, shall we? Bring your husband of course, and ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... dresses and obviously had neither powder on her face nor the lightest touch of the rouge which became her so well. Moreover, she was listless beyond experience, and when he asked her if she would go to the Savoy and dance that night, she answered that she thought she would give up dancing altogether. It quite took his ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... made his way on deck, and began to sing, and dance, and halloo like a madman. One of his shipmates, named Wilkins, remonstrated against such unruly conduct, and received in return a blow on the side of the head, which sent him with great force against the gunwale. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... "Baranhoff it is! Big house, fine castle. Beautiful laughing ladies in lovely dressing. Gold, gold, I see everywhere on fingers, ears and necks. Money plenty. All make pleasure, good time, dancing, gambling; drink tea much from big copper dish. Ah, great man many sleeps gone by. This way they dance," then added the old creature, scrambling to her feet clumsily and catching up her tattered skirt daintily with each hand after the manner of a danseuse. Then, still with closed eyes, she glided gracefully and with dignified movement over the floor ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... Storrington, who was a woman of boundless energy, could work all day with secretaries, and could dance all night, gave brilliant parties in the season at her large Chelsea house. But she never invited to them Mr. David Vavasour Williams, that rising young barrister who had become so famous as a pleader of ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... with Miss Savine, or get that crack-brained aunt of hers to cure your neuralgia. There are also two young premium pupils, sons of leading Montreal citizens, in Mr. Savine's service, who dance attendance upon the fair Helen continually. It shouldn't be difficult to flatter them a ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... useful godsend are you to me now, King of the dance, companion of the feast, Lovely in all your nature! Welcome, you 35 Excellent plaything! Where, sweet mountain-beast, Got you that speckled shell? Thus much I know, You must come home with me and be my guest; You will give joy to me, and I will do All that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... time to time. Christmas Day they spent with the Hopes, who from first to last proved the kindest and most helpful of friends to them. The young men from the High Valley were there also, and the day was brightly kept,—from the home letters by the early mail to the grand merry-making and dance with which it wound up. Everybody had some little present for everybody else. Mrs. Wade sent Clover a tall india-rubber plant in a china pot, which made a spire of green in the south window for the rest of the winter; ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... freshness of the nocturnal sea took us in its huge embrace. The spray began to fly over our bows as we nosed into the glassy rollers, one of which, on the starboard side, admonished us, by half swallowing us, that only the mighty-limbed immortals might dance with safety on the bar that night, and that it were wise for even 45-foot yawls to hug the land till daylight. So, reluctantly, we kept the shadowy coast-line for our companion, as we steered for the southwestern end of the island; to our right, ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... the competition, though, probably through the forgetfulness of the master, I remember that I never received the promised prize. My next literary effort, written in 1876, was an account of a Zulu war dance, which I witnessed when I was on the staff of the Governor of Natal. It was published in the Gentleman's Magazine, and very kindly noticed in various papers. A year later I wrote another article, entitled "A Visit to the Chief ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... airy mazes of the dance, straining her ear to catch the mellow voice which uttered such graceful, fascinating nothings to Salome. Several times in the course of the cotillion Russell's hand clasped her, but even then he avoided looking at her, and ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Petrie, Royal Tombs i (Egypt Exploration Fund), pi. xi, 14, xv, 16. This is the record of a single year, the first in the reign of Semti, King of Upper and Lower Egypt. On it we see a picture of a king performing a religious dance before the god Osiris, who is seated in a shrine placed on a dais. This religious dance was performed by all the kings in later times. Below we find hieroglyphic (ideographic) records of a river expedition to fight the Northerners and of the capture of a fortified town called An. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... minuetting towards her down the single strip of matting. Her hair, hanging in short ringlets when released, fell forward round her neck as she bowed—the slightest dainty inclination, from side to side against the swaying of her dance. She was smiling her down-glancing, little sprite ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... angels hearken, and Anaitis, the leader of the starry host, calls even the Messiah in heaven out to the dance." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... fiction-making: in this respect, Dickens (and most of his contemporaries) seem now old-fashioned. The present realist creed would keep the novelist away and out of sight both of his fictive creations and his audience; it being his business to pull the strings to make his puppets dance—up to heaven or down to hell, whatever does it matter to the scientist-novelist? Tolstoy's novel "Resurrection" is as a subject much more disagreeable than Flaubert's "Madame Bovary"; but it is beautiful where the other is horrible, because it palpitates with a Christ-like sympathy for an erring ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... 'Lion, nevermore shalt thou kill a goat!' And it has remained thus to this day: the lion of Tabariat has still all his old-time power to carry off camels, but he can never do the slightest harm to even a new-born kid. The goats of the flocks dance in front of him at night, deriding him to his face, and always from that moment his right leg has ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... father was away from home, her step-sisters went off to a wedding dance. They told her not to forget to draw water from the well, and warned her that if she forgot, as she did the last time, they would beat her without mercy when ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... in the drawing-room. I think it belongs in the living-room, if it is in constant use, though of course it is very convenient to have it near by the one big room, be it drawing-room or dining-room, when a small dance is planned. I am going to admit that in my opinion there is nothing more abused than the piano, I have no piano in my own house in New York. I love music—but I am not a musician, and so I do not expose myself to the merciless banging of chance callers. Besides, my house is quite small ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... over a clean hundred winner for the day. Those who had no money fortunately had good credit with those of us who had, for there was yet much to be seen, and in Dodge in '82 it took money to see the elephant. There were several variety theatres, a number of dance halls, and other resorts which, like the wicked, flourish best under darkness. After supper, just about dusk, we went over to the stable, caught our horses, saddled them, and tied them up for the night. We fully expected to leave town by ten o'clock, for it was ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... ones!" the Old Year cried; "Have I not given you night and day, Over and over, score upon score, Wherein to live, and love, and pray, And suck the ripe world to its rotten core? Yet do you reek if my reign be done? E're I pass ye crown the newer one! At ball and rout ye dance and shout, Shutting men's cries of suffering out, That startle the white-tressed silences Musing beside the fount of light, In the eternal space, to press Their roses, each a nebula bright, More close to their lips serene, While ye wear ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... bank of the Canadian, hoping to find the Commanche and Kiowa Indians (who had been committing their atrocities during the whole of 1864) in their winter quarters. The Indians with our command, on every night, after making camp, being now on the war-path, indulged in the accustomed war dance, which, although new to most of us, became almost intolerable, it being kept up each night until nearly day-break; and until we became accustomed to their groans and howlings, incident to the dance, it was impossible to sleep. Each morning ...
— Frontier service during the rebellion - or, A history of Company K, First Infantry, California Volunteers • George H. Pettis
... That in the woodland springs, And we will crown our May-day queen With buds this fair month brings. Merriest of all the year Is the day we welcome here; We will sing and dance away, In our glee, this ...
— Cousin Hatty's Hymns and Twilight Stories • Wm. Crosby And H.P. Nichols
... was insisted upon even to a greater degree by the autocracy with the opening of war. The playing of dance music brought a visit from the police. The theatres at first were closed but later opened. Only plays of a serious or patriotic nature were originally permitted. Dancing was tabooed, but in the winter of 1915-16 Reinhardt ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... silver, with sixteen nymphs in as many niches, personating the provinces of the French kingdom. When, after some verses well sung but indifferently composed, these nymphs descended from their elevation, and took part in an intricate maze of dance, the Polish spectators remarked, in the excess of their admiration, that the French ballet was something that could be imitated by none of the kings of the earth. "I would rather," dryly adds a contemporary ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... dressed from head to foot, and had a hat put on his head, with which he did not seem at all pleased, but cut a very awkward figure, and seemed uneasy. The music was then ordered to play, with which he seemed much pleased, and when taken by the hand would leap and dance. Finding it impossible to bring the ships to anchor that day, they sent off the Indian, allowing him to keep all he had got in order to encourage the rest to come on board. But, what was really ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Wood, was an elderly piping faun and performed with astonishing agility a sword-dance over a stick crossed with his whistle. Elsewhere as Mr. Coade he played very engagingly the part of the only character who had made such good use of his First Chance that he really didn't need a Second. Both in name and nature he brought to mind the late ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... that mule—or run down this one's mainspring some," the Texan said when Drew had King again with four feet on the ground, though weaving in a sideways dance. ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... but one sort, and in all their meetings the same is still exhibited. Young men, such as make it their pastime, fling themselves naked and dance amongst sharp swords and the deadly points of javelins. From habit they acquire their skill, and from their skill a graceful manner; yet from hence draw no gain or hire: though this adventurous gaiety has its reward, namely, that of pleasing the spectators. What is marvellous, playing at dice ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... ballads; do come and play some game. Mamma," she exclaimed, one evening, "we must have a regular picnic for Bessie; she has never been at a large one in her life. We will go to Ardley, and Florence shall take her violin, and Dr. Merton his cornet, and we will have a dance on the turf; it ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... feelings. Beaudry had won and he had lost. Well, he was going to be a good loser this time. "What you want goes with me this time, Boots. The way you yanked me out of the sinks was painful, but thorough. I'll be a friend to Mr. Beaudry if he is of the same opinion as you. And I'll dance at his wedding ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... a square dance not unlike our lanciers, the Filipinos take very seriously, stepping through it with all the unsmiling dignity of our grandparents in the minuet. The sides not engaged in dancing always sit down between every figure and critically discuss those on the floor, but while going through the ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... used to laugh at this, and hurl all sorts of low, vile words at the princesses. Then, while the royal prisoners were taking their walk, the cannoneers used to collect in the allees through which they wandered, and dance to the music of revolutionary songs which some of them sang. Sometimes the gardeners who worked there hurried up to join them in this dance, and to encircle the prisoners in their wild evolutions. One of these people ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... speech I never heard. She was soprano in the choir, and I a solemn bass, And when we unisoned our voices filled that holy place; The tenor and the alto never had the slightest chance, For Mary's upper register made every heart-string dance; And, as for me, I shall not brag, and yet I'd have you know I sung a very likely bass when I ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... through the Eastern and Western circuits for four years with a mixed-up act comprising a monologue, three lightning changes with songs, a couple of imitations of celebrated imitators, and a buck-and-wing dance that had drawn a glance of approval from the bass-viol player in more than one house—than which no performer ever received more satisfactory evidence of ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... springing and dancing, and spinning, and whirling, around and around the room in the very ecstasy of mischief. Her dance was brought to a sudden and ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... and immediately sat down with a rude jar on the ice; but, nothing daunted, he quickly scrambled to his feet and began to dance like a wild Indian might when the war tocsin sounds through the village, and all his primeval instincts are aroused by the thought ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... about his intentions, which made her dance with joy. Besides, she had a little money, left her by a female oyster-dealer, who had picked her up when she had been left on the quay at Havre by an American captain. This captain had found her, when she was only about six years old, lying on bales of cotton in the hold ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... couldn't have been one of us big lubbers of boys instead of her," he grumbled to his mother. "She seems to be made to run and dance and play—almost ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... Innsbruck, the exiled duke was anxiously watching the course of events, and awaiting a favourable moment to return and claim his own. "I will beat the drum in winter and dance all the summer," was the motto which he adopted, together with the device of a tambourine, in reference to his future hopes. A letter which the well-known preacher, Celso Maffei of Verona, addressed to him, moralizing over the causes of his fall, ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... The dance is a continual exercise of the joints and muscles, but its swaying motion is not without grace and displays all the seductive beauty of the girls whose freshness has not been destroyed by ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... compare with a Sunday to go to the waterfalls, or to "Piney Ridge," or to "Columbine Ledge," or to stroll along "Snake Lane"? What sweet peace and repose is over all! The snakes in Snake Lane are as free from venom as are grasshoppers, and the grasshoppers themselves fiddle and dance as at no other time. Cherish your Sundays. I think you will read a little deeper in "Nature's infinite book of secrecy" on Sunday than on Monday. I once began an essay the subject of which was Sunday, but never finished it. I must send ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... are gathering nearer. A heavy, heated atmosphere quivers before his eyes, or else the witch and her unholy crew are uniting in a reeling dance. In vain does Balder try to shut his eyes and escape the giddy spectacle; they stare widely open and see things supernatural. Nor can he ward off these with his hands, which are rigid before him, and defy his will. The ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... a pleasant picture we behold of the period: the two friends partaking together of communion, and dining, and then embracing at parting with effusive words and promises to meet at a dance on the morrow, the unsuspecting Duke of Orleans going out into the dark, where hired assassins were waiting to hack him in pieces. Then a court of justice trying and acquitting this confessed murderer of the king's brother, upon the ground that tyrannicide is a duty; the sad, crazed wraith of a king ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... something to eat. The tables were ranged all around, and in the centre there was a boarded platform for dancing. The ladies were there already dressed for partners; and the music was so lively, that I felt very much inclined to dance, but we had agreed to go and see the wild beasts fed at Mr. Polito's menagerie, and as it was now almost eight o'clock, we paid our bill and set off. It was a very curious sight, and better worth seeing than any thing in the fair; I never had an ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... daughter's, there was naught in them. I should like to have seen the villain's face when he opened the money bags and found the trick that I had played him. He had best never show his face in London, for if I catch him he will dance at the end of a rope. And now, sirs, with your permission, I will repair to my home, for my wound smarts sorely, and I must have it dressed by a leech, who will pour in some unguents to allay the pain. My wife, too, will be growing anxious, for I had written to her that we should ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... fiftieth floor, three were express to sixty-five. He wanted one of the latter, and so did the mob. The crushing, clinging mob. They pressed and panted the way mobs always do; mobs that lynch and torture and dance around bonfires and guillotines and try to drag you down to trample you to death because they can't stand you if your name is Harry and you ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... I hold a rose-bush, Which will bloom, Manon lon la! Which will bloom in the month of May. Come into our dance, pretty rose-bush, Come and kiss, Manon Ion la! Come and kiss whom you ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... traveler who had any money or valuables drew a long breath when he reached a region where there was really a protecting law. Men were shot down in the streets on little or no provocation, and the murderer boasted of his crime and defied punishment. The dance-halls were run day and night. The drinking of whiskey, and, moreover, bad whiskey, was a thing universal. Vice was everywhere and virtue was not. Those few who had an aim and an ambition in life were long in the minority and, in the welter of a ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... Your ever active thoughts engage; Frisk, dance, and sing, and have your fling, Unharmed, ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... girl!" thought Yergunov, sitting on the chest, and from there watching the dance. "What fire! Give up everything for her, and it would be too ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... new doesn't turn up. Youngish. Sixteen's a little early. Seventeen will do. Marry a girl while she's in the gristle, and you can shape her bones for her. Splendid creature without her trimmings. Wants training. Must learn to dance, and sing ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... succession of these brilliantly portrayed situations that clutch at the heartstrings—the meetings in the mission house, the reconciliation scene when Ingmar's battered watch is handed to the man he felt on his deathbed he had wronged, the dance on the night of the "wild hunt," the shipwreck, Gertrude's renunciation of her lover for her religion, the brother who buys the old farmstead so that his brother's wife may have a home if she should ever return from the Holy Land. As for ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... it is not so! We are always having a treat! Why, think now: at Christmas, the holidays, the gifts, the carols and the games, with fiddler and spiced wine and all manner of cakes; at harvest, the great dance, the prizes, the ale; at Easter, the church trimming, the gold-pieces sent home and the pick of the lambs for the one that does best at Catechism (but that is the little ones); at ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... adorned the grounds, as Roth's stirring "Chariot Race" and St. Gaudens's equestrian statue of General Sherman. Sculpture was profusely used to beautify buildings. Wholly original and charming were the four groups for the Temple of Music: Heroic Music, Sacred Music, Dance Music, and Lyric Music. Perched in every corner were figures of ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... palm of one hand and a stick held in the other. The music grows faster, emphasizing certain beats, until it becomes a compelling rhythm that starts the feet of the onlookers, and suddenly a man or woman begins to dance. At first she keeps time to the music by raising on her toes and heels, bending the knees and twisting the body from side to side, but soon she becomes more animated, the feet are raised high above the floor and brought down with a sort of shuffle which reminds one of the sound made by ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... and in dancing. But the active Arjuna obtained no peace of mind, remembering the unfair play at dice of Sakuni, the son of Suvala, and thinking with rage of Dussasana and his death. When however, his friendship with Chitrasena had ripened fully, he at times learned the unrivalled dance and music practised among the Gandharvas. And at last having learnt various kinds of dance and diverse species of music, both vocal and instrumental, that slayer of hostile heroes obtained no peace of mind remembering ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... amazed. Having thus spoken, the net was drawn and found to be full of fish, which were laid at Elizabeth's feet. The entry for this day ends with the sentence, "That evening she hunted." On Thursday the lords and ladies dined at a table forty-eight yards long, and there was a country dance with tabor and pipe, which drew from her Majesty "gentle applause." On Friday, the Queen knighted six gentlemen and ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... practiced by all classes,[1] were considered worthy to be perfected among the chiefs themselves and those who sought their patronage. Of a chief the Polynesian says, "He speaks well."[2] Hawaiian stories tell of heroes famous in the hoopapa, or art of debating; in the hula, or art of dance and song; of chiefs who learned the lore of the heavens and the earth from some supernatural master in order to employ their skill competitively. The oihana haku-mele, or "business of song making," was hence an aristocratic art. The able ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... fiddlers begins to dance, and caper and plays, fit to make one burst with laughter that sees and hears them. Then they go on again and crys as before, with the greatest majesty and gravity immaginable, none of this comical crew being seen so much as to smile all the time, when ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... odd ways. It might amuse Mrs. Patmore and the children. They'd have more sense than he! He'd be like a Fool kept in the family, to keep the household in good humour with their own understanding. You might teach him the mad dance set to the mad howl. Madge Owl-et would be nothing to him. "My, how he capers!" [In the margin is written:] One ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... morning the news came that the regiment was about to be removed from the garrison; Renoldi began to dance with joy. He was saved! Saved without scenes, without cries! Saved! All he had to do now was to wait patiently for two months ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... all that. Still he wished to try, and if he couldn't find her, 'twas his look-out. Now in the castle there was a band that played sweet tunes, and there were fair maids to dance with, and so the ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... I believed in the voodoo craft, or in the power of an evil-eye, I should also have feared. Those who have ever witnessed a sea-island witch-dance can bear me out, and I think a man may dread a hag and be no coward either. But distance and time allay the memories of such uncanny works. I had forgotten whether I was afraid or not. So I said, "There are no ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... literary in my point of view that sometimes I could not see what was, if more naturally approached and without any technical preoccupation, perfectly transparent. It remained for another great passion, perhaps the greatest of my life, to fuse these gyves in which I was trying so hard to dance, and free me forever from the bonds which I had spent so much time and trouble to involve myself in. But I was not to know that passion for five or six years yet, and in the mean time I kept on as I had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Springing o'er the blue main To our paeans reply With their long, long refrain; And the sea-folk upleap From their dark weedy caves; With a clear, briny laugh They dance over the waves; Now their mistress below,— See bright Thetis go, As she leads the mad revels, While loud Tritons blow! While ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... flamed out; in which the Russian Armies had only to show themselves to beat the Turks in every rencounter." His Majesty continues: "This War changed the whole Political System of Europe [general Diplomatic Dance of Europe, suddenly brought to a whirl by such changes of the music]; a new arena (CARRIERE) came to open itself,—and one must have been either without address, or else buried in stupid somnolence ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... were astonished and wondered how such things as they saw could exist in a city like New York. There were all classes in the place, sailors, men, women, and girls, who had lost all self-respect and thought of nothing but the drink and the dance. ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... determined to go and obtain the body of Outetoucos, who was drowned at the fall, as we have before mentioned. They went to the spot where he had been buried, disinterred him and carried him to the island of St Helene, where they performed their usual ceremony, which is to sing and dance over the grave with festivities and banquets following. I asked them why they disinterred the body. They replied that if their enemies should find the grave they would do so, and divide the body into several pieces, which they would then hang to trees ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... Moloch fled, Hath left in shadows dread His burning idol all of blackest hue; In vain with cymbals' ring They call the grisly king, In dismal dance about the furnace blue: The brutish gods of Nile as fast, Isis and Orus, and ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... the bundle over which the piache had been performing his extraordinary dance when they interrupted him, and which had the appearance of being simply a bundle of ordinary matting. But Stukely's eye happened to have been resting upon it while he spoke, and he had distinctly seen ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... and there was no grass on them. He called the Chinook and Sound Indians, who were weak, his children, and the Yakima, Cayuse, and Wasco, who loved war, his brothers; but he was elder brother. And the Spokanes and the Shoshones might fast and cut themselves with thorns and knives, and dance the medicine dance, and drink the blood of horses, but nothing could make their hearts as strong as the hearts of the Willamettes; for the One up in the sky had told the old men and the dreamers that the Willamettes should be the strongest of all ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... handkerchiefs in my pockets, I threw everything else into a corner of the room. I flung my fine cloak over the monk, and the fellow looked as if he had stolen it. I must have looked like a man who has been to a dance and has spent the rest of the night in a disorderly house, though the only foil to my reasonable elegance of attire was the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... came, however, when the child was big enough to dance about in farm-yard and garden, looking like a flower with long golden stamina. She was simply brimming over with merriment and delight in being alive; and now Captain Rauchfuss condescended to take notice of his daughter. He brought her home all sorts of toys and trifles, and took ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... happier time still on the anniversary of that day—Ivy will be cured, and we'll dance round the Maypole together, the 'maddest, merriest' ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... popularity of pure and unadulterated pessimism is an oddity; it is almost a contradiction in terms. Men would no more receive the news of the failure of existence or of the harmonious hostility of the stars with ardour or popular rejoicing than they would light bonfires for the arrival of cholera or dance a breakdown when they were condemned to be hanged. When the pessimist is popular it must always be not because he shows all things to be bad, but because he shows some ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... first—plash! with a silvery tinkle in the sound, as if hidden bells down among the green water weeds had been set to ringing by this sprite of the air. A shower of spray caught the rainbow for a brief instant; the ripples gathered and began to dance over the spot where Koskomenos had gone down, when they were scattered rudely again as he burst out among them with his fish. He swept back to the stub whence he had come, chuckling on the way. There he whacked his fish soundly on ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... to the bottom of the sea? Hear, sailor; ho, honest fellow. Thus, thus, my friend, hold fast above. In truth, here is a sad lightning and thundering; I think that all the devils are got loose; it is holiday with them; or else Madame Proserpine is in child's labour: all the devils dance a morrice. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... do not remember whether this was by day or by night—Mr. Wardrop began to dance clumsily, and wept the while; and they too danced and wept, and went to sleep twitching all over; and when they woke, men said that the rods were straightened, and no one did any work for two days, but lay on the decks and ate fruit. Mr. Wardrop would go below from time ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... loved it: she had taken off her hat and was watching eagerly. Christophe poked fun at the burlesque solemnity of the music and the musicians. He fumbled in his pockets and produced a pencil and began to make lines and dots on the back of a hotel bill: he was writing dance music. The paper was soon covered: he asked for more, and these too he covered like the first with his big scrawling writing. Anna looked over his shoulder with her face near his and hummed over what he wrote: she tried to guess ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... analyzes itself, and makes itself such as it chooses; the fruit which it bears itself enjoys—for the fruits of plants and that in animals which corresponds to fruits others enjoy—it obtains its own end, wherever the limit of life may be fixed. Not as in a dance and in a play and in such like things, where the whole action is incomplete if anything cuts it short; but in every part, and wherever it may be stopped, it makes what has been set before it full and complete, so that ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... these tiny daintinesses. Also, curls took up too much time in arranging, and the slightest moisture in the air was liable to draw them down into lank and unsightly plasters, and, therefore, saving for a dance or a picnic, curls should not ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... an early little dance that night for the young people, and Tilly put on her prettiest gown,—a white mull with rose-colored ribbons,—and went down to dinner in it, for the dance was an informal affair that was to follow very soon after dinner on account of the youth of most of the dancers. Her heart beat more quickly ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... down to the day of my departure. It had been arranged that I was to sail to Liverpool by the first of the two daily steamers, and without any awakening I leapt out of bed at the first sign of daylight. So great was my delight that I began to dance in my nightdress to an invisible skipping rope, forgetting my father, who always rose at dawn and was at breakfast in the ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... danced a skirt dance, and there were shouts of applause for her, and she came back and danced again. When she reappeared in jacket and hat, and with her stage-box in her hand, the girls crushed their way out. Going through ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... cleared space what was presumably a quadrille, though it bore almost as great a resemblance to a Scottish country dance, or indeed to one of the measures of Bretonne France, which was, however, characteristic of the country. The Englishman has set no distinguishable impress upon the prairie. It has absorbed him with his reserve and sturdy industry, and the Canadian from ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... himself and his reader. He builds his castle of cards for the mere pleasure of knocking it down again. He is ever unexpected and surprising. And with this curious mental activity, this play and linked dance of discordant elements, his page is alive and restless, like the constant flicker of light and shadow in a mass of foliage which ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... one of the wicker arm-chairs by the fire, turned luxuriously from the girls to watch the flames poise and dance with the music. He was evidently at his ease, yet he seemed ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... reached her netting, and then said, "Do you care about dancing at all? I am not quite sure whether clever men ever dance." ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... seats roundabout it, also a fiddlers' stand, got the fiddlers, printed invitations which went far and wide to women young and old, saw to a sufficiency of barbecue, depended on the Lord and the ladies for other things—and prepared to dance, dance from nine in the morning until two next morning. Men were not specifically invited—anybody in good standing with a clean shirt, dancing shoes, a good horse and a pedigree, was heartily welcome. ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... its effects subsided, and the graves of its 25,000,000 victims were hardly closed, when it was followed by an epidemic of the dance of St. John, or St. Vitus, which like a demoniacal plague appeared in Germany in 1347, and spread over the whole empire and throughout the neighboring countries. The dance was characterized by wild leaping, furious screaming, and foaming at the mouth, which gave to the individuals ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... notice the cups they drink out of much more than we do. If we did notice the cups we drink out of, we should not be able to endure them. In primitive societies there are not star pianists or singers or dancers; they all dance and make music. Homer himself was a popular entertainer; he would have been very much surprised to hear that he was a dreamer apart. In fact Whistler made up this pretty story about the primitive ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... The movement of portraits and statues is particularly characteristic, especially in dim light, and under unstable emotional conditions. I own a relief by Ghiberti called the "Rise of the Flesh,'' in which seven femurs dance around a corpse and sing. If, at night, I put out the lamp in my study and the moon falls on the work, the seven femurs dance as lively as may be during the time it takes my eyes to adapt themselves from the lamplight to the moonlight. Something ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... delight was Marjory's reply, and the two girls were executing a kind of war-dance round the hall, when suddenly the study door opened, and the doctor put his head out. He had a book in his hand, and was wearing his spectacles, which always made him look more formidable. Marjory wished that the floor might open and swallow her; but ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... so that the giant might see him, and putting on his shoes of swiftness, he ran from the giant, who followed like a walking castle, so that the very foundations of the earth seemed to shake at every step. Jack led him a long dance, in order that the gentlemen and ladies might see; and at last to end the matter, ran lightly over the drawbridge, the giant, in full speed, pursuing him with his club. Then, coming to the middle of the bridge, the giant's ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... of Madagascar informs us that "while the men are at the wars, and until their return, the women and girls cease not day and night to dance, and neither lie down nor take food in their own houses. And although they are very voluptuously inclined, they would not for anything in the world have an intrigue with another man while their husband is at the war, believing firmly that if that happened, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... acuteness, though a little eccentric at times, coming from K—'s Island, where we had been on some business; and as we neared the turn of the causeway to the main road, he pulled up the chaise, jumped out, and placing himself on a broad flat rock by the road-side, began violently to dance up and down and to shake his clothes. 'Good Heavens!' cried I, 'are you mad?' 'Oh, no,' said he, resuming his seat, 'but my mother always told me, that whenever I was coming away from K—'s Island, I must stand upon that rock and shake the ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... arched bulk rolling against the trunks of the trees and recoiling again, or an upright cylindrical mass, but always oscillating and unsteady, and striking the trees on either hand. The frequent occurrence of the movement suggested the figures of some weird rhythmic dance to music heard by the shape alone. Suddenly it either became motionless ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... proportions; but it wasn't till Thompson told her that father was about to retire, and that I, of course, was looking to enter a higher walk, that she gave permission to trot me up. Do you think I went? They were pretty girls she had, and the music—I'd have given something to dance that night; but if I was the sort of man she'd let dance with her girls, she needn't have taken anything else into account; and if I was decent enough for them, it was because of something else in me other than what ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... she bestowed upon the vacant air. At others she would induce the youth to enter a box stall, telling him to make believe he was at the theatre, and then, forgetting her role of princess, she was again the Aileen Armagh of old—the child on the vaudeville stage, dancing the coon dance with such vigor and abandonment that once, when Aileen was nearly sixteen, Octavius, being witness to this flaunting performance, took her severely to task for such untoward actions now that she was grown up. He told her frankly that if Romanzo Caukins was led astray in the future it would ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... of a verse, or adjoining a whole second to the former, looks more like the Design of two, than the Answer of one [pp. 498, 559].' Suppose we acknowledge it. How comes this Confederacy to be more displeasing to you, than a dance which is well contrived? You see there, the united Design of many persons to make up one Figure. After they have separated themselves in many petty divisions; they rejoin, one by one, into the gross. The Confederacy is plain amongst them; for Chance ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... in London, was for some time in the British Museum. He pub. Illustrations of Shakespeare (1807), and a dissertation on The Dance ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... not keeping you, am I?" laughed the elf, beginning a strange sort of dance, rubbing his hands together, and giving a series of ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... sick, he will ask some medicine man to unroll his pipe. If able to dance, he will take part in the ceremony, but if not, the medicine man paints him with the sacred symbols. In any case a fervent prayer is offered by the medicine man for the sick person's recovery. The medicine man administers no remedies; the ceremony is purely ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... shaking tree, And then to scamper away; And with laughing shout to dance about The grass where the ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell |
