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More "Entertainer" Quotes from Famous Books



... building Louis had more than once felt some hesitation, and it might now, with a favouring manner from his entertainer, have operated to deter him from going further with his intention. But the Bishop had personal weaknesses that were fatal to sympathy for ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... players, but that was long before. It may be their antiquated and failing art rendered them harmless. And, then, those beguiling words "Lecture Room" have such a soothing sound! They seemed in those days to hallow the whole function, which was, of course, the wily wish of the great moral entertainer; and his great moral entertainment was even as "the cups that cheer but not inebriate." It came near it in our case, however. It was our first matinee at the theatre, and, oh, the joy we took of it! Years afterward did we ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... for four days the splendid hospitality of their royal entertainer, the king and queen of Aragon re-embarked, and reached their own port of Valencia, after various detentions, on the 20th of July, 1507. Ferdinand, having rested a short time in his beautiful capital, pressed ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... to task," began Quincy, "for not being present at the reception, but I told him I had to see Culver on some political business. Then he remarked that I missed a very pleasant evening. He complimented Aunt Ella, here, for her skill as an entertainer, and expressed his surprise that Bruce Douglas, instead of being a young man, was a young and very beautiful woman. Yes, Aunt Ella, he actually called my wife here a very ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... the windows, and a piece of Turkey carpet lay upon the floor; those windows were two in number, looking out, through the trunks of the trees close to the house, upon the lake. It needed all the fire, and all the pleasant associations of my entertainer's red nose, to light up this melancholy chamber. A door at its farther end admitted to the room that was prepared for my sleeping apartment. It was wainscoted, like the other. It had a four-post bed, with heavy tapestry ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu

... cook was an adept in preparing. It may be supposed that our "fast days" were especial epochs of delicious reunion. A fine dinner smoked on the table; a good bottle was added by the grocer; and, while my entertainer discussed the viands, I contrived to keep him in continual chat, which, in reality, was the best practical lesson a man in my circumstances ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... fixin' the cushions under our feet, brushin' the dust offen her mistresses dresses, or pickin' up my stitches when in my agitation or the jigglin' of the cars I dropped 'em, and a perfect Arabian Night's entertainer to Tommy, who worshipped her, when I hearn a exclamation from Tommy, and the car door shet, and I looked round and see a young man and woman advancin' down the isle. They wuz a bridal couple, that anybody could see. The blessed fact ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... old-fashioned families that uncomfortable and ungracious custom lasted till this century. I know of children not fifty years ago standing thus at all meals at the table of one of the Judges of the Supreme Court. He had a bountiful table, was a hospitable entertainer and well-known epicure; but children sat not at his board. Each stood at his own place and had to behave with decorum and eat in entire silence. In some families children stood behind their parents and other grown persons, and food was handed ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... long-backed, but really not uncomfortable vehicle. The landlord of the inn, too, and his ostler, were there; and Wilton failed not to pay them liberally for the services they had rendered. He then briefly gave his own address, and that of the Duke to his reverend entertainer, and entered the carriage beside the Lady Laura, with a heart beating high with the hope and expectation of saying all and hearing all that the voice of ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... than go to hear it. These parsons are like a scolding wife who grieves because her husband will not pass his evenings with her. The more she grieves, the more she scolds and the more diligently he keeps away from her. I don't think Jack Satan is conspicuously wise, but he is in the main a good entertainer, with a right pretty knack at making people come again; but the really reprehensible part of his performance is not the part that attracts them. The parsons might study his methods with great ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... from your friends. If you lose your friends your enemies will destroy you." Davis has stood by his friends. As a labor leader and a fraternal organizer, he has proved his ability. Thousands think he is unequaled as an orator, thinker and entertainer. His zeal is all for humanity and he knows man's needs. He has dedicated his life to the cause of better education for the workers of this land. His cause ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... necessity from the modern viewpoint. We cannot believe that he had any pretensions to refined art in play building, or rather rebuilding, or to any superficial elegance of style, or to any moralizing pose. We believe him an entertainer pure and simple, who never restricted himself in his means except by the outer conventions and form of the Greek New Comedy and the Roman stage, provided his single aim, that of affording amusement, was attained. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke

... comedian, born in London; abandoned his father's trade of bookseller for the stage in 1794; appeared in Dublin and York, and from 1803 till 1818 played in Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and the Lyceum; the rest of his life he spent as a single-handed entertainer, charming countless audiences in Britain and America with his good singing and incomparable mimicry; he ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... we found ourselves in the Capital of the South. The Countess was still there, but the Count, her brother, had not appeared, and the explanation to which he referred remained unspoken. Here Lucia was our kind friend and excellent entertainer; but of the tenderness of the Hotel Promontonio it was hard for me to find a trace. The great lady indeed outshone her peers, and took my moorland eyes as well as the regards of others. But I had rather walked by the lake with the scarlet cloak, or stood with her and been ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... approached, from the gate, by a short drive. It was, moreover, a much more modern dwelling than Mr. Wentworth's, and was more redundantly upholstered and expensively ornamented. The Baroness perceived that her entertainer had analyzed material comfort to a sufficiently fine point. And then he possessed the most delightful chinoiseries—trophies of his sojourn in the Celestial Empire: pagodas of ebony and cabinets of ivory; sculptured monsters, grinning and leering ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... his own time about coming back; so long a time that Blount forgot that it was past midnight, that he was a guest in a strange house, and that he still had not learned the name of his entertainer. For all this forgetfulness the little lady with the dark-brown eyes was directly responsible. Almost before he realized it, Blount found himself chatting with her as if he had always known her, making ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... My entertainer received me with more civility than I had expected. He was almost fashionably dressed; his grim features were smoothed into an elaborate smile; and he repeated his gratification at seeing me, in such variety of tones that I began to doubt the cordiality ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... and we were left to feed without a host. The grandees, meanwhile, remained outside, and still enjoyed the dances, ranging themselves upon their haunches in front of the rows of chairs which not one among them would have dared to trust himself in for either love or money. Considering that our entertainer was a Hindoo, and that his dinner-giving appliances were limited, each person having to bring his own knife, fork, spoon, and chair, we fared very well, and after having drunk his health, again assembled in the court, where we found Rumbeer ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight

... by his numerous family and attendants. He made De Soto a present of a rich fur mantle, and invited him, with his suite, to occupy the royal dwellings for their residence. De Soto politely declined this offer, as he was unwilling thus to incommode his kind entertainer. He, however, accepted the accommodation of several houses in the village. The remainder of the army were lodged in exceedingly pleasant bowers, skilfully, and very expeditiously constructed by the natives, of bark and the green boughs of trees, outside ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... assumption in Africa. The chief, however, behaved very well. He told them a fine would have to be paid on the return of the wounded man's father, and it had better be handed to him, for by law the blame would fall on him, as the entertainer of the man who had brought about the injury. He admitted that he had ordered all his people to stand clear of the spot where the disaster occurred, but he supposed that in this instance his orders had not been heard. They had not sufficient goods in any case to respond ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... you wait for that?" his entertainer asked. "To think of these ten years that we might have been enjoying you!" At the vision of which waste and loss Mr. Searle had ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James

... lecturing was always a task and a duty. I do not feel now that I ever sought to be an entertainer. I am sure I would have been an utter failure but for the feeling that I must preach some gospel truth in my lectures and do at least that much toward that ever-persistent "call of God." When I entered the ministry (1879) I had become ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell

... at his entertainer, his expression suggestive of such excitement, not to say horror, that the narrator ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... Here our entertainer gave out, and had to rest; and while resting he went to sleep, so that he did not take up his ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... after leaving her entertainer, sped swiftly cross-town until she arrived at a handsome and sedate mansion two squares to the east, facing on that avenue which is the highway of Mammon and the auxiliary gods. Here she entered hurriedly and ascended to a room where a handsome young lady in an elaborate ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... gladly accepted his hospitality for the night, and feeling very tired and weary after his hard journey, he retired to rest, and slept the sleep of the just, until he was awakened in the morning by his hospitable entertainer. Springing from his bed, and looking out at his window, he saw that the sun was just peeping over the hills in the east, and throwing its first faint rays over the beautiful landscape that was spread before him, lighting up hill and dale with the ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... family. He said he knew the Redmonds of Redmondstown. 'Oh,' says I, 'mine are the Redmonds of Castle Redmond;' and so I put him off the scent. I went to see my nag put up at a livery-stable hard by, with the Captain's horse and chair, and returned to my entertainer. ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... appeared upon his features, fitted very ill with the Lieutenant's preconceptions on the subject of the proprietor of a hell; and the tone of his conversation seemed to mark him out for a man of position and merit. Brackenbury found he had an instinctive liking for his entertainer; and though he chid himself for the weakness, he was unable to resist a sort of friendly attraction for ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... hospitable from native inclination. They were hospitable from circumstances. None but those who dwell in a wilderness, where the savages roam and the wolves howl, can understand all the pleasant associations connected with the sight of a stranger of the same race. The entertainer felt himself stronger from the presence of his guest. His offered food and fare were the spoils of the chase. He heard news from the old settlements and the great World; and he saw in the accession of every stranger ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint

... while observing the traditional form, does not always do so uncritically. Occasionally he will throw in a little interpolation of his own, as if in apology: "There was once a wifeless man—that is the way a story always begins." Or the entertainer starts off in a cheerfully familiar style: "Well, it was the usual thing; there was a Strong Man, and he had a wife. And, of course, he used ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown

... particular task of finding "pearls" is as deadly for it as it would be to make Levitan draw a tree without including the dirty bark and the yellow leaves. I agree that "pearls" are a good thing, but then a writer is not a confectioner, not a provider of cosmetics, not an entertainer; he is a man bound, under contract, by his sense of duty and his conscience; having put his hand to the plough he mustn't turn back, and, however distasteful, he must conquer his squeamishness and soil his imagination with the dirt of life. He is just like ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... A far-too-fat entertainer out on the floor was writhing in the pangs of an Hawaiian dance. It took the attention of the crowd. I watched the face of my ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... to push their Fortunes in this sort of Reputation; but where 'tis unseasonably insisted on to a modest Stranger, this Drench may be said to be swallowed with the same Necessity, as if it had been tendered in the Horn [1] for that purpose, with this aggravating Circumstance, that it distresses the Entertainer's Guest in the same degree as ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... he, 'the exhibition of the Great Humbug Troupe is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting and least objectionable that ever appeared in our village. It remains for us to make it instructive. I propose that we give three cheers for our brave entertainer,—hip, hip, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... that Mark Twain loved the lecture platform, but from his letters we see that even at this early date, when he was at the height of his first great vogue as a public entertainer, he had no love for platform life. Undoubtedly he rejoiced in the brief periods when he was actually before his audience and could play upon it with his master touch, but the dreary intermissions of travel and broken sleep were too heavy ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... floor—all these sounds, intermingling with the gliding seductive measure of the various waltzes played in quick succession by the band, created a vague impression of confusion and restlessness in the brain, and David Helmsley himself, the host and entertainer of the assembled guests, watched the brilliant scene from the ballroom door with a weary sense of melancholy which he knew was unfounded and absurd, yet which he could not resist,—a touch of intense ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... house all her life, her father had lived in it, and so also had her grandfather. She had gone out, to take tea, from its doors two or three times a week, ever since she had been twenty; and she had had her little tea-parties in its front parlor as often as any other genteel Slowbridge entertainer. She had risen at seven, breakfasted at eight, dined at two, taken tea at five, and gone to bed at ten, with such regularity for fifty years, that to rise at eight, breakfast at nine, dine at three, and take tea at six, and go to bed at eleven, would, she was firmly convinced, be but "to fly ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... whisked again through space to Upper Tooting, or wherever else he honoured the domestic gods, "I have had a dream," I think he would say, as he sat up, rubbing his eyes, in the familiar chimney-corner chair, "I have had a dream of a place, and I declare I believe it must be heaven." But to Dodd and his entertainer, all this amenity of the tropic night, and all these dainties of the island table, were grown things of custom; and they fell to meat like men who were hungry, and drifted into idle talk like men ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... your meals, eh?" The Texan went on, after a short pause. "I've got a pot of coffee bilin' an' a mess o' bacon fryin'. No?" He grinned sardonically. "How'd you like me to give you some o' this here cabareet stuff, while you're waitin'? I ain't no great shucks as a entertainer, but I'll do what I can. Mebbe, you'd like to know how I happened to catch you that clump on the ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... was an English woman, famed as a whip, a golfer and an entertainer. Her salon was one of the most interesting, the most delightful in Brussels; her husband and her rollicking little boys were not a whit less attractive than herself, and her household was the wonder of that gay, careless city. The baron, a middle-aged Belgian ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon

... teetotum^; knickknack &c (trifle) 643; magic lantern &c (show) 448; peep show, puppet show, raree show, gallanty show^; toy shop; quips and cranks and wanton wiles, nods and becks and wreathed smiles [Milton]. entertainer, showman, showgirl; dancer, tap dancer, song-and-dance man; vaudeville act; singer; musician &c 416. sportsman, gamester, reveler; master of ceremonies, master of revels; pompom girl^; arbiter elegantiarum [Lat.]; arbiter bibendi ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... wasn't serious," Helen said, with her roguish, indolent smile. "While I don't object to helping the great cause along, I am not yearning to become a polite entertainer. I'd probably be a most impolite one before the end of a week, if I had to rush freshies as a steady task. I am afraid few of them would turn out to be as amiable, beautiful, jolly, delightful, agreeable and companionable as good old ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... Pharisee or the contrition of the Magdalen? This query Jesus answered by rebuking self-righteousness and declaring 364:12 the absolution of the penitent. He even said that this poor woman had done what his rich entertainer had neg- lected to do, - wash and anoint his guest's feet, a special 364:15 ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... to proceed very cautiously, after leaving the hospitable cabin of their sable entertainer. But they had not gone far before they met an unexpected and vexatious obstacle, a river or creek, the Diascon, as the negroes named it. They crossed it at length, but not without great trouble ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... want your Christening to be a succes fou? Then send for Hubert the Homunculus, London's Premier Baby-Entertainer ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various

... is helplessly in peril without the spiritual police of sentiments or ideal feelings. And it is this invisible police which we had need, as a community, strive to maintain in efficient force. How if a dangerous "Swing" were sometimes disguised in a versatile entertainer devoted to the amusement of mixed audiences? And I confess that sometimes when I see a certain style of young lady, who checks our tender admiration with rouge and henna and all the blazonry of an extravagant expenditure, with slang and bold brusquerie ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... stopped at sight of him, and a malignant look shot from his eyes; hatred showed in the profane word that was chopped off at his teeth. When Monsieur Doltaire reached us, he said, his eyes resting on me with intense scrutiny, 'His Excellency will present me to his distinguished entertainer?' He seemed to read behind my mask. I knew he had discovered me, and my heart stood still. But I raised my eyes and met his gaze steadily. The worst had come. Well, I would face it now. I could endure defeat ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... arrived at their entertainer's house the festivities were at full; brilliant light shone from every window and streamed from the wide entrance in a flood, coaches rolled up the avenue and waited for place before the door, from within strains ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... confidence, something she was not to repeat, that she was in appearance the very image of the lady in Chester Square. The motive that prompted this declaration was between aunt Julia and her conscience; but it was a great emotion to the girl to find her entertainer so beautiful. She was tall and exquisitely slim; she had hair more exactly to Rose Tramore's taste than any other she had ever seen, even to every detail in the way it was dressed, and a complexion and a figure of the kind that are always spoken of as "lovely." Her ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James

... the nickel-plated entertainer, and I'll never miss another Monday eve unless I'm in the shops or the round-house. You ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... the freedom from external cares, without which it is hardly possible for art to mature to perfection; he passed his existence in the thick of the battle, and he died as he had lived—in the harness of the professional entertainer. His early years were spent amid the rough and sordid surroundings of a travelling provincial company, of which he became the manager and the principal actor, and for which he composed his first plays. He matured late. It was not till he was ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... eaten, the farmer, who appeared to be a jovial, warm-hearted, humorous, and withal a shrewd old man, passed several hours in conversation with his guest, who seemed to be very ill at ease, both in body and mind; yet, as if desirous of pleasing his entertainer, he replied courteously and agreeably to whatever was said to him. Finally, he pleaded fatigue and illness as an excuse for retiring to rest, and was conducted by the farmer to an upper chamber ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... Juggins?—without permission" when some poor fellow comes on his head as his horse (bare of saddle and bridle) refuses at a jump. "Get up (and SIT BACK) you—you—hen, you pierrot, you Aard Vark, you after-thought, you refined entertainer, you pimple, you performing water-rat, you mistake, you byle, you drip, you worm-powder.... What? You think your leg's broken? Well—you've got another, haven't you? Get up and break that. Keep your neck till you get a stripped saddle and no reins.... Don't embrace the horse like ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... man, spoke rather of sirloins and haunches, than of pease and pulse. This incongruity did not escape the guest. After he had with great difficulty accomplished the mastication of a mouthful of the dried pease, he found it absolutely necessary to request his pious entertainer to furnish him with some liquor; who replied to his request by placing before him a large can of the purest ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... sensation. No foresight may predict it, and the sensation always is genuine. Whatever else O. Henry was, he was an artist, a master of plot and diction, a genuine humorist, and a philosopher. His weakness lay in the very nature of his art. He was an entertainer bent only on amusing and surprising his reader. Everywhere brilliancy, but too often it is joined to cheapness; art, yet art merging swiftly into caricature. Like Harte, he cannot be trusted. Both writers on the whole may be said to have lowered the standards of American literature, ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... hundred and fifty warriors, had followed the trail along the Nolachucky, and on the morning of the 20th had come upon the house of William Bean, the hospitable entertainer of Robertson on his first visit to Watauga, Bean himself was at the fort, to which had fled all the women and children in the settlement, but his wife had preferred to remain at home. She had many friends among the Indians, and she felt confident they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... chagrined. Evelyn Rogers had put him in more hopeless positions in their brief acquaintanceship than he had experienced in years. There was his call upon her the previous night with its role of dual entertainer to the young lady with a nineteen-year-old college freshman. And now a ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen

... to a literary dinner at the Marquis D'Al—; and as I knew I should meet Vincent, I felt some pleasure in repairing to my entertainer's hotel. They were just going to dinner as I entered. A good many English were of the party. The good natured (in all senses of the word) Lady—, who always affected to pet me, cried aloud, "Pelham, mon joli petit mignon, I have not seen you for an ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... we want to be up-to-date—there's no reason why the Westmore mills shouldn't do as well by their people as any mills in the country," he affirmed, in the tone of the entertainer accustomed to say: "I want the thing done handsomely." But he seemed even less conscious than Mrs. Westmore that each particular wrong could be traced back to a radical vice in the system. He appeared to think that every murmur of assent to her ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... over the areas occupied by British troops. Every base would be organised in such a way that such lectures and even detailed courses of study should be available for everyone. Every chaplain, hutworker, and social entertainer must do his or her bit. They must know how to speak wisely and well—not all in public, but, everyone as the occasion offered, privately, in hut or camp, to inquiring and dissatisfied Tommies. They would doubtless feel themselves insufficient for these things, but study-circles ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... however, an individual in the room, and in the act of seating herself at the head of the table, who struck my fancy more forcibly than even the dishes upon the table. This, as I afterwards learned, was Miss Snooks, our entertainer's cousin. I was not exactly prepared to encounter the apparition of a female at our banquet. The landlord was a confirmed bachelor; and I expected to see nothing but myself, and three other lords of the creation, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various

... entertainer, Monsieur Loring, you must submit to being entertained," she said, pleasantly; "shall I sing to you, read to you, or tell ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... a trice, she had the table covered with various good things, conspicuous amongst which was a jolly round of salt beef. In compliance with the request of his host, the stranger drew into the table thus kindly prepared for him; but, to the great disappointment of his entertainer, ate ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... auspices, and with glowing anticipations of that pleasure for which he so ardently longed, but so imperfectly realized at home—the entire sympathy of the public. Nor was he disappointed. On the same evening that he alighted at the castle of his noble entertainer, his opera of 'Figaro' was given at the theatre, and Mozart found himself for the first time in the midst of that Bohemian audience of whose enthusiasm and taste he had heard so much. The news of his presence in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... first time since leaving home, I was ushered into a civilised drawing-room; and when I found myself seated on a cushioned chair, with my moccasined feet pressing a soft carpet, and several real, bona fide ladies (the wife and daughters of my entertainer) sitting before me, and asking hundreds of questions about my long voyage, the strange species of unbelief in the possibility of again seeing the civilised world, which had beset me for the last three years, began ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... I was glad to find that, at all events in Iceland, people do not consider it necessary to pass the ten minutes which precede the announcement of dinner, as if they had assembled to assist at the opening of their entertainer's will, instead of his oysters. The company consisted of the chief dignitaries of the island, including the Bishop, the Chief justice, etc. etc., some of them in uniform, and all with holiday faces. As soon as the door was opened, Count Trampe tucked me under his arm—two other gentlemen did ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... dwelling, it came to pass that all the gun-wadding was spent, so that he was obliged to fetch paper instead. After Sir Walter had come back, his fellow-shooter chanced to look at the succedaneum, and was not a little astonished to see it formed part of a tale written by his entertainer's hand. By his friend's urgent inquiries, the Scotch romancer was compelled to acknowledge himself the author, and to save the well nigh destroyed manuscript ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various

... regular jockey fashion, was standing. "I like his paces well," said the surgeon; "I think I shall take him for my own use." "And what am I to have for all the trouble his master caused me?" said my late entertainer, on whose countenance I now observed, for the first time, a diabolical squint. "The consciousness of having done your duty to a fellow-creature in succouring him in a time of distress, must be your reward," said the surgeon. "Pretty gammon, truly," ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... Meantime our hospitable entertainer—it is ever the women who wait on their guests—brought out home-grown wine, somewhat sour to the unaccustomed palate, and, as a corrective, home-made brandy, which, with sugar, formed an agreeable liqueur, walnuts—everything, indeed, that she had. We were also ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... houses and before their gates. Regarding him as the god of strangers, they received and entertained visitors with great ceremony. As a sign of fidelity, the right hand of fellowship was given to a stranger, to whom salt was presented, in token that his person would be safe under the entertainer's roof. A stranger's bottle was kept, and when a visitor arrived at the door the head of the family and he joined feet together on the threshold. A cup of wine was drunk to an unknown person before his name was asked. To return respect to those in the house, the stranger ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... asked for a piece of bread. The good-natured cook brought him in, and gave him an excellent breakfast, which the prince found nothing the worse for being served in the kitchen. While he ate, he talked with his entertainer, and learned that this was the favourite retreat of the Princess Daylight. But he learned nothing more, both because he was afraid of seeming inquisitive, and because the cook did not choose to be heard talking ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald

... fault to find with the modest entertainment at the Parsonage. A splendid banquet in a great house is an admirable thing, provided always its getting up did not cost the entertainer an inward conflict, nor its recollection a twinge of economical regret, nor its bills a cramp of anxiety. A simple evening party in the smallest village is just as admirable in its degree, when the parlor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... precise condition of her tear-stained face, she put it off moment after moment, and stirred the fire, in hope that the faint illumination thus produced would be sufficient to save her from the charge of stupid conduct as entertainer. ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... prizes of his art from all competitors. Consequently it was inevitable that other sculptors should be jealous of him, and should unite together for mutual protection. Story was a man of talent, and not a little of an amateur, but he was the gentlemanly entertainer of those Americans who came to the city with good letters of introduction. Hawthorne evidently fell into Story's hands. He speaks slightingly of Crawford, and praises Story's statue of Cleopatra in unqualified ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... but, under instructions from the reverend Padre, were loyally and superstitiously silent; the vocations of the gardener and muleteer made any intrusion from them impossible. A breakfast of fruit, tortillas, chocolate, and red wine, of which Hurlstone partook sparingly and only to please his entertainer, nevertheless seemed to restore his strength, as it did the Padre's equanimity. For the old man had been somewhat agitated during mass, and, except that his early morning congregation was mainly composed of Indians, muleteers, and small venders, his abstraction ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... Hall called upon Bianconi and went over his establishment, as well as over his house and farm, a short distance from the town. The travellers had a very pressing engagement, and could not stay to hear the story of how their entertainer had contrived to "make so much out of so little." "How much time have you?" he asked. "Just five minutes." "The car," says Mr. Hall, "had conveyed us to the back entrance. Bianconi instantly rang the bell, and said to the servant, 'Tell the driver to bring the car round to the front,' adding, 'that ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... will kindly give me your attention for a few moments I will be happy to introduce to your favorable notice an entertainer of world-wide fame who will, I am sure, not only mystify you but, at the same time, interest you. You have witnessed the death-defying dives of the Demon Discobolus; you have laughed with the comical clowns; you have thrilled with the hurrying horses; and you have gasped at the ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum

... receive being left out of a general invitation. They may feel ever so keenly the omission, but it should never betray itself in a shadow of change either in look or in tone. If the invitation is not a general one, why should any one feel hurt by being omitted? No one but the entertainer can know all the motives that influence her in her selections. And here might be mentioned several reasonable points of etiquette which may control her. When a first invitation has not been accepted, it is to be supposed that no other will be expected until the recipient ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... no answer. She might have been stone deaf, and as dumb as the hearthstone bricks. Mrs. Mitchell cast an alarmed glance at her entertainer. ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... platform as a lecturer. This was followed by his lecturing for two seasons all over the country, but finding that the Institutes made huge profits out of his efforts, and that his anecdotes and mimicry were the parts most relished, he abandoned the role of lecturer for that of entertainer with "The Humours of Parliament." As soon as he had crushed the idea that it was a lecture, people flocked to hear his anecdotes and to watch his acting, the result of his first short tour resulting in a clear profit ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... happy man was thus pleasantly engaged, his entertainer opened his writing portfolio and began to scribble off note after note, with such rapidity that the amazed pauper at his elbow fairly lost his appetite, and, after a vain attempt to recover it, suggested that it might be as well for him to retire to one of ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... well-spiced brewage, and better breakfasted than He whose morning appetite would have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem, his religion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the shop, trading all day without his religion." This is a startling passage. We should have pronounced hitherto that Milton's one hopeless, congenital, irremediable want, alike in literature and in life, was humour. And now, surely as ever Saul was among the ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... brought them back. How indeed then she must cared, in answer to which Strether's entertainer dropped a comprehensive "Ah!" expressive perhaps of some impatience for the time he took to get used to it. She herself had got used to it ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... courtesy, drank a glass of light wine, but his entertainer, apologizing for his own robuster taste, poured out a stiff tumbler of brandy, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... hour or two with that amiable individual, and, it is to be hoped, sustained the character of a spiritual visitant with considerable dignity. In one particular at least, that, namely, of appetite, I did honour to my supposed source, and as my entertainer would not hear of payment in material kind, all I could do was to show her some conjuring tricks, which greatly increased her belief in my supernatural origin, and to teach her some new hitches and knots, using her fishing-line as a means of illustration, ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... Lieutenant Brant, although I must confess the former attractions of the Herndon home are now greatly increased. From my slight knowledge of Mr. Moffat's capabilities, I fear I should be found a rather indifferent entertainer; yet I sincerely hope we shall meet again at a time when ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... head thereafter; he seemed to pine away somehow, until one morning they found him dead, his face downward on the tiny grave in which he had buried his little playfellow. Another young lady performed a series of brilliant roulades on a silver bugle, which seemed to afford satisfaction. A well-known entertainer sat down to the piano and proceeded to give a description of a fashionable wedding; and all the people laughed merrily at the clever and sparkling way in which he made a fool of—not themselves, of course, but their friends and acquaintances. ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... Northcote (Life of Reynolds, i. 118) says that Reynolds took Johnson to dine at a house where 'he devoured so large a quantity of new honey and of clouted cream, besides drinking large potations of new cyder, that the entertainer found himself much embarrassed between his anxious regard for the Doctor's health and his fear of breaking through the rules of politeness, by giving him a hint on the subject. The strength of Johnson's constitution, however, saved him from ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... canaux, and canaille, to receive cash in the busy counting-house, and hospitality the princely mansion of one of its most respected bankers. None, I am well assured, will discern in their amiable and exemplary entertainer any vestige of the disreputable impulses and evil passions that sullied the early life of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... of the earth! Prudence, power, and grandeur, hide your diminished heads! Here were two people who cared nothing for you, and who flung you aside without a fear as they stood together under the trees in the raw evening air,—one a penniless little hired entertainer of elderly ladies, the other an equally impecunious bondsman in ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... and set him coughing. It appeared as bitter as ashes. The Moose felt the same effect, and began to cough. Each one, in turn, was added to the number of coughers. But they had too much sense of decorum, and respect for their entertainer, to say anything. The meat looked very fine. They thought they would try more of it. But the more they ate the faster they coughed and the louder became the uproar, until Manabozho, exerting his former ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... believe in "Genius." Shakespeare and Moliere did not live in "Society," though both rubbed shoulders with it, or looked at it over the invisible barrier between the actor and the great people in whose houses or palaces he takes the part of Entertainer. The rest they ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... sister Ellen and her brother Robert were handsome children. As a child, she was sensitive and sentimental, and her delight was to browse in a library,—and it was this taste that equipped her for her later friendships. Her power of imagination was uncommonly strong, and she became the entertainer of her children-companions with stories of her own imagining, as well as by her recitals of legends and romance learned in the library. Her father removed to Clonmel, and became editor of a paper there. He was not prosperous, and was ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing

... there was nothing in his conduct that resembled ill-breeding. He accepted, with a grave courtesy, whatever was offered, eating deliberately, and expressing no preference for one thing over another. His entertainer fancied that, from time to time, he cast a stolen glance, as if watching motions in order to accommodate himself to them. However that may be, the young white man was greatly pleased with the untutored politeness of his red ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... upon his remark that he had been expecting the arrival of a friend who, it would appear, had been dead two years. Helwyse himself may have been puzzled by this; or, being a quick-witted young man, he may have divined its explanation. He looked at his entertainer with critical sympathy not ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... Custer to a game of croquet, and she, with secret reluctance, but a very good grace—being one of those sweetly-amiable people who never speak ill of any one, and never manifest the least boredom, no matter who undertakes the office of entertainer to them—accepted. However, she would make the most she could out of it. She invited the rest of the company to come down and look on and see that she had fair play. Bruce, at whom she glanced appealingly, paid no ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... me. There was, however, a story attached to their smartness. A seller of quack medicines had sent out advertisers with most objectionable little bills, which he had posted on every gate adjoining the roads. My entertainer, who was the occupier of the land, had brought an action against the medicine man for defacing his gates, which was only compromised by the delinquent undertaking to paint every gate. He demurred at first to painting the railings too, but in the ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... explain the position of all of them with reference to one another. Claude was the virtual master of the schooner, since he had chartered it for his own purposes. To all of them, therefore, he seemed first their savior, and secondly their host and entertainer, to whom they were bound to feel chiefly grateful. Yet none the less did they endeavor to include the honest skipper in their gratitude; and Zac came in for a large share of it. Though he could not understand any of the words which they addressed to him, ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille

... woman employed in eating places and taverns, a bar maid, a waitress, an entertainer, may be all that in one person. One of the caricatures drawn on a tavern wall in Pompeii depicts a COPA energetically demanding payment for a drink from a ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... ambitions with respect to these two men, it is notable that he became, not pageant-poet, but chronologer to the City of London; and that, on the accession of the new king, he came soon to triumph over Daniel as the accepted entertainer ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... The entertainer, however, appeals to prevailing opinions and prejudices; he gives the audience what they want. The lecturer should be an instructor and his theme may be a new and, as yet, unpopular truth, and it is his duty to give the audience ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis

... epigrammatically expressed by one of the guests, "the history of the country" was taking its leave in phrases more or less memorable and characteristic. Some of these valedictory axioms were clever, some witty, a few profound, but always left as a genteel contribution to the entertainer. Some had been already prepared, and, like a card, had served and identified ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... doings, but he wouldn't have that to-day. As he thought of the way in which, the other afternoon, before Kate, he had sat complacently "jawing," he accused himself of excess, of having overdone it, having made—at least apparently—more of a "set" at their entertainer than he was at all events then intending. He turned the tables, drawing her out about London, about her vision of life there, and only too glad to treat her as a person with whom he could easily have other topics than her aches and pains. He spoke to her ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... supper was brought in; and, as in the morning, two cloths were spread, one before me and my chaplain, with one merchant, on which were set various dishes of roast, fried, and boiled meats, with rice and sallads. On this occasion my honourable entertainer desired me to excuse his company, as it was their custom to eat among themselves, and his countrymen might take it ill if he did not eat with them; so he and his guests, and I with my companions, solaced ourselves with good ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... horseflesh or the quality of the brandy; with the matrons he is courtly, gallant, anecdotic: the young women appear to idolize him, and lean their pretty elbows on his desk half the day, for he is their protector, chevalier, entertainer, bonbon-holder, adviser and elder brother, all in one. Such is the landlord, as that rare expert is understood in the South. As for the regimen, it is the rarest kind of Pleasure made Medicinal, and that must be the reason of its efficacy. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... her companion. "If it does hurt or harm to you or yours, or anything but good, may what is hanging over me be fulfilled!" and she extended a thin, but, considering her years, not ungraceful arm, in the act of holding out the bottle to her kind entertainer. ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... the pirate captain exclaimed rapturously, when his entertainer at length raised his fingers from the key-board. Whereupon Lance began to play and sing "Hail, Columbia." Johnson stood still and silent as a statue now, the stirring strains touched an altogether different chord of his memory, and ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... Alice more and more took Ruth's place as his entertainer, and read to him by the hour, when he did not want to talk —to talk about Ruth, as he did a good deal of the time. Nor was this altogether unsatisfactory to Philip. He was always happy and contented with Alice. She was ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... it is going to take a long time to prove your ability. Travel, and make territory for yourself. Go in a vaudeville act, if offered such an engagement. Keep on "small time" for a year, if necessary, and get your name known in a certain territory for a pleasing entertainer. Get on with some act, big or little, as a solo dancer, at a reasonable salary, and expect the first two weeks to be at half salary, as is usual. Do not demand a large salary until managers are clamoring for your services—make it an inducement ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... the king. Here they were feasted in a chamber opposite to the king's chamber, which had a curtain drawn across the door, concealing him from their gaze, but not so thick as to hide them from their entertainer. Occasionally, on some very special occasion, as, perhaps, on the Royal birthday, or other great festival, the king presided openly at the banquet, drinking and discoursing with his lords, and allowing the light ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... surprise than consternation of the family, and he left, assuring them that their hospitality should not be forgotten. The King kept his word, for he afterwards sent his officers to the village with a stern reproof to his first entertainer and a handsome present ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne

... years old. To the right and to the left along the passages were rooms opening from one into another. I could imagine Sir Walter's kind eyes looking upon the scene, and Wordsworth coming down the stairs, and their friendly entertainer making all happy, and all welcome in turn; and their hostess, the widowed Mrs. Edgeworth, responding and sympathising with each. We saw the corner by the fire where Maria wrote; we saw her table with its pretty curves standing in its ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth

... And we have invented a new sort of 'ribbon sandwich.' Did you ever hear of a ribbon sandwich? If not, you must be told that it consists of layers and layers of thin slices of bread all pressed down together, with ground nuts or dressed lettuce in between. Each entertainer astonishes her guests with a new variety. That ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... Casanova"—she seemed deliberately to avoid addressing him as Chevalier—"to give me an elaborate proof of your renowned talent as entertainer, and I am extremely grateful to you. But of course you know as well as I do that the Cabala has not merely nothing to do with mathematics, but is in conflict with the very essence of mathematics. The Cabala bears to mathematics the same sort of relationship ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler

... into details on the subject of Scilly; details which have already been put into print by previous travellers. Let me only add then, that our sojourn in the islands terminated with the close of our stay in the house of our kind entertainer. It had been blowing a gale of wind for two days before our departure; and we put to sea with a doubled-reefed mainsail, and with more doubts than we liked to confess to each other, about the ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... her husband. His resolution had begun to stagger. He considered that there were strong reasons against the deed. In the first place, he was not only a subject, but a near kinsman to the king; and he had been his host and entertainer that day, whose duty, by the laws of hospitality, it was to shut the door against his murderers, not bear the knife himself. Then he considered how just and merciful a king this Duncan had been, how clear of offence to his subjects, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

... gentlemen was a quarter of an hour in saying "that the ducks and green peas were very good," and another almost an equal time in assenting to it. At the conclusion, however, the derided guests became aware of the trick their entertainer had played upon them; and from their hands, quicker than their tongues, he was obliged to make a precipitate retreat. Our dinner-party of yesterday did not break up in any such fracas, nor was the ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... succeeding day,—when, the lakes having become frozen over sufficiently strong to make travelling on the ice as safe as it was convenient and easy, they, on the second morning after their arrival at his house, bade their entertainer good-by, and set out for their homes in the settlement, which they respectively reached by daylight, to the great relief of their anxious and now overjoyed ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... deal to learn, no end even of quite basic things; a cosmopolite like Sherringham would understand that a girl of that age, who had never had a friend but her mother—her mother was greater fun than ever now—naturally would have. Sherringham winced at being dubbed a "cosmopolite" by his young entertainer, just as he had winced a moment before at hearing himself lumped in esoteric knowledge with Dashwood and Gabriel Nash; but the former of these gentlemen took no account of his sensibility while he enumerated a few of the elements of the "basic." He was a mixture ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... hide your diminished heads! Here were two people who cared nothing for you, and who flung you aside without a fear as they stood together under the trees in the raw evening air,—one a penniless little hired entertainer of elderly ladies, the other an equally impecunious bondsman in a ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... the evening upon the banks of the river, he found, to his great joy, a chance boat had come along, bound to Philadelphia and containing many passengers. Eagerly Franklin joined them, and bidding adieu to his kind entertainer, was soon drifting slowly down the stream. The night was dark, there was no wind, and no cheerful gleam from the white man's cabin or the Indian's wigwam met the eye. It was necessary to resort to rowing. At length, a little after midnight, several of the passengers insisted that they must ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott

... in "Genius." Shakespeare and Moliere did not live in "Society," though both rubbed shoulders with it, or looked at it over the invisible barrier between the actor and the great people in whose houses or palaces he takes the part of Entertainer. The rest ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... end, and which I dare say would have ended under other circumstances, in some violent explosion on the part of our host. But he had so high a sense of his hospitable and responsible position as our entertainer, and my guardian laughed so sincerely at and with Mr. Skimpole, as a child who blew bubbles and broke them all day long, that matters never went beyond this point. Mr. Skimpole, who always seemed quite unconscious ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... Signor Ercole insisted upon the artists taking a stirrup-cup with him before they left for Segni, and accordingly accompanying him to the house, they drank success to their hospitable entertainer, and departed highly pleased with this Representative Man. It is his class—the intelligent Producers of the Papal States—to whom we must look for all the life that will keep that worn-out old body sufficiently animated to last until Regenerated Italy can take it in hand, see ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... an Indian chief, glad to see any white men who hated the Spaniards as deeply as he did himself. He was well received and served to the best the ship could afford. Then he said to his entertainer in Spanish, a language he ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris

... it gave him a singular feeling of humiliation. At first he loathed being exhibited on a platform. He saw the audience, felt it, as with antennae, and knew that for the most part it was composed of idle people who were there only for the sake of having something to do: and the role of official entertainer was not at all to his liking. Worst of all, speaking from a platform is almost bound to distort ideas: if the speaker does not take care there is a danger of his passing gradually from a certain ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... the Jadoo-wallah proceeded to divest himself of all his clothing, with the exception of his dhotie or loin cloth. On the arrival of our orderly, he too was made to take off his shirt, leaving him dressed in a similarly neglige manner to our entertainer. The Jadoo-wallah then took some earth and made our orderly hold it in his two hands held together in front of his body. He then pranced round the orderly two or three times, making, as he did so an imaginary circle round his assistant. He next called our attention ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson

... for a score of years yet," jovially remarked Major Hawke, as he gazed at the well-preserved outer man of his uneasy entertainer. "The harpoon is deeply fixed in the old whale," mused Hawke, as he followed Hugh Johnstone. "He ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... farmer, who appeared to be a jovial, warm-hearted, humorous, and withal a shrewd old man, passed several hours in conversation with his guest, who seemed to be very ill at ease, both in body and mind; yet, as if desirous of pleasing his entertainer, he replied courteously and agreeably to whatever was said to him. Finally, he pleaded fatigue and illness as an excuse for retiring to rest, and was conducted by the farmer to an upper chamber where he ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... as he was writing a poem called "The Legion Club," he was seized with a fit so painful and so long continued, that he never after thought it proper to attempt any work of thought or labour. He was always careful of his money, and was therefore no liberal entertainer, but was less frugal of his wine than of his meat. When his friends of either sex came to him in expectation of a dinner, his custom was to give every one a shilling, that they might please themselves with their ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson

... treaty which was signed by the two contracting parties; and this arrangement had no sooner been concluded than the court resumed its career of gaiety; nor was it until the 7th of March that the Duke finally took leave of his royal entertainer, and commenced his ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... her to find another good-looking girl for me—I assume she is good looking—then we can make it a foursome. I'm a great entertainer, and, while I don't drink, I haven't the slightest objection to ladies who do. Dallas, I believe, is a ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... trinkets for the women; wandering doctors selling remedies of herbs, tonics made from deerhorns or tigers' teeth, and wonderful potions of "dragons' bones." Perhaps there was a Buddhist priest or two, a barber, or a tailor. Often a professional entertainer sat cross-legged on the kang telling endless stories or singing for hours at a time in a high-pitched, nasal voice, accompanying himself upon a tiny snakeskin violin. It was like a stage drama ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews

... Curran replied, "I would have been at dinner too, but a trifling circumstance—delay in remittances—obliges me to dine on an Irish tune." The result was that Curran was invited to dine with the stranger, and years afterwards, when he had become famous, he recalled the incident to his entertainer—Macklin, the celebrated actor—with the assurance, "You never ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... serious," Helen said, with her roguish, indolent smile. "While I don't object to helping the great cause along, I am not yearning to become a polite entertainer. I'd probably be a most impolite one before the end of a week, if I had to rush freshies as a steady task. I am afraid few of them would turn out to be as amiable, beautiful, jolly, delightful, agreeable and companionable as ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... elder brother. His aspect was marvellously grave, and he and La Salle met with gestures of ceremonious courtesy. The interview was very friendly; and the chief returned well pleased with the gifts which his entertainer bestowed on him, and which, indeed, had been the principal motive of ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... rooms. The guests are, if possible, evenly divided as to sex, and a hostess may, with perfect propriety, arrange that the men of the party shall be lodged at a hotel, coming over to breakfast with their entertainer. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... you will kindly give me your attention for a few moments I will be happy to introduce to your favorable notice an entertainer of world-wide fame who will, I am sure, not only mystify you but, at the same time, interest you. You have witnessed the death-defying dives of the Demon Discobolus; you have laughed with the comical clowns; ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum

... public speeches and published writings scarcely give a hint of his humour, which was lambent and sometimes almost boyish. He loved to be amused, and he repaid his entertainer by being amusing. I suppose that after his return from Cairo he allowed this feature of his character a much freer run. The legend used to be that he was looked upon in Egypt as rather grim, and by no means to be trifled with. He was not the man, we may be sure, to be funny with ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... expresses substantial sense in the guise of verbal nonsense, so the social "Thing one would rather have expressed differently" must, to be really precious, show a polite intention struggling with verbal infelicity. Mr. Corney Grain, narrating his early experiences as a social entertainer, used to describe an evening party given by the Dowager Duchess of S—— at which he was engaged to play and sing. Late in the evening the young Duke of S—— came in, and Mr. Grain heard his mother prompting him in an anxious undertone: ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... received from the fatal scroll which accompanied each dish the sad assurance that this resemblance was not imaginary. They sat in torpid silence, anticipating their own fate in that of their countrymen; while their ferocious entertainer, with fury in his eyes, but with courtesy on his lips, insulted them by frequent invitations to merriment. At length this first course was removed, and its place supplied by venison, cranes, and other dainties, accompanied by ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... circumstances of his life. Moliere never knew the leisure, the seclusion, the freedom from external cares, without which it is hardly possible for art to mature to perfection; he passed his existence in the thick of the battle, and he died as he had lived—in the harness of the professional entertainer. His early years were spent amid the rough and sordid surroundings of a travelling provincial company, of which he became the manager and the principal actor, and for which he composed his first plays. He matured late. ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... first with meal, into the fire. The rest they slash'd and scored, and roasted well, And placed it, heap'd together, on the board. Then rose the good Eumaeus to his task Of distribution, for he understood The hospitable entertainer's part. Sev'n-fold partition of the banquet made, 530 He gave, with previous pray'r, to Maia's son[63] And to the nymphs one portion of the whole, Then served his present guests, honouring first ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... dressed in regular jockey fashion, was standing. "I like his paces well," said the surgeon; "I think I shall take him for my own use." "And what am I to have for all the trouble his master caused me?" said my late entertainer, on whose countenance I now observed, for the first time, a diabolical squint. "The consciousness of having done your duty to a fellow-creature in succouring him in a time of distress, must be your reward," said the surgeon. "Pretty gammon, truly," said my late entertainer; "what would you say if ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... outlasted the sun. He had the virtues of his primitive race, and that appreciation of a guest which urges the entertainer to give not only the best that he has, but the best that he ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman

... reverend Padre, were loyally and superstitiously silent; the vocations of the gardener and muleteer made any intrusion from them impossible. A breakfast of fruit, tortillas, chocolate, and red wine, of which Hurlstone partook sparingly and only to please his entertainer, nevertheless seemed to restore his strength, as it did the Padre's equanimity. For the old man had been somewhat agitated during mass, and, except that his early morning congregation was mainly composed of Indians, muleteers, and small ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... Irish Channel, Tristram entertains Princess Iseult with songs and tales, until he becomes so thirsty that he begs for a drink. By mistake the love-potion is brought, and, as Iseult graciously dips her lips in the cup before handing it to her entertainer, it comes to pass both partake of the magic draught, and thus become victims of a passion which naught can cure. Still, as their intentions remain perfectly honorable, they continue the journey to Cornwall, and, in spite of all he suffers, Tristram delivers ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... slipping of light dancing feet on a polished floor—all these sounds, intermingling with the gliding seductive measure of the various waltzes played in quick succession by the band, created a vague impression of confusion and restlessness in the brain, and David Helmsley himself, the host and entertainer of the assembled guests, watched the brilliant scene from the ballroom door with a weary sense of melancholy which he knew was unfounded and absurd, yet which he could not resist,—a touch of intense and utter loneliness, as though ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... through the tobacco smoke. Hats flash. Firecracker voices explode. A guffaw dances across a smear of faces. Congo gleams, college boy pallors, the smiles of black and white men and women interlace. A spotlight shoots its long hypotenuse upon the floor. In its drifting oval the entertainer, her shoulders back, her elbows out, her fists clenched and her body twisting into slow patterns, bawls ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... me for?" said the ungrateful beast, springing to his legs, and eyeing his entertainer with one of his ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes

... born in London; abandoned his father's trade of bookseller for the stage in 1794; appeared in Dublin and York, and from 1803 till 1818 played in Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and the Lyceum; the rest of his life he spent as a single-handed entertainer, charming countless audiences in Britain and America with his good singing and incomparable mimicry; he died ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... own time about coming back; so long a time that Blount forgot that it was past midnight, that he was a guest in a strange house, and that he still had not learned the name of his entertainer. For all this forgetfulness the little lady with the dark-brown eyes was directly responsible. Almost before he realized it, Blount found himself chatting with her as if he had always known her, making rapid strides on the way to confidence and finding her alertly responsive in whatever field the ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... with a quiet and graceful air, full of sadness, yet of courtesy; and I knew then that he was no longer my guest and entertainer, but once more the chapman ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... he stayed to tea, and after it went over the arm-buildings with Mr. Graeme, revealing such a practical knowledge of all that was going on, that his entertainer soon saw his opinion must be worth something whether ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... congenial character of its frank, fearless, patriotic, but blunt and unpolished landlord, whose substantial cheer and hearty welcome, money or no money usually caused him to be looked upon as a friend, as well as a good entertainer. To this then widely-known establishment we will now repair, to note the occurrences next to be related in ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... of them all.' Ku Hsi said on it, 'And always be the host of (the spirits of) Heaven and Earth, of the hills and rivers, and of the departed.' The term 'host' does not imply any superiority of rank on the part of the entertainer. In the greatest sacrifices the emperor acknowledges himself as 'the servant or subject of Heaven.' See the prayer of the first of the present Manchau line of emperors, in announcing that he had ascended ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... some more," the pirate captain exclaimed rapturously, when his entertainer at length raised his fingers from the key-board. Whereupon Lance began to play and sing "Hail, Columbia." Johnson stood still and silent as a statue now, the stirring strains touched an altogether different chord of his memory, and for an instant something suspiciously like ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... are quite satisfied with the bare contemplation of the fare. Our readers, also, we suspect, have long ago been satiated. They have dropped off, one by one, and left us alone with our kind entertainer. What more we have to say must therefore be bestowed upon his private ear. We shall speak with the greater freedom. We know the exquisite pleasure we have given him. We are sure that he is not ungrateful. When his book comes to a second edition,—with a change ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... MSS. at the British Museum is the account of a supernatural visitation to Rye in 1607. The visitants were angels, their fortunate entertainer being a married woman. She, however, by a lapse in good breeding, undid whatever good was intended for her. "And after that appeared unto her 2 angells in her chamber, and one of them having a white fan in her hand did let the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... concealed bowers had come peals of laughter or strains of music. Unnoticed among the merry throng in palace and park, the jester had moved aimlessly about; unobserved now, he turned his back upon the gray walls, satiated, perhaps, with the fetes inaugurated by the kingly entertainer. But as he attempted to pass the gate, a stalwart guard stepped forward, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... convalesced, Alice more and more took Ruth's place as his entertainer, and read to him by the hour, when he did not want to talk —to talk about Ruth, as he did a good deal of the time. Nor was this altogether unsatisfactory to Philip. He was always happy and contented with Alice. She was the most ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... want to be up-to-date—there's no reason why the Westmore mills shouldn't do as well by their people as any mills in the country," he affirmed, in the tone of the entertainer accustomed to say: "I want the thing done handsomely." But he seemed even less conscious than Mrs. Westmore that each particular wrong could be traced back to a radical vice in the system. He appeared to think that every murmur of assent to her ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... with the young men he had invited. I knew I was not to breathe a word of what had happened, and I was miserably anxious about the effect that a dinner in a restaurant en vogue might have upon the nerves of my poor patient. Strange to say, he bore it very well, and played his part as entertainer quite merrily. But after dinner I longed to get him away, and proposed to take an open carriage for a drive in the Champs Elysees. This was accepted, and I believe ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... testimonials. A curious incident resulted from this great popularity. He was invited to breakfast by Sir Thomas Buxton, the noted English philanthropist, with a view to making the acquaintance of a number of distinguished persons who were to be present. When Mr. Garrison presented himself, his entertainer, who had not before met or seen him, looked at him ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... the popularity of the Hawaiian letters, and deliver a lecture on the same subject. But this was a fearsome prospect—he trembled when he thought of it. As Governor of the Third House he had been extravagantly received and applauded, but in that case the position of public entertainer had been thrust upon him. To come forward now, offering himself in the same capacity, was a different matter. He believed he could entertain, but he lacked the courage to declare himself; besides, it meant ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... love this generous, old-fashioned entertainer! One nearly always sees them clinging to the close whorls of flowers that are strung along the stem, and of course transferring pollen, in recompense, as they journey on. A more credulous generation imported the plant for its alleged healing virtues. What is the significance of its Greek ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... profound loyalty You have sent Us tribute from afar, and We are delighted at this admirable token of Your sincerity. Our health is as usual, notwithstanding the increasing heat of the weather. Therefore We have sent Pei Shieh-ching, Official Entertainer of the Department charged with the Ceremonial for the Reception of Foreign Ambassadors, and his suite, to notify to you the preceding. We also transmit to you the products of which a ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... at once that they must have come from a place of importance; which must be near at hand, as they had doubtless set out upon the receipt of a message, dispatched by his present entertainer. He guessed that the report must have been a favorable one of him, and that the natives were impressed with the idea that he was a superior being. It was, therefore, needful for him to comport himself so that this impression ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... Dublin on February 24, 1797, was the most versatile man of his age. He was a song-writer, a novelist, a painter, a dramatist, and an entertainer; and in each of these parts he was remarkably successful. In 1835 he came to London, and set up as a miniature painter; then he turned to literature, and in "Rory O'More," published in 1837, and "Handy Andy, a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... Alcmene forms the subject of comedies by Plautus and Moliere. From Moliere's line "Le veritable Amphitryon est l'Amphitryon ou l'on dine'' (Amphitryon, iii. 5), the name Amphitryon has come to be used in the sense of a generous entertainer, a ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... exhortations found no sympathetic chord in the mind of my patron. He had not the skill to carry conviction to an understanding so well fortified in error. In a word, after a thousand efforts of kindness to his entertainer, he drew off his forces, growling and dissatisfied with his own impotence, rather than angry at the obstinacy of Mr. Falkland. He felt no diminution of his affection for him, and was sincerely grieved to find that he was so little capable of serving him. Both parties in this case did justice ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... guest more fixedly than ever, and Lancey, now feeling convinced of his entertainer's madness, began to think uneasily of the best way ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... up a list right away; Mr. and Mrs. Cabinski, Majkowska and Topolski, Mimi and Wawrzecki and Glas, as an entertainer, of course. Whom else ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... Naushon is its old Indian name. William Swain, Esq., commonly known as "the Governor," was the proprietor of it at the time when this song was written. Mr. John M. Forbes is his worthy successor in territorial rights and as a hospitable entertainer. The Island Book has been the recipient of many poems from visitors and friends of the owners of ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... angel of Help, fixin' the cushions under our feet, brushin' the dust offen her mistresses dresses, or pickin' up my stitches when in my agitation or the jigglin' of the cars I dropped 'em, and a perfect Arabian Night's entertainer to Tommy, who worshipped her, when I hearn a exclamation from Tommy, and the car door shet, and I looked round and see a young man and woman advancin' down the isle. They wuz a bridal couple, that anybody could see. The ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... Marshall repaired to the White Bear, and Aubrey was left to Agnes as entertainer. She was sewing a long seam, and her needle went in and out with unfailing regularity. For a few minutes he watched her in silence, discovering a sunny gleam on her hair that he had never before noticed. Then he suddenly spoke ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... Our entertainer, waving his hand towards our mugs of Glenlivet, by way of invitation, lifted his own to his mouth by the handle, and with a dexterous tilt that showed practice, turned its bottom towards the beams ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... sleep, rises, is saluted; and after the malmsey or some well-spiced brewage, and better breakfasted than He whose morning appetite would have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem, his religion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the shop, trading all day without his religion." This is a startling passage. We should have pronounced hitherto that Milton's one hopeless, congenital, irremediable want, alike in literature and in life, was humour. ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... them! And we have invented a new sort of 'ribbon sandwich.' Did you ever hear of a ribbon sandwich? If not, you must be told that it consists of layers and layers of thin slices of bread all pressed down together, with ground nuts or dressed lettuce in between. Each entertainer astonishes her guests with a new variety. That furnishes ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... the pleasant music of a tea bell. He was mainly silent; although he threw in a quiet, controlled answer here and there. One could read, in the shadowy solicitude with which she regarded him now and then, the relation between that welded old couple—she the entertainer, the hoarder of trivial detail from her days; ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... insubordination had already troubled him; and these mutinous words now sounded ominously in his ears. He looked at the old gentleman uneasily. Upon one occasion, many years before, when Joseph was delivering a lecture, the audience had revolted in a body; finding their entertainer somewhat dry, they had taken the question of amusement into their own hands; and the lecturer (along with the board schoolmaster, the Baptist clergyman, and a working-man's candidate, who made up his bodyguard) ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... that Varick suddenly realized with satisfaction that both Miss Burnaby and Helen regarded the departure of their kinsman with perfect equanimity. Was it possible that Helen was glad her uncle and guardian was leaving her alone—for once? The thought was a very pleasant one to her present entertainer and host. ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

... ordered a chest of the Rosolio to be sent from Somersetshire. When it comes, please to send half down here (paying the carriage, of course). 'Twill be an acceptable present to my kind entertainer, Mr. B." ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray

... that the great difficulty was from "benevolence." It was hard to refuse "a good, worthy man" who asked you to try his cellar. This, according to Johnson, was mere conceit, implying an exaggerated estimate of your importance to your entertainer. Reynolds gallantly took up the opposite side, and produced the one recorded instance of a Johnsonian blush. "I won't argue any more with you, sir," said Johnson, who thought every man to be elevated who ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... the shortest pause he would ask whether his interlocutors were aware how many tons of rust were scraped every year off the Menai Bridge, and how many rival shops Mr. Whiteley had bought up since he opened his business. The attitude of his acquaintances towards this inexhaustible entertainer varied according to his presence or absence between indifference and terror. It was frightful to think of a man's brain being stocked with such inexpressibly profitless treasures. It was like visiting some imposing British Museum and finding its ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... at our entertainer's cottage when rumours got afloat, such as had not disturbed for many a year the standing and sometimes stagnant pool of Goslington society. The son of Lord W—was about to come of age, and the event was to be celebrated by grand doings; a varied string ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... mouth, gave you the idea of a man who could not easily be deceived by his fellows; one who, though no rogue himself, was quick in detecting the roguery of others. His manners were frank and easy, and he was such a hospitable entertainer that you felt at home with him in ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... The American husband must be a good provider, but it doesn't follow that the wife must be a good cook. Say a good entertainer, and there you have a complete formula of matrimony: PROVIDER (Hustler, Money-getter, Liberal) and ENTERTAINER (A woman pretty, ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... quarter to five when he took leave of his entertainer, responding warmly to an injunction to look in again whenever he felt disposed. He walked very thoughtfully homewards, revolving many questions in his busy brain. How much he had seen and learnt since he left home that morning! Worlds of beauty, ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... extracted from a cupboard behind the counter—dusky, in the rather low-browed place, despite its glass doors—each bid for their attention spoke, however modestly, for itself, and the pitch of their entertainer's pretensions was promptly enough given. His array was heterogeneous and not at all imposing; still, it differed agreeably from what they ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... of depending on the guests to make their own entertainment, a professional entertainer had been engaged from New York, and he sang and recited and did pantomimes that were so funny nobody could ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells

... her husband will not pass his evenings with her. The more she grieves, the more she scolds and the more diligently he keeps away from her. I don't think Jack Satan is conspicuously wise, but he is in the main a good entertainer, with a right pretty knack at making people come again; but the really reprehensible part of his performance is not the part that attracts them. The parsons might study his methods with great advantage ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... house, happy faces beamed from every corner, happy hearts beat high with Christmas cheer; the very air seemed charged with happiness. The four younger sisters made charming hostesses, Grandma Campbell proved to be a rare entertainer, and the dignified President won everlasting fame as a story-teller and leader ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown

... that character to the present; so that their utility in this respect has now long been the substantial ground on which these usages rest. Costly entertainments, such as the potlatch or the ball, are peculiarly adapted to serve this end. The competitor with whom the entertainer wishes to institute a comparison is, by this method, made to serve as a means to the end. He consumes vicariously for his host at the same time that he is witness to the consumption of that excess of good things ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... St. Auge was an English woman, famed as a whip, a golfer and an entertainer. Her salon was one of the most interesting, the most delightful in Brussels; her husband and her rollicking little boys were not a whit less attractive than herself, and her household was the wonder of that gay, ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon

... history of the country" was taking its leave in phrases more or less memorable and characteristic. Some of these valedictory axioms were clever, some witty, a few profound, but always left as a genteel contribution to the entertainer. Some had been already prepared, and, like a card, had served and identified the guest ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... is it necessary for a man to know you before he can call you 'Jack'?" When Jerrold first saw Smith's initials, he had said that he believed they were "only two-thirds of the truth"—and he continued to act upon the assumption until Smith left Punch and had become a successful "Entertainer." Then a truce was called, for his Mont Blanc ascent and the "Entertainment" he made out of it (of which Leech himself said, "It's only bad John Parry") had made of Smith one of the lions of the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... waiter, with the smiling bottle, the cork drawn; a common quart bottle, but for the occasion fitted at bottom into a little bark basket, braided with porcupine quills, gayly tinted in the Indian fashion. This being set before the entertainer, he regarded it with affectionate interest, but seemed not to understand, or else to pretend not to, a handsome red label pasted on the bottle, bearing the ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... Valdarfer, John Gutemberg, and the others. The Celt had no objection in the world to pledge successive glasses to these names, which he had no doubt belonged "to fery respectaple persons," probably to the chief landed gentry of his entertainer's neighbourhood. But the best Glenlivet would not induce him to pledge "the cause of Bibliomania all over the world," being unable to foresee what influence the utterance of words so unusual and so ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... the high-tide of minstrelsy in this country—1870 to 1880. Dozens of minstrel companies, ranging from bands of real negroes recruited in the South to aggregations of white men who blacked their faces, traveled about the country. The minstrel was the direct product of the slave-time singer and entertainer. His fame was recognized the world over. The best audiences at home, and royalty abroad, paid tribute to his talents. Out of the minstrel ranks of those days emerged some of the best known of our modern stars—men like Francis Wilson, Nat Goodwin, Henry E. ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... reading an article on "How to be a Success at an Evening Party." I was rather surprised to know that, for one thing, some knowledge of Spiritualism is necessary to enable one to be a popular entertainer nowadays. It has never struck me before that spiritualists were such a genial class, full of bonhomie and great joy; but then, although I read the Sunday papers, I'm afraid I don't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various

... for this occasion only, and a screaming display of conjuring tricks by an amateur of legerdemain who had forgotten the art, if ever he had mastered it. At every new mistake or blunder, and with each fresh change of expression on the entertainer's streaky face, conveying the idea of his being under the influence of a bad dream, and hoping to wake up in his own quarters by-and-by, to find that he had never really undertaken to make a pudding in a hat, and smash a gentleman's ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... BLAKEWAY. Northcote (Life of Reynolds, i. 118) says that Reynolds took Johnson to dine at a house where 'he devoured so large a quantity of new honey and of clouted cream, besides drinking large potations of new cyder, that the entertainer found himself much embarrassed between his anxious regard for the Doctor's health and his fear of breaking through the rules of politeness, by giving him a hint on the subject. The strength of Johnson's constitution, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... Our worthy entertainer was a man of the world, and understood this little trait of humanity; so he led us straight to the roofless mosque, where we were shaded from the afternoon sun, but at the same time had his cheerful reflection from the upper part of the marble walls, from which trailed and waved lovely vines ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... of Nigel Olifaunt, Lord Glenvarloch, being again hollowed into his ear, he drew up, and, regarding his entertainer with some austerity, rebuked him for not making persons of quality acquainted with each other, that they might exchange courtesies before they mingled with other folks. He then made as handsome and courtly a congee to his new acquaintance as a man maimed in foot and hand could do; and, observing ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... I lunched with her at her pretty villa at Putney. There I met Mr. Browning, Mr. Holman Hunt, Mrs. Ritchie, Miss Anna Swanwick, the translator of Aschylus, and other good company, besides that of my entertainer. ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... had never heard his name in our family. He said he knew the Redmonds of Redmondstown. 'Oh,' says I, 'mine are the Redmonds of Castle Redmond;' and so I put him off the scent. I went to see my nag put up at a livery-stable hard by, with the Captain's horse and chair, and returned to my entertainer. ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... their host's fault, nor Mr John Randolph's, who acted as joint entertainer, if their guests did not make a hearty tea. The meal concluded, Mr Tankardew requested his young friend to bring out some of his curiosities. These greatly interested all the party—especially Mrs Franklin and Mary, who were delighted with the ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson

... social intercourse. It may pamper the appetite, but it does not always feed the mind. There is still a corner left for those that have but little money. A lady can give a matinee or a soiree in a small house with very little expenditure of money; and if she has the inspiration of the model entertainer, every one whom she honors with an invitation will flock to her small and unpretending menage. There are numbers of people in our large cities who can give great balls, dazzle the eye, confuse and delight the senses, drown us in a sensuous ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... to the entertainer, as I shook the crumbs out of my napkin, and took the first whiff of my chibouque, "that if Stephan Dushan's chief cook were to rise from the grave, he could not give us ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... wits' end. She had not expected to be a professional entertainer, and she didn't ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells

... your friends your enemies will destroy you." Davis has stood by his friends. As a labor leader and a fraternal organizer, he has proved his ability. Thousands think he is unequaled as an orator, thinker and entertainer. His zeal is all for humanity and he knows man's needs. He has dedicated his life to the cause of better education for the workers of this land. His cause ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... exaggerated politeness of his manner to his wife, whose fingers he had kissed with pretty, old-fashioned gallantry upon his entrance, I asked myself, Could that encounter in the passage have been a dream? Could that savage in the sheepskin be my courteous entertainer? ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... upon his features, fitted very ill with the Lieutenant's preconceptions on the subject of the proprietor of a hell; and the tone of his conversation seemed to mark him out for a man of position and merit. Brackenbury found he had an instinctive liking for his entertainer; and though he chid himself for the weakness, he was unable to resist a sort of friendly attraction for Mr. Morris's ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... thus agreeably employed, could do no otherwise than discover that the countenance of his entertainer, which he had at first found so unprepossessing, mended when it was seen under the influence of the Vin de Beaulne, and there was kindness in the tone with which he reproached Maitre Pierre, that he amused ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... Garden, You, and I," said Lavinia Cortright, almost before I had finished the letter. "She will be entertainer in chief, for she never fails to ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright









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