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More "Performer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... black boots. I did think one spell of goin' into the theayter biz, but I couldn't git the right kind of a job. I can dance a good many of them perfessionals way out of sight, but the managers won't hire a performer what ain't ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... the expense of any pleasure which youth generally indulges, or by the omission of any accomplishment in which it becomes a gentleman to excel: he practised in great perfection the arts of drawing and painting, he was an eminent performer in both vocal and instrumental musick, he danced with uncommon gracefulness, and, on the day after his disputation at Paris, exhibited his skill in horsemanship before the court of France, where at a publick match of tilting, he bore away the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... she could only manage her own accompaniments or a sprightly valse. Nan, who did most of the execution of the family, was a very fair performer from a young lady's point of view, and that is not saying much. She always had her piece ready if people wanted her to play. She sat down without nervousness and rose without haste. She had a choice little repertory of old songs ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... that it was the only one I knew. I was glad that he had never discovered that I am a trained monkey. If he had known how many tricks I can perform life wouldn't have been worth living. It would have been like an endless circus, with me for the only performer. As it was, I was made to go through that one trick of the wise monkeys of Japan until I was heartily disgusted with it, or with anything else, in fact, that suggested ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... is like an AEolian harp; it makes a full and perfect sound of itself. A consonant cannot sound without a vowel, any more than a horn (except such an one as Baron Munchausen's) can play a tune without a performer. ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... a story in blank verse descriptive of this passage of the soul. It is sometimes sung in very dramatic fashion, the performer acting the principal incidents and pitching his voice in a doleful, though musical, minor key. Such a recitation of the passage of the soul, delivered by a wild and tragic figure before an intently listening group of squatting men and women illuminated by flickering ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... performance of the act judged is directed by the performer's brain, the constitution of which was pre-determined by the germ-plasm from which he arose, so that the basis ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... performer on the flute; Mr. Lanman played the violin, and his wife the piano; and they discoursed some excellent music. Then, still better, there was singing. The deep-chested Forrest had a superb bass voice; Lanman a fine tenor; Annie's voice was light, but exceedingly sweet and expressive; ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... restoration to life was effected, a probability would be arrived at which would be almost equal to certainty. An experiment, however, should always admit of being repeated. What a man has done once he should be able to do again, and in miracles there can be no question of ease or difficulty. The performer would be requested to repeat the operation under other circumstances upon other bodies; and if he succeeded on every occasion, two points would be established: first, that there may be in this world such things as supernatural ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... hear) not particularly good-tempered, and have wrecked a private brougham or two. No effect on Opera, which goes as well as ever. Rumours that the player of the grosse caisse has struck at rehearsal are confirmed, he appears in his place and strikes again, so does the Shakspearian performer "Cymbaline." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... Mr. Page, the performer, was a plump young man, with black whiskers, and his hair in oily ringlets, such as may be seen in the model wigs presented on smiling, waxen dandies, in Mr. Rose's front window at Dollington. He bowed and smiled in the most unexceptionable of white chokers and the dapperest of dress coats, and ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Cross who could not—and did not wish to—tell his Sovereign, when the coveted honour was being pinned to His breast, of some other soldier not less worthy than himself of being decorated, whose deed of gallantry was performed under less noticeable conditions. The performer of such a deed is an "as" and it is his luck to be a not public hero. But why ace of diamonds? ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... it always in your eye, and learn to walk upon it; rest upon Mr. Harte, and he will poise you, till you are able to go alone. By the way, there are fewer people who walk well upon that line, than upon the slack-rope; and, therefore, a good performer shines so much ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... have my readers too excited. They were words to shudder at, indeed; but the immediate consequences were not bloody— they were only to a limited degree tragic. It must be remembered that the magnificence of all actions is relative to the performer, nor would I seek to exalt Miss Limpenny to the level of a Semiramis or a Dido; only, when I say that she bore a great soul in a little body, I say no more than ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Philip. At first they only styled him regent and general, but, when they found by experience that he governed the kingdom with moderation and to general advantage, gave him the title of king. This was he that was surnamed Doson, as if he was a great promiser, and a bad performer. To him succeeded Philip, who in his youth gave great hopes of equaling the best of kings, and that he one day would restore Macedon to its former state and dignity, and prove himself the one man able to check the power of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... that enabled her to hit the target against odds of almost infinity to one; not just once, but time after time. By definition, intuition. What quality did you use just now in getting me off the hook? Intuition. What makes Teddy Blake such an unerring performer? Intuition again. My hunches—they're intuition, too. Intuition, hell! Labels—based on utterly abysmal damned dumb ignorance of our own basic frames of reference. Do you think those four kinds of intuition are alike, by seven thousand rows of ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... for thee for the performance of the Rajasuya sacrifice. The time for the performance of that sacrifice in which Rishis of austere vows kindle six fires with mantras of the Sama Veda, is come for thee in consequence of thy Kshatriya possessions. At the conclusion of the Rajasuya sacrifice when the performer is installed in the sovereignty of the empire, he is rewarded with the fruits of all sacrifices including the Agnihotra. It is for this that he is called the conqueror of all. Thou art quite able, O strong-armed one, to perform this sacrifice. All of us are ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... not his spirits were raised by Kenelm's praise and exhortations, the minstrel that day talked with a charm that spellbound Tom, and Kenelm was satisfied with brief remarks on his side tending to draw out the principal performer. ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... invariable use of heavy tackle has blinded the fishermen to the wonderful leaping and fighting qualities of this long-nosed, long-toothed sea-tiger. The few of us who have hooked barracuda on light tackle know him as a marvelous performer. Van Campen Heilner wrote about a barracuda he caught on a bass rod, and he is not likely to forget it, nor will the reader of his ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... silence fell upon the whole assembly, and it then became the duty of the performer, assuming an attitude of profound and deferential obeisance, to salute the lieutenant-general after a fashion more easily describable by Rabelais or by M. Armand Silvestre than by me, and which seems to have been derived from ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... epilogue of autobiographical interest, gathering up the foregoing strains of his lyre, for a few last chords, in so intimate a way that the actual fall of the fingers may be felt, the pausing smile seen, as the performer turns towards the one who inspired "One Word More." The appropriateness of "Transcendentalism" as a prologue need be no more of a secret than that of "One Word More" as an epilogue, although it is left to betray itself. Other poets writing on the poet, Emerson for example, and Tennyson, place ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... adroit performer intended she should—under the gay cascade of talk. Laughed at length, letting finer instincts of charity go by the wall, in her enjoyment of neatly turned mockeries and the sense of personal superiority they provoked. For Henrietta's dissection of the weaknesses of absent friends, inevitably ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... simulate all the movements of a cow or bull. They pretend to paw up the earth, toss their make-believe horns, turn round and pretend to scratch themselves, and in fact identify themselves with the animal they are representing; and it is irresistibly comic to watch a solitary performer go through this al fresco comedy. I have laughed often at some cunning old herdsman, or shekarry. When they see you watching them, they will redouble their efforts, and try to represent an old bull, going through all his pranks and practices, and throw ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... have preferred remaining with John Jr., but she was habitually polite, always playing when invited, and now taking her seat at the piano, she brought out sounds far different from those of a new performer. But Mr. Graham, if he heard it, did not heed it, his eyes and ears being alone for 'Lena. Seating himself near her, he commenced talking to her in an undertone, apparently oblivious to everything ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... gentlemen," he said, "'tis nothing at all, I assure you. On shore I am a circus performer, an' I was just practicing a little. Have ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... 'Fenice' at Venice, her voice and musical skill being such as to give hope of her becoming a prima donna. She had, she said, frequently sung at private parties at Rome, but only knew within the last few days that she had been, not a guest, but a paid performer. Overwhelmed with the shame and indignity of this false position, she implored her mother's brother to compassionate her. 'If I could not become a governess, I could be your servant, dearest uncle,' she wrote. 'I ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... farce of 'STATE PROSECUTIONS; or, the Plotters Outwitted,' will be again performed, and positively for the last time; on which occasion that first-rate performer, Mr. W. F. Stawell, will (by special desire of a distinguished personage) repeat his well-known impersonation of Tartuffe, with all the speeches, the mock gravity, etc., which have given such immense satisfaction to the public on former occasions. This eminent ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... hands many rings, with stones rather too large to be taken for genuine on a woman promenading alone at such an hour. Conjoined with the musical instrument, the attire confirmed the student in his first impression after the tragic one, that this was a performer in one of the numerous dance-houses of the popular region, ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... are at all seasons noisy and vivacious: from the end of February until the rains have set in they are positively uproarious. Two or three of them love to sit on a telegraph wire, or a bare branch of a tree, and hold a concert. The first performer draws itself up to its full height and then gives vent to harsh cries. Before it has had time to deliver itself of all it has to sing, an impatient neighbour joins in and tries to shout it down. The concert may last for half ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... his eyes, clasping his hands, striking his breast, and gyrating about Miss Dwyer in the most approved operatic style. He had a fine voice and knew a good deal of music; so that, barring a certain nervousness in the performer, the exhibition was really not bad. In his singing he had used a meaningless gibberish varied with the syllables of the scale, but he closed by singing the words, "Are you ready now? Go ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... A performer on the zimble, an instrument constructed like a wooden tray, with several wires stretched across lengthwise, and played by means of ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... ears would mistake for the voice of the Scarlet Tanager, comes from that rare visitant, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak. It is a strong, vivacious strain, a bright noonday song, full of health and assurance, indicating fine talents in the performer, but not genius. As I come up under the tree he casts his eye down at me, but continues his song. This bird is said to be quite common in the Northwest, but he is rare in the Eastern districts. His beak is disproportionately large and heavy, like a huge nose, which slightly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... to be imputed rather to the nature of the undertaking, than the negligence of the performer. Thus some explanations are unavoidably reciprocal or circular, as hind, the female of the stag; stag, the male of the hind: sometimes easier words are changed into harder, as burial into sepulture or interment, drier into desiccative, ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... living things, Most noble eminence, I worship thee; Thee I salute, who am a monarch's child, The daughter and the consort of a prince, The high-born Damayanti, unto whom Bhima, Vidarbha's chief—that puissant lord— Was sire, renowned o'er earth. Protector he Of the four castes, performer of the rites Called Rajasuya and the Aswamedha— A bounteous giver, first of rulers, known For his large shining eyes; holy and just, Fast to his word, unenvious, sweet of speech, Gentle and valiant, dutiful and pure; The guardian of Vidarbha, of his foes The slayer. ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... do MORE than this? Can it DO this? and if so who and what is to determine the degree of its failure or success? The composer, the performer (if there be any), or those who have to listen? One hearing or a century of hearings?-and if it isn't successful or if it doesn't fail what matters it?—the fear of failure need keep no one from the attempt for if the composer is sensitive he need but launch forth a countercharge ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... beautiful and inimitable to the cher confrere; and then gros bonnets of many kinds—ambassadors, cabinet ministers, bankers, generals, what do I know? even Jews. Above all always some awfully nice women—and not too many; sometimes an actress, an artist, a great performer—but only when they're not monsters; and in particular the right femmes du monde. You can fancy his history on that side—I believe it's fabulous: they NEVER give him up. Yet he keeps them down: no one knows how he manages; it's too beautiful ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... chords. She sang the song they had been working over, the song of Venice, with a swaying melody as of floating water-grasses. Then she plunged into a throbbing aria,—singing freely, none too accurately, but with a passion and self-forgetfulness which promised greater things than the concert performer. From this on to other snatches of opera, to songs, wandering as the mood took her, coming finally to the street song that Vickers had woven into his composition for Rome, with its high, sad note. There her voice stopped, died in a cry half stifled in the throat, and leaving the piano she ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... skater cut his name in the ice; there, bands of noisy boys were playing tag, and on the ringing steel pursuing the chase; while every once in a while down would tumble some lubberly urchin, or unskillful performer, or new beginner, coming into harder contact with the frozen element than was pleasant, and seeing stars in the daytime, while bursts of laughter and ironical invitations to try it again, greeted his misfortune. In another place were ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... tension, and when the swelling C in the overture to Freischutz told me that I had stepped, as it were with both feet, right into the magic realm of awe. Any one who had been watching me at that moment could hardly have failed to see the state I was in, and this in spite of the fact that I was such a bad performer on ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... the Mozart? Well, Mozart was a wonderful musical genius, who could compose music when he was five years old, and who astonished all Germany by his skill and aptness as a performer. So Charles decided on calling ...
— The Nursery, February 1878, Vol. XXIII, No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... been effectively uttered by a very inferior histrionic artist. In the second play, in the scene between Orestes and his mother, and in the gathering madness of Orestes, the art of the poet would unquestionably task to the uttermost the skill of the performer. But in the last play (the Furies), perhaps the sublimest poem of the three, which opens so grandly with the parricide at the sanctuary, and the Furies sleeping around him, there is not one scene from the beginning to the end in which an eminent ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... such things happened, which none but he can know; the most sure proof of his remembering is the power to react his part in the original drama, whatever it may have been; if a man can repeat a performance with consummate truth, and can stand any amount of cross-questioning about it, he is the performer of the original performance, whatever it was. The memories which all living forms prove by their actions that they possess-the memories of their common identity with a single person in whom they meet-this is ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... from her gifted father a great talent for music. She was a remarkably skilful performer upon the pianoforte. So retentive was her memory that she could play without notes a large portion of the works of ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... (whose real name was Maddaleno Morelli) often accompanied herself on the violin; not holding it against her shoulder, but resting it in her lap. She was reckoned a fine performer on this instrument; and for her distinguished talents was crowned in the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... not a wonderful performer, but she had a fine ear, and played with finish and accuracy. But she sang divinely. To oblige her friends, she sang a few new things and then pausing, was about to rise from the instrument, when Mr. ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... he thought this a mistake, but he urged that full details were wanting in regard to his mental capacity as shown in other ways than in music. Macaulay replied that Mozart was the Raphael of music, and was both a composer and a wonderful performer at the age of six. "Now," said he, "we cannot conceive of any one being a great poet at the age of six: we hear nothing of Shakespeare or Milton ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... little of as the music he was parodying, was beyond all bearing! Then, if ever, did my wretched master dig his fingers into his ears, and writhe and shiver and groan at each discord produced by that inhuman performer. He retreated into the innermost recess of his bedroom; he even hid his unhappy head beneath the clothes, if haply he might escape the agony of this torture. But it was hopeless. The shrieks and groans of that brutal ophicleide would have penetrated ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... fund of merit to the performer, which raises him in every future birth, and at length advances him to heaven, where he enjoys happiness for a limited period, or carries him towards final absorption. A person may sink to earth again by crimes committed in heaven. The joys of heaven arise only from the gratification ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... agreed, on the occasion of a great religious solemnity—the feast of Adonis—to go together to the palace of King Ptolemy Philadelphus, to see the image of Adonis, which the Queen Arsinoe, Ptolemy's wife, had had decorated with peculiar magnificence. A hymn, by a celebrated performer, was to be recited over the image. The names of the two women are Gorgo and Praxinoe; their maids, who are mentioned in the poem, are called Eunoe and Eutychis. Gorgo comes by appointment to Praxinoe's house to fetch her, and there the ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... him, and the cook and the two men stood watching them till they disappeared through the saloon entrance, while the men in the forecastle kept on singing a chorus, sounding now loud and now soft, just as one hears the music of a great organ when the performer opens and ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... and rewrite this section from the beginning, expunging the statements that Hoopdriver was a poet and a romancer, and saying instead that he was a playwright and acted his own plays. He was not only the sole performer, but the entire audience, and the entertainment kept him almost continuously happy. Yet even that playwright comparison scarcely expresses all the facts of the case. After all, very many of his dreams never got acted at all, possibly indeed, ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... with his parents to the Fourth Election district of Cecil county, in the Spring of 1855, and has been engaged in farming all his life, except two years spent in teaching in our public schools. He is a popular music teacher and performer on musical instruments, and has won local distinction ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... something. Down in the village, and opposite the curiously-carved fountain, is a schoolroom which can accommodate a couple of hundred people on a pinch. There are our public meetings held. Musical entertainments have been given there by a single performer. In that schoolroom last winter an American biologist terrified the villagers, and, to their simple understandings, mingled up the next world with this. Now and again some rare bird of an itinerant lecturer covers dead walls with posters, yellow and blue, and to that schoolroom we flock ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... performers have told us that in the moments of their highest efforts they are aware that the out-of-conscious portion of their mind is doing the work for them, and they are practically standing aside and witnessing the work being done. So true is this that in some cases it is related that if the performer's conscious mind attempts to take up the work the quality is impaired and the musician and the audience ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... task of being enthusiastic and demonstrative over matters of this kind, applauded vehemently, and cried, "Bravo!" and "Encore!" and ended in convincing us of the reality of his delight, by pressing his brandy-flask into the hands of the performer, and urging him to "drink it all, every drop, and then give us another!" Our mountain Paganini, I fear, interpreted the behest too literally; or else H.'s enthusiasm never afterwards rose to so high a pitch; at any rate, he was never known to manifest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... a city where he had fondly hoped to find a response to his high thoughts was the sensation caused throughout Rome by the dress and theatrical effectiveness with which a certain prelate said mass. All Rome talked of it, cardinals and noble ladies complimented the performer as if he were a ballet-dancer, and the flattered prelate used to rehearse his part, and expatiate upon his methods of study for it, to private audiences of admirers. In fact, society had then touched almost the lowest depth of degradation where society had always been ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... circus. Let all who are curious in regard to the point I am discussing visit it. Permit me to call special attention to three performers,—to the man who lifts the cannon, to the India-rubber man, and to the general performer. The lifter and the India-rubber man constitute the two mischievous extremes. It is impossible that in either there should be the highest physiological conditions; but in the persons of the Hanlon brothers, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... for the British noble to maintain his position, which was, after all, of small moment. The bended knee, no less than the full prostration to the ground, is a symbol of homage from an inferior to a superior, and if not equally humiliating to the performer, it is only because he has been made familiar by practice with one, and not with the other. In Europe, the bended knee is exclusively appropriated to the relations of sovereign and subject; and no representative of any sovereign in Christendom ever bends his knee ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... Each performer quaked with fear, and both sympathy and approval were in the applause. Miss Polly Vaughn was a rare picture of rustic beauty, her cheeks as red as her ribbons, her voice low and sweet. Trove came out in the audience for a look at her as she read. Ringing ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... which the fingers of this skilful pianist cannot overcome, and his intellectual grasp of a subject enables him to discern and interpret the beauties of all musical themes; but where an earnest, passionate interest in the music of the old masters is not felt by the performer, it is rarely ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of a contributor; the union will. No matter how excellent the idea, no matter how inspired the contrib may be to amplify it, he will not be permitted to do more than a certain amount of work per day. However brilliant he may be, he will be held down to the level of the most pedestrian performer. In unionizing, moreover, he will be only exchanging one tyrant for another, and perhaps not so benevolent a one. Now, then, go to it, as the emperor said to ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... Circus, and The Book is a novel by Miss AMYE READE. Mr. P. is not sweet upon any gymnastic and acrobatic shows in which the chances of danger appear, and probably are, as ten to one against the performer; and especially does he object to children of very tender years being utilised in order to earn money for their parents or guardians by exhibiting their precocious agility. Mr. P. approves of the ancient use of the birch as practised at Eton a quarter of a century ago, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... The performer seemed to grind out his fearful stuff with a fierce delight, in which appeared little of the esthetic pleasure of the artist. Thorpe was at a loss ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... present the same elements that constitute the appeal of pictures,—skill in the rendering, a certain correspondence with experience, and the power of imaginative interpretation of the facts of life. The music-hall performer who wins the loudest and heartiest applause is he who does the greatest number of pyrotechnic, wonderful things on the piano, or holds a high note on the cornet for the longest time. His success, as with ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... She dusted the room swiftly, aware all the time of a watchful eye. Occasionally came a crisp comment: "You didn't dust that window-sill." "Cecilia, that table has four legs—did you only notice two?"—the effort to speak while playing generally bringing the performer with vigour upon a wrong chord. The so-called music became almost a physical ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... Berlin, who were both cheerful and talkative. The household was then completely changed, for weeks at a time, and, the hatchet being temporarily buried, merriment and playing of sly tricks, with occasional boisterous pranks, became the order of the day. The most brilliant performer in the fun-making competitions that frequently arose was always my father himself. He was, as handsome men often are, the absolute opposite of Don Juan, and proud of his virtue. But by as much as he was unlike Don Juan, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... they prefer (I speak of the male sex) this latter to that of sounds. Music may procure some moments of bliss to those who yield themselves to its charms but it is transitory and, with them, leaves no reminiscence for the performer or the listener; on the contrary representative art remains and can also give satisfaction to the self love of the artist. It is limited to some rough designs and still more rough incisions on the blowpipes, quivers and the women's combs ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... which of course settles the question, I would not have called him a great performer—indeed, my astonishment has always been how he succeeded, or ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... corner to corner, and continued successively towards the centre until there is only room left for the hand to hold the instrument. At each corner is appended a bunch of cockatoo feathers. With this the chief performer keeps a little in advance of the dancers, and whisking it up and down to the time of the music, regulates ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... for the rehearsal of the newly-imported tragedy. I promised to be present. The state of my thoughts but little qualified me for a performer or auditor in such a scene; but I reflected that, after it was finished, I should return home with you, and should then enjoy an opportunity of discoursing with you fully on this topic. My resolution ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... minute. Fancy your father's feelings if I had come home with a black eye from an encounter with a pot-house bully! You know I put my foot into a tender secret of your man's, by offering to be the performer!" ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... performance of a musical piece by a great artist, some individual member of the audience were to be called upon to give his rendering of the original rendering. The result would be that the musical joy of the audience would be completely destroyed and the performer himself would ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... A verb is a word which signifies to be, to do, or to suffer. Verbs are divided into neuter, active, and passive. Neuter verbs merely signify being, or that kind of action which has no effect upon any thing beyond the performer, as, I am, I sit, I walk. (You may distinguish those neuter verbs that seem to imply action from active verbs by their making a complete sense by themselves, whereas active verbs always require a noun or pronoun after them to finish ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... mass of spangles and pieces of coloured glass. Underneath a skirt of tartan silk was fitfully visible. Their brown legs and feet were bare. The expression of their faces was solemn, not to say lugubrious—one performer had a most whimsical resemblance to Mr. Toole when he is sunk in an abyss of dramatic woe. They realised the responsibilities of their position, and there were moments when these seemed too many for them. The orchestra, taken as a whole, was rather noisy; but it comprised one instrument, ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... treated with considerable contempt by the Princess, he is not uninformed of the light in which he was intended to stand, by an amazing piece of imprudence of the last, but not the most inconsiderable performer in this drama, the Solicitor-general, Murray—pray, what part has his brother, Lord Dunbar, acted in the late squabbles in the Pretender's family? Murray, early in the quarrel, went officiously to the Bishop, and told him ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... clownish servant, called Lentulo, and in the third act a song is introduced for greater variety, which, as was not unusual at a later period of our stage history, seems to have been left to the choice of the performer. The prayer for the Queen, at the conclusion of the drama, put into the mouth of Fortune, was a relic of a more ancient practice, and perhaps affords further proof, if it were wanted, that it was represented before Elizabeth.[7] ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... part, he was born, of English and Scotch parents—he produced, edited, and illustrated "The Schoolboys' Punch" in manuscript, in careful imitation of the original, drawing the cartoon as well. One of these "big cuts" represented himself as the performer in a cabinet-trick—(the sensation of the Davenport Brothers was before the public at the time)—in which the cabinet was the school, and the ropes that bound him the curriculum; while from another cabinet he emerges ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... once "put the party through." The eccentric "Old Spear" was generally present, seated in an obscure corner smoking a solitary cigar. Comical S.D. Johnson and his hopeful son George were usually on hand to enliven the scene; and so was Jim Ring, alias J. Henry, the best negro performer, next to Daddy Rice, in the United States. Chunkey Monroe, who did the villains at the National; and, towering above him might be seen his cousin, Lengthy Monroe, who enacted the hard old codgers at the ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... department of concerted human action in which these same principles are not apparent? What would be thought of an army without discipline and without generals; or of a musical production in which every performer played his own tune? Even in the region of sport, can a cricket or a football team dispense with its captain and its places? And yet many people imagine that a disorganized collection of delegates of various sections can rule a nation? ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... could not see it at first. There may have been more, although I saw but one and heard but one baby cry, a prolonged but very low sound of pewee quality. While their charge lingered so near me, I was treated to another sensation by one of the pair,—a pewee song. The performer alighted almost directly over my head, and began at once to sing in a very sweet voice, but so low it could not be heard a dozen feet away. There was little variation in the tones, but it was rapidly delivered, with longer and shorter intervals and varying inflections, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... his daughter Margaret had almost broken that heart by marrying a man of whom he could not approve. Martin Moore was a professional violinist. He was a popular performer, though not in any sense a great one. He met the slim, golden-haired daughter of the manse at the house of a college friend she was visiting in Toronto, and fell straightway in love with her. Margaret had loved him with all her virginal heart in return, and married him, despite her father's disapproval. ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... compliment; for having drank a little more wine than usual that evening, and happening to wear a wig on account of having lost his hair by a fever, he suddenly took off the wig, and dashed it at the head of the performer, exclaiming, "You dog! I'll throw ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... that earlier essay he had merely criticised a critic; he had not originated criticisms of his own. So he had touched the field of theological controversy, but had not appeared on it as a performer. That now he so appeared was probably due to the success which attended Culture and Anarchy. The publication of that book had immensely extended the circle of his audience. Those who care for literature ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... his art. He led a wandering life for many years, and performed everywhere in restaurants, at fairs, at peasants' weddings, and at balls. At last he got into an orchestra and constantly rising in it, he obtained the position of director. He was rather a poor performer; but he understood music thoroughly. At twenty-eight he migrated into Russia, on the invitation of a great nobleman, who did not care for music himself, but kept an orchestra for show. Lemm lived with him seven years in the capacity of orchestra conductor, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... autumn of 1873. He was the father and teacher of the celebrated pianist, Clara Wieck, now Fr. Dr. Clara Schumann, widow of the renowned composer Robert Schumann, who was also a pupil of Wieck. His second daughter, Fraeulein Marie Wieck, is well known in Germany as an artistic performer on the piano-forte. ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... which even then conferred great celebrity on the successful player. At the court of Leo X, who, when cardinal, had filled his house with singers and musicians, and who enjoyed the reputation of a critic and performer, the Jew Giovan Maria del Corneto and Jacopo Sansecondo were among the most famous. The former received from Leo the title of count and a small town; the latter has been taken to be the Apollo in the Parnassus ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... unregenerated called this saloon the "Synagogue." The devotions consisted only of two hymns from the Plymouth Collection and a short prayer, and seldom occupied more than fifteen minutes. The hymns were accompanied by parlor-organ music when the sea was smooth enough to allow a performer to sit at the instrument without ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... always been considered one of the most pleasing and perfect of musical instruments. Here the skilled performer has absolutely free scope for his genius, because his fingers can pluck the strings at will and hence regulate the overtones, and his feet can regulate at will the tension, and hence the pitch ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... Australia, whither it appeared, the boy had betaken himself and his disappointment, people seemed at first disinclined to overlook Magda's share in the matter. For a time even her immense prestige as a dancer suffered some eclipse, but this, with a performer of her supreme artistry, was bound to ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... the greatest, is now-a-days more than common, to the greatest Disgrace of the Professors and the Profession; and yet they ought to know, that the Words only give the Preference to a Singer above an instrumental Performer, admitting them to be of equal Judgment and Knowledge. Let the modern Master learn to make use of this Advice, for never was it more necessary than ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... the once famous sleight of hand performer Patler. His house is a cozy, pretty affair, freshly painted and nestled under great embowering trees. Close ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... their regular concerts each man had a bamboo, which was of a different length and gave a different tone; these they beat against the ground, and each performer, assisted by the note given by this instrument, repeated the same note, accompanying it by words, by which means it was rendered sometimes short and sometimes long. In this manner they sing in chorus, and not only produced octaves to each other, according to their different ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... on several occasions witnessed, was invariably begun by a single female performer appearing on the scene, and after going through a few graceful movements, a shrill whistle (caused by inserting two fingers into the month) given by one of the men is the signal for a change. Several performers then come forward, advancing and retiring on either side of a huge ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... some of the chants were really beautiful, but rendered perhaps too harsh for our ears in actual contact: for as I joined myself to the procession, and became susceptible of the trembling cadence of each separate performer—the human voice in every key which the extremes of youth and age might produce, there was a sensation effected which I cannot well describe—a terrible jarring of the brain. The fact that the involuntary tears rolled down the cheeks of those ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... Pedgift,' says he. 'Public amusement? Why, it's Sunday evening!' says I. 'All right, sir,' says Mustapha. 'They stop acting on the stage, I grant you, on Sunday evening—but they don't stop acting in the pulpit. Come and see the last new Sunday performer of our time.' As he wouldn't have any more wine, there was nothing else ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... inconvenience and an imperfection that ought to be palliated; but we aggravate it. The first-rate actor always does his best, because the audience expect it, and reward him with their applause; but no one cares for, or observes, the performer of second-rate talents: whether he be perfect in his part, and exert himself to the utmost, or be slovenly and negligent throughout, he is unpraised and unblamed. The general effect, therefore, of our tragedies, is very unsatisfactory; for that is far greater, ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... life in France at the time of the first Napoleon. Fifi, a glad, mad little actress of eighteen, is the star performer in a third rate Parisian theatre. A story as dainty as a ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... not to gamble with Hop Wah. He is a very smart one at the business, and he will relieve you of all the money you have, if you play with him. Being a sleight-of-hand performer, he can do things that you could not see. Just go it light on that point. I don't want to have him get into trouble, and that is what he generally does when he wins a whole lot of money. There is always some one to accuse him of cheating, whether they catch ...
— Young Wild West at "Forbidden Pass" - and, How Arietta Paid the Toll • An Old Scout
... Sailor and Master of Navigation; Rode with ease and dexterity; and was a Proficient in that most difficult trick of the Manege, that of riding a horse en Biais, as the French term it, and of which our Newcastle has learnedly treated; was an admirable Performer on the Guitar and Viol di Gamba; Sung very sweetly; Fenced exquisitely; must have been in his Youth (he was now about Sixty, and his Hair was grizzled grey) as Beautiful as a Woman, as Graceful as ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... The number of spirits of one kind or another, believed in by the Indians, is very great. In the bear dance, the principal performer has a bear-skin over him, the head of it hanging over his head, and the paws over his hands. Others have masks of bears' faces; and all of them, throughout the dance, imitate the actions of a bear. They stoop ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... ever delving. Sometimes he leans upon his mattock, and gazes, as a coach whirls by, bearing the newly married on their wedding jaunt, or glances carelessly at a babe brought home from christening. Suddenly (for the scene grows larger and larger as we look) a bony hand snatches back a performer in the midst of his part, and him, whom yesterday two infinities (past and future) would not suffice, a handful of dust is enough to cover and silence forever. Nay, we see the same fleshless fingers opening to clutch the showman himself, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... matter of astonishment, but to him it was sport; for while employed thus he kept talking to those below and laughing immoderately. He descended with as much ease and agility as he had raised himself. Even our natives allowed that he was a capital performer, against whom they dared not to enter the lists; for as they subsist chiefly by fishing they are less expert at climbing on the coast than ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... poignant, new value, and through that revolution to achieve form comparable to the most eminent. His fantasy ranges over the keyboard with complete freedom; he creates new rhythms, new combinations of tones that cause the hands of the performer to become possessed of a new and curious intelligence, to make significant gestures, and to move with a delightful life. And these latter compositions are entirely structure, entirely bone. There is a complete economy. There is not a note in the Ninth Sonata, for instance, that is not necessary, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... night, for the experiment was interrupted. An elderly, hard-looking man, with a goatee beard and about as much appearance of sentiment an you would expect from a retired slaver, turned with a start and bade the performer stop that "damned thing." "I've heard about enough of that," he added; "give us something about the good country we're going to." A murmur of adhesion ran round the car; the performer took the instrument from his lips, laughed and nodded, and then struck into a dancing measure; ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Museum is largely due to the energy and erudition of Dr. W. J. Holland, its amiable director. In the music-hall, a symphony orchestra is maintained, and free recitals are given on the great organ twice every week by a capable performer. When the orchestra began its work thirteen years ago, it is doubtful if there were very many persons in Pittsburgh, other than musical students, who knew the difference between a symphony, a suite, a concerto, and a fugue. To-day there are thousands of people in this city who can intelligently ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... five minutes, and no one answered. The flute still continued its melancholy tune; it was evidently in the hands of a learner, for the air (a dispiriting one enough at the best) kept breaking off suddenly and repeating itself. But the performer had patience, and the sound never ceased for more than two seconds at a time. Besides this, nothing could be heard. The blinds were drawn in all the windows. The glow of the candles through them was cheerful enough, but nothing ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hidden under his coat he brought dozens of skins. I believe that his religious vows did not allow him to handle animals—openly—and so he would beckon Roy into the darkness of the temple with a most mysterious air, and would extract all sorts of things from his sleeves just like a sleight-of-hand performer. He was a ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... Fenn was also a musician,—not a genius at the piano, as he was at cricket, but a sufficiently sound performer for his age, considering that he had not made a special study of it. He was to play at the school concert on the ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... instrumental and vocal. The English trials hardly mention music, possibly because the Sabbath had fallen into a decadent condition; but the Scotch and French trials prove that it was an integral part of the celebration. The Devil himself was the usual performer, but other members of the society could also supply the music, and occasionally one person held the position of piper to the Devil. The music was always as an accompaniment of the dance; the instrument in general use ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... the bull's neck a number of barbed darts ornamented with cut paper, and, sometimes, charged with detonating powder. It is de rigeur to plant the barbs exactly on either side. In the third and final act, the protagonist, the matador or espada, is the sole performer. His function is to entice the bull towards him by waving the muleta or red flag, and, standing in front of the animal, to inflict the death-wound by plunging his sword between the left shoulder and the blade. "The teams of mules now enter, glittering with flags and tinkling with ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... four in a bar, on the contrary, should be beaten two in a bar; the four accustomed gestures of a moderate movement becoming then so hurried as to present nothing decided to the eye, and serving only to confuse the performer instead of giving him confidence. Moreover,—and this is of much more consequence,—the conductor, by uselessly making these four gestures in a quick movement, renders the pace of the rhythm awkward, and loses the freedom ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... young acrobat started to pull himself up on the rope. The ringmaster glared at him and then cracked his whip once more, taking the young performer in ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... man resembles a fiddler, whose music, though liked, is not much praised, because he lives by it; while a gentleman performer, though the most wretched scraper alive, throws ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... Burney's Memoirs, ii. 77. Hawkins (Life, p. 319) says that Johnson said of music, '"it excites in my mind no ideas, and hinders me from contemplating my own." I have sometimes thought that music was positive pain to him. Upon his hearing a celebrated performer go through a hard composition, and hearing it remarked that it was very difficult, he said, "I would it had been impossible."' Yet he had once bought a flageolet, though he had never made out a tune. 'Had I learnt ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... know that it is the uneven and irregular surface that strikes us as the largest, and the dimensions of a genius, like those of a building, are lost in the justness of its proportions; and therefore it is that in recalling the surpassing excellence of our guest as an artistical performer, one is really at a loss to say in what line of character he has excelled the most. The Titanic grandeur of Lear, the human debasement of Werner, the frank vivacity of Henry V, the gloomy and timorous guilt of King John, or that—his last—personation ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... the performers were born musicians. The principal opera house, or rather that in which the principal singers are engaged, is near the palace, and is called Im Theater naechst dem Kaernthnerthoc. Here I saw the Marriage of Figaro performed with great spirit and eclat. A young lady, a new performer of the name, of Wranizth, played Susannah in a style exquisitely naive and effective. She was one of the most natural performers I ever saw; and her voice seemed to possess equal sweetness and compass. She is a rising favourite, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... practised; indeed, it was rarely that we visited their habitations without seeing some engaged in them. One of these our gentlemen saw at Winter Island, on an occasion when most of the men were absent from the huts on a sealing excursion, and in this Iligliuk was the chief performer. Being requested to amuse them in this way, she suddenly unbound her hair, platted it, tied both ends together to keep it out of her way, and then, stepping out into the middle of the hut, began to make the most hideous faces that can be conceived, by drawing both lips into her mouth, ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... man and a famous Professor was he, As the great Alexander now may be, Whose fame not yet o'erpast is: Or that new Scotch performer Who is fiercer and warmer, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Should the voice agree in style with the different varieties of prose? It should, and the performer should endeavor to produce the exact ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... than the percussion of hands, a man would execute a pas seul, which it is to be presumed he enjoyed. Again, with a riper and better sense of musical methods, the performer accompanied himself, or, as in this case it usually was, herself, on the double-pipes, the guitar or the tambourine, while the familiar hand-clapping was done by attendants. A step not unlike that of the abominable clog dance ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... young man arrived, and, duly arrayed, was received into his stall at vespers, the bishop assisting. It was then that the people heard the music of the organ, rolling over them for the first time, with various feelings of delight. But the performer on and author of the instrument was forgotten in his work, and there was no re-instatement of the former favourite. The religious ceremony was followed by a civic festival, in which Auxerre welcomed its future lord. The festival was to end at nightfall with a somewhat rude popular pageant, ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... of frugality and self-denial by the Continental Congress put an end temporarily to plays in the colonies outside the British lines and put Washington into a greater play, "not, as he once wished, as a performer, but as a character." There were amateur performances at Valley Forge, but they aroused the hostility of the puritanical, and Congress forbade them. Washington seems, however, to have ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... played Charlot, 'proved', says Cibber, 'not only a good actress, but was allowed in those days, to sing and dance to great perfection. In the dramatic operas of Dioclesian and King Arthur, she was a capital and admired performer. In speaking too, she had a sweet-toned voice, which, with her naturally genteel air and sensible pronunciation, rendered her wholly mistress of the amiable in many serious characters. In parts of humour, too, she had a manner of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... "Yes, a fodefeel performer. I don't know what that means, but he must be queer. But I think Larry would be all right, and Joe. You ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... the son of an instrument maker, a fairly good performer and an even better composer," the musician began. "Thus at an early age I had mastered the laws of musical construction in its twofold aspects, the material and the spiritual; and as an inquisitive child I observed many things which ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... circus performer nearly ran against him. He looked up and made a forward jump. He seized the handkerchief and the two odd objects it contained with a fervent cry that astonished ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... as well. In music, to take but a single example, are present the same elements that constitute the appeal of pictures,—skill in the rendering, a certain correspondence with experience, and the power of imaginative interpretation of the facts of life. The music-hall performer who wins the loudest and heartiest applause is he who does the greatest number of pyrotechnic, wonderful things on the piano, or holds a high note on the cornet for the longest time. His success, as with the painter whose aim is to create illusion, rests upon men's ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... without words" on an instrument he knew as little of as the music he was parodying, was beyond all bearing! Then, if ever, did my wretched master dig his fingers into his ears, and writhe and shiver and groan at each discord produced by that inhuman performer. He retreated into the innermost recess of his bedroom; he even hid his unhappy head beneath the clothes, if haply he might escape the agony of this torture. But it was hopeless. The shrieks and groans of that brutal ophicleide would have ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... a glory to think that even a Mexican rebel could not have been guilty of so heinous a crime. The performer of that cowardly deed was a Frenchman, living among the Indians of the west, who, for the sake of a paltry sum of gold, came to the aid of the rebels with many thousands of the savages. His next step was to ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... practice are required in order so to make and adjust the machines described by me as not to overlook the smallest particular, I should not be less astonished if they succeeded on the first attempt than if a person were in one day to become an accomplished performer on the guitar, by merely having excellent sheets of music set up before him. And if I write in French, which is the language of my country, in preference to Latin, which is that of my preceptors, it is because I expect that those who ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... however, interesting, deeply so; one of those rare beings who fill your eye in every mood. Her passion for music, and the great excellence she had attained as a performer, drew us together. I was her daily visitor; but, if my admiration ever softened into tenderness, it was the tenderness of pity for her unsatisfied ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... engagement cleared away, secure of his ship. I suppose he was about thirty: a powerful, active man, with a blue eye, a thick head of hair, about the colour of oakum and growing low over the brow; clean-shaved and lean about the jaw; a good singer; a good performer on that sea-instrument, the accordion; a quick observer, a close reasoner; when he pleased, of a really elegant address; and when he chose, the greatest ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... murderous nature. But I incline to the belief that it is because the invariable use of heavy tackle has blinded the fishermen to the wonderful leaping and fighting qualities of this long-nosed, long-toothed sea-tiger. The few of us who have hooked barracuda on light tackle know him as a marvelous performer. Van Campen Heilner wrote about a barracuda he caught on a bass rod, and he is not likely to forget it, nor will the reader ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... accomplished young men of his time. He was well read in the Greek and Latin authors, as well as in all the moderns of any merit who had written in English, French, or Italian. He had a good ear for music, and was no indifferent performer on the violin, which he used to play like a bass viol, seated on a chair with the instrument between his legs. To the music of the harpsichord and clavichord he was extremely partial, but the smallness of his hands ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... tomorrow. Do you know what the public is after in its pursuit of art? To shout bravos, to throw flowers and wreaths upon the stage, to have something to talk about, to be seen by others, to say Ah and Oh, once in a while to take a hand in unhitching a performer's horses—these are the public's real wants, and I satisfy them. If they pay me half a million, I in return furnish a living to a legion of cabmen, writers, milliners, florists, tavernkeepers. The money is made to circulate. People's blood is made to circulate. Young girls become engaged, ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... library (in which I was supposed to be waiting), the active young footman was in the hall, answering the door. It mattered little, as I thought. In my aunt's state of health, visitors in general were not admitted. To my horror and amazement, the performer of the soft little knock proved to be an exception to general rules. Samuel's voice below me (after apparently answering some questions which I did not hear) said, unmistakably, "Upstairs, if you please, sir." The next moment I heard footsteps—a man's footsteps—approaching the ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... attempted by his predecessor. Smith thrills thousands in daily flights and skiey acrobatics, including crazy dips and loops, startling dashes to the earth and illuminated flights through the night air. (See p. 192.) Smith became in a day an attraction outshining, perhaps, any other single performer ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... singing, done in the village hall by one of the villagers, will arouse more criticism and more enthusiasm among his friends and neighbours than can be excited by the most consummate performance of a professional in a great city theatre, where no one in the audience knows or cares for the performer. ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett
... Silver was a star performer. What other fire-horse ever mastered the intricacies of the automatic halter release? It was Silver, too, that picked from the Captain's hip-pocket a neatly folded paper and chewed the same with malicious enthusiasm. The folded paper ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... show that very little amount or force of breath is needed to produce effective tones, the impression must exist in the mind of the performer that there is a free flow of breath through the larynx; otherwise the tone will seem restricted and will be weak. The forced holding back of the breath begets a restraint that has a bad effect on the singer's delivery. While the breath must be controlled, there is such a thing as ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... was a twin brother of Gil Alvarez. They were known among their few friends as Jack and Gil. They were trained athletes; their father had been a circus performer, and under peculiar circumstances the two brothers had been trained for the profession, but owing to reasons satisfactory to themselves, and as recorded in previous records of their exploits, they had decided become detectives, ...
— Two Wonderful Detectives - Jack and Gil's Marvelous Skill • Harlan Page Halsey
... the first son of Stenatlihan, who was made to conceive by the sun's rays as she lay asleep on the eastern slope of a mountain. He is the War God and miracle performer, the culture hero who in parallel legends appears in many North American aboriginal cults. Great monsters in the form of giant antelopes, rolling stones, and beasts of hideous conception are supposed to have inhabited the earth for a time, destroying its people. These monsters typify only ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... addresses of a swarthy foreigner who had a foothold a yard beyond the curbstone, and who was turning the crank of his instrument with all the rapid regularity of the thorough mechanician. The whole street rang. "'Ah, perche non posso odiarti!'" hummed Truesdale in unison with the organ, as the performer, after an intricate cadenza, returned to the original theme. "That's the only recognizable thing I've heard these fellows play since I came over. I wonder who puts together all the shocking stuff they are ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... elucidate, obey, and express. The genius knows them not. The recitation begins; one golden word leaps out immortal from all this painted pedantry and sweetly torments us with invitations to its own inaccessible homes. I remember I went once to see the Hamlet of a famed performer, the pride of the English stage; and all I then heard and all I now remember of the tragedian was that in which the tragedian had no part; simply ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... It has been claimed by some that the cobra is not influenced by the music, but by movements of the Hindu performer, who dances, salaams, etc., continually while giving exhibitions. Very recently, however, Momsen has proven the contrary by ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... near you, in Florida) added his voice for a time, but soon relapsed into silence. The fact was characteristic; for, wherever I went, I found it true that the mocker grew less musical as the place grew wilder. By instinct he is a public performer, he demands an audience; and it is only in cities, like St. Augustine and Tallahassee, that he is heard at his freest and best. A loggerhead shrike—now close at my elbow, now farther away—was practicing his ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... from a private source that he uses a disc of twelve inches diameter which he rolls upon a straight rail.' The 'rolling is a very creditable one; it is as much below the mark as Archimedes was above it. Its performer is a joiner who evidently knows well what he is about when he measures; he is not wrong by 1 in 3000.' Such skilful mechanicians as the builders of the pyramid could have obtained a closer approximation still by mere measurement. Besides, as they were manifestly ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... the showerer, the slayer of the malevolent, profound, mighty, of impenetrable sagacity, the dispenser of prosperity, the enfeebler, firm, vast, the performer of pious acts, Indra has given birth to the light ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... convenience. The caste themselves have the following legend of their origin: Once upon a time Parmeshwar [244] was offering rice milk to the spirits of his ancestors. In the course of this ceremony the performer has to present a gift known as Vikraya Dan, which cannot be accepted by others without loss of position. Parmeshwar offered the gift to various Brahmans, but they all refused it. So he made a man of clay, and blew upon the image and gave ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... born in Albany, New York and before she started her writing career she was a file clerk, music teacher and a carnival performer. Her hobbies are reading science fiction novels, going to the opera and listening to ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... average excellence. The Ladies here are real Ladies, not stuffed imitations, as at Cambridge. Mrs. SIM, Mrs. MORRIS, and Miss FARMER, were all good. But the one really brilliant performance was that of Crab, the dog, by a wonderful Variety performer from the Theatre Royal, Dogs' Home, Battersea. If this gorgeously ugly, splendidly intelligent, and affectionately versatile animal is sent back at the conclusion of the run of the piece to be asphyxiated at Battersea, I shall never believe in the gratitude ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... went off—not with a loud report, but with a gentle and lofty tenor piping, somewhere in the neighbourhood of F, or it might have been only E (though, indeed, a photograph would have suggested that Emanuel was singing at lowest the upper C), and the performer slowly resumed ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... lady made in her quaint frock against the crumbling garden wall. He spoke a very pretty speech about her appearance. But he found her haughty indeed considering that she was nothing but an upstart vaudeville performer. She had no manners at all, he decided, for she did not even suggest that he sit down. He actually had to make ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... and the young King of Navarre, though proof to the artifices of his gossip Guise, was not adamant to the temptations spread for him by Catherine de' Medici. In the harem entertained for him in the Louvre many pitfalls entrapped him; and he became a stock-performer in the state comedies and tragedies of that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... left all alone in the middle, don't you think?" Lord Regalia felt his own similarity to the "ball in a fix" too keenly to appreciate the interesting character of the amusement, or the coolness of the chief performer in it; but "Beauty's Solitaire" became a synonym thenceforth among the Household to typify any very tender passages "sotto ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... obliged to make millions laugh. I do not like Chaplin's work, but I have to admit the good intentions and the enviable laurels. Let all the Art Museums invite him in, as tentative adviser, if not a chastened performer. Let him be given as good a chance as Mae Marsh was given by Eggers in Fullerton Hall. Only let him come in person, not in film, till we hear him speak, and consider his suggestions, and make sure he has eaten of the mystic Amaranth Apples of ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... embrace. Iemon receives them as would a stone Jizo[u]. O'Iwa, at sight of the fright of Iemon, laughs—ki, ki, ki. At once they fade away; and at once the ghost of Kohei the wakato[u] takes her place, he who was charged with unchaste conduct with O'Iwa. It was the part of the performer to please the uninitiated by some strenuous effort. The first performance at this theatre was for three months—from the seventh to the ninth month. On consideration the drama is of interest. O'Iwa is killed at Yotsuya. With the dead body of the wakato[u] ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... my children, Come my boys and girls, my women, household and intimates, Now the performer launches his nerve, he has pass'd his prelude on ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... remain in her society, of necessity exceedingly small. She would try my temper at home, too, in a thousand ways. When requested by me (often, I own, rather roughly) to entertain the company with conversation, wit, and learning, of which she was a mistress: or music, of which she was an accomplished performer, she would as often as not begin to cry, and leave the room. My company from this, of course, fancied I was a tyrant over her; whereas I was only a severe and careful guardian over a silly, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... who, having thrown a rope high into the air, has a boy climb it until he is lost to view. He can even have the feat photographed. The camera will click; nothing will appear on the developed film; and this, the performer will glibly explain, "proves" that the whole company of onlookers was hypnotized! And he can be certain of a very profitable following to defend and ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... his Royal Highness coming forward to the front of the box and himself directing the musicians, keeping time earnestly with his right hand, in which was a long black opera-glass. This he occasionally used, but merely to look at the orchestra, not, assuredly, to detect a negligent or inefficient performer; for in the schooled orchestra of Reisenburg it would have been impossible even for the eagle eye of his Royal Highness, assisted as it was by his long black opera-glass, or for his fine ear, matured as it ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... their cost in other countries. In Somaliland, for instance, for the price I paid for my nine, I could get one hundred and sixty-three camels! But the Somali camel from all accounts is a very poor performer, compared to his kinsman in the Antipodes, his load being about 200 lbs. against the Australian's 6 to ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... the case of the meditations on the small ether, &c., on the other hand, the text says nothing as to their having to be performed by priests, and we therefore assume in accordance with the general principle that 'the fruit belongs to the performer,' that the agent there is the person to whom Scripture assigns the fruit.— Here terminates the adhikarana of ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... cried with a chuckle. "That dog 'll be worth money to the show, by the time I've trained him. 'The Wonderful Black and Tan Performer,' &c. We'll keep him shut up till we're far from here, and if any questions is asked it's our dog, and that boy's a thief that have stole him from ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... visits, indeed, had by no means been frequent, as the ill-humour of Lady Margaret Monckton had rendered them painful to her; yet the opportunities they had afforded her of mixing with people of fashion, had served to prepare her for the new scenes in which she was soon to be a performer. ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... got so unbearing hot! I might have missed it altogether. Wouldn't it have been a shame to lose that sight? The cunning little divil! When he gets to toddling down that log to meet me, won't he be a circus? Wonder if he'll be as graceful a performer afoot as ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... shouts and answering cries and laughter. Here, flying round in graceful curves, a dexterous skater cut his name in the ice; there, bands of noisy boys were playing tag, and on the ringing steel pursuing the chase; while every once in a while down would tumble some lubberly urchin, or unskillful performer, or new beginner, coming into harder contact with the frozen element than was pleasant, and seeing stars in the daytime, while bursts of laughter and ironical invitations to try it again, greeted his misfortune. In another place were girls on ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... could not both be referable to the same noun contents, by silently substituting die for dies, MR. COLLIER has blinded his reader and wronged his author. The purport of the passage amounts to this: the contents, or structure (to wit, of the show to be exhibited), breaks down in the performer's zeal to the subject which it presents. Johnson very properly adduces a much happier expression of the same thought from A Midsummer ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... salutation—accomplished by adding something to a rather quick inclination of the body from the hips, with the back and neck held straight expressed deference without affecting or inviting cordiality. It was an elaborate little formality of a kind fancifully called "foreign," and evidently habitual to the performer. ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... illustrious dramatist was born, in the year 1564, and here he also died, in 1616. It has been conjectured, that his first dramatic composition was produced when he was but twenty-five years old. He continued to write for the stage for a great number of years; occasionally, also, appearing as a performer: and at length, having, by his exertions, secured a fortune of two or three hundred a year, retired to his native town, where he purchased a small estate, and spent the remainder of his ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... business houses, chorus girls from the theaters, and a mixed company generally, are to be found sitting around the various tables, drinking. The atmosphere is foggy with cigar smoke. The saloon is all ablaze with light. On the stage is some fourth-rate performer rendering a popular song. There is a long lunch counter, upon which is placed the materials for manufacturing all kinds of sandwiches. There is the flower girl, with her tray of fresh pansies and roses, casting a reflected bloom upon her otherwise pale face. There ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... not trouble to weigh the rights against the wrongs. But look at this boy, here. You recognize him, hey? I charge you with having murdered his father, Major Brooks, as you murdered Coffin. You have run up a pretty long account, my friend, for so clumsy a performer; but I think you have reached the ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... a considerable number of poetical experiments when the Dunciad appeared, but he had not yet discovered in what direction his talents could be most efficiently exerted. Bystanders are sometimes acuter in detecting a man's true forte than the performer himself. In 1722 Atterbury had seen Pope's lines upon Addison, and reported that no piece of his writing was ever so much sought after. "Since you now know," he added, "in what direction your strength ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... the straight high-road with its high-tangled hedge-rows on either side than she began to show symptoms of behaving very badly indeed. She bucked and pranced, and stood on her hind legs; she whipped suddenly round, pirouetted upon her own axis with the dexterity of a circus performer, and demonstrated very plainly that, if she only dared, she would like to take to her heels in the reverse direction to that which her ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... enthusiasm with any other person when occasion was felicitous, the subject of interest, and the comedian in his happy vein. Dunlap, were he speaking, might tell you of his [Cooper's] gratuities to the unfortunate playwright and the dramatic performer." In 1832 William Dunlap's "History of the American Theatre" was "Dedicated to James Fenimore Cooper Esq., by his ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... Gaines leaning far forward, looking now at his wife, now at the little group. I followed his eyes. To my surprise, I saw Marchant, his gaze riveted on Edith Gaines as if she had been the star performer in a play. Evidently my chance request to Karatoff had been builded better than I knew. I ran my gaze over the others. Errol was no less engrossed than Marchant. Quickly I glanced at Carita, wondering whether she might be gratified by the performance of a pupil. Whether it was natural ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... mere trick of a juggler! a figure projected on the wall by some ingenious contrivance of glasses. The instrument was found on the body of the performer, who turned out to be the colonel's valet—of course in the enemy's pay, and who furnished them with daily intelligence of all our proceedings. As for the loss of the sabre, which actually startled the ghost-seer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... frail as music. Features of our face, The tones of the voice, the touch of the loved hand, Perish and vanish, one by one, from earth: Meanwhile, in the hall of song, the multitude Applauds the new performer. One, perchance, One ultimate survivor lingers on, And smiles, and to his ancient heart recalls The long forgotten. Ere the morrow die, He too, returning, through the curtain comes, And the new age forgets us and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the shop itself would have held Janice Day's attention even for a moment; but from within (the front door stood ajar) came the wailing notes of a violin, the uncertain bow of the performer seeking out the notes of "Silver Threads ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... express. The genius knows them not. The recitation begins; one golden word leaps out immortal from all this painted pedantry, and sweetly torments us with invitations to its own inaccessible homes. I remember, I went once to see the Hamlet of a famed performer,[624] the pride of the English stage; and all I then heard, and all I now remember, of the tragedian, was that in which the tragedian had no part; simply, Hamlet's ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... life, playing in all sorts of places—in taverns, at fairs, at peasants' marriages, and at balls. At last he gained access to an orchestra, and there, steadily rising higher and higher, he attained to the position of conductor. As a performer he had no great merit, but he understood music thoroughly. In his twenty-eighth year, he migrated to Russia. He was invited there by a great seigneur, who, although he could not abide music himself, maintained an orchestra from a love of display. In his house Lemm spent ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... nowadays," the old woman told Ruth once, "are not trained as they once were. I came of circus folk. My people had been circus performers in the old country for generations before my father and mother came over here. My husband was a trapeze performer. ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... length, of narrow cylindrical bore, and played by means of a cup-shaped mouthpiece. The tube is bent round upon itself from the mouthpiece to the bell in the shape of a broad C and is strengthened by means of a bar across the curve, which the performer grasps while playing, in order to steady the instrument; the bell curves over his head or shoulder as in the modern helicon. Three Roman buccinas were found among the ruins of Pompeii and are now deposited in the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... protection, though not welcome. Methinks," he added, "it is time that I should know who they are that have thus highly honoured my ruined dwelling!" The young lady remained silent and motionless, and the father, to whom the question was more directly addressed, seemed in the situation of a performer who has ventured to take upon himself a part which he finds himself unable to present, and who comes to a pause when it is most to be expected that he should speak. While he endeavoured to cover his embarrassment with the exterior ceremonials of a well-bred demeanour, it was obvious ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... pleasure even in her half-motherly criticism and admonition of some passages. I am afraid he forgot Susy, who listened with the complacency of an exhibitor; Mary, whose black eyes dilated alternately with sympathy for the performer and deprecation of Mrs. Peyton's critical glances; and Peyton, who, however, seemed lost in thought, and preoccupied. Clarence was happy. The softly shaded lights in the broad, spacious, comfortably furnished drawing-room shone on the group before him. It was a picture of refined ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... burlesque of a lovelorn tenor's part, rolling his eyes, clasping his hands, striking his breast, and gyrating about Miss Dwyer-in the most approved operatic style. He had a fine voice and knew a good deal of music; so that, barring a certain nervousness in the performer, the exhibition was really not bad. In his singing he had used a meaningless gibberish varied with the syllables of the scale, but he closed by singing the words, "Are you ready ...
— Deserted - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... a quite surprising performer on the banjo, which her father had taught her when she was quite a little girl, and invented charming tunes and effects and modulations that had never been tried on that humble instrument before. She could have made a handsome living out of it, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Bellini's 'Sonnambula'; and in a glee, 'You'll See Them on the Ohio,' nothing can be more effective than the skilful blending of the parts. It is, perhaps, the buffo exhibition which will create the greatest sensation, and in this quality they are inimitable. The tambourine performer affects a ludicrous air of pompous sentiment, while the castanet sable hero indulges in all kinds of buffoonery and antics. He is a wonderful player—no Spaniard can rival him in rapidity, delicacy and precision. A scene called a 'Railway ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... wherein the peculiar features of the box consist. The one I am about to describe is, I think, the best of those I am acquainted with, or at liberty to divulge. Indeed, I don't know that any method is better, and this one has the advantage over most others of allowing the performer to get into as well as out of the box, without leaving a trace of his means of ingress. It will be seen the box is paneled, and all the panels look equally firm and fixed. As a matter of fact, one of the panels is movable, though the closest scrutiny would fail to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... of Music.] — N. musician, artiste, performer, player, minstrel; bard &c. (poet) 597; [specific types of musicians] accompanist, accordionist, instrumentalist, organist, pianist, violinist, flautist; harper, fiddler, fifer[obs3], trumpeter, piper, drummer; catgut scraper. band, orchestral waits. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... not at all alarmed. She was eagerly watching Lady Dunstable, as one watches for the mannerisms of some well-known performer. Sir Luke perceived it, and immediately began to show off his hostess by one of the sparring matches that were apparently frequent between them. They fell to discussing a party of guests—landowners from a neighbouring estate—who seemed to have paid a visit to Crosby Ledgers the day before. Lady ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... but he can know; the most sure proof of his remembering is the power to react his part in the original drama, whatever it may have been; if a man can repeat a performance with consummate truth, and can stand any amount of cross-questioning about it, he is the performer of the original performance, whatever it was. The memories which all living forms prove by their actions that they possess-the memories of their common identity with a single person in whom they meet-this is incontestable proof of their being animated by a common soul. It is ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... the Rajasuya sacrifice. The time for the performance of that sacrifice in which Rishis of austere vows kindle six fires with mantras of the Sama Veda, is come for thee in consequence of thy Kshatriya possessions. At the conclusion of the Rajasuya sacrifice when the performer is installed in the sovereignty of the empire, he is rewarded with the fruits of all sacrifices including the Agnihotra. It is for this that he is called the conqueror of all. Thou art quite able, O strong-armed one, to perform this sacrifice. All of us are obedient to thee. Soon will you ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... have a bullfight in their little bullring. On such an occasion the bullfighting outfit is specially imported from one of the larger towns farther inland. Sometimes the whole troupe comes from Juarez and puts on a regular metropolitan production, with the original all-star cast. There is the gallant performer known as the armadilla, who teases the bull to desperation by waving a red shawl at him; the no less daring parabola, sticking little barbed boleros in the bull's withers; and, last of all, the intrepid mantilla, who calmly meets the final ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... little Arctic blossoms shared his exile—for this is nothing less than an exile to a man of cultivation and intellectual tastes. In his house I saw—the last thing one would have expected to find in the heart of Lapland—a piano. Madame Hvoslef, who is an accomplished performer, sat down to it, and gave us the barcarole from Massaniello. While in the midst of a maze of wild Norwegian melodies, I saw the Pastor whisper something in her ear. At once, to our infinite amazement, she boldly struck up "Yankee Doodle!" Something ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... possesses, however, is one which requires no scientific knowledge of music in his audiences to appreciate. Placed at the instrument with any musician, he plays a perfect bass accompaniment to the treble of music heard for the first time as he plays. Then taking the seat vacated by the other performer, he instantly gives the entire piece, intact in brilliancy and symmetry, not a note lost or misplaced. The selections of music by which this power of Tom's was tested, two years ago, were sometimes fourteen and sixteen pages in length; on one occasion, at an exhibition at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... even at the Olympic games formerly celebrated in Greece. The art of running is, like that of dancing, acquirable from a master; but gracefulness of motion is not essential to the perfection of the runner, swiftness being the principal requisite. Hence, whether the performer display his agility by bounding along on the light fantastic toe, or waddling with the zig-zag respectability of a corpulent alderman, if he can first reach the destined goal within a given period of time, he is rewarded, not with a civic ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... because of it. I revert to this merely to show that I have not always acted in a ruffianly manner under these circumstances. It seems rather to depend upon how the thing is done—the mood of the performer—his mental state. Had Mr. Belknap-Jackson been—pardon me—quite drunk, I feel that the outcome would have been happier for us all. So far as I have thought along these lines, it seems to me that if one is to be kicked at all, one ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... this, his daughter Margaret had almost broken that heart by marrying a man of whom he could not approve. Martin Moore was a professional violinist. He was a popular performer, though not in any sense a great one. He met the slim, golden-haired daughter of the manse at the house of a college friend she was visiting in Toronto, and fell straightway in love with her. Margaret had loved him with all her ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... foes; her horse has all four feet off the ground, his means of support, a bronze rod as a sort of fifth or middle leg, being more practical than artistic. "The rider's position in the saddle," as Archie says, "would turn any circus performer green with envy." An altogether atrocious piece of sculpture is this, with an element of grotesqueness in its conception quite unworthy of one of the most serious characters in all history, the Maid to whom, as Carlyle says, "all maidens upon ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... Walraven has told me. Pray favor us with one song before some less gifted performer secures ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... an enthusiastic musician, being himself not only a very capable performer, but a composer of no mean merit. All the afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness, gently waving his long, thin fingers in time to the music, while his gently smiling face and his languid, dreamy eyes were ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... four-act play of 'Ingomar.' Though young in years, Miss Anderson is evidently a practiced actress. She knows the business of the stage perfectly, is learned in the art of making points, and, what is more, knows how to bide her opportunity. The wise discretion which imposes restraint upon the performer was somewhat too rigidly observed in the earlier scenes on Saturday night, the consequence being that in one of the most impressive passages of the not very inspired dialogue, the little distance between the sublime and the ridiculous was bridged by a voice from the gallery, which, adopting a tone, ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... in the case of science, provided the number of hours devoted to teaching is not excessive. It is partly because science and teaching are so easily combined that science is vigorous in the present age. In music, a composer who is also a performer enjoys similar advantages, but one who is not a performer must starve, unless he is rich or willing to pander to the public taste. In the fine arts, as a rule, it is not easy in the modern world either to make ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... Freischutz told me that I had stepped, as it were with both feet, right into the magic realm of awe. Any one who had been watching me at that moment could hardly have failed to see the state I was in, and this in spite of the fact that I was such a bad performer on ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... from the pressure of water, and a receptacle partly filled with water was an essential part of every Roman organ. From this feature it was called the water-organ. The Emperor Nero had been a notable performer on the water-organ and had interested himself in some improvements in ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... and received with hilarity by the audience. At another place he would be entertained by listening to jokes of his own invention, coarsely retailed by the clown of the ring, and shouted at by the public as capital waggery on the part of the performer. His own good things from the lips of another "came back to him with alienated majesty," as Emerson expresses it. Then the thought would steal over him—Why should that man gain a living with my witticisms, and I not use ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... copper spire of the old Rathhaus, and there seated within its perforated cupola had drunk from a glass of native wine, and thrown the rest of it, glass and all, down the spire—an ancient custom which, as she only heard afterwards, entitled its performer, though of outside extraction, to make her ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... had some fifty years ago been no mean performer upon the vielle,* and at the age he was then of, touched well enough for the purpose. His wife sung now and then a little to the tune, then intermitted, and joined her old man again, as their children and grandchildren danced ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... originated in the taste for mumming and disguises of all sorts, prevalent at the Bacchic festivals, were an indispensable accompaniment to tragedy. They not only concealed the individual features of well-known actors, and enabled the spectators entirely to forget the performer in his part, but gave to his whole aspect that ideal character which the tragedy of antiquity demanded. The tragic mask was not intentionally ugly and caricatured like the comic, but the half-open mouth, the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... difficult way was to insert surreptitiously a lump of metal into the mixture, using an ordinary crucible. This required great dexterity, but was facilitated by the use of many mysterious ceremonies on the part of the operator while performing, just as the modern vaudeville performer diverts the attention of the audience to his right hand while his left is engaged in the trick. Such ceremonies were not questioned, for it was the common belief that the whole process "lay in the spirit as much as in the substance," many, as we have seen, regarding the whole process ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... as the flickering shadows that fell upon them from the waving trees overhead. The master was fascinated yet troubled. What if there had been older spectators? Would the parents take the performance as innocently as the performer and her little audience? He thought it necessary later to suggest this delicately to the child. Her temper rose, her ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... sometimes when he calls up I am out, just to let him know that he is not the only star performer. ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... place, the simple, bare, almost sordid Teatro Gayarre. Most of the turns were of the same ordinary sort that might be seen in many another music-hall of the long Calle Marques del Duero. But at the end came on a performer who was, I soon found, of altogether another order. The famous Bianca Stella, as the programme announced, shortly to start on her South American tour, was appearing for a limited number of nights. I had never heard ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... how you like this. I differ from your idea of the expression of the tune. There is, to me, a great deal of tenderness in it. You cannot, in my opinion, dispense with a bass to your addenda airs. A lady of my acquaintance, a noted performer, plays and sings at the same time so charmingly, that I shall never bear to see any of her songs sent into the world, as naked as Mr. What-d'ye-call-um has done ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... hour of the relatively trivial instruction of a few children in the higher life, the library must secure a room and pay for its care, a room which if it be obtained and used at all could be used for more profitable purposes; and the performer must study her art and must, if she is not a conceited duffer, prepare herself for her part for the day at a very considerable ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... mother," said young Nisbet slowly, "is the way she manages to come in just at the wrong moment. At interruption, she's the most star performer I've ever run up against. You don't mind my saying that, do you? I'm not throwing any asparagus. I wouldn't be disrespectful about her for the world. But really, for chopping into a conversation, ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... tragic to me in this Siamese-twins arrangement of two so uncongenial. I am at one and the same time pupil and teacher, offender and judge, performer and critic, chaperone and protegee, a prim, precise, old maid and a rollicking schoolgirl, a tomboy and a prude, a saint and sinner. What can result from such a combination? That we get on tolerably is a wonder. Some days, however, we get on admirably together, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
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