"Dancer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... professionally known as the "California Pet" was performing to enthusiastic audiences in the interior. Her specialty lay in the personation of youthful masculine character; as a gamin of the street she was irresistible, as a negro-dancer she carried the honest miner's heart by storm. A saucy, pretty brunette, she had preserved a wonderful moral reputation even under the Jove-like advances of showers of gold that greeted her appearance ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... funeral. That's Stafford all the way. He's so pleasant, so frank, so lovable, that you think him quite harmless; but while you're admiring his confounded ingratiating ways, while you're growing enthusiastic about his engaging tricks—he's the best rider, the best dancer, the best shot—oh, but you must have heard of him!—he is bearing down upon you; your heart goes under, and he—ah, well, he just sails over you smiling, quite unconscious of having brought ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... must be a dancer," answered the girl, grown courageous. "Oh! I am even certain that I saw thee at the ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... Seeking for an explanation, he came to the conclusion that James, who had a slight weakness for the society of ladies connected with the stage, had made the acquaintance of some actress or other, ballet-dancer, singer, artiste, and had given ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... he called after her, "I should think you could—you mind how we used trip it together. You were the prettiest dancer them all, and the young fellows all went ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... sensibilities and dark forebodings of the diminished party of survivors who leave England to distract their minds by foreign travel are artfully suggested. The leaping, gesticulating figure, whom their jaded nerves and morbid fancy transform into a phantom, is a delirious ballet-dancer; and the Black Spectre, mistaken for Death Incarnate, proves only to be a plague-stricken noble, who lurks near the party for the sake of human society. These "reasonable" solutions of the apparently supernatural remind us of Mrs. Radcliffe's method, and Mrs. Shelley ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... dissipations have consisted in a surreptitious cigarette and glass of beer, neither of which he enjoyed, but both of which he pretended to revel in for the sake of being "mannish,"—will talk knowingly of "the latest soubrette," "a jolly little ballet-dancer," "the wicked ways of this world," and "the dens of iniquity in our large cities." Dickens tells us that "when Mr. Feeder spoke of the dark mysteries of London, and told Mr. Toots that he was going to observe it himself closely in all its ramifications in the approaching holidays, ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... Bias, Vestris, Anatole, Paul, Albert, and the other principal dancers, congregated. One of our countrymen, having been introduced by M. de la Rochefoucauld to Mademoiselle Bigottini, the beautiful and graceful dancer, in the course of conversation with this gentleman, asked him in what part of the theatre he was placed; upon which he replied, "Mademoiselle, dans un loge rotie," instead of "grillee." The lady could not understand what he meant, until his introducer ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... he repeats. "I had reason to be proud of them. Each child as he or she married gave me fresh cause for joy. Marcia's mother was an Italian dancer." ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... de Chartres (the Regent's son), very awkward, but a libertine, was at Paris with an opera dancer he kept. He received the courier which brought him the news of the apoplexy, and on the road (to Versailles), another with the news of death. Upon descending from his coach, he found no crowd, but simply the Duc de Noailles, and De Guiche, who very 'apertement' ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Good-looking in a soapy sort of way, but dull: Good dancer, agonizingly slow at a twosing. Takes what you give him and is grateful. Good ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... purpose of the soul, which is thankless and not composed of the gunas' (Sankhya Ka. 60).—The Sankhyas further teach that Prakriti, on being seen by any soul in her true nature, at once retires from that soul—'As a dancer having exhibited herself on the stage withdraws from the soul, so Prakriti withdraws from the soul when she has manifested herself to it' (59); 'My opinion is that there exists nothing more sensitive than Prakriti, who knowing "I have been seen" does ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... things that will make those old organizations live longest in the memory are their frolics, excursions and picnics, full of all that appealed to the appetite for pleasure and excitement. There the dancer, the fighter, the runner, the wrestler, could indulge freely in his favorite pastime; there old scores could be settled and new ones made. The most noteworthy and serviceable of those old volunteer organizations was ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... I can," she told him; "but I've already promised three of them to Billy Westlake, who is a divine dancer." ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... there is a cry of delight from the great circle of barbarians. "Long live the Quat'z' Arts!" they cry, amid cheers for the dancer. ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... Edgar Allen Poe's cheerful little tales if he had been buried alive and were speaking from the family vault. Coming suddenly out of the night it affected Bream painfully. He uttered a sharp exclamation and gave a bound which, if he had been a Russian dancer would undoubtedly have caused the management to raise his salary. He was in no frame of mind to bear ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... country folk call a "natural-born dancer," and she quickly learned the new steps she had had no opportunity to practice since going West. All the girls and most of the boys were excellent dancers, too, and Bob was not allowed to beg off. Frances ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... The dancer arose, but hung down her flashing coronal. Her blush was enchanting. She stood silent, while the good-humoured king smiled down on her, till Artazostra came from her seat by Mardonius and whispered in her ear. Every neck in the crowded pavilion was craned ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... whipped about like a feather in the wind. Sometimes she was pointing her nose to the clouds, and again earthward. Again she would be whirling about in the grip of the hurricane, like some fantastic dancer, and again she would roll dangerously. Had she turned turtle it probably would have been the last of her ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... skirt or petticoat, over which is worn a sort of calico short dress, which scarcely descends two inches below the hips, and is confined about the waist with a belt or a string. The skirt bells out like the skirt of a dancer, leaving the feet and bare legs well exposed; and the head is covered with a white handkerchief, twisted so as to look like a turban. Multitudes of these barelegged black women are walking past us,—carrying bundles or baskets upon their heads, ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... had a guitar; and I never witnessed a ballet that gave me more amusement, or saw a dancer that evinced more grace, ease, confidence, and decided talent, than did this little girl. She was prettily formed, and was exceedingly admired and applauded by us all. Her mother considered her education as finished, and looked on with all ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... associated with the fortunes of Mr. Frederick Dorrit, who played the instrument at the theatre where his elder niece was a dancer, and where Little Dorrit sought an engagement. After the rehearsal was over she and her sister went ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... always result in making time go more heavily than ever. Mr. Desmond's attempt was like a curious pas seul, executed by a nimble actor in a certain extravaganza, the peculiarity of which is that at every forward step the dancer slides farther and farther backward, until finally an unseen power appears to drag him back ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... horse of some light material, fastened round the waist of the morrice-dancer, who imitated the movements of ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... himself for a shilling a day to murder any man, right or wrong—even his own brother or his own father—just because such a whiskered, profligate jackanapes as that officer, without learning, without any god except his own looking-glass and his opera-dancer—a fellow who, just because he is born a gentleman, is set to command grey-headed men before he can command his own meanest passions. Good heavens! that the lives of free men should be entrusted to such a stuffed cockatoo; and that free men should be such traitors to their country, traitors ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... times in a magical dance, for rhythm was the wheel of Eternity, on which alone the transient and accidental could be broken, and the spirit set free. I found that the steps, which were simple enough, resembled certain antique Greek dances, and having been a good dancer in my youth and the master of many curious Gaelic steps, I soon had them in my memory. He then robed me and himself in a costume which suggested by its shape both Greece and Egypt, but by its crimson colour a more passionate life than theirs; and having ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... what she can do. Why, there's young Stout, as fine a lad as ever walked the streets, or stood by the helm of his vessel in a gale o' wind; and look at him now, pale and cadaverous, and walking round people's gardens, on the edge of narrow fences where nobody but a rope-dancer, with a pole in his hands, could keep his balance, and a hundred more such antics; everybody ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... Garrick married a dancer, who made him an excellent wife. By his own exertions he won a highly respectable social position, and an easy fortune of L140,000, upon which he retired from the stage. He died in ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... and the convents are tolerably well off. But, to tell you the truth, I think this lady's father had some education, and his going to that part of the country may be accounted for by what she told me once about her mother. Her mother was a dancer, a ballet-dancer, a very estimable and pious woman, her daughter says, and I have no doubt it is true; but an educated man who makes that sort of marriage, you know, may prefer to live out ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... two-room log cabin. She was continually worrying over rattlesnakes and diphtheria and pneumonia, and begging Brit to sell out and live in town. She had married him because he was a cowboy, and because he was a nimble dancer and rode gallantly with silver-shanked spurs ajingle on his heels and a snakeskin band around his hat, and because a ranch away out on Quirt Creek had sounded exactly like a ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... she signed to him to approach, and rose to take his arm, saying in her clear soft voice, "Come, George, it is time for old folks to be at home." Smiling a good-night to all, she walked down the room, as erect in form and as steady in gait as any dancer there. ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... me!" said Tutmosis. "It is not enough that for five days I have not bathed and know not rose perfumed oil, but besides I must make in one day two forced marches. I am sure that when we reach Memphis no dancer ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... perplexity, Kawelo consulted an old dancing-master, who told him, "Dancing and poetry are the arts most esteemed and appreciated by those in power. Come with me into the mountains. I will instruct you, and if you turn out an accomplished dancer, you will have a sure means of pleasing the insensible Kaakaukuhimalani." Kawelo listened to the advice of the poet dancing-master, and withdrew into the ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... the dancer, "envoys from King Antiochus. But—goose that I am!—then they would not be received here, but in the royal harbour at the Lochias. See if I don't prove to be right! Divine honours are to be paid to some newly attracted hero of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... festive decorations that made the corporate home of Dink and the Tennessee Shad a place to visit and admire was, as has been related, a smashing poster of a ballet dancer in the costume of an amazon parader. Up to now Dink had shared the just pride of the Tennessee Shad in this rakish exhibit that somehow gave the possessor the reputation of having an acquaintance with stage entrances. But on the second morning ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... fantastic warblings and flourishes, these preposterous runs, these never-ending shakes, but delusive artifices of style, which people admire in the same way that they admire the foolhardy agility of a rope-dancer? Do you imagine that such things can make any deep impression upon us and stir the heart? The 'harmonic shake' which you spoilt I cannot tolerate; I always feel anxious and pained when she attempts it. And then this scaling up into the region of the third line above ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... your inclinations, and bridling your curiosity, and accustoming it to obey reason. Afterwards it will be well to extend the practice still further, and not to go to the theatre when some fine piece is performing, and if your friends invite you to see some dancer or actor to decline, and, if there is some shouting in the stadium and hippodrome, not even to turn your head to look what is up. For as Socrates advised people to abstain from food that made them eat when they were not hungry, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... you with the arts of war, you think that you must therefore excel others in counsel; but you cannot thus claim preeminence in all things. Heaven has made one man an excellent soldier; of another it has made a dancer or a singer and player on the lyre; while yet in another Jove has implanted a wise understanding of which men reap fruit to the saving of many, and he himself knows more about it than any one; therefore I will say what I think will be best. The fight has hemmed you in as with ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... affectionately—for Metzeger—and once he detected Tully staring at him through the enlarging glasses as if in an effort to read his very soul. But he knew his soul was not to be read by such as Tully. Tully, back there on the Nile, would have been a dancer—at the most, a fancy skater—if, indeed, he had risen to the human order, and were not still a slinking gazelle. Good name that, for Tully. He ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... should hardly be able to name over the old families now. All the leaders of our day—Madame Apukhtin, Princess Osinin, the Dowager-Countess Parakoff—they are all dead. It is the wife of the younger Smirnoff—Alexander married a dancer who cannot be received—who keeps up the name. Eugen married Olga Lodoroff. She was a child when I was married. She wouldn't remember me at all now. But we have had not one excuse. They are all to come. Kasha, I ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... specimens of their kinds. Frank was a little below medium height, slight, blond, vivacious to a degree, full of fun, and the most industrious talker within miles; he would "stir things up" at a funeral. Phil Stone was tall, slender, dark, quiet, well-dressed, a good dancer, and a very agreeable fellow in the corner of the room, where his low musical voice ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... philosophy of life; he has not the pale blood and torpid heart which allow the scotched adder to dose away its sense of pain. Just as old age began to creep upon the fashionable usurer, he fell in love with a young opera-dancer, whose light heels had turned the lighter heads of half the eligans of Paris and London. The craft of the dancer was proof against all lesser bribes than that of marriage; and Levy married her. From that moment his house, Louis Quinze, was more ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and her intimacy with the rope-dancer in particular, becoming common talk of the town, his majesty became incensed; and it grieved him the more that one who dwelt in his palace, and was yet under his protection, should divide her favours between a king and a mountebank. Accordingly bitter feuds ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... went to see the mighty dead. It was quite true that her feet were warm, but the matter was capable of a simple explanation, as the feet of her defunct majesty were turned towards a burning lamp at a little distance off. A dancer of my acquaintance, whom curiosity had brought there with the rest, came up to me, complimented me upon my fortunate escape, and told me everybody was talking about it. His news pleased me, as it is always a good thing ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of Honour; she was genteel and gay, but not pretty nor of a good figure. This son was called the Chevalier d'Orleans. The other, who is now a lad of eighteen years, is the Abbe de Saint Albin; he had this child by Florence, an opera dancer, of a very neat figure, but a fool; although to look at her pretty face one would not have thought so. She is since dead. The third of my son's illegitimate children is a girl of fourteen years old, whom he had by Desmarets, an actress, who is still on the stage. This child has been ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the approbation of her husband, that of itself ought to suffice to the court; for it is not an unheard thing to have dramatic representations by the royal family. Louis XIV. appeared on the boards as a dancer; and even under the pious Madame de Maintenon, the princes and princesses of France acted the dramas of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... ever had a beard?' The answer to which, was, 'Yes—when Judith bore the head of Holofernes.' It was singular that such a question could have been agitated, when the legends of the saints contained the story of the bearded saintess of the Tyrol—a converted ballet-dancer, who was thus rendered hideous in accordance with her prayer, that she might be made so repulsive as to frighten away all lovers. And yet Mr. Barnum's Bearded Lady had ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... she knew that she had met the Dancer of the World. At first she was pleased that her steps fitted his so well, and then she forgot all about steps and just floated along, on invisible gauzy wings, unconscious of her will of direction, of his will of direction. There was nothing in the world but invisible gauzy wings, which ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... the Sun had stepped out of her shrine; . . no longer a creature removed, impersonal, and sacred, she had become most absolutely human. Moreover, she might now have been taken for a bacchante, a dancer, or any other unsexed example of womanhood inasmuch as with her golden mantle she had thrown off all disguise of modesty. Her beautiful limbs, rounded and smooth as pearl, could be plainly discerned through the filmy garb of silvery tissue ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... There was now and then the formality of saying a lesson, but if you had not learned it, a brush across the shoulders (just enough to disturb a fly) was the sole remonstrance. Field never used the rod; and in truth he wielded the cane with no great good will—holding it "like a dancer." It looked in his hands rather like an emblem than an instrument of authority; and an emblem, too, he was ashamed of. He was a good easy man, that did not care to ruffle his own peace, nor perhaps ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... in the position of paying a salary to this courtly old nobleman and statesman, who could tell him of his own intimate knowledge how Emperors conversed with one another; how the Pope fidgeted in his ornate-carved chair when the visitor talked on unwelcome topics; how a Queen and an opera-bouffe dancer waged an obscure and envenomed battle for the possession of a counting-house strong box, and in the outcome a nation was armed with inferior old muskets instead of modern weapons, and the girl got the difference ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... equally popular. It also was encored, as indeed was every song sting that evening; but the performers had counted on this. After the third song there was a hornpipe, in the performance of which the dancer's chief aim seemed to be, to shew in what a variety of complex ways he could shake himself to pieces if he chose. Then there was another trio, and then a short pause, in order duly to prepare the public mind for ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... necessity for coming back to Oakley, and to pave the way for my new advent, I sent Nurse Hagar with the false account of my death. A girl had died in the hospital—a poor, heart-broken, homeless, friendless, wronged, little unfortunate,—'Kitty the Dancer' she was called in the days when she was fair to see, and men, bad men, set ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... of his asking her to marry him, which was possible, and of her accepting him, which was also possible, whether she would find him, in the closer knowledge of married life, as keen and lighthearted with her as he had been with the French dancer. If he would but treat her more like a comrade and equal, and less like a prime minister conferring with his queen! She wanted something more intimate than the deference that he showed her, and she did not like his taking it as an accepted fact that she was as worldly-wise as himself, ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... followed the Castle lessons with a series of the most beautiful dances of Madam Pavlowa, the Russian dancer, hoping to remove the unfavorable impression of the former series. But it was only partially successful. Bok had made a mistake in recognizing the craze at all; he should have ignored it, as he had so often in the past ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... his fatal glass And twilight on the landscape closed her wings; Far to Asturian hills the war-sounds pass, And in their stead rebeck or timbrel rings; And to the sound the bell-decked dancer springs, Bazars resound as when their marts are met, In tourney light the Moor his jerrid flings, And on the land as evening seemed to set, The Imaum's chant was ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... he was taken ill. It came on suddenly, a violent fever which continued for a week. Then he seemed to grow better, after the crisis had passed, and even attended a meeting of our central committee the other night. But in the meantime Olga Samarova, the little Russian dancer, whom you have perhaps seen, fell ill in the same way. Samarova is an ardent revolutionist, you know. This morning the servant at my own home on East Broadway was also stricken, and - who knows? - perhaps it will be my turn next. For to-night Saratovsky had an even more violent return of the fever, ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses, the tea merchant, drove past us in a gig with his daughter, Dancer Moses was her name, and the poodle in her lap bridled up and you asked me if I ever heard or read ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... enable her to understand her mistress when Lucy chose to allow herself to run riot in a species of intellectual tarantella, in which her tongue went mad to the sound of its own rattle, as the Spanish dancer at the noise of his castanets. Phoebe knew enough of the French language to be able to dip into the yellow-paper-covered novels which my lady ordered from the Burlington Arcade, and to discourse with her mistress upon the questionable subjects of these romances. The likeness which the lady's ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... sat down and ate and danced again, keeping this up all day long. And if anyone lagged in the dance, it was a bad day for him. Little Poplar had a whip, and he would ply it thick on the back of the sluggish dancer. ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... she had a dress of the clearest gauze, and a little narrow blue ribbon over her shoulders, that looked like a scarf; and in the middle of this ribbon was a shining tinsel rose as big as her whole face. The little lady stretched out both her arms, for she was a dancer; and then she lifted one leg so high that the Tin Soldier could not see it at all, and thought that, like himself, she ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Queen." Lord March (afterwards Duke of Queensberry) was a lord of the bedchamber in the decorous court of George the Third, when he wrote thus to Selwyn: "I was prevented from writing to you last Friday, by being at Newmarket with my little girl (Signora Zamperini, a noted dancer and singer). I had the whole family and Cocchi. The beauty went with me in my chaise, and the rest in ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... much less agile than his comrades; he was very careful about trying gymnastics and fell very often. He always brought up the rear when the company ascended the balusters, and looked like a tight-rope dancer trying to do without a balancing-pole. Then I understood the usefulness of a tail in the case of rats: it aids them to maintain their equilibrium when scampering along cornices and narrow ledges. They swing it to the right or the ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... because in a heaven of pleasure and in a strange country." He must go to see all famous executions. He must needs visit the body of a murdered man, defaced "with a broad wound," he says, "that makes my hand now shake to write of it." He learned to dance, and was "like to make a dancer." He learned to sing, and walked about Gray's Inn Fields "humming to myself (which is now my constant practice) the trillo." He learned to play the lute, the flute, the flageolet, and the theorbo, and it was not the fault of his intention if he did not learn the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... week. The old woman and the child have had all there was. And yet she is burning! And see, she has now been dancing without a break for two whole hours! Can one understand such a thing? Hanne dances like a messenger from another world, where fire, not cold, is the condition of life. Every dancer leaves his partner in the lurch as soon as she is free! How lightly she dances! Dancing with her, one soars upward, far away from the cold. One forgets all misery in ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Monologuist and minstrel, dancer and vaudevillian in his terpsichorean travesties, buoyant burlesques, inimitable imitations, screaming impersonations, refined comedy sketches and popular song ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... lie, the seed-ground of every wickedness, the vile haunt and hideous habitation of lust and gluttony, the mark of every scandal since his earliest years: in boyhood, ere he became so hideously bald, the ready servant of the vilest vices; in youth a stage dancer limp and nerveless enough in all conscience, but, they tell me, clumsy and inartistic in his very effeminacy. Except for his immodesty he is said not to have possessed a single quality that should ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... stronger flavours of gossip in his talk. 'There's no stir in these valleys. They arrested, somewhere close on Trent yesterday afternoon, a fellow calling himself Beppo, the servant of an Italian woman—a dancer, I fancy. They're on the lookout for her too, I'm told; though what sort of capers she can be cutting in Tyrol, I can't ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... agility and elasticity quite aerial. One lithe and active dancer grasped his fair partner by the waist. She was dressed in a red dress; was small, elastic, agile, and went by like the wind. And now and then, in the course of every few seconds, he would give her a whirl and a lift, sending her ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... This is not the place to elaborate the theory of inheritance, as understood by those writers; its essence, however, is that we only inherit the natural faculties of our forebears, and not those faculties which they have acquired by practice and experience. The son of a rope-dancer does not inherit his father's faculties for rope-dancing, nor the son of an orator his father's ready aptitude for public speech, nor the son of a designer his father's acquired skill in the making of designs. All that the son inherits is the natural faculties of the parent, but ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... unsuited to one another—everybody sees it. At nineteen it seemed to me beautiful, holy, the idea of being a clergyman's wife, fighting by his side against evil. Besides, you have changed since then. You were human, my dear Nat, in those days, and the best dancer I had ever met. It was your dancing was your chief attraction for me as likely as not, if I had only known myself. At nineteen how can ...
— The Philosopher's Joke • Jerome K. Jerome
... to call with morning on the wing, With noon so near, With Life a dancer in the masque of Spring And Youth new wedded with a golden ring— When falls the night and birds have ceased to ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... By a dancer at the Opera, called Mimi, the Prince de Conde had an illegitimate daughter, whom he had caused to be educated and whom he had married to the Comte de Rully. The Comtesse de Rully and her husband had a suite at Chantilly. This was an arrangement which Sophie, as reigning Queen of ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... fault—even with the disposition of the extremities. But his nightly visitor—the enamoured goddess—is, of all female figures which I have ever seen upon canvass, one of the most affected, meagre, and uninteresting. Diana has been exchanged for an opera dancer. The waist is pinched in, the attitude is full of conceit, and there is a dark shadow about the neck, as if she had been trying some previous experiment with a rope! Endymion could never open his eyes to gaze upon a figure so utterly unworthy of the representation of an enamoured deity.[190] ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Each dancer has a masque. It may be an owl's head with mother-of-pearl eyes, or a wooden pelican's beak, or a wolf's head. It may be a wooden animal's face, which can be pulled apart by a string, and reveal under it an effigy of ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... of the air, fall upon the earth only to be broken and cast into the furnace. The precursor of Newton lived in the deserts of the moral world, drank water, and ate locusts and wild honey. It was fortunate that his head also was not lopped off: had a singer asked it, instead of a dancer, it ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... said that the Squire winks hard at his misdeeds, having an indulgent feeling towards the vagabond, because of his being very expert at all kinds of games, a great shot with the cross-bow, and the best morris-dancer in the country. ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... "you would get me finely scolded by my sister. No, it is only a family party. Under the Empire, madame, we all devoted ourselves to dancing. At that great epoch of our national life they thought as much of a fine dancer as they did of a good soldier. Nowadays the ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... turn was in full swing and the folks below were standing around talking and drinking, and gazing with only partial interest at the feats of a woman acrobatic dancer. Bill was looking at her, too. But his thoughts were on the girl at Fort Mowbray and this man who ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... splintered into a thousand pieces. He saw the man himself, choking, sinking down beneath the black waters; heard the stifled cry from his palsied lips, saw the slow dawning agony of death in his distorted features. Some one was playing a mandolin down in the second class. He heard the feet of a dancer upon the deck, the little murmur of applause. Well, after all, this was life. It was a rebuke of fate to his own illogical and useless vapourings. Men died every second whilst women danced, and no one who knew life had any care save for the measure of ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 same establishment. That fine fellow, Ned Sandford, must not be forgotten; neither must Sam Lake, the clever little dancer. Rube Meer was invariably to be found in company with a pot of malt; and he was usually assisted by P. Jones, a personage who never allowed himself to be funny until he had consumed four pints. Charley Saunders, the comedian and dramatist, ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... one daughter but she is an invalid. She was studying to be a dancer and one slippery day in winter she fell and broke her hip. And she has never ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... and mantelpiece; he would fall from the shelf to the floor, just to show how hard he was; and after thanking the good woman most politely, for the service she had done him, he walked out into the sunshine, on the clothes-line, like a rope dancer, to see the wide, ...
— Denslow's Humpty Dumpty • William Wallace Denslow
... on, moving on shoes like Japanese water shoes, completely mystifying as to how she balanced on the stilt-like soles. Stepping thus in little balancing steps like a dancer, she moved very close, peering into my eyes, so that I blushed deeply at the nearness and the nudity of her, and she laughed, amusedly, as at a child. Her long, gemmed hand reached out and touched me, and she talked to Holaf excitedly, her face all smiles and interest; I was a wholly fascinating ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... the room with a mincing, kittenish affectation of carriage, casting bold smirks about her, like an Italian dancer. ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... "He is a dancer!" he cried. "He is a 'ballarino'!" The others all laughed, too, and the name remained his as long as he lived—he was ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... with you??" he demanded, belligerently. "There hain't no pertier girl nor no better dancer ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... thing in the picture is the group in the foreground. An old lady with an iron coal-scuttle on her head is handing some black pills to a ballet-dancer dressed in pink tights, while another woman in a badly-fitting chemise stands by them brushing off the flies with the branch of a tree, with a canary-bird resting upon her shoulder and trying to sing at some small boys who are seen in the other corner of the field. What this means we haven't the ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... A Tight-rope Dancer who, they say, Was a great master in his way, Was tutoring a Youth to spring Upon the slight and yielding string, Who, though a novice in the science, Had in his talents great reliance, And, as on high his steps he tried, Thus to his sage instructor cried: "This pole ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... list and divide up. Archie Holmes is such a delightful dancer, and Allie is so full of fun, and so many of us were at ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... She was a stage dancer; there's where ye got yer nimble toes, but she died when ye wasn't a year old, an' yer father married that other woman who wa'n't nobody at all. Yer own ma was called 'Ma'm'selle Nannette' on the play-bills, an' she was a good woman, a sweet ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... It was a pleasure to see him run, and to witness the immense power and speed with which he passed all competitors in the prize races, in which I sometimes indulged my men. Ali Nedjar was a good soldier, a warm lover of the girls, and a great dancer; thus, according to African reputation, he was the ne plus ultra of a man. Added to this, he was a very willing, good fellow, and more courageous than ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... do they take you for a rope-dancer?' he muttered in my ear. 'Mount, sir, and come. There is not a moment to ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... sermon. It would not be fair to the reader to give an abstract of that. When a man who has been bred to free thought and free speech suddenly finds himself stepping about, like a dancer amidst his eggs, among the old addled majority-votes which he must not tread upon, he is a spectacle for men and angels. Submission to intellectual precedent and authority does very well for those who have been bred ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... I haven't seen Fly by Night yet, but of course I know that you are the most beautiful dancer on the ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... devil, that man," she said. "Never, never in life has there been any such devil. I did right to kick him. It would be more right to kick his mouth. But I am not a dancer. I cannot ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... earth about the four supporting posts, I sent Basilio to put it up. He finished his work just as the prisoners were ready to heave up on the posts, and, to express his entire glee in what was shortly to occur, he came down the rope a la circo, and landed himself with a ballet dancer's pirouette, kissing both hands toward the tugging men. Anything more graceful and more comical than Basilio's ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... all in the corner by that pillar, where she seems buried in the gloom, in spite of the candles blazing above her head? Between her and us there is such a sparkle of diamonds and glances, so many floating plumes, such a flutter of lace, of flowers and curls, that it would be a real miracle if any dancer could detect her among those stars. Why, Martial, how is it that you have not understood her to be the wife of some sous-prefet from Lippe or Dyle, who has come to try to get her ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... millionaire, in spite of his reputation for miserliness, had even volunteered his disinterested support if at any time it should become necessary to enlarge the plant. And it was this good man's happiness that his son, a frivolous and useless dancer, was going to ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of the women. She was dressed as a Spanish dancer and in one hand held a tambourine and castanets. "They fight," she gave a little smirk of ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... Astley's which came here October 7, 1787. In 1815 Messrs. Adams gave performances in a "new equestrian circus on the Moat," and it has interest in the fact that this was the first appearance locally of Mr. Ryan, a young Irishman, then described as "indisputably the first tight-rope dancer in the world of his age." Mr. Ryan, a few years later, started a circus on his own account, and after a few years of tent performances, which put money in his pocket, ventured on the speculation of building a permanent structure in ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... chin, as feeble as any man could desire in the partner of his bosom. Person—straight, elastic, and rather tall. Mind—nineteen. Accomplishments—numerous; a poor French scholar, a worse German, a worse English, an admirable dancer, an inaccurate musician, a good rider, a bad draughtswoman, a bad hairdresser, at the mercy of her maid; a hot theologian, knowing nothing, a sorry accountant, no housekeeper, no seamstress, a fair embroideress, a capital geographer, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... stranger's hair, Sometimes the vague expression upon a stranger's face, Can make me feel your presence—can fill a lonely place With dreams of life half realized. Faint music through the air Can make me hear your foot-fall, again, upon the stair— Sometimes a dancer moving with quite unconscious grace, Can make my pulse beat faster; and for a breathless space Can make me turn, expecting ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... obvious detail of either mood or scene. We may not understand the purport of the song, we understand the feeling that prompted the song, as, having done with reading 'Kubla Khan,' there remains in our mind, not the pictured vision of palace or dancer, but a personal participation in Coleridge's heightened fancy, a setting-on of reverie, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Carlotta, more than two years older than Michel, was the miniature of her mother, and had a piquant coquettish air, mixed with an expression of repose in one so young quite droll, like a little opera dancer. The father clapped his hands, and all, except himself, turned round, bowed to the audience, and retired, leaving Baroni and his two elder children. Then commenced a variety of feats of strength. Baroni stretched forth his right arm, and Josephine, with a bound, instantly sprang upon ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... same whut I said, Stutter. Ye 're a broight one, ye are. That's the Mexican dancer down at the Gayety at San Juan, no less; and it's dollars to doughnuts, me bye, that that dom Farnham sint her out here to take a peek at us. It wud be loike the slippery cuss, an' I hear the two of thim ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... back carefully this time, crouching, balanced easily on the balls of his feet. For all his size, he fought with the grace of a dancer. ...
— My Shipmate—Columbus • Stephen Wilder
... you are paid for your art, not as a mannikin. You are almost in the front rank of musical comedy. I have seen you occasionally at the theater, and I thought you were the best dancer ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... a direction opposite to the sun's apparent movement. Nobody present is allowed to walk in contra-direction to the dancers. After six or eight rounds, they enlarge the circuit so as to include the fire; and whenever a dancer finds himself just between the shaman and the fire, he quickly turns around once, then, dancing as before, moves on to the dancing-place proper. Now and then the dancers give vent to what is supposed to be an imitation of the hikuli's talk, which reminded me of the crowing of a cock. ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... heights of Berkeley Nightly I watch the West. There lies new San Francisco, Sea-maid in purple dressed, Wearing a dancer's girdle All to inflame desire: Scorning her days of sackcloth, ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... balls at Northampton? I should like to see you dance, and I'd dance with you if you would, for nobody would know who I was here, and I should like to be your partner once more. We used to jump about together many a time, did not we? when the hand-organ was in the street? I am a pretty good dancer in my way, but I dare say you are a better." And turning to his uncle, who was now close to them, "Is not Fanny a ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... has given the name Marner, for mariner, and Seaman, but the medieval forms of the rare name Saylor show that it is from Fr. sailleur, a dancer, an artist who also survives as ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... weaknesses, prejudices, follies, haughtinesses, and caprices and lives upon as accurate a calculation and as nice a measure of her moral nature as her dressmaker takes of her physical proportions. Is a new dress, a new custom, a new singer, a new dancer, a new form of jewellery, a new dwarf or giant, a new chapel, a new anything, to be set up? There are deferential people in a dozen callings whom my Lady Dedlock suspects of nothing but prostration before her, who can tell you how to manage her as if she were a baby, who ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the fortune of the play, and the Laureate tells us that she was "then in the full bloom of what beauty she might pretend to."[B] He adds that "before this she had only been admired as the most excellent dancer, which perhaps might not a little contribute to the favourable reception she now met with as an actress in this character which so happily suited her figure and capacity: the gentle softness of her voice, the composed innocence of her aspect, the modesty of her dress, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... the pantomime is a more or less lurid eastern melodrama, based on the Arabian Nights. A hunchback is in love with a beautiful young dancer, who hates him. He sells her to a fierce old sheik, to get her out of the way of another lover, the sheik's son. Then he takes poison. Sumurun, the sheik's chief wife, favors a handsome cloth merchant called Nur-al-Din, whom she manages to smuggle ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... Jacob Hall (the famous rope-dancer) was at that time in vogue in London; his strength and agility charmed in public, even to a wish to know what he was in private; for he appeared, in his tumbling dress, to be quite of a different make, and to have limbs very different from ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... Lady Cashel's thoughts on the education of young men, these evils were ranked with the measles and hooping cough; it was well that they should be gone through and be done with early in life. She had a kind of hazy idea that an opera-dancer and a gambling club were indispensable in fitting a young aristocrat for his future career; and I doubt whether she would not have agreed to the expediency of inoculating a son of hers with these ailments in a mild degree—vaccinating him as it were with dissipation, in order ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... the ordinary Thames boat: a long, narrow, flat-bottomed, shallow craft with tapering ends decked over to serve as seats, the whole propelled by a pole the size of a tight-rope dancer's and about as ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of veritable corybantes. A young Tsigane, of about fifteen years of age, then advanced. He held in his hand a "doutare," strings of which he made to vibrate by a simple movement of the nails. He sung. During the singing of each couplet, of very peculiar rhythm, a dancer took her position by him and remained there immovable, listening to him, but each time that the burden came from the lips of the young singer, she resumed her dance, dinning in his ears with her daire, and deafening him with the clashing ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... than with her other partners, and when they left the clattering supper-room, where plates were being broken and champagne was being drunk by the gallon, sitting on the stairs, he talked to her till voices were heard calling for his services. A dancer had been thrown and had broken his leg. Alice saw something carried towards her, and, rushing towards May, whom she saw in the doorway, ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... can be good that is not slncere. It must be the expression of its author's mind. There are, of course, certain elements of composition which must be mastered as a dancer learns his steps, but the style of the writer, like the grace of the dancer, is only made effective by such mastery; it springs from a deeper source. Initiation into the rules of construction will save us from some gross errors of composltion, but it will not make a style. ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... to be having a good time. He danced a lot with Jane, who is a wreched dancer, with no sense of time whatever. Jane is not pretty, but she has nice eyes, and I am not afraid, second couzin once removed or no second couzin once removed, to say she ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... unknown, but are seldom mentioned, in America, and vices that are infamous beyond conception. I presume it will not be denied that there must be an amazing depravation of mind in a nation where a farce is a publication of more consequence than Milton's poem, and where an opera dancer, or an Italian singer, receives a salary equal to that of an ambassador. The facts being known and acknowledged, I presume the consequence will not be denied. Not that the charge is good against every individual; even in the worst times there will be found many exceptions to the general character ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... it avail her that she could say the Assembly's Catechism from end to end without tripping, and that every habit of her life beat time to practical realities, steadily as the parlor clock? The wildest Italian singer or dancer, nursed on nothing but excitement from her cradle, never was more thoroughly possessed by the awful and solemn mystery of woman's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... the Cossack. "Why?"—"I can't: I have such a disposition that whatever I take off, I drink up." And indeed, the young fellow had not had a cap for a long time, nor a belt to his caftan, nor an embroidered neckerchief: all had gone the proper road. The throng increased; more folk joined the dancer: and it was impossible to observe without emotion how all yielded to the impulse of the dance, the freest, the wildest, the world has ever seen, still called from its ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... calls legs, and you will feel great pain, as if a sword were passing through you. But all who see you will say that you are the prettiest little human being they ever saw. You will still have the same floating gracefulness of movement, and no dancer will ever tread so lightly; but at every step you take it will feel as if you were treading upon sharp knives, and that the blood must flow. If you will bear all ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... her end. Others, as many as take pleasure in their trade and profession, can even pine themselves at their works, and neglect their bodies and their food for it; and doest thou less honour thy nature, than an ordinary mechanic his trade; or a good dancer his art? than a covetous man his silver, and vainglorious man applause? These to whatsoever they take an affection, can be content to want their meat and sleep, to further that every one which he affects: and shall actions tending to the common good of human society, seem ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... bare-armed, lean-legged pleasurer had equipped himself (by way of disguise) with a large false moustache, and evading the close watch of his hatchet-faced, middle-aged spouse, had come forth to celebrate. Neither dancer nor vocalist, the Jolly Baker had other little entertaining ways all ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... but, to his unspeakable horror, the dancer crossed the floor with a swift jingling rush, and sank in a gauzy heap at his feet, seizing his hand in both hers and covering it with kisses, while she murmured speeches in some tongue ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... step ought not to exceed the length of the foot; the leg should be put forward, without stiffness, in about the fourth position; but without any effort to turn the foot out, as it will tend to throw the body awry, and give the person an appearance of being a professional dancer. The head should be kept up and the chest open: the body will then attain an advantageous position, and that steadiness so much required in good walking. The arms should fall in their natural position, and all their movements and oppositions to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... formerly of Cincinnati; dancer by profession; active in settlement work and in campaign for birth-control. July 4, 1917, arrested for picketing and sentenced to ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... want salt on you. A super is an adjunct to the stage. A supe is a fellow that assists the stars and things, carrying chairs and taking up carpets, and sweeping the sand off the stage after a dancer has danced a jig, and he brings beer for the actors, and helps lace up corsets, and anything he can do to add to the effect of the play. Privately, now, I have been acting as a supe for a long time, on ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... there had been the tenderest love, for she was all that was left to him of four. In the old days Mrs. Clancy had been the belle of the soldiers' balls, a fine-looking woman, with indomitable powers as a dancer and conversationalist and an envied reputation for outshining all her rivals in dress and adornment. "She would ruin Clancy, that she would," was the unanimous opinion of the soldiers' wives; but he seemed to minister to her extravagance with unfailing ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... question of his friends, "Who should inherit them?" he replied, "The most worthy." After many disturbances, his generals recognized as Kings the weak-minded Aridaeus—a son of Philip by Philinna, the dancer—and Alexander's posthumous son by Roxana, Alexander AEgus, while they shared the provinces among themselves, assuming the title of satraps. Perdiccas, to whom Alexander had, on his death-bed, delivered his ring, became guardian of the kings during their minority. The empire of Alexander soon ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various |
