"Story-telling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tellers in Hindustani after they were told, and a second time by the annotator before they were printed. "I never saw people more anxious to have their tales retold exactly, than are Dunkni and Muniya," the two story-telling ayahs. Not till each tale was pronounced by them to be exact was it sent to the press. The stories may be taken then as faithful transcripts of Indian thought. The merits of the copious Notes contributed by the late Mrs. Whitley Stokes, bearing witness ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... as indebted to his father for his frame and steady guidance of life, to his mother for his happy disposition and love of story-telling, to his grandfather for his devotion to the fair sex, to his grandmother for his love of finery. Schopenhauer reduces the law of heredity to the simple formula that man has his moral nature, his character, his inclinations, and his heart ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... my name on the title-page of this trifle from principle. My pen-children are all mine, and I cannot think of disowning one, though it may happen to be born hump-backed. But I beg of you, gentlest of unfortunate readers, not to take DAISY'S NECKLACE as a serious exponent of my skill at story-telling. It is not printed at the "urgent request of numerous friends"—I am so fortunate as not to have many—but a seductive little argument in the shape of a cheque is the sole cause of its present form; ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... go to the bottom lands paw-paw gathering. Winter nights there was story-telling in the huts. We had a kind of corn, very small, that burst out white like a ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... seem almost ludicrous did we not keep in mind its reason for existence. It was, first, symbolic story-telling art, and secondly, architectural decoration. As a story-teller it was effective because of its simplicity and directness. As decoration, the repeated expressionless face and figure, the arbitrary color, ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... deal of story-telling in some quarters; in others, little but silence. In this society, more than any other that ever I was in, it was the narrator alone who seemed to enjoy the narrative. It was rarely that any one listened for the listening. If he lent an ear to another man's story, it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... another necessarily, because their ages must differ widely. Read Goethe's autobiography; and note that though he was happy in his parents and had exceptional powers of observation, divination, and story-telling, he knew less about his father and mother than about most of the other people he mentions. I myself was never on bad terms with my mother: we lived together until I was forty-two years old, absolutely without the smallest friction of any kind; yet ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... That the story-telling type was a bore, I grant. To be grabbed on entering your club and obliged to listen to Smith's last, or to have the conversation after dinner monopolized by Jones and his eternal "Speaking of coffee, I remember once," etc. added an additional hardship to existence. But the opposite pose, which ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... gracefully written and deftly touched with a gentle humor. It is a dainty book—daintily illustrated."—New York Tribune. "A wholesome, bright, refreshing story, an ideal book to give a young girl."—Chicago Record-Herald. "An idyllic story, replete with pathos and inimitable humor. As story-telling it is perfection, and as portrait-painting it is true to ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... Stories were told, jokes were cracked and laughed at, and the news contained in the latest newspaper finding its way into the wilderness was discussed. Such a store was that of Denton Offutt. Lincoln could hardly have chosen surroundings more favorable to the highest development of the art of story-telling, and he had not been there long before his reputation for drollery ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... of singing and story-telling at odd times. A group of children making mats or baskets, gathering pease or going after berries would beg Nils or Nikolina to tell a story, or Karen would lead them in some old song with a familiar refrain. But some of the songs the Wind-wife crooned to the baby were not like any the ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... most of this audience know. He has not been noticeably active in the affairs of the village, but when you have met him in private intercourse, you have known that he retained the fine social qualities—the love of story-telling, and the keen, yet harmless wit—for which he was always remarkable. Those whose memory goes back thirty years, must have noticed, I think, that he became more uniformly serene and cheerful in the latter ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... I heard definitely taking a side. He left me, and, looking back, I saw him pouring his news into the ear of a gaping stranger whom he had arrested for the purpose. I almost went back to hear would he tell the same tale or would he elaborate it into a new thing, for I am interested in the art of story-telling. ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... apartment occupied by Miss Mary Garden.... A fat manufacturer's wife confronts the proposal of a mercenary duke with an epic rejoinder: "Pay a man a million dollars to sleep with my daughter! Never!"... Again Saltus demonstrates how completely he is master of the story-telling gift, how surely he possesses the power to ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... cauldron of boiling oil from which he was miraculously preserved, he banished the poor son of Zebedee to a desert island in the Archipelago where he was gifted with the second sight, and saw as many wild beasts as I have seen since I came to Edinburgh; which, a circumstance not uncommon in story-telling, brings me back ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... should have enjoyed their harlequinades and would have made them dance to us a wee and all and some tell us tales to gladden our minds; after which we would have suffered them depart and go about their own business." The wife enquired, "And given that they knew neither dancing nor story-telling what hadst thou done with them?" and replied he, "Had the case been as thou sayest and they ignorant of all this, verily we would have killed them and cast them into the chapel of case." The four men hearing such threatening words muttered to themselves, "There is no Majesty ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... in good government and in the rational and convenient ordering of things. Her tales to illustrate the truths of political economy are what might be expected from a writer of this character. They are far from being wanting—many of them—in the genuine interest of good story-telling. They are rapid, definite, and without a trace of either slovenliness or fatigue. We are amazed as we think of the speed and prompt regularity with which they were produced; and the fertile ingenuity ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... in mythology and folk-customs, but to the children of Ireland and England. Our new imaginative stories are now told in nurseries, listened to at evening when the children assemble in the fire-light to hear tales from their parents, and eagerly read by boys at school. A fresh world of story-telling has been opened to the imagination of ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... the beginning,' was the old story-telling formula, and it was a very sound one, if 'the beginning' could only be definitely ascertained! As our nearest possible approach to it I would draw attention to certain curious parallels in the earliest literary monuments of our race. I would at the same time beg those ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... really historical personages. Mr. Fox Bourne's 'English Merchants' furnished the tradition respecting Whittington. I am afraid the knighthood was really conferred on Henry's first return to England, after the battle of Agincourt; but human—or at least story-telling—nature could not resist an anachronism of a few years for such a story. The only other wilful alteration of a matter of time is with regard to the Duke of Burgundy's interview with Henry. At the time of Henry's last stay at Paris the Duke was attending ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... think the best of it, came forth in a form which does not permit of its being recalled, the form of the spoken and unrecorded word. He was by nature an improvisor. In the inclusive sense of the term, the sense which includes poetry, story-telling, description as well as pleading and exhortation, he was a born orator; and he was at his best when in the glow of pure improvisation. It thus happened that it was often a group of friends around a fireside, ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... along with the other members. The effect will be that his children are more likely to stay as worshipers with him than if they gazed on him as on some lonely elevation, unrelated to them in his religious exercises. The reading, the song, the prayers, the comment and discussion, the story-telling, and all that may make up the regular specific religious activities of the family should be such that all may have a share in them. Nothing could be finer, diviner, and bring larger helpfulness for social living than the attempt of the least little lisping ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... so, however, let us notice a method of the old Mnemonics, which is still taught and which should never be resorted to. It is their story-telling method. A story or narrative is invented for the purpose of helping the student, as it is claimed, to memorise it. In this poem we find there are four stanzas, each occupied with a different kind of bell. To help remember that the order of the bells is silver, gold, brass and iron, ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... idle nature by any means: it was only erratic, fond of variety, impatient of drudgery. Thus, in the course of fourteen years' literary work, his thoughts make excursions from town-life to country-life, from social satire to story-telling, from art to ethnology, from theology to opera-bouffe! Here are the titles of a few of his compositions: Lower Bohemia in Melbourne (a sketch), Plot (a sensational drama), Review of Comte and Positive Philosophy (magazine article), ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... their spirits rose and there were many rounds of singing and story-telling as they sat clustered together like bees under the lee of the deck-house, and in all of these Stevenson ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... in the hay-field. Eric excelled himself in his rare power of story-telling. Basil and Ermie sat side by side, and whispered together. Miss Nelson had seldom seen a softer look on her elder pupil's face than now. She determined that Basil and his sister should be together as much as possible ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... conserve health, to train for domestic efficiency and motherhood, and if necessary for economic independence. It must also furnish the stimulus for mental culture and direct a proper aspiration for social enlightenment. The curriculum should include biology, hygiene, psychology, home beautifying, the story-telling side of literature, music and a few other studies tending to make woman more like woman than she is to-day. When we have this, teaching for mothercraft will be ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... of the halibut and the cormorant, recently reported in the daily Press, has brought us a budget of interesting letters, from which we select the following as agreeable evidence of the return of normal conditions in the fish-story-telling industry:— ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... Teacher, on being asked "Who is my neighbour?" replied "A man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho," and the parable which followed is the most beautiful which language has ever recorded. Story-telling, though often abused, is the medium by which truth can be most irresistibly conveyed to the majority of minds, and in the present instance we have a desire to portray in some slight degree the importance of Charity in ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... boats, and with the adventures of the young crew, who, by degrees, become most expert in this most wonderful and awe-inspiring field of modern naval practice. The books are written by an expert and possess, in addition to the author's surpassing knack of story-telling, a great educational value for all ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... his father, "it is little better than story-telling to conceal a part of the truth. The affair now wears quite a new face. It was you that gave the first assault, and will have to answer for all the bad consequences. It is my duty to see that this unoffending boy is taken care of; but if his leg be so cut or bruised that he cannot ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... farther from the truth. Mr. Baxter's strength lies in the rapid flow and sweep of his narrative. His characterisation is clear and firm in outline, but it is never pursued into those quicksands of minute analysis which too often impede the stream of good story-telling. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... in story-telling mood. She seemed to have an inexhaustible fund of them in reserve which she could deftly strap on as life-preserver at the first far sign of danger. And she would flash into her stories an "As you said, Ann," or "As you would put it, Ann," ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... was the only means of transmitting it, and it was of a sacred character, because sacred things and beliefs were the only forces which influenced primitive thought. When it was repeated to new generations of learners, it was not a case of story-telling—it was a matter of the profoundest importance. Everywhere among the lowest savagery we find the secrets of the group kept from all but the initiated, and these secrets are the traditions which have become sacred, traditions expressed sometimes ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... you a story?" she then said in a mild fit of desperation, for story-telling was as little in her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... of story-telling must be manifest to everybody; for here I am talking of Helen, as of a young lady of sixteen or more, with shy notions of beaux and lovers in her head,—whereas, in point of time, my story has not advanced by regular stages beyond the period of her childhood, when she thought more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... her mother, who was not thinking of story-telling, "I am afraid I have forgotten all the ones I ever knew. Besides, darling, it is time for ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... differences arise of character, habit and thought, not to be easily shaken off. I was in the Civil Service in Canada and did very well until I meddled with literature. Discovering that I had a faculty for verse and story-telling, I was ambitious and at the same time foolish enough to work so hard at my new pursuit that I was compelled to "cut" the service, in other words to resign. Some other Englishman got my post and I found myself, rather unexpectedly, ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... jack," ordered Al. "To-morrow he won't even remember he ever saw us. You're letting your story-telling instinct warp your judgment, Lucy. You're looking for mysteries. I'll get that ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... the picturesque style in which it is written rather contributes to this effect, lending the story beauty but robbing it of truth. Still, it is not without power, and cultured verse is certainly a pleasanter medium for story-telling than coarse and common prose. The hero of the poem is a young clergyman of ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... inventiveness in pose and attitude." For each new picture he seemed always to have ready some new compositional motive. Claude Phillips goes so far as to say that in the whole range of art Rembrandt alone is his equal in this respect. This versatility was due in a measure to his story-telling instinct. His imagination seemed to weave some story about each sitter which the picture was intended, as it were, to illustrate. From Lord Heathfield, refusing to yield the keys of Gibraltar, to little Miss ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... nobody to scare me into story-telling," said Agnes, loftily, deciding that she did not like this boy ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... indeed, one of those delightfully simple and captivating tales which, as soon as finished, we are not unwilling to begin again. Even the adult becomes himself like the child who cannot be satisfied with the repetition of a favourite tale, but harasses the story-telling aunt or nurse, to know more of the incidents and characters. In this respect Bunyan has contrived a contrast, which, far from exhausting his subject, opens new sources of attraction, and adds to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... vocation, and are impatient of his devotion to fiction; but I suspect that these admirers are mistaken. A novelists he is not, after the old fashion, or after any fashion but his own; yet since he has finally made his public in his own way of story-telling—or call it character-painting if you prefer,—it must be conceded that he has chosen best for himself and his readers in choosing the form of fiction for what he has to say. It is, after all, what a writer has to say rather than what he has to tell that we care for nowadays. In one manner ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was he as a priest, Who at the mass on Sunday sings, Save that upon his upper lip His beard, a good palm's length at least, Level and pointed at the tip, Shot sideways, like a swallow's wings. The poets read he o'er and o'er, And most of all the Immortal Four Of Italy; and next to those, The story-telling bard of prose, Who wrote the joyous Tuscan tales Of the Decameron, that make Fiesole's green hills and vales Remembered for Boccaccio's sake. Much too of music was his thought; The melodies and measures fraught With sunshine and the ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... on the jonquiere, he watched keenly, in a business-like spirit, the gay gestures and pretty dimples of Blaisette Simon, who was the most eager listener of the story-telling group. He had often thought of her as a possible wife. But she was such a universal flirt, that, hitherto, he had received no special encouragement. To-night, however, he felt inclined to exert the full power of attraction which he was quite capable of appreciating ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... wherefores, as they make poor story-telling, and leave me, Basdel Morris, overlong in quitting the thicket about my tree. And yet the wise man always looks backward as well as forward when entering on a trail, and children yet unborn may blaze a better trace if they ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... times and seasons for story-telling among the various Indian tribes, but the winter season, when there is likely to be most leisure and most need of fireside entertainment, is a general favorite. However, some tribes have myths that "can not be told in summer, others only at night, etc."[16] Furthermore there are secret cults and ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... as the Americans say, in "full blast," during the few hours which I spent on Lake Champlain. There were about a hundred passengers, including a sprinkling of the fair sex. The amusements were story-telling, whittling, and smoking. Fully half the stories told began with, "There was a 'cute 'coon down east," and the burden of nearly all was some clever act of cheating, "sucking a greenhorn," as the phrase is. There were occasional anecdotes of "bustings-up" ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... story-telling around the camp-fire that night. They gathered around it, even before the light died out in the sky. Ranald had his guitar and Allison her mandolin, and they thrummed accompaniments awhile for the others to sing. But a mighty yawn catching Margery in the middle of a verse, and Mrs. ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... make such a medley, with a sort of divine fascination about it,—that we are always interested to hear how anybody has borne himself through whatever varieties of fortune. At the basis of every other character which can be assumed by man lie the conceiver and the teller of stories; story-telling is the prima facie quality of an intelligent and sociable being leading a life full of events in a universe full of phenomena. The child believes the wonders of romance by a right instinct; narratives of love and peril and achievement come home to the spirit of the youth; ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... Milan, where he cultivated literature rather than the austerer science to which he had been bred, and soon became the fashion, writing tales in Milanese and Italian verse, and making the women cry by his pathetic art of story-telling. "Ildegonda", published in 1820, was the most popular of all these tales, and won Grossi an immense number of admirers, every one (says his biographer Cantu) of the fair sex, who began to wear Ildegonda dresses ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... however, seemed inclined to go to sleep, so after supper we all sat or lay around the large fires and amused ourselves. We had the fiddler with us, and in the intervals between the wretched tunes which he played, the usual amusement of story-telling beguiled the time: tales of hair-breadth escapes from jaguar, alligator, and so forth. There were amongst us a father and son who had been the actors, the previous year, in an alligator adventure ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... not only wonderful travellers in this vile world, but splenetic travellers, and of these not a few, and also conspicuous enough. It is a pity, therefore, that the Baron has not endeavoured to surpass them also in this species of story-telling. Who is it can read the travels of Smellfungus, as Sterne calls him, without admiration? To think that a person from the North of Scotland should travel through some of the finest countries in Europe, and find fault with everything he meets—nothing to please him! And therefore, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... Story-telling has always been popular, of course; and the desire is deep-rooted in all of us to hear and to tell some new thing and to tell again something deserving remembrance. But the novel itself, and the short-story also, must confess that they have only ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... desire for improvement. If the desire exists, then improvement is usually accomplished only by the conquest of self—the material self, which seeks pleasure and amusement. The novel, the game of cards, the billiard cue, idle whittling and story-telling will have to be eschewed, and every available moment of leisure turned to account. For all who seek self-improvement "there is a lion in the way," the lion of self-indulgence, and it is only by the conquest of this enemy that ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... and expires. This you will allow is a fair summary of the story; and if Nasser, the Arabian merchant, told no better, our Holy Prophet (to whom be all honor and glory!) had no need to be jealous of his abilities for story-telling." ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... This little band of devoted "Dickensians" contained among them Mr. Henry Dickens, K. C., the son of the novelist; Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, who had the honour of being intimately associated with Dickens on Household Words; Mr. Luke Fildes, R. A., among whose many famous paintings is that pathetic story-telling canvas, "The Empty Chair," being a reproduction of that portion of Dickens' study at Gad's Hill, wherein stood ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... when even the little ones must labour, not a word; but from sunset to sunrise, when no man can work, the tongues chatter glibly enough, for that is story-telling time. Then, after the scanty meal is over, the bairns drag their wooden-legged, string-woven bedsteads into the open, and settle themselves down like young birds in a nest, three or four to a bed, while others coil up on mats upon the ground, ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... around camp the smoke was curling upward from those cigars in clouds. When supper was over and the guards arranged for the night, story-telling was in order. This cattle-buyer with us lived in Kansas City and gave us several good ones. He told us of an attempted robbery of a bank which had occurred a few days before in a western town. As a prelude to the tale, he gave us the history of ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... Time that our Story-telling should pass, as they say, from better to worse, from Kings to Anthony, a Priest of Louvain, who was much in Favour with Philip surnamed the Good: there are a great many Things told of this Man, both merrily said, and wittily done, but most of them are something ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... is to say so. But perhaps it's just as well to let the old gentleman drop, for his adventures were rather strange; but the narration of them is not very profitable, not that I go in for the utilitarian theory of conversation; but I think, on the whole, that, in story-telling, fiction should be preferred to dull facts like these, and so the next time I tell a story I will ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... house-picnic means this: It means the whole house thrown open from ten in the morning till ten at night. It means fun in the garret, music and games in the parlor, story-telling in odd corners, candy-pulling in the kitchen, sliding-curtains, tinkling bells, and funny performances in the library; it means almost any right thing within bounds that you and about thirty other youngsters choose to make it, with ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... to say that not all moving-picture productions are photoplays than that not all prose is fiction, yet the distinction must be emphasized. A photoplay is to the program of a moving-picture theatre just what a short-story is to the contents of a popular magazine—it supplies the story-telling or drama element. A few years ago the managers of certain theatres used so to arrange their programs that for four or five days out of every week the pictures they showed would consist entirely of photoplays. On such days their programs corresponded exactly to the ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... listened to it, his eyes filled with tears, "to be able to stir men like that." "The Skeleton in Armor," "A Ballad of the French Fleet," "Paul Revere's Ride," "The Wreck of the Hesperus," are ballads that stir men still. For all of his skill in story-telling in verse—witness the "Tales of a Wayside Inn"—Longfellow was not by nature a dramatist, and his trilogy now published under the title of "Christus," made up of "The Divine Tragedy," "The Golden Legend," and "New England Tragedies," added little ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... favorable to story-telling. There was an autumnal languor in the air, and a dreamy haze softened the dark green of the distant pines and the deep blue of the Southern sky. The generous meal he had made had put the old man in a very good humor. He was not always so, for his curiously undeveloped nature was subject ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... not the summary of a study in national growth and decay, but expressive of the fact that a French bicycle team wins a signal victory over a group of exhausted English competitors. Do you see now how far towards the art of simplified story-telling these ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... always trip it on a light fantastic toe, neither do "iambic" measures always pace sedately. Doubtless there is a certain general fitness, in various stanza forms, for this or that poetic purpose: the stanzas employed by English or Scotch balladry are admittedly excellent for story-telling; Spenser's favorite stanza is unrivalled for painting dream-pictures and rendering dream-music, but less available for pure narration; Chaucer's seven-line stanza, so delicately balanced upon that ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... come to hear all I passed through after leaving that rock, you will know that this story-telling is not worth thinking about," said Blauvelt, with a slight laugh, "All my exposure was well worth the risk, for the chance of telling it to a woman of your nerve. My hope now is that Strahan may some day learn how stanch was our 'home support,' ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... without wit, and without external charm of any kind. La Bruyere has said, "A certain man appears loutish, heavy, stupid; he can neither talk nor relate what he has just seen; he sets himself to writing, and it is a model of story-telling; he makes speakers of animals, trees; stones, everything that cannot speak. There is nothing but lightness and elegance, nothing but natural beauty and delicacy in his works." "He says nothing or will talk of nothing ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... book devoted to the special pillage of statues and other ornaments, which, for the genius displayed in story-telling, is perhaps of all the Verrine orations the most amusing. The Greek people had become in a peculiar way devoted to what we generally call Art. We are much given to the collecting of pictures, china, bronze, and marbles, ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... the statesman, and a numerous company had been brought together to meet them. All three had the opportunity of displaying their special gifts; Lavater his skill in physiognomy, Goethe the gift he had inherited from his mother of story-telling to children; but in the end Basedow asserted himself in his most characteristic style. With a power of reasoning and a passionate eloquence, to which both Goethe and Lavater bear witness, he proclaimed the conditions of the regeneration of society—the improved education of youth ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... almost without realizing what it would come to, she found herself pitted against Souwanas, the great story-teller of the tribe. However, being determined that Souwanas should not rob her of the love of the children, she was tempted to begin her story-telling even though the children were exhausted, and so it was that when the lad asked a question ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... story-telling mood, I may as well relate an account that was given me of the manner in which Jung distinguished himself on one occasion with a musk elephant. The story is interesting, as it was by such daring feats that he won for himself ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... degrees, however, I got matters into better train, and by getting our rehearsal early before Fin appeared, as he usually slept somewhat later after his night at mess, I managed to have things in something like order; he and his confounded drum, which, whenever he was not story-telling, he was sure to be practising on, being, in fact the greatest difficulties opposed to my managerial functions. One property he possessed, so totally at variance with all habits of order, that it completely baffled me. So numerous were his ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... no time for story-telling. The rooms had to be swept, the bread to be baked, the clothes to be washed, the pigs and chickens to be fed. Moreover, to-day was the first day of the Michaelmas fair, and things must be bought in to last till Christmas. The ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... signal for story-telling, when suddenly the aggageers changed the conversation by a few tales of the Base natives, which so thoroughly eclipsed the dangers of wild beasts, that in a short time the entire party would almost have welcomed a lion, provided would he only have agreed to protect ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... ours together." He then began his tale of the Vampire; and, having the whole arranged in his head, repeated to them a sketch of the story[120] one evening,—but, from the narrative being in prose, made but little progress in filling up his outline. The most memorable result, indeed, of their story-telling compact, was Mrs. Shelley's wild and powerful romance of Frankenstein,—one of those original conceptions that take hold of the public mind at once, and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the Three Black Crows had less to do in the way of handling and nursing the schooner. Their plans when the "Boomskys" should be reached were rehearsed over and over again. Then came spells of card and checker playing, story-telling, or hours of silent inertia when, man fashion, they brooded over pipes in a patch of sun, somnolent, the mind empty ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... his "Deirdre" was successfully produced at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. It presents only the last chapter of this, the saddest tale of the three heart-burdening tales that are known as "The Three Sorrows of Story-Telling," but it presents it so poignantly and with so keen an emphasis on the quick-passing of all things sweet, that it takes place, for all its slightness, with the world's greatest tragedies that are tragedies because of the overthrow ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... enough music, and there are some who certainly can say altogether too much of the kind there is in this country. The same thing can be said of painting. There is altogether too much of comfortable art, the art of the uplifted illustration. It is the reflex of the Anglo-Saxon passion for story-telling in pictures which should be relegated to the field of the magazines. Great art often tells a story but great art is always something plus the idea. Ordinary art does ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... cried, before she reached him, "you are to stop work!" Then, as she came up to him, she continued: "Yes; there is to be story-telling this morning. We have told papa about it, and he is coming to what he calls the story-telling place with us, and mamma feels inspired to tell the story. So you may take that troubled look out of your face. Please put the big easy garden-chair in the ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... was true; she had a real gift for story-telling, and though her accent sounded strange, her words were so correctly chosen, and her whole tone had so much charm about it, that it was almost difficult to believe that she had not at some time of her life been in a much better ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... which the pursuit of history may be divided—investigation, theory, and story-telling—not one attains ideal finality. Investigation is merely useful, because its intrinsic ideal—to know every detail of everything—is not rational, and its acceptable function can only be to offer accurate information upon ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... outer life that assumed its first definite phase in the years on Pigeon Creek. During those years, Lincoln discovered his gift of story-telling. He also discovered humor. In the employment of both talents, he accepted as a matter of course the tone of the young ruffians among whom he dwelt. Very soon this powerful fellow, who could throw any of them in a wrestle, won the central position among them by a surer title, by the power ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... sympathetic interpretation, always restrained within the limits of the art she was using, and her understanding of educational values, based on a wide experience of teaching, all marked her as an artist in story-telling. She was equally at home in interpreting the subtle blending of wit and wisdom in Daudet, the folk lore philosophy of Grimm, or the deeper world philosophy and poignant human ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... sights greeted the benighted huntsman, and of voyaging far south into the lands of the sun where the poorest thrall wore linen and the cities were all gold and jewels. Biorn's head would be in such a whirl after a night of story-telling that he could get no sleep for picturing his own deeds when he was man enough to bear a sword and launch his ship. And sometimes in his excitement he would slip outside into the darkness, and hear far up in the frosty sky the whistle ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... with the second guard, and the others had gathered around the camp-fire for their nightly story-telling. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... their achievements. He stigmatized the speculations of the day as the "lust of innovation." But the reader cares little for the opinions of Dr. Brown as arguments: his subject is of little consequence if he will but talk. By the charm of his story-telling these dead Scotch doctors are made to live again. The death-bed of Syme, for instance, is as pathetic as the wonderful paper on Thackeray's death; and to-day many a heart is sore for 'Pet Marjorie,' the ten-year-old child who died in Scotland almost ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... that tend to develop this larger community sense are games, athletic sports of all kinds, including team work and competition between small, well-knit groups. Folk dancing and other forms of amusement, such as dramatics, pageants, and story-telling, serve a similar purpose because they all mean the possession of a resource not only for the right use of the girl's own leisure time, but for serving this need in ...
— Educational Work of the Girl Scouts • Louise Stevens Bryant
... were busy, and it was not reasonable to suppose any of her bird or animal acquaintances would be out. As she sat by the window, watching the little streams of water as they ran down the glass, she said to herself that this was one of the days when she could not hope to be entertained by story-telling. ...
— Mouser Cats' Story • Amy Prentice
... called 'The [Golden] Ass,'—and more generally known under that title,—will be remembered when many greater writers shall have been forgotten. The downfall of Greek political freedom brought a period of intellectual development fertile in prose story-telling,—short fables and tales, novels philosophic and religious, historical and satiric, novels of love, novels of adventure. Yet, strange to say, while the instinct was prolific in the Hellenic domain of the Roman Empire, it was for the most part sterile in Italy, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... kind-hearted decision. Tessa was devotedly attached to Katie, and followed, rather than led, her friend. She was shy with the boys at first, but soon came to show them the same sisterly feeling that their sister did. Her wit, quickness, and power of story-telling soon made her a valuable addition to the family circle, while the genial home influences and good fare so told upon herself that her extreme delicacy soon disappeared, and she became capable of as much work or endurance ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... humor, his fidelity to nature and story-telling power, lose nothing with years, and he stands at the head of those who are furnishing a literature for the young, clean and sweet in tone, and always ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... exclaimed, "what a sharp tongue you have! Were your ladyship to take to story-telling, we really would have nowhere to earn ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the flickering camp-fire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by Piney—story-telling. Neither Mr., Oakhurst nor his female companions caring to relate their personal experiences, this plan would have failed, too, but for the Innocent. Some months before he had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope's ingenious translation ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... Princess Greedalind, while she looked ready to cry for spite, "only see that low little girl who came here in a coarse frock and barefooted, what finery and favour she has gained by her story-telling chair! All the Court are praising her and overlooking me, though the feast was made in honour of my birthday. Mamma, I must have that chair from her. What business has a common little girl with ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... not see the arch rogue during the day, but he came in to dinner. He was gay—in a story-telling mood. There was little or no banter, for he spoke only to Jane, and gave her flashes of some of his amazing activities in search of art treasures. He had once been chased up and down Japan by the Mikado's agents for having ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... sealed the letter, nodding confidently to Mrs. Sherman, who had come over to help with Lloyd's costume. "You remember Nell Bond, do you not? She took the prize every year in elocution, and was always in demand at every entertainment. She is the most charming reader I ever heard, and as for story-telling—well, she's better than the 'Arabian Nights.' You must let the Little Colonel come over every ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... shown four visions of future events, all covering the same general stretch of events, but with a fuller description, here of one part and there of another. The four Gospels are a familiar illustration of the same principle in teaching and story-telling. This is the ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... his fidelity to nature, and story-telling power lose nothing with years; and he stands at the head of those who are furnishing a literature for the young, clean and sweet in tone, and always ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... when reading was a rare accomplishment, our many times great-grandparents would gather round the blazing fire of kitchen or hall on the long, dark winter nights and pass away the hours before bedtime in conversation and story-telling. ...
— Legend Land, Vol. 1 • Various
... Wait" in Reedy's Mirror during the past few months, and I should much prefer them to those of Jack Lait for the complete success with which he has achieved his aims. Imitation of "O. Henry" has been the curse of American story-telling for the past ten years, because "O. Henry" is practically inimitable. Mr. Lewis is not an imitator, but he may well prove before very long to be "O. Henry's" successor. In the words of Padna Dan and Micus Pat, "Here's the chance for some ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... or Gautier, what even Bulwer or Washington Irving, would have made of this. Roger (one may call him this without undue familiarity, because it is the true factor in both his names) has a good idea—the muster of defunct painters in an ancient Antwerp pot-house at ghost-time, and their story-telling. The contrast of them with the beautiful living barmaid might have been—but is not—made extremely effective. In fact the fatal improbability—in the Aristotelian, not the Barbauldian sense—broods over the whole. And the Cabaret des Morts itself ceases, not ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... books was a great primer, with painted letters and pictures, and bringing this forth, he gathered the ten around him, and used all his powers of description and story-telling to endeavor to awaken the slumbering interest of these unpromising pupils. It was a weary hour's work. A few of them betrayed a slight curiosity in regard to the bright colors, which Noll endeavored to stimulate; but it soon died out, and all looked on and listened with listless ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... The love of story-telling seems to be ingrained in human nature. Travellers tell of vari-coloured races sitting round their watch fires reciting deeds of the past; and letters from colonists show how, even amidst forest-clearing, they have beguiled their evening hours ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Gilbert's story-telling and verse-making began very early, but not, I think, in great abundance; his drawing even earlier, and of this there is a great deal. There is nothing very striking in the written fragments that remain, but his drawings even at the age of five are full of vigour. The faces and ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... of social and moral ideals will find much to interest him in Chretien's romances. Mediaeval references show that he was held by his immediate successors, as he is held to-day when fairly viewed, to have been a master of the art of story-telling. More than any other single narrative poet, he was taken as a model both in France and abroad. Professor F. M. Warren has set forth in detail the finer points in the art of poetry as practised by Chretien and his contemporary craftsmen (see "Some Features of Style in Early French ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... No doubt the story-telling habit owes much to the fact that ordinary people, quite unconsciously, rate humour very low: I mean, they underestimate the difficulty of "making humour." It would never occur to them that the thing is hard, meritorious and dignified. Because the result is gay and light, they think the process ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... balls, except, perhaps, the annual election, or Thanksgiving festival; and when winter came, and the sun went down at half-past four o'clock, and left the long, dark hours of evening to be provided for, the necessity of amusement became urgent. Hence, in those days, chimney-corner story-telling became an art and an accomplishment. Society then was full of traditions and narratives which had all the uncertain glow and shifting mystery of the firelit hearth upon them. They were told to sympathetic audiences, by the rising and falling light of the solemn embers, with ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was only the thruth, neighbors. As soon as night came, all the young boys and girls from the countryside about them flocked to it in scores. In a short time the house was crowded; and maybe there wasn't laughing, and story-telling, and singing, and smoking, and drinking, and crying—all going on, heller-skelter, together. When they'd be all in full chorus this way, may be, some new friend or relation, that wasn't there before, would come in, and raise the keena; of coorse, the youngsters would then keep quiet; and if the ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... known, story-telling was often with President Lincoln a weapon which he employ'd with great skill. Very often he could not give a point-blank reply or comment—and these indirections, (sometimes funny, but not always so,) were probably the best responses possible. In the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... there has been a wholesome revival of the ancient art of story-telling. The most thoughtful, progressive educators have come to recognize the culture value of folk and fairy stories, fables and legends, not only as means of fostering and directing the power of the child's imagination, but as a basis for literary ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... knew his Dickens as no other undergraduate in the University knew that branch of polite literature, and passed an examination on the 'Pickwick Papers' which the author declared that he himself would have failed in. By these processes Mr. Besant fitted himself mentally and socially for the task of story-telling. The relations of a man of letters to the rest of the world are comprehensively revealed in the long list of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the reedy notes of the accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the flickering campfire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by Piney—story-telling. Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions caring to relate their personal experiences, this plan would have failed, too, but for the Innocent. Some months before he had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope's ingenious translation ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... brightly, there was a vast deal of boisterous hilarity, in which the deep guttural tones of the men and the shrill voices of the squaws were intermingled. Around the fires there were endless gossiping, story-telling, and jesting. Jokes, by no means delicate and decidedly personal, provoked uproarious laughter, in which the ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... doors again and set them wide, as they have for the most part remained ever since, in the daytimes; thus rendering Ruth's doings and ways particularly patent to the household, and most conveniently open to the privilege and second sight of story-telling. ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... ocean poetry here (ll. 210-224), and we get a vivid idea of the hospitality of a brave people by following the poet's description of Beowulf's meeting with King Hrothgar and Queen Wealhtheow, and of the joy and feasting and story-telling in Heorot. The picture of Wealhtheow passing the mead cup to the warriors with her own hand is a noble one, and plainly indicates the reverence paid by these strong men to their wives and mothers. Night comes on; the fear of ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... itself with such majesty that a show of violence was out of the question. Among his precious books was a cat story—privately printed and bound—which his second wife had gradually evolved among the wonderful essays in story-telling with which, when he was jaded, she diverted him. This held so large a share in his affection that it nearly displaced his little French copy of the Contes de Perrault, containing the adventures of the Marquis ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... so, but they saw no brilliance in my explanation. They were artistic, but not artistic enough to appreciate the nuance of the story-telling art. Perhaps this is nothing against them. Each ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... replied the old man; "you have wished nothing of the kind. Oh, Gus, haven't you conquered the horrid habit of story-telling that used to make you the laughing-stock of all the young men in the shop. And you, my little Two-to-the-Pound, what a time it is since we've met, never since the exciseman died, I do believe. Well, you've not grown thin ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... in the humour of story-telling, the young nobleman went on, addressing himself chiefly to his servants, without ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... at once. Imagine me singing or dancing when I'm so tired I can hardly move; and as for story-telling, ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... Friend Oliver Wendell Holmes Mr. Morris's Poems Mrs. Radcliffe's Novels A Scottish Romanticist of 1830 The Confessions of Saint Augustine Smollett Nathaniel Hawthorne The Paradise of Poets Paris and Helen Enchanted Cigarettes Stories and Story-telling The Supernatural in Fiction An Old Scottish ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... the well-known inflexions of Thackeray's voice and the humours of his temperament; certainly Pendennis and Esmond and George Warrington and Thackeray have all of them exactly the same conception of the art of story-telling, they all command the same perfection of luminous style. And not only does Thackeray stop short at an early stage of the process I am considering, but it must be owned that he uses the device of the narrator ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... Allah, verily, injustice slayeth its folk!"[FN147] And he was edified by that wherewith Shehrzad bespoke him and sought help of God the Most High. Then said he to her, "Tell me another of thy stories, O Shehrzad; let it be a pleasant one and this shall be the completion of the story-telling." "With all my heart," answered Shehrzad. "It hath reached me, O august King, that a man once said to his fellows, 'I will set forth to you a means[FN148] of security[FN149] against vexation.[FN150] A friend of mine once related to me and ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... broad nose and the large mouth of the southern Negro. Her physical condition is especially good for a woman of her age. She is very talkative at times, but her memory appears to come and go, so that she has to be prompted at intervals in her story-telling by her daughter or granddaughter, with whom she lives. Familiarly known as "Aunt Classie," she is very proud of her age and more especially of her long line ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration |
