"Dance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Flounderings of Absurdities, Irresistibilities of Iterations, Significances of Jargons, Wailings of Pretended Woes, Roarings of Laughter, and Hubbubs of Animal Spirits, all appear, singly or in companies, to flash, ripple, dance, shoot, effervesce, and sparkle, in prose and verse, vignettes, sketches, or elaborate pictures, on the ever-shifting and always entertaining pages of the London Charivari. Of one prominent form of the exhibition of this inexhaustible arsenal, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... Jewish women was considered the highest honor and glory ever vouchsafed to mortals. So she was permitted for a brief period to enjoy her freedom, accompanied by young Jewish maidens who had hoped to dance at ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... have imagined one's self in the 'land of the cypress and myrtle' instead of our actual whereabout upon the polar banks of the Neva. Wandering through these mimic groves, or reposing from the fatigues of the dance, was many a fair and graceful form, while the brilliantly lighted ballroom, filled with hundreds of exquisitely dressed women (for the Russian ladies, if not very pretty, are graceful, and make admirable toilettes), formed a dazzling contrast with the tempered light ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... laughter of the company, by jocosely putting his arms akimbo, and inserting his thumbs into the orifices of the wounds, as if they had been arm-holes. This having in a measure restored good-humor, the party joined hands and formed a circle preparatory to dancing. The dance was commenced by some monotonous stanzas hummed in a very high key by one of the party, the rest joining in the following chorus, which seemed to present a familiar sound to ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... John de Bichis, where there were several women of Siena, women wholly given over to worldly vanities. Your companion was one of your colleagues whom his years, if not the dignity of his office, ought to have reminded of his duty. We have heard that the dance was indulged in in all wantonness; none of the allurements of love were lacking, and you conducted yourself in a wholly worldly manner. Shame forbids mention of all that took place, for not only the things themselves but their very names are unworthy of your rank. In order ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... transactions, or emergencies that may arise in traveling, as when we wish to consign some friend to the care of another. They are given at balls, that partners may be found for all the dancers. Here, however, care must be taken beforehand to ascertain if the parties will dance, for such is the selfishness and, shall it be said, ill-breeding of our society young men that not unfrequently they will walk away without even offering the lady the courtesy of the next dance. In this way her hostess unwittingly exposes her to a marked slight, ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... given you this great gift of oratory, if you will forgive my speaking so, to use only in a great cause. A grand organ in a cathedral is placed there to lift men's thoughts to high resolves and purposes, not to make people dance. A street organ can do that. Now, here is a cause worthy of your great talents, worthy of a Daniel Webster, of a ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... tore into the north, smaller spouts leaping up and twirling in their mad dance, but none forming the threatening aspect of that which the bark's gun had burst. In half an hour the sun was out and I dared spread a whisp of sail and ran down to ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... sense of the profundity of their inventor's acquirements. When not entertaining a circle of admiring auditors from San Francisco or the East he could commonly be found pursuing the comparatively obscure industry of sweeping out the various dance ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... while practising dancing.[228] Henri III. fell into a tearful passion and called the Grand Prieur a liar, a poltroon, and a villain, at a ball, because the Grand Prieur was heard to mutter "Unless you dance better, I would you had your money again that your dancing has cost you." [229] James I. was particularly anxious to have his "Babies" excel in complicated boundings. His copy of Nuove Inventioni di Balli[230] may be seen ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... treat him as anything but a boy. So they gradually grew friendly, and when they met at parties or church socials he spent most of the time in her company, or, rather, he would have so spent it had she permitted. But she was provokingly impartial and was quite as likely to refuse a dance with him to sit out one with Sam Thatcher or Ben Hammond or any other village youth of her acquaintance. However, although she piqued and irritated him, he was obliged to admit to his inner consciousness that she was the most interesting person he had yet discovered in South ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... kill it and eat it till they have their bellies full, then I go up to where the lion is sitting down by the carcass, and I go pretty near to him; I cry out, "What have you got there, cannot you spare me some of it? Go away and let me have some meat, or I'll do you some harm." Then I dance and jump about and shake my skin-dress, and the lion looks at me, and he turns round and walks away; he growls very much, but he don't stay, and ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Fourteenth and his Court." If tickling the gravel gently with brooms, and depositing one petal a-piece in large baskets is "busily preparing," they are. The Gardeners, feeling that they have done a very fair afternoon's work, dance a farandole in sabots, after which Ladies and Cavaliers arrive and prepare to dance too; the Cavaliers select their partners by chasing them on tiptoe, the Ladies run backwards, and coyly slap their favourites' faces with bouquets. Here, according to Argument, "refreshments are served by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 25, 1892 • Various
... Daily News and Punch, Daily Telegraph, Lord Lansdowne's letter to, Damascus captured by Allies, Dance of Death, the, Danube, Serbians reach the, Dardanelles Commission, Dawn of Doubt, the, Daylight Saving, Bill passed, Death Lord, the, Debeney, General, Praises Americans, Defence of the Realm Act, ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... of man," said Ukridge. "They are always the worst. It's plain to me that this man was beastly drunk, and upset the boat while trying to do a dance." ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... while witticisms of the Bench and Bar abound, very few are recorded of the attorney and his client. "Law is law" wrote the satirist who decided not to adopt it as a profession. "Law is like a country dance; people are led up and down in it till they are tired. Law is like a book of surgery—there are a great many terrible cases in it. It is also like physic—they who take least of it are best off. Law is like a homely gentlewoman—very well to follow. Law ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... vary the monotony of his instrument in an artistic manner by hitting the wooden frame alternately with the drumhead. The unpleasant rattling tone thus produced reminded me in ghostly fashion of the rattling of the skeletons' bones in the dance round the gallows by night which Berlioz had brought home to my imagination with such terrible realism in his performance of the last movement of his Sinfonie ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... he said, "I plumb forgot what I come over here for. They's goin' to be a dance over to town, an' I come to tell you about it. O' ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... hundred men did dance, The stoutest they could find in France; We with two hundred did advance, On board of the Arethusa! Our captain hail'd the Frenchman, 'Ho!' The Frenchman then cried out 'Hullo!' 'Bear down, d'ye see, to our Admiral's lee.' ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... hot cup on the ground and began to dance up and down, shaking his blistered hand as ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... sounds he divined for the first time a majesty that appalled; his imagination, glorified by Skale, instantly fell to constructing the forms they bodied forth. Out of doors the flutes of Pan cried to him to dance: indoors the echoes of yet greater music whispered in the penetralia of his spirit that he should cry. In this extraordinary new world of Philip ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... river. It snorted loudly at the strange sight of the handsomely-painted diahbeeah. I took the boat, and upon my near approach it was foolish enough to swim towards us angrily. A shot from the Reilly No. 8, with one of my explosive shells, created a lively dance, as the hippopotamus received the message under the eye. Rolling over and over, with the legs frequently in the air, it raised waves that rocked my little boat and made shooting difficult; but upon a close approach, taking good care to keep out of the reach of its struggles, I gave it a quietus ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... beauty. Believing her beyond his reach he felt a sudden overpowering sense of utter loneliness. Fully clad as he was, he flung himself upon his bed, but his arm, his breast, still tingled with the contact from the dance. Sleep held aloof from him. Darkness was no refuge from her tempting face, for, visible to his soul, it stood between him ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... the fever of the dance-hall and the glitter and the shine, The beauty, and the jewels, and the whirl, The madness of the music, the rapture of the wine, The languorous allurement of a girl! She is like a lost madonna; he is gaunt, unkempt and grim; But she fondles him and gazes ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... susceptible, I confess to a very sympathetic reaction to the syncopated rhythms known as 'rag-time,' and which appear to be especially American in character." For the benefit of those readers who may not chance to know it, Lieutenant Spalding's "Alabama," a Southern melody and dance in plantation style, for violin and piano, represents a very delightful creative exploitation of these rhythms. The writer makes mention of the fact since with regard to this and other of his own compositions Lieutenant Spalding would only state: "I felt that I had something to say and, therefore, ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... we postpone our joy to another world? Thousands of people take great pleasure in dancing, and I say let them dance. Dancing is better than weeping and wailing over a theology born of ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Mrs. James Harris Jones gave a | |reception yesterday at her home, 136 | |Fifth street, for her daughter, Miss | |Dorothy Jones. In the receiving line were | |Miss Marjorie Smith, Miss, etc. * * The | |reception was followed by an informal | |dance. | ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... my limitations at which you must not laugh. For a juggler must be taken seriously, or he juggles in vain; he must have an opportunity to create the necessary illusion in you to insure the success of his performance. Meanwhile, I go to make the circle of my dance smaller; who knows but to-morrow I may be a snow-bunting on your tall cliffs, or a little homeless wren seeking shelter ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... dance they knew, From every country far away; And so it was no wonder that They should keep dancing ...
— Marigold Garden • Kate Greenaway
... the principal characters had so greatly taken my fancy, that I could play the part perfectly from memory. In the mean time I asked her permission to take off my boots, otherwise I was not light enough for this character; and then taking up my broad hat for a tambourine, I began to dance ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... older, and she never liked to have me be much with her. When Maud—for that was her name—found out that I was to be at my uncle's a few days, she at once asked me to stay with her instead. She offered all sorts of inducements. She was going to have a party—a dance it was—and my parents did not approve of dancing. In fact, she drew such an enticing picture of the good times we would have that I was tempted to do what I had never done in my ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... wondering were all suspended for a time, for Mr. Bertram was in the room again; and though feeling it would be a great honour to be asked by him, she thought it must happen. He came towards their little circle; but instead of asking her to dance, drew a chair near her, and gave her an account of the present state of a sick horse, and the opinion of the groom, from whom he had just parted. Fanny found that it was not to be, and in the modesty of her nature immediately felt that she had been unreasonable ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... caught her praying, he said, he would "give her hell." Mary was a member of the Methodist Church in Washington. There were several pious people in the company; and at night, when the driver found them melancholy and disposed to pray, he had a fiddle brought, and made them dance in their chains, whipping them till they complied. Mary at length became so weak that she really could travel on foot no further. Her feeble frame was exhausted, and sank beneath accumulated sufferings. She was seized with a burning fever; and the diabolical trader—not moved with pity, ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... they journeyed into the great unknown. Wise men who are nearing the height of the trail say they can hear the booming of myriad hoofs, and see the tossing of unnumbered horns as the herds of bison yet travel far ahead. This is the Shadow Trail the Northern Lights dance upon, shimmering and pale and silvery. We Indians call them the 'Dead Men's Fingers,' though sometimes they pour out in great splashes of cold blue, of poisonous-looking purple, of burning crimson and orange. We speak of them then as the 'Sky Flowers of the North,' that ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... are all of those to be seen this Sunday morning in a house that you know, a new house on the outskirts of the old faubourg. The show-case on the ground-floor is more brilliant than usual. The signs over the door dance about more airily than ever, and through the open windows issue joyous cries, a soaring heavenward ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... April moon is a few days old bullocks are sacrificed to Lerpiu. "Two bullocks are led twice round the shrine and afterwards tied by the rain-maker to the post in front of it. Then the drums beat and the people, old and young, men and women, dance round the shrine and sing, while the beasts are being sacrificed, 'Lerpiu, our ancestor, we have brought you a sacrifice. Be pleased to cause rain to fall.' The blood of the bullocks is collected in a gourd, boiled in a pot on the fire, and eaten by the old and important ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... The Greek lyric poetry was characterized by the expression of deeper and more impassioned feeling, and a more impetuous tone than the elegy and iambus, and at the same time the effect was heightened by appropriate vocal and instrumental music, and often by the figures of the dance. In this union of the sister arts, poetry was indeed predominant, yet music, in its turn, exercised a reciprocal influence on poetry, so that as it became more cultivated, the choice of the musical measure decided the tone of ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... happiness. Float it on the smoking viands; sound it in the music; whirl it in the dance; cast it on the snow of sculpture; sound it up the brilliant stairway; flash it in chandeliers! Happiness, indeed! Let us build on the centre of the parlor floor a throne to Happiness; let all the guests, when they come in, bring their flowers and ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... was a vigorous, slender man, with exhaustless energy. His face was rough, with rough-hewn features, like the common people's; but his eyes under the deep brows were so full of life that they fascinated her. They seemed to dance, and yet they were still trembling on the finest balance of laughter. His mouth the same was just going to spring into a laugh of triumph, yet did not. There was a sharp suspense about him. She bit her lip moodily. His hand was hard ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... Minnesota Regiment was on police duty, and no one was allowed on the streets after seven o'clock at night, with a fellow soldier I started out to go to a dance outside of the city walls; we knew that if we were caught we would be court martialed. To avoid all the risk possible we went out before seven o'clock, and took chances on getting back to quarters safely. ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... jerk and a spring; Very long was his leg, though but short was his wing; He took but three leaps, and was soon out of sight, Then chirped his own praises the rest of the night. With steps most majestic the Snail did advance, And he promised the gazers a minuet to dance; But they all laughed so loud that he drew in his head, And went in his own little chamber to bed. Then as evening gave way to the shadows of night, Their watchman, the Glow-worm, came out with his ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... no other in it than to show the apparent folly of the sex. For if perhaps any of them goes about to be thought wiser than the rest, what else does she do but play the fool twice, as if a man should "teach a cow to dance," "a thing quite against the hair." For as it doubles the crime if anyone should put a disguise upon Nature, or endeavor to bring her to that she will in no wise bear, according to that proverb of the Greeks, "An ape is an ape, though clad in scarlet;" so a woman is a woman still, ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... northern pass, slammed the great iron fire-doors that hung creaking from the stone bank building, caught up a cloud of sand and dirt and, whirling it down past empty stores and assay offices, deposited it in the doorways of gambling houses and dance halls, long since abandoned to the rats. An old man, pottering about among the ruins, gathered up some broken boards and hobbled off; and once more Keno, the greatest gold camp the West has ever seen, sank back to silence ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... excessive exertions. I pay dear for extravagance of this sort; five years ago I had no idea of the languor and want of animal spirits which torment me now. Animal spirits are not to be despised. An earnest mind and seeking heart will not often be troubled by despondency; but unless the blood can dance at proper times, the lighter passages of life lose ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... bursting with eager desire to evidence a Creator's power. Every tint and color, every breath of perfume, every note of music, every darting flight or whirling dance, was a call to life—a challenge to love—an invitation to mate—a declaration of God. The world throbbed and exulted with the passion of the Giver ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... telling you) that when the ode was read before Peni, at the part relating to Italy his eyes overflowed, and down he threw himself on the sofa, hiding his face. The child has been very earnest about Italian politics. The heroine of that poem called 'The Dance'[74] was Madame di Laiatico. The 'Court Lady' is an individualisation of a general fashion, the ladies at Milan having gone to the hospitals in full dress and in open carriages. Macmahon taking up the child[75] is also historical. I believe the facts to be in the book: 'He has done it all,'[76] were ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... jinks, the filling of bumpers, the drinking two in a hand, the beginning of mistresses' healths; and then the roaring out of drunken catches, the calling in a fiddler, the leading out every one his lady to dance, and such like riotous pastimes—these were not taught or dictated by any of the wise men of Greece, but of Gotham rather, being my invention, and by me prescribed as the best preservative of health: each of which, the more ridiculous ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... sinking a bucket in the mud, and then pulling it out. For sixty yards I followed the holes and finally lost them in a confusion of other tracks. The place had been so trampled upon that it was beaten into a basin. It looked as though every animal in the Kasai had met there to hold a dance. There were the deep imprints of the hippos and the round foot of the elephant, with the marks of the big toes showing as clearly as though they had been scooped out of the mud with a trowel, the hoofs of buffalo as large as the shoe of a cart horse, and the arrow-like ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... sneaked off like that. But there's nothing wrong about the dances, and I have n't done anything wrong. I like all those country girls, and I like to dance with them. That's ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... like dirt there, easy to get and to spend. I was all caked in on a dance-hall jade, but she shook me in the end. It put me queer, and for near a year I never drew sober breath, Till I found myself in the bughouse ward with a claim ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... nations of Western Europe, intimately connected as they are by close and frequent intercourse, the music of the one is interpreted in the same sense by the others. By travelling eastwards we find that there is certainly a different language of music. Songs of joy and dance- accompaniments are no longer, as with us, in the major keys, but always in the minor." Whether or not the half-human progenitors of man possessed, like the singing gibbons, the capacity of producing, and therefore no doubt of appreciating, musical notes, we know that man possessed these faculties ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Impossible to conceal ourselves inside it without the artists seeing us, and then they will get off simply by countermanding the vaudeville. They are so modest! An audience embarrasses them. None of that, none of that. I want to hear them sing and make them dance." ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... in talk,' replied the lady; 'but, say what you will about pleasing and intelligent girls, nobody will attend to them unless they dress in the fashion. If my daughters were to dress in the plain, neat style you recommend, they would see all their acquaintance asked to dance more frequently than themselves, and not a gentleman would join them ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... the little girl. She seemed diffident, but pleased at Marjorie's words. "You see, it was a Children's Carnival, and Mamma let me dance. I never danced in a place like that before, and I was ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... landing field the pilot watches two vibrating reeds, tuned to the radio beacon, on a virtual radio receiver on his instrument board. If he turns to the right or left of his course the right or left reed, respectively, begins doing a sort of St. Vitus dance. If the reeds are in equilibrium the pilot knows it is clear sailing ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... Louisiades, and on one occasion a portly member of the gun-room, being cut off by these black gentry, only saved his life by parting with all his clothes as presents to them, and keeping them amused by an impromptu dance in a state of nature under the broiling sun, until a party came to his relief. At Cape York also, a white woman was rescued who had been made prisoner by the blacks from a wreck, and had lived among them for several years. Here, too, Huxley and Macgillivray made ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... of Ingeston House, Herefordshire, entertained James I. with a morrice-dance, performed by ten persons, whose united ages exceeded one thousand years, all natives ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... I shake those Chaines off I would cutt Capers: poore Dick Pike would dance though Death pip'd to him; yes, and ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... with the drowsy look that was so different from the quick, clear glance of the Ruby Watson who used to dance so nimbly in the Old Bijou days. "What'd you and your ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... The dance was over. From the great house on the hill the guests had all departed and only the musicians remained. As they filed out through the ample doorway, on their way home, the first faint streak of early ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... Wrykyn, the school, and Wrykyn, the town, there stands on an island in the centre of the road a solitary lamp-post. It was the custom, and had been the custom for generations back, for the diners to trudge off to this lamp-post, dance round it for some minutes singing the school song or whatever happened to be the popular song of the moment, and then race back to their houses. Antiquity had given the custom a sort of sanctity, and the authorities, if they knew—which they ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... you've an addle pate o' your own! Go to France to learn to dance, to be sure! Better stay at home and learn to transmogrify a few kink's picters into your pocket. No marry come fairly! Squire Nincompoop! He would not a sifflicate Sir Arthur, and advise him to stay at home, and so keep the rhino for the ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... make another mistake. But I would like to tell you what some of the boys said about the dance last night. They were just raving about you. Did ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... learned to appear attentive to the description of a frock. I keep a special indulgent smile for the incoherence inspired by a hat. But when you pipe to me the praises of a shawl—well, I'm unable to dance." ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... taken, however, that it is a plant of the correct species, for in the etiquette of courtship all flowers have different meanings and many a promising affair has been ruined because a suitor sent his lady a buttercup, meaning "That's the last dance I'll ever take you to, you big cow," instead of a plant with a more tender significance. Some of the commoner flowers and their meaning in courtship ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... food, and inspiring living creatures with terror, held their high carnival there. And the warriors, gazing on that field of battle which, enhancing the population of Yama's domain, presented such an awful sight, and where human corpses rising up, began to dance, slowly left it as they beheld the mighty car-warrior Abhimanyu who resembled Sakra himself, lying on the field, his costly ornaments displaced and fallen off, and looking like a sacrificial fire on the altar no longer drenched with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... dance and romp and play From dawn to dusk the livelong day, But more than this they love to find A chance to ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... the agitated S'gono, "give me the space of a moon and they shall leap with both legs and dance in a most ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... A kiss, at a dance, was all they could say in their gossipping, but he had kissed Annette, and she was by no means the flower ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... raged. Ships started out of every haven, to the number of a hundred. All hurried to Portland, 'as unto a sea-field where immortal fame and glory was to be attained, and faithful service to be performed unto their prince and country.' It was for the Englishmen 'a morris dance upon the waters.' We may be sure he applied his principle of the worse armed but handier fleet, not 'grappling,' as 'a great many malignant fools' contended Lord Howard ought, but 'fighting loose or at large.' 'The guns of a slow ship,' he observes, 'make as great holes ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... It represented a dance of Bacchantes. Fenwick looked at it in silence. Watson replaced it with a patient sigh. 'Theophile Gautier said of some other fellow's Bacchantes that they had got drunk on "philosophical" wine. He might, I fear, have said it of mine. Anyway, I felt I was not made for Bacchantes—so ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... recess he occupied, and, with the kettle, proceed to walk half across the room—there to perform certain manual operations requiring skill and presence of mind, before a large and crowded assembly—was horror to the mind of the poor Jib; and he would nearly as soon have acceded to a desire to dance a hornpipe, if such had been suggested as the wish of the company. However, there was nothing for it; and summoning up all his nerve—knitting his brows —clenching his teeth, like one prepared to "do or die," he seized the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... moment we were launched into the whirl of the dance. My whole frame quivered as I encircled the delicate waist with my arm. One hand was held in mine, the other rested lovingly upon my shoulder. I felt the sweet breath of the damask lips upon my face—the cup of my happiness ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... and of pleasure. This is natural and right. It was not intended that men should walk perpetually in sackcloth and ashes because of the sorrows that surround them. But equally true is it that they were never meant to shut their eyes and ears to those woes, and dance and sing through life heedlessly, as far too many do until some thunderbolt falls on their own hearts, and ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... announced at the great hall of the Mechanics' Institute. It was advertised that a man who had been to Belgium, and had witnessed what had taken place, was to be the chief speaker. At first Polly Powell tried to persuade Tom not to go, and would probably have been successful had there not been a dance that night to which Polly had been invited. Tom, not being a dancer, was not eligible for the occasion, so he made his ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... them beautiful; when we gather the children into kindergartens, hang pictures in the schools; when we build beautiful new schools and public buildings and let in the light, with grass and flower and bird, where darkness and foulness were before; when we teach the children to dance and play and enjoy themselves—alas! that it should ever be needed—we are trying to wipe off the smudge, and to lift the heavy mortgage which it put on the morrow, a much heavier one in the loss of citizenship than any community, even the republic, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... and even into the place where I lay concealed, but they did not find me. At length I heard them depart, and so great was my joy, I could hardly restrain my feelings within the bounds of decorum. I felt as though I must dance and sing, shout aloud or leap for joy at my great deliverance. I am sure I should have committed some extravagant act had not the gentleman at that moment called me up, and told me that my danger was by no means past. This information so dashed my cup of bliss that I ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... in the city of Villette. Miss Ginevra Fanshawe carelessly ran on with a full account of herself, her school at Madame Beck's, her poverty at home, her education by her godfather, De Bassompierre, who lived in France, her want of accomplishments—except that she could talk, play, and dance—and the need for her to marry a rather ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... arsenal, dear colleague, but it may serve unless we do something. If the people can be persuaded that the Pope is their one friend in adversity, there couldn't be a better feather in the Papal cap. Happily our people love to sing and to dance as well as to weep and to pray. So we needn't throw ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... Daggers and poignards, too, of every age, needle-pointed yet viciously strong, with exquisitely inlaid hilts and fine-lined blades; long rapiers that brought visions of gallants with curls and lace stocks and silken hose, as ready to fight as to dance or to make a poem to a fair lady's eyebrow. Helmets of every age, with visors behind which the knights of old had looked grimly as they charged down the lists at "gentle and joyous passages of arms." Horse-armour of amazing weight—"I always pictured those old knights prancing ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... drawing-room, lighted with candles, like a shrine, and looking vast, with the furniture taken out of the way, she found the Reverend Arthur Spottiswood, of whom it was not easy to think that eagerness to dance had driven him to come so sharply on time. He looked serious-minded, almost somber, and Leslie, though prepared to be vivacious with peer or pauper, found it all duty and little fun to make conversation with him until the next arrival should come to her relief. The gentleman was Brenda's adorer, ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... we spent very agreeably to me; he was perfectly good-humoured, and was at that time very merry. Then he made Amy dance with him, and I told him I would put Amy to bed to him. Amy said, with all her heart; she never had been a bride in her life. In short, he made the girl so merry that, had he not been to lie with me the same night, I believe he would have ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... striking a match to dance by. "The old heroine has fetched the police, and these ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... had a presentiment that the play would soon become earnest; but he seated himself in the saddle (after a short delirious dance on one toe), and in a state of extreme agitation, not to say perspiration, proceeded at a walk, by Mr. Larkyns' side, up Holywell Street. Here the mare, who doubtless soon understood what sort of rider she had got on her back, began to be ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... that the boy with four brothers to come always got the prizes. In fact, and short, I do not like that sort of school, which is a pernicious and abominable humbug, altogether. Again, ladies and gentlemen, I don't like that sort of school—a ladies' school—with which the other school used to dance on Wednesdays, where the young ladies, as I look back upon them now, seem to me always to have been in new stays and disgrace—the latter concerning a place of which I know nothing at this day, that bounds Timbuctoo on the north-east—and ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... could magnetise bits of wood — why should he not be able to magnetise a whole tree? It was no sooner thought than done. There was a large elm on the village green at Busancy, under which the peasant girls used to dance on festive occasions, and the old men to sit, drinking their vin du pays on the fine summer evenings. M. de Puysegur proceeded to this tree and magnetised it, by first touching it with his hands and ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... blood. Scanlan was lying in the narrow path, his chest riddled with bullets, when the chief fetish priest of the place, to encourage the natives to make further efforts, sprang upon a ruined wall in front of him, and began dancing an uncouth dance, accompanying it with savage yells and significant gestures to the dying man. He paid dearly for his rashness, however, for Scanlan, collecting his strength for a last supreme effort, seized his loaded rifle, which ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... north? Perhaps you will wait for me and let me take you to the city. Louise is going on to a dance." ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... to the South, To the beautiful land of France; And there we showered the loveliest gifts,— Flaxen-haired dolls that could dance. ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... spun round on his heels and, clutching with his whole hand at the rope, began to execute a sort of dance—a weird, fantastic, horrible affair of quivering limbs and rolling eyeballs, topped by a withered arm that pointed upward, and a tortured fingernail-pierced fist that nodded on ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... which I knew the Irish sea was preparing for me. The harper presently struck up a livelier strain, when two Welsh girls, who were chatting before the grate, one of them as dumpy as a bag of meal and the other slender and tall, stepped into the middle of the floor and began to dance to the delicious music, a Welsh mechanic and myself drinking our ale and looking on approvingly. After a while the pleasant, modest-looking bar-maid, whom I had seen behind the beer-levers as I entered, came in, and, after looking on for a moment, was persuaded to lay ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... from Crete, put in at Delos, and, having sacrificed to the god of the island, dedicated to the temple the image of Venus which Ariadne had given him, and danced with the young Athenians a dance that, in memory of him, they say is still preserved among the inhabitants of Delos, consisting in certain measured turnings and returnings, imitative of the windings and twistings of the labyrinth. And this dance, as Dicaearchus writes, is called among the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... and dance had ceased, and I was now left in those luxurious gardens alone. Though so ardent and active a votary of pleasure, I had, by nature, a disposition full of melancholy;—an imagination that presented sad thoughts even in the midst of mirth and happiness, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... half joking. Excitement tingled in him—the kind of excitement which might lead either to rage or caresses. He swayed now on one foot, now on the other, as if preparing for a dance, and his fists were clenched upon ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... and black! Sting, little light, the shadows back! Dance, little flame, with freakish glee! Twinkle with brilliant mockery! Glitter on ice-robed roof and floor! Jewel the bear-skin of the door! Gleam in my beard, illume my breath, Blanch the clock face that times ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... crop by hand with a sickle. Sometimes the jovial habits of the planter life came with the Loyalists to Canada, and winter witnessed a furbishing up of old flounces and laces to celebrate all-night dance in log houses where partitions were carpets and tapestries hung up as walls. Sometimes, too,—at least I have heard descendants of the eastern township people tell the story,—the jovial habits kept the father tippling and card playing ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... notice. Yet in spite Of pleasure won, and knowledge not withheld, There was an inner falling off—I loved, Loved deeply all that had been loved before, More deeply even than ever: but a swarm 280 Of heady schemes jostling each other, gawds, And feast and dance, and public revelry, And sports and games (too grateful in themselves, Yet in themselves less grateful, I believe, Than as they were a badge glossy and fresh 285 Of manliness and freedom) all conspired ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... debris brought down by the Zuni River, which here joins the Colorado Chiquito. Ko-thlu-el-lon signifies the "standing place (city) of the Ka[']-ka" (from Kaa contraction of Ka[']-ka, the sacred dance, and thlu-el-lonstanding place). ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... subsided, and the graves of its 25,000,000 victims were hardly closed, when it was followed by an epidemic of the dance of St. John, or St. Vitus, which like a demoniacal plague appeared in Germany in 1347, and spread over the whole empire and throughout the neighboring countries. The dance was characterized by wild leaping, furious screaming, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of the classic phrase seems to have been native with him, for we find it in his earliest utterances. Such a phrase appears in homely proverbial form in his first speech: "My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance." Impaired in rhythm of thought and sound by an awkward, though logical, parenthetical expression, another phrase stands out in a "spread-eagle" passage from his first formal address, that on "The Perpetuation of ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... Spring, is the year's pleasant king; Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring, Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing, Cuckoo, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... brawling like geese, to the amusement of third parties. Indeed, when you get surfeited on that side, you come over to this, where there are, after all, such girls as Fours and Fives (Ssu Erh and Wu Erh) to dance attendance upon you. But such kind of things as ourselves uselessly defile fine names and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... other place is proper for their work. One might as well undertake to dance in a crowd, as to make good verses in the midst ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... I am still speaking of the form, and not of the spirit. The evening reception, which is gradually fading away, as a separate rite, with its supper and its dance, we now have as the English have it, for the people who have not been asked to dinner. The ball, which brings us round to breakfast again, is again the ball of our Anglo-Saxon kin beyond the seas. In short, from the society point of view we are ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... "inquiry" dinner dance given at the Country Club in New Orleans in May to discuss why Louisiana women were not yet enfranchised was attended by the Governor and many other prominent politicians from all parts of the State. The ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... his recent tribulations, took up one of his feet and began to groan over it again. He was as shapeless and clumsy as a bear, and this motion seemed not unlike the tiltings of a bear forced to dance. ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... with a mask on. No one knew me, for I disguised my voice, and no one dreamed of the silent, haughty Miss March (for they think I am very stiff and cool, most of them, and so I am to whippersnappers) could dance and dress, and burst out into a 'nice derangement of epitaphs, like an allegory on the banks of the Nile'. I enjoyed it very much, and when we unmasked it was fun to see them stare at me. I heard one of the young men tell another that he knew I'd been an actress, in fact, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... from you I will telegraph my train. We missed you awfully at the Makeways. John spoke of it several times. He loves to dance with you because you are always ready to sit it out and do all the talking. Dear me, I'm afraid that doesn't sound complimentary, but I assure you he meant ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... to the Autumn breeze's bugle sound, Various and vague the dry leaves dance their round; Or, from the garner-door, on ether borne, The chaff flies devious from the winnow'd corn; So vague, so devious, at the breath of heaven, From their fix'd aim are mortal ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... reality is given in it with remarkable breadth and boldness; its defect it is difficult to express save by saying that it makes the spectator vaguely uneasy and even unhappy—an accident the more to be regretted as a lithe, inspired female figure, given up to the emotion of the dance, is not intrinsically a displeasing object. "El Jaleo" sins, in my opinion, in the direction of ugliness, and, independently of the fact that the heroine is circling round incommoded by her petticoats, has ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James |
