"Dinner table" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... having two guardians is, that when you have got rid of one you have to face the other. And that other had to be faced at the dinner table to-day. It was well that the twelve miles' ride had not taken down Hazel's strength below the mischief point. Rollo, it must be remarked, had been obliged to gallop back ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... classical instruction in England. At Cambridge the sizars, and at Oxford the servitors, form the lowest grade of students. Formerly menial tasks were imposed upon them, and amongst other duties, they had to wait upon the fellows of their colleges at the dinner table—to bear the dishes and fill the goblets. This custom has long since been discontinued; nor are the sizars of Trinity and St. John's any longer distinguished from the great body of the students by any external mark of inferiority. At the small colleges, however, they wear different ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... boundaries, that at last the continent, vast as it is, seemed too narrow to hold them both; and they began throwing up their elbows for more room, in a manner that would have been thought quite uncivil in a private individual at a dinner table ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... that listen to you?" he asked Cherry. Cherry was sitting beside him, at the dinner table, on the first night of his arrival. She was thrilling still to the memory of his greeting kiss, its fresh odour of shaving soap and witch hazel, and the clean touch of his smooth-shaven cheek. ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... had tumbled to pieces the very day after the party. As they lingered around the dinner table at Ingleside, talking of the war, the telephone had rung. It was a long-distance call from Charlottetown for Jem. When he had finished talking he hung up the receiver and turned around, with a flushed face and glowing eyes. Before he had said a ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and the conversation rattled on around the table as lightly as it might have around any other dinner table in London. Carol and Sir Arthur and Rayburn had it mostly to themselves at first, but after a little the conversation grew more general. Dora and Carol engaged in a really brilliant discussion on the subject of Mrs. Lynn Linton's last book, with the ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... furnished a steady topic for conversation. He was aware that he contributed little froth and less substance to a dinner table, that, in short, he did not keep up his end. Although he assured himself that small talk was beneath a man of serious purpose, and that no one could acquire it anyhow in society unless addicted to sport, still there had been times when he was painfully aware that a dinner partner ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... said the next day at the dinner table that she was going to accept the invitation. It would be much easier just to go and have it over with, she remarked, than to stay away and explain her absence. She said this in a way that would lead you to believe that it had cost her much effort ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... watched the scene with the same aloof politeness that he might have watched guests at the dinner table, moved quickly forward. ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... Dorothy and I were dining with Douglas and Mrs. Douglas, Dorothy and Mrs. Douglas conceived the idea of going off to see the play of Charlotte Temple; for we had overflowed the lesser talk at the dinner table by our discussion of railroads. Accordingly they left us, and Douglas and I settled down to an intimate evening, of which we were beginning to have many. We set a quart bottle of whisky between us, drinking from it from time to time as the evening progressed. Both ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... have kept him up late that night, for neither at the breakfast nor at the dinner table did he appear. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... together. They sat side by side at the dinner table and in school, black head and golden brown leaning to each other over the same book; they walked side by side in the packed procession, going two by two. They slept in the same room, the two white beds drawn ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... heerd tell of a man who couldn't see London for the houses? I tell you, if we had this country, you couldn't see the harbours for the shipping. There'd be a rush of folks to it, as there is in one of our inns, to the dinner table, when they sometimes get jammed together in the door-way, and a man has to take a running leap over their heads, afore he can get in. A little nigger boy in New York found a diamond worth two thousand dollars; well, he sold it to a watchmaker for fifty cents—the little critter didn't know ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... speaker's wisdom. To be trivial on a serious occasion, to be funereal at a banquet, to be long-winded ever—these are the marks of non-sense. Some imprudent souls seem to select the most friendly of after-dinner occasions for the explosion of a bomb-shell of dispute. Around the dinner table it is the custom of even political enemies to bury their hatchets anywhere rather than in some convenient skull. It is the height of bad taste to raise questions that in hours consecrated to ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... we were not yet through with these indirect dealings with the Boss. The System was thorough, if nothing else, and prompt. We had about decided to continue our conference over the dinner table in some uptown restaurant, when the officer stationed in the hall poked his head in the door and announced another ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... is smoking, and my mother, after having glanced smilingly round the table, plunges her ladle into the tureen. Give me the family dinner table at which those we love are seated, at which we may risk resting our elbows at dessert, and at which at thirty we once more taste the ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... was at the head of her dinner table, serene, beautiful, and calm, in her elegant mourning, provokingly inaccessible in the sweet deliberation of her widowed years; Padre Esteban was at her side with a local magnate, who had known Peyton and his wife, while Donna Rosita and a pair of liquid-tongued, childlike senoritas were ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... characteristics. I heard from more than one person how easily and "in almost no time" they could be tamed, if indeed they needed taming. A resident of Hawks Park told me that they used to come into his house and stand upon the corners of the dinner table waiting for their share of the meal. When he was hoeing in the garden, they would perch on his hat, and stay there by the hour, unless he drove them off. He never did anything to tame them except to treat them kindly. When a brood was old enough to leave ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... beautiful ornaments, and the four together were so effective that Adele declared she should use them that night for a dinner table decoration at ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... apathy. It was cold; there was a feeling of raw, unpleasant dampness. The mother-in-law of a lawyer, called Kvashin, and his wife, Nadyezhda Filippovna, dressed in waterproofs and shawls, were sitting over the dinner table in the dining-room. It was written on the countenance of the elder lady that she was, thank God, well-fed, well-clothed and in good health, that she had married her only daughter to a good man, and now could play her ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Mrs. Gallant rearranged the dinner table and prepared portions for three instead of two, she related to him ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... everyone was very festive and amiably argumentative. As I write there is a group in the dark room discussing political progress with discussions—another at one corner of the dinner table airing its views on the origin of matter and the probability of its ultimate discovery, and yet another debating military problems. The scraps that reach me from the various groups sometimes piece together in ludicrous fashion. Perhaps these arguments are practically ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... Laestrygons, and those other horrible giants, his subjects, who devoured a great many more of us than are now left? To tell you the truth, if we go to yonder palace, there can be no question that we shall make our appearance at the dinner table; but whether seated as guests, or served up as food, is a point to ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Webb all over again," she said. "He could keep a dinner table laughing for two hours and fight a duel at daybreak. I remember at his own wedding, when they drank his health, he told such a funny story that old Judge Blitherstone, who was upwards of eighty, had to have cold bandages put to ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... thoroughbred for you! You take a woman who got prosperous suddenly and is still acutely suffering from nervous culture, and if such a shipwreck had occurred at her dinner table she'd be utterly prostrated by now—she'd be down and out—and we'd all be standing back to give her air; but when they're born in the purple it shows in these big emergencies. Look at this woman now—not a ripple on the surface—balmy as a summer evening! But in about one hour from now, Central ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Woodman and Jack Pumpkinhead all sat at the dinner table, although none of them was made so he could eat. Usually they served to enliven the meal with their merry talk, but to-night all seemed strangely ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... irreverent fool!" shouted his father, rising up from the dinner table where this conversation had been held. "Man, ye an' yon Neil pack neither fear God nor regard man! ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... were two little boys who lived chiefly in the front garden, because their villa was a model one. The front garden was about the same size as the dinner table; it consisted of four strips of gravel, a square of turf with some mysterious pieces of cork standing up in the middle and one flower bed with a row of red daisies. One morning while they were at play in these romantic grounds, a passing individual, probably the milkman, leaned over the railing and ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... ornaments out of the parlor, I see," Cousin Ann said at the dinner table. "It's rather nice for a change, and after all, perhaps you spend as much time in this room as in any, and entertain ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... it would nice for each of us to give Dora something for her housekeeping?" she asked at the dinner table that evening. ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... to the dinner table, and went thence to the Gymnase. When the first part of the performance was over, it occurred to Castanier to show himself to some of his acquaintances in the house, so as to turn away any suspicion of his departure. He left Mme. de la Garde ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Hundred Thousand Dollars," murmurs the stealthy Promoter. "Why should some other Citizen have his Coal-Bin right in the House while you carry it from a Shed? Your Wife should sit at her own Dinner Table and make signs at the Maid. And as you ride to your Work with the other dead-eyed Cattle and see all those Strong-Arm Johnnies coming out of their Brick Mansions to hop into their own Broughams and Coupes, have you ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... I think you're real mean! You made me enough trouble at the dinner table, and you needn't make fun of my ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... him almost immediately up-stairs I ascertained that he went directly to Mary's room, and when in a few hours later the family collected around the dinner table, I perceived, almost without looking up, that a. great and insurmountable barrier had been raised between him and his ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... should bring her face to face with Mr. Gilmore. Wherever they went, their tour, in accordance with a contract made by the baronet, was terminated within two months. For on Christmas Day Mrs. Walter Marrable was to take her place as mistress of the house at the dinner table. ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... be so frank, Prince!" she said. "The Duke sometimes forgets, in the pursuit of his hobby, that a private dinner table is not a platform. I insist upon it that we discuss something of ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... led her away, and I heard their merry voices floating down from the bedrooms above. The pink light of the candles on the dinner table in the room beyond, the vague, sweet scent of the roses, and the warmth of the wood fire burning on the andirons, seemed to grow faint and distant, for I was very tired with the fatigue of a man whose muscles are cramped from want of exercise. I felt all at once that I had stepped from ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... families were eating three times a day. It is discouraging to find a girl who can tell you the geographical location of any country on the globe and who does not know where to place the dishes upon a common dinner table. It is discouraging to find a woman who knows much about theoretical chemistry, and who cannot properly wash and ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... a piece of writing in any sense comparable to this "Modest Proposal." Written, apparently, in a light and comic vein, it might deceive the casual reader into the belief that Swift had achieved a joke. It has the air of a smiling and indifferent raconteur amusing an after-dinner table. In truth, however, this piece of writing is a terrible indictment made by an advocate speaking against the result of a tyranny of power which, through wicked stupidity or complacent indifference, had ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... proverbially good managers, employ themselves, while their servants are eating, in washing the cups, glasses, &c.; arranging the cruets, the mustard, salt-sellers, pickle vases, and all the apparatus for the dinner table. This occupies but a short time, and the lady has the satisfaction of knowing that they are in much better order than they would be if left to the servants. It also relieves her from the trouble of seeing ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... uncomfortable suggestion over a dinner table!" said the fastidious Laura. "Picture the ladies of your household in the salons of Paris. I promise we ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... Peter Mortimer knew it; but, then, doctors and private secretaries are supposed to hold their secrets. There was little out of the commonplace in the world's accepted version. You may hear its like from the moneyed host at his dinner table in New York or as he shows you over the acres of his country estate, enthusing with a personal narrative of conquest which is to him unique. John Wingfield, Sr. makes history for us in the type of woman whom he married and the type of son she ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... Portents, signs, indications. Jovial, joyful, gladsome. Board, dinner table. Charger, a horse for battle or parade. Serf, ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... One evening at the dinner table Fairy said, with a mocking smile, "How are your Slaughter-house friends to-day, Carol? When I was at the dentist's I saw you coming along, beaming at them in your ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... the present day are deemed essential to female education, rarely leave much time or inclination for the humble study of household affairs; and it not unfrequently happens, that the mistress of a family understands little more concerning the dinner table over which she presides, than the graceful arrangement of the flowers which adorn it; thus she is incompetent to direct her servant, upon whose inferior judgment and taste she is obliged to depend. She is continually subjected to impositions from her ignorance of what is required for ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... very storm. Next day came another of the sea wonders. The cry of land started them all from the dinner table; but the land happened to be an immense field of ice, which, with the inequalities of its surface and the effect of refraction, presented some appearance of a wooded country. On that night the cry of "Light a-head," while they were still several hundred ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... inward consternation, that Don Carlos de Ruiz was the guest of honour at the dinner-dance to which she had been invited, and her hostess, finding they had met before, placed them together at the dinner table. ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... did not suit Captain Langless, who had not forgotten his talk with the Rovers at the dinner table. If it looked as if he was going to be cornered, he thought that a compromise with Tom and Sam would come ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... foods that you had on your dinner table yesterday. Where did each come from? How did it get here? Was there anything which came from our own neighborhood, and which did not have to take a long journey either to the factory where it was manufactured or to the store where ...
— Where We Live - A Home Geography • Emilie Van Beil Jacobs
... now she put her own finger in the pie. First, she had to make sweetmeats and jam out of all the immense quantity of fruit she had stored. For this, as she could only do one kind at a time, she had ten kettles, each as big as a dinner table. During forty-eight hours the cooking went on; a dozen scullions blew the fire and put on the fuel. Mother Mitchel, with a spoon that four modern cooks could hardly lift, never ceased stirring and trying the boiling fruit. Three expert tasters, chosen from the most dainty, had orders ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... impression. There was nothing she was not ready to do for Winston. It was only the good sense, or the somewhat better sense, of the daughter, that prevented her at Rome from secretly calling for his bill and paying it for him behind his back. At Naples, Winston almost always met them at the dinner table; and it was impossible for him to be churlish towards persons who seemed so very pleased with whatever he said, and so kindly disposed towards him. Mrs. Jackson was confidential in the extreme as to the several items which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... of its danger, imagine it had been cherishing a crime, and resolve—soon—before very long—at length—finally—to break so far at least with the painter as to limit their intercourse to the radiation of her power across a dinner table, the rhythmic heaving of their two hearts at a dance, or the quiet occasional talk in a corner, when the looks of each would reveal to the other that they knew themselves the martyrs of a cruel and inexorable law. It must ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... for breath. I had heard of Music Halls. A stout lady had denounced them across our dinner table on one occasion—fixing the while a steely eye upon her husband, who sat opposite and seemed uncomfortable—as low, horrid places, where people smoked and drank, and wore short skirts, and had ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... been talking a lot about my sisters; but I tell you honestly I don't see any girls to beat them anywhere. I don't. The Sentimental is rather stupid, perhaps; but then she scores by her music. Nan's the one for my money, though. She isn't the prettiest; but set her down at any dinner table, and you can lay odds on her against the field. I believe there are a dozen old gentlemen who have got her name in their will—not that she cares for worldly things any more—it is all sanctity now. I wish to goodness ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... on with me to the river, and when we reached the river, proposed to remain with me until the boat arrived, and then proposed to cross the river with me. We were, I think, the only passengers, and his conversation continued to flow as fresh and interesting as at the dinner table until we reached the Brooklyn shore. He declined to pass the rest of the night at my house, and while I waited with him till the boat should leave the wharf to take him back, the night editor of ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant
... time betrayed a charming simplicity and purity of mind. Thus he would cross-examine upon their recent movements ladies who came to call, proving them very frequently to have lied, for he was puzzled like most children by the duplicity of the gay world. Or again, he would ask guests at the dinner table how old they were and whether they liked his father and mother, and this in a loud and shrill way that provoked at once the attention and amusement of the select coterie (for coterie it was) that ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... words, then, could express the horror, and the sense of treason, in that case, which had happened, where all three outsides, the trinity of Pariahs, made a vain attempt to sit down at the same breakfast table or dinner table with the consecrated four? I myself witnessed such an attempt; and on that occasion a benevolent old gentleman endeavored to soothe his three holy associates, by suggesting that, if the outsides were indicted for this criminal attempt at the next assizes, the court would regard it ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... incomplete and lengthening list of elements was just as reasonable a field for exploration as was the Antarctic Continent, or Darkest Africa. The results, indeed, of such exploration were bound to be a great deal the more useful. The professor worried. In time, he laid his worries on the dinner table before Reed Opdyke whose father had been a classmate of ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... pause. Geoffrey looked at McVay. The moment for disillusioning her had manifestly come. Wherever they might next meet it would not be at his dinner table. A hateful vision of a ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... hundred years, and you'd see him sailing for Plymouth, for freedom to worship God. (Obstinate, too, like the rest of 'em. He wouldn't worship anybody else's God, only the one he'd set up for himself.) If his wife didn't mind him, he might pray with her or growl over the dinner table, but he wouldn't bash her head in. Understand, Jack, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... large dinner—large, that is, for Endbury—of twenty covers, and Lydia had never prepared a table for so many guests. The number of objects necessary for the conventional setting of a dinner table appalled her. She was so tired, and her attention was so fixed on the complicated processes going on uncertainly in the kitchen, that her brain reeled over the vast quantity of knives and forks and plates and glasses needed to convey food to twenty mouths ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... come from his dinner table," quietly said the startled Major. "They are both here, and well. I am already intimate at the house, but I have not seen the girl. I feared being followed or I would have met you at the train." He marveled at her royal beauty. She was conscious now of the power of wealth, ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... and six feet long were caught in New York Bay. The traveller, Van der Donck, says "those a foot long are better for serving at table." Truly a lobster six feet long would seem a little awkward to serve on a dinner table. Eddis, in his Letters from America, written in 1792, says these vast lobsters were caught in New York waters until Revolutionary days, when "since the incessant cannonading, they have entirely forsaken ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... Pinkies had been dismissed, their new Queen Rosalie, by means of a clever charm, conjured up a dinner table set with very nice things to eat. They all enjoyed a hearty meal and afterward sat and ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... strength of mind enough to clear up now, so we will sober ourselves with a funeral," said Jo, as they rose, and Miss Crocker made ready to go, being eager to tell the new story at another friend's dinner table. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... noticed that the dinner table was set for two persons. Both places were undisturbed and ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... were fearful she might be capsized. The guns were not made fast at the time. The officers had just sat down to dinner as the Valley City commenced rolling and pitching tremendously. First we endeavored to save the contents of the dinner table; finally this effort was abandoned in order to save ourselves. We were tossed about the ward-room in an uncomfortable manner. The contents of the dinner table went to the floor and were lost, and to mend matters the Valley City got into the "trough of the sea." The howitzers and ammunition ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... Slippery had exchanged other brief greetings all three went towards the rear of the hallway, and here she opened a door and bade them enter, and by the brilliant illumination they saw it was the dining room of the fiat. Around its well provisioned dinner table were seated a number of men and women who in a most friendly, but noise avoiding manner, greeted Slippery and while they questioned him as to his latest movements, they gave Joe a chance to recover from the surprise that completely shocked him, when he discovered ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... remain immune. How can she begin right? Give her best to her home. A woman who gives her most gracious smiles and her most captivating manners to society, is false to her husband and her home. The prettiest gown and the brightest jewels should grace her own dinner table. To bring them out only to attend a reception, or a tea party, is a desecration. Many women expend their moral and spiritual strength upon the "club," and bring the withering remnants as a sacrifice to the blighted home fireside. We have no right to help build ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... at the head of his dinner table. A little dinner for twelve was well under way at the Birches. Mrs. Everard was confined to her tower suite to-night with one of the sudden headaches which unkind critics held were likely to come when the Colonel entertained. Randolph Sebastian, ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... who had been ordered by his chief to break open the door at the end of the corridor, now returned and laid upon the dinner table two engraved metal plates, and a handful of new one-hundred-franc notes; some I noticed from where I sat were blank on one side. With the plates came the acrid stench of a broken ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... guests varies in different homes and for different occasions. Sometimes the women at the table are served before the men. This is usually done, however, for home service or when only a few persons are at the table. At a large dinner table or a banquet, guests are usually served in the order in which they sit. In many homes, the guests are served first, while in others the hostess is always the first to be served. At a family meal, when no guests are present, the hostess should always ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... markets of the world had been ransacked to provide dainties for these gentlemen. He appointed inspectors to survey the dealers' stalls, and occasionally prohibited dishes were carried off from the dinner table under the eyes of the disappointed guests,[4] Enemies enough Caesar made by these measures; but it could not be said of him that he allowed indulgences to himself which he interdicted to others. His domestic economy was strict and simple, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... make Charles II. absolute in England—the Courts of Justice, the Parliaments, the Universities, and the Church of England. Had he been as ambitious as he was fond of pleasure, as capable of ruling as he was capable of telling stories at the dinner table, he would, like Louis XIV., have reared an absolute throne in England. But he was too easy, too careless, too fond of pleasure to concentrate his thoughts on devising ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... wife across the dinner table, found his transient conjugal glance arrested by an indefinable ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... "There are people," he began, in that voice of restrained irritation which is veiled by sarcastic politeness—"there are people, my dear mother, who think of something else than filling their stomachs." Mrs. Maitland's eye had left the dinner table, and was raking her son from head to foot. He was very handsome, this sixteen-year-old boy, standing tall and graceful in his new clothes, which, indeed, he wore easily, in spite of his excitement at ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... stared at the dinner table without really seeing it. Coming to the restaurant had been Hector's idea. Three hours earlier, Massan had been removed from the ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... laughed at the humorous account of the rescue of Johnnie Cass which Dick and Gwen gave at the dinner table. ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... Abbey before his election as Abbot, and when Cellarer had been put in the pillory in Luton Market, "in hatred to the Abbot and utter contempt of religion." The conspiracy to dethrone Richard II. was first formed at the dinner table of this Abbot, when the Duke of Gloucester and the Prior of Westminster were dining with him. In 1399 the body of John of Gaunt rested in the Abbey on its way to London, his son, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Lincoln, being allowed to conduct a service in the Abbey; and ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... time were very scanty, so that the first day they were cut off the sufferings were fearful. The boys thought he would surely relent the next day, but they did not know their man. He was not suffering any, why should he relax his severity? He strolled leisurely out from his dinner table, picking his teeth with his penknife in the comfortable, self-satisfied way of a coarse man who has just filled his stomach to his entire content—an attitude and an air that was simply maddening to the famishing wretches, of whom ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... higher social pretensions. There is the usual illustrated dining-room literature, the usual bric-a-brac, the usual cabinet series of poets. There are oil paintings on the walls; there is an immense amount of the most expensive electroplate on the dinner table; the toilet accessories in the guest chambers are 'elegant' and recherche. The upholsterer ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... heart of Peggy McGuire later gained some consolation, for Anastasie Galitzin emerged from her room refreshed and invigorated, and lent much grace to the dinner table, telling father and daughter something of the early life of the convalescent, exhibiting a warm friendship which could be satisfied with nothing less than a visit on the morrow to the sick-room. And His Highness now very much on the mend, sent word, ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... 'and I shan't come here again, no, never. I don't know what you have been trying to tell me, but I don't believe it. It's no good crying. I shall never come back. They're not witches.' She had a vision of them at the dinner table, Rose like a white flower, Caroline and Sophia jewelled, gaily dressed, a little absurd, oddly distinguished. 'Witches! They are my father's sisters, and ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... Goodwins as the vessel slid from the crest of a snowy roller upon the Sands, threw the cabin dinner table and everything on it up to the cabin ceiling, and no words can describe the wild hurry and helpless confusion on the sea-pelted motionless vessel, as the foam and the spray ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... dramatist, in mixing up a new monopolylogue for that facetious child of whim and wit, the inimitable Charles Mathews. Our first story, while the wine was decantering, proceeded from the 101alderman, who having been driven from the dinner table somewhat abruptly by the amiable caro sposa of the fish-merchant, had failed in giving us his promised anecdote of old Tattersall and his beef-eater. "I have dined with him often in this house," said the alderman, "in my earlier days, and a pleasant, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... board the Stella, their cruise being along the Wicklow coast, and highly delighted the young ladies were, though the counsellor acknowledged that he was much happier when the Stella brought up in Kingstown Harbour, and he found himself at the dinner table in the comfortable cabin ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... she said two words to anybody else, except, of course, idle conv. at the crowded dinner table or a chance remark in a throng ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... reflection from them, as I ascended the front stairs. There are no carpets in the houses in Jamaica; but the floors, which are often mahogany, are beautifully polished, and shine like a well—kept dinner table. They are, of course, very slippery, and require wary walking till one gets accustomed to them. The rooms are made exceedingly dark during the heat of the day, according to the prevailing practice in all ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... sittin' at the tables is Liberal and Tory Members of Parlimint. After this we 'ave a very beautiful pitcher hintitled "Four footed Haristocrats". 'Ere you see Lady Slumrent's pet dogs sittin' up on chairs at their dinner table with white linen napkins tied round their necks, eatin' orf silver plates like human people and being waited on by real live waiters in hevening dress. Lady Slumrent is very fond of her pretty pets and she does not allow them to be fed on anything but the very best food; they gets chicken, rump ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... was dismayed, the counterfeit policeman was no less disgusted to see his fellow Scorpion sitting at the dinner table, but they gazed at each other ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... busy, she was indeed a little dynamo of energy, her college years and the years of travel had been crowded with interests and enterprises. But she had never been tired before; she had never felt, as she felt now, that she could fall asleep at the dinner table for sheer weariness, and that no trial was more difficult to bear than Jim's cheerful announcement that the Deanes might be in later for a call, or the Weavers wanted them to come over for ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... fire that a little spark kindles! It was more than a thousand miles away that I first heard of the school at Sleepy Eye. It happened in this way. The clock had scarcely announced that it was high noon when a group of men drew their chairs up to a dinner table generously loaded with country hotel fare. There were two school directors in this happen-so party, a carter, a salesman, a lawyer, a farmer and two teachers, who talked with a professional twang. The salesman listened impatiently to the educational clap-trap, watching for ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... replied Thorndyke, "and I work hard still; but I have my hours of labour and my hours of leisure, unlike you poor devils of general practitioners, who are liable to be dragged away from the dinner table or roused out of your first sleep by—confound it all! ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... down stairs. Who, however ignorant, could look upon the latter as a compliment? or what fair maiden, however simple, would require a master to teach her how to construe a gentle compression of her fingers at parting, or a tender pressure of her toe under the dinner table? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... that she was trying to be a nun, and that she belonged to the solitary and forsaken turtledove in the wilderness. She whispered in Tabea's ear: "You'll look so nice when you're married, dear, and Daniel will be so pleased, and the young men will steal your slipper off your foot at the dinner table, and how I wish I could be there to see you married! But oh, Tabea! I don't see how you dare to face them all! I'd just run away with all my might if ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... undesigned and uncontrolled by man. The humblest inhabitant of the United States or Great Britain depends for the satisfaction of his simplest needs upon the activities of innumerable people, in every walk of life and in every corner of the globe. The ordinary commodities which appear upon his dinner table represent the final product of the labors of a medley of merchants, farmers, seamen, engineers, workers of almost every craft. But there is no human authority presiding over this great complex of ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... of record occurred during these days. The first time the family gathered at the dinner table, after the one who had been so nearly a son of the house had been carried to his rest in that wonderful and treasured city of Greenwood, Ralph, being helped by John, as usual, to his glass of wine, refused it with a short, sharp, almost angry ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... her all over as she sat at the dinner table. She was a pretty child, with her hair gathered up high and falling in a golden shower. Her frock was some gray woolen stuff, and he wondered vaguely if blue or red would have been better. He had seen little girls in red frocks; they looked so warm ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... vat grandma left on die dinner table full of milk, and telled you watch it bis Hendrik come to his dinner, or bis she be ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... seat himself at the dinner table until his wife or his hostess is seated. This rule holds good in the home, for if it is not practised there, it will not ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... shone through the majestic pines brought from Oregon, a full military band from Heidelberg, adown the hillside among the rose trees, mingled its music with the dinner discussions. There was nothing at that dinner table but peace and harmony, although every language in Europe was spoken; for Sielcken knew them all from his youth. Sometimes he entertained his guests with stories of his California life, and sometimes with those of shipwrecks ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... days they did not mention it, but in all those ten days a sort of crescendo of emotion was going on in her. At first she began to think of it as soon as bed-time approached; then she felt it intruding on her thoughts at the dinner table; then she was unable to sleep for an hour or two after the fifteen minutes had passed, and, finally, one night, she fled into his room to find him wide awake, just before dawn, and to confess that the shadow of midnight was stretched before and after until it was ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... the one thing needed to clear away the doubts that beset Spencer at the dinner table. He had seen Mrs. de la Vere enter Helen's bedroom when he left the girl in charge of a gesticulating maid; but an act of womanly solicitude did not explain the friendship that sprang so suddenly into existence. Now he understood, or thought ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... 1685, and of the Siamese ambassadors in the following year. The garden has been preserved as an adjunct to Versailles up to the present day. For two centuries its product went to the "Service de Bouche" of the chief of state, that is, the royal dinner table; but in 1875 the Minister of Agriculture installed there the French National Horticultural College, which to-day, with a widened scope, has admitted ornamental plants and trees to this famous garden. Nevertheless ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... people to follow than to set an example—however good it may be both for themselves and others, most men have a silly squeamishness about proposing an adjournment from the dinner table. The host, fearing that his guest may take it for a token that he loves his wine better than his friends, is obliged to feign an unwillingness to leave the bottle, and, as Sponge says—"In good truth, 'tis impossible, nay, I say it is impudent, to contradict any gentleman at his own table; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... Practical Instructions for Diners Out. Illustrated with Engravings of Fish, Flesh, and Fowl, and appropriate instructions, whereby a complete and skilful knowledge of the useful art of Carving may be attained, and the usages of the Dinner Table ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... sits at his desk, sits in a comfortable automobile as he goes home, sits at the dinner table and sits all evening at the theater, or at the card table. It is sit, sit, sit until he gets a big abdomen, a puffy skin ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... to change their clothes before they waited at the dinner table, and to return to their working dresses after dinner when washing up was necessary. In this habit they were rigidly particular, and every boy then tied his dinner suit in a parcel, and suspended it to the roof of his hut to be ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... That evening at the dinner table Gyp, very obviously, made a secret sign to Jerry. She brought one hand, with a little downward, spiral movement, to rest upon the other hand, the first two fingers of ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... "Daddy and the boys and I will go in our old trap, just behind you!" She knew that Owen thought that her quick hand over his, in a game of hearts, the thoughtful stare of her demure eyes, across the dinner table, the help she accepted so casually, climbing into his big car—were all evidences that she was as unconscious of his presence as Stan was. But in reality the future for herself of which Sandy confidently dreamed was one in which, ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... home to the French colonies in the West Indies. They were nice, refined people, but we were rather reserved and kept to ourselves. One of the passengers had a dozen Spanish fighting cocks, and they afforded us much amusement. There were frequent mains on the after deck and sometimes on the dinner table. These were very popular, particularly with the ladies, who were continually asking to have the cocks brought on after dessert. A space would be made in the centre of the table and two cocks placed on it. How they loved fighting! ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... century, but we Englishmen—the country gentleman obsessed by vague theories of the Balance of Power and heaven knows what, reading his Times and barking out his preposterous politics over the dinner table? That this fatal policy was dictated simply by fear of the growth of "Russian barbarism and autocracy" and "the overshadowing of the Western nations by a country whose institutions are inimical to our own"? That while we were thus led into war by a phantom ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... The oak-panelled walls, black with age, were hung with portraits, sombre and yet vivid, and upon a marble pedestal at the end of the room, lifelike, and untouched by the centuries, stood a wonderful presentation of Ralph de St. Etarpe, the founder of the house, clad in the armour of his days. The dinner table, with its brilliant and modern appurtenances of flowers and plate, standing in the middle of the floor, seemed like a minute and yet startling anachronism. The brilliant patches of scarlet geranium, the deep blue livery of the two footmen, the glitter of the Venetian glass upon the ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at that dinner table that anything was amiss. Smith seemed to be in the highest spirits, talking incessantly, describing his sudden descent on Firtop Farm and his interview with the farmer so racily that his mother laughed gently, and even Kate, ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... contentions. He knew Webster personally, and they both looked forward to the social pleasure of meeting again during the negotiations. The two representatives came together in this pleasant frame of mind and did most of their business at the dinner table, where it is reported that more than diplomatic conversation flowed. They avoided an exchange of notes, which would bind each to a position once taken, but first came to an agreement and ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... disconcerted by this formidable array of womankind without a man in sight, and at the dinner table confided to me his sentiments regarding pensions in rather strong language, insisting that it was like being in a convent, or a young ladies' seminary, except that he had noticed that most of the ladies were not painfully ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... succulent green vegetable and French dressing, should be seen on the dinner table in every well-regulated household three hundred and sixty-five times a year. These green vegetables contain the salts necessary to the well being of our blood; the oil is an easily-digested form of fatty matter; ...
— Sandwiches • Sarah Tyson Heston Rorer
... could escape from the dinner table she fled to her room to face this dread thing which had come upon her. All undisciplined and unused to pain, through her mother's careless indulgence, entirely pagan, too, for her religious experience ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... half past seven a very jolly party gathered around the dinner table, which was a miracle of beauty with its decorations of apple blossoms. Besides Nicholas Grimm and Yoritomo Ito, there were two Englishmen, Reginald Carlton, a young man who was taking a trip around the world by way ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... Kyme presided like a high priest; conversation had been restrained. That night, as Johnnie Laurens afterwards expressed it, "things loosened up," and Mr. Watling was responsible for the loosening. Taking command of the Kyme dinner table appeared to me to be no mean achievement, but this is just what he did, without being vulgar or noisy or assertive. Suavitar in modo, forbiter in re. If, as I watched him there with a newborn pride and loyalty, I had paused to reconstruct ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to Callender House. At last Hawley was aroused to the imminence of the danger. Leaving the dinner table, he leaped on his horse and arrived in the camp at a gallop, breathless and bare-headed. He trusted to the rapidity of his cavalry to redeem the day. He placed himself at the head of the dragoons, and up the ridge they rode at a smart trot. It was a race for the top. The dragoons on their ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... her ears had grown together. Then she sent word to Vera and Marfinka to change their dresses. In passing she told Vassilissa to set out the best table linen, and the old silver and glass for the breakfast and the dinner table. The cook was ordered to serve chocolate in addition to the usual dishes, and sweets and champagne were ordered. With folded hands, adorned for the occasion with old and costly rings, she stepped solemnly into the reception ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... one of these attacks, when for two days Carrie had not appeared at the dinner table, Alma, entering when the meal was almost over, seated herself rather exhaustedly at her ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... sitting by the fire reading the paper, and waiting for her seniors to join her at the dinner table. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... party at the dinner table, I could not help feeling surprised on perceiving how little they sympathized in my feeling for the events of the day; which, indeed, they only alluded to in a professional point of view—criticising the speeches of the counsel on both sides, and the character of the different ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... "No lingering at the dinner table to-night for this army," declared Marjorie, finishing her dessert in a hurry. "It's almost seven, Mary. We'll have to hurry upstairs ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... that Arthur was a little disappointed at the idea of having to keep what they had done secret, especially as he had probably rehearsed already the astonishment with which all those at the dinner table would greet the startling announcement of the ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... at breakfast, nor did she appear at the dinner table. He had followed the rule since she came to the house not to make any open inquiries about her health, but from words dropped by Ezekiel and Uncle Ike, he had kept fairly well informed as to the result ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin |
