"Gala" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I felt sustained by the flattering and comforting assurance that I was one of the bigwigs of opera. Under these circumstances, Schmale, the stage manager, who has been my good friend ever since, proposed a special gala performance for New Year's Day, which he felt sure would be a triumph. I was to compose the necessary music. This was very speedily done; a rousing overture, several melodramas and choruses were all greeted ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... in having come to town just as he has, since we shall have a sort of gala-day, to-morrow, for ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... a beautiful little lake right back of the town that could be properly fenced, so that no one could look on without paying. They promised that Captain Boyton should have the entire receipts, and that they would make it a gala day providing he would come up, and assured him of the warmest kind of reception. "We'll have music too," added ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... cool gulf under the Illinois Central tracks, then out into a glare of full day, before the wild, licking flames. The Court of Honor with its empty lagoon and broken bridges was more beautiful in the savage glow of the ravaging fire than ever on the gala nights of the exposition. The fantastic fury of the scene fascinated man and beast. The streaming lines of people raced on, and the horse snorted and plunged into the mass. Now the crackling as of ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... with eating and drinking; with them were representatives of the foreign Powers, grown old and grey in their strenuous efforts to protect fellow-countrymen who had got mixed up with sailors and fishermen in drunken brawls, or assist at Gala performances, christenings, weddings and funerals. So much for the aristocracy. In the centre of a large space Mr. Blom suddenly discovered the chimney sweep of his quarter, the proprietor of a small inn, the chemist's assistant ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... continued in the canoe alone, and Belle and I and Tauilo set off on foot for Malie. Tauilo was about the size of both of us put together and a piece over; she used us like a mouse with children. I had started barefoot; Belle had soon to pull off her gala shoes and stockings; the mud was as deep as to our knees, and so slippery that (moving, as we did, in Indian file, between dense scratching tufts of sensitive) Belle and I had to take hands to support each other, and Tauilo ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... priceless boon that would admit him to their sacred presence. Sparkling on their white-robed breasts or shoulders were the colors of their favorite knights, and were it not for the fact that the doughty heroes appeared on unromantic mules, it would have been easy to imagine one of King Arthur's gala-days.' ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... come home from the good folk.' 'I 'll soon send him back to them,' says he. And he takes a great rung** and lays it about Tarn's shoulders, calling him coward loon, that ran away from the fighting. And since then Tam has never been seen about the place. But the Laird's man, of Gala, knows them that say he was in Perth the last seven years, and not in Fairyland at all. But it was Fairyland he told me, and he would not lie to his own mother's ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang
... be the bearer of bad news into such a festive chamber as the pastor's. There they sat, resting after heat and fatigue, each in their best gala dress, the table spread with "Dicker-milch," potato-salad, cakes of various shapes and kinds—all the dainty cates dear to the German palate. The pastor was talking to Herr Mueller, who stood near the pretty young Fraeulein Anna, in her fresh white chemisette, with her round white arms, ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... there. Good God, what age are we living in? The guests were served by swarthy slaves who spoke an unknown tongue, and who seemed to me to be veritable demons. The livery of the very least among them would have served for the gala-dress of an emperor. There have always been very strange stories told of this Clarimonde, and all her lovers came to a violent or miserable end. They used to say that she was a ghoul, a female vampire; but I believe she was none other than ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... reined his rising feelings, and took up and began to re-read some tablets on which he had written an address in Greek, to be delivered before the king. Agias rowed on with the energy of helpless desperation. They were very close to the quay. A company of the royal body-guard in gala armour stood as if awaiting the distinguished visitor. For a moment the young Hellene believed that Achillas was sincere in ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... The person he most liked to annoy was young La Billardiere, his nightmare, his detestation, whom he was nevertheless constantly wheedling so as the better to torment him on his weakest side. He wrote him love letters signed "Comtesse de M——" or "Marquise de B—"; took him to the Opera on gala days and presented him to some grisette under the clock, after calling everybody's attention to the young fool. He allied himself with Dutocq (whom he regarded as a solemn juggler) in his hatred to Rabourdin and his praise ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... he sent a page to my room to tell me that if I wanted to come with him and kiss the king's hand I must put on my gala dress. I put on a suit of rose-coloured velvet, with gold spangles, and I had the great honour of kissing a small hand, covered with chilblains, belonging to a boy of nine. The Prince de St. Nicander brought up the young king to the best of his ability, but he was naturally a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to gaze upon the ruins, resplendent now in the rosy apotheosis of the evening, they come to look like the crumbling remains of a gigantic skeleton. They seem to be begging for a merciful surcease, as if they were tired of this endless gala colouring at each setting of the sun, which mocks them ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... had been thrice round the block after that, he discovered human beings in the hall; they were Florence, in a gala costume, and Florence's mother, evidently arrived to be assistants at the party, for, with the helpful advice of a coloured manservant, they were arranging some bunches of flowers on two hall tables. Their ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... chilling gloom—a monster to be avoided by little Pilgrim and her crew, for the possibility of being run down in a fog is not pleasant to contemplate. On board one of these steamers was a sorry company—apparently a Sunday-school excursion. Children in gala dress huddled in swarms on the lee of the great smoke-stacks, and in imagination we heard their teeth chatter as they glided by us and in another moment ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... play, in which Mme. Verdurin delighted. One evening, when they were dining at home, he heard her complain that she had not one of those permits which would save her the trouble of waiting at doors and standing in crowds, and say how useful it would be to them at first-nights, and gala performances at the Opera, and what a nuisance it had been, not having one, on the day of Gambetta's funeral. Swann never spoke of his distinguished friends, but only of such as might be regarded as detrimental, whom, therefore, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... pageant in the harbor opened before us. As far as the eye could reach, its waters were thickly crowded with shipping, gaily decked from bow-sprit to yard-arm and top-mast, "with flags and streamers gay, in honor of the gala-day!" While on every ship and transport, in every available place, were assembled the ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer
... this good Lestocq is insufferable to-day; he will annoy us to death if we remain any longer here! Come, we will escape from him and his serious face! Oh, we have much more serious subjects of conversation. To-morrow is my grand gala dinner, and we have my toilet to examine, to be certain that every thing is in the proper order. And then the ball toilet for the evening, which is far more important. I shall open the ball with a Polonnaise. You promised me, Alexis, to practice with me the new tour which ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... echoed nightly with the tramp of drilling minute-men. Secession orators harangued enthusiastic crowds. Hardly a coat but bore a secession cockade. November 17th, the Palmetto flag was unfurled in Charleston. It was a gala day. Cannon roared, bands played the Marseillaise, and processions paraded the streets bearing such mottoes as "Let's Bury the Union's Dead Carcass!" "Death to All Abolitionists!" The whole South was beside itself with excitement. One State after another assembled its convention to decide ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... pause. Love had not come her way. Of course there was Ray McCrea. But he was only a possibility. She wondered if she would turn to him in trouble. Of that she was not yet certain. It was pleasant to be with him, but even for a gala occasion she was not sure but that she was happier with Honora Daley than with him. Honora Daley was Honora Fulham now—married to a "dark man" as the gypsy fortune-tellers would have called him. He seemed very dark to Kate, ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... to look back with considerate benevolence to the poor hostess, whose necessities he had relieved by pawning his gala coat, for we are told that "he often supplied her with food from his own table, and visited her frequently with the sole purpose to ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... dress, there they were in crates, covered with straw, just as they stood in the warehouse. The guests were expected in half an hour. I was one of the managers, and, after standing a few moments in dismay, we rolled up our sleeves and began. Two gentlemen and two ladies, in gala attire, washing seventy-two dozen dishes in a violent hurry, with a limited supply of water and towels, on an August afternoon with the thermometer at eighty-eight. That is my ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... to catch her eye). Your ladyship seems somewhat absent. I take the liberty of permitting myself the boldness (very loud)—his serene highness, my lady, has sent me to inquire whether you mean to honor this evening's gala with your ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... whilst it was as yet light, and had drawn the curtains over it, and were busy about their cards and their candles, and their tea and negus, and other refreshments. One chair after another landed ladies at the Baroness's door, more or less painted, patched, brocaded. To these came gentlemen in gala raiment. Mr. Poellnitz's star was the largest, and his coat the most embroidered of all present. My Lord of March and Ruglen, when he made his appearance, was quite changed from the individual with whom Harry had made acquaintance at the White Horse. His ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to his room laden with the spoils of the house, proceeded to adorn himself on the principle of selection, discarding the Gutter Pup's trousers for the gala breeches of the Tennessee Shad, donning the braided cutaway of Lovely Mead's in preference to an affair of Slush Randolph's which was ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... that I was giving orders to my coachman to inquire at the gate of the palace whether we entered by the new pavilion, or through the marble court. "The entrance is through the marble court, my dear prince," replied the baron; "it is a grand gala reception. Tell your coachman to follow mine; I ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... chaque fois avec une bonne humeur que rien ne pouvait branler, et aprs souper voyant qu'il mourrait de faim s'il ne se servait pas lui-mme, il prit le plus beau jambon qui se trouvait dans le garde-manger et une grosse miche de pain et se rgala bien. ...
— Contes et lgendes - 1re Partie • H. A. Guerber
... rapidly-flowing muddy waters before you, ploughed in all directions by boats, by ships, by steamers, by river barges and flats; on the opposite side five miles of Docks, wherein rise forest after forest of masts, fluttering, if it be a gala day, with the flags of every nation—Russian, Sardinian, Greek, Turkish, French, Austrian, but chiefly, after our own, with the stripes and stars of the ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... only two persons just then in the kitchen: his cook, who, still in her working dress, was refreshing herself after her labours over the supper with a journal of some sort, and the housemaid, who, in neat gala costume, was engaged in fastening a pin more securely in ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... the day of the Senior dance. A gala day at Miss North's. Sue and Blue Bonnet had both been invited to the dance—an almost unheard of privilege. Sue had been thus favored because her brother Billy was to be Annabel's guest, and Blue Bonnet, because Annabel had begged Miss North, almost ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... the demoralising experiences of poverty that, after she had finished the heavier tasks, she should set to work to mark the religious day by a freshly washed cloth upon the table, with a bowl of red roses picked from the bush that grew by the doorway, and a gala supper of new-laid eggs, lentil soup and ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... the air; the course of events in the Serapeum had kept many of the younger men from witnessing the races, and some mysterious influence seemed to weigh upon the gaiety and mirth of which the Hippodrome on a gala day was usually ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of reputable parents, and well educated, despite his ferocity, was not without a certain refinement, which perhaps rendered him the more acceptable to the precise Robespierre. Dumas was a beau in his way: his gala-dress was a blood-red coat, with the finest ruffles. But Henriot had been a lacquey, a thief, a spy of the police; he had drank the blood of Madame de Lamballe, and had risen for no quality but his ruffianism; and Fouquier Tinville, the son of a provincial ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... was unusually great, and that the day was in some sort more peculiar than the ordinary Jewish Sabbath. That the young men and girls should be dressed in their best clothes was, as a matter of course, incidental to the day; but he could perceive that there was an outward appearance of gala festivity about them which could not take place every week. The tall bright-eyed black-haired girls stood talking in the streets, with something of boldness in their gait and bearing, dressed many of them in white muslin, with ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... savage storm from the north. Brisk breezes floated down from the mountain peaks; an unreluctant sun smiled his cheeriest from his seat behind the hills, warmly awaiting the hour when he could peep above them for a look into the gala nest of humanity on the western slope. Everywhere there was activity, life, gladness ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Imperia appeared so lovely as at this first gala after her mourning. All the princes, cardinals, and others declared that she was worthy the homage of the whole world, which was there represented by a noble from every known land, and thus was it amply demonstrated that beauty was in every place ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... it sufficed them to have gained some victories in the provinces, and that the Germans accepted the proposition of pourparlers of peace ("the German generals came to meet us in gala attire, wearing their ribbons and decorations," with triumph announced in their appeal to the Russian people the representatives of this "Socialist" government Schneur & Co.), for this the Bolsheviki henceforth refused every compromise and all ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... society that we cannot well afford to dispense with. The clearing of a whole day from all possibilities of labor and amusement necessarily produced a grave and thoughtful people, and a democratic republic can be carried on by no other. In lands which have Sabbaths of mere amusement, mere gala days, republics rise and fall as quick as children's card-houses; and the reason is, they are built by those whose political and religious education has been childish. The common people of Europe have been ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... poison. All the mischief in the neighborhood was eventually laid at Job's door. For a long time the boy systematically avoided the Deans, till by some strange political fortune Marshall Dean was appointed postmaster for the Pine Mountain post-office. That was a gala day in Deans' Lane. Sally Dean had a brand-new dress on the strength of it, and Dan gave himself more airs than ever before. After that Job was obliged to go to the Deans' twice a week for the mail, and more than once went away with the suspicion that Andrew Malden's mail had been well ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... their bursting sacks, our eyes feast upon such revelations as tinned butter, condensed milk, raisins, and a consignment of that great chieftain of the ration race, The Maconochie of Maconochie. On these occasions Private Mucklewame collects his share, retires to his kennel, and has a gala-day. ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... earliest Ruggles could wake and toot his five-cent tin horn, Mrs. Ruggles was up and stirring about the house, for it was a gala day in the family. Gala day! I should think so! Were not her nine "childern" invited to a dinner-party at the great house, and weren't they going to sit down free and equal with the mightiest in the land? ...
— The Birds' Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Castijars, and Lord Cobham, in order that we may recover, for a breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale that Grigneure has lost, the appetite which we all of us so cruelly abused last night at the Ambassador's gala. On my honor, my dear fellow, everybody was of a caprice prestigieux and a comfortable mirobolant. Fancy, for a banquet-hall, a royal orangery hung with white damask; the boxes of the shrubs transformed into so many sideboards; lights gleaming through the foliage; ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... witchery of the 21st century could not pin guilt on fabulous Lonnie Raichi, the irreproachable philanthropist. But Jason, the cop, was sweating it out ... searching for that fourth and final and all-knowing rule that would knock Lonnie's "triple ethic" for a gala loop. ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... gravel-grinding walks, under a fervid sun, to the elegant revels of West-end, of Greenwich, or of Tothill-fields. Breeches, rejected by common consent of young and old alike, cling to the legs of the coalheaver with an abiding fondness, as to the last place of refuge; and, on gala-days, a dandy might die of envy to mark the splendour of those nether integuments—which he has not soul enough to dare to wear—of brilliant eye-arresting blue, or glowing scarlet plush, glittering in the sun's rays, giving and taking ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... semi-rural demi-manufacturing town on the banks of the "braw, braw Gala water." Not having the good fortune to get to Abbotsford from Melrose, I started over the hill which looks down on Galashiels, towards that destination. Abbotsford I need not render an account of. But my approach to it was not deficient ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... Arles was there, male and female, down to the babies in arms. Between each course all the spectators promenaded under the galleries and on the terrace at the top of the amphitheatre, the women in gala dress of white lace bodices, black mantle, and dark silk skirts; and a very fine sight they were; it was worth the forty centimes I paid for admission to see these majestic women pace along and sweep the little men from their path as they careered ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... notions curiously out of place, clearly correspond to the funeral games of antiquity. Thus we read not only of "offrande d'un repas aux urnes royales" but of "illuminations generales ... lancement de ballons ... luttes et assauts de boxe et de l'escrime ... danses et soiree de gala.... Apres la cremation, Sa Majeste ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... home. He had been to town and back again, and now stood upon his spotless doorstep, and anon upon his handsome drawing-room hearthrug, determined that his house should lack nothing befitting the great occasion. It was all in gala dress—newly-arranged flowers, festive lunch-table, the best foot foremost; and yet, whereas there was no hiding the self-seeker in the ingratiating Bennet Goldsworthy, there was no finding him in this proud host and husband, whose desire was ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... weights and measures, we want one similarly graduated system—each measure and weight rising ten times above the former. All calculations of prices would then be made by simple multiplication. What a gala-day for school-boys when the pence and shilling table would be abolished by act of parliament, and there would no longer be the table of avoirdupois-weight to learn, nor troy-weight, nor apothecaries', nor long-measure, nor square-measure, nor cloth-measure, nor liquid-measure, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... Bleiberg was known to us as early as two o'clock this after-noon," answered the baron. "Permit us to escort you to the chateau before the ladies see you. 'Tis a gala night; we are all in our best bib and tucker, as the English say. We believed at one time that you were not going to honor us with a second visit. Now to dress, both of us; at ten Madame the duchess arrives with General Duckwitz and Colonel Mollendorf, who ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... her gala days. She wanted them to be sumptuous, and when he alone could not pay the expenses, she made up the deficit liberally, which happened pretty well every time. He tried to make her understand that they would be quite as comfortable ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... go naked, but, like all savages, they have their gala dress, of which they are not a little vain. This usually consists of a gray surcoat and leggins of the dressed skin of the antelope, resembling chamois leather, and embroidered with porcupine quills brilliantly dyed. A buffalo robe is ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... picturesque relief. Fashion, in its world-wide crusade against variety and its bitter contest with form and colour, has recoiled, defeated for the present from the mountain fastnesses of Bavaria. Still, as Sunday or gala-day comes round, the broad-shouldered, sunburnt shepherd of the Oberland dons his gay green-embroidered jacket over his snowy shirt, fastens his short knee-breeches with a girdle round his waist, claps ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... probabilities seemed to be that he would never live to reach Washington. Then the mutterings of the thunder grew deeper and deeper, and some disruption seemed inevitable, evident to us far away, while you at home, it seemed, were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, holding gala-days and enjoying yourselves generally, on the brink of an arousing volcano from which the sulphurous smoke already began to ascend to the heavens! So time passed on; autumn became winter, and ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... to see that monarch enter and depart for many years past, is now a chaos of ruins; as is that entire suite of apartments which led to those drawing-rooms in which the Court was accustomed to assemble, till within these five years, on birth and gala days!—He would have been deemed a false and malignant prophet, who seven years ago might have foretold that the public Palace of the Kings of England would so soon become a heap of unrepaired ruins, and its splendid ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... banquets in the evening require evening dress just the same, except with that very enormous group (to which most of us belong) who do not own evening dress. This does not mean that evening parties must be foregone by this group or that they should hire gala attire for the occasion, but simply that the men wear their business suits and the girls their "Sunday" dresses. It is just as correct, it is just as much fun, and it is infinitely wiser than giving a dollar down and ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... the gala ornament of the popular classes in Madrid and Andalusia. It is a large silk shawl, usually white or cream color, with ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... prisoners were coming in to army head-quarters, and as brigade after brigade of cavalry passed, each carrying a large number of confederate flags at the head of the column, it looked as though our cavalry had adopted the confederate banner and had paraded in gala day splendor. ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... herself up and dressed slowly. She remembered that there was to be a gala performance at the Hippodrome that night in honour of the presence of one of the Infantas, her husband and suite, who were passing through the town, and had announced their intention of being present. For all the performers it meant more work and ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... "du Placet." Why they had hitherto been "de Cominges" I do not know—I only know that this entirely satisfied the General, that he liked the name "du Placet" even better than he had liked the name "de Cominges." On the morning of the wedding, he paced the salon in his gala attire and kept repeating to himself with an air of great gravity and importance: "Mlle. Blanche du Placet! Mlle. Blanche du Placet, du Placet!" He beamed with satisfaction as he did so. Both in the church and at the wedding breakfast ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... trail toward the south. In the saddle was the erect, spruce figure of the one-armed veteran, Seth Jones. And, on a blanket strapped behind the saddle to serve as pillion, rode a woman, with her arms clasped around the man's waist. It was the Widow Brown, dressed all in gala white. ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... house And shut the windows down so close My spirit cannot see? Who 'll let me out some gala day, With implements to fly ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... fair was to be held. The fair is one of the gala days of the year in the country districts of the West, and one of the times when the country lover rises above expense to the extravagance of hiring a top buggy in which to take his sweetheart to ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... first of the old Briarwood Hall set to be married, and this was bound to be a gala occasion. This was no "weepy" wedding, but a time of joy. And the bridal party coming down the aisle made as brilliant a picture as had ever been seen ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... highest lady to the lowest servant wench, were clad in silks and cashmeres, while the costly pearls destined for the fair neck of Her Majesty the Queen of Portugal clasped that of the Regent's wife; indeed there were gala entertainments from the halls of the governor's residence to the lowest hut, and the pirates went from one to another, here a gentleman and there a lout, carousing, dancing, fighting, and love-making all day long. For an entire fortnight there was neither night nor day, only ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... was most brilliant, as it is always on a Sunday night. The great auditorium, with its blue silk-curtained boxes, the mass of glittering uniforms, and the ladies in evening-dress, although they were all in black, made a gay spectacle almost like a gala night. Then it is so delightful to have one's eyes pleased with what is on the stage and yet be able ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... hesitates—reluctant and regretful—at the beginning of his venture. Then he went on; walking with a certain reckless swing, as though, in ignorance of that land toward which he had set his face, he still resolutely turned his back upon that which lay behind. It was as though, for this man, too, the gala day, with its tinseled bravery and its confetti ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... preserved in this portly volume. Among them one noticed messages from Mme. Schumann-Heink, the Flonzaley Quartet, Cleofonte Campanini and hosts of others. Here, too, is preserved the Jubilee Programme booklet, also the libretto used on that gala occasion. Music lovers all over the world will echo the hope that this wonderful voice may be preserved for many ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... tropical trees, the distant view of cool chasm- like valleys, with Honolulu sleeping in perpetual shade, and the still blue ocean, without a single sail to disturb its profound solitude. Saturday afternoon is a gala-day here, and the broad road was so thronged with brilliant equestrians, that I thought we should be ridden over by the reckless laughing rout. There were hundreds of native horsemen and horsewomen, many of them doubtless on the dejected quadrupeds I saw ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... because of her defects. The Henry Grace a Dieu, or Great Harry as she was generally called, launched in 1514, was Henry's own flagship on his way to the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. She had a gala suit of sails and pennants, all made of damasked cloth of gold. Her quarters, sides, and tops were emblazoned with heraldic targets. Court artists painted her to show His Majesty on board wearing cloth of ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... autumn. And it seemed as though nature had removed now from the Volga the sumptuous green covers from the banks, the brilliant reflections of the sunbeams, the transparent blue distance, and all its smart gala array, and had packed it away in boxes till the coming spring, and the crows were flying above the Volga ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... given me! A fool I was, aye, tenfold a fool, that I put my faith in your glib tongue. Those who wished me well gave me warning; my enemies made me an object of scorn; but little heed gave I to either. I put on my gala attire; kinsmen and friends I gathered together; with song and laughter we set out for the festive hall, and then,—the bridegroom ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... enjoy herself and flung herself into all the social gaieties. She went everywhere and met everyone. She dined at the villa of Count Schoenbrunn, the Vice-Chancellor; she attended all the assemblies of Madame Rabutin and the other leaders of society, and all the "gala days"; she danced; she went to the theatre, and, then, as a contrast, to a nunnery, which left her unhappy, as, indeed, she ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... the vast nave I found that the 'Grand Mass' had begun, and the whole was full to the door, while in the great choir were ranged about a hundred young girls waiting to make their first Communion. A vast number of gala carriages were waiting at the doors to take the candidates home, and for the rest of the day they would promenade the city in their veils and flowers, receiving congratulations. There was a pleasant provincial simplicity in all this and in all that followed, which brought back certain old Sundays ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... on which she did not receive company, would have presented, to any one who might have had the honour to see that venerable lady, an entirely different appearance to that which she assumed on gala days. A white handkerchief supplied the place of the curling wig, and the tasty French cap was replaced by a muslin one, decorated with an immense border of ruffling, that flapped up and down over her silver ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... joy and exhilaration which these colored leaves excite. Already these brilliant trees throughout the street, without any more variety, are at least equal to an annual festival and holiday, or a week of such. These are cheap and innocent gala-days, celebrated by one and all without the aid of committees or marshals, such a show as may safely be licensed, not attracting gamblers or rum-sellers, not requiring any special police to keep the peace. And poor indeed must be that New-England village's October which has not the Maple in ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... passed again into a thick wood, where ruddy arrows of the sun glinted among the boughs; and, here and there, one saw a courtly maple or royal oak wearing a gala mantle of crimson and pale brown, gallants of the forest preparing early for the October masquerade, when they should hold wanton carnival, before they stripped them of their finery ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... year 1800 was a gala day in Paris. Napoleon had decreed a triumphal procession, and on that day a splendid military ceremony was performed in the Champ de Mars, and the trophies of the Egyptian expedition were exultingly displayed. There were, however, two features in ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... is cleared of its rows of seats, the stage united to the parquet by a sloping floor. Every one of the boxes, rising tier above tier in a jeweled horseshoe, offers the sight of a merry supper-party, with spread table, twinkling candelabra, flowers, gala display. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... notabilities who were to take part in it. From the window where I sat I could not see an inch of pavement, the crowd was so dense. At last there was a sound of martial music and the First Regiment appeared in full gala array. Oh, I assure you it was very imposing and well worth taking some trouble to see. The crowds pushed and jostled, and beyond the first line or two at the curb no one among them could get more than an occasional glimpse of a stray cockade or a floating banner. ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... the dining-room were laid for a great entertainment; and the ladies were in gala dresses—my Lady of Chelsey in her highest tour, my Lady Viscountess out of black, and looking fair and happy a ravir; and the Maid of Honor attired with that splendor which naturally distinguished her, and wearing on her beautiful breast the French officer's star which Frank had sent ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... and Marian, Tom and Jerrie, Nina and Billy, Fred Raymond and Ann Eliza, who wore diamonds enough for a full dress party, and whose red hair was piled on the top of her head so loosely that the ends of it stuck out here and there like the streamers on a boat on gala days. This careless style of dressing her hair, Ann Eliza affected, thinking it gave individuality to her appearance; and it certainly did attract general observation, her hair was so red and bushy. Dick had stumbled and stammered dreadfully when ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... dresses packed away in stamen, or petal, or private seedcase, to be brought out at the end of fifty centuries at the touch of human genius. Those of which Solomon sang in his time, and which exceeded his glory in their every-day array, even "the hyssop by the wall," never showed, on the gala-days of his Egyptian bride, the hidden charms which he, in his wisdom, knew not how to unlock. Flowers innumerable are now, like illuminated capitals of Nature's alphabet, flecking, with their sheen-dots, prairie, steppe, mountain and meadow, the earth around, which, perhaps, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... most striking sights here is the turn-out of the Fire Companies on any gala day. They consist of eight companies, of one hundred each; their engines are brilliantly got up, and decorated tastefully with flowers; banners flying; the men, in gay but business-like uniform, dragging their engines about, and bands playing away joyously before ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... was tempting—was it not? You would have thought so, if you had been in my place, and yet I hesitated. But the fellow insisted. He swore that he was acquainted with the habits of the house; that Monday evening was a grand gala night there, and that on these occasions the servants didn't lock up the plate. After a little ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... was made in the direction of halls and theatres, a few friends would drop in about twelve, and continue their drinking till three or four; but Saturday night was gala night—at half-past eleven the lords drove up in their hansoms, then a genius or two would arrive, and supper and singing went merrily until the chimney sweeps began to go by, and we took chairs and bottles into the street ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... down at all was rather doubtful, and to add to her discomfort, Molly felt herself to be very conspicuously placed in the centre of the carriage, a mark for all the observation of Hollingford. It was far too much of a gala day for the work of the little town to go forward with its usual regularity. Maid-servants gazed out of upper windows; shopkeepers' wives stood on the doorsteps; cottagers ran out, with babies in their arms; and little children, too young to ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... that it was the People's day, and that there was to be a big sports meeting and gala in one of the Ottawa parks, he had specially added another item to his full list of events, and made it known that he ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... twenty-one. You cannot imagine a prettier sight. We anchored, supposing that the authorities might come off to us. As yet, however, they have shown no disposition to do so. I presume, however, that the display is a compliment. Figure to yourself the gala I have described at the mouth of a broad stream running at right angles to the river Yangtze, and up which the town lies, about two miles off— the river, plains, town and all, surrounded by an amphitheatre of lofty hills—and you will have an idea of the scene in the midst of which ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... horrors unnameable. They had lost Dixmude—for a while—but they had gained great glory, and the inspiration of their epic resistance had come from the quiet officer who stood there, straight and grave, in his white gloves and gala uniform. ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... Temple Camp during that gala season of its opening would fill a book; but this is not a history of Temple Camp, and we must pass at once to those extraordinary happenings which shook the little scout community to its very center and ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... Harrington's old nurse. Zoe often paid a visit to her cottage, but she never came to Vizard Court except on Harrington's birthday, when the servants entertained all the old pensioners and retainers at supper. Her sudden appearance, therefore, and in gala costume, astonished Zoe. Probably her face betrayed this, for the old lady began, "You wonder to see me ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... the baskets and the price over. They were very neat! they would hold as many berries as the sixpenny ones, and look pretty too, as for a festival they should. The sixpenny ones were barely neat—they had no gala look about them at all. While Daisy's eye went from one to the other, it glanced upon the figure of the poor, patient, little waiting girl who stood watching her. "If you please, Mr. Lamb," she said, ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... everywhere found; but it struck us as very odd to see men, women, and children bathing together. Sometimes as we passed a house we saw the master or mistress seated in a tub, up to the neck in water. The men, except when they wear gala costume, are very simply dressed: their sandals are of straw, and they use a plain fan of white paper and bamboo. They, however, possess fine dresses, which are kept in their richly-ornamented lacquered chests. They live chiefly ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... than two hours high when Don Andres himself appeared in his gala dress upon the veranda, to greet in flowery Spanish the first arrivals among his guests. The senora, he explained courteously, was still occupied, and the senorita, he averred fondly, was sleeping still, because there would ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... supplied in this item, of which she manages to drink a quantity during her song; and, by way of a change at these times, she enters into a monologue or a recitation. Taken and viewed in an artistic light, the audience in their rich gala dresses is a pleasing piece of color and ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... written them on an official despatch. We are told that the people of Rome refused to show any pleasure, and that even his own soldiers had enough in them of the Roman spirit to feel resentment at his assumption of the attributes of a king. Cicero makes but little mention of these gala doings in his letters. He did not see them, but wrote back word to Atticus, who had described it all. "An absurd pomp," he says, alluding to the carriage of the image of Caesar together with that of the gods; and he applauds the people who would ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... looked down, and colored; and he, wishing to misunderstand a language so disgraceful to herself, so dishonoring to her husband, gave some trifling answer; then making a slight observation about the earl, he advanced to him. Lord Mar was become tired with so gala a scene, and, taking the arm of Wallace, they returned ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... a decided success. Every contestant put aside his work-a-day tricks, and performed those only that were intended for gala days. "Aguinaldo" was a sure winner from the first, for he had learned to draw his sword, wave it dramatically over his head, cheer for a few seconds in monkey talk, then break and dash to the rear. "Paterno" was an easy candidate ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... it is to wake on the morning of a gala day, to hear the carts and cabs rumbling and clattering in the streets, and to know that you must get up early, and be off directly after breakfast, and will have the whole livelong day to amuse yourself in. What a bright sunshiny morning it was, and what fun I had going ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... the conduct of the Churchills, in keeping him away. She then proceeded to say a good deal more than she felt, of the advantage of such an addition to their confined society in Surry; the pleasure of looking at somebody new; the gala-day to Highbury entire, which the sight of him would have made; and ending with reflections on the Churchills again, found herself directly involved in a disagreement with Mr. Knightley; and, to her great amusement, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... while he only pretended to be copying, he brought the soul to the surface and painted the inner and the outer man at the same time. His portraits relate the secret Memoires of the Spanish court better than all the chroniclers. Let him represent them in gala dress, riding their genets, in hunting-costume, an arquebuse in their hand, a greyhound at their feet, and we recognize in these wan figures of kings, queens, and infantas, with pale faces, red lips, and massive chins the degeneracy of Charles V. and the falling away of exhausted dynasties. Although ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... interests who could possibly attend, was present to do the doughty pair honor and cheer when the awards for valor were duly made by Cappy and congratulatory speeches made by Mr. Skinner and Matt Peasley. It was such a gala occasion that Cappy drank three cocktails, battened down by a glass or two of champagne, and as a result was ill for two days thereafter. When he recovered, he announced sadly and solemnly that he was about to retire—forever; ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... remaining to dinner; but I returned time enough in the evening to be present at the conclusion of the day's ceremony. The dinner had passed off without any remarkable occurrence, and considering the ominous quantity of Champagne consumed (a very favourite beverage on all gala days with the middle classes of society at St. Petersburgh), I found the party almost philosophical. Toasts to the bride and bridegroom had been repeatedly drunk, and the night was far advanced when the passajonaiatetz took the bride by the hand, and conducted her into the bed-chamber, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... sang again in the sylvan palace of the Queen of the Woods, having first drunk all the tears in his agate bowl. And it was a gala night, and all the court were there and ambassadors from the lands of legend and myth, and even some from ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... have kept his open-air shop longer than he did in the shadow of the mediaeval gateway, if his dog had not quarrelled with the sole representative of police authority for having put on his gala uniform, which included a cocked-hat and a sword. For this want of respect the animal was imprisoned in the room of the tower, to the great joy of all the other dogs, but to the intense grief of his master, who found it impossible to turn a deaf ear to the plaintive moans that reached him ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... it was chosen as a gala night, one of two nights throughout the year in which the prisoners were allowed to celebrate a great national event: and in those days of relaxed prison management the utmost license was allowed to ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... jack-boots. In fact, it is no flattery to Emperor William to declare that his appearance in this uniform invariably suggests "Lohengrin." At court entertainments, in the evening, he frequently wears the so-called gala, or court dress of this regiment. The coat is scarlet instead of white, while the cuirass is abandoned. Sometimes the emperor attires himself in the uniform of a colonel of the Hussar regiment which he commanded at the time of his accession to the throne. ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... Bowland, a gentleman of landed property in the vale of Gala, was prosecuted for a very considerable sum, the accumulated arrears of teind (or tithe) for which he was said to be indebted to a noble family, the titulars (lay impropriators of the tithes.) Mr. R——d was strongly impressed with the belief that his father had, by a form of process ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... A. D. 1907 was a gala-day for the citizens of Prescott, a historic date for Arizona, as then our governor, in behalf of the territory, formally accepted an equestrian statue from ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... her immense parlors for the last rehearsal of the chief performers in the plays and tableaux, realizing that even the most obligingly blind of Mother Superiors could not appear to ignore the gathering of some fifty girls in their gala dresses in the convent hall, for this purpose. Alanna and Teresa were gloriously excited over the prospect, and flitted about the empty rooms on the evening ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... indulgence in the name of charity, Monsieur," he said to Francois. "The Comedie-Francaise finds itself in the most awkward quandary. We have prepared a big gala performance at La Monnaie, to raise money for all ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... with the old-fashioned caleche, in which tourists once struggled to admire French Canadian scenes. As a rule, however, the people live very economically, and extravagance in dress is rather the exception. On gala days the young wear many ribbons and colours, though arranged with little of the taste characteristic of the French people. Both old and young are very sociable in their habits, and love music and dancing. The violin is constantly played in ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... frigate, the Fleur-de-Lis, through the fleet of the enemy, enabling him among other things to replenish the wardrobes of the ladies of Quebec with latest Parisian fashions, made him immensely popular on this gala day. The kindness and affability of the ladies extended without diminution of graciousness to the little midshipmen even, whom the Captain conditioned to take with him wherever he and his officers were invited. Captain Martiniere was happy to see the lads enjoy a few cakes on shore after the hard ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... little feminine, a little hard, a little weak; still full of the light of youth, but already beginning to be vulgarised; a sordid bloom come upon it, the lines coarsened with a touch of puffiness. He was dressed, as for a gala, in peach-colour and silver; his breast sparkled with stars and was bright with ribbons; for he had held a levee in the afternoon and received a distinguished personage incognito. Now he sat with a bowed ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had his brigadier wig newly frizzed, his bonnet (he had abjured the cocked-hat) decorated with Saint George's red cross, his uniform mounted as a captain of militia, the Duke's flag with the boar's head displayed—all intimated parade and gala. ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... egg to the apple, from the beginning to the end. [Footnote: The practical side of the Roman priesthood was the priestly cuisine; the augural and pontifical banquets were, as we may say, the official gala days in the life of a Roman epicure, and several of them form epochs in the history of gastronomy: the banquet on the occasion of the inauguration of the augur Quintus Hortensius, for instance, brought roast peacocks into vogue.—Mommsen. Book ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman |
