"Minuet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gentlemen speaking the French language so readily as our young gentlemen. George especially perfected his accent so as to be able to pass for a Frenchman. He had the bel air completely, every person allowed. He danced the minuet elegantly. He learned the latest imported French catches and songs, and played them beautifully on his violin, and would have sung them too but that his voice broke at this time, and changed from treble to bass; and, to the envy of poor Harry, who ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... addition of two more Gentlemen to-night. A Doctor Harrington—a handsome man, I think—and an elderly Gentleman, Captain Grigg; the most laughable creature I ever saw. They tell me I shall be highly diverted at the minuet he dances; and we intend to make him dance ...
— Journal of a Young Lady of Virginia, 1782 • Lucinda Lee Orr
... favorites will the king throw his handkerchief? With which of the two will he converse most? Will he feel at ease as he treads the minuet under the eyes of the devotee? Or will he venture to recognize HER in ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... There a girl sat sleeping. Could it be Femke? The linen danced about her to the music of the wind, the shirts making graceful bows and extending their sleeves. Nightcaps, dickeys and drawers danced the minuet; stockings, skirts, collars, handkerchiefs waltzed thicker and thicker around the sleeping girl. Her curls began to flutter—a smile, a sigh, and she sprang to her feet. A whirlwind caught her ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... find the speed of a piston per minute? A. Double the stroke and multiply it by the number of revolutions a minuet. Thus an engine with a 12 inch stroke would travel 24 inches, or 2 feet, at a revolution. If it made 200 revolutions a minute, the travel of piston would be 400 feet ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... theatrical throne, and paraded in state round both drawing-rooms, to their own great delight and that of their little associates. Then the ball was supposed to commence, and was by general desire opened with a minuet by Miss Niphet and Lord Curryfin. Then came alternations of quadrilles and country dances, interspersed with occasional waltzes and polkas. So the ball went merrily, with, as usual, abundant love-making in mute signs and in ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... drums. But the rhythm changes as though a mist Were curling and twisting Over the landscape. For a moment a rhythmless, tuneless fog Encompasses her. Then her senses jog To the breath of a stately minuet. Herr Altgelt's violin is set In tune to the slow, sweeping bows, and retreats and advances, To curtsies brushing the waxen floor as the Court dances. Long and peaceful like warm Summer nights When stars shine ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... were never idle, these legs: there was no sitting cross-legged in a chair for St. George: he was not constructed along those lines. Hardly a week had passed before he had them across Spitfire's mate; had ridden to hounds; danced a minuet with Harry and Kate; walked half-way to Kennedy Square and back—they thought he was going to walk all the way and headed him off just in time; and best of all—(and this is worthy of special mention)—had slipped them into the lower section of a suit of clothes—and these his own, although he ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... quality of the district to pay their court and attend the receptions of the Governor. The Seigneur's wife was gowned according to the latest intelligence from Paris, with coiffe poudre, court-plaster, ribbons, and fan. She could curtsey with fine grace and dance the stately minuet; and her sprightly conversation was the amazement of those visitors who have recorded their impressions of Quebec. La Potherie, in 1698, and Charlevoix, in 1720, both remarked upon the purity of the French language as spoken in these salons of ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... consists in associating two different—though somewhat related—Song-Forms. The practice was so common in certain of the older dances, particularly in the minuet, that this design is also ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... Berlioz's "Tristia" given in New York City, by Theodore Thomas; also Rameau's gavotte, tambourine, and minuet, from the ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... only beginning to stream through. When love comes to a man at forty he is apt to play the game very badly indeed; he turns it into a very anxious business, and moves through the light-tripping measure with the pedantic dignity of a minuet dancer. But Philip Crane was not given to making mistakes; he knew that, like Crusader, "His best racing days (in the love stakes) were over"—especially where the woman was but a girl. So he sat down and planned it all out as he planned to win the Brooklyn Derby months ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... has bought a blue lute string. Shall I not also have a new gown? The gauzes are very sweet and genteel, and I think Mrs. Jay will not forget to ask me to her dance next week. Mr. Jefferson is sure to be there, and I wish to walk a minuet with him." ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... will. I will be quiet as a lamb, though I am so happy I could dance a minuet with Satan and not tire. But I will obey you. Do not be uneasy. Sit here. No, here. The light is better. There it is. Look, finished! My masterpiece, my ideal! It is only to lift that curtain, and I shall ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... the promotion of civilization have engaged Mr. Tom Matthews to teach the Hottentots the minuet-de-la-Cour and tumbling. He departs with the other missionaries when the hot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... came by, tripping it lightly, holding each other's hands, he in a bob wig with a sword by his side, she in high-heeled red shoes and a cap decked with flowers and ribbons. She smiled and ogled, as if about to dance a minuet. I almost laughed as I saw them, they appeared so vivid and real. Then Captain Longfleet came upon the scene as I fancied him, dressed in a cocked-hat and feathers, a long sword buckled to his side, high boots, a red coat, and a ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... They were walking a minuet, and its tempered grace, which I have never ceased to admire, seemed to suit well the splendour of embroidered gowns and the brilliant glow of the scarlet coats. I began to note the faces and to see them plainly, being, as I have said, ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... slightly elevated position, she could, without rising, overlook the floor, and watched with quiet pleasure the dancers, among them the kingly figure of the Commander-in-Chief, who led a Fredericksburg matron through a minuet. ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... opposition of horsemen accustomed to the measured paces of the manege, whose highest art consisted in consuming a whole hour in achieving at a gallop the length of the terrace of St. Germain. The professors of this equestrian minuet, as solemn and formal in the saddle as was the dancer Dupre in the ballets of the period, predicted the speedy decay of the old system of horsemanship and the extinction of the native breed of horses if France should allow her soil ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... sleep! Pray, my dear Baron, were you ever at the falls of Niagara?" "Yes, my lady," replied I, surprised at such a strange association of ideas; "I have been, many years ago, at the Falls of Niagara, and found no more difficulty in swimming up and down the cataracts than I should to move a minuet." At that moment she dropped her nosegay. "Ah," said she, as I presented it to her, "there is no great variety in these polyanthuses. I do assure you, my dear Baron, that there is taste in the selection ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... that dancing was taught in nearly all of these institutes. In spite of Puritanical training, in spite of the thunder-bolts of colonial preachers, the tide of public opinion could not be stayed, and the girls would learn the waltz and the prim minuet. Times had indeed changed since the day when Cotton Mather so sternly spoke his opinion on such an ungodly performance: "Who were the Inventors of Petulant Dancings? Learned men have well observed that the Devil was the First Inventor of the impleaded Dances, and the Gentiles who worshipped ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... Dreamland. Then there was a pretty boy who could do things to the piano, a funeral-faced duck that could tell funny stories, and a bunch of six or eight likely-lookin' ladies and gents who'd laid themselves out to prance through what they called a minuet. Lastly ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... from Bernini, more especially at the development of it which prevailed in France. The ideal of this school was not antique beauty, but commonplace nature: instead of the simplicity and grace of ancient art, it represented the manners of a French minuet. ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the express image of that rascal Wilson, went up to ask her to dance a minuet; and his sudden appearance shocked her so much, that she fainted away — I call Wilson a rascal, because, if he had been really a gentleman, with honourable intentions, he would have, ere now, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... well, it would have vexed me sore not to have been able to lead in the minuet one of the beauties of Cahokia, whose fame had reached even my distant home in Philadelphia, for I had been carefully trained in the steps and the figures, and was young enough to be proud of my skill in the dance. But feeling ill as I did, the sounds of revelry ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... light of the matter, my young friend; but you will not find the task before you so easy an affair as dancing a gavotte or a minuet, I can tell you. Do you know that Chambly is some seventy leagues distant? How do you mean to find ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... to a minuet. Twice he took Elizabeth down the country dances. The generous wines had warmed his heart, the glow of beauty kindled it to flame, and it was plain to be seen that his eyes were only for the fair Gunnings. The world followed his example,—when does it otherwise?—and a ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... majestic the Snail did advance, And he promised the gazers a minuet dance; But they all laughed so loudly, he pulled in his head, And went, in his ...
— The Butterfly's Ball - The Grasshopper's Feast • R.M. Ballantyne
... schooled herself in the mysteries of Ombre, of Macao. She spent hours over the tambour-frame. She rode out on horse-back, with a riding-master. She had a music-master to teach her the spinet; a dancing-master, too, to teach her the Minuet and the Triumph and the Gaudy. All these accomplishments she found mighty hard. She was afraid of her horse. All the morning, she dreaded the hour when it would be brought round from the stables. She dreaded her dancing-lesson. Try as she would, she could but stamp her ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... tableaux-vivants, or even acted. There was "Pattikin's House;" I am sure we had the greatest fun with those pictures, we being so many girls: and "The man all tattered and torn that married the maiden all forlorn;" that was on p. 652 of the volume for 1876: "The Minuet," in January, 1877: "Hagar in the Desert," in June, 1877; my aunty did that, and it was lovely: the little girl in "The Owl That Stared," in November, 1876; and "Leap-Year," in the same number. All these we had at our own home, but there are lots of others that ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... meaning. To most of the lads about him the purpose of the Academy was to fit young gentlemen for the army or the court; to give them the chance of sweating a shirt every morning with the fencing-master and of learning to thread the intricacies of the court minuet. They modelled themselves on the dress and bearing of the pages, who were always ruffling it about the quadrangle in court dress and sword, or booted and spurred for a day's hunting at the King's chase of Stupinigi. To receive a nod or a word from one of these young demigods on his way to the King's ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... and formal graces, the parade of arguments, grave sayings, and shreds of philosophy,[269] which characterized their fathers; and a smarter and more sparkling kind of oratory succeeded,[270] just as in our own country the minuet of the last century has been supplanted by the quadrille, and the stately movements of Giardini have given way to Rossini's brisker and more artificial melodies. Corvinus, even before the time of Augustus, had ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Their music strikes the ear like Gascon patois!. . . (The old man seats himself, and gets his flute ready): Your flute was now a warrior in durance; But on its stem your fingers are a-dancing A bird-like minuet! O flute! Remember That flutes were made of reeds first, not laburnum; Make us a music pastoral days recalling— The soul-time of your youth, in country pastures!. . . (The old man begins to play the airs of Languedoc): ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... the movement of a lady in a minuet, when you rein him in a little. I drove those cattle, Corny, across the pine-plains, to Schenectady, in one hour and twenty-six minutes;—sixteen miles, as the crow flies—and nearer sixty, if you follow all the ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... waist; may have wondered to hear how in such disguise she too was fatal to many hearts, and set men by the ears, and was a toast at suppers in days when the waltz was coming in and the solemn grace of the minuet lingered in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... laughed as heartily as the girls; for be it well understood there are things which are allowed on term-holiday which the rashest spirit dare not attempt on working days! Then two pretty sisters went through the stately figures of a minuet, and Margaret sang a song in her sweet voice, pronouncing the words so distinctly that you really knew what she was singing about, which nowadays is a very rare and wonderful accomplishment. Altogether it was a most festive evening, and Flora was in the ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... his flesh, the mark of it rising red and angry across his cheek, he stepped back a pace, and without a word, without a retaliatory movement, without even a change of facial expression he executed the most elaborately courteous bow, as of one treading a minuet, recovered the upright and walked away bareheaded. The old clergyman was left planted there, the cane still jigging up and down in ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... said he. "I have no friends yet to offer you, though you shall have some young dogs like yourself very soon. What do you like?—riding, hunting, a quiet minuet on the terrace, eh? Ah me, the coquettes of Quebec! I well ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... and the knives and forks had begun their time-honoured minuet within their funny little fences. The amateur "lookout" glanced across the table at her friend and ally the poet, who nodded ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... little time; and I am come out quite new, with everything but youth. The journey recovered me with magic expedition. My strength, if mine could ever be called strength, is returned; and the gout going off in a minuet step. I will say nothing of my spirits, which are indecently juvenile, and not less improper for my age than for the country where I am; which, if you will give me leave to say it, has a thought too much gravity. I don't venture to laugh or talk ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... slow stately dance, and the King, taking the Queen by the hand, advanced to the middle of the circle and with her stepped a minuet. When the music ceased, all the Little People clapped their hands in applause, and the King and Queen reseated ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... false curls, bandeaux, and other artificial head-gear paraphernalia, in bandboxes to boarding schools, and so on—a desire naturally sprung up within me, being now in my twenty-first year, and worth a guinea a week of wages, to look about for what old kind Seignor Fiddle-stringo, the minuet-master, used to recommend under the title of a cara sposa—open shop—and act head frizzle in an establishment ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... ceremonies, knowing how fond Mr. Pickle was of every opportunity to display himself, came up, and told him, that there was a fine young creature at the other end of the room, who seemed to have a great inclination to dance a minuet, but wanted a partner, the gentleman who attended ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... learning neglected in the ornamental parts, for I had an uncommon natural genius for many things, and soon topped in accomplishments most of the persons around me. I had a quick ear and a fine voice, which my mother cultivated to the best of her power, and she taught me to step a minuet gravely and gracefully, and thus laid the foundation of my future success in life. The common dances I learned (as, perhaps, I ought not to confess) in the servants' hall, which, you may be sure, was never without a piper, and where I was considered unrivalled both ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said I, making a minuet bow, and off I went to the farm-house. Such a pretty walk it was, too! through a thicket of birches, down a little hill-side into a hollow full of hoary chestnut-trees, across a bubbling, dancing brook, and you came out upon the tiniest orchard in the world, a one-storied ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... a measure stately, Languid, slow, serene; All the dancers move sedately, Stepping leisurely and straitly, With a courtly mien; Crossing hands and changing places, Bowing low between, While the minuet inlaces Waving arms and woven paces,— Glittering damaskeen. Where is she whose form is folden In its royal sheen? From our longing eyes withholden By her mystic girdle golden, Beauty sought but never seen, Music walks the maze, ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... increased tameness of spirit. And the most pathetic of all writers are, to my mind, those whose mastery of their art grows as the initial impulse declines. But my young friend appeared to me to value only prodigal and fantastic vigour, and to prefer the sword-dance to the minuet. ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... even Miss Dorcas Culpeper, spinster, and Lawrence, the happy father, became completely reconciled. Soothed by the grateful influences of barbecued meats and draughts of rum and sugar, Lawrence led Miss Culpeper through the minuet. ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... caricatured the beauties of nature; and skies of sunny brightness, that mocked the golden hues of even an American sun. The experience of Miss Emmerson went no further than the simple evolutions of the country dance, or the deliberate and dignified procession of the minuet. No wonder, therefore, that her faculties were bewildered by the complex movements of the cotillion: and, in short, as the good lady daily contemplated the improvements of the female youth around her, she became each hour more convinced of her own inability to control, or in any manner to ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... dance a jig with mirth than a minuet with melancholy," laughed the girl; "and yet it would take a great deal to make me miserable if I were with you, and you loved me, my dear aunt. Still, I own I like to be rich, so as to have everything I want, and give everybody what they want; and, aunt Sarah, you ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... the garlands gay; The red dais where the fiddlers sit alone, Where, flushed with pride, the good old tunes they play. Strike, fiddlers, strike! we're ready for the set; The young folks' feet are eager for the dance; We'll trip Sir Roger and the minuet, And revel in ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... honors of poetic craftsmanship who complain of its difficulties. Something of our contemporary impatience with fixed stanzaic forms is due perhaps to the failure to recognize that the greater poets succeed in making over every kind of poetic pattern in the act of employing it, just as a Chopin minuet differs from a Liszt minuet, although both composers are using the same fundamental form of dance music. We must allow for the infinite variety of creative intention, technique and result. The true defence of rhyme and stanza against the arguments of extreme advocates of free verse is to point out ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... the river's bank in a series of irregular terraces, upheld by rough stone walls. The gnarled old trees bent towards each other and away like dwarfs and crook-backs dancing a fantastic minuet; and in the grass beneath them, where the sun shot his fiery darts and cast his net of shadows, Chloris had scattered innumerable wildflowers: hyacinths, the colour of the sky; violets, that threaded the air for yards about with their sentiment-provoking fragrance; tulips, ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... repaired to Hampstead in company with Billy Chatter, my Lord Hobble, and Doctor Wagtail. There I saw a very brilliant assembly, before whom I had the honour to walk a minuet with Melinda, who charmed me with her frank manner and easiness of behaviour. Before the country dances began, I received a message by a person I did not know from Bragwell, who was present, importing that nobody who knew him presumed to dance with Melinda ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... dyin' of it when I was an infant; and I was the only officer in the regiment, when we were at Athlone, that was prevented going to the race ball—and I would not for a hundred pounds. I was to dance the first minuet, and the first country dance, with that beautiful creature, Miss Rose Cox. I was makin' a glass of brandy punch—not feelin' quite myself—and I dhressed and all, in our room, when Ensign Higgins, a most thoughtless young man, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... delicious liberty of the garret. After a short experience of three weeks Comte returned to neediness and contentment. He was not altogether without the young man's appetite for pleasure; yet when he was only nineteen we find him wondering, amid the gaieties of the carnival of 1817, how a gavotte or a minuet could make people forget that thirty thousand human beings around them had barely a morsel to eat. Hardship in youth has many drawbacks, but it has the immense advantage over academic ease of making the student's interest in men ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... since we left Colombo was laid bare to its minutest detail. Lascars slipped by me in the half-darkness, the voices of two lovers near alternated with their expressive silences, and from the music saloon there came the pretty strains of a minuet, played very deftly. Under the influence of this music my thoughts became less exact; they drifted. My eyes shifted to the lights of the 'Porcupine' in the distance, and from them again to the figures passing and repassing me ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... aptitude for the work. The business prospered, and Uncle Thomas was very proud of his handsome ward, who was quite in demand at parties and balls and in a general social way, while the uncle could not dance a minuet ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... you want your ninety pistoles, you must patch up this marriage! [He goes out. The three FIDDLERS, left alone, continue their minuet, as the ...
— The Romancers - A Comedy in Three Acts • Edmond Rostand
... day. You shall dine with me on the 8th, for then Lady Frederick dines with me, and she will taste you. You shall sit next to Lady Frederick, and mind you flirt with her. I wonder if you are as amusing as your grandfather. I remember dancing a minuet with him at Versailles seventy ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... Hamiltons entered his drawing-room to-night they found many people of note already there, although the minuet had not begun. The President, his graceful six feet in all the magnificence of black velvet and white satin, his queue in a black silk bag, stood beside his lady, who was as brave as himself in a gown of violet brocade over ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... had any exact notions on the subject. Ashatea sometimes joined us, and moved about very gracefully, performing figures of her own invention, which I have since discovered greatly resemble those of the minuet of Europe. ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... last. "All," replied once more her Majesty. It was in vain that Peel pleaded and argued; in vain that he spoke, growing every moment more pompous and uneasy, of the constitution, and Queens Regnant, and the public interest; in vain that he danced his pathetic minuet. She was adamant; but he, too, through all his embarrassment, showed no sign of yielding; and when at last he left her nothing had been decided—the whole formation of the Government was hanging in the wind. A frenzy of excitement now seized upon Victoria. Sir Robert, she believed in ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... Spirits, which formerly raised his Fancy, and fired his Imagination. The same Folly hinders a Man from submitting his Behaviour to his Age, and makes Clodius, who was a celebrated Dancer at five and twenty, still love to hobble in a Minuet, tho he is past Threescore. It is this, in a Word, which fills the Town with elderly Fops, and ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... whether the most universally popular of the serious authors of a generation—and Macaulay was nothing less than this—affects style coupe or style soutenu. The critic of style is not the dancing-master, declaiming on the deep ineffable things that lie in a minuet. He is not the virtuoso of supines and gerundives. The morality of style goes deeper 'than dull fools suppose.' When Comte took pains to prevent any sentence from exceeding two lines of his manuscript or five of print; to restrict every paragraph ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... the same day he approaches the house by way of the winding avenue, his violin-case safe in hand. He steps out joyfully beneath the wide-spread minuet of twinkling stars. On his way he comes to a moss-grown bench at the foot of a mighty elm,—the bench on which he sat with Helen during the stirring moments of their last interview. Manetho's soul overflows to-night with flattering hopes, and he has spare emotion ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... two persons dancing a minuet, that "they looked as if they were hired to do it, and were doubtful of ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... an error into which I had before fallen. For I had fancied, that for the freezing of the sound, it was necessary for it to be wrapped up, and, as it were, preserved in breath. But I found my mistake, when I heard the sound of a kit playing a minuet ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... L'Allonge assured me, that I thrust quart over arm better than any man in England, what could I less than present him with a sword that cost me thirty pieces? I was bound for a hundred pounds for Tom Trippet, because he had declared that he would dance a minuet with any man in the three kingdoms except myself. But I often parted with money against my inclination, either because I wanted the resolution to refuse, or dreaded the appellation of a niggardly fellow; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... 'not write any operas, or arias, or symphonies, but only great sonatas for her instrument and mine!' I gave her her fourth lesson today, and so far as the rules of composition and her exercises are concerned I am pretty well satisfied with her. She wrote a very good bass to the first minuet which I set her, and has already begun to write in three parts. It goes, but she gets bored too quickly. I can not help her; progress is impossible, she is too young even if she had talent. Unfortunately she has ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... chest and beg for stories of the articles it contained, many fascinating tales of those two school years, a pretty colour coming to her cheeks as she told of the dances learned together, pas-de-deux and minuet, from old 'Doctor' Shaffer, who was at the time second violin of the Boston Theatre, as well as authority in the correct methods of bowing and courtesying for gentlewomen. Your grandmother married first, and the letter telling of it was ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... the neighboring towns. At the grove a series of historic tableaux presented the principal personages in significant pictures, and these were accompanied by Old English ballads and Shakespearian songs. The finale was a stately minuet, beautifully danced by four couples. They had been drilled for weeks by Miss Russell and as she was more than satisfied with the performance, it was, no doubt, nearly perfect. The audience seemed to be of that mind as they refused to disperse until the ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... of the temper and passions. Swimming and dancing were also included for all, dancing being a slow and graceful movement of the body to music, to develop grace of motion and beauty of form, and to exercise the whole human being, body and soul. The minuet and some of our folk- dancing are our nearest approach to the Greek type of dancing, though still not like it. The modern partner dance was ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... ceremony was performed in pantomime and the bride and groom received the congratulations of their friends. The groom bowed low over the bride's hand and led her to the center of the hall. The other couples formed in line behind them and a stately minuet was danced. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... to-morrow with lady Mac Manus; and being rusted in my dancing, I was refreshing my memory with a little exercise; but if I had known there was a sick person below, by Christ! I would have sooner danced a hornpipe upon my own head, than walk the softest minuet over yours.' — My uncle, who was not a little startled at his first appearance, received his compliment with great complacency, insisted upon his being seated, thanked him for the honour of his visit, and reprimanded me for my abrupt expostulation with a gentleman of his rank and ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... back up against a fence sometime to hide his patches from you," laughed Roxanne in such merriment that anybody with any sense of pleasant humor would have joined her at the thought of the Idol and me dancing a minuet to keep out of each ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the vice-reine of the Chateau St Louis, she helped her consort to settle nice points of etiquette and maintain a dignity befitting His Majesty's chosen representative. How did the seigneurs rank among themselves and with the leading English-speaking people? Who were to dance in the state minuet? Should dancing cease when the bishops came in, and for how long? Was that curtsy dropped quite low enough to her viceregal self, and did that debutante offer her blushing cheek in quite the proper way to Carleton when he graciously gave her the presentation ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... 'seem to me not very well imagined. There is something fade, almost ridiculous, in the literary minuet in which the recipiendaire and the receiver are trotted out to show their paces to each other and to the Academy. The new member extolling the predecessor of whom he is the unworthy successor, the old member lauding his new colleague to ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... greater merit,' replied the Queen, turning round to old Vestris—'Ah, I shall never forget you and Mademoiselle Guimard dancing the minuet de la cour.' ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Diego walked a minuet with Madam Clement; for whom, by this time, he had contracted an extraordinary degree of affection. Valentine had the honour to dance with the incomparable Serafina, whose beauty and attractions dazzled the eyes of the ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... with him.[88] He was absolutely without verbal memory, and he pronounces himself wholly incapable of learning anything from masters. Madame de Warens tried to have him taught both dancing and fencing; he could never achieve a minuet, and after three months of instruction he was as clumsy and helpless with his foil as he had been on the first day. He resolved to become a master at the chessboard; he shut himself up in his room, and worked night and day over the books with indescribable efforts which covered ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... kick, when any of them evinced an extraordinary awkwardness in their attitudes. During the whole of the time that the prostrations were practising, the attendants were dancing in a circle, with now and then the interlude of a minuet by one of the performers, in the course of which he would frequently throw a somerset, as expert as old Grimaldi, and all this under a burning tropical sun. These caboceers were dressed in robes of leopard skin, hung round with tassels and chains, and ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Bunbury, whom "quality"-loving Mr. Walpole calls "the second Hogarth, and first imitator who ever fully equalled his original (!);" but whose prints to "Tristram Shandy," are nevertheless completely forgotten, while, if he be remembered at all, it is by the plate of "The Long Minuet," and the vulgar "Directions to Bad Horsemen." With the first years of the century, however, appears the great master of modern humorists, whose long life ended only a few years since, "the veteran George Cruikshank"—as his admirers were wont to style him. He indeed may justly be compared to ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... legs. Neither of them thought it consistent with the dignity of the Crown which he served to advance towards the other faster than the other advanced towards him. If therefore one of them perceived that he had inadvertently stepped forward too quick, he went back to the door, and the stately minuet began again. The ministers of Lewis drew up a paper in their own language. The German statesmen protested against this innovation, this insult to the dignity of the Holy Roman Empire, this encroachment on the rights of independent nations, and would not know any thing about the paper till it ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... beautiful slow minuet played, and a bit of "solemn dancing" done. Certainly it was not gay, but it must be owned it was beautiful; it was the dance of kings, the poetry ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... rousing herself with a start, and wondering at her own folly in speaking thus of the white silk in which she was dressed, and of which she was holding up the skirt between her finger and thumb, as if she were dancing a minuet. ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... into line!" He heard the calls that followed—"Eyes front!" "Steady," "Quick march," "Halt, dress "—and felt, rather than saw, the whole elaborate manoeuvre; the rear ranks locking up, the covering sergeants jigging about like dancers in a minuet—pace to the rear, side step to the right—the pivot men with stiff arms extended, the companies wheeling up and dressing; all happening precisely ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... York, he challenged all, At minuet or all 'amande, And lessons for a courtly ball His guards by day and ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... benches which fringed the sides were hard and forbidding; but long before any of us were born this room was the scene of many revelries; the vacant hearths were bright with flame; the fiddlers bowed and scraped; the seats were filled with belles and beaux, and the stately minuet was ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... king and the royal family. His royal highness condescended to honour a ball in the evening; and often did young Saumarez hear his aunt (a sister of his mother, married to Major Brabazon of the 65th regiment,) relate her having opened the ball in a minuet with his ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... Hannibal and Pope Joan, may have been very glad, at my time of life or Alain's, to follow his example. 'Tis a misfortune common to all; and really,' said I, bowing to myself before the mirror like one who should dance the minuet, 'when the result is so successful as this, who would do ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "I'm to walk a minuet with Madge Haldimand!" broke in Ruyven; "will you lend me your gold stock-buckle, ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... of their special features. Just before the close of her second social season Mrs. Halliday gave a fancy-dress ball, which was a happy inspiration, varying as it did the monotony of germans, receptions and teas. On this occasion the minuet was danced by the younger guests dressed in Louis ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... where the dancers of the different sexes stand opposite each other, instead of side by side, as in the minuet, rigadoon, louvre, &c. and now corruptly called ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... levity. But levity, my dear, is quite out of character in you. Your ordinary walk is as if you were performing some religious ceremony: you come up to my table of a morning, when you merely bring in the tea-things, as if you were advancing to the altar. You move in minuet-time: you measure every step, as if you were afraid of offending in the smallest things. I never hear your approach on the stairs, but by a sort of hushed silence. When you enter the room, the Graces wait on you, and Love waves ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... herself was straight and elegant, and inclined to the ironical, when, as Jane Dudley, the belle of the country-side, she fired the fancy of young Julius Webb, an officer in the cavalry of the United States. He danced a minuet with her at a ball in Washington, was heard to swear an oath by her eyes at punch before the supper was over; and proceeded the following week to spur his courtship upon old William as daringly as he had ever spurred his horse ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... came back to the lovers, a reflected gleam from those fair autumn days illumined their thoughts. Mendelssohn's Minuet called up before them a vision of the villa by the sea, of rooms filled with the perfume of the terraced garden, of cypresses lifting their dark heads into the soft sky, of flaming ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... placed his stage wardrobe at their disposal when they were invited to the great Viceregal ball in honour of King George's birthday; and, attired as Lady Macbeth and Juliet respectively, they danced the stately minuet and rollicking country dances with such grace and abandon that lords and ladies stopped in their dances, and mounted on chairs and tables to feast their eyes on so rare ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... than I as a young man was prepared to stand. "My dear father," I answered, "what did he do? He could draw a little, but could he to save his life have got a picture into the Royal Academy exhibition? He built two organs and could play the Minuet in Samson on one and the March in Scipio on the other; he was a good carpenter and a bit of a wag; he was a good old fellow enough, but why make him out so much abler than ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... the classical in music and recommending it to his people as the best form of musical education. He holds that there is much in common between it and the folk-songs of Germany. At Court he revived classical dances like the minuet and the gavotte. He is devoted to opera and never leaves before the end of the performance. Concerts frequently take place in the royal palaces at Potsdam and Berlin, items on the programme for them being ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw |
