"Performer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... violinist, or harpist, or both, perhaps," he said. "Music is always, as you say, a great addition to such affairs, Mrs. Dott. I happen to know of a young fellow who plays exceptionally well, and his sister is really a very accomplished performer on the harp. Of course they should be engaged in merely a professional capacity. They are not persons who would mingle with our set, but they're not at all ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... all the sleeping echoes that lie in the many folds of the valley, so that we hear the words of welcome repeated again and again, growing fainter and fainter as the sound of the voice travels from cliff to cliff. The performer is delighted with a few soldi, and the jaded scarecrow of a horse seems pleased with his momentary halt. Iterum altiora petimus; by degrees we reach the airy platform upon which Ravello stands, and finally alight at the comfortable ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Weasel among its admirers. He never cared to hear a bird sing—not even Jolly Robin's cousin the Hermit, who was one of the most beautiful singers in the woods. And as for Buddy Brown Thrasher, whom most people thought a brilliant performer, Grumpy Weasel always groaned whenever he heard him singing in the topmost branches ...
— The Tale of Grumpy Weasel - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... lacked the magnetic element; and while the critic was baffled in the attempt to pick a flaw, and the elocutionist in raptures at the sublime possibilities of his art, it was Rachel, not Hermione, the genius of the performer, not the reality of the character, that won the earnest attention, and woke the constant plaudits. [A] That over-consciousness which belongs to the French nature, so evident in their 'Confessions,' their oratory, their manners, their conversation, and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was a clever and versatile performer, caught the air, made up like the Negro, and in the course of the next season introduced Jim Crow and his step to the stage, and so successful was he in his performance that on his first night in the part he was encored twenty times.[1] Rice had many imitators ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... black boots. I did think one spell of goin' into the theayter biz, but I couldn't git the right kind of a job. I can dance a good many of them perfessionals way out of sight, but the managers won't hire a performer what ain't ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... the expense of any pleasure which youth generally indulges, or by the omission of any accomplishment in which it becomes a gentleman to excel: he practised in great perfection the arts of drawing and painting, he was an eminent performer in both vocal and instrumental musick, he danced with uncommon gracefulness, and, on the day after his disputation at Paris, exhibited his skill in horsemanship before the court of France, where at a publick match of tilting, he bore away the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... she could only manage her own accompaniments or a sprightly valse. Nan, who did most of the execution of the family, was a very fair performer from a young lady's point of view, and that is not saying much. She always had her piece ready if people wanted her to play. She sat down without nervousness and rose without haste. She had a choice little repertory of old songs ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... that it was the only one I knew. I was glad that he had never discovered that I am a trained monkey. If he had known how many tricks I can perform life wouldn't have been worth living. It would have been like an endless circus, with me for the only performer. As it was, I was made to go through that one trick of the wise monkeys of Japan until I was heartily disgusted with it, or with anything else, in fact, that suggested ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... is like an AEolian harp; it makes a full and perfect sound of itself. A consonant cannot sound without a vowel, any more than a horn (except such an one as Baron Munchausen's) can play a tune without a performer. ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... a story in blank verse descriptive of this passage of the soul. It is sometimes sung in very dramatic fashion, the performer acting the principal incidents and pitching his voice in a doleful, though musical, minor key. Such a recitation of the passage of the soul, delivered by a wild and tragic figure before an intently listening group of squatting men and women illuminated by flickering ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... performance of the act judged is directed by the performer's brain, the constitution of which was pre-determined by the germ-plasm from which he arose, so that the basis ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... performer on the flute; Mr. Lanman played the violin, and his wife the piano; and they discoursed some excellent music. Then, still better, there was singing. The deep-chested Forrest had a superb bass voice; Lanman a fine tenor; Annie's voice was light, but exceedingly sweet and expressive; ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... restoration to life was effected, a probability would be arrived at which would be almost equal to certainty. An experiment, however, should always admit of being repeated. What a man has done once he should be able to do again, and in miracles there can be no question of ease or difficulty. The performer would be requested to repeat the operation under other circumstances upon other bodies; and if he succeeded on every occasion, two points would be established: first, that there may be in this world such things as supernatural ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... hear) not particularly good-tempered, and have wrecked a private brougham or two. No effect on Opera, which goes as well as ever. Rumours that the player of the grosse caisse has struck at rehearsal are confirmed, he appears in his place and strikes again, so does the Shakspearian performer "Cymbaline." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... Mr. Page, the performer, was a plump young man, with black whiskers, and his hair in oily ringlets, such as may be seen in the model wigs presented on smiling, waxen dandies, in Mr. Rose's front window at Dollington. He bowed and smiled in the most unexceptionable of white chokers and the dapperest of dress coats, and ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Cross who could not—and did not wish to—tell his Sovereign, when the coveted honour was being pinned to His breast, of some other soldier not less worthy than himself of being decorated, whose deed of gallantry was performed under less noticeable conditions. The performer of such a deed is an "as" and it is his luck to be a not public hero. But why ace of diamonds? ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... it always in your eye, and learn to walk upon it; rest upon Mr. Harte, and he will poise you, till you are able to go alone. By the way, there are fewer people who walk well upon that line, than upon the slack-rope; and, therefore, a good performer shines so much ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... have my readers too excited. They were words to shudder at, indeed; but the immediate consequences were not bloody— they were only to a limited degree tragic. It must be remembered that the magnificence of all actions is relative to the performer, nor would I seek to exalt Miss Limpenny to the level of a Semiramis or a Dido; only, when I say that she bore a great soul in a little body, I say no more than ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Philip. At first they only styled him regent and general, but, when they found by experience that he governed the kingdom with moderation and to general advantage, gave him the title of king. This was he that was surnamed Doson, as if he was a great promiser, and a bad performer. To him succeeded Philip, who in his youth gave great hopes of equaling the best of kings, and that he one day would restore Macedon to its former state and dignity, and prove himself the one man able to check the power of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... that enabled her to hit the target against odds of almost infinity to one; not just once, but time after time. By definition, intuition. What quality did you use just now in getting me off the hook? Intuition. What makes Teddy Blake such an unerring performer? Intuition again. My hunches—they're intuition, too. Intuition, hell! Labels—based on utterly abysmal damned dumb ignorance of our own basic frames of reference. Do you think those four kinds of intuition are alike, by seven thousand rows of ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... for thee for the performance of the Rajasuya sacrifice. The time for the performance of that sacrifice in which Rishis of austere vows kindle six fires with mantras of the Sama Veda, is come for thee in consequence of thy Kshatriya possessions. At the conclusion of the Rajasuya sacrifice when the performer is installed in the sovereignty of the empire, he is rewarded with the fruits of all sacrifices including the Agnihotra. It is for this that he is called the conqueror of all. Thou art quite able, O strong-armed one, to perform this sacrifice. All of us are ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... not his spirits were raised by Kenelm's praise and exhortations, the minstrel that day talked with a charm that spellbound Tom, and Kenelm was satisfied with brief remarks on his side tending to draw out the principal performer. ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... invariable use of heavy tackle has blinded the fishermen to the wonderful leaping and fighting qualities of this long-nosed, long-toothed sea-tiger. The few of us who have hooked barracuda on light tackle know him as a marvelous performer. Van Campen Heilner wrote about a barracuda he caught on a bass rod, and he is not likely to forget it, nor will the reader of his ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... silence fell upon the whole assembly, and it then became the duty of the performer, assuming an attitude of profound and deferential obeisance, to salute the lieutenant-general after a fashion more easily describable by Rabelais or by M. Armand Silvestre than by me, and which seems to have been derived from ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... epilogue of autobiographical interest, gathering up the foregoing strains of his lyre, for a few last chords, in so intimate a way that the actual fall of the fingers may be felt, the pausing smile seen, as the performer turns towards the one who inspired "One Word More." The appropriateness of "Transcendentalism" as a prologue need be no more of a secret than that of "One Word More" as an epilogue, although it is left to betray itself. Other poets writing on the poet, Emerson for example, and Tennyson, place ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... adroit performer intended she should—under the gay cascade of talk. Laughed at length, letting finer instincts of charity go by the wall, in her enjoyment of neatly turned mockeries and the sense of personal superiority they provoked. For Henrietta's dissection of the weaknesses of absent friends, inevitably ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... simulate all the movements of a cow or bull. They pretend to paw up the earth, toss their make-believe horns, turn round and pretend to scratch themselves, and in fact identify themselves with the animal they are representing; and it is irresistibly comic to watch a solitary performer go through this al fresco comedy. I have laughed often at some cunning old herdsman, or shekarry. When they see you watching them, they will redouble their efforts, and try to represent an old bull, going through all his pranks and practices, and throw ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... have preferred remaining with John Jr., but she was habitually polite, always playing when invited, and now taking her seat at the piano, she brought out sounds far different from those of a new performer. But Mr. Graham, if he heard it, did not heed it, his eyes and ears being alone for 'Lena. Seating himself near her, he commenced talking to her in an undertone, apparently oblivious to everything ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... gentlemen," he said, "'tis nothing at all, I assure you. On shore I am a circus performer, an' I was just practicing a little. Have ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... 'Fenice' at Venice, her voice and musical skill being such as to give hope of her becoming a prima donna. She had, she said, frequently sung at private parties at Rome, but only knew within the last few days that she had been, not a guest, but a paid performer. Overwhelmed with the shame and indignity of this false position, she implored her mother's brother to compassionate her. 'If I could not become a governess, I could be your servant, dearest uncle,' she wrote. 'I ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... farce of 'STATE PROSECUTIONS; or, the Plotters Outwitted,' will be again performed, and positively for the last time; on which occasion that first-rate performer, Mr. W. F. Stawell, will (by special desire of a distinguished personage) repeat his well-known impersonation of Tartuffe, with all the speeches, the mock gravity, etc., which have given such immense satisfaction to the public on former occasions. This eminent ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... hands many rings, with stones rather too large to be taken for genuine on a woman promenading alone at such an hour. Conjoined with the musical instrument, the attire confirmed the student in his first impression after the tragic one, that this was a performer in one of the numerous dance-houses of the popular region, ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... are at all seasons noisy and vivacious: from the end of February until the rains have set in they are positively uproarious. Two or three of them love to sit on a telegraph wire, or a bare branch of a tree, and hold a concert. The first performer draws itself up to its full height and then gives vent to harsh cries. Before it has had time to deliver itself of all it has to sing, an impatient neighbour joins in and tries to shout it down. The concert may last for half ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... his eyes, clasping his hands, striking his breast, and gyrating about Miss Dwyer in the most approved operatic style. He had a fine voice and knew a good deal of music; so that, barring a certain nervousness in the performer, the exhibition was really not bad. In his singing he had used a meaningless gibberish varied with the syllables of the scale, but he closed by singing the words, "Are you ready now? Go ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... A performer on the zimble, an instrument constructed like a wooden tray, with several wires stretched across lengthwise, and played by means of ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... ears would mistake for the voice of the Scarlet Tanager, comes from that rare visitant, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak. It is a strong, vivacious strain, a bright noonday song, full of health and assurance, indicating fine talents in the performer, but not genius. As I come up under the tree he casts his eye down at me, but continues his song. This bird is said to be quite common in the Northwest, but he is rare in the Eastern districts. His beak is disproportionately large and heavy, like a huge nose, which slightly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... to be imputed rather to the nature of the undertaking, than the negligence of the performer. Thus some explanations are unavoidably reciprocal or circular, as hind, the female of the stag; stag, the male of the hind: sometimes easier words are changed into harder, as burial into sepulture or interment, drier into desiccative, ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... living things, Most noble eminence, I worship thee; Thee I salute, who am a monarch's child, The daughter and the consort of a prince, The high-born Damayanti, unto whom Bhima, Vidarbha's chief—that puissant lord— Was sire, renowned o'er earth. Protector he Of the four castes, performer of the rites Called Rajasuya and the Aswamedha— A bounteous giver, first of rulers, known For his large shining eyes; holy and just, Fast to his word, unenvious, sweet of speech, Gentle and valiant, dutiful and pure; The guardian of Vidarbha, of his foes The slayer. ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... do MORE than this? Can it DO this? and if so who and what is to determine the degree of its failure or success? The composer, the performer (if there be any), or those who have to listen? One hearing or a century of hearings?-and if it isn't successful or if it doesn't fail what matters it?—the fear of failure need keep no one from the attempt for if the composer is sensitive he need but launch forth a countercharge ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... beautiful and inimitable to the cher confrere; and then gros bonnets of many kinds—ambassadors, cabinet ministers, bankers, generals, what do I know? even Jews. Above all always some awfully nice women—and not too many; sometimes an actress, an artist, a great performer—but only when they're not monsters; and in particular the right femmes du monde. You can fancy his history on that side—I believe it's fabulous: they NEVER give him up. Yet he keeps them down: no one knows how he manages; it's too beautiful ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... chords. She sang the song they had been working over, the song of Venice, with a swaying melody as of floating water-grasses. Then she plunged into a throbbing aria,—singing freely, none too accurately, but with a passion and self-forgetfulness which promised greater things than the concert performer. From this on to other snatches of opera, to songs, wandering as the mood took her, coming finally to the street song that Vickers had woven into his composition for Rome, with its high, sad note. There her voice stopped, died in a cry half stifled in the throat, and leaving the piano she ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... skater cut his name in the ice; there, bands of noisy boys were playing tag, and on the ringing steel pursuing the chase; while every once in a while down would tumble some lubberly urchin, or unskillful performer, or new beginner, coming into harder contact with the frozen element than was pleasant, and seeing stars in the daytime, while bursts of laughter and ironical invitations to try it again, greeted his misfortune. In another place were ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... tension, and when the swelling C in the overture to Freischutz told me that I had stepped, as it were with both feet, right into the magic realm of awe. Any one who had been watching me at that moment could hardly have failed to see the state I was in, and this in spite of the fact that I was such a bad performer on ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... the Mozart? Well, Mozart was a wonderful musical genius, who could compose music when he was five years old, and who astonished all Germany by his skill and aptness as a performer. So Charles decided on calling ...
— The Nursery, February 1878, Vol. XXIII, No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... been effectively uttered by a very inferior histrionic artist. In the second play, in the scene between Orestes and his mother, and in the gathering madness of Orestes, the art of the poet would unquestionably task to the uttermost the skill of the performer. But in the last play (the Furies), perhaps the sublimest poem of the three, which opens so grandly with the parricide at the sanctuary, and the Furies sleeping around him, there is not one scene from the beginning to the end in which an eminent ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... such things happened, which none but he can know; the most sure proof of his remembering is the power to react his part in the original drama, whatever it may have been; if a man can repeat a performance with consummate truth, and can stand any amount of cross-questioning about it, he is the performer of the original performance, whatever it was. The memories which all living forms prove by their actions that they possess-the memories of their common identity with a single person in whom they meet-this is ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... from her gifted father a great talent for music. She was a remarkably skilful performer upon the pianoforte. So retentive was her memory that she could play without notes a large portion of the works of ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... (whose real name was Maddaleno Morelli) often accompanied herself on the violin; not holding it against her shoulder, but resting it in her lap. She was reckoned a fine performer on this instrument; and for her distinguished talents was crowned in the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... not a wonderful performer, but she had a fine ear, and played with finish and accuracy. But she sang divinely. To oblige her friends, she sang a few new things and then pausing, was about to rise from the instrument, when Mr. ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... he thought this a mistake, but he urged that full details were wanting in regard to his mental capacity as shown in other ways than in music. Macaulay replied that Mozart was the Raphael of music, and was both a composer and a wonderful performer at the age of six. "Now," said he, "we cannot conceive of any one being a great poet at the age of six: we hear nothing of Shakespeare or Milton ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... little of as the music he was parodying, was beyond all bearing! Then, if ever, did my wretched master dig his fingers into his ears, and writhe and shiver and groan at each discord produced by that inhuman performer. He retreated into the innermost recess of his bedroom; he even hid his unhappy head beneath the clothes, if haply he might escape the agony of this torture. But it was hopeless. The shrieks and groans of that brutal ophicleide would have penetrated ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... fund of merit to the performer, which raises him in every future birth, and at length advances him to heaven, where he enjoys happiness for a limited period, or carries him towards final absorption. A person may sink to earth again by crimes committed in heaven. The joys of heaven arise only from the gratification ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... agreed, on the occasion of a great religious solemnity—the feast of Adonis—to go together to the palace of King Ptolemy Philadelphus, to see the image of Adonis, which the Queen Arsinoe, Ptolemy's wife, had had decorated with peculiar magnificence. A hymn, by a celebrated performer, was to be recited over the image. The names of the two women are Gorgo and Praxinoe; their maids, who are mentioned in the poem, are called Eunoe and Eutychis. Gorgo comes by appointment to Praxinoe's house to fetch her, and there the ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... him, and the cook and the two men stood watching them till they disappeared through the saloon entrance, while the men in the forecastle kept on singing a chorus, sounding now loud and now soft, just as one hears the music of a great organ when the performer opens and ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... and rewrite this section from the beginning, expunging the statements that Hoopdriver was a poet and a romancer, and saying instead that he was a playwright and acted his own plays. He was not only the sole performer, but the entire audience, and the entertainment kept him almost continuously happy. Yet even that playwright comparison scarcely expresses all the facts of the case. After all, very many of his dreams never got acted at all, possibly indeed, ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... with his parents to the Fourth Election district of Cecil county, in the Spring of 1855, and has been engaged in farming all his life, except two years spent in teaching in our public schools. He is a popular music teacher and performer on musical instruments, and has won local distinction ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... something. Down in the village, and opposite the curiously-carved fountain, is a schoolroom which can accommodate a couple of hundred people on a pinch. There are our public meetings held. Musical entertainments have been given there by a single performer. In that schoolroom last winter an American biologist terrified the villagers, and, to their simple understandings, mingled up the next world with this. Now and again some rare bird of an itinerant lecturer covers dead walls with posters, yellow and blue, and to that schoolroom we flock ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... performers have told us that in the moments of their highest efforts they are aware that the out-of-conscious portion of their mind is doing the work for them, and they are practically standing aside and witnessing the work being done. So true is this that in some cases it is related that if the performer's conscious mind attempts to take up the work the quality is impaired and the musician and the audience ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... task of being enthusiastic and demonstrative over matters of this kind, applauded vehemently, and cried, "Bravo!" and "Encore!" and ended in convincing us of the reality of his delight, by pressing his brandy-flask into the hands of the performer, and urging him to "drink it all, every drop, and then give us another!" Our mountain Paganini, I fear, interpreted the behest too literally; or else H.'s enthusiasm never afterwards rose to so high a pitch; at any rate, he was never known to manifest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... a city where he had fondly hoped to find a response to his high thoughts was the sensation caused throughout Rome by the dress and theatrical effectiveness with which a certain prelate said mass. All Rome talked of it, cardinals and noble ladies complimented the performer as if he were a ballet-dancer, and the flattered prelate used to rehearse his part, and expatiate upon his methods of study for it, to private audiences of admirers. In fact, society had then touched almost the lowest depth of degradation where society had always been ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... circus. Let all who are curious in regard to the point I am discussing visit it. Permit me to call special attention to three performers,—to the man who lifts the cannon, to the India-rubber man, and to the general performer. The lifter and the India-rubber man constitute the two mischievous extremes. It is impossible that in either there should be the highest physiological conditions; but in the persons of the Hanlon brothers, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... for the British noble to maintain his position, which was, after all, of small moment. The bended knee, no less than the full prostration to the ground, is a symbol of homage from an inferior to a superior, and if not equally humiliating to the performer, it is only because he has been made familiar by practice with one, and not with the other. In Europe, the bended knee is exclusively appropriated to the relations of sovereign and subject; and no representative of any sovereign in Christendom ever bends his knee ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... Each performer quaked with fear, and both sympathy and approval were in the applause. Miss Polly Vaughn was a rare picture of rustic beauty, her cheeks as red as her ribbons, her voice low and sweet. Trove came out in the audience for a look at her as she read. Ringing ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... which the fingers of this skilful pianist cannot overcome, and his intellectual grasp of a subject enables him to discern and interpret the beauties of all musical themes; but where an earnest, passionate interest in the music of the old masters is not felt by the performer, it is rarely ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of a contributor; the union will. No matter how excellent the idea, no matter how inspired the contrib may be to amplify it, he will not be permitted to do more than a certain amount of work per day. However brilliant he may be, he will be held down to the level of the most pedestrian performer. In unionizing, moreover, he will be only exchanging one tyrant for another, and perhaps not so benevolent a one. Now, then, go to it, as the emperor said to ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... Circus, and The Book is a novel by Miss AMYE READE. Mr. P. is not sweet upon any gymnastic and acrobatic shows in which the chances of danger appear, and probably are, as ten to one against the performer; and especially does he object to children of very tender years being utilised in order to earn money for their parents or guardians by exhibiting their precocious agility. Mr. P. approves of the ancient use of the birch as practised at Eton a quarter of a century ago, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... The performer seemed to grind out his fearful stuff with a fierce delight, in which appeared little of the esthetic pleasure of the artist. Thorpe was at a loss ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... present the same elements that constitute the appeal of pictures,—skill in the rendering, a certain correspondence with experience, and the power of imaginative interpretation of the facts of life. The music-hall performer who wins the loudest and heartiest applause is he who does the greatest number of pyrotechnic, wonderful things on the piano, or holds a high note on the cornet for the longest time. His success, as with ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... She dusted the room swiftly, aware all the time of a watchful eye. Occasionally came a crisp comment: "You didn't dust that window-sill." "Cecilia, that table has four legs—did you only notice two?"—the effort to speak while playing generally bringing the performer with vigour upon a wrong chord. The so-called music became almost a physical ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... Berlin, who were both cheerful and talkative. The household was then completely changed, for weeks at a time, and, the hatchet being temporarily buried, merriment and playing of sly tricks, with occasional boisterous pranks, became the order of the day. The most brilliant performer in the fun-making competitions that frequently arose was always my father himself. He was, as handsome men often are, the absolute opposite of Don Juan, and proud of his virtue. But by as much as he was unlike Don Juan, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... they prefer (I speak of the male sex) this latter to that of sounds. Music may procure some moments of bliss to those who yield themselves to its charms but it is transitory and, with them, leaves no reminiscence for the performer or the listener; on the contrary representative art remains and can also give satisfaction to the self love of the artist. It is limited to some rough designs and still more rough incisions on the blowpipes, quivers and the women's combs ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... which of course settles the question, I would not have called him a great performer—indeed, my astonishment has always been how he succeeded, or ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... corner to corner, and continued successively towards the centre until there is only room left for the hand to hold the instrument. At each corner is appended a bunch of cockatoo feathers. With this the chief performer keeps a little in advance of the dancers, and whisking it up and down to the time of the music, regulates ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... for the rehearsal of the newly-imported tragedy. I promised to be present. The state of my thoughts but little qualified me for a performer or auditor in such a scene; but I reflected that, after it was finished, I should return home with you, and should then enjoy an opportunity of discoursing with you fully on this topic. My resolution ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... minute. Fancy your father's feelings if I had come home with a black eye from an encounter with a pot-house bully! You know I put my foot into a tender secret of your man's, by offering to be the performer!" ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... performance of a musical piece by a great artist, some individual member of the audience were to be called upon to give his rendering of the original rendering. The result would be that the musical joy of the audience would be completely destroyed and the performer himself would ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... A verb is a word which signifies to be, to do, or to suffer. Verbs are divided into neuter, active, and passive. Neuter verbs merely signify being, or that kind of action which has no effect upon any thing beyond the performer, as, I am, I sit, I walk. (You may distinguish those neuter verbs that seem to imply action from active verbs by their making a complete sense by themselves, whereas active verbs always require a noun or pronoun after them to finish ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... mass of spangles and pieces of coloured glass. Underneath a skirt of tartan silk was fitfully visible. Their brown legs and feet were bare. The expression of their faces was solemn, not to say lugubrious—one performer had a most whimsical resemblance to Mr. Toole when he is sunk in an abyss of dramatic woe. They realised the responsibilities of their position, and there were moments when these seemed too many for them. The orchestra, taken as a whole, was rather noisy; but it comprised one instrument, ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... treated with considerable contempt by the Princess, he is not uninformed of the light in which he was intended to stand, by an amazing piece of imprudence of the last, but not the most inconsiderable performer in this drama, the Solicitor-general, Murray—pray, what part has his brother, Lord Dunbar, acted in the late squabbles in the Pretender's family? Murray, early in the quarrel, went officiously to the Bishop, and told him ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... clownish servant, called Lentulo, and in the third act a song is introduced for greater variety, which, as was not unusual at a later period of our stage history, seems to have been left to the choice of the performer. The prayer for the Queen, at the conclusion of the drama, put into the mouth of Fortune, was a relic of a more ancient practice, and perhaps affords further proof, if it were wanted, that it was represented before Elizabeth.[7] ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... part, he was born, of English and Scotch parents—he produced, edited, and illustrated "The Schoolboys' Punch" in manuscript, in careful imitation of the original, drawing the cartoon as well. One of these "big cuts" represented himself as the performer in a cabinet-trick—(the sensation of the Davenport Brothers was before the public at the time)—in which the cabinet was the school, and the ropes that bound him the curriculum; while from another cabinet he emerges ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... once "put the party through." The eccentric "Old Spear" was generally present, seated in an obscure corner smoking a solitary cigar. Comical S.D. Johnson and his hopeful son George were usually on hand to enliven the scene; and so was Jim Ring, alias J. Henry, the best negro performer, next to Daddy Rice, in the United States. Chunkey Monroe, who did the villains at the National; and, towering above him might be seen his cousin, Lengthy Monroe, who enacted the hard old codgers at the ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... department of concerted human action in which these same principles are not apparent? What would be thought of an army without discipline and without generals; or of a musical production in which every performer played his own tune? Even in the region of sport, can a cricket or a football team dispense with its captain and its places? And yet many people imagine that a disorganized collection of delegates of various sections can rule a nation? ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... could not see it at first. There may have been more, although I saw but one and heard but one baby cry, a prolonged but very low sound of pewee quality. While their charge lingered so near me, I was treated to another sensation by one of the pair,—a pewee song. The performer alighted almost directly over my head, and began at once to sing in a very sweet voice, but so low it could not be heard a dozen feet away. There was little variation in the tones, but it was rapidly delivered, with longer and shorter intervals and varying inflections, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... his daughter Margaret had almost broken that heart by marrying a man of whom he could not approve. Martin Moore was a professional violinist. He was a popular performer, though not in any sense a great one. He met the slim, golden-haired daughter of the manse at the house of a college friend she was visiting in Toronto, and fell straightway in love with her. Margaret had loved him with all her virginal heart in return, and married him, despite her father's disapproval. ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... compliment; for having drank a little more wine than usual that evening, and happening to wear a wig on account of having lost his hair by a fever, he suddenly took off the wig, and dashed it at the head of the performer, exclaiming, "You dog! I'll throw ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... that earlier essay he had merely criticised a critic; he had not originated criticisms of his own. So he had touched the field of theological controversy, but had not appeared on it as a performer. That now he so appeared was probably due to the success which attended Culture and Anarchy. The publication of that book had immensely extended the circle of his audience. Those who care for literature ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... his art. He led a wandering life for many years, and performed everywhere in restaurants, at fairs, at peasants' weddings, and at balls. At last he got into an orchestra and constantly rising in it, he obtained the position of director. He was rather a poor performer; but he understood music thoroughly. At twenty-eight he migrated into Russia, on the invitation of a great nobleman, who did not care for music himself, but kept an orchestra for show. Lemm lived with him seven years in the capacity of orchestra conductor, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... autumn of 1873. He was the father and teacher of the celebrated pianist, Clara Wieck, now Fr. Dr. Clara Schumann, widow of the renowned composer Robert Schumann, who was also a pupil of Wieck. His second daughter, Fraeulein Marie Wieck, is well known in Germany as an artistic performer on the piano-forte. ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... which even then conferred great celebrity on the successful player. At the court of Leo X, who, when cardinal, had filled his house with singers and musicians, and who enjoyed the reputation of a critic and performer, the Jew Giovan Maria del Corneto and Jacopo Sansecondo were among the most famous. The former received from Leo the title of count and a small town; the latter has been taken to be the Apollo in the Parnassus ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... unregenerated called this saloon the "Synagogue." The devotions consisted only of two hymns from the Plymouth Collection and a short prayer, and seldom occupied more than fifteen minutes. The hymns were accompanied by parlor-organ music when the sea was smooth enough to allow a performer to sit at the instrument without ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... always been considered one of the most pleasing and perfect of musical instruments. Here the skilled performer has absolutely free scope for his genius, because his fingers can pluck the strings at will and hence regulate the overtones, and his feet can regulate at will the tension, and hence the pitch ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... Australia, whither it appeared, the boy had betaken himself and his disappointment, people seemed at first disinclined to overlook Magda's share in the matter. For a time even her immense prestige as a dancer suffered some eclipse, but this, with a performer of her supreme artistry, was bound to ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... the greatest, is now-a-days more than common, to the greatest Disgrace of the Professors and the Profession; and yet they ought to know, that the Words only give the Preference to a Singer above an instrumental Performer, admitting them to be of equal Judgment and Knowledge. Let the modern Master learn to make use of this Advice, for never was it more necessary than ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... the once famous sleight of hand performer Patler. His house is a cozy, pretty affair, freshly painted and nestled under great embowering trees. Close ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... their regular concerts each man had a bamboo, which was of a different length and gave a different tone; these they beat against the ground, and each performer, assisted by the note given by this instrument, repeated the same note, accompanying it by words, by which means it was rendered sometimes short and sometimes long. In this manner they sing in chorus, and not only produced octaves to each other, according to their different ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... on several occasions witnessed, was invariably begun by a single female performer appearing on the scene, and after going through a few graceful movements, a shrill whistle (caused by inserting two fingers into the month) given by one of the men is the signal for a change. Several performers then come forward, advancing and retiring on either side of a huge ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... some of the chants were really beautiful, but rendered perhaps too harsh for our ears in actual contact: for as I joined myself to the procession, and became susceptible of the trembling cadence of each separate performer—the human voice in every key which the extremes of youth and age might produce, there was a sensation effected which I cannot well describe—a terrible jarring of the brain. The fact that the involuntary tears rolled down the cheeks of those ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... Pedgift,' says he. 'Public amusement? Why, it's Sunday evening!' says I. 'All right, sir,' says Mustapha. 'They stop acting on the stage, I grant you, on Sunday evening—but they don't stop acting in the pulpit. Come and see the last new Sunday performer of our time.' As he wouldn't have any more wine, there was nothing else ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... inconvenience and an imperfection that ought to be palliated; but we aggravate it. The first-rate actor always does his best, because the audience expect it, and reward him with their applause; but no one cares for, or observes, the performer of second-rate talents: whether he be perfect in his part, and exert himself to the utmost, or be slovenly and negligent throughout, he is unpraised and unblamed. The general effect, therefore, of our tragedies, is very unsatisfactory; for that is far greater, ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... life in France at the time of the first Napoleon. Fifi, a glad, mad little actress of eighteen, is the star performer in a third rate Parisian theatre. A story as dainty as a ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... not to gamble with Hop Wah. He is a very smart one at the business, and he will relieve you of all the money you have, if you play with him. Being a sleight-of-hand performer, he can do things that you could not see. Just go it light on that point. I don't want to have him get into trouble, and that is what he generally does when he wins a whole lot of money. There is always some one to accuse him of cheating, whether they catch ...
— Young Wild West at "Forbidden Pass" - and, How Arietta Paid the Toll • An Old Scout
... Sailor and Master of Navigation; Rode with ease and dexterity; and was a Proficient in that most difficult trick of the Manege, that of riding a horse en Biais, as the French term it, and of which our Newcastle has learnedly treated; was an admirable Performer on the Guitar and Viol di Gamba; Sung very sweetly; Fenced exquisitely; must have been in his Youth (he was now about Sixty, and his Hair was grizzled grey) as Beautiful as a Woman, as Graceful as ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... The number of spirits of one kind or another, believed in by the Indians, is very great. In the bear dance, the principal performer has a bear-skin over him, the head of it hanging over his head, and the paws over his hands. Others have masks of bears' faces; and all of them, throughout the dance, imitate the actions of a bear. They stoop ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... ever delving. Sometimes he leans upon his mattock, and gazes, as a coach whirls by, bearing the newly married on their wedding jaunt, or glances carelessly at a babe brought home from christening. Suddenly (for the scene grows larger and larger as we look) a bony hand snatches back a performer in the midst of his part, and him, whom yesterday two infinities (past and future) would not suffice, a handful of dust is enough to cover and silence forever. Nay, we see the same fleshless fingers opening to clutch the showman himself, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... matter of astonishment, but to him it was sport; for while employed thus he kept talking to those below and laughing immoderately. He descended with as much ease and agility as he had raised himself. Even our natives allowed that he was a capital performer, against whom they dared not to enter the lists; for as they subsist chiefly by fishing they are less expert at climbing on the coast than ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... poignant, new value, and through that revolution to achieve form comparable to the most eminent. His fantasy ranges over the keyboard with complete freedom; he creates new rhythms, new combinations of tones that cause the hands of the performer to become possessed of a new and curious intelligence, to make significant gestures, and to move with a delightful life. And these latter compositions are entirely structure, entirely bone. There is a complete economy. There is not a note in the Ninth Sonata, for instance, that is not necessary, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... performer in upper Hindustan, and considered as the first in his art. He lived in the reign of Akbar, ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... night, for the experiment was interrupted. An elderly, hard-looking man, with a goatee beard and about as much appearance of sentiment an you would expect from a retired slaver, turned with a start and bade the performer stop that "damned thing." "I've heard about enough of that," he added; "give us something about the good country we're going to." A murmur of adhesion ran round the car; the performer took the instrument from his lips, laughed and nodded, and then struck into a dancing measure; ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Museum is largely due to the energy and erudition of Dr. W. J. Holland, its amiable director. In the music-hall, a symphony orchestra is maintained, and free recitals are given on the great organ twice every week by a capable performer. When the orchestra began its work thirteen years ago, it is doubtful if there were very many persons in Pittsburgh, other than musical students, who knew the difference between a symphony, a suite, a concerto, and a fugue. To-day there are thousands of people in this city who can intelligently ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... five minutes, and no one answered. The flute still continued its melancholy tune; it was evidently in the hands of a learner, for the air (a dispiriting one enough at the best) kept breaking off suddenly and repeating itself. But the performer had patience, and the sound never ceased for more than two seconds at a time. Besides this, nothing could be heard. The blinds were drawn in all the windows. The glow of the candles through them was cheerful enough, but nothing ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hidden under his coat he brought dozens of skins. I believe that his religious vows did not allow him to handle animals—openly—and so he would beckon Roy into the darkness of the temple with a most mysterious air, and would extract all sorts of things from his sleeves just like a sleight-of-hand performer. He was a ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... Fenn was also a musician,—not a genius at the piano, as he was at cricket, but a sufficiently sound performer for his age, considering that he had not made a special study of it. He was to play at the school concert on the ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... instrumental and vocal. The English trials hardly mention music, possibly because the Sabbath had fallen into a decadent condition; but the Scotch and French trials prove that it was an integral part of the celebration. The Devil himself was the usual performer, but other members of the society could also supply the music, and occasionally one person held the position of piper to the Devil. The music was always as an accompaniment of the dance; the instrument in general use ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... the bull's neck a number of barbed darts ornamented with cut paper, and, sometimes, charged with detonating powder. It is de rigeur to plant the barbs exactly on either side. In the third and final act, the protagonist, the matador or espada, is the sole performer. His function is to entice the bull towards him by waving the muleta or red flag, and, standing in front of the animal, to inflict the death-wound by plunging his sword between the left shoulder and the blade. "The teams of mules now enter, glittering with flags and tinkling with ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... four in a bar, on the contrary, should be beaten two in a bar; the four accustomed gestures of a moderate movement becoming then so hurried as to present nothing decided to the eye, and serving only to confuse the performer instead of giving him confidence. Moreover,—and this is of much more consequence,—the conductor, by uselessly making these four gestures in a quick movement, renders the pace of the rhythm awkward, and loses the freedom ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... young acrobat started to pull himself up on the rope. The ringmaster glared at him and then cracked his whip once more, taking the young performer in ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... man resembles a fiddler, whose music, though liked, is not much praised, because he lives by it; while a gentleman performer, though the most wretched scraper alive, throws ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... Burney's Memoirs, ii. 77. Hawkins (Life, p. 319) says that Johnson said of music, '"it excites in my mind no ideas, and hinders me from contemplating my own." I have sometimes thought that music was positive pain to him. Upon his hearing a celebrated performer go through a hard composition, and hearing it remarked that it was very difficult, he said, "I would it had been impossible."' Yet he had once bought a flageolet, though he had never made out a tune. 'Had I learnt ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... know that it is the uneven and irregular surface that strikes us as the largest, and the dimensions of a genius, like those of a building, are lost in the justness of its proportions; and therefore it is that in recalling the surpassing excellence of our guest as an artistical performer, one is really at a loss to say in what line of character he has excelled the most. The Titanic grandeur of Lear, the human debasement of Werner, the frank vivacity of Henry V, the gloomy and timorous guilt of King John, or that—his last—personation ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... the performers were born musicians. The principal opera house, or rather that in which the principal singers are engaged, is near the palace, and is called Im Theater naechst dem Kaernthnerthoc. Here I saw the Marriage of Figaro performed with great spirit and eclat. A young lady, a new performer of the name, of Wranizth, played Susannah in a style exquisitely naive and effective. She was one of the most natural performers I ever saw; and her voice seemed to possess equal sweetness and compass. She is a rising favourite, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... practised; indeed, it was rarely that we visited their habitations without seeing some engaged in them. One of these our gentlemen saw at Winter Island, on an occasion when most of the men were absent from the huts on a sealing excursion, and in this Iligliuk was the chief performer. Being requested to amuse them in this way, she suddenly unbound her hair, platted it, tied both ends together to keep it out of her way, and then, stepping out into the middle of the hut, began to make the most hideous faces that can be conceived, by drawing both lips into her mouth, ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... man and a famous Professor was he, As the great Alexander now may be, Whose fame not yet o'erpast is: Or that new Scotch performer Who is fiercer and warmer, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton |
