"After-dinner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and there lay crochet and knitting and embroidery side by side with a weekly basket of family mending, and in neighborly contiguity with the last book of the season, which my wife turned over as she took her after-dinner lounge on the sofa. And in the bow-window were canaries always singing, and a great stand of plants always fresh and blooming, and ivy which grew and clambered and twined about the pictures. Best of all, there was in our ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in black thought of Polly, then and subsequently, was told at her own fireside, where she sat, some six weeks later, chatting over an after-dinner cup of coffee with ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... his connection with his college a profession, a return of Commencement Day recalls many memories. It is likely also, after nearly a quarter of a century, to cause some reflections. It is, I suppose, to give tongue to such memories and reflections that after-dinner speaking is provided. After all due allowance for change of perspective, going to college was a greater event twenty-five years ago than it is to-day. My own memories are not yet ancient enough to warrant their recalling. The greater events of that day ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... and when the hour for the banquet arrived every available seat, the room's limit of three hundred and seventy-five, was occupied. Outside were women offering ten dollars a plate and clamoring for the privilege of merely listening to the after-dinner speakers. Something must have happened in the course of those eight years to make such an astounding change in the attitude ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... Street is a completed day. It is a cash business. Your broker likes to talk about his trades over his after-dinner cigar, and to tell you, in the horsy, professional jargon of the Street, how he "pulled a thousand out of 'Paul,' and went home ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... desire but a poor crop of scruples, readily trampled under foot; and by a fine stroke of irony Lenox himself completed the trampling process. He, who rarely took an active part in the random, unedifying talk congenial to after-dinner "pegs" and cigars, had one night been moved to administer advice to a rapturous subaltern, in the shape of a few trenchant cynicisms in respect of women and marriage, bidding him not be fool enough to run his misguided head into the noose; ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... took, and takes, an animated part in its proceedings, suggesting positions for the guns, the disposition of armour, the dimensions of submarines, and a hundred other details. In 1908 he delivered an after-dinner lecture at the "Villa Achilleion" in Corfu on Nelson and the battle of Trafalgar, based on the writings of Captain Mark Kerr of the Implacable, at which the situations of the French, English, and Spanish fleets were sketched by the imperial hand. To his admiration ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... had created so much interest or won so much regard. He had already been honored by degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, and now many similar honors were thrust upon him. He was acknowledged to be the best after-dinner speaker in England, and no one was called upon so often for addresses at dedications, the unveiling of tablets, and other civic occasions. It is not strange that he became attached to England with an increasing affection, but there was no diminution of his intense Americanism. ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... long rounds of cheers. There was much laughter, and occasional deep feeling during my criticisms on the variations, and some of the topics of the speeches of my opponents at Quebec, especially the after-dinner speeches at the ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... looked very hot, and whose face proclaimed very plainly that he had been having an after-dinner nap, came slowly up, stooped within the awning, and in silence took hold of the spy-glass, whose glistening black sides were quite hot, and which ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... the first reference to his fastidiousness in the literary expression and artistic completeness of his work. As he said in an after-dinner speech at a meeting in aid of the Literary Fund, "Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing." Anything that was to be published he subjected to repeated revision. And thus, apologising to Hooker for his absence, he writes ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... now at the broad entrance of the brilliantly-lighted hotel. Several loungers, smoking their after-dinner cigars, gazed at ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... moderate fashion. Take the case of Demosthenes last winter, for instance. His wife told me that he dined at home three times during the winter. The rest of the time he was out, here, there, and everywhere, making after-dinner speeches. The saving on his dinner bills didn't pay his pebble account, much less remunerate him for his time, and the fearful expense of nervous energy to which he was subjected. It was as much as she could do, she said, to keep him from shaving one side of ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... of or both poulette emince and spring lamb grignon, and on through to fresh strawberry ice cream in fluted paper boxes, petits fours, and demi-tasse. Groups of carefully corseted women stood now beside the invitational plush divans and peacock chairs, paying twenty minutes' after-dinner standing penance. Men with Wall Street eyes and blood pressure slid surreptitious celluloid toothpicks and gathered around the cigar stand. Orchestra music flickered. Young girls, the traditions of demure sixteen ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... by the sound of wheels, and a horse's tramp. The door opened to admit the surgeon, Lord Luxellian, and a Mr. Coole, coroner for the division (who had been attending at Castle Boterel that very day, and was having an after-dinner chat with the doctor when Lord Luxellian arrived); next came two female nurses ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... object is to get an hour or so for sleep before the visitors come out from their later lunch. Mam 'Idger says we are lazy; that she 'don't gie way to it, she don't!' (She did a couple of days ago.) When the after-dinner tea is finished, Tony makes a start for 'up over!' Mrs Widger enquires if I have some writing to do—and asks also if I would like ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... The scope of the subjects is wide and the variety such that this book is all that could be desired in a book of toasts. The latter half of the book is a collection of side-splitting and clever stories as told by the great humorists and well-known after-dinner speakers. Here again the wide range of subjects makes this book especially useful and withal highly entertaining. The idea of a combination of toasts ...
— The Little Lame Prince - Rewritten for Young Readers by Margaret Waters • Dinah Maria Mulock
... if not to retire from the service, at any rate to go home on leave. Why he had to go he did not know; but after his after-dinner nap he gave orders to saddle Mars, an extremely vicious gray stallion that had not been ridden for a long time, and when he returned with the horse all in a lather, he informed Lavrushka (Denisov's servant who had remained with him) ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of them. Then we set out again. The day was intensely hot (March 24), and my oarsman was more than half sick with a sudden cold. I begged him to take things easily, but he soon experienced an almost miraculous renewal of his forces. In one of the first of our after-dinner bonnet patches, he seized his gun, fired, and began to shout, "A purple! a purple!" He drew the bird in, as proud as a prince. "There, sir!" he said; "didn't I tell you it was handsome? It has every color there is." And indeed it was handsome, worthy ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... on deck to get my after-dinner smoke the prospect was as dreary and dismal as it could well be. It was dark as a wolf's mouth; for the moon was well advanced in her last quarter—which is as good as saying that there was no moon at all—and the thickness overhead not only obliterated the stars but also ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... appearance of the steak, which was found to have survived the period of waiting, and to be incredibly juicy and tender. Presently we were all settled once more in the great beamed living room, Sis at the piano, the two men smoking their after-dinner cigars with that idiotic expression of contentment which always adorns the masculine face on ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... a super-bountiful dinner, beginning with oysters and ending with plum pudding, and including (it seemed to him) all the roast turkey and baked potatoes and chicken salad and squash pie and ice cream in the world. Wherefore he sat, gorged, and gazed upon the world with after-dinner contempt. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... given in the fine old hall where James II. had feasted; and on some of these occasions the Warden's table had been honored with illustrious guests; especially when any of them happened to be wanting an opportunity to come before the public in an after-dinner speech. Just at present there was no occasion of that sort; and the good Warden fancied that he might give considerable eclat to his hereditary feast by bringing forward the young American envoy, a distinguished and eloquent man, to ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... borrowing the spirit-lamp which the seniors used for brewing their after-dinner coffee, but at the last moment they found the bottle of methylated ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... us up to divert himself with his stick. He made the dogs yelp first, and then he called to me. I didn't go very willingly; he had been drinking harder than usual, and the more he drank the better he liked his after-dinner amusement. He was in high good-humor that day, and he hit me so hard that he toppled over, in his drunken state, with the force of his own blow. He fell with his face in a puddle, and lay there without moving. I and the dogs stood ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... reality reveling in her droll account of how, in the train coming up from Chicago, Mrs. Judge Porterfield had worn the negro porter's coat over her chilly shoulders in mistake for her husband's. Kate O'Malley can tell a funny story in a way to make the after-dinner pleasantries of a Washington diplomat sound like the clumsy jests told around the ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... Friend hast thou none; For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire The mere effusion of thy proper loins, Do curse the gout, leprosy, and the rheum For ending thee no sooner; Thou hast nor youth, nor age, But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep, Dreaming on both; For all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty To make thy ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... of the country and the game, and we were enjoying the change in our usual after-dinner camp conversation, when suddenly up he jumped, and turning around looked straight at Faye, and then like a bomb came the request to be allowed to go with him to Fort Maginnis! He raised the brim of his hat, and there seemed to be a look of defiance in his steel-blue eyes. But Faye ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... loaded with a group o' the real, genuine gold-sweaters, an' they entered into a fierce competition to see which could load me down with the finest watch an' load me up with the finest champagne. They got me to make 'em after-dinner speeches an' do fancy stunts with my raw-hide—ropin' wine bottles off the waiters' trays an' such—until we got as friendly as a herd of tramps. They even got me into a long-tailed coat an' a bullfrog vest; but I didn't take kindly to that, 'count o' there not bein' ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... explained the hostility to the Americans. Meares was short of provisions to go to China, and Gray supplied them. In return Meares set his workmen to help clean the keel of the Lady Washington from barnacles; but the Englishman was a true fur trader to the core. In after-dinner talks, on the day of the launch, he tried to frighten the Americans away from the coast. Not fifty skins in a year were to be had, he said. Only the palisades and cannon protected him from the Indians, of whom there were more than two thousand hostiles at Nootka, ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... but he said he much preferred coming to Boston; of late years he never went there, and he had lost the habit of it long before he came home from Europe to live in New York. At these feasts, which were often of after-dinner-speaking measure, he could always be trusted for something of amazing delightfulness. Once, when Osgood could think of no other occasion for a dinner, he gave himself a birthday dinner, and asked his friends ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... found Everett Gibbons in and was ushered into his study, where he sat poring over some papers and enjoying an after-dinner cigar. ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... Taylor with something like real feeling. He was spending Sunday with his father-in-law, and both, over their after-dinner cigars, were gazing thoughtfully ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... in public. So says WALTER. They mumble, stumble, hammer, stammer, falter! BESANT, why grumble at fate's distribution? To writers, sense; to speakers, elocution! Some books are bosh, but all experience teaches "Rot's" native realm is—After-dinner Speeches! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... Is it not the church of the queen, and the ministers, and all the nobility, and of all the old families? It is the only religion for a gentleman, and, therefore, it is his religion. Would the dissenting minister hob-nob with him as comfortably over the after-dinner bottle as Ned does, and play a rubber as comfortably with him, and let him swear a comfortable oath now and then? 'Tis not to be supposed. Besides, of what family is this dissenting minister? Where does he spring from? At what university did he graduate? 'Twon't ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... the writer took part in an after-dinner discussion at the American Art Association of Paris over the expression "the rules of composition." A number of artists joined in the debate, all giving their opinion without premeditation. Some maintained that the principles of composition were nothing more than aesthetic taste and judgment, ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... beginning of the second week in January, the bills were out advertising the sale, under a decree of Chancery, of Mr. Tulliver's farming and other stock, to be followed by a sale of the mill and land, held in the proper after-dinner hour at the Golden Lion. The miller himself, unaware of the lapse of time, fancied himself still in that first stage of his misfortunes when expedients might be thought of; and often in his conscious ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... Cat's-skin obsequiously behind him, each holding a piece of food, and they laughed aloud and shouted to see the old woman so angry. And with a shriek the child was caught and the old woman set to work slapping and the child screaming, and it was very good after-dinner fun for them. Little Si ran on a little way and stopped at last between fear ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... obeyed, and she could see that, weary as he undoubtedly still was in spite of the refreshing meal, he really did not want to lose any of her society. Lying at full length on his side, his head propped on his hand, talking in the lazy tone of after-dinner content which had descended upon him, he continued to watch her as she repacked the hamper. It was not until she deliberately forsook him that he gave up to her wishes. But when, having been out of his sight for ten minutes, she peered cautiously through the ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... made on us by some of the cleverest and most characteristic of their periodical literature, we should think England hopelessly stranded on the good-humored cynicism of well-to-do middle-age, and should fancy it an enchanted nation, doomed to sit forever with its feet under the mahogany in that after-dinner mood which follows conscientious repletion, and which it is ill-manners to disturb with any topics more exciting than the quality of the wines. But there are already symptoms that a large class of Englishmen are getting weary of the dominion of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... present good, with the risk of incurring a future evil? Above all things, let us discountenance the agitation of exciting topics.—Profound philosophy! deserving to be compared with that of the modern Cockney who does not want his after-dinner rest to be disturbed by even a lively discussion. "I say, look here, why have row? Excessively unpleasant to have row, when a fellow wants to be quiet! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... had not died out in the ward when Carlotta went back to it. On each bedside table was an orange, and beside it a pair of woolen gloves and a folded white handkerchief. There were sprays of holly scattered about, too, and the after-dinner content of roast turkey ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... with MONTAGU WILLIAMS's third volume of Reminiscences, published by MACMILLAN & Co. His cheery after-dinner conversational style of telling capital stories is excellent. He is not writing a book, he is talking to us; he is telling us a series of good things, and, quoth the Baron, let me advise you to light your cigar and sit down in your armchair before ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... loose, or the most dyspeptic of after-dinner dreams, could not be more bewildering than was this motley train of the Lord of Misrule. Giants and dwarfs, dragons and griffins, hobby-horses and goblins, Robin Hood and the Grand Turk, bears and boars and fantastic animals that never had a name, ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... Durville, during the after-dinner recreation period, "we want you to come around to show what you can do at baseball. We've some good, armor-proof material for the squad, but we need a lot more. And we want Holmesy, too. Bring him around ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... minister and his wife often joined these outdoor parties. Since he neither played cards, danced, nor drank in after-dinner symposiums, this spirited amusement stirred his blood. Pani went to bed early, and Margot would bring in her sewing and see that ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... nine-days' wonder on the plantation. He was brought in as an after-dinner's amusement; visitors asked for him as the show of the place. There was hardly a conception, however, in the minds of those who heard him, of how deep the cause for wonder lay. The planters' wives and daughters of the neighborhood were not people who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... Webster once declared that there was no such thing as ex tempore speaking,—a saying not altogether correct, but in the main confirmed by many great orators who confess to laborious preparation for their speech-making, and by the fact that many of our famous after-dinner speakers have been known to send their speeches to the Press before they were delivered. The case of Demosthenes would seem to indicate the necessity of the most careful study and preparation in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... should stick at one dogma amidst the present quite insatiable demand for creeds. Shintoism and either a cleaned or, more probably, a scented Obi, might in vigorous hands be pushed to a very considerable success in the coming years; and I do not see any absolute impossibility in the idea of an after-dinner witch-smelling in Park Lane with a witchdoctor dressed in feathers. It might be made amazingly picturesque. People would attend it with an air of intellectual liberality, not, of course, believing in it absolutely, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... a walk on the shore by moonlight—I can't and won't, not if ten fathers, and fifty thousand mothers went down on their knees and implored me to be prudent!" asserted audacious Jill, as she finished her after-dinner coffee; whereupon Dr Trevor laughed good- naturedly, ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... the same trio which had formed the little after-dinner circle years ago at Stirling. But there was a change in all. The father and mother sat—not side by side, in that propinquity which is so sweet, when every breath, every touch of the beloved's garment gives pleasure; they sat ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... House of Commons nowadays is to provide amusing "copy" for the late editions of the evening papers and to give the "sketch"-writers a chance of exercising their pretty wits. As Mr. SPENCER LEIGH HUGHES once remarked in an after-dinner speech to Mr. BALFOUR, "You, Sir, are our ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... Grey Pine ran on in the routine of lessons, riding, and the pleasure for John of representing his uncle in the oversight of the young thoroughbred colts and the stables. Brief talks with Rivers of books and politics filled the after-dinner hour, and when he left John fell with eagerness on the newspapers of the day. His uncle's mail he forwarded to Pittsburgh, and heard from him that he would not return until mid-October. His aunt would be at home about the 8th, and Leila was now at her school. The boy felt the unaccustomed ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... Book. Subject: Quotations designed for general reference, and also as an aid in the preparation of the toast list, the after-dinner speech, and the ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... and worms. The Subotchevs dined exactly at twelve o'clock and only ate old-fashioned dishes: curd fritters, pickled cabbage, soups, fruit jellies, minced chicken with saffron, stews, custards, and honey. They took an after-dinner nap for an hour, not longer, and on waking up would sit opposite one another again, drinking bilberry wine or an effervescent drink called "forty-minds," which nearly always squirted out of the bottle, affording them great amusement, much to the disgust of ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... flinging into the yard at one o'clock—no later. That's certain, because Frodsham was at his after-dinner pipe—or should have been: instead of which he came running in after him. Just about that time, or maybe a little before, Mr. Menzies had been asking for Struan? Where was he? Did anyone ever see such a wastrel? No man's account, he called him. Mrs. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... bitter complaint. Her excellent dinner received scant enough attention from these two. They hurried through it like eager, bright-eyed school-children who have been promised a treat. Two scarlet spots glowed in Emma's cheeks. Buck's eyes, through the haze of his after-dinner ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... scene in the streets of Nashville, Tennessee, less than a century ago, though it seems to belong to the days of barbarism? Two groups of men, made up of the most respectable citizens of the place, stood furiously shooting at each other with pistols and guns, as if this was their idea of after-dinner recreation. Their leaders were Colonel Thomas H. Benton, afterward famous in the United States Senate, and General Andrew Jackson, famous in a dozen ways. The men of the frontier in those days were hot in temper and quick in action, and family feuds led quickly to wounds and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... me that we were ages at table; I was impatient to know the end. My father finally gave the signal, and we rose, but while we were each saying the after-dinner grace, Mr. Kochanowski slipped out at a small side door, and did not again ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... words dramatically, imitating the Rev. Amos's fervour and symbolic action, and every one laughed except Mr. Duke, whose after-dinner view of things was not apt to be jovial. He said,—'I think some of us ought to remonstrate with Mr. Barton on the scandal he is causing. He is not only imperilling his own soul, but ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... the hot pudding and the after-dinner coffee things. "This has come on us so suddenly that we must make our plans at once," she explained. "I should think your mother would be glad to keep Rose for us; she is such a good cow. And then you can have ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... public dinners where I saw him I found him patient of the greater attention that more public men paid themselves and one another. He was not a speaker, and I never saw him on his feet at dinner, except once, when he read a poem for Whittier, who was absent. He disliked after-dinner speaking, and made conditions for his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Steyn's invitation was formally accepted, and on the following day it was arranged that the Conference should begin on May 31st. Never was intervention more effective, or less obtrusive. Mr. Hofmeyr's part in the affair was confined apparently to an after-dinner conversation with the High Commissioner. Nor was the directing hand of the Master of the Bond revealed more fully until Lord Roberts's occupation of Bloemfontein placed the British authorities in possession of part of the communications which passed at this time, ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... and the after-dinner cigar duly smoked, Sir Reginald and his companion elephant-hunters having declared that they were too tired to enjoy any further sport that day, the professor and Mildmay bade the rest of the party good-night, and, taking their rifles, set out for the margin of the lake. ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... one has the future opening before Canada come as a greater surprise than to Canadians themselves. A few years ago such a claim as the Premier's would have been regarded as the effusions of the after-dinner speaker. While Canadian politicians were hoping for the honor of being accorded colonial place in the English Parliament, they suddenly awakened to find themselves a nation. They suddenly realized that history, and big history, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... honour with a somewhat tardy confidence of his happiness, was not there. When he asked for Rainham, he was told that "the dry-docker," as these flippant youngsters familiarly designated the silent man, whom they secretly revered, had gone for an after-dinner stroll, or perchance to the theatre, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... been prepared for years. This answer was given to him. But Jimmy went on—gulping and obstructing, obstructing and gulping. It is amusing, perhaps, to you who can read this description as part of an after-dinner's amusement, but what is one to think of a Parliamentary institution that can be so flouted, and nullified by mere beef-headed dulness? This is a question to make any one pause who has faith in ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... The after-dinner scene was very charming. Chinese lanterns were hung in the trees, the ladies in evening dress, the officers of the Imperial Army in ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... discoverers besides Columbus, but he seems to have made more satisfactory arrangements with the historians than any of the others. He had genius, and was also a married man. He was a good after-dinner speaker, and was first to use the egg trick, which so many after-dinner speakers have since wished they had ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... said Mr. Belden with suspicious eagerness. Mary's after-dinner practising hour had tinged much of his existence with gall. "I insist that Mary shall have a rest. And you shall join the reading society now. Let us consider ourselves a little as well as the children; it's really best for them, too. Haven't we immortal souls as well as they? Can we expect ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... I'm right glad to know it. Well, I'll be around to the Waldorf in the course of a day or two No, much obliged, but I don't care to go into the club-rooms to-night; in fact, I haven't been in there since the governor made that after-dinner speech ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... sleeping-place, the captain making his guest until our separation and departure in different directions next morning. During the fierce heat of mid-day we halt for about three hours at Adony, and spend a pleasant after-dinner Lour examining the trappings and trophies of a noted sporting gentleman, and witnessing a lively and interesting set-to with fencing foils. There is everything in fire-arms in his cabinet, from an English double-barrelled shot-gun to a tiny ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... been a comfort to the awkward and the shy that Washington could not make an after-dinner speech; and the well-known anecdote—"Sit down, Mr. Washington, your modesty is even greater than your valor "—must have consoled many a voiceless hero. Washington Irving tried to welcome Dickens, but failed in the attempt, while Dickens was ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... horse-pailful a day. His chief recreation being a "Demon's War Dance," in which he will, if one be handy, hack a clothes-horse to pieces with his "baloo," or two-edged chopper-axe, he might be found an agreeable inmate by an aged and invalid couple, who would relish a little unusual after-dinner excitement, as a means of passing away a quiet evening or two. Applicants anxious to secure the Chief should write at once. Three-and-sixpence a-week will be paid for his keep, which, supplying the place of the rum in his drink (which has been ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... fright, facing this audience I was to address, that the ideas I had carefully gathered together have, I fear, rather taken flight; but I shall give them to you as they come, though they may not be in quite as good order as I should like them. The gift of after-dinner speaking is one I heard illustrated the other day very well at a dinner at which my friend, Judge Bartlett and I were present. A gentleman told a story of an English bishop travelling in a third-class railway carriage with an individual who was swearing most tremendously, originally, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... stories found no credit with anybody who knew him. Wilberforce pronounced it impossible that they could be true. "Pitt," he added, "was a man who always said less than he thought on such topics." It was asserted in many after-dinner speeches, Grub Street elegies, and academic prize poems and prize declamations, that the great minister died exclaiming, "Oh my country!" This is a fable; but it is true that the last words which he uttered, while ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... watering-place of Liebenstein, on the southern slope of the Thuringian Forest. I had no expectation or even desire of making new acquaintances among the gay company who took their afternoon coffee under the noble linden trees on the terrace; but, within the first hour of my after-dinner leisure, I was greeted by an old friend, an author, from Coburg, and carried away, in my own despite, to a group of his associates. My friend and his friends had already been at the place a fortnight, and knew the very tint and texture ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... now and then when some of the ambassadors of great European States happened to be guests at his dinner-table. In the presence of the French Ambassador, for instance, the King, while delivering his after-dinner speech, would suddenly recall some of his recollections of the days when the great Napoleon held the Imperial throne of France, and he would then, perhaps, close a sentence {117} with an exultant reference to the glorious triumphs we had obtained ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... drawing-room, with her amber skirts trailing, and Eliz had been wheeled in, they received the after-dinner visitors. Courthope could almost see the room filled with the quaint creations to whom they were both bowing and ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... very tolerant—very easy, in fact—on the question of morals in this district, where the gallantries of Claude de Buxieres were thought quite natural, where the illegitimacy of Claudet offended no one's sense of the proprieties, and where the after-dinner conversations, among the class considered respectable, were such as Julien had listened to with repugnance. Nevertheless, even in his most suspicious moods, Julien had never dared broach the ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... remain faithful, the northern and strenuous half, destined to move with sure steps and steady mind to greater growth and higher place among the nations than any of us can now imagine—would it be as safe to prophesy that such a momentous sailing-day will never be more than the after-dinner fantasy of aristocratic rhetoric? Is it not at least as easy to imagine that even now, while the people of England send their viceroys to the ends of the earth, and vote careless millions for a reconstructed army, ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... family was the occupation of the idle hour: she seemed to think that he ought to regard it as a life-work. She was always coming and digging him out of the garden and dragging him back to what should have been a purely after-dinner task. It was Lord Marshmoreton's habit, when he awoke after one of his naps too late to resume work, to throw out some vague promise of "attending to it tomorrow"; but, he reflected bitterly, the girl ought to have tact and ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Drew. I felt ashamed of the lightness of my own thoughts, but I had to tell him of my speculations upon after-the-war developments in aviation: nurses flying Voisins, with the cars filled with babies; old men having after-dinner naps in twenty-three-metre Nieuports, fitted, for safety, with Sperry gyroscopes; family parties taking comfortable outings in gigantic biplanes of the R-6 type; mothers, as of old, gazing apprehensively at speed-dials, cautioning fathers about "driving too fast," ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... a big boy, of very strong mind, but totally uninformed, and uncultivated. He very rapidly improved under the tuition of Congress; and in some degree awoke to the consciousness of his great intellectual imperfections. Still he was never diffident. He closed one of his off-hand after-dinner speeches in Boston, ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... connection with shooting-parties. Thus, perhaps, you may learn not so much what you ought to say, as what you ought not to say, and your discretion shall be the admiration of a whole country-side. "The Smoking-room: with which is incorporated 'Anecdotes.'" What a rollicking, cheerful, after-dinner sound there is about it. SHABRACK might say it was like the title of a cheap weekly, which as a matter of fact, it does resemble. But what of that? Next week we will begin upon it in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... the nest resembles an after-dinner coffee cup. It is beautifully woven, and, like those of the white-eye and fantail flycatcher, covered with cobweb; this gives it a very neat appearance. In it are laid two or three eggs of salmon hue with reddish-brown ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... first place, it was not five feet from deck to deck and even this space was encroached upon by two outlandish cross-timbers bracing the vessel, and by the sailors' chests, over which you must needs crawl in getting about. At meal-times, and especially when we indulged in after-dinner chat, we sat about the chests like ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... to call themselves Bolshevists until such time as it was forced upon them that Bolshevism was not, in point of fact, a democratic system. They and some of their friends still occasionally used that label, in moments rather of after-dinner enthusiasm than of the precise thinking that is done in morning light. For, after all, even Mr. Bertrand Russell, even Mrs. Philip Snowden, might be wrong in their hurried jottings down of the ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... later, six men were smoking their after-dinner cigars at the same round table in the dining-room at the Sheridan Club. As a rule, it was the hour when, with all the reserve of the day thrown aside, badinage and jest reigned supreme, and the humourist came to his own. ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... after-dinner nap," said the Prime Minister. "Your Majesty is overspent with the hard hunting yesterday. Is it your Majesty's will that we should proceed with our business, or shall the Council rise ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... gone around to Broome Street on his undeclared errand, and while the ladies are making an excuse to while away the time until his return, in the discussion of the after-dinner provocatives to indigestion recommended, let us enter a little more closely upon a subject merely indicated in the foregoing chapter, and then sneered at by at least one of the conversationists—that of the fortune-telling ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... corner, when the boatmen announce that they are going to make us each a lobstick. We land, as pleased as Punch over the suggestion. We now know what it feels like when the philanthropist of a village takes his after-dinner walk through the square and sees the sparrows drinking from the memorial fountain surmounted with his own bust, done in copper, life-size. It takes fully two hours to trim the trees into significant shape, but the beauty of this particular kind of Cook's Tour is that ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... the opening refrain, Marie! We thought so; here you are again, Marie! A simple tune, in simple thirds, Beloved of after-dinner birds; A ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... rejoice to see the highest scientific judgment- court in Great Britain recognise your claims. I do hope Mrs. Hooker is pleased, and E. desires me particularly to send her cordial congratulations ...I pity you from the very bottom of my heart about your after-dinner speech, which I fear I shall not hear. Without you have a very much greater soul than I have (and I believe that you have), you will find the medal a pleasant little stimulus, when work goes badly, and one ruminates that all is vanity, it is pleasant to have some ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... insisted upon seeing innumerable pictures, lurking (as she had discovered) in many different recesses of the library? More and more from this quarter it was that we drew the materials of our daily after-dinner conversation. One great discouragement arises commonly to the student, where the particular library in which he reads has been so disordinately collected that he cannot pursue a subject once started. Now, at Laxton, the books had been so judiciously brought ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... not know but Mme de Coulanges has already sent you word of our after-dinner conversations at Gourville's about people who have taste above or below their intelligence. Mme. Scarron and the Abbe Tetu were there; we lost ourselves in subtleties until we no longer understood anything. If the air of Provence, which subtilizes things still more, magnifies for you ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... to be superior to us in respect of three things—their facility in travelling, their fire system, and their after-dinner speaking. One of these I will not question, and that is the Fire Brigade. It is necessary for America to excel in this respect, for with their huge warehouses and stores overstocked with inflammable goods fire would destroy their cities as Chicago ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... has been given of an after-dinner speech by Mr. Webster at a gathering of his political friends, when he had to be prompted by a friend who sat just behind him, and gave him successively phrases and topics. The speech proceeded somewhat after this fashion: Prompter: "Tariff." ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... fashion that is very convenient when large quantities of dishes are liable to be needed. But for a dinner served in orderly sequence, the orderly correspondence of a handsome "set" seems more in keeping. But even with this, the harlequin idea may come in with the dessert; fruit plates, ice-cream sets, after-dinner coffees, etc., may display any number of fantasies ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... singleness of purpose which left no doubt as to his enjoyment, and the effort of old Edouard Dubois to scrape the last vestige of potato from his plate brought out a suggestion from Adolph Kunkel to leave the gilt design on the bottom. And when tiny after-dinner coffee cups appeared, the guests felt that a new and valuable experience was ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... The after-dinner discussion was in full progress when she was called out to speak to Mr. Prendergast. Heated, wearied, and choking with dust, he would not come beyond the hall, but before going home he had walked all this distance to tell her the result of his expedition. Derval had not been ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... so, and had generously whispered that if some little increase to the major's present income were needed, he might possibly be able to do something. "What is the good of keeping it?" the archdeacon had said in liberal after-dinner warmth; "I only want it for your brother and yourself." The brother ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... to which the teacher and each one of the six school-children contributed, the teacher explained to me that she was recently from the East, and that I so well fitted her ideas of a Western desperado that she was frightened at first. When I finished eating, I made my first after-dinner speech; it was also my first attempt to make a forestry address. One point I tried to bring out was concerning the destruction wrought by forest fires. Among other things I said: "During the past few years in Colorado, forest fires, which ought never to ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... of after-dinner conversation that took place between them. I began more clearly to understand the fascination that Jerry had for her—to understand, too, her growing delight in the splendid, vital, innocent animal that she had chained to her ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... Answer me that. Imagine a Roman, whose theory, at least, of a dinner was that it was a thing for enjoyment, whereas we often look on it as a continuation of the business of the day—I say, imagine a Roman girding himself up, literally girding himself up to make an after-dinner speech. ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... would of behaved the way Germany and Austria has since the judge asked them if they had anything to say why sentence should ought to be passed on them. Evidently they must of thought it was up to them to make regular after-dinner speeches, leaving out only the ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... the man of the second childhood par excellence. To the eye of history the effort of his soul was an effort backwards, because the vision of history is focused only for a perspective of progress. On his after-dinner journey to Diderot at Vincennes, Jean-Jacques saw, with the suddenness of intuition, that that progress, amongst whose convinced and cogent prophets he had lived so long was for him an unsubstantial word. ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... over meditatively. The fancy seized me that it had been left there on purpose—my last chance! Eastford House was barely a mile and a half away—a very reasonable after-dinner stroll. I smiled to myself as I ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... following Diana Von Taer's visit to the three nieces found the girls all congregated in Patsy's own room, where an earnest discussion was being conducted. That left Uncle John to take his after-dinner nap in the big Morris chair in the living room, where Major Doyle sat smoking-sulkily while he gazed from the window and begrudged the moments Patsy was ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... except at the back, where there was a board fence through whose cracks the corn was thrown in. Whenever the passing advance-guard told us that an army was approaching, the hogs were hurriedly fed, so that the army might go by while they were taking their after-dinner nap, and thus not reveal their presence by an escaped grunt or squeal. Fortunately, the house was situated in a narrow valley, where the opportunities for bushwhacking were so great that the soldiers did not tarry long enough to search unsuspected ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... future, how good it is! I feel so light, so free; there is a light in the distance, I see freedom. I see myself and my children freeing ourselves from vanities, from kvass, from goose baked with cabbage, from after-dinner naps, ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... he built a fire in the unused stove. Then she drew up her work-table before the fire and poured out the coffee into two thick cups. As there was no cream, she remarked with a little smile, "It is very late for after-dinner coffee!" ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... minister, and it is a shame to deprive the good man of such assistance. It is only by such help that some of us can hope to approximate to real sublimity. Lord Beaconsfield used to say that, in making after-dinner speeches, he kept his eye on the waiters. If they were unmoved, he knew that he was in the realms of mediocrity. But when they grew excited and waved their napkins, he knew that he was getting home. Lord Cockburn, who was for ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... mischief was happily limited by their obtuseness. We remember that French baron—Gilbert de Retz, we believe, was his name—who, like Isegrim, had studied at the universities, and passed for learned, whose after-dinner pastime for many years, as it proved at last, was to cut children's throats for the pleasure of watching them die. We may well feel gratitude that a Reineke was provided to be the scourge of such monsters as these; and we have a thorough pure, exuberant satisfaction ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Gustavo Madero under arrest, still sitting at the table where Huerta had been his guest, Huerta sought to palliate his action by claiming that Gustavo Madero had tried to poison him by putting "knock-out" drops into Huerta's after-dinner brandy. At the same time Huerta claimed that President Madero had tried to have him assassinated, on the day before, by leading Huerta to a window in the Palace, which an instant afterward was shattered by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... evening of the 6th, just at dusk, I had started up the road for a lazy after-dinner saunter, when I was brought to a sudden halt by what on the instant I took for the cry of a night-hawk. But no night-hawk could be here thus early in the season, and listening further, I perceived that the bird, ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... came out of the house, fresh from his after-dinner nap, and looked a good deal of polite surprise at seeing Jack ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... Don Sabas. Advancing to the mast he lowered the flag to the deck, where lay its too loyal supporter. Thus ended the Minister of War's little piece of after-dinner drollery, and by the same hand that ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... by a side door and went to the library, where she knew Colonel Belmont smoked his after-dinner cigar when at home. A cordial voice answered her knock. When she entered he rose and came forward with the graceful hospitality which never failed him in the moments of his liveliest possession, and with the acute interest which anything feminine ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... has enough, and to be willing not only to let well enough alone, but to give a helping hand to the other fellow; to recognize, in a practical way, that we are our brother's keeper; that a brotherhood of man does exist outside after-dinner speeches. Too many men make the mistake, when they reach the point of enough, of going on pursuing the same old game: accumulating more money, grasping for more power until either a nervous breakdown overtakes them and a sad incapacity results, or they ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... his after-dinner smoke, felt that he wanted to know more about the girl who had invited him to call at the Lawrence ranch again. He told himself that he wanted to study her; to find out her preferences, her ideals, her attitude toward life, and how the thought of always living in the ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... of the substance of the conversation, of which I made no note at the time; but, at a meeting of the Society of the Army of the Cumberland some years after, at Cleveland, Ohio, about 1868, in a short after-dinner speech, I related this conversation, and it got into print. Subsequently, in the spring of 1870, when I was at New Orleans, on route for Texas, General Hood called to see me at the St. Charles Hotel, explained that he had seen my speech reprinted in the newspapers and gave ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... women, but also the sombreness of men's attire. Not a tint on their walls that has not been profoundly studied and mixed and laid with a view to the great aim. Wherefore, when the electric clusters glow in the ceiling, and the "after-dinner" band (that unique corporation of British citizens disguised as wild Hungarians) breathes and pants out its after-dinner melodies from the raised platform in the main salon, people regard this coup d'oeil with awe, and feel glad that they are in the dazzling picture, and even the failures who ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... the atmosphere that the two friends declared the interior of the tent to be insupportable, they therefore walked down to near the inner margin of the beach and flung themselves down upon the curious moss-like turf, to indulge in their usual after-dinner chat and watch the gathering of the storm that now seemed inevitable, while Earle smoked. For a wonder, there were neither flies, mosquitoes, nor midges on this little peninsula; there was therefore nothing ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... 19.—In the after-dinner hour walked out with Mr. and Mrs. Stoddart, towards the Quarantine harbour. One's first feeling is, that it is all strange, very strange; and when you begin to understand a little of the meaning ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... not a bit—that after-dinner talk, as you call it, for forty years, day after day retailing falsehoods, and asseverating them so constantly, that you at last almost succeed in deceiving yourself, does away all the distinctions in your ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... divorce from his wife in some Western court. There had been no particular scandal, no damning charges on either side; and a club wit had remarked at the time that the only possible ground for a separation was the fact that Mrs. Kemper had grown jealous of her husband's after-dinner cigar. Since then other and varied rumours had reached Gerty's ears, until finally there had blown a veritable gale concerning a certain Madame Alta, who sang melting soprano parts in Italian opera. Then this, too, had passed, and, with the short ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... with a jealous pang, for he found it almost impossible to get a quiet word with that busy and important member of the household, and now that winter was coming on, it would be harder than ever, for even the little after-dinner chats in the garden ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... with his after-dinner cigarette, he strolled casually through Granville Avenue, the short street indicated by the address. It was a loosely-built neighborhood of frame dwellings, with yards and a moderate provision of trees and shrubs—a neighborhood of people who owned ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... sat in his fur overcoat at the open window, looking at the landscape in watercolours. He smoked an after-dinner cigarette, and spoke of the Beautiful. Crowl was with him. They were in the first floor front, Crowl's bedroom, which, from its view of the Mile End Road, was livelier than the parlour with its outlook on ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... and another, it might have been about three in the afternoon when, with Pup reposing by my side, I finally settled down to an after-dinner smoke from the sage meerschaum often ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Aunt Lora's look and manner, that she, too, had heard the news, but no remark was make on the subject till the ladies had retired to the drawing-room, leaving the gentlemen to the enjoyment of their after-dinner cigars. ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... after-dinner cigar, and leaned back with the indolent satisfaction which a man ripe in useful years may feel when surrounded by his family. Since the death of his wife, he and his children had been more inseparably attached one to another than ever, and each drew a full measure of happiness from ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... with this solemn speech, Mr. Hill settled himself in his arm-chair, to take his after-dinner's nap; and he dreamed of blowing up cathedrals, and of oak bark floating upon the waters; and the cathedral was, he thought, blown up by a man dressed in a pair of woman's Limerick gloves, and the oak bark turned into mutton steaks, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... condition is seen in the breaking up of old habits. The newspaper is as imperious as a Russian Ukase; it will be had, and it will be read. To this all else must give place. If we must go out at unusual hours to get it, we shall go, in spite of after-dinner nap or evening somnolence. If it finds us in company, it will not stand on ceremony, but cuts short the compliment and the story by the divine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... music he listened to with, as he put it, unintelligent and barbarous enjoyment; and since he had, shamefully, never yet heard the great pianist, he had bought the best stall procurable some weeks before, and now, after a taxing day in the law courts, had foregone his after-dinner coffee in order not to miss one note of the opening Appassionata; it was a sonata he was very fond of. He sometimes picked out the air of the slow movement on the piano with heavy deliberation; his musical equipment did not carry him ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... not one of her acquaintances among them who could be accepted in lieu of Miss Taylor for even half a day. It was a melancholy change; and Emma could not but sigh over it, and wish for impossible things, till her father awoke from his usual after-dinner sleep, and made it necessary to be cheerful. His spirits required support. He was a nervous man, easily depressed; fond of everybody he was used to, and hating to part with them; hating change of every kind. Matrimony, as the origin of change, was always disagreeable ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... indulged in a loitering walk along the towpath of the old canal, not returning to the clubhouse until after seven. When they had found a table on the veranda, Dan turned his head slightly and saw Thatcher, Allen, and Pettit, the Fraserville editor, lounging in after-dinner ease at a table ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... said little Doctor Keene, speaking for the after-dinner loungers, "you must take a little human advice. Go, get the air on the Plaza. We will keep shop for you. Stay as long as you like and come home in any condition you think best." And Joseph, tormented into this course, put on his ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... heritage' had given many an after-dinner speaker a peroration, but it had given very few new settlers a living. The Conservative Government had achieved one great task of constructive patriotism, in providing for the {219} building of a railway across the vast wilderness to the Pacific. Over thirty million acres of the choicest ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... arose one Sabbath afternoon from her religious meditations, when all the house was taking its after-dinner nap, and went out in the yard, and stopped at the gate. She took out her pocket handkerchief. She looked at it. Yes, that would do for the experiment. She put it back into her pocket. She did not have to rehearse mentally the sacred admonition not to carry anything beyond the house-limits on the ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... him with an after-dinner cup of tea, which she had brought into the drawing-room, and in putting the second lump of sugar into his saucer she paused again, thoughtfully, holding the little cube in the tongs. She was rather elaborately dressed for so simple an occasion, and her silken ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... and more or less touched by the astounding fact that every one was enjoying himself. This phenomenon, which is apt to burst into song or dance among other races, is constrained to voice itself in an Anglo-Saxon gathering by some explanation, apology, or moral—known as an after-dinner speech. Thus it was that the gentleman from Siskyou, who had been from time to time casting glances at Somers and his fair companion at the head of the table, now rose to his feet, albeit unsteadily, pushed back his ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... seems as if nothing more will be said and the audience might as well go home. But presently the Duke sees something at the rear of the cabin. He looks as you or I would look if we saw a yellow elephant taking its after-dinner coffee in the sitting-room; but, as he is a pirate, he is not frightened—merely interested and intent. He brushes his hand before his eyes, to make sure it is no delusion—not grog or rum. Then he rises softly. He crosses to the window. Very gently he ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... Bloomfield was indeed a figure quite peculiar to the days of Mr Gladstone; what we may call (for the lack of an accepted expression) a Squirradical. Having acquired years without experience, he carried into the Radical side of politics those noisy, after-dinner-table passions, which we are more accustomed to connect with Toryism in its severe and senile aspects. To the opinions of Mr Bradlaugh, in fact, he added the temper and the sympathies of that extinct ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... ingenuousness in his tones that set these writers, the hope of young France, in a roar. "So far our blasphemies have been uttered over our cups; we have passed our judgments on life while drunk, and taken men and affairs in an after-dinner frame of mind. We were innocent of action; we were bold in words. But now we are to be branded with the hot iron of politics; we are going to enter the convict's prison and to drop our illusions. Although one has no belief left, except in the devil, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... passed, swinging through the University, been elected to the Wolves, but he had only attended one dinner and had then remained severely and unpleasantly sober. There was no other possible rival to Cardillac, to his distinction, his power of witty and malicious after-dinner speaking, his wonderful clothes, his admirable football, his haughty indifference. He would of course ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... at the table either. Besides the five permanent members of the family there were invariably outsiders as well. After dinner Chekhov used to go off to his bedroom and lock himself in to "read." Between his after-dinner nap and tea-time he wrote again. The time between tea and supper (at seven o'clock in the evening) was devoted to walks and outdoor work. At ten o'clock they went to bed. Lights were put out and all was stillness in the house; the only sound was a subdued singing ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... that we might too if we liked. And of course we liked, for it is a great compliment when a man in Venice, or any Italian town,—especially if he is of the importance and distinction to which Duveneck had already attained,—makes you free to join him at dinner and over after-dinner coffee. It is more than a compliment. It launches you in Venice as to be presented at court ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... hint in the modern period. Lost causes and setting suns, whatever appeal they may have made to Ireland, do but rarely fire with their magical glimmer the raw daylight of the English political mind. As for that more facile, after-dinner attachment, in which it is charged that we do not join with sufficient fervour, it seems to us always fulsome, and often mere hyprocrisy. In the development of English ceremonial, "God Save the King!" gets to the head of the toast-list only when the king ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... inappropriate in one who was thirty minutes late to mess and must therefore make out with what was left. The other members of the squadron had finished their meal and were now engaged in the usual after-dinner practice of spinning some ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... found this to interfere with her after-dinner nap, and no wonder; for if a cohort of ghosts had been "shrieking and squealing," as Calpurnia puts it, in our back garden, or it had been fitted up as a creche for a nursery of goblin infants in the agonies of teething, the noise could not ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... calling itself dyspepsia, had tried to tyrannize over our forefathers, it would have 175:18 been routed by their independence and in- dustry. Then people had less time for self- ishness, coddling, and sickly after-dinner talk. The ex- 175:21 act amount of food the stomach could digest was not discussed according to Cutter nor referred to sanitary laws. A man's belief in those days was not so severe 175:24 upon the gastric juices. Beaumont's "Medical Experi- ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... up for a little unlisted chat with Vee, I must have forgotten. Not one of my regular evenin's, you understand, nor any special date: I was just takin' a chance. And when the maid tells me Miss Vee and Auntie have gone out for an after-dinner stroll on the Drive, I chucks my new felt-rim straw on the hall table and remarks careless that, as Auntie ain't likely to do any Marathon before bedtime, I guess ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... men and women have met to partake of good food under charming surroundings and have enjoyed legitimate gastronomic delights it is regrettable that a disagreeable element should be added by a series of dull, long-winded, un-appropriate after-dinner speeches. The preceding adjectives suggest the chief faults of those persons who are repeatedly asked to speak upon such occasions. They so often miss the mark. Because after-dinner speaking is so informal ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... new value in his eyes from the time of that visit of Lady Laura's. He was certainly kinder to her than usual, the girl thought, as they sat on the lawn in the balmy June evening, sipping their after-dinner coffee, while the moon rose fair and pale above the woods of Arden Court. He contemplated her with a meditative air now and then, when she was not looking his way. He had always known that she was beautiful, but her beauty had acquired a new emphasis ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Mr. Kemp entered the lounge of Verney's Hotel as though in quest of some one. Most of the hotel guests had finished their after-dinner coffee and liqueurs, and the hall was comparatively empty, but a few who remained raised their eyes in well-bred protest at the intrusion of a member of the lower orders into the corridor of an exclusive hotel. Mr. Kemp felt ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... race partook largely of the ridiculous. All the extravagant anecdotes of morbid self-love, miserly epicurism, strained courtesy, and frivolous absurdity current used to boast a Frenchman as their hero. It was so in novels, plays, and after-dinner stories. Our first personal acquaintance often confirmed this prejudice; for the chance was that the one specimen of the Grand Nation familiar to our childhood proved a poor migr who gained a precarious livelihood as a dancing-master, cook, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... me say he is much sorry If any thing more than your sport and pleasure Did move your greatness and this noble state To call upon him; he hopes it is no other But for your health and your digestion sake, An after-dinner's breath. ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... all of these beautiful ladies here this evening. We just had dinner, and I presume I should make an after-dinner speech. I have always wanted to attend a Northern Nut Growers Association convention. I am more or less of what you might call a convention addict and speak on any occasion on slight provocation. I attended a convention ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... and contempt for this woman, during and after which repast, the party devised upon the best means of bringing this love-matter to a close. As for Costigan, his idea of tweaking the Major's nose vanished with his supply of after-dinner whisky-and-water; and he was submissive to his daughter, and ready for any plan on which she might decide, in order to meet the crisis which ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... service;—for, on the appearance of Lord Byron's answer to Mr. Bowles, I had the mortification of finding that, with a far less pardonable want of reserve, he had all but named me as his authority for an anecdote of his reverend opponent's early days, which I had, in the course of an after-dinner conversation, told him at Venice, and which,—pleasant in itself, and, whether true or false, harmless,—derived its sole sting from the manner in which the noble disputant triumphantly applied it. Such are the consequences of one's near and dear ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... place on a silken cushion close to the Emperor's bed. All the presents it had received, gold and precious stones, were ranged about it. In title it had come to be High Imperial After-Dinner-Singer, and in rank it was Number One on the left hand; for the Emperor reckoned that side the most important on which the heart is placed, and even in an Emperor the heart is on the left side. And the Play-master wrote ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... happier every minute. The after-dinner coffee was not necessary to make, somewhere near my heart, little thrills jump up and down, like corn in a hot popper. I was getting what my soul craved—companionship, contact with life, and a glimpse into the ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay |
