"Performer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sweet, and free from defects of every kind. He was a chaste performer, and never hazarded any difficulty which he was not certain of executing with the utmost precision. He was, moreover, an excellent actor, so that nothing but the recent remembrance of the gigantic talents of Farinelli, and the grand and majestic ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... That gallant son of Mars is not only a good sportsman, but he has, in common with many of his brother officers, the reputation of being a dashing, but discriminating worshipper at the shrine of beauty. At military and hunt balls the Captain is a stalwart performer, a despiser of mere programme engagements, and an invincible cutter-out of timid youths who venture to put forward their claims to a dance that the Captain has mentally reserved for himself. The mystery is how he has escaped scathless ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... Jemmy was a sensible, merry fellow, and a good seaman: you could not affront him by any jokes on his figure, for he would joke with you. He was indeed the fiddle of the ship's company, and he always played the fiddle to them when the danced, on which instrument he was no mean performer; and, moreover, accompanied his voice with his instrument when he sang to them after they were tired of dancing. We shall only observe that Jemmy was a married man, and he had selected one of the tallest of the other sex: of her beauty, the less that is said the better—Jemmy did not look to that, ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... manufactured according to his own particular taste; and wines of all colours and qualities sparkled upon his table; he would occasionally stroll into the Bodleian Library and Picture Gallery, in order to know whether any acquisitions had been recently made to them; and attended the Concerts when any performer came down from London. Yet, in the midst of all his gaiety, Lisardo passed more sombrous than joyous hours: for when he looked into a book, he would sometimes meet with an electrical sentence from Cicero, Seneca, or Johnson, from which ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... am very partial to good music. My mother was a great performer. I recollect once, she was performing a piece on the piano in which she had to imitate a thunderstorm. So admirably did she hit it off, that when we went to tea all the cream was turned sour, as well as three casks of beer ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... weapon, which is held by another. The chaunt or psalm is then renewed, and another devotee comes forward howling; snatches a portion of prickly pear, and actually devours it ravenously. Then another exceedingly zealous performer—whose face, by the way, reminded me strangely of the portraits of Disraeli in Punch—seized some red-hot coals, and held them in his mouth for a time, afterwards proceeding to swallow lighted pipes, and execute other salamandrine feats. After witnessing ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... taste for mumming and disguises of all sorts, prevalent at the Bacchic festivals, were an indispensable accompaniment to tragedy. They not only concealed the individual features of well-known actors, and enabled the spectators entirely to forget the performer in his part, but gave to his whole aspect that ideal character which the tragedy of antiquity demanded. The tragic mask was not intentionally ugly and caricatured like the comic, but the half-open mouth, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... than ten days, because Hubert has told me so much about you, and your music. You play charmingly. So much native talent. You want good training, of course; but you really might become a brilliant performer. Hubert is quite distressed that you should not enjoy more advantages. I should like so much if you could come and stay with us in town, and have some good ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Navarre, though proof to the artifices of his gossip Guise, was not adamant to the temptations spread for him by Catherine de' Medici. In the harem entertained for him in the Louvre many pitfalls entrapped him; and he became a stock-performer in the state comedies and tragedies of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... drawing-room to themselves in the evening as a rule, but to-night, the fancy took Sir Francis to join them there. Deleah, nervous at playing and singing before him, was too shy to ask to be excused. She had been told that the dead wife had been a fine instrumental performer, and that every evening she had provided for her husband a genuine ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... be wholly out of place here, and may perhaps amuse the reader. An amateur performer in verse expressed to a common friend a strong desire to be introduced to me, but hesitated in accepting my friend's immediate offer, on the score that "he was, he must acknowledge, the author of a confounded severe epigram on my Ancient Mariner, which had given me great pain." I assured ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 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 ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... need to go abroad. In a kind of burlesque of the calling of the infant Samuel, she sat up in her bed, startled as by a voice calling her to a mission. She had been an actress, a wanderer, a performer in cheap theaters, a catcher of late trains, a dweller in rickety hotels. She knew cold, and she had played half clad ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... "beat" Buzfuz with his puffed, coarse face and hulking form? His brother Serjeant has the dried, "peaked" look of the overworked barrister, and though he is in his wig we recognize him at once, having seen him before at his chambers. Mr. Phunkey, behind, is the well-meaning but incapable performer to be exhibited in his examination of Winkle; and Mr. Skimpin is the alert, unscrupulous, wide- awake practitioner who "made such a hare" of Mr. Winkle. The composition of this picture is indeed a work ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... liberality, the showerer, the slayer of the malevolent, profound, mighty, of impenetrable sagacity, the dispenser of prosperity, the enfeebler, firm, vast, the performer of pious acts, Indra has given birth to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... curled his black legs together, and began singing out of his flat nose to the thrumming of a long guitar with wire strings. The instrument was not bigger than a soup-ladle, with a long straight handle, but its music pleased the performer; for his eyes rolled shining about, and his head wagged, and he grinned with an innocent intensity of enjoyment that did one good to look at. And there was a friend to share his pleasure: a Turk dressed in scarlet, and covered ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... She was no unskillful performer on this instrument, and solely by such aid she gained her food and lodging to the interior of Georgia. Reaching her destination after a long and painful journey and delays of many kinds, she found her ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... not identified permanently with the success of the completed whole. We may note that one of the great unsatisfying features to such arts as acting and music, is that no matter how wonderful the performer's efforts, there was no permanent record of them; that the work of the day dies with the day. He can expect to live only in the minds and hearts of the hearers, in the accounts of spectators, or ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... one side, a stone bottle, much heavier, depending from the other. It was a stormy evening when he arrived at the upper end of the island, and there was no ferryman in sight, so, after fuming up and down the shore, he swallowed a mighty draught of Dutch courage,—for he was as accomplished a performer on the horn as on the trumpet,—and swore with ornate and voluminous oaths that he would swim the stream "in spite of the devil" [En spuyt ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... such general interest among all classes as the arrival of Jenny Lind, the celebrated vocalist and actress. She made her first appearance at the Italian Opera House on the 4th of May, and was received with an enthusiasm never before lavished on any performer: during her stay in England this ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... also an actor in another singular scene, in which the notorious astrologer Lilly was a performer, and had no small expectation on the occasion, since he brought with him a half-quartern sack ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... honor intended for the Princess; the bystanders shouted; the attendants on the portico clapped their hands, for indeed never in their remembrance had the prostration been more profoundly executed. Arising nimbly the performer wheeled about, reared on his hind feet, clasped his paws on his head, and acknowledged the favor of the commonalty by resolving himself into a great fur ball, and rolling a somersault. The acclamation became tumultuous. One admirer ran off and returned ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... their sentinel when I glanced out of my window. He is a harmless enough fellow, Parker by name, a garroter by trade, and a remarkable performer upon the Jew's harp. I cared nothing for him. But I cared a great deal for the much more formidable person who was behind him, the bosom friend of Moriarty, the man who dropped the rocks over the cliff, the most cunning ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ran up and down the hotel corridors announcing it. "After each announcement," writes the young cousin, "a group of Roosevelt men would cry out, 'All postmasters attend!'" Two Taftites spoke briefly and "were greeted by a couple of hand claps apiece; and then the star performer of the evening was announced in the most glowing terms as a model of political propriety, and the foremost and most upright citizen of the United States—William Barnes, Jr., of Albany." Mr. Barnes was supposed, at that time, to lead the New York Republican Machine. "We have got to save the country," ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... Abdoollah saw that Ali Baba and Khaujeh Houssain had done talking, he began to play on the tabor, and accompanied it with an air; to which Morgiana, who was an excellent performer, danced in such a manner as would have created admiration in any other company besides that before which she now exhibited, among whom, perhaps, none but the false Khaujeh Houssain was in the least attentive to her, the rest ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... 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 his band ...
— The Nursery, February 1878, Vol. XXIII, No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... been somewhat cleared by a month of breezy, healthful scouting, accepted only in part—that part which included the break. Forman had the fresh start and a walk over and held the trophy just two months, when it dawned upon him that Margaret loved dancing far more than she did him—a clumsy performer, and that she would dance night after night, the lightest, daintiest creature in the hop room, and never have a word or a look for him who leaned in gloomy admiration against the wall and never ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... up-they placed him in the carriage, and bore his insensible and much bruised form slowly to the palace of Borelloni. All Florence rung with the tidings of the deed—the name of Mario was spoken everywhere, and the city honored the performer of ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... the pupils all repaired, without any guide or leader, to a spacious music-hall, where they took their seats in an orchestra erected for that purpose, and listened with manifest delight to a voluntary on the organ, played by one of themselves. At its conclusion, the performer, a boy of nineteen or twenty, gave place to a girl; and to her accompaniment they all sang a hymn, and afterwards a sort of chorus. It was very sad to look upon and hear them, happy though their condition unquestionably was; and I ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... relieved him. This was a diversion of Attention for a deliberate purpose, which might have been varied ad infinitum to procure very useful results. But I have myself known a man in the United States, who, having lost—he being an actor or performer—a certain article of theatrical properties on which he believed "luck" depended, lost all heart and hope, and fell into a decline, from which he never recovered. In this, as in all such cases, it was not so much conviction or reason which influenced the sufferer as the mere effect ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... even as a song; but he did better yet as a performer. I have heard famous actors, when there was not a dry eye in the Edinburgh theatre; a great wonder to behold; but no more wonderful than how the Master played upon that little ballad, and on those who heard him, like an instrument, and seemed now upon the point of failing, and now to conquer ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was a merry party, almost like a family gathering, not merely because most of the dancers knew one another, but because "all Israel are brothers"—and sisters. They danced very buoyantly, not boisterously; the square dances symmetrically executed, every performer knowing his part; the waltzing full of rhythmic grace. When the music was popular they accompanied it on their voices. After supper their heels grew lighter, and the laughter and gossip louder, but never beyond the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Trinidad and Tobago has earned a reputation as an excellent investment site for international businesses. A leading performer the past four years has been the booming natural gas sector. Tourism is a growing sector, although not proportionately as important as in many other Caribbean islands. The economy benefits from low inflation and a trade surplus. The year 2002 was marked by solid growth in ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Irish Exchequer Court. A description of the University, with a Vignette view, and ground plan, is perhaps, the most interesting of the whole Number; but as dramatic critics sometimes say of a new performer, we had rather see him in another character before we form an estimate of his talents—so we wait for better things from the London ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... After the "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" had been pronounced, Malling settled himself to listen. He felt tensely interested. Both Mr. Harding and Chichester were now before him, the one as performer—he used the word mentally, with no thought of irreverence—the other as audience. He could study both as he wished to ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... divided into five several distinct principalities, besides the supreme. There is, indeed, this difference from the Saxon times,—that, as in the itinerant exhibitions of the stage, for want of a complete company, they are obliged to throw a variety of parts on their chief performer, so our sovereign condescends himself to act not only the principal, but all the subordinate parts in the play. He condescends to dissipate the royal character, and to trifle with those light, subordinate, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... air with a stark quality like that of nudity. To speak absolutely, both instrument and execution were poor; but the relative is all, and as she listened Tess, like a fascinated bird, could not leave the spot. Far from leaving she drew up towards the performer, keeping behind the hedge that he ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... The serious business is relieved by some attempts at comedy by a 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] It appears not unlikely ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... Brigadier. The finals of the boxing and cross country running could not take place until later when we had left the area. On one or two of the spare afternoons we managed to get some Rugby football, and had some excellent games, during which we discovered that our Padre was a performer of considerable merit. ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... scene and medium, for our couple of generations, so much so in fact that the rest of the picture has become almost all the picture: the author and the producer, among us, lift the weight of the play from the performer—particularly of the play dealing with our immediate life and manners and aspects—after a fashion which does half the work, thus reducing the "personal equation," the demand for the maximum of individual doing, to a contribution mostly of the loosest and sparest. As a sop to historic curiosity ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... and the casket which she instinctively held in her hand, Elizabeth naturally conjectured that the beautiful, but mute figure which she beheld was a performer in one of the various theatrical pageants which had been placed in different situations to surprize her with their homage; and that the poor player, overcome with awe at her presence, had either forgot the part assigned ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... (meritumthat which is earned) is that property of a good work which entitles the performer to receive a reward from him to whose advantage the ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... time, for a year or two, I in the usual manner and he by means of dictation to his servant, who was an earnest if somewhat poor performer on the type-writer. But gradually the thread of our intercourse was broken in some ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... any of the exhibitions at the old Egyptian Hall? One of the favorite illusions was the trick cabinet in which the performer seated himself in full view of the spectators. The doors would be closed for an instant, and then, when reopened, the man had disappeared. The full interior of the cabinet was plainly visible; it stood on legs, which ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... if you are too prudish to use my coach, but it shall be got for you at the moment. We won't have your own chairman and links to chatter and betray you before you have played the ghost. Remember you come to my party not as a guest, but as a performer. If they ask why Lady Fareham is absent I shall say you refused to take part ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... of air to the pipes was obtained from the pressure of water, and a receptacle partly filled with water was an essential part of every Roman organ. From this feature it was called the water-organ. The Emperor Nero had been a notable performer on the water-organ and had interested himself in ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... performer finds that the pedals in which he puts his feet will not allow of a good circular stroke. He will observe, however, that there is a saddle in which—especially while the horse is trotting—he is expected to seat himself from time to time. But it is ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... the names of the great faeries, and in a moment or two she said that she could hear music far inside the rocks, and then a sound of confused talking, and of people stamping their feet as if to applaud some unseen performer. Up to this my other friend had been walking to and fro some yards off, but now he passed close to us, and as he did so said suddenly that we were going to be interrupted, for he heard the laughter of children somewhere beyond the rocks. We were, however, quite alone. The spirits of the ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... doorway, and received from your hostess the cordial shake of the hand or formal bow which makes you free of the place. So, with patience and perseverance you work your way at last into the dancing-room, and you now see what people come here for—dancing, of course. Each performer has about eighteen inches of standing room, and on that space must be enacted in hopeless pantomime the intricate evolutions of the quadrille, or the rotatory struggles of the waltz. Sliding and smiling, and edging and crushing, the conscientious dancers try to fulfil their duties, and much confusion ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... such an interruption as that broke up the performance for the time being, and Toby was obliged to exert all his authority to disentangle the monkey from the performer. ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... said Charley, naming the principal stage performer of the day. 'If one is to go the whole hog, one had better do ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... his stubborn nature by means of cunning sounds. But the cajolery of pipe or string was just as powerless to enfeeble that dogged warrior. When he heard it, he felt that the respect paid him savoured more of pretence than of love. Hence the crestfallen performer seemed to be playing to a statue rather than a man, and learnt that it is vain for buffoons to assail with, their tricks a settled and weighty sternness, and that a mighty mass cannot be shaken with the idle puffing of the lips. For Starkad ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... forced his way into the very center of the bunch of wild horses, wheeling and doubling and riding like a circus performer, to avoid the batteries of flying heels, until he was close to the wicked black stallion, which was all that held the bunch together and prevented it from being broken up and driven to the upper end of ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... "O king, O foremost of Janaka's race, thou art the paramount sovereign and all power reposeth in thee. In times of old, king Yayati was the celebrator of sacrifices. And in the present age, thou it is that art performer thereof. We have heard that the learned Vandin, after defeating (in controversy) men expert in discussion, causeth them to be drowned by faithful servants employed by thee. Hearing this, I have come before these Brahmanas, to expound the doctrine of the ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... story of Pyramus and Thisbe, and to have got his brothers and sisters to perform it. Panizzi doubts the possibility of these precocious private theatricals; but considering what is called "writing" on the part of children, and that only one other performer was required in the piece, or at best a third for the lion (which some little brother might have "roared like any sucking-dove"), I cannot see good reason for disbelieving the story. Pope was not twelve years old when he turned the siege of Troy into a play, and got his school-fellows to perform ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... conservatory or academy where they obtained their instruction. Musicians who appear in public generally possess, along with musical ability, a more or less impressive personality. A number of teachers who have made a decided success are in receipt of good incomes. A performer or singer needs to have unusual ability to earn a large income. Women musicians not infrequently make fine accompanists and may devote themselves to this branch of their art. In general, what has been said of the remuneration in other arts applies to music. But the systematizing of ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... Squirrels is another sport. "I first witnessed," writes the one to whom we have above alluded, "this manner of procuring squirrels, while near the town of Frankfort. The performer was the celebrated Daniel Boone. We walked out together and followed the rocky margins of the Kentucky river, until we reached a piece of flat land, thickly covered with black walnuts, oaks, and hickories. Squirrels were ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... whose arrows laid His foemen low, his word obeyed; And Rama thus again addressed The swift performer of his hest: "Prepare the venison thou hast shot, To sacrifice for this our cot. Haste, brother dear, for this the hour, And this the day of certain power." Then glorious Lakshman took the buck His arrow in the wood had struck; Bearing his mighty load he came, And laid it in the kindled flame. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... been like that!" she began again. "His father was a tailor and I kept a shop. In the beginning all went well for we had plenty of money and a decent home. My husband worked for a circus and shortly a performer caught his eye and he followed her into the world when the ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... recognized their sentinel when I glanced out of my window. He is a harmless enough fellow, Parker by name, a garroter by trade, and a remarkable performer upon the jew's-harp. I cared nothing for him. But I cared a great deal for the much more formidable person who was behind him, the bosom friend of Moriarty, the man who dropped the rocks over the cliff, the most cunning and dangerous criminal in London. That is the man who is after me to-night ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... any one who dislikes dancing as heartily as I have always disliked it in manhood, should have been rather a brilliant performer when a boy. Our dancing-master was extremely pleased with me, and encouraged me by many compliments; nay, he even went so far as to teach me a sailor's hornpipe, which I danced in public as a pas seul when the school gave a theatrical entertainment on the approach ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... rejecting, coyly bewitching, and at last yielding as lightly and as immaterially as the flickering shadows that fell upon them from the waving trees overhead. The master was fascinated yet troubled. What if there had been older spectators? Would the parents take the performance as innocently as the performer and her little audience? He thought it necessary later to suggest this delicately to the child. Her temper rose, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... great outside world had found their way into this fairyland, but all except one had been companions of Dorothy and had turned out to be very agreeable people. The exception I speak of was the wonderful Wizard of Oz, a sleight-of-hand performer from Omaha who went up in a balloon and was carried by a current of air to the Emerald City. His queer and puzzling tricks made the people of Oz believe him a great wizard for a time, and he ruled over them ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... was a twin brother of Gil Alvarez. They were known among their few friends as Jack and Gil. They were trained athletes; their father had been a circus performer, and under peculiar circumstances the two brothers had been trained for the profession, but owing to reasons satisfactory to themselves, and as recorded in previous records of their exploits, they ...
— Two Wonderful Detectives - Jack and Gil's Marvelous Skill • Harlan Page Halsey
... categorical information "now of the planetary and now of the fixed," might put one in mind of Hecate's mode of ascending in a machine from the stage, "midst troops of spirits," in which you now admire the skill of the artist, and next tremble for the fate of the performer, fearing that the audacity of the attempt will turn his head or break his neck. The style of these "Discourses" also, though not elegant or poetical, was, like the subject, intricate and endless. It ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... the smoke of that engagement cleared away, secure of his ship. I suppose he was about thirty: a powerful, active man, with a blue eye, a thick head of hair, about the colour of oakum and growing low over the brow; clean-shaved and lean about the jaw; a good singer; a good performer on that sea-instrument, the accordion; a quick observer, a close reasoner; when he pleased, of a really elegant address; and when he chose, the ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the advent of a performer whose theatrical reputation, notwithstanding the wonderful sensation it created for a couple of seasons, was not destined to survive his childhood. The brief furore he excited, enabled his friends to lay by for him a considerable fortune, which ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... should characterize the Exhortative? The performer should appeal, beseech, and implore, as the ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... divided into five several distinct principalities, besides the supreme. There is indeed this difference from the Saxon times, that as in the itinerant exhibitions of the stage, for want of a complete company, they are obliged to throw a variety of parts on their chief performer; so our sovereign condescends himself to act not only the principal, but all the subordinate, parts in the play. He condescends to dissipate the royal character, and to trifle with those light, subordinate, lacquered sceptres in those hands that ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... normally involving three persons: the composer, the performer, and the listener. Until the present generation, the role of the listener was normally quite passive. All that he had to do was to keep his ears open to the music, and further, when required, his ears open to words and his ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... acquaintance should assume for me the interest of a drama—a scene of it played every night, with interludes every day, in public drives and excursions—would not be wonderful to you, could I have drawn the portrait of the principal performer in it, so that you would understand its novelty. I had never seen such a woman, and I was intensely interested to know how she would bear temptation. The peculiar character of the prince I easily understood; and I felt at once, that of all stages of an accomplished ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... note of a sweeter, but not less exciting music. For, according to Hellenic custom, to the rowers was allotted a musician, with whose harmony their oars, when first putting forth to sea, kept time. And on this occasion Alcman superseded the wonted performer by his own more popular song and the melody of his richer voice. Standing by the mainmast, and holding the large harp, which was stricken by the quill, its strings being deepened by a sounding-board, he chanted an Io Paean to the Dorian god of light and poesy. The ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... [Performance of Music.] — N. musician, artiste, performer, player, minstrel; bard &c. (poet) 597; [specific types of musicians] accompanist, accordionist, instrumentalist, organist, pianist, violinist, flautist; harper, fiddler, fifer[obs3], trumpeter, piper, drummer; catgut scraper. band, orchestral waits. vocalist, melodist; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... lyrist like Lodge, Nash, or Constable, to fitly phrase Paula's presentation of herself at this moment of absolute abandonment to every muscular whim that could take possession of such a supple form. The white manilla ropes clung about the performer like snakes as she took her exercise, and the colour in her face deepened as she went on. Captain De Stancy felt that, much as he had seen in early life of beauty in woman, he had never seen beauty of such a real and living sort as this. A recollection of his vow, together with a sense that to ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... produced at the Park Theater, Philadelphia, on Christmas Eve. It was a success, but not a lavish one. The play was well written and staged, and Elsie Leslie was charming enough in her parts, but in the duality lay the difficulty. The strongest scenes in the story had to be omitted when one performer played both Tom Canty and the little Prince. The play came to New York—to the Broadway Theater—and was well received. On the opening night there Mark Twain made a speech, in which he said that the presentation of "The Prince and the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of an ardent genius shining as an exception to his race. Amongst the few, there were two brothers named Luna—the one was a notably skilful performer on the guitar and violin, who, however, died at an early age. The other, Juan Luna, developed a natural ability for painting. A work of his own conception—the "Spoliarium," executed by him in Rome in 1884—gained the second prize at the Madrid Academy Exhibition of Oil Paintings. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... very prettily, but 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 ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... 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] ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... performance is a great success, the actors will have the credit of it, and will probably be receiving compliments amongst the audience whilst the stage-manager is blowing out the guttering footlights, or showing the youngest performer how to get the paint off his cheeks, without taking the skin off into the bargain. And if the performance is a failure, nine of the performers will have nine separate sets of proofs that it was due to the stage-manager's ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... road dipping downward among the chestnuts and olives. There was no one within sight but a young man who slowly trudged upward with his coat slung over his shoulder and his hat upon his ear in the manner of a cavalier in an opera. Like an operatic performer too he sang as he came; the spectacle, generally, was operatic, and as his vocal flourishes reached my ear I said to myself that in Italy accident was always romantic and that such a figure had been exactly what was wanted to set off the landscape. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... practice. The best time to set vigorously about such practice would be when you have but just listened with dismay to the injuries inflicted on some favourite poet by the laboured or tasteless reading of an unpractised performer. ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... in an entertainment that the Club gave a few weeks ago for the Christmas Ship and I think he received more applause than any other performer." ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... modulation became impossible. Mr. Eulenstein has remedied that inconvenience, by joining sixteen Jew's harps, which he tunes by placing smaller or greater quantities of sealing-wax at the extremity of the tongue. Each harp then sounds one of the notes of the gamut, diatonic or chromatic, and the performer can fill all the intervals, and pass all the tones, by changing the harp. That these mutations may not interrupt the measure, one harp must always be kept in advance, in the same manner as a good reader advances the eye, not upon the word which he pronounces, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 269, August 18, 1827 • Various
... scene had been prophetic. In that moment Maurice had instinctively taken his place in the mask of the spring and she hers. Their bodies had uttered their minds. She was the passionate watcher, but he was the passionate performer. Therefore she was his audience. She had travelled out to be in Sicily, but he, without knowing it, had travelled out ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... minstrels and received with hilarity by the audience. At another place he would be entertained by listening to jokes of his own invention, coarsely retailed by the clown of the ring, and shouted at by the public as capital waggery on the part of the performer. His own good things from the lips of another "came back to him with alienated majesty," as Emerson expresses it. Then the thought would steal over him—Why should that man gain a living with my witticisms, and I not use them in the same way myself? why not be the utterer of my ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... we had been in the country. Their music consisted of two sticks of very hard wood, one of which the musician held upon his breast, in the manner of a violin, and struck it with the other, in good and regular time; the performer, who was a stout strong voiced man, sung the whole time, and frequently applied those graces in music, the piano and forte; he was assisted by several young boys and girls, who sat at his feet, and by their manner of crossing the thighs, ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... a performance, we are concerned with appreciating the merit of it. A man with a bad headache, however gallant, is not likely to talk as well as a man in perfect health and high spirits; but if we are not considering the performance, but the virtues of the performer, we might admire the man who pumped up talk when he was feeling wretched more than the man from ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... great 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 some of the singular rites attributed by Von Hammer ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... airs, opera bits—all delivered in' a resounding barytone and accompanied by thumping chords improvised by the performer. Out through the open windows they floated, and one astonished villages driving by to take the early ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... learned with ease. But all this must be learned and acquired,—not while he is writing that which shall please, but long before. His language must come from him as music comes from the rapid touch of the great performer's fingers; as words come from the mouth of the indignant orator; as letters fly from the fingers of the trained compositor; as the syllables tinkled out by little bells form themselves to the ear of the telegraphist. A man who thinks much of his words as he writes them will generally leave ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... sounds flat, from flatulence; and he fetches breath, like a drowning kitten, whenever he can. Notwithstanding all this, his music gains ground, for it walks with him from end to end of the street. He is your only performer that requires not many entreaties for a song; for he will chant, without asking, to a street cur, or a parish post. His only backwardness is to a stave after dinner, seeing that he never dines; for he sings for bread, and though corn has ears, sings very commonly in vain. As ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... The way in which Marshall proceeded to do this was to treat the phrase "perform a part" as demanding "a levying of war" on the part of the performer. (Robertson, "Reports," vol. II, p. 438.) But this explanation will not hold water. For what then becomes of the phrase "scene of action" in the passage just quoted? What is the difference between the part to be performed "however minute," and the "action" ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... his own. "Canon M'Neill's well-known talents as a finished orator would make such a public controversy an unfair trial of strength between them, because he himself was no orator. He had in fact no practice in public speaking. His friends, however, told him that he was no mean performer on the violin, and if he agreed to meet Canon M'Neill, he would only make one condition, that the Canon should open the meeting, and say all he had to say, after which he (Mr. Newman) would conclude with a tune on the violin. The public would then be able to judge which was the better man."[21] ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... thousand armchairs. And gradually, as I pondered and brooded over the thought, there came upon me the desire to commit a crime that should baffle detection. I could invent hundreds of such crimes, and please myself by imagining them done; but would they really work out in practice? Evidently the sole performer of my experiment must be myself; the subject—whom or what? Accident should determine. I itched to commence with murder—to tackle the stiffest problems first, and I burned to startle and baffle the world—especially the world ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... music than the percussion of hands, a man would execute a pas seul, which it is to be presumed he enjoyed. Again, with a riper and better sense of musical methods, the performer accompanied himself, or, as in this case it usually was, herself, on the double-pipes, the guitar or the tambourine, while the familiar hand-clapping was done by attendants. A step not unlike that of the abominable clog dance ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... a good band of music played; but it was all wind instruments. Mr. Lejeune, the first bassoon, is a most capital performer indeed. ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... situation. He was tethered to a tree, his bonds were stout, and his captors had not made sufficient allowance for the almost human intelligence of Professor Thunder's star performer. All about were scattered the utensils of a late supper, and with the aid of a stick the Link contrived to draw a knife within reach. With this ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... hearers, spoke about the deceased as a chivalrous fighter for his native land, as a good Christian and a truly noble character. It was touching to hear the parting hymn sung by the sonorous voices of the British wounded, accompanied solemnly on the harmonium by a British performer. All escorted the coffin to the gates. Once outside, it was reverently lifted on to the funeral car, which German gunners escorted to the cemetery. Four British and one French officer, as well as the German doctors who could be ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... Van Varick Shadd had got ahead of her in the matter of Jockobinski, the monkey virtuoso. Society had been very much interested in the reported arrival in America of this wonderfully talented simian who could play the violin as well as Ysaye, and who as a performer on the piano was vastly the superior of Paderewski, because, taken in his infancy and specially trained for the purpose, he could play with his feet and tail as well as with his hands. It had been reported by Tommy Dare, the leading Newport ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... They were much puzzled by a curious bleating which came from the mules; and hurriedly counted their kids, suspecting that one had been purloined, whilst they had some trouble to prevent the whole flock following us. All roared with laughter when they found that Mr. Clarke was the performer. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... written, and before science is greatly advanced, the productions of mere genius are sometimes complete: the performer requires not the aid of learning where his description of story relates to near and contiguous objects; where it relates to the conduct and characters of men with whom he himself has acted, and in whose occupations and fortunes he himself has borne ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... abatement, and exacted with the utmost rigour the greatest exertions of the wrestlers and gladiators in their several encounters. He went so far in restraining the licentiousness of stage-players, that upon discovering that Stephanio, a performer of the highest class, had a married woman with her hair cropped, and dressed in boy's clothes, to wait upon him at table, he ordered him to be whipped through all the three theatres, and then banished him. Hylas, an actor of pantomimes, upon ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... of our spring and summer mornings in New England, and in all the country north and west of these States. Without his sweet notes, the mornings would be like a vernal landscape without flowers, or a summer-evening sky without tints. He is the chief performer in the delightful anthem that welcomes the rising day. Of the others, the best are but accompaniments of more or less importance. Remove the Robin from this woodland orchestra, and it would be left without a soprano. Over all the northern parts of this continent, wherever there are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... seventeenth century used to write voluntaries for the organ, using the shorthand of the older notation; they jotted down the formulas of the successive harmonies expressed in terms of the chords merely. The transitions and the musical explanation were left to the individual performer. And Michael Angelo has left behind him, as it were, the poetical equivalents of such shorthand musical formulas. The harmonies are wonderful. The successions show a great grasp of comprehension, but you cannot play ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... love of music, which however had had little development except from the study of the violin, with the assistance of a certain poor enough performer in the village, and what criticism his brother could afford him, who, not himself a player, had heard much good music. But Alister was sorely hampered by the fact that his mother could not bear the sound of it. The late chief was one of the few clergymen ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... them crack the same quips and tell the same stories for the last five years, yet they always get the same big laugh and the same large "hand." That is a delightful trait about the music-hall—the entente existing between the performer and audience. The favourites seem to be en rapport even while waiting in the wings, and the flashing of their number in the electric frame is the signal for a hand of welcome and—in the outer halls—whistles and cries. The atmosphere becomes electric with good-fellowship. It ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... open at all. Of course, all the inhabitants know that Webster was born at Salisbury, but there is not so much local pride in the matter as there is at East Aurora over the fact that one of her former citizens is a performer in Barnum ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... his voice for a time, but soon relapsed into silence. The fact was characteristic; for, wherever I went, I found it true that the mocker grew less musical as the place grew wilder. By instinct he is a public performer, he demands an audience; and it is only in cities, like St. Augustine and Tallahassee, that he is heard at his freest and best. A loggerhead shrike—now close at my elbow, now farther away—was practicing ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... "it has ever been a favourite whetstone for the human reason. It has been frequently solved to the satisfaction of the performer, but no solution has yet won the universal acceptance that is the badge ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... constantly working up until he becomes more proficient. As in all other occupations, practice eventually brings skill, and he at last becomes a master of the violin. He may have been born a genius—it has always been in him to become the exceptional performer upon the instrument of his choice. Nevertheless, the hard work was necessary, as that maker of epigrams saw when he said that genius was an infinite capacity ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... of the records we have kept for years I have found a source of supply for seed nuts and nursery stock which has proved to be a constant performer. I bud this nursery stock from trees with individual records that have proved themselves to be good performers, I have found that certain varieties have proved themselves not worthy of being planted, and certain other varieties have proven themselves at least promising. This last year ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... criticism was evidently at the start to be sure her make-up had had the last touch and that she looked at least no worse than usual. Aunt Maud's appreciation of that to-night was indeed managerial, and the performer's own contribution fairly that of the faultless soldier on parade. Densher saw himself for the moment as in his purchased stall at the play; the watchful manager was in the depths of a box and the poor actress in the glare of the footlights. But she passed, the ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... his bread by 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 ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... up of all sorts of pieces; and one man was scattered among five or six different men; his brain was with one, his heart with another, and the body belonging to his soul with yet another; the instrument was on one side, the performer on the other. Certain creatures remained like wonderful violins, forever shut up in their cases, for want of anyone with the art to play them. And those who were fit to play them were found all their lives to put up with wretched scraping fiddles. He had all the more reason for thinking ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... The news was true, and was given with circumstantial detail. Hugh de Lusignan, Count of La Marche, and the most considerable amongst the vassals of the Count of Poitiers, was, if not the prime mover, at any rate the principal performer in the plot. His wife, Joan (Isabel) of Angouleme, widow of the late King of England, John Lackland, and mother of the reigning king, Henry III., was indignant at the notion of becoming a vassal of a prince himself a vassal of the King of France, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... upon the ruined Mission wall tipped with clusters of dark foliage. Half hiding, half mingling with one of them—an indistinct bulk of light-colored huddled fleeces like an extravagant bird's nest—hung the unknown musician. So intent was the performer's preoccupation that Masterton actually reached the base of the wall immediately below the figure without attracting its attention. But his foot slipped on the crumbling debris with a snapping of dry twigs. There was a quick little cry from above. He had barely time to recover his position ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... Elisha, the star performer of the Curry stable, had been combed and groomed and polished within an inch of his life, and there were blue ribbons in his mane, a sure sign of the confidence of Shanghai, the hostler. He was ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... laugh that followed at her expense. "So I did," she admitted unblushingly, "and what's more, I only discovered day before yesterday that a trapezoid wasn't a trapeze performer!" ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... be expected, was the most admired performer of the evening; but he was thinking very little of the notice he at last excited, he was employing such ingenuity as his experience of life supplied to the deficiencies of a very imperfect education, limited to the little ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the music, together with the earnest entreaties of the tiny performer, softened the heart of his father to forgiveness of his conduct. But even then the old gentleman could not be induced to allow his son to follow the profession for which nature had so well fitted him, as he feared he would not be able ...
— Golden Deeds - Stories from History • Anonymous
... my judgment, a very short-sighted student. Maniacs and imbeciles cannot be trained to perform any program fit to be seen. I saw that tried fifty years ago, in "the wild Australian children," who were idiots. The performer must think, ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... 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 ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... and gradually—just as he had come from Turkey to the Treasury in Petersburg to recruit the militia, and then to the army when he was needed there—now when his part was played out, Kutuzov's place was taken by a new and necessary performer. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... people, always prompt in its recognition of genius, and ready to sympathize in the joys and woes of a truly great artist, this work will be one of exceeding interest. It is a short, glowing, and generous sketch, from the hand of Franz Liszt, (who, considered in the double light of composer and performer, has no living equal,) of the original and romantic Chopin; the most ethereal, subtle, and delicate among our modern tone-poets. It is a rare thing for a great artist to write on art, to leave the ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... Often. I have played the part of the "Poor Gentleman," before a great many audiences,—more, I trust, than I shall ever face again. I did not wear a stage-costume, nor a wig, nor moustaches of burnt cork; but I was placarded and announced as a public performer, and at the proper hour I came forward with the ballet-dancer's smile upon my countenance, and made my bow and acted my part. I have seen my name stuck up in letters so big that I was ashamed to show myself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... not advocate deafness. Nay, privately, being quite incapable of deciphering a score, I confess that there is something dry and dreary in absolutely soundless music—music which from the silent composer passes to the silent performer, who is at the same time a silent listener, without the neighbours being even one bit the wiser? Besides, were this gift universal, it would deprive us of that delightful personality the mere performer, whose high-strung ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... a sorry Performer! Yet as silence is prescribed you for eight and forty hours, I may possibly entertain you, when wearied of your own reflections. I ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... composer and performer of merit, paused in his great work of religious reform to declare, "I verily think, and am not ashamed to say, that, next to divinity, no art is comparable to music." And Disraeli utters this noble thought: ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... youthful love of good things to eat, she was thankful when it was time to return to the drawing-room, where Christabel was already awaiting her turn, with an eagerness which had been lacking in any other performer. ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey |
