"Story-telling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... acquaintance, we lose this sense of obtrusiveness. Morris, in this poem, uses alliteration, but so skilfully that only the reader that seeks it discovers it. A less superb artist would have made it stick out in every line, so that the device would be a hindrance to the story-telling. As it is, nowhere in the more than nine thousand lines of Sigurd the Volsung is this alliteration an excrescence, but everywhere it is woven into the grand design of a fabric which is the richer for ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... not have thought it; you were his mother," Mrs. Wade, or Mrs. Comerford, said simply. Then she settled down as to a story-telling. ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... been working for my father five years before I was born. He was not a strong man and had never been able to carry the wide swath of the other help in the fields, but we all loved him for his kindness and his knack of story-telling. He was a bachelor who came over the mountain from Pleasant Valley, a little bundle of clothes on his shoulder, and bringing a name that enriched the nomenclature of our neighbourhood. It ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... Slawkenbergius de Nasis is extremely scarce, it may not be unacceptable to the learned reader to see the specimen of a few pages of his original; I will make no reflection upon it, but that his story-telling Latin is much more concise than his philosophic—and, I think, has ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... with the second guard, and the others had gathered around the camp-fire for their nightly story-telling. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... been transferred to a china dish, and the browned butter was ready to pour over it. The potatoes were steaming themselves into mealy delicacy, and Aunt Jane peered into the stove where the dumplings were taking on a golden brown. Her story-telling evidently did not interfere with her culinary skill, ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... was good their spirits rose and there were many rounds of singing and story-telling as they sat clustered together like bees under the lee of the deck-house, and in all of these ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... to develop this larger community sense are games, athletic sports of all kinds, including team work and competition between small, well-knit groups. Folk dancing and other forms of amusement, such as dramatics, pageants, and story-telling, serve a similar purpose because they all mean the possession of a resource not only for the right use of the girl's own leisure time, but for serving this need ...
— Educational Work of the Girl Scouts • Louise Stevens Bryant
... The love of story-telling seems to be ingrained in human nature. Travellers tell of vari-coloured races sitting round their watch fires reciting deeds of the past; and letters from colonists show how, even amidst forest-clearing, they have beguiled their evening hours by telling or reading stories ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... are not the summary of a study in national growth and decay, but expressive of the fact that a French bicycle team wins a signal victory over a group of exhausted English competitors. Do you see now how far towards the art of simplified story-telling these Americans have gone? ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... art of story-telling must be manifest to everybody; for here I am talking of Helen, as of a young lady of sixteen or more, with shy notions of beaux and lovers in her head,—whereas, in point of time, my story has not advanced by regular ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... because, like all truly good men, they themselves indulged a fond, secret, half-belief that these child's stories of theirs were, if the truth could be got at, more than half true. We should be sorry to believe that this good old life of story-telling and story-hearing had utterly gone out. It belonged to an age that only very foolish men and very vulgar men ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... the guidance of a teacher; gymnastic exercises; several sorts of handwork suited to little children; going for walks; learning music, both instrumental (on the method of Madame Wiseneder[5]) and vocal; learning and repetition of poetry; story-telling; looking at really good pictures; aiding in domestic occupations; gardening; and the usual systematic ordered occupations of Froebel. Madame Schrader is steadfastly opposed to that conception of the Kindergarten which insists upon mathematically shaped materials for the Froebelian ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... smoke was curling upward from those cigars in clouds. When supper was over and the guards arranged for the night, story-telling was in order. This cattle-buyer with us lived in Kansas City and gave us several good ones. He told us of an attempted robbery of a bank which had occurred a few days before in a western town. As a prelude to the tale, he gave us the ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... ours together." He then began his tale of the Vampire; and, having the whole arranged in his head, repeated to them a sketch of the story[120] one evening,—but, from the narrative being in prose, made but little progress in filling up his outline. The most memorable result, indeed, of their story-telling compact, was Mrs. Shelley's wild and powerful romance of Frankenstein,—one of those original conceptions that take hold of the public mind at ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Lincoln's habit of story-telling the introduction of a story at the end of a speech may not seem strange. But, as a matter of fact, this is the only case of the kind that has been noted, and a careful reading of the speeches shows either that they were ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... inmates of both camps were gathered in a great circle about the fire, singing, jesting and story-telling, both girls forgot their weariness and might have been heard singing the same "merrily we roll along" with great zest and ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... such "good things" which make Chaucer a constant delight to those who, by a very little practice, can understand him almost as easily as Shakespeare. Moreover he was a careful artist; he knew the principles of poetry and of story-telling, and before he wrote a song or a tale he considered both his subject and his audience, repeating to himself ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... an added charm in Griffiths that he liked Philip. They were all sober people, and the wine they had drunk went to their heads. Griffiths became more talkative and so boisterous that Philip, amused, had to beg him to be quiet. He had a gift for story-telling, and his adventures lost nothing of their romance and their laughter in his narration. He played in all of them a gallant, humorous part. Mildred, her eyes shining with excitement, urged him on. He poured out anecdote after anecdote. When the lights began ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... imagining them uttered, and then imagining what they would mean if uttered. What, then, shall be said of the delight of sitting at one's ease, with closed eyes, listening to the same story poured into one's ears in the strong, sweet, musical tones of a perfect mistress of the art of story-telling, and of the expression and excitation by means of ...
— With The Eyes Shut - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... bigwigs till I have explained that it is in accordance with his usual character to do so. This is unartistic on my part, and shows want of imagination as well as want of skill. Whether or not I can atone for these faults by straightforward, simple, plain story-telling—that, indeed, is very doubtful. ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... play dealing with the conspiracy of Count Fiesco at Genoa in the year 1547. He had also won his spurs as a poet and a critic. His Anthology for 1782 contains a large number of short poems, some of them evincing a rare talent for dramatic story-telling, others foreshadowing the imaginative sweep and the warmth of feeling which characterize the best poetic work of the later Schiller. Such, notably, are the poems to Laura, in which the lover's raptures are linked with the law of gravitation and the preestablished harmony ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... story-telling mood, I may as well relate an account that was given me of the manner in which Jung distinguished himself on one occasion with a musk elephant. The story is interesting, as it was by such daring feats that he won for himself the reputation of being ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... story-telling so hard; she could not collect her thoughts; she could not think of a single thing that would interest that frightened crowd. The blizzard—the horror of it—the dread of what it might bring to these children under her charge—then the terrors of ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... favourites, the Bhats and Charans. At sunset the torch-bearers appear and supply the chamber with light, upon which all those who are seated therein rise and make obeisance towards the chief's cushion. They resume their seats, and playing, singing, dancing, story-telling go on as before. At about eight the chief rises to retire to his dinner and his hookah, and the party is broken up." There is little reason to doubt that the Rajputs ascribed a divine character to opium and the mental exaltation produced ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... imaginations, pass; and, accordingly, there was a consultation in Mr Benson's study one morning. Ruth was there, quiet, very pale, and with compressed lips, sick at heart as she heard Miss Benson's arguments for the necessity of whipping, in order to cure Leonard of his story-telling. Mr Benson looked unhappy and uncomfortable. Education was but a series of experiments to them all, and they all had a secret dread of spoiling the noble boy, who was the darling of their hearts. And, perhaps, this very intensity of love begot an impatient, unnecessary anxiety, and made them resolve ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... free of the country. The quantity of your observation has astonished me. What have most pleased me have been 'Recollections after a Ramble,' and those 'Grongar Hill' kind of pieces in eight-syllable lines, my favourite measure, such as 'Cowper Hill' and 'Solitude.' In some of your story-telling ballads the provincial phrases sometimes startle me. I think you are too profuse with them. In poetry, slang of every kind is to be avoided. There is a rustick Cockneyism as little pleasing as ours of London. Transplant ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... describes himself as indebted to his father for his frame and steady guidance of life, to his mother for his happy disposition and love of story-telling, to his grandfather for his devotion to the fair sex, to his grandmother for his love of finery. Schopenhauer reduces the law of heredity to the simple formula that man has his moral nature, his character, his inclinations, and his heart from ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Irving, would have made of this. Roger (one may call him this without undue familiarity, because it is the true factor in both his names) has a good idea—the muster of defunct painters in an ancient Antwerp pot-house at ghost-time, and their story-telling. The contrast of them with the beautiful living barmaid might have been—but is not—made extremely effective. In fact the fatal improbability—in the Aristotelian, not the Barbauldian sense—broods over the whole. And the Cabaret des Morts itself ceases, not in a suitable ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... middle of the afternoon, when she unfastened all the doors again and set them wide, as they have for the most part remained ever since, in the daytimes; thus rendering Ruth's doings and ways particularly patent to the household, and most conveniently open to the privilege and second sight of story-telling. ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... venture on that anecdote of Jones if the napkin-in-hand listener should be an ex-envoy renowned for his story-telling? Who would break down in his history, enunciate a false quantity, misquote a speech, or mistake the speaker, in such hearing? Some one might object to the position and to the functions I assign to persons of a certain distinction, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... young collector to the tellers in Hindustani after they were told, and a second time by the annotator before they were printed. "I never saw people more anxious to have their tales retold exactly, than are Dunkni and Muniya," the two story-telling ayahs. Not till each tale was pronounced by them to be exact was it sent to the press. The stories may be taken then as faithful transcripts of Indian thought. The merits of the copious Notes contributed by the late Mrs. Whitley Stokes, bearing witness to a very wide range ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... advertisements say, on your favorite magazine. This formula, with variations which readers can supply for themselves or draw from textbooks on the short story, is not a wholly bad method of writing fiction. It is, I venture to assert, a very good one,—if you desire merely effective story-telling. It is probably the best way of making the short story a thoroughly efficient tool for the presentation of modern life. And there lies, I believe, the whole trouble. The short story, its course plotted and its form prescribed, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... Story-telling, in those old times, when books (and authors also, lucky for the public) were rarer than now, was a common amusement; and as the Spaniard's accomplishments in that line were well known, all the ladies ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... by whom story-telling was begun no one can say. From the first use of speech, no doubt, our ancestors have told stories of war, love, mysteries, and the miraculous performances of lower animals and inanimate objects. ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... at the same time cast a glance into Susanna's heart? It is rather curious there. The fact was, that Harald had,—partly by his provocativeness and naughtiness, and partly by his friendship, his story-telling, and his native worth, which Susanna discovered more and more,—so rooted himself into all her thoughts and feelings, that it was impossible for her to displace him from them. In anger, in gratitude, in evil, ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... his assent, and after an evening spent in story-telling and chaffing, Jim went to bed upon the shakedown in an upper room to ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... But in the British magazine the serial Novel is the one thing of consequence, and all else is termed "padding." In England the writer of three-volume Novels is the best paid of literary laborers. So in England whoever has the gift of story-telling is strongly tempted not to essay the difficult art of writing Short-stories, for which he will receive only an inadequate reward; and he is as strongly tempted to write a long story which may serve first as a serial and afterward as a three-volume Novel. The result ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... Herbert went to live with his uncle, the Reverend Thomas Spencer, at Bath. Here the same methods of education were continued that had been begun at home—conversation, history in the form of story-telling, walks and talks, and mathematical calculations carried out as pleasing puzzles. In mathematics the boy made rapid progress, but the faculty of observation was the dominant one. Every phase of cloud and sky, of water and earth, rock and mountain, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... Unaccustomed to story-telling, it is possible that I have neglected chronology in this account. I referred just now to the time we couldn't get into Harlson's house because we hadn't carried the Ninth Ward and to the Ape crowing at the window in his mother's ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... wholly pardonable exaggeration, called 'with the sole exception of the Bride of Lammermoor, the most beautiful tale in prose composition in any language, ancient or modern.' There is something of an incomparable kind of story-telling in most of the best essays of Elia, but it is a kind which he had to find out, by accident and experiment, for himself; and chiefly through letter-writing. 'Us dramatic geniuses,' he speaks of, in a ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... his fidelity to nature, and story-telling power lose nothing with years; and he stands at the head of those who are furnishing a literature for the young, clean and sweet in tone, and always of interest ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... attached to many stories of this kind is very apparent, and it is evident that they have been put together in oral form by unknown 'makers,' some of whom had either a natural or artistic aptitude for story-telling. In the first of the following tales it is curious to note how the ancient Breton theme has been put by its peasant narrator ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... be listening, as it were, for a knock at the door, which did not come. Immediately after that, Patsy, happy in sitting down to table with "the quality"—for such they were to him—because he saw that Louise must be distracted, and because he had seen story-telling, many a time, draw people away from their troubles even ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that only those in their anecdotage should tell stories. De Quincey wanted all story-tellers to be submerged in a horse-pond, or treated in the same manner as mad dogs. But story-telling has its legitimate and appropriate use, and if certain rules are observed may give added charm ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... which belongs to drama itself. I have heard Chaucer called dramatic. It is a complete misnomer. His genius would have for ever been unable to produce a good drama. Had he lived in Elizabeth's time, he would, no doubt, have tried to write one, but he must have failed. The genius for story-telling is just the genius which is incapable of being a fine dramatist. And the opposite is also true. Shakespeare, great as his genius was, would not have been able to write a single one of the Canterbury Tales. He would have been ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... had not as yet received a very rigorous training; and played upon their stage like children who should have slipped into the house and found it empty, rather than like drilled actors performing a set piece to a huge hall of faces. But presently my dreamer began to turn his former amusement of story-telling to (what is called) account; by which I mean that he began to write and sell his tales. Here was he, and here were the little people who did that part of his business, in quite new conditions. The stories must now be trimmed and pared and set upon all-fours, they must run from a beginning ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and stay till eleven or twelve. Japanese chess, story-telling, and the samisen fill up the early part of the evening, but later, an agonising performance, which they call singing, begins, which sounds like the very essence of heathenishness, and consists mainly in a prolonged vibrating "No." As soon as I hear it I feel as if I were among savages. ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... In making such a deduction as I have just indicated, the reader would be doing but his share of the task; the grand point is to get him to make it. I hold that there is a way. It is perhaps a secret; but until it is found out, I think that the art of story-telling cannot be said to have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... of story-telling in some quarters; in others, little but silence. In this society, more than any other that ever I was in, it was the narrator alone who seemed to enjoy the narrative. It was rarely that any one listened for the listening. If he lent an ear to another man's story, it was because ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which it is my purpose now to put in written form, I have at various times briefly or in part related to one and another of my intimate friends; but they all mistook my facts for fancies, and good-naturedly complimented me on my story-telling powers—which was certainty not flattering to ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... being asked "Who is my neighbour?" replied "A man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho," and the parable which followed is the most beautiful which language has ever recorded. Story-telling, though often abused, is the medium by which truth can be most irresistibly conveyed to the majority of minds, and in the present instance we have a desire to portray in some slight degree the importance of Charity ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... he read the fable of the Fig Tree, Olive, Vine, and Bramble from the ninth chapter of Judges, or that of the Thistle and Cedar from the fourteenth chapter of II Kings and noted that teaching by story-telling was still well in vogue six ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... exclaimed, "what a sharp tongue you have! Were your ladyship to take to story-telling, we really would have nowhere ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... have longish watches over our camp fires, and perhaps we may get a bit tired of conversation night after night, with nothing much to talk about; now why not start a round of story-telling, each to spin a yarn in turn, one every evening, unless we should happen to feel more inclined for a talk, in which case we miss a day. Anybody who can't think of a tale must pay a fine of a shilling, the winner to take the total ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... shipboard, the cuddy was wont to pass some not unpleasant evenings. Mrs. Vickers, who was poetical and owned a guitar, was also musical and sang to it. Captain Blunt was a jovial, coarse fellow; Surgeon Pine had a mania for story-telling; while if Vickers was sometimes dull, Frere was always hearty. Moreover, the table was well served, and what with dinner, tobacco, whist, music, and brandy and water, the sultry evenings passed away with a rapidity of which the wild ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... it out. But—and this consideration may afford a ground of conciliation with Miss Faraday and the scholars who hold by the lateness of the episode—the intrinsic beauty and pathos of the situation, the fact of its constituting an artistic climax, would naturally tempt the more gifted of the story-telling class. There would be a tendency to elaborate, to adorn in the newest fashion, hence to modernise, and it is not only conceivable but most probable that the original form should be farther departed from than in the case of ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... she noticed wore an air of great fragility, as though he had been sprinkled with powder to preserve him. His movements were all minute and precise. He walked with short steps; and when he smiled, as Jocelyn, already in the story-telling stage, compelled him to do, his lips twitched apart for a moment and then closed again as if he were afraid that any expression more violent might make his teeth fall out. Gabrielle decided that he must be very old, so old that he was only kept alive by these precautions. ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... he wrote down. Most of the coinage of his mind, and I think the best of it, came forth in a form which does not permit of its being recalled, the form of the spoken and unrecorded word. He was by nature an improvisor. In the inclusive sense of the term, the sense which includes poetry, story-telling, description as well as pleading and exhortation, he was a born orator; and he was at his best when in the glow of pure improvisation. It thus happened that it was often a group of friends around a fireside, or a casual audience, who were the witnesses of the most ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... intimate outpouring, with all the well-known inflexions of Thackeray's voice and the humours of his temperament; certainly Pendennis and Esmond and George Warrington and Thackeray have all of them exactly the same conception of the art of story-telling, they all command the same perfection of luminous style. And not only does Thackeray stop short at an early stage of the process I am considering, but it must be owned that he uses the device of the narrator "in character" very loosely and casually, as soon as it might ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... on the pathetic aspect of the situation. Hence it is generally assumed that LL preserves an old version of the episode, and that the scribe of the Yellow Book has compressed the latter part. It is not, however, usual, in primitive story-telling, to linger over scenes of pathos. Such lingering is, like the painted tears of late Italian masters, invariably a sign of decadence. It is one of the marks of romance, which recognises tragedy only when it is voluble, ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... see the same palate equally satisfied with both. But one should, of course, add that it is only in respect of its supposed humour that this story shakes its readers' faith in the gifts of the narrator. As a mere piece of story-telling, and even as a study in landscape and figure-painting, it is quite perversely skilful. There is something almost irritating, as a waste of powers on unworthy material, in the prettiness of the picture which Sterne draws of the preparations ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... very anxious that it should be called Crystalline Lake. It was here that the young folks used to sail in summer and skate in winter; here, too, those queer, old, rum-scented, good-for-nothing, lazy, story-telling, half-vagabonds, that sawed a little wood or dug a few potatoes now and then under the pretence of working for their living, used to go and fish through the ice for pickerel every winter. And here those three young people were drowned, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... fierce men, in their gaudy, flowing costumes, lying about in various attitudes; of our encampments at night, the fire or the moonlight lighting them up, the divans and the pipes, the narghilehs and coffee; of their wild, mournful songs; of their war-dances; of their story-telling of love and war, which are the only themes. I got to know the Bedawin very well during that time, both men and women; and the more I knew them ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... western shore of the lake—the principal of which are Kivira, Kabizia, and Kasenge, the only ones inhabited—a watch-boat belonging to Sultan Kasanga, the reigning chief of this group, challenged us, and asked our mission. Great fraternising, story-telling, and a little pipe ensued, for every one loves tobacco; then both departed in peace and friendship: they to their former abode, a cove in a small uninhabited island which lies due south of Kivira; whilst we proceeded to a long narrow harbour in Kivira itself, the largest of all these ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... for the children as she had promised. It was such a mild beautiful day, though only April, that she got leave to take them out-of-doors for the story-telling, and in a favourite corner, sunny yet sheltered, they settled their little camp-stools in a circle round her and prepared ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... on the Continent or with ourselves, is there a passion for story-telling with the brush, a desire to give ideas instead of pictures, a denial of the fact that the main object of a picture is to please the eye just as truly and as surely as the main object of a symphony is to please ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... on his shoulders. It was rather hard on him, after his work in the fields, but he felt his responsibility and applied himself with due diligence and became a very promising child. I also gave strict attention to his talent for story-telling. It improved rapidly. Being frank in my criticism he was able to profit by all his failures in taste and method, so that each story had a fierce bear in it and a fair amount of growling by and by. But I could not teach ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... of Robert Louis Stevenson Rab's Friend Oliver Wendell Holmes Mr. Morris's Poems Mrs. Radcliffe's Novels A Scottish Romanticist of 1830 The Confessions of Saint Augustine Smollett Nathaniel Hawthorne The Paradise of Poets Paris and Helen Enchanted Cigarettes Stories and Story-telling The Supernatural in Fiction An Old ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... cosmopolitan writer and has no other connexion with America than the accident of birth. A third novelist, also a foreign resident, Francis Marion Crawford (1854-1909), falls into the same category. A prolific novelist, in the beaten track of story-telling, he has always a story to tell and excellent narrative power. The work regarded as most important from his hand is Saracinesca (1887) and its sequels; but his subjects are cosmopolitan, his talent is personal, and he has no effectual connexion with his ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... astonished me. What have most pleased me have been Recollections after a Ramble, and those Grongar Hill kind of pieces in eight syllable lines, my favourite measure, such as Cowper Hill and Solitude. In some of your story-telling Ballads the provincial phrases sometimes startle me. I think you are too profuse with them. In poetry slang of every kind is to be avoided. There is a rustick Cockneyism, as little pleasing as ours of London. Transplant Arcadia to Helpstone. The true rustic style, the Arcadian ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... state of suspended animation which the temperance bar-rooms of modern days produce on human beings, as the Grotta del Cane does on dogs in the well-known experiments related by travellers. This bar-room used to be famous for drinking and story-telling, and sometimes fighting, in old times. That was when there were rows of decanters on the shelf behind the bar, and a hissing vessel of hot water ready, to make punch, and three or four loggerheads ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... this story-telling, he said: "I am accused of telling a great many stories. They say that it lowers the dignity of the presidential office, but I have found that plain people (repeating with emphasis plain people), take them as you find them, are more easily influenced by a broad and humorous illustration than ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... affection. He studied law at the University of Pavia, but went early to Milan, where he cultivated literature rather than the austerer science to which he had been bred, and soon became the fashion, writing tales in Milanese and Italian verse, and making the women cry by his pathetic art of story-telling. "Ildegonda", published in 1820, was the most popular of all these tales, and won Grossi an immense number of admirers, every one (says his biographer Cantu) of the fair sex, who began to wear Ildegonda dresses and Ildegonda bonnets. The poem was printed ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... back," the boy said. "Where is the story-telling lady? The reason we comed back was because I thought she'd be here, too. Cousin Dink told us she'd ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... this slovenly narrative is the very perfection of bad story-telling. But the story itself is striking, and, by the very oddness of the incidents, not likely to have been invented. The effect, from the position of the two parties—on the one side, a simple child from Devonshire, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... look after itself. During this period, after supper, the whole party were wont to draw round the blazing fire in the hut, and each contributed his or her share to the entertainment of the social circle. Then it was that lugubrious John Mitford developed amazing powers of inventive story-telling, and Joe Slag came out strong with thrilling lifeboat tales, every word of which Bob Massey corroborated, while Terrence O'Connor displayed powers of sarcastic criticism of the highest order, and Tomlin, Black Ned, and the women proved an intensely appreciative audience. But the latter ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... Isles, though its battle is not too far below Marmion, and though its hero is Robert the Bruce, yet wants the original force of the earlier romances. When Scott changed his hand from verse to prose for story-telling and wrote Waverley, he not only gained in freedom and got room for a kind of dialogue that was impossible in rhyme, but he came back to the same sort of experience and the same strength of tradition as had given ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... the very air of popular poetry, and the dovetailing is done with most happy skill. "Proud Maisie is in the Wood" is a fine example of the ballad manner of story-telling ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the posing and photographing of pet animals, especially kittens and puppies, which he delights to clothe in quaintly human style and cause to appear intently engaged in all manner of human duties and pastimes. His clever imagination also lends itself readily to entertaining story-telling. The result is a book that surprises and delights all who see it. Each of sixty half-tones from photographs of living, costumed pets is faced by a page of bright descriptive narrative. The continuation of story-interest is remarkably good, and the pictures are a ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... loquacious mood after supper, devoting himself entirely to Necia, in whom he seemed to take great interest. He was an engaging talker, with a peculiar knack of suggestion in story-telling—an unconscious halting and elusiveness that told more than words could express—and, knowing his West so well, he fascinated the girl, who hung upon his ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... no!" said Mr. Norton, "those won't do for such a grand story-telling as this. I must think of some story which is all long words ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Much of the charm of the old furniture and needlework, again, upon which the present time sets so much store, lies in acquired and unpremeditated qualities. And no doubt the novel grew up out of simple story-telling, and the universal desire of children, old and young alike, for a story. It is only slowly that we have developed the distinction of the novel from the romance, as being a story of human beings, absolutely credible and conceivable as distinguished from human beings frankly endowed ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... and knew when to stop; besides, now that she was near the house again, the anxiety and distress that had been lulled by the walk and the story-telling, came back like a flood, and filled her heart. They were crossing the lawn; what tidings would greet them at the door? Some one was standing there now; Miss Cortlandt, was it? no, Miss Russell herself. She was waiting for them with the news; would it be good or bad? Peggy hung back for an ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... band of devoted "Dickensians" contained among them Mr. Henry Dickens, K. C., the son of the novelist; Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, who had the honour of being intimately associated with Dickens on Household Words; Mr. Luke Fildes, R. A., among whose many famous paintings is that pathetic story-telling canvas, "The Empty Chair," being a reproduction of that portion of Dickens' study at Gad's Hill, wherein stood the ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... the Children's Museum in Brooklyn was developed a feature article for the New York Herald, and from a story-telling hour at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts was evolved a feature story for the Boston Herald on the telling of stories as a means of interesting children ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... Story-telling being now the order of the evening, Silver tells of the gun trick being tried in the Far West. One day, just as the conjuror had caught the bullet in his teeth, another whizzed close to his head, and a voice came from the gallery, 'Guess, I nearly had you ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... with which the writer seems to be familiar. He might write or talk about them, in praise or vindictiveness as he loves or dreads them, for many a longer day—but he has one main theme to make clear to his hearers and must respect the modern canons of the Story-telling Art. Among the many things therefore he could tell, an he would, he selects that only which will unravel a particular thread of fate in the tangle of endless consequences; which will render plausible the growth of passions on which, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... was making to settle their claims, they now presented him with Abbotsford, and thither he returned to spend the few years remaining to him. In 1830 he suffered a first stroke of paralysis; refusing to give up, however, he made one more desperate rally to recapture his old power of story-telling. Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous were the pathetic result; they are not to be taken into account, in any estimate of his powers, for they are manifestly the work of a paralytic patient. The gloomy picture is darkened by an incident which illustrates ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... in, followed, before long, by Clover and Elsie. Such a merry morning as they had! Cousin Helen proved to possess a perfect genius for story-telling, and for suggesting games which could be played about her sofa, and did not make more noise than she could bear. Aunt Izzie, dropping in about eleven o'clock, found them having such a good time, that almost before she knew it, she was drawn into the game too. Nobody ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... premise. This story shall draw a conclusion from it, and show at the same time that the premise is incorrect. That will be a new thing in logic, and a feat in story-telling somewhat older than the great ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... store-rent, and may carry all his affairs under his hat, as the phrase is. He alone among men of letters may look forward to that sort of continuous prosperity which follows from capacity and diligence in other vocations; for story-telling is now a fairly recognized trade, and the story-teller has a money-standing in the economic world. It is not a very high standing, I think, and I have expressed the belief that it does not bring him the respect felt for men in other lines of business. Still our people cannot ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... O kind-hearted reader, I feel myself constrained, in the telling of this little story, to depart altogether from those principles of story-telling to which you probably have become accustomed, and to put the horse of my romance before the cart. There is a mystery respecting Mr. and Mrs. Peacocke which, according to all laws recognised in such matters, ought not to be elucidated till, let us say, the ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... we came upon an artist who, with his camp-stool under his arm, and his portfolio at his feet, was, like ourselves, taking a last look at the sunset before going away. As we approached, he turned and recognised us. It was Herr Franz Mueller, the story-telling student of the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... been publishing a series of these "Tales While You Wait" in Reedy's Mirror during the past few months, and I should much prefer them to those of Jack Lait for the complete success with which he has achieved his aims. Imitation of "O. Henry" has been the curse of American story-telling for the past ten years, because "O. Henry" is practically inimitable. Mr. Lewis is not an imitator, but he may well prove before very long to be "O. Henry's" successor. In the words of Padna Dan and Micus Pat, "Here's the chance for some ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "father": he was always "Louis"—simply one of them. He married the family and they married him. He had captured their hearts in France by his story-telling, his flute-playing and his skilful talent with the jackknife. Now he was with them for all time, and he was theirs. It was the most natural thing in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... a wild jocular man with a peculiar twang in his speech, the result of having been long a prisoner in Ireland. We mention these men particularly, because it was they who took the chief part in conversations and in story-telling. The two Scots were also there, but they were very quiet, and talked little; nevertheless, they were interested and attentive listeners. Olaf was there also, all eyes and ears,—for Olaf drank in stories, and songs, and jests, as the sea-sand ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... that her power reached its full development, and she even took prizes in magazines and newspapers for some stories with what her friends called "prim heroes and pasteboard heroines," classifications which she good-naturedly accepted, as she readily acknowledged that she had no gift for story-telling. ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... used, loose sentences or periodic? In literature the loose more frequently occur. They are informal and conversational, and are especially suited to letter-writing, story-telling, and the light essay. The period is formal; it has the air of preparation. The oration, the formal essay, well-wrought argument,—forms of literature where preparation is expected,—may use the period with good effect. It has a finish, a scholarly refinement, not found ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... for the teuf-teuf of motors along the distant road prevented Mrs. West from attending to her brother's suggestions. He had had an inspiration for the new novel they were planning together, and was explaining it eagerly, for Basil was a born story-teller. Only, he had never found time for story-telling until lately. He was tremendously happy in his new way of life, although only a terrible illness which had closed others paths of success had opened this door for him. It did not matter in the least that Aline ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the stage has been denounced by the purists because he makes settings too large a portion of his story-telling, and transforms his theatre into the paradise of the property-man. But this very quality of the well spaced setting, if you please, has made his chance for the world's moving picture anthology. As reproduced by Jesse K. Lasky the Belasco production is the only type of the old-line drama that ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... a knack of story-telling, but there you must yield to me, if you hearken attentively to what I am about to disclose, you will be convinced; it is a tale, my dear Boswell, which whether we consider the turnings and windings of fortune, or the sadness of the catastrophe, ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... for boys and girls deal with life aboard submarine torpedo boats, and with the adventures of the young crew, and possess, in addition to the author's surpassing knack of story-telling, a great educational value for all ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... guide was leading my camel by its halter along the banks of those ancient rivers, and he told me story after story until I grew weary of his story-telling and ceased to listen. I have never been irritated with that guide when he lost his temper as I ceased listening. But I remember that he took off his Turkish cap and swung it in a circle to get my attention. ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... came to his turn to speak, he said: 'My tale is but short, although story-telling is my profession. I am the son of a schoolmaster, who, perceiving that I was endowed with a very retentive memory, made me read and repeat to him most of the histories with which our language abounds; and when he found that he had furnished my mind with a sufficient assortment, he turned me out ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... mediaeval frescoes of the Campo Santo at Pisa; and I have since verified it by observations on many other pictures elsewhere, both ancient and modern. The Campo Santo, however, forms an exceptionally good museum of such story-telling frescoes by various painters, as almost every picture consists of several successive episodes. The famous Benozzo Gozzoli, for example, of Noah's Vineyard represents on a single plane all the stages in that earliest drama of intoxication, from the first act of gathering the ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... differ more from each other in the art and mystery of story-telling than either of them do from the English. It would be very easy to point out tales which are very popular in Paris, that would make no sensation at Vienna or Berlin; and, vice versa, we cannot imagine how the French can possibly enter into the spirit of many of the best known authors of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... for all their individual achievements, good or bad. It is the theatrical change from the Potter's Field to the centre of fashion that first catches our fancy in the tale of Washington Square. In fact, my friend, we are, first and last, children addicted to the mad yet harmless passion of story-telling and story-hearing. I do hope that, when you read these pages, you will remember that, and be not too stern in criticism of sundry vastly important historic points which are all forgot and left out of ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... sight of some odd occurences in life, yet the very same occurrences shall please them in a well-told story, where the disagreeable parts of the images are concealed, and those only which are pleasing exhibited to the fancy. Story-telling is therefore not an art, but what we call a "knack"; it doth not so much subsist upon wit as upon humor; and I will add, that it is not perfect without proper gesticulations of the body, which naturally attend such merry emotions of the mind. I know very well that a certain ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... My pen-children are all mine, and I cannot think of disowning one, though it may happen to be born hump-backed. But I beg of you, gentlest of unfortunate readers, not to take DAISY'S NECKLACE as a serious exponent of my skill at story-telling. It is not printed at the "urgent request of numerous friends"—I am so fortunate as not to have many—but a seductive little argument in the shape of a cheque is the sole cause of its present form; otherwise, I should be content ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... venerable appearance, and judging from his countenance that he possessed intelligence, as well as experience, we respectfully invited him to relate a story for our entertainment. "I am not at all skilled in story-telling," replied the old gentleman, "but, as a means of passing away the tedious hours of the uncomfortable ride, I will relate some circumstances which took place many years since, and which also have connection with my present journey, although the narrative may not possess ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... the reedy notes of the accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the flickering campfire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by Piney—story-telling. Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions caring to relate their personal experiences, this plan would have failed, too, but for the Innocent. Some months before he had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope's ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... old man; "you have wished nothing of the kind. Oh, Gus, haven't you conquered the horrid habit of story-telling that used to make you the laughing-stock of all the young men in the shop. And you, my little Two-to-the-Pound, what a time it is since we've met, never since the exciseman died, I do believe. Well, you've not grown thin on't. Do ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... almost ludicrous did we not keep in mind its reason for existence. It was, first, symbolic story-telling art, and secondly, architectural decoration. As a story-teller it was effective because of its simplicity and directness. As decoration, the repeated expressionless face and figure, the arbitrary color, the absence of perspective were not inappropriate ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... Keary's The Heroes of Asgard, adapting it to classroom use for pupils of about the fourth and fifth grades." The selection is presented here as a splendid specimen of "made-over" literature, as well as, in its own right, a masterpiece of story-telling ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... held a prominent place in the firm's catalogue, is Mr. George M. Baker. Although he has done much for the entertainment of the young people in the line of story-telling, his greatest success has been found in his series of amateur dramatic books, which have long ago become standard. I would not undertake to mention how many "plays" he has written; but to simply read the "mail orders" for such literature or watch customers as they come and go from "headquarters," ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... novels. These last he eagerly skimmed until an advanced hour in the morning; but although they introduced him to many new ideas, he could nowhere discover what to do with a stolen diamond. He was annoyed, moreover, to find the information scattered amongst romantic story-telling, instead of soberly set forth after the manner of a manual; and he concluded that, even if the writer had thought much upon these subjects, he was totally lacking in educational method. For the character and attainments of Lecoq, however, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... derived directly from the hands of the Father in heaven. Therefore every meal to him was a sacrament requiring conduct and attitude of mind not unlike that befitting the Lord's Supper. No idle word was allowed to be spoken at our table, much less any laughing or fun or story-telling. When we were at the breakfast-table, about two weeks after the great golden time-discovery, father cleared his throat preliminary, as we all knew, to saying something considered important. I feared that it was to be on the subject of my early rising, and ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... than superficial instruction, but taught reading and writing with the usual success which attends teachers of these elements. After the birth of her first child, Emily, her moral nature showed an unaccountable weakening; the origin was no doubt physical, but in story-telling we dwell very much on the surface of things; it is not permitted us to describe human nature too accurately. The exigence of her temper became something generally described by a harsher term; she lost her interest ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... were all favorable to story-telling. There was an autumnal languor in the air, and a dreamy haze softened the dark green of the distant pines and the deep blue of the Southern sky. The generous meal he had made had put the old man in a very good humor. He was not always so, for his curiously undeveloped nature was subject ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... tale being horrid; my third, 'The Merry Men,' I am more than half through, and think real well of. It is a fantastic sonata about the sea and wrecks; and I like it much above all my other attempts at story-telling; I think it is strange; if ever I shall make a hit, I have the line now, as ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a book devoted to the special pillage of statues and other ornaments, which, for the genius displayed in story-telling, is perhaps of all the Verrine orations the most amusing. The Greek people had become in a peculiar way devoted to what we generally call Art. We are much given to the collecting of pictures, china, bronze, and marbles, partly from love of such things, partly ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... months,—just eight little weeks,—but I'm going to crowd them so full of glorious hard work that I'll accomplish wonders. There'll be no end of good times, too: clambakes and fishing and bathing to fill up the chinks in the days, and the story-telling in the evenings around the driftwood fires. It will be over before we know it, and I'll be back here ready to take you home before you have time to really ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... to hear all I passed through after leaving that rock, you will know that this story-telling is not worth thinking about," said Blauvelt, with a slight laugh, "All my exposure was well worth the risk, for the chance of telling it to a woman of your nerve. My hope now is that Strahan may some day learn how stanch was our 'home support,' as we were ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... him, and a boy had volunteered to come early to school in order that he might teach the boy who was backward. A great many teachers have discovered that the strongest motive which they can find for good work in the field of English is to be found in providing an audience, both for the reading or story-telling, and for the English composition. The idea which prevails is that if one is to read, he ought to read well enough to entertain others. If one has enjoyed a story, he may, if he prepares himself sufficiently well, tell it to the class or to some ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... Richard Calmady's famous place in the north of the county, where—prior to his retirement to his native town of Marychurch, upon a generous pension—her father, Lomas Fisher, had for many years occupied the post of second gardener. Here was material for story-telling to the child Damaris' heart's content! For Brockhurst is rich in strange records of wealth, calamity, heroism, and sport, the inherent romance of which Mary's artless narrative was calculated to ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... let us notice a method of the old Mnemonics, which is still taught and which should never be resorted to. It is their story-telling method. A story or narrative is invented for the purpose of helping the student, as it is claimed, to memorise it. In this poem we find there are four stanzas, each occupied with a different kind of bell. To help remember that the order of the bells is silver, gold, brass ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... ribbon pulled, and, though taken somewhat unawares, the boy tried to jump right into the story-telling, and ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... fantastic toe, neither do "iambic" measures always pace sedately. Doubtless there is a certain general fitness, in various stanza forms, for this or that poetic purpose: the stanzas employed by English or Scotch balladry are admittedly excellent for story-telling; Spenser's favorite stanza is unrivalled for painting dream-pictures and rendering dream-music, but less available for pure narration; Chaucer's seven-line stanza, so delicately balanced upon that fourth, pivotal line, can paint a picture and tell a story too; Byron's ottava rima has a devil-may-care ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... London. There was his historic house, a part of it 500 years old; there were his ten acres of garden, his lawn, his trees; and they walk with you over it all; they sit out-of-doors; they serve tea; they take life rationally; they talk pleasantly (not jocularly, nor story-telling); they abhor the smart in talk or in conduct; they have gentleness, cultivation, the best manners in the world; and they are genuine. The hostess has me take a basket and go with her while she cuts it full of flowers for us to bring home; and, as we walk, she tells the story ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... means this: It means the whole house thrown open from ten in the morning till ten at night. It means fun in the garret, music and games in the parlor, story-telling in odd corners, candy-pulling in the kitchen, sliding-curtains, tinkling bells, and funny performances in the library; it means almost any right thing within bounds that you and about thirty other youngsters choose to make it, with the house thrown open to you ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... History." He travelled over much of the then known world, visiting Italy, Egypt, and Babylonia, and as an eye- witness describes with a never-failing vivacity and freshness the wonders of the different lands he had seen. Herodotus lived in a story-telling age, and he is himself an inimitable story-teller. To him we are indebted for a large part of the tales of antiquity—stories of men and events which we never tire of repeating. He was over-credulous, and was often imposed ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... impressive Cathedral of Notre Dame is perhaps less intimately associated with Bayeux in the average mind than is the wonderful story-telling tapestry which is domiciled in the same city. As for this treasure of the past, it is a subject so vast, and of such great significance, in both history and art, that it has many times been made the subject of weighty consideration. A well-known English amateur, the Honourable E. J. Lowell, has ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... plenty of very fine novels," he said cheerily. "And no one need be ashamed of liking that form of story-telling. I always fail to understand the attitude of the person who says 'I never read novels!' as though he were claiming a tremendous superiority, whereas he's only showing himself a narrow-minded and ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... only wonderful travellers in this vile world, but splenetic travellers, and of these not a few, and also conspicuous enough. It is a pity, therefore, that the Baron has not endeavoured to surpass them also in this species of story-telling. Who is it can read the travels of Smellfungus, as Sterne calls him, without admiration? To think that a person from the North of Scotland should travel through some of the finest countries in Europe, and find fault with everything he meets—nothing to please him! And therefore, methinks, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... enjoyed their harlequinades and would have made them dance to us a wee and all and some tell us tales to gladden our minds; after which we would have suffered them depart and go about their own business." The wife enquired, "And given that they knew neither dancing nor story-telling what hadst thou done with them?" and replied he, "Had the case been as thou sayest and they ignorant of all this, verily we would have killed them and cast them into the chapel of case." The four men hearing such threatening words muttered to themselves, "There is no Majesty and there ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... slain while trying in vain to batter down the gates with heavy timbers, the baffled Indians were obliged to retire discomfited. The siege was chiefly memorable because of an incident which is to this day a staple theme for story-telling in the cabins of the mountaineers. One of the leading men of the neighborhood was Major Samuel McColloch, renowned along the border as the chief in a family famous for its Indian fighters, the dread and terror of the savages, many of whose most ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... turned to his sergeant with a triumphant expression. "Just what I thought. Anybody that can't give a better account of himself than that had better be locked up. Spies—aha! Another of you came ashore a while ago—a glib-tongued, story-telling gentleman who fooled us into letting him off, but we've got you safe and sound and here you'll ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... me in charge to you?" Laura said, looking up into Mr. Pynsent's face, and dropping her eyes instantly, like a guilty little story-telling coquette. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Hebrides, Aug. 21. See post, under May 2, 1780. Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 219) mentions another great-grandson of Charles II. (Commissioner Cardonnel) who was 'the most agreeable companion that ever was. He excelled in story-telling, like his great-grandfather, Charles II., but he seldom ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... whys and wherefores, as they make poor story-telling, and leave me, Basdel Morris, overlong in quitting the thicket about my tree. And yet the wise man always looks backward as well as forward when entering on a trail, and children yet unborn may blaze a better trace if they ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... As this is a story-telling age, I have been tempted occasionally to give the reader one of the many tales that are served up with supper at the Hall. I might, indeed, have furnished a series almost equal in number to the Arabian Nights; but some were rather hackneyed and tedious; others ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... Story-telling, like letter-writing, is going out of fashion. There are no modern Scheherezades, and the Sultans nowadays have to be amused in a different fashion. But, for that matter, a hundred poetic pastimes of leisure have fled before the ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... devoted to social gatherings. If the night was pleasant groups would assemble, for conversation, singing and story-telling; varied with dancing by the young people of some companies. The more religious sang hymns and read the Bible sometimes, in lieu of attendance at any church service. When wood was plentiful, a bonfire added ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... nursery, songs for childhood, for girlhood, boyhood, and sacred songs—the whole melody of childhood and youth bound in one cover. Full of lovely pictures; sweet mother and baby faces; charming bits of scenery, and the dear old Bible story-telling pictures.—Churchman, N. Y. ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... that hell?" Dan Cohan gulped down half a glass of red wine, smacked his thick lips, and began in his story-telling voice: ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... generally tie it up in a knot behind, or cover it with a fancy-colored handkerchief, on the presumption, I suppose, that they look less barbarous in that way than they would with shingled heads. You may suspect me of story-telling, but upon my word I think three-story women are extravagant enough without adding another to them. I only hope their garrets contain a better quality of furniture than that which afflicts the male members of the Mujik community. No wonder those poor women have families of children ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... but that my Memory has been lately refreshed by seeing some of these ingenious Gentlemen ply in the open Streets, one of which I saw receive so suitable a Reward of his Labours, that tho' I know you are no Friend to Story-telling, yet I must beg leave to trouble you with ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... brightly, there was a vast deal of boisterous hilarity, in which the deep guttural tones of the men and the shrill voices of the squaws were intermingled. Around the fires there were endless gossiping, story-telling, and jesting. Jokes, by no means delicate and decidedly personal, provoked uproarious laughter, in which ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... without external charm of any kind. La Bruyere has said, "A certain man appears loutish, heavy, stupid; he can neither talk nor relate what he has just seen; he sets himself to writing, and it is a model of story-telling; he makes speakers of animals, trees; stones, everything that cannot speak. There is nothing but lightness and elegance, nothing but natural beauty and delicacy in his works." "He says nothing or will talk of nothing but Plato," Racine's daughters used to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... large, oval, elevated, scarlet nostrils; we have shot at seals, and almost hit them in the most admirable manner; we have hunted for an indubitable polar bear,—and found a dog and a midnight mystification; we have played at chess, euchre, backgammon, whist, debating-club, story-telling, nightmare,—one of our number developing an incomparable genius for the last; we have played at getting tolerable cooking out of two slovens, one of whom knows nothing, and the other everything but his business,—and have lost the game; we have played at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... be glad of your help, good comrade." The three youths got out of their beds and they sat with Feet-in-the-Ashes round the fire and the four spent a third of the night in pleasant story-telling, and slumber nor weariness did come near ...
— The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said • Padraic Colum
... parts into which the pursuit of history may be divided—investigation, theory, and story-telling—not one attains ideal finality. Investigation is merely useful, because its intrinsic ideal—to know every detail of everything—is not rational, and its acceptable function can only be to offer accurate ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... French coverlets, and other bedgear, all, that were so minded, had leave of the king to go to sleep, and those that cared not to sleep might betake them, as each might choose, to any of their wonted diversions. But, all at length being risen, and the time for addressing them to the story-telling being come, the king had carpets spread on the sward no great way from the place where they had breakfasted; and, all having sat them down beside the lake, he bade Emilia begin; which, blithe and smiling, Emilia did on ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... time for Story-telling. "Our whole life, Travellers," said I, "is a story more or less intelligible,—generally less; but we shall read it by a clearer light when it is ended. I, for one, am so divided this night between fact and fiction, that I scarce know which is which. Shall I beguile the time by ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens
... go to the bottom lands paw-paw gathering. Winter nights there was story-telling in the huts. We had a kind of corn, very small, that burst out white like a flower ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al |
