"Dancing-master" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Autobiography and in some sarcastic lines (Dine zu Coblenz) Goethe has commemorated it. He sat between Lavater and Basedow, and during the meal the former expounded the Revelation of St. John to a country pastor, and the latter exerted himself to prove to a stolid dancing-master that ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... sit and watch them; and in this way she picked up a great deal of learning; for she was always awake, though her mistress was not, and listened to the wise professors when Angelica was yawning or thinking of the next ball. And when the dancing-master came, Betsinda learned along with Angelica; and when the music-master came, she watched him, and practiced the Princess's pieces when Angelica was away at balls and parties; and when the drawing-master came, she took note of all he said and did; and the same with ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... education of my daughters, I spared no expense; they had a dancing-master, music-master, and drawing-mister, and a French governess to teach them behaviour and ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... Fleete Ally to see a couple of pretty [strumpets] Upon a small temptation I could be false to her Waked this morning between four and five by my blackbird Whose voice I am not to be reconciled Wife and the dancing-master alone above, not dancing but talking Would not make my ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... many a long year. Here we live in an old rumbling mansion, that looks for all the world like an inn, but that we never see company. Our best visitors are old Mrs. Oddfish, the curate's wife, and little Cripplegate, the lame dancing-master; and all our entertainment your old stories of Prince Eugene and the Duke of Marlborough. I hate ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... Dancing-Master, in Love with Olympia an Athenian Matron, threw himself from the Rock with great Agility, but was crippled ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... to a son, named Joseph, who succeeded to all the lands of the family, while James was cut off with a shilling. The favourite son, however, was so extravagant that he soon became as poor as his disinherited brother. Both were forced to earn their bread by their labour. Joseph turned dancing-master and settled in Norfolk. James struck off the Mac from the beginning of his name and set up as a portrait painter at Chester. Here he had a son, named Charles, well known as the author of the "History of Music" and as the father of two remarkable ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... tavern, which exists still, we believe, a venerable relic of the border past, was, in the year 1777, the abode of a "number of Quakers, together with one druggist and a dancing-master, sent to Winchester under guard, with a request from the Executive of Pennsylvania, directed to the County-Lieutenant of Frederick, to secure them." The reasons for this arrest and exile may be found in a Congressional ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... and stood ready to receive them within his fortifications. At some distance from him, the whole train of natives made a halt, all preserving the most profound silence, except the sceptre-bearer, who made a speech of half an hour. He then, from an orator, became a dancing-master, and struck up a song, being joined in both by the king, lords, and common people, who came all singing and dancing up to the fences which the admiral had thrown up. The natives then all sat down; and, after some preliminary compliments, the king made a solemn offer ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... comply with Mr. Starlight's scheme; for nothing surely could please me like a year of confusion, when I shall no longer be fixed this hour to my pen, and the next to my needle, or wait at home for the dancing-master one day, and the next for the musick-master; but run from ball to ball, and from drum to drum; and spend all my time without tasks, and without account, and go out without telling whither, and come home without regard to prescribed ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... students returned and lectures were resumed. There was a grand Commers or students' supper meeting at which I was present; and again the duelling-ground rang with the sound of blades, and all was merry as before. Herr Zimmer, the University dancing-master, gave lessons and cotillion or waltzing-parties thrice a week, and these I regularly attended. Those who came to them were the daughters of the humbler professors and respectable shopkeepers. During the previous session I had taken lessons from a little old ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Colonel Sibthorp and Mr. Peter Borthwick like the covering of the dancing-master's toes?"—"Because they are a pair ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... blessing the sunshine is. But Captain Bounce was on deck, and, standing on the forecastle, he nervously watched the progress of the yacht. Doubtless he felt belittled at finding himself placed under the orders of a mere boy, even though the pilot was as polite as a French dancing-master. ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... stay for the great fete at St. Cloud; he excused himself, "because it would make him miss a music-meeting at Worcester;" and she excused herself from the fireworks at Madame Pompadour's, "because it was her dancing-master's hour." I will tell you but one more anecdote, and I think You cannot be imperfect in your ideas of them. The Mar'echale de lowendahl was pleased with an English fan Lady Coventry had, who very civilly gave it her: ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... this print, is contrasted by the giddy profusion of his prodigal son. We view him now at his levee, attended by masters of various professions, supposed to be here offering their interested services. The foremost figure is readily known to be a dancing-master; behind him are two men, who at the time when these prints were first published, were noted for teaching the arts of defence by different weapons, and who are here drawn from the life; one of whom is a Frenchman, teacher of the small-sword, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... he used to say that he wrote Love in a Wood at nineteen, the Gentleman Dancing-Master at twenty-one, the Plain Dealer at twenty-five, and the Country Wife at one or two and thirty. We are incredulous, we own, as to the truth of this story. Nothing that we know of Wycherley leads us to think him incapable of sacrificing ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... melody in phthisis, gout, hydrophobia, the bites of venomous reptiles, etc. There is a case in the Lancet of a patient in convulsions who was cured in the paroxysm by hearing the tones of music. Before the French Academy of Sciences in 1708, and again in 1718, there was an instance of a dancing-master stricken with violent fever and in a condition of delirium, who recovered his senses and health on hearing melodious music. There is little doubt of the therapeutic value of music, but particularly do we find its value in instances of neuroses. The inspiration offered by music is well-known, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... asphalt; or, as some authorities would frame it, that she had "been there herself," a form which, while preferable to the book's form, is still not to be recommended. If the book wishes to tell us that Harriet Shelley hired a wet-nurse, that commonplace fact gets turned into a dancing-master, who does his professional bow before us in pumps and knee-breeches, with his fiddle under one arm and his crush-hat under the other, thus: "The beauty of Harriet's motherly relation to her babe was marred in Shelley's eyes ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... excellent workman, happily hit upon it, and made all so exactly the same that Numa himself was at a loss, and could not distinguish. The keeping of these targets was committed to the charge of certain priests, called Salii, who did not receive their name, as some tell the story, from Salius, a dancing-master born in Samothrace, or at Mantinea, who taught the way of dancing in arms; but more truly from that jumping dance which the Salii themselves use, when in the month of March they carry the sacred targets through the city; at which procession they are habited in short frocks of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... swinging-step and a graceful dancing-movement to this stately promenade. A quadrille cannot go on evenly if any confusion arises from the ignorance, obstinacy, or inattention of one of the dancers. It is proper, therefore, if ignorant of the figures, to consult a dancing-master and to learn them. It is a most valuable dance, as all ages, sizes, and conditions of men and women can join in it. The young, old, stout, thin, lazy, active, maimed, or single, without loss of caste, can dance a quadrille. No one looks ridiculous dancing a quadrille. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... till 9, the innabitance of Halbany may have been surprised to hear the sounds of music ishuing from the apartmince of Jeames de la Pluche, Exquire, Letter Hex. It's my dancing-master. From six to nine we have walces and polkies—at nine, 'mangtiang & depotment,' as he calls it & the manner of hentering a room, complimenting the ost and ostess & compotting yourself at table. At nine I henter ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... command, and turned it, into a dressmaking establishment. Anne Rory, who deserves more than a passing mention, one of the institutions of Honora's youth, who sewed for the first families, and knew much more about them than Mr. Meeker, the dancing-master. If you enjoyed her confidence,—as Aunt Mary did,—she would tell you of her own accord who gave their servants enough to eat, and who didn't. Anne Rory was a sort of inquisition all by herself, and would have made a valuable chief of police. The reputations ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... have here to say is rather in the nature of an apology than of a preface or advertisement. The very title of a Treatise upon the art of dancing by a dancing-master, implicitly threatens so much either of the exageration of the profession, or of the recommendation of himself, and most probably of both, that it cannot be improper for me to bespeak the reader's favorable precaution against so natural a prejudice. My principal ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... men are!—I think, child, we kept up our dignity. Any girl, however inexperienced, knows how to accept an offer, but it requires a vast deal of address to refuse one with proper condescension and disdain. I used to practise it at school with the dancing-master. ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... written "Tu quoque," it represents Bubble, a silly person in a comedy, played so excellently by an actor named Green, that it was called "Green's Tu-quoque." Then a changeling and a simpleton, from plays by Cox; a French dancing-master, from the Duke of Newcastle's "Variety;" Clause, from Beaumont and Fletcher's "Beggar's Bush;" and Sir John Falstaff and hostess. Our notion of Falstaff by this print seems very different from that of our ancestors: their Falstaff is in extravaganza of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... to be thinking up any French words you ever heard," suggested Bumpus, artfully. "Who knows what use the same'd be to you in a tight hole. How'd parley vous Francais sound, now? I've heard our dancing-master in Cranford use that more'n a few times, though I own up I don't know from Adam what she means. But it might make a fellow come to a standstill if he was agoing to run you through, and you suddenly ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... Court and diplomatic circles were here last night. Very soon I am going to a ball given by the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and I shall be presented to the society I am so eager to know. A dancing-master is coming every morning to give me lessons, for I must be able to dance in a month, or I can't ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... which is the best teacher of refinement and dignity, not the dancing-master," said her mother, sententiously, and departed upstairs to her own room, not so much ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... galvanized look of joy would instantly vanish. It was at a very uncertain gait he sidled into my office. He did not seem at all sure I would know him, or, in fact, very intimately acquainted with himself. The mingled gruffness and cordiality of his greeting suggested a dancing-master suffering with corns. It was a minute or two before his wonted calmness returned; but finally, with a piteous look of blended tenderness and brutal exultation, he handed me a card. It contained the handsomely engraved compliments of Miss Florence ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... right afore the wind, you see, and the boat swings fore and aft, like a French dancing-master. If she had a swayed only a leetle grain, we might all ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... Club, whose musical setting of "The Queen's Speech, as it is to be sung by the Lord Chancellor," appeared in 1843; the polka, at the time when that dance was a novel and a national craze, dedicated to the well-known dancing-master, Baron Nathan; "Punch's Mazurka," in Vol. VIII. (1845); and one or two other pieces besides. The other was a coloured picture representing a "plate"—a satire on the poor and inartistic "coloured plates" then being issued by S. C. Hall's "Art Union." It was a clever lithographic ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... stockings; such display is not for the sterner sex; even in his highest moments of ornament, a man should always bear about him a trace of the useful. To illustrate what we mean—a man is not born to be a dancing-master, nor a tavern-waiter; a gentleman, more especially, is intended, from the moment he can run alone, to be ready for feats of gallantry and hardihood. He should dress accordingly; and, as a fundamental rule, the reason for which lies deeper than most people think, a gentleman should always be so attired ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... more beamingly every day, but the chauffeur hated it. He was a city product and looked as much at home on that hill-top as a dancing-master in a hay-field. He smoked cigarettes and read the sporting page of the paper in the garage, where gasoline rather deadened the country smells of flowers and hay, and tried to forget his degrading surroundings, but he ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... but with a moderate voice. It is said of our Lord, "He shall not cry"—literally, scream.' The helpers generally are commanded 'not to affect the gentleman. You have no more to do with this character than with that of a dancing-master.' And again, 'Do not mend our rules, but keep them,' with much more to the same effect. His preachers in Ireland are instructed how they are to avoid falling into the dirty habits of the country and the most minute and delicate rules about ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the pavement under us but Uncle Billy Bosistow! He was a ragged old scarecrow, turned a bit grey and lean with iniquitous living, but not more than half-drunk; and he stepped into the middle of the roadway and cut a low reverence to his worship, flinging out his leg like a dancing-master. And says he, in a high cackle, ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... peaceable citizens, for the benefit of individual officers or soldiers; but there is another extreme, more amiable and pleasant to look upon, but not less fatal to the cause. Buell is likely to go to that. He is inaugurating the dancing-master policy: "By your leave, my dear sir, we will have a fight; that is, if you are sufficiently fortified; no hurry; take your own time." To the bushwhacker: "Am sorry you gentlemen fire at our trains from behind stumps, logs, and ditches. ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... of speaking, awkward motions, and a disagreeable address, are great clogs to the ablest man of business, as the opposite qualifications are of infinite advantage to him. I am told there is a very good dancing-master at Leipsig. I would have you dance a minuet very well, not so much for the sake of the minuet itself (though that, if danced at all, ought to be danced, well), as that it will give you a habitual genteel carriage and ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... To the last class belongs the dance which Theseus is said to have instituted on his return from Crete, after having abated the Minotaur nuisance. At the head of a noble band of youth, this public spirited reformer of abuses himself executed his dance. Theseus as a dancing-master does not much fire the imagination, it is true, but the incident has its value and purpose in this dissertation. Theseus called his dance Geranos, or the "Crane," because its figures resembled those described ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... him, but he besought relief of heaven through the merits and intercession of the blessed king, and he straightway felt a profuse sweat breaking out all over him, and was recovered perfectly. And there was the wife of Mons. Lepervier, dancing-master to the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, who was entirely eased of a rheumatism by the king's intercession, of which miracle there could be no doubt, for her surgeon and his apprentice had given their testimony, under oath, that they did not in any way contribute to the cure. ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... wealthy parents, their idol and joy. A dancing-school having opened near their home, the daughter, for accomplishment, was sent to it. She came from her home, modest, and her innate spirit of purity rebelled against the liberties taken by the dancing-master, and the men he introduced to her. She became indignant at the indecent attitudes she was called upon to assume, but noticing a score of young women, many of them from the best homes in the town, all yielding to the vulgar embrace, she cast aside that spirit ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... the shop, and the penny merchandise arranged on shelves with that exactness which has been thought peculiar to unmarried women. Father Baby was a scandal to the established confessor of the parish, and the joke of the ungodly. Some said he had been a dancing-master before he entered the cloister, and it was no wonder he turned out a renegade and took to trading. Others declared that he had no right to the gray capote, and his tonsure was a natural loss of hair; in fact, ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... cried Ronnie. "I never went in for a French dancing-master to bid me mind my P's and Q's! But, seriously, Helen, don't you understand how much this means to me? Both my last novels have had tame English settings. I can't go on forever letting my people make love in ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... it matters little whether the most universally popular of the serious authors of a generation—and Macaulay was nothing less than this—affects style coupe or style soutenu. The critic of style is not the dancing-master, declaiming on the deep ineffable things that lie in a minuet. He is not the virtuoso of supines and gerundives. The morality of style goes deeper 'than dull fools suppose.' When Comte took pains ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... limbs, and let them take care of themselves. But observe the attitudes which sculptors give to their statues; and study also those of children, which are almost always graceful, because natural. Avoid, on the one hand, the stiffness of the soldier, and, on the other, the ape-like suppleness of the dancing-master; and let there be no straining, no fidgeting, no uneasy shifting of position. You should stand on both feet, bearing a little more heavily on one than the other. The same general principles apply to the sitting posture. This may be either graceful, dignified, and elegant, or awkward, ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... names him in one of his plays, and he is also mentioned in Dekker's Honest Whore. Of one of the tunes mentioned in the song, viz., Hence, Melancholy! we can give no account; the other,—Mad Moll, may be found in Playford's Dancing-Master, 1698: it is the same tune as the one known by the names of Yellow Stockings and the Virgin Queen, the latter title seeming to connect it with Queen Elizabeth, as the name of Mad Moll does with the history of Mary, who was subject to mental ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... Chesterfield is a very representative figure. Johnson, who was really devout, angrily affirmed that his celebrated letters taught: "the morality of a whore with the manners of a dancing-master." ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... then respected, amidst all the degradations I have known, I respect still,—talent, ambition, intellect, and will. Do you think I would exchange these in a son of mine for the mere graces which a dancing-master can sell him? Fear not. Let us give but wealth to that intellect, and the world will see no clumsiness in the movements that march to its high places, and hear no discord in the laugh that triumphs over fools. But you have some news to communicate, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a queer kind of individual he was to look at—a rakish figure, about thirty, and of the middle size, dressed in a coat smartly cut, but threadbare, very tight pantaloons of blue stuff, tied at the ankles, dirty white stockings, and thin shoes, like those of a dancing-master; his features were not ugly, but rather haggard, and he appeared to owe his complexion less to nature than carmine; in fact, in every respect, a very ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Toby's pace had degenerated into a walk, as if not to disturb the fair burden he bore, for she, overcome with fatigue and excitement, was quietly sleeping with her head on my shoulder. Toby picked his way like a dancing-master, and though the road was rough, never once did he stumble; he still bore himself gallantly for the old House of Fairlee. Ah! Toby, that road was miles too short for your master. Willingly would he have ridden thus, aye, until his hair had turned as white as snow on his brows, ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson |
