"Dinner party" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... alone with Lord and Lady Chelsford. From the moment of our arrival at Chelsford House my host had encouraged nothing but the most general conversation. It happened that they were alone, as a great dinner party had been postponed at the last moment owing to some Royal indisposition. Lord Chelsford in his wife's presence was careful to treat me as an ordinary guest; but directly she had left the room and we were alone he abandoned ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a dinner party were postponed. All London was sympathizing with Monsieur de Lamborne, and a great many women swore never again to take a sleeping draught. Madame de Lamborne lay dead behind the shelter of those drawn blinds, and by her side an ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... environments lent an additional charm to the situation. He soon became aware that we needed something exciting to sustain us in our enforced imprisonment, and he produced fiddlers and half-breed women for dancing. He gave us every day a dinner party composed of viands unknown outside of the frontier of North America. One day we would have the tail of the beaver, always regarded as a great delicacy on the border; the next, the paws of the bear soused, which, when served on a white dish, very much resembled the foot of a negro, but were good; ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... was out with him, and he had been running about for some time. Mrs. Ripon was picking flowers, for she had a dinner party that evening, and she enjoyed getting her flowers, and arranging her vases, herself. Presently she looked round, but Tom was missing. There were many clumps of ornamental shrubs on the lawn, and Mrs. Ripon thought ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... cursed the necessity of reading his evening paper by candle-light; and Mary, the cook, grumbled because she could not telephone the grocery for some forgotten ingredient; and Jones' dinner party was very hilarious over the joke on their host; and men swore and their wives worried because they had perforce to be very late ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... in for a disagreeable encounter. At four o'clock Wetherbee always began to balance his cash for the day and he was particularly vicious at any interruptions during this precise performance. What in the world had possessed Helen to give this absurd dinner party to two people Starratt had never met? At least she might have put the thing off until pay day, when money was ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... ago, on my first visit to Canada, in 1826, when such a thing as expressions of disloyalty was almost unknown, and long before Mackenzie's folly, I remember being struck with the speech at a private dinner party of a person who has since held high office, respecting the independence of Canada: he observed that it must ultimately be brought about. The colony then was in its mere infancy, and this person no doubt had dreams of glory, although in outward life he was one of the most uncompromising ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... of the province. By the address, in reply, he was assured that these acts would be renewed. Shortly after the assembly had met it occurred to them that their peculiar privileges, as an offshoot of the Commons of England, had been assailed. The proceedings of a dinner party given to the representatives of Montreal in that city had been printed and circulated in the Montreal Gazette of the 1st April, 1805. The dinner was given in Dillon's tavern, and the party were particularly merry with the abundant supply of wines. Mr. Isaac Todd, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... will Peritania (Britain) fight Germany, and send her away from Samoa?" They have no complaint against the Germans. They have merely a sentimental and highly flattering preference for the English. On a recent visit of an English gunboat to Apia, the officers were entertained at a Samoan dinner party, with music and dances, by an eminent and very charming young princess. The princess is a famous beauty, with the keen intelligence Samoans have if they care, a wonderful dancer, possessed of a glorious ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... over old campaigns with officers who had fought against him in the war, and he delighted his listeners with stirring stories of his experiences in the field. On one occasion, when in Philadelphia, he was entertained in sumptuous fashion by Colonel Aaron Burr. A dinner party was held in his honour, and among the guests were Talleyrand and Volney. Early in the evening the War Chief was rather taciturn, and the other guests were somewhat disappointed. But this was only a passing mood, from which Brant soon freed himself. Launching ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... example. Indeed, I believe he nearly set fire to Nevil's Court, that beautiful new quadrangle of our college, which Sir Christopher Wren had lately built. He knocked down a proctor's man that wanted to arrest him in a midnight prank; he gave a dinner party on the Prince of Wales's birthday, which was within a fortnight of his own, and the twenty young gentlemen then present sallied out after their wine, having toasted King James's health with open windows, and sung cavalier songs, and shouted, "God save the King!" in the great court, so ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sent out cards for a dinner party next Thursday," said Linda to Aunt Ella. "There will be an opportunity for that 'explanation,' but you must assume the responsibility if there ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... In the frank sensualism of the Orient, this personage is admired and enjoyed on her merits. We, more sophisticated in this matter, joke shamefacedly about "the bald-headed row," and occasionally burst forth in shrill scandal over some dinner party where ladies clad in a veil and a bracelet dance on the table. Nowhere else in the whole range of life on earth, is this degradation found—the female capering and prancing before the male. It is absolutely and essentially his function, not hers. That we, as a race, present this pitiful ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... he admitted, "nine times out of ten. That call I got last evening that broke up the dinner party,—an intern at the County Hospital would have done just as well as I. There was nothing to it at all. Oh, it was a sort of satisfaction to the husband's feelings, I suppose, to pay me a thousand dollars and be satisfied that nobody in town could ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Mrs. Hilary seldom favoured her with a visit. She had found the letter on the hall table when she and Gilbert had come in from a dinner party ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... interesting and characteristic account of a dinner party at the general's (April 10, 1772), at which Goldsmith and Johnson were present. After dinner, when the cloth was removed, Oglethorpe, at Johnson's request, gave an account of the siege of Belgrade, in the true veteran style. Pouring a little wine upon the table, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... while thanking Callias politely for the invitation, were not disposed at first to join the dinner party; but the annoyance of the other so to be put off was so obvious that in the end the party were persuaded to accompany ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... of corporal punishment. The Duke of York, with all his zeal for the service, never loses sight of the comfort of the soldier and is indefatigable in his exertions to ameliorate his conditions. We had a pleasant dinner party at General Adam's, and at night I went to sleep at the house occupied by Captain C., one of the aides-de-camp of the General,[10] an active, intelligent officer who had formerly served in the marines, which service he had quitted in order ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... little dinner party was assembled that night in a luxurious flat in Albemarle House. It was a bachelor party, and consisted of three—the colonel, resplendent in evening dress, "Swell" Crewe and a middle-aged man whose antique dress coat and ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... feeling in me. I remember with the utmost distinctness my first meeting with him. It was just after the Boer war and old Johnny Beaminster gave a dinner party to some men pals of his at the Phoenix. Johnny was not so old then—none of us were; it was a short time after the death of that old harpy, the Duchess of Wrexe, and some wag said that the dinner was in celebration of that ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... when a husband is present at his wife's dinner party he repeats the mortifying superfluity of a bridegroom ...
— The Elevator • William D. Howells
... dress; but she always made the excuse that she "had no time" to read the papers, and amused Erica not a little by asking her husband if "anything particular had been happening lately," when they were just starting for a dinner party. Out of his little rechauffe of the week's news she probably extracted enough information to enable her to display that well-bred interest, that vague and superficial acquaintance with the subject which will pass muster in society, and which probably explains ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... and work again," she said. "I'm so glad we were able to meet, today. I have enjoyed it more than you know. When Reggie returns we must arrange a dinner party—the three of us. And before long you and your mother must come out to the ranch. ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... been to a dinner party since I began this. Our host seems to be a universal genius—a member of the house of peers, an authority on education, an orchid fancier, a painter and I don't know what. There were over twenty at table, and our health was drunk in champagne ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... of bravery being discussed one evening at a dinner party, when a German gentleman present related an anecdote, the hero of which was ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... extremely likely that she will. Everybody knows that most people do things not so much because they want to as because they haven't any reason for refusing. Take the average party, for instance—tea party, tennis party, garden party, or dinner party. How many men go to parties because they want to? Not one in a hundred. The other ninety-nine go simply because there's no available reason for not going. It's just the same with marrying. Unless you give Miss King some good reason for refusing you, ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... jolly dinner party. The young fellows Red had picked up in the blacksmith's shop were not the ordinary quality of loungers. They were boys of good country parentage, with a common school education, who, unfortunately, could find nothing to do but the occasional ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... her nose and mouth, which, it seemed, were both there and in perfect condition. "I was in town yesterday interviewing butlers,—that Swiss I told you about refused to be glared at by Edmond and left us on the verge of a dinner party, summing us all up in a burst of pure German,—and there was Alice having a lonely lunch at the Ritz, just back from her mother's convalescent chair. I persuaded her to come to me for a few days and what more natural than that she should want to see what this wonderful air has done for ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... of Roads and Bridges; then I have the Receiver of Registrations, the First Clerk of Excise, and the Perceiver of the Impost. That is our dinner party. I am a sort of hovering government official, as you see. But away - ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... P. Chase once warned me, when going downstairs to a dinner party at Edgewood, "For God's sake, Kate, don't quote the Atlantic Monthly tonight!" I realized then what a bore ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... slowly about; and, as the sun went down, gorgeous effects were produced behind the rocks and hills. Prettier still when it became dark and the lights began to twinkle on the hillsides, and in the tents, pitched in readiness for a dinner party to be given by Sir Salar Jung this evening. The drive home through the densely crowded tortuous streets was most amusing; though one never ceased wondering how the drivers, even with the aid of the active syces, managed to avoid running over ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... was fain to think, a welcome, guest. Mrs. Carrington, who entertained a deep distrust of the manners and excesses of Aureataland, was good enough to consider me eminently respectable, while the signorina was graciousness itself. I was even admitted to the select circle at the dinner party which, as a rule, preceded her Wednesday evening reception, and I was a constant figure round the little roulette board, which, of all forms of gaming, was our hostess' favorite delectation. The colonel was, not to my pleasure, an equally invariable guest, and the President himself would ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... had married his cook was giving a dinner party and between the courses the good lady sat with her hands spread on ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... furthest recess of London, where no one would come to her and flurry her with false hopes, and there remain till she might be allowed to earn her bread. That was the mood in which Mrs Mackenzie found her late in the afternoon on the day of Sir John Ball's visit. There was to be a dinner party in the house that evening, and Margaret began by asking leave to ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... The dinner party were assembled in the great drawing-room, when Maltravers and Cleveland, also invited guests to the banquet, were announced. Lord Raby received the former with marked empressement; and the stately marchioness honoured him with her most gracious smile. Formal presentations ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are; Mouchi, who enjoyed the greatest favour, did not grieve for her mistress a single moment; she was playing the flute at her window on the very day that the Princess was borne to St. Denis, and went to a large dinner party in Paris, where she ate and drank as if nothing had happened, at the same time talking in so impertinent a manner as disgusted all the guests. My son desired her and her ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... dinner party, and afterwards it was almost like old times at the Wigwam, for Phil insisted on helping wipe the dishes, and was so boyish and jolly with his teasing reminiscences that she almost forgot her new awe of him. ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... there should happen to be an impromptu luncheon or drinking party at your house, or a dinner party, perhaps— the ordinary thing at resorts like yours—where would my place ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... a merry dinner party that graced the table during dinner that evening, and the boy forgot his troubles and was as jolly and sociable as he had ever ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... Frank Digby from the opposite side of the table, in a tone as if he had been speaking to some one behind him. "Fudge has a dinner party to-night, ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... the dinner party begins and I would like to talk with you. I am impressed by your apparent honesty and particularly by the air of devotion to duty that characterizes you. The latter I have more often remarked in women than in the more selfish sex to which we belong. We need a boy here. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... left us so abruptly after our little dinner party, you put me in a very awkward position. I was desperately in love with your daughter, and as long as you were in the frame of mind in which you left, I could not hope to find an opportunity of telling her so. You see what a fix I was in, don't you? I thought for ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... displaying his contempt of the politician elected only for his money influence in borough, county, or in the subscription lists of the Chief Whip. Though his pulses still beat a little quicker when he held Vivie's hand in his at some reception of Lady Feenix's or a dinner party at the Gorings—Vivie as the child of a "fallen" woman had a prescriptive right of entrance to Diana's circle—he had not the slightest intention of running away with her, of nipping his career in two, just as he might be scaling the last heights to the citadel ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... an apology. They were so sorry they could not ask him down that night; but they had a large dinner party on, and he would have made an odd man. Doubtless, too, he would be tired after his journey and disinclined for such a function. The following day, however, they would be glad to have him. It was forty minutes' run from Victoria Station, ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... had elapsed since the aforesaid dinner party took place and day by day Helen grew stronger, till at length Dr. Durham pronounced her to be well enought to get up; in fact he went so far as to say that a drive in the fresh air would do her good. As may be imagined it was ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... After the dinner party domestic matters seemed to run even more smoothly than before, but there was a difference, far below the surface, in Mrs. Salisbury's attitude toward the new maid. The mistress found herself incessantly looking for ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... being made to the host, he agreed to wipe out Hogarth's score upon his completing the picture, which attracted much company; so that, although the house lost the dinner party, it gained by persons coming to see the parochial authorities stuck up on the walls. Some time after, the score again raised its head, when mine host, for the purpose of clearing it off, and to make the tap-room more uniform, proposed to Hogarth the subject of the Hudson's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... say I did laugh a little too much the other night, but could I help it? We had a dinner party. Present were Mr. Pollingray, Mrs. Kershaw, the Wilbury people (three), Charles, my brother Duncan, Evelina, mama, papa, myself, and Mr. and Mrs. (put them last for emphasis) Romer Pattlecombe, Mrs. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... We can retire when we are fatigued, without leaving a blank space before the others. And all this without saying anything of the higher spiritual and intellectual effect—freed from material grossness of appetite and show—which the dinner party thus attains. But you are surely joking! You, an American, and not know it! Why, it comes from Boston. Haven't you read that book, 'Jumping a Century'? It's ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... exceptional or strange in a man's calling at half-past nine on a friend to inquire details of a proposed dinner party and not coming in, but it seemed strange to all of them. Above all, it seemed strange and not right ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... his resigning. Besides, he is so very popular among the students that his transfer or discharge would be inadvisable. Red Shirt always misses the point. And though he did not get to the point, the object of my visit was ended. We talked a while on sundry matters, Red Shirt proposing a farewell dinner party for Hubbard Squash, asking me if I drink liquor and praising Hubbard Squash as an amiable gentleman, etc. Finally he changed the topic and asked me if I take an interest in "haiku"[8] Here is where I beat it, I thought, and, saying "No, ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... the Colonel gave a dinner party and the powers of the Mess President were taxed to the utmost limit. Nearly 40 sat down, the Mess staff rose to the occasion, and the cook turned out things we had never seen before. The next day the Commanding Officer remarked at dinner "Really, P.M.C., I don't ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... have laid his hand upon the senior partner of Cathcart and Cathcart. Yet here was this sane man, taking this fantastic nonsense as if there were really something in it. He had first heard him speak of the subject at a small bachelor dinner party of four in the rooms of a mutual friend; and, as he had listened, he had had the same sensation as one would have upon hearing a Cabinet Minister, let us say, discussing stump-cricket with enthusiasm. Cathcart had said all ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... a gala dinner party, an occasion almost as gay as that Round Table banquet over eight years ago had been when Dick Carson had been formally inducted into the order and Doctor Holiday had announced that he was going to marry Miss Margery. And as before there was laughter ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... from the Embassy in one of the palace rooms. In the afternoon the Emperor and the Empress drove with their guests to the Bois de Boulogne, and to Neuilly—so closely associated with the Orleans family—lying in ruins. General Canrobert, just returned from the Crimea, was an addition to the dinner party. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... heaped and crushed together in great quantities, was formed a thick and high bridge of ice, completely across the river, safe for passengers for some time; and in the middle of it a Yankee speculator had erected a shanty for refreshments. Lately, at a dinner party, I heard a staff-officer of talent, but who was fond of exciting wonder by his narratives, propose to the company a singular wager,—a bet of one hundred pounds that he would go over the Falls of Niagara and come out alive at the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... A dinner party, and fortune in good humour: The opera house, and small talk: Sagacious female discoveries: Olivia, and the art of fascinating: An old acquaintance suddenly seen and dreaded, though despised: Timely recollection: The opera ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... girlish beauty. "Well, I'll make the usual excuses for you. Good-by," and not forgetting to pick up his walking stick with his hat, he ran off on his way to the florist's for the boutonniere that must go on before he presented himself at the Parrotts' dinner party. ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... very heavy labours. On May 30th His Majesty presented colours to the Irish Guards, received the Maharajah Sir Pertab Singh, held an investiture of the Garter in great state, visited Westminster Abbey to see the Coronation preparations, and gave a large dinner party. During the next three days he presented medals to the St. John Ambulance Brigade and held a Levee and investiture of the Bath. On June 4th he gave audiences to various Ministers, proceeded with the Queen to the Derby, gave a dinner to the Jockey ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... complaints, in flattery to those who suffer from any, as that their eyesight and sense of hearing are deficient, if their friends are somewhat blind or deaf, as the flatterers of Dionysius, who was rather short-sighted, jostled one another at a dinner party, and knocked the dishes off the table, as if from defect of vision.[382] And some to make their cases more similar wind themselves in closer, and dive even into family secrets for parallels. For seeing that their friends ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... The family dinner party went off as happily as that in the kitchen. The young Mortimers all sat together at the side table, and their papa, had not once occasion to call them out for being noisy, though they were merry and cheerful enough. It was certainly true, as Harriet had said, that her cousins would be ...
— Christmas, A Happy Time - A Tale, Calculated for the Amusement and Instruction of Young Persons • Miss Mant
... also of the dinner party—an arrangement made by the provident Miss Hendy, that the two millionaires might receive a little preliminary information on the merits of the rest of the company, who were only invited to tea. Four maiden ladies (who had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... at your house anyhow, Ina," Barbara said, "working with Skeet painting those big banners they've tacked up out in your court. You'll have to feed us; but we'll be pretty messy. I don't know about a dinner party." ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... to ask Nils Hansen and Bettina to join their dinner party. She had a sudden access of friendliness for the Hansens. Nils refused because he was going out to see the college herds fed; but at Jennie's urgent request, reinforced by pats and hugs, Bettina consented. Jennie was very happy, and proved herself a beaming hostess. The dean devoted himself ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... wife, dressed in a low dress and thin fringe on her forehead in honour of what, to the country mind, was a grand dinner party, at which Angela's plain black dress and tight white cap were an unbecoming sight. Elizabeth was there, kissing Angela with real sympathy; and Lena, who had grown a good deal more accustomed to strange relations, endured the ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... has adopted a capital idea of late. When he gives a little dinner party and the time arrives to smoke, after the departure of the ladies, he sometimes finds that the conversation is apt to become too political, too personal, too slow, or too scandalous. Then he always manages to introduce to the company some new poser that he has secreted up his sleeve ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... (good, but merely an appetizer) Clear soup (a dinner party helping, and no substance) Smelts (one apiece) Individual croutards of sweetbreads (holding about a dessert-spoonful) Broiled squab, small potato croquette, and string beans Lettuce salad, with about one small ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... off. If he had wanted to do that he would not have gone to Varese. But that is mortified vanity. The same thing happened when he met Mr. Birrell at dinner in 1900. Then it was the celebrity who took pains to save his host and hostess from a frosty dinner party. The same thing is recalled of meetings with Sir George Trevelyan and Lord Morley earlier in the book. It is all pretty stupid; but when a man is ridden by a vanity like that there can be no healthy pleasure to be got out of writing ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... the account Boswell gives of his own election. The Club had been in existence some nine years when the fatal night of the balloting arrived. Beauclerk had a dinner party at his house before the club-meeting, and when he and the other members left for the ceremony the anxious Boswell was committed to the hospitality of Lady Di, whose "charming conversation" was not entirely ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... the eve of my dinner party, I ordered a repast in which no expense was to be spared. I did not forget to tell the landlord to get me the best wines, the choicest liqueurs, ices, and all the materials for a bowl of punch. I told him that we should be six in number, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... were also of the party a Venetian nobleman, Count Morano, and a Signora Livona, whom Montoni had introduced to his wife, as a lady of distinguished merit, and who, having called in the morning to welcome her to Venice, had been requested to be of the dinner party. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... on the top of the wagon, after having put Mr. Stubbs inside, with the others of his tribe, and in a very few moments the boy was sound asleep, dreaming of a dinner party at which Mr. Stubbs made a speech and he himself scampered up ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... is hurriedly bundled out of the house. The silent woman finds her voice immediately after the marriage, begins to talk loudly and to make reforms in the household, driving Morose to distraction. A noisy dinner party from a neighboring house, with drums and trumpets and a quarreling man and wife, is skillfully guided in at this moment to celebrate the wedding. Morose flees for his life, and is found perched like a ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... and Billy Webster, if you and some of the others will help us, why can't we have our dinner party here at the cabin? We are not planning to have it until New Year, so there will be plenty ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook
... Communist diplomat in Berne, Switzerland, happened to see it and, one night at a dinner party, he said mockingly: "This stupid American general in Jerusalem is obviously ignorant of the world. Otherwise, he would realize that no nation on earth loves gambling so much as the Chinese. Anyone who knows the ...
— The Golden Judge • Nathaniel Gordon
... measure. No college which pretended to maintain discipline could allow even a poet to shoot thus wildly. In truth, Landor's offence has been exaggerated by Southey. It was nothing out of the common. The poet was giving "an after-dinner party" in his rooms. The men were mostly from Christ Church; for Landor was intimate, he says, with only one undergraduate of his own college, Trinity. On the opposite side of the quadrangle a Tory and a butt, named Leeds, was entertaining persons whom the Jacobin ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... no use for titles. T.S.B. Nielsen says that at a dinner party in Germany in 1915 he heard Sielcken explain to a large number of guests that the United States was the best country because there a man was appraised at his real value. What he did, and how he lived, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... in the morning, in which case one man would ride on the "for'oss" (fore horse) carrying a lantern to light the way; and a sorry struggle it was! Years later when a carriage was kept here and there, it was not uncommon for a dinner party to get stuck in similar difficulties, and to have to call up the horses from a neighbouring farm ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... a second helping of a dish is never offered, and should never be asked for; but at an informal dinner party it is not out of place to accept a second helping, if one is offered, but is complimentary to the hostess, who is ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... a grand dinner, I suppose?" Lars Peter's eyes shone; he had never been to a dinner party himself. ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... and philosophers have made much of associations as a restorer of dim memories. Porter has a story of a dinner party in which a reference to Benedict Arnold was immediately followed by someone asking the value of the Roman denarius. Reflection shows that the question was directly suggested by the topic under discussion. Benedict Arnold suggested Judas Iscariot and the thirty pieces ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... an angel could not reach its heart; and here one of his eccentricities broke out. He drew a line, in his dictatorial way, between dinner and feeding parties. "A dinner party is two rubbers. Four gentlemen and four ladies sit round a circular table; then each can hear what anyone says, and need not twist the neck at every word. Foraging parties are from fourteen to thirty, set up and down a plank, each separated from those he could talk to as effectually as if the ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... is lost to history; but Lincoln Lang, who was with him when he rode back to camp that afternoon, reported that Roosevelt's comments on the dinner party were "blistering." "He told my mother afterwards," said Lang in later times, "that Mrs. Cummins was out of place in the Bad Lands"; which was Mrs. ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... and shrieking after them, and finding fault with them. My uncle generally has his dinner parties on Saturday, or goes out; and aunt gives me ten shillings and sends me to the play; that's better fun than a dinner party." Here the lad blushed again. "I used," said he, "when I was younger, to stand on the stairs and prig things out of the dishes when they came out from dinner, but I'm past that now. Maria (that's my cousin) used ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... engagement is ratified by the consent of the powers that be, a few days should elapse before the event is made public. The lady's parents generally give a dinner party to their most intimate friends, or an At Home if they wish to include a larger number of guests, at which the important announcement is made. The father or mother will tell the news to the most important guest or nearest relation, and it will gradually ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... speak to the lady who had read his plays on the night of his first success. The play was loudly applauded. Some people behind me—a youth and a girl—began to hiss. I remember thinking that they resembled the bird they imitated. I only saw Synge on two other occasions. I met him at a dinner party, but had no talk with him, and I called upon him at his old lodgings in Handel ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... uncle and asked him as a great favor that she might only arrive the very day of the family dinner party, he could plead for her excess of trousseau business, or what he liked. She would come by the nine o'clock morning train, so as to be in ample time for dinner; and it would be so much easier for every one, if they could get the meeting over, the whole family together, rather than have the ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... Lieutenant Stanford at a dinner party the week I left," said Sir Ronald, stiffly—so stiffly, that the subject was ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... a dinner party, or the opera, if you have any doubts as to the unselfishness of our married men. How many of them do you suppose are present for their own pleasure? The owner of an opera box rarely retains a seat in his expensive quarters. You generally find him idling in the lobbies looking at ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... dinner party. There was naturally much talk of the Academie, its elections and duties, its merits and demerits in public estimation. The 'deities' hold that those who run down the institution are all, without exception, poor creatures who cannot get in. For the strong apparent instances to the contrary, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... baffledness, while I sat sucking at a cigarette, feeling rather like a chappie I'd once read about in a book, who murdered another cove and hid the body under the dining-room table, and then had to be the life and soul of a dinner party, with it there all the time. My guilty secret oppressed me to such an extent that after a while I couldn't stick it any longer. I lit another cigarette and started for a stroll in the grounds, ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... as detective stories, these cannot be granted a very good mark. There is scarcely a story that has not a serious flaw in it. A man—Flambeau, of whom more later—gains admittance to a small and select dinner party and almost succeeds in stealing the silver, by the device of turning up and pretending to be a guest when among the waiters, and a waiter when among the guests. But it is not explained what he did during the first two courses ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... The dinner party motored back to town. Dinner was more like a reception that evening, for the news of Tom's plucky fight against the rough element had spread through the town. Nearly two score of men representing the better part of the population of Paloma called at the hotel to shake ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... chair, he staggered slightly, and put his hand to his head. Recovering himself in a moment, he called for his hat and cane, and, leaving the ordinary, turned his face toward the Palace. A garrulous fellow Councilor, also bidden to his Excellency's dinner party, overtook him, and, falling into step, began to speak first of the pirates' trial, and then of the weather. A hot and feverish summer. 'Twas said that a good third of the servants arriving in the country since spring had died of their seasoning. The slaver lying in the York had thrown ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... Mrs. Treat was ready to believe that her costume might be reasonably fit to wear to a dinner party, she was certain that something more than tights and a pair of short, red velvet trousers was necessary for ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... Perker had a dinner party that day, which was certified by the lights in the drawing-room windows, the sound of an improved grand piano, and an improveable cabinet voice issuing therefrom; and a rather overpowering smell of meat which prevaded ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... the country. Not that our people have a fondness for money, but they have come here to better their condition—and I hope in God they will. They not only better their own condition, but the condition of all around them, and I can pick out from all over this community, and from this little dinner party, men who came from Ohio poor, but with an honest endeavor to do what was best for themselves and their families, and here they are, rich ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... one of the 12,418, and in my case the ballot papers were distributed at the end of a dinner party. No discussion of the various candidates took place with the single exception that, finding my memory of Mr. Arthur Henderson rather vague, I whispered a question about him to my next neighbour. We were all politicians, and nearly all the names ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... The dinner party was a large one and Francesca arrived late with little time to take preliminary stock of the guests; a card with the name, "Miss de Frey," immediately opposite her own place at the other side of the table, indicated, however, the whereabouts of the heiress. It was characteristic of Francesca ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... I 'spect I must go down town. Good-by, my dears. I shall certainly ask Mr. Morris to dinner. He's a very nice young man for a small dinner party. ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow
... and am, reading your Records again, before this Atlantic came to remind me of you. I have Bentley's second Edition. I feel the Dullness of that Dinner Party in Portland Place {181a} (I know it was) when Mrs. Frere sang. She was somewhile past her prime then (1831), but could sing the Classical Song, or Ballad, till much later in Life. Pasta too, whom you then saw and heard! I still love the pillars of the old Haymarket ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... after Mr. Campbell's dinner party, the three older members of the company sat down in the drawing-room for a quiet game, while the young people repaired to the library where they might talk and laugh freely without ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... dinner party, and Mrs. Grandon is in her glory. She almost forgives Violet her existence for the opportuneness of the accident. She is just as much mistress as ever, and to be important is Mrs. Grandon's great delight. She hates secondary positions. To be a dowager without the duchess is the great cross ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... so, too. I wish we were just awfully, awfully, awfully big—and then we could go to Aunt Clara's dinner party, and everywhere. ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... child? The matter is that you may unpack, and that we will give a dinner party! We do not travel to-morrow; no, nor the next day, nor the next! I have to ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... they came, as they did frequently in his later years. It was the fashionable thing in bygone novels of the 'Pelham' school, and Even in more recent comedies, to introduce a well-dressed sheriff's officer at a dinner party or ball, and take him through a variety of predicaments, ending, at length, in the revelation of his real character; and probably some such scene is still enacted from time to time in the houses of the extravagant: but Sheridan's adventures with bailiffs seem to have ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... away. The boom of his jovial laughter still rang out upon the air, and presently the tinkle of guitar, the swish of feminine garments, the rasp of chairs and the merry mingling of voices told that the little dinner party, the first the camp had ever known—for what is a dinner party without women—had quit the table and gathered on the porch. By this time, too, an unclouded moon had sailed aloft from behind the screen of eastward ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... That dinner party certainly deserved consideration. Willoughby, Trench, Castleton—these three men were the cause of Harry Feversham's disgrace and disappearance. Durrance tried to recollect all the details of the evening; but he had been occupied himself on that occasion. He remembered ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... cotton wool. Let me tell you what the lives of such men really are—the best of them, the very best. He gets up at noon, walks in the park, takes tea with some one, grunts and groans that he must go to somebody's dinner party, escapes to the Gaiety Theatre, sups at ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... of society it has been variously regarded as the consummation of an earthly career most fervently to be desired, and, on the other hand, as that consummation which is most of all to be deprecated. Caesar the Dictator, at his last dinner party, (coena,) and the very evening before his assassination, being questioned as to the mode of death which, in his opinion, might seem the most eligible, replied—"That which should be most sudden." On the other hand, the divine Litany of our English Church, when breathing forth supplications, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... of what took place between two men well known in the literary world, who were at a dinner party together, both dissenters,—one a Unitarian. In the evening, tea was brought on a large silver waiter. They were popular writers of the day. One of them observing the salver facetiously cried out, "See how ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... Juanita, please! I like it so, I can look out. The moonlight is nice. Somebody is very late, going home from a dinner party." ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... a great trade virtue in a haberdasher to have forty thousand pairs of best hose lying ready for sale in his warehouse. Let him assume that virtue if he have it not. Is not this the way in which we all live, and the only way in which it is possible to live comfortably. A gentleman gives a dinner party. His lady, who has to work all day like a dray-horse and scold the servants besides, to get things into order, loses her temper. We all pretty well know what that means. Well; up to the moment when she has to show, she is as bitter a piece of goods as may be. ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... weeks after this modest first appearance on the boards of "The Man with an Aneurism," that, happening to be at dinner party of practical business men, I sought to interest them with the details of the above story, delivered with such skill and pathos as I could command. I regret to say that, as a pathetic story, it for a moment seemed to be a dead failure. At last a prominent banker sitting ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... tense and nervous, not only because of her experience at the Palazzo Scorpa, but because of something portentous in Giovanni's unexplained demand for silence. He was not at the same dinner party with her, but she went on to a dance at the Marchese Valdeste's, feeling sure that she would have a chance to speak with him there. He always danced with her several times during a ball, and, as he was not very much taller than she, ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... Hour.—When Lord Nelson was leaving London, on his last, but glorious, expedition against the enemy, a quantity of cabin furniture was ordered to be sent on board his ship. He had a farewell dinner party at his house; and the upholsterer having waited upon his lordship, with an account of the completion of the goods, was brought into the dining-room, in a corner of which his lordship spoke with him. The upholsterer stated to his employer, that ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... that night. The chief and his engineers, the officers and their wives, all vied with one another in their efforts to celebrate Neale's return to work. The dinner party was merry, yet earnest, too. Baxter made a speech, his fine old face alight with gladness as he extolled youth and genius and the inspiring power of bright eyes. Neale had to answer. His voice was deep and full as he said that Providence had returned him to his work and to a happiness he had ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... the beginning of the season that Sir Lemuel and Miss Levison received invitations to a dinner party at ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... wherever he came, who took snuff by palmfuls, diving for it under the mighty flap of his old-fashioned red waistcoat. In the gentle Samuel Salt we discover a portrait of the employer of Lamb's father. Salt was a shy indolent, absent man, who never dressed for a dinner party but he forgot his sword. The day of Miss Blandy's execution he went to dine with a relative of the murderess, first carefully schooled by his clerk to avoid the disagreeable subject. However, during the pause ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Harrison with Mrs. Whitney were gathered about Louise, who among the couch pillows was reading hands. As Morris Blood, after some talk with Mr. Brock, approached, Louise nodded to him. "We shall take no apologies for spoiling our dinner party," said she, "but you may sit down. I haven't been able, Mr. Blood, to get your story out of my head since you told it: none of us have. Do you believe in palmistry? Now, Mr. Harrison, do sit still till I finish your hand. Oh, here's ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... nobleman called Giovanni Falieri, who was about to give a large dinner party, asked old Canova to make him some ornament for the table. He said he did not care what it was, but wanted something new and uncommon. There was but little time before the date fixed for the party, and the old stone-cutter tried in vain to think of a suitable object. ...
— Golden Deeds - Stories from History • Anonymous
... I was sometimes tempted to knock my uncle Adam down; and indeed I believe it must have come to a rupture at last, if they had not given a dinner party at which I was the lion. On this occasion I learned (to my surprise and relief) that the incivility to which I had been subjected was a matter for the family circle, and might be regarded almost in the light of an endearment. To strangers I was presented with consideration; and the account ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... back country, planters, clerks, merchants, lawyers, and doctors, all with their coats off, and we were told that this habit of going without coats is universal. One man who had lived there a good while said, 'You may go to a grand dinner party, and find the ladies dressed in the height of fashion, and the gentlemen in their shirt sleeves.' I don't wonder that they have adopted this plan, as the climate is very warm. The region is decidedly tropical, ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... and troubled. Here was a dreadful situation indeed! Already Susan felt drawn toward the pretty young American girl, and she was aghast at the outlook of a dinner party with no party frock. ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... buried under the altars, or committed to the secret keeping of rivers. Nothing of the sort: when a man made a sacrifice, the meaning was, that he gave a dinner. And not only was every sacrifice a dinner party, but every dinner party was a sacrifice. This was strictly so in the good old ferocious times of paganism, as may be seen in the Iliad: it was not said, 'Agamemnon has a dinner party to-day,' but 'Agamemnon sacrifices to Apollo.' Even in Rome, to the last days of paganism, it is ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... having given a dinner party at this sand-bag castle on the plains, miles and miles from a white man or woman! The number of guests was small, but their rank was immense, for we entertained Powder-Face, Chief of the Arapahoe Nation, and Wauk, his young squaw, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... to three persons only are invited from one family to the same entertainment, and, in the event of a small dinner party, two would be the limit. The invitations would be addressed, not to Mr. Coates and family, but one to "Mr. and Mrs. Coates," another to "The Misses Coates," or to "Miss Coates." If there are brothers, ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... our sympathies and antipathies in all we look upon, and Frank read in this letter an old woman with diamonds and dyed hair. He had met her twice. The first time was at a ball where he knew nobody; the second was at a dinner party. She had fixed her eyes upon him; she had prevented him from talking after dinner to a young girl whom he had admired across the table during dinner. He did not like her, and he thought now of the young girls he would meet if he accepted her invitation. Lady Seveley was a shadow; ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... staring at us both. "Is such a thing possible in a Christian land? Oh, how I have neglected my duty to the Church! Come back with me to Bruntsea, and my son shall do it. The church there is under my orders, I should hope; and we will have a dinner party afterward. What a horrible neglect ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... the morning in quite a placid state of mind, expecting to enjoy a day of rest, as she had the night before sat up much beyond her usual time, to set matters to rights after the confusion consequent on the dinner party. What was her astonishment, therefore, on finding the kitchen she had left in a state of perfect order and cleanliness, in a condition that resembled the preparation ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... answered. "I told you my lungs were my weak point. I am turned down—and I am going abroad. It's not very pleasant to find oneself staying on in London, going to a little dinner party here and there where all the men are oldish, when all of one's ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... disciplined, he will form the habit of curiosity about words, their stations, their savor, their aptitudes, their limitations, their outspokenness, their reticences, their affinities and antipathies. Thus when he has need of a phrase to fill out a verbal dinner party, he will ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... ventilation of a house, which keeps the air pure; much in this world has to be taken for granted, and we cannot be for ever arguing over our first principles. If a man persists in talking of what he does not understand, he is put down; if he sports loose views on morals at a decent dinner party, the better sort of people fight shy of him, and he is not invited again; if he profess himself a Buddhist, a Mahometan, it is assumed that he has not adopted those beliefs on serious conviction but rather in wilful levity and eccentricity which does not deserve to be tolerated. Men have ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... seen in public but a few times more—once at the last dinner party he ever attended, to meet the Prince of Wales and the King of the Belgians, and once when the Queen invited him to Buckingham Palace. ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... gusts of passion under which it sometimes gave way. The details are unquestionably authentic, as they were communicated by Washington's secretary who witnessed the scene. Washington was having a dinner party when an officer arrived at the door and sent word that he was the bearer of dispatches from the Western army. The secretary went out to him, but the officer said his instructions were to deliver the dispatches ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... different groups broke up and drifted here and there; into the palm-house to look at the flowers, back into the drawing-room to talk, drink coffee, and glance surreptitiously at the clock. In this old-fashioned household, no one thought of providing any other amusement for a dinner party than the dinner itself. Having been well fed, the guests were expected to amuse themselves for the hour that remained. In an ordinary way I could have taken my share in the amusing; I like talking, and am never troubled ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... you remember a question, rather unconventional, which you put to me at the dinner party you and Mr. Logan gave at ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... part kept herself looking even more trig than when she had the fear that Mrs. Grover might drop in at any time. And every night at dinner she presided with as much form as though she were entertaining a dinner party. I guess she thought we might learn to eat with ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... Sainte-Croix went to see the marquise every day, and that in a box belonging to that lady she had seen two little packets containing sublimate in powder and in paste: she recognised these, because she was an apothecary's daughter. She added that one day Madame de Brinvilliers, after a dinner party, in a merry mood, said, showing her a little box, "Here is vengeance on one's enemies: this box is small, but holds plenty of successsions!" That she gave back the box into her hands, but soon changing from her sprightly mood, she cried, "Good heavens, what have I said? ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... I think of the matches, and oh! what a pity I failed to fill my pockets with them that night of the Professor's dinner party! To think that matches are selling at this moment in Sweden two hundred and fifty ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... angry altercation could be heard immediately outside the front door, Miss Meakin detained Mavis, asking, in the politest tone, advice on the subject of the most fashionable material to wear at a select dinner party. ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... her beauty! The one precious gift she had to give Michael, that lover of all beauty! . . . The knowledge seemed to beat against her brain, throbbing and pulsing like a wound, while she made a pretence at doing justice to the little dinner party, which had been especially concocted for her under Virginie's watchful eye, and responded in some sort to Coppertop's periodic outbreaks ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... tongue or his pen, as he may. And it is only through such expression that he will finally arrive (if he ever can) at a condition of household furnishing which will say something to his neighbour as well as to himself. It is a pleasure when one leaves a dinner party to be able to observe "That is his house," just as it is a pleasure when one leaves a concert to remember that a composer has expressed himself and not the result of seven years study in Berlin ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... doctor invariably insisted on regular evening costume at dinner-time. This has many advantages. In the first place it gives at least half an hour's occupation, an object in itself worth something to persons living in the country, and then it gives a cachet or rather chic to your dinner party, however small it may be, and is in itself a certain amount of restraint on excessive exuberance of spirits, and thus may be considered as a disciplinary element of education tending to keep up that reserve and self-restraint ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... very young, a continuation of this in youth, then the tobacco and liquor habits in connection with disobedience. Then, nothing but sorrow; now, nothing but peace and joy if they would only remain true to our wonderful Redeemer. Doubtless most of my readers have never attended such a dinner party. Let me tell you something. We had for our guest—the King. To be sure, we did not see him with these fleshly eyes, but the spiritual vision wonderfully revealed his presence, beyond a doubt, to each of us. It was ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... am not a thief, and yet I have stolen; I cannot explain why. It was at Semeon Ivanovitch Ishenka's country house, one Sunday. He had a dinner party. After dinner the men stayed at the table over their wine. It struck me to ask the daughter of the house to play something on the piano; so I passed through the corner room to join the ladies. In that room, on Maria Ivanovna's writing-table, I observed a three-rouble ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the happiest dinner party I ever remember. It would be powerfully hard for me to say which was happier, "Danyul" or his mother. They just beamed upon each other. She was proud of her boy and his pleasant home. "Danyul says he's got a little red heifer for me ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... entertained a dinner party of distinguished authors. These discoursed largely during the meal, and bored one another and more especially their host, who was not literary. To wake himself up, he excused himself from the table with a vague murmur about opening a window, and went out into ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... letter. Miss Macnulty was staying with her, but she had not said a word to Miss Macnulty about the letter. She read it up in her own bedroom, and then sat down to think about it. Sir Florian, as he had handed to her the stones for the purpose of a special dinner party which had been given to them when passing through London, had told her that they were family jewels. "That setting was done for my mother," he said, "but it is already old. When we are at home again they shall be reset." Then he had added some little ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... the dinner party consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Lockhart, Miss Scott, and myself. Sir Walter did not join us till the dessert, when he entered, assisted by his servant, and took his place at the foot of the table. His grandchildren were then brought in, and his favourite, Johnnie Lockhart, was seated ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... soothe my touchy and choleric friend. No soldier, said I, likes to be made a show of. Why had he suggested a dinner party? A few friends. Anyone in Boyce's position knew what that meant. It meant about thirty gawking, gaping people for whom he didn't care a hang. Why hadn't Anthony asked the Boyces to dine quietly with Edith and himself—with me thrown in, for instance, if they wanted exotic assistance? ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... the current rumours of the day, about the designs of Publius, about "Iuno's" trumpet calls, about Athenio who leads his roughs, about his letter to Gnaeus, about the conversation of Theophanes and Memmius. Besides, how eager you have made me to hear about the "fast" dinner party which you mention! I am greedy in curiosity, yet I do not feel at all hurt at your not writing me a description of the symposium: I would rather hear it by word of mouth. As to your urging me to write ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... had assumed that the overelaborateness was due to the festive occasion, but Patty now perceived that the same formality of service was observed with only the two girls at the table. And the menu was long and varied enough to have served a dinner party. ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... dinner party a shy young lady was present, whose mother, with maternal partiality, admitted that her daughter sang. After dinner the Bishop had candles placed on the piano, and begged the shrinking vocalist to give them an exhibition of her skill. The luckless victim ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... making my way home from a dinner party at a rather late hour, after drinking pretty freely, I won't attempt to deny—for that was the head and front of my offense—when, lo and behold! before the very doors of my abode, before the home of the good Milo, your fellow-citizen, I beheld ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... should be added the record of a talk which passed in June of the same year at a dinner party, where Sir Charles, 'along with Matthew Arnold, Bowen, afterwards Lord of Appeal, and Frederick Pollock,' discussed 'what is known ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... There was a great dinner party, but the general, not thinking Cecilia quite equal to it, had engaged Mrs. Holdernesse, a relation of his own, to do ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... house in such an insistently open manner that they created a social draught. The people who accepted their invitations for the second or third time were not the sort of people whose names gave importance to a dinner party or a house gathering. Failure, in a thinly-disguised form, attended the assiduous efforts of the Shalems to play a leading role in the world that they had climbed into. The Baron began to observe to his acquaintances that "gadding about" and entertaining on a ...
— When William Came • Saki
... government; and he had occupied himself in other ways. Nor could it be denied that he enjoyed himself—out of her sight; but, in that redoubtable presence, his abounding manhood suffered a miserable eclipse. Once, at Osborne, when, owing to no fault of his, he was too late for a dinner party, he was observed standing behind a pillar and wiping the sweat from his forehead, trying to nerve himself to go up to the Queen. When at last he did so, she gave him a stiff nod, whereupon he vanished immediately behind another pillar, and remained there until the ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... he should cogitate over the best way of managing his first meeting with them; but he had not been an hour in his uncle's house before he found that Grand was shortly going to give a great dinner party for the bride mainly consisting of relatives and very old friends. This, it was evident, would be the most natural time ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... more on level terms with royalty (though his dress-suit was four years old and his patent shoes, good enough for such mild society functions as came his way, looked horribly cracked and shabby), he dismissed the matter from his mind. The dinner party was a large one. There were two bishops, innumerable popes, several bejewelled women, an officer or two and the inevitable duenna. He was introduced to them all, but remembered only Colonel Malinkoff, a quiet man whom ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace |
