"Performer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... erect in the great calm of the public performer. Then slowly he began to revolve the log under his feet. The lofty gaze, the folded arms, the straight supple waist budged not by a hair's breadth; only the feet stepped forward, at first deliberately, then faster and faster, until the rolling log threw a blue spray a foot into the air. ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... of his life that the refinement and taste for which Major Whistler was ever after noted began to show itself. An accomplished scientific musician and performer, he gained a reputation in this direction beyond that of a mere amateur, and scarcely below that of the professionals of the day. His sobriquet of "Pipes," which his skill upon the flute at this time gave him, adhered to him through life among his intimates in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... and resources—would that he had confined his talent to its legitimate sphere, namely, on the boards—but, unfortunately, he had chosen to exert it at his, Mr. Pickwick's, expense. (Loud laughter.) This performer tried to live by his wits, as it is called, and he, Mr. Pickwick, had encountered him, and his wits, too and nearly always with success. Mr. Pickwick then humorously described some of his adventures with this person, causing ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... of the pipe stops and bellows. In particular, the steady flow of air to the pipes was obtained from the pressure of water, and a receptacle partly filled with water was an essential part of every Roman organ. From this feature it was called the water-organ. The Emperor Nero had been a notable performer on the water-organ and had interested himself in ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... intently listening to the music, or whether her mind was upon something far different and far away; he thought the latter. He was right. Ellen at the moment had escaped from the company and the noisy sounds of the performer at her side; and while her eye was curiously tracing out the pattern of the carpet, her mind was resting itself in one of the verses she had been reading that same evening. Suddenly, and as it seemed, from no connection with anything in or ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Cumming, sent to beg the boys might not be all flogged precisely at the same hour, as, though she had no doubt the punishment was deserved, the noise of the concord was really dreadful. Robert was the only one of our family who could sing, though my father was musical, and a performer on the violoncello at ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... ashamed to be seen with a player. He therefore hurried Bensley to an unfrequented coffee-house, where he asked him very seriously, "Hoo could ye disgrace the corps by turning a play-actor?" Mr. Bensley answered, that he by no means considered it in that light; on the contrary, that a respectable performer of good conduct was much esteemed, and kept the best company. "And what, man," said the other, "do you get by this business of yours?" "I have," replied Mr. B., "at present an income of near a thousand a year." "A thousand a year!" ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... portrait came to be published. In justice to Marshall, it is right to say that he had done much better things, and did better things afterwards for Moseley, than this head of Milton. "Marshall," says Bliss (Wood's Ath. III. 518, Note), "though in general a coarse and hasty performer, is not to be despised, since his heads, though often very rough sketches, bear evident marks of authenticity and resemblance to the originals. The best head he ever engraved, in my opinion, is one of Dr. Donne when young." ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... an event, always, and each chief, according to his temperament and training, tried to do things up properly. And in that attempt certain basic traits of human nature showed in the very strongest relief. Thus there are three points of view to take in running any spectacle: that of the star performer, the stage manager, or the truly artistic. We encountered well-marked specimens of each. I will tell ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... treble and bass, was not satisfactory, partly owing to mechanical difficulties occasioned by the distribution of the matter on the slate and the multiplicity of corrections, and partly from lack of skill in the performer. However, two or three very brief passages were given by both hands and pronounced correct by the Composer, who showed surprise that anything so "simple"—as he characterized it—should give so much trouble. In one instance he noted that, while the two parts, treble ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... desire to commit a crime that should baffle detection. I could invent hundreds of such crimes, and please myself by imagining them done; but would they really work out in practice? Evidently the sole performer of my experiment must be myself; the subject—whom or what? Accident should determine. I itched to commence with murder—to tackle the stiffest problems first, and I burned to startle and baffle the world—especially the ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... amused himself by rapping on the head every one who came within his reach. This exhibition seems very absurd, yet not less than one hundred were present—children, boys, old men, and even gentlemen and ladies, were standing by, and occasionally greeting the performer with the smile of approbation. Mr. Punch, however, was not to have it all his own way, for another and better sort of Punch-like exhibition appeared a few yards off, that took away Mr. Punch's audience, to the great dissatisfaction of that gentleman. This was ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... gifted father a great talent for music. She was a remarkably skilful performer upon the pianoforte. So retentive was her memory that she could play without notes a large portion of the works of ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... you not to gamble with Hop Wah. He is a very smart one at the business, and he will relieve you of all the money you have, if you play with him. Being a sleight-of-hand performer, he can do things that you could not see. Just go it light on that point. I don't want to have him get into trouble, and that is what he generally does when he wins a whole lot of money. There is ...
— Young Wild West at "Forbidden Pass" - and, How Arietta Paid the Toll • An Old Scout
... there is a resemblance in other points too. For example, you are a bully—that I am in a position to prove by the evidence of witnesses if you will not confess. And are you not a flute-player? That you are, and a far more wonderful performer than Marsyas. For he indeed with instruments charmed the souls of men by the power of his breath, as the performers of his music do still; for the melodies of Olympus are derived from the teaching of Marsyas, and these, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... very sorry to find, by the Opera Bills for this Day, that we are likely to lose the greatest Performer in Dramatick Musick that is now living, or that perhaps ever appeared upon a Stage. I need not acquaint my Reader, that I am speaking of Signior Nicolini. [1] The Town is highly obliged to that Excellent Artist, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... of it," cried Virginia, excitedly. "I've thought of a good way. We'll give Jonesy a benefit, like great singers have. The bear will be the star performer, and we'll all act, too, and sell the tickets, and have tableaux. I love to arrange tableaux. We were always having ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... well as performer, the Lord Keeper Guilford enunciated his views regarding the principles of melody in 'A Philosophical Essay of Musick, Directed to a Friend'—a treatise that was published without the author's name, by Martin, the printer to the Royal Society, in the year 1677, at which ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... she discovered that Mrs. Van Varick Shadd had got ahead of her in the matter of Jockobinski, the monkey virtuoso. Society had been very much interested in the reported arrival in America of this wonderfully talented simian who could play the violin as well as Ysaye, and who as a performer on the piano was vastly the superior of Paderewski, because, taken in his infancy and specially trained for the purpose, he could play with his feet and tail as well as with his hands. It had been ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... the smoke of that engagement cleared away, secure of his ship. I suppose he was about thirty: a powerful, active man, with a blue eye, a thick head of hair, about the colour of oakum and growing low over the brow; clean-shaved and lean about the jaw; a good singer; a good performer on that sea-instrument, the accordion; a quick observer, a close reasoner; when he pleased, of a really elegant address; and when he chose, the greatest brute upon ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... a successful man to go. He loved fine clothes, good eating, and particularly the company and acquaintanceship of successful men. When dining, it was a source of keen satisfaction to him to know that Joseph Jefferson was wont to come to this same place, or that Henry E. Dixie, a well-known performer of the day, was then only a few tables off. At Rector's he could always obtain this satisfaction, for there one could encounter politicians, brokers, actors, some rich young "rounders" of the town, all eating and drinking amid a ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... field-marshal's baton at the age of thirty. He was the first prince of the name, having been ennobled in 1687 for his successes against the Turks and his support of the House of Hapsburg. He was a musical amateur and a performer of some ability, and it was to him that the family owed the existence of the Esterhazy private chapel, with its solo singers, its chorus, and its orchestra. Indeed, it was this prince who, in 1683, built the splendid Palace of Eisenstadt, at the foot of the Leitha mountains, in Hungary, where ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... use in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. That such was the case there can be no doubt, for the musical world can still furnish many compositions, written expressly for Queen Elizabeth, her majesty being considered a very good performer on the virginal. But it is not generally known that the very identical instrument, the favourite property of that queen, is still in the possession of a Mr. Jonah Child, artist, of Dudley, Worcestershire. It is a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... subterranean road to Montalbano, was a larger canvas and gave him more opportunities. As a creative artist he is in the fortunate position of being up to a certain point his own impresario, stage-manager and performer. Nevertheless he has to rely on the co-operation of his father and Gildo, and there is always the public to be considered, therefore it is possible that some of the things we made and contemplated in the workshop did not get so far as to ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... attainments partake of this old-fashioned character, and most of her songs are such as are not at the present day to be found on the piano of a modern performer. I have, however, seen so much of modern fashions, modern accomplishments, and modern fine ladies, that I relish this tinge of antiquated style in so young and lovely a girl; and I have had as much pleasure in hearing her warble one of the old songs of Herrick, or Carew, or Suckling, adapted to ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... hearers, spoke about the deceased as a chivalrous fighter for his native land, as a good Christian and a truly noble character. It was touching to hear the parting hymn sung by the sonorous voices of the British wounded, accompanied solemnly on the harmonium by a British performer. All escorted the coffin to the gates. Once outside, it was reverently lifted on to the funeral car, which German gunners escorted to the cemetery. Four British and one French officer, as well as the German doctors who could be ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... take the trouble to remark on such slight evidence that the voice was very charming and when the performers resumed their seats I shifted my position slightly in order not to have that particular performer hidden from me by the little man with the beard who conducted, and who might for all I know have been her father, but whose real mission in life was to be a model for the Zangiacomo of "Victory." Having got a clear line of sight I naturally (being idle) continued to ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... ceremony proceeded, Margaret could not keep quiet. She hovered round the fortunate performer. She must have an apparent hand in it, if not a real. She put her finger into the water—to pave the way for her boy, I suppose; for she could not have deceived herself so far as to think Catherine would allow her to settle the temperature. During the ablution she kneeled down opposite ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... 1—Naye{COMBINING BREVE}nezgani is the first son of Stenatlihan, who was made to conceive by the sun's rays as she lay asleep on the eastern slope of a mountain. He is the War God and miracle performer, the culture hero who in parallel legends appears in many North American aboriginal cults. Great monsters in the form of giant antelopes, rolling stones, and beasts of hideous conception are supposed to have inhabited the earth for a time, destroying its people. These monsters typify ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... when song expires Pervades a moment those who listen round; And then of course the circle much admires, Nor less applauds, as in politeness bound, The tones, the feeling, and the execution, To the performer's diffident confusion. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... I can do," spoke Betty. She was a good swimmer and diver, perhaps not so brilliant a performer as Mollie, but with more staying qualities. Down went Betty in a clean dive, and when she came up, panting and shaking the water ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... squire, tossing the bill from him, so that it floated on to the loaf and settled there, "I suppose we shall none of us think it worth while to ride or drive ten miles to see this wonderful performer." ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... thing—namely, the principal opera-house in France, the institution whose specialties are grand opera and ballet.] one admires the warmth of feeling which speaks out of his singing. Chollet, the first tenor of the Opera-Comique, the best performer of Fra Diavolo, and excellent in the operas "Zampa" and "Fiancee," has a manner of his own in conceiving the parts. He captivates all with his beautiful voice, and is the ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... follow, but there was always a certain amount of slap-stick comedy that could be readily understood. Then there was dancing—as a whole monotonous and mediocre; but there was one old man who was a remarkable performer, and would have been appreciated on any stage in the world. The topical songs invariably amused me—they were so universal in spirit. The chorus of one which was a great hit ran: "Haido, haido, rahweni ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... minutes, and no one answered. The flute still continued its melancholy tune; it was evidently in the hands of a learner, for the air (a dispiriting one enough at the best) kept breaking off suddenly and repeating itself. But the performer had patience, and the sound never ceased for more than two seconds at a time. Besides this, nothing could be heard. The blinds were drawn in all the windows. The glow of the candles through them was cheerful enough, but nothing could be seen of the house inside. ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ungovernable gaiety was not perceived by Dr. Johnson, who faced the fire, with his back to the performer and the instrument. But the amusement which such an unlooked for exhibition caused to the party, was momentary; for Dr. Burney, shocked lest the poor Signor should observe, and be hurt by this mimicry, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... ceaseless mandarin-like head-wagglings and mutterings of the names of Allah would stupefy anyone's brain up to a point. It is not only Arabs who daze their understandings with godly ejaculations, oft repeated. The marabout leader, who is a kind of maitre de ballet, enfolds each performer in his arms and makes a few passes round him, or kisses him. The uninitiated then reel off in a trance of hypnotic joy; the others do the same, in more theatrical fashion. At the end of each one's trick he de-mesmerizes him ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... immediately fainted; because, as the eternal Secretary told Popanilla, the Vraibleusians are the most modest and most moral nation in the world. The male part of the audience insisted, in indignant terms, that the offending performer should immediately be dismissed. In a few minutes he appeared upon the stage to make a most humble apology for an offence which he was not conscious of having committed; but the most moral and the most modest of nations was implacable, and the wretch was expelled. Having a large ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... as kutchin kutchu-ing; which consists in jumping about with the legs bent in a sitting posture? If so, have they not been struck with a philological mania, on seeing his picture of the Kutchin-Kutcha Indians dancing; in which the principal performer is actually figuring in the midst of the wild circle in the way described. Is not the nursery term something more than a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... Fancy your father's feelings if I had come home with a black eye from an encounter with a pot-house bully! You know I put my foot into a tender secret of your man's, by offering to be the performer!" ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... aerial Performer who wore powerful Spectacles, in which any one standing before her could see an Image ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... once lowered his eyes or focussed the little party before him, although ultimately the tea table could not have been more than a few yards off. There stood the stranger with a vacant expression which would have made the fortune of a performer in a waxwork show, and hoped and almost prayed that a servant of some kind would appear, receive his signature or his card and allow him to return to the comfortless obscurity of his hotel. There was no bell, and no servant came, and the silence ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... to form a juvenile Pinafore company, and would like to have you take the leading part. You would make an excellent Admiral. I propose to take my opera company all over the United States. I should be willing to pay you, as the star performer, twenty-five dollars a week." ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... for prayers. The unregenerated called this saloon the "Synagogue." The devotions consisted only of two hymns from the Plymouth Collection and a short prayer, and seldom occupied more than fifteen minutes. The hymns were accompanied by parlor-organ music when the sea was smooth enough to allow a performer to sit at the instrument without being ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ungloved hands many rings, with stones rather too large to be taken for genuine on a woman promenading alone at such an hour. Conjoined with the musical instrument, the attire confirmed the student in his first impression after the tragic one, that this was a performer in one of the numerous dance-houses of the popular region, bordering ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... of disarming his principal performer of so necessary an adjunct to his instrument, in such an emphatic part of the composition too, which must have had a droll effect at the time, all such minutiae of adaptation are at this time of day very properly exploded, and Jackson of Exeter very fairly ranks them under ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to his station at the coffee-house, where he curled his black legs together, and began singing out of his flat nose to the thrumming of a long guitar with wire strings. The instrument was not bigger than a soup-ladle, with a long straight handle, but its music pleased the performer; for his eyes rolled shining about, and his head wagged, and he grinned with an innocent intensity of enjoyment that did one good to look at. And there was a friend to share his pleasure: a Turk dressed in scarlet, and covered all over with daggers ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fleet of fishing—boats, although we could scarcely see them, but being unwilling to lose ground by lying to, we fired a gun every half hour, to give the small craft notice of our vicinity, that they might keep their bells agoing. Every three or four minutes, the marine drum—boy, or some amateur performer,—for most sailors would give a glass of grog any day to be allowed to beat a drum for five minutes on endi—beat a short roll, and often as we drove along, under a reefed foresail, and close reefed topsails, we could hear the answering tinkle before we saw the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... was an enthusiastic musician, being himself not only a very capable performer, but a composer of no mean merit. All the afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness, gently waving his long, thin fingers in time to the music, while his gently smiling face and his languid, ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... creatures are beasts of burden, as well as perhaps a feeling that if they did happen to be pursued youth and activity would enable them to get out of the brute's way, caused the two boys to stand fast alone upon the last form, thoroughly enjoying the acts of the performer, and wondering what ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... have this intrinsic utility, in the apprehension of the performer and the beholder alike, this sense of the intrinsic rightness of decorum is only the proximate ground of the vogue of manners and breeding. Their ulterior, economic ground is to be sought in the ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... now of the fixed," might put one in mind of Hecate's mode of ascending in a machine from the stage, "midst troops of spirits," in which you now admire the skill of the artist, and next tremble for the fate of the performer, fearing that the audacity of the attempt will turn his head or break his neck. The style of these "Discourses" also, though not elegant or poetical, was, like the subject, intricate and endless. It was that of a man pushing his way through a labyrinth ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... of the records we have kept for years I have found a source of supply for seed nuts and nursery stock which has proved to be a constant performer. I bud this nursery stock from trees with individual records that have proved themselves to be good performers, I have found that certain varieties have proved themselves not worthy of being planted, and certain other varieties have proven themselves at least promising. This last ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... when the swelling C in the overture to Freischutz told me that I had stepped, as it were with both feet, right into the magic realm of awe. Any one who had been watching me at that moment could hardly have failed to see the state I was in, and this in spite of the fact that I was such a bad performer on ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... with a semicircular groove for her neck, is fixed upon her chest, abdomen, and thighs by means of a waist-belt which passes through brass receivers on the under side of the board. An ordinary upright piano is then placed on the platform by four men; a performer mounts the platform and plays while the "strong lady" sings a love song while supporting ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... fury, twirling round the room, her waist encircled by the arm of that gentleman. He never used to be angry before when, on summer evenings, the chairs and tables being removed, and the governess called downstairs to play the piano, he and the Chevalier Strong (who was a splendid performer, and could dance a British hornpipe, a German waltz, or a Spanish fandango, if need were), and the two young ladies, Blanche and Laura, improvised little balls at Clavering Park. Laura enjoyed this dancing so much, and was so ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the enunciation of every word be clear and distinct. Most of the singing of the present day, is entirely too artificial, stiff and mechanical. It should be easy and natural; flowing directly from the soul of the performer, without affectation or display; and then singing will answer its true end, and not only please the ear, but affect and ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... healthful scouting, accepted only in part—that part which included the break. Forman had the fresh start and a walk over and held the trophy just two months, when it dawned upon him that Margaret loved dancing far more than she did him—a clumsy performer, and that she would dance night after night, the lightest, daintiest creature in the hop room, and never have a word or a look for him who leaned in gloomy admiration against the wall and never took ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... are the exclusive duty of the priests. In the case of the meditations on the small ether, &c., on the other hand, the text says nothing as to their having to be performed by priests, and we therefore assume in accordance with the general principle that 'the fruit belongs to the performer,' that the agent there is the person to whom Scripture assigns the fruit.— Here terminates the adhikarana of 'the lord ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... fiddler, whose music, though liked, is not much praised, because he lives by it; while a gentleman performer, though the most wretched scraper alive, throws the ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... habitues are often invited to come upon the stage on "amateur nights," which occur at least once a week in all the theaters. This is, of course, a most exciting experience. If the "stunt" does not meet with the approval of the audience, the performer is greeted with jeers and a long hook pulls him off the stage; if, on the other hand, he succeeds in pleasing the audience, he may be paid for his performance and later register with a booking agency, the address of which is supplied by the obliging manager, and ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... life in France at the time of the first Napoleon. Fifi, a glad, mad little actress of eighteen, is the star performer in a third rate Parisian theatre. A story as ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... like to do lots of these stunts, Midget, but let me advise you if you're ever a circus performer, don't try trapeze work; you're too heavy. When you came down, you'd go smash through the net! If you must be in a circus, you'd better stick to ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... two notes, but made up in power what it lacked in variety. Tom had tried hard to learn "Hail Columbia" for this occasion. He thought he knew it, and the family thought so too, from the amount of practising they had heard. But the excitement confused the performer, and the violin, after careering around among "Independence be your boast," ended in the well-known "Nelly Bly," Tom's chef-d'oeuvre. Fortunately the change made no difference to the rest of the orchestra, their accompaniment was ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... sent out of the room, and the rest then agree upon some simple task for her to perform, such as moving a chair, touching an ornament, or finding some hidden object. She is then called in and some one begins to play the piano. If the performer plays very loudly, the "seeker" knows that she is nowhere near the object she is to search for. When the music is soft, then she knows she is very near, and when the music ceases altogether, she knows that she has found the object she ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... report. One of the actresses was highly spoken of, and had indeed reached the reward of her eminence; having been called to the Parisian stage. Bonaparte is notoriously, perhaps politically, attached to the drama, and is no sooner informed of any good performer on a provincial stage, than he issues his command for his appearance and engagement ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... of the circus and menagerie to Briggsville. Tom had not been able to attend the performance; but it may be said he was favored with a little "circus" of his own, in which he played the part of star performer. But all's well that ends well, and he had the pleasure of walking into his humble home and turning over to his mother the handsome reward paid for the restoration of Tippo Sahib, comparatively unharmed, to the owner. He was so well liked by ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... and watching their ironical negligence of the stage and their interest in each other's company; their animated talk and rapid decisions as to the merits and charms of a performer; the comfort of their attitudes and carelessness (although never quite slovenliness) in dress; one seems to realize the nation better than anywhere. The old fighting passion may have gone; but much of the quickness, the shrewdness ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... chords; then a merry laugh would follow, and drown all other sounds. "What can it be?" thought I. "There is, to be sure, a pianoforte in the large drawing-room; but then, who would venture upon such a liberty as this? Besides, who is capable of it? There, it can be no inexperienced performer gave that shake; my worthy housekeeper never accomplished that!" So saying, I jumped from the breakfast-table, and set off in the direction of the sound. A small drawing-room and the billiard-room lay between ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... tried a considerable number of poetical experiments when the Dunciad appeared, but he had not yet discovered in what direction his talents could be most efficiently exerted. Bystanders are sometimes acuter in detecting a man's true forte than the performer himself. In 1722 Atterbury had seen Pope's lines upon Addison, and reported that no piece of his writing was ever so much sought after. "Since you now know," he added, "in what direction your strength ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... themselves into various antic postures, to the measure of their music, bringing their heels close together at every pause. Sometimes the men howled, like wild beasts; and he who continued to howl the longest, appeared to be considered the best performer. The women suffered their arms to hang down, as if they were without the ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... an enthusiast in music, and a very accomplished performer on several instruments. Her favorite had always been the harp, and next to ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... manner of the ancient heathen, return thanksgiving unto Apollo for having at last sent us a singer who knows her business! One who can sing as if she had a soul; who can act as if she were not acting, but existing amidst reality; who is, in short, a performer entirely new to the British stage; to whom we have not a parallel example to produce,—a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... master at Aix-la-Chapelle. He had before taken lessons from Gallini in that trifling art. From a pensioner at Chelsea he had learnt the use of the broadsword. He afterwards made an attempt, in which, however, he does not seem to have persevered, to become a performer on the national instrument of his forefathers, the harp. Ambition of such various attainments reminds us of what is related concerning the Admirable Crichton, and Pico ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... admittance. Do thou also try thyself." Ashtavakra then addressing the king said, "O king, O foremost of Janaka's race, thou art the paramount sovereign and all power reposeth in thee. In times of old, king Yayati was the celebrator of sacrifices. And in the present age, thou it is that art performer thereof. We have heard that the learned Vandin, after defeating (in controversy) men expert in discussion, causeth them to be drowned by faithful servants employed by thee. Hearing this, I have come before these Brahmanas, to expound the doctrine of the unity of the Supreme ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... eminence, I worship thee; Thee I salute, who am a monarch's child, The daughter and the consort of a prince, The high-born Damayanti, unto whom Bhima, Vidarbha's chief—that puissant lord— Was sire, renowned o'er earth. Protector he Of the four castes, performer of the rites Called Rajasuya and the Aswamedha— A bounteous giver, first of rulers, known For his large shining eyes; holy and just, Fast to his word, unenvious, sweet of speech, Gentle and valiant, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... magnified you here, O Maruts? Come hither, O friends, towards your friends. Ye brilliant Maruts, welcoming these prayers, be mindful of these my rites. The wisdom of Manya has brought us hither, that he should help as the poet helps the performer of a sacrifice: turn hither quickly! Maruts, on to the sage! the singer has recited these prayers for you. May this your praise, O Maruts, this song of Mandarya, the son of Mana, the poet, bring offspring for ourselves with food. May we have an invigorating autumn, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... to live on her 'face' in more senses than one. She is specially noticeable for three facts which have been abundantly exemplified in her career. First, she is a remarkably well educated woman, an accomplished linguist, speaking fluently, French, German and Italian, a skilled performer on the piano, and thoroughly versed in the literature of the day. Second, she has always exhibited a dislike, amounting almost to horror, of matrimony; and although she has, during her eventful history, received several advantageous offers of marriage, has declined them ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... shoots of individuality in their orchidean glass-house. A violation of the rule is a really deadly personal attack. Captain Cumnock was particularly sensitive regarding it, inasmuch as he knew himself not the natural performer he strove to be, and a mimicry affected him as a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was to be the chief, though passive performer, is peculiar to some of the tribes east of the Rocky Mountains, and consists in killing a dog and cutting out its liver, which is afterwards sliced into shreds or strings and hung on a pole about the height of a man's head. A band of warriors then come and dance wildly round this pole, and each ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... hat who wished to recite verses of, I gathered, a violent indecency. I was uncomfortable about Vera Michailovna, but I need not have been. The indecency was of no importance to her, and she was interested in the human tragedy of the performer. Tragedy it was. The man was hungry and dirty and not far from tears. He forgot his verses and glanced nervously into the wings as though he expected to be beaten ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... at Alexandria, agreed, on the occasion of a great religious solemnity—the feast of Adonis—to go together to the palace of King Ptolemy Philadelphus, to see the image of Adonis, which the Queen Arsinoe, Ptolemy's wife, had had decorated with peculiar magnificence. A hymn, by a celebrated performer, was to be recited over the image. The names of the two women are Gorgo and Praxinoe; their maids, who are mentioned in the poem, are called Eunoe and Eutychis. Gorgo comes by appointment to Praxinoe's house to fetch her, and there the ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... made in her quaint frock against the crumbling garden wall. He spoke a very pretty speech about her appearance. But he found her haughty indeed considering that she was nothing but an upstart vaudeville performer. She had no manners at all, he decided, for she did not even suggest that he sit down. He actually had ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... way into the very center of the bunch of wild horses, wheeling and doubling and riding like a circus performer, to avoid the batteries of flying heels, until he was close to the wicked black stallion, which was all that held the bunch together and prevented it from being broken up and driven to the upper end of the ranch, where ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... returned to the cabin, and lay down on my bed. Jim's hands were white with flour. He was kneading dough, and had several low, flat pans on the table. Wallace and Jones strolled in, and later Frank, and they all took various positions before the fire. I saw Frank, with the quickness of a sleight-of-hand performer, slip one of the pans of dough on the chair Jones had placed by the table. Jim did not see the action; Jones's and Wallace's backs were turned to Frank, and he did not know I was in the cabin. The conversation continued on the subject of Jones's ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... different sorts of music. These halls are connected by telephone with all the houses of the city whose people care to pay the small fee, and there are none, you may be sure, who do not. The corps of musicians attached to each hall is so large that, although no individual performer, or group of performers, has more than a brief part, each day's programme lasts through the twenty-four hours. There are on that card for to-day, as you will see if you observe closely, distinct programmes of four of these concerts, each of a ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... not come to Rome for gratification. It is not considered conformable to the dignity and sanctity of an ecclesiastical government to patronize them; and it is not the custom or etiquette for the Pope, Cardinals or higher Clergy ever to visit them. The consequence is that no performer of any consideration or talent is engaged to sing at Rome, except one or two by chance at the time of the Carnaval. In amends for this you have a good deal of music at the houses of individuals who hold conversazioni or assemblies; in which society would flag very much but for the music, ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... country running could not take place until later when we had left the area. On one or two of the spare afternoons we managed to get some Rugby football, and had some excellent games, during which we discovered that our Padre was a performer of considerable merit. ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... under his pillow, where he had placed them for safety. Perhaps as consolation for their losses they were entertained during the night to a concert. Three drums and four flutes, the latter having four holes into one of which the performer blew with his nostrils, were the orchestra, and Cook's criticism is hardly complimentary: "The music and singing were so much of a piece that I was very glad when it was over." They waited till noon the next day in hopes ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... eager audience, fearful of losing a word, would bend forward with open mouths as well as attentive ears. It was always a hostile audience at the beginning of Mr. Phillips's address, but before the end he swayed them to applause, tears, or laughter, as a skilled performer upon a perfect instrument. His subject was nearly always slavery, his views very extreme and for immediate abolition, but at that time he had a very small following. Nevertheless, his speeches, especially because of the riots and controversies they caused, set people thinking, and ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... be used for the ornamentation of the college. Our population at Gladstonopolis was so thriving that we found it as easy to collect ten pennies as one. At these readings Gabriel Crasweller was the favourite performer, and it had begun to be whispered by some caitiffs who would willingly disarrange the whole starry system for their own immediate gratification, that Crasweller should not be deposited because of the beauty of his voice. And then the difficulty was ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... employed his leisure, if not relieved his sense of the war-minister's neglect, by exerting his talents as the "Gracioso" of some strolling company. The troopers gathered round us, with that odd mixture of familiarity and respect which belongs to all the lower ranks of Spain; and the performer evidently acquired new spirits from the laughter of his audience, as he dashingly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... and now unhappy personage appear to give it much more consideration than the rest. Hurried on by the force of associating circumstances, and by promptings not of himself or his, he had been an active performer in the terrible drama we have already witnessed, and the catastrophe of which he could now only, and in vain, deplore. Leaning with vacant stare and lacklustre vision against the neighboring rock, he seemed ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... A Scotch abbot of the 7th century. Scott says here: "I am not prepared to show that Saint Modan was a performer on the harp. It was, however, no unsaintly accomplishment; for Saint Dunstan certainly did play upon that instrument, which retaining, as was natural, a portion of the sanctity attached to its master's character, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... requires no scientific knowledge of music in his audiences to appreciate. Placed at the instrument with any musician, he plays a perfect bass accompaniment to the treble of music heard for the first time as he plays. Then taking the seat vacated by the other performer, he instantly gives the entire piece, intact in brilliancy and symmetry, not a note lost or misplaced. The selections of music by which this power of Tom's was tested, two years ago, were sometimes fourteen and sixteen pages in length; on one occasion, at an exhibition at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... instruments the first place was held by the violin, which even then conferred great celebrity on the successful player. At the court of Leo X, who, when cardinal, had filled his house with singers and musicians, and who enjoyed the reputation of a critic and performer, the Jew Giovan Maria del Corneto and Jacopo Sansecondo were among the most famous. The former received from Leo the title of count and a small town; the latter has been taken to be the Apollo in the Parnassus of Raphael. In the course ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... in turn, which it accordingly did; and the whole circumstances having been privately reported to one of the ushers as usual, that functionary, after listening about at the doors of the rooms, by a sudden descent caught the performer in his night-shirt, with a box of phosphorus in his guilty hand. Lucifer-matches and all the present facilities for getting acquainted with fire were then unknown—the very name of phosphorus had something diabolic in it to the boy-mind; so Tom's ally, at the cost of a sound flogging, earned ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... Interesting game. Queer fix, though, the ball's in that's left all alone in the middle, don't you think?" Lord Regalia felt his own similarity to the "ball in a fix" too keenly to appreciate the interesting character of the amusement, or the coolness of the chief performer in it; but "Beauty's Solitaire" became a synonym thenceforth among the Household to typify any very tender passages "sotto ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... of floating water-grasses. Then she plunged into a throbbing aria,—singing freely, none too accurately, but with a passion and self-forgetfulness which promised greater things than the concert performer. From this on to other snatches of opera, to songs, wandering as the mood took her, coming finally to the street song that Vickers had woven into his composition for Rome, with its high, sad note. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... likewise unremitting; indeed, the latter was almost too kind, for she seemed anxious that we should eat of every dish, and drink out of every flask and bottle. We had a little music too,—for she played the piano; and the commissary, likewise a performer, paid us the compliment to dash off in very good style, "God save the King." But the circumstance which amused me most of all remains to be stated. I was asked if I played chess; and I replied in the affirmative, adding, however, as the facts of the ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... which it must have cost a performer like Paganini to have arrived at such transcendent excellence, people are often apt to err in their calculations as to the actual extent of time and practice which has been devoted to its acquisition. That the perfect knowledge of the mechanique of the instrument ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... delicate voice, without extravagance of adjunct, unhealthy lateness of hours, or appeal to degraded passions. Such entertainment might be obtained at infinitely smaller cost, and yet at a price which would secure honorable and permanent remuneration to every performer; and I am mistaken in my notion of the best actors, if they would not rather play at a house where people went to hear and to feel, than weary themselves, even for four times the pay, before an audience insulting in its listlessness and ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... tunes sung by the rugged Huguenot soldier. Strauss characterizes by his vocal manner as well as by his themes and their instrumental treatment; but for his success he relies at least as much upon the performer as upon the musical text. A voice and style like Mr. Van Rooy's give an uplift, a prophetic breadth, dignity, and impressiveness to the utterances of Jochanaan which are paralleled only by the imposing instrumental apparatus employed in proclaiming the phrase ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... sooner was Mrs. Rolfe gone than Dymes did talk of her with the salesman, and in a way peculiar to his species, managing, with leers and half-phrases, to suggest not only that the lady was a performer of distinction, but that, like women in general, she had found his genius and his person fatally attractive. Dymes had the little weaknesses ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... been in the habit of forming themselves into troupes, or, as they call them, compagnie, placed under the direction of one person, who is both manager and principal performer. They divide these troupes according to the various kinds of acting; thus, there are companies of tragic, melodramatic and comic actors, but it is very rare to find a combination of tragedy and comedy in the same entertainment. There are at present about eighty different troupes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... practising ponies for forthcoming gymkhanas. Goal-posts were already fixed for the great yearly football match between Chumba and Dalhousie; in which contest victory was by no means always to the West, since Jeff Bathurst, a famous performer, trained and captained the Chumba team: and in another part of the green, three wooden sign-posts of unequal height gave promise of ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... have my readers too excited. They were words to shudder at, indeed; but the immediate consequences were not bloody— they were only to a limited degree tragic. It must be remembered that the magnificence of all actions is relative to the performer, nor would I seek to exalt Miss Limpenny to the level of a Semiramis or a Dido; only, when I say that she bore a great soul in a little body, I say no more than that ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of her own existence; she fathomed his genius to its utmost depths; her whole being vibrated in sympathy with his, and when she sat down at the piano and pressed the keys, it was as though he himself were the performer. She was his fingers—fingers at once deft and delicate. She played with a double love—love for him and love for his music. And why should she not love it? She was as much the mother of his music as of his children. I ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... a line of musical ancestors. His grandfather and namesake was an orchestral leader and composer of operas. His father was a professional singer, who took his son's musical education in hand at the age of four. At eight the boy was a fluent performer both on the violin and on the piano. When but ten years old Beethoven produced his first pianoforte sonata, and was installed as assistant organist in the Electoral Chapel at Bonn. When the lad visited Vienna, in 1787, ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... produced at the Park Theater, Philadelphia, on Christmas Eve. It was a success, but not a lavish one. The play was well written and staged, and Elsie Leslie was charming enough in her parts, but in the duality lay the difficulty. The strongest scenes in the story had to be omitted when one performer played both Tom Canty and the little Prince. The play came to New York—to the Broadway Theater—and was well received. On the opening night there Mark Twain made a speech, in which he said that the presentation ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of conversation all over the room. The second flutist, while looking over his shoulder angrily at the garrulous audience, executed a false note, which almost threw the first (and only) violinist into fits. In turning round to rebuke the errant performer, the violinist struck his elbow against a similar projection of the other flutist, and knocked a false note out of that gentleman too, besides momentarily ruffling his temper. This little episode diffused unhappiness over ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... due to the energy and erudition of Dr. W. J. Holland, its amiable director. In the music-hall, a symphony orchestra is maintained, and free recitals are given on the great organ twice every week by a capable performer. When the orchestra began its work thirteen years ago, it is doubtful if there were very many persons in Pittsburgh, other than musical students, who knew the difference between a symphony, a suite, a concerto, and a fugue. To-day there are thousands of people in ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... back and wiped his spectacles and beamed on their laughter. Then he read on down the column, through the biting satire to the bitter end, having an audience whose hilarity would have delighted a vaudeville performer's soul. ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... trials and adventures, and a subtle pleasure even in her half-motherly criticism and admonition of some passages. I am afraid he forgot Susy, who listened with the complacency of an exhibitor; Mary, whose black eyes dilated alternately with sympathy for the performer and deprecation of Mrs. Peyton's critical glances; and Peyton, who, however, seemed lost in thought, and preoccupied. Clarence was happy. The softly shaded lights in the broad, spacious, comfortably furnished drawing-room shone on the group before him. It was a picture ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... that Leonardo was invited to the court of Milan for the Duke Ludovico's amusement, "as a musician and performer on the lyre, and as the greatest singer and improvisatore of his time;" but this is improbable. Leonardo, in his long letter to that prince, in which he recites his own qualifications for employment, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... reached any very high pitch of art. "It was looked upon," says a recent writer, "much with the same view that the boys on the Serpentine even now seem to adopt, as an accomplishment, the acme of which was reached when the performer could succeed in running along quickly on his skates, and finishing off with a long and triumphant slide on two feet in a straight line forward. A gentleman would probably then have no more thought of trying to execute different ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... carried about in its case like the fiddle of the virtuoso, or blanketed and bridled like the "favourite" of the jockey. She liked her as much as ever, but there was a corner of the curtain that never was lifted; it was as if she had remained after all something of a public performer, condemned to emerge only in character and in costume. She had once said that she came from a distance, that she belonged to the "old, old" world, and Isabel never lost the impression that she was the product of a different moral or social clime from her own, that she had ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... form of the resonance chambers affect the pitch as well as the quality of the tone. This is demonstrated in the trombone, French horn, and other wind instruments. The lengthening of the tube of the trombone lowers the pitch of the tone, and the projection of the hand of the performer into the bell of the French horn has the effect of raising the pitch of the sound. If the variation in length or form is only slight, the result is sharp or flat, and the instrument is out of tune. In the ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... squire's lady was standing by her; the gentlemen, for a moment arrested from a political discussion, formed a group in a distant part of the room, the rector occasionally venturing in a practised whisper to enforce a disturbed argument. Ferdinand glided in unobserved by the fair performer. Miss Temple not only possessed a voice of rare tone and compass, but this delightful gift of nature had been cultivated with refined art. Ferdinand, himself a musician, and passionately devoted to vocal ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... of the wave—let him merge in the general run and wait his development.... Still, the final test of poems or any character or work remains. The prescient poet projects himself centuries ahead, and judges performer or performance after the changes of time. Does it live through them? Does it still hold on untired? Will the same style, and the direction of genius to similar points, be satisfactory now? Has no new discovery in science, or arrival at superior ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... Major walked up and down the platform side by side; the former taciturn and gloomy, and the latter entertaining him, or entertaining himself, with a variety of anecdotes and reminiscences, in most of which Joe Bagstock was the principal performer. Neither of the two observed that in the course of these walks, they attracted the attention of a working man who was standing near the engine, and who touched his hat every time they passed; for Mr Dombey habitually ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... were prepared to throw away their money here, and I fancy that the fat Greek who presided over the table made a fat thing of it. In the concert room, the superannuated artistes of the poorer kind of Continental concert hall shrieked and grimaced and ogled, and after every item of the show, the performer came round with an escallop shell into which the more generously disposed dropped small copper coins. The place was nearly always crowded with men in black frock-coats and crimson fezzes. Ill-starred Valentine Baker had been employed by the ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... and attributes. Here is the musician, the conspirator (a very Guy Fawkes, with dark lantern and all), the scholar, and so forth, all done with humorous detail by one Pianta. When he came to the artist he had a little quiet fun with the master himself, this figure being a caricature of no less a performer than the great Tintoretto. ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... distracted her attention. I then called aloud the names of the great faeries, and in a moment or two she said that she could hear music far inside the rocks, and then a sound of confused talking, and of people stamping their feet as if to applaud some unseen performer. Up to this my other friend had been walking to and fro some yards off, but now he passed close to us, and as he did so said suddenly that we were going to be interrupted, for he heard the laughter of children somewhere beyond the rocks. We were, ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... unfortunate in having no particular accomplishments. I cannot sing either the old songs or the new; neither am I a performer on divers instruments. I can paint a little, but my paintings do not seem to rouse any enthusiasm in the beholder, nor do they add an inspiring strain to conversation. I can, indeed, make gingerbread and six different kinds of pudding, but I hesitate to mention it, because the cook is far ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... performer of the Curry stable, had been combed and groomed and polished within an inch of his life, and there were blue ribbons in his mane, a sure sign of the confidence of Shanghai, the hostler. He was also putting this confidence ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... that have diseased nails, that are lepers, that are deceitful, that are born in bastardy of widows or of women having husbands alive; and they also that support themselves by the profession of arms. That Sraddha which is censurable, consumeth the performer thereof like fire consuming fuel. If they that are to be employed in Sraddhas happen to be dumb, blind, or deaf, care should be taken to employ them along with Brahmanas conversant with the Vedas. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... I would, I think, go back and rewrite this section from the beginning, expunging the statements that Hoopdriver was a poet and a romancer, and saying instead that he was a playwright and acted his own plays. He was not only the sole performer, but the entire audience, and the entertainment kept him almost continuously happy. Yet even that playwright comparison scarcely expresses all the facts of the case. After all, very many of his dreams never got acted at all, possibly indeed, most of them, the dreams of ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... if the woman played fifty times worse, and looked like a beggar. A medium performer with an ugly visage would not find us stumbling against duty. No respect should be shown to persons, when such a charge is brought up. The facts must be tested, and Miss Edgar—What's the reason she never owned she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... Maria that's to blow out the Gunning candles. Let me present to your la'ship Sir Edward Walpole, brother to the Baron of Strawberry Hill. A flourish and a sliding bow, and you know one another! Sir Edward, who resembles not Horry in his love for the twittle-twattle of the town, is a passable performer on the bass viol, and a hermit—the Hermit of Pall Mall. But the rules of that Hermitage are not too severe, child. 'Tis known there were ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... a subtle relation between motive and action that it has been said, "The effect of any action is measured by the depth of the motive from which it proceeds." [Footnote: Ralph Waldo Emerson.] And so this is why the clever performer cannot reproduce the effect of a speech of Demosthenes or Daniel Webster. This is a reason aside from that arising from the difference in the occasion. Great men and great artists make the occasion in the hearts of their hearers. The voice of the orator peculiarly should be free from ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... was well known in the Texas cattle country, and well loved. Frosty's daughter—she was only sixteen when he was last at Blowout, more than a year ago—was a pretty little thing, and her father had trained her to be a graceful tight-rope performer. He himself did some shooting from horseback, which most of the cowboys who ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... young artist, son of the performer, came to paint my picture at the request of Terry. This is very far from being agreeable, as I submitted to this distressing state of constraint last year to Newton, at request of Lockhart; to Leslie at request of my American friend;[112] to Wilkie, for his picture of the King's arrival at Holyrood ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... figuring in a hornpipe, and his father, very proud of this lithe son, whom he repeatedly declared to be just like himself in his young days in a tone that implied this to be the very highest stamp of juvenile merit, was the centre of a group who had placed themselves opposite the performer, not far from the upper door. Godfrey was standing a little way off, not to admire his brother's dancing, but to keep sight of Nancy, who was seated in the group, near her father. He stood aloof, because he wished to avoid suggesting himself as ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... his throat. He hath but one shake, and that is in winter. His voice sounds flat, from flatulence; and he fetches breath, like a drowning kitten, whenever he can. Notwithstanding all this, his music gains ground, for it walks with him from end to end of the street. He is your only performer that requires not many entreaties for a song; for he will chant, without asking, to a street cur, or a parish post. His only backwardness is to a stave after dinner, seeing that he never dines; for he sings for bread, and though corn has ears, sings very commonly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... might hear her perform; and when Melvil, as if ravished with the harmony, broke into the queen's apartment, she pretended to be displeased with his intrusion; but still took care to ask him whether he thought Mary or her the best performer on that instrument.[*] From the whole of her behavior, Melvil thought he might, on his return, assure his mistress, that she had no reason ever to expect any cordial friendship from Elizabeth, and that all her professions of amity were full of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... lively taste for facts in the little Boy; which continued to be the taste of the Man, in an eminent degree. Fictions he also knows; an eager extensive reader of what is called Poetry, Literature, and himself a performer in that province by and by: but it is observable how much of Realism there always is in his Literature; how close, here as elsewhere, he always hangs on the practical truth of things; how Fiction itself is either an expository illustrative ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... friends was a skilled performer on the cornet, the Cabinet Ministers were able to clash cymbals more or less in tune, and the Chief Organiser has ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... sharpened stick was inserted and stirred about until his insides were thoroughly mixed, when he died. We left them cleaning and scraping and dividing, and beating two drums, about four feet long, eight inches in diameter, covered with leather at one end. These are beaten with the open hand, the performer sitting on the ground with the instrument coming up over his left thigh, and produce a muffled and melancholy note. Mr. Forbes had some notion of buying one of them, but was told he would be simply wasting his time, both gansas and drums having an extraordinary value ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... preferred remaining with John Jr., but she was habitually polite, always playing when invited, and now taking her seat at the piano, she brought out sounds far different from those of a new performer. But Mr. Graham, if he heard it, did not heed it, his eyes and ears being alone for 'Lena. Seating himself near her, he commenced talking to her in an undertone, apparently oblivious to everything else around him, and it was not until ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... sake he's a better performer than my old friend, Galer. That man is getting on my nerves, Spike. He pursues me like a smell-dog. I expect he's lurking out in the passage now. Did you ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... reader imagine was this unobtrusive guest? It was the famous performer of acknowledged impossibilities,—a character of superhuman capacity and virtue, and, if his enemies are to be credited, of no less remarkable weaknesses and defects. With a generosity with which he alone sets us an example, we will glance merely at ...
— A Select Party (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
