"After-dinner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of soup, fish, game, birds, salads, was very quickly served, a waiter for each guest. The table was furnished with much silver and cut glass, and at each plate was a bouquet holder with napkin ring attached; there were after-dinner speeches by Governor Taft, Judge Wright, and others; then we were ushered into the large drawing-room where coffee and cigars were served. The room had been especially prepared by the labor of many ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... many a man falls short: to know when he has enough, and to be willing not only to let well enough alone, but to give a helping hand to the other fellow; to recognize, in a practical way, that we are our brother's keeper; that a brotherhood of man does exist outside after-dinner speeches. Too many men make the mistake, when they reach the point of enough, of going on pursuing the same old game: accumulating more money, grasping for more power until either a nervous breakdown overtakes them and a sad incapacity results, or they drop "in the ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... advantages of the English alliance, and would wish to see this alliance confirmed de novo; and I think it would be very well for us to meet them half-way with this. But then it would be better to avoid all after-dinner speeches such as those at the Reform Club,[28] all Polish legions such as are talked of, and in short any of these little matters, which are painfully felt here, and which always produce an uncomfortable and distrustful effect. The Emperor expressed himself in the most grateful manner towards ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... claret and sugar—adding cream if you like. Cream, lightly sweetened, flavored with sherry or rum, or a liqueur, and whipped, gives the last touch of perfection to a dessert of mixed fruit, or to wine jelly, or a cup of after-dinner coffee, ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... ending with plum pudding, and including (it seemed to him) all the roast turkey and baked potatoes and chicken salad and squash pie and ice cream in the world. Wherefore he sat, gorged, and gazed upon the world with after-dinner contempt. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... recitation-room." Greek he never enjoyed: his curiosity was never awakened on the edge of that boundless contiguity of interesting knowledge, and he only learned enough Greek to escape censure. He said, forty years after, in an after-dinner speech: ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Mme de Coulanges has already sent you word of our after-dinner conversations at Gourville's about people who have taste above or below their intelligence. Mme. Scarron and the Abbe Tetu were there; we lost ourselves in subtleties until we no longer understood anything. If the air of Provence, which subtilizes things still more, magnifies for you our visions, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... mile distant, in his richly furnished bungalow, Warwick Sahib dozed over his after-dinner cigar. He was in evening clothes, and crystal and silver glittered on his board. But his gray eyes were half closed; and the gleam from his plate could not pass the long, dark lashes. For his spirit was ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... pages for the fourth. They ask, What shall be done? Nothing is known to me but to give them Rahel, though I grudge it, for I vastly prefer to end with Scott. Rahel, I fancy, cost you no night and no morning, but was writ in that gentle after-dinner hour so friendly to good digestion. Stearns Wheeler dreams that it is possible to draw at this eleventh hour some possible manuscript out of the unedited treasures of Teufelsdrockh's cabinets. If the manuscripts were ready, all fairly copied out by foreseeing scribes in ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... recalls how the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, while eating a charlotte russe, felt his teeth strike against a hard object, which turned out to be a cardboard cylinder inscribed 'Votes for Women.' The chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was about to light his after-dinner cigar the other day when the cigar suddenly expanded into a paper fan bearing the legend, 'Tyrants, beware!' The newest Dreadnought with the First Lord of the Admiralty on board was preparing to set out on her trial trip when it was discovered ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... of course, an after-dinner speech. Being the last speech of the campaign it was also a highly important one. But George Remington felt, as he sat listening to the din of the applause, that he had answered rather neatly those who said he was wabbling on the local economic issue and was swaying in the wind of socialist ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... in his old place, and the two men talked of the Russian war and the probable storming of the Alamo. Then John took his usual after-dinner nap, and David went up stairs with Jenny and kissed his children, and said a few words to them and to the old woman, which made ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... comfort to the awkward and the shy that Washington could not make an after-dinner speech; and the well-known anecdote—"Sit down, Mr. Washington, your modesty is even greater than your valor "—must have consoled many a voiceless hero. Washington Irving tried to welcome Dickens, but ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... speech—a speech beyond the scope of the regulation after-dinner orations. This was something very remarkable; for the merchant was no speaker, and—what was still more ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... theory, at least, of a dinner was that it was a thing for enjoyment, whereas we often look on it as a continuation of the business of the day—I say, imagine a Roman girding himself up, literally girding himself up to make an after-dinner speech. ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... you fellows will come back to the fire and have a pipeful of talk we shall not be missed. In this house on ordinary occasions we reverse the order of after-dinner privileges—the men retire to the atmosphere of the sofa-pillows, and the women—I'm not allowed to tell what they do. But after remaining discreetly out of sight for some little time, during which faint sounds ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... hands trembling with nervous horror; but judge of my surprise, when he rose to reply with so calm a voice and so composed a manner, that, in all my experience of dinner-speaking, I never witnessed such a case of apparent ease. (Easy-Chair C —— himself, one of the best makers of after-dinner or any other speeches of our day, according to Charles Dickens,—no inadequate judge, all will allow,—never surpassed in eloquent effect this speech by Hawthorne.) There was no hesitation, no sign of lack of preparation, but ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... often spoken of by the men of his club with whom he had been at one time so intimate, and the subject happened to be brought up again one noon when Jack Carter was in the club as George Hands' guest. Hands, Carter, and Eckert were at one of the windows over their after-dinner cigars and liqueurs. ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... the struggles of many of the parents to educate their children as well as their faith in God, occurred at the alumni dinner of Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. At the close of the Commencement, Rev. H.H. Holloway, of Turin, Ga., the father of one of the graduates, was called upon for an after-dinner speech. Mr. Holloway told of a letter he received from President Cravath when he felt compelled, owing to the hard times, to have his son John, who had been in the University only four months, return home. Mr. Holloway, ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 48, No. 10, October, 1894 • Various
... Drew. I felt ashamed of the lightness of my own thoughts, but I had to tell him of my speculations upon after-the-war developments in aviation: nurses flying Voisins, with the cars filled with babies; old men having after-dinner naps in twenty-three-metre Nieuports, fitted, for safety, with Sperry gyroscopes; family parties taking comfortable outings in gigantic biplanes of the R-6 type; mothers, as of old, gazing apprehensively at speed-dials, cautioning fathers about "driving too ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... first-class boarding-house whose landlady and boarders would have been horror-stricken had they known that "Mr. Williams," the jolly, good-natured young fellow who had proved such a valuable acquisition to their after-dinner gatherings, was the desperate free-booter who had walked away with the valuable ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... at sunrise whipping the best stream in the State, the first morning of the trout season; the type of man whose machine noses in the closest to the judge's stand when a big race is on; the type of man who dances most, collects the most picture postals of pretty girls, laughs most at after-dinner speeches; the type of man who either does not marry at all, or attains much notoriety when the question of alimony is being fought out to the last cipher; the last man you would point out as a possible conspirator against anything save the peace and ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... Man,' is a domestic treachery of the same kind, though very much less in degree. That note might have been written on the impulse of the moment; but what shall we say of his practice of committing to paper Hamilton's sayings in the freedom of after-dinner conversation—a time when open-hearted men are apt to forget that there may be a Judas at table—and of saving them up to be used against him in the future? Jefferson explains away these and other dubious passages in his life with great ingenuity. He had to make such explanations ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... last few moments he had been considering, in that comfortable spirit of relaxed attention that comes with the after-dinner tobacco, two subjects: first, the beauty of the evening; second, the temperament, character, ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... failure, and the Egyptians proof against mere novelty, preferring harmony and beauty. So he withdrew and ceased to prize them; the camel died forgotten, and the parti-coloured man became the reward of Thespis the fluteplayer for a successful after-dinner performance. ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... slept the larger part of the day, and amused himself at solitary billiards until dinner, came out on the terrace to smoke his after-dinner cigar. He watched the sun as, like a ball of rusted brass, it slid down behind the hills, leaving the glowing embers of a smoldering day on the hilltops. The vermilion deepened into charred umber, and soon the west was a blackened grate; ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... dessert; he then changed his dinner hour from half past six to five, because Elizabeth, with her stern sacrifice of every thing to the child's good, had suggested to him, humbly but firmly, that late hours kept little Henry too long out of his bed. He gave up his bottle of port and his after-dinner sleep, and took to making water-lilies and caterpillars out of oranges and boats out of walnut shells, for his boy's special edification. Sometimes when, at half past six, Elizabeth, punctual as clock-work, ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... Pentele, some seventy-five miles distant; this is our first sleeping-place, the captain making his guest until our separation and departure in different directions next morning. During the fierce heat of mid-day we halt for about three hours at Adony, and spend a pleasant after-dinner Lour examining the trappings and trophies of a noted sporting gentleman, and witnessing a lively and interesting set-to with fencing foils. There is everything in fire-arms in his cabinet, from an English double-barrelled shot-gun to a tiny air-pistol for shooting flies ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... of that withering malignity towards the name of Pitt, which runs through Coleridge's famous Fire, Famine, and Slaughter. As this little viperous jeu-d'esprit (published anonymously) subsequently became the subject of a celebrated after-dinner discussion in London, at which Coleridge (comme de raison) was the chief speaker, the reader of this generation may wish to know the question at issue; and in order to judge of that, he must know the outline of this devil's squib. The writer brings upon the scene ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... even in England itself. For example, it would never occur to any diplomat in Washington to transact his business in any other language than English. Whereas, in London, I never once heard the French Ambassador pronounce one word of English—even in an after-dinner speech—M. Jusserand in Washington always spoke English. But, in spite of the claim that the French make, that their language prevails in diplomatic circles, he could not have done otherwise; because I have never, ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... Book. Subject: Quotations designed for general reference, and also as an aid in the preparation of the toast list, the after-dinner speech, and the ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... Mr. Bowles, I had the mortification of finding that, with a far less pardonable want of reserve, he had all but named me as his authority for an anecdote of his reverend opponent's early days, which I had, in the course of an after-dinner conversation, told him at Venice, and which,—pleasant in itself, and, whether true or false, harmless,—derived its sole sting from the manner in which the noble disputant triumphantly applied it. Such are the consequences of one's near and dear ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... has been given of an after-dinner speech by Mr. Webster at a gathering of his political friends, when he had to be prompted by a friend who sat just behind him, and gave him successively phrases and topics. The speech proceeded somewhat after this fashion: Prompter: "Tariff." Webster: "The tariff, gentlemen, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... lying. And as nothing on earth could be further from the scientific person's mind than such an imputation, he is usually fain in the end to give up the social pursuit of postprandial natural history (the subject generally crops up about the same time as the after-dinner coffee), and to let the prehistoric toad go on ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... every minute. The after-dinner coffee was not necessary to make, somewhere near my heart, little thrills jump up and down, like corn in a hot popper. I was getting what my soul craved—companionship, contact with life, and a glimpse into the doings of ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... stanza form to his use, as witness Thomas Hood with his galloping stanzas in the "Bridge of Sighs," but an ordinary mortal must produce his effects more obviously. The greater skill one has the greater liberties one can take in his choice of materials, just as a clever after-dinner speaker may say many things which from a less tactful person would be deemed offensive. Thomas Hood can write his dirges in dactylics with triple rhymes, but we must model ours on Gray's "Elegy" or ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... The after-dinner scene was very charming. Chinese lanterns were hung in the trees, the ladies in evening dress, the officers of the Imperial Army in mess ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... Grace, about two years old, pursued him down from her nursery every morning, and insisted upon seeing innumerable pictures, lurking (as she had discovered) in many different recesses of the library? More and more from this quarter it was that we drew the materials of our daily after-dinner conversation. One great discouragement arises commonly to the student, where the particular library in which he reads has been so disordinately collected that he cannot pursue a subject once started. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... he really says something droll, no matter how much below the average of the give and take of common talk, the listener's gratitude is frantic. It is so eager, it so outruns utterance, that it is not strange the after-dinner speech should be the favorite field of the fake-humorist, who reaps a full and ever-ripened harvest in it, and prospers on to a celebrity for brilliancy which there is little danger of his ever forfeiting so long as he ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... lofty pinnacle of imaginative and immaculate excellence, from which a tendency to shortness of temper in matters of domestic finance resulting in petty squabbles with her mother, and an irresistible desire for after-dinner somnolence, will have gradually displaced him. One after another her brothers will have been to her Knights of the Round Table of her fancy, armed by her enthusiasm for impossible conflicts, of which they themselves, absorbed as they are in the examination ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... exceedingly good dinner; to the admiration of Mr. Bows, who had a remarkable regard and contempt for this woman, during and after which repast, the party devised upon the best means of bringing this love-matter to a close. As for Costigan, his idea of tweaking the Major's nose vanished with his supply of after-dinner whisky-and-water; and he was submissive to his daughter, and ready for any plan on which she might decide, in order to meet the crisis which she saw was ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... judged intemperate on board a pirate ship. Mr Bloomfield was indeed a figure quite peculiar to the days of Mr Gladstone; what we may call (for the lack of an accepted expression) a Squirradical. Having acquired years without experience, he carried into the Radical side of politics those noisy, after-dinner-table passions, which we are more accustomed to connect with Toryism in its severe and senile aspects. To the opinions of Mr Bradlaugh, in fact, he added the temper and the sympathies of that extinct animal, the Squire; he admired pugilism, he carried a formidable oaken staff, ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... our public societies terminated like those of the Fellows of Berlin, science would become more popular, and the lovers of good living be gainers. Still, we recommend the fellows to keep out of their after-dinner conversations, all such topics as the course of the Niger, or the position of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... "I haven't had my after-dinner smoke yet," he commented. "Better light up with me. It always tastes better when one ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... dull. The Okes lived a remarkably solitary life. There were but few neighbours, of whom they saw but little; and they rarely had a guest in the house. Oke himself seemed every now and then seized with a sense of responsibility towards me. He would remark vaguely, during our walks and after-dinner chats, that I must find life at Okehurst horribly dull; his wife's health had accustomed him to solitude, and then also his wife thought the neighbours a bore. He never questioned his wife's judgment in these matters. He merely stated the case as if resignation were quite ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... soup-plates, the dinner-plates, the large platter and two vegetable dishes out into the kitchen to be made hot; they also carried out the bread-plate, the salad-bowl, and the pudding-dish, as well as the after-dinner coffee-cups and saucers. Then they arranged the plates for salad on the sideboard, and the dessert-plates, putting a dessert-spoon and fork for each person on these. While the dinner was getting ready came the lesson ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... concerning things human and divine"; we know that Carlyle found him "unprofitable, even tedious," and wished "to worship him, and toss him in a blanket"; and we have the vivid reporting of Keats, who tells us that, on his one meeting with Coleridge, "I walked with him, at his alderman-after-dinner pace, for near two miles, I suppose. In those two miles he broached a thousand things. Let me see if I can give you a list—nightingales—poetry—on poetical sensation—metaphysics—different genera and species of dreams— nightmare—a dream ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... Sunshine." So I loitered by the big table, dreaming upon the poignant perfections of this idol of a strange new art. I dreamed until awakened by the bustling return of my hostess, Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill, who paused beside me to build an after-dinner cigarette, herself glancing meantime at the flawless face on the magazine cover. I perceived instantly that she also had been caught by its not ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... listeners, the usual after-dinner loafers of the tavern's purlieus. Mr. Britt did not seem to mind them. He even looked about, as if to make sure ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... But, during after-dinner conversations, or at other times of like intercourse, who hears anything said about the rearing of children? When the country gentleman has paid his daily visit to the stable, and personally inspected the condition and treatment of his horses; ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... different to what I had seen him look before; not quite so stern—much less gloomy. There was a smile on his lips, and his eyes sparkled, whether with wine or not, I am not sure; but I think it very probable. He was, in short, in his after-dinner mood; more expanded and genial, and also more self- indulgent than the frigid and rigid temper of the morning; still he looked preciously grim, cushioning his massive head against the swelling back of his chair, and receiving the light ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... anxiety. How it told upon his strong and self-contained chief is related by T.J. Parker—"I never saw a man more crushed than he was during the dangerous illness of one of his daughters, and he told me that, having then to make an after-dinner speech, he broke down for the first time in his life, and for one painful moment forgot where he was and what he had to say." This was one of the few occasions of his absence from College during the seventies. "When, after two days, he looked in at the laboratory," ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... of weather and at all sorts of distances. For though Pitt did not care for joviality, being a frigid man of poor hearth and appetite, yet he considered that to be hospitable and condescending was quite incumbent on-his station, and every time that he got a headache from too long an after-dinner sitting, he felt that he was a martyr to duty. He talked about crops, corn-laws, politics, with the best country gentlemen. He (who had been formerly inclined to be a sad free-thinker on these points) entered into poaching and game preserving with ardour. He didn't hunt; he wasn't ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Marcy was both astonished and shocked to find that nearly every one with whom he conversed believed that the Union was already a thing of the past, and that the rebellious States never could be whipped. One day he spoke to Beardsley about it, while the latter was pacing his quarter-deck smoking his after-dinner cigar. ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... speak in public. So says WALTER. They mumble, stumble, hammer, stammer, falter! BESANT, why grumble at fate's distribution? To writers, sense; to speakers, elocution! Some books are bosh, but all experience teaches "Rot's" native realm is—After-dinner Speeches! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... to belong to the days of barbarism? Two groups of men, made up of the most respectable citizens of the place, stood furiously shooting at each other with pistols and guns, as if this was their idea of after-dinner recreation. Their leaders were Colonel Thomas H. Benton, afterward famous in the United States Senate, and General Andrew Jackson, famous in a dozen ways. The men of the frontier in those days were hot ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Mr. Reginald Smith tells me how James once wrote a leading article in the train between Paddington and Maidenhead. Many of the little poems which he contributed to periodicals were improvised. He was famous for wit and readiness as an after-dinner speaker; and showed an oratorical power in electioneering speeches which gave the highest hopes of parliamentary success. Indeed, from all that I have heard, I think that his powers in this direction made the greatest impression upon his ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... with the hot pudding and the after-dinner coffee things. "This has come on us so suddenly that we must make our plans at once," she explained. "I should think your mother would be glad to keep Rose for us; she is such a good cow. And then you can have all the cream ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... Gussie, don't you?" he asked with a jealous pang, for he found it almost impossible to get a quiet word with that busy and important member of the household, and now that winter was coming on, it would be harder than ever, for even the little after-dinner chats in the garden would ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... evening to escape their usual after-dinner talk, and went to his room. He was there now, with ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... noon, and the boys were eating dinner at the camp set up close to the creek at Sinkhole cabin. Sudden, sprawled in the shade of the wagon, was staring glumly at the sluggish little stream, smoking his after-dinner cigar and trying to formulate some plan that would promise results where results were most vital to his bank account. It would, of course, take two or three days to gather in all the horses on Sinkhole range, and ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... variety such that this book is all that could be desired in a book of toasts. The latter half of the book is a collection of side-splitting and clever stories as told by the great humorists and well-known after-dinner speakers. Here again the wide range of subjects makes this book especially useful and withal highly entertaining. The idea of a combination of toasts ...
— The Little Lame Prince - Rewritten for Young Readers by Margaret Waters • Dinah Maria Mulock
... she had saved, subsequently ate her; but one of her little hoofs commemorates her name, and as Mr. Denny, with its assistance, lights his after-dinner pipe, he often heaves an appropriate sigh, and remarks: "Well, Mary, we'll never get the like of that ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... evening," went on Reggie, in the approved manner of after-dinner introductions, "one whom you all well know, and whom it is scarcely ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... expression to these motives, will be neither a reformer without grace nor a scholar without manliness. Give to such a man a flow of animal spirits and a dash of wit, and he should be not unapt to entertain even when poised on the dangerous wing of an after-dinner speech. ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... had created so much interest or won so much regard. He had already been honored by degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, and now many similar honors were thrust upon him. He was acknowledged to be the best after-dinner speaker in England, and no one was called upon so often for addresses at dedications, the unveiling of tablets, and other civic occasions. It is not strange that he became attached to England with an ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... open face; but he was a born orator of a certain type. Rounded and polished, mellow and musical, his sentences rolled from his mouth in liquid cadence and perfect balance. Sir Hugh put him down as his ideal after-dinner speaker. He made his points clearly, neatly, and with occasional vigor that was ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... who has had her after-dinner nap, gets up and goes into her sitting-room, we may enter with ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... raised it to sip, the scent of the wine quirked time for him, making this for a fleeting moment the dining room at Red Springs during a customary after-dinner gathering of the men of the household. The talk there, too, had been of horses—always horses. Then Drew came back in a twitch of eyelid to the here and now, to Hunt Rennie watching him with a measuring ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... after-dinner speech was perhaps not quite in accordance with Bashkir etiquette, but it made a favourable impression. There was a decided murmur of approbation, and those who understood Russian translated my words to their less accomplished brethren. A short ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... went out to talk in the moonlight, while I smoked an after-dinner cigar. We were gone for some time, and on our return decided to go straight upstairs to bed. I noticed that lights still burned in the coffee-room, and heard the sound of voices from that direction. Thinking that some late guests had arrived during our absence, I had the curiosity to ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... 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 big scale was not much in his line; a quiet after-dinner pipe and talk with some brother legislator was his ideal ...
— When William Came • Saki
... about the middle of March, as the old man was rousing himself from his after-dinner nap, two men drove up to the Walker homestead, tied their horse at the gate, came up the path to the house and knocked at the door. He, ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... passed wearily, and her usual ride into the upland canyon did not reanimate her. For reasons known best to herself she did not take her after-dinner stroll along the shore to watch the outlying fog. At a comparatively early hour, while there was still a roseate glow in the western sky, she appeared with grim deliberation, and the blue lamp-shade in her hand, ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... whitening hairs on his face and tufted feet were not visible. His hazel-brown eyes were still as bright and soft and deep as the sunniest pools of Leith Water. It was only when he opened his mouth for a tiny, pink cavern of a yawn that the points of his teeth could be seen to be wearing down; and his after-dinner nap was more prolonged than of old. At such times Mr. Traill recalled that the longest life of a dog is no more than a fifth of the length of days ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... that sad business; and how the then Brandenburger, much wrought upon, smote the then Neuburger across the very face, and drove him into Catholicism, we have not forgotten; how can we ever?—It is one hundred and sixteen years since that after-dinner scene; and, O Heavens, what bickering and brabbling and confused negotiation there has been; lawyers' pens going almost continually ever since, shadowing out the mutual darkness of sovereignties; and from time to time ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... in the extreme. The public tables at the hotels were consequently thronged, and there acquaintances were soon made. The day of my arrival at Homburg I was seated next to Van Haubitz; his manner was off hand and frank, we entered into conversation, took our after-dinner cigar and evening stroll together, and by bed-time had knocked up that sort of intimacy easily contracted at a watering-place, which lasts one's time of residence, and is extinguished and forgotten on departure. Van Haubitz, like many Continentals and very few Englishmen, was one of those free-and-easy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... about the table broke suddenly, attended with a scraping of chairs and after-dinner chirrupings attended with toothpicks. A blowsy maid strained herself immediately across the strewn table and cloying lamb platter, and turned off two ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... professional standing. Of late, however, he had shown a puzzling tendency to dogmatize, to throw down the gauntlet, to flaunt his private code in the face of society; and the relation of the sexes being a topic always sure of an audience, a few admiring friends had persuaded him to give his after-dinner opinions a larger circulation by summing them up in a series of talks at the Van ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... the floor. For a moment it seems as if nothing more will be said and the audience might as well go home. But presently the Duke sees something at the rear of the cabin. He looks as you or I would look if we saw a yellow elephant taking its after-dinner coffee in the sitting-room; but, as he is a pirate, he is not frightened—merely interested and intent. He brushes his hand before his eyes, to make sure it is no delusion—not grog or rum. Then he rises softly. ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... after-dinner in the drawing-room upstairs! It is a nightmare to be imagined, not to be described. Imagine walking from the darkness and the frightful secret of the passage into the blazing dazzle and the glittering eyes of the resplendent dinner party! They, in Harry's ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... In the after-dinner Noel we make a promenade in the woods of Boulognes. Now it is the vacancies[5] of Noel and I aid Maman, she make me some black aprons new for go to school, and I sit myself down on the side of her. She loves not that I play in the ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... with all his might in the Reveil, backed up by Martainville, the only one among his associates who stood by him without an afterthought. Martainville was not in the secret of certain understandings made and ratified amid after-dinner jokes, or at Dauriat's in the Wooden Galleries, or behind the scenes at the Vaudeville, when journalists of either side met on ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... 'Why, indeed? After-dinner boozing and three-bottle men are a tradition of the dark ages; and yet there are dozens of young men in London—gifted young men some of them—who are doing this thing every year. Half the untimely deaths you hear of might be traced home to the brandy bottle, if a man had only the ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... usual six-course feed (with wines), and after it was over asked how I would like to while away the afternoon. I left it in his hands. "Eh bien, let us play on the Bosch a little," he suggested. It sounded as pleasant a light after-dinner amusement as any, so I bowed and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... Peter Laurie, as Lord Mayor of London, entertained the judges and leaders of the bar, he exclaimed to his guests, in an after-dinner oration:— ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... half the quantity of water, given in recipe for Boiled Coffee (see Page 30). This coffee may be prepared in the Percolator, following the directions given in the foregoing. Milk or cream is not served with black coffee. Serve in hot after-dinner coffee cups, with ...
— Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners - A Book of Recipes • Elizabeth O. Hiller
... keep still, my dear," he said. "There is an inquietude in your very pose that unsettles me, and with a little fortitude one can get used to anything. For instance, if anybody had told me five years ago that I could take my after-dinner coffee without a slight flavour of old cognac I ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... the field of recollection pretty thoroughly in our after-dinner seance in your rooms, David, but I noticed there was one corner of it you left undisturbed. ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... stepmother was especially kind to Julian this evening, and that she and he sat apart in one of the windows for some time talking to each other in a low confidential tone, while my father took his after-dinner nap. I wonder whether he told her of our ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... was the atmosphere that the two friends declared the interior of the tent to be insupportable, they therefore walked down to near the inner margin of the beach and flung themselves down upon the curious moss-like turf, to indulge in their usual after-dinner chat and watch the gathering of the storm that now seemed inevitable, while Earle smoked. For a wonder, there were neither flies, mosquitoes, nor midges on this little peninsula; there was therefore nothing but the excessive heat and the closeness of ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... be true. The world, a world of prose, Full-crammed with facts, in science swathed and sheeted, Nods in a stertorous after-dinner doze! Plangent and sad, in every wind that blows Who will may hear the sorry words repeated:- 'The Gods ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... an after-dinner nap," said the Prime Minister. "Your Majesty is overspent with the hard hunting yesterday. Is it your Majesty's will that we should proceed with our business, or shall the ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... flinging into the yard at one o'clock—no later. That's certain, because Frodsham was at his after-dinner pipe—or should have been: instead of which he came running in after him. Just about that time, or maybe a little before, Mr. Menzies had been asking for Struan? Where was he? Did anyone ever see such a wastrel? No man's account, he called him. Mrs. Benson tolled her ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... after-dinner conversation on January 11th, 1803, with Roederer, Buonaparte exalted Voltaire at the expense of Rousseau in these significant words: "The more I read Voltaire, the more I like him: he is always reasonable, never a charlatan, never a fanatic: he is made for mature ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... no doubt as to his enjoyment, and the effort of old Edouard Dubois to scrape the last vestige of potato from his plate brought out a suggestion from Adolph Kunkel to leave the gilt design on the bottom. And when tiny after-dinner coffee cups appeared, the guests felt that a new and valuable experience was being added ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... fur overcoat at the open window, looking at the landscape in watercolours. He smoked an after-dinner cigarette, and spoke of the Beautiful. Crowl was with him. They were in the first floor front, Crowl's bedroom, which, from its view of the Mile End Road, was livelier than the parlour with its outlook on the backyard. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... besides Columbus, but he seems to have made more satisfactory arrangements with the historians than any of the others. He had genius, and was also a married man. He was a good after-dinner speaker, and was first to use the egg trick, which so many after-dinner speakers have since wished they had thought ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... and the after-dinner cigar duly smoked, Sir Reginald and his companion elephant-hunters having declared that they were too tired to enjoy any further sport that day, the professor and Mildmay bade the rest of the party good-night, and, taking their rifles, ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... piece of food, and they laughed aloud and shouted to see the old woman so angry. And with a shriek the child was caught and the old woman set to work slapping and the child screaming, and it was very good after-dinner fun for them. Little Si ran on a little way and stopped at last between ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... parry adjourned to the brilliantly lighted saloon, where many of the passengers had congregated to spend the after-dinner hour. It was a beautiful apartment, even more gorgeous and elaborate than the dining- room, and furnished with inviting-looking easy-chairs, sofas, and divans of puffy upholstery. Gilt-framed tables were scattered about for the benefit of the card-players, and attractively appointed writing-desks ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... Leslie has gone around to Broome Street on his undeclared errand, and while the ladies are making an excuse to while away the time until his return, in the discussion of the after-dinner provocatives to indigestion recommended, let us enter a little more closely upon a subject merely indicated in the foregoing chapter, and then sneered at by at least one of the conversationists—that of the fortune-telling imposition which so largely prevails, especially in the ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... crossing the Channel in a balloon. Manfred-like, you talk to the clouds: you have a fellow feeling for the sun. And when Jarl and I got conversing up there, smoking our dwarfish "dudeens," any sea-gull passing by might have taken us for Messrs. Blanchard and Jeffries, socially puffing their after-dinner Bagdads, bound to Calais, via Heaven, from Dover. Honest Jarl, I acquainted with all: my conversation with the captain, the hint implied in his last words, my firm resolve to quit the ship in one of her boats, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... these after-dinner causeries I ventured humbly to remark that Patriotism was a vulgar vice of which I had never been guilty. That innocent indiscretion of mine aroused at the moment some unfavourable comment. I confess I was sorry for it. ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... herself, and she, in this rosy hour believing, looked upon her handiwork, and saw that it was tolerably good. Statesmen, diplomats, captains of industry, the smiling Boss—a very parliament of brains—did the governor honor, and the most famous after-dinner speaker in the land proclaimed him New York's ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... during this same visit in Chicago, at 'Poetry's' banquet on the evening of March first, 1914, that Mr. Yeats honored Mr. Lindsay by addressing his after-dinner talk primarily to him as "a fellow craftsman", and by saying of ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... particular scandal, no damning charges on either side; and a club wit had remarked at the time that the only possible ground for a separation was the fact that Mrs. Kemper had grown jealous of her husband's after-dinner cigar. Since then other and varied rumours had reached Gerty's ears, until finally there had blown a veritable gale concerning a certain Madame Alta, who sang melting soprano parts in Italian opera. Then this, too, had passed, and, with the short ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... Our modern, at least our Protestant, custom is in direct contrast. We tend on great religious festivals rather to close than to open our theatres. Another point of contrast is in the time allotted to the performance. We give to the theatre our after-dinner hours, when work is done, or at best a couple of hours in the afternoon. The theatre is for us a recreation. The Greek theatre opened at sunrise, and the whole day was consecrated to high and strenuous religious attention. During the five or six days of the great Dionysia, ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... arose one Sabbath afternoon from her religious meditations, when all the house was taking its after-dinner nap, and went out in the yard, and stopped at the gate. She took out her pocket handkerchief. She looked at it. Yes, that would do for the experiment. She put it back into her pocket. She did not have to rehearse mentally the sacred ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... then slightly bows, takes leave of his partner, and adjourns with the other gentlemen to the smoking-room, where after-dinner coffee, liqueurs, cigars and cigarettes are passed, and they all sit where they like and with whom they ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... try that big pipe organ I hear they've put in. Bob thinks it's an awful thing to do. See how shocked he looks. But I've promised not to stay more than half an hour if the movie magnate is in anything more startling than a placid after-dinner state, or if the place is cluttered up with too many screen favorites. And I think Bob wants Torchy to go along as bodyguard. So won't you both come? ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... Sabas. Advancing to the mast he lowered the flag to the deck, where lay its too loyal supporter. Thus ended the Minister of War's little piece of after-dinner drollery, and by the same hand that ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... for dollars on a corner of the counter. The attraction of dice for all these people was, indeed, extraordinary: at a certain club where I once dined in the character of "my partner, Mr. Dodd," the dice-box came on the table with the wine, an artless substitute for after-dinner wit. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The after-dinner ceremony thus completed, old Mazey made his bow, and walked out of the room again. Brutus and Cassius stretched themselves on the rug to digest mushrooms and made gravies in the lubricating heat of the fire. "For what ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... in the interests of the Monroe Doctrine (which is a form of the "Balance of Power"). I do not think any one knew what the Monroe Doctrine meant, or could coherently defend it. An American Ambassador had an after-dinner story ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... contributed, the teacher explained to me that she was recently from the East, and that I so well fitted her ideas of a Western desperado that she was frightened at first. When I finished eating, I made my first after-dinner speech; it was also my first attempt to make a forestry address. One point I tried to bring out was concerning the destruction wrought by forest fires. Among other things I said: "During the past few years in Colorado, forest fires, which ought never to have been started, have destroyed ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... enjoying to the full his after-dinner pipe, and with him Dr. Martin, who was engaged in judiciously pumping the Inspector in regard to the happenings of the recent campaign—successfully, too, except where he touched those events in which the Inspector himself ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... be easy for you," said the artist. "There was a time, when my pouch was no fuller than yours. I know by the experience of those days how a poor man feels, and never wish to forget it. I still owe you my after-dinner speech, but you must let me off, for I can't speak your language fluently. In brief, I wish you the recovery of your health, Pellican, and you a joyous life of happiness and honor, my worthy ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... he must of necessity have his boats dragged over the ground, for almost the entire course over which he traveled is now dry land. Since that time the river has deserted almost all of its former channel, as if to repudiate its connection with the after-dinner treaties of two hundred years lang syne; in places its channel lies to the west, but for the greater extent it is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... was not room to sit at the table either. Besides the five permanent members of the family there were invariably outsiders as well. After dinner Chekhov used to go off to his bedroom and lock himself in to "read." Between his after-dinner nap and tea-time he wrote again. The time between tea and supper (at seven o'clock in the evening) was devoted to walks and outdoor work. At ten o'clock they went to bed. Lights were put out and all was stillness in the house; the only sound was a subdued singing and monotonous recitation. ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... paralytic, who had given his legs years ago to the aforesaid country, a delightful evening. ... No, I'm quite sure such a patronising thought never entered my Betty's head. After all, my upper half is sound, and I can talk sense or nonsense with anybody. What have one's legs to do with a pleasant after-dinner conversation? Years ago I swore a great oath that I would see them damned before they got in the way ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... Faculty and the circle of the chapter. He was doing very well in business, people said, better than Shirlock, probably. Rice was a keen fellow, the new men could see that at a glance; but they did not put an arm about him instinctively in the after-dinner stroll, ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... he had finished, 'I have read with pain. This claim upon Obermunsterol is palpably unjust; it has not a tincture, not a show, of justice. There is not in all this ground enough for after-dinner talk, and you propose to force it ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson |
