"After-dinner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with ham and his own thoughts. He became aware of a series of jangling concussions on the table. He craned his neck and discovered that Mr. Voules was standing up and leaning forward over the table in the manner distinctive of after-dinner speeches, tapping upon the table with a black bottle. "Ladies and gentlemen," said Mr. Voules, raising his glass solemnly in the empty desert of sound he had made, and paused for a second or so. "Ladies and gentlemen,—The ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... office. Why, my countrymen, I can show by statistics—and statistics never lie—that Ohio never had her fair share of the public offices. I have not brought any of the statistics with me, for fear some know-nothing might cry at our after-dinner speech 'Figures.' Still we never had our share of the public offices, or if we had we always filled them well, and ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... and another, it might have been about three in the afternoon when, with Pup reposing by my side, I finally settled down to an after-dinner smoke from the sage meerschaum often deservedly ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... in much the same manner, and night found Tom, if not actually exhausted from the unceasing grind, at least pleasurably fatigued thereby and ready for an after-dinner doze. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... that direction? By Jove! I'm right glad to know it. Well, I'll be around to the Waldorf in the course of a day or two No, much obliged, but I don't care to go into the club-rooms to-night; in fact, I haven't been in there since the governor made that after-dinner speech of his. Good-night!" ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... himself, Harrison Cressy discovered to his annoyance that there was no train out of Dunbury for two hours. That was the worst of these little one-horse towns. You might as well be dead as alive in 'em. By the time he had smoked his after-dinner cigar he felt as if he might as well be dead himself. He felt suddenly heavy, old, almost decrepit, though that morning when he had left Boston he had considered himself in the prime of life and vigor. Hang it! He was sixty-nine. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... candy, and bite it, the egg having previously been fried on both sides until it is as stiff and as hard as a piece of bristol board, who would not recognize a salad if they saw one, and who have never heard of after-dinner coffee. ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... 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 comrade. What is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... April 19.—In the after-dinner hour walked out with Mr. and Mrs. Stoddart, towards the Quarantine harbour. One's first feeling is, that it is all strange, very strange; and when you begin to understand a little of the meaning and uses of the massy endless walls and defiles, then you feel and perceive that it is very wonderful. ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... occupation of the idle hour: she seemed to think that he ought to regard it as a life-work. She was always coming and digging him out of the garden and dragging him back to what should have been a purely after-dinner task. It was Lord Marshmoreton's habit, when he awoke after one of his naps too late to resume work, to throw out some vague promise of "attending to it tomorrow"; but, he reflected bitterly, the girl ought to have tact and sense to understand that this was only ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... university broils, but gradually his mind recovered, or rather made its tone, and he became known as a man always ready at a moment's notice to take up the cudgels in opposition to anything that savoured of an evangelical bearing. He was great in sermons, great on platforms, great at after-dinner conversations, and always pleasant as well as great. He took delight in elections, served on committees, opposed tooth and nail all projects of university reform, and talked jovially over his glass of port of the ruin ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... human dwelling in sight, Turkey and I lay that afternoon, in a bliss enhanced to me, I am afraid, by the contrasted thought of the close, hot, dusty schoolroom, where my class-fellows were talking, laughing, and wrangling, or perhaps trying to work in spite of the difficulties of after-dinner disinclination. A fitful little breeze, as if itself subject to the influence of the heat, would wake up for a few moments, wave a few heads of horse-daisies, waft a few strains of odour from the blossoms of the white clover, and then die away fatigued with the effort. Turkey took ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... of sight Jack went into the house and found mother crying in the kitchen. As he felt more tolerant in his after-dinner mood, he tried to cheer her up by telling her how fine father had looked beside the other two men. Mother raised her face, all swollen and spoilt with weeping, and gazed at her son in astonishment. "They are taking him to prison," ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... of the country and the game, and we were enjoying the change in our usual after-dinner camp conversation, when suddenly up he jumped, and turning around looked straight at Faye, and then like a bomb came the request to be allowed to go with him to Fort Maginnis! He raised the brim of his ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... 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 in waiting, ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... and could not know was that this, the first of the autumn after-dinner bridge-parties, was destined to look on the famous teagown of kingfisher-blue, as designed for Mrs. Trout. No doubt other ladies would have hurried up their new gowns, or at least have camouflaged their old ones, in honour of the annual inauguration of evening bridge, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... known, was renewing her kittenhood, so potent was the influence of the dangling strings and rolling balls that she encountered everywhere; and Tommy Dunn, with Billy's help, was learning that not even a pair of crutches need keep a lonely little lad from a frolic. Even William, roused from his after-dinner doze by peals of laughter, was sometimes inveigled into activities that left him breathless, but curiously aglow. While Pete, polishing silver in the dining-room down-stairs, smiled indulgently at the merry clatter above—and forgot the ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... Macdougal from the cab, where he still kept the engineer and fireman covered, "a little hunt is like an after-dinner drink to me." ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... thought of Polly, then and subsequently, was told at her own fireside, where she sat, some six weeks later, chatting over an after-dinner cup of coffee ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... gold and precious stones, were ranged about it. It had a title, High Imperial After-Dinner-Singer. It was ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... was his darling; and the little maiden, prattling and smiling in the fond arms of that old father, is a sweet image to look on. There is a family picture in Burney, which a man must be very hard-hearted not to like. She describes an after-dinner walk of the royal family at Windsor:—"It was really a mighty pretty procession," she says. "The little princess, just turned of three years old, in a robe-coat covered with fine muslin, a dressed close cap, white gloves, and fan, walked ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... when, after the after-dinner housework was all done, she took her shawl and hood from the peg, and drew some old wool socks of Caleb's over her shoes. She went out without saying a word. Ephraim waited a few minutes after the door shut behind her; then he ran ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Tennessee, less than a century ago, though it seems 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 in temper and quick in action, and family feuds led quickly to wounds and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... audience I was to address, that the ideas I had carefully gathered together have, I fear, rather taken flight; but I shall give them to you as they come, though they may not be in quite as good order as I should like them. The gift of after-dinner speaking is one I heard illustrated the other day very well at a dinner at which my friend, Judge Bartlett and I were present. A gentleman told a story of an English bishop travelling in a third-class railway carriage with an individual who was swearing ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... queen, and the ministers, and all the nobility, and of all the old families? It is the only religion for a gentleman, and, therefore, it is his religion. Would the dissenting minister hob-nob with him as comfortably over the after-dinner bottle as Ned does, and play a rubber as comfortably with him, and let him swear a comfortable oath now and then? 'Tis not to be supposed. Besides, of what family is this dissenting minister? Where does he spring from? At what university did he graduate? 'Twon't ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... 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 should ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... he chanced to be lying, heavy-hearted, some ten or a dozen paces in front of the kitchen door, while Joe Barnes sat on the doorstep smoking his after-dinner pipe, and Ann bustled through the dish washing. At such times, in the old happy days, Sonny's place had always been at Joe Barnes's feet; but those times seemed to have been forgotten by Joe Barnes, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... decidedly red color. He had looked forward to an autumn at Fairoaks; and perhaps the idea of passing two or three months there did not amuse the young man. "There is not a soul to speak to in the place," he said to Warrington. "I can't stand old Portman's sermons, and pompous after-dinner conversation. I know all old Glanders's stories about the Peninsular war. The Claverings are the only Christian people in the neighborhood, and they are not to be at home before Christmas, my uncle says: besides, Warrington, I want to get out ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... strenuous half, destined to move with sure steps and steady mind to greater growth and higher place among the nations than any of us can now imagine—would it be as safe to prophesy that such a momentous sailing-day will never be more than the after-dinner fantasy of aristocratic rhetoric? Is it not at least as easy to imagine that even now, while the people of England send their viceroys to the ends of the earth, and vote careless millions for a reconstructed army, and sit in the wrecks of Cabinets disputing whether they will eat our bread ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... short moment it threatened to be spoiled. A passenger came along, demanding in an important voice, "Where are these frogs?" He was a prominent New York after-dinner speaker, they whispered me, and out for a holiday in his private car. Reaching us and walking to the Virginian, he said cheerily, "How much do you want for ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... full of this clock. It was of the good old-fashioned "grandfather" type. It stood eight feet high, in a carved-oak case, and had a deep, sonorous, solemn tick, that made a pleasant accompaniment to the after-dinner chat, and seemed to fill the room with ...
— Clocks - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... arranged for reference. The scope of the subjects is wide and the 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 ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... lions in a moderate fashion. Take the case of Demosthenes last winter, for instance. His wife told me that he dined at home three times during the winter. The rest of the time he was out, here, there, and everywhere, making after-dinner speeches. The saving on his dinner bills didn't pay his pebble account, much less remunerate him for his time, and the fearful expense of nervous energy to which he was subjected. It was as much as she could do, she said, to keep him from shaving one side of his head, so that he couldn't ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... Monsieur Paul's comment on the conversation, as we were taking our after-dinner stroll in the garden—"as you see, that sort of person is the bad element in our country—the dangerous element—unreasoning, revengeful, and ignorant. It is such men as he who still uphold hatreds and keep the flame alive. It is better to have no talent at all for politics—to ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... 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 ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... but 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
... the siege and capture of the capital, which has been so often and eloquently described by grave and wise historians, but rather to follow the fortunes of an humble private in the ranks, and relate the events of a certain court-martial, as I learned them from the after-dinner talk of a gallant officer who had officiated ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... see Paris deprived for so long of its Opera, became as sorrowful as if the arrivals of grain had ceased, or bread had risen to more than seven sous the quartern loaf. It was melancholy to see the nobility, the army, and the citizens without their after-dinner amusement; and to see the promenades thronged with the unemployed divinities, from the ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... came 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? ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... the Busy Folks' Bible Class, composed of mature men and women and addressed by the old-school physician, Dr. T. Atkins Jordan, in a sparkling style comparable to that of the more refined humorous after-dinner speakers, but when he went down to the junior classes he was disconcerted. He heard Sheldon Smeeth, educational director of the Y.M.C.A. and leader of the church-choir, a pale but strenuous young man with curly hair and a smile, teaching ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... almost like landlubbers again; for while our home acre was a watery one and Gadabout, boat-like, swung and swayed, yet we had real neighbours up on the bluff and there was even a church next door. Later, we saw coming down the stream some good after-dinner cheer—our rowboat with mail that had been accumulating for days at Westover. Letters and papers and packages and magazines were welcomed aboard. Comfortably we settled down for an evening of catching up with ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... had called it, and he was always piqued when one of them went astray. In addition to this, intuition told him that he had taken the name of a deity in vain—and that deity was Chiltern. These reflections resulted in another after-dinner conversation to which we ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fanwise, kept himself with difficulty from dropping into his usual after-dinner nap, and laughed at everything. The young people, at the countess' instigation, gathered round the clavichord and harp. Julie by general request played first. After she had played a little air with variations on the harp, she joined the other young ladies in begging ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... on the same trio which had formed the little after-dinner circle years ago at Stirling. But there was a change in all. The father and mother sat—not side by side, in that propinquity which is so sweet, when every breath, every touch of the beloved's garment gives pleasure; they sat one at each corner of the table, engrossed in their several ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... thing as ex tempore speaking,—a saying not altogether correct, but in the main confirmed by many great orators who confess to laborious preparation for their speech-making, and by the fact that many of our famous after-dinner speakers have been known to send their speeches to the Press before they were delivered. The case of Demosthenes would seem to indicate the necessity of the most careful study and preparation in order to make a truly great speech, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... a very unconventional after-dinner speech. Especially it will be thought strange that in returning thanks I should deliver something very much like a homily. But I have thought I could not better convey my thanks than by the expression of a sympathy which issues in a fear. If, as I gather, this intemperance in work affects ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... always been a 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 failed ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... rain; Dr. Woodford had gone two days before to consult a book in the Cathedral library, and was probably detained at Winchester by the weather; Lady Archfield was confined to her bed by a sharp attack of rheumatism. Sir Philip was taking his after-dinner doze in his arm- chair; and little Philip was standing by Anne, who was doing her best to keep him from awakening his grandfather, as she partly read, partly romanced, over the high-crowned hatted fishermen in the illustrations ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... danger of obscuring the point of the story with too many details is not peculiar to teachers, nor is it shown only in the narrative form. I have often heard really brilliant after-dinner stories marred by this defect. One remembers the attempt made by Sancho Panza to tell a story to Don Quixote. I have always felt a keen sympathy with the latter in ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... I be in such an ardour of gratitude? But I have had out of that dear book the greatest delight that has ever come to me since I was a young man; to write and think about it makes me almost young, and this I suppose is what I'm doing, like an after-dinner speech. ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... visitor at this time and later: the squalor of this family strongly appealed to chance charitable visitors, who helped them liberally because they looked miserable—helped them without knowledge and without plan. It used to be said that every American thinks he can make an after-dinner speech, and it might have been added that every American, or nearly every American, thinks {205} he can administer his own charities judiciously. When we are mistaken in our speech-making ability, we ourselves are the sufferers, but the saddest thing about our charitable ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... that we were ages at table; I was impatient to know the end. My father finally gave the signal, and we rose, but while we were each saying the after-dinner grace, Mr. Kochanowski slipped out at a small side door, and did not again make ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... yes. But let me tell you, sir, that I always went in the company of gentlemen—that is, when I did go, which was very seldom." The baronet in some after-dinner half-hour had allowed this secret of his youth ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... literary masterpiece of E. M. Hull, the novel celebrating the adventures of Miss Diana Mayo and the Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan. The next chapter deals with Hans Christian Andersen and literary and dramatic critics. Pretty soon we are discussing after-dinner speeches, Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey. If this is a gesture, all I can say is, it is a pinwheel; and yet Broun writes only about things he knows about. Lest you think from my description that Pieces of Hate is a book in a wholly unserious vein, I invite ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... silent, self-centred, uncommunicative. The painful truth of this remark may be seen in the row of countenances along the president's table at a public banquet about nine o'clock in the evening. The bicycle-face seems unconstrained and merry by comparison with the after-dinner-speech-face. The flow of table-talk is corked by the ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... his after-dinner cigar in his bachelor quarters. The years had been good to the firm of Conward & Elden; good far beyond the wildness of their first dreams. The transaction of the section bought from the English absentee had been but the beginning of bigger and ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... '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, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... stupidly at 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. He crosses to the window. Very gently he touches the glass. ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... Le Drieux appeared in the lobby of the hotel and sat himself comfortably down, as if his sole desire in life was to read the evening paper and smoke his after-dinner cigar. He cast a self-satisfied and rather supercilious glance in the direction of the Merrick party, which on this occasion included the Stantons and their aunt, but he made no attempt to approach the corner where ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... I 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 ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... his hand, and Bo and Cat's-skin obsequiously behind him, each holding a 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 fear ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... the writer took part in an after-dinner discussion at the American Art Association of Paris over the expression "the rules of composition." A number of artists joined in the debate, all giving their opinion without premeditation. Some maintained that the principles of composition were nothing more than aesthetic taste and ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... during the mid-week after-dinner dance, Gore appeared suddenly in the doorway. It was ten o'clock. The Hubbells were dallying with their after-dinner coffee at one of the small tables about ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... after-dinner and occasional speaker Dickens was rarely equaled; and as an actor upon the amateur stage, in plays of his own composition, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... western heritage' had given many an after-dinner speaker a peroration, but it had given very few new settlers a living. The Conservative Government had achieved one great task of constructive patriotism, in providing for the {219} building of a railway across the vast wilderness ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... his cosy study smoking his after-dinner cigar. It was unusual for him to be alone at this hour of the evening, as his wife and children were generally with him. But he had been late coming from the office and by the time he had finished his ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... the most dyspeptic of after-dinner dreams, could not be more bewildering than was this motley train of the Lord of Misrule. Giants and dwarfs, dragons and griffins, hobby-horses and goblins, Robin Hood and the Grand Turk, bears and boars and fantastic ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... the future opening before Canada come as a greater surprise than to Canadians themselves. A few years ago such a claim as the Premier's would have been regarded as the effusions of the after-dinner speaker. While Canadian politicians were hoping for the honor of being accorded colonial place in the English Parliament, they suddenly awakened to find themselves a nation. They suddenly realized that history, and big history, too, was in the making. ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... 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, himself, ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... 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 Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... was popular throughout the state, and was the logical candidate for governor. He would have been highly gratified with the candidacy. But again he put personal desires one side that the general good might not be endangered. He therefore proposed, in his after-dinner speech, for nomination a democrat who had a record of earnest opposition to the slave power. Refusing the use of his own name, he added: "But I can suggest a name that will secure not only the old whig vote, but enough anti-Nebraska democrats to give us the victory. That man is Colonel William ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... the rains cease. At that time everything is green and bright, and the great golden poppies, as large as the saucer of an after-dinner coffee cup, are blossoming everywhere. Tamalpais is green to its top; everything is washed and bright. By late May a yellow tinge is creeping over the hills. This is followed by a golden June and a brown July and August. The hills are burned and dry. The fog comes in heavily, too; and ...
— The City That Was - A Requiem of Old San Francisco • Will Irwin
... 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 ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... frequent intervals. Every man of the Carpathia's crew was unsparing in his efforts to assist, to tenderly comfort each and every survivor. In all, sixteen boatloads were receives, containing altogether 720 persons, many in simply their night attire, others in evening dress, as if direct from an after-dinner reception, or concert. Most conspicuous was the coolness and self-possession, particularly of ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... twenty votes. Congratulations. Tell people." He dictated it aloud, saying: "We must let them share our rejoicing." Darya Alexandrovna, getting the message, simply sighed over the rouble wasted on it, and understood that it was an after-dinner affair. She knew Stiva had a weakness after dining for faire ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... to be off-hand, waggish, and brisk—a cross between a street peddler and a circus clown, with a hint of the forced mirth of the after-dinner speaker. Occasionally the jokes are good and the answers from the audience ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... them in the danger, but not in the honour. I myself know it, and have tasted it in all the course of my life.' But the application of the warning, and the regret, to the hearing of Cobham's vague after-dinner flights might have seemed, unless for the result, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... laughing demur among those who enjoyed their after-dinner wine, but we followed the bent of our inclination, and found ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... this still March evening, as Kresney strolled back and forth on his narrow verandah, enjoying an after-dinner cigar, every detail of that detested interview darted across his memory for the hundredth time, like a lightning-streak across a cloud. Wounded, in the most susceptible part of his nature, Kresney saw no reason to deny himself the satisfaction of hitting back. Whatever ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... omnipotent Providence. For this he was, to use his own phrase, 'soundly spanked' by all his friends; that is, he was mocked at, jeered, ridiculed. To what end, they said, was one an agnostic if he weakly yielded his position to the exigencies of an after-dinner speech. The Bibliotaph alone took pains to analyze his late antagonist's position. He wrote to the actor congratulating him upon his success. 'I wondered a little at this, remembering how inconsiderable ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... 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
... yachting trips. His intimate pals seem to be middle-aged millionaires who are known to me in only the most casual way; and he is a sort of gentleman-in-waiting—I believe the accepted term is "pet cat"—to several society women, for whom he devises new cotillion figures, arranges original after-dinner entertainments and makes himself ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... assumed a new value in his eyes from the time of that visit of Lady Laura's. He was certainly kinder to her than usual, the girl thought, as they sat on the lawn in the balmy June evening, sipping their after-dinner coffee, while the moon rose fair and pale above the woods of Arden Court. He contemplated her with a meditative air now and then, when she was not looking his way. He had always known that she was beautiful, but her beauty had ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... sombreness of men's attire. Not a tint on their walls that has not been profoundly studied and mixed and laid with a view to the great aim. Wherefore, when the electric clusters glow in the ceiling, and the "after-dinner" band (that unique corporation of British citizens disguised as wild Hungarians) breathes and pants out its after-dinner melodies from the raised platform in the main salon, people regard this coup d'oeil with awe, and feel glad ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... ever feeling 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. ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... 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 we have received, the Lord make us truly ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... follow that interminable dinner, and for a time Priscilla was occupied in helping Lady Raffold to receive the after-dinner guests. She longed to escape before the contingent from the dining-room arrived upstairs, but she soon realised the impossibility of this. Her stepmother seemed to want her at every turn, and when at length she found herself free, young Lord Harfield ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... in Faneuil Hall to celebrate the beginning of the new reign. It would be interesting to know how the sedate people of Boston comported themselves on a festive occasion of that character. John Adams was a young barrister then. If the after-dinner speeches were as outspoken as the political comments he entered in his Diary, the proceedings could not have been very acceptable to the royal governor. Mr. Adams was far from thinking that England had issued victorious from the late campaigns, and he thought that France was ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... watched her now as she reclined, a small slim figure in white, with the red glow of the sun playing on the gold uptwisted coil of her hair,—a few people of the neighbourhood had joined her at dinner, and these were seated about, sipping coffee and chatting in the usual frivolous way of after-dinner guests—one or two of them were English who had made their home in Sicily,—the others ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... his chair, and gazed at the Canon, the remarkable, the clever, the versatile little Canon, with half-closed eyelids veiling his contemptuous eyes. (He confided to Hannay, later on, that the Canon, in his after-dinner ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... merely a big boy, of very strong mind, but totally uninformed, and uncultivated. He very rapidly improved under the tuition of Congress; and in some degree awoke to the consciousness of his great intellectual imperfections. Still he was never diffident. He closed one of his off-hand after-dinner speeches ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... either a cleaned or, more probably, a scented Obi, might in vigorous hands be pushed to a very considerable success in the coming years; and I do not see any absolute impossibility in the idea of an after-dinner witch-smelling in Park Lane with a witchdoctor dressed in feathers. It might be made amazingly picturesque. People would attend it with an air of intellectual liberality, not, of course, believing in it absolutely, but admitting "there must be Something in it." That Something in it! "The ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... 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 ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... scarcely less famous for love of harmonious sounds than for judicial efficiency. Lord Keeper Guildford was a musical amateur, and notwithstanding his low esteem of literature condescended to write about melody. Lord Jeffreys was a good after-dinner vocalist, and was esteemed a high authority on questions concerning instrumental performance. Lord Camden was an operatic composer; and Lord Thurlow studied thorough-bass, in order that he might direct the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... extraordinary facility as a writer. 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 friends, and convinced them ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... us round the next corner, when the boatmen announce that they are going to make us each a lobstick. We land, as pleased as Punch over the suggestion. We now know what it feels like when the philanthropist of a village takes his after-dinner walk through the square and sees the sparrows drinking from the memorial fountain surmounted with his own bust, done in copper, life-size. It takes fully two hours to trim the trees into significant shape, but the beauty of this particular kind of Cook's Tour is that you go down when you like ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... Ortelsburg said to his brother-in-law, Joseph Kamin, as they sipped their after-dinner coffee in the Ortelsburg library that day. "It wouldn't be taking advantage of the feller at all. You say yourself he tries to sell goods to you on the car already. Why shouldn't we try to sell Glaubmann's house to him while he's down here? And we'll split the commission ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... liked. And of course we liked, for it is a great compliment when a man in Venice, or any Italian town,—especially if he is of the importance and distinction to which Duveneck had already attained,—makes you free to join him at dinner and over after-dinner coffee. It is more than a compliment. It launches you in Venice as to be presented at ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... of the old-fashioned type were Doctor Dixi Crosby of Hanover, and his son "Ben," who made a great name for himself in New York City as a surgeon, and also as a brilliant after-dinner speaker. Doctor Crosby's preference was for the long-drawn-out style, as this example, which I heard him tell ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... 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
... a peaceful place," said Cardross, narrowing eyes watching the lake through the haze of his pipe. "I almost hate to disturb it with a gun-shot; but if we stay here we've got to eat." And, turning toward the guides' table where they lounged over their after-dinner pipes: "Coacochee, my little daughter has never shot a wild turkey. Do you think she had better try this evening or go ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... played as admirably as usual. At the other end of the room Romayne and Stella were together, listening to the music. Lord Loring, walking backward and forward, with a restlessness which was far from being characteristic of him in his after-dinner hours, was stopped when he reached the neighborhood of the piano by a private signal ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... happened that the next day, while Miss Wealthy was taking her after-dinner nap, the two girls presented themselves at the door of Martha's little sewing-room, where she sat with her sleeves rolled up, hemming pillow-cases. It was a sunny little room, with a pleasant smell of pennyroyal ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... super-bountiful dinner, beginning with oysters and 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
... move and spoil the picture," he cried. "Oh, you idyllic pair! And what are you playing? Cribbage! If I had been challenged to guess the game you would have selected for your after-dinner entertainment, I should ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... an amateur actor, he was simply unapproachable. He passed, in fact, beyond the range of mere amateurs, and was brought into contrast by right, with the most gifted professionals among his contemporaries. Hence, again, as an after-dinner speaker, he was nothing less than incomparable. "He spoke so well," Anthony Trollope has remarked, "that a public dinner became a blessing instead of a curse if he were in the chair—had its compensating twenty minutes ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... with many public questions, such as temperance, capital and labor, civic righteousness, and the purifying of East Side slum life. He advocated personal freedom, and invariably spoke with authority. He was particularly happy as an after-dinner speaker. He died ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... report of the night is the same as before. He has had some intervals of broken sleep, and no more. But he feels it less to-day, having slept after yesterday's dinner. This after-dinner sleep is the result, no doubt, of the ride which I advised him to take. I fear I shall have to curtail his restorative exercise in the fresh air. He must not be too well; he must not be too ill. It is a case (as a sailor would say) of ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... off a lonely island. Perhaps they would think we were out of the way, perhaps not. We should see what we should see.' I suppose that the gunnery lieutenant was almost as sanguine of adventure as I was of humdrum peace in this after-dinner hour on the darkened bridge. Adventure, or at least what seemed to be its promising prelude ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... ass whose back with ingots bows, Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey, And death unloads thee: Friend hast thou none; For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire, Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum, For ending thee no sooner: Thou hast no youth nor age, But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep, Dreaming on both: for all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich, Thou hast neither heat, affection, limbs, nor beauty, To ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... the second week in January, the bills were out advertising the sale, under a decree of Chancery, of Mr. Tulliver's farming and other stock, to be followed by a sale of the mill and land, held in the proper after-dinner hour at the Golden Lion. The miller himself, unaware of the lapse of time, fancied himself still in that first stage of his misfortunes when expedients might be thought of; and often in his conscious hours talked in a feeble, disjointed manner of plans ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... First after-dinner speech; delivered at a printers' banquet in Keokuk, Iowa. Letters from Cincinnati, November 16, 1856, signed "Snodgrass"— Saturday ...
— Widger's Quotations from Albert Bigelow Paine on Mark Twain • David Widger
... 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, ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... prodigious collection of which were among the fantastic assets which represented his originally large personal fortune on the winding up of his earthly affairs. Among these unimaginative creditors were, doubtless, many jewellers who found it hard to sympathize with his lordship's genial after-dinner habit, particularly when in the society of fair women, of plunging his hand into his trousers pocket and bringing it forth again brimming over with uncut precious stones of many colours, at the same time begging his companion to take her choice of the moonlit rainbowed ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... courage still less. Let us be a Gideon's band. 'Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return, and depart early from Mount Gilead.' And among that band let there be no delusions; let the last encouraging lie have been told, the last after-dinner humbug spoken, for surely, though the days seem dark, we may remember that men longed for freedom while yet they were slaves; that it was in times when swords were reddened every day that men began to think of peace and order, and to strive ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought roams gracefully free of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this way—marking the points with a lean forefinger—as we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it) ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the position and vocation of a twentieth-century superman. He found, with rare and mythical exceptions, that there was no noblesse oblige among the business and financial supermen. As a clever traveler had announced in an after-dinner speech at the Alta-Pacific, "There was honor amongst thieves, and this was what distinguished thieves from honest men." That was it. It hit the nail on the head. These modern supermen were a lot of sordid banditti ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London |
