"Quadrille" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "A quadrille, two waltzes, and the cotillon. That will do very well. As nobody knows you in that domino, we can dance as often as we please, and you will only be seen with me in the cotillon. What is your costume? I am ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... broke away from Miss Forsyth and went and asked Miss Satterly for the next waltz; but she opened her big eyes at him and assured him politely that she was engaged. He tried for a quadrille, a two-step, a schottische—even for a polka, which she knew he hated; but the schoolma'am was, apparently, the most engaged young woman in Dry ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... the first quadrille, and aunt Helen for the second dance. It was most enjoyable. There was a table at one end of the room on which was any amount of cherries, lollies, cake, dainties, beers, syrups, and glasses, where all could regale themselves without ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... enjoying themselves in a normal manner. And absolutely nothing is quite so ghastly sad as the sight of those same well-flushed, well-fleshed Germans cavorting about between the hours of two and four-thirty A.M., trying, with all the pachydermic ponderosity of Barnum's Elephant Quadrille, to be professionally gay and cutuppish. The Prussians must love their Kaiser dearly. We sit up with our friends when they are dead; they stay up for him until they are ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... dawdlers!" she cried. "Does Marise pay you to sit there like mourners? Strike up, you mummies, or you pay yourselves for what you drink to-night. Soul of desires!"—as the musicians grabbed up their instruments, and a leaping, lilting, quick-beating air went rollicking out over the hubbub—"a quadrille, you angels of inspiration! Partners, gentlemen! Partners, ladies! ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... the shade of some titled turban. In fact, Mr. Coates was a great success. There was an air of most romantic mystery that endeared his presence to all the damsels fluttering fans in the Pump Room. It set them vying for his conduct through the mazes of the Quadrille or of the Triumph, and blushing at the sound of his name. Alas! their tremulous rivalry lasted not long. Soon they saw that Emma, sole daughter of Sir James Tylney Long, that wealthy baronet, had cast a magic net about the warm Antiguan heart. In the wake of her chair, ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... this opening, and also through slits in the canvas. The pavilion is fantastically decorated in various tastes, and is lit with lanterns. A good-natured moon, nevertheless, shines into it benignly. Some of the card tables are neglected, but at one a game of quadrille is in progress. There is much movement and hilarity, but none from one side of the tent, where sit several young ladies, all pretty, all appealing and all woeful, for no gallant comes to ask them if he may have ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... polonaise were heard now, and the guests, grouping themselves in pairs, strode through the wide halls. A quadrille followed the polonaise, and it was a charming sight to see all these graceful women and young girls dance. Irene kept up a cross-fire of words with the vicomte and Velletri. Talizac had just whispered some gallant sentence to her, when ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... penny, in for a pound." But to all this I gave my consent; I could afford it well, and I liked to please my wife and daughters. The ball was given, and this house-warming ended in house-breaking; for just before the supper-quadrille, as it was termed, when about twenty-four young ladies and gentlemen were going the grand ronde, a loud noise below, with exclamations and shrieks, was heard, and soon afterwards the whole staircase was smothered ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... it. The duchess was delighted. Nobody seemed to mind. Even Lady Sellingworth forced herself to quote the saying and to make merry over it. But from that day she gave up dancing entirely. Nothing would induce her even to join in a formal royal quadrille. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... constraint in the drawing-room. "He did not know how to appear at ease, and I believe that he never wanted anybody else to be so, afraid of the slightest approach to familiarity, and inspiring each with a fear of saying something offensive to his neighbor before witnesses.... During the quadrille, he moves around amongst the rows of ladies, addressing them with some trifling or disagreeable remark," and never does he accost them otherwise than "awkwardly and ill at his ease." At bottom, he distrusts them and is ill-disposed toward them.[1290] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... he was doing the literature for the Barnum show, Tody Hamilton would have made the best nominee I can think of. Remember, don't you, how when Tody started in to write about the elephant quadrille you had to turn over to the next page to find the verb? And almost any one of those young fellows who write advertising folders for the railroads would gladly tackle the assignment; in fact, some of them already have—but not ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... cannot see them, the musicians, with sad, gentle faces, are tuning up their fiddles. A stately quadrille lies open on their stands. They are going to attack the old-fashioned piece. At the first notes our heroes and masks ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France
... fete champetre in the gardens which should be very different from anything the court of France had seen before. She said that all her guests should appear either as goblins or as nymphs. They would not dance the quadrille nor any other stately measure, but would be free to romp and play such jokes as might occur to them. When he heard these plans Lafayette shook ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... popular, has been superseded by Whist. Quadrille, the game referred to by Pope in his "Rape of the Lock," is ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... suddenly came up to them; and how they all three decided to change their life. They thought that the night was over, and were about to go away, when suddenly the noise of tipsy voices was heard in the ante-room. The violinist played a tune and the pianiste began hammering the first figure of a quadrille on the piano, to the tune of a most merry Russian song. A small, perspiring man, smelling of spirits, with a white tie and swallow-tail coat, which he took off after the first figure, came up to her, hiccoughing, and caught her up, while another fat man, with a beard, and also ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... Caxton brought up one of his brother cadets and presented him, and he asked me, and looked disappointed when for both the next dances I was obliged to refuse him. I was quite glad when Mr. Thorold came and carried me off. The second quadrille went better than the first; and I was enjoying myself unfeignedly, when in a pause of the dance I remarked to my partner that there seemed to be ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... to which Mr. Esmond belonged. His father's widow had all her hopes, sympathies, recollections, prejudices, engaged on King James's side; and was certainly as noisy a conspirator as ever asserted the King's rights, or abused his opponent's, over a quadrille table or a dish of bohea. Her ladyship's house swarmed with ecclesiastics, in disguise and out; with tale-bearers from St. Germains; and quidnuncs that knew the last news from Versailles; nay, the exact force and number of the next expedition which the French king was to send from Dunkirk, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... the capitals were gently shaken. A light shudder as of delight ran through the building, the stones were loosened in their setting, the wall-spaces swayed with graceful caution. Here and there a ponderous pier moved as solemnly as a dowager when she condescends to complete a quadrille at the close of a ball. A few slender and graceful columns, their heads adorned with wreaths of trefoil, began to laugh and dance here and there. Some of the pointed arches dashed at the tall lancet windows, who, ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... back to the kitchen, but her flighty thoughts were swinging corners in the quadrille with Jeb, and the fried potatoes were gracefully shot into the coal-scuttle as the pan was waved aloft in imitation of dancers she had ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... vases, and alluring dames. Shall then Uxorio, if the stakes he sweep, Bear home six w****s, and make his lady weep? Or soft Adonis, so perfumed and fine, Drive to St. James's a whole herd of swine? Oh, filthy cheek on all industrious skill, To spoil the nation's last great trade, Quadrille! Since then, my lord, on such a world we fall, What say you? B. Say? Why, take it, gold and all. P. What Riches give us let us then inquire: Meat, fire, and clothes. B. What more? P. Meat, clothes, and fire. Is this too little? would you more than live? Alas! 'tis more than ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... flatform (platform) at one end whar de music-makers sot. Dey had a string band wid a fiddle, a trumpet, and a banjo, but dere warn't no guitars lak dey has in dis day. One man called de sets and us danced de cardrille (quadrille) de virginia reel, and de 16-hand cortillion. When us made syrup on de farm dere would always be a candy pullin'. Dat homemade syrup made real good candy. Den us would have a big time ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... I find the music he makes werry useful in the streets, as a warning to the old happle women to get out of the way. Pray, sir," turning to the Yorkshireman with a jerk, "do you dance?"—as the boat band, consisting of a harp, a flute, a lute, a long horn, and a short horn, struck up a quadrille,—and, without waiting for a reply, our hero sidled past, and glided among the ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... sole alone, four men? Probably playing whist or euchre. And now we began with waltzes, which passed into polkas, which subsided into other round dances; and then in very exhaustion we fell back in a grave quadrille. I danced with Hosanna; Wolfgang and Sarah were our vis-a-vis. We went through the same set that Noah and his three boys danced in the ark with their four wives, and which has been danced ever since, in every moment, on one or another spot ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... back," lectured the master. Esmeralda was his pupil, and he would have taken the whole centennial quadrille and all the cabinet ladies to point his moral, had he seen them making equestrian blunders. "Where your horse has been, where, he is, is the past. Look to the future, straight ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... a quadrille, etc., are suggested, and when this question has gone the round, the grasshopper asks what music he can dance to, and the ants suggest the music of the violin, the piano, cornet, etc. Then the grasshopper ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... empty, the ball was just beginning, the gaming-tables were open, offering their green cloths and their packs of cards still compressed in the frail case placed upon them by the customs office. The second quadrille ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... dance much. We had the regular quadrille d'honneur with the Princes and Princesses of Wales, Denmark, Sweden, Countess of Flanders, and others. None of the French princes came to the ball. There was a great crowd, but as the distinguished guests remained all the time in the salon reserve, ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... through all that glittering sea Of gems and plumes and pearls and silks to where He deems it is his proper place to be Dissolving in the waltz to some soft air Or proudlier prancing with Mercurial skill Where science marshalls forth her own quadrille.'" ...
— A Pioneer Railway of the West • Maude Ward Lafferty
... waltz and quadrille, Idly they laughed, like other girls, Who over the fire, when all is still, Comb out their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... Penwether. Mr. Gotobed selected Miss Penge, and Hampton and Battersby the two Miss Godolphins. They all took their places with a lugubrious but business-like air, as aware that they were sacrificing themselves in the performance of a sad duty. But Morton was not allowed to dance in the same quadrille with the lady of his affections. Lady Penwether explained to him that she and her brother had better divide themselves,—for the good of the company generally,—and therefore he and Arabella ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... caught sight of there was her eldest son. He was dancing a quadrille, and his partner was a short young lady in a strawberry-coloured tulle dress, covered with trails of spinach-green fern leaves. This young person had a round, chubby face, with bright apple-hued cheeks, a dark, bullet-shaped ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... and his body swayed with the rhythm of the dance as he watched each set with growing pride. They danced a quadrille, a mazurka, another quadrille, a schottische, the lancers, another quadrille, and another and another. They paused for supper at midnight and then danced them ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... development of beauty, fashion changed to harmonize with the popular style in beauty. In general, styles were influenced by an important event of the day: thus, when Marie Leczinska, introduced the fad of quadrilles, there were invented ribbons called "quadrille of the queen"; and many other fads originated in the same way. French taste and fashions travelled over entire Europe; all Europe was a la francaise, yoked and laced in French styles, French in art, taste, industry. The domination of the French Galerie des Modes was due to ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... executed opera selections, and a French quadrille which excited my extremest admiration. My beautiful aunt laid stress upon the fact that she had only studied two years. A very intricate plan ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... notables which the English colony of that place could muster were there, as well as all those in high office, and also the moneyed aristocracy; in fact, everybody of standing felt glad to attend the marriage feast of the house of Mortimer & Co. Just now the sounds of a quadrille commenced, and the various pairs began to arrange themselves for the occasion, when the lackey in attendance was pushed aside and a horse's head looked inquisitively ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... was public and all sorts of persons were admitted and encouraged to come, young Pynsent having views upon the county and Lady Rockminster being patroness of the ball. There was a quadrille for the aristocracy at one end, and select benches for the people of fashion. Towards this end the Chevalier did not care to penetrate far (as he said he did not care for the nobs); but in the other part of the room he ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... theatre pay no attention to ballet except at pantomime season; and whilst probably the average keen playgoer of Paris is acquainted with the names of the orthodox steps, and is aware that in the ballet one begins as petit rat, then becomes a quadrille ballerina, develops into a coryphee, blossoms into a minor subject, grows into a subject, and eventually emerges and reaches the stars as a prima ballerina, few of us know anything about ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... certainly very pleasing to see the numbers of native gentlemen of all religious persuasions, who enter into the private society of Bombay, but I could wish that we should offer them some better entertainment than that of looking on at the eternal quadrille, waltz, or galoppe. They are too much accustomed to our method of amusing ourselves to view it in the light in which it is looked upon in many other parts of India; still, they will never, in all probability, reconcile ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... danced together. I like to see soldiers or sailors dance in pairs, as a straightforward outlet for superfluous physical energy. Also, peasants in a ring—about a Maypole or something. Also, I very much like square dances and reels. There were enough that night for a quadrille, with somebody for the piano and even somebody to 'call off,'—but whoever sees a quadrille in these days? However, I mustn't burn any more gas ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... be conceived. When we reached the landing, the gold and rose-colored clouds were fading into soft masses of white and ashen gray, and moonlight was taking the place of sunset. As we went up the green slope to the sitio, a dance on the grass was proposed, and the Indian girls formed a quadrille; for thus much of outside civilization has crept into their native manners, though they throw into it so much of their own characteristic movements that it loses something of its conventional aspect. Then we returned to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... opening quadrille, and after that every one could dance. But of all the people there Cicely knew no one who would be likely to dance with her. She sat by her mother on one of the raised settees that ran in four rows the length ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... invitations which the elegant young lions vied with one another in pressing upon her; in fact, she grew sadly confused as to the number and order of her engagements,—a circumstance which very nearly led, in spite of the entente cordiale, to an open rupture between France and perfidious Albion. A quadrille doubly promised, to a young English peer aged ten and a pupil in the Naval School of about the same years, came very near producing unpleasant complications, inasmuch as the young British scion of nobility had assumed a boxing ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... acted with me in it, was dancing with me on the stage to the music which was being played during the wait, instead of changing his dress for the next piece. This dancing during the entr'acte was very popular among us. Many a burlesque quadrille I had with Terriss and others in later days. On this occasion Clayton suddenly found he was late in changing, and, rushing upstairs to his dressing-room in a hurry, he missed his footing and fell back on his head. This made me very miserable, as I could not help feeling that ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... her joy at presents of gold and jewelled trifles; changing, rising shrilly, to her last imploring sobs, her frantic embrace of the man that, beyond any doubt, she had herself killed. Running through this were the strains of a quadrille, the light sliding of dancing feet, and the sound of a low, diffident voice, Susan Brundon at the Jannans' ball. The voice continued, in a different surrounding, and woven about it was the thin complaint of ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... what do you think? cried Dorcas —My lady is resolved to go to church to-morrow! I was at quadrille with the women below.—To church! said I, and down I laid my cards. To church! repeated they, each looking upon the other. We had done playing ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... caterpillar of trade having crawled a little farther up the stalk of fashion, for the shops, I found, went right up to the Park, and the old W. K. house where we once danced our long-forgotten Dresden China Quadrille, in imitation of the equally forgotten Eighty-Three event, confronted me as a beehive of business offices. I couldn't quite get used to the new names and the new faces and the new shops and the side-street theaters and the thought of really nice girls ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... oils, antlers and arras, and gilt saloons, and placid large bed-chambers: and it took me an hour. There were here not less than a hundred and eighty people. In the first of a vista of three large reception-rooms lay what could only have been a number of quadrille parties, for to the coup d'oeil they presented a two-and-two appearance, made very repulsive by their jewels and evening-dress. I had to steel my heart to go through this house, for I did not know if these people were looking at ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... few days after this ball, she took to her bed, and fell into a sad but beautiful delirium. She had found her sisters again in this world; she walked with them hand in hand; she waltzed in the same saloon; she danced in the same quadrille; she took them to the play: all the while recounting to them her imaginary loves. What a picture for Gretry! 'She had,' he says in his Memoirs, some serene moments before death.—She took my hand, and that of her mother, and with a sweet ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... of Lady Oldbuck's—the valuable space occupied by chaperones and corpulent cronies,—blessing the new mode;—dances now being given to dancers, not to dowagers and matrimonial slave-dealers, as heretofore. Mrs. Brown calculates her company; and thinking there is enough for a quadrille in either room, she commences to form them—pouncing, from time to time, upon timid young men by the door, who are led forward, like lambs from a flock, to sacrifice,—until the sets are completed—all but one couple—Mrs. Brown stating herself "distressed ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... him. What exasperates me is his collection of little songs, compositions in the most vulgar style, without the least knowledge of the most elementary rules of harmony and poetry, concluding with quadrille ritornelli, and which he calls Recueil de Chants Polonais. You know how I wished to understand, and how I have in part succeeded in understanding, our national music. Therefore you will judge what pleasure I experience when, laying hold of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... you might have ventured to accept the Archdeacon for a quadrille," she whispered behind her fan, as Agnes regretfully ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... not disappoint us in our last evening together, Miss Candlish," said Glenville, coming to the rescue of the unfortunate tutor, and speaking in his most fascinating manner, "I have hoped for the pleasure of a quadrille and lancers and" (with an effort) "a waltz with you this evening if ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... ourselves, we exchanged them with the Jews for piecegoods. The robes we thus bartered did not long remain in the hands of the Jews, and there must have been a great demand for them among the belles of Mayence, for I remember a ball there at which the Empress might have seen all the ladies of a quadrille party dressed in her cast-off clothes.—I even saw German Princesses wearing ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... said to the animal presently, "it looks more like a swim than a waltz quadrille, and neither of ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... lose them, And languish in the dumps By having to quadrille on A pair of polished stumps— But a corky limb, though one might dread, Isn't half as bad as ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... success. He then went back to Paris to seek indemnity for the loss of his crown. In 1655 he was appointed to the post of grand-chamberlain of France. He figured in the famous carrousel of 1663, at the head of a quadrille of American savages, whilst the great Conde appeared as chief of the Turks. On seeing those two personages so pitted, some wit observed, "There go the heroes of history and fable." The Duke de Guise might indeed be very aptly compared to a mythological entity, or to a knight errant of the ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... without reserve on this occasion to the revellers and their friends from the environs; for at the Towers nothing was done by halves in those days. There the august heads of the household were expected to walk solemnly through a quadrille with the housekeeper and head butler. Mrs. Masham's and Mr. Norbury's sense of responsibility on these occasions can neither be imagined nor described. This great event made conscientious dressing for dinner more than usually necessary, however defective the excitement of the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... that there should be dancing this evening—all the young ladies had wished it. Lothair danced with Lady Flora Falkirk, and her sister, Lady Grizell, was in the same quadrille. They moved about like young giraffes in an African forest, but looked bright and happy. Lothair liked his cousins; their inexperience and innocence, and the simplicity with which they exhibited and expressed their feelings, had in them something bewitching. Then the rough remembrance of his old ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... people rushed to see a quadrille where two women, with ease, were kicking off men's hats; and while watching them I heard that a special display of fireworks had been arranged in Marie's honour, the news having got about that this was her last night at the Elysee. A swishing sound was heard; the rocket ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... considered the most charming of the maidens present, as undoubtedly she was the most blooming, and she seemed to enjoy the ball as much as any one. She danced with Captain Hemming, and went through a quadrille with Commander Babbicome. He then entreated her to perform a valse with him. Laughing heartily, she advised him not to make the attempt. Even the quiet dance had reduced him to a ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... was restored and the quadrilles began. I danced. I was obliged to do so. I danced moreover somewhat badly for a Wallachian prince. The quadrille once ended, I became stationary; foolishly held back by my short sight—too shy to sport an eyeglass, too much of a poet to wear spectacles, and dreading lest, at the slightest movement, I should bruise my knee against the corner of some piece of furniture, or plunge my nose into the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... reason why he should not come. But Chad did not go even to the Christmas party that Margaret gave in town, though the Major urged him. He spent Christmas with the Major, and he did go to a country party, where the Major was delighted with the boy's grace and agility dancing the quadrille, and where the lad occasioned no little amusement with his improvisations in the way of cutting pigeon's wings and shuffling, which he had learned in the mountains. So the Major made him accept a loan and buy a suit for social ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... as astonishing, perhaps more so, that a horse has been taught to do similar things. When I was in Paris, I saw some horses dance a quadrille very respectably, and keep excellent time. One of the Roman historians relates, "An elephant, having been punished for stupidity in executing some feat which he was required to learn, was observed, at night, endeavoring ...
— What the Animals Do and Say • Eliza Lee Follen
... ball began. Napoleon did not dance, but Marie Louise did. The first quadrille was thus made up: the Empress and the King of Westphalia, the Queen of Naples and the Viceroy of Italy, Princess Pauline Borghese and Prince Esterhazy, Mademoiselle de Saint-Gilles and M. de Nicolai. The second ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... a quadrille, but in this Mrs. Carr did not dance, being employed in the reception of her guests. Then followed a waltz, and, as its first strains struck up, several applicants came to compete for the honour of her hand; but she declined them all, saying that she ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... that he very seldom found time for even the mild dissipations of Christchurch; he was good-looking and gentlemanly, and seemed clever and sensible, a little brusque, perhaps, but one soon gets used to that here. During our quadrille he confided to me that he hardly knew any ladies in the room, and that his prospects of getting any dancing were in consequence very blank. I did all I could to find partners for him, introducing him to every lady whom ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... the house, the quadrille which had opened the party was finishing. Don Roberto was making a sweeping bow to Tiny, whose face wore an inscrutable expression. Magdalena was about to step through the window, but Trennahan guided her ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... knowledge of the fact that they dance almost into your eyes out of sheer vanity. They are simply admiring their own reflection in the mirror of the eye; or, may be, some mistake their own reflected forms for other flies performing the part of a "vis-a-vis" in their unwearying quadrille. ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... While he took breath so, the mutter went on, and through the door came the jigging fiddle. A fire of desperation lighted in his eyes. "Buffalo Girls!" he shouted, hoarsely, in her ear, and got once more on his feet with her as though they were two partners in a quadrille. Still shouting her to wake, he struck a tottering sort of step, and so, with the bending load in his grip, strove feebly to dance the ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... following evening. But she made amends in other dances, keeping poor Richard waiting for her night after night, until he actually fell asleep and dreamed of the log cabin on the prairie, where he had once danced a quadrille with Abigail Jones to the tune of Money-musk, as played by the Plympton brothers—the one on a cracked violin, and the other on ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... quadrille, and there, sure enough, were Sir Hildebrandt and young Otto standing side by side in the dance. Two eggs were not more like! The reason of the Margrave's horrid suspicion at once ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he draws the bow To suit his changing will; A march, a waltz, a polka, and An intricate quadrille, Each in its turn is rendered ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... "a household darling." I watched her one evening, not a long while since, at a gay ball, where her mother and I sat as spectatresses. She had been persuaded from our side by a dashing distingue youth, and was moving most gracefully with him through a quadrille. In the pauses of the dance he seemed most anxious to interest her, and I saw his fine, dark eyes bend on her very tender glances. Her bouquet seemed to him an object of especial attention, and though a graceful dancer ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... scaffold! The pleasant dream was at an end, and the fashionable world, giving up its former habits, took to harmless occupations—card-playing, dissipation, and the reading of French light literature. "The French quadrille," as a writer of the time tersely expresses it, "has taken the place of ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... cast up, which he did on a higgler's horse, he found the only sound one in his stud had gone to the neighbouring town to get some fiddlers—her ladyship having determined to compliment Mr. Bugles' visit by a quadrille party. Bugles and she were old friends. When Mr. Sponge cast up at half-past eleven, things were ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... or, still further back, that night of Canada's first ball, the 4th of February, 1667, when the courtly soldiers of the Carignan-Salieres regiment led the grand dames of New France through the mazes of a Versailles quadrille. From a child, indeed, Quebec had conned the worldly wisdom of Fontainebleau. Her wholesome reputation for the social graces is reflected in the compliment paid by George III. to the first Canadian lady who had the honour ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... much knowledge to dance a quadrille, particularly if you get on a side set. Come, we have an hour before it is time to go. Suppose I give you ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... simplicity need not fear comparison with any royal pageant when the President was received at the Metropolitan, and, in a scene of beauty and opulence that might be the flowering of a thousand years instead of a century, stood upon the steps of the "dais" to greet the devoted Centennial Quadrille, which passed before him with the courageous five, 'Imperator, morituri te salutamus'. We had done it—we, the people; that was our royalty. Nobody had imposed it on us. It was not even selected out of four hundred. We had taken one of the common people and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... one made, a newer one still, if I'm to take your arm. Oh, how silly I am; you won't take me in, of course. Denoisel, please keep a quadrille for me. We shall give a ball, of ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... beauty of the neighbourhood, with the exception of the bottom couple of the last set; here, Mrs. Fraudhurst appeared, gorgeously attired, as Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, with no other for her partner than Ralph Coleman in the garb of Mephistopheles. At the conclusion of the first Quadrille, the Baronet seated himself in the state chair, with his old friends on either side, for their dancing days like his own was now as a thing of the past, but looking on with inward satisfaction at the gay assembly, until the memories of their own youthful days rose pleasantly before them, the rare ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... wait for Kaethe to reply; they formed themselves in long avenues and began a stately dance, something like a quadrille. ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... latter part of the evening, one of the rooms was cleared for a dance. Montfort was solicited to join in a quadrille, and a beautiful partner was even presented to his notice; but he wanted confidence and knowledge, and he had no faith in the integrity of the gaiter shoes he had vamped up for the occasion, so that he was forced to decline. This ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... no, nor my youthfullity, which bears me out even at a sabat. I dined last week at Lady Blandford's, with her, the old Denbigh, the old Litchfield, and Methuselah knows who. I had stuck some sweet peas in my hair, was playing at quadrille, and singing to my sorci'eres. The Duchess of Argyle and Mrs. Young came in; you may guess how they stared; at last the Duchess asked what was the meaning of those flowers? "Lord, Madam," said I, "don't you know it is the fashion? ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... very good, but they're only wood, So they have to be shown The step to take and the bow to make— They cannot dance alone! Quadrille, gavotte, and I don't know what, They soon will clever be! So, dolls who sigh to be dancers, try ...
— Laugh and Play - A Collection of Original stories • Various
... knows every body. The elder men take to billiards and ecarte,—the graver ladies form into little coteries; a younger one goes to the piano, a circle is made, a romance is sung; and then, as the strain becomes lighter, the feet beat in sympathy, and the gay quadrille is formed. At eight or nine o'clock the room is at its fullest; the village minstrels are called in—some half-dozen violins, a clarionet, and a cornet; the music becomes louder, the mazy waltz is danced, and the enjoyment of the day is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... couples who afterward danced in the Poets' Quadrille were Miss Daisy Bankshire, looking more than usually lovely as Laura, and Mr. Ronald Grew ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... was disregarded. It was visible that the hero of the night hung listening and in expectation. He and the Beauty were named to one another, and they chatted through a quadrille. Sir Lukin introduced a fellow-Harrovian of old days, Mr. Thomas Redworth, to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... presented himself at the palace; but as there was a court ball, he could not see the queen, and contented himself with making known the reason for his journey to the minister Cecil, and with begging him to ask his mistress for an audience next day. Elizabeth was dancing in a quadrille at the moment when Cecil, approaching her, said in a low voice, "Queen Mary of Scotland has just given birth to a son". At these words she grew frightfully pale, and, looking about her with a bewildered air, and as if she were about to faint, she leaned against an arm-chair; ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... graceful movements of the limbs—vulgarly termed, in creole vernacular, 'la sopimpa'—the excitement is far greater than it is with the fastest 'trois temps' on record. So great indeed, that after every other 'round' the couples pause and perform a kind of lady's-chain in quadrille groups of six or eight. Each dancer gives his or her favourite version of this remarkable step. Some appear to glide around as if propelled on wheels; while others define the step by hops, backward skips and short turns, now ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... when he first led out Miss Page to dance, and I saw him again when he stood up opposite her in the last quadrille, and I tell you, boys, there was a mighty deal of difference in the way he conducted himself toward her in the beginning of the evening and the last. You wouldn't have thought him the same man. Reckless young fellows like him are not to be caught by ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... glad you came. Now our meeting is complete. We want evidence. Tell us all you know about the strange men. You had a good chance to observe. You were not in the little quadrille on ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... years—what are fifty years! Think of Methuselah! It's summer in the world still, and it's only spring at St. Saviour's. It's the time of the first flowers. Let's dance—no, no, never mind the Cure to-night! He will not mind. I'll settle it with him. We'll dance the gay quadrille." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... you to run away and leave me when I was your partner in the first quadrille! I do not see why you should have disappointed me for anything that fellow could have ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... flat boat so called, or rather float, and slept at a pavilion he had on the bank of it. I shall never forget my nocturnal visitors, the bull-frogs, who, sans facon, jumped about the room as if dancing a quadrille, not to my amusement but their own, making a most unmusical noise to the tune of something like, "Pay your debts, pay your debts, pay your debts." After the third croak they paused, probably to ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... Besides these, or what might be deduced as corollaries from these, he will teach not much else of any effective value: some dim notions of divinity, perhaps, and book-keeping, and how to walk through a quadrille. ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as Hamlet, led the quadrille with Carrie Shaw as a Greek girl. His sad and solemn 'reverence' contrasted charmingly with her sunny ease. He acted the Dane to the life, his bearing, the melancholy light in his eyes, his black-plumed head-cover, and his rapier ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... "calling out" is hard work for one man. There are but two kinds of dances,—the Red River jig, and a square dance which probably had for honourable ancestors the lancers on the father's side and a quadrille ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... Falconers and their quadrille-set were resting themselves, whilst this country dance was going on. Miss Georgiana was all the time endeavouring to engage Count Altenberg in conversation. By all the modern arts of coquetry, so insipid ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... call.) Madam, your husband will attend The funeral of so good a friend.' 'No, madam, 'tis a shocking sight; And he's engaged to-morrow night: My Lady Club will take it ill, If he should fail her at quadrille. He loved the Dean—(I lead a heart)— But dearest friends, they say, must part. His time was come; he ran his race; We hope he's in ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... them, and saw the African beauties squatting on their haunches, or reclining, in graceful negligence, on banks of mud, a great difficulty existed as to whom they should select to be their partners in the African quadrille. We have ourselves been in a ball-room where the beating of the female heart was almost audible, when the object of its secret attachment approached to lead out the youthful beauty to the dancing circle; and although ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... opera-dancers. Not at all. And not like Madame Anybody's finished pupils. Not the least. It was not quadrille dancing, nor minuet dancing, nor even country-dance dancing. It was neither in the old style, nor the new style, nor the French style, nor the English style: though it may have been, by accident, a trifle in the Spanish style, which is a free and joyous one, I am told, ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... first ladies as their partners, and, strange as it may seem, there is nothing in their behaviour that the most fastidious can complain of. They are perfectly polite, quiet, and well conducted; and what is more remarkable, go through a quadrille as well as their neighbours. The ball was quietness itself, until near the end, when the wind-instruments were suddenly seized with a fit of economy, the time they were paid for having probably expired, and stopped short in the midst of a waltz; ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... the widow of a former vicar of Highbury, was a very old lady, almost past every thing but tea and quadrille. She lived with her single daughter in a very small way, and was considered with all the regard and respect which a harmless old lady, under such untoward circumstances, can excite. Her daughter enjoyed a most uncommon degree of popularity for a woman neither young, handsome, rich, nor ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... asked her to dance again, and they stood in a quadrille. She stood by him looking straight before her, and perfectly silent, wondering how he would open the conversation. He did not leave her ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... victorious cavalcade arrived near the queen, Don Antonio and the chief of the quadrille vaulted nimbly from their horses, when the conqueror knelt at the feet of his gracious sovereign, who, with a condescending smile, threw the ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... and her husband led the quadrille in the sitting-room, opposite a trooper and the neighbor woman; the Swede had as his partner the new teacher, a young lady from St. Paul; and the biggest brother had his mother. Above them, as they promenaded, balanced, and swung, waved the ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... on the floor, then another, then one more; finally a whole quadrille of five-franc pieces were ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... was again Ball and Royal Evening Party—"Grand Apartment" so called. Immense Ball, "seven hundred couples, all people of condition:" there were "Four Quadrilles," or dancing places in the big sea of quality-figures; each at its due distance in the grand suite of rooms: Wilhelmina presides in Quadrille NUMBER ONE; place assigned her was in the room called Picture-Gallery; Queen and all the Principalities were with Wilhelmina, she is to lead off their quadrille, and take charge of it. Which she ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... my humble protest against the quadrille and lunch parties which are sometimes given to European ladies and gentlemen of the station at this imperial tomb; drinking and dancing are no doubt very good things in their season, but they are sadly out of place ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in dancing a quadrille to swing a young person of the opposite sex twice round at a select party when you are but slightly acquainted, but feel quite confident that her partner ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... in advance by the patronesses to be one in the "grand march." The "grand march" proper is a form of exhibition long since relegated to balls of the "Tough Boys' Coterie" and other assemblages of the same class. But it has survived, in place of a lancers or quadrille of honor, at the Charity Ball, and we have either to go through with it or watch it from the boxes with Christian patience. If you are to take part, I would advise you to present yourself at the ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... a ball; but we only know about a dozen people. We've got to wait till we know enough at least for two sets of a quadrille." ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... spring when the mating-instinct is strong, I have seen a flock of white ibises waltzing about the sky, going through various intricate movements, with the precision of dancers in a ballroom quadrille. No sign, no signal, no guidance whatever. Let a body of men try it under the same conditions, and behold the confusion, and the tumbling over one another! At one moment the birds would wheel so as to ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... type of fandango was being danced—a dance not wholly unlike a quadrille, in that it admitted a number of persons to the set and afforded opportunity for certain individual exhibitions ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... only the stars justify this name of jewellery, as usual, by the life of their splendor, but also, in this case, by their arrangement. No jeweller could have set, or disposed with more art, the magnificent quadrille of stars which is placed immediately below the upright plume. There is also another, a truncated quadrille, wanting only the left hand star (or you might call it a bisected lozenge) placed on the diadem, but obliquely placed as regards the curve of that ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... occurred to him to approach his old adversary, now a marshal. This man, whom I knew, was something of an original character; he presented himself before Augereau with a little violin under his arm, and said that as he had nothing to give his eight children for dinner, he would make them dance a quadrille to cheer them up, unless the marshal could put him in the way of providing a more substantial meal. Augereau recognised Belair, invited him to a meal, gave him some money and a few days later arranged for him to have a good job in the transport department. He also placed ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... came, To serve a proud Iernian dame; Was long submitted to her will, At length she lost me at Quadrille. Through various shapes I often passed, Still hoping to have rest at last; And still ambitious to obtain Admittance to the patriot Dean; And sometimes got within his door, But soon turn'd out to serve the poor; Not strolling idleness to aid, But honest industry ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... does she dance? Is it a valse, a polka, a quadrille?" "No. Would that it were!" And Mr. Greyne, unable further to govern his desire for full expression, gave Mademoiselle Verbena a slightly Bowdlerised description of the dances of the desert. She ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... violent passions (which you and I know is not the case) she might be a good nurse for her child; but, as matters stand, I do verily think, that the milk of a good comely cow, who feeds quietly in her meadow, never devours ragouts, nor drinks ratifia, nor frets at quadrille, nor sits up till three in the morning, elated with gain, or dejected with loss; I do think, that the milk of such a cow, or of a nurse that came as near it as possible, would be likely to nourish the young squire much better than hers. If ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... assemblage stood about in the ballroom floor ready for a quadrille. Elena Ashley and her betrothed were near the wide ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... Kensington rejoiced, and the festivities were wound up with a ball given at St. James's Palace by order of the poor King and Queen, over whose heads the cloud of sorrow and parting was hanging heavily. We are told that the ball opened with a quadrille, the Princess being "led off" by Lord Fitzalan, eldest son of the Earl of Surrey and grandson of the Duke of Norfolk, Premier Duke and Earl, Hereditary Earl Marshal and Chief Butler of England. Her Royal Highness danced afterwards with Prince Nicholas ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... not expect that—is it not the best usage of Europe, now, to bring a quadrille into the very minimum ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... these hosts? The hero could not charge down on the ladies and gentlemen in a ballroom, and spoil the quadrille. He had sufficient reticence to avoid sounding his challenge in the Law Courts; nor could he well go into the Houses of Parliament with a trumpet, though to come to a tussle with the nation's direct representatives did ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... deepened, expanded into a melody that made you think the heavens had suddenly opened. Every other sound ceased; the doors and windows were filled with eager faces; the dancers ended in the middle of a quadrille, and the band came in a body to listen. I saw one fat Dutchman holding his fiddle in one hand while he wiped the tears from his eyes with the other. When the song was ended the old Italian took both her hands in his and kissed them, talking at the same ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... with us. I had to tell him, we said a horse "took the track," in racing, and as this lady came from a racing region, she might have used it, con amore, especially in the gallopade. Capt. ——, of the navy, once called out to the ladies of a quadrille to "shove off," when he thought the music had got the start of them; and it is lucky that this Sir —— did not hear him, or he would have set it down at once as an Americanism. These people are constantly on the hunt for something peculiar and ridiculous in Americans, and make no allowance for ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... alone:—above all, the overpowering attractions of a Sans Prendre Vole,—to the triumph of which there is certainly nothing parallel or approaching, in the contingencies of whist;—all these, she would say, make quadrille a game of captivation to the young and enthusiastic. But whist was the solider game: that was her word. It was a long meal; not, like quadrille, a feast of snatches. One or two rubbers might coextend in duration ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... close on it again. The sea was freckled by the rain, the waves were beaten into submission. The tide was rather low, and not very far away a great company of porpoises bowed each other through the mazes of a slow quadrille. There were a few rocks spotted like leopards, and on one of these a young brown seagull rested, and allowed itself occasionally to ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... that Godefroid went to one of the balls for which Mme. de Nucingen enjoyed a certain not undeserved reputation, he caught a glimpse of his future lady-love in a quadrille, and was set marveling by that height of four feet eleven inches. The fair hair rippled in a shower of curls about the little girlish head, she looked as fresh as a naiad peeping out through the crystal pane of her stream to take a look at the spring ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... reason told him that they did not belong to men of his class, but at nineteen reason is not always supreme; and many a time he went back with a sigh from his window to his books, and tried to forget the alluring strains of the quadrille and waltz in the descriptions of the lion's roar and the bull-frog's ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... to speak to a young lady while you are dancing—what we call in this country—a quadrille. What nonsense do you invariably give and receive in return! No, I am a woman-scorner, and don't care to own it. I hate young ladies! Have I not been in love with several, and has any one of them ever treated me decently? I hate married women! ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a Waverley quadrille already formed," said Miss Byrton—"that is de rigueur. There could not be a fancy ball without a Waverley quadrille. How I should like two Shakesperian ones! I thought of having one from 'As You Like It' ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... already formed," said Miss Byrton—"that is de rigueur. There could not be a fancy ball without a Waverley quadrille. How I should like two Shakesperian ones! I thought of having one from 'As You Like It' and another from 'Romeo and Juliet;' and, Miss L'Estrange, I wish you would come as Juliet. It seems rude even to suggest a character to any one with such perfect taste as yours—still ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... laughing voice in his ear—"will you dance the royal quadrille with me? Something's happened to my partner. Mother ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... time it was indeed. There were ombre and quadrille tables, piquet and guinea points for the elders, while the black fiddlers in the end of the hall inspired the feet of the younger portion. With the dancing there were jest and laughter and compliments enough to give a novice vertigo. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Erie, Pa., has turned a lawyer named Donaldson out of the church. The charge against him was not that he was a lawyer, as might be supposed, but that he had danced a quadrille. It does not seem to us as though there could be anything more harmless than dancing a cold blooded quadrille. It is a simple walk around, and is not even exercise. Of course a man can, if he chooses, get in extra steps enough to keep his feet warm, but we contend that no quadrille, where they ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... Norse,—the songs were received with generous applause. Once or twice, a recitation, very spiritedly rendered in a powerful Scottish accent, varied the proceedings; and once we sought in vain to dance a quadrille, eight men of us together, to the music of the violin. The performers were all humorous, frisky fellows, who loved to cut capers in private life; but as soon as they were arranged for the dance, they conducted themselves like so many mutes at a funeral. I have never seen decorum ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... quadrille, since that is not the material part," said Charles. "What is to the point is that after—after doing what took me, I stayed to help in Guy Fawkes' fun ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford |
