"Showman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in front of the children. He was dressed like a real showman. He had on a high hat and a long coat. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, in a funny deep voice, "the big show is about to begin. Will you please find seats in the show tent?" The children laughed and sat down ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams
... pleasure to meet often during the early seventies the man who is now famous in the old world and the new world, Buffalo Bill (William F. Cody), cowboy, ranger, hunter, scout and showman, a man who carried his life in his hands day and night in the wild country where duty called, and has often bluffed the grim reaper Death to a standstill, and is living now, hale, hearty ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... came, the interminable Sonata in B minor, in which the sugar and the fire are so strangely mixed, it was as if Paderewski were still playing his own music. If ever there was a show piece for the piano, this was it, and if ever there was a divine showman for it, it was Paderewski. You felt at once the personal sympathy of the great pianist for the great pianist. He was no longer reverential, as with Beethoven, not doing homage but taking part, sharing almost in a creation, comet-like, of stars in the sky. Nothing in the bravura disconcerted ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... great showman had fallen short of his printed promise. The hurricane had come by night, and with one fell swash had made an irretrievable sop of every thing. The circus trailed away its bedraggled magnificence, and the ring was ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... dared go in his pretensions are well illustrated in an incident of these days. Among the curiosities of a travelling showman who passed through Kirtland were some Egyptian mummies. As the golden plates from which the Mormon Bible was translated were written in "reformed Egyptian," the translator of those plates was interested in all things coming from Egypt, and at his suggestion the mummies ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... that most of those evils from which speakers and singers suffer, whatever the part of the vocal mechanism affected, arise from faulty methods of voice-production, or excess in the use of methods in themselves correct. A showman may have a correct method of voice-production—indeed, the writer has often studied the showman with admiration—but if he speak for hours in the open air in all sorts of weather, a disordered throat is but the ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... his own nature? And yet he felt that he would like to observe Mr. Barker. He felt drawn to him without knowing why, and he had a presentiment that the American would drag him out of his quiet life into a very different existence. Mr. Barker, on the other hand, possessed the showman's instinct. He had found a creature who, he was sure, had the elements of a tremendous lion about town; and having found him, he meant to capture him and exhibit him in society, and take to himself ever after the credit of having unearthed the handsome, rich, ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... literature. The stories are a frank and wholesome caricature of the French detective story. They are legitimate pieces of literature because they are burlesque, and because the smiling Mephistopheles who lurks everywhere in the pages of Stevenson is for this time the acknowledged showman of the piece. ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... destination. The view of the earth, and of the clouds, obtainable from a height, was beautiful and unfamiliar, but in the absence of any specific utility the thing became a popular toy. In public gardens a balloon could be counted on to attract a crowd, and the showman soon gave it its place, as a miracle of nature, by the side of the giant and the dwarf, the living skeleton, and the fat woman. A horse is not seen to advantage in the car of a balloon, but it is a marvel that a horse should be seen there ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... military character. Its first constituent is obedience: a soldier is, of all descriptions of men, the most completely a machine; yet his profession inevitably teaches him something of dogmatism, swaggering, and sell-consequence: he is like the puppet of a showman, who, at the very time he is made to strut and swell and display the most farcical airs, we perfectly know cannot assume the most insignificant gesture, advance either to the right or the left, but ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... being—according to the biography published by his showman, BARNUM—the son of a Yankee carpenter, we should much like to know the General's arms. Did Her Majesty, before the 'performance,' send to learn them, that they might be duly engraved? or were they, as ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... the marvel! If to enter life Needed some courage, 'twere a kind of wages, As they let sacking soldiers take home loot: But we are shuffled into life like puppets Emptied out of a showman's bag; and then Made spenders of the joys current in heaven! (Not such a marvel neither, if this love Be but the price I'm paid for my free soul. Who's the old trader that has lent this girl The ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... the bed mouths into the broad Wady Mismh, a feeder of the Wady Argah. Here, after some ten miles, the guide, Na'ji', who thus far had been very misty in the matter of direction, suddenly halted and, in his showman style, pointed to the left bank of the watercourse, exclaiming, "Behold Ab'l-Mar!" (the "Father of Quartz"). It was another surprise, and our last, this snowy reef with jagged crest, at least 500 metres long, forming the finest display of an exposed filon we had as yet seen; but—the first ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... on Parnassus were displayed in full conclave; and, thanks to Mrs Amy's skill in draping and posing, the white wigs and cotton-flannel robes were classically correct and graceful, though sundry modern additions somewhat marred the effect, while adding point to the showman's learned remarks. Mr Laurie was Professor Owlsdark in cap and gown; and, after a high-flown introduction, he proceeded to exhibit and explain his marbles. The first figure was a stately Minerva; but a second glance produced a ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Beaches. Besides, from your own name, you should be a descendant of Miles Standish, and blood relation to these Cape Codders yourself. And Uncle Amazon and Uncle Abram are fine old gentlemen." She said it boldly, whether she could believe it about Cap'n Amazon or not. "I will not play showman." ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... If only I could talk the matter over, in a friendly spirit, with mother, but she won't let me. Ah! if it were not that one is born with feelings and energies and ambitions of one's own, parents might treat one as a showman treats his marionettes, and we should all be charmed to lie prone on our backs, or to dance as may be convenient to our creators. But, as it is, the life of a marionette—however affectionate the wire-pullers—does become monotonous ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... we had been captured by Curry's gang of train robbers, who made their headquarters in the hole in the wall. The leader searched Pa and took all his money, and told us to make ourselves at home. Pa protested, and said he was an old showman who had come to the valley looking for the supposed-to-be- extinct dinosaurus, to capture one for the show, and the leader of the gang said he was the only dinosaurus there was, but he hadn't been ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... vacant guesses were made as the showman held it aloft. Then with a conjuror's gesture he suddenly placed his thumbs within the rim, released the spring and extended the hat. The assembly laughed again ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Not merely as a showman's dog has he distinguished himself. He is something more than a mountebank of the booths, trained to walk the tight rope and stand on his head. He is an adept at performing tricks, but it is his alertness ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... the showman said, "Your day at last is done, No more you'll fly at Punch's head, Or cause the Clown to run, Poor little chap! you're weak, too weak To join ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... now to do some original research with me. I may not be a top-flight genius like Metternick or Dahl, but my reputation does carry some weight with the Board. (That, Turnbull thought, was a bit of needless modesty; Duckworth wasn't the showman that Metternick was, or the prolific writer that Dahl was, but he had more intelligence and down-right wisdom than either.) So if you could manage to get a few months leave from Columbia, I'd be honored to have your assistance. (More ...
— Dead Giveaway • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Indian runner, or clicking over the magnetic wires, troop all the famous performers from the four quarters of the globe. Looked at from a point of criticism, tiny puppets they seem all, as the editor sets up his booth upon my desk and officiates as showman. Now I can truly see how little and transitory is life. The earth appears almost as a drop of vinegar, on which the solar microscope of the imagination must be brought to bear in order to make out any thing distinctly. That animalcule there, in the pea-jacket, is Louis Philippe, just landed on ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... above assertion, in the true showman phraseology, just "Walk up! walk up!" to Madame Tussaud's, the real Temple of Fame, and let such doubts vanish for ever; convince yourselves that the mighty attribute not more survives from good than evil deeds, though, like poverty, it makes its votaries acquainted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the spring, so the Copperhead Times seems to have cast its own this season; but though it may appear in more pleasing garb with its present covering, let none forget that it is the same old Copperhead still. And the time will come when some enterprising showman will obtain and exhibit the last issue of that delectable sheet as the acme of treason and corruption during the war, and as an illustration of what villainy the mind of man may conceive, when he once turns ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... the showman. He was very big, and so ugly that the sight of him was enough to frighten anyone. His beard was as black as ink, and so long that it reached from his chin to the ground. I need only say that he trod upon it when he walked. His mouth was as big as an oven, and his eyes were like ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... one day in the street, enjoying the vagaries of punch with the rest of the crowd, the showman came up to her and solicited a contribution. She was not very ready in answering the demand, when the fellow, taking care to make her understand that he knew who she was, exclaimed, "Ah! it's all over with the drama, if ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... have parades and reviews two or three times a week and the Sovereigns of Russia, Austria and Prussia constantly attend; Wellington is their showman. These crowned Heads like mightily playing at soldiers; I should think His Grace must be heartily tired of them. Massacres and persecutions of the Protestants have begun to take place in the South of France, and the priests are at work again ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... pulling up. Then, with the air of a showman introducing some rare exhibit, added: "This is the ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... him as 'the Flower of Bartholomew Fair and the Idol of the Rabble; a Fellow that overdoes everything, and spoils many a Part with his own Stuff,' the Spectator has in another paper given honourable fame to his skill as a comedian. Here there is but the whimsical suggestion of a favourite showman and low comedian mounted on an elephant to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... interpreter; expositor, expounder, exponent, explainer; demonstrator. scholiast, commentator, annotator; metaphrast[obs3], paraphrast[obs3]; glossarist[obs3], prolocutor. spokesman, speaker, mouthpiece. dragoman, courier, valet de place, cicerone, showman; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Power could hope to put us into disorder. Do you think that' such a company of mean fellows 'would have attacked Us, if they had not been supported by vast unseen forces behind the scenes.'[58] With what cruel craft, but seeming indifference, the artful old showman treated his manikins! He cut off the heads of some amongst those who responded most vigorously to his touch; whilst others, not less free upon the wire, were carefully packed up, and sent home safe. By seizing and boxing up in the ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... be, with some feats of dexterity and effort, like a man trying to lift himself in his own arms, or take his head in his teeth, exploits as dangerous, as ungraceful, and as useless, except to glorify the showman and bring wages in, as the feats of ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... water or grass, before reaching the Carson River. While camping in this vicinity two pelicans sailed around and lighted in the clear lake, beyond reach of rifle-shot. These were the first birds of the kind I had ever seen outside of a showman's cage, and I was determined to have one of them if possible; so, with rifle in hand, I waded out till the water came up under my arms, and, not being able to go any farther, ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... certainly, but it won't do any damage," replies their showman, with confidence; "and really it is very pretty while burning. I used to make 'em by hundreds when I was a boy, and nothing ever happened except once, when I blew the ear off ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... beyond measure by what you say. I should have thought that a boy of your poetical and artistic temperament would have had his imagination somewhat fired, even by the efforts of the poor showman whom we've seen to-night. Now I will make you a confession. At the bottom of my heart I agree with every word you've said. I may be one-sided, prejudiced, what you will, but I cannot help looking upon a ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... an explanation. But, by the hypothesis, since you are not I, you can know nothing certainly. Now my theory explains many things, and, among others, the adamantine, imperishable, impenetrable nature of the substance vanity upon which the showman, Nature, projects in fast fading colours the unsubstantial images of men. Why do you drag me through this ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... meant to have a thoroughly good time. But the Islip Chapel has no cheerful intent. It is, indeed, a place set aside, with all reverence, to preserve certain relics of a grim, yet not unlovely, old custom. These fearful images are no stock-in-trade of a showman; we are not invited to 'walk-up' to them. They were fashioned with a solemn and wistful purpose. The reason of them lies in a sentiment which is as old as the world—lies in man's vain revolt from the prospect ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... battle-pieces, but those were such confusion that all I could make out was horses on their hind-legs; and portraits. I think it is nonsense for people to try to paint battles; they can't do it; and, besides, as far as the fighting goes, one fight is just like another. Mr. Dillwyn told me of a travelling showman, in Germany, who travelled about with the panorama of a battle; and every year he gave it a new name, the name of the last battle that was in men's mouths; and all he had to do was to change the uniforms, he said. ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... and a column in the Capitol were she without merit. There is value in her; but to fetch it out she must go back, begin lower, and give years to training, education, and hard work. She can labor ten years for the sake of living five. As for her support, it was of the sort afforded by John T., the showman, and very funny. Mrs. Germon, God bless her! was properly funny. She is the best old woman on end ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... footman has just produced a cantata which has been sent in to the committee of the Worcester Festival (Be quiet, Marcella; if it isn't that, it's something near it); that she teaches the stable boys and the laundry maids old English dances, and the pas de quatre once a fortnight, and acts showman to her own pictures for the benefit of the neighbourhood once a week? I came once to see how she did it, but I found her and the Gairsley ironmonger measuring the ears of the Holbeins—it seems you can't ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... department of life that may or may not be allied to the platform. If a man makes a remarkable speech, he is very naturally invited to lecture; but he is no more certain to be invited than he who wins a battle. A showman gets his first invitation for the same reason that an author does,—because he is notorious. Nearly all new men in the lecture-field are introduced through the popular desire to see notorious or famous people. A man whose name is on the popular tongue is a man whom the popular eye desires to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... Ohio, and after working for some months on the Tiffin Advertiser, went to Toledo, where he remained till the fall of 1857. Thence he went to Cleveland, Ohio, as local editor of the Plain Dealer. Here appeared the humorous letters signed "Artemus Ward" and written in the character of an itinerant showman. In 1860 he went to New York as editor of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... well-dressed girls, with a few polygynic young men in the usual island proportion of the sexes, came out of the cottages, and stood in the lanes talking and laughing, or walked to the edge of the bluff to see the sun go down. We rubbed our eyes. Was this real, or were we looking into some showman's box? It seemed like the Petit Trianon adapted to an island in the Atlantic, with Louis XV. and his marquises playing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... showman's dog. If scholdin' didn't do for Finn, she'd cry at him, an' had tin childher that she larned to cry at him too, an' when she begun, the tin o' thim 'ud set up a yell that 'ud deefen a thrumpeter, so Finn ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... set free by Don Quixote. He returned the favor by stealing Sancho's wallet and ass. Subsequently he reappeared as a puppet-showman.—Cervantes, Don Quixote. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... have you no mercantile instinct? That would be like killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Why, the first showman would take the old gentleman off my hands, and pay me a handsome price for him. You must know that a troublesome father-in-law is so rare that the public would flock to see him. But you couldn't get anything ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... another mother's meeting for the mothers of the Free Kindergarten. This time I gave a magic lantern show, and I was the showman. The poor, ignorant women sat there bewildered. They had never seen a piano, and many of them had never been close to a foreigner before. I showed them about a hundred slides, explained through an interpreter ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... of it I saw a head, and a—a small portion of a little deformed body, mounted on a high chair, which brought the occupant up to a fair level enough for him to get at his food. His whole appearance was so grotesque, I felt for a minute as if there was a showman behind him who would pull him down presently and put up Judy, or the hangman, or the Devil, or some other wooden personage of the famous spectacle. I contrived to lose the first of his sentence, but what I ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... for support, either directly through pension payments or indirectly through some form of industrial paternalism. Incidentally, a profuse public expenditure is condoned where not actually encouraged. Jeffersonian simplicity is preached; extravagance is practised. As the New York showman long since shrewdly observed: "The American people ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... as she read this letter, and went on with faster beats than usual after she had folded it up. A voyage, and London, and Pitt Dallas for a showman! What could be more alluring in its temptation and promise? Going about in London with him to guide and explain things—could opportunity be more favourable to finish the work which last summer left undone? Betty's heart jumped ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... control of the English Government, and subject to the same degradation as Westminster, St. Paul's, &c."—Starting from this basis, which only wants truth to make it solid, he complains of "the meanness of reducing the nation to the condition of a common showman;" the trifling mistake of confounding public and private property moves his democratic chivalry, and he takes up the cudgels for the masses. I almost fear to give the sentence publicity, lest it should shake the Ministry, and be a rallying-point ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... into aids to a system of puffing at which Barnum himself would stare amazed, and confess that he had never conceived of "a dodge" in which literary genius and philanthropy could be allied with the grossest bookselling humbug. But we trust, that, after our American showman has recovered from his first shock of surprise, he will vindicate the claim of America to be considered the "first nation on the face of the earth," by immediately offering Dickens a hundred thousand dollars to superintend ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... display to him who stood as showman. This was a handsome lad, seemingly no older than I, though taller, with a shock of black hair, rough and curly, and dark, smooth face, very boyish and pleasant. He was dressed well, in bourgeois fashion; yet there was about him and his apparel something, I could not tell what, unfamiliar, ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... fell, and closed as they rose, so the device as a whole must be regarded as a sort of flapping glider. Having by experiment proved his apparatus successful, Besnier promptly sold it to a travelling showman of the period, and forthwith set about constructing a second set, with which he made gliding flights of considerable height and distance. Like Lilienthal, Besnier projected himself into space from some height, ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... of that?" cried the detective, with the air of a showman exhibiting his show. "This was overlooked because it was in the darkest corner of the room, and no one thought of looking there. The murderer has written it with his or her own blood. See this smear where it has trickled down the wall! That disposes of ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the children of rich and poor, who scream with delight and kick their little, fat bare legs at the first shrill squeak of Mr. Punch. The three who compose the staff of this tiny attraction have been long in its service—the old harpist, and the good wife of the showman who knows every child in the neighborhood, and her husband who is Mr. Punch, the hangman, and the gendarme, and half a dozen other equally historical personages. A thin, sad-looking man, this husband, gray-haired, with a careworn look in his deep-sunken eyes, who works harder ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... medley tune, half "Patrick's Day" And half "Boyne Water," take their cantering way, While Peel, the showman in the middle, cracks His long-lasht whip to cheer the doubtful hacks. Ah, ticklish trial of equestrian art! How blest, if neither steed would bolt or start;— If Protestant's old restive tricks were gone, And Papist's ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... there where they can see you!" admonished a clown. "If you're going to be a showman you mustn't be afraid to ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... character of showman, threw himself into his work with even more than his customary energy. His flow of speech never faltered. He spoke of the New Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, Osiris and Ammon; waxed eloquent concerning Mut, Bubastis, Cheops, the Hyksos kings, ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... The showman was outside, haranguing. His system was to thrill the audience with horror, till they precipitated themselves in a spasm of terror into his show. Just as when one is on a height, a nervous, uncontrollable impulse fills some men to ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... is something very fundamental indeed about the ancient showman's trick—divert their attention from the thing you're ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... she did not understand them in those days. That he should be fond of history and the sciences was natural enough, but when the Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself, appeared, and he sat up nights to absorb it, and woke early and lighted the lamp to follow the career of the great showman, she was at a loss to comprehend this particular literary passion, and indeed was rather jealous of it. She did not realize then his vast interest in the study of human nature, or that such a book contained what Mr. Howells calls ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... interesting to observe the different views the artists have severally taken of it, for most of them in turn have attempted his portrayal. Brine regarded him as a mere buffoon, devoid of either dignity or breeding; Crowquill, as a grinning, drum-beating Showman; Doyle, Thackeray, and others adhered to the idea of the Merry, but certainly not uproarious, Hunchback; Sir John Tenniel showed him as a vivified puppet, all that was earnest, responsible, and wise, laughing and high-minded; Keene looked on him generally as ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... the famous Showman relates many exciting experiences of his early days on the road, and recalls the trials and triumphs of a career more interesting than many a ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... attention to some humorous touch in one of Bewick's tail-pieces, or to some plump figure in a group by his favourite Stothard than when handling a Michael Angelo drawing or an amazing Blake. Yet, had it been his humour, he could have played the showman to Michael Angelo and Blake at least as well as to Bewick, Stothard, or Chodowiecki. But a modesty, marvellously mingled with irony, was of the very essence of his nature. No man expatiated less. He ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... one of the merits of the showman's enterprise in modern times that he brings to a great city like London groups of interesting savages, without imposture and without ill-treatment, and enables us to see and talk with them almost ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... Every window was opened, the cure, the garde champetre, the school-master, all peering out anxiously into the night, and asking what was happening. Was it tramps, or a travelling circus, or a bear escaped from his showman, or perhaps a wolf? I have wished sometimes since, when I have heard various barons talking politics, that I, too, could wander out into the night and seek ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... the Auld Licht young men came into the square dressed and washed to look at the young women errand-going, and to laugh some time afterward to each other, it presented a glare of light; and here even came the cheap jacks and the Fair Circassian, and the showman, who, besides playing "The Mountain Maid and the Shepherd's Bride," exhibited part of the tall of Balaam's ass, the helm of Noah's ark, and the tartan plaid in which Flora McDonald wrapped Prince ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... to France, this little party had met the first check, in the only tavern of Mockern village. Not only had a wild beast showman, known as Morok the lion-tamer, sought to pick a quarrel with the inoffensive veteran, but that failing, had let a panther of his menagerie loose upon the soldier's horse. That horse had carried Dagobert, under General Simon's and ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Manuel," said Bob. "We shall all be coming to you to shoot us, if you'll just bind us up as beautifully afterwards. Did you learn that in the shooting galleries too, in case you put the showman's eye out?" ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... been attracted by the rumour of the gathering. A tight-rope dancer, a snake charmer, an itinerant showman with a performing goat, monkey, or dancing bear, may make his appearance before ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... myself in a Northern capital, and committed myself to the guidance of a native coachman, whose business and pride it was to drive me from place to place, and indicate to me the important buildings of his majestic city. He was a patriotic showman, and I am bound to say he showed us a great deal; but the most memorable moment of that instructive day was when he stopped before, what seemed to us, a respectable mansion in a respectable street, and announced to us that "you" was "the Free Kirk Univairsity." It was the first time in my life ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... containing a bed—which had all the appearance of having been slept in for a week—a rocking-chair, and a bureau; a smaller room opening out of it also contained a very-much-slept-in bed. Throwing open the door of the latter room with a flourish that would have been creditable in a professional showman, he introduced us. ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... flashed and dwindled. He dared not drop back to set fire to the base of the heap. But even in the exhaustion and strain of the moment Jerry Foster still knew the value of the showman's tricks in reaching the fears ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... be the closin attraction. I intended it should finish the proceedins. I think it would have finished them. I understand animals better than any other class of human creatures. I have a very animal mind, and I've been identified with 'em doorin my entire perfessional career as a showman, more especial bears, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... had at one time been actively engaged on the important engineering work now in progress in the pass; and Lady Merton could not, therefore, have found a better showman. But why any showman at all? What did she know about this man who had sprung so rapidly into intimacy with herself and her brother? Yet Delaine could not honestly accuse him of presuming on a chance acquaintance, ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... A SHOWMAN giving entertainments in Lafayette, Ind., was offered by one man a bushel of corn for admission. The manager declined it, saying that all the members of his company had been corned for the ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... had to take his turn with several in acting showman to the gazing crowd, and by and by the part fell to him oftenest. Each had his own way of filling the office. One would repeat his information like a lesson in which he was not interested, and expected no one else to be interested. ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... boa constructors, as the showman said they was called, because they constructed so many pleasing images ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... wusser were introduced into an apartment where appeared before them nothing more than a little lean shrivelled hideous blear-eyed mangy pig. Everyone cried out "Swindle!" and "Shame!" "Patience, gentlemen, be heasy," said the showman: "look at that there hanimal; it's a perfect phenomaly of hugliness: I engage you never see such a pig." Nobody ever had seen. "Now, gentlemen," said he, "I'll keep my promise, has per bill; and bad as that ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... when he lectures and dictates, he is like a man blowing wild blasts upon a shrill trumpet. Then Carlyle—his big books, his great tawdry, smoky pictures of scenes, his loud and clumsy moralisations, his perpetual thrusting of himself into the foreground, like some obstreperous showman; he wearies and dizzies my brain with his raucous clamour, his uncouth convolutions. I saw the other day a little Japanese picture of a boat in a stormy sea, the waves beating over it; three warriors in the boat lie prostrate ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... as he had a "set" at all, consisted of the sometime curate of a fashionable West End Church, known to the company as the Archbishop of Bloomsbury; the Lady Sarah, a blooming, red-cheeked girl who sold flowers in Regent Street, "the Panorama," an old showman's son who had not a sixpenny piece in his pocket, but whose schemes were invariably about to bring him in "two thousand next Tuesday morning"; and "Betty," a pretty, fair-haired lad, thrown on the streets ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... the Public is still outside, listening open-mouthed to a comic dialogue between the Showman and a juvenile and irreverent Nigger. Those who have come in find that, with the exception of some particularly tame-looking murderers' heads in glazed pigeon-holes, a few limp effigies stuck up on rickety ledges, and an elderly Cart-horse in low spirits, there is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... of heroisms and heroes. Yet he feels he has been cheated by the fat parson who stole sovereigns from his pocket to keep him out of h——! His spiritual bones fairly ache with the leagues he has travelled, hunting up the throne of God! "Where the deuce," he mutters, "is the showman?" He can't find the lake of fire and brimstone ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... and American and New Zealand and South African and several other things, and she's been shipwrecked dozens of times," began Lennie Chapman, who was prone to exaggerate, and liked to act showman. ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... laithe (now used as an auction room by Mr T. S. Lister). I painted a glowing scenic piece for the entrance to the exhibition—picturing the shark swallowing a whole boat-load of people! I was also put on to act as showman, and in that capacity—not in my capacity as a private citizen—I told stories of the voracious appetite of the shark when alive. Many blankets had been found in the shark, not to mention a barrel or two of beer. ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... marionnettes. Our voice is the voice of the unseen showman, Convention; our very movements of passion and pain are but in answer to his jerk. A man resembles one of those gigantic bundles that one sees in nursemaids' arms. It is very bulky and very long; it looks a mass of delicate lace and rich fur and fine woven ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... critics have censured Thackeray severely because of his tendency to preach, and also because he regarded his characters as puppets and himself as the showman who brought out their peculiarities. There is some ground for this criticism, if one regards the art of the novelist as centered wholly in realism; but such a hard and fast rule would condemn all old English novelists from Richardson ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... quiet at Lumley," he said, in his odd, refined-showman's voice. "Have you nothing at all in the way ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... she doubled it into a small but very pugnacious looking fist, which she shook most entrancingly before the very eyes of the young man by her side. The eyes turned such a peculiar look upon her that she hastened to add: "Go on with your dissolving views. It is number eight's turn next. You are the showman, and ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... FATTA, MAI ANCORA, COME QUESTA - O Heaven! this thing will never be done again, like this!' He has seen every lion he ever saw, under some remarkably propitious circumstances. He knows there is no fancy in it, because in every case the showman mentioned the fact at the time, and congratulated ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... dolls that jump when the showman pulls the strings," remarked Pillot, as we made our ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... incarnated man, as represented in the wrestling youths, is struggling for that which he did not produce, and which only death can reap. The poppy reveals the secret of the illusions of Nature's master-showman. All earthly things are unreal to the spirit, which is the only real thing. Man's effort to hoard and save the things of this world IS INJUSTICE TO OTHERS. The struggle is eternal, and no matter how ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... claiming for himself the merits of this book, Pierce Egan stands in relation to it in the position of a showman, and nothing more. He is not even entitled to the credit of being the originator,—for the originator and suggestor was Robert Cruikshank, who informs us of the fact (after his own characteristic fashion) by way of footnote to his frontispiece to the "Finish."[60] But Egan is undoubtedly ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... prophets 'mongst the ancient Romans Were deemed the same, and this our pockets rue, For on this creed is built our sacred showman's, Who has his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... in American humour, as it is shown in the great body of comic writers who are represented by Mark Twain and the "Genial Showman," are its rusticity and its puritanism. The fun is the fun of rough villagers, who use quaint, straightforward words, and have developed, or carried over in the Mayflower, a slang of their own. They do not want anything too refined; they are not in the least like the farm- lad to whose shirt a ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... dining at Gresham Gardens about a fortnight ago, and Jacobi told me in the course of conversation that his sister had never been to Oxford, and that they meant to run down for a day or two, and that a friend of theirs had offered to be showman and ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... eyes upon Ferret, he proceeded: "An't you a limb of the law, friend?—No, I cry you mercy, you look more like a showman or a conjurer."—Ferret, nettled at this address, answered, "It would be well for you, that I could conjure a little common sense into that numskull of yours." "If I want that commodity," rejoined the squire, "I must go to another market, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... himself through there with two pair o' pants on," answered Mr. Briley. "I expect they must have to keep limber as eels. I used to think, when I was a boy, that 't was the only thing I could ever be reconciled to do for a livin'. I set out to run away an' follow a rovin' showman once, but mother needed me to home. There warn't nobody but me ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... of humor a hearing and reception abroad. Ever since the invention of Hosea Biglow, an imaginary personage of some sort, under cover of whom the author might conceal his own identity, has seemed a necessity to our humorists. Artemus Ward was a traveling showman who went about the country exhibiting a collection of wax "figgers" and whose experiences and reflections were reported in grammar and spelling of a most ingeniously eccentric kind. His inventor was Charles F. Browne, originally of Maine, a printer by trade and afterward a newspaper ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... hard- ridden Pegasus, the dove which brought the olive branch, and many others appear in such rapid succession that the reader has no time to take breath, or to consider what will turn up next. Like an accomplished showman, Hawthorne enlivens the performance here and there with original reflections on life, which are perfectly dignified, but become humorous from contrast with their surroundings. In spite of its comical effect, the piece has a very ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... entertainment that prevented a reaction of ennui after twelve months passed in constant watchfulness. The shield over the Consulate door, with the lion and the unicorn, was but a sign of the life within; as the grand picture outside the showman's wagon may exemplify the nature of his exhibition. I enjoyed myself extremely with these creatures, especially when the ostriches invited themselves to tea, and swallowed our slices of water-melons and the greater portion of the bread from the table a few moments before we were seated. These ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming!" There was a touch of humor in the cry; for it was like the voice of a showman advertising his wares to a pack of holiday-makers anxious to buy; and wherever he went pleasantness reigned, and an element of good temper and considerateness mingled itself ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... moment of the father's despair, Sleary the showman saved the day for the shivering thief. He agreed with the porter that as Tom was guilty of a crime he must certainly go with him, and he offered, moreover, to drive the captor and his prisoner at once to the nearest railroad ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... Irish Court Scenes—naughtiest and most humorous of tales—unpublished, of course, but handed down from generation to generation of the faithful. Most delightful was an interview between his late Majesty George the Fourth and an itinerant showman, which ended up with, 'No, George the Fourth, you shall not have my Rumptifoozle!' What said animal was, or the authenticity of the story, he never ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dwelt intermediate between the Bull's Head and the ecclesiastical establishment. The school and schoolmaster's house were behind the Bull. The show was surrounded by the children of the place, who looked on silent with ecstasy, while a burly showman piped his pipes and beat his drum. A couple of ostlers, with their shirt-sleeves rolled up to their shoulders, and one of them with a pail in his hand, stood arrested in their work. And in the front of the spectators was Alick ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... not being as far in advance of his age, morally, as he was intellectually. A notorious instance of a personal attack under various characters in one play is to be found in Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair," wherein he boasts of having, under the characters of Lanthorn, Leatherhead, the Puppet-showman, and Adam Overdo, satirized the celebrated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... with ammonia; but Professor Thunder was not thankful, he hadn't time, his magnificent mind was already busy on ways and means of repairing the mischief done to his Missing Link and to his reputation as an honourable showman. ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... After the trials, it is manifest that Hone was {186} to be unassailed, do what he might. The Political House that Jack built, in 1819; The Man in the Moon, 1820; The Queen's Matrimonial Ladder, Non mi ricordo, The R—l Fowls, 1820; The Political Showman at Home, with plates by G. Cruickshank,[416] 1821 [he did all the plates]; The Spirit of Despotism, 1821—would have been legitimate marks for prosecution in previous years. The biting caricature of several of these works are remembered to this day. The Spirit of Despotism ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... attempt to bias the reader's judgment by saying which side I believed to be right. As the historic British showman said, in reply to the question as to whether an animal in his collection was a rhinoceros or an elephant, "You pays your money and ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy |
