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More "Performer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... diminution of distance destroy the harmony entirely; some of the chants were really beautiful, but rendered perhaps too harsh for our ears in actual contact: for as I joined myself to the procession, and became susceptible of the trembling cadence of each separate performer—the human voice in every key which the extremes of youth and age might produce, there was a sensation effected which I cannot well describe—a terrible jarring of the brain. The fact that the involuntary tears rolled down the cheeks of those infants who sat passively on their ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... stall she bought a photograph frame which had lost its prop in an unequal contest with a tea-tray which had collapsed from the heartiness of the Rector's clapping at the conclusion of the Countess's speech; and a Noah's Ark from which the star performer and his very best beasts ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various
... enthusiast in music, and a very accomplished performer on several instruments. Her favorite had always been the harp, and next to ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... livelier and more vivid in his performance than the tragedian.[64] The two were usually sharply differentiated.[65] Specialization arose, too, and we hear of actors who confined their efforts to feminine roles,[66] though naturally every performer was cast for parts to which ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... to my tame Hussar-Captain, SHABRACK. That gallant son of Mars is not only a good sportsman, but he has, in common with many of his brother officers, the reputation of being a dashing, but discriminating worshipper at the shrine of beauty. At military and hunt balls the Captain is a stalwart performer, a despiser of mere programme engagements, and an invincible cutter-out of timid youths who venture to put forward their claims to a dance that the Captain has mentally reserved for himself. The mystery is how he has escaped scathless ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... has self as its central motive can never ring true or achieve any lasting success. Inferior music may be decked out by a capable performer to sound impressive or pretentious, or be invested with a glamour which is largely fictitious, but this surely amounts to false pretences. It is simply a method of misleading the public. Such a performer has ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... at this time of his life that the refinement and taste for which Major Whistler was ever after noted began to show itself. An accomplished scientific musician and performer, he gained a reputation in this direction beyond that of a mere amateur, and scarcely below that of the professionals of the day. His sobriquet of "Pipes," which his skill upon the flute at this time gave him, adhered to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... on the piano, the performer laid his cigarette on the music rest, and made an amazing face by ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... MORE than this? Can it DO this? and if so who and what is to determine the degree of its failure or success? The composer, the performer (if there be any), or those who have to listen? One hearing or a century of hearings?-and if it isn't successful or if it doesn't fail what matters it?—the fear of failure need keep no one from the attempt for if the composer ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... demand. Still there is something. Down in the village, and opposite the curiously-carved fountain, is a schoolroom which can accommodate a couple of hundred people on a pinch. There are our public meetings held. Musical entertainments have been given there by a single performer. In that schoolroom last winter an American biologist terrified the villagers, and, to their simple understandings, mingled up the next world with this. Now and again some rare bird of an itinerant lecturer covers dead ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... unfrequented coffee-house, where he asked him very seriously, "Hoo could ye disgrace the corps by turning a play-actor?" Mr. Bensley answered, that he by no means considered it in that light; on the contrary, that a respectable performer of good conduct was much esteemed, and kept the best company. "And what, man," said the other, "do you get by this business of yours?" "I have," replied Mr. B., "at present an income of near a thousand a year." "A thousand a year!" exclaimed Saunders, ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... he hired a large number of small boys and gave them a dime apiece and told them to learn the Lord's Prayer that week. They did so; and when Sunday came, with a chorus to back him, he came on as a solo performer. ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... that," Blaze defended himself. "I know her husband, and he's a bad hombre. He backed me up against a waterin'-trough and told my fortune yesterday. He said I'd be married twice and have many children. He told me I was fond of music and a skilled performer on the organ, but melancholy and subject to catarrh, Bright's disease, and ailments of the legs. He said I loved widows, and unless I was poisoned by a dark lady I'd live to be eighty years old. ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... little worn; people whistled and sang her songs and were pleased with their own performance of them. And Roland, also, had tired a little of the life—of its regularity and its obligations. He was now often willing to let any other performer who desired to do so take his place at the piano. He began to have occasional lookings-backward to Burrell Court and the ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... look upon the whole as a mere preconcerted scheme. What! the Sicilian's terror, his convulsive fits, his swoon, the deplorable situation in which we saw him, and which was even such as to move our pity, were all these nothing more than a studied part? I allow that a skilful performer may carry imitation to a very high pitch, but he certainly has no power over ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... without vanity, presume that the name and official description prefixed to this Proem will secure it, from the sedate and reflecting part of mankind, to whom only I would be understood to address myself, such attention as is due to the sedulous instructor of youth, and the careful performer of my Sabbath duties, I will forbear to hold up a candle to the daylight, or to point out to the judicious those recommendations of my labours which they must necessarily anticipate from the perusal of the title-page. Nevertheless, I am not unaware, that, as Envy always ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... wonderful cures, and in connection with him effected a so-called miraculous cure on a princess of Schwarzenberg who had been for some years a paralytic.[195] From this experience he became enthusiastic in healing, and he acquired such a fame as a performer of miraculous cures that multitudes flocked from different countries to receive the benefit of his supposed supernatural gifts. In one year (1848-49) there were eighteen thousand people who obtained access to him. ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... in classes, or in small groups. They took place in the open air, and on a dirt or sandy floor. They were accompanied by music—usually the flute, played by a paid performer. A number of teachers looked after the boys, examining them physically, supervising the exercises, directing the work, and giving various ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... Also, the manner in which Ion is affected by his own recitations affords a lively illustration of the power which, in the Republic, Socrates attributes to dramatic performances over the mind of the performer. His allusion to his embellishments of Homer, in which he declares himself to have surpassed Metrodorus of Lampsacus and Stesimbrotus of Thasos, seems to show that, like them, he belonged to the allegorical ...
— Ion • Plato
... the infant, and I could not see it at first. There may have been more, although I saw but one and heard but one baby cry, a prolonged but very low sound of pewee quality. While their charge lingered so near me, I was treated to another sensation by one of the pair,—a pewee song. The performer alighted almost directly over my head, and began at once to sing in a very sweet voice, but so low it could not be heard a dozen feet away. There was little variation in the tones, but it was rapidly delivered, with longer and shorter intervals and varying inflections, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... with their contents; now, with tapping pencil and contracted brows, he seemed maturely to consider some particular statement. A stealthy glance about the room assured him of the success of his manoeuvres; all eyes were turned on the performer, mouths were open, pipes hung suspended; the birds were charmed. At the same moment the entrance of Mr. Watts afforded ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shortening his way, or taking the most direct course, and alike incapable of laying down any rules which he can communicate to others. This is the state of the artist of mere experience, however long the duration of his practice may have been, as the simple performer of operations. ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... entertainment. Mrs. Ascher has often told me that she is more interested in life than in anything else, even art. She distinguishes between life and real life. Mine, I gather, is not nearly so real as that of a performer in a travelling circus. I do not know why this should be so, but I have no doubt that it is. Mrs. Ascher is not by any means the only person who thinks so. Tim Gorman's life was apparently real enough to attract her greatly. She paid him the compliment of talking a good deal to the boy, though ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... satisfied. A year later as assistant concertmaster in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, I had a chance to become practically acquainted with the orchestral works of Strauss, d'Indy and other moderns, and enjoy the Beethoven, Brahms and Tschaikovsky symphonies as a performer. ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... hum of surprise rose from the ring of Arabs, and deepened as the Frenchman drew another date from the nostril of a camel and tossed it into the air, from which, apparently, it never descended. That gaping sleeve was obvious enough to his companions, but the dim light was all in favour of the performer. So delighted and interested was the audience that they paid little heed to a mounted camel-man who trotted swiftly between the palm trunks. All might have been well had not Fardet, carried away by his own success, tried to repeat ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... private exhibitions the light is so obscured as to prevent the deception being observed and exposed; and when public demonstrations of skill are made the auditors invariably consist of the most credulous of the uninitiated, or the confrres of the performer, from whom no antagonism or ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... well and overthrown more than his enemies.' Result, an elopement and mesalliance never to be forgiven—the husband a jolly, racketing Irish lad, unable to appreciate his high-toned, accomplished wife, a skilful performer on the Irish harp, a poetess and a genius, called by the admiring neighbors 'the Harp of the Valley.'" Their only child, the father of Lady Morgan, was a tolerable actor, of loose morals and tight purse, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... great religious solemnity—the feast of Adonis—to go together to the palace of King Ptolemy Philadelphus, to see the image of Adonis, which the Queen Arsinoe, Ptolemy's wife, had had decorated with peculiar magnificence. A hymn, by a celebrated performer, was to be recited over the image. The names of the two women are Gorgo and Praxinoe; their maids, who are mentioned in the poem, are called Eunoe and Eutychis. Gorgo comes by appointment to Praxinoe's house to fetch her, and there ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... was assisted to mount the inside pony, when the gentleman leaped lightly upon the off one. He was at first seated, as indeed was the female performer. At a sudden burst from the band, he started from his seat, a la cavalier, and bounding into the air, alighted upon the backs of the horses, a leg upon each. The lady was expected to have followed this graceful action, but its ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... of the pitiable object a roar of laughter went up from the spectators. Nowhere was the laughter louder than in the ranks of the standing plebes themselves, at the rear of the audience. This woeful-looking performer, after the orchestra had played a few preliminary strains, launched into a parody of "Nobody Loves Me." The song was full of hits on the b.j. "beast." The real plebes [Transcriber's note: missing text] ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... 'The Toreador,' no doubt of that. The voice of the bull of Bashan would have been as the summer wind in the trees beside it. Where so much volume came from we could not tell, as we looked at the thin frame of the performer. Why the babies did not wake up will ever remain a mystery. Why Azalea did not desert her accompaniment to press her hands over bursting ear drums I cannot imagine, for it was with difficulty that I surrendered ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... up,' says I. 'I had an appointment as chief performer at an inquest at seven, and I'm not kicking ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... or poems were recited by their authors, then a gay comedy was performed; then Glycera, the most famous singer in the city, had sung a dithyramb to her harp, in a voice as sweet as a bell, and Alexander, a skilled performer on the trigonon, had executed a piece. Finally a troop of female dancers had rushed into the room and swayed and balanced themselves to the music of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... troubles were not very serious. A Music Society which he wished to join tried to trap him into an agreement to write important compositions for it whenever they were wanted. Once he offended his princely master by learning to play the baryton, an instrument on which the prince was a performer greatly esteemed by his retainers. Such teacup storms soon passed: Prince Esterhazy doubtless forgave him; the Society was soon forgotten; and Haydn worked on placidly. Every morning he rose with or before ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... drawing a wide circle of melody round her; or that of the jet-black, automaton-like, dancing tyrant-bird; and concerning this species he would probably say that the plain-plumaged female went about unseen, critically watching the dancing of different males, to discover the most excellent performer according to the traditional standard. And this was, in substance, what Darwin did. There are many species in which the male, singly or with others, practises antics or sings during the love-season before the female; and when all such cases, or rather those that are most ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... any pleasure which youth generally indulges, or by the omission of any accomplishment in which it becomes a gentleman to excel: he practised in great perfection the arts of drawing and painting, he was an eminent performer in both vocal and instrumental musick, he danced with uncommon gracefulness, and, on the day after his disputation at Paris, exhibited his skill in horsemanship before the court of France, where at a publick match of tilting, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... games were not organized but left to voluntary effort; and during his three or four years at school Morris never took part in cricket or football. In the latter game, at any rate, he should have proved a notable performer on unorthodox lines, impetuous, forcible, and burly as he was. But he found no reason to regret the absence of games, or to feel that time hung heavy on his hands. The country satisfied his wants, the Druidic stones at ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... middle—an art contemned now, worse than neglected, insulted by the vulgar caricature of "kitchen lancers"; but then seriously practised, delighting the eye, bringing blood to the dancers' cheeks. For five minutes and more Dorothea was entirely happy. M. Raoul— himself no mean performer—tasted, after his first surprise, something of the joy of discovery. Who could have guessed that this quiet spinster, who, as a rule, held herself and walked so awkwardly, would prove the best partner in the room? He had not the least doubt ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and crudely trained, but Joshua Rylands, sitting there comfortably slippered by the fire and conscious of the sheeted rain against the window, felt it good. Presently he arose, and lounging heavily over to the fair performer, leaned down and imprinted a kiss on the labyrinthine fringes of her hair. At which Mrs. Rylands caught blindly at his hand nearest her, and without lifting her other hand from the keys, or her eyes from the music, ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... about a swelled head, Lance must have been rotting. He wasn't troubling about women or girls—except for tennis and dancing; and Miss Arden was a superlative performer; in fact, rather superlative all round. As a new experience, she seemed distinctly worth cultivating, so long as that process did not seriously hamper the novel,—that was unashamedly his first consideration, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... also used for an independent instrumental solo accompanying a vocal piece. Owing to the early custom of only writing the accompaniment in outline, by means of a "figured bass,'' to be filled in by the performer, and to the changes in the number, quality and types of the instruments of the orchestra, "additional'' accompaniments have been written for the works of the older masters; such are Mozart's "additional'' accompaniments to Handel's Messiah or those to many of the elder ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... ask whether you are musical, Mrs. Elton. Upon these occasions, a lady's character generally precedes her; and Highbury has long known that you are a superior performer." ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... horns, they simulate all the movements of a cow or bull. They pretend to paw up the earth, toss their make-believe horns, turn round and pretend to scratch themselves, and in fact identify themselves with the animal they are representing; and it is irresistibly comic to watch a solitary performer go through this al fresco comedy. I have laughed often at some cunning old herdsman, or shekarry. When they see you watching them, they will redouble their efforts, and try to represent an old bull, going through all his pranks and practices, and throw ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Lord Chatham's room till everything was ready for the representation, till the dresses and properties were all correctly disposed, till the light was thrown with Rembrandt-like effect on the head of the illustrious performer, till the flannels had been arranged with the air of a Grecian drapery, and the crutch placed as gracefully as that of Belisarius ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... welcome. Methinks," he added, "it is time that I should know who they are that have thus highly honoured my ruined dwelling!" The young lady remained silent and motionless, and the father, to whom the question was more directly addressed, seemed in the situation of a performer who has ventured to take upon himself a part which he finds himself unable to present, and who comes to a pause when it is most to be expected that he should speak. While he endeavoured to cover his ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... rather than see Thessalus overcome. This was certainly a striking instance of magnanimity. How unprejudiced and generous that great man's mind was may be collected from a subsequent act of his in a case that concerned that very Athenodorus. That performer being heavily fined by the Athenians for not appearing on the stage at the feast of Bacchus implored Alexander to intercede for him; the just and munificent monarch, however, refused to write in his favour, but, in order to relieve the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... I suppose he was about thirty: a powerful, active man, with a blue eye, a thick head of hair, about the colour of oakum and growing low over the brow; clean-shaved and lean about the jaw; a good singer; a good performer on that sea-instrument, the accordion; a quick observer, a close reasoner; when he pleased, of a really elegant address; and when he chose, the greatest ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... determined and energetic practice, extending over many years. At all the popular concerts, this trick-music is in immense request. Bottesini was the lion of Jullien's last series; but in his place in the orchestra of the Philharmonic, he plays his part and holds his instrument like any ordinary performer. Bagpipe music is not much appreciated on the banks of the Thames; but I can assure any enterprising Scotsman, that if he can only succeed in producing the notes of the bagpipe out of the trombone, he will make a fortune in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... was another performer who enjoyed considerable fame. Such was the dexterity of this conjurer that, "drinking only fountaine-water, he rendered out of his mouth in severall glasses all sorts of wine and sweete waters." A Turk, who walked up an almost ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... the exception of that part watered by the Waveney, is not famed for its fly-fishing: therefore I was no adept in the gentle art, but in ground-bait angling I consider myself no contemptible performer. ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... private source that he uses a disc of twelve inches diameter which he rolls upon a straight rail.' The 'rolling is a very creditable one; it is as much below the mark as Archimedes was above it. Its performer is a joiner who evidently knows well what he is about when he measures; he is not wrong by 1 in 3000.' Such skilful mechanicians as the builders of the pyramid could have obtained a closer approximation still by mere measurement. Besides, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... so soon-finished scrutiny characteristic of childhood. For a child, like a dog, is wont to judge by instinct rather than reason. Schmucke looked up; his eyes rested on that charming little picture; he saw the performer on the tin trumpet, a little five-year-old maiden with wonderful ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... which was in use among our ancestors prior to the invention of the spinnet and harpsichord. Mary, Queen of Scots, who delighted in music, in her moments of "joyeusitie" as John Knox phrases it, used to play finely on the virginal; and her more fortunate rival, Queen Elizabeth, was so exquisite a performer on the same instrument, that Melville says, on hearing her once play in her chamber, he was irresistibly drawn into the room. The virginal now deposited in the museum formerly belonged to a noble family in Inverness, and is considered to be the only one remaining in Scotland. It ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... principalities, besides the supreme. There is, indeed, this difference from the Saxon times,—that, as in the itinerant exhibitions of the stage, for want of a complete company, they are obliged to throw a variety of parts on their chief performer, so our sovereign condescends himself to act not only the principal, but all the subordinate parts in the play. He condescends to dissipate the royal character, and to trifle with those light, subordinate, lacquered sceptres in those hands that sustain the ball representing the world, or ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... scientific knowledge of music in his audiences to appreciate. Placed at the instrument with any musician, he plays a perfect bass accompaniment to the treble of music heard for the first time as he plays. Then taking the seat vacated by the other performer, he instantly gives the entire piece, intact in brilliancy and symmetry, not a note lost or misplaced. The selections of music by which this power of Tom's was tested, two years ago, were sometimes fourteen and sixteen pages in length; on one occasion, at an exhibition at the White ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... for the practice of several distinct crafts, and, to be properly done, requires thorough training and experience. Its performer is not only in a position of confidence, as necessarily entrusted with the care of the employer's goods and with knowledge of the most intimate family relations; but the work itself, in maintaining the life and health of the members ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... casually, into an apartment where he might hear her perform; and when Melvil, as if ravished with the harmony, broke into the queen's apartment, she pretended to be displeased with his intrusion; but still took care to ask him whether he thought Mary or her the best performer on that instrument.[*] From the whole of her behavior, Melvil thought he might, on his return, assure his mistress, that she had no reason ever to expect any cordial friendship from Elizabeth, and that all her professions of amity were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... hips, with the back and neck held straight expressed deference without affecting or inviting cordiality. It was an elaborate little formality of a kind fancifully called "foreign," and evidently habitual to the performer. ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... intently listening to the music, or whether her mind was upon something far different and far away; he thought the latter. He was right. Ellen at the moment had escaped from the company and the noisy sounds of the performer at her side; and while her eye was curiously tracing out the pattern of the carpet, her mind was resting itself in one of the verses she had been reading that same evening. Suddenly, and as it seemed, from no connection ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... that almost amounted to affection. "If I did all those Swedish exercises before I drove, I should forget what I had come out for and go home." Alexander concluded the movements, and landed a bare three yards on the other side of the ravine. "He's what you would call a steady performer, isn't he? ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... The fourth performer in this trial of memories was an ancient lady, gaily dressed, and intently eager on the game. Between her and the young man was a large pile of guineas, which appeared to be her exclusive property, from which she repeatedly, during the play, ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... Frenchman, was a fine performer on the violin and harpsichord. At the representation of Arsinoe and the other earliest operas, he played the harpsichord and Haym the violoncello. Dieupart, after the small success of the design set forth ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the faintest pulsation of the artist's "love of loving, rage of knowing, feeling, seeing the absolute truth of things," of the lover's passion for union with another soul. When he describes effects of music or painting, he passes instinctively over to the standpoint of the composer or the performer; shows us Hugues and Andrea themselves at the organ, or the easel; and instead of feeling the world turned into "an unsubstantial faery place" by the magic of the cuckoo or the thrush, strikes out playful theories of the professional methods of these songsters,—the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... when, in the desolation of her life, she made advances to me, this repelled me somewhat. The equestrian performer in Heiberg's Madame Voltisubito cannot sing unless she hears the crack of a whip. Thus it seemed to me that her nature could not sing, save to the accompaniment of all the cart, carriage and riding whips of the mind. But I saw how unhappy she was, and that ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... attentions of the bailiff and his lady were likewise unremitting; indeed, the latter was almost too kind, for she seemed anxious that we should eat of every dish, and drink out of every flask and bottle. We had a little music too,—for she played the piano; and the commissary, likewise a performer, paid us the compliment to dash off in very good style, "God save the King." But the circumstance which amused me most of all remains to be stated. I was asked if I played chess; and I replied in the affirmative, adding, however, as the facts of the case required, that ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... servant, called Lentulo, and in the third act a song is introduced for greater variety, which, as was not unusual at a later period of our stage history, seems to have been left to the choice of the performer. The prayer for the Queen, at the conclusion of the drama, put into the mouth of Fortune, was a relic of a more ancient practice, and perhaps affords further proof, if it were wanted, that it was represented before Elizabeth.[7] It appears not unlikely that, if "The rare Triumphs ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... Freischutz told me that I had stepped, as it were with both feet, right into the magic realm of awe. Any one who had been watching me at that moment could hardly have failed to see the state I was in, and this in spite of the fact that I was such a bad performer on ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... much disagreeable work, as we would call it, to be done with the hand. In our busy life there are a thousand such tasks, which I cannot conceive of being performed by machinery, many of them hard only because they are monotonous and awake no interest or enthusiasm in the performer. Men and women are continually wearing themselves out with such work. You must have abolished all that, if everybody here is comfortable and happy. I am very anxious to hear how it ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... the nine, Toe Barter, Sam Willard and Slim Cooney. Slim and Toe were veterans, and the mainstays of the team, and Sam Willard was one of those chaps so often seen in baseball, a brilliant but erratic performer. ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... is a fact, he never once lowered his eyes or focussed the little party before him, although ultimately the tea table could not have been more than a few yards off. There stood the stranger with a vacant expression which would have made the fortune of a performer in a waxwork show, and hoped and almost prayed that a servant of some kind would appear, receive his signature or his card and allow him to return to the comfortless obscurity of his hotel. There was no bell, and no servant came, and the silence ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... lifter. I have alluded to the gymnastics of the circus. Let all who are curious in regard to the point I am discussing visit it. Permit me to call special attention to three performers,—to the man who lifts the cannon, to the India-rubber man, and to the general performer. The lifter and the India-rubber man constitute the two mischievous extremes. It is impossible that in either there should be the highest physiological conditions; but in the persons of the Hanlon brothers, who are general performers, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... aspiration any compunction; any contrite visitings of nature? What did the player expect; that he would violate precedence; overthrow the fashionable maxims of good George IV; become a slave to a tragi-comic performer and cast his high destiny to the winds? Had ever a gentleman entertained such a project? Vows? Witness the agreeable perjuries of lovers; the pleasing pastime of fond hearts! Every titled rascallion lied to his mistress; ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... The performer, an old man with bronzed face, was squatting on his haunches playing a weird tune on a reedy instrument resembling a flute. Before him was upreared a monstrous specimen of the deadly cobra species, swaying gently to and fro ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... had been working over, the song of Venice, with a swaying melody as of floating water-grasses. Then she plunged into a throbbing aria,—singing freely, none too accurately, but with a passion and self-forgetfulness which promised greater things than the concert performer. From this on to other snatches of opera, to songs, wandering as the mood took her, coming finally to the street song that Vickers had woven into his composition for Rome, with its high, sad note. There her voice stopped, died in a cry half stifled in the throat, and leaving the piano ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... note, which overpowered the deafening barks of the coyotes, and silenced them as if by enchantment. This silence henceforth continued, only interrupted by the hysterical sounds which the fiddle produced under the fear-stiffened fingers of the old negro performer. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... I looked on I could scarcely refrain from rushing into the sable throng, and joining them in their frisks and jumps; though I dare say, had I done so they would have considered me a very contemptible performer. At length the Queen's chamberlain clapped his hands, and gave notice that the court must break up, as her majesty was desirous of retiring to attend to her duties in putting to bed the children of her mistress to whom she was nurse. The bearers of her palanquin ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... every line of her body, and occasionally a posture was arrested, to pass away in an instant into some new combination. There was no definite character in the dance beyond mere beauty. It was melody for melody's sake. A remarkable change, too, came over the face of the performer. She looked serious; but it was not a seriousness produced by any strain. It was rather the calm which is found on the face of the statue of a goddess. In none of her attitudes was there a trace of coquettishness, although some ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... no one of them spoke to me. The ladies all did, and all spoke French. The two children were present again—the little girl five years old played on the piano, and the boy of nine played and sang like a public performer. He promenaded about the room with his hands in his pockets, like a man. I think his manners were about equal to ——-'s, as occasionally he yelled and was ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... created it. Every day animals and men are coming into being by the action of the parents without the operation of any God. Neither is it necessary as Nyaya supposes that dharma and adharma should have a supervisor, for these belong to the performer and ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... recollection of yesterday's applause, to which Miss Annie had referred. It had amused Mavis to notice the isolated clapping which followed the execution of an item, in the programme by a solitary performer; this came from her friends in the room. The conclusion of a duet would be greeted by two patches of appreciation; whilst a pianoforte concerto, which engaged sixteen hands, merged the eight oases of applause ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... she applied to the Duc de Choiseul, the Prime Minister. Even he was unable to put her in the way of obtaining redress, and sought to pacify her by comparing her position to his own. 'I am,' said he, 'mademoiselle, like yourself, a public performer; with this difference in your favour, that you choose what parts you please, and are sure to be crowned with the applause of the public; for I reckon as nothing the bad taste of one or two wretched individuals who have the misfortune of not adoring you. I, on the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... of the velocity and, according to this velocity, the exact proportion of the angle of incidence to the angle of projection. Theoretically, it was perfect; in reality there might be some unexpected hitch. It was a question for the venturesome performer, who allowed himself to be projected by a series of powerful springs, to fall accurately from pedestal to pedestal, preserving a faultless balance; in a word, to risk his life six times in as many seconds. The daring of a Laurence and the agility of a Lily combined would not have been ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... the showerer, the slayer of the malevolent, profound, mighty, of impenetrable sagacity, the dispenser of prosperity, the enfeebler, firm, vast, the performer of pious acts, Indra has given birth to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... that of a satyr. Aye, and there is a resemblance in other points too. For example, you are a bully—that I am in a position to prove by the evidence of witnesses if you will not confess. And are you not a flute-player? That you are, and a far more wonderful performer than Marsyas. For he indeed with instruments charmed the souls of men by the power of his breath, as the performers of his music do still; for the melodies of Olympus are derived from the teaching of Marsyas, and these, whether they are played by a great master or by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... [Performance of Music.] — N. musician, artiste, performer, player, minstrel; bard &c. (poet) 597; [specific types of musicians] accompanist, accordionist, instrumentalist, organist, pianist, violinist, flautist; harper, fiddler, fifer[obs3], trumpeter, piper, drummer; catgut scraper. band, orchestral waits. vocalist, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... them not. The recitation begins; one golden word leaps out immortal from all this painted pedantry and sweetly torments us with invitations to its own inaccessible homes. I remember I went once to see the Hamlet of a famed performer, the pride of the English stage; and all I then heard and all I now remember of the tragedian was that in which the tragedian had no part; simply Hamlet's question to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... dampers, permits the playing of sustained sounds, or damping them instantaneously. The second pedal divides certain strings into two equal parts, to give the harmonic octaves; by the aid of this pedal the performer can produce ten harmonic sounds simultaneously; on the ordinary harp only four simultaneous harmonics are possible. An ordinary keyboard being the intermediary between the performer and the movement of the mechanical "fingers" which pluck ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... water, and a human life sacrificed at any moment either to caprice in the populace, or to a strife of rivalry between the ayes and the noes, or as the penalty for any trifling instance of awkwardness in the performer himself? Even the more innocent exhibitions, in which brutes only were the sufferers, could not but be mortal to all the finer sensibilities. Five thousand wild animals, torn from their native abodes in the ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... and the Major walked up and down the platform side by side; the former taciturn and gloomy, and the latter entertaining him, or entertaining himself, with a variety of anecdotes and reminiscences, in most of which Joe Bagstock was the principal performer. Neither of the two observed that in the course of these walks, they attracted the attention of a working man who was standing near the engine, and who touched his hat every time they passed; for Mr Dombey ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... a similar way you speak of a good boxer or a good flute-player or a good performer in any ...
— Alcibiades II • An Imitator of Plato
... lavish one. The play was well written and staged, and Elsie Leslie was charming enough in her parts, but in the duality lay the difficulty. The strongest scenes in the story had to be omitted when one performer played both Tom Canty and the little Prince. The play came to New York—to the Broadway Theater—and was well received. On the opening night there Mark Twain made a speech, in which he said that the presentation of "The Prince and the Pauper" realized a dream which fifteen years before had ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... somewhat startled when he expressed his belief, that the performer of this mystic strain was one of the company then present, who exerted, for this end, a faculty not commonly possessed. Who this person was he did not venture to guess, and could not discover, by the tokens which he suffered to appear, that his suspicions glanced at me. ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... acrobatics, including crazy dips and loops, startling dashes to the earth and illuminated flights through the night air. (See p. 192.) Smith became in a day an attraction outshining, perhaps, any other single performer upon the huge ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... sweep, was sitting on his doorstep in the sun, eating an onion, one of many which reposed in a vinegar bath on his knees. He was quite black, save where a three-days beard lent a gleam of snow to chaps and chin; being toothless, he was an indifferent performer upon the onion. But his hearing was as keen as his eyesight. He caught Angioletto's vivacious heeltaps upon the flags, and peered from burly brows at the smart little gentleman, cloaked, feathered, and gaudy, who looked as suitable to his dusty surroundings as a red ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the reader imagine was this unobtrusive guest? It was the famous performer of acknowledged impossibilities,—a character of superhuman capacity and virtue, and, if his enemies are to be credited, of no less remarkable weaknesses and defects. With a generosity with which he alone sets ...
— A Select Party (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of spirits of one kind or another, believed in by the Indians, is very great. In the bear dance, the principal performer has a bear-skin over him, the head of it hanging over his head, and the paws over his hands. Others have masks of bears' faces; and all of them, throughout the dance, imitate the actions of a bear. They stoop down, they dangle ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... insisted that there was no time like the present. She had discovered that Littimer had an excellent carpenter's shop on the premises; indeed, she admitted to being no mean performer with the lathe herself. She flitted down the ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... I am not a Russian. I should certainly be knouted. The murder of the young Czar Ivan has sluiced again all my abhorrence of the czarina. What a devil in a diadem! I wonder they can spare such a principal performer from hell! ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... belongs, and proves his success as a fifteenth century reformer. The people made and keep up the acquaintance of this man by way of the ticket office, but instead of considering him as they would any other footlight performer, who had struck a paying vein and was working it for all it was worth, and who can only be heard at so much per ticket, they have come to look upon the character he has been acting as the man himself, and their friend who would make their ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... with any other partner. I have heard them crack the same quips and tell the same stories for the last five years, yet they always get the same big laugh and the same large "hand." That is a delightful trait about the music-hall—the entente existing between the performer and audience. The favourites seem to be en rapport even while waiting in the wings, and the flashing of their number in the electric frame is the signal for a hand of welcome and—in the outer halls—whistles and cries. The atmosphere becomes electric ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... there, and the deliberate red glow of the creek, all seemed to mock me. Even Edward, fond as he was of me, seemed to have no real connection with me. I was isolated and despairing. But very gradually, like the dispersing of a cloud, it came back. I began again to feel myself a performer in the drama, not a gloomy spectator of it—there must be the sufferer, the condemned, to make the tragedy complete, and they may be enacted well—till the sense of God's Fatherhood came back to me. So that I can be and feel myself a part of the vast economy, diseased and inefficient though ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "Yes, a fodefeel performer. I don't know what that means, but he must be queer. But I think Larry would be all right, and Joe. You ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... verse, though it may be noticed that the four lines which he quotes from Macbeth,[36] as containing the 'topmost note in the stupendous agony of the drama,' are rhymed. The management of rhyme is a difficult and very delicate art; it is an instrument that requires a first-class performer, like Mr. Swinburne, to bring out its potency; to this art the English lyric, the ode and the song, owe their musical perfection. Mr. Swinburne, in an essay upon Matthew Arnold's New Poems (1867), has said, truly, that 'rhyme is the native condition of ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Scottish verse, William Air Foster, was born at Coldstream on the 16th June 1801. He has followed the occupation of a bootmaker, first in his native town, and latterly in Glasgow. Devoted to the Border sports, in which he was formerly an active performer, he has celebrated them in animated verse. To "Whistle Binkie" he has contributed a number of sporting and angling songs, and he has composed some volumes of poetry which are still ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of an ardent genius shining as an exception to his race. Amongst the few, there were two brothers named Luna—the one was a notably skilful performer on the guitar and violin, who, however, died at an early age. The other, Juan Luna, developed a natural ability for painting. A work of his own conception—the "Spoliarium," executed by him in Rome in 1884—gained the second prize at the Madrid ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Cassandra might have been effectively uttered by a very inferior histrionic artist. In the second play, in the scene between Orestes and his mother, and in the gathering madness of Orestes, the art of the poet would unquestionably task to the uttermost the skill of the performer. But in the last play (the Furies), perhaps the sublimest poem of the three, which opens so grandly with the parricide at the sanctuary, and the Furies sleeping around him, there is not one scene from the beginning to ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... public performances of works by radio and television broadcast stations, the name of, and other identifying information about, a performer whose performance is fixed in a work other than an ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code, Circular 92 • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... to enact something worthy of notice and approbation, and "Amoroso, King of Little Britain," was selected by my brother John, our guide and leader in all matters of taste, for the purpose. "Chrononhotonthologos" had been spoken of, but our youngest performer, my sister, was barely seven years old, and I doubt if any of us (but our manager) could have mastered the mere names of that famous burlesque. Moreover, I think, in the piece we chose there were only four principal characters, and we contrived to speak ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... these officious aids, made the affair a very much more nervous proceeding than it would otherwise have been. The lowness of the side-ropes, and the oscillation of the ricketty structure rendered the feat altogether a rather more amusing performance to the looker on than to the actual performer, and I was not to reach the opposite shore. On the arrival of the coolies, they all hung back, and regarded the machine with utter astonishment, and when one of them did essay the passage, his coat caught in one of the twigs, about half way across, and not having the use of his ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... country running could not take place until later when we had left the area. On one or two of the spare afternoons we managed to get some Rugby football, and had some excellent games, during which we discovered that our Padre was a performer ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... Nelly had the musical comedy performer's horror of the older-established form of entertainment. "Why, comic opera died in the ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... A music-hall performer gave a turn in a King's Bench court the other day. There was a time when a judge would have objected to his court being turned into a theatre, but since the advent of comic judges the line of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... as little of as the music he was parodying, was beyond all bearing! Then, if ever, did my wretched master dig his fingers into his ears, and writhe and shiver and groan at each discord produced by that inhuman performer. He retreated into the innermost recess of his bedroom; he even hid his unhappy head beneath the clothes, if haply he might escape the agony of this torture. But it was hopeless. The shrieks and groans of that brutal ophicleide would have penetrated ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... see the connection of pupils, consisting only of pleasure and generosity. They should learn to love, but not to hate each other. Benevolent actions should not directly be preached to them, they should strictly begin in the heart of the performer. But when actually done, they should receive ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... the Museum is largely due to the energy and erudition of Dr. W. J. Holland, its amiable director. In the music-hall, a symphony orchestra is maintained, and free recitals are given on the great organ twice every week by a capable performer. When the orchestra began its work thirteen years ago, it is doubtful if there were very many persons in Pittsburgh, other than musical students, who knew the difference between a symphony, a suite, a concerto, and a fugue. To-day there are thousands of people in this city who can ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... most kind, gentle, and genial. The eldest brother was in Sir William Forbes's bank. George was agent for Mr. Patrick Maxwell Stuart in connection with his West India estates, and the third brother was his assistant. The elder brother was an admirable performer on the violoncello, and he treated us during these Saturday evenings with noble music from Beethoven and Mozart. My special friend George was known amongst us as "the worthy master." He was thoroughly versed in general science, and was moreover a keen ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... Elisha, the star performer of the Curry stable, had been combed and groomed and polished within an inch of his life, and there were blue ribbons in his mane, a sure sign of the confidence of Shanghai, the hostler. He was also putting this confidence into words and telling the ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... professional musicians. "A violinist, or harpist, or both, perhaps," he said. "Music is always, as you say, a great addition to such affairs, Mrs. Dott. I happen to know of a young fellow who plays exceptionally well, and his sister is really a very accomplished performer on the harp. Of course they should be engaged in merely a professional capacity. They are not persons who would mingle with our set, but they're not at all ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... he said. "Very curious business! Some person unknown must have interfered with the gas-man and his staff ... and that person unknown was obviously working on behalf of the kidnapper ... But what a funny idea to kidnap a performer on the stage! ... Send for the doctor of the theater, please." And Mifroid repeated, "Curious, ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... entreat your kind and considerate forbearance; I lament as much, nay more than you, the absence of Mr. Liston; but, in the anguish of the moment, one thought supports me, the consciousness of having done my duty. (Applause.) I had an interview with your deservedly favourite performer this morning, and every necessary arrangement was made between us. I have sent to his hotel, and he is not to be found. (Disapprobation.) I have been informed that he dined early, and left the house, saying that he was going to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... I never indulge in betting or slang. Both are vulgar in the extreme. And as to riding like a circus performer, I have higher ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... The principal opera house, or rather that in which the principal singers are engaged, is near the palace, and is called Im Theater naechst dem Kaernthnerthoc. Here I saw the Marriage of Figaro performed with great spirit and eclat. A young lady, a new performer of the name, of Wranizth, played Susannah in a style exquisitely naive and effective. She was one of the most natural performers I ever saw; and her voice seemed to possess equal sweetness and compass. She is a rising favourite, and full of promise. Madame Hoenig played Mazelline ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... is a word which signifies to be, to do, or to suffer. Verbs are divided into neuter, active, and passive. Neuter verbs merely signify being, or that kind of action which has no effect upon any thing beyond the performer, as, I am, I sit, I walk. (You may distinguish those neuter verbs that seem to imply action from active verbs by their making a complete sense by themselves, whereas active verbs always require a noun or pronoun after them to ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... players is sent out of the room, and the rest then agree upon some simple task for her to perform, such as moving a chair, touching an ornament, or finding some hidden object. She is then called in and some one begins to play the piano. If the performer plays very loudly, the "seeker" knows that she is nowhere near the object she is to search for. When the music is soft, then she knows she is very near, and when the music ceases altogether, she knows that she has found the object she was ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... On the occasion of some quarrel between the factions of the Circus, Theodoric had graciously ordered him to assume the patronage of the Green Faction, and to conduct the election of a pantomimic performer for that party. He had also received permission to erect workshops overlooking the Forum on its northern side, on condition that his buildings did not in any way interfere with public convenience or the beauty of ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... told any one about. I saw that she always lived among crooks, looked at things the way crooks do, and grew up with no other thought than to be a crook. I never had an idea of using her myself, till she began to look like such a good performer this last year; and then my idea, no matter what Barney Palmer may have planned, was to use her only in a couple of stunts. My main idea always was, when you came out with your grand idea of what your ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... green monkey sprang into the cave and threw a big rock at the performer. It knocked the bear off the slab, and he fell into the pool of water at the foot of the waterfall, and was dripping wet when he ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... to his cousin's candid forehead, and for the second time the embrace was of a brotherly or paternal character, rather than the rapturous proceeding which it would have been had Sir Harry Towers been the privileged performer. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... foregoing circumstances relating to this production, I hope not to be suspected of arrogating to my own exertions only, the popularity which has attended "The Child of Love," under the title of "Lovers' Vows,"—the exertions of every performer engaged in the play deservedly claim a share in its success; and I must sincerely thank them for the high importance ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... at last yielding as lightly and as immaterially as the flickering shadows that fell upon them from the waving trees overhead. The master was fascinated yet troubled. What if there had been older spectators? Would the parents take the performance as innocently as the performer and her little audience? He thought it necessary later to suggest this delicately to the child. Her temper rose, her ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... imperfection that ought to be palliated; but we aggravate it. The first-rate actor always does his best, because the audience expect it, and reward him with their applause; but no one cares for, or observes, the performer of second-rate talents: whether he be perfect in his part, and exert himself to the utmost, or be slovenly and negligent throughout, he is unpraised and unblamed. The general effect, therefore, of our tragedies, is very unsatisfactory; for that is far greater, where all the characters ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... mother," said young Nisbet slowly, "is the way she manages to come in just at the wrong moment. At interruption, she's the most star performer I've ever run up against. You don't mind my saying that, do you? I'm not throwing any asparagus. I wouldn't be disrespectful about her for the world. But really, for chopping into a conversation, she's ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... she is twenty-one her aunt will tell her about him. If she knew he was the great Savelli, she would rush off and join him to-morrow, she is so impulsive. She has the music madness of both father and mother. Her aunt tells me she is a remarkable performer on both ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... of metal into the mixture, using an ordinary crucible. This required great dexterity, but was facilitated by the use of many mysterious ceremonies on the part of the operator while performing, just as the modern vaudeville performer diverts the attention of the audience to his right hand while his left is engaged in the trick. Such ceremonies were not questioned, for it was the common belief that the whole process "lay in the spirit as much as in the substance," ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... business in those days. People brought their dinners and had a general penitential gorge. Instrumental music was proscribed, as per Amos fifth chapter and twenty-third verse, and the length of prayer was measured by the physical endurance of the performer. ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... ears would mistake for the voice of the Scarlet Tanager, comes from that rare visitant, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak. It is a strong, vivacious strain, a bright noonday song, full of health and assurance, indicating fine talents in the performer, but not genius. As I come up under the tree he casts his eye down at me, but continues his song. This bird is said to be quite common in the Northwest, but he is rare in the Eastern districts. His beak is disproportionately ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... of becoming a trapeze performer in the show. But Mart still kept on practicing, and soon he could do a number of good tricks. Lucile, too, practiced her songs, and those who heard the children at their rehearsals said the show, which had first been thought of by Bunny and Sue, ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... listen to the fair musician, and assumed the seat she had vacated. A few prolonged notes, and then one of the most beautiful and intricate compositions of Beethoven, poured its sonorous strains on the ears of the assembly. The performer at length seemed to forget all around him, and at the end of the second chorus joined his own deep, rich tones with the instrument. All were delighted; but Louise, with her quick sensibilities, was thrilled to the centre of her soul. And she felt piqued and angry too; not that he had excelled ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... steadily: they call it grind and confinement. They are always ready to pity the toilers who are condemned to this fate, and to congratulate those who escape it, or who can do something else. When they see some performer in spangles risk his life, at a circus, swinging around on trapezes, high up in the air, and when they are told he must do it daily, do they pity /him?/ No! Super-elephants would say, and quite properly, "What a horrible ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... hearers, spoke about the deceased as a chivalrous fighter for his native land, as a good Christian and a truly noble character. It was touching to hear the parting hymn sung by the sonorous voices of the British wounded, accompanied solemnly on the harmonium by a British performer. All escorted the coffin to the gates. Once outside, it was reverently lifted on to the funeral car, which German gunners escorted to the cemetery. Four British and one French officer, as well as the German doctors who could be ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... to one of these affairs. It took place at a theater. Such is the English way of interpreting the poetry of motion—to hire some one else to do it for you, and—in order to get the worth of your money—sit and swizzle tea while the paid performer is doing it. At the tango tea we patronized the tea was up to standard, but the dancing of the box-ankled professionals was a disappointment. Beforehand I had been told that the scene on the stage would be a veritable picture. And so it ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... or malignant individuals. There, the line that separates the rights of the actor from those of the auditor has been exactly defined by the highest judicial authority.[4] And if an individual assaults a performer by hissing[5] without carrying the audience, or a large majority of it, along with him, the performer has his action against his malicious assailant, and is adjudged damages as certainly as persons of any ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... them. Well, she is a daring little rider, now, and is perfect in what she knows of horsemanship. By-and-by she will know the art like a West Point cadet, and will exercise it as fearlessly. She doesn't know anything about side-saddles. Does that distress you? And she is a fine performer, without any saddle at all. Does that discomfort you? Do not let it; she is not in any danger, I give you ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... on the ground that it reveals "no thought," and is only "imitation," is, in my judgment, a very short-sighted student. Maniacs and imbeciles cannot be trained to perform any program fit to be seen. I saw that tried fifty years ago, in "the wild Australian children," who were idiots. The performer ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... bruisers—rapscallions, such as used to follow Clodius through the streets of Rome—and he loved to join in the scuffles like any commoner. Pugilism he learnt from Angelo, and he was considered by some to be a fine performer. On one occasion, too, at an exposition d'escrime, when he handled the foils against the maitre, he 'was highly complimented upon his graceful postures.' In fact, despite all his accomplishments, he seems to have been a thoroughly ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... an excellent preventive against that obscure, though not uncommon, kind of self-deception which enables wooden tripods to write and tables to tip and hazel-twigs to twist upside-down, without the conscious intervention of the performer. It was this kind of faith, no doubt, which caused the discomfiture of Jacques Aymar on his visit to Paris, [25] and which has in late years prevented persons from obtaining the handsome prize offered by the French Academy for the first ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... the place where he had left his horse. Finding it gone, he walked into Montgomery and reported to the Sheriff, not daring to face the widow after the ridiculous tableau in which he had been the principal performer. ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... performer on the zimble, an instrument constructed like a wooden tray, with several wires stretched across lengthwise, and played by means ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... better,' said Charley, naming the principal stage performer of the day. 'If one is to go the whole hog, one had better do ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Ou, or Chinese fiddle, used in Siam, is suggestive of a modern croquet mallet, with pegs stuck in the handle, and has only two strings, fastened from the pegs to the head. It is played with a bow which the performer ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... planetary and now of the fixed," might put one in mind of Hecate's mode of ascending in a machine from the stage, "midst troops of spirits," in which you now admire the skill of the artist, and next tremble for the fate of the performer, fearing that the audacity of the attempt will turn his head or break his neck. The style of these "Discourses" also, though not elegant or poetical, was, like the subject, intricate and endless. ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... Carolina, even. [Applause.] He got mad at the old Whig party, on account of his higher law and abolitionism, and put it to death. When the Puritan first came to these shores, he made the way to heaven so narrow that only a tight-rope performer could walk it. [Laughter.] Now, what with his Concord philosophies, transcendentalisms, and every heresy, he has made it so wide that you could drive all Barnum's elephants abreast upon it and through the strait gate. He compels us to send our sons to his colleges for his nasal note. He is ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... I said when I had spoken for an hour—and they gave me an encore. When I had finished my encore, the dear old Colonel got up to thank the "performer"—and he couldn't do it; there was a lump in his throat and big tears ...
— Your Boys • Gipsy Smith
... to it he owed his success in society; but it is a remarkable fact, that on his first appearance before an audience he entirely lost all his nerve, turned pale, and could scarcely utter a syllable. He rapidly recovered, however, and from this time became a favourite performer in private theatricals, in which he was supported by Mathews and Mrs. Mathews, and some amateurs who were almost equal to any professional actors. His attempts were, of course, chiefly in broad farce and roaring burlesque, in which his comic face, with its look of mock gravity, and the twinkle of ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... how impossible it was for the British noble to maintain his position, which was, after all, of small moment. The bended knee, no less than the full prostration to the ground, is a symbol of homage from an inferior to a superior, and if not equally humiliating to the performer, it is only because he has been made familiar by practice with one, and not with the other. In Europe, the bended knee is exclusively appropriated to the relations of sovereign and subject; and no representative ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... exception of public performances of works by radio and television broadcast stations, the name of, and other identifying information about, a performer whose performance is fixed in a work ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code, Circular 92 • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... of life and the influences that have surrounded her from her childhood have created and fostered in her, and for which she is no more answerable than for the color of her hair. I do not even much regret her election, little as I admire the vocation of a public performer. To struggle is allotted to all, let them walk in what paths they will; and her peculiar gifts naturally incline her to the career she is choosing, though I think also that she has much higher intellectual capabilities than those which the vocation of a public singer ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... sneaking up on a sparrow, and then make a fling up at the bright thing, which I reckon he thinks must be a juicy sort of a bug. As soon as he feels the barb of the hook he tries to climb up the line and jump all around like a trapeze performer. But only a cruel fellow would stand and watch him suffer. I always try to knock him on the head instanter, and get ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... in which the Jumby dance was to be performed. It stood under a vast cotton-tree, on an open space near the bank of the river which you see running into the ocean to the westward of this. As we went along Kerlie told me that the chief performer was a big negro, Cudjoe, reputed to be a powerful Obeah man; that is, a necromancer, or what the North American Indians would call a medicine-man. He is supposed to possess wonderful mysterious powers—to ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... dancing tyrant-bird; and concerning this species he would probably say that the plain-plumaged female went about unseen, critically watching the dancing of different males, to discover the most excellent performer according to the traditional standard. And this was, in substance, what Darwin did. There are many species in which the male, singly or with others, practises antics or sings during the love-season before the female; and when ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... obeisance, which the lady-mother scarcely recognised, he addressed himself to his vocation. A mighty indifferent prelude succeeded the arrangement of the strings, then a sort of jig, accented by the toe and head of the performer. Afterwards he broke into a wild and singular extempore, which gradually shaped itself into measure and rhythm, at times beautifully varied, and accompanied by the voice. We shall attempt a more modern and intelligible version of the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... capacities—to play just badly enough to be beaten towards the end of the round after an exciting match. It required a good deal of cleverness and self-control to accomplish this, for Lord Ashbridge was a notably puerile performer, but he generally managed it with tact and success, by dint of missing absurdly easy putts, and (here his skill came in) by pulling and slicing his ball into far-distant bunkers. Throughout the game it was his business to keep up a running fire ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... and as immaterially as the flickering shadows that fell upon them from the waving trees overhead. The master was fascinated yet troubled. What if there had been older spectators? Would the parents take the performance as innocently as the performer and her little audience? He thought it necessary later to suggest this delicately to the child. Her temper rose, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... noise and life a plenty here. At a discordant box of a piano a negro performer was playing with a keen appreciation of time if of nothing else, and two others with voices that might not have been unpopular in a decent minstrel show were rendering a popular air. They wore battered straw hats and a make-up which was ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... smiling right into his blue eyes. "The Tom Dorgan I mentioned is a sleight-of-hand performer at ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... of our Reverends might have been warmer,— Tho' one or two capital roarers we've had; Doctor Wise[2]is for instance a charming performer, And Huntingdon Maberley's yell ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... is plain that this alleged music is not everywhere. Where, then, is it? And will it, when we have found it, be found to merit all the praise that is bestowed upon it? Sociology, as we have seen, may show us how to secure to each performer his voice or his instrument; but it will not show us how to make either the voice or the instrument a good one; nor will it decide whether the orchestra shall perform Beethoven or Offenbach, or whether the chorus shall sing a ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... this office, an abundant store of real or assumed soft stupidity is required; but it is a somewhat difficult part to play, for with this stupidity there must also be a considerable portion of fine tact, to guard the performer against any of those blunders into which good-natured people are continually plunging. Drill and discipline are also necessary, in order to be always on the look out for hints, to appreciate them properly, to comprehend that friends may say one thing and mean another, and to ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... this? Can it DO this? and if so who and what is to determine the degree of its failure or success? The composer, the performer (if there be any), or those who have to listen? One hearing or a century of hearings?-and if it isn't successful or if it doesn't fail what matters it?—the fear of failure need keep no one from the ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... is time that I should know who they are that have thus highly honoured my ruined dwelling!" The young lady remained silent and motionless, and the father, to whom the question was more directly addressed, seemed in the situation of a performer who has ventured to take upon himself a part which he finds himself unable to present, and who comes to a pause when it is most to be expected that he should speak. While he endeavoured to cover his embarrassment with the exterior ceremonials of a well-bred demeanour, it was obvious that, in making ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... self-devotion and passionate love personified. As for Dr. Staines, there is no need of any apotheosis in his case: as the hero of the book he must perforce be that renowned prestidigitateur whom Mr. Reade long since presented to an admiring audience as the principal performer in his troupe. It is needless, therefore, to say that he goes through the programme with the highest dexterity and eclat, displaying the marvelous knowledge, encountering the terrific dangers, achieving the prodigies which belong to his part, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... in the same room.") There can be no doubt that birds closely attend to each other's song. Mr. Weir has told me of the case of a bullfinch which had been taught to pipe a German waltz, and who was so good a performer that he cost ten guineas; when this bird was first introduced into a room where other birds were kept and he began to sing, all the others, consisting of about twenty linnets and canaries, ranged themselves on the nearest side of their cages, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... daughter of Moliere was like her father in her wit and humor. Beethoven had for a maternal grandmother an excellent musician. The mother of Mozart gave the first lessons to her son. A crowd of composers have descended from John Sebastian Bach, who long stood unrivaled as a performer on the organ, and composer for that instrument. It may be remarked here, that it is almost invariably true that the ability or inability to acquire a knowledge of music is derived from the ancestry. Parents who cannot turn a tune or tell one note from another, bring forth children equally ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... dance resembles no other terpsichorean exercise, nor is it by any means easy of execution. It calls for sinews of steel and great suppleness of limb. To make it still more difficult, the performer is obliged to provide his own music by singing a merry popular ballad while he dances. He throws himself first on one leg, then on the other, bending his knee and sinking nearly to the floor, while he extends the other leg straight before ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... his native land, as a good Christian and a truly noble character. It was touching to hear the parting hymn sung by the sonorous voices of the British wounded, accompanied solemnly on the harmonium by a British performer. All escorted the coffin to the gates. Once outside, it was reverently lifted on to the funeral car, which German gunners escorted to the cemetery. Four British and one French officer, as well as the German doctors who could be spared, followed in ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... violin, which even then conferred great celebrity on the successful player. At the court of Leo X, who, when cardinal, had filled his house with singers and musicians, and who enjoyed the reputation of a critic and performer, the Jew Giovan Maria del Corneto and Jacopo Sansecondo were among the most famous. The former received from Leo the title of count and a small town; the latter has been taken to be the Apollo in the Parnassus of Raphael. In the ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... eyes were turned on the performer, and I took advantage of that fact to rise from the rocking-chair with the roll of paper safe in my pocket, and saunter across the room in the direction of the piano. Leaning against a corner of the ramshackle old instrument, ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... helped us. He it was who stifled music with the curse of professionalism; so that now, like shivering shop-boys paying gate- money to watch games they cannot play, we sit mute in our stalls listening to the paid performer. But for the musician, music might have been universal. The human voice is still the finest instrument that we possess. We have allowed it to rust, the better to hear clever manipulators blow through tubes and twang wires. ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... silence fell upon the whole assembly, and it then became the duty of the performer, assuming an attitude of profound and deferential obeisance, to salute the lieutenant-general after a fashion more easily describable by Rabelais or by M. Armand Silvestre than by me, and which seems to have been derived ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... substituting die for dies, MR. COLLIER has blinded his reader and wronged his author. The purport of the passage amounts to this: the contents, or structure (to wit, of the show to be exhibited), breaks down in the performer's zeal to the subject which it presents. Johnson very properly adduces a much happier expression of the same thought from A Midsummer ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... The harp has always been considered one of the most pleasing and perfect of musical instruments. Here the skilled performer has absolutely free scope for his genius, because his fingers can pluck the strings at will and hence regulate the overtones, and his feet can regulate at will the tension, and hence ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... stage, throws a handkerchief over his extended arm and produces in succession three or four shallow glass dishes filled to the brim with water in which live gold-fish are swimming. Of course the dishes are concealed somehow upon the person of the performer. ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... terms are likewise a puzzle to the uninitiated. To Westerns, the brahmans[33] are best known as the priests of the Hindus; more correctly, however, the name brahman signifies not the performer of priestly duties, but the caste that possesses a monopoly of the performance. The brahman caste is the Hindu Tribe of Levi. Every accepted Hindu priest is a brahman, although it is far from being the case that every brahman is a priest. As a matter of fact, at the Census ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... of the footmen, I surmised that something extraordinary had taken place.... I did not dare to cross-examine them, but I had a friend in the young waiter Philip, who was passionately fond of poetry, and a performer on the guitar. I addressed myself to him. From him I learned that a terrible scene had taken place between my father and mother (and every word had been overheard in the maids' room; much of it had been in French, but Masha the lady's-maid had lived five years' with a dressmaker ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... almost equal to certainty. An experiment, however, should always admit of being repeated. What a man has done once he should be able to do again; and in miracles there can be no question of ease or difficulty. The performer would be requested to repeat the operation under other circumstances upon other bodies; and if he succeeded on every occasion, two points would be established: first, that there may be in this world such things as supernatural operations; ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... ended Bunny's hopes of becoming a trapeze performer in the show. But Mart still kept on practicing, and soon he could do a number of good tricks. Lucile, too, practiced her songs, and those who heard the children at their rehearsals said the show, which had first been ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... chorale form, and the emancipation of the art from any influence whatsoever other than derives from contact with nature and emotion. If we ask what equipment he had for his task, we answer: enthusiasm, so deep, so tempered in all its qualities, that, though in a few years he became the ablest performer of his time upon the harpsichord and organ, yet never once is the term "virtuoso" associated in our thought with the purity of aspiration which characterized him. His enthusiasm was religious, deep-seated, his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... tremendous bludgeon, with which he amused himself by rapping on the head every one who came within his reach. This exhibition seems very absurd, yet not less than one hundred were present—children, boys, old men, and even gentlemen and ladies, were standing by, and occasionally greeting the performer with the smile of approbation. Mr. Punch, however, was not to have it all his own way, for another and better sort of Punch-like exhibition appeared a few yards off, that took away Mr. Punch's audience, to the great dissatisfaction ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... among the younger and more heavy birds and squirrels that old Bullfrog was a bore, and that it was time to get up a new style of music in the parish, and to give the charge of it to some more modern performer. ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... instantly;' 'a green-grocer in Weymouth Street, Marylebone, next door to the Weavers' Arms, cured of lameness in both legs—went with crutches—is perfectly well;' 'a Miss W——, a public vocal performer, cured,—but had not goodness of heart enough to own the cure publicly;' 'a child cured of blindness, at Mr. Marsden's, cheesemonger, in the borough.' Other cases are set forth; but the reader will probably consider that specimens enough have been ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... the chief performer in Marie Bashkirtseff's "Confessions" interested her but little, the stage on which for a little while she had scolded and whimpered did interest her—for should it not have been her stage too, and Henry's stage, and Dot's stage, father's and mother's ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... this acquaintance should assume for me the interest of a drama—a scene of it played every night, with interludes every day, in public drives and excursions—would not be wonderful to you, could I have drawn the portrait of the principal performer in it, so that you would understand its novelty. I had never seen such a woman, and I was intensely interested to know how she would bear temptation. The peculiar character of the prince I easily understood; and I felt at once, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... supper-parties on principle, but he was also thinking of the advantage which might accrue to the drawing-room concert which Cicely had projected (with himself as the chief performer), if he could be brought into contact with a ...
— When William Came • Saki
... amiable representation which Mr. Cibber makes of his old favourite, and whose judgment in theatrical excellences has been ever indisputed. But this finished performer did not live to reap the advantages which would have arisen from the great figure ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... said, "'tis nothing at all, I assure you. On shore I am a circus performer, an' I was just practicing a little. ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... never once lowered his eyes or focussed the little party before him, although ultimately the tea table could not have been more than a few yards off. There stood the stranger with a vacant expression which would have made the fortune of a performer in a waxwork show, and hoped and almost prayed that a servant of some kind would appear, receive his signature or his card and allow him to return to the comfortless obscurity of his hotel. There was no bell, and no servant came, and the ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... was a fine performer on the flute; Mr. Lanman played the violin, and his wife the piano; and they discoursed some excellent music. Then, still better, there was singing. The deep-chested Forrest had a superb bass voice; Lanman a fine tenor; Annie's voice was light, but exceedingly ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... bed. Jim's hands were white with flour. He was kneading dough, and had several low, flat pans on the table. Wallace and Jones strolled in, and later Frank, and they all took various positions before the fire. I saw Frank, with the quickness of a sleight-of-hand performer, slip one of the pans of dough on the chair Jones had placed by the table. Jim did not see the action; Jones's and Wallace's backs were turned to Frank, and he did not know I was in the cabin. The conversation continued on the subject of Jones's big bay ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... stump performer yourself, Plonny. Don't you know that exactly the same argument will be urged two years ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... a literary man, and his snug sitting-room was fitted with books and easy chairs—a piano also, upon which he was no mean performer. ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... South must find their environing inheritance. In the contact of the street workman with his boss; in the cook kitchen; in the nursery room; in the concubine chamber; in the street song; in the brothel; in the philosophizings of the minstrel performer; in the literature which he will ere long create, by means of which there can be contact not personal; in myriad ways the Negro will write something upon the soul of the white man. It should be the care of the American ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... will spell out (with the assistance of card-board letters) a number of interesting astronomical facts at the instigation of his mirth-provoking master and proprietor. This talented performer will ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... volatile infection of her presence. A smile was the only tribute she exacted, and good-humor the rule laid down for her guests. If it occasionally required some mental agility to respond to her banter, a Californian gathering was, however, seldom lacking in humor. Yet she was always the principal performer to an admiring audience. Perhaps there was security in this multitude of admirers; perhaps there was a saving grace in this humorous trifling. The passions are apt to be serious and solitary, and Jovita ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... with Deschartres, and from her grandmother took her first lessons in music, an art of which she became passionately fond; and it always remained for her a favourite source of enjoyment, though she never acquired much proficiency as a musical performer. The educational doctrines of Rousseau had then brought into fashion a regime of open-air exercise and freedom for the young, such as we commonly associate with English, rather than French, child-life; and Aurore's early years—when ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... and the same thing—namely, the principal opera-house in France, the institution whose specialties are grand opera and ballet.] one admires the warmth of feeling which speaks out of his singing. Chollet, the first tenor of the Opera-Comique, the best performer of Fra Diavolo, and excellent in the operas "Zampa" and "Fiancee," has a manner of his own in conceiving the parts. He captivates all with his beautiful voice, and is the favourite ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... something tragic to me in this Siamese-twins arrangement of two so uncongenial. I am at one and the same time pupil and teacher, offender and judge, performer and critic, chaperone and protegee, a prim, precise, old maid and a rollicking schoolgirl, a tomboy and a prude, a saint and sinner. What can result from such a combination? That we get on tolerably is a wonder. Some days, however, we get on admirably ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... a peculiarity of James H. Caldwell to do whatever he did with all his might. No obstacle seemed to deter or impede the execution of any public or individual enterprise of his. Beside being a splendid performer, he was an accomplished gentleman, and a fine, classic scholar. His reading was select and extensive. At a very early day, he was impressed with the future importance of New Orleans as a commercial city, and commenced to ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Scotch abbot of the 7th century. Scott says here: "I am not prepared to show that Saint Modan was a performer on the harp. It was, however, no unsaintly accomplishment; for Saint Dunstan certainly did play upon that instrument, which retaining, as was natural, a portion of the sanctity attached to its master's character, announced future events by its spontaneous sound. 'But ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... American homes the parlor is also the music room. Since a piano should be chosen for quality rather than appearance, an instrument of any finish is allowable in a room, whatever its decorative scheme. Except in a family containing an expert performer, a piano should be chosen for softness and richness of tone, instead of brilliancy. For most households the old cottage organ is a more practicable instrument than the "concert grand" often found in a small ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... it was lucky for us that she was. The storm that came screeching after us from way across the Coral Sea was one of those high-powered freak disturbances that juggle with lumps of water like a vaudeville performer juggling with cheap crockery. It took the tops off those rollers and pelted them at us, and the wind seemed to yell in triumph when the yacht was buried in the whirlpools in which ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... of which are grouped the pipes. The barrel revolves slowly from back to front, each revolution as a rule playing one complete tune. A notch-pin in the barrelhead, furnished with as many notches as there are tunes, enables the performer to shift the barrel and change the tune. The ordinary street barrel-organ had a compass varying from 24 to 34 notes, forming a diatonic scale with a few accidentals, generally F, G, C. There were usually ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... hours watching a woodchuck hole, and ran down the hill by leaps and circuits as fast as his little legs could carry him, and, with every appearance of a lad who puts duty before pleasure, arrived breathless at the kitchen door, where Alice stood waiting for him. Alice, the somewhat feeble performer on the horn, who had been watching for the boy with her hand shading her eyes, called ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... eccentricities which frequently accompany greatness and the unconscious physical and psychical evidences of idiocy which so clearly agree with the antics of the chimpanzee or the droll Capuchin monkeys, might find in the performer to whom I refer a subject for some very interesting, not to say startling reflections. Few have ever been successful in inducing this pianist to talk upon any other subject than music for more than a few minutes at a time. Another pianist, who was distinguished ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... life has been like that!" she began again. "His father was a tailor and I kept a shop. In the beginning all went well for we had plenty of money and a decent home. My husband worked for a circus and shortly a performer caught his eye and he followed her into the world when the circus ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... such general interest among all classes as the arrival of Jenny Lind, the celebrated vocalist and actress. She made her first appearance at the Italian Opera House on the 4th of May, and was received with an enthusiasm never before lavished on any performer: during her stay in England this ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... bird, then sweet as the breath of an infant, the violin uttered its varied and magical language, responsive to the touch of the wizard. There were moments when the air throbbed and the room rocked with the sound, and other moments when the music was all absorbed in the soul of the performer. Finally the old man drew himself up, threw his head backward, ran his fingers raspingly up towards the bridge and made a desperate plunge with his bow. A loud snap was heard like the report of a pistol. The string had broken. Batoche quietly lowered the instrument ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... What was his astonishment when he just peeped out, by way of caution, to see that the person who had opened it was—not Job Trotter, but a servant-girl with a candle in her hand! Mr. Pickwick drew in his head again, with the swiftness displayed by that admirable melodramatic performer, Punch, when he lies in wait for the flat-headed comedian with ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... slippers, though fitting easily; stockings had to be drawn off violently by another person, and they had given up changing their chemises during the period because the linen became so glued to the skin. An orchestral performer on the double-bass informed Laurent that whenever he left a tuned double-bass in his lodgings during his wife's period a string snapped; consequently he always removed his instrument at this time to a friend's house. He added that the same thing happened ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... along the straight high-road with its high-tangled hedge-rows on either side than she began to show symptoms of behaving very badly indeed. She bucked and pranced, and stood on her hind legs; she whipped suddenly round, pirouetted upon her own axis with the dexterity of a circus performer, and demonstrated very plainly that, if she only dared, she would like to take to her heels in the reverse direction to that which her driver ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... his strength and weakness also. His hand was quick, his sight clear and sure, his knowledge to a certain point most definite and practical, his mastery of the sword delightful; but he had little imagination, he did not divine, he was merely a brilliant performer, he did not conceive. I saw that if I put him on the defensive I should have him at advantage, for he had not that art of the true swordsman, the prescient quality which foretells the opponents action and stands prepared. There I had him at fatal advantage—could, I felt, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... observations of this kind, in the course of his voyages. He attained likewise to such a degree of proficiency in general learning, and the art of composition, as to be able to express himself with a manly clearness and propriety, and to become respectable as the narrator, as well as the performer, of great actions. ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... such loads of trumpery to market as I shall, or made such wealth as I will do. I dare say Lady Penelope, and all the gentry at the Well, will purchase, and will raffle, and do all sort of things to encourage the pensive performer. I will send them such lots of landscapes with sap-green trees, and mazareen-blue rivers, and portraits that will terrify the originals themselves—and handkerchiefs and turbans, with needlework scallopped exactly like ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... third performer in the shadow-play now. You could hear him roaring lustily at morn and noon and milky eve. The Wonderfullest Baby ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... was "Le Nozze di Dorina," by Sarti, and extremely pretty; though I wished it had been as new to M. C— de P— as to myself, for then he would not have divided my attention by obligingly singing every note with every performer. In truth, I was still so far from recovered from the fatigue of my journey, that I was lulled to a drowsiness the most distressing before the end of the second ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... arches, which increase regularly in length and diminish in height. They are connected at one end with the fibres of the auditory nerve, and Helmholtz has suggested that the waves of sound play on them, like the fingers of a performer on the keys of a piano, each separate arch corresponding to a different sound. We thus obtain a glimpse, though but a glimpse, of the manner in which perhaps we hear; but when we pass on to the senses of smell and taste, all we know is that the extreme ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... either side of the bull's neck a number of barbed darts ornamented with cut paper, and, sometimes, charged with detonating powder. It is de rigeur to plant the barbs exactly on either side. In the third and final act, the protagonist, the matador or espada, is the sole performer. His function is to entice the bull towards him by waving the muleta or red flag, and, standing in front of the animal, to inflict the death-wound by plunging his sword between the left shoulder and the blade. "The teams ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... have been always of the same length, not, like the Roman "right" and "left pipes," of unequal length, and so of different pitches. They were held and played, like the classical one, with either hand of the performer. There can be little doubt that they were in reality quite straight, though sometimes they have been awkwardly represented as crooked by ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... born at Cremona, the son of an instrument maker, a fairly good performer and an even better composer," the musician began. "Thus at an early age I had mastered the laws of musical construction in its twofold aspects, the material and the spiritual; and as an inquisitive child I observed many things which subsequently ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... think, go back and rewrite this section from the beginning, expunging the statements that Hoopdriver was a poet and a romancer, and saying instead that he was a playwright and acted his own plays. He was not only the sole performer, but the entire audience, and the entertainment kept him almost continuously happy. Yet even that playwright comparison scarcely expresses all the facts of the case. After all, very many of his dreams never got acted at ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... frequent, as the ill-humour of Lady Margaret Monckton had rendered them painful to her; yet the opportunities they had afforded her of mixing with people of fashion, had served to prepare her for the new scenes in which she was soon to be a performer. ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... demand categorical information "now of the planetary and now of the fixed," might put one in mind of Hecate's mode of ascending in a machine from the stage, "midst troops of spirits," in which you now admire the skill of the artist, and next tremble for the fate of the performer, fearing that the audacity of the attempt will turn his head or break his neck. The style of these "Discourses" also, though not elegant or poetical, was, like the subject, intricate and endless. It was that of a man pushing his way through a labyrinth of difficulties, and determined not to ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... passive listener, what must be the agonies of the dramatis personae? "Hang it!" says Charles Lamb, "how I like to be liked, and what I do to be liked!" And do Nancie, Harriette, and Herr Driesbach like it any less? What shall avenge them for their spretae injuria formae? What can repay the hapless performer, who has performed her very best, for learning by terrible, indisputable indirections that her cherished and boasted Cremona is but a very ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... before the sacrificial fire.' Karna, thus addressed, with slightly quivering lips fetched a deep sigh, looked at the God of the day in the skies. And even as a mad elephant riseth from an assemblage of lotuses, the mighty Duryodhana rose in wrath from among his brothers, and addressed that performer of dreadful deeds, Bhimasena, present there, 'O Vrikodara, it behoveth thee not to speak such words. Might is the cardinal virtue of a Kshatriya, and even a Kshatriya of inferior birth deserveth to be fought with. The lineage of heroes, like the sources of a lordly river, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... perfect well-being, because he can do nothing as it should not be done. If he can only arrive at such perfect operation of his mental processes, he will necessarily be the perfect speaker, the perfect ruler, the perfect craftsman, the perfect performer of every task, including the securing of his own happiness. Doubtless this is logical enough, but how is one to attain to such right mental operations, and to become what was called a "sage"? Only by acting always according to reason and not according to passion. That and that alone is "virtue." ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... court imprisonment succeeded, and the young King of Navarre, though proof to the artifices of his gossip Guise, was not adamant to the temptations spread for him by Catherine de' Medici. In the harem entertained for him in the Louvre many pitfalls entrapped him; and he became a stock-performer in the state comedies and tragedies of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... second Simon had his grip on Dick's collar, and both men were struggling for dear life in the pool. Stanmore could swim, of course, but it takes a good swimmer to hold his own in fisherman's boots, encumbered, moreover, with sundry paraphernalia of his art. Simon was a very mild performer in the water, but he had coolness, presence of mind, and inflexible tenacity of purpose. To these qualities the friends owed it that they ever reached the shore alive. It was a very near thing, and when they found their legs and looked into each other's faces, gasping, dripping, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... is an instrument which, when used by a skilled performer, brings happiness and cheer to those who listen. The harp of God, when understood and skillfully used, brings peace of mind and gladness of heart. The title of this book suggests the thought of good cheer and happiness. The message herein contained, taken from the Word of God, is sent forth ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... became a performer on the slack wire. With a parasol to balance her, she ran to the centre of an imaginary wire that swayed perilously, and she swung there, cunningly maintaining a precarious balance. Then she sped back to safety at the wire's end, threw down her parasol, caught the handkerchief thrown to her by ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... incurred the reproach of indolence and lackadaisical indifference, and although both were of creditable repute in the Craft, yet did GRANDOLPH shine the more prominently and give the greater promise of pre-eminence, ARTHUR seeming content, as men say, to play second fiddle to the more pushing Performer. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 7, 1891 • Various
... that looks kindly, on all things. He was not sure at first whether she were intently listening to the music, or whether her mind was upon something far different and far away; he thought the latter. He was right. Ellen at the moment had escaped from the company and the noisy sounds of the performer at her side; and while her eye was curiously tracing out the pattern of the carpet, her mind was resting itself in one of the verses she had been reading that same evening. Suddenly, and as it seemed, from no connection with anything in or out of her thoughts, there came ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... ingenious in their construction, as well as remarkable for the sweetness of their various sounds; some, as the two first-named, are played with the fingers, and produce any melody or combination of sound at the will of the performer; others, as the musical-box, barrel-organ, &c., produce a particular melody, or a certain number of melodies, by means of machinery. In the use of the last-named the performer is not at all indebted ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... have to get off for food, the same as a woman. And that ain't all," says pa; "men are performers and women is the audience; and women just sit and look and criticize, or maybe applaud if they like the performer; and men have to act their best, write the best books, and make the best speeches, and get the most money so as to please women which is the audience—and a woman can't do nothin' but applaud or criticize, and stir ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... Musician. [Performance of Music.] — N. musician, artiste, performer, player, minstrel; bard &c. (poet) 597; [specific types of musicians] accompanist, accordionist, instrumentalist, organist, pianist, violinist, flautist; harper, fiddler, fifer[obs3], trumpeter, piper, drummer; catgut scraper. band, orchestral ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... sympathetic tie between those girls! This I know, for when I had breakfast at the Cafe Bauer, U.d.L., they were BOTH there, slightly disguised, and occupying the same table!... Who is Syvorotka? Her lover?... I wonder what the game is.... Come to think about it, the titled performer of the Metropole looks like a twin sister of Marie Amelia, Countess of [Cszecheny] Chechany, a perfect composite of Juno and Venus and Hebe all rolled into one.... These enigmatical personages crowded everything else out of ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... of the hand or formal bow which makes you free of the place. So, with patience and perseverance you work your way at last into the dancing-room, and you now see what people come here for—dancing, of course. Each performer has about eighteen inches of standing room, and on that space must be enacted in hopeless pantomime the intricate evolutions of the quadrille, or the rotatory struggles of the waltz. Sliding and smiling, and edging and crushing, the conscientious dancers try to fulfil ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... was famous for the fare which it put before its patrons, and here was certainly enough variety of talent to please the most critical—a famous tenor, a popular violinist, a contralto much in favour for her singing of tender and sentimental songs, a notable performer on the violincello, a local vocalist whose speciality was the singing of ancient Scottish melodies, and—item of vast interest to a certain section of the audience—a youthful prodigy who was fondly believed to have it in her power to become a female Paderewski. These performers were duly announced ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... the musical comedy performer's horror of the older-established form of entertainment. "Why, comic opera died ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... accustomed to give in Rome, first of all short selections from new essays or poems were recited by their authors, then a gay comedy was performed; then Glycera, the most famous singer in the city, had sung a dithyramb to her harp, in a voice as sweet as a bell, and Alexander, a skilled performer on the trigonon, had executed a piece. Finally a troop of female dancers had rushed into the room and swayed and balanced themselves to the music ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... given half his kingdom rather than see Thessalus overcome. This was certainly a striking instance of magnanimity. How unprejudiced and generous that great man's mind was may be collected from a subsequent act of his in a case that concerned that very Athenodorus. That performer being heavily fined by the Athenians for not appearing on the stage at the feast of Bacchus implored Alexander to intercede for him; the just and munificent monarch, however, refused to write in his favour, but, in order to relieve the man, paid the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... interpretation of the word 'participator' which would permit such a denial; but it was no doubt honestly made, although for the purpose of disguising what John Brown's real agency in the matter was. He was, in fact, the originator and performer of these executions, although the hands that dealt the wounds were those of others."—Frank B. Sanborn, "Life and Letters of John ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... upon the ruined Mission wall tipped with clusters of dark foliage. Half hiding, half mingling with one of them—an indistinct bulk of light-colored huddled fleeces like an extravagant bird's nest—hung the unknown musician. So intent was the performer's preoccupation that Masterton actually reached the base of the wall immediately below the figure without attracting its attention. But his foot slipped on the crumbling debris with a snapping of dry twigs. There was a quick little cry from above. He had barely time to recover his ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... male friends in the Lower House, and engaging them to dine with me, preparatory to the great act of voting on—'s motion. I led them myself to the House of Commons, and not feeling sufficiently interested in the debate to remain, as a stranger, where I ought, in my own opinion, to have acted as a performer, I went to Brookes's to wait the result. Lord Gravelton, a stout, bluff, six-foot nobleman, with a voice like a Stentor, was "blowing up" the waiters in the coffee-room. Mr.—, the author of T—, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the squire, tossing the bill from him, so that it floated on to the loaf and settled there, "I suppose we shall none of us think it worth while to ride or drive ten miles to see this wonderful performer." ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... other points too. For example, you are a bully—that I am in a position to prove by the evidence of witnesses if you will not confess. And are you not a flute-player? That you are, and a far more wonderful performer than Marsyas. For he indeed with instruments charmed the souls of men by the power of his breath, as the performers of his music do still; for the melodies of Olympus are derived from the teaching of Marsyas, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... but the colour had flushed into her cheeks again, and the recollection occurred to Mary, that her fame as a performer, in that way, arose from the very amusing manner in which she and Sir Guy had conducted the game last year. At the same moment her mother met her, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... its waters. We reposed here for some hours, and to my astonishment the Doctor, laying aside his pipe, entertained us with his performance on a piano forte, which was in the room, and when his tea arrived his place was occupied by another performer. ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... allusion to the leather strap which flute-players wore to constrict the cheeks and add to the power of the breath. The performer here no doubt ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... Caroline, destined in later years for an illustrious career. William soon learned all that his master could teach him in the ordinary branches of knowledge, and by the age of fourteen he was already a competent performer on the oboe and the viol. He was engaged in the Court orchestra at Hanover, and was also a member of the band of the Hanoverian Guards. Troublous times were soon to break up Herschel's family. The French invaded Hanover, the Hanoverian Guards were overthrown in the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... are to be imputed rather to the nature of the undertaking, than the negligence of the performer. Thus some explanations are unavoidably reciprocal or circular, as hind, the female of the stag; stag, the male of the hind: sometimes easier words are changed into harder, as burial into sepulture, or interment, drier into desiccative, dryness into siccity ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... is in all the Churches of literature. It was his skill in this respect which elicited the liveliest compliments from a transcendent performer in the same field. In 1881 he wrote to his sister: "On Friday night I had a long talk with Lord Beaconsfield. He ended by declaring that I was the only living Englishman who had become a classic in his own lifetime. The fact is that what I have done in establishing ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... up in a high-tensioned ball team. There were three other chief pitchers on the nine, Toe Barter, Sam Willard and Slim Cooney. Slim and Toe were veterans, and the mainstays of the team, and Sam Willard was one of those chaps so often seen in baseball, a brilliant but erratic performer. ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... this was a special convent. The Signal Company slept in the theatre, and of an evening all the kit would be moved aside. One of the military policemen could play anything; so we danced and sang until the lights went out. The star performer was "Spot," the ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... opera occasionally; more or less under protest, because of its length, and because his mind was too practical for the indirect operatic form. He could not remain patient at a recital; the effort to listen to one performer for an hour and a half was too severe a tax upon his restless nature. The Philadelphia Orchestra gave a symphony concert each Saturday evening, and Bok dreaded the coming of that evening in each week for fear ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... the papers he felt that his future was secure. True, The Era, careful never to miss a single performer, had yet to say. "Mr. Eustace Merrowby was capital as Tommy," and The Stage, "Tommy was capitally played by Mr. Eustace Merrowby"; but even without this he had become one of the Men who Count—one whose private life was of more interest to the public than that of any scientist, general ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... was a success, but not a lavish one. The play was well written and staged, and Elsie Leslie was charming enough in her parts, but in the duality lay the difficulty. The strongest scenes in the story had to be omitted when one performer played both Tom Canty and the little Prince. The play came to New York—to the Broadway Theater—and was well received. On the opening night there Mark Twain made a speech, in which he said that the presentation of "The Prince and the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... to be recouered, but that the merit of seruice is sildome attributed to the true and exact performer, I would haue that drumme ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... in betting or slang. Both are vulgar in the extreme. And as to riding like a circus performer, I have ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... "it has ever been a favourite whetstone for the human reason. It has been frequently solved to the satisfaction of the performer, but no solution has yet won the universal acceptance that ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... gloom that filled the rest of the parlor thrilled echoing chords. Moore, coming in, stopped in the dimness to listen. A troubled uncertainty made itself felt through the strains, a sudden discordant crash jarred through the room, and the performer rose abruptly. He ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... end of the day. Mark had indeed once asked old Mr. Pomeroy to hear him play, an occasion to which the boy still looked back with hot shame. For when his obliging old employer had settled himself to listen after hours on an appointed afternoon, and Mark had opened the piano, the performer suddenly found his spine icy, his hands wet and clumsy. He felt as if he had never touched a piano before; the attempt was a failure from the first note, as Mark well knew. When he had finished ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... resting on the figure, No. 3, to support it. Twiss mentions one that he saw sculptured on the cathedral, at Toro, five feet long. The proper name of it is the rote, so called from the internal wheel or cylinder, turned by a winch, which caused the bourdon, whilst the performer stopped the notes on the strings with his fingers. This instrument has been very ignorantly termed a vielle, and yet continues to be so called in France. It is the modern Savoyard hurdy-gurdy, as we still more improperly term it; for the hurdy-gurdy is quite a different instrument. In ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... the latter and now unhappy personage appear to give it much more consideration than the rest. Hurried on by the force of associating circumstances, and by promptings not of himself or his, he had been an active performer in the terrible drama we have already witnessed, and the catastrophe of which he could now only, and in vain, deplore. Leaning with vacant stare and lacklustre vision against the neighboring rock, he seemed indifferent to, and perhaps ignorant of, the occurrences taking place around ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... stops of an organ, and the lower ones by way of pedals: and then he begins thrashing the desk like the finger-board of an organ with his hands, while his feet kick away at the lower drawers as if he were the greatest pedal performer out of Germany, and he emits a rapid succession of grunts and squeaks, producing a ludicrous reminiscence of the instrument, which I defy any one to hear without laughing. Several sows and an indefinite number of sucking pigs could not ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... in France at the time of the first Napoleon. Fifi, a glad, mad little actress of eighteen, is the star performer in a third rate Parisian theatre. A story as ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... commended the charming figure that the lady made in her quaint frock against the crumbling garden wall. He spoke a very pretty speech about her appearance. But he found her haughty indeed considering that she was nothing but an upstart vaudeville performer. She had no manners at all, he decided, for she did not even suggest that he sit down. He actually had to make ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... Larry. "We'd better go on up to the transmitting room. The worst crime a public performer can commit is ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... note, the pitch, on her very first visit to Chester Square. She had arrived there in intense excitement, and her excitement was left on her hands in a manner that reminded her of a difficult air she had once heard sung at the opera when no one applauded the performer. That flatness had made her sick, and so did this, in another way. A part of her agitation proceeded from the fact that her aunt Julia had told her, in the manner of a burst of confidence, something she was not to repeat, that ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... The joke was suddenly evolved. A certain phrase led to a song, which was sung with lightning rapidity, each performer making precisely the same gestures at precisely the same instant. They were irresistible. McTeague, though he caught but a third of the jokes, could have listened ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... She knows the business of the stage perfectly, is learned in the art of making points, and, what is more, knows how to bide her opportunity. The wise discretion which imposes restraint upon the performer was somewhat too rigidly observed in the earlier scenes on Saturday night, the consequence being that in one of the most impressive passages of the not very inspired dialogue, the little distance between the sublime and the ridiculous ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... by a back street. She still wore a heavy veil, an' I never looked at her—not right straight—but I could see that she walked with her feet an' held her head on the top of her neck; so I was purty certain that if Dick did return an' try to finish the weddin' as the star performer she'd give us ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... improvident and very poor. The D——s, and the Impressario of the theatre got up a concert for him the other night, which was well attended, and on which occasion he electrified the audience. He is a native of Genoa, and if I were a judge of violin playing, I would pronounce him the most surprising performer in the world!" ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Eleanor as they stood at one side of the stage while the Glee Club, composed of juniors and seniors, arranged themselves preparatory to filing on to the stage. "Everything seems to be going beautifully though. Not a single performer has disappointed us. How pretty the Glee Club girls ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... Mozart? Well, Mozart was a wonderful musical genius, who could compose music when he was five years old, and who astonished all Germany by his skill and aptness as a performer. So Charles decided on calling his ...
— The Nursery, February 1878, Vol. XXIII, No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... in her life she looked forward to the leafy seclusion of the buried chapel with a feeling of longing. She had avoided her youthful escort, for she wished to practice alone for an hour before the service with the new harmonium that had taken the place of the old accordion and its unskillful performer. Perhaps, too, there was a timid desire to be at her best on the return of Brother Seabright, and to show him, with a new performance, that the "heavenly gift" had not been neglected. She opened the chapel with the key she always carried, "swished" away an intrusive squirrel, left the door and ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... music began, left the piano and sat in a corner just beyond the circle of light cast by the lamp. His interest was divided: while his ears drank in the sounds, his glance constantly roved from Ruth to the performer and back to Ruth. These ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... final test of poems, or any character or work, remains. The prescient poet projects himself centuries ahead, and judges performer or performance after the changes of time. Does it live through them? Does it still hold on untired? Will the same style, and the direction of genius to similar points, be satisfactory now? Have the marches of tens and hundreds and thousands of years made willing detours to the right hand ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... dress, and the casket which she instinctively held in her hand, Elizabeth naturally conjectured that the beautiful but mute figure which she beheld was a performer in one of the various theatrical pageants which had been placed in different situations to surprise her with their homage; and that the poor player, overcome with awe at her presence, had either forgot ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
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