"Performer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... "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
... 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
... 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; ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... 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
... 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,[624] 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 ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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
... performer, standing before a noble audience, my mind was too much engaged with the arduous task I had undertaken, to glance my eyes towards the music gallery, or I might have seen two more spectators there than I expected. Nurse Withers ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... 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 |
