"Teller" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now about to be given is derived from an honourable gentleman, a member of Congress from the state of New-York during the administration of Mr. Jefferson, and yet living in this state. He says that Mr. Wells (a teller on the part of the Senate) informed him that the envelope was blank; that the return of the votes was not authenticated by the signatures of the electors, or any of them, either on the outside or the inside of the envelope, or in any other ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... who told me that the Patagonians were a friendly race is a traitor to science. I, Professor Simeon Sandburr, brand him a teller of untruths. For Professor Thomas Tapper, who told me about the fur-bearing pollywog of the South Polar seas, I have the warmest respect. I leave all my books, bottled fishes and reptiles to the Smithsonian Institute. My servant, James, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... became unbearable, "and we're kinder bashful about singin' to company, anyway. But if you want to hear somethin' good, you want to git Bill goin' about Coloraydo. Sure, Mr. Lightfoot is our best story-teller; and he's had some mighty excitin' times up there in them parts, hain't ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... but the land blessed by nature, the land where men took joy in living, the land of life, flowing with gaiety and love, the land of the Song of Songs and of Ruth. He drew Isaiah for them, not as a saintly Rabbi or a teller of mystical dreams, but a poetic Isaiah, patriot, sublime moralist, the prophet of a free Judea, the preacher of earthly prosperity, of goodness, and justice, opposing the narrow doctrines and minute and senseless ceremonialism inculcated by ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... know I've been helping the paying-teller straighten up his books," went on the young bank employee, "and when I came out tonight, after working for several hours, I was glad enough to hurry away from the 'slave-den,' as I call it. I almost ran up the street, not looking where I was going, when, just as I turned the ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... Henry Wallace Mills. He was in the middle thirties, temperate, studious, a moderate smoker, and—one would have said—a bachelor of the bachelors, armour-plated against Cupid's well-meant but obsolete artillery. Sometimes Sidney Mercer's successor in the teller's cage, a sentimental young man, would broach the topic of Woman and Marriage. He would ask Henry if he ever intended to get married. On such occasions Henry would look at him in a manner which was a blend of scorn, ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... interest was aroused in public speaking and he soon began to exercise himself in this direction and to attend meetings addressed by those skilled in the art of oratory. Many stories are told of his local reputation as a speaker and story-teller even before he moved to Illinois, much of his success then as in later life being due to the singular charm of his personality. Lincoln never overcame a certain awkwardness, almost uncouthness of appearance, ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... narrator put the number of metal brethren at two dozen instead of twenty-five, or missed out a single stage of the duckling's wanderings, she would have been instantly tripped up by her audience. But Queen Mab was too skilful a story-teller to leave out the minutest detail in describing the perilous voyage of the paper boat, or to spare the duckling a single snub from the narrow-minded hen or the bumptious tom-cat. The "Tin Soldier" she generally gave in answer to the special request of her small nephew, but she ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... the admiration of the millions of young people who read his books, but upon the judgment of mature critics, to whom his delineations of adventurous life were literature of no common order. His reputation as a story-teller was widely recognized on the Continent, where he was accepted as an authority in regard to the customs of the pioneers and the guerilla warfare of the Indian tribes, and was warmly praised for his freshness, his novelty, and his hardy originality. ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... ones,—the roaring lions of the earth, beguiled the ignorance of the innocent, and led lonely lambs into their slaughter-houses. All this, much amplified, made up half the article; and then, after the manner of a pleasant relater of anecdotes, the clerical story-teller began his little tale. When, however, he came to the absolute writing of the tale, he found it to be prudent for the present to omit the names of his hero and heroine—to omit, indeed, the names of all the persons concerned. He had first intended boldly to dare ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... back of his hand on his trousers. "I wonder if there's any funny business there?" he reflected. But he thought no more about it until weeks afterward, when he happened, one day, in the bank, to stand before Maurice, waiting his turn at the teller's window. He said, "Hello!" and Maurice said, "Hello!" and added that it was a cold day. The fact that Maurice said not a word about that recovering little patient in Medfield made the doctor's mind revert to the possibilities he had ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... matter of its honour,—that was obvious; he had paid Ezra Lane two thousand dollars for the Banner, that was a matter of record; and he had marched with some grandeur into General Hendricks' bank one Saturday and had clinked out five thousand dollars in gold on the marble slab at the teller's window, and that was a matter attested to by a crowd of witnesses. Watts McHurdie used to say that more people saw that deposit than could be packed into the front room of the ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... boasted such an achievement, and for a long time he carried with him the recollection of that man's eyes as they met his above a beer mug. They had drunk uproariously together, and von Sperrgebiet heard all about it first hand, and even fingered enviously the Iron Cross upon the breast of the teller of the tale. But somehow those eyes had told quite a different story: and it was that which von Sperrgebiet remembered long after the wearer of the Iron Cross had gone out into the North Sea ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... were brought about by some influence outside of human agency [said a believer in Spiritualism the other day to a St. Louis Globe reporter]. I know a lady—a church member—who makes no pretensions as a fortune teller, clairvoyant, or medium, and who would indignantly resent being called a Spiritualist. This lady takes a pencil in her hand and writes rapidly and legibly, with her arm extended, without looking at the paper or pencil, and gazing in an opposite ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... a visit, and had carried the bright young sister off to Malta. She was a terrible loss to all the parish, and it would have been worse if Sophia had not grown up to take her place, and to be the great helper in the school and parish, as well as the story-teller and playmate, the ever ready "Aunt Sophy" of the ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the first disclosure and a completely established understanding that she must not be told, come what might. Supposing that she could tell, and he could hear, the whole story of twenty years ago better than when a terrible position warped it for teller and hearer in what had since become to her an intolerable dream—supposing this done, and each could understand the other, might not the very strangeness of the fact that the small new life that played so large a part in that dream had become Sally since, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Canada thistles growing in clumps, all a-bloom, as if the farmer had given up cultivating, and let things just go to rack and ruin. I was never up there myself, but from what I've heard my father say, I rather think that must be the Hoskins place. They say he consulted some fortune teller a couple of years ago, who told him he would some day discover a gold mine on his property that would make him a millionaire; and ever since the farmer has spent about all his time digging here and there, but up to now without any success ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... to invest the characters of the story; or its setting, with qualities amusing in themselves, quite apart from any relation to the point. Precise instruction cannot be given, but concentration along this line will of itself develop the humorous perception of the story-teller, so that, though the task may appear too difficult in prospect, it will not prove so in actual experience. But, in every instance, care must be exercised to keep the point of the story clearly in view, and to omit nothing essential ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... and, dismissing the subject with airiness somewhat exaggerated, drew out his huge gilt snuffbox. The snow was now falling more thickly, drawing a white and fleecy veil between the two upon the road and the story-teller and his audience beneath the distant elm. "Are you for Williamsburgh?" demanded the Highlander, when he had somewhat abruptly declined to take snuff with ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... cannot read the first paragraph of the book, which begins in the right way "Once upon a time" without knowing that Mr. Lofting believes in his story quite as much as he expects you to. That is the first essential for a story teller. Then you discover as you read on that he has the right eye for the right detail. What child-inquiring mind could resist this intriguing sentence to be found on the ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... did not believe—no one but a fool (and she was not that) could have believed—all the many things that were told her; the many things that must always, while pity and the need to be pitied endure, be told to the pitiful; but she seldom said so. She merely looked at the teller with her long and lovely violet eyes, that took in so much and gave out such continual friendship, and saw how, behind the lies, the need dwelt pleading. Then she gave, not necessarily what the lies asked for, but what, in ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... liked the sudden flare-up of her manner. There was something convincing about it. Besides, he didn't want her to go off in that independent way as if she meant never to come back. It was she who had brought the Towncrier, that matchless Teller of Tales, ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... he said: "I have been asked to say something about this disaster and its magnitude, but I haven't the heart. Besides I haven't the words. If I was the biggest truth teller in the world I could not tell ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... lights were put out, some one demanded a story. Most of the bedrooms possessed a professional story-teller, and in one there was a young romancist who began a stirring history the very first night of the term, which always ran on until the night before the holidays, and, if his hearers were apt to yawn at the sixth week of it, he himself enjoyed and believed in it ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... famous expedition from the arrival of Major Clarke's force at Corn Island, until Kaskaskia was captured. He relates that part of Simon Kenton's life history which is not usually touched upon either by the historian or the story teller. This is one of the most entertaining books for young ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... Young Henry was trying to ease his mind by moving from place to place, and from excitement to excitement. But he thought about Blanche as he sauntered in the dark walks; he thought about Blanche as he looked at the devices of the lamps. He consulted the fortune-teller about her, and was disappointed when that gipsy told him that he was in love with a dark lady who would make him happy; and at the concert, though Mr. Momus sang his most stunning comic songs, and asked his most astonishing ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... GREAT.—Among the best specimens of Saxon prose are the translations and paraphrases of King Alfred, justly called the Great and the Truth-teller, the noblest monarch of the Saxon period. The kingdoms of the heptarchy, or octarchy, had been united under the dominion of Egbert, the King of Wessex, in the year 827, and thus formed the kingdom of England. But this union of the kingdoms was in ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the quality and quantity of her labors, is the best story-teller for children England ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... applied it, to art, to letters, to the love of locality, to music, and even to good manners. The phrase about no priest coming between a man and his Creator is but an impoverished fragment of the full philosophic doctrine; the true Puritan was equally clear that no singer or story-teller or fiddler must translate the voice of God to him into the tongues of terrestrial beauty. It is notable that the one Puritan man of genius in modern times, Tolstoy, did accept this full conclusion; denounced all music as a mere drug, and forbade his ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... warning. She is a witch, an accursed fortune-teller. You will be sorry if she enters the camp. She will cast a spell over camels ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... 'calls a spade a spade.' In an age of pretence, it is to many more or less shocking to have such persons take up the pen and, with frankness born of native honesty, tell the truth as he or she may distinctly perceive it. Society is so used to 'diplomatic courtesies' that when the truth-teller arrives, society 'takes a fit,' seeing its illusions vanish. Its would-be idols which have been proclaimed as made of pure gold, are found to be gilded clay, its devils not so devilish after all, and the daring act of the truth-teller ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... work done by George Henry Miles for the cause of Catholic literature, the more so as his name is not infrequently omitted from many popular histories of American literature. Yet the author of "The Truce of God" had mastered the story teller's and the dramatist's art. "If there was ever a born litterateur," writes Eugene L. Didier, in The Catholic World for May, 1881, "that man was George Henry Miles. His taste was pure, exquisite and refined, his imagination was rich, vivid, and almost ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... to stifle his boredom and push on resolutely through the dust to find what good, if any, may be hidden by it. I will admit therefore some vague interest in the record of how the War hit such persons as these. Also (to the credit of the author as tale-teller) she does allow one of the young men to earn a scholarship, and for no sane reason to depart instantly thereupon before the mast of a sailing-ship; also another, the central figure, to fall in love with the girl. The book is in three parts, of which the third is superfluously ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 29, 1920 • Various
... the great literary and social leaders of the eighteenth century was Mme. de Genlis, a prodigy in every respect, an amateur performer upon nearly every instrument, an authority on intellectual matters as well, a fine story teller, a consummate artist, entertainer, and general charmer. Authoress, governess of Louis-Philippe, councillor of Bonaparte, her success as a social leader established her reputation and places her in the file of great women, although she was not a salon leader ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... "The 'Polite Story-teller' sinks into insignificance beside you: such a flow of language deserves a better audience. But really, Teddy, I never heard so extraordinary a story. To marry a woman, and never have the curiosity to raise her veil to see whether she was ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... Widely Read Than Any Other Story-Teller—The Greatest of the Modern Humorists Appeals to the Readers of ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... the idea of "Jack the Giant Killer" is exactly the opposite to Shaw's idea. If it were not a tale of effort and triumph hardly earned it would not be called "Jack the Giant Killer." If it were a tale of the victory of natural advantages it would be called "Giant the Jack Killer." If the teller of fairy tales had merely wanted to urge that some beings are born stronger than others he would not have fallen back on elaborate tricks of weapon and costume for conquering an ogre. He would simply have let the ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... The receiving-teller gave her her vouchers. She put them in her handbag and somehow got round a perambulator, and the two went out on ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... teller was sitting on a chair, quietly knitting a stocking, and on their approach she got up, went up to Madame d'Ormonde and said ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... few nervous words asked the cashier to state the object of the call. Mr. Bone at once stated that there were strong indications that a robbery of the bank had been perpetrated; that a large amount of currency had been abstracted from the paying teller's room. Hence this sudden call for consultation; this, also, accounted for the unusual presence of Chief Andrews and his colleagues. He then called on Mr. Roe, the senior paying teller, to make a statement of what he ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... had not yet come, for the prophecy of the fortune-teller had not yet been fulfilled. Josephine was, indeed, the wife of a renowned general, but she was not yet ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... racing handle-bars, and sprint for dear life. Returning safely to Abbeville, they would write hair-raising accounts of the dangers they had passed through to the motor-cycling papers. It is only right that I should here once and for all confess—there is no finer teller of tall stories than the ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... Any fortune-teller might tell, and no doubt, if she thought it would flatter, would tell, a beautiful young girl that her destiny was to be a queen; but there is in this prediction a minuteness of detail, that cannot be accounted for on the ground of accidental coincidence. It is ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... them. In telling these tales, they had frequent occasion to use the word "millions," a word not then common among the Venetians, as to say that the Great Khan had revenues amounting to ten or fifteen millions of gold, and so on. And the people gave Marco, who seems to have been the story-teller of the party, the nickname of Messer Marco Millioni. Curiously enough, this name appears in the public records of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... suspect it. Even a celebrated fortune-teller in New Orleans, whom the young pilot one day consulted as to his future, did not mention the great upheaval then close at hand. She told him quite remarkable things, and gave him some excellent advice, but though this was February, 1861, she failed to make ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... he were thinking already that he might have to leave sudden, and perhaps a crew wouldn't be willing to, even if he got one. So he trimmed his teller lanyards to run forrard, so as he could steer before t' foremast, and handle t' headsheets hisself going to windward, and at t' same time keep a ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... not in Cambridge! Cross the bay and see How a world delighted hastes to honor thee. Seek the fortune-teller and thy future hear; There is empire yonder; there is ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... fitting out at Boston, one small annoyance ruffled the auspicious undertaking. Three different crews were signed before a full complement could be persuaded to tarry in the forecastle. The trouble was caused by a fortune-teller of Lynn, Moll Pitcher by name, who predicted disaster for the ship. Now every honest sailor knows that certain superstitions are gospel fact, such as the bad luck brought by a cross-eyed Finn, a black cat, or going to sea on ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... occasion of a visit of the great Duke of Marlborough. The portrait instantly arrests attention. His ideal personages had been drawn in such a sketchy way, they presented so many imperfectly harmonized features, that they never became real, with the exception, of course, of the story-teller himself. But the vigor with which the presentment of the imperial ship-carpenter, the sturdy, savage, eager, fiery Peter, was given in the few opening sentences, showed the movement of the hand, the glow of the color, that were in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... somewhat clairvoyant. She gave a brief analysis of my character, stating accurately my regular calling and a few of my personal traits even indicating roughly my bringing-up and where. She is not a professional fortune-teller, and merely ventured a few statements. My impression was that she was an unusually close and alert observer. Like her mother she is somewhat taciturn. I should have said that her mother was reserved as well as forgetful. The mother never ventured a word except in answer to a question, ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... comprehensible. His son was openly, before one of the tenants and a parcel of farm-hands, making use of a superstitious device in which no sane person could believe. Weston, as I remember it, compared him to a gipsy fortune-teller, and went on through the gamut of impostor, mountebank and charlatan, before he commanded him to desist on the moment. I don't quite know what came next, though something was said about a lifted riding-crop, but within the week Clarence started ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... a remarkable degree in thrilling the reader ... she stands in direct line, and not unworthily, after Stevenson and that born teller of tales, F. ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... wore white shirts, and a few sported plug hats. There was also a "right smart sprinkling" of ladies present who were well dressed and adorned with rich jewelry, and their position seemed to be that of paying teller at the ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... you should use much caution in giving consent to its consummation. For a young woman, this portends a choice between two rivals. She will be worried to find out the standing of one in business and social circles. To dream that she is engaged to a fortune-teller, denotes that she has gone through the forest and picked the proverbial stick. She should be self-reliant, or poverty ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... successful and deserve much praise." But who would feel comfortable under such eulogy? And why not? If telling the truth is a spiritual excellence and the result of effort, why should it not be praised? But there lies the trouble. I assumed that to be a truth-teller required strain on your part. In reality it would have required greater strain for falsehood. It might then seem that I should praise those who are not easily excellent, since I am forbidden to praise those who are. And something ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... the stories for publication, the aim has been to preserve, as much as possible, in vocabulary and idiom, the original folk-lore language, and to retain the conversational style of the teller of tales, in order that the sympathetic young reader may, in greater or less degree, be translated into the atmosphere of ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... subservience flattered Clara's languor. He had not compelled her to be watchful on her guard, and she was unaware that he passed it when she acquiesced to his observation, "An anticipatory story is a trap to the teller." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Monday."—"Did you, though?" said my father.—"To be sure, we did," says the touter, "you're a babby to him—this way, sir—this way!"—and sure enough my father walks arter him, like a tame monkey behind a horgan, into a little back office, vere a teller sat among dirty papers, and tin boxes, making believe he was busy. "Pray take a seat, vile I makes out the affidavit, Sir," says the lawyer.—"Thank'ee, Sir," says my father, and down he sat, and stared with all ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... than to sip a rare vintage with a woman of beauty and intellect opposite? One glass is enough to loose her laughter, her wit, her charm. Bah! A man who knows how to drink his wine, a woman who knows when to laugh, a story-teller who stops when his point is told; these trifles add a little color as we pass. Will ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... teach you how to tell fortunes—really and truly?" asked Betty. "We had a fortune-teller's tent at the School Bazaar last year, and the youngest Smithson girl dressed up in spangles and a red dress and said she was Zara, the Eastern Mystic Hand-Reader, and Foreteller of the Future. But she got it all out of ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... according to their conjurors; they are not independent bodies, with native colours; they needs must be painted by the different hands they pass through, and they may be multiplied; a nought or so counts for nothing with the teller. Skepsey saw that. Yet they can overcome: even as fictitious battalions, they can overcome. He shrank from the results of a ciphering match having him for object, and was ashamed of feeling to Statistics as women to giants; nevertheless he acknowledged ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the papers he required for his proposed transaction, set out for the Bourse; while I, disguised as one of his serving-men, accompanied Jacob to the abode of the old fortune-teller. Flemish being my native tongue, it must be remembered I had no difficulty in passing for the character I had assumed; and I thought that, probably, the Dame Barbara ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... and began reading, because she did not know what else to do. While she had been watching Lloyd in the boat, Elise had been summoned to the house to try on the dress she was to wear in the tableau of the gipsy fortune-teller. The people on the porch had divided into little groups which she did not feel free to join. She was afraid they would think she was intruding. Even her own sister seemed out of her reach, for she and Lieutenant Logan had taken their share of paper roses over to a rustic seat near the croquet grounds ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... dried in square cakes.] with honey in the other world!) could tell a story wonderfully well. When he used to begin on a tale, you wouldn't stir from the spot all day, but keep on listening. He was no match for the story-teller of the present day, when he begins to lie, with a tongue as though he had had nothing to eat for three days, so that you snatch your cap and flee from the house. As I now recall it,—my old mother ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... eccentric Tennessean, who was a celebrated hunter, Indian fighter, story teller, wit, and member of Congress three terms (where he opposed President Jackson, and refused to obey any party commanding him "to-go-wo-haw-gee," just at his pleasure) here lost his life. On the 27th of the same month 500 more Americans at Goliad were ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... truth the saga is a prose epic, and marked by every quality an epic should possess. Growing up while the deeds of dead heroes were fresh in memory, most often recited before the sharers in such deeds, the saga, in its pure form, never goes from what is truth to its teller. Where the saga, as this one of the Volsungs is founded upon the debris of songs and poems, even then very old, tales of mythological heroes, of men quite removed from the personal knowledge of the narrator, yet the story is so inwound ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... just such a friend, no, you can have a whole company of just such friends, for yourself. How? In books, of course. Only they won't be merely books; they will be friends. Washington Irving, teller of wonderful stories, and Robert Louis Stevenson are there, in those books, and you can learn them as well as their stories. And Henry W. Longfellow, writer of stories in verse; and John G. Whittier, writer of poems about barefoot boys and corn huskings; and Benjamin Franklin, a kindly ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... Indian folk-lore, and neither by coaxing nor by offers of money could an Indian be persuaded to relate a myth. In most instances, Professor Hartt was met with statements to the effect that some old woman of the neighborhood was the story-teller, who could make him laugh with tales of the animals; but he never could ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... a score of white-bearded, white-robed warriors, or grave seniors of the city, seated at the gate of Jaffa or Beyrout, and listening to the story-teller reciting his marvels out of "Antar" or the "Arabian Nights?" I was once present when a young gentleman at table put a tart away from him, and said to his neighbor, the Younger Son (with rather a fatuous ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at the clock in the First National tower. He had three minutes before the bank's closing time. He controlled his emotions as best he could and presented the check at the paying-teller's grill. The money was counted out to him without question, and when he held the thick packet in his hand he realized still more acutely in what position he stood in his affairs ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... the thing that was not in his mind with the deplorable facility of the professional story-teller—"supposing that illness had been a sham, and they had really meant to elope ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... been called "The Prince of Story-Tellers." To call him "The Boy's Own Historian" would perhaps be a more appropriate title, for time has proved that he is more than a story-teller; he is a preserver and propagator of ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty
... Did ever tale-teller compare with Shahrazad? Who does not sympathise with the Trader who killed the invisible son of the jinni? Who has not dreamt of the poor fisherman and the pot that was covered with the seal of King Solomon? The story of Duban, who cured King Yunon ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... dears, that I am the proudest story-teller that ever lived. Many a time tears of pride and joy have stood in my eyes while I read the tender, loving, appealing letters that come to me in almost every mail from my little readers. To have pleased you, to have interested you, to have won your friendship, ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... think he was on the whole a good critic (for a man may be a good critic and a bad reviewer, though the reverse will hardly stand), and I have given my reasons. That he was neither a great, nor even a very good poet or tale-teller, I have no doubt whatever. But this leaves untouched the attraction of his miscellaneous work, and its suitableness for the purpose of recreation. For that purpose I think it to be among the very best work in all literature. Its unfailing ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Gayther busied himself in making the "story-telling place" attractive he felt glad that there were others besides himself who liked to tell stories. There was such a thing as overworking a mine. He was that rare thing, a story-teller who is also a good listener. Moreover, John felt very diffident about telling one of his stories before the Master of the House, who was a man prone to speak his mind. Not that John disliked the Master of the House. Far from it. He, with the family, ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... was told, and the teller gone. The curtain over the past was never lifted again; but often, in after years, Waring thought of this strange life and its stranger philosophy. He could never judge them. ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... believed that he was a fortune-teller, so people often went to him to inquire what was to happen to them. One day, shortly after he became king, Attila went to the cave to get his ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.
... mind telling you about that, youngster, though I ain't much of a story-teller. You just wait till I get my pipe filled, and I'll spin a yarn for you, as they used to ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... teller Anna knew was really bad. That had to be told to the father just as it was and penance had then ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... mother again. He now possessed the best gift Ruth had asked him to beseech of the "word." The soldier's sweetheart, the faithless wife, the companion of his rival, whom only yesterday he had avoided, the fortune-teller, the camp-sibyl, was the woman who had given him birth. He, who thought he had preserved his honor stainless, whose hand grasped the sword if another looked askance at him, was the child of one, at whom every respectable woman had the right to point her finger. All these thoughts ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... anecdote has also to true; it must be, in our proverbial phrase, "if not true, well invented." Even if exaggeration and humour contribute to give it a twist, the essence of parody is that it parodies—it must conform to the original even where it leaves it. A good story-teller will hardly tell the same story of Mr. Roosevelt and the Archbishop of Canterbury—unless it happens to be true, and then he will be cautious. "Truth," to quote another proverb, "is stranger than fiction"; because fiction has to go warily to be probable, and must be, more or less, conventional. The ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... not I—that the mind exercises a powerful influence over the body. From the beginning of time, the sorcerer, the interpreter of dreams, the fortune-teller, the charlatan, the quack, the wild medicine-man, the educated physician, the mesmerist, and the hypnotist have made use of the client's imagination to help them in their work. They have all recognised the potency and availability of that force. Physicians cure ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Colonel Antony of the righteousness of Sher Singh's cause that for once he overbore the opposition of his Durbar. The Durbar considered that Partab Singh's recorded disinheritance of his elder son, and the presumed reasons for it, which were known by hearsay to every story-teller in Granthistan, were sufficient to bar his recognition as regent and heir presumptive; but Colonel Antony thought that the secrecy with which the Prince had been condemned, and the absence of any documentary evidence, rendered it extremely probable that his father ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... must the account be rendered. There shall enter into Heaven nothing that maketh a lie. If our lives are not quite genuine and honest here, we are locking ourselves out of Heaven. Let us, as citizens of no mean city, keep aloof from the hypocrite, the teller or maker of a lie, and speak every man truth with his neighbour. Again, I think that as citizens of Heaven, we ought to take very good heed to our words. You know how our streets and lanes in ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... a story in which the various parts of a stage coach are mentioned, and whenever he names one of these parts or articles, the player or players bearing that name must get up instantly, whirl around once, and sit down again. Any player failing to do this must pay a forfeit. Whenever the story teller says "Stage Coach!" all of the players must get up and turn around. At the end of this story he will manage to have the stage coach meet with a catastrophe, and as soon as he says "The stage coach upset!" all of the players ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... personal atrocities, it is nevertheless true, have been hideously exaggerated. Wherever one real atrocity has occurred, it has been multigraphed into a hundred cases. Each, with clever variation in detail, is reported as occurring to a relative or close friend of the teller. For campaign purposes, and particularly in England for the sake of stimulating recruiting, a partisan press has helped along ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... handsome person and amiable character, a good scholar and apt at arms. But his family were poor; and he had no patron among the military nobility,—so that his prospects were small. He lived in a very quiet way, devoting himself to the study of literature, and having (says the Japanese story-teller) "only the Moon ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... who have married or died since I was here before, or gone away, or come back from America. Then I was told that the old man, Dermot (or Darby, as he is called in English), was the finest story-teller in Iveragh; and after a while he told us a long story in Irish, but spoke so rapidly and indistinctly—he had no teeth—that I could understand but few passages. When he had finished I asked him where he ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... thinking, with a smile, that in spite of their early tribulations the sins for which the boys suffered had gotten a little mixed in their result, for fibbing Steve was now the tidy one, and careless Mac the truth teller. But such small contradictions will happen in the best-regulated families, and all perplexed parents can do is to keep up a steadfast preaching and practicing in the hope that it will bear fruit sometime, for according ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... now came back, and in a cart followed the show and the ape—a big one, without a tail and with buttocks as bare as felt, but not vicious-looking. As soon as Don Quixote saw him, he asked him, "Can you tell me, sir fortune-teller, what fish do we catch, and how will it be with us? See, here are my two reals," and he bade Sancho give them to Master Pedro; but he answered for the ape and said, "Senor, this animal does not give any answer or information ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... however, that at some time the marshy ground in the forum gave way, as ground often does, and that there was difficulty in filling up the chasm. A grand opportunity was thus offered for a good story-teller to build up a romance, or to touch up the early history with an interesting tale of heroism. The temptation to do this would have been very ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... all cheques are "open"; and many an Englishman has gone confidently to the bank on which it was drawn with a cheque, the signature to which he knew to be good, and has expected to have the money paid over the counter to him without a word. All that the English paying teller needs to be satisfied of is that the signature of the drawer is genuine and that there is money enough to the credit of the account to meet the cheque. But the Englishman in the strange American bank finds that the document in his hands is practically useless, no matter ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... a series of lectures on surgery for the Society of Naval Practitioners. These lectures proved so interesting and instructive that he was at once invited to give others, and his reputation as a lecturer was soon established. He was a natural orator and story-teller, and he combined with these attractive qualities that of thoroughness and clearness in demonstrations, and although his lectures were two hours long he made them so full of interest that his pupils seldom tired of listening. He believed ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... have founded a modern school, with a lightness of touch and a felicity of expression unparalleled. He was vividly imaginative, and also had the faculty of giving dramatic form and consistency to an incident or story told by another. He was a story-teller, equally dexterous in prose or verse. His taste was unerring and he sought for perfect form. His atmosphere was breezy and healthful—out of doors with the fragrance of the pine-clad Sierras. He was never morbid and introspective. His ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... story-teller, who thought she was making a great impression—"then the sorrow came. As soon as his family knew, they were grievously angry, furiously wrathful, because she had no dot; and when she heard of their fury and wrath she nobly refused to marry him ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... daughters-in-law. In this position his duty would be partly to perform various humble work in the household, partly also to help amuse the leisure of the inmates, and it is easy to suppose that he soon won favor as a fluent story-teller. He early became acquainted with the seamy as well as the brilliant side of courtly life; for in 1359 he was in the campaign in France and was taken prisoner. That he was already valued appears from the king's subscription of the equivalent of a thousand dollars of present-day money toward ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... at a young man when he was telling in low whispers how he hoped to make the world wiser and better by his presence in it, or when he narrated some incident of great danger in which he took part, where (unconsciously, perhaps, on the teller's part) his own heroism was shown forth to the best possible advantage. Then Bessie's eyes would grow large and humid and tender, and a subdued light would come into them as she hung breathlessly on his words. Did not Desdemona capture Othello merely by listening to a recital of his own ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... bringing to the receiving teller's window their day's offerings, Mr. Montgomery took his stand at the paying teller's window,—a part of his usual routine,—to relieve the pressure incident to the closing hour, one teller at other times being quite ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... especially afflicted was the confluence of the Croton and the Hudson, for the Kitchawan burying-ground was here, and the red people being disturbed by the tramping of white men over their graves, "the walking sachems of Teller's Point" were nightly to be met on their ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... children!" said the story-teller, "do you indeed desire amusement by the words of my lips? Then shut your mouths, that the noise you make may be abated, and I may hear myself speak; and open your ears, that you may be entertained by the tales that I shall tell you. ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... range of possibilities; it had only been his charming office to project upon that wide field of the artist's vision—which hangs there ever in place like the white sheet suspended for the figures of a child's magic-lantern—a more fantastic and more moveable shadow.) No privilege of the teller of tales and the handler of puppets is more delightful, or has more of the suspense and the thrill of a game of difficulty breathlessly played, than just this business of looking for the unseen and the occult, in a scheme half-grasped, by the light or, so to speak, by the clinging scent, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... morning till evening he was in the village, among the boats beside the little pier, or in the fields, when the men worked there. Everyone petted and loved him, from Father Moran, the priest who had started the national school, down to old Shamus, the crippled singer of interminable Irish songs and teller of heroic legends of the past. It was when he heard the boy repeat a story of Finn MacCool to the old crone in the kitchen that Mr. Conneally awoke to the idea that he must educate his son. He began, naturally enough, with Irish, for it was Irish, and not ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... speaking. I am grown weary of my Taciturnity, and having served my Country many Years under the Title of the dumb Doctor, I shall now prophesie by Word of Mouth, and (as Mr. Lee says of the Magpie, who you know was a great Fortune-teller among the Ancients) chatter Futurity. I have hitherto chosen to receive Questions and return Answers in Writing, that I might avoid the Tediousness and Trouble of Debates, my Querists being generally ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele |
