"Ballroom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... down upon the brilliant throng with impatience. It seemed to him that he had been doing this all his life. The novelty of the experience had long since ceased to divert him. It was all just like the second act of an old-fashioned musical comedy (Act Two: The Ballroom, Grantchester Towers: One Week Later)—a resemblance which was heightened for him by the fact that the band had more than once played dead and buried melodies of his own composition, of which he had wearied a full eighteen ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... a change pass in Jeff's look from embarrassment to surprise and then to flattered intelligence. He beamed all over; and he went away with Bessie toward the ballroom, and left Westover to a wholly unsupported belief that she had not been engaged to dance with Jeff. He wondered what her reckless meaning could be, but he had always thought her a young lady singularly fitted ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the drawing-room that led to the ballroom, she saw Lady Marion in her usual calm, regal attitude, receiving her guests. The queen of blondes looked more than lovely; her dress was of rich white lace over pale blue silk, with blue forget-me-nots in her hair. Leone had one moment's hard fight with herself ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... pleading. Eloquently the tones fell upon her ears. At length the hopeless apathy in her eyes gave place to interest, then animation, and finally to a degree of agitation but ill-concealed from the suspicious watcher. They were standing on a low balcony just outside the ballroom. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... and did not rate highly his power of attraction for the opposite sex. Therefore, he thought it not unlikely that the girl might consider him as a desirable enough acquaintance for the forest but a bore in a ballroom. In this ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... equally naturally I was ashamed to refuse. It would, I know, seem super-sentimental to them. So I reluctantly followed them out. They stood in a group about me—these men who had been in battles, come out safely, and were again advancing to the firing line as smilingly as one would go into a ballroom—while I pointed out the towns and answered their questions, and no one was calmer or more keenly interested than the Breton priest, in his long soutane with the red cross on his arm. All the time the cannon was booming in the northeast, but they paid no more attention ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... my court to his beautiful wife," said the minister, sauntering into the ballroom, to which his fine person and graceful manners were much better adapted than was his genius to the cabinet or his eloquence ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the dance the Princess Malio, stiff, thin, and sour, and the old Duchess Scorpa, stolid, ugly, and squat, sat together in a corner of the ballroom—that is to say, the picture ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... bring the debut of his cousin Nathalie? She, light of his dreams, no longer to be shut away from his eyes, or voice, or even—speak of it reverently!—arms, perhaps—stood where he had stood a year before: on the threshold of the ballroom of youth. The world was to know her well; for her mother, always advocate of the dernier cri de la mode, had decided, months before, that she, like a dozen ladies of the highest Russian world, would adopt, for her daughter, the English fashion; ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... we pick from the best of the throng In the ballroom of Life and go lilting along; We follow our fancy, and choose as we will, For waltz or for tango or merry quadrille; But ever one partner is waiting us all At the end of the programme, ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... drifted into another channel, and all sorts of topics were discussed, from racing to the latest feminine fashions, from ballroom dances to the merits and demerits ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... know about that," she answered. Eventually she took off the ballroom episode with considerable feeling, forgetting, as she got deeper in the scene, all about Drouet, and letting herself rise to a fine ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... the eternal world, to delay repentance no longer. Will you, then, be so mad as to turn a deaf ear to this call? Will you ever take another sip from the cup of unhallowed pleasure? Will you ever direct your little feet to the ballroom, or other places of sinful amusement? Will you hereafter prefer your worldly joys to Christ? O, you must not, you must not. It will not do for you to be lost. Who, O who can lie down in everlasting burnings? Who can dwell for ever with ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... sconces. The great carriage-room became a refectory, with Jacobean and old monastery chairs, and the vast loft overhead, reached by a narrow staircase that clung to the wall, was railed on its exposed side, waxed as to floor, hung with lanterns, and became a ballroom. ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... belief that love is the basis of courtesy. "We must obtain that, if we can; but by all means we must affirm this. Life owes much of its spirit to these sharp contrasts. Fashion which affects to be honor, is often, in all men's experience, only a ballroom code. Yet, so long as it is the highest circle, in the imagination of the best heads on the planet, there is something necessary and excellent in it; for it is not to be supposed that men have ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... ravished with the melody of birds. You shall wander in that garden as much as you choose, and when you are tired, you shall repose in a shady arbor, and dream of love and its thousand blisses. In the winter season, like this, the opera, the ballroom, the theatre, shall minister to your pleasure; and in those places, none shall surpass you in splendor of dress or magnificence of jewels. Say, belissima, will you give me your love in ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... and plate-glass, for instance; and if those lumbering bookshelves and horrid old chimney-pieces were removed and the ceiling painted white and gold like that in my uncle's saloon, and a rich, lively paper, instead of the tapestry, it would really make a very fine ballroom." ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... more tilts, and a combat of two-handed swords, which finished the outdoor amusements of the day, and, when the deluged guests found their way to the Banqueting Hall, they found that, and its sister tent, the Ballroom, utterly untenantable through the rain; so they had to improvise a meal within the Castle, and the ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... breeches and high black boots, their heads swathed in gaudy loongies (turbans) with tails streaming down their backs, holding steel-headed bamboo lances with red and white pennons in their white-gauntleted right hands—lined the approach. Inside, the splendid ballroom, ablaze with electric lights, was crowded with gaily-dressed figures in costumes beautiful or bizarre. The good-looking, middle-aged baron who was the King's representative in the Bombay Presidency was standing, dressed as Charles II., beside his plain but pleasant-featured wife in the garb ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... I saw the laughter leave Dorothy's face, and caught her eyes upon; me with such a look as set my beast throbbing. They would not meet my own, but would turn away instantly. I was heavy indeed that night, and did not follow the company into the ballroom, but made ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... I agree with you about the tiresomeness of balls. I think it must be old age approaching, but I can't see any use in going off at the hour when, under happier circumstances, I would be thinking of bed, to a hot, crowded ballroom; and just at present Calcutta is simply congested with balls. I don't like things that cost a lot; simple little pleasures please me much more. To drive out to Tollygunge of an afternoon, have tea and a game of croquet, look at the picture papers, and come quietly home again, is ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... handkerchiefs, as if ashamed to show them, the brown officers alone venturing to show their own hair. Presently a military band struck up with a sudden crash in the inner—room, and the large folding doors being thrown open, the ballroom lay before us, in the centre of which stood the President, surrounded by his very splendid staff, with his daughter on his arm. He was dressed in a plain blue uniform, with gold epaulets, and acquitted himself extremely well, conversing ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... forward, and handed the tin case to the executive officer as gracefully as though he had been figuring in a ballroom. Captain Sawlock had followed the officers over from the port side. He appeared to be confounded, and listened in silence to the explanation of Mr. Gilfleur. But he looked ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... the rims. I thought of these great American canyons as I looked down into the Bromo Sand Sea. By noon this was a great ten-mile long valley of silver sand which glittered in the sunlight like a great silver carpeted ballroom floor. Tourists from all over the world have thrilled to its strange beauty. Like the gown of some great and ancient queen this silver cloth lies there; or like some great silver rug of Oriental weaving it carpeted that ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... a Healthful Art Dance-Giving No Longer a Luxury The Debut Dance Costume Balls Subscription Dances The Ballroom Music at the Dance Dance Programs Dinner Dances Dressing Rooms The Dance When the Lady is Asked to Dance "Cutting In" Dancing Positions When the Guest Does Not Dance Public Dances A Plea for Dancing The Charm of Dress in Dancing At the Afternoon Dance Gentlemen at ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... of the rooms, and the blaze of pure white light from the uncurtained ballroom windows spread into the street, and the musicians passed in with their instruments. Then, after a short pause, the carriages of a few intimate friends, who came early at the hostess's express desire, began to drive up, and the Hansom cabs of the contemporaries ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... of the Grand Babylon was built for a ballroom. A balcony, supported by arches faced with gilt and lapis-lazulo, ran around it, and from this vantage men and maidens and chaperons who could not or would not dance might survey the scene. Everyone knew this, and most people took advantage of it. What everyone did not know—what no one knew—was ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... at this hour is like a ballroom, isn't it?" Owen said. "I want to get some cigars." And they turned into a celebrated store, where half a dozen assistants were busily engaged in tying up parcels of five hundred or a thousand cigars, or displaying neatly-made paper ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... The decks were not a pleasant point of vantage, however, even for the most enthusiastic admirer of nature, as a big wave would now and then break over the forward part of the vessel, drenching everything and everybody within reach and making the decks as slippery as a well-waxed ballroom. ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... heard that some robbers prepare themselves for all sorts of emergencies. Only last week I was reading about a fellow who went to a ball, and between the dances went out and robbed a gentleman on the street of his watch. When he was arrested, he tried to prove that he hadn't been outside of the ballroom all night, and it was by the merest accident that the authorities found ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... At the dance, the two girls, attended up the stairway to the ballroom by a chattering covey of black-coats, made a sensational entrance to a gallant fanfare of music, an effect which may have been timed to the premonitory tuning of instruments heard during the ascent; at all events, it was a great success; and Cora, standing revealed under the wide gilt archway, might ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... stairs afforded precarious access, a condition which may have been regarded as a protection, but more likely it was due to laziness and want of care. However that may have been, the interior was surprisingly substantial, with an excellent floor like that in a ballroom. I slept in a detached ramshackle room used as a kitchen, comfortable because of ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... two distinct sets of species. In the water, among the leaves, little shining whirlwigs wheel round and round, fifty joining in the dance, till, at the slightest alarm, they whirl away to some safer ballroom, and renew the merriment. On every floating log, as we approach it, there is a convention of turtles, sitting in calm debate, like mailed barons, till, as we approach, they plump into the water, and paddle away for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... rifles and revolvers, more amazed than ever! I was told it made a great impression on the natives, his sleeping alone in the garden, without so much as a sentry. And the cream of it is," she added—her eyes on Elton's unheroic figure—"the man who could do that is terrified of walking across a ballroom or saying polite things to ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... packed moving mass, in whose midst dancing was little more than a promenade under difficulties, and stood aside in an alcove that opened off the ballroom. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... the cafe, and fiacres were called to take them to the house where the mask was held. The women were placed in their respective carriages, but the men walked. At the door of the house, as they entered the ballroom, they reunited, but again were soon scattered. Robert Kater wandered about, searching here and there for his very elusive Laura, so slim and elegant in her white and gold draperies, who seemed to be greatly in demand. He saw many whom he recognized; some by their carriage, some by their ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... simply incomparable," she found herself soliloquizing. "Just give her that dress, put a white flower in her hair and set her down in a ballroom, or in the dress circle of a theatre, and she would set the whole place astir. ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... rooms at Montaueto I studiously avoided. The forlorn cavern of a parlor, or ballroom, I remember to have seen only once. There was a painful vacuum where good spirits ought to have been. Along the walls were fixed seats, like those in the apse of some morally fallen cathedral, and they were covered with blue threadbare magnificence that told the secrets of vanity. ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... were using their opera-glasses upon them with undisguised curiosity. There was much gossip, some laughter, and a good deal of gesticulation. The atmosphere was one of light spirits, approaching gaiety, the atmosphere of the theatre or the ballroom. ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... winter suit with the weight of the outer garments which he wears to business, and if you are yourself a man you will wonder why she doesn't freeze stiff when the thermometer falls to the twenty-above mark. Observe her in a ballroom that is overheated in the corners and draughty near the windows, as all ballrooms are. Her neck and her throat, her bosom and arms are bare. Her frock is of the filmiest gossamer stuff; her slippers are paper thin, her stockings the ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... or watch for the jelly-fish and the nautilus over the side, and the shark, the whale, and other strange monsters of the deep; and at night they were to dance in the open air, on the upper deck, in the midst of a ballroom that stretched from horizon to horizon, and was domed by the bending heavens and lighted by no meaner lamps than the stars and the magnificent moon—dance, and promenade, and smoke, and sing, and make love, and search the skies ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the party, not having had their usual allowance of wine after their early dinner, remained at the supper table over a bowl of punch, which had been provided in ample quantity, and, in the intervals of dancing, circulated, amongst other refreshments, round the sides of the ballroom, where it was gratefully accepted by the gentlemen, and not absolutely disregarded even by the young ladies. This may be conceded on occasion, without admitting Goldoni's facetious position, that a woman, ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... and fortunes where he goes. He has not the trouble of earning or owning them; they solicit him to enter and possess. We send girls of a timid, retreating disposition to the boarding-school, to the riding-school, to the ballroom, or wheresoever they can come into acquaintance and nearness of leading persons of their own sex; where they might learn address, and see it near at hand. The power of a woman of fashion to lead, and also to daunt and repel, derives from their belief that she knows resources and behaviors not known ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... in the doorway of a ballroom, he had closed his ears so as to exclude all sound of the music, and then had seriously doubted the sanity of the men and women he saw madly jumping about. He felt almost ashamed afterwards when he had to ask the no longer youthful Frau Lischke for a dance; but the fat ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... the Colonel, limping a little, entered the ballroom he leaned upon Beverley's strong young arm, while on the other side was Mrs. Fortescue, always particularly radiant in evening dress. Broussard and Anita walked behind them. The news, as rashly announced by the After-Clap, that Mr. Broussard had kissed Anita, ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... with a victim-like look, half strode, half sidled towards Mrs. Hilson, and putting his elbow in her face by way of an invitation, led her to the quadrille. The contrast between these two couples, placed opposite to each other, was striking, and yet common enough in a mixed ballroom. Captain Kockney was desperately nonchalant, his partner full of airs and graces; their conversation was silly, ignorant, and conceited, beyond the reach of imagination—such things must be heard to be believed. Young Van Horne was clever, and appeared ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... grotesque interruptions imaginable. At a sort of country hotel much frequented by driving parties and sleighing parties, a company of players were "strapped,"—to use the theatrical term, stranded,—unable either to pay their bills or to move on. There was a ballroom in the house, and the proprietor allowed them to erect a temporary stage there and give a performance, the guests in the house promising ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... morning till night in the company of the beloved one, to meet her hand at the table, to touch her dress in a narrow corridor, to feel her leaning on his arm when they entered a salon or left a ballroom, always to have ceaselessly to control every word, look, or movement which might betray his feelings, no human power ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... complete. The whole room—host, guests, musicians, even waiters—one and all were literally dumbfounded at the extraordinary beauty of her face and costume, to say nothing of her jewels. Such an entrancing spectacle was without parallel in a ballroom in Innsbruck; and when she left, before the entertainment was over, all the life, the light, the gaiety went ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... entirely of reception-rooms, which were so arranged as to have the large ballroom in the middle, with salons at the side. In one of these rooms the family generally dined on Sunday, or when they had guests, and it was the small salon at the north-west corner, looking over the building-yard and the sea, in which the dinner was ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... suggestiveness as great as that of an Homeric epithet. Thus our familiar Cat and Mouse appears in modern Greece as Lamb and Wolf; and the French version of Spin the Platter is My Lady's Toilet, concerned with laces, jewels, and other ballroom accessories instead of our prosaic numbering of players. These changes that a game takes on in different environments are of the very essence of folklore, and some amusing examples are to be found in ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... with the Princess Victoria at a court ball in London at the age of twenty-two, to the end of his interesting and eventful life, he was known as "Prince John." His remarkable gifts opened the door to all that was ultra as well as noble. He led in the ballroom, he presided at dinners, he graced every forum, and he moved in the highest social circles. Men marvelled at his knowledge, at his unfailing equanimity, and at his political strength; but even to those ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... great affluence and independence, but made use of her privileges of fortune chiefly to secure to herself the command of her own time. She had been long ago tired and disgusted with the dull and fulsome uniformity and parade of the play-house and ballroom. Formal visits were endured as mortifications and penances, by which the delights of privacy and friendly intercourse were by contrast increased. Music she loved, but never sought it in places of public resort, or from the skill of mercenary ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... waited, our muscles involuntarily straining, as if to help the boat along; but the sail flapped idly: we might as well have tried to sail on the waxed floor of a ballroom with the windows shut. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... else. When my old friend William Woodall, M.P. for Stoke (Governor-General of the Ordnance in Mr. Gladstone's Government 1885), gave at St. Anne's Mansions his famous "Sandwich Soirees" to his friends, the spacious ballroom on the ground floor packed with his many friends—a characteristic, polyglot gathering of Ministers and Parliamentarians of all kinds, musicians, dramatists, authors, artists, actors, and journalists, who sang, recited, and gave a gratuitous entertainment ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... stood against the wall, unconscious of the curious glances directed towards him, the music ceased, and the dancers came pouring out of the ballroom to ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... Generally speaking, I think the ball-rooms of continental cities are the curses and abominations of the Sunday. My landlord, who was no moralist, but played faro, draughts, and billiards on the Sunday evening, would not hear of his daughter attending a public ballroom. There is a curious anomaly in connection with places of public entertainment which strikes a stranger at once, and which is equally true of Berlin as of Vienna; it is this: that, while private houses are closed at nine and ten o'clock, according to the season of the year, coffee-houses, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... Captain Gronow in 1814 says: "At the present time one can hardly conceive the importance which was attached to getting admission to Almack's, the seventh heaven of the fashionable world." The large ballroom was about 100 feet in length by 40 in width, and the largest number of persons present at one time was 1,700. It is often mentioned in the contemporary fiction dealing with fashionable society; indeed, the whole of this neighbourhood was the theatre for much of the gay life of ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... over and over again that till he got this man he could never tell how long it would take to unload a ship. That is bad for progress. You have seen him pass by after his labours on his famous horse to dazzle the girls in some ballroom with an earthen floor. He is a fortunate fellow! His work is an exercise of personal powers; his leisure is spent in receiving the marks of extraordinary adulation. And he likes it, too. Can anybody be more fortunate? To be ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Utah. On the maps and on the roads, and for them that have not awoke to the new light, it's called the Great Salt Lake City; but for us favoured saints, it's New Jerusalem. It's Zion—it's Paradise—it's anything beautiful you may like to call it. There's a ballroom ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the ballroom she was confiscated, and he had a miserable quarter of an hour watching her whirl from one masculine arm to another. For the first time dancing struck him as pernicious. He declared that the clergy had ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... forget his look when I accosted him on the threshold of the big new ballroom. With celibate egoism I had rather fancied he would be gratified by my departure from custom; but one glance showed me my mistake. He smiled warmly, indeed, and threw into his hand-clasp an artificial energy of welcome—"You of all people—my dear fellow! Have you seen Daisy?"—but ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... so fashionable in New York) a little shallow and unconvincing, she never showed it. Handsome and serene, a trifle more matronly than women of her age appear to-day, perhaps, but none the less admired for it, she moved through her duties of household, nursery, ballroom and salon, omitting nothing, excelling ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... words came hoarsely forth on to the night air, clang, clang, clang, burst out the tocsin of the alarm bell, silencing the music in the ballroom and sending an electric thrill through every listener within the precincts of the castle; but ere the great bell had sent forth a score of vibrating notes which came quivering through the darkness and echoing from every wall, the clattering of hoofs began in obedience ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... a lark! There were over a hundred people—both old and young, and even then the ballroom—oh, yes, the Gerards have a ballroom—looked half empty. We danced from ten o'clock until four in the morning, and went for a picnic the next ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... bevy of vestals in white habits, making tea; in the next, a drapery of sarcenet, that with a very funereal air crossed the chimney, and depended in vast festoons over the sconces. The third chamber's doors were heightened with candles in gilt vases, and the ballroom was formed into an oval with benches above each other, not unlike pews, and covered with red serge, above which were arbours of flowers, red and green pilasters, more sarcenet, and Lord March's glasses, which he had lent, as an upholsterer asked Lord Stanley 300l. for ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... and the front door stood open to the cool of the summer night. From the ballroom came the swaying lilt of the music and the beat of the dancers' feet. Ethne drew a breath of relief at her reprieve from her duties, and then dropping her partner's arm, crossed ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... timid smile. "I only put it on just before you came. It's the one I used to wear in the ballroom scene in 'Gay Times in 'Frisco.' You don't know it, I know. I thought I would wear it tonight, and then," she suddenly grasped his hand, "you'll let me put all these things away forever! Won't you, Josh? I've seen such nice pretty calico at the store to-day, ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... was really very much in love, and very serious in his desire to be married in quite the ordinary way. With a rather lack-lustre eye he noticed the amusement of his friends at his last vagary; but when Winifred Ames entered the ballroom a nervous vivacity shook him, as it has shaken ploughmen under similar conditions, and for just a moment he felt ill at ease in the lonely lunacy of his flowered waistcoat and olive-green knee-breeches. He danced with her, then took her to a scarlet nook, apparently devised ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... like my friendship with her nephew. When they first came to Washington, the Arnolds lived at the National Hotel, but last year Mr. Arnold bought a vacant lot on our street, and has built a large double house with a ballroom, if you please. I believe Mrs. Arnold is to give her house-warming some time soon. It was she who made the original remark about having a 'spinal staircase in the back,' and Doctor Boyd told her it was quite the proper place ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... valley of the Mississippi. No military procession would have heralded his way through crowded streets, thickset with the banner and the plume, the glittering saber and the polished bayonet. No cities would have called forth beauty and fashion, wealth and rank, to honor him in the ballroom and theater. No states would have escorted him from boundary to boundary, nor have sent their chief magistrate to do him homage. No national liberality would have allotted to him a nobleman's domain and princely ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... peasant. All her life she had danced with the Bannisters and the Beauforts. Yet she had never been invited to the big balls. When the Merriweathers gave their Harvest Dance, Mary and her mother would go over and help bake the cakes, and at night they would sit in the gallery of the great ballroom and watch the dancers, but Mary would not be asked out ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... the afternoon of the festal day, and Nola sighed happily as she stood with Frances in the ballroom, surveying the perfection of every detail. Money could do things away off there in that corner of the world as well as it could do them in Omaha or elsewhere. Saul Chadron had hothouses in which even oranges and ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... inventor to Long Island. It's called the Gull Glide. But Jack did too much last week, teaching Patsey to drive her giant Grayles-Grice, and he says if he danced anything it would have to be the Shamblers' Shake. I wouldn't put my nose inside the ballroom without him; vowed I'd be bored stiff. The Goodrich girls' mother is chaperoning her brood and Pat. I made Jack "seek his bed," as the French say, but I'm on the balcony of our private sitting-room, in the moonlight, writing by an ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... individuals was once the most trivial, and vice versa. The plebeian, who is called to-day the man-in-the-street, can never see and understand the significance of the hidden seed of things, which in time must develop or die. A garter dropt in the ballroom of Royalty gives birth to an Order of Knighthood; a movement to reform the spelling of the English language, initiated by one of the presidents of a great Republic, becomes eventually an object of ridicule. Only two instances to illustrate our point, which ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... the glow of her loveliness? It was not that she looked young, he realized while he watched her, but that she looked ageless and immortal, a creature of the spirit. While he gazed at her across the violent whirl of colours in the ballroom, he remembered the evening star shining silver white in the afterglow. Perhaps, who could tell, she may have had the best that life had ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... ball in the evening, to celebrate the event. It was during the winter; the night was very cold, the crowded rooms overheated, the young lady thinly but magnificently clad. She took a chill in leaving the close ballroom for the large, ill-warmed supper-room, and three days after, the hope of these rich people lay insensible on ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... "The Mouse and the Garter," a travesty on Grand Opera in two acts that Clarence Andrews was to produce at the opening of the Waldorf-Astoria ballroom-theater. Many has been the pleasurable moment I have had in examining the old "prompt book" in use during rehearsals, for the company was picked, the scenery modeled, the costumes made and the "fancy," as Allison called it, ready to be staged, when Oscar Hammerstein, who had a contract ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... not yet joined, your Excellency. To-morrow I hope to have that honour,' returned Rallywood and passed on into the gallery beyond. This gallery, opening from the head of the staircase, ran round the great saloon, which served the purpose of a ballroom, and many of the guests were amusing themselves by looking down over the silk-hung ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... once in France, as you may remember, called the Chambre Ardente, the Burning Chamber. It was hung all round with lamps, and hence its name. The burning chamber for the trial of young maidens is the blazing ballroom. What have they full-dressed you, or rather half-dressed you for, do you think? To make you look pretty, of course!—Why have they hung a chandelier above you, flickering all over with flames, so that it searches you like the noonday sun, and your deepest dimple cannot hold a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... and she's eager to be thus described, because she and her mother—even if her mother was once a lady and knew better—are haunted by one perpetual, sickening fear, the fear of being left out. And if you desire to pay correct ballroom compliments, you no longer go to her mother and tell her she's looking every bit as young as her daughter; you go to the daughter and tell her she's looking every bit as old as her mother, for that's what she wishes to do, that's what ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... vast ballroom over the medley of entwined revolving couples, punkahs had been fixed, to clear and freshen the languid air, and these huge fans, moving with incredible slowness, drove a faint refreshing draught down over the sea of white shirt-fronts and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a gallant figure in his new suit galloping on horseback from his highlands down to the village on the flats to attend some rustic diversion. In the tavern ballroom there is a little stage with a curtain hung across it, and on that stage the boy sees the most charming performance he ever beholds. It consists of a regular play, with a ballet between the acts, and a minstrel performance introducing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... schooled her in the simpler forms of ballroom dancing, Delamater suggested a course in the deeper ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... every season are the fashionable marriages, one of which is described for us by Mr. Frederick Locker in his 'St. George's, Hanover Square.' On the subject of the belles of the season I need not dwell. Praed's 'Belle of the Ballroom' was a provincial beauty; but not so, assuredly, was Pope's and Lord Peterborough's Mrs. Howard, Congreve's Miss Temple, Lord Chesterfield's Duchess of Richmond, Fox's Mrs. Crewe, Lord Lytton's La Marquise, Mr. Aide's ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... suddenly and saw him entering the ballroom. He was of commanding height and his face was the face of the man who has been exposed to the forces of Nature. The wind, the waves, the sun, the mosquito had set their mark upon him. Down one side of his cheek was a newly healed scar, a scratch from a hippopotamus in its last ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... green wag, the gentle spring grass, lay strewn about the ballroom floor, and glistened in the warm light that was of one ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... upon a tour of exploration and finding what she desired in the way of a quiet corner returned for Katherine. They passed down flights of steps, through halls, and came to a large corridor that opened upon a gallery which encircled the ballroom, save where it was cleft by a great stairway. As they stood looking over the railing, 'twas like looking down upon an immense concave opal, peopled by the gorgeously apparelled. Myriad tints seeming to assimulate and focus wherever the eyes rested. Gilt bewreathed pillars, mouldings, shimmering ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... custodians no longer welcome you for the sake of your tips, but for the sake of your company. The King, who is with the army, visits Rome only rarely; the Queen occupies a modest villa in the country; the Palace of the Quirinal has been turned into a hospital. The great ballroom, the state dining-room, the throne-room, even the Queen's sun-parlor, are now filled with white cots, hundreds and hundreds of them, each with its bandaged occupant, while in the famous gardens where Popes and Emperors and Kings have strolled, convalescent soldiers now laze in ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... the ballroom like a dazzling fairy thing, all white and gold and glitter. Because she knew that—so to speak—the curtain would ring up for her entrance, and not an instant before, in the fondness of her heart for young officers she had not even delayed long enough to change the dress she ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... broad and spacious grounds festooned lights hung from tree to tree; here and there little rose-scented bowers for tete-a-tete talks were set; from within, streaming through the windows in regal beauty, came the lights of the vast ballroom, the reception-rooms, and the beautifully designed dining-hall—lately added by young Morris Black, the architect, to Mrs. ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... "To the ballroom we had better, dear, be walking; If we stop down here much longer, really ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the latter, married and known to have been implicated in various intrigues with men of the locality, one day entered one of those fine balls. 'There is a woman of mixed blood here,' she cried haughtily. This rumor ran about the ballroom. In fact, two young quadroon ladies were seen there, who were esteemed for the excellent education which they had received, and much more for their honorable conduct. They were warned and obliged to disappear in haste before a shameless woman, and their society ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... barrel-horses and toboggan slides, fat men who produce tidal waves, and tiny boys who do the heroic as sliders and divers, make fun for the spectators), hunting, fishing, yachting, rowing, riding to hounds, rabbit hunts, pigeon shoot, shooting-galleries, driving, coaching, cards, theatre, ballroom, lectures, minstrels, exhibitions of the Mammoth and Minute from Yosemite with the stereopticon, to Pacific sea-mosses, the ostrich farm, the museum or maze for a morning hour, dressing or undressing for evening ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... cynical smile, he settled his academic cap more firmly on his head and strolled off towards the ballroom. Gervase stood irresolute, his eyes fixed on that wondrous golden figure that floated before his eyes like an aerial vision. Denzil Murray had gone forward to meet the Princess and was now talking to ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... where we had to take quarters in a peasant's house which was occupied by the family and a lot of cows & calves, also several rabbits.—[His word for fleas. Neither fleas nor mosquitoes ever bit him—probably because of his steady use of tobacco.]—The latter had a ball & I was the ballroom; but they were very ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... driving, in the villas in the afternoon, generally finishing at the Pincio, where there was music. All the carriages drew up and the young men came and talked to the women exactly as if they were at the opera or in a ballroom. When we had music or danced at our house, we used to tell some well-known man to say "on danse chez Madame King ce soir." That was all. Paris society is much stiffer, attaches much more importance ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... young Angus in the deserted library later, while the rest was one-stepping in the Henry Quatter ballroom or dance hall. The old man had his arms pretty well upon the boy's shoulders. Yes, sir, he was almost actually hugging him. The boy fled to this gilded cafe where the rest was, and old Angus, with his eyes shining ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... accused iv embezzlemint, but th' charges niver reached his ears or th' public's ontil eight years afther his death. * * * In 67' his foster brother, that he had neglected in Kansas City, slipped on his ballroom flure an' broke his leg. * * * In '70 his wife died afther torturin' him f'r fifty years. They were a singularly badly mated couple, with a fam'ly iv fourteen childher, but he did not live long to enjoy his happiness. F'r some reason he niver left his house, but passed away within ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... feet, the strains of a string-band in the distance, and, piercing all, the clear, high notes of a flute, filled the spring night with wonderful sound. Lady Blythebury had turned her husband's house into a fairy palace of delight. She stood in the doorway of the ballroom, her florid face beaming above her Elizabethan ruffles, looking in upon the gay and ever-shifting scene which she had called ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... voice. She cut me short by rising from her seat; I felt that she was both angry and alarmed. Fisher, of Philadelphia, jostling right and left in his haste, made his way toward her. She fairly snatched his arm, clung to it with a warmth I had never seen expressed in a ballroom, and began to whisper in his ear. It was not five minutes before he came to me, alone, with a very stern face, ...
— Who Was She? - From "The Atlantic Monthly" for September, 1874 • Bayard Taylor
... not think I shall learn easily," Karen said, smiling from him to Betty. "I do not think I should do you credit in a ballroom. But I ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Wren, as the captain unclasped his saber belt and turned it over to Mickel, his German "striker." She would have proceeded further, but he held up a warning hand. He had come homeward angering and ill at ease. Disliking Blakely from the first, a "ballroom soldier," as he called him, and alienated from him later, he had heard still further whisperings of the devotions of a chieftain's daughter at the agency, above all, of the strange infatuation of the major's wife, and these had warranted, in his opinion, ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... me his arm, and in this fashion we entered the ballroom. A bride of the Saturday weddings in the Bois de Boulogne could not have looked more foolish than I felt. A valse was being played; the room was full of light and color, all the officers of the Yeomanry in their pretty uniforms (Augustus puffed ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... aspect, and his short, fairish, curly hair was ruffled as though he had been running his fingers through it. Accompanying him was a small black dog with a large stone in its mouth, which came into the ballroom and sat down. Gay gave one look at the pair of them, and the colour went out of her face. There was more than a glint of passion in the eyes she turned to Tyron, who was smiling ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... ballroom was utterly lost on Craig. "Think of all the houses only half guarded about here to-night," he mused, as we joined Armand and McNeill on the end of the dock. I could not help noting that that was the only idea which the gay, variegated, sparkling tango ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... safe: they had but a few steps to take to be on the staircase and then in the garden, but suddenly a falling beam separated mother and child, and the staircase broke down beneath the weight of the struggling crowd. Missing her daughter, the courageous princess plunged once more into the ballroom. No one knew what had become of her; in the cruel, heart-wringing uncertainty the stern face of the Ambassador was wet ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand |
