"Showman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... everyone will wonder at its folly. If only I could talk the matter over, in a friendly spirit, with mother, but she won't let me. Ah! if it were not that one is born with feelings and energies and ambitions of one's own, parents might treat one as a showman treats his marionettes, and we should all be charmed to lie prone on our backs, or to dance as may be convenient to our creators. But, as it is, the life of a marionette—however affectionate the wire-pullers—does become monotonous after ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... vacant guesses were made as the showman held it aloft. Then with a conjuror's gesture he suddenly placed his thumbs within the rim, released the spring and extended the hat. The assembly ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... out came the showman. He was very big, and so ugly that the sight of him was enough to frighten anyone. His beard was as black as ink, and so long that it reached from his chin to the ground. I need only say that he trod upon ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... wasn't in, but her father and mother were; and when he met her afterwards he told her that he had just come from a show where he had seen a curious monster advertised for exhibition—the offspring of a hare and a salmon. The monster was not to be seen at the moment, but the showman said here was monsieur the ...
— Five O'Clock Tea - Farce • W. D. Howells
... this faculty in a large degree, and one of his best political satires, the "Political Showman at Home," is entirely made out of quotations from older authors applicable to the real or fancied characteristics of the politicians ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... other people going in the same direction, for my landlady had given no exaggerated account of the curiosity which it had excited. Jacques Chacot evidently possessed the talent of a showman. He had enlarged the front of his cottage so as to form a sort of theatre, the inner part serving as a stage. We found him standing at the door with a couple of stout young fellows, his sons, ready to receive visitors, for he allowed no one to go in until he had obtained payment. A strong bar was ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... thinking this good advice, made arrangements with a showman, and set up an exhibition. The noise of the kettle's performances soon spread abroad, until even the princes of the land sent to order the tinker to come to them; and he grew rich beyond all expectations. Even the princesses, too, and the great ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... have domesticated themselves among the barbarous tribes of the Pacific. Jack, who has long been accustomed to the long-bow, and to spin tough yarns on the ship's forecastle, invariably officiates as showman of the island on which he has settled, and having mastered a few dozen words of the language, is supposed to know all about the people who speak it. A natural desire to make himself of consequence in the eyes of the strangers, prompts him to ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... write of painters for some of whom I acted showman so long at the Carfax Gallery. I confess that when I heard they were going to Bond Street my pangs were akin to those of the owner of a small country circus on learning that his troupe of performing dogs had been engaged by Mr. Imre Kiralfy or the Hippodrome. ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... used up. If they have old engines of terror or torment, they may fall to pieces from mere rust, like an old coat of armour. But in the case of the Prussian tyranny, if it be tyranny at all, it is the whole point of its claim that it is not antiquated, but just going to begin, like the showman. Prussia has a whole thriving factory of thumbscrews, a whole humming workshop of wheels and racks, of the newest and neatest pattern, with which to win back Europe to the Reaction ... infandum ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... spiral, inclining to whites and greens, becoming brilliantly effective upon the dark facial backgrounds of Herman and Verman; while the countenances of Sam and Penrod were each supplied with the black moustache and imperial, lacking which, no professional showman can be ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... Auld Licht young men came into the square dressed and washed to look at the young women errand-going, and to laugh some time afterward to each other, it presented a glare of light; and here even came the cheap jacks and the Fair Circassian, and the showman, who, besides playing "The Mountain Maid and the Shepherd's Bride," exhibited part of the tall of Balaam's ass, the helm of Noah's ark, and the tartan plaid in which Flora McDonald wrapped Prince Charlie. More select entertainment, such as Shuffle Kitty's wax-work, whose motto was, "A rag ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... He dared not drop back to set fire to the base of the heap. But even in the exhaustion and strain of the moment Jerry Foster still knew the value of the showman's tricks in reaching the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... swinging puppets of the Oscans were gradually confined within a portable box, and danced or gesticulated upon a miniature stage. Their dumb-show was relieved by the extemporary jests and songs of the showman, until at length, one propitious morning, some Homer or Shakspeare of the streets conceived the sublime idea of embodying these scattered rays of satire and jest in the portly ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... will not be disappointed there, friend. So do your best to get up to the Moon, with my story for travelling companion and showman ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... with his broad shoulders towering above the average man, his genial smile and jovial manners, he was the typical free, big-hearted westerner of the eastern imagination. And he liked the role; also he played it well. Symes was essentially a poseur. He loved the limelight like a showman. To be foremost, to lead, was essential to his happiness. He demanded satellites and more satellites. His love of prominence amounted to a passion. Sycophancy was as acceptable as real regard, since each catered to ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... swayed about, listless, apparently indifferent to any effect she might be producing, Hanson had a full opportunity to study her, and, in that concentrated attention, the man and the manager were fused. He was at once the cynical showman discounting every favorable impression and the most critical ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... those days. That he should be fond of history and the sciences was natural enough, but when the Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself, appeared, and he sat up nights to absorb it, and woke early and lighted the lamp to follow the career of the great showman, she was at a loss to comprehend this particular literary passion, and indeed was rather jealous of it. She did not realize then his vast interest in the study of human nature, or that such a book contained what Mr. Howells calls "the root of the human matter," ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... joined in the wiry old lady, bobbing up and down like a miniature figure moved by the unseen hand of the showman. "Allow me, sir!" And she gravely tendered him a huge snuff-box of tortoise shell, which he declined; ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... his eyes upon Ferret, he proceeded: "An't you a limb of the law, friend?—No, I cry you mercy, you look more like a showman or a conjurer."—Ferret, nettled at this address, answered, "It would be well for you, that I could conjure a little common sense into that numskull of yours." "If I want that commodity," rejoined the squire, "I must go to another ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... pension payments or indirectly through some form of industrial paternalism. Incidentally, a profuse public expenditure is condoned where not actually encouraged. Jeffersonian simplicity is preached; extravagance is practised. As the New York showman long since shrewdly observed: "The American people love to ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... the Worcester Festival (Be quiet, Marcella; if it isn't that, it's something near it); that she teaches the stable boys and the laundry maids old English dances, and the pas de quatre once a fortnight, and acts showman to her own pictures for the benefit of the neighbourhood once a week? I came once to see how she did it, but I found her and the Gairsley ironmonger measuring the ears of the Holbeins—it seems ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I was dining at Gresham Gardens about a fortnight ago, and Jacobi told me in the course of conversation that his sister had never been to Oxford, and that they meant to run down for a day or two, and that a friend of theirs had offered to be showman and pilot them about ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... morning passes into mid-day, amid a hundred sounds symbolical of the various phases of life in the Western capital,—the shout of the driver, the twang of the cotton-cleaner, the warning call of the anxious mother, the rattle of the showman's drum, the yell of the devotee, the curse of the cartman, the clang of the coppersmith, the chaffering of buyer and seller and the wail of the mourner. And above all the roar of life broods the echo of the call to prayer in honour of Allah, ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... upon neither criticism nor comment, whose role throughout all these pages is but that of a showman, although I trust one not altogether devoid of insight into the matter ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... more or less spite, on the sudden friendship between their first selectman and Hiram Look, since Look—once owner of a road circus—had retired from the road, had married his old love, and had settled down on the Snell farm. Considering the fact that the selectman and showman had bristled at each other like game-cocks the first time they met, Smyrna wondered at the sudden effusion of affection that now kept them trotting back and forth on almost ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... must go back, begin lower, and give years to training, education, and hard work. She can labor ten years for the sake of living five. As for her support, it was of the sort afforded by John T., the showman, and very funny. Mrs. Germon, God bless her! was properly funny. She is the best old woman on end ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... course, not very easy to sketch undisturbed in the streets of Falaise; and both in the churches and in the castle the showman is perpetually treading on the traveller's heels. Everywhere we turn, in the neighbourhood of the castle, we are reminded of historic deeds of valour, and of deadly fights in the middle ages; and every day that we remain in the town, we are reminded (by the crowds of farmers, horsedealers, ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... for I found even philosophers were not calm in their examination of unpalatable facts. One gentleman who approached the subject with his mind fully made up, accused the lady medium of playing tricks, and me of acting showman on the occasion. As there was no method of shunting this person, I was obliged to break up my sub-committee. To mention spiritualism to these omniscient gentlemen is like shaking a red rag at a bull. As a case in point (though, of course, I do not credit these gentlemen with the assumption ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... decided to leave their case to Judge Jacko, a venerable monkey, who lived in the adjoining shed. Judge Jacko was an African by birth, but in early life he was stolen by a wicked sailor from the land of palms and cocoanuts and sold into slavery to a travelling showman, with whom he wandered over many countries and learned the manners and customs of the people. He was a careful observer of all he saw done, and hence he acquired a great amount of information. Those who would learn rapidly should be careful observers of all that goes on around them; knowledge ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... as my shirt. The little Bainbridges came over; invited to see the armoury, etc., which I stood showman to. It is odd how much less cubbish the English boys are than the Scotch. Well-mannered and sensible are the southern boys. I suppose the sun brings them forward. Here comes six o'clock at night, and it is snowing as if it ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... and buttressed with thick comforter and collar, heedeth not, but goes on his round, now fast, now slow, always stolid and rubicund, the rain running harmlessly from him as if he were oiled. The conductor, perched like the showman's monkey behind, hops and twists, and turns now on one foot and now on the other as if the plate were red-hot; now holds on with one hand, and now dexterously shifts his grasp; now shouts to the crowd and waves his hands towards the pavement, and again looks round the edge of the ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... like a highly prosperous savings-bank. Within the house-boat were gathered a merry party, some of whom were on mere pleasure bent, others of whom had come to listen to a debate, for which the entertainment committee had provided, between the venerable patriarch Noah and the late eminent showman P. T. Barnum. The question to be debated was upon the resolution passed by the committee, that "The Animals of the Antediluvian Period were Far More Attractive for Show Purposes than those of Modern Make," and, singular to relate, ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... business, she took to it so easily; but she was just as smart at school in the winter, and at everything else. Was the life good for her? Yes, why not? Rough company and bad language? They could hear worse talk every day in the street. "Sometimes a feller would come in with too much liquor aboard," the showman admitted, "and would begin to talk his nonsense; but Comstock wouldn't ask nothin' better than to pitch such a feller out, especially if he should sarce the little gals. They were good little gals, and ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Introduction to Pendennis is a letter written from Spa, in which he says, 'They have got a Sunday service here in an extinct gambling-house, and a clerical professor to perform, whom you have to pay just like any other showman who comes.' It does not seem to have occurred to Thackeray that the turning of a gambling-house into a place of prayer is no bad thing of itself, or that you have no more right to expect your religious services to be done for you in a foreign land without ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... But temptation whispered in the ear of a gentleman in tow breeches, and he stealthily opened his long bladed knife and cut a hole in the canvas. A score of others followed suit, and held their sides and laughed at the scenes within. But as they laughed a showman slipped inside, armed with a policeman's "billy." He quietly sidled up to the hole where a peeper's nose made a knot on the tent on the inside. "Whack!" went the "billy"—there was a loud grunt, and old "Tow Breeches" spun 'round like a top, and cut the "pigeon wing," while his nose spouted blood. ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... her opinions: Mistress Dyer also, another of the same crew, was delivered of a large—" [here follows a minute description of a feminine monster that would have made the fortune of any travelling showman, so complexly-horrible was its physiology]. Thus God punished those monstrous "wretches," But the civil authorities of New England, as we know, had punished them too. "God put it into the hearts of the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Miss," declared the showman, and took an end of the bench, leaving the other end invitingly open, but Agnes leaned against the tree trunk and ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... 'tis sorrow's crown of sorrow to remember That this sacrilegious reptile owed me nought but gratitude, For I bought him from a showman twenty years since come November, And I dropped him in the river for his own and ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... Atlantic spirit.) Against the barbarians of the North and the East they pompously set up the heirs of a new Roman Empire.... Words, words, all second-hand. The refuse of the libraries scattered to the winds.—Like all his comrades, young Jeannin went from one showman to another, listened to their patter, was sometimes taken in by it, and entered the booth, only to come out disappointed and rather ashamed of having spent his time and his money in watching old clowns buffooning in shabby rags. And yet, such is youth's power of illusion, such was his certainty ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... called out Dave, in showman style. "The two marvelous lightweights of the United States, Master Hitem Morr and Lamem Lawrence. They will fight to a finish, without gloves, weather permitting. Walk up, tumble up, or crawl up! Admission ten cents, one dime; young ladies ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... giggling and amused Clara Coriander. The amateur gorilla was in a frenzy of delight, and tore up and down his cage, scattering Mr. Jonquil's chestnut curls with savage glee. Old Coriander afterwards had to pay for the wig, of course, but he was so delighted with the stroke of showman genius displayed in its destruction, that he paid the bill without a murmur. None but a wild and savage animal, of course, would "snatch a gentleman bald-headed," as the old man expressed it. I suppose some of my readers, ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... Mr. Barker. He felt drawn to him without knowing why, and he had a presentiment that the American would drag him out of his quiet life into a very different existence. Mr. Barker, on the other hand, possessed the showman's instinct. He had found a creature who, he was sure, had the elements of a tremendous lion about town; and having found him, he meant to capture him and exhibit him in society, and take to himself ever ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... young men in the usual island proportion of the sexes, came out of the cottages, and stood in the lanes talking and laughing, or walked to the edge of the bluff to see the sun go down. We rubbed our eyes. Was this real, or were we looking into some showman's box? It seemed like the Petit Trianon adapted to an island in the Atlantic, with Louis XV. and his marquises playing at fishing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... in the street, enjoying the vagaries of punch with the rest of the crowd, the showman came up to her and solicited a contribution. She was not very ready in answering the demand, when the fellow, taking care to make her understand that he knew who she was, exclaimed, "Ah! it's all over with the drama, if we don't encourage ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... dolls that jump when the showman pulls the strings," remarked Pillot, as we made our ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... shouts and laughs! . . . How is it possible, so near to the great dead? . . . And there enters a group of tourists, dressed more or less in the approved "smart" style. A guide, with a droll countenance, recites to them the beauties of the place, bellowing at the top of his voice like a showman at a fair. And one of the travellers, stumbling in the sandals which are too large for her small feet, laughs a prolonged, silly little laugh like the clucking of a turkey. ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... I'm coming! I'm coming! I'm coming!" There was a touch of humor in the cry; for it was like the voice of a showman advertising his wares to a pack of holiday-makers anxious to buy; and wherever he went pleasantness reigned, and an element of good temper and considerateness mingled itself with ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... the Carson River. While camping in this vicinity two pelicans sailed around and lighted in the clear lake, beyond reach of rifle-shot. These were the first birds of the kind I had ever seen outside of a showman's cage, and I was determined to have one of them if possible; so, with rifle in hand, I waded out till the water came up under my arms, and, not being able to go any farther, I fired, ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... make out was horses on their hind-legs; and portraits. I think it is nonsense for people to try to paint battles; they can't do it; and, besides, as far as the fighting goes, one fight is just like another. Mr. Dillwyn told me of a travelling showman, in Germany, who travelled about with the panorama of a battle; and every year he gave it a new name, the name of the last battle that was in men's mouths; and all he had to do was to change the uniforms, ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... up marionnettes. Our voice is the voice of the unseen showman, Convention; our very movements of passion and pain are but in answer to his jerk. A man resembles one of those gigantic bundles that one sees in nursemaids' arms. It is very bulky and very long; it looks a mass of delicate lace and ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... about Manuel," said Bob. "We shall all be coming to you to shoot us, if you'll just bind us up as beautifully afterwards. Did you learn that in the shooting galleries too, in case you put the showman's eye out?" ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... something very fundamental indeed about the ancient showman's trick—divert their attention from the thing you're really ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... and gentlemen, but we've been waiting for you!" Jim Baggott began in the voice of a showman. "I'll have to ask you gentlemen to step this way, all of you. It's a real-pressing little matter of business you're all concerned in, and the ladies can come, too, if they feel like it. There'll be ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... whenever recourse is had to show, for the purpose of procuring that belief, it implies a lameness or weakness in the doctrine that is preached. And, in the second place, it is degrading the Almighty into the character of a showman, playing tricks to amuse and make the people stare and wonder. It is also the most equivocal sort of evidence that can be set up; for the belief is not to depend upon the thing called a miracle, but upon the credit of the reporter who says ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... obedience: a soldier is, of all descriptions of men, the most completely a machine; yet his profession inevitably teaches him something of dogmatism, swaggering, and sell-consequence: he is like the puppet of a showman, who, at the very time he is made to strut and swell and display the most farcical airs, we perfectly know cannot assume the most insignificant gesture, advance either to the right or the left, but as he is moved by his exhibitor.'—Godwin's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... far to the westward. There are two large parks, Beardsley, in the extreme north part of the city, and Seaside, west of the harbour entrance and along the Sound; in the latter are statues of Elias Howe, who built a large sewing-machine factory here in 1863, and of P.T. Barnum, the showman, who lived in Bridgeport after 1846 and did much for the city, especially for East Bridgeport. In Seaside Park there is also a soldiers' and sailors' monument, and in the vicinity are many fine ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... significant of this, that there is hardly a hut in the bush where you will not see woodcuts from the Illustrated and Graphic pasted up, and that the pictures most admired at the exhibitions were those which were most dramatic—such as a horse in a stable on fire, and a showman's van broken down in the snow through the death of the donkey which drew it. Next to dramatic pictures, those in which horses, cows, or sheep appeared were most admired, for here the colonist felt himself a competent critic, and was delighted ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... shall see them whenever you like," he answered. "Julius knows all about them. He'll be only too delighted to act showman." ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... jist a lot o' oily tongued wheedlers," was the reply, "an' that wee ferrit-eyed yin is the worst o' them a'. Just wait till he begins to speak, an' you'll think he's a showman. He can fairly pit on the butter, an' he'll send us a' away hame in the belief that we're the finest set o' men he ever met, an' mak' us feel that if we decide to do anything against what he recommends, the hale country will gang ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... you one thing," said the San Reve, "from which you may wring a warning. My father was a showman—a tamer of lions and leopards. When I was twelve, I went into the den with him to hold a hoop while he lashed those big cats through it. Yes, Storri," cried the San Reve, a sudden flame to burst forth in her voice like an oral brightness, and as apparent ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... self, when he was calling your attention to some humorous touch in one of Bewick's tail-pieces, or to some plump figure in a group by his favourite Stothard than when handling a Michael Angelo drawing or an amazing Blake. Yet, had it been his humour, he could have played the showman to Michael Angelo and Blake at least as well as to Bewick, Stothard, or Chodowiecki. But a modesty, marvellously mingled with irony, was of the very essence of his nature. No man expatiated less. He never expounded ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... evening the women of the village come round in a body to see the Ferenghi and his iron horse, and the wearer of the spectacles, the red cap, and blue slippers, takes upon himself the office of showman for the occasion; pointing out, with a good deal of superficial enthusiasm, the peculiar points of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Adeline determined Juan's wedding In her own mind, and that's enough for woman; But then with whom? there was the sage Miss Redding, Miss Raw, Miss Flaw, Miss Showman, and Miss Knowman, And the two fair co-heiresses Giltbedding. She deem'd his merits something more than common. All these were unobjectionable matches, And might go on, if well wound ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... puppet—seek to study The Showman who manipulates the strings, The Hand that paints the western drop-scene ruddy, The prosy truths of all ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson
... squirt charged with ammonia; but Professor Thunder was not thankful, he hadn't time, his magnificent mind was already busy on ways and means of repairing the mischief done to his Missing Link and to his reputation as an honourable showman. ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... birds, were stuck round the room, giving it rather the air of a circus and menagerie. This, however, made it only the more home-like to its present owner, who felt exceedingly rich and respectable as he surveyed his premises; almost like a retired showman who still fondly remembers past successes, though now happy in the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... which is amusingly characteristic of him. He says: "Our author has told us that it was his object to present a series of scenes and characters connected with Scotland in its past and present state, and we must own that his stories are so slightly constructed as to remind us of the showman's thread with which he draws up his pictures and presents them successively to the eye of the spectator.... Against this slovenly indifference we have already remonstrated, and we again enter our protest.... We are the more earnest in this ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... moved swiftly, was by no means noiseless. His progress through the room resembled in almost equal proportions the finish of a Marathon race, the star-act of a professional juggler, and a monologue by an Earl's Court side-showman. Constant acquaintance rendered regular habitues callous to the wonder, but to a stranger the sight of Paul tearing over the difficult between-tables course, his hands loaded with two vast pyramids of dishes, shouting as he went ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... excellence or notoriety in some department of life that may or may not be allied to the platform. If a man makes a remarkable speech, he is very naturally invited to lecture; but he is no more certain to be invited than he who wins a battle. A showman gets his first invitation for the same reason that an author does,—because he is notorious. Nearly all new men in the lecture-field are introduced through the popular desire to see notorious or famous people. A man ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... and charmed the bystanders with the recital of the wonders he had witnessed. The beautiful Angelica now looked out of her window; and, hearing the Devil descant in so pious a tone, she felt an irresistible desire to see the wonders of his box, and to bestow alms upon the devout old showman. The Devil was sent for. Even he was struck by her wondrous beauty, her gentle manners, and her ingenuousness; but he became only so much the more desirous to confuse her senses and entrap her. She placed ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... always on this road," said our A.S.C. driver cheerfully, "but they don't generally begin not till about 4 o'clock," so, as it was then 2.30, we weren't alarmed. They know it is used for transport and troops and often send a few shells on to it. We sat next him and he did showman. Before long we got into the area of ruined houses—and they are a sight! They spell War, and War only—nothing else (but perhaps an earthquake?) could make such awful desolation; in a few of the smaller cottages with a roof ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... early ideas of divine worship; and when, passing from side altar to side altar, I feel that I am only looking at wax figures, they produce no solemnity in me. And when I afterward learned, or thought I learned, that the showman of the strolling museum got his "wax figures" at the same shop, or from the same moulds in which were cast the images of the saints, they call up the ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... be able to speak to people is not all. And in the first stage of my relations with natives I was helped by two things. To begin with, I was the showman of the Casco. She, her fine lines, tall spars, and snowy decks, the crimson fittings of the saloon, and the white, the gilt, and the repeating mirrors of the tiny cabin, brought us a hundred visitors. The men fathomed out her dimensions with their arms, as their fathers fathomed out the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other friends of Sardi Babu the deceased pillow-sham vender was simplicity itself. Besides Sardi Babu and Mokarzel there had been Nicola Abbu, the confectioner; Menheem Shikrie, the ice-cream vendor; Habu Kahoots, the showman; and David Elias, a pedler. All six of them, as they claimed, had been sitting peacefully in Ghabryel & Assad's restaurant, eating kibbah arnabeiah and mamoul. Sardi had ordered sheesh kabab. It was about nine o'clock in the evening, and they were talking politics ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... khaki tunic, which Army discipline alone forced him to wear. It was Elodie, too, who had fixed into his buttonholes the little red rosette of the Officer of the Legion. That at least he could do for her.... Success, such as it was, before the war, he had attained he knew not how. The big drum of the showman had ever been an engine of abhorrence. Others had put him on the track of things, Elodie, Bakkus.... He had sternly suppressed vulgarity in posters. He had never intrigued like most of his craft for press advertisement. Over and ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... like to make you an offer right now to do some original research with me. I may not be a top-flight genius like Metternick or Dahl, but my reputation does carry some weight with the Board. (That, Turnbull thought, was a bit of needless modesty; Duckworth wasn't the showman that Metternick was, or the prolific writer that Dahl was, but he had more intelligence and down-right wisdom than either.) So if you could manage to get a few months leave from Columbia, I'd be honored to have your assistance. (More modesty, thought Turnbull. ...
— Dead Giveaway • Gordon Randall Garrett
... have been flung violently open with an explosive gesture, as though some invisible showman had called out: "Look who's here!" and the woman herself had catherine-wheeled into their midst, standing there in her exotic gorgeousness, with her arms spread out in salutation and her mouth parted in that rather simple smile. Robert could almost smell the faint perfume that surrounded ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... and hostess must keep the conversation going, if it lags, but this is not as definitely their duty at a formal, as at an informal dinner It is at the small dinner that the skilful hostess has need of what Thackeray calls the "showman" quality. She brings each guest forward in turn to the center of the stage. In a lull in the conversation she says beguilingly to a clever but shy man, "John, what was that story you told me——" and then she repeats briefly an introduction ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... above assertion, in the true showman phraseology, just "Walk up! walk up!" to Madame Tussaud's, the real Temple of Fame, and let such doubts vanish for ever; convince yourselves that the mighty attribute not more survives from good than evil deeds, though, like poverty, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... it?" asked Fitzgibbon, in the tones of a gratified showman. "It always does strike people ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... a showman's string, Know more of freedom and less of care, Cage birds, that flutter from perch to ring, Have less of worry and surer fare. Cursing the burdens, yourselves have bound, In a maze of wants, running round and round— Are ye free men, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... saw the other day, with envy, an old and a very clever lady setting forth on a second or third voyage into MONTE CRISTO. Here are stories which powerfully affect the reader, which can he reperused at any age, and where the characters are no more than puppets. The bony fist of the showman visibly propels them; their springs are an open secret; their faces are of wood, their bellies filled with bran; and yet we thrillingly partake of their adventures. And the point may be illustrated still further. The last interview between Lucy and Richard Feveril is pure drama; more than that, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... monkey and sets out: but the latter perseveres in following, and after having, by her most graceful grimaces, sought to conciliate him, marches beside him. Not caring to arrive at Coquimbo escorted by such a companion, which would give him in a city the appearance of a mountebank and showman of monkeys, Selkirk, this time, repulses her rudely, not with his hand, but with the butt of ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... other critics have censured Thackeray severely because of his tendency to preach, and also because he regarded his characters as puppets and himself as the showman who brought out their peculiarities. There is some ground for this criticism, if one regards the art of the novelist as centered wholly in realism; but such a hard and fast rule would condemn all old English ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... a Bear was trying to disengage himself from the rope, but the slip-knot about his wrist would not yield, for the Bear was all the time pulling in the slack with his paws. In the midst of his trouble the Hunter saw a Showman passing by, and managed to ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... A SHOWMAN giving entertainments in Lafayette, Ind., was offered by one man a bushel of corn for admission. The manager declined it, saying that all the members of his company had been corned for the ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... they had all the trophies which had been produced in court; but the officer who acted as showman to Langholm admitted that they had no right to retain any of them. They were Mrs. Minchin's property, and if they knew where she was they would of course ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... education. Unhappily too the doubt comes from scholars, from persons who have tried these methods. In their experience the scholar was not raised by the sacred thoughts amongst which he dwelt, but used them to selfish ends. He was a profane person, and became a showman, turning his gifts to a marketable use, and not to his own sustenance and growth. It was found that the intellect could be independently developed, that is, in separation from the man, as any single organ can be invigorated, and the result was monstrous. ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the galley-slave set free by Don Quixote. He returned the favor by stealing Sancho's wallet and ass. Subsequently he reappeared as a puppet-showman.—Cervantes, Don Quixote. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... to obscure them, owing to their want of education. Scott tells a story of a Scotch peasant who, discovering a company of gaily-dressed puppets standing in a thicket, where they had been concealed by a travelling showman, at once concluded that they were "fairies." He had inherited the belief that fairies were "little people" who frequented just such places as this; consequently, he decided these were fairies. This fact was elicited in court, where the countryman had to appear as ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... The showman's work is very profitable at the country-house of Voltaire, at Ferney, near Geneva. A Genevese, an excellent calculator, as are all his countrymen, many years ago valued as follows the yearly profit derived by the ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... smiled broadly and murmured something about compliments as she released her hand from his grasp. Mr. Browne extended his open hand towards her and said to those who were near him in the manner of a showman introducing a ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... wandered from court to court; then for a time he returned to Salzburg, where the Archbishop treated him as a showman might a performing dog, using his great genius in tests of ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... which, of course, he wasn't; but, then, every Dwarf is always advertised that way. It's a custom of the profession, and we don't consider it to be lying, any more than a President considers the tough statements lying that he makes in his annual message. A showman and a politician must be allowed a little liberty of statement, or they couldn't carry on their business. Well, as I was saying, thishyer Major Microbe was in my show a matter of ten years ago, when we were in Cincinnati, and he was about as vicious ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... hand. An old German Jew travelling with a diorama on his back, was passing down the mountain-road towards the village just as the party turned aside from it, and, in hopes of eking out the profits of the day, the showman had kept ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... American type of humor a hearing and reception abroad. Ever since the invention of Hosea Biglow, an imaginary personage of some sort, under cover of whom the author might conceal his own identity, has seemed a necessity to our humorists. Artemus Ward was a traveling showman who went about the country exhibiting a collection of wax "figgers" and whose experiences and reflections were reported in grammar and spelling of a most ingeniously eccentric kind. His inventor was Charles F. Browne, originally of Maine, a printer by trade and afterward a newspaper writer and editor ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... were governed by the independence which characterised his intellectual judgments. Of the moderns, Wagner was his god; for Liszt he had an unbounded admiration, though he detected the showman, the mere juggler, in him; Tchaikovsky stirred him mightily; Brahms did not as a rule give him pleasure, though certain of that master's more fertile moments compelled his appreciation. Grieg he delighted in. ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... in his conflict. He was a self-made man, and before he "went in" for opera had been a showman all over the States, and had made a quantity of money. He had run a menagerie, more than one circus, had taken about a "fake-hypnotist," a "living-magnet," and other delights. Then he had "started in" as a music-hall manager. With music halls he had been marvellously successful. He still ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... the Public is still outside, listening open-mouthed to a comic dialogue between the Showman and a juvenile and irreverent Nigger. Those who have come in find that, with the exception of some particularly tame-looking murderers' heads in glazed pigeon-holes, a few limp effigies stuck up on rickety ledges, and an elderly Cart-horse in low spirits, there is little ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... take his turn with several in acting showman to the gazing crowd, and by and by the part fell to him oftenest. Each had his own way of filling the office. One would repeat his information like a lesson in which he was not interested, and expected no one else to be interested. Another made himself the clown of the exhibition, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... off, certainly, but it won't do any damage," replies their showman, with confidence; "and really it is very pretty while burning. I used to make 'em by hundreds when I was a boy, and nothing ever happened except once, when I blew the ear off my ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... says M. Radisson, elbowing a saucy spark from the wall for the tenth time in as many paces. "Pardieu, you can't hear yourself think! Shut up to you!" he called to a bawling 'prentice dressed in white velvet waistcoat like a showman's dummy to exhibit the fashion. "Shut ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... earth have been scoured. All Asia, from Siberia to India is there. Africa is represented from the Nile to Cape Town. The steppes of Russia and every out-of-the-way corner of Europe have been visited by the agents of the showman, and the result is legion. South America, with the wonders of the Amazon and the pampas and the high fauna of the Andes, is there. Our own continent also contributes largely, for the Rockies and the Selkirks still hold wonders ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... you," said the jester, "what you had in your luggage. It was an idle question, but you might be a showman of Milan." ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... African mammoth, that has lived for a hundred years, devoured human beings, devoured paper, devoured roles, devoured fame until it died from indigestion," cried Wawrzecki, imitating the voice and speech of a provincial showman. ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... "Oh, indeed?" observed the showman, looking Andy all over with one swift, comprehensive glance. "They tell me you can do stunts, ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... says he will bait them with a bit of that to excite interest. It will be an annual fair, to last three days, in which he will be the only exhibitor. He's spending half his mornings now in conference with Mr. Agar and Mr. Pitts. Mr. Agar is his sales manager, and Mr. Pitts his showman." ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... Jack thanked the genial showman on behalf of his companions, and then reminded him that Ramon was still at large, although the insurrectos ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... books which came to hand yesterday and was opened in the midst of us with due admiration, and with pleasure at the prospect it held out for the winter. My wife, I say; for she is the great reader, while I am, in comparison, like the owl, which the showman said kept up-you remember what sort of a thinking. But, comparisons [349] apart, it is really interesting to see how much she reads; how she keeps acquainted with what is going on in the world, especially in ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... which inspires them is very frequently repeated in other parts of the collection. That spirit is one of mocking sarcasm, and it acts in every case by presenting a beautifully draped figure of illusion, from which the poet, like a sardonic showman, twitches away the robe that he may display a skeleton beneath it. We can with little danger assume, as we read the Satires of Circumstance, hard and cruel shafts of searchlight as they seem, that Mr. Hardy was passing through a mental crisis when he wrote ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Brewster, in his Letters on Natural Magic, page 305, gives a more detailed account of Aldini, from which the natural deduction is that the Chevalier was a showman with an intellect fully up to the demands of ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... figures of spache an' inspired wid seltzer-wather—I'm thinkin' it would make its fortune, sure, by exhibition of itself in the capitals of the worrld, ma'am. Not Barnum's, nor the Flannagan an' Imparial, would compare with it. An' 'tis thrue, ma'am, as a showman in the profession, I couldn't be exprissin' betther me wondher ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... will remember me. At the Place de la Nation the fun grows thicker: there is a rain of confetti, and everybody comes out in coloured spots; the switchback is busy, chairs mount and descend on ropes, and there is a bunch of balloons; on a platform outside a booth a showman beats a drum, the riding-master cracks his whip, and ladies of uncertain ages and exuberant busts smile all day in evening dress; in the neighbouring Cirque the Ball of the City of Paris is whirling noisily. Yes, life goes on in the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... England; and all this is accomplished by that happy knack which the French possess of making much of a little. Of what did this fete consist—a few hundred lamps—a few score of fidlers, and about as much decoration as an English showman would waste on the exterior of his exhibition, or assemble within a few square yards. There were no long illuminated vistas, or temples and saloons red hot with oil and gas—but a few slender materials, so scattered and intermixed with the natural ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... up the fossil body, and exhibited it with rare dexterity. No professional showman could have ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... out in front of the children. He was dressed like a real showman. He had on a high hat and a long coat. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, in a funny deep voice, "the big show is about to begin. Will you please find seats in the show tent?" The children laughed and ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams
... she wanted to see this beautiful house and garden. Valentine was showman, and the whole family accompanied her, wandering among the great white pear-trees, and the dark yews, then going into the stable-yard, to see the strange, old out-buildings, with doors of heavy, ancient oak, and then on to ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... Irish Court Scenes—naughtiest and most humorous of tales—unpublished, of course, but handed down from generation to generation of the faithful. Most delightful was an interview between his late Majesty George the Fourth and an itinerant showman, which ended up with, 'No, George the Fourth, you shall not have my Rumptifoozle!' What said animal was, or the authenticity of the story, he never ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... so far as good clothes, a fine head of hair, and a sweet expression, were concerned. He could also play rudimentary music upon the flute. But he couldn't handle his mother tongue glibly enough to accompany the scenes in first class showman style. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... beings: they rant at one another or at the audience with such overwrought subtleties of speech and rhetorical perversions that they give the impression of being no more than mechanical puppets handled by a crafty but inartistic showman. All speak the same strange language, a language born in the rhetorical schools of Greece and Rome. Gods and mortals alike suffer the same melancholy fate. Juno, when she declares her resolve to afflict Hercules with madness, ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... these bulls, all of them being of the gentler sex. Perhaps it might be well to explain here that the word "bull," in the language of the white tops, means elephant. To a showman all cow elephants are bulls just as in a mid-Victorian day, more refined than this one, all authentic bulls were, to cultured ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... laughing-stock of yourself," Mrs. Cockayne exclaims, taking her husband firmly by the arm. "One would think you were an hotel guide, or a walking handbook, or—or a beadle or showman. What do you want to know about the massacre of St. Bartholomew now? There'll not be a mantle or a pair of gloves left. Come in—do! You can go gesticulating about the streets with Carrie to-morrow, if you choose; but ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... the Grecian arts created, May the victor Gaul, elated, Bear with banners to his strand.[45] In museums many a row, May the conquering showman show To his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... apparent change of the seasons with which Albertus Magnus startled the Earl of Holland; nay, even those more dread delusions of the Ghost and Image with which the necromancers of Heraclea woke the conscience of the conqueror of Plataea (Pausanias,—see Plutarch.),—all these, as the showman enchants some trembling children on a Christmas Eve with his lantern and phantasmagoria, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... where they can see you!" admonished a clown. "If you're going to be a showman you mustn't be afraid to get yourself ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... than dancing-dogs. "But, sir, you will allow that some players are better than others?" "Yes, sir, as some dogs dance better than others." So when Goldsmith accused Garrick of grossly flattering the queen, Johnson exclaimed, "And as to meanness—how is it mean in a player, a showman, a fellow who exhibits himself for a shilling, to flatter his queen?" At another time Boswell suggested that we might respect a great player. "What! sir," exclaimed Johnson, "a fellow who claps a hump upon his back and a lump on his leg and cries, 'I am Richard III.'? ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... "Which is the Cobbler and which is his Wife?" He told me he was thinking of a question so expressed many years ago, long before revolving pictures were thought of, and when pictures of any kind were very scarce. A fair was being held in the country, and a showman was exhibiting pictures which were arranged in a row alongside his booth or van in such a way that his customers could pass from one picture to another and which they could see by looking through slightly magnifying ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... as this, awfully, yet ludicrously, reminds me of that showman who enticed his audience in with—"Here you'll see the Duke of Vellington at the battle of Vauterloo, with the blood all a-runnen down his fut,"' or of poor little "Totty" (in "Helen's Babies"), who loved to hear about "B'liaff" and his headlessness, and the sword that was ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... that' such a company of mean fellows 'would have attacked Us, if they had not been supported by vast unseen forces behind the scenes.'[58] With what cruel craft, but seeming indifference, the artful old showman treated his manikins! He cut off the heads of some amongst those who responded most vigorously to his touch; whilst others, not less free upon the wire, were carefully packed up, and sent home safe. By seizing and boxing up in the Tower ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... interpreter; expositor, expounder, exponent, explainer; demonstrator. scholiast, commentator, annotator; metaphrast[obs3], paraphrast[obs3]; glossarist[obs3], prolocutor. spokesman, speaker, mouthpiece. dragoman, courier, valet de place, cicerone, showman; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus |
