"Waltz" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wild water-mountains, bounding from their deep basin—ten miles deep, I am told—are not entirely there on thy behalf! Meseems they have other work than floating thee forward; and the huge winds that sweep from Ursa Major to the Tropics and Equator, dancing their giant waltz through the kingdoms of Chaos and Immensity, they care little about filling rightly or filling wrongly the small shoulder-of-mutton sails in this cockle-skiff of thine. Thou art not among articulate-speaking friends, my brother; thou art among immeasurable dumb monsters, tumbling, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... pushed the table into a corner, and Dick extracted a sort of waltz from Robina's mandoline. It is years since I danced; but Veronica said she would rather dance with me any day than with some of the "lumps" you were given to drag round by the dancing- mistress. I have half a mind to take it up again. After ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... Ethically, it works out beautifully, for each partner to the hymeneal bargain is fat and full of content, happiness fairly oozing out of every oily pore. And is not happiness the goal of human endeavour, whether a man seeks it amid the electric lights, subtle perfumes, and dreamy waltz-music of a New York ballroom, or finds it seated with his community wives on a hummock of ice ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... question, but could learn no further particulars. He turned to quit the gardens just as the band was striking up for a fresh dance, a wild German waltz air; and mingled with that German music his ear caught the sprightly sounds of the French laugh, one laugh distinguished from the rest by a more genuine ring of light-hearted joy, the laugh that he had heard on entering the gardens, and the sound of which had ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to room in the bright September sunshine—now sitting down to the piano to trill out a ballad, or the first page of an Italian bravura, or running with rapid fingers through a brilliant waltz—now hovering about a stand of hot-house flowers, doing amateur gardening with a pair of fairy-like, silver-mounted embroidery scissors—now strolling into her dressing-room to talk to Phoebe Marks, and ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... exactly knew where—was so effectually promoted by Mr. and Mrs. Cole, that every thing was rapidly clearing away, to give proper space. Mrs. Weston, capital in her country-dances, was seated, and beginning an irresistible waltz; and Frank Churchill, coming up with most becoming gallantry to Emma, had secured her hand, and led her up to ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... murmured, "this is the one thing which completes my subjugation. Fancy an Englishman being able to waltz! Almost in that beautiful room I fancied myself back in Vienna, except that it was more ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of more than sixty miles an hour; while that which swept through Frankfort, Kansas, on May 17, 1896, was fully a half-hour in crossing a half-mile stretch of bottom-land adjoining the Vermillion River, pausing in its dizzy waltz upon a single spot for long ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... again, this time a waltz tune. Drake came over to the piano, and stood leaning upon the lid of it; he took up the ring and turned it over in his fingers. She ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... half inclined to waltz round the room, but she was afraid of disturbing the occupant of the office below. Gradually she sobered down, and by the time Jack Cameron ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... feet tripped a waltz, while the plait kept up an accompanying polka. Certainly Peter Klausson did press her ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... me," said Eloquent mournfully, "that one does nothing but change all the time. Now this is a waltz, how can you one-step ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... magical slipper named before, which they managed to admiration, never allowing it to lose its position, or to touch the floor at any other part but the toe, to which it adhered with singular tenacity, through the most difficult steps of the whirling waltz or puzzling polka. ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... the dancing, it is indeed ridiculous to observe the series of silent tendernesses, the sly looks and fascinating glances with which these old worthies entertain each other. Meanwhile the music strikes up, and the floor is instantly covered with waltzers. It is well known, that the waltz is a dance, above all others, requiring grace and youth, and activity in those who perform it. Nothing, therefore, to a stranger, can be more entertaining, than the sight of those motley and aged couples, who, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... this organist came to a certain lively waltz, and threw his whole soul, as it were, into the crank of his instrument, my beloved ragamuffin failed not to seize another cake-boy in his arms, and thus embraced, to whirl through a wild inspiration of figures, in which there was something grotesquely rhythmic, something of indescribable ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... landing between trees they gave last touches to their hair and dresses before the mirror, they heard from the ballroom the careful, distinct notes of the fiddles of the orchestra beginning the first waltz. A little old man in civilian dress, arranging his gray curls before another mirror, and diffusing an odor of scent, stumbled against them on the stairs, and stood aside, evidently admiring Kitty, whom he did not know. A beardless youth, one ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... the pause before the dance was encored, and asked for the "next but one,"—there were no cards at the Brownings; all over the hall girls were nodding over their partners' shoulders, in answer to questions, "Next, Louise?" "Next waltz—one after ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... day was a warm one. One of the men said something in Swiss, at which the bear gave a roar-like grunt and commenced to dance. Around and around the great lumbering fellow went on his two hind legs, holding his fore paws in the air. It was not what one would call a very "airy waltz," however. Again the keeper spoke, and immediately bruin threw himself upon the ground and turned somersaults, making us all laugh heartily. He then told him to shake hands (but all in Swiss), and it was too funny to see the great awkward animal waddle up on his hind legs and extend ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... dancers inside were devoting themselves, without interruption, to Terpsichorean pleasures,—mostly waltzes, they being the special delight of Frau Stark. When Borgert entered the ballroom the band struck up the latest waltz,—"Over the Waves,"—and he noticed Frau Stark, flaming like a peony, perspiration streaming down her rubicund face, being handed, true to his programme, by Lieutenant Specht to his smiling comrade, ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... marquees were dotted here and there on the smooth velvet lawns—bright flags waved from different quarters of the gardens, signals of tennis, archery, and dancing,—and the voluptuous waltz-music of a fine Hungarian band rose up and swayed in the air with the downward floating songs of the birds and the dash of fountains in full play. Girls in pretty light summer costumes made picturesque groups under the stately oaks and beeches,—gay ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... said the captain, in no wise perturbed by this accusation. "I would have you remember that at the inquest it was stated that the window was locked and the door was open. How then could I waltz into that blamed hotel and arrange for a funeral? 'Sides, I guess shooting is mor'n my line than garrotting. I leave that to ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... did but make way for a succession of suitors, who, in low and pleading tones, besought the honor of her hand in the waltz that was about to begin. But to each of these in turn she excused herself, upon the plea ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... not to think about the book which he was forced to write, the book, nevertheless, was completed. One page of it was found on the bed of a sick man, another on the sofa of a boudoir. The glances of women when they turned in the mazes of a waltz flung to him some thoughts; a gesture or a word filled his disdainful brain with others. On the day when he said to himself, "This work, which haunts me, shall be achieved," everything vanished; and like the three Belgians, he drew forth a skeleton from the place over which he had ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... It was not certain, however, that he had left the palace. His haste to get on might be only a coincidence, Nevill pointed out. "Frenchified Arabs" like Si Maieddine, he said, were passionately fond of dancing with European women, and very likely Maieddine was anxious to secure a waltz with some Frenchwomen of ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... flowers, canaries, and pretty trinkets. Her rooms and garden, it is true, were small and poorly fitted-up, yet everything in them was so neat and methodical, and bore such a general air of that gentle gaiety which one hears expressed in a waltz or polka, that the word "toy" by which guests often expressed their praise of it all exactly suited her surroundings. She herself was a "toy"—being petite, slender, fresh-coloured, small, and pretty-handed, and invariably gay and well-dressed. The only fault ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... was a waltz." The faint, unconquered smile of brown Arizona, broke through the blood and bruises of the face. "The fight began when Jerry Durand and his friend rushed me—and it ended when Jerry landed on me with brass knucks. After that I was a football." The words came in gasps. Every ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... utterly different from what she had expected. She had imagined a gay, crowded room, wild gamblers shouting in their excitement, a band playing delirious waltz music, champagne corks popping merrily, painted women laughing, jesting loudly, all kinds of revelry and devilry and Bacchic things undreamed of. This was silly of her, no doubt, but the silliness of inexperienced young women is a matter for the pity, not the reprobation, ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... good girls and tolerated by good mothers does not prove that it is good. Custom blunts the edge of many perceptions. A good thing soiled may be redeemed by good people; but waltz as many as you may, spotless maidens, you will only smut yourselves, and not cleanse the waltz. It is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... in the doorway of the Gildermere ball-room, watching her pass him in the waltz, he tried to remember how it had begun. First there had been the tailor's bill; the fur-lined overcoat with cuffs and collar of Alaska sable had alone cost more than he had spent on his clothes ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... black. The Judge was enjoying his vacation the better for its lateness. He had bolted his supper early enough to secure his favorite chair in the best part of the piazza: a mandolin orchestra was playing a waltz from "The Serenade," and playing it well, the Judge thought. He threw away the match with which he had lighted his third cigar—to keep off the mosquitoes, he blandly told his conscience—and leaned back in the Morris chair, thinking how ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... peace. The sensation of being in this little town is rather like that of being at a great international congress. It is like that moving and glittering social satire, in which diplomatists can join in a waltz who may soon be joining in a war. For the religious and political parties have yet another point in common with separate nations; that even within this narrow space the complicated curve of their frontiers is really more or less fixed, ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... guaranteed him sufficient to defray the expenses of six years' tuition. He went to Vienna at once and studied the piano with Czerny, besides taking lessons in composition from Salieri and Randhartinger. It was while in that city that his first composition, a variation on a waltz of Diabelli, appeared. In 1823 he went to Paris, hoping to secure admission to the Conservatory; but Cherubini refused it on account of his foreign origin, though Cherubini himself was a foreigner. Nothing daunted, young Liszt continued his studies with Reicha and Paer, and two ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... first waltz together, and he danced delightfully. This was a fresh agreeable surprise to Rose—as if drapers did not take dancing lessons and make use of them like other people; she was almost indiscreet in her eulogies on his performance. But there was not room for all, or half, or a quarter, to dance at once; ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... middle distance, but nothing of grandeur. Poplars marched along with us on either side, primly on guard, and puritanical, though all the while their myriad little fingers seemed to twinkle over the keyboard of an invisible piano, playing a rapid waltz. ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... before me, straddling the drifts with his long, heron legs, and whistling a gay tune to keep up his spirits. Now and then, he would turn around with a waggish smile, and cry: "Comrade, let's have the waltz from 'Robin,' I feel like dancing." A burst of laughter followed these words, and then the good fellow would resume his march courageously. I followed on as well as I could, up to my knees in snow, and I felt a sense of melancholy ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... gets madder when you talk reason to him Ah! how sweet to waltz through life with the right partner And not any of your grand ladies can match my wife at home Any man is in love with any woman Believed in her love, and judged it by the strength of his own Eating, like scratching, only wants a beginning Feel no shame that I do not feel! ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... with me, find me an ice and waltz once with me, for if anything happened to you I should ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... And the result is not dissimilar, for in another moment you two are at play. Is there any other modern writer who gets round you in this way? Well, he had given my mother the look which in the ball-room means, 'Ask me for this waltz,' and she ettled to do it, but felt that her more dutiful course was to sit out the dance with this other less entertaining partner. I wrote on doggedly, but could hear ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... and she pushed its claims to the disadvantage of the exhibition. Some of the young ladies who thought that art should have the first place, went about saying that she was for the dance because she could waltz and mask better than she could draw, and would rather exhibit herself than her work, but it was a shame that she should make Miss Saunders work for her the way she did, because Miss Saunders, though she was so overrated, was really ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... thing, Alice"—and she took the daughter's place at the piano and began to play snatches of an old waltz tune—"it would be free from all the morbid unnaturalness, the silliness, the froth of things. There is too much hardness in every life—in the world—in the very laws of life, for such things ever to have been part of the original plan. For my part, I think they ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... Senator had "decreed," like Kubla Khan, "a stately pleasure dome," to entertain his friends and partisans. As they approached the house, the trembling light like fireflies through the leaves, the warm silence broken only by a military band playing a drowsy waltz on the veranda, and the heavy odors of jessamine in the air, thrilled Brant with a sense of shame as he thought of his old comrades in the field. But this was presently dissipated by the uniforms that met him in the hall, with ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... the first bar to the last. She would play the same piece a hundred times without varying the performance by a hair's-breadth. Nor did she affect anything but classical music. She was one of those young ladies who, when asked for a waltz or a polka, freeze the impudent demander by replying that they play no dance music—nothing ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... the saloon at the theatre; at the night-houses, after the play; at Tom Cribb's, examining the silver cup then in the possession of that champion; at the chambers of Bob Logic, who, seated at a cabinet piano, plays a waltz to which Corinthian Tom and Kate are dancing; ambling gallantly in Rotten Row; or examining the poor fellow at Newgate who was having his chains knocked off before hanging: all these scenes remain indelibly engraved upon the ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... recollections and preoccupations; besides, he really liked Guy. The Parisian was the complement of the Castilian. They had so many reminiscences in common: fetes, suppers, sorrows, Parisian sadnesses, girls who sobbed to the measure of a waltz. Then they had not seen each other for ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... Annapolis, that we might be here at every hop!" sighed Belle Meade, as the waltz finished and she and Dave, flushed and happy, sought seats at ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... play a waltz—at first slowly, and afterwards quicker. The first Yager dances with the girl, the Sutler-woman with the recruit. The girl springs away, and the Yager, pursuing her, seizes hold of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... and closer to the lattice. One of her little feet went tap-tapping on the gravel, beating the measure of the waltz. For at the sound of the music, at the sight of the locked and whirling couples, her memory revived; she heard again the beating of the measure old as time; she felt in her limbs the start and strain of the ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... One—two—three, one—two—three.' Round and round went Prince and Madeline in an interminable waltz. The table and stools had been shoved over against the wall to increase the room. Malemute Kid sat on the bunk, chin to knees, greatly interested. Jack Harrington sat beside him, scraping away on his ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... Vixen—[I'm beginning now]—Her name was Sarah Vixen. She was a horrid old maid. One morning she went and played her organ in Euston Square. She played 'Wait till the clouds roll by,' and 'Sweethearts' waltz', and the 'Marseillaise,' one after the other, after which she paused and watched a tennis match which was ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... The waltz time ended in a soft chord and the dancers began trooping through the doorway to the big punch-bowl of lemonade in one corner of the hall. They were just in time to see a lithe figure in pink spring out, catlike, from behind the palm-screened alcove and hear a furious voice cry out, "How dare ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... hour, no one else taking the floor. They were repeatedly and loudly applauded, the old men and women jumping out of their seats in admiration, and the young people waving their hats and handkerchiefs. Indeed among people of the character of these Mexicans, the waltz seemed to me to have found its right place. The great amusement of the evening,—which I suppose was owing to its being carnival—was the breaking of eggs filled with cologne, or other essences, upon the heads of the company. One end of the egg is broken and the inside taken out, then it is ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... deal more of good than bad in every Nation. I take off my hat to the French. But, I have had my fling and I am quite ready to go home. Even amid the gayety and the glare, the splendor of color and light, the Hungarian band wafting to the greenery and the stars the strains of the delicious waltz, La Veuve Joyeuse her very self—yea, many of her—tapping the time at many adjacent tables, the song that fills my heart is 'Hame, Hame, Hame!—Hame to my ain countree.' Yet, to come again, d'ye mind? I should be loath to say good-by forever ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... a moment or a merry span Of years uncounted when convulsion ran Right through the veins of me, to make me blest, And yet accurst, in that revolving quest Known as a waltz,—if waltz indeed it were And not a fluttering dream of gauze and vair And languorous eyes? I scarce can muse thereon Without a pang too ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... can't be," said he; "it ain't possible. However, I'll tell you what I'll do. Just to put your mind at rest, I'll go round and find out for sure. Just you waltz in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... A waltz encore was just then being demanded. The dancers stood about clapping and insisting upon a repetition of the number. Jane and Judith waited a moment before their partners espied them, and as they lingered they ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... life. With him every note lives, has its own body and its own soul, and that is why it is worth hearing him play even trivial music like Mendelssohn's "Spring Song" or meaningless music like Taubert's Waltz: he creates a beauty out of sound itself and a beauty which is at the root of music. There are moments when a single chord seems to say in itself everything that music has to say. That is the moment in which everything but sound is annihilated, the ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... up in March or April. Sleighing parties are varied by skating at the rink and assemblies in the town-hall, where we meet a medley of ball goers and givers, each indulging his or her favourite style of dancing—from the old fashioned "three-step" waltz preferred by the elders, to the breathless "German," the simple deux temps, and the graceful "Boston" dance, peculiar as yet to Americans and Canadians. The band was composed of trained musicians who had belonged to various regiments, ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... of a familiar waltz caused a quick reassembling of the dancers. The music tingled in Phil's blood. She kept time with head and hands, and then, swinging round, began dancing, humming the air as her figure swayed and ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... score of couples pulsed rhythmically to the swinging waltz-time music. Starched shirts and frock coats were not. The men wore their wolf- and beaver-skin caps, with the gay-tasselled ear-flaps flying free, while on their feet were the moose-skin moccasins and walrus-hide muclucs of the north. Here ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... greatest and most perfect performance attainable by a ropedancer. With beads of perspiration on her brow, and eyes uplifted, she threw the cage aside, swung her Mercury staff aloft, and danced along the rope in waltz time, as though borne by the gods of the wind. Whirling swiftly around, her slender figure darted in graceful curves from one end of the narrow path to the other. Then the applause reached the degree ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Henry's last night in Bourcelles, and the spirit of pandemonium was abroad. Neither parent could say no to anything, and mere conversation in corners was out of the question. The door was opened into the corridor, and while Mother played her only waltz, Jimbo and Monkey danced on the splintery boards as though it were a parquet floor, and Rogers pirouetted somewhat solemnly with Jane Anne. She enjoyed it immensely, yet rested her hand very gingerly upon his shoulder. 'Please ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... I cannot hope to buy, Their phantoms round me waltz and wheel, They pass before the dreaming eye, Ere Sleep the dreaming eye can seal. A kind of literary reel They dance; how fair the bindings shine! Prose cannot tell them what I feel,— The Books that ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... of water, left by the rain in a hollow of the gravel-walk. Was she frightened? Not at all. The water felt delightfully fresh, her spirits flashed out like the sun himself, and in the joy of her heart she began to waltz, scattering and splashing the water about her. The crisp ruffles of the cambric lost all their starch, the pretty boots were quite spoiled, but Lota waltzed on, and in this plight Nursey, flying indignantly out from the kitchen door, found her ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... near her window, kept the night ringing with music. Resolutely she closed her ears to his song. But presently, through the faint fragrance of oleanders, other sounds began to penetrate,—the strains of the waltz to which they had danced only the night before. The little art teacher turned wearily over and ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... way, launched forth into the unkindest references to deaf old worldlings keeping in the deafening world; and gouty gluttons limping to their gouty gormandizings; and corseted coquets clasping their corseted cavaliers in the waltz, all for disinterested society's sake; and thousands, bankrupt through lavishness, ruining themselves out of pure love of the sweet company of man—no envies, rivalries, or other ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... with flowers, gay curtains, flags, and cloths. The floor is shining like silver, and as polished as a mirror. The band strikes up the Blue Danube waltz, and amid the usual bustle, flirtation, scandal, whispering, glancing, dancing, tripping, sipping, and hand-squeezing, the ball goes gaily on till the stewards announce supper. At this—to the wall-flowers—welcome announcement, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... she was not true to these hopes. She was taken into what is called "the world," froth and scum as it mostly is on the social caldron. There, she saw fair Woman carried in the waltz close to the heart of a being who appeared to her a Satyr. Being warned by a male friend that he was in fact of that class, and not fit for such familiar nearness to a chaste being, the advised replied that "women should know nothing about such things." She saw one fairer given in wedlock ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Bumpus?" cried Step Hen, as he ran out toward the spot where the other continued to waltz around in his bright red and white striped pajamas, that made him look like an "animated sawed-off barber's pole," as one of his chums had once ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... play a waltz from "A Persian Princess." Joanna felt once more in her blood the strange stir of the music she could not understand. It would be nice to dance ... queer that she had so seldom danced as a girl. She ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... moment. He tried to comfort Pons by giving him a sketch of the world from his own point of view. Paris, in his opinion, was a perpetual hurly-burly, the men and women in it were whirled away by a tempestuous waltz; it was no use expecting anything of the world, which only looked at the outsides of things, "und not at der inderior." For the hundredth time he related how that the only three pupils for whom he had really cared, for whom he was ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... said the Earl, as the waltz was finished, "for you must have been told so often how wonderfully well you dance. But I must tell you what a pleasure it ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... was over. The City Band was just beginning to play a waltz. Annixter assuring himself that everything was going all right, was picking his way across the floor, when he came upon Hilma Tree quite alone, and looking anxiously among ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... I only love to tease her now and then. I go to the races, play cards, waltz, talk slang, and read novels. But when I do bow down to her I bow away down. Why, at Montrose, I ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... hadn't got her—she wasn't there! We hoofed Charliet off to find her, first thing; he'll bring her here, as soon as it's safe to make a get-away. We'd have brought her ourselves, only the show would have been spoiled if Hutton had spotted us. And we had to hustle, too, to get back here and waltz you out of Thompson's mausoleum. It'll be time enough for you to go for Miss Paulette when she doesn't turn up. You're not fit now, anyway." I felt him staring into my face. "Had anything to eat all day, except a hard ride ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... and a critic, no doubt, who barked out something about forgetting sound tradition, all the spectators proclaimed Zamore the Vestris of dogs and the god of dancing. Our artist had performed a minuet, a jig, and a deux temps waltz. A large number of two-footed spectators had joined the four-footed ones, and Zamore enjoyed the honour of being applauded by ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... terminated by a group unexpectedly occupying the smoking room. He saw Stephen Jannan, his wife Liza, the newly married young Jannans, and a strange woman in glace muslin and a black Spanish lace shawl about her shoulders. Stephen greeted him cordially. "Jasper, just at the moment for a waltz with—with Susan." The stranger blushed painfully, made an involuntary movement backward, and Liza Jannan admonished her husband. "Do you know Miss ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... sundry desperate spinsters to despair by his erratic movements. Coming to a quiet nook, where a long window gave a fine view of the brilliant scene, he found Christie leaning in, with a bright, wistful face, while her hand kept time to the enchanting music of a waltz. ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... Brown, urged by the public-spirited 'Enery Irving, exhausted himself in playing the "Marseillaise" at the fullest pitch of his lungs and mouth-organ. His artistic soul revolted at last at the repetition, but since the only other French tune that was suggested was the Blue Danube Waltz, and there appeared to be divergent opinions as to its nationality, "Snapper" at last struck, and refused to play the "Marseillaise" a single time more. 'Enery Irving enthusiastically took up this matter of "acting so as to deceive ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... which owed nothing to any salve. Her nose was almost patrician, and her cheeks were tinted with the bloom of exquisite fruit. Her gown was extremely decollete, revealing shoulders and arms of perfect ivory beauty. She was dancing a waltz with a man in elaborate evening dress, who had discarded orthodox sobriety for crude embellishments. The string band in the orchestra was playing ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... if he had not heard and strolled to the door. He opened it, and at once the room was filled with the plaintive alluring strains of waltz-music. He stood and looked back. Dinah met the look, and suddenly she ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... the measure. She stood still and listened. No, no, not a sound save the rain on the roof. It was the music of her own heart, beating irregularly and fiercely to an intermittent lilt, like a Hungarian waltz or ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... of the ball arrived. Mme. Loisel made a great success. She was prettier than them all, elegant, gracious, smiling, and crazy with joy. All the men looked at her, asked her name, endeavored to be introduced. All the attaches of the Cabinet wanted to waltz with her. She was remarked ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... moment later, he arose, fresh life and vigor seemed certainly to have been acquired. Catching her by the waist, he hummed a waltz and away they floated, over the pine-needles, he in gray and she in white, like wingless spirits of the wood. When the waltz had ended and they were walking hand in hand, and a little out of breath, ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... house always pleasant from that reminiscence, with the consent of parent and pupil, and to his own great delight, the hour designed for the scholar's scales and exercises was given to the master's playing. He was fond of Weber's "Invitation to the Waltz," and he played it with force and precision and the utmost delicacy. Mr. Timm had a pale, smooth, sharp face, a rather prim manner, and a quick, modest gait. He was most simple-hearted, and loved a joke; ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... rides like an angel; but the mustang throwed her. Well, I sorter got in the way o' thet hoss, and it stopped. Hevin' bin the cause o' the hoss shyin', for I reckon I didn't look much like an angel lyin' in that ditch, it was about the only squar thing for me to waltz in and help the gal. Thar, thet's about the way the thing pints. Now, don't you go ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... an artificial nightingale, brilliantly ornamented with diamonds, rubies, and sapphires. As soon as this artificial bird was wound up, its tail moved up and down, and shone with silver and gold. It sang very well, too, in its own way. Three and thirty times over did it sing the same waltz, and yet was not tired. The Emperor said that the living Nightingale ought ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... Latin fashion. The two men got down from their fiacre and elbowed a way through the good-natured crowd to a place near the more popular of the merry-go-rounds. The machine was in rotation. Its garish lights shone and glittered, its hidden mechanical organ blared a German waltz tune, the huge, pink-varnished pigs galloped gravely up and down as the platform upon which they were mounted whirled round and round. A little group of American trippers, sight-seeing with a guide, stood ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... is intended to be given with an accompaniment of waltz music, introducing dance-steps at the refrain "With one, ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a marriage-bell, and—I would not be understood to complain, but it had been a sad occasion. Now the deceitful strains rose and fell again upon the salt sea wind. The many lights glowed and twinkled from the near shore. We are all at play, come and play with us, screamed the soft waltz music. It is summer, and the days are long, and trouble is not, and care is banished. If the waves sigh, it is with bliss. Our voyage is ended. It is sad that you did not sail with us, but we will ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... artillery Regimental band gave a concert. Illustrative of the mental breadth and generous nature marking the real American boy, in its repertoire was to be observed Strouse's "Blue Danube Waltz!" ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... the ball-room, on went the shuffling of feet, the swish of garments, the gay talk and laughter of the young people; and on and on talked Mr. Stevens and Mr. Turner, until one familiar strain of music penetrated into Sam's inner consciousness; the Home Sweet Home waltz! ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... to waltz again. Then they had a galop, and the party broke up. Anthony said good-night, and that he was coming up on Saturday. Then Saltonstall drew her into a little nook in the hall that made a connection with another ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... may be offered for other forms of the dance as means of exercise under certain restrictions, employed as a form of calisthenics, no such excuse can be framed in defense of "round dances," especially of the waltz. In addition to the associated dissipation, late hours, fashionable dressing, midnight feasting, exposures through excessive exertions and improper dress, etc., it can be shown most clearly that dancing has a direct influence in stimulating the passions and provoking unchaste desires, ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... the fever of the public pulse," replied Carley. "The graceful waltz, like the stately minuet, flourished back in the days when ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... in the small room. The runners of a sleigh scraped the icy street below, its horses' hoofs cracked noisily. The music of a fiddle sounded in the distance. Babe's voice humming a waltz tune rose ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... with his two hands on the marble rail he looked down into the room below. The music of a waltz was just beginning, and some of the more enthusiastic spirits had already begun dancing, moving in and out among the uniforms and ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... opinions could not interest him one way or another, and he was going far in assuming that she was deeply concerned in Harwood's welfare. The incongruity of their talk was emphasized by the languorous strains of the newest popular waltz that floated over them ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... soup to slow waltz time, with the result that every spoonful was cold before we got it up to our mouth. Just as the fish came, the band started a quick polka, and the consequence of that was that we had not time to pick out the bones. We gulped down white wine to the "Blacksmith's Galop," and if the tune had lasted ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... was playing "Auf Wiedersehen," and the waltz carried with it the sadness that had made people call the man who wrote it the waltz king. Swanson listened gratefully. He was glad that before he went out, his last mood had been of regret and gentleness. The sting of his anger had departed, the music soothed ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... in general appearance and behavior. The characteristic movements of the dancers do not appear. As the result of a long series of breeding experiments, Darbishire (16 pp. 26, 27) says: "When the race of waltzing mice is crossed with albino mice which do not waltz, the waltzing habit disappears in the resulting young, so that waltzing is completely recessive in Mendel's sense; the eye-color of the hybrids is always dark; the coat-color is variable, generally a mixture of wild-gray and white, the character of the coat being distinctly correlated with characters ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... gracious promise, but here is my friend, whose character for veracity you well know, and he will assure you the delay arose from no fault of mine." And as at this moment the orchestra gave the signal for the waltz, Albert put his arm round the waist of the countess, and disappeared with her in the whirl of dancers. In the meanwhile Franz was considering the singular shudder that had passed over the Count of Monte Cristo at the moment when he had been, in some sort, forced to give his ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... waltz, I believe," she said, striving to speak naturally; but her pulses had begun to stir again; the same inexplicable sense of exhilaration and insecurity was ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... girl's undulating languor to the door, opened it, then charged suddenly upon Octavia Dean, twirled her round in a wild waltz and bore her away; appearing a moment after on the playground demurely walking with her arm around her companion's waist in an ostentatious confidence at once lofty, exclusive, and exasperating to the ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... cared little for polka or varsovienne, and still less for 'Money Musk' or 'Virginia Reel,' and wondered what people could find to admire in these slow dances. But in the soft floating of the waltz I found a strange pleasure, rather difficult to intelligibly describe. The mere anticipation fluttered my pulse, and when my partner approached to claim my promised hand for the dance, I felt my cheeks glow a little sometimes, and I could not look him ...
— There is No Harm in Dancing • W. E. Penn
... charming and delightful this lady was; a true Frenchwoman in intelligence (une vraie francaise par l'esprit)—Frenchmen have no higher praise than this—what an extraordinary musician she was, and how marvelously she waltzed (Varvara Pavlovna did in fact waltz so that she drew all her hearts to the hem of her light flying skirts)—in a word, he spread her fame through the world, and, whatever one may say, that is pleasant. Mademoiselle Mars had already left the stage, and Mademoiselle Rachel had not yet made her appearance; nevertheless, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... inventing something, and losing a limb by a new kind of explosion at the end of each of the four acts. Poor old chap, he is good material. I can imagine his wife or his sweetheart reluctantly adopting each of his new religious in turn, just in time to see him waltz into the next one and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... this time. More applause. Say this guy can fiddle, he can. Come on, baron, another tune. The tired faces yammer for another ditty. "Traeumerei." All right, let her go, Paganini. And after that the "Missouri Waltz." ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... she stretches her limbs, She golfs, she punts, she rows, she swims— She plays, she sings, she dances, too, From ten or eleven til all is blue! At ball or drum, til small hours come (Chaperon's fans concealing her yawning) She'll waltz away like a teetotum. And never go home til daylight's dawning. Lawn-tennis may share her favours fair— Her eyes a-dance, and her cheeks a-glowing— Down comes her hair, but then what does she care? It's all her own and it's worth the showing! Go search ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... heighten the interest she had begun to feel in him. She was frankness, almost loquacity itself,—a girl who could no more keep a secret than she could harbor a grudge. He was studious, thoughtful, forever reading. She loved air, sunshine, action, travel, tennis, dancing, music (of the waltz variety), and, beyond her Bible and her Baedeker, read nothing at all, and not too much of them! She was with her aunt and some American friends when first she met him. It was the morning they hove in sight of England, and the steamer was pitching through a head ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... on her breast that night. Oh, but their scent was sweet! Alone we sat on the balcony, and the fan-palms arched above; The witching strain of a waltz by Strauss came up to our cool retreat, And I prisoned her little hand in mine, and I whispered my ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... out into a waltz and the crowd drew away from the centre of the floor. I expected the real Heir Presumptive to lead out the Princess. I admit I was curious to see him. Report made him a very able young fellow, and his pictures showed a goodly figure. Instead, however, someone in a Colonel's uniform ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... sexes in the dance is only pleasurable because of that contact. I am fully aware of the fact that this idea is scouted and denied by those who indulge in the waltz and kindred dances. They claim that no thought of carnality ever enters into their feelings. I know from personal experiences that they are honest in this declaration, yet, from a psychical standpoint, they are ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... sitting down to the piano and playing a waltz. "I hadn't a notion of it, but I did notice she hasn't been looking ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... a crashing waltz d'Arnault suddenly began to play softly, and, turning to one of the men who stood behind him, whispered, "Somebody dancing in there." He jerked his bullet head toward the dining-room. "I ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... took my rifle, and sent a ball through the center of her head, and she was numbered with the dead." There is nothing in "Waterton's Wanderings," or in the "Adventures of Baron Munchausen" more startling than this "Waltz with a Hippopotamus!" ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... wings poised in giant flight, a sphere supported by four allegorical figures whose attitude of turning suggests some vague waltz-measure—a total effect of equilibrium well conveying the illusion of the sweeping onward of the earth; and there are arms raised to give the signal, bodies heroically risen, containing an allegory, a symbol which stamps them with death and immortality, secures to them a place ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... waltz. An ordinary waltz; Yet distance gives it dignity. Who knows? Journeying through the woods the master haunted. Under the cyclamen, among the bracken, It may have ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... their dress or manner to indicate anything but the best possible breeding. Jorrocks, indeed, fancied himself in the very elite of French society, and, but for a little incident, would have remained of that opinion. In an unlucky moment he took it into his head he could waltz, and surprised the Countess Benvolio by claiming her hand for the next dance. "It seems werry easy," said he to himself as he eyed the couples gliding round the room;—"at all ewents there's nothing like trying, 'for he who never ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... instantly appeased:—not so, however, toward the interloper! I gnawed, in impotent fury, the attenuated ends of the small fragment of a moustache which nature had allotted to me, and talked at him and over him, so pointedly, that he had to beat a retreat and claim some other partner for the ensuing waltz. ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... probably did not time his "Minute Waltz" to exactly sixty seconds, some auditors insist that it lives up to its name. Mme. Theodora Surkow-Ryder on one of her tours played the "Minute Waltz" as an encore, first telling her audience what it ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... millionaire Dawsons and Ezra Stowbody and "Professor" George Edwin Mott danced, looking only slightly foolish; and by rushing about the room and being coy and coaxing to all persons over forty-five, Carol got them into a waltz and a Virginia Reel. But when she left them to disenjoy themselves in their own way Harry Haydock put a one-step record on the phonograph, the younger people took the floor, and all the elders sneaked back to their chairs, with crystallized ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... played in the Moorish kiosk. Number nine went up on the board. It was a waltz tune. The pale girls, the old widow lady, the three Jews lodging in the same boarding-house, the dandy, the major, the horse- dealer, and the gentleman of independent means, all wore the same blurred, drugged expression, and through the chinks in the planks at their feet they ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... "if I can keep in mind that I am thirty-three years old, and not a day less, I imagine I shall get through all right. Of course I sha'n't go on the floor and dance—at least, not very much. Perhaps nobody will ask me, anyway; of course I can expect nothing from Theodore Brower, who couldn't waltz any more than he could fly. No; I'll just sit in the box, and then nobody can say that I am giddy, or flighty, or trying to be ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... dancers. I followed them with my eyes through the crowd. Each abandoned herself with charming grace to her partner's arm, turning her head a little to one side, her hair floating on the waves of the waltz. Perhaps there was exaggerated ease and a trace of childish awkwardness in their manner. In ten minutes they came back to their places, out of breath, but with bright eyes. They took up their fans again, and while fanning themselves went ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... they are all gentlemen-some very distinguished," she continues, shaking her head as if to caution us. Voices in loud conversation are heard in the room to the right, while from out the left float the mellow notes of a waltz, accompanied by the light ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... The waltz struck up, and off they whirled; Dinah went into it as if she were working for pay, and as Joe held her closely in his arms, her wide hoops expanded till she looked like a topsail schooner scudding ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... than girls," she said to Mr. Parsons as they danced the last waltz together. "And I think their rooms are prettier than ours, if these are fair samples. But they can't have any better time ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... true, maid, wife, or widow, my duty as a soldier to my commander and the army to which I belonged, blotted out all else. Even as this new rush of determination swept over me, above us there sounded clearly the dashing music of a military band in the strains of a Strauss's waltz, and we could distinguish the muffled shuffling of many feet on the oaken floor overhead. Caton's chance remark about the great ball to be given that evening by officers of the headquarters staff recurred to ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... breath, or bust, hadn't you?" cried her disrespectful son, catching the portly matron about the spot where her waist should have been and hilariously whirling her about in a waltz which his own lameness rendered the more grotesque. "And where can you cook 'em? Why, right square in them old ovens at the mission. Full now of saddles and truck, but Samson and me'll clear 'em out lively. I'll make you a fire in ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... according to my observation, he cannot play lawn tennis oftener than once in two weeks. In between games he limps round, stiff as a hat tree and sore as a mashed thumb. Time was when he might mingle in the mystic mazes of the waltz, tripping the light fantastic toe or stubbing it, as the case may be. But that was in the days of the old-fashioned square dance, which was the fat man's friend among dances, and also of the old-fashioned ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His long improvised dirges will ring for ever in my ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded and which grew, touch by touch, into vagueness at which I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not why;—from these paintings (vivid as their images now are before ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... and the Goths drew the corpses, as they found room, towards a dark pile in the midst, where old Wulf sat upon a heap of slain, singing the praises of the Amal and the glories of Valhalla, while the shrieks of his lute rose shrill above the shrieks of the flying and the wounded, and its wild waltz-time danced and rollicked on swifter and swifter as the old singer maddened, in awful mockery of the terror ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... of their coffee. The band was playing the latest waltz. It was all very commonplace, but they were both young and uncritical. The waltz was one which Fenella had played after dinner at Bourne End, while they had sat out in the garden, lingering over their dessert. ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and returned in spirit to the fields of Vevey, hunting for one more sprite of field or wood. In vain. He could think of nothing but an old familiar hedge of eglantine. And to that, finally, was written the "Rose Waltz" to which Mademoiselle Pakrovsky, Venara's "discovery," later danced her way through La Scala to Paris, that end and aim of the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... waltz was played by the band: played a second time, special request, conveyed to the leader by Prince Ferdinand. True, most true, she longs to be home across the water. But be it admitted, that to any one loving colour, music, chivalry, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... years of age, he made his first attempt at composition, producing for a public occasion at the seminary in Athens, Ohio, where he was a student at the time, the "Tioga Waltz," which, although quite a pretty affair, he never thought worthy of preservation. In the same year, shortly afterwards, he composed music to the song commencing, "Sadly to mine heart appealing," now embraced in the list ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... living with him you wouldn't realize how important he was, would you? (Distant music begins again, a waltz tune.) ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett |
