"Story-telling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Gaboriau's novels. These last he eagerly skimmed until an advanced hour in the morning; but although they introduced him to many new ideas, he could nowhere discover what to do with a stolen diamond. He was annoyed, moreover, to find the information scattered amongst romantic story-telling, instead of soberly set forth after the manner of a manual; and he concluded that, even if the writer had thought much upon these subjects, he was totally lacking in educational method. For the character ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their spirits rose and there were many rounds of singing and story-telling as they sat clustered together like bees under the lee of the deck-house, and in all of these ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... style in which it is written rather contributes to this effect, lending the story beauty but robbing it of truth. Still, it is not without power, and cultured verse is certainly a pleasanter medium for story-telling than coarse and common prose. The hero of the poem is a young clergyman of ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... of story-telling seems to be ingrained in human nature. Travellers tell of vari-coloured races sitting round their watch fires reciting deeds of the past; and letters from colonists show how, even amidst forest-clearing, they have beguiled their evening hours by ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... torpedo boats, and with the adventures of the young crew, who, by degrees, become most expert in this most wonderful and awe-inspiring field of modern naval practice. The books are written by an expert and possess, in addition to the author's surpassing knack of story-telling, a great educational value for all ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... except, perhaps, the annual election, or Thanksgiving festival; and when winter came, and the sun went down at half-past four o'clock, and left the long, dark hours of evening to be provided for, the necessity of amusement became urgent. Hence, in those days, chimney-corner story-telling became an art and an accomplishment. Society then was full of traditions and narratives which had all the uncertain glow and shifting mystery of the firelit hearth upon them. They were told to sympathetic audiences, by the rising and ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that hell?" Dan Cohan gulped down half a glass of red wine, smacked his thick lips, and began in his story-telling voice: ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... excellent bit of ocean poetry here (ll. 210-224), and we get a vivid idea of the hospitality of a brave people by following the poet's description of Beowulf's meeting with King Hrothgar and Queen Wealhtheow, and of the joy and feasting and story-telling in Heorot. The picture of Wealhtheow passing the mead cup to the warriors with her own hand is a noble one, and plainly indicates the reverence paid by these strong men to their wives and mothers. Night comes on; the fear of Grendel is again upon the Danes, and all withdraw after ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... gorges, the reedy notes of the accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the flickering campfire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by Piney—story-telling. Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions caring to relate their personal experiences, this plan would have failed, too, but for the Innocent. Some months before he had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope's ingenious translation of the Iliad. He now proposed to narrate the principal ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... on being asked "Who is my neighbour?" replied "A man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho," and the parable which followed is the most beautiful which language has ever recorded. Story-telling, though often abused, is the medium by which truth can be most irresistibly conveyed to the majority of minds, and in the present instance we have a desire to portray in some slight degree the importance ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... seals, and almost hit them in the most admirable manner; we have hunted for an indubitable polar bear,—and found a dog and a midnight mystification; we have played at chess, euchre, backgammon, whist, debating-club, story-telling, nightmare,—one of our number developing an incomparable genius for the last; we have played at getting tolerable cooking out of two slovens, one of whom knows nothing, and the other everything but his business,—and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... cosmopolitan writer and has no other connexion with America than the accident of birth. A third novelist, also a foreign resident, Francis Marion Crawford (1854-1909), falls into the same category. A prolific novelist, in the beaten track of story-telling, he has always a story to tell and excellent narrative power. The work regarded as most important from his hand is Saracinesca (1887) and its sequels; but his subjects are cosmopolitan, his talent ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... evening in June, in the year 1620, little Philip noticed that there was less general story-telling than usual, and that the Indians seemed greatly interested in a long story which one of their number was telling. He could not understand the story, but he frequently caught the words, "Squanto" and "English." These were ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... written and deftly touched with a gentle humor. It is a dainty book—daintily illustrated."—New York Tribune. "A wholesome, bright, refreshing story, an ideal book to give a young girl."—Chicago Record-Herald. "An idyllic story, replete with pathos and inimitable humor. As story-telling it is perfection, and as portrait-painting it is ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... loquacious mood after supper, devoting himself entirely to Necia, in whom he seemed to take great interest. He was an engaging talker, with a peculiar knack of suggestion in story-telling—an unconscious halting and elusiveness that told more than words could express—and, knowing his West so well, he fascinated the girl, who hung upon his ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... will be followed by "The Fisher Maiden," in which Bjornson makes a new departure, and exhibits his powers in a somewhat different vein of story-telling. ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... train for domestic efficiency and motherhood, and if necessary for economic independence. It must also furnish the stimulus for mental culture and direct a proper aspiration for social enlightenment. The curriculum should include biology, hygiene, psychology, home beautifying, the story-telling side of literature, music and a few other studies tending to make woman more like woman than she is to-day. When we have this, teaching for mothercraft will be ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... privilege of reading any stories they find on the shelves, which are on one side only. The other shelves, placed across the room, were moved to the studio, which is so large that it has space for story-telling, or oftener story-reading. The winter of the Dickens centennial, through the month of February, the beginnings of "David Copperfield," "Nicholas Nickleby," "Dombey and son" and "Great ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... he could not be satisfied his leg was sound (in all other things well) until two Franciscans by chance coming that way, fully removed him from the conceit. Sed abunde fabularum audivimus,—enough of story-telling. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Walter Scott gathered round him at the fireplace in the Parliament Hall of Edinburgh a company of young brother advocates to hear the latest of Lord Eskgrove's eccentric sayings from the Bench, that rendezvous has been the favourite resort for story-telling among succeeding generations of counsel. While the Court is in session, they vary their daily walk up and down the hall by lounging round the spot where the future Wizard of the North proved a strong counter-attraction to many ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... slovenly narrative is the very perfection of bad story-telling. But the story itself is striking, and, by the very oddness of the incidents, not likely to have been invented. The effect, from the position of the two parties—on the one side, a simple child from Devonshire, dreaming in the Strand that he was swimming over from Sestos to Abydos, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... seem almost ludicrous did we not keep in mind its reason for existence. It was, first, symbolic story-telling art, and secondly, architectural decoration. As a story-teller it was effective because of its simplicity and directness. As decoration, the repeated expressionless face and figure, the arbitrary color, the absence of perspective were not inappropriate then nor ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... gorges, the reedy notes of the accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the flickering camp-fire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by Piney—story-telling. Neither Mr., Oakhurst nor his female companions caring to relate their personal experiences, this plan would have failed, too, but for the Innocent. Some months before he had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope's ingenious translation of the Iliad. He now proposed to narrate the principal ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... animals, especially kittens and puppies, which he delights to clothe in quaintly human style and cause to appear intently engaged in all manner of human duties and pastimes. His clever imagination also lends itself readily to entertaining story-telling. The result is a book that surprises and delights all who see it. Each of sixty half-tones from photographs of living, costumed pets is faced by a page of bright descriptive narrative. The continuation of story-interest is remarkably good, and the pictures are ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... the stage has been denounced by the purists because he makes settings too large a portion of his story-telling, and transforms his theatre into the paradise of the property-man. But this very quality of the well spaced setting, if you please, has made his chance for the world's moving picture anthology. As reproduced by Jesse K. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... his fidelity to nature and story-telling power, lose nothing with years, and he stands at the head of those who are furnishing a literature for the young, clean and sweet in tone, and always ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... no attempt to compile a complete handbook on story-telling but has merely brought together in uniform printed form, story lists and programs for story hours as they have been used to meet the needs in the various divisions of the Children's Department of the St. Louis Public Library. No claim is made to originality, but the editor ...
— Lists of Stories and Programs for Story Hours • Various
... of whys and wherefores, as they make poor story-telling, and leave me, Basdel Morris, overlong in quitting the thicket about my tree. And yet the wise man always looks backward as well as forward when entering on a trail, and children yet unborn may blaze a better trace if they understand ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... with you. You are here to listen. Never mind if they tell you that story-telling is a cheap thing, a popular thing, a mean thing. It is the instrument that is given to you and if, when you come to die you know that, for brief moments, you have heard, and that what you have heard you have ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... not an idle nature by any means: it was only erratic, fond of variety, impatient of drudgery. Thus, in the course of fourteen years' literary work, his thoughts make excursions from town-life to country-life, from social satire to story-telling, from art to ethnology, from theology to opera-bouffe! Here are the titles of a few of his compositions: Lower Bohemia in Melbourne (a sketch), Plot (a sensational drama), Review of Comte and Positive Philosophy (magazine article), The Humbug Papers (humorous and ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... is best to begin with the children, but the parents can {131} sometimes be induced to join in. Story-telling is also an unfailing resource in our efforts to amuse ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... jonquiere, he watched keenly, in a business-like spirit, the gay gestures and pretty dimples of Blaisette Simon, who was the most eager listener of the story-telling group. He had often thought of her as a possible wife. But she was such a universal flirt, that, hitherto, he had received no special encouragement. To-night, however, he felt inclined to exert the full power of attraction which he was quite capable of appreciating ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... ways wind, They reach not to the blessed fairy-land That once all lovely in heaven's stolen light, To yearning thoughts, in the deep green-wood grew. Ah! had they come to light when nature Was a wonder-loving, story-telling child!— The misty morn of ages had gone by, The dreamy childhood of the race was past, And in its tame and reasoning manhood, In the daylight broad, and noon-day of all time, This world hath sprung. The poetry of truth, None other, shall her shining lakes, ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... the summary of a study in national growth and decay, but expressive of the fact that a French bicycle team wins a signal victory over a group of exhausted English competitors. Do you see now how far towards the art of simplified story-telling these Americans have gone? ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... jack," ordered Al. "To-morrow he won't even remember he ever saw us. You're letting your story-telling instinct warp your judgment, Lucy. You're looking for mysteries. I'll get ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... Keary's The Heroes of Asgard, adapting it to classroom use for pupils of about the fourth and fifth grades." The selection is presented here as a splendid specimen of "made-over" literature, as well as, in its own right, a masterpiece of story-telling for children. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... story-telling mood, I may as well relate an account that was given me of the manner in which Jung distinguished himself on one occasion with a musk elephant. The story is interesting, as it was by such daring feats that he won for himself the reputation of being the most undaunted ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... in detail we found that they covered an extraordinarily wide range of fancy, graceful and dramatic, even while, save in one panel, they showed an indifference to story-telling. One group celebrated "The Birth of European Art," with the altar and the sacred flame, tended by a female guardian and three helpers, and with a messenger reaching from his chariot to seize the torch of inspiration and to bear it in triumph through the world, the future intimated ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... has held a prominent place in the firm's catalogue, is Mr. George M. Baker. Although he has done much for the entertainment of the young people in the line of story-telling, his greatest success has been found in his series of amateur dramatic books, which have long ago become standard. I would not undertake to mention how many "plays" he has written; but to simply read the "mail orders" for such literature or watch customers as they come and go from "headquarters," ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... for his production, that of the mediaeval ballad, is peculiarly adapted to story-telling on account of the freedom which it allows, and it has never been more artistically used than in this instance. In harmony with the ballad form the poet uses certain old words, such as "trow," "wist," and "countree." It will be seen that the stanzas vary in length, and that ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... TROWBRIDGE'S humor, his fidelity to nature, and story-telling power lose nothing with years; and he stands at the head of those who are furnishing a literature for the young, clean and sweet in tone, and always ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... must not dress Cordelia or Rosalind in robes of triangular patches, covered with spangles, by way of making the coup d'oeil of them less dull; and so the story-telling of Scott is like the robe of the Sistine Zipporah—embroidered only on the edges with gold and blue, and the embroidery involving a legend written ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... became skilful), hugged her again, exulted in her brighter looks, and stationed her in her chair by the window. Over against this chair, Maggy, with apoplectic exertions that were not at all required, dragged the box which was her seat on story-telling occasions, sat down upon it, hugged her own knees, and said, with a voracious appetite for stories, and ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... achievements, good or bad. It is the theatrical change from the Potter's Field to the centre of fashion that first catches our fancy in the tale of Washington Square. In fact, my friend, we are, first and last, children addicted to the mad yet harmless passion of story-telling and story-hearing. I do hope that, when you read these pages, you will remember that, and be not too stern in criticism of sundry vastly important historic points which are all forgot and left out ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... presented him with Abbotsford, and thither he returned to spend the few years remaining to him. In 1830 he suffered a first stroke of paralysis; refusing to give up, however, he made one more desperate rally to recapture his old power of story-telling. Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous were the pathetic result; they are not to be taken into account, in any estimate of his powers, for they are manifestly the work of a paralytic patient. The gloomy picture is darkened by an incident which illustrates ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... Never was story-telling so hard; she could not collect her thoughts; she could not think of a single thing that would interest that frightened crowd. The blizzard—the horror of it—the dread of what it might bring to these children under her ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... antithesis of the symbol and the story has a most interesting parallel in the two great classes of primitive art—the one symbolic, merely suggestive, shaped by the space it had to fill, and so degenerating into the slavishly symmetrical; the other descriptive, "story-telling," and without a trace of space composition. On neither side is there evidence of direct aesthetic feeling. Only in the course of artistic development do we find the rigid, yet often unbalanced, symmetry ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... dervish came to his turn to speak, he said: 'My tale is but short, although story-telling is my profession. I am the son of a schoolmaster, who, perceiving that I was endowed with a very retentive memory, made me read and repeat to him most of the histories with which our language abounds; and when he found that he had ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... reality of it all, and so beautiful did they appear to her that she was reluctant to leave, and begged to be taken back to see it all again. Unfortunately it is not true. A full and careful inquiry has been made into the story, of which there are several versions, and its origin traced to a little story-telling Wiltshire boy who had read or heard of the white-robed priests of the ancient days at "The Stones," and who just to astonish other little boys naughtily pretended that he had ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... come to cast in my lot with the people of the Red River, I should be glad to hear from you about the early times, and especially of the earlier people of this region, who lived their lives, and came and went, before the arrival of Lord Selkirk's settlers in 1812." Thus the story-telling began, and patriarch and questioner made out from one source and another the whole story of the predecessors of the ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... his supercilious smile, "ah, indeed! dragons should be interesting, especially in such a very quiet, shady nook as this,—quite an idyllic place for story-telling, it's a positive shame to disturb you," and his sharp, white teeth gleamed beneath his moustache, as he spoke, and he tapped his riding-boot lightly with his hunting-crop as he fronted Bellew, who had risen, ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... infants, who have lively imaginations, pass; and, accordingly, there was a consultation in Mr Benson's study one morning. Ruth was there, quiet, very pale, and with compressed lips, sick at heart as she heard Miss Benson's arguments for the necessity of whipping, in order to cure Leonard of his story-telling. Mr Benson looked unhappy and uncomfortable. Education was but a series of experiments to them all, and they all had a secret dread of spoiling the noble boy, who was the darling of their hearts. And, perhaps, this very intensity of love begot an impatient, unnecessary anxiety, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... there was laughing, story-telling, drinking of healths, and rejoicing, until Pitter Nilken was quite overcome, and offered of his own accord to sing "The Knife-Grinder's Courtship"—a song which had been a great favourite in the days of his youth. He sang amidst rounds of applause, in ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... inventiveness in pose and attitude." For each new picture he seemed always to have ready some new compositional motive. Claude Phillips goes so far as to say that in the whole range of art Rembrandt alone is his equal in this respect. This versatility was due in a measure to his story-telling instinct. His imagination seemed to weave some story about each sitter which the picture was intended, as it were, to illustrate. From Lord Heathfield, refusing to yield the keys of Gibraltar, to little Miss Bowles, dropping ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... full of interest in the narrative of our young tourist. The tropical scenery by day and night on the river, the fandango at Gorgona, and the ride to Panama through the dense dark forest, with death, in the shape of a cholera-stricken emigrant, following at their heels, are in the raciest spirit of story-telling. The steamer from Panama touched at the ancient city of Acapulco, and took in a company of gamblers, who immediately set up their business on deck. At San Deigo, the first overland emigrants by the route of the Gila river, who had reached that place a few days before, came on board, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... hear all I passed through after leaving that rock, you will know that this story-telling is not worth thinking about," said Blauvelt, with a slight laugh, "All my exposure was well worth the risk, for the chance of telling it to a woman of your nerve. My hope now is that Strahan may some day learn how stanch was our 'home support,' as we were accustomed ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... real gift of story-telling to begin with. And he has other greater qualities than that.... His latest novel possesses a broad human interest as a really imaginative study of life."—RICHARD LE GALLIENNE, in ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... story-telling, when suddenly the aggageers changed the conversation by a few tales of the Bas-e natives, which so thoroughly eclipsed the dangers of wild beasts that in a short time the entire party would almost have welcomed a lion, provided he would have agreed to protect them from the Bas-e. In this very ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... Unaccustomed to story-telling, it is possible that I have neglected chronology in this account. I referred just now to the time we couldn't get into Harlson's house because we hadn't carried the Ninth Ward and to the Ape crowing at the window in his mother's arms. Time passed after that, and, we all grew older, though, ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... good government and in the rational and convenient ordering of things. Her tales to illustrate the truths of political economy are what might be expected from a writer of this character. They are far from being wanting—many of them—in the genuine interest of good story-telling. They are rapid, definite, and without a trace of either slovenliness or fatigue. We are amazed as we think of the speed and prompt regularity with which they were produced; and the fertile ingenuity with which the pill of political economy is wrapped up ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... The story-telling, thus agreed upon, opened a new opportunity for meeting Mary-Clare. Quite naturally she shared with Noreen and Jan-an the hours of the late afternoon walks in the woods or, occasionally, by the fireside of her own home when the chilly ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... to you that this "going back and living up" in a story-book is a sign of a possibility that may be laid by in the divine story-telling, for the things we have to hurry away from, and miss of, now? It does to me. I know that That can manage at least as well ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... matter with your telling it to me?" asked Rob, eying the mailed hand and the spear with interest. "I'll be gone before Betty gets back. Go on and tell it. This is an ideal time and place for story-telling." ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of the Princesse de Sagan and the apartment occupied by Miss Mary Garden.... A fat manufacturer's wife confronts the proposal of a mercenary duke with an epic rejoinder: "Pay a man a million dollars to sleep with my daughter! Never!"... Again Saltus demonstrates how completely he is master of the story-telling gift, how surely he possesses the power ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... not at the same time cast a glance into Susanna's heart? It is rather curious there. The fact was, that Harald had,—partly by his provocativeness and naughtiness, and partly by his friendship, his story-telling, and his native worth, which Susanna discovered more and more,—so rooted himself into all her thoughts and feelings, that it was impossible for her to displace him from them. In anger, in gratitude, in evil, in good, at all times, must she think ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... old gentleman drop, for his adventures were rather strange; but the narration of them is not very profitable, not that I go in for the utilitarian theory of conversation; but I think, on the whole, that, in story-telling, fiction should be preferred to dull facts like these, and so the next time I tell a story I ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... in charge to you?" Laura said, looking up into Mr. Pynsent's face, and dropping her eyes instantly, like a guilty little story-telling coquette. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of a child's life merges imperceptibly into the reading period.... Listening to stories from books is the natural approach to reading from books and is the first step toward the acquisition of culture," says one believer in story-telling. Another adds "What is more pleasing than an increasing acquaintance with stories of the imagination, for of fact we shall ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher
... one penalty people pay for being authors, which is that from cultivating vivid impressions and mental pictures they are apt to take fancies too seriously and to mistake them for reality. In story-telling this is well enough, and it interferes with nobody; but in real history, and in one's own history most of all, this faculty is apt to raise up bogies and nightmares along one's path; and while one is fighting imaginary demons, the ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... which have a more national or even local tinge and are yet not legendary. The homely flavour attached to many stories of this kind is very apparent, and it is evident that they have been put together in oral form by unknown 'makers,' some of whom had either a natural or artistic aptitude for story-telling. In the first of the following tales it is curious to note how the ancient Breton theme has been put by its peasant narrator into almost a ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... thought of it more, but that my Memory has been lately refreshed by seeing some of these ingenious Gentlemen ply in the open Streets, one of which I saw receive so suitable a Reward of his Labours, that tho' I know you are no Friend to Story-telling, yet I must beg leave to trouble you with this ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... painting this is only a stage of transition. In dancing as in painting we are on the threshold of the art of the future. The same rules must be applied in both cases. Conventional beauty must go by the board and the literary element of "story-telling" or "anecdote" must be abandoned as useless. Both arts must learn from music that every harmony and every discord which springs from the inner spirit is beautiful, but that it is essential that they should spring from the inner ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... art speak, he went on to teach it to say things heretofore unaccustomed. If you look back at the five books of which we have now so hastily spoken, you will be astonished at the freedom with which the original purposes of story-telling have been laid aside and passed by. Where are now the two lovers who descended the main watershed of all the Waverley Novels, and all the novels that have tried to follow in their wake? Sometimes they are almost lost sight of before the solemn isolation of a man ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... came forth in a form which does not permit of its being recalled, the form of the spoken and unrecorded word. He was by nature an improvisor. In the inclusive sense of the term, the sense which includes poetry, story-telling, description as well as pleading and exhortation, he was a born orator; and he was at his best when in the glow of pure improvisation. It thus happened that it was often a group of friends around a fireside, or ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... time. A little farther off, near the main-hatch, Nils Buvaagen (whom Salve had met again at Notteroe, and persuaded to take service with him) and a couple of the crew who were off duty were engaged in story-telling, the others lounging about near them to listen. ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... in Hindustani after they were told, and a second time by the annotator before they were printed. "I never saw people more anxious to have their tales retold exactly, than are Dunkni and Muniya," the two story-telling ayahs. Not till each tale was pronounced by them to be exact was it sent to the press. The stories may be taken then as faithful transcripts of Indian thought. The merits of the copious Notes contributed by the late Mrs. Whitley Stokes, bearing witness to a very ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... telling stories is the oldest artistic faculty in the world, and the deepest implanted in the heart of man. Before the rudest cave-pictures were scratched on the stone, the story-teller, it is not unreasonable to suppose, was plying his trade. All early poetry is simply story-telling in verse. Stories are the first literary interest of the awakening mind of a child. As that is so, it is strange that the novel, which of all literary ways of story-telling seems closest to the unstudied tale-spinning of talk, should be the late discovery that it is. Of ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... different, but it also left deep mark. A tall, consumptive girl among the Cliff House pupils, the motherless daughter of a clergyman-friend of Miss Frederick's, had for some time taken notice of Marcella, and at length won her by nothing else, in the first instance, than a remarkable gift for story-telling. She was a parlour-boarder, had a room to herself, and a fire in it when the weather was cold. She was not held strictly to lesson hours; many delicacies in the way of food were provided for her, and Miss Frederick ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... another necessarily, because their ages must differ widely. Read Goethe's autobiography; and note that though he was happy in his parents and had exceptional powers of observation, divination, and story-telling, he knew less about his father and mother than about most of the other people he mentions. I myself was never on bad terms with my mother: we lived together until I was forty-two years old, absolutely without the smallest friction of any kind; yet when her death set me thinking ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... all favorable to story-telling. There was an autumnal languor in the air, and a dreamy haze softened the dark green of the distant pines and the deep blue of the Southern sky. The generous meal he had made had put the old man in a very good humor. He was not ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... humour of story-telling, the young nobleman went on, addressing himself chiefly to his servants, without minding ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... mind relished and fattened upon,—nay, and because, like all truly good men, they themselves indulged a fond, secret, half-belief that these child's stories of theirs were, if the truth could be got at, more than half true. We should be sorry to believe that this good old life of story-telling and story-hearing had utterly gone out. It belonged to an age that only very foolish men and very vulgar men ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Blanc now move on through the crumbling snowdrift so slowly, that their progress is almost imperceptible, and anon abridge their journey by springing over the intervening chasms which cross their path, with the assistance of their pilgrim-staves. Or, to make a briefer simile, the course of story-telling which we have for the present adopted, resembles the original discipline of the dragoons, who were trained to serve either on foot or horseback, as the emergencies of the service required. With this explanation, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... may afford a ground of conciliation with Miss Faraday and the scholars who hold by the lateness of the episode—the intrinsic beauty and pathos of the situation, the fact of its constituting an artistic climax, would naturally tempt the more gifted of the story-telling class. There would be a tendency to elaborate, to adorn in the newest fashion, hence to modernise, and it is not only conceivable but most probable that the original form should be farther departed from than in the case of much else ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... set times and seasons for story-telling among the various Indian tribes, but the winter season, when there is likely to be most leisure and most need of fireside entertainment, is a general favorite. However, some tribes have myths that "can not be told in summer, others only at night, etc."[16] ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... exclaimed. "Glad are we to see the Bard of Imarina. Your coming is well-timed. We are feasting, and singing, and story-telling. Words from the poet ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... heavy, and one of Karlsefin's men called Krake, who was a wild jocular man with a peculiar twang in his speech, the result of having been long a prisoner in Ireland. We mention these men particularly, because it was they who took the chief part in conversations and in story-telling. The two Scots were also there, but they were very quiet, and talked little; nevertheless, they were interested and attentive listeners. Olaf was there also, all eyes and ears,—for Olaf drank in stories, and songs, and jests, as the sea-sand ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... and cordial; he was established in the kindliness of all who knew him; and he was flattered by the dependence of the Paronsina and her mother, even when it was troublesome to him. He had his past of sentiment and war, his present of story-telling and romance. He was quite independent: his sins, if he had any, began and ended in himself, for none was united to him so closely as to be hurt by them; and he was far too imprudent a man to be taken for an example ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... young was once decoyed by some noblemen and the player to a house of carnal recreation. Mr. Bowles was not always a clergyman; and when he was a very young man, was he never seduced into as much? If I were in the humour for story-telling, and relating little anecdotes, I could tell a much better story of Mr. Bowles than Cibber's, upon much better authority, viz. that of Mr. Bowles himself. It was not related by him in my presence, but in that of a third person, whom Mr. Bowles names oftener than ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... solitary being, without wit, and without external charm of any kind. La Bruyere has said, "A certain man appears loutish, heavy, stupid; he can neither talk nor relate what he has just seen; he sets himself to writing, and it is a model of story-telling; he makes speakers of animals, trees; stones, everything that cannot speak. There is nothing but lightness and elegance, nothing but natural beauty and delicacy in his works." "He says nothing or will talk of nothing but Plato," Racine's ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... hard to associate hypocrisy with Mr. Stafford, whose fond ambition it was to nail Lawrence Hyde to lecture on his Chinese travels before the Bible Class. "Oh, nothing religious," he explained, holding his victim firmly by the coat as Lawrence edged away. "Only half an hour's story-telling to put a few new ideas into their heads—as if you were talking to a young brother of your own. I'm always trying to get them to emigrate, but they need a great deal of shoving." Lawrence said they could not emigrate ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... the smoke was curling upward from those cigars in clouds. When supper was over and the guards arranged for the night, story-telling was in order. This cattle-buyer with us lived in Kansas City and gave us several good ones. He told us of an attempted robbery of a bank which had occurred a few days before in a western town. As a prelude to the tale, he gave us ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... mythology and folk-customs, but to the children of Ireland and England. Our new imaginative stories are now told in nurseries, listened to at evening when the children assemble in the fire-light to hear tales from their parents, and eagerly read by boys at school. A fresh world of story-telling has been opened to the imagination of ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... working for my father five years before I was born. He was not a strong man and had never been able to carry the wide swath of the other help in the fields, but we all loved him for his kindness and his knack of story-telling. He was a bachelor who came over the mountain from Pleasant Valley, a little bundle of clothes on his shoulder, and bringing a name that enriched the nomenclature of our neighbourhood. It ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... the art of story-telling must be manifest to everybody; for here I am talking of Helen, as of a young lady of sixteen or more, with shy notions of beaux and lovers in her head,—whereas, in point of time, my story has not advanced by regular ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... head. "I haven't got the gift of story-telling," he said, simply. "Besides, you can understand I don't want it noised ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... when the deep snow came; how, when the lake set fast and the thick ice formed a highway to the shore, little Oscar taught Oliver Trench how to cut holes through to the water and fish under the ice; how hunting, sledging, football, and firewood-cutting became the order of the day; supping, story-telling, singing, and reading the manuscript Gospel according to John, the order of the evening, and sleeping like tops, with occasional snoring, the order of the night, when the waters were thus arrested by the power of frost, and the land was smothered in snow. All this and a ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... differ more from each other in the art and mystery of story-telling than either of them do from the English. It would be very easy to point out tales which are very popular in Paris, that would make no sensation at Vienna or Berlin; and, vice versa, we cannot imagine how the French can possibly enter into the spirit of many of the best known ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... entertainment and is found enough. Dumas approaches perhaps nearest of any modern to these Arabian authors in the purely material charm of some of his romances. The early part of "Monte Cristo," down to the finding of the treasure, is a piece of perfect story-telling; the man never breathed who shared these moving incidents without a tremor; and yet Faria is a thing of packthread and Dantes little more than a name. The sequel is one long-drawn error, gloomy, bloody, unnatural, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "epic" for present purposes—appear to have been two—the Saint's Life and the patriotic or family saga, the latter in the first place indelibly affected by the Mahometan incursions of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. The story-telling instinct—kindled by, or at first devoted to, these subjects—subsequently fastened on numerous others. In fact almost all was fish that came to the magic net of Romance; and though two great subjects ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... interested in the flow of anecdotes which came from his companion's lips. There were few corners of the world, civilised or uncivilised, where the superintendent had not been in the course of his career. He had the gift of dramatic and humorous story-telling. He spoke of adventures in Buenos Ayres, in South Africa, Russia, the United States, and a dozen other countries, of knife-thrusts and revolver shots, of sand-bagging and bludgeoning, without any suspicion of vaunting himself. The baronet ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... in the hay-field. Eric excelled himself in his rare power of story-telling. Basil and Ermie sat side by side, and whispered together. Miss Nelson had seldom seen a softer look on her elder pupil's face than now. She determined that Basil and his sister should be together as much as possible ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... from that in which the Cid was written, but the power and movement of that remarkable legend are entirely wanting in these poems. There is a simple-hearted piety in them, however, that is very attractive, and in some of them a story-telling spirit that is ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... card-playing with packs soiled and worn; checkers and chess on extemporized boards with rudely whittled "pieces"; occasional discussions historical, literary, political, or religious; many of us quite regular physical exercises in brisk walks on the empty lowest floor; story-telling; at times, though not often, the reading aloud of a Confederate newspaper, to a group of fifty or more listeners; at evening, sweet singing, riddles, jests, or loud-voiced sarcastic conundrums and satirical responses. Many found interest ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague |
