"Teller" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the bird's nest, but that this should occur while the Khwajah's benefactors were his guests is—well, very extraordinary indeed! As to the pot of bran—why, some little license must be allowed a story-teller, that is all that need be said! The story from beginning to end is a most charming one, and will continue to afford pleasure to old and young—to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... were others. Madame Coraline, the fortune-teller, who rented the hall room on the second floor, was perhaps more surprised at her invitation than any of the rest. No one ever asked her anywhere. Even the veiled ladies who sometimes visited her darkened chamber always tiptoed up the steps as if they were ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... Xenophon. But otherwise we must come down to Lucian and the East before we find the faculty. So, too, in Latin before the two late writers named above, Ovid is about the only person who is a real story-teller. Virgil makes very little of his story in verse: and it is shocking to think how Livy throws away his chances in prose. No: putting the Petronian fragments aside, Lucian and Apuleius are the only ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... this book the reader will find translations, condensations of whole books, of interminable romances, and a few sketches by the author embodying Japanese ideas, beliefs and superstitions. I have taken no more liberty, I think, with the native originals, than a modern story-teller of Tokio would himself take, were he talking in an American parlor, instead of at his bamboo-curtained stand in Yanagi Cho, (Willow ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... ever yet was made to introduce military government." "If this bill had been law," Grattan added, "the independence of the Irish Parliament, the emancipation of the Catholics, and even the English revolution of 1688, could never have taken place!" The teller in favour of the Convention Act was Major Wellesley, member for Trim, twenty years later—Duke of Wellington! It became and still remains the law ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... are all spontaneously sure that no story-teller, though he were a Timon of Athens double distilled, can ever be so unsympathetic and unnatural as destiny, who tells the only story that never winds up. We cannot understand destiny; we never know to what lengths she may go: but the story-teller we know inside and ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... The teller of the Merchants' and Fruitgrowers' Bank looked through the bars of his gilded cage, and repeated the name reflectively. He did not notice the eager look of the woman who confronted him, but he did wonder a little that she had failed to ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... said that I do not think he was on the whole a good critic (for a man may be a good critic and a bad reviewer, though the reverse will hardly stand), and I have given my reasons. That he was neither a great, nor even a very good poet or tale-teller, I have no doubt whatever. But this leaves untouched the attraction of his miscellaneous work, and its suitableness for the purpose of recreation. For that purpose I think it to be among the very best work in all ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... false anecdote has also to true; it must be, in our proverbial phrase, "if not true, well invented." Even if exaggeration and humour contribute to give it a twist, the essence of parody is that it parodies—it must conform to the original even where it leaves it. A good story-teller will hardly tell the same story of Mr. Roosevelt and the Archbishop of Canterbury—unless it happens to be true, and then he will be cautious. "Truth," to quote another proverb, "is stranger than fiction"; because fiction ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... blessed by nature, the land where men took joy in living, the land of life, flowing with gaiety and love, the land of the Song of Songs and of Ruth. He drew Isaiah for them, not as a saintly Rabbi or a teller of mystical dreams, but a poetic Isaiah, patriot, sublime moralist, the prophet of a free Judea, the preacher of earthly prosperity, of goodness, and justice, opposing the narrow doctrines and minute and senseless ceremonialism inculcated by ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... * the book is so varied, so full of color and life from end to end, that few who read the first two or three stories will lay it down till they have read the last—and the last is a veritable gem * * * contains some of the best of his highly vivid work * * * Kipling is a born story-teller and a man ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... bottle. For what greater delight than to sip a rare vintage with a woman of beauty and intellect opposite? One glass is enough to loose her laughter, her wit, her charm. Bah! A man who knows how to drink his wine, a woman who knows when to laugh, a story-teller who stops when his point is told; these trifles add a little color as we pass. Will ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... growing in clumps, all a-bloom, as if the farmer had given up cultivating, and let things just go to rack and ruin. I was never up there myself, but from what I've heard my father say, I rather think that must be the Hoskins place. They say he consulted some fortune teller a couple of years ago, who told him he would some day discover a gold mine on his property that would make him a millionaire; and ever since the farmer has spent about all his time digging here and there, but up to now without any success ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... instincts of the people are ineradicable. One among those instincts, so foolishly styled "superstition," runs in the blood of the populace, and tinges no less the intellects of better educated folk. More than one French statesman has been known to consult the fortune-teller's cards. For sceptical minds, astrology, in French, so oddly termed astrologie judiciare, is nothing more than a cunning device for making a profit out of one of the strongest of all the instincts of human nature—to wit, curiosity. The sceptical mind consequently denies that there ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... of a winter's day. Eustace put his bundle of manuscript into my hands; and I skimmed through it pretty rapidly, trying to find out its merits and demerits by the touch of my fingers, as a veteran story-teller ought ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... The story-teller swallowed something in his throat, his gaze still on his persecutor. "No, sir," he continued, hoarsely, "them bucks jumped to their feet with the most awful yells I ever heard, and made a rush toward where ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... in mock horror. "Here's another one! Come on, fellers! Kick him!—he's got no friends! You know," he laughed, "I remind myself of the man who stuck his head in at the teller's window, wanting to have a check cashed. The teller didn't know him from Adam. 'Have you any friends here in the city?' asked he. 'Lord, no!' said the stranger; ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... I've guessed your secret—and his. But don't be afraid. I won't tell a soul. It's too romantic and fascinating for words—or to put into words. He let me have my fortune told by an Arab sand diviner, who came while we were at dinner. I can't repeat to you what the fortune-teller said. But I feel as if I were living in a book. Oh, if only I were writing it myself and could make everything happen just as I want it to happen! Do you know one thing I would put ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... something you must ask of those wiser than I, for I am only the story-teller, sitting in the shadow of the market-place, passing on the tale that comes to my ears. But I can remind you that May Eve is one of the most bewitched and bewitching times of the whole year—reason enough to account for any number of strange happenings; and I can point ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... Mr. Grice and the two prefects was eagerly discussed by boys of all ages. Exaggerated reports spread from mouth to mouth, each teller of the story adding to it some details drawn from his own imagination, until, away down in the Second Form, it was confidently asserted that Oaks had called Mr. Grice a "little tin monkey," and that Allingford had boxed ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... to the bank on which it was drawn with a cheque, the signature to which he knew to be good, and has expected to have the money paid over the counter to him without a word. All that the English paying teller needs to be satisfied of is that the signature of the drawer is genuine and that there is money enough to the credit of the account to meet the cheque. But the Englishman in the strange American bank finds that the document in his hands is practically ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... whom I love; to those who feel rather than to those who think; to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in the only realities—I offer this book of truths, not in the character of Truth-Teller, but for the beauty that abounds in its truth: constituting it true. To these I present the composition as an Art-Product alone:—-let us say as a Romance; or, if it be not urging too lofty a claim, as a Poem. What I here propound is true: therefore it ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... it had seemed! How rough everything was! How impossible the whole thing would have appeared to her had any fortune-teller in Bond Street prophesied the end ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... teller of whole strings of stories, which he repeats at every gathering. He has also a stock of bon-mots. "Madam," said he, "I have lost by you to-day." "How so, Sir Harry!" replies the lady. "Why, madam," ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... is comparatively easy. Abstract remarks are a great relief to the lazy honest man. They spare him the trouble of meticulous investigation of unimportant facts. But a concrete remark, touching upon a number of small details, is full of traps for the truth-teller." ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... favorable construction upon all dubious matters, and to throw the strongest light upon every fortunate circumstance. Mr. Parton has tried all three modes, and failed in all. He is an unskilful delineator of character, a poor story-teller, and a worse advocate. His book, despite its spasmodic style, lacks vigor. It indicates a want of firmness and precision of thought. It leaves a mixed impression on the mind. We venture to say, that two thirds of its readers will close the volume with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... and continued, "Her head will be slightly in danger, but of this no appearance will remain half an hour afterwards." It was impossible to doubt the facts. They appeared so surprising to the King, that he desired some inquiry to be made concerning the fortune-teller. Madame, however, protected her from the pursuit ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... was universally beloved in the neighbourhood—by the poor for the bounty he dispensed at the gates from the well-stocked larder of the knight; by the rich because he was by far the best tale-teller of the district, and the success of a feast at which he was present was at once assured; and by the children generally, for the confections and little silver pence he bestowed upon them, along with his kind word and cheery smile, ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... the afternoon to Mr. John Teller's, to ascertain whether he had any good wine, and to purchase some for our voyage, and also some brandy. On arriving at his house, we found him a little cool; indeed, not as he was formerly. We inquired for what we wanted, and he said ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... others, and one man who knew it had declined to come—the sociability grew more positive. Chester relaxed his legs under the table, feeling that at last Red's guests could take care of themselves. Grayson proved an accomplished story-teller; Buller had lately had some remarkable adventures; even Ronald Grant, who had seemed a trifle taciturn, related an extraordinary experience of another man. The Scottish surgeon had the reputation of never talking ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... merry jest and laughter and banter and gallant compliment before, but it was Richard Hunt's turn now, and story after story he told, as the rose-flakes dropped under his knife in such thin slices that their edges coiled. It was full half an hour before the carver and story-teller were done. After that ham the tablecloth was lifted, and the dessert spread on another lying beneath; then that, too, was raised, and the nuts and wines were placed on a third—red damask ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... story of Yorkshire's past provides Mr. Norway with a wealth of interesting material, which he has used judiciously and well; each grey ruin of castle and abbey he has re-erected and re-peopled in the most delightful way. A better guide and story teller it would ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... been taken prisoner. He told Stanhope the following curious story, "which," the latter suggests, "Walter Scott would probably hail as an additional proof of the reality of the art of divination. Captain Reid's mother, many years ago, having heard of the fame of some fortune-teller, resolved, out of pure frolic, to have her fortune told. She therefore disguised herself as her own maid and went to see the woman. She was at that date a wife and the mother of five children. The fortune-teller informed her that she would have, in all, ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... the maddening whirl of the dance; others use opium, Indian hemp, or other narcotics—all for the same purpose, to suspend the will, render the mind a blank, and excite the brain so as to produce morbid fancies and illusions. The fortune-teller and the clairvoyant employ methods of their own for concentrating their attention, so as produce a condition of mental passivity. The Indian adept prides himself on being able to extract volition and suspend imagination by the mere exercise ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... Numbers xv. 32-36. Upon referring to the sacred text, we certainly find a man gathering sticks upon the Sabbath day, and the congregation gathering stones for his merciless punishment, but we look in vain for any mention of the moon. Non est inventus. Of many an ancient story-teller we may say, as Sheridan said of Dundas, "the right honourable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests and to ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... moving from place to place, and from excitement to excitement. But he thought about Blanche as he sauntered in the dark walks; he thought about Blanche as he looked at the devices of the lamps. He consulted the fortune-teller about her, and was disappointed when that gipsy told him that he was in love with a dark lady who would make him happy; and at the concert, though Mr. Momus sang his most stunning comic songs, and asked his most astonishing riddles, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of insight, and his attention may thus be better secured than had the subject worn its every-day dress. Seriously, the most matter-of-fact life has moods when the light of romance seems to gild its earthen chimney-pots into fairy minarets; and, were the story-teller but sure of laying his hands upon the true gold, perhaps the more his story had of it, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... have just such a friend, no, you can have a whole company of just such friends, for yourself. How? In books, of course. Only they won't be merely books; they will be friends. Washington Irving, teller of wonderful stories, and Robert Louis Stevenson are there, in those books, and you can learn them as well as their stories. And Henry W. Longfellow, writer of stories in verse; and John G. Whittier, ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... an act under which he received his pension from the Government, the Court answered: "Pensions are the bounties of the government, which Congress has the right to give, withhold, distribute or recall, at its discretion." United States v. Teller, 107 U.S. 64, 68. Can it be doubted that Congress has power to repeal at any time the protection which present legislation affords ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... time of his arrival until his departure there was no sleeping, by anybody, on that picket post. We sat on the ground in a little circle around him, and listened to his comical and side-splitting stories of army life, and incidents in camp and field generally. He was an inimitable story teller, and his peculiar tone and manner added immensely to the comicality of his anecdotes. And somehow he had the happy faculty of extracting something humorous, or absurd, from what the generality of men would have regarded as a very serious affair. ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... situated in a high part of the town; and from the window of her summer apartment, we had the prospect of the sea, the islands, and the Asian mountains.—My letter is insensibly grown so long, I am ashamed of it. This is a very bad symptom. 'Tis well if I don't degenerate into a downright story-teller. It may be, our proverb, that knowledge is no burden, may be true, as to one's self but knowing too much, is very apt to make us troublesome to other ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... hours in the telling, the one or the other of us knowing it to be his special duty so to tell it that judge, and counsellors, and jury, should all catch clearly every point that was to be made,—how ill would that story be told, how would those points escape the memory of the teller, and never come near the intellect of the hearers! And how would the knowledge that it would be so, confuse your tongue or mine,—and make exquisitely miserable that moment of rising before the audience! But ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... many people—and as it is desirable that a story-teller and a story-reader should establish a mutual understanding as soon as possible, I beg it to be noticed that I confine this observation neither to young people nor to little people, but extend it to all conditions ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... jackal in possession of the carcass, the vulture impatiently waiting his good pleasure for the last scraps; of the natives working at the endless shadoofs; of a group of listeners around a professional story-teller—unfinished, for he was observed ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... — N. oracle; prophet, prophesier, seer, soothsayer, augur, fortune teller, crystal gazer^, witch, geomancer^, aruspex^; aruspice^, haruspice^; haruspex; astrologer, star gazer^; Sibyl; Python, Pythoness^; Pythia; Pythian oracle, Delphian oracle; Monitor, Sphinx, Tiresias, Cassandra^, Sibylline ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... not what; nay, to a thousand worse dealings with the devil than they were really guilty of. And this trade grew so open and so generally practised that it became common to have signs and inscriptions set up at doors: 'Here lives a fortune-teller', 'Here lives an astrologer', 'Here you may have your nativity calculated', and the like; and Friar Bacon's brazen-head, which was the usual sign of these people's dwellings, was to be seen almost in every street, ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... though we speak to no particular, or even existing, audience. Yet this fact is obvious; for all art gets its very form from the fact that it is a method of address. A story is a story because it is told, and told to some one not the teller. A picture is a picture because it is painted to be seen. It has all its artistic qualities because it is addressed to the eye. And music is music, and has the form which makes it music, because it is addressed ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... story that near the end of his term in office he went to a bank teller's wicket—being in urgent temporary need of a little common money—and presented a cheque. On being courteously reminded by the teller that he had not brought the customary identification, he blandly announced, "I am the Finance Minister of Canada." The manner ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... make me be untrue to my salt. And if you have any lingering notion that I'm not going to collect a million dollars' worth of satisfaction for the way you've acted aboard my ship, I can only say that as a fortune-teller you'll never earn enough money to keep yourself in cigarettes. You say you have been trained to provide for all conceivable emergencies, so I'm advising you, as a friend, to brace yourself for the surprise of your life before you're a week older. Have you ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... berries, cake, and ice cream, there will be some fine tableaus, I am told, and also a tent with a real gypsy fortune-teller, they say. I suppose we ought to patronize it for charity's sake, and because the girls might find it ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... man, the teller of the bank; "Johnny Clayton's kept Sussex and Kent in line for Adams; Jeems Bayard and the McLanes have captured Newcastle: Clayton goes to the senate, Louis McLane to the cabinet, the country to ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... he had been to a fortune-teller to inquire his destiny. It was his own energy and spirit of enterprise, and his resolution to lead an industrious life, that made him look forward with so ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Castlereagh is again accused by name at p. 187. The same charge occurs also in the dialogue between Aristotle and Calisthenes! p 334, 335, 336; where Prince Metternich, (Metanyctius,) the briber, is himself represented as a traitor to his country. Aristotle is the teller of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... Lord Dolphin, traveller and story-teller, want to repeat, that I am very, very grateful to any One I ought to thank, that I find myself among friends again, free, and in my own glorious home, the bright blue ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... was irresponsible and fantastic, full of bonhomie, and an engaging story teller. He possessed a "stupendous" fund of anecdotes of Napoleon and his marshals, and told them with such charm that his son acquired an unusual fondness for anecdotes, which he indulges extensively in some of his writings, particularly ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... The story-teller who roars with the lion and bleats with the lamb is sure to be rewarded with shouts of ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... to write about?" I retorted. "And you can't have spent five years at a great public school like Kensingtowe without one or two sensational things. Pick them out and let us have them. For whatever the modern theorists say, the main duty of a story-teller ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... about half a dozen words are strung together, and a sort of dialogue, in recitative, is kept up by the performers. In one direction, a conjurer is seen exhibiting his feats of manual dexterity, surrounded by a motley gaping crowd;—in another, a story-teller exercises the risible faculties of the sedate Turk, as well as of the merry laughter-loving Greek. A string of Armenian women approach, walking two and two with slow solemn steps, and followed by a slave ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... the story-teller by getting up and tucking a heavy rug snugly around Baby Van Rensselaer's feet, for the sky was now overcast and gray and the air was damp ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... "Oh! you little story-teller. Why, they are my college colors. I wouldn't part with them for worlds. I'll give you a lock of my hair, and the prettiest handkerchief you can find in Oxford; ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... "tendency to soliloquy" is growing upon him which will need watching. But he clothes his reflections pleasantly enough. Already known as what the old lady called "an agreeable rattlesnake," he has now proved himself a story-teller of conspicuous promise. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... legend of Solomon—not the Solomon of the Bible, but the much more wonderful Solomon of the Arabian story-teller. His power is said to have been in a certain seal ring, upon which the mystical name of Allah, or at least one of the ninety and nine mystical names, was engraved. When he chose to use this ring, all the spirits of air, the spirits of ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... railway facilities worth mentioning, and they had to go by private conveyance—wagon or carriage or on horseback as the case might be. Probably a dozen lawyers might go together, all putting up at the same hotel, and generally having a good time at night, spinning yarns. Lincoln was a good story-teller, and so was Davis; and the evenings were made exceedingly agreeable ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... that boat he were thinking already that he might have to leave sudden, and perhaps a crew wouldn't be willing to, even if he got one. So he trimmed his teller lanyards to run forrard, so as he could steer before t' foremast, and handle t' headsheets hisself going to windward, and at t' same time keep a ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... of laughter drowned the words of the luckless second speaker, and some one yelled vociferously, "Neddie the fortune-teller! Don't tell me he's ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... an account in the papers of a young lady who, misled by a fortune-teller, actually went part of the way to India (as far as Bagnigge Wells, I think,) in search of a husband who was promised her there. Do you suppose this poor deluded little soul would have left her shop ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the river. Andre went up the Hudson in the sloop of war Vulture, which anchored off Teller's Point. Fearing they knew not what, the Continentals dragged an old six-pound cannon to the end of Teller's Point. That galled the Vulture and drove her from her anchorage, so that she drifted down the river. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... and their eight children. Mr. William Bakewell, of Bartley & Bakewell, solicitors, married Jane Warren of Springfield, Barossa, and I was a familiar friend of their five children. In one house I was "Miss Spence, the storyteller," in the other "Miss Spence, the teller of tales!" Some of the tales appeared long after as Christmas stories in The Adelaide Observer, but my young hearers preferred the oral narrative, with appropriate gestures and emphasis, and had no scruple about ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... things, they made their story, as it unfolded itself, explain, by more or less skilful devices, all that needed to be known about their beginnings. They did not think of rules of art. They did of themselves naturally what a good story-teller does, to make himself intelligible and interesting; and it is not easy to be interesting, unless the parts of the story are in ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... The reward of the story-teller who has successfully met the child's story interest is the plea embodied in the title of this book: "Tell me another story." The book meets this child longing on a psychologic basis. It consists of groups of stories arranged so that their telling ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... castle-building recurring to the mind in this condition, and now believed to have a real existence." Thus, for example, one patient believed in the reality of the good luck previously predicted by a fortune-teller. Other writers on mental disease observe that it is a common thing for the monomaniac to cherish the delusion that he has actually gained the object of some previous ambition, or is undergoing some ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... the palm for being a good trainer, Dick," declared Tom, taking a bite out of a sandwich and following it with a sip of coffee, "but you have one short-coming. You're no fortune teller. So, as you can't foretell the future, I vote that, after this, we breakfast in the morning and swim later in the day. It would affect my heart in time, if we had to battle every morning for our ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... more than another which weighs upon the mind of a story-teller as he chronicles the events which he has set out to describe, it is the thought that the reader may be growing impatient with him for straying from the main channel of his tale and devoting himself to what are after all minor developments. This ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... had not yet come, for the prophecy of the fortune-teller had not yet been fulfilled. Josephine was, indeed, the wife of a renowned general, but she was not yet "something more than ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... we gather about the story teller—then lie awake o' nights, seeing mocking figures, arms akimbo, defying all your science ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... presently Tony fell into narration. From the young Stuart Prince's curious looks at me 'twas plain to be seen that Creagh was recounting the tale of my adventures. Once I heard the Prince exclaim, "What! That boy?" More than once he laughed heartily, for Creagh was an inimitable story-teller and every point to be scored in the telling gained sparkle from his Irish wit. When he had finished Prince Charles sent for me and congratulated me warmly on the boldness and the aplomb (so he was kind enough to phrase it) which had ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... had in Madame Marve a perfect wife for a showman. In addition to her value as the Egyptian Mystic, a wonder-worker, and teller of for tunes, she was chief cook and housekeeper for the whole caravan, but she had a flirtatious disposition, and the attentions Nicholas Crips offered in his unprofessional moments were received in a spirit ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... nephew, in this case it may be hoped, not relying on his uncle, calls Warner a "good plain writer of moral rules and precepts": the fact being that though he sometimes moralises he is in the main a story-teller, and much more bent on narrative than on teaching. Meres calls him "a refiner of the English tongue," and attributes to him "rare ornaments and resplendent habiliments of the pen": the truth being that he is (as Philips so far ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... earliest years and passed them on to their children and grandchildren in turn. And, as is natural, in all this telling the stories changed little by little. New and more familiar characters were introduced, or a story-teller with more vivid imagination than his fellows would add a bit here and there to make ...
— Legend Land, Vol. 1 • Various
... said Wally, in tones of melancholy. "Every fortune teller I ever saw told me that ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... truly initiated, who looked with sovereign contempt upon the hackney author. One little indication is the love of mystifications, or what were entitled 'bites.' All the Wits, as we know, combined to tease the unlucky fortune-teller, Partridge, and to maintain that their prediction of his death had been verified, though he absurdly pretended to be still alive. So Swift tells us in the journal to Stella how he had circulated a lie about a man who had been hanged coming ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... deposit slips, then glanced mechanically at the bank-book's entries, and wearily parried the badinage of the bright-faced young bank-teller. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... writing of stories which, for the most part, were somewhat sad. One of these stories a fellow scribe borrowed from me and read aloud to a company, whom it pleased so much that there were many who asked leave to copy it and publish it abroad. So by degrees I became known as a teller of tales, which tales I caused to be copied and sold, though out of them I made but little. Still my fame grew till on a day I received a message from the Prince Seti, my twin in Ra, saying that he had read certain ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... and seldom won. She did not believe—no one but a fool (and she was not that) could have believed—all the many things that were told her; the many things that must always, while pity and the need to be pitied endure, be told to the pitiful; but she seldom said so. She merely looked at the teller with her long and lovely violet eyes, that took in so much and gave out such continual friendship, and saw how, behind the lies, the need dwelt pleading. Then she gave, not necessarily what the lies asked for, but what, in her opinion, pity owed to that which pleaded. She certainly gave, as a ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... should crawl; Still they're your only hope: no midnight oil Makes up for virtue wanting in the soil; 90 Manure them well and prune them; 'twon't be France, Nor Spain, nor Italy, but there's your chance. You have one story-teller worth a score Of dead Boccaccios,—nay, add twenty more,— A hawthorn asking spring's most dainty breath, And him you're freezing pretty well to death. However, since you say so, I will tease My memory to a story by ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... saving woman comes to him pure and clean, and does her healthful, beautiful work for him at such a cost as you know of. Whether her life is tragedy modified or tragedy unalloyed rests with the story-teller; but you're there to champion ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... with these reports about the Archduke there is one remarkable detail that is worthy of note. He told me himself how a fortune-teller once predicted that "he would one day let loose a world war." Although to a certain extent this prophecy flattered him, containing as it did the unspoken recognition that the world would have to reckon on him as a powerful factor, still he emphatically pointed out how mad ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... notable quality was a humorous urbanity. As a story-teller he was unsurpassed. He had been everywhere and had known every one. He was quick to seize a point, and extraordinarily apt in anecdote and illustration. His fine taste appreciated whatever was best in life, in conversation, in literature, even when (as in his selection ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... Truth-Teller" could utter its lies, as a privileged publication, at the period of this narrative. Types still had a sanctity; and it is surprising how much they deceived, and how many were their dupes. The journal did not even take the ordinary ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... spared the pain of undergoing such an examination. Mr. Cardney, a teller in one of the banks, had just been married, and wanted a maid-servant for his wife, and, passing through the market in the early part of the day, was pleased with the young slave's appearance, and his dwelling the quadroon found a much better home than often falls ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... As each story-teller began his narrative, she cast a momentary glance in his direction, and then turned back to fire-gazing once more. Once or twice she cast a curious glance towards the far corner where Dan Vernon was seated, but he had drawn his chair so far back that nothing ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... realizes this he slips into the state of the first speaker described in this paragraph. If he does not realize when he reaches a good conclusion he talks too long and weakens the effect by stopping on a lower plane than he has already reached. This fault corresponds to the story teller whose book drops in interest at the end. The son of a minister was asked whether his father's sermon the previous Sunday had-not had some good points in it. The boy replied, "Yes, three good points ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... very grand to have the first telling; and I daresay there might be a peculiar freshness about it, because everything would be nearly as new to the story-teller himself ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... surely." And Douglas Hyde brought home one day a story from Kilmacduagh bog, in which Aristotle took the place of Solomon, the Wise Man in our tales as well as in those of the East. And he said that as the story grew and the teller became more familiar, the name of Aristotle was ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... addressed the bald, stocky, middle-aged man who, at the paying-teller's window, was sponging his fat fingers and counting and labeling packages of currency—"what is ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... laugh, and pulled him away to where a hippopotamus sat under the shade of a big tree, mopping his brow with a red handkerchief—for the weather was somewhat sultry. Before the hip was a table covered with a blue cloth, and upon the cloth was embroidered the words: "Professor Hipmus, Fortune Teller." ...
— The Woggle-Bug Book • L. Frank Baum
... might expect, his laws did not remedy the evil. There were so many rich men who had not married that it had become a lucrative trade to flatter them in order to be mentioned in their will; by having no children one could surround himself with a crowd of flatterers. "In the city," says a Roman story-teller, "all men divide themselves into two classes, those who fish, and those who are angled for." "Losing his children augments the influence of ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... Boris, was in there trying to borrow some money. He's been hanging round town ever since Mascola fired him. When I've seen him he's been drunk on Japanese sake. He has it in for me because all the fishermen kid him about being run on the rocks by a girl. When I stepped back from the teller's window, Boris lunged against me and started to mumble something. But before he had hardly opened his mouth, a well-dressed man came from somewhere and threw him half across the room. And who do you think ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... Now this tidings-teller did not deliver his relation of things in private, but in open court, the King and his Son, high lords, chief captains, and nobles, being all there present to hear. But by that they had heard the whole of the story, it would ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... now," he said to the caliph, "which of us is the truth-teller. Here is the lost leg of the table. I found the table and kept this for evidence. It is the same with most of the treasures Musa has shown you. It was I who won them and captured the cities in which they were found. Ask any of these soldiers if I ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... version of the story followed. In it Big Jack and his mates figured merely as disinterested onlookers. The teller, stimulated by applause, surpassed himself. They could not ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... in case I should be obliged to abandon my present business. Dervish Sefer instructed me in the numerous tricks which he practised, to impose himself upon the world as a person of great sanctity; I learned the art of writing talismans from the second; and the story-teller taught me some of the tales with which his head was stored, lent me his books, and gave me general rules how to lead on the curiosity of an audience, until their money should insensibly be enticed ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... from Rieha, turned round its eastern corner, and in one hour from Rieha, reached the village of Kefr Lata [Arabic]. We were hospitably received at the house of the Sheikh of Kefr Lata, although his women only were at home. A wondering story-teller amused us in the evening with chanting the Bedouin history of the Beni Helal. Kefr Lata belongs to Ibn Szeyaf, one of the ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... Taciturnity, and having served my Country many Years under the Title of the dumb Doctor, I shall now prophesie by Word of Mouth, and (as Mr. Lee says of the Magpie, who you know was a great Fortune-teller among the Ancients) chatter Futurity. I have hitherto chosen to receive Questions and return Answers in Writing, that I might avoid the Tediousness and Trouble of Debates, my Querists being generally of a Humour to think, that they have never Predictions enough for ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... ascending the mountain—that there was a cave high up among the precipices on the southeast side of Nipple Top. He scarcely volunteered the information, and with seeming reluctance gave us any particulars about it. I always admire this art by which the accomplished story-teller lets his listener drag the reluctant tale of the marvelous from him, and makes you in a manner responsible for its improbability. If this is well managed, the listener is always eager to believe a great deal more than the romancer seems willing to tell, and always resents ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... have to be teller of very bad new sister, my poor wife die morning. It will not be a shock to you than it wa me. I had no thought it was likely to happen a few hours previous sent her love to you her mother. The two little things ar but I have been what ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... had been a captain of volunteers in a Minnesota regiment. He was a thoroughly interesting talker, and an inimitable story-teller, a man who did not lose his sense of humor when the joke turned on himself. I heard him tell one or two ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... too, that could teach even the wisest, sun-employing pig some tricks in economics. He is the last word in adaptation to environment, with an uncanny knowledge that makes the uninformed look askance at the tale-teller. These crabs climb cocoanut-trees to procure their favorite food. They dote on cocoanuts, the ripe, full-meated sort. They are able to enjoy them by various endeavors demanding strength, cleverness, an apparent understanding of the effect ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... seeing a castle," he began in the accepted manner of the story-teller, and in his pleasant, soothing voice. "A great big castle on the summit of a mountain, with a golden flag fluttering in the sunset; and I think it must be the 'Castle of Heart's Desire,' because all up the craggy path that leads to it there are ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... "So far as I am able to learn," says he, "there is just one person, aside from Mrs. Pedders and her daughter, who believes him innocent. Strangely enough too, that's Norris, who was teller at the time. He's president of the bank now. I had a talk with him this morning. He insists that Pedders was too honest to touch a dollar; says he knew him too well. But he offers no explanation as to where the ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... if Clara J. ever gets wise that I've been speculating again after faithfully promising her to cut out all the guessing contests, she's liable to say something unkind. I simply must get that money back, Bunch, before she knows I lost it, and Signor Petroskinski is the name of our paying teller. I tell you, Bunch, we can't lose if we handle this cinch right, and I've got it all framed up. It's good for a thousand plunks apiece every week, so cut out the yesterday gag and ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... given a book in which the teller or cashier credits him on the left-hand side with the amount deposited. Other deposits are treated in the same way, and at proper times, if interest is allowed, it is added as ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun
... of all foemen, very hard to vanquish be: The Truth-teller, the Just-dweller, and the ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... and other establishments, fitted up with gorgeous saloons, are generally crowded with them. As you pass, you may observe the frequenters of such places in dozens, deeply engaged in play, while the teller of the establishment sits at a table with a huge heap of Spanish doubloons or Mexican mill dollars before him, which he adds to or takes from with the tact of a banker's clerk, as the chances of luck ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... them off slowly till three o'clock," said Bingley, the vice-president, whom I found, with five or six of the directors, already in my office. "I've got only one paying teller's window open. The trouble, of course, began with the small accounts, of which we carry such a blamed lot. Mark my words, it is the little ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... "We never heard of such a port," said some of his auditors; "you're humbugging us." "I have been to America, the West and East Ingees, but I never heard of such a port," said another. "Why, you lubbers," said the story-teller, "if you go to France, you'll see thousands of them. It's what they drive the coaches under into their yards." I was inclined to correct the word, but I thought it better not to interrupt them. "Where ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... the masses and great libraries. Macaulay is a glorified journalist and reviewer, who brings the matured results of scholars to the man in the street in a form that he can remember and enjoy, when he could not make use of a merely learned book. He performs the office of the ballad-maker or story-teller in an age before books were known or were common. And it is largely due to his influence that the best journals and periodicals of our day are written in a style so clear, so direct, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... great charm, when the emotion of the subject is quiet, recollective, or deep. The descriptions of Nature in the poem are some of the most vivid and true in Browning's work. The sketches of animal life—so natural on the lips of the teller of the story—are done from the keen observation of a huntsman, and with his love for the animals he has fed, followed and slain. And, through it all, there breathes the romantic passion—to be out of the world of custom and commonplace, set free ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... this there was no time to make reply, for Inna had supplied them all with tea, and Oscar had cleared his throat like a story-teller in a book, and ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... told before. Hence the emphatic sentences marked in the good old (but deserted) Italic type; and hence, too, the frequent interposition of the reminding old colloquial parenthesis, 'I say,' 'Mind,' and the like, when the story-teller repeats what, to a practised reader, might appear to have been sufficiently insisted upon before: which made an ingenious critic observe, that his works, in this kind, were excellent reading for the kitchen. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... or 10, that I distinctly recollect the desire I had of being able to know something about every pebble in front of the hall door—it was my earliest and only geological aspiration at that time. I was in those days a very great story-teller—for the pure pleasure of exciting attention and surprise. I stole fruit and hid it for these same motives, and injured trees by barking them for similar ends. I scarcely ever went out walking without saying I had seen a pheasant ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... her individual capacity, is fitted for a number of different occupations. Banks have long employed girls as stenographers and a number of young women have held junior clerkships. But now the work of a ledger-keeper or teller is sometimes given to a woman, and there is a prospect for the intelligent girl with capacity for financial affairs to find a position in a bank, suited to her gifts. There are a few women in accountants' offices. The number ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... the Androscoggin and the Saco,—I don't feel bound to tell you precisely where, and I have only a story-teller's word to give you for it at all,—lies the little neighborhood of Outledge. An odd corner of a great township such as they measure off in these wilds; where they take in, with some eligible "locations" of intervale land, miles also ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... eye on the world, Mr. Henry Worthington Cowperwood, because of the death of the bank's president and the consequent moving ahead of the other officers, fell heir to the place vacated by the promoted teller, at the, to him, munificent salary of thirty-five hundred dollars a year. At once he decided, as he told his wife joyously, to remove his family from 21 Buttonwood Street to 124 New Market Street, a much better ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... appointment as one of the Tellers of the Exchequer, was in close confederacy with Bennet, now Lord Arlington, and was scheming with him to oust the influence of the Chancellor and the Treasurer. His perquisites, as Teller of the Exchequer, were lessened by the assignment of taxes to the bankers in return for their advances, and as the proceeds of the taxes did not pass through the Exchequer, the percentage to the Tellers was thereby diminished. The position of Lord Southampton was difficult to assail. "His reputation ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik |
