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Story-teller   Listen
noun
Story-teller  n.  
1.
One who tells stories; a narrator of anecdotes,incidents, or fictitious tales; as, an amusing story-teller.
2.
An historian; in contempt.
3.
A euphemism or child's word for "a liar."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Story-teller" Quotes from Famous Books



... about Charley's use of the word under the circumstances, and he himself couldn't tell whether his exclamation had reference to the Author of Evils or only to the Author of Novels. The circumstances were calculated to suggest equally thoughts of the Great Teller of Stories and of the Great Story-teller, and I have a mind to amuse you at this Christmas season by telling you the circumstances, and letting you decide, if you can, which Dickens it was that Charles ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... interesting to remember that one of his grandparents was a full-blooded negress. Dumas' literary work is essentially romantic; his themes are courage, loyalty, honour, love, pageantry, and adventure; he belongs to the tradition of Scott and Schiller, but as a story-teller excels every other. His plays and novels are both very numerous; the "OEuvres Completes," published between 1860 and 1884, fill 277 volumes. Probably "Monte Cristo" and "The Three Musketeers" are the most famous of his stories. He was an ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... customers. Hardly has dessert ended when an elderly Mahomedan in shabby garb falls out of the group and clearing his throat to attract attention commences to recite a flowery prelude in verse. He is the "Dastan-Shah," own brother (professionally) of the "Sammar" or story-teller of Arabia and the "Shayir" of Persia and Cairo: and his stories, which he delivers in a quaint sing-song fashion, richly interspersed with quotations from the poets of Persia, are usually culled from the immortal "Thousand and one Nights" or are concerned with the exploits ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... is to supply the place of interminable details that would be tedious and tame. What best merits attention at present is the general situation, and the strange complication of feeling that arose from it. History itself, though a far more daring story-teller than romance, presents few things so strange(1) as the footing on which Gerard and Margaret now lived for many years. United by present affection, past familiarity, and a marriage irregular but legal; separated by Holy Church and by their own consciences, which sided unreservedly with Holy ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... to return to France. They abandoned the little Hermine, as the crew had been so weakened by sickness and death. They captured Donnacona and several other chiefs and determined to take them to France "to relate to the king the wonders of the world Donnacona [evidently a great story-teller] had seen in these western countries, for he had assured us that he had been in the Saguenay kingdom, where are infinite gold, rubies, and other riches, and white men dressed in woollen clothing." In the vicinity of the fort, at the meeting of the St. Croix and Lairet, Cartier raised a cross, thirty-five ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... not so great a story-teller as many Americans, but he excelled in a type of yarn that especially delights Englishmen, for it is the kind that is native to the American soil. He possessed an inexhaustible stock of Negro anecdotes, and he had the gift ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... roared with laughter except Romer. His interest had been so all-absorbing, his excitement so great, and his faith in the story-teller so reverential that at first he could not grasp the trick at the end of the story. His face was radiant, his eyes were dark and dilated. When the truth dawned upon him, amaze and disappointment changed ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... roaming thoughts by help of a good yarn, when it could be got. There were plenty of individuals, amongst a crew of forty, calculated by their experience, or else by their flow of spirits, and fancy, to spin it. Each watch into which they were divided had its especial story-teller, with whose merits it twitted the other, and on opportunity of a general reunion, they were pitted against one another like two fighting-cocks, or a couple of rival novelists in more polished literary society ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... must be keen," said the story-teller, "for it is a long way off. Well, he had never felt them so objectionable as on one particular night, when the house being full of company, it was decided that the boys should sleep in 'barracks,' as they called it; that is, ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... everyone likes to read these make-believe biographies? Because we are all interested in what other people are doing and thinking, and because a good story tells in an entertaining way about life-like people, into whom the story-teller has breathed something of his own personality. Then how does it come that so few of us care to read the biographies of real people, which ought to be all the more interesting because they are true instead of make-believe? Well, in the first place, because most ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... drew a deep breath, and the story-teller, watching her face, saw that she was stirred with an emotion which he put down, with a slight surprise, to ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... himself, and sit upon a narrow bench, or perhaps stand up; which selects for another the choicest portions of the dishes upon the table, and uncomplainingly dines off what is left; which hears with smiling interest the well- worn anecdotes of the veteran story-teller; which gently lifts the little child, who has fallen, and comforts the sobbing grief and terror; which never forgets to endeavor to please others, and seems, at least, pleased with all efforts made to entertain himself. Place the code of politeness beside that of vulgarity ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost

... and it always has a tremendous stimulus to the imagination, and that is why stories and fire go together. You cannot tell a good story unless you tell it before a fire. You cannot have a complete fire unless you have a good story-teller along! ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... half 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

... subject for congratulation that so many youth will be introduced, through the medium of Dryden's crisp and vigorous verse, to one of the tales of Chaucer. May it now, as in his own century, accomplish the poet's desire, and awaken in them appreciative admiration for the old bard, the best story-teller in ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden

... back,—that is one of the story-teller's rights,—and put ourselves once more in the year 1815, and even a little earlier than the epoch when the action narrated in the first part of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... interested listeners were gathered around the wigwam fire of the old story-teller, whom they had made happy by gifts of venison and tobacco, Oowikapun said to him, "Good father, you are wise in many things about which we are ignorant, and long ago the old men of our people handed down to you from our forefathers the stories to be kept in remembrance; tell us how the white men ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... a visit of the great Duke of Marlborough. The portrait instantly arrests attention. His ideal personages had been drawn in such a sketchy way, they presented so many imperfectly harmonized features, that they never became real, with the exception, of course, of the story-teller himself. But the vigor with which the presentment of the imperial ship-carpenter, the sturdy, savage, eager, fiery Peter, was given in the few opening sentences, showed the movement of the hand, the glow of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... replied the story-teller. 'It is this: however bad the woman whom one happens to possess may be, be certain it is always possible to ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... had won a very great reputation as a short story-teller, that De Maupassant attempted a long novel. He published only six single volume stories, all of which are included in the present edition. The first was Une Vie (A Life), 1883, a very careful study of Norman manners, highly finished in the manner of Flaubert, ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... 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

... interrupted 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 ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... species. In three years' practical experience among the children of the poorer classes, and during all the succeeding years, when I have filled the honorary and honorable offices of general-utility woman, story-teller, song-singer, and playmaker-in-ordinary to their royal highnesses, some thousands of babies, I have been struck with the greater hardness of the small boys; a certain coarseness of fibre and lack ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... is not what we were talking about. Quadroon balls are not to be mentioned in connection. Those ladies—" He addressed himself to the resuscitation of his cigar. "Singular people in this country," he resumed; but his cigar would not revive. He was a poor story-teller. To Frowenfeld—as it would have been to any one, except a Creole or the most thoroughly Creoleized Americain—his narrative, when it was done, was little more than a thick mist of strange names, places and events; yet there shone a light of romance upon it ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... what he precisely meant by the last reference to herself. For as he leaned complacently back in his seat, anger against him flamed suddenly hot in her. Occupied by his story, she had ceased to take stock of the story-teller. Now that he had ended, she looked him over from head to foot. An obstinate stupidity was the mark of the man to her eye. How dare he sit in judgment upon the meanest of his fellows, let alone Harry Feversham? she asked, and in the same moment recollected ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... gone out, and not even a skirt rustled in that dark studio as the story-teller paused a moment to steady her voice, and put a hand softly up to her ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... Grushenka had grown used to him, and coming back from seeing Mitya (whom she had begun to visit in prison before she was really well) she would sit down and begin talking to "Maximushka" about trifling matters, to keep her from thinking of her sorrow. The old man turned out to be a good story-teller on occasions, so that at last he became necessary to her. Grushenka saw scarcely any one else beside Alyosha, who did not come every day and never stayed long. Her old merchant lay seriously ill at this time, "at his last gasp" as they said in the town, and he did, in fact, die a week ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... story, they have only too frequently been modified, or the reverse. At the same time, embellishments of the kind are interesting, as showing how familiar these traditionary beliefs were in olden times to the story-teller, and how ready he was to avail ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... girl to her and pointed out the shepherds and shepherdesses carved on the white Italian marble of the fireplace; she invented a little story about them to amuse the child, while the mother stood by and at the end thanked the story-teller with more enthusiasm than seemed called for. Mrs. Lee did not fancy her effusive manner, or her complexion, and was glad when ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... Moment.—The chief business of a story-teller is to arouse the interest of his readers, and the sooner he succeeds, the better. Usually he tries to arouse interest from the very beginning of his story. He therefore places in the introduction or near ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... intervention, in company where I am supposed to be enjoying myself. When my friend the politician gets too far into the personal details of the quorum pars magna fui, I find myself all at once exclaiming in mental articulation, Popgun! When my friend the story-teller begins that protracted narrative which has often emptied me of all my voluntary laughter for the evening, he has got but a very little way when I say to myself, What wouldn't I give for a pellet from that popgun! In short, so useful has that trivial implement proved as a jaw-stopper ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... and each reader in each age, must judge for itself and himself. I think the author of the Odyssey (the Iliad comes rather in competition with the chansons than with these romances) was a better poet than the author of Partenopeus, and I also think that he was a better story-teller; but I do not think that the latter was a bad story-teller; and I can read him with plenty of interest. So I can most of his fellows, no one of whom, I think, ever quite approaches the insipidity of their worst English imitators. The knights do not weary me with their exploits, and I confess that ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... ward returned once more to the chateau, N'Oun Doare riding his new purchase, when it entered into his head to untie one of the knots on the halter. He did so, and immediately descended in the middle of Paris—which we must take the story-teller's word for it is ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... to the story-teller in her intense interest. Why, it was like one of her fairy-tales! She held her breath to listen, while the old ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer

... 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 of ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green

... "The nasty little story-teller!" Mrs. Twemlow cried. "But I am not at all surprised at it, when I saw how she had got her hair done ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... cause trouble," Stark was saying, "for he didn't seem to be a jealous sort, just stupid and kind of heavy-witted; but one night he took advantage of Bennett's absence and sneaked up to the house." The story-teller paused, and Necia, who was under the spell of ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... 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 will result in definite ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

... hut a fire was blazing. Some men were squatted around a tripod which supported a large iron pot. One was speaking, and even Royson's untrained ear recognized the measured cadence of the story-teller. A rumble of laughter showed that the protest of some discomfited rogue or some wise moullah's saw had just tickled the audience when Abdullah leaped from the ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... friend. In the overthrow of love and feeling, she bravely tried to pick up the threads of the old intellectual pleasures. And both Ferrier and Chide, two of the ablest men of their generation, were never tired of helping her thus to recover herself. Chide was an admirable story-teller; and his mere daily life had stored him with tales, humorous and grim; while Ferrier talked history and poetry, as they strolled about Siena or Perugia; and, as he sat at night among the letters of ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... am wandering again. That is the difficulty with the unprofessional story-teller: he yaws back and forth and can't keep in the wind; he drops his characters overboard when he hasn't any further use for them and drowns them; he forgets the coffee-pot and the frying-pan and all the other small essentials, ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... have become a citizen of York after serving an apprenticeship in London. Evil May Day is closely described in Hall's Chronicle. The ballad, said to be by Churchill, a contemporary, does not agree with it in all respects; but the story-teller may surely have license to follow whatever is most suitable to the purpose. The sermon is exactly as given by Hall, who is also responsible for the description of the King's sports and of the Field of the ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... novels, as in the twoscore short stories and sketches—the contes and the nouvelles which are now spring-like idyls and now wintry episodes, now sombre etchings and now gayly-colored pastels—in all the works of the story-teller we see the firm grasp of the dramatist. The characters speak for themselves; each reveals himself with the swift directness of the personages of a play. They are not talked about and about, for all analysis has been done by the playwright before he rings up the curtain in the ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy

... "impressions" to any non-combatants they may interest. They must not look for the talents of a great story-teller, nor the thrilling interest of a novel. All they will find is the simple tale of an eyewitness, the unschooled effort of a soldier more apt with the sword ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont

... know," quoth my uncle, "that Dame Primmins is a very intelligent woman,—full of fancy, and a capital story-teller?" ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... chance could you ask?' I cried. 'Man, I've often thought that an innkeeper would make the best story-teller in the world.' ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan

... "He's a great story-teller, but that's a small part of him," said Samson. "He's a kind of a four horse team. He knows more than any man I ever saw and can tell it and he can wrestle like old Satan and swing a scythe or an axe all day an' mighty supple. He's one of us common folks and don't pretend to be a ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... story-teller," put in the old hunter, "but if you will forgive my want of skill, I shall be happy to tell you, not the story of the tusks, for that is part of the history of our journey to King Solomon's Mines, but that of the buffalo horns beneath ...
— Hunter Quatermain's Story • H. Rider Haggard

... addressed to the story-teller suggesting ways in which the poems may be used. The poems are indexed under such ethical subjects ...
— Lists of Stories and Programs for Story Hours • Various

... but he had keen literary tastes, a vigorous interest in science, and a remarkable alertness of intellect. His gifts were varied rather than deep; literary rather than philosophical. As a companion, he had a wonderful charm and magnetism; he was a graceful talker, a marvellous story-teller, and a wit seldom rivalled. His intimate friend, Anthony Trollope, says, "There was never a man so pleasant as he with whom to sit and talk vague literary gossip over a cup of coffee and a cigar." By the same friend ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... secretly wondered if Uncle Jesse were not drawing a rather long bow at our credulous expense. But in this, as I found later, I did him injustice. His tales were all literally true, and Uncle Jesse had the gift of the born story-teller, whereby "unhappy, far-off things" can be brought vividly before the hearer and made to live again ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Man's Land (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is revealed a breadth of vision which may astonish some of us who have been inclined to regard SAPPER as merely a talented story-teller. Among the writers on the War I place him first, for the simple reason that I like him best; and I am not at all sure that I should like him any better if he cured himself of his cardinal fault. With his tongue in his cheek he dashes away ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various

... something of the same result by sadly different means, will measure the difference between the roundabout, faint descriptive tokens of respectable prose and the immediate projection of the figure by the pencil. A charming story-teller indeed he would be who should write as Mr. Abbey draws. However, what is style for one art is style for other, so blessed is the fraternity that binds them together, and the worker in words may take ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... Smaller systems circulate more rapidly. The administrators were guided by experience. The movement had been far swifter, and the results were more surprising. Such was the wonderful story, and it was told in a happy moment. The audience were eager and sympathetic. The subject was enthralling. The story-teller had a wit and a style that might have brightened the dullest theme. In these propitious circumstances the book was more than a book. The words rang like the trumpet-call which rallies the soldiers after the parapets are stormed, and summons them to ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... was to supersede Borough Farm. We had grown out of Borough and were for the moment houseless, so far as summer quarters were concerned. And for my work's sake, I felt that eagerness for new scenes and suggestions which is generally present, I think, in the story-teller of all shades. Suddenly, in a house-agent's catalogue, we came across an astonishing advertisement. Hampden House, on the Chiltern Hills, the ancestral home of John Hampden, of ship-money fame, was to let for the summer, ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... now, sitting on that crimson velvet seat in the lounge and looking past the gesticulations of the General to Jevons, who was shaking his head at her as much as to say, "Don't you believe the old boy, he's a shocking story-teller." ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... writing in the Nineteenth Century, October 1887, said: "I have left till the last any mention of the lady who, by right of merit, should stand first. Mrs. Molesworth is, in my opinion, considering the quality and quantity of her labours, the best story-teller for children England has yet known. This is a bold statement and requires substantiation. Mrs. Molesworth, during the last six years, has never failed to occupy a prominent place among the juvenile writers of the season. . . . Mrs. Molesworth's ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... to be Maupassant, the novelist, a story-teller, a writer, and a philosopher by turns. I will add one more trait; he was devoid of all spirit of criticism. When he essays to demolish a theory, one is amazed to find in this great, clear writer such lack of precision of thought, and such weak argument. He wrote the ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... followed in quick succession. Embodying extravagant adventures, they must be classed nevertheless in the category of the sentimental novel to which the writings of Sand and Feuillet belong. Cherbuliez is always an interesting story-teller and an ingenious artificer of plot, but his psychology is conventional and his descriptive passages superficial though clever. "Samuel Brohl & Co.," published in 1877, illustrates his power of drawing cosmopolitan ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... heard the many tales which the old lady had to relate. Mrs. Margaret having led a life without adventures, had made up their deficiency by being a most graphic recorder of the histories of others; Scheherazade herself was not a more amusing story-teller; and if the Arabian Princess had recourse to genii, talismans, and monsters, to adorn her narratives, neither was Mrs. Dymock without her marvellous apparatus; for she had her ghosts, her good people, her ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]

... my hand, or else sewing buttons on to a shirt-collar. But he never forgave me about the mutton broth. He told me, in so many words, that I was a—story-teller. And for the matter of that, my dear, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... Dickie o' Dryhope, who, having never a word ready, 'thrust the lance through his fause bodie,'—all these are told in the most vigorous and graphic style of rough first-hand narrative. And then the story-teller takes up the parable in his own person, and describes how he and his comrades plunged through the flooded Eden, climbed the bank, and through 'wind and weet and fire and sleet' came ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie

... in his condition had had a chastening effect—just as some fruits become mellower and better after being bruised a little and frost-bitten. He was a great lover of children, and withal an inveterate story-teller. ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth

... possible to escape the great thought that in a few moments we should see at that queer, stiff table the creator of Sam Weller, and Oliver Twist, and Micawber, and Dick Swiveller, and the rest of the endless, marvellous company—the greatest story-teller since Scott, one of the most famous names in literature since Fielding. When he was here before Carlyle growled in Past and Present about "Schnauspiel, the distinguished novelist," and there were some who laughed. But the laugh has passed by.—Look! There is a man, who looks ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... re-read, but not Tolstoi: and I couple two of the giants. To take lesser artists, I would say that we can re-read Lavengro but not Romola. But what seems puzzling is that Hardy, who is above all a story-teller, and whose stories are of the kind that rouse suspense and satisfy it, can be read more than once, and never be quite without novelty. There is often, in his books, too much story, as in The Mayor of Casterbridge, where the plot extends into almost inextricable entanglements; and yet that ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... of Throndhjem, Thoke (Thore) of More, Hrafn the White, Haf (war), Biarni, Blihar (Blig?) surnamed Snub-nosed; Biorn from the district of Sogni; Findar (Finn) born in the Firth; Bersi born in the town F(I)alu; Siward Boarhead, Erik the Story-teller, Holmstein the White, Hrut Rawi (or Vafi, the Doubter), Erling surnamed Snake. Now from the province of Jather came Odd the Englishman, Alf the Far-wanderer, Enar the Paunched, and Ywar surnamed Thriug. Now from Thule (Iceland) came Mar the Red, born and bred in the district ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... horses, Albino ponies, with pink eyes and noses, revoltingly greedy creatures, eating all day long and still craving for more. There are booths for singing and dancing, and under one a professional story-teller was reciting to a densely packed crowd one of the old, popular stories of crime. There are booths where for a few rin you may have the pleasure of feeding some very ugly and greedy apes, or of watching mangy monkeys which have ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... or three thousand centuries, ten or fifteen thousand generations. So slowly, by human standards, did humanity gather itself together out of the dim intimations of the beast. And that first glimmering of speculation, that first story of achievement, that story-teller bright-eyed and flushed under his matted hair, gesticulating to his gaping, incredulous listener, gripping his wrist to keep him attentive, was the most marvellous beginning this world has ever seen. It ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... much so, indeed, that large numbers of the people suffer from diseased eyes, in consequence of these insects incessantly fastening on the sores caused by the irritating sand which fills the air. It was absurd for this Hebrew story-teller to scotch the last fly; he should have left sufficient to maintain the ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote

... had brought their horses within the shadow of the sok's[6] high walls and loosened the many-clothed saddles. Slaves walked behind their masters or trafficked on their behalf. The snake-charmer, the story-teller, the beggar, the water-carrier, the incense seller, whose task in life is to fumigate True Believers, all who go to make the typical Moorish crowd, were to be seen indolently plying their trade. But inquiries for mules, horses, and servants for the inland journey met with no ready response. ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan

... added the polite General, while Paul noted how little the author of "Shadowmere" minded, as he phrased it to himself, when addressed as a celebrated story-teller. The young man had an idea he should never get used to that; it would always make him uncomfortable—from the suspicion that people would think they had to—and he would want to prevent it. Evidently his great colleague had toughened and hardened—had made himself a surface. The group of men ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James

... mutual friend, Barbour Lathrop, with whom I had been associated in journalism in San Francisco and who is famous from the Bohemian Club literally around the globe and in many of its most out-of-the-way islands as a most entertaining, albeit incessant, story-teller and conversationalist. Pretty nearly all subjects that interest humanity have engaged his attention. He could no more rest from travel than Ulysses; and he brought to those he associated with all the fruits that faring forth in strange lands could ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... famous story-teller; after I had acquired language he used to spell clumsily into my hand his cleverest anecdotes, and nothing pleased him more than to have me repeat them at an ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... story-teller chanced in that neighbourhood he was directed to the monastery, and there he received a welcome and his fill of all that is ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens

... advantage for any one who attempts to give an account of his life. But it has a counterbalancing disadvantage in the circumstance that there is grave reason to doubt his veracity, Defoe was a great story-teller in more senses than one. We can hardly believe a word that he says ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... Bevis, putting a pinch of powder on the touch-hole, "you know you are a wicked story-teller; you killed the poor leveret after I let you loose. Now!" and he went down on one knee, and put his cannon-stick on the other as a rest to keep ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife, which, you will allow, is not an action likely to occur to the imagination of the average story-teller. Take a pinch of snuff, Doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over you ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... refrains act like sign-posts to help the child to mark the progress. This is simply a skilful way of making the continuity close, of showing the ladder rungs for the child's feet. I venture to say that any good story-teller consciously or unconsciously puts up sign-posts to help the children. If he is skilful, he makes a pattern of them so that they are not merely intellectually helpful but charming as well. So Kipling in his "Just So Stories" uses his sign-posts,—which ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell

... indescribable charm characteristic of the women of her race. Her tales were of the kindergarten, happenings in her life and the lives of others, and I have sought to set them down as she told them to me in her quaint, broken English. But they miss the earnest eyes and dramatic gestures of the little story-teller as she sat in the glow of the hibachi fire, with a background of paper doors, with shadow pictures of pine-trees and bamboo etched by the moonlight, the far-off song of a nightingale, and the air sweet with ...
— Mr. Bamboo and the Honorable Little God - A Christmas Story • Fannie C. Macaulay

... ed. Schmidt, pp. 50 and 128. The version in the Cento nov. ant. ed. Gualt, No. 31, is as follows: Messer Azzolino had a story-teller, whom he made tell stories during the long winter nights. It happened one night that the story-teller had a great mind to sleep, and Azzolino asked him to tell stories. The story-teller began to relate a story about a ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane

... or chide the other workers, or relate some incident of the hunt or of village life. Toward midday little groups will gather in the field shelters to partake of their lunches, to smoke, or to rest, and usually in such a gathering will be a good story-teller who amuses with fables, or tales ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole

... the midst of one of his stories; the soldier was standing still, leaning on his stick, and laughed with a touch of annoyance, for he was growing vain of his skill as a story-teller. ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price

... the help of the Lord against the mighty." But Dr. Bailey said he knew them personally, and that despite their public record, they were at heart anti-slavery, and that prudence alone dictated their course. Mrs. Stowe was a graphic story-teller, had been in Kentucky, taken in the situation and could describe the peculiar institution as no one else could. If he could only enlist her, the whole family would most likely follow into the abolition ranks; but the bounty money, alas, where ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... boaster, He the marvelous story-teller, He the traveler and the talker, He the friend of old Nokomis, Made a bow for Hiawatha; From a branch of ash he made it, From an oak bough made the arrows, Tipped with flint, and winged with feathers, And the cord ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... considering the quality and quantity of her labors, is the best story-teller for children ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins

... gossip from whom one would expect all the formulas, "and then he says to the king, Sacred Crown," "and then the Prince walks, walks, walks, walks." "A company of knights in armour nice and shining," "three comely ladies in a green meadow," and so forth of the professional Italian story-teller—the same Carpaccio, who was also, and much more than the more solemn Giovanni Bellini, the first Venetian to handle oil paints like Titian and Giorgione, painted the fairy tale of St. George, with quite the most dreadful dragon's walk, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... satisfied, the men lounged about on the grass, smoking and listening to the yarns of some famous story-teller. He would tell them, perhaps, the pathetic story of Cadieux, who, on this very stream, had held the dreaded Iroquois at bay while his comrades escaped. Cadieux himself escaped the Iroquois, only to fall a victim to the folie des bois, or {25} madness of the woods, wandering aimlessly ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee

... for I almost forget. Did ever any of you see a port-go-chaire?" "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 did I leave off?" "Come, Bill, heave ahead and save tide; your ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... of her head being towards it!" said the story-teller with the ruined head, giving a knowing wink on the sound side of ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... The children learned them in their 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 a better ...
— Legend Land, Vol. 1 • Various

... Europe owes "The Arabian Nights' Entertainments" over which Western childhood and youth have spent so many spelling hours. Antoine Galland was the first to discover the marvellous fund of material for the story-teller buried in the Oriental mine; and he had in a high degree that art of telling a tale which is far more captivating than culture or scholarship. Hence his delightful version (or perversion) became one of the world's classics and at once made Sheherazade and Dinarzarde, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... Here the story-teller broke off as a rider upon a grey horse came at a foot-pace round the slope of Burrator below us and passed on without seeing. It was the Rajah, returning solitary from the hunt, and his eyes were ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... man, the strong man, and the man of supreme fortitude; the honest man, the truthful king, and the woman that knows how to wait for the man she loves; voices in the air, signs in the sky—in short, everything. Even poor old Aesop wasn't in time to grasp a reputation for originality. The modern story-teller may combine, extend, and elaborate; but all opportunity for a display of invention seems to ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... workers, rests on his novels. Judged by standards of the present day, these are far from faultless. The facts are not very coherent, the diction is artificial in the fashion of the day. But when all is said, Brown was a rare story-teller; he interested his readers by the novelty of his material, and he was quite objective in its treatment, never obtruding his own personality. 'Wieland,' 'Edgar Huntly,' and 'Arthur Mervyn,' the trilogy of his best novels, are not to be contemned; and he has the distinction of being in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... entire, with the Prioress' tale of Hugh of Lincoln, the Clerk's tale of Patient Griselda, and the Nun's Priest's merry tale of Chanticleer and the Fox, if the reader would appreciate the variety and charm of our first modern poet and story-teller. ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... the Daughter of the House skipped away. And as John Gayther busied himself in making the "story-telling place" attractive he felt glad that there were others besides himself who liked to tell stories. There was such a thing as overworking a mine. He was that rare thing, a story-teller who is also a good listener. Moreover, John felt very diffident about telling one of his stories before the Master of the House, who was a man prone to speak his mind. Not that John disliked the Master of the House. Far from it. He, with ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... highly favoured places which abound with chronicle and great men. The British and American line had run near it during the war; it had, therefore, been the scene of marauding, and infested with refugees, cow-boys, and all kinds of border chivalry. Just sufficient time had elapsed to enable each story-teller to dress up his tale with a little becoming fiction, and, in the indistinctness of his recollection, to make himself the hero ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... story was merely the medium of transmission, and through this weird conduit the story-teller conveyed ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... steam. "Cooper's ships live," so says Captain Mahan; and continues: "They are handled as ships then were, and act as ships still would act under the circumstances." This naval historian thought "the water a noble field for the story-teller." "The Two Admirals" first appeared in Graham's Magazine, for which Cooper was regularly engaged to write in 1842. On June 16 of this year a decision was rendered in the "Naval History" dispute. One of the questions was whether Cooper's account of the battle ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips

... the old story-teller, 'struck one blow with his sword; yea, and more than four; and fought right valiantly'; until he and his knights disappeared under the heaving, struggling mass of ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae

... chuckled. 'That comes o' ringin' t' fire-bell,' said he to himself; 'it were shame for it to be tellin' a lie, poor oud story-teller.' ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell

... here that the Doctor is a born story-teller and something of an actor as well. He seldom explains his characters or situations as he goes on by putting in "I said" and "he said" and similar expressions. You know by the tones of his voice who is speaking, and his gestures supply ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... friends are in the guilt; and that is, the humour of taking snuff, and looking dirty about the mouth by way of ornament. My method is to dive to the bottom of a sore before I pretend to apply a remedy. For this reason, I sat by an eminent story-teller and politician who takes half an ounce in five seconds, and has mortgaged a pretty tenement near the town, merely to improve and dung his brains with this prolific powder. I observed this gentleman the other day in the midst of a story ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... shooting at a mark attached to some valuable or beloved person is an idea doubtless that might easily have occurred to any inventive poet. But it is also an idea that might easily occur to any boastful archer. It might be one of the fantastic caprices of some story-teller. It might equally well be one of the fantastic caprices of some tyrant. It might occur first in real life and afterwards occur in legends. Or it might just as well occur first in legends and afterwards ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... actions of my kind alien from me, I do find some of the tomfoolery with which Nodier has seasoned the story superfluous. Why call a damsel "Folly Girlfree"? What would a Frenchman say if an English story-teller christened some girl of Gaul "Sottise Librefille"? "Sir Jap Muzzleburn," the Bailiff of the Isle of Man, and his black poodle-equerry, Master Blatt, amuse me but little; and Master Finewood, the shipbuilder,—whose rejected six sons-in-law, lairds of high ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... supposed to be appropriate old British names from the depths of his own consciousness. His guesswork was on a par with that of the schoolboys who introduce 'Stirlingia' or 'Liverpolia' into their Ovidian elegiacs. That abandoned story-teller, Geoffrey of Monmouth, goes a step further, and concocts a Caer Lud for London and a Caer Osc for Exeter, whenever the fancy seizes him. The only examples amongst these pretended old Welsh forms which seem to me to have any real historical value are an unknown Kair Eden, mentioned ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... and he was anxious to get her into the yards before the horse sales were over; this was to be the last day of the sales. Jim was the best "barracker" of the two; he had great imagination; he was a very entertaining story-teller and conversationalist in social life, and a glib and a most impressive liar in business, so it was decided that he should hurry on into Bourke with the mare and sell her for Bill. Seven ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson

... Camp-fire, a group of friendly girls and a good story-teller who knows and loves the girls, and the ideals of a whole community may be lifted in ...
— Fireside Stories for Girls in Their Teens • Margaret White Eggleston

... original, I say; is it possible he could have read it somewhere, adding a few little touches of his own? Unfortunately, our story-teller in his desire for ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... Minnie sharply, "and get rid of him. A little story-teller! Theo his tutor! If I were his mother, I should whip him, till he learned what ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... pitched. Providence took me by the hand, and—an oddity of dispensation which, I trust, there is no irreverence in smiling at—has led me, as the newspapers announce, while I am writing from the Old Manse, into a custom-house.[76] As a story-teller I have often contrived strange vicissitudes for my imaginary personages, but none ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... a housekeeper at Crewe Hall, where my mother was born, and I have often heard her say that the greatest treat that could be given her and her brother and sister was an afternoon in the housekeeper's room at Crewe, for Mrs. Dickens was a splendid story-teller, and used to love to gather the children round her and tell them fairy stories. And so it was only natural that my mother should feel a special interest in Charles Dickens, when she came to know him in after life. I believe that the very last time that ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... 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 ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... breadth by the Rocky Mountains. An English family, after being ruined in St Louis, and reduced to their last hundred pounds, are persuaded by a Scottish miner to accompany him across this desert to New Mexico. 'They are a wonderful people,' says the story-teller, 'these same Scotch. They are but a small nation, yet their influence is felt everywhere upon the globe. Go where you will, you will find them in positions of trust and importance—always prospering, yet, in ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various

... the new romanticism. The poetry of Cowper, an ardent lover of nature, whose first volume appeared in 1781, though usually conventional in expression, is always sincere and sometimes exquisite. Crabbe, a story-teller and preacher, wrote some true poetry, along with much that is prosaic: rarely moved by an inspiration drawn from nature to desert the conventional couplet, he nevertheless had something of the spirit of the new ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... a child's elaborateness of incident. Every change of the seasons, the history of every walk is set down. He is in love with every feature of the landscape, be it the wild doons of Exmoor or the wilder Yorkshire coast, or, across the seas, the plains of the Sierras. He is a story-teller of the days in which it was quite unimportant whether tales should come to an end or not. He would have saved Scheherazade all her trouble and enjoyed the task. He cannot pass carelessly by the slightest incident; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... prized among his early companions as a wit and story-teller. The women complained because at their parties all the men were drawn off to hear Abe Lincoln's stories. When he came to be a public speaker, he feathered the shafts of his argument with jest and anecdote. The vein of humor in him ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... then, the story of Beowulf, picturing in our imagination the story-teller and his audience. The scene opens in a great hall, where a fire blazes on the hearth and flashes upon polished shields against the timbered walls. Down the long room stretches a table where men are ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... especially conversant are yet undeveloped, and not having been even in the slightest degree experienced, cannot be sympathized with. In what stage of the progress of society, again, is story-telling most valued, and the story-teller in greatest request and honour?—In a rude state like that of the Tartars and Arabs at this day, and of almost all nations in the earliest ages. But in this state of society there is little poetry except ballads, which are mostly narrative, that is, essentially ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... and Hugh Trotter, were accommodated with hobbles, and after an exchange of commonplace news of the country, we settled down to story-telling. Trotter was a convivial acquaintance of Aaron Scales, quite a vagabond and consequently a story-teller. After Trotter had narrated a late dream, Scales unlimbered and ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams

... several other of these narratives, four or five men talking at the top of their voices at the same time, each one telling a different story. At first each story-teller addressed himself to the company generally, but after a while, finding it impossible to make himself heard, he would select some particular individual who seemed disposed to listen and tell him the story. It sometimes happened that in the middle ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... a filthy story-teller, a monster. Seward is the brains of the administration. Without Seward, ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn

... vanished with that vicious switch of his tail, we have a little feeling of having been "sold,"—a feeling which great art never gives. But we are in the best of humor; for were we not warned all along against just this foible of curiosity, and is not the story-teller smiling inscrutably and advising us to be thankful that we at least still have our ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous

... the story-teller heard it, but with different results. The latter stirred and looked about him, as though new hope and strength had come to him. The former, led by Tim and Judy, broke simultaneously into anxious speech. Maria, having slept profoundly since the first ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... part, and we had a pleasant evening at the Hall. He discharged a good many other puns, which I am glad to say I have forgotten. But there was a man present who was a good story-teller. Some I had heard before, but they were none the less welcome, while one or two I related were as good as new to my host and old Squire Fullerton, who had once been High Sheriff, and was supposed to know all about circuit business. He prefaced almost everything ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... her stories went well, with the true instinct of a story-teller could seldom be persuaded to follow it with another, fearing an anti-climax perhaps. She turned in under her little tent, and soon thereafter trumpeted to the world ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... men went out on the porch with their pipes and we to the sitting-room, where Molly, the story-teller, seated herself in a comfortable chair, her feet outstretched before her. She made a lap, a generous lap, to which she tried to beguile the baby, Letty. Mrs. White ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... boys. It was soon after I began collecting stones, i.e., when 9 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 or some strange bird (natural history taste); these ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... boasted of fried bacon and eggs, the usual circle was formed, and Mr. Davies, being called upon to entertain the company, said that he was "not much of a story-teller, but had learned some facts relating to a terrible political tumult, which took place years ago, but was still spoken of everywhere on the island as the great 'Belfast Riot.' I shall term it, unless some one offers a better ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... 545); dissembler, hypocrite; sophist, Pharisee, Jesuit, Mawworm[obs3], Pecksniff, Joseph Surface, Tartufe[obs3], Janus; serpent, snake in the grass, cockatrice, Judas, wolf in sheep's clothing; jilt; shuffler|!, stool pigeon. liar &c (lie &c 544); story-teller, perjurer, false witness, menteur a triple etage[Fr], Scapin[obs3]; bunko steerer* [U.S.], carpetbagger* [U.S.], capper* [U.S.], faker, fraud, four flusher*, horse coper[obs3], ringer*, spieler[obs3], straw bidder [U.S.]. imposter, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... told is superior to the story read might not be easy, but much of the superiority probably comes from the freedom of the "talk style" and the more appropriate use of inflection and emphasis. Then, too, the story-teller can look at her audience and is free to add a descriptive word or phrase occasionally to produce vividness of impression. Some stories, of course, are so constructed that they must follow closely the diction of the original form. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... or name may have a signification in the language in which the story is told different from that which it possessed in the original dialect, and, in the effort to make the old fact and the new language harmonize, the story-teller is forced, gradually, to modify the narrative; and, as this lingual difficulty occurs at every fireside, at every telling, an ingenious explanation comes at last to be generally accepted, and the ancient myth remains dressed in a new suit of ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... matter, and tried to think it out, but, as she says, she could make nothing of it. She began to be afraid that uncle's brain was giving way through overwork, as he had stopped in the City (as he said) up to all hours lately, and he had to go to Yorkshire (wicked old story-teller!), about some very tiresome business connected with his leases. But then she reflected that however queer he might be getting, even his queerness couldn't make whistles in the air, though, as she said, he was always a wonderful man. ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... by contemporary testimony, and it probably sprang from the imagination of some good frontier story-teller. It contains at least this much truth, that the settlement, after being thrown into panic, was quickly and easily taken. Curiously enough, the commandant was a Frenchman, Rocheblave, who had thriftily entered the ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg

... its light-hearted raillery, inasmuch as the deed is regarded as a breach of divine law, is exposed and punished, and the recompense for the release of the guilty pair, the penalty, is duly stated in accordance with law. Not every modern story-teller is so scrupulous, in meting out justice to ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... imaginative power of the Celtic mind is never more strikingly displayed than in the legends and fanciful tales which people of the humbler walks of life seldom tire of telling. Go where you will in Ireland, the story-teller is there, and on slight provocation will repeat his narrative; amplifying, explaining, embellishing, till from a single fact a connected history is evolved, giving motives, particulars, action, and result, the whole surrounded by a rosy wealth ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.

... expressed a desire not to be met at the station; and listening for the teuf-teuf of motors along the distant road prevented Mrs. West from attending to her brother's suggestions. He had had an inspiration for the new novel they were planning together, and was explaining it eagerly, for Basil was a born story-teller. Only, he had never found time for story-telling until lately. He was tremendously happy in his new way of life, although only a terrible illness which had closed others paths of success had opened this door for him. It did not matter in the least that Aline ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... moment longer; then he brightened. "Listen here, mamma; grandpa wouldn't wipe his shoe on that ole story-teller, would he?" ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... on the same footing as dramatic representations of this character. They are creatures of the same sort of imagination as we see in the story-teller of Venice and Naples, who lays a hat on the ground and waits until an audience is assembled. Then he spins a tale which so captivates his hearers that, when he gets to the catastrophe, he makes a round of the crowd, hat in hand, for contributions, ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer

... admission that they are more familiar with the marling-spike than with the pen. But even the caricature born of pretentiousness will not prevent the unpremeditated betrayal of conditions, facts, and incidents, which help reconstruct the milieu; how much more, then, the unaffected simplicity of the born story-teller. I do not know how Froissart ranks as an authority with historians. I have not read him for years; and my recollections are chiefly those of childhood, with all the remoteness and all the vividness which memory preserves from early impressions. I think ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan



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