"Dinner table" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... do with yourself all day long, Marty, if you don't go to school?" she asked her cousin, at the dinner table. ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... of one. I must say that he seldom does. I suppose that his intimate association with Mrs. Ascher had spoiled his manners in this respect. She encouraged him to be oratorical. But I am not Mrs. Ascher, and I saw no reason why I should stand that kind of thing at my own dinner table. ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... grateful acknowledgement of my hospitality. After that, she covered her head up with her apron again and had another laugh about Mr. Barkis. After that, she took the baby out of its little cradle, and nursed it. After that, she cleared the dinner table; after that, came in with another cap on, and her work-box, and the yard-measure, and the bit of wax-candle, all just the ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... cold potatoes with an equal quantity of flour, they would find them produce a much lighter dumpling or pudding than they can make with flour alone: and by the aid of a few spoonfuls of good gravy, they will provide a cheap and agreeable appendage to the dinner table. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... associates, to obtain the necessary sailing directions. The masters had been furnished with a supply of charts, which they had studied daily, as they were instructed in the theory of laying down the ship's course. Foster unrolled the large chart of the North Atlantic Ocean upon the dinner table, and with parallel ruler, pencil, and compasses, proceeded ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... dinner table somebody began to talk about Freda. Roger strained his ears to listen. Mrs. Kitty Carr was speaking—Mrs. Kitty ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... for the dinner service should be of good quality. Fashions in china decoration are not fixed; the fancy of the hour is constantly changing, but a matched set is eminently proper for the dinner table, leaving the "harlequin" china for luncheons and teas. In the latter style the aim is to have no two pieces alike in decoration, or at least, to permit an unlimited variety; a fashion that is very convenient when large ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... it is a shame to waste all that money on music lessons, if you won't practise, Rosemary," announced her aunt at the dinner table that night. ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... of the housekeeping, and was delighted to find that the coffee was clearer and finer-flavored; the bread whiter and lighter; the cream richer, the butter fresher, and the beefsteak juicier than he had ever known them to be on the doctor's table; that on the dinner table, from day to day, dishes succeeded each other in a well-ordered variety and well-dressed style—in a word, that, in every particular, the comfort of the family was greatly enhanced by the presence of the housekeeper, and that the doctor and his daughter ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... was greatly interested and pleased at the appearance of a roast chicken upon the family dinner table. She chattered about the "birdie" as she had done before on similar occasions. But when the carving knife was lifted over it, she astonished everyone by her terrified cry of "Don't cut the birdie. Hurt the birdie." No explanation ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... generations, and in some part of the lady herself, who had the true spirit of a collector, that special gift which the French connoisseur calls le flair. Ida and the lady of the house worked diligently all the morning in papering and polishing these treasures; and the dinner table, with its antique silver, Derby china, heavy diamond-cut glass, and white and scarlet exotics, was a picture to gladden the eyes of ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... anaemic, overworked drudge. You still live in the same city, yet not in the same world. You would not know how to act in Richard's home, before all the servants; you would be embarrassed if you sat down at his dinner table. Your children would be awkward and shy in the presence of his children, while they would scorn to introduce your ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... of the members would appear; and if the more formal debates were not more effectual than predicted by J.S. Mill, the informal discussions, almost conversations, at smaller meetings, and the free course of talk at the dinner table, did something to realise the primary objects of the society. The personal rapprochement took place, but not philosophic compromise or conversion. Whether or not the tone adopted after this period ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... said Anne penitently. "I never thought about that pie from the moment I put it in the oven till now, although I felt INSTINCTIVELY that there was something missing on the dinner table. I was firmly resolved, when you left me in charge this morning, not to imagine anything, but keep my thoughts on facts. I did pretty well until I put the pie in, and then an irresistible temptation ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... hour. The refrigerator car and ship made the packing industry as stable as the production of cotton or corn, and gave an immense impetus to cattle raising and sheep farming. So the meat of the West took its place on the English dinner table by the side of bread ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... at first somewhat disconcerted by this formidable array of womankind without a man in sight, and at the dinner table confided to me his sentiments regarding pensions in rather strong language, insisting that it was like being in a convent, or a young ladies' seminary, except that he had noticed that most of the ladies were not painfully young, all this in an undertone, of course, when ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... intrauterine hemorrhage excited by coitus soon after the menstrual flow had ceased and while the uterus and ovaries were highly congested. In another case the patient commenced flooding while at the dinner table in the Metropolitan Hotel in New York, and from the same cause an almost fatal hemorrhage ensued. Hirst of Philadelphia has remarked that brides have been found on their marital beds completely covered with blood, and that the hemorrhage may have been so profuse as ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... geese they may eat, and however much they may enjoy them; and I remember one lady, whose ancestors, probably all having loved goose, reached back up to a quite giddy antiquity, casting a gloom over a dinner table by removing as much of the skin or crackling of the goose as she could when it came to her, remarking, amidst a mournful silence, that it was her favourite part. No doubt it was. The misfortune was that ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... was the one thing needed to clear away the doubts that beset Spencer at the dinner table. He had seen Mrs. de la Vere enter Helen's bedroom when he left the girl in charge of a gesticulating maid; but an act of womanly solicitude did not explain the friendship that sprang so suddenly into existence. Now he understood, ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... more passed on that matter, and they only conveyed a reiteration of the Earl's promise more distinctly. On the afternoon of that day another person was added to the dinner table of the Earl of Sunbury. Wilton knew not that anybody was coming, till he perceived that the Earl waited for some guest; but at length the Earl of Byerdale was announced, and a tall good-looking man, of some fifty years of age, or perhaps less, entered ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... serious matter of tea-drinking, which comes some hours later. Mixed dinner parties of ladies and gentlemen are very rare, and unless several foreigners are present, but little conversation passes at table. It certainly does not, in my opinion, add to the well ordering a dinner table, to set the gentlemen at one end of it, and the ladies at the other; but it is very rarely ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... blinded by the reflection from them, as I ascended the front stairs. There are no carpets in the houses in Jamaica; but the floors, which are often mahogany, are beautifully polished, and shine like a well—kept dinner table. They are, of course, very slippery, and require wary walking till one gets accustomed to them. The rooms are made exceedingly dark during the heat of the day, according to the prevailing practice in all ardent climates. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... a time there were two little boys who lived chiefly in the front garden, because their villa was a model one. The front garden was about the same size as the dinner table; it consisted of four strips of gravel, a square of turf with some mysterious pieces of cork standing up in the middle and one flower bed with a row of red daisies. One morning while they were at play in these romantic grounds, a passing individual, probably the milkman, leaned ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... and had the glum pleasure of hearing her chat in high spirits over the dinner table of packing boxes; but she was on her cayuse and off with the scouts long before Father Holland and I ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the amateurs who enjoy that sort of reading, and partly for the guidance of those who wish to obtain some hints to help them through such critical small talk about Wagner and Bayreuth as may be forced upon them at the dinner table ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... brought home the deeds, and put them down on the dinner table before her. Nancy usually started the meal promptly at half past six, so that the children's first raging appetites might be partly assuaged; bread was buttered, milk poured, bibs tied, and all the excitement ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... In the left wall is a recessed window hung with curtains. Against the right wall is a buffet on which is set a tea-caddy, toast-rack, and tea kettle. Below the buffet a door opens into the butler's pantry. A dinner table stands well down the stage with a chair at each end and on either side. Two chairs are set against the back wall to the right of the door. The walls and windows are decorated with holly and mistletoe and Christmas wreaths tied with bows of scarlet ribbon. When the window is opened there ...
— Miss Civilization - A Comedy in One Act • Richard Harding Davis
... was a large flat sofa cushion of Guelder roses with tall sprays of roses or carnations dancing from it. On ordinary occasions market bunches are put into water as an English cottager puts in his flowers, level and tightly packed. But on a festive occasion in a rich man's house you hear of a long dinner table strewn with branches of pink hawthorn and peonies. In fact, a riot of flowers is now considered correct by wealthy people, but you do not find them here and there and everywhere, whether people are wealthy or ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... Captain Langless, who had not forgotten his talk with the Rovers at the dinner table. If it looked as if he was going to be cornered, he thought that a compromise with Tom and Sam would come in ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... not only on the quarter-line but also at the dinner table the little quarter-back was ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... girl of the shy, mother-obeying, man-worshipping English type, but a girl such as Miss Cameron seemed to be, a girl who could understand what you were trying to say before you said it, who could take an interest in rates of exchange and preside at a dinner table, who was charmingly feminine and clever, and who was respectful of herself and of others. In fact, he decided, with a flush, that Miss Cameron herself was the young girl he had ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... together. They sat side by side at the dinner table and in school, black head and golden brown leaning to each other over the same book; they walked side by side in the packed procession, going two by two. They slept in the same room, the two white ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... half past seven a very jolly party gathered around the dinner table, which was a miracle of beauty with its decorations of apple blossoms. Besides Nicholas Grimm and Yoritomo Ito, there were two Englishmen, Reginald Carlton, a young man who was taking a trip around the world by way of finishing ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... barbed wire to complete the fence. When the first heavy rains came on, and the pigs rooted down the sod wall and made little paths all over it to facilitate their ascent, he heard his wife relate with relish the story of the little pig that built a mud house, to the minister at the dinner table, and William's gravity never relaxed for an instant. Silence, indeed, was ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... dinner table, and Mr. Wharton, followed by Frank, ascended the staircase to the front room on the second floor, which was handsomely fitted up as ...
— The Cash Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... Army man sat down behind the stove and tilted his chair back comfortably against the wall, fishing his quill toothpick from his waistcoat pocket. The two bankers, Phelps and Elder, sat off in a corner behind the dinner table, where they could finish their discussion of the new usury law and its effect on chattel security loans. The real estate agent, an old man with a smiling, hypocritical face, soon joined them. The coal-and-lumber dealer and the cattle shipper sat on opposite ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... felt half sorry that I had commenced this new mode of managing my husband; but, as I had begun, I was determined to go through with it. "He'll at least take care how he acts in the future," I said. I did not leave my chamber to join my husband at the dinner table. He sat his usual time, as I could tell by the ringing of the bell for the servant to change the plates and bring in the dessert. I was exceedingly fretted; and more so by his returning to his business without calling up to see me, and ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... himself at the dinner table until his wife or his hostess is seated. This rule holds good in the home, for if it is not practised there, it will not be observed ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... his Chief, across the dinner table, when his eyes sought it was indecipherable to him; but, shut as it was, he was reminded by it, not to the improvement of his spirits, of a little personal hope, a just and rational hope, which might have to be relinquished. After ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... recovered from that sense of strangeness that had at first overpowered her. The girls had been able to help her out a little in the matter of dress. She appeared at the dinner table quite as one of themselves. Betty would not hear of Ida's withdrawing from the general company, and for ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... the dinner table without really seeing it. Coming to the restaurant had been Hector's idea. Three hours earlier, Massan had been ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... room the dinner table was as usual laid for two, but one could see that more care than usual had been given to its arrangement, while the roses in the centre were the largest and finest of their kind. In the low, wide grate a bright fire was burning, and Arthur placed a large ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... spared on this day, for neither Cousin Peter, Elizabeth Betsey, or Miss Berintha made their appearance. At the dinner table Mr. Dayton remarked quietly to his daughters, "I believe you have given up ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... educated at the expense of the king in a French school, he became rigid in his insular patriotism, and loudly extolled Paoli, the liberator, against whom his relations had declared themselves. "Paoli," said he, at the dinner table,[1115]" was a great man. He loved his country. My father was his adjutant, and never will I forgive him for having aided in the union of Corsica with France. He should have followed her fortunes and have succumbed only with her." Throughout his youth he is at heart anti-French, morose, "bitter, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... dinner table the other day with the remark that when a man once gives himself up to the full enjoyment of a virtuous life, it seems strange to him that more people ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... dear young lady," he would cry, shaking one fat finger at Sabina across the dinner table, "take care, take care! You will lose your heart to both my boys and sow ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... offices in the Abbey before his election as Abbot, and when Cellarer had been put in the pillory in Luton Market, "in hatred to the Abbot and utter contempt of religion." The conspiracy to dethrone Richard II. was first formed at the dinner table of this Abbot, when the Duke of Gloucester and the Prior of Westminster were dining with him. In 1399 the body of John of Gaunt rested in the Abbey on its way to London, his son, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Lincoln, being allowed to conduct a service in the Abbey; and in the same year Richard ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... After the dinner table was cleared off, the captain seated himself at it with a chart spread out before him. It was plain enough that he was devising some expedient to escape the three-master. Christy did not deem it prudent to observe him, and he went on ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... dinner table to-night for this army," declared Marjorie, finishing her dessert in a hurry. "It's almost seven, Mary. We'll have to hurry upstairs to dress ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... The odd character of the house and its inmates had already given him much ground for thought, even amazement; but to suddenly find himself face to face, tete-a-tete with a bewitching girl, at a gorgeous dinner table, laid for them only, was a condition of things calculated to turn any ordinary man's head. Never for an instant had the girl given the slightest intimation of why he, or rather the original Henley, had been wanted, and every effort ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... upon the native bedstead in a way fascinated him, and when towards sunset a strong wind sprang up and blew against the stream, he felt an actual comfort in the knowledge that the sick man would gain some relief from it. And when his neighbour that evening at the dinner table spoke to him with a German accent, he ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... always been busy, she was indeed a little dynamo of energy, her college years and the years of travel had been crowded with interests and enterprises. But she had never been tired before; she had never felt, as she felt now, that she could fall asleep at the dinner table for sheer weariness, and that no trial was more difficult to bear than Jim's cheerful announcement that the Deanes might be in later for a call, or the Weavers wanted them to come over for a ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... doubtless herself contrive many an alluring dish of her own. Variety is said to be the spice of life. However that may be, the spices and their friends, the herbs, certainly make for variety in that important function of life, the dinner table. ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore
... triumphant sense of proprietorship in a man, especially if they have at the same time to hold themselves on the defensive against the possible fulminations of Lady Molyneux. Joanna proclaimed herself a champion. Even when Paragot forgot his social reformation and banged his fist down on the dinner table till the glasses rang again, with a great nom de Dieu! her glance swept the company as if to defy them to find anything uncommon in the demeanour of her guest. It was only towards the end of my stay that she began to wince. And Paragot, save on occasion of outburst, went through ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... laughing for, our Anna?" asked Tom, the elder brother, at the dinner table, his hazel eyes bright with joy. "Everybody stopped to look at you." ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... guests varies in different homes and for different occasions. Sometimes the women at the table are served before the men. This is usually done, however, for home service or when only a few persons are at the table. At a large dinner table or a banquet, guests are usually served in the order in which they sit. In many homes, the guests are served first, while in others the hostess is always the first to be served. At a family meal, when no guests are present, the hostess ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... finest of the soy beans is the Hahto variety. They grow one or two in a pod. I saw some of these beans in the market in Jerusalem forty years ago. When about three quarters grown and used as shelled beans they are exceedingly palatable. If at the dinner table today you will call for a soy bean omelet, you will be quite surprised. Dr. Morris tried it this morning and was kind enough to say it was ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... fast to the Colonel's cottage, sat down to the dinner table, which was decked with pale blue napkins, and a fine-looking old Voukotitch, an ex-M.P. in national costume, acted as butler. In spite of his seventy odd years he had joined the army as a common soldier. He refused all invitations to sit with us, for he knew his place. The young husband was ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... and rather obvious remarks the bishop had listened, over the dinner table, with urbane acquiescence and growing distrust. Peasants and fisher folks! This fellow did not look as if he cared for such company. He was ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Foote's maternal uncle, by his brother Captain Goodere, a naval officer. In the year 1740, the two brothers dined at a friend's house near Bristol. For a long time they had been on bad terms, owing to certain money transactions, but at the dinner table a reconciliation was, to all appearance, made between them. But it was a most terrible piece of underhand treachery, for on leaving that dinner table, Sir John was waylaid on his return home by some men from his brother's vessel—acting ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... had happened, as we shall see. But one thing was clear—this was no wild man from the west. He had claims to be considered, and he was considered. People watched him as he went down over the esplanade and into quiet streets. The little occurrence at the dinner table had set him upon a train of thoughts which he had tried to avoid for many years. On principle he would not dwell on the past. There was no corrosion, he said to himself, like the memory of an ugly deed. But the experiences ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... know. But for that matter, after carrying out Adair's instructions the engineer plunged at once into his own Herculean task of reorganization, emerging only when he made a tardy sixth at the president's dinner table in the hotel cafe ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... moved in the midst of friends, boon companions of the saucepan, the cup, and the milk jug of the court, and of the dinner table when the ...
— The Cat and the Mouse - A Book of Persian Fairy Tales • Hartwell James
... them all in the trunk. She hurried to assure me that my dark skirt and white blouse would do very well, that she would not dress for dinner to-night. But I feel sure that she seldom appears at the dinner table in a blouse and tailored skirt. Guess Aunt Maria'd say I'm in a place too tony for me, but I know I can learn how to do here. I might have remembered that some people make of their evening meal a formal ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... rolled on, my visits were enlivened by the sight of small drums, trumpets, horses with their tails pulled out, and dolls with their noses knocked off. Sometimes very pretty little cherubs peeped in at the door, or were invited for half an hour to the dinner table. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... a steady topic for conversation. He was aware that he contributed little froth and less substance to a dinner table, that, in short, he did not keep up his end. Although he assured himself that small talk was beneath a man of serious purpose, and that no one could acquire it anyhow in society unless addicted to sport, still there had been times ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... think you're real mean! You made me enough trouble at the dinner table, and you needn't make fun of my ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... putting himself upon his dignity, he managed for a time, sans l'argent, to live like a prince. Buck was what the world would call a devilish clever fellow; he was something of a scholar, with the smattering of a gentleman; good at off-hand dinner table oratory, good looking, and what never fails to take down the ladies, he wore hair enough about his countenance to establish two Italian grand dukes. Buck was "an awful blower," but possessed common-sense enough not to waste his ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... occurred during these days. The first time the family gathered at the dinner table, after the one who had been so nearly a son of the house had been carried to his rest in that wonderful and treasured city of Greenwood, Ralph, being helped by John, as usual, to his glass of wine, ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... ottoman beside her and then asked her first how she had been and then how Jamie was, then where his sisters were, and if his father had come home—for there was a father, the elder Cameron, a quiet, unassuming man, who stayed all day in Wall Street, seldom coming home in time to carve at his own dinner table, and when he was at home, asking for nothing except to be left by his fashionable wife and daughters to himself, free to smoke and doze over his evening paper in the seclusion of ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... have attempted to give in India performances on European lines. They have purchased the necessary paraphernalia from London and have as much idea of using it to its best advantage as a crocodile has of arranging the flowers on a dinner table. Our Indian Jadoo-wallah usually gets himself into a very tight fitting third or fourth hand evening dress on these occasions, to show, I presume, how European he is. The audience is more concerned with the possibility of its bursting and their having to leave ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... Mr. George, "unless the baggage is under the charge of public functionaries; and then, to save time, they often take it into the capital, and examine it there. I asked one of the passengers at the dinner table, and he said that the trunks were not to be opened till we get ...
— Rollo in Rome • Jacob Abbott
... were not yet through with these indirect dealings with the Boss. The System was thorough, if nothing else, and prompt. We had about decided to continue our conference over the dinner table in some uptown restaurant, when the officer stationed in the hall poked his head in the door and announced another visitor for the ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... murmur of applause, and Major Andre smiled kindly upon her, and taking her hand led her toward the head of the table with as much grace and courtesy as if he were handing Miss Peggy Ship pen herself, one of the beauties of the town, to a seat at General Howe's dinner table. ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... they are anathema. And then the mass of paper monstrosities which crowd every corner. Swans, nautilus shells, and even wild boars are used to hold up the menu. Once my menu was printed on a satin flag, and during the war the universal khaki invaded the dinner table. Ices are served in frilled baskets of paper, which have a tendency to dissolve and amalgamate with the sweet. The only paper on the table should be the menu, writ ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... rather a weakness for china, and the attractions of the fragile world, as presented in the great crockery-stores, had been many times too much for our prudence and purse. Consequently we had all sorts of little domestic idols of the breakfast and dinner table,—Bohemian-glass drinking-mugs of antique shape, lovely bits of biscuit choicely moulded in classic patterns, beauties, oddities, and quaintnesses in the way of especial teacups and saucers, devoted to different members of ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of Roman law at Tubigen. We parted, but he changed his mind, and instead of attending an additional course of lectures in a German university, he proceeded to Rome. A few weeks after my arrival there, I felt a tap on my shoulder at the dinner table, and, on looking up, I recognized my young Russian friend, who was already speaking Italian, with as much fluency as he had spoken English, French, and German, when we parted ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... of talk while they were being seated at the dinner table the visitor was almost forgotten, and he sat watching them glumly while Allison and Leslie eagerly discussed plans for some society in which they seemed to be interested. At last he grew weary of being ignored and in the first ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... and wide. Nothing appeared to be unknown to him, and it really seemed as if tidings of the most secret matters must be borne to him by the winds. He had one very peculiar habit. Every day, after the dinner table had been cleared, and everyone had retired, a confidential servant brought in a dish. It was covered, and neither the servant nor anyone else had any idea what was on it, for the King never removed the cover or partook of the dish, till he ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... American contentions. He knew Webster personally, and they both looked forward to the social pleasure of meeting again during the negotiations. The two representatives came together in this pleasant frame of mind and did most of their business at the dinner table, where it is reported that more than diplomatic conversation flowed. They avoided an exchange of notes, which would bind each to a position once taken, but first came to an agreement ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... the ornaments out of the parlor, I see," Cousin Ann said at the dinner table. "It's rather nice for a change, and after all, perhaps you spend as much time in this room as in any, and entertain as much ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... pleasant little dinner table Dick's heart was quite won. The room was so clean and pretty, and the hot meal so good after the meagre fare of the last fortnight. And the new friends were so kind and sympathising, it was easy to tell them about the long march from Venley, and all his hopes about the future. ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... been taken for father and son. And yet, though the elder person was as simply clad as the younger, and as simple in manner too, he had an indescribable air of one who knew the world, and who would not have felt abashed at the governor's dinner table or in King William's court, were it possible that his affairs should call him thither. But the only thing about him that could be fixed upon as remarkable was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... almost anything creates an excitement, and the preparing the despatch barrel was witnessed by many persons, among whom I noticed Dunkswell. I had observed that he listened very attentively to all that passed between Mr. Solomons and myself at the dinner table. I did not regard this as very strange, for all on board were deeply interested in everything which related to the progress ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... pleasanter than to be told not to come in at all, so I made another call on the street, but did no business. As I took my place at the dinner table a man opposite me (we two were alone) nodded, and asked if I was selling hardware, saying he had seen me come out of Mr. Bell's. I told him my business, and he gave me his card: Tibbals, of Meriden, Conn. I've seen many handsomer ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... But Bolderwood had brought in a fawn which he had hung until it was of the right flavor, and this was dressed and roasted like a young kid. When the boys heard of these good things it almost took their appetites away at the dinner table, for they did not wish to eat more than was absolutely ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... an old shawl over her head, met me in an alley in Philadelphia late one night. She saw the basket on my arm, and looked in my face wistfully, as a dog looks up beside the dinner table. She was hungry, and was coming in empty. I shook my head, and with a peculiarly sad glance she turned down the dark passage. I had found several families hungry, and yet I felt like a hypocrite, standing there with an empty basket, and a woman, ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... going to the open transom, looked down into the cabin. The long dinner table had been relieved of dessert-dishes, but the after-dinner bottles were there in profusion, and cigar-boxes and cigarettes within convenient reach; it was an odd scene; a picture of confusion in a dead calm. The lights were burning low and there was no sound save the hoarse ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... happened, she was roused. It was almost Christmas then, and Sidney was well on the way to recovery, thinner and very white, but going slowly up and down the staircase on K.'s arm, and sitting with Harriet and K. at the dinner table. She was begging to be back on duty for Christmas, and K. felt that he would have to give ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... who was responsible for the artist's presence at Lady Arabella's dinner table. She had expressed—in her usual autocratic manner—a wish that he should be presented to her, and had determined upon the evening of the first performance of The Swan-Maiden ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... thermometer was sinking still lower, Julien shivered as he left the dinner table (for the dining-room was never sufficiently heated, so careful was he over the wood), and rubbing his ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... am almost inclined to agree with Thackeray in liking Hawkeye 'better than any of Scott's lot.' What noble stories those five are in which the hero is described from youth to age!" From "Thackeray in the United States," by General James Grant Wilson, comes: "At an American dinner table" (the talk was of Cooper and his writings) "Thackeray pronounced Leatherstocking the greatest character created in fiction since the Don Quixote of Cervantes"; and he thought the death scene in "The Prairie," where the old ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... always the claret pitcher on her dinner table, too; and claret and water, well-sugared, went deliciously ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... grey hairs, a thin throat, a tired face, rough hands, two spoiled teeth in the front upper row. That was not the worst; the gaiety of her wit had been sapped. She could not have kept two men amused at a dinner table as that raven woman in the Royal Red did had her life depended upon it. Six years ago she could. She could have had them in her white, pretty hands; but not now. Not now! ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... the last relic of a fat capon, which formed the main battle of the dishes set out before him, when a heavy footstep was heard on the stairs, and in another instant the gaunt figure of the priest himself stood before the empty plates on the dinner table, and the unknown and unexpected guest, whose jaws were at the moment occupied in masticating the last morsel of the fat fowl, which the father had ordered for himself, and looking forward to it had caused him to take a lengthened promenade, ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... and Mr. Vicary. About this time a tremendous impetus was given to the breed by the formation, in 1876, of the Fox-terrier Club, which owed its inception to Mr. Harding Cox and a party of enthusiasts seated round his dinner table at 36, Russell Square, among whom were Messrs. Bassett, Burbidge, Doyle, Allison, and Redmond, the last two named being still members of the club. The idea was very warmly welcomed, a committee formed, and a scale of points drawn up which, with but one alteration, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... make Charles II. absolute in England—the Courts of Justice, the Parliaments, the Universities, and the Church of England. Had he been as ambitious as he was fond of pleasure, as capable of ruling as he was capable of telling stories at the dinner table, he would, like Louis XIV., have reared an absolute throne in England. But he was too easy, too careless, too fond of pleasure to concentrate his thoughts on devising means ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... finger in the pie. First, she had to make sweetmeats and jam out of all the immense quantity of fruit she had stored. For this, as she could only do one kind at a time, she had ten kettles, each as big as a dinner table. During forty-eight hours the cooking went on; a dozen scullions blew the fire and put on the fuel. Mother Mitchel, with a spoon that four modern cooks could hardly lift, never ceased stirring and trying the boiling fruit. Three expert ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... some butter," asked Bert, not having observed that this was a prohibited article on the Wilsons' dinner table. ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... the Viscount had said, "Pooh, pooh! you don't need any opening. Just borrow it straight out—ask for it across a dinner table, just as you'd ask for a match; they think nothing ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... southern families, rice, is boiled every day for the dinner table, and eaten with the ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... season allotted to changing our ship garments and for rest, we found ourselves seated at the dinner table. While dining, the sister-in-law of our friends came in from the next door, to exchange a word or two of welcome, and invite us to breakfast with them ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... dinner table and hurried to the dock and found the speedboat tied up alongside. After a hurried conference with Adams he raced back to the house, where the forehanded Matak was already packing his bags. Terry added a steamer ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... long before all was ready, and having made many ablutions and a little toilet, we assembled round the dinner table in the eating tent, the same party that had dined at Mr. Currie Ghyrkins' house on Sunday night, with the addition of the little collector of Pegnugger, whose stories of his outlying district were full of humour and anecdote. The talk bending in ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... she was twenty and had never thought kindly of any man since. From her earliest childhood Hinpoha had dreaded the very name of Aunt Phoebe. When she came to visit a restraint fell over the whole house. The usual lively chatter at the dinner table was hushed, and Aunt Phoebe held forth in solemn tones, generally berating some unfortunate person who nearly always happened to be a good friend of Mrs. Bradford's. Hinpoha would be called up for a minute examination of her clothes and manners and would invariably do something ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... Funchal each lady found beside her plate at the dinner table a bunch of violets, a memento from the flower gardens of Madeira; and on St. Valentine's Day each found there a package containing a pretty fan with the compliments of the Captain. At this dinner on the fourteenth of February much merriment prevailed ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... from Lady O'Gara's demeanour at the dinner table that Black Care pressed hard on her white shoulders. Sir Shawn had often said that when his wife chose she could put the young ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... be a large dinner—large, that is, for Endbury—of twenty covers, and Lydia had never prepared a table for so many guests. The number of objects necessary for the conventional setting of a dinner table appalled her. She was so tired, and her attention was so fixed on the complicated processes going on uncertainly in the kitchen, that her brain reeled over the vast quantity of knives and forks and plates and glasses needed to convey food to twenty mouths ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... this action, and in which two individuals with whom our readers have made partial acquaintance, were the principal performers, we will venture to relate. It will be recollected that at the dinner table at Colonel D'Egville's on the day of the capture of Major Montgomerie, and his party, among the guests were the chiefs Split-log and Walk-in-the-Water, the former distinguished by a huge bulbous excrescence miscalled a nose, and exquisitely slit ears that dangled gracefully upon his ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... the head of his dinner table. A little dinner for twelve was well under way at the Birches. Mrs. Everard was confined to her tower suite to-night with one of the sudden headaches which unkind critics held were likely to come when the Colonel entertained. Randolph Sebastian, ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... all over again," she said. "He could keep a dinner table laughing for two hours and fight a duel at daybreak. I remember at his own wedding, when they drank his health, he told such a funny story that old Judge Blitherstone, who was upwards of eighty, had to have cold bandages put ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... her away, and I heard their merry voices floating down from the bedrooms above. The pink light of the candles on the dinner table in the room beyond, the vague, sweet scent of the roses, and the warmth of the wood fire burning on the andirons, seemed to grow faint and distant, for I was very tired with the fatigue of a man whose muscles are cramped from want of exercise. I felt all at once that I had stepped from ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... up the lists of signs which were in use in medieval monastic houses, however, combined a preternatural ingenuity with an extremely exiguous sense of humour, and the sort of dumb pandemonium which went on at Eglentyne's dinner table must often have been more mirth-provoking than speech. The sister who desired fish would 'wag her hands displayed sidelings in manner of a fish tail'; she who wanted milk would 'draw her left little finger ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... immensity of petty usages at the dinner table, such as those mentioned in the story of the Abb, Delille and the Abb, Cossen in the Introduction to this volume, which it would be trifling and tedious to enumerate hers, and which will be learned by an observing man after assisting at ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... in this very storm. Next day came another of the sea wonders. The cry of land started them all from the dinner table; but the land happened to be an immense field of ice, which, with the inequalities of its surface and the effect of refraction, presented some appearance of a wooded country. On that night the cry of "Light a-head," while they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... and his face fell as he pondered the verse. It was a neat, well-bred slap at him as a man without initiative or courage. At the dinner table she had expressed much the same thought that was condensed in the verse, but the quotation, unrelieved by her smile, carried a sting. He read it over until the lines marched with a nimble step through ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... old and young," he said in his blithe, cordial tones, "to come and have as good and merry a time as possible, to celebrate the third birthday of my little namesake grandson. We talked the thing over at the dinner table and all agreed that there could be no better way of celebrating that most ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... chloride. It is in all ordinary shop bread, in large quantity in a special and much advertised cereal food, even in a largely sold wheat flour, and often in pastry. It is added to nearly all savoury vegetable food, and many persons, not content, add still more at the time of eating. No dinner table is considered complete without one or more salt-cellars. Some take even threequarters of an ounce, or an ounce per day. The question is not, of course, whether salt is necessary or not, but whether there is a sufficient quantity already existing in our foods. Some allege ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... very severe in his denunciations, while he quite forgot to offer a word of encouragement to the humble seeker after good. Upon the Sabbath in question Mrs. Talbot returned from church, and seated herself at the dinner table with a countenance of most woeful solemnity. Her husband at length enquired, how she had enjoyed the sermon. "Oh!" replied she, "he is a preacher after my own heart, and his sermon explained all my views clearly." "Indeed," replied Mr. Talbot, "he must ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... If I afterwards went to the field my household labors ceased until night; if not, they continued through the day. As often as possible mother would engage in making pumpkin pies, in which I generally bore a part, and one of these more commonly graced the supper than the dinner table. My pride was in the labors of the field. Mother did the spinning. The standing dye-stuff was the inner bark of the white walnut, from which we obtained that peculiar and permanent shade of dull yellow, the butternut [so common and typical in the clothing of the backwoods farmer]. Oak ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... not indulge in trashiness—writes about people you could introduce into your own home. I agree with my Uncle Sydney, as I once heard him say he did not care to read a book or go to a play about people he would not care to meet at his own dinner table. I believe we should live by certain standards and ideals, as you know from my telling you ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... home. A woman who gives her most gracious smiles and her most captivating manners to society, is false to her husband and her home. The prettiest gown and the brightest jewels should grace her own dinner table. To bring them out only to attend a reception, or a tea party, is a desecration. Many women expend their moral and spiritual strength upon the "club," and bring the withering remnants as a sacrifice to the blighted home fireside. We ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... spoke, he looked about him at the assembled company around the huge dinner table, glittering with cut glass and white linen, ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... Rosa, across the dinner table, "the sudden fall of a man who has filled a large space in the public eye is always pitiful. It is like the fall of a great tree in the forest. One never realized how big it ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... her mode of life and the debt Gerrit Ammidon owed her. He would stand with his fingers twitching, talking in a rapid sharp voice, blinking continuously against any light brighter than that of a shaded room or dusk. He seldom left the office or went out through the day; his place at the dinner table was far more often empty than not. But after their early supper, in the long late June twilights, he had an inexhaustible desire for her to stroll with him. She occasionally agreed for the reason that they invariably passed in the vicinity of ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... when Dorothy and I were dining with Douglas and Mrs. Douglas, Dorothy and Mrs. Douglas conceived the idea of going off to see the play of Charlotte Temple; for we had overflowed the lesser talk at the dinner table by our discussion of railroads. Accordingly they left us, and Douglas and I settled down to an intimate evening, of which we were beginning to have many. We set a quart bottle of whisky between us, drinking from it from time to time as the evening progressed. Both of us had a fair capacity. And ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... the psalms, without which, to those who have acquired the stern relish, a service lacks its greatest tonic. But my poor efforts seemed well received and the flood of Southern fervour burst forth later on, as we sat around the Vardells' dinner table. ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... grateful,' Henrietta said; 'and I shan't come here again, no, never. I don't know what you have been trying to tell me, but I don't believe it. It's no good crying. I shall never come back. They're not witches.' She had a vision of them at the dinner table, Rose like a white flower, Caroline and Sophia jewelled, gaily dressed, a little absurd, oddly distinguished. 'Witches! They are my father's sisters, and ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... tucked into a great easy chair, while his lace-curtained crib was given up to a younger, tinier baby, who sucked his thumb and did not sleep. Both babies frowned and choked and sneezed over their respective father's kisses or whiskers, or both. Both appeared in all their glory at the dinner table; and all the bright happy company were in blissful ignorance of a scene so nearly similar that had occurred when the supposed young heir of Hastings' Hall reached the close of his first year. Yet this was different, for Mr. Stephens asked a blessing on this bright glad scene, and Dr. ...
— Three People • Pansy
... home, where I had left my wife and children chatting at the dinner table. They had known where I was going. They knew what the issue of my "trial" would be for them and for me. Yet when I came back to them, none asked me any questions and none seemed perturbed. And this is typical of the Mormon family. I think the ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... hint, and the conversation rattled on around the table as lightly as it might have around any other dinner table in London. Carol and Sir Arthur and Rayburn had it mostly to themselves at first, but after a little the conversation grew more general. Dora and Carol engaged in a really brilliant discussion on the subject of Mrs. Lynn Linton's last ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith |
