"Showman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from Browning! All make-believe of the feeblest. He was a coward, running away at the first threat of danger. It was as if he were watching a tall stranger with a wand pointing to the embarrassed phantom that was himself, and ruthlessly exposing its frailties! And yet the pitiless showman was himself too—himself as he wanted to ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... doubt the above assertion, in the true showman phraseology, just "Walk up! walk up!" to Madame Tussaud's, the real Temple of Fame, and let such doubts vanish for ever; convince yourselves that the mighty attribute not more survives from good than evil deeds, though, like poverty, it makes its votaries acquainted with the strangest of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... "So the showman says he ain't answerin' no fool questions, but if anybody what looks like they had brains is asking in-tell-i-gent questions, he's ready to ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... overestimated. What others have said for years as in a glass darkly, with noble seriousness of utterance, he proclaims again through his brazen megaphone, with all the imperturbable aplomb of an impudent showman, having as little self-respect as he has respect for his public; and, as a consequence, that vast herd of middle-class minds to whom finer spirits appeal in vain hear for the first time truths as old as philosophy, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... sense of his grasp in her own covered the ground of loss just as much as the ground of gain. His presence was like an object brought so close to her face that she couldn't see round its edges. He himself, however, remained showman of the spectacle even after they had passed out of the Park and begun, under the charm of the spot and the season, to stroll in Kensington Gardens. What they had left behind them was, as he said, only a pretty bad circus, and, through prepossessing gates and over a bridge, they had come ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... Miss," declared the showman, and took an end of the bench, leaving the other end invitingly open, but Agnes leaned against the ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... wax-figures, consisting almost wholly of murderers and their victims,—Gibbs and Hansley, the pirates, and the Dutch girl whom Gibbs murdered. Gibbs and Hansley were admirably done, as natural as life; and many people who had known Gibbs would not, according to the showman, be convinced that this wax-figure was not his skin stuffed. The two pirates were represented with halters round their necks, just ready to be turned off; and the sheriff stood behind them, with his watch, waiting for the moment. The clothes, halter, and Gibbs's hair were authentic. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... way to talk," he said. "I don't know you very well, but I've watched you close. I'm just a common, ordinary showman, who never had much money, and I'm going out o' date. I've spent most of my time with nigger minstrel shows and circuses, but I've been on the square. That's why I'm broke." Rather sadly he added: "Once I ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... scenes, the terrible power of the tragic scenes, the perfection of the mise-en-scene—the rattle, the fun, the glitter of the Fair, are sustained from end to end, from the first words of the ineffable Miss Pinkerton to the Vanitas Vanitatum when the showman shuts up his puppets in their box. There is not in all Vanity Fair a single dull page that we skip, not a bit of padding, no rigmarole of explanation whilst the action stands still. Of what other fiction can this be said? Richardson and even Fielding have their longueurs. ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... good time. But the Islip Chapel has no cheerful intent. It is, indeed, a place set aside, with all reverence, to preserve certain relics of a grim, yet not unlovely, old custom. These fearful images are no stock-in-trade of a showman; we are not invited to 'walk-up' to them. They were fashioned with a solemn and wistful purpose. The reason of them lies in a sentiment which is as old as the world—lies in man's vain revolt from the prospect of death. If the soul must perish from the body, may not at least ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... who had the true showman's instinct. "Can't you see that folks are curious? They're afraid to come 'emselves, and they're sendin' their wives and daughters. If you get the women tonight, they'll go home and club ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... ridiculousness of the military character. Its first constituent is obedience: a soldier is, of all descriptions of men, the most completely a machine; yet his profession inevitably teaches him something of dogmatism, swaggering, and sell-consequence: he is like the puppet of a showman, who, at the very time he is made to strut and swell and display the most farcical airs, we perfectly know cannot assume the most insignificant gesture, advance either to the right or the left, but as he is moved by ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... have been the case with Mr. Smith, when, through the brilliant medium of his glass of old Madeira, he beheld three figures entering the room. These were Fancy, who had assumed the garb and aspect of an itinerant showman, with a box of pictures on her back; and Memory, in the likeness of a clerk, with a pen behind her ear, an inkhorn at her buttonhole and a huge manuscript volume beneath her arm; and lastly, behind the other two, a person ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... But to-day the great showman had fallen short of his printed promise. The hurricane had come by night, and with one fell swash had made an irretrievable sop of everything. The circus trailed away its bedraggled magnificence, and the ring was cleared for ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... of the father's despair, Sleary the showman saved the day for the shivering thief. He agreed with the porter that as Tom was guilty of a crime he must certainly go with him, and he offered, moreover, to drive the captor and his prisoner at once to the nearest railroad station. He winked ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... over one eye, a battered hat considerably inclining to the back of his head, a coat with a high collar and long tails, and a tout ensemble indescribably seedy—something between a street preacher and a travelling showman. But here we are. Take care how you come down, ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... think that is quite the idea, either. I am inclined to think that if any showman has lost a great ape lately, and the brute is in these parts, a jury would find a true bill against it. Norton passes that way every night, you know, about the same hour. There's a tree that hangs low over the path—the big elm from Rainy's garden. Norton thinks the ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... now crossed over from Darkot village," the Pathan explained, indicating the wizened leader of a forlorn hope with the air of a showman exhibiting a curiosity. "He came to fetch the remains of his sister, who died in this valley, that she may be buried among her own people. I have therefore engaged him as guide, to take the Sahib ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... were gathered a merry party, some of whom were on mere pleasure bent, others of whom had come to listen to a debate, for which the entertainment committee had provided, between the venerable patriarch Noah and the late eminent showman P. T. Barnum. The question to be debated was upon the resolution passed by the committee, that "The Animals of the Antediluvian Period were Far More Attractive for Show Purposes than those of Modern ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... that prodigy for him to do his sums by—finally thought he had discovered it, and resolved to keep his arm whirling all the time he studied his arithmetic lesson the next morning. Equally inadequate is it to relate in full how he became so confused among the wax-works that he pinched the solemnest showman's legs to see if he was real, and perplexed the beautiful Circassian to the verge of idiocy by telling her he had read in his geography all about the way they sold girls ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... of other people going in the same direction, for my landlady had given no exaggerated account of the curiosity which it had excited. Jacques Chacot evidently possessed the talent of a showman. He had enlarged the front of his cottage so as to form a sort of theatre, the inner part serving as a stage. We found him standing at the door with a couple of stout young fellows, his sons, ready to receive visitors, ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... young birches and oak near the church. The Hills dwelt intermediate between the Bull's Head and the ecclesiastical establishment. The school and schoolmaster's house were behind the Bull. The show was surrounded by the children of the place, who looked on silent with ecstasy, while a burly showman piped his pipes and beat his drum. A couple of ostlers, with their shirt-sleeves rolled up to their shoulders, and one of them with a pail in his hand, stood arrested in their work. And in the front of the spectators was ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... being—according to the biography published by his showman, BARNUM—the son of a Yankee carpenter, we should much like to know the General's arms. Did Her Majesty, before the 'performance,' send to learn them, that they might be duly engraved? or were they, as MATHEW'S French ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... bauble; doll &c. (puppet ) 554; teetotum[obs3]; knickknack &c. (trifle) 643; magic lantern &c. (show) 448; peep show, puppet show, raree show, gallanty show[obs3]; toy shop; "quips and cranks and wanton wiles, nods and becks and wreathed smiles" [Milton]. entertainer, showman, showgirl; dancer, tap dancer, song-and-dance man; vaudeville act; singer; musician &c. 416. sportsman, gamester, reveler; master of ceremonies, master of revels; pompom girl[obs3]; arbiter elegantiarum[Lat]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... have lived long in the alms-basket of WORDS,' is the criticism on this learning with which this showman, whoever he may he, explains his exhibition of it. And surely he must be, indeed, of the school of Antony Dull, and never fed with the dainties bred in a book, who does not see what it is that is criticised here;—that it is the learning of an unlearned time, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... think it very wicked if a showman should turn his lions and tigers loose in a crowd of women and children. Somebody would surely be killed and others hurt. It is just as wrong to turn loose the germs of the sick by throwing the spit and the slops where they will get into a stream or ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison
... some department of life that may or may not be allied to the platform. If a man makes a remarkable speech, he is very naturally invited to lecture; but he is no more certain to be invited than he who wins a battle. A showman gets his first invitation for the same reason that an author does,—because he is notorious. Nearly all new men in the lecture-field are introduced through the popular desire to see notorious or famous people. A man whose name is on the popular tongue is a man ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... that study accessible to the public, that never was a public man's sanctum before—or after. He was intruded upon all the time, as he let the door remain wide open. (Old New Yorkers may recall P. T. Barnum, the showman's, similar habit.) Every now and then some petitioners would make a desperate rush in and, on seeing they were not repelled by order or by the ushers' own initiative, others would be emboldened to do the same. The New Yorker no sooner took ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... of course, was to see the Abbey, which stands just on the outskirts of the village, and is attainable only by applying at a neighboring house, the inhabitant of which probably supports himself, and most comfortably, too, as a showman of the ruin. He unlocked the wooden gate, and admitted us into what is left of the Abbey, comprising only the ruins of the church, although the refectory, the dormitories, and the other parts of the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... piquante entertainment that prevented a reaction of ennui after twelve months passed in constant watchfulness. The shield over the Consulate door, with the lion and the unicorn, was but a sign of the life within; as the grand picture outside the showman's wagon may exemplify the nature of his exhibition. I enjoyed myself extremely with these creatures, especially when the ostriches invited themselves to tea, and swallowed our slices of water-melons and the greater portion of the bread from the table a few moments before we were seated. These birds ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... sailed for home and Peter was left alone to pursue, as he supposed, the Order of the Crescent. On the contrary, he found that the Order of the Crescent was pursuing him. He had not appreciated that, from underlings and backstair politicians, an itinerant showman like Stetson and the only son of an American Croesus ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... is value in her; but to fetch it out she must go back, begin lower, and give years to training, education, and hard work. She can labor ten years for the sake of living five. As for her support, it was of the sort afforded by John T., the showman, and very funny. Mrs. Germon, God bless her! was properly funny. She is the best old woman on end ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... poet until we feel that throughout Paradise Lost, as in Paradise Regained and Samson, Milton felt himself to he standing on the sure ground of fact and reality. It was not in Milton's nature to be a showman, parading before an audience a phantasmagoria of spirits, which he himself knew to be puppets tricked up for the entertainment of an idle hour. We are told by Lockhart, that the old man who told the story of Gilpin Horner to Lady Dalkeith bona fide believed ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... of the earth, and of the clouds, obtainable from a height, was beautiful and unfamiliar, but in the absence of any specific utility the thing became a popular toy. In public gardens a balloon could be counted on to attract a crowd, and the showman soon gave it its place, as a miracle of nature, by the side of the giant and the dwarf, the living skeleton, and the fat woman. A horse is not seen to advantage in the car of a balloon, but it is a marvel that a horse should be seen ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... and fro, addressing the doorful of eyes, expounding like a glib showman at a museum. Her voice ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... volume are only fifteen in number, but the spirit which inspires them is very frequently repeated in other parts of the collection. That spirit is one of mocking sarcasm, and it acts in every case by presenting a beautifully draped figure of illusion, from which the poet, like a sardonic showman, twitches away the robe that he may display a skeleton beneath it. We can with little danger assume, as we read the Satires of Circumstance, hard and cruel shafts of searchlight as they seem, that Mr. Hardy was passing through a mental crisis when he wrote them. This seems to be the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... this minute," he told her, and led the way with Mr. Welles, leaving Marise and Mr. Bayweather to be showman for Mr. Marsh. He now remembered that he had not heard the older man say a single word as yet, and surmised that he probably never said much when the fluent Mr. Marsh was with him. He wondered a little, as they made their way to the saw-mill, what Marise ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... was dining at Gresham Gardens about a fortnight ago, and Jacobi told me in the course of conversation that his sister had never been to Oxford, and that they meant to run down for a day or two, and that a friend of theirs had offered to be showman and pilot them about ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... trader," Who—luring the passengers in as they pass By lamps, gay panels, and mouldings of brass, And windows with only one huge pane of glass, And his name in gilt characters, German or Roman,— If he isn't a Pedlar, at least he's a Showman! ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... mile or so farther on made Dan even more sceptical, and further tracks again set him harking back to his theory of "something always telling 'em somehow," and, losing interest in nigger-hunts, he became showman of the ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... off, certainly, but it won't do any damage," replies their showman, with confidence; "and really it is very pretty while burning. I used to make 'em by hundreds when I was a boy, and nothing ever happened except once, when I blew the ear off ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... animals, pointing out from two to eight players for each troop, according to the number who are taking part. These must come forth into the center of the ring and go through their paces as indicated by the showman. He may thus display the growling and clawing bear, the hopping and croaking frog, the leaping kangaroo, the roaring and ramping lion, the humped camel, the stubborn and braying donkey, the screaming and wing-flapping eagle, the hooking and mooing cow, the neighing and galloping ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... marvel! If to enter life Needed some courage, 'twere a kind of wages, As they let sacking soldiers take home loot: But we are shuffled into life like puppets Emptied out of a showman's bag; and then Made spenders of the joys current in heaven! (Not such a marvel neither, if this love Be but the price I'm paid for my free soul. Who's the old trader that has lent this girl The glittering cash of pleasure ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... and portraits. I think it is nonsense for people to try to paint battles; they can't do it; and, besides, as far as the fighting goes, one fight is just like another. Mr. Dillwyn told me of a travelling showman, in Germany, who travelled about with the panorama of a battle; and every year he gave it a new name, the name of the last battle that was in men's mouths; and all he had to do was to change the uniforms, he said. He had a pot of ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... this faculty in a large degree, and one of his best political satires, the "Political Showman at Home," is entirely made out of quotations from older authors applicable to the real or fancied characteristics ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... however, were not musical practitioners. Ullmann may have had some knowledge of music, but he was all showman. Thalberg, the pianist, was Ullmann's partner when Strakosch and Ullmann joined their forces in January, 1857, to manage the Academy of Music, but the new coalition was the sign of Thalberg's withdrawal ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... French detective story. They are legitimate pieces of literature because they are burlesque, and because the smiling Mephistopheles who lurks everywhere in the pages of Stevenson is for this time the acknowledged showman ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... have both been forced into aids to a system of puffing at which Barnum himself would stare amazed, and confess that he had never conceived of "a dodge" in which literary genius and philanthropy could be allied with the grossest bookselling humbug. But we trust, that, after our American showman has recovered from his first shock of surprise, he will vindicate the claim of America to be considered the "first nation on the face of the earth," by immediately offering Dickens a hundred thousand dollars to superintend ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... showman, looking Andy all over with one swift, comprehensive glance. "They tell me you ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... them, owing to their want of education. Scott tells a story of a Scotch peasant who, discovering a company of gaily-dressed puppets standing in a thicket, where they had been concealed by a travelling showman, at once concluded that they were "fairies." He had inherited the belief that fairies were "little people" who frequented just such places as this; consequently, he decided these were fairies. This ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... tended to convince him that most of those evils from which speakers and singers suffer, whatever the part of the vocal mechanism affected, arise from faulty methods of voice-production, or excess in the use of methods in themselves correct. A showman may have a correct method of voice-production—indeed, the writer has often studied the showman with admiration—but if he speak for hours in the open air in all sorts of weather, a disordered throat is but the natural consequence; and the Wagnerian singer who will shout instead of sing ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... beautiful Angelica now looked out of her window; and, hearing the Devil descant in so pious a tone, she felt an irresistible desire to see the wonders of his box, and to bestow alms upon the devout old showman. The Devil was sent for. Even he was struck by her wondrous beauty, her gentle manners, and her ingenuousness; but he became only so much the more desirous to confuse her senses and entrap her. She placed her enthusiastic eye to the window of the box. The Devil preluded with a few proverbs ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... just two outs. He's got to be a glad hand artist, or a bruiser. That covers it. He's either got to be so popular that they don't care much who he fights, so long as he's a good showman, or he's got to take them all on as they come. All the hard ones, and the harder the better, till one of 'em puts ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... had just spent with Mr. Gregory in his father's dusty dismantled library. He and his were, it seemed, "ruined"—as many people here already guessed. He looked at the full-length Van Dycks on the wall of the Tamworths' ballroom, and thought, not without a grim leap of humour, that he would be acting showman and auctioneer, within a few days perhaps, to his father's possessions of ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he will bait them with a bit of that to excite interest. It will be an annual fair, to last three days, in which he will be the only exhibitor. He's spending half his mornings now in conference with Mr. Agar and Mr. Pitts. Mr. Agar is his sales manager, and Mr. Pitts his showman." ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... Pendennis is a letter written from Spa, in which he says, 'They have got a Sunday service here in an extinct gambling-house, and a clerical professor to perform, whom you have to pay just like any other showman who comes.' It does not seem to have occurred to Thackeray that the turning of a gambling-house into a place of prayer is no bad thing of itself, or that you have no more right to expect your religious services to be done for you in a foreign land ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... the loud playfulness and mirth. Of those who passed him, gay in youth and hope, He took at Jupiter a shilling's worth Of gazing, through the showman's telescope; Sounds as of far-off bells came on his ears, He fancied 'twas ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... certain sum before we were handed into the custody of his companion. Thus is this splendid testimony of national gratitude to the Great Duke of Marlborough made a show of for the emolument of the servants of the establishment; each of them demanding his fee as regularly as a showman of wild beasts at a fair demands a shilling at the entrance. This is considered by foreigners as a disgrace to the British character, and ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... come from a place very unlike England. But also it is clear that it won't do to overdose you with information about this place, and that you had best suck it in little by little. Further, I should take it as very kind in you if you would allow me to be the showman of our new world to you, since you have stumbled on me first. Though indeed it will be a mere kindness on your part, for almost anybody would make as good a guide, and many ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... for about twenty minutes, and Merritt had been bumped against pretty nearly every cask in the hold before he finally succeeded in drawing the sack over the snake's head. Then it was easy, and in spite of his lack of breath the showman in Merritt asserted itself. He put the sack on the floor, and with one foot on the neck of it he prodded the snake's body with the other while he made mysterious passes with his hands until the tip of the tail disappeared. When the sack was securely tied up the python ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... doctrines concerning the many 'true Gods' they hear such precious rigmaroles about in Church and Conventicle, as well as the many orthodox opinions of that God, whose name is there so often 'taken in vain.' But Priests like the showman in question, answer, in language less inelegant to be sure, but substantially the same, 'Vichever you please, my little dears, it ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... innumerable panegyrics and lampoons; from the works and the private correspondence of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Prior and Bolingbroke, and from multitudes of such works as Ox and Bull, the High German Doctor, and The History of Robert Powell the Puppet Showman.] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... expositor, expounder, exponent, explainer; demonstrator. scholiast, commentator, annotator; metaphrast^, paraphrast^; glossarist^, prolocutor. spokesman, speaker, mouthpiece. dragoman, courier, valet de place, cicerone, showman; oneirocritic^; (Edipus; oracle) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... not be disappointed there, friend. So do your best to get up to the Moon, with my story for travelling companion and showman of the terrestrial scene. ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... specimens of deformity, which ought to have been destroyed, rather than preserved to gratify a morbid taste for the horrible and erratic in nature. But while persons of the highest station and education in England patronised an artful and miserable dwarf, cleverly exhibited by a showman totally destitute of principle, it is not surprising that the American people should delight in yet more hideous ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... France, Spain, and Holland, the whole trophies of the war, swinging pompously, and expanding their massy draperies, slowly and heavily, in the upper gloom, as they were swept at intervals by currents of air. At this moment we were provoked by the showman at our elbow renewing his vile iteration of "Twopence, gentlemen; no more than twopence for each;" and so on, until we left the place. The same complaint has been often made as to Westminster Abbey. Where the wrong ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... for the necessary dime was always forthcoming from his mother when an itinerant showman rented the corner dance hall ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... is a thing which, with all deference to some great names in fiction, should in my judgment never be done. It is hard enough for him as it is to simulate real life, without the poor showman's reaching out from behind the curtain to shake hands with ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... beef and bread, and powerful ale, sets off through the woods till the town lights appear right in front, and lies for the night at the ancient sign of Crispin and Crispianus. The floating population of the roads,—the travelling showman, the cheap jack, the harvest and hopping tramps, the young fellows who trudge along barefoot, their boots slung over their shoulders, their shabby bundles under their arms, their sticks newly cut from ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... the Giant have engaged Col. J.W. Wood, known all over the country as a popular showman, as their manager. To-night Mr. W. will have a much larger tent (forty feet) over his giantship, so that hereafter many more can be accommodated at a time—whether they can see better ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... be able to speak to people is not all. And in the first stage of my relations with natives I was helped by two things. To begin with, I was the showman of the Casco. She, her fine lines, tall spars, and snowy decks, the crimson fittings of the saloon, and the white, the gilt, and the repeating mirrors of the tiny cabin, brought us a hundred visitors. The men fathomed out her dimensions with their arms, as their fathers fathomed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... particular form: "Which is the Cobbler and which is his Wife?" He told me he was thinking of a question so expressed many years ago, long before revolving pictures were thought of, and when pictures of any kind were very scarce. A fair was being held in the country, and a showman was exhibiting pictures which were arranged in a row alongside his booth or van in such a way that his customers could pass from one picture to another and which they could see by looking through slightly magnifying glasses placed in pairs, one to fit each eye after ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... globe!" called out Dave, in showman style. "The two marvelous lightweights of the United States, Master Hitem Morr and Lamem Lawrence. They will fight to a finish, without gloves, weather permitting. Walk up, tumble up, or crawl up! Admission ten ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... Public is still outside, listening open-mouthed to a comic dialogue between the Showman and a juvenile and irreverent Nigger. Those who have come in find that, with the exception of some particularly tame-looking murderers' heads in glazed pigeon-holes, a few limp effigies stuck up on rickety ledges, and an elderly Cart-horse in low spirits, there ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... few of the many sides of the problem of what is called "laying out a show." A command of the art of balancing a show is a part of the genius of a great showman. It is a gift. It cannot be analyzed. A born showman lays out his bill, not ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... The showman's work is very profitable at the country-house of Voltaire, at Ferney, near Geneva. A Genevese, an excellent calculator, as are all his countrymen, many years ago valued as follows the yearly profit derived by the ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... thanks to Mrs Amy's skill in draping and posing, the white wigs and cotton-flannel robes were classically correct and graceful, though sundry modern additions somewhat marred the effect, while adding point to the showman's learned remarks. Mr Laurie was Professor Owlsdark in cap and gown; and, after a high-flown introduction, he proceeded to exhibit and explain his marbles. The first figure was a stately Minerva; but ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... from fair to fair began here by hanging out a signboard, a revolving sun in a blackboard, and the inscription in red letters: "Here Man may see what God can never see. Admittance, two sous." The showman at the door never admitted one person alone, nor more than two at a time. Once inside, you confronted a great looking-glass; and a voice, which might have terrified Hoffmann of Berlin, suddenly spoke as if some ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... if you should ask ten Boston men, 'Who was Artemas Ward?' nine would say he was an amusing showman. If you asked 'Who was John Thomas?' nine would say he was a flunky commemorated by Thackeray."—E. E. HALE, "Memorial History of ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... a showman's dog has he distinguished himself. He is something more than a mountebank of the booths, trained to walk the tight rope and stand on his head. He is an adept at performing tricks, but it is his alertness of brain that places him apart from other animals. There ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... Black Museum they had all the trophies which had been produced in court; but the officer who acted as showman to Langholm admitted that they had no right to retain any of them. They were Mrs. Minchin's property, and if they knew where she was they would of course ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... with his head out and his back to the exhibition. He had the art of mute expression; his attitude said as clearly as possible: "No, no, you can't call me either ill-mannered or ill-natured. I'm the showman of the occasion, moreover, and I avert myself, leaving you to judge. If there's a thing in life I hate it's this idiotic new fashion of the drawing-room recitation and of the insufferable creatures who practise it, who ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... lady setting forth on a second or third voyage into MONTE CRISTO. Here are stories which powerfully affect the reader, which can he reperused at any age, and where the characters are no more than puppets. The bony fist of the showman visibly propels them; their springs are an open secret; their faces are of wood, their bellies filled with bran; and yet we thrillingly partake of their adventures. And the point may be illustrated still further. ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to show the people by their verdict and the severity of the procedures how thoroughly in earnest they were. But whilst I was compelled to absent myself an hour because the Emperor wished to inspect the new towers on the city wall, and I had to attend him in the character of showman, they sentenced the poor fellow, since his loose tongue had brought the whole rout and rabble against him, to torture so severe that I shuddered when ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... trembling. "He's killed a bear!" said he, with glittering eye; "you should have seen it, ah! a tame bear, of course. Listen—he was coming back from hunting with the Marquis and Mademoiselle Berthe and some people behind. And he comes on a wandering showman with a performing bear. A simpleton with long black hair like feathers, and a bear that sat on its rump and did little tricks and wore a belt. The prince had got his gun. I don't know how it came about but the prince he got an idea. He ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... the room, throwing back a curtain at the further end. In the recess stood a sideboard, laden with all manner of liqueurs and wines, glasses of every size and shape, sandwiches, pasties, and fruit. Herr Selingman stood on one side with outstretched hand, in the manner of a showman. He himself was wrapped for a ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... monstrous opinions; some were bigger, some less, none of them having human shape, but shaped like her opinions: Mistress Dyer also, another of the same crew, was delivered of a large—" [here follows a minute description of a feminine monster that would have made the fortune of any travelling showman, so complexly-horrible was its physiology]. Thus God punished those monstrous "wretches," But the civil authorities of New England, as we know, had punished them too. "God put it into the hearts of the civil magistrates to convent the chief leaders of them; and, after fruitless admonitions ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... its grace of curve and bend, and so—the description is longer than the voyage—we come to our first stopping-place. To the side, in front of the well-kept fertile fields, like a proud little showman, stood the little house. Its pointed shingle roof covered it like the top of a chafing-dish, reaching down to the windows, which peeped out from under it ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... ammonia; but Professor Thunder was not thankful, he hadn't time, his magnificent mind was already busy on ways and means of repairing the mischief done to his Missing Link and to his reputation as an honourable showman. ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... divining what their course would be after the fourth of March, if they should chance to be elected. We know too well what regular Democracy is, to like either of the two faces which each shows by turns under the same hood. Everybody remembers Baron Grimm's story of the Parisian showman, who in 1789 exhibited the royal Bengal tiger under the new character of national, as more in harmony with the changed order of things. Could the animal have lived till 1848, he would probably have found himself offered to the discriminating public as the democratic ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... vacant guesses were made as the showman held it aloft. Then with a conjuror's gesture he suddenly placed his thumbs within the rim, released the spring and extended the hat. The assembly laughed again silently ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... been carried through his native town; and whose inspection, perhaps, had much to do with that impulse that first caused him to "run away to sea." Under a glass-case he had examined that piece of osseous structure, described by the showman as the sword of the sword-fish. Under the waves of the tropical Atlantic,—but little less translucent than the glass,—he had no difficulty in identifying ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... as the flight began. He was an amateur magician and spotted the gimmick at once. He kept silent with professional courtesy, and smiled ironically as the rest of the bunch grew silent one by one. The colonel was a good showman and he had set the scene well. He almost had them believing in the Space Wave Tapper before he was through. When the model had landed and he had switched it off he couldn't stop them ...
— Toy Shop • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... of its reverses, the House fell into the occupation of a Showman. He was found registered as its occupier, on the parish books of the time when he rented the House, and there was therefore no need of any clue to his name. But, he himself was less easy to be found; for, he had led a wandering life, and settled ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... doubtful when declined with the article hic or haec— whichever you please, as the showman said of the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon Bonaparte. Anguis, a snake, is a doubtful noun. At all events ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... into the flame to encourage him—something went wrong with the works, and she was instantly redooced to a cinder. I fortunately 'appened to be near at the time (you will escuse a little wild fib from a showman, I'm sure!) I 'appened to be porsin by, and was thus enabled to secure the ashes of the Wonderful She, which—(draws hangings and reveals a shallow metal Urn suspended in the centre of scene), are now before you enclosed in that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... language in which it is written. All this of course. But, apart from this, the work must be complete in and of itself, so as to be intelligible without a commentary. And any work which requires a sign or a showman to tell the beholder what it is, or to enable him to take the sense and virtue of it, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... flocking to the little wagon and paid the sixpence to go inside and see the pushmi-pullyu that very soon the Doctor was able to give up being a showman. ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... of the Brahman and the showman were certainly saved by the wonderful intelligence of the ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... where it frequents shady ravines, building in hollows and their precipitous sides, and making its nest of small sticks and grasses, the eggs being five in number, of a sky-blue colour." But Shore, as the showman would say, is, so far as eggs and nests are concerned, "a fabulous writer," and the eggs are always more or less spotted, and no nest that I ever saw of this species was composed ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... changed. He turned, like any courteous stranger, to playing the part of showman of the house. Once more a veil had ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... happened; what I have been tracing. Parbleu!" he exclaimed, imitating the manner of a showman at a fair, "here is a lovely town, called St. Remy, six thousand inhabitants; charming boulevards on the site of the old fortifications; handsome hotel; numerous fountains; large charcoal market, silk factories, famous hospital, ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... broadly and murmured something about compliments as she released her hand from his grasp. Mr. Browne extended his open hand towards her and said to those who were near him in the manner of a showman introducing a prodigy ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... than dancing-dogs. "But, sir, you will allow that some players are better than others?" "Yes, sir, as some dogs dance better than others." So when Goldsmith accused Garrick of grossly flattering the queen, Johnson exclaimed, "And as to meanness—how is it mean in a player, a showman, a fellow who exhibits himself for a shilling, to flatter his queen?" At another time Boswell suggested that we might respect a great player. "What! sir," exclaimed Johnson, "a fellow who claps a ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... display to him who stood as showman. This was a handsome lad, seemingly no older than I, though taller, with a shock of black hair, rough and curly, and dark, smooth face, very boyish and pleasant. He was dressed well, in bourgeois fashion; yet there was about ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... to ken aught of the Showman or the Show? "Why meanly bargain to believe, which only ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... a showman's dog. If scholdin' didn't do for Finn, she'd cry at him, an' had tin childher that she larned to cry at him too, an' when she begun, the tin o' thim 'ud set up a yell that 'ud deefen a thrumpeter, ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... police of Harrisburg are hunting high and low for a young Indian known to the records of the Academy as Ralph Moreau, but borne on the payrolls of Buffalo Bill's Wild West aggregation as Eagle Wing—a youth who is credited with having given the renowned scout-showman more trouble than all his braves, bronchos and "busters" thereof combined. Being of superb physique and a daring horseman, Moreau had been forgiven many a peccadillo, and had followed the fortunes of the show two consecutive summers until Cody finally had to get rid of him as ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... into disorder. Do you think that' such a company of mean fellows 'would have attacked Us, if they had not been supported by vast unseen forces behind the scenes.'[58] With what cruel craft, but seeming indifference, the artful old showman treated his manikins! He cut off the heads of some amongst those who responded most vigorously to his touch; whilst others, not less free upon the wire, were carefully packed up, and sent home safe. By seizing and boxing up in the Tower mere bystanders, wholly unconcerned in the ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... as at a village fair A showman's views, dissolving into air, Again appear transfigured on the screen, So in my fancy this; and now once more, In part transfigured, through the open ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... beyond measure by what you say. I should have thought that a boy of your poetical and artistic temperament would have had his imagination somewhat fired, even by the efforts of the poor showman whom we've seen to-night. Now I will make you a confession. At the bottom of my heart I agree with every word you've said. I may be one-sided, prejudiced, what you will, but I cannot help looking upon a public performer as I look upon no other ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... his eyes upon Ferret, he proceeded: "An't you a limb of the law, friend?—No, I cry you mercy, you look more like a showman or a conjurer."—Ferret, nettled at this address, answered, "It would be well for you, that I could conjure a little common sense into that numskull of yours." "If I want that commodity," rejoined the squire, "I must go to another market, I trow.—You legerdemain ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... forty-five and fifty years of age, is the type of the semi-broken-down showman. In the evolution of the theatrical business in America, the old circus and minstrel men have gradually been pushed aside, while younger men, with more advanced methods, have taken their place. The character is best realized by the way ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... companions, for in the led golilla or oolang-ootang of his peculiar pronunciation, they recognised the long known and world-renowned ape of Borneo, which, although safe enough when seen inside the cage of the showman, is a creature to be dreaded—at least the species spoken of—when encountered in its native haunts, the forests of Sumatra ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... Army discipline alone forced him to wear. It was Elodie, too, who had fixed into his buttonholes the little red rosette of the Officer of the Legion. That at least he could do for her.... Success, such as it was, before the war, he had attained he knew not how. The big drum of the showman had ever been an engine of abhorrence. Others had put him on the track of things, Elodie, Bakkus.... He had sternly suppressed vulgarity in posters. He had never intrigued like most of his craft for press advertisement. Over and ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... who were curious enough to turn, beheld the colonel with a handkerchief to his eyes, his shoulders heaving. Somehow the colonel's noisy grief failed to excite the sympathy of those assembled. It was suspected that the wrecked showman was playing ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... entrancingly before the very eyes of the young man by her side. The eyes turned such a peculiar look upon her that she hastened to add: "Go on with your dissolving views. It is number eight's turn next. You are the showman, and ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... have old engines of terror or torment, they may fall to pieces from mere rust, like an old coat of armour. But in the case of the Prussian tyranny, if it be tyranny at all, it is the whole point of its claim that it is not antiquated, but just going to begin, like the showman. Prussia has a whole thriving factory of thumbscrews, a whole humming workshop of wheels and racks, of the newest and neatest pattern, with which to win back Europe to the Reaction ... infandum renovare dolorem And if we wish to test the truth of ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... jist a lot o' oily tongued wheedlers," was the reply, "an' that wee ferrit-eyed yin is the worst o' them a'. Just wait till he begins to speak, an' you'll think he's a showman. He can fairly pit on the butter, an' he'll send us a' away hame in the belief that we're the finest set o' men he ever met, an' mak' us feel that if we decide to do anything against what he recommends, the hale ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... attention to some humorous touch in one of Bewick's tail-pieces, or to some plump figure in a group by his favourite Stothard than when handling a Michael Angelo drawing or an amazing Blake. Yet, had it been his humour, he could have played the showman to Michael Angelo and Blake at least as well as to Bewick, Stothard, or Chodowiecki. But a modesty, marvellously mingled with irony, was of the very essence of his nature. No man expatiated less. ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... medley tune, half "Patrick's Day" And half "Boyne Water," take their cantering way, While Peel, the showman in the middle, cracks His long-lasht whip to cheer the doubtful hacks. Ah, ticklish trial of equestrian art! How blest, if neither steed would bolt or start;— If Protestant's old restive tricks were gone, And Papist's winkers could be still kept on! But no, false hopes—not ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al |
