"Waltz" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of young ladies now discovered the youths who had been thus enjoying a smoke and talk, and the boys were promptly carried off to the ball room, where the strains of an alluring waltz were floating. ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... little music: Kajsa, with a disdainful air, played a fashionable waltz; Vanda sung an old Scandinavian melody with a sweetness that surprised them all. The tea was served, and a large bowl of punch, which they drunk to the success of the expedition, followed. Erik noticed that Kajsa ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... square dance was over. The City Band was just beginning to play a waltz. Annixter assuring himself that everything was going all right, was picking his way across the floor, when he came upon Hilma Tree quite alone, and looking anxiously ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... turn round now?" i.e., "She can't waltz any more than a crane, and parading is better ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... forth into the unkindest references to deaf old worldlings keeping in the deafening world; and gouty gluttons limping to their gouty gormandizings; and corseted coquets clasping their corseted cavaliers in the waltz, all for disinterested society's sake; and thousands, bankrupt through lavishness, ruining themselves out of pure love of the sweet company of man—no envies, rivalries, or other ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... moved on before me, straddling the drifts with his long, heron legs, and whistling a gay tune to keep up his spirits. Now and then, he would turn around with a waggish smile, and cry: "Comrade, let's have the waltz from 'Robin,' I feel like dancing." A burst of laughter followed these words, and then the good fellow would resume his march courageously. I followed on as well as I could, up to my knees in snow, and I felt a sense of melancholy ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... bursts of boisterous laughter and of the waltz-music of the pianola in the hall, for in the shooting season the echoes of the fine mansion were awakened by the merriment of as gay a crowd as any ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... the hall now. A turn brought them to a wider path which led directly to the building. Up the steps and into the throng of masks they passed, the girl now holding tight to the man's arm. The orchestra was playing a waltz and the pair swung into the whirl, dancing fast and gracefully. The music stopped; a man in the costume of a Spanish sailor came up and asked for the next. The girl looked down, then glanced quickly up and pointed silently to the tall cavalier at her side. The sailor bowed and passed on. ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... anchored among the hulks of houses, her frail cables of lanterns looping her to her moorings. A side door of the theatre opened suddenly and a shaft of light flew across the grass plots. A sudden burst of music issued from the ark, the prelude of a waltz: and when the side door closed again the listener could hear the faint rhythm of the music. The sentiment of the opening bars, their languor and supple movement, evoked the incommunicable emotion which had been the cause of all his day's unrest ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... the men said something in Swiss, at which the bear gave a roar-like grunt and commenced to dance. Around and around the great lumbering fellow went on his two hind legs, holding his fore paws in the air. It was not what one would call a very "airy waltz," however. Again the keeper spoke, and immediately bruin threw himself upon the ground and turned somersaults, making us all laugh heartily. He then told him to shake hands (but all in Swiss), and it was too funny to see ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... Watkins can do—anything he wants to do, practically. Then you and I will go on home and call up some of the crowd to come in and dance to-night. We have some beautiful new records. There's a Hungarian waltz— ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... splintered bits of marble. On another fragment of a wall there still hung a magnificent stag's antlers. Strewed about in the corners I saw fragments of vases that had been priceless. Even the remnants were valuable. In the ruined music room I found a piece of fresh, clean music, (an Alsatian waltz,) lying on the mantelpiece. I went out to the front of the building, where the great park sweeps down to the edge of the river. An old gardener in one of the side paths saw me. We immediately established cordial relations with ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... now struck up again, and played a waltz—a dance new to our country, but older than the Heptarchy. Jansen, with his pipe in his mouth, took one of the women by the waist, and steered round the room about as leisurely as a capstan heaving up. Dick Short also ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... muddy poodle, very wretched looking, and a critic, no doubt, who barked out something about forgetting sound tradition, all the spectators proclaimed Zamore the Vestris of dogs and the god of dancing. Our artist had performed a minuet, a jig, and a deux temps waltz. A large number of two-footed spectators had joined the four-footed ones, and Zamore enjoyed the honour of being ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... anything on shore. My thoughts went back to the last time, nearly a year before, when I had been on that river. I saw it then, in flood of moonlight as I stepped on the boat deck of the giant liner Rotterdam. The soft strains of a waltz floated up from the music room, adding enchantment to the windmills and low Dutch farmhouses strung out below ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... and you, my noble lords and ladies, must see," he went on, "that with a real Nightingale you can never tell what is coming next, but with an imitation one everything is settled. One can open it and see exactly how it works, where the waltz comes from, and why the notes follow ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... to comprehend this charming, tasteful "Carneval," the various numbers of which are harmoniously combined in such artistic fancy. I do not doubt that, later on, this work will maintain its natural place in universal recognition by the side of the "Thirty-three Variations on a Waltz of Diabelli" by Beethoven (to which, in my opinion, it is superior even in melodic invention and importance). The frequent ill-success of my performances of Schumann's compositions, both in private circles and in public, discouraged me from including and keeping them in the programmes ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... house on the river, a place with celebrated gardens which would always come back to her memory as a riot of roses. The frocks of the people on the lawn looked as though they were made of the petals of flowers, and a mad little haunting waltz was being played by the band, and there under a great copper birch on the green velvet turf near her stood Jem, looking at her with dark, liquid, slanting eyes! They were only a few feet from each other,—and he looked, and ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... minute, after a fashion that (I say it with reverence) would have tantalized even a deacon. She clapped her hands, she laughed, she danced, she went swaying on tiptoe around the room with a jaunty step, singing and keeping time to a waltz tune; and finally, pausing near the window, she doubled a tiny fist, as white as a snowball, bringing it down into the rosy palm of her other hand with a gesture of resolute determination, at the same time uttering, through closed teeth and with compressed and puckered lips, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... from the dovecot; Hortense is drawing water from the well; and as all the rooms open into the court, you can see the white-capped cook over the furnace in the kitchen, and some idle painter, who has stored his canvases and washed his brushes, jangling a waltz on the crazy, tongue-tied piano in the salle-a-manger. "Edmond, encore un vermouth," cries a man in velveteen, adding in a tone of apologetic after-thought, "un double, s'il vous plait." "Where are you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "That's the new waltz. My sister was raving about it. I think it's pretty bad. I expect she danced it with ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... the thing now, you know, so one must have it." Her eyes fell on Sally's dress as she spoke. "Sally Lane!" she half-shrieked into Sally's ear, as, at the moment, the orchestra burst into a swinging waltz, "if that isn't the very same embroidered Swiss that you had for my wedding, almost four years ago, when you were a ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... cunning bow across the strings of a dingy violin. He sprang from Gallic stock, a descendant of the old coureurs who for two centuries wandered in search of furs across the wilderness, even as far as the northern barrens, before the Briton came to farm. It was a waltz he played—at least, that was the time; but the music seemed filled with the sighing of limitless pines, and the air was probably known in France three hundred years ago. Still, weather-beaten men, and fair women who were considerably less numerous, swept light-heartedly ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... Pachmann plays a run you realise that it may have its own legitimate sparkle of gay life. With him every note lives, has its own body and its own soul, and that is why it is worth hearing him play even trivial music like Mendelssohn's "Spring Song" or meaningless music like Taubert's Waltz: he creates a beauty out of sound itself and a beauty which is at the root of music. There are moments when a single chord seems to say in itself everything that music has to say. That is the moment in which everything but sound is ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... complained the host. "I know all that lot—and they all know me! I mean the nice-looking fellows round the wall! I haven't been introduced, Haredale. They've come in since this waltz started." ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... know how wrong all that is—tout au contraire, in fact. Tell me a word about Chorley when next you write: you said once that Mendelssohn laughed at him: then, he ought not. How well I remember his strumming away at some Waltz in Harley or Wimpole's endless Street, while your Sister and a few other Guests went round. I thought then he looked at one as if thinking 'Do you think me then—a poor, red-headed Amateur, as Rogers does?' That old Beast! I don't scruple to ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... by our seeing the purser lead out one of the fat ladies, behind whom Dicky had been hid, to attempt a waltz. Never was there a more extraordinary performance. Neither of them had a notion of the dance. They floundered and flolloped, and twisted and turned, and tumbled against all the other couples, till they spread consternation around; and at last found ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... approach. It was a strange sight they beheld as they stood on the edge of the little clearing where the great beast was going through his dance. With his trunk curled high above his great head the big pachyderm was solemnly twirling round and round in a sort of slow waltz and every time he brought a foot down it was with a crash that shook the forest about him. He was a ferocious looking brute, with a wicked gleam in his small eye that boded ill for anyone who should happen to get in his path. One of his tusks ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... life of the soul-stirring song, Of waltz and of wine, with a yearning so strong, Hail, ye stout race of heroes, so brave and so true. Ye blue-eyed, gay maidens, a greeting to you! Your life and your aims and your efforts be mine; Wherever I wander ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... placid as sleep itself, only stirred by the webbed feet of waterfowl, or the wings of dipping swallows, with above and below a brawling rivulet, here and there showing cascades like the tails of white horses, or the skirts of ballroom belles floating through waltz or gallopade. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... pleasure of this waltz with you?" Sir Penthony is saying, bending over Lady Stafford, as she sits in one of the numberless small, dimly-lit apartments that branch ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... that she had occasion to repeat, she changed the wording to six-syllabled mouthfuls, delivered with ponderous circumlocution. She subscribed to papers and magazines, which she read and remembered. And she danced! When other women thought even a waltz immoral and shocking; perfectly stiff, her curls exactly in place, Agatha could be seen, and frequently was seen, waltzing on the front porch in the arms of, and to a tune whistled by young Adam, whose full name was Adam Alcibiades Bates. In his younger days, when discipline ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... their shyness began to wear off, and they could in some sort enjoy the beauty of the sight from a quiet corner. They were not long troubled with Miss Mary. She had not been in the ball-room two minutes before the eldest son of the house had found her out and engaged her for the next waltz. They had met several times already, and were on the best terms; and the freshness and brightness of her look and manner, and the evident enjoyment of her partner, as they laughed and talked together in the intervals of the dance, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... fortunate if the quick eye of a native woman does not detect her hiding-place. About the month of September, while traveling over the prairie, a woman is occasionally observed to halt suddenly and waltz around a suspected mound. Finally the pressure of her heel causes a place to give way, and she settles contentedly down to rob the poor mouse of the ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... at the door waiting for five or six couples, who were pirouetting to the strains of a waltz, to pass him, whilst his pale lips wreathed into a smile as ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... majestic sarabande, the solemnly animated entree, loure, and chaconne, the delicate pastoral musette, the staid gliding siciliano, and the measured, graceful minuet, compared to a generation who dance the whirling waltz, the stormy skipping galop, and the furious cancan! In the opera the tragic hero could dance a sarabande, and even in choral songs of the church the ear of the eighteenth century could distinguish dance music. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... 'gentlemen' in those halcyon days. One Represented things—Parties in Parliament—Benevolent Societies, and British Hospitality in the form of astounding long dinners at which one drank healths and made speeches. In roseate youth one danced the schottische and the polka and the round waltz which Lord Byron denounced as indecent. To recall the vigour of his poem gives rise to a smile—when one chances to ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... could say that their education was in any wise neglected, for besides being taught the ordinary duties of life by their mother, such as mouse-hunting, fish-stealing, and bird-catching, they received instructions in the arts of singing, and playing the harp and the piano, and were taught to waltz and dance the polka with every imaginable grace. Now when the kittens grew to be of age, it was their custom of an afternoon to spend some hours at tea and intellectual talk. The youngest always ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... probably did not time his "Minute Waltz" to exactly sixty seconds, some auditors insist that it lives up to its name. Mme. Theodora Surkow-Ryder on one of her tours played the "Minute Waltz" as an encore, first telling her audience what it was. Thereupon a huge man in a large riding suit ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... to the embarrassing situation I turned to her and said, "I warn you that I am not very proficient at dancing, but as they will carry you off any moment, will you grant me a waltz?" ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... I beg the honour of your hand for the next waltz? surely after a round or two you will ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... came up in the pause before the dance was encored, and asked for the "next but one,"—there were no cards at the Brownings; all over the hall girls were nodding over their partners' shoulders, in answer to questions, "Next, Louise?" "Next waltz—one after that, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... with you in heart and sympathy, rejecting with contempt the antiquated idea that woman is only fit for a plaything or a household drudge. Nor can I see how it is less dignified to go to a public building to deposit a vote than to frequent the concert-room, whirl through the waltz in happy repose on some roue's bosom, or mingle in any public crowd which is, in modern times, quite admissible in polite society. Dethrone the idol and raise the soul to its true and noble elevation, supported on a foundation of undying ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... male for whom I feel any thing of the kind, excepting, perhaps, Thomas Moore. I have had, and may have still, a thousand friends, as they are called, in life, who are like one's partners in the waltz of this world—not much remembered when the ball is over, though very pleasant for the time. Habit, business, and companionship in pleasure or in pain, are links of a similar kind, and the same faith in politics is another." * ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... lowering looks. He stood in front of the line of spectators, who were amusing themselves by looking on. Every time that she came past him, his eyes darted down upon her eddying face; he might have been a tiger with the prey in his grasp. The waltz came to an end, Mme de Langeais went back to her place beside the Countess, and Montriveau never took his eyes off her, talking all the ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... chap that you might waltz in here at a moment's call?" continued the man in bed. "No? Do you know any of them waiters in the house? Thar's a bell over yan!" and he motioned with his eyes towards the wall, but did not otherwise ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... plunges into the program that he has played at all weddings for fifteen years past. It begins with Mendelssohn's Spring Song, pianissimo. Then comes Rubinstein's Melody in F, with a touch of forte toward the close, and then Nevin's "Oh, That We Two Were Maying" and then the Chopin waltz in A flat, Opus 69, No. 1, and then the Spring Song again, and then a free fantasia upon "The Rosary" and then a Moszkowski mazurka, and then the Dvorak Humoresque (with its heart-rending cry in the middle), and then some vague and turbulent thing (apparently the disjecta membra ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... was a Stott vogue. You found his name at the bottom of signed articles written by members of the editorial staff; you bought Stott collars, although Stott himself did not wear collars; there was a Stott waltz, which is occasionally hummed by clerks, and whistled by errand-boys to this day; there was a periodical which lived for ten months, entitled Ginger Stott's Weekly; in brief, during one summer there ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... the way I'm going; but the moment it splits at the top and forms a V, I know I've got to scratch to starboard in a hurry, or I'll bang this boat's brains out against a rock; and then the moment one of the prongs of the V swings behind the other, I've got to waltz to larboard again, or I'll have a misunderstanding with a snag that would snatch the keelson out of this steamboat as neatly as if it were a sliver in your hand. If that hill didn't change its shape on bad nights ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... well as their neighbours. The ball was quietness itself, until near the end, when the wind-instruments were suddenly seized with a fit of economy, the time they were paid for having probably expired, and stopped short in the midst of a waltz; upon which the gentlemen waltzers shouted "Viento! Viento!" at the full extent of their voices, clapping their hands, refusing to dance, and entirely drowning the sound of some little jingling guitars, which were patiently ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the noise of the fair began, the rattling of the shooting galleries, the bells of the three large whirligigs, and two noisy bands playing different tunes, and making a strange, discordant sound, an odd mixture of the 'Mabel Waltz,' and 'Poor Mary Ann.' Then, as the crowds in the fair became denser, the shouts and noise increased on all sides, and the sick woman moaned to herself from ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... a little more sane, and a waltz, or something like it, was got up. It was quite pretty, and some of the movements graceful; but the wild spirit of the glens seemed to re-enter them again rather suddenly. The females were expelled from the ring altogether, and the young men braced themselves for ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... a renewal of hostilities so unfortunately interrupted, met the newcomer half-way, and, each embracing the other with cheerful alacrity, the two heavy men began to stamp and turn round and round with each other like a couple of particularly awkward bears attempting to waltz together. They were very evenly matched for a wrestling bout, for although the German was by a couple of inches the taller of the two, the Russian had the advantage in breadth of shoulder and length of arm, as well as in the enormous strength of his back. The Cossack, having assured himself ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... sigh of relief when the "rigodon" ended, and mustered fresh courage for social conquests in the waltz that was now breathing forth from the trembling strings. My companion in the first dance had been the young lady by whose side I had sat at dinner. But it now became necessary to search for another, so I prudently waited to see how partners were chosen, and made no mistake when a few ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... Lizaveta Nikolaevna. We went in almost together; I was also going to make my first call. They were all, that is Liza, her mother, and Mavriky Nikolaevitch, sitting in the big drawing-room, arguing. The mother was asking Liza to play some waltz on the piano, and as soon as Liza began to play the piece asked for, declared it was not the right one. Mavriky Nikolaevitch in the simplicity of his heart took Liza's part, maintaining that it was the right waltz. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... spirit of dance in their music than those did to-night. They had just given us the most lovely swinging things, one after another, when suddenly they all stopped and the leader drew his bow across his violin. Never in all my life have I ever heard anything like the call of that waltz from that gipsy's strings. It laughed you a signal and you felt yourself follow ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... middle-aged lady found the satisfaction of a belated youth in conveying her pretty niece to the various functions that occupied her time. Each Friday night saw her in the gallery of a certain smart dancing school of the south side, where she watched Page dance her way from the "first waltz" to the last figure of the german. She counted the couples carefully, and on the way home was always able to say how the attendance of that particular evening compared with that of the former occasion, and also ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... Martha Josselyn had sat there with the waltz-music in her ears, and her little feet, that had had one merry winter's training before the war, and many a home practice since with the younger ones, quivering to the time beneath her robes, and seen other girls chosen out and led away,—young ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... situation, and flirting shamefully with the one he likes next best to the imprisoned maiden on the staircase; or, the tables turned, young fledglings pining madly for their respective enslavers, and picturing to themselves how she may be even now whirling round to that pealing waltz in the arms of some former adorer or delightfully new acquaintance, little heeding him who is languishing in his white neckcloth, actually within speaking distance, but separated as effectually as if he were in another country. By-the-bye, it's fatal when people begin to think of each other ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... all over Nantucket and Cape Cod and the North Shore, smiling from the railings of verandas, from the roofs of bungalows, from the eaves of summer palaces. Empaled on their little iron uprights, each sailorman whirled—sometimes languidly, like a great lady revolving to the slow measures of a waltz, sometimes so rapidly that he made you quite dizzy, and had he not been a sailorman with a heart of oak and a head and stomach of pine, he would have been quite seasick. But the particular sailorman ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... wish you 'd come and waltz with me. Fan told me not to go near her, 'cause my wed dwess makes her pink one look ugly; and Tom won't; and ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... dupe hurl musk pomp malt tune turn rusk romp salt flute churn stung long waltz plume hurt pluck song swan glue curl drunk strong wasp droop deck chill for sheath gloom neck drill corn shell loop next quill fork shorn hoof text skill form shout roof desk spill sort shrub proof nest ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... women, all busily occupied in disposing of the villainous liquids which were dispensed to them by so-called pretty waiter girls, who had evidently long since become strangers to modesty and morality. The band was playing a waltz, and the floor was filled with a motley gathering of both sexes, who were whirling about the room, with the greatest abandonment, dancing madly to the harsh and discordant music. The scene was a perfect ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... had left, and they all advanced, talking, to join the dancers. I followed them with my eyes through the crowd. Each abandoned herself with charming grace to her partner's arm, turning her head a little to one side, her hair floating on the waves of the waltz. Perhaps there was exaggerated ease and a trace of childish awkwardness in their manner. In ten minutes they came back to their places, out of breath, but with bright eyes. They took up their fans again, and while fanning themselves went ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... hopes of the Past, the beauties of other days, throng round you, and shake their dry bones; and oh, what efforts at sprightliness! what ravishing of graces! what whirling and rattling of bare bones, as they waltz round to that music of other days! And now, born of these, comes another group, with the laughing eye of young years and a full heart; and ah! the tempting lip, the heaving bosom, the light step of the perfect form; ha! ha! there is life, there is beauty in the world again! ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... intervals, where streams of light fall over them aslant from the lamps in the room. The fountain is playing. In rivalry with its lighter music, the nightingales are singing their song of ecstasy. Sometimes, the laughter of girls is heard—and, sometimes, the melody of a waltz. The younger ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... be arranged beforehand, and for large balls programmes are printed with a list of the dances. Usually a ball opens with a waltz, followed by a quadrille, and these are succeeded by galops, lancers, polkas, ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... some old duennas, and the men on the other. When the music struck up each man asked the lady whom his eyes had already selected to dance with him, and it was not etiquette for her to refuse—no engagements being allowed before the music began. When the dance, which was generally a long waltz, was over, he seated his partner, and then went to a little counter at the end of the room and bought his dulcinea a plate of the candies and sweetmeats provided. Sometimes she accepted them, but most generally pointed ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... she stretches her limbs, She golfs, she punts, she rows, she swims - She plays, she sings, she dances, too, From ten or eleven till all is blue! At ball or drum, till small hours come (Chaperon's fan conceals her yawning), She'll waltz away like a teetotum, And never go home till daylight's dawning. Lawn tennis may share her favours fair - Her eyes a-dance and her cheeks a-glowing - Down comes her hair, but what does she care? It's all her own and it's worth the showing! Go search the world and search the sea, Then ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... right to call, and I have a right to refuse. I will paint no more religious subjects. I have not enough soul. My St. Cecilia looks like a nursery governess playing a waltz for white-cravated saints to dance by." There was a tone of real mortification in Esther's voice as she looked once more at the figure on the wall, and felt how weak it seemed by the side of Wharton's masculine work. Then she suddenly ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... that 'politics are, for the moment, suspended in public regard, by the new and all-absorbing pursuit—the Polka—a dance recently imported from Bohemia, and which embraces in its qualities the intimacy of the waltz, with the vivacity of the Irish jig. You may conceive how completely is 'the Polka' the rage, from the fact that the lady of a celebrated ex-minister, desiring to figure in it at a soiree dansante, monopolised the professor, par excellence, of that specialite ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... knew where—was so effectually promoted by Mr. and Mrs. Cole, that every thing was rapidly clearing away, to give proper space. Mrs. Weston, capital in her country-dances, was seated, and beginning an irresistible waltz; and Frank Churchill, coming up with most becoming gallantry to Emma, had secured her hand, and led her up ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... sister. 'He won't be the one; and it proves nothing if she was waltzing with him. Why shouldn't she waltz with him, as well as with ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... to him eminently suited to the situation, and he repeated it over and over again—now in the waltz-time of the old melody, now as a march, and again as a serenade—now in loud, jubilant tones, and then half whispering, as if he were confiding his love and his hope to the moon and ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... should seem to deny that the mistaken practice of these hymn-book compilers was based on the solid ground of secular common-sense. If anything is true of rhythm it is this, that the common mind likes common rhythms, such as the march or waltz, whereas elaboration of rhythm appeals to a trained mind or artistic faculty. I should say that the popularity of common rhythms is due to the shortness of human life, and that if men were to live to be 300 years old they ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... the fever of the public pulse," replied Carley. "The graceful waltz, like the stately minuet, flourished back in the days when people ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... amongst the ladies, and then danced with all the other women in turn, according to rank. How Fanny trembled, and how her heart began to beat, when she saw him approaching her. Lady Szentirmay had just been carried off by some young cavalier for a waltz, and ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... time one has strange dreams and fancies of small waists, and pretty faces, smiling cunningly. My mind had sometimes reverted to former scenes, when I had a mother and a sister. I had sighed for a partner to dance or waltz with on the green, while our old servant was playing on his violin some antiquated en ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... melodeon, so I hammered away for years. I had to learn difficult things at the start, or none at all, or else those I improvised; and that's how I can play one or two of Beethoven's symphonies pretty well, and this song, and a few others, and go a cropper with a waltz. Will ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hesitancy with distrust, and still retaining the grip upon his shoulder, half led, half pushed him through a short passage straight into the dancing-hall, where on the instant his ears were assailed by a flood of joyous sound in the form of a rhythmic, swinging waltz—his eyes blinked before the flood of light to which the Parisian pins his faith for public pleasures—and his nostrils were assailed by a penetrating smell of scent and smoke. Dazed and a little frightened he drew back against a wall, ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... when the solid pine groves on Maple and Government islands loom up big and black. The Judge was enjoying his vacation the better for its lateness. He had bolted his supper early enough to secure his favorite chair in the best part of the piazza: a mandolin orchestra was playing a waltz from "The Serenade," and playing it well, the Judge thought. He threw away the match with which he had lighted his third cigar—to keep off the mosquitoes, he blandly told his conscience—and leaned back in the Morris chair, thinking how congruously comfortable it all was, ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... works out beautifully, for each partner to the hymeneal bargain is fat and full of content, happiness fairly oozing out of every oily pore. And is not happiness the goal of human endeavour, whether a man seeks it amid the electric lights, subtle perfumes, and dreamy waltz-music of a New York ballroom, or finds it seated with his community wives on a hummock of ice ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... book, The Man in Ratcatcher, consists of shorter stories which exhibit very perfectly McNeile's gift for the dramatic situation. He gives us the man who returned from the dead to save his sweetheart from destruction; the man who staked his happiness on a half forgotten waltz; the man who played at cards for his wife; the man who assisted at suicide, either ordinary short stories nor ordinary motifs! I should hesitate to predict how far McNeile will go along this special line of his; ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... than of wit in the lyric, which became as popular as our modern invocation of Jingo, the god of battles. It chanced one night that M. Limayrac appeared at a masked ball in the opera- house. He was recognised by some one in the crowd. The turbulent waltz stood still, the music was silent, and the dancers of every hue howled ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... "trot," And letting the waltz go to pot, In the glorious Jazz Most undoubtedly has Discovered the pick of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... laid in hand to the stairs we advance, Feet scarcely touching the carpet at all: Why should they walk who are able to dance? Clasping each other, we waltz through ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... love. He woke in a fright, and ran down to see that his cheeses were safe. I swept with a light wing over a politician's eyes, and straightway he dreamed of theatres and music. I caught an undertaker in his first nap, and I have left him whirled into a waltz. For what would be sleep if it did not contrast life? Then I came to a solitary chamber, in which a girl, in her tenderest youth, knelt by the bedside in prayer, and I saw that the death-spirit had passed over her, and the blight was on the ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the reality of fifty. Being still a bachelor, and being always ready to make himself agreeable, he was generally popular in the society of women. In the ballroom he was a really welcome addition to the company. The German waltz had then been imported into England little more than three years since. The outcry raised against the dance, by persons ski lled in the discovery of latent impropriety, had not yet lost its influence in certain quarters. Men who could waltz were scarce. The Major had successfully ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... that that resource of rural entertainment has no foothold in the Philippines. Dancing was next in order. The first dance was the stately rigodon, which is almost the only square dance used here. When it was finished and a waltz had begun, I insisted on going home, for I was tired out. Somebody loaned us a victoria, and thus the trip was short. A deep-mouthed bell in the church tower rang out ten slow strokes as I threw back the shutters after putting out my light. The military bugles took up the sound with "taps," and ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... with a Southern girl's undulating languor to the door, opened it, then charged suddenly upon Octavia Dean, twirled her round in a wild waltz and bore her away; appearing a moment after on the playground demurely walking with her arm around her companion's waist in an ostentatious confidence at once lofty, exclusive, and ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... the major, who was in an antic mood and disposed to be gracious, bade Friedel play on, and as Mrs. Cumberland refused his hand with a glance at her weeds, the major turned to the Count's buxom housekeeper, and besought her to waltz with him. She assented, and away they went as nimbly as the best. Amy laughed, but stopped to blush, as Casimer came up with an imploring glance, ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... the pleasure of the first waltz, Miss Yorba?" he asked. "I am told that it will be a unique pleasure,—that you can talk science and waltz in the same ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the hall is occupied by the other dancers, who later in the evening find their way into the diplomatic set. The dancing in the quadrilles and Lancers is of a rather stately and ceremonious sort. In waltz or galop the English always dance the same step, the deux temps, and the aim of the dancing couple is to go as much like a spinning-top as possible. They make occasional efforts to introduce puzzling novelties like the trois temps, the Boston dip, etc., but, I am ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... practised by good girls and tolerated by good mothers does not prove that it is good. Custom blunts the edge of many perceptions. A good thing soiled may be redeemed by good people; but waltz as many as you may, spotless maidens, you will only smut yourselves, and not cleanse the waltz. It ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... of Miss Tox (D. & S.) was the harpsichord, and her favourite piece was the 'Bird Waltz,' while the 'Copenhagen Waltz' was also in her repertoire. Two notes of the instrument were dumb from disuse, but their silence did not impoverish the rendering. Caddy Jellyby found it necessary to know something ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... was singing in the air about him—a simple, plaintive strain wandering at will over a surface of steady rhythmic movement underneath, always creeping upward through mysteries of sweetness, always sinking again in cadences of semi-tones. With only a moment's pause, there came the Seventh Waltz—a rich, bold confusion which yet was not confused. Theron's ears dwelt with eager delight upon the chasing medley of swift, tinkling sounds, but ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... oscillates, to the tune of an ancient waltz. All the arms, extended and raised, agitate themselves in the air, rise or fall with pretty, cadenced motions following the oscillations of bodies. The rope soled sandals make this dance silent and infinitely light; one hears only ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... The waltz ended, some dancers passed out of the ball-room, and Mildred was surrounded. It looked as if her card would be filled before Morton could get near her. But she stood on tiptoe and, looking over the surrounding shoulders, cried that she would keep the fourteenth ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... Strahlweg,[4] no; Thy Cupids answer "'tis not so;" And every floor that night shall tell How quick thou daubest and how well. Shine as thou mayst in French vermilion, Thou'rt best beneath a French cotillion; And still comest off, whate'er thy faults, With flying colors in a Waltz. Nor needest thou mourn the transient date To thy best works assigned by fate. While some chef-d'oeuvres live to weary one, Thine boast a short life and a merry one; Their hour of glory past and gone With "Molly ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the more dashing of the young men remarked that if they wanted to dance they'd better begin. The girl who had played the accompaniments sat at the piano and placed a decided foot on the loud pedal. She played a dreamy waltz, marking the time with the bass, while with the right hand she 'tiddled' in alternate octaves. By way of a change she crossed her hands and played the air ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... the room; Bessie went and opened it, and then asked me to sit down and give her a tune: I played a waltz or ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... be classed in the same category with certain drugs, as a therapeutic agent. And like drugs, each composition has its own special effect. Thus a brisk Strauss waltz might act as a stimulant, but it would not answer as a narcotic. A nocturne would ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... stiff Aunt Betty stood that Marion could hardly restrain herself from catching hold of her and whirling her around in a waltz. ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... preliminaries proved disappointing. So much so that in the last of the series a soured sportsman on one of the benches near the roof began in satirical mood to whistle the "Merry Widow Waltz." It was here that the red-jerseyed thinker for the first and last time came out of his meditative trance. He leaned over the ropes, and spoke, ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... close to the entrance of the green-house, idly watching the dancers as they waltz round the spacious room, we once more see Helen and Gladys in close companionship. What a pretty ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... off my head. It is dangerous to waltz with any one so pretty," he said, in that bantering tone he often took with her, and which aggravated ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... or Concordia Clubs, two beautiful and commodious buildings replete with every comfort, become the rendezvous of old and young, and dancing is kept up till half-past eight o'clock. It must be confessed that it made one perspire to see the dancers tread a measure to a popular waltz, but there could be no question of the enjoyment ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... or German dance), a name for two kinds of dance, one a German national dance, in 2-4 time, the other somewhat resembling a waltz. The movement in a suite following the prelude, and preceding the courante (q.v.), with which it is contrasted in rhythm, is also called an allemande, but has no connexion with the dance. The name, however, is given to pieces of music based on the dance movement, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... attenuated ends of the small fragment of a moustache which nature had allotted to me, and talked at him and over him, so pointedly, that he had to beat a retreat and claim some other partner for the ensuing waltz. ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... tenderness, just what every man expected of them in the approaching crisis. And no comrade gave another any instructions regarding mother or the girl at home, if he were to bite the dust. For my own part, I found my mind so busy in going over the cadences of a waltz I had danced with Somebody months before that I could not bring myself to consider anything else but the beauty of its refrain—or was it Her eyes?—try as I might. And, besides, it is not profitable ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... grip, not on politics, for which she had a wholesome contempt, but on the affairs of the nations—the things which really mattered. And yet withal she was just an entirely healthy young Englishwoman, who was quite as much at home in the midst of a good swinging waltz as she was in an argument on high ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... No. 300 Grosvenor Square. Hour, close on midnight. A ball is in progress, and dreamy waltz music ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... committed," replied Ralph, as the music, after some prefatory flourishes, broke into the delicious rhythm of a Strauss waltz, "then it is no use struggling against fate. Come, let us make the plunge ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... crashing waltz d'Arnault suddenly began to play softly, and, turning to one of the men who stood behind him, whispered, "Somebody dancing in there." He jerked his bullet head toward the dining-room. "I ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... is feminine. Thus although the author made a resolution not to think about the book which he was forced to write, the book, nevertheless, was completed. One page of it was found on the bed of a sick man, another on the sofa of a boudoir. The glances of women when they turned in the mazes of a waltz flung to him some thoughts; a gesture or a word filled his disdainful brain with others. On the day when he said to himself, "This work, which haunts me, shall be achieved," everything vanished; and like the three Belgians, he drew forth a skeleton from the place over which he had bent ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... no doubt very effective, but it is considered very common now." Evelyn hummed snatches of the opera; then the waltz from ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... was filling rapidly; it was the hour of the the dansant. An orchestra, rich with saxophones, played a waltz that everyone in France was singing. It was from the latest musical success now running in Paris, and it pleased Esther to think she had seen the piece itself, ten days ago: it made her feel herself au courant of things new and smart. Leaning back ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... into the ball-room, where she saw Elsie whirling through a waltz, looking as happy and unconscious as if she had not just crushed a warm, loving human heart under her ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... music; it will play three tunes," said the Wizard, lifting the music-box from the bag. It first played "Coming Through the Eye," then "Violets Blue," and next struck up a lively German waltz. ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... before me were two beautiful children, a boy of six and a little girl of four. They were merry and happy as the birds were, and with an arm of each around the waist of the other, they went hopping and skipping up and down the walks, stopping now and then to waltz, to swing round and round, and then darting away again with their hop and skip, too full of hilarity, too instinct with vitality, to be for a moment still. The flush of health was on their cheeks, and the warm light of ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... claim them. But deep down in her heart she remembers the number of each. It was he who was to have been her escort. It was he who made out her card and gave it to her only a day or two before that fatal interview. It was he who was to have had the last waltz—the very last—that he would dance in the old cadet gray; and though new names have been substituted for his in other cases, this waltz she meant to keep. Well knowing that there would be many to beg for it, she has written Willy's name for "Stanley," and duly warned him of the fact. ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... morning serenade in honor of me at the house of my friendly hosts the Rieslers, whose villa will remain most pleasantly in my remembrance. Felix Mottl conducted the Liszt concert in Baden-Baden with "Mazeppa," the "Mephisto- Waltz," the "Hunnenschlacht," and three pieces from the Oratorio "Christus" in a most praiseworthy manner. Bulow's Liszt-evening in Berlin glorious as ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... pulling at a long curly mustache and drawing himself up to his full height of six feet, "and when you're as old as I am and half as wise, Billy, you'll know that a pretty girl is worth ten times the thought our old frumps of generals demand. My name ain't Gordon if I haven't a mind to waltz over there through the mist and the wind just to tell them I've sent for Squeers. Then I'll get ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... to her guitar accompaniment a little "Bird Waltz," and whirled on the pavement in time, till I doubt if she herself knew whether the guitar had gone mad, and were waltzing about her, or she were waltzing about ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... the noble hostess, nor shall sink With the three-thousandth curtsy; there the waltz, The only dance which teaches girls to think, Makes one in love even with its very faults. Saloon, room, hall, o'erflow beyond their brink, And long the latest of arrivals halts, 'Midst royal dukes and dames condemn'd to climb, And gain an inch of ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... this very much like a waltz? Yes, ladies, you have been dancing the lavolta of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries without being aware of it. But there was another waltz still older, called the Sauteuse, which I suspect answered to your favourite polka. Then there were brawls, galliards, paspys, sarabands, country-dances ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... see how far she would go, perhaps desperately hoping she would make me hate her, I followed her shamelessly from patio to parlor, porch to court, even to the waltz. ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... This is serious business, Cappy. I can show you where you and I can waltz into the Chicago Pit, make a killing on December wheat, and escape with a sizable wad before ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... You don't go into the managing business these days unless you have plenty on the ball. You've got to know all the principles and all the tricks of organization and communication, and you've got to be able to waltz your way around all the roadblocks that are caused by Government laws—some of which have been floating around on the books of one nation or another ...
— A Spaceship Named McGuire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... comes over one in such situations. I had a great mind to draw Emmy on to my knee and commence a brotherly romp with her, to give John a thump on his very upright back, and to propose to one of the Misses Evans to strike up a waltz, and get the parlor into a general whirl, before the very face and eyes of propriety in the corner: but "the spirits" were too strong for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... would fascinate him in a play. "The Waltz Dream" that he did at the Hicks Theater in London in 1908 was typical. Miss Gertie Millar, who sang the leading part, had an important song. Frohman did not like the way she sang it, so he worked on it for two weeks until it reached the perfection of expression that he desired. ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... in the doorway of the Gildermere ball-room, watching her pass him in the waltz, he tried to remember how it had begun. First there had been the tailor's bill; the fur-lined overcoat with cuffs and collar of Alaska sable had alone cost more than he had spent on his clothes for two or three years previously. Then there were theatre- tickets; cab-fares; florist's bills; ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... Sibylla, in a little spirit of mischief. And, in the bright prospect of the future, she forgot past and present grievances, turned her laughing blue eyes upon her sisters, and, to their great scandal, began to waltz round ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... madame," he said. "I remember your love for lilies-of-the-valley. You will put my name down for the first waltz?" ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... not seen its horror pass; His heart is blithe; the village hears His distant laughter; he careers In festive waltz athwart the glass.— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... paviour's rammers should be called demoiselles has always seemed to me an outrage and an impertinence, though I may suppose it finds its excuse in the short-waisted costumes of our grandmothers. But the movement of the glass-smoothing valseuses was really a sort of waltz movement. The plates of glass were fixed with plaster on a solid rectangular table. Granite-dust was scattered upon the plates, and then a wooden plateau, armed on the under side with bands of cast iron or steel, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert |
