"After-dinner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like crossing the Channel in a balloon. Manfred-like, you talk to the clouds: you have a fellow feeling for the sun. And when Jarl and I got conversing up there, smoking our dwarfish "dudeens," any sea-gull passing by might have taken us for Messrs. Blanchard and Jeffries, socially puffing their after-dinner Bagdads, bound to Calais, via Heaven, from Dover. Honest Jarl, I acquainted with all: my conversation with the captain, the hint implied in his last words, my firm resolve to quit the ship in one of her ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... came with him, was not half so well known, save to the Faculty and the circle of the chapter. He was doing very well in business, people said, better than Shirlock, probably. Rice was a keen fellow, the new men could see that at a glance; but they did not put an arm about him instinctively in the after-dinner stroll, as they ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... with a jealous pang, for he found it almost impossible to get a quiet word with that busy and important member of the household, and now that winter was coming on, it would be harder than ever, for even the little after-dinner chats in the garden ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... "and I would of lost thousands more if every prisoner would of behaved the way Germany and Austria has since the judge asked them if they had anything to say why sentence should ought to be passed on them. Evidently they must of thought it was up to them to make regular after-dinner speeches, leaving out ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... The after-dinner discussion was in full progress when she was called out to speak to Mr. Prendergast. Heated, wearied, and choking with dust, he would not come beyond the hall, but before going home he had walked all this distance to tell her the result of his expedition. Derval had ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had given his legs years ago to the aforesaid country, a delightful evening. ... No, I'm quite sure such a patronising thought never entered my Betty's head. After all, my upper half is sound, and I can talk sense or nonsense with anybody. What have one's legs to do with a pleasant after-dinner conversation? Years ago I swore a great oath that I would see them damned before they got in the way ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... Lord Granville, 'belonged to many of our good speakers—to Charles Fox—to Lord Holland. Indeed Fox required the excitement of serious business to become fluent. He never made a tolerable after-dinner speech.' ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... touch the paper. My mind shrank back from its task. In my ignorance of the laws of life, I charged myself with idleness, and tried to spur myself on to renewed activity. The attempt was vain. One afternoon I ventured to lie down and treat myself to an after-dinner nap. I slept three hours. I had no engagement that night, and feeling still unaccountably sleepy, I slipped off to bed about eight o'clock. I slept till nearly nine next morning. I slept an hour or two more after dinner. At night I slept about ten hours more. Next day I felt as if my strength ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... from deck to deck and even this space was encroached upon by two outlandish cross-timbers bracing the vessel, and by the sailors' chests, over which you must needs crawl in getting about. At meal-times, and especially when we indulged in after-dinner chat, we sat about the chests like a ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... being fond of office. Why, my countrymen, I can show by statistics—and statistics never lie—that Ohio never had her fair share of the public offices. I have not brought any of the statistics with me, for fear some know-nothing might cry at our after-dinner speech 'Figures.' Still we never had our share of the public offices, or if we had we always filled them well, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... during her long reign no ambassador had created so much interest or won so much regard. He had already been honored by degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, and now many similar honors were thrust upon him. He was acknowledged to be the best after-dinner speaker in England, and no one was called upon so often for addresses at dedications, the unveiling of tablets, and other civic occasions. It is not strange that he became attached to England with an ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... jokes, quotations and stories in this second volume, the editor has endeavored to bring further aid to the distracted toastmaster, to the professional after-dinner speaker who must change his stories often, and to individuals inexperienced in public speaking and so unfortunate as to have public addresses forced upon them. He views the product with much the same feeling as did Alexander Pope, who said, "O'er his books ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... March evening, as Kresney strolled back and forth on his narrow verandah, enjoying an after-dinner cigar, every detail of that detested interview darted across his memory for the hundredth time, like a lightning-streak across a cloud. Wounded, in the most susceptible part of his nature, Kresney saw no reason to deny himself ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... another root; and was up at four the next morning (he never worked at night; for, he said, he never could trust after-dinner brains), drawing out a detailed report of the Pentremochyn cottages, which he sent to Lord ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... strange double life which she had been leading of late, Wych Hazel heard Mr. Falkirk's announcement and poured out his 'after-dinner coffee' with a steady hand. Then asked when Mr. Rollo was to go. He had gone already, that very day. And till when must this other business wait? Till the second week in October. Then she knew that he had thrown her off. No other earthly thing would ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... the nest resembles an after-dinner coffee cup. It is beautifully woven, and, like those of the white-eye and fantail flycatcher, covered with cobweb; this gives it a very neat appearance. In it are laid two or three eggs of salmon hue with reddish-brown ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... after-dinner Noel we make a promenade in the woods of Boulognes. Now it is the vacancies[5] of Noel and I aid Maman, she make me some black aprons new for go to school, and I sit myself down on the side of her. She loves not that I play in the streets, because she desire that I be well ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... for reference. The scope of the subjects is wide and the variety such that this book is all that could be desired in a book of toasts. The latter half of the book is a collection of side-splitting and clever stories as told by the great humorists and well-known after-dinner speakers. Here again the wide range of subjects makes this book especially useful and withal highly entertaining. The idea of a combination of toasts and stories ...
— The Little Lame Prince - Rewritten for Young Readers by Margaret Waters • Dinah Maria Mulock
... quantity of coffee or half the quantity of water, given in recipe for Boiled Coffee (see Page 30). This coffee may be prepared in the Percolator, following the directions given in the foregoing. Milk or cream is not served with black coffee. Serve in hot after-dinner coffee cups, with ...
— Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners - A Book of Recipes • Elizabeth O. Hiller
... obsequiously behind him, each holding a piece of food, and they laughed aloud and shouted to see the old woman so angry. And with a shriek the child was caught and the old woman set to work slapping and the child screaming, and it was very good after-dinner fun for them. Little Si ran on a little way and stopped at ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... That dinner! That after-dinner in the drawing-room upstairs! It is a nightmare to be imagined, not to be described. Imagine walking from the darkness and the frightful secret of the passage into the blazing dazzle and the glittering eyes ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... was smoking a cigar and sipping his after-dinner coffee, was in evening dress, but wore his house-jacket—a circumstance of which Strange did not know the significance, though he felt its effect. The old man's welcome was not unlike that of a shy father trying to break the ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... of your life, a month's trouble and discomfort, but with no risk. What is a month out of a lifetime, when that month means immortality to you and life to thousands? In a month you would make a half dozen after-dinner speeches and cause your friends to laugh and applaud. Why not wring their hearts instead, and hold this thing up before them as it is, and shake it in their faces? Show it to them in all its horror—bleeding, diseased and naked, an offence to our humanity, ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... cried Don Sabas. Advancing to the mast he lowered the flag to the deck, where lay its too loyal supporter. Thus ended the Minister of War's little piece of after-dinner drollery, and by the ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... very embarrassing now and then when some of the ambassadors of great European States happened to be guests at his dinner-table. In the presence of the French Ambassador, for instance, the King, while delivering his after-dinner speech, would suddenly recall some of his recollections of the days when the great Napoleon held the Imperial throne of France, and he would then, perhaps, close a sentence {117} with an exultant reference to the glorious triumphs we had obtained ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... waiting pause of silence, a shrill little voice from right under the wagon piped out, "Here I is!" and over the rim of the great copper kettle popped Martha's golden head. Scrambling out, "head-over-heels," she rushed into her mother's arms, as fresh and rosy from her after-dinner nap as though she had been rocked in the downiest cradle ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37. No. 16., April 19, 1914 • Various
... it is characteristic of Mr. Roosevelt to speak on the spur of the moment, trusting to the occasion to furnish him with both his ideas and his inspiration. Nothing could be more contrary to the facts. It is true that in his European journey he developed a facility in extemporaneous after-dinner speaking or occasional addresses, that was a surprise even to his intimate friends. At such times, what he said was full of apt allusions, witty comment (sometimes at his own expense), and bubbling good humor. The address to the undergraduates at the Cambridge ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... all the dinners proposed he would not have lived to enjoy his public honors a month. As it was, he accepted many more dinners than he could eat, and presently fell into the habit of arriving when the banqueting was about over and the after-dinner speaking about to begin. Even so the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... John Randolph of Roanoke, who, when at the Court of St. James (England) was conspicuous for his boasting that he was a Virginian. He was introduced by an English official for an after-dinner speech with a request that he should tell the distinguishing difference between a Virginian and a citizen of the ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... tries to be off-hand, waggish, and brisk—a cross between a street peddler and a circus clown, with a hint of the forced mirth of the after-dinner speaker. Occasionally the jokes are good and the answers from the audience ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... liked, for it is a great compliment when a man in Venice, or any Italian town,—especially if he is of the importance and distinction to which Duveneck had already attained,—makes you free to join him at dinner and over after-dinner coffee. It is more than a compliment. It launches you in Venice as to be presented at court launches ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... of a German convictorium, or a dinner at the Palais Royal a deux francs, the dinners to which I was invited by some of the Fellows in Hall, or in Common Room, surprised me not a little. The old plate, the old furniture, and the whole style of living, impressed me deeply, particularly the after-dinner railway, an ingenious invention for lightening the trouble of the guests who took wine in Common Room. There was a small railway fixed before the fireplace, and on it a wagon containing the bottles went backwards and forwards, halting before ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... future, and claim a brotherhood after the flesh with your average Briton, who looks out of his comfortable present only to look into his comfortable past. Yet let this estate be temporary; for it is well to return to our thin diet, and, instead of jolly after-dinner talk, repeat the high and aspiring phrases of certain New-Englanders who lead the generous thought and life of a continent. Phrases! Yes, but how many nebulous ideas, think you, would it take to stuff out their hollowness? Nay, my objecting friend, if the ideas are not wholly clear, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Thackeray, talking of after-dinner speeches, has lamented that "one never can recollect the fine things one thought of in the cab," in going to the place of entertainment. I am not aware that there are any "fine things" in the following pages, but such as there are stand to a speech which really did get itself spoken, at the ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... extensive and often habitual use of alkalies for acidity, of purgatives for constipation, nervines and opiates for sleeplessness, and after-dinner pills to goad into action the lagging stomach, has been a potent factor in the production of a large class ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... a flowery tribute of the after-dinner variety, leaning forward to rest a hand upon Banneker's desk as he spoke. When the speech was over and the hand withdrawn, something remained among the strewn papers. Banneker regarded it with interest. It showed a blotch of yellow upon ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Smith tells me how James once wrote a leading article in the train between Paddington and Maidenhead. Many of the little poems which he contributed to periodicals were improvised. He was famous for wit and readiness as an after-dinner speaker; and showed an oratorical power in electioneering speeches which gave the highest hopes of parliamentary success. Indeed, from all that I have heard, I think that his powers in this direction made the greatest impression ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Chaplain of the Millionaires' Club, the Pastor of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Religious Editor of the New Haven, the Sunday-school Superintendent of Standard Oil. We shall try the weight of their jewelled sledges—books, sermons, newspaper-interviews, after-dinner speeches—wherewith they pound their golden nails of sophistry into the bleeding hands and feet of the ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... luncheon dictates that coffee be served in the drawing room. Here the waitress passes the after-dinner coffee which the hostess pours. If it seems preferrable to serve coffee at the table, the waitress, after she has placed the finger-bowl service, puts the coffee at the guest's left hand, and passes him cream and sugar. When he has removed his finger ...
— Prepare and Serve a Meal and Interior Decoration • Lillian B. Lansdown
... little of their "goings on." Doubtless there were appropriate toasts and responses, or what in bug etiquette answered to this seemingly indispensable human fad, while as to that other festive social essential of after-dinner speeches, coupled in this case with most vigorous discussion, I am certain the air was blue with something of this sort, if the eloquent pantomime bore any significance. Here, for instance, is one isolated, but ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... soiree was to follow that interminable dinner, and for a time Priscilla was occupied in helping Lady Raffold to receive the after-dinner guests. She longed to escape before the contingent from the dining-room arrived upstairs, but she soon realised the impossibility of this. Her stepmother seemed to want her at every turn, and when at length she found herself free, ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... and contained a considerable amount of poetical sentiment; indeed, all that has come down to us of Xenophanes, the first sillographer, is of this character. We are told that he used parody, but his pleasantry, probably, consisted much of after-dinner jests and stories, for we find that although he praises wisdom, and despises the fashionable athletic games, he rejoiced in sumptuous banquets, and said that the water should first be poured into the cup, then the wine. But ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... a hard fate to be obliged to leave your after-dinner cigar and George Eliot's last novel in order to drive four miles through wind and snow to a party which your hostess has given, not because she has good fare, or good music, or agreeable guests, or anything, in short, really calculated ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Grace, about two years old, pursued him down from her nursery every morning, and insisted upon seeing innumerable pictures, lurking (as she had discovered) in many different recesses of the library? More and more from this quarter it was that we drew the materials of our daily after-dinner conversation. One great discouragement arises commonly to the student, where the particular library in which he reads has been so disordinately collected that he cannot pursue a subject once started. Now, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... seen more than one member of the United States Senate staggering through the streets, from what cause the reader will have no difficulty in judging. I have seen a great statesman, since deceased, carried from an after-dinner table to his chamber. I have seen the honorable Secretary of one of the National departments engaged in a brawl in a brothel. I have seen Representatives fighting in a bar-room like so many rowdies, and I have heard them use language that would disgrace a beggar in his drink. ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... severe "nervous shock"—very serious, often deadly, at the patient's age. Why not confess everything at once, set things straight, free the poor shaken mind from its oppression? Who's afraid?—what harm is there in an after-dinner stroll? ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... after-dinner causeries I ventured humbly to remark that Patriotism was a vulgar vice of which I had never been guilty. That innocent indiscretion of mine aroused at the moment some unfavourable comment. I confess I was sorry for it. But I passed it by at the time, lest I should speak ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... unlovely, but habitable. Its two great towering sea-front hotels look American, but they are a great deal more substantially built. There are two rivals for popular favour, the Grand and the Metropole. They are much alike in all their appointments, but there are fewer tea-drinkers and after-dinner sleepers (and snorers) at the Metropole. There is also a famous old coaching house, the Ship Hotel (most curiously named), ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... corner of the counter. The attraction of dice for all these people was indeed extraordinary: at a certain club, where I once dined in the character of "my partner, Mr. Dodd," the dice-box came on the table with the wine, an artless substitute for after-dinner wit. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... to the Front. Mr. Davis' Labors and Responsibilities. His Personal Popularity. Social Feeling at the new Capital. "Pawnee Sunday" Panic. Richmond Society. An After-dinner Object Lesson. How Good Blood did not Lie. Western Virginia. Society's Pets go to the Front. "The Brave ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... on his discreet efforts. Those members of the secluded domain of high respectability for whom he strived showed their gratitude in a less emotional but more substantial way—generally in the mellow atmosphere of after-dinner conferences ... "You had better see my man, Brimsdown. I'll give you a note to him. He'll square this business for ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... the ups and downs of life, damn it! Your turn to-day, mine to-morrow; jolly lucky not to break a leg, after all! And their gaiety returned, amid the smoke and the glasses, through a need of reaction; and, after the first drink or two, came jokes, after-dinner stories, impromptus which had traveled ten times round the world and brought tears of laughter to the eyes of the audiences in thousands of music-halls, not to speak of the second-class cabins of every ship of every ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... heard the absurd lampoon as a child, and one evening late in August, smoking his after-dinner cigar beside his father in the empty conservatory, he recalled the story, which had been one of his ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... tolerant—very easy, in fact—on the question of morals in this district, where the gallantries of Claude de Buxieres were thought quite natural, where the illegitimacy of Claudet offended no one's sense of the proprieties, and where the after-dinner conversations, among the class considered respectable, were such as Julien had listened to with repugnance. Nevertheless, even in his most suspicious moods, Julien had never dared ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Mr. Belden with suspicious eagerness. Mary's after-dinner practising hour had tinged much of his existence with gall. "I insist that Mary shall have a rest. And you shall join the reading society now. Let us consider ourselves a little as well as the children; it's really best ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... second week in January, the bills were out advertising the sale, under a decree of Chancery, of Mr. Tulliver's farming and other stock, to be followed by a sale of the mill and land, held in the proper after-dinner hour at the Golden Lion. The miller himself, unaware of the lapse of time, fancied himself still in that first stage of his misfortunes when expedients might be thought of; and often in his conscious hours talked in a feeble, disjointed ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... The after-dinner scene was very charming. Chinese lanterns were hung in the trees, the ladies in evening dress, the officers of the Imperial Army in ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... returned from a much-enlivened exile in the wilds of Mexico. It was that blessed season of the year when the asparagus and the plover's egg are abroad in the land, and the oyster has not yet withdrawn into it's summer entrenchments, and Sir Lulworth and his nephew were in that enlightened after-dinner mood when politics are seen in their right perspective, even ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... boat-passage). But of late we had been lying up for the most part off a lonely island. Perhaps they would think we were out of the way, perhaps not. We should see what we should see.' I suppose that the gunnery lieutenant was almost as sanguine of adventure as I was of humdrum peace in this after-dinner hour on the darkened bridge. Adventure, or at least what seemed to be its promising ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... none; For thy own bowels, which do call thee sire, The mere effusion of thy proper loins, Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum, For ending thee no sooner: thou hast nor youth, nor age; But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep, Dreaming on both: for all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms Of palsied eld; and when thou art old, and rich, Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, To make thy riches ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... would be having your after-dinner smoke, Mr. Dott," explained the Honorable, with a smile and a Teutonic accent. "I said you would wish we was ouid instead of in; but Olga would not have it so. And, when the women say yes, we don't say no. Eh; what is ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... That evening, with his after-dinner cigarette, he strolled casually through Granville Avenue, the short street indicated by the address. It was a loosely-built neighborhood of frame dwellings, with yards and a moderate provision of trees and shrubs—a ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... rains cease. At that time everything is green and bright, and the great golden poppies, as large as the saucer of an after-dinner coffee cup, are blossoming everywhere. Tamalpais is green to its top; everything is washed and bright. By late May a yellow tinge is creeping over the hills. This is followed by a golden June and a brown July and August. The hills are burned and dry. The fog comes in heavily, ...
— The City That Was - A Requiem of Old San Francisco • Will Irwin
... caviare. This bloated harpy, sprung from hell, Confined thee, goddess, to a cell: Sprung from her womb that impious line, Contemners of thy rites divine. First, lolling Sloth, in woollen cap, Taking her after-dinner nap: Pale Dropsy, with a sallow face, Her belly burst, and slow her pace: And lordly Gout, wrapt up in fur, And wheezing Asthma, loth to stir: Voluptuous Ease, the child of wealth, Infecting thus our hearts by stealth. None seek ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... with the fashion of the time, to be ignorant of plain things and people, and to be knowing in brilliancies, is a kind of Pelhamism that is very apt to overtake one in the first blush of manhood. To hold a fair place in the after-dinner table-talk, to meet distinction as a familiarity, to wear salon honors with aplomb, to know affection so far as to wield it into grace of language, are all splendid achievements with a man of the world. Instruction is caught without asking it; and ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... men were smoking their after-dinner cigars at the same round table in the dining-room at the Sheridan Club. As a rule, it was the hour when, with all the reserve of the day thrown aside, badinage and jest reigned supreme, and the humourist came to his own. To-night chairs were drawn ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... balls on their feast days. He entertained lavishly, and his manners toward his guests were decidedly convivial. 'Milord,' exclaimed one of them on one occasion, tapping him on the back at a certain stage of the after-dinner conversation, 'milord, vous etes bien aimable.' 'Pardonnez,' replied Gosford; 'c'est le vin.' Even Papineau was induced to accept the governor's hospitality, though there were not wanting those who warned Gosford that Papineau was irreconcilable. 'By a wrong-headed and melancholy alchemy,' ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... Mrs. Preston prepared some coffee, while he built a fire in the unused stove. Then she drew up her work-table before the fire and poured out the coffee into two thick cups. As there was no cream, she remarked with a little smile, "It is very late for after-dinner coffee!" ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... of the old-fashioned type were Doctor Dixi Crosby of Hanover, and his son "Ben," who made a great name for himself in New York City as a surgeon, and also as a brilliant after-dinner speaker. Doctor Crosby's preference was for the long-drawn-out style, as this example, which I heard ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... her debtor. "Da Karascho! Yes, all right! Montez donc!" cries my mercurial friend, hurrying to the train; then, as he once more settles himself in the compartment, he sings "Rule Britannia! Blass the Prince of WAILES! O Maman!" and before I have lit my after-dinner cigar, he has made himself quite comfortable, lying at full length, and is fast asleep. So am I soon. When I awake, it is night; pitch-dark, and very cold. We are stopping at some station. A stout Frenchman enters our carriage; not that there is anything remarkable about his stoutness, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... of after-dinner stories. Here comes the coffee. Luckily, there's plenty for us both. Will you ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... University, been elected to the Wolves, but he had only attended one dinner and had then remained severely and unpleasantly sober. There was no other possible rival to Cardillac, to his distinction, his power of witty and malicious after-dinner speaking, his wonderful clothes, his admirable football, his haughty indifference. He would of ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... Everett Gibbons in and was ushered into his study, where he sat poring over some papers and enjoying an after-dinner cigar. ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... Cavalier, the finish'd courtier Whom Ladies lov'd, the gallant curled Woodvil, Whom brave men fear'd, the valiant, fighting Woodvil, The haughty high-ambitioned Parricide— The same that sold his father's secret in his cups, And held it but an after-dinner's trick?— So humble and in tears, a crestfallen penitent, And crawling at a younger brother's feet! The sinews of my [stiff] revenge grow slack. My brother, speak to me, my brother John. (Aside) Now this is better than the beastly deed Which I ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... friend whom he intended to honour with a somewhat tardy confidence of his happiness, was not there. When he asked for Rainham, he was told that "the dry-docker," as these flippant youngsters familiarly designated the silent man, whom they secretly revered, had gone for an after-dinner stroll, or perchance to ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... perhaps, you may learn not so much what you ought to say, as what you ought not to say, and your discretion shall be the admiration of a whole country-side. "The Smoking-room: with which is incorporated 'Anecdotes.'" What a rollicking, cheerful, after-dinner sound there is about it. SHABRACK might say it was like the title of a cheap weekly, which as a matter of fact, it does resemble. But what of that? Next week we will begin ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... this evening," went on Reggie, in the approved manner of after-dinner introductions, "one whom you all well know, and whom it is scarcely necessary ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... the house by a side door and went to the library, where she knew Colonel Belmont smoked his after-dinner cigar when at home. A cordial voice answered her knock. When she entered he rose and came forward with the graceful hospitality which never failed him in the moments of his liveliest possession, ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of his notable public addresses have been published. The Choate Story Book (New York, 1903) contains a few of his addresses and after-dinner speeches, and is prefaced by a brief ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... same trio which had formed the little after-dinner circle years ago at Stirling. But there was a change in all. The father and mother sat—not side by side, in that propinquity which is so sweet, when every breath, every touch of the beloved's garment gives pleasure; ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... may have explained the hostility to the Americans. Meares was short of provisions to go to China, and Gray supplied them. In return Meares set his workmen to help clean the keel of the Lady Washington from barnacles; but the Englishman was a true fur trader to the core. In after-dinner talks, on the day of the launch, he tried to frighten the Americans away from the coast. Not fifty skins in a year were to be had, he said. Only the palisades and cannon protected him from the Indians, of whom there were more than two thousand hostiles at Nootka, he reported. They could have his ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... the estimate was prepared exactly as every other estimate had been prepared for years. This answer was given to him. But Jimmy went on—gulping and obstructing, obstructing and gulping. It is amusing, perhaps, to you who can read this description as part of an after-dinner's amusement, but what is one to think of a Parliamentary institution that can be so flouted, and nullified by mere beef-headed dulness? This is a question to make any one pause who has faith in ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... that if the conversation is to proceed in this way, the children had better be removed. Removed they are, after a few tears and many struggles; and Pa having looked at Ma sideways for a minute or two, with a baleful eye, draws his pocket-handkerchief over his face, and composes himself for his after-dinner nap. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... chanced to be lying, heavy-hearted, some ten or a dozen paces in front of the kitchen door, while Joe Barnes sat on the doorstep smoking his after-dinner pipe, and Ann bustled through the dish washing. At such times, in the old happy days, Sonny's place had always been at Joe Barnes's feet; but those times seemed to have been forgotten by Joe Barnes, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the same manner, and night found Tom, if not actually exhausted from the unceasing grind, at least pleasurably fatigued thereby and ready for an after-dinner doze. He considered himself ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... it might have been about three in the afternoon when, with Pup reposing by my side, I finally settled down to an after-dinner smoke from the sage meerschaum often deservedly noticed in ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... many other discoverers besides Columbus, but he seems to have made more satisfactory arrangements with the historians than any of the others. He had genius, and was also a married man. He was a good after-dinner speaker, and was first to use the egg trick, which so many after-dinner speakers have since wished they had ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... Amelia was his darling; and the little maiden, prattling and smiling in the fond arms of that old father, is a sweet image to look on. There is a family picture in Burney, which a man must be very hard-hearted not to like. She describes an after-dinner walk of the royal family at Windsor:—"It was really a mighty pretty procession," she says. "The little princess, just turned of three years old, in a robe-coat covered with fine muslin, a dressed close cap, white gloves, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the parental transparency was a little mysterious, and that there is, after all, more than we see in something that we see through. They were now in danger of supposing that because the old man had possibly deceived them to some extent, he had deceived them altogether. But was not the after-dinner scene too horribly true? Were not his hands moist and cold while the forehead was crimson? And could a human creature feel at his own pulse, and look into vacancy with that intense apprehensive look, and be but an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... rather made its tone, and he became known as a man always ready at a moment's notice to take up the cudgels in opposition to anything that savoured of an evangelical bearing. He was great in sermons, great on platforms, great at after-dinner conversations, and always pleasant as well as great. He took delight in elections, served on committees, opposed tooth and nail all projects of university reform, and talked jovially over his glass ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... account of the Squaw Creek raid on a sheep camp, ending in a battle that had resulted in the death of two men and the wounding of three others. He had been sitting in a hotel at San Antonio, Texas, when he had read the story over his after-dinner cigar. The item had not seemed even remotely connected with himself. Now he was in prison at Gimlet Butte, charged with murder, and unless he was very much mistaken the sheriff was hinting at a lynching. The Squaw Creek raid had come very near to him, for he knew the fight he had interrupted ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... Ambassador-is not here yet. Under those two gentlemen I learned to make after-dinner speeches, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... about this time you have finished your dinner, and are enjoying your after-dinner coffee in the library with your father. I would give all that I possess, though heaven knows that is mighty little, to be with you and get you to talk to me, and let me tell you all that has happened since I left you. But ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... has gone around to Broome Street on his undeclared errand, and while the ladies are making an excuse to while away the time until his return, in the discussion of the after-dinner provocatives to indigestion recommended, let us enter a little more closely upon a subject merely indicated in the foregoing chapter, and then sneered at by at least one of the conversationists—that of the fortune-telling ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... next corner, when the boatmen announce that they are going to make us each a lobstick. We land, as pleased as Punch over the suggestion. We now know what it feels like when the philanthropist of a village takes his after-dinner walk through the square and sees the sparrows drinking from the memorial fountain surmounted with his own bust, done in copper, life-size. It takes fully two hours to trim the trees into significant shape, but the beauty ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... quite so hideous as in the little Tweedside watering-place. The extinction of duelling has destroyed, or nearly destroyed, the swaggering style of truculence; people could not behave as Mowbray and Sir Bingo behave to Tyrrel, in the after-dinner scene. The Man of Peace, the great MacTurk, with his harangues translated from the language of Ossian, is no longer needed, and no longer possible. Supposing manners to be correctly described in "St. Ronan's," the pessimist himself must admit that ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... boar was killed here during one of our meets, which was long celebrated in our after-dinner talks on boars and hunting. It was called 'THE LUNGRA,' which means the cripple, because it had been wounded in the leg in some previous encounter, perhaps in its hot youth, before age had stiffened its joints and tinged its whiskers ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... after-dinner nap," said the Prime Minister. "Your Majesty is overspent with the hard hunting yesterday. Is it your Majesty's will that we should proceed with our business, or shall the ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... father to a lofty pinnacle of imaginative and immaculate excellence, from which a tendency to shortness of temper in matters of domestic finance resulting in petty squabbles with her mother, and an irresistible desire for after-dinner somnolence, will have gradually displaced him. One after another her brothers will have been to her Knights of the Round Table of her fancy, armed by her enthusiasm for impossible conflicts, of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... Then we set out again. The day was intensely hot (March 24), and my oarsman was more than half sick with a sudden cold. I begged him to take things easily, but he soon experienced an almost miraculous renewal of his forces. In one of the first of our after-dinner bonnet patches, he seized his gun, fired, and began to shout, "A purple! a purple!" He drew the bird in, as proud as a prince. "There, sir!" he said; "didn't I tell you it was handsome? It has every color there is." And indeed it was handsome, worthy ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... Jewish Errors with respect to the Conversion of Mary Magdalene." The more pious among them had high hopes that these studies would lead him into the right way; but of this there were no symptoms in his after-dinner conversations. ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey |
