"After-dinner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... destined to enjoy the beauty of the night in peace, for it was not long before the after-dinner crowd began to pour out on deck and the girls were surrounded by friendly, interested fellow-passengers, who ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... day. His chief recreation being a "Demon's War Dance," in which he will, if one be handy, hack a clothes-horse to pieces with his "baloo," or two-edged chopper-axe, he might be found an agreeable inmate by an aged and invalid couple, who would relish a little unusual after-dinner excitement, as a means of passing away a quiet evening or two. Applicants anxious to secure the Chief should write at once. Three-and-sixpence a-week will be paid for his keep, which, supplying the place of the rum in his drink (which has been tried with effect) ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... door of her father's room and was about to tell him abruptly and decisively that there was no need of Grzesikiewicz's coming, but Orlowski was already enjoying his after-dinner nap, seated in a big arm-chair with his feet propped against the window-sill. The sun was shining straight into his face which was almost ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... let me tell you, sir, that I always went in the company of gentlemen—that is, when I did go, which was very seldom." The baronet in some after-dinner half-hour had allowed this secret of his youth to escape ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... applications, and when the hour for the banquet arrived every available seat, the room's limit of three hundred and seventy-five, was occupied. Outside were women offering ten dollars a plate and clamoring for the privilege of merely listening to the after-dinner speakers. Something must have happened in the course of those eight years to make such an astounding change in the attitude of the ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... statues. Still less can the Assyrians have had any genius for the comic: the round eyes and simpering satisfaction of their ideal faces belong to a type which is not witty, but the cause of wit in others. The fun of these early races was, we fancy, of the after-dinner kind—loud-throated laughter over the wine-cup, taken too little account of in sober moments to enter as an element into their Art, and differing as much from the laughter of a Chamfort or a Sheridan as the gastronomic enjoyment of an ancient Briton, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... of the House of Commons nowadays is to provide amusing "copy" for the late editions of the evening papers and to give the "sketch"-writers a chance of exercising their pretty wits. As Mr. SPENCER LEIGH HUGHES once remarked in an after-dinner speech to Mr. BALFOUR, "You, Sir, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... beastly, but when I think of the future, how good it is! I feel so light, so free; there is a light in the distance, I see freedom. I see myself and my children freeing ourselves from vanities, from kvass, from goose baked with cabbage, from after-dinner naps, from base idleness.... ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... intended to go direct to Dunmore House from the Kellys, and to have seen Barry, but he would have had to stop for dinner if he had done so; and though, generally speaking, not very squeamish in his society, he did not wish to enjoy another after-dinner tete-a-tete with him—"It's better to get him over to Tuam," thought he, "and try and make him see rason when he's sober: nothing's too hot or too bad for him, when ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... gentlemen, Cerberus-like into one, and when I saw Science pulling impatiently at the leash on my left, and Art on my right, and that therefore the responsibility of only a third part of the acknowledgment has fallen to me. You, my lord, have alluded to the difficulties of after-dinner oratory. I must say that I am one of those who feel them more keenly the more after-dinner speeches I make. There are a great many difficulties in the way, and there are three principal ones, I think. The first is having too much to say, ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... What trouble there rose with the first of them, about that sad business; and how the then Brandenburger, much wrought upon, smote the then Neuburger across the very face, and drove him into Catholicism, we have not forgotten; how can we ever?—It is one hundred and sixteen years since that after-dinner scene; and, O Heavens, what bickering and brabbling and confused negotiation there has been; lawyers' pens going almost continually ever since, shadowing out the mutual darkness of sovereignties; and from time to time the military implements brandishing ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... after-dinner speech was perhaps not quite in accordance with Bashkir etiquette, but it made a favourable impression. There was a decided murmur of approbation, and those who understood Russian translated my words to their less accomplished brethren. A short consultation ensued, and then there was a general ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Waring's, they drove out early and indulged in a loitering walk along the towpath of the old canal, not returning to the clubhouse until after seven. When they had found a table on the veranda, Dan turned his head slightly and saw Thatcher, Allen, and Pettit, the Fraserville editor, lounging in after-dinner ease at a table in a ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... night is the same as before. He has had some intervals of broken sleep, and no more. But he feels it less to-day, having slept after yesterday's dinner. This after-dinner sleep is the result, no doubt, of the ride which I advised him to take. I fear I shall have to curtail his restorative exercise in the fresh air. He must not be too well; he must not be too ill. It is a case (as a sailor would say) of ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... whatever, at all events beyond that which is constitutionally provided for in the proceedings of the British Parliament. He had great wealth; he fared sumptuously every day; things shone to him in a rosy after-dinner light. Not a gross or a selfish man, for he was as good-natured as he was contented, and gave very freely of his substance; it was simply his part in the world to enjoy the product of other men's labour and to set an example of ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... 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 every guest till he had helped himself. That railway, I ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... what I'm, trying to say here. The Orpheus legend symbolizes to this day the call of Beauty! [He takes up his pen, while she continues to stare out at the moonlight. Yawning] Dash it! I get so sleepy; I wish you'd tell them to make the after-dinner coffee ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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
... Mr. Ludolph lighted a cigar and sat down to the evening paper, while his daughter evoked from the piano true after-dinner music—light, brilliant, mirth-inspiring. Then both ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... whole of his energies. Hence, as an amateur actor, he was simply unapproachable. He passed, in fact, beyond the range of mere amateurs, and was brought into contrast by right, with the most gifted professionals among his contemporaries. Hence, again, as an after-dinner speaker, he was nothing less than incomparable. "He spoke so well," Anthony Trollope has remarked, "that a public dinner became a blessing instead of a curse if he were in the chair—had its compensating twenty minutes of pleasure, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... me; but I'm not curious. Or, rather, I am, but friendship sets a limit to my curiosity. Well, I must be going. I am to make an after-dinner call, by invitation, on a lady. Literally a lady—Lady Gridborough." Derrick turned his head sharply, and Reggie, noticing the movement, asked blandly, ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... down the gauntlet, to flaunt his private code in the face of society; and the relation of the sexes being a topic always sure of an audience, a few admiring friends had persuaded him to give his after-dinner opinions a larger circulation by summing them up in a series of talks at the Van ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... Le Drieux appeared in the lobby of the hotel and sat himself comfortably down, as if his sole desire in life was to read the evening paper and smoke his after-dinner cigar. He cast a self-satisfied and rather supercilious glance in the direction of the Merrick party, which on this occasion included the Stantons and their aunt, but he made no attempt to approach the corner ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... let loose, or the most dyspeptic of after-dinner dreams, could not be more bewildering than was this motley train of the Lord of Misrule. Giants and dwarfs, dragons and griffins, hobby-horses and goblins, Robin Hood and the Grand Turk, bears and boars and fantastic animals that never had a name, boys and girls, men and women, in every ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... Lodges, Grand Orients, and Supreme Councils were present, and a proposal was unanimously adopted "tending towards the creation of an International Bureau for Masonic Affairs," to which twenty Powers, mostly Europeans, gave their adherence. Brother Desmons, of the Grand Orient of France, in an after-dinner speech declared it to have been always "the dream of his life" that "all democracies should meet and understand one another in such a way as one day to form the ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... 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 ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... de Palliac and Millie Higbee proved to be correct. Percival came upon Higbee in the meditative enjoyment of his after-dinner cigar, out ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... turned, it turns the half disk and lifts the latch H as shown in Fig. 318; this, of course, opens the door, and the visitor is struck with amazement upon being ushered into a pioneer backwoods log cabin, where after-dinner coffee may be served, where the gentlemen may retire to smoke their cigars, where the master of the house may retire, free from the noise of the children, to go over his accounts, write his private letters, or simply sit before the fire and rest his tired brain by ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... been accustomed as a boy to hear the best type of what I may call old-fashioned after-dinner English conversation, from the mouth of a master, Abraham Hayward. Hayward was an excellent example of the special type of raconteur who first became famous in the Regency period. These men, who were chiefly anecdotal in their talk, are well described by Byron in the immortal account of ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... interested. He did not like to disturb his after-dinner nap, and he settled back in his chair again and ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... things look increasingly bad for us, and increasingly well for them. It will be extraordinarily close anyway—probably a matter of a vote or two." And he gave her a summary of his after-dinner conversation with Lord Cathedine, a keen ally of Fontenoy's in the Lords, and none the less a shrewd fellow because he happened to be ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dressed than when in Naples, I was smoking my after-dinner cigar in the handsome hall of the Dolder Hotel when a tall, well-set-up man, whose fair hair and square jaw stamped him as German-Swiss, inquired of the hall porter for Signor Zuccari, and was at once shown up to the banker's private sitting-room, ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... Daniel Webster once declared that there was no such thing as ex tempore speaking,—a saying not altogether correct, but in the main confirmed by many great orators who confess to laborious preparation for their speech-making, and by the fact that many of our famous after-dinner speakers have been known to send their speeches to the Press before they were delivered. The case of Demosthenes would seem to indicate the necessity of the most careful study and preparation in order to make a truly great speech, however gifted an orator may be; and those who, like ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... and Frank was so kind and attentive and agreeable I couldn't find it in my heart to be cross to him. So it ended in our making up any little imaginary differences we may have had and becoming better friends than ever. As we sat in the balcony over the river—the two gentlemen smoking their after-dinner cigars, and we ladies sipping our coffee—I thought I had never enjoyed an evening so much; and even John, who was generally dreadfully afraid of Lady Scapegrace, became quite lively and gallant (for him), and they laughed and talked and joked about all sorts of things; while ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... he had finished, 'I have read with pain. This claim upon Obermunsterol is palpably unjust; it has not a tincture, not a show, of justice. There is not in all this ground enough for after-dinner talk, and you propose to force ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... riches but a journey, And death unloads thee: friend thou hast 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
... sketches, stories, poems, monologues. The favorite numbers of favorite authors and entertainers. The book also contains practical advice on the delivery of the selections. The latest and best book for family reading, for teachers, elocutionists, orators, after-dinner speakers, and actors. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... senecio,—homelike as well as pretty, both of them. 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
... of the Copley Medal is of interest in another way, inasmuch as it led to Sir C. Lyell making, in his after-dinner speech, a "confession of faith as to the 'Origin.'" He wrote to my father ('Life,' vol. ii. page 384), "I said I had been forced to give up my old faith without thoroughly seeing my way to a new one. But I think you would have been satisfied with ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... an after-dinner speech. Being the last speech of the campaign it was also a highly important one. But George Remington felt, as he sat listening to the din of the applause, that he had answered rather neatly those who said he was wabbling on the local economic issue and was swaying in the wind of socialist ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... a tall, good-looking young fellow in evening dress, whose bronzed skin, square shoulders and easy stride gave one the idea that he was a good deal more accustomed to the free and easy costume of the Bush or the Veld or the Mining Camp than to the swallow-tails and starched linen of after-dinner Civilisation. ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... came a rich oriental odor. It intoxicated me with its subtle perfume. I picked up "After-Dinner Stories" (Balzac), then a translation from Alfred de Musset, an old novel by Wilkie Collins, "The Guilty River;" but still that mysterious perfume pervaded my senses and unfitted me for the otherwise tempting feast spread before me. I looked at the clock; it was nine thirty. I turned again to ...
— A Few Short Sketches • Douglass Sherley
... Victoria declared that 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 increasing affection, but ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... saw the light, pandemonium broke out in the land of thinkers and poets. "What," cried the moralists, "workingmen, dirty, filthy slaves, to be put on the stage! Poverty in all its horrors and ugliness to be dished out as an after-dinner amusement? That ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... but also the sombreness of men's attire. Not a tint on their walls that has not been profoundly studied and mixed and laid with a view to the great aim. Wherefore, when the electric clusters glow in the ceiling, and the "after-dinner" band (that unique corporation of British citizens disguised as wild Hungarians) breathes and pants out its after-dinner melodies from the raised platform in the main salon, people regard this coup d'oeil with awe, and feel ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... past six to five, because Elizabeth, with her stern sacrifice of every thing to the child's good, had suggested to him, humbly but firmly, that late hours kept little Henry too long out of his bed. He gave up his bottle of port and his after-dinner sleep, and took to making water-lilies and caterpillars out of oranges and boats out of walnut shells, for his boy's special edification. Sometimes when, at half past six, Elizabeth, punctual as clock-work, knocked at the dining room door, she heard father and son laughing together ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... the type of after-dinner conversation that took place between them. I began more clearly to understand the fascination that Jerry had for her—to understand, too, her growing delight in the splendid, vital, innocent animal that she had chained to ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... no means hurried; and after a very early supper there is often a stroll to the corner store or to a neighbor's house, for a little wholesome idleness and gossip,—the latter not invariably wholesome. At about the hour when the average reader of "The Atlantic" has finished his after-dinner cigar, all lights are extinguished, and the farm household is wrapped in heavy slumber; for such early rising as the milk-farmer is condemned to must needs trench upon the valuable evening hours ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... it on until after the evening meal and her aunt's early retiring. But when she was released, she was glad enough to go out on the promenade just forward of the starboard paddle-box, where there were no after-dinner loungers, to be alone with her problem and free to plunge once ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... found a happy earth? I least should breathe a thought of pain. Would God renew me from my birth I'd almost live my life again. So sweet it seems with thee to walk, And once again to woo thee mine— It seems in after-dinner talk Across ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... took part in an after-dinner discussion at the American Art Association of Paris over the expression "the rules of composition." A number of artists joined in the debate, all giving their opinion without premeditation. Some maintained that the principles of composition were nothing ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... entrances. These were either hopelessly official and public, or guarded to an equally hopeless point of secrecy. A contingent of tall, civil men-servants was always on duty. Richard was invariably in his place at table when the rest of the company came down. The ladies took their after-dinner coffee in the drawing-room, and joined the gentlemen in the Chapel-Room, library, or gallery, as the case might be. If they rode, Richard was at the door ready mounted, along with the grooms and led-horses. If they drove, he was already seated in ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the maternal after-dinner nap. From the rocking-chair where she sat Becky rolled ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... will come back to the fire and have a pipeful of talk we shall not be missed. In this house on ordinary occasions we reverse the order of after-dinner privileges—the men retire to the atmosphere of the sofa-pillows, and the women—I'm not allowed to tell what they do. But after remaining discreetly out of sight for some little time, during which faint sounds as of the rattle of china penetrate through closed doors, they reappear, pleasantly ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... where the Japanese pile up their fresh vegetables with such charming show of taste. The great sheds cover three long blocks, and in the countless stall-like shops which they contain may be found everything for the table, including flowers to trim it and after-dinner sweets. I doubt that any northern housewife knows such a market or such a profusion of comestibles. In one stall may be purchased meat, in the next vegetables, in the next fish, in the next bread and cake, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... President Spalding responded in well-chosen words, thanking both the King and the residents of Honolulu for the hospitality shown us, after which, at the King's request, Lincoln entertained the guests with his satire on after-dinner speeches, his "A B C" orations, and his mixing of a soda cocktail, all of which provoked roars of laughter. After the banquet the King and the members of his court and family held a levee beneath his birth-tree, ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... has no carnal arguments to address to carnal reason upon this subject, I thought it best to avoid disputation, which I felt sure would lead to no profitable result. Faith is the free gift of God, and I do not believe that ever yet was an infidel converted by means of after-dinner polemics. This was the last evening ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... were out of sight Jack went into the house and found mother crying in the kitchen. As he felt more tolerant in his after-dinner mood, he tried to cheer her up by telling her how fine father had looked beside the other two men. Mother raised her face, all swollen and spoilt with weeping, and gazed at her son in astonishment. "They are taking ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... that when he was making believe paint pictures, in the first freshness of early morning, or when he was smoking his after-dinner cigar, in the lingering June twilight, the face that interfered with the one occupation and lent charm to the other, was not framed in golden hair, nor animated with the lively and bird-like intelligence which he found so amusing. And not only ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... annually given in the fine old hall where James II. had feasted; and on some of these occasions the Warden's table had been honored with illustrious guests; especially when any of them happened to be wanting an opportunity to come before the public in an after-dinner speech. Just at present there was no occasion of that sort; and the good Warden fancied that he might give considerable eclat to his hereditary feast by bringing forward the young American envoy, a distinguished and eloquent man, to speak on the well- ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... forced to listen, now and then, to a kind of talk which makes him feel as if this were the after-dinner time of the world, and mankind were doomed hereafter forever to that kind of contented materialism which comes to good stomachs with the nuts and raisins. The dozy old world has nothing to do now but stretch its legs under the mahogany, talk about stocks, and get rid ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... under arrest, still sitting at the table where Huerta had been his guest, Huerta sought to palliate his action by claiming that Gustavo Madero had tried to poison him by putting "knock-out" drops into Huerta's after-dinner brandy. At the same time Huerta claimed that President Madero had tried to have him assassinated, on the day before, by leading Huerta to a window in the Palace, which an instant afterward was shattered by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... will have elevated her 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 which they themselves, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... surprise, when he rose to reply with so calm a voice and so composed a manner, that, in all my experience of dinner-speaking, I never witnessed such a case of apparent ease. (Easy-Chair C —— himself, one of the best makers of after-dinner or any other speeches of our day, according to Charles Dickens,—no inadequate judge, all will allow,—never surpassed in eloquent effect this speech by Hawthorne.) There was no hesitation, no sign of lack of preparation, but he went on for about ten minutes in such a masterly manner, that ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... 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
... The after-dinner cigar lasted only until one o'clock; newspapers by the noon-day mail occupied their time for but a scant hour more, and an attempted game of cribbage speedily dropped by ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... has enough, and to be willing not only to let well enough alone, but to give a helping hand to the other fellow; to recognize, in a practical way, that we are our brother's keeper; that a brotherhood of man does exist outside after-dinner speeches. Too many men make the mistake, when they reach the point of enough, of going on pursuing the same old game: accumulating more money, grasping for more power until either a nervous breakdown overtakes them and a sad ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... in Wall Street is a completed day. It is a cash business. Your broker likes to talk about his trades over his after-dinner cigar, and to tell you, in the horsy, professional jargon of the Street, how he "pulled a thousand out of 'Paul,' and went home ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... morbid conditions. Left in an ante-room, during the school session, until, in cold weather, it becomes nearly frozen, and then partaken of hurriedly, that there may be more time for play, is it to be wondered at that the after-dinner session drags so wearily, and that the pupils feel sleepy, dull, and uninterested? Our brains are nourished by blood made from the food we eat; and if it be formed of improper or unwholesome food, the result will be a disordered organ, incapable ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... was paid to Mr. Desmond Mulligan. Political enthusiasm is his forte. He lives and writes in a rapture. He is, of course, a member of an inn of court, and greatly addicted to after-dinner speaking as a preparation for the bar, where as a young man of genius he hopes one day to shine. He is almost the only man to whom Bludyer is civil; for, if the latter will fight doggedly when there is a necessity ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sat reading in the abode of the vine-covered porch, while her aunt enjoyed her customary after-dinner nap. She presently heard the gate swing to, and the next moment Mr. Egerton was helping himself to a seat ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... smiled, and the discussion was dropped for a time. It was during the coffee and cigars that Mrs. Dane made her announcement. As Alice Robinson takes an after-dinner cigarette, a custom my wife greatly deplores, the ladies had remained ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a century ago, though it seems to belong to the days of barbarism? Two groups of men, made up of the most respectable citizens of the place, stood furiously shooting at each other with pistols and guns, as if this was their idea of after-dinner recreation. Their leaders were Colonel Thomas H. Benton, afterward famous in the United States Senate, and General Andrew Jackson, famous in a dozen ways. The men of the frontier in those days were hot in temper and quick in action, and family ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of Lord Byron's answer to Mr. Bowles, I had the mortification of finding that, with a far less pardonable want of reserve, he had all but named me as his authority for an anecdote of his reverend opponent's early days, which I had, in the course of an after-dinner conversation, told him at Venice, and which,—pleasant in itself, and, whether true or false, harmless,—derived its sole sting from the manner in which the noble disputant triumphantly applied it. Such are the consequences of one's near and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... remedies against stomach troubles, spasms, and worms. The Subotchevs dined exactly at twelve o'clock and only ate old-fashioned dishes: curd fritters, pickled cabbage, soups, fruit jellies, minced chicken with saffron, stews, custards, and honey. They took an after-dinner nap for an hour, not longer, and on waking up would sit opposite one another again, drinking bilberry wine or an effervescent drink called "forty-minds," which nearly always squirted out of the bottle, affording them great amusement, much to the disgust of Kalliopitch, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... beside golden-watered "branch" or sapphire lake; the cheery half hour in the log house on the hill above the little grist-mill, with the bright young Philadelphians who have here cast in their lot; the abundant feast in the farm-house under the orange trees, and the "old-time" stories of the after-dinner hour; the pleasant days at Crystal Lake, where our first day's drenching resulted so happily in a slight illness that detained us in that lovely spot, and showed us, in the new colony lately settled on this and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... longer 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 manners have improved. But it is not without ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... in the State, the first morning of the trout season; the type of man whose machine noses in the closest to the judge's stand when a big race is on; the type of man who dances most, collects the most picture postals of pretty girls, laughs most at after-dinner speeches; the type of man who either does not marry at all, or attains much notoriety when the question of alimony is being fought out to the last cipher; the last man you would point out as a possible conspirator against anything save the peace and dignity of some other man's home. But ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... to work alone, for Mr. Badger usually indulged himself in the luxury of an after-dinner nap, lasting ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... of the ridiculous. All the extravagant anecdotes of morbid self-love, miserly epicurism, strained courtesy, and frivolous absurdity current used to boast a Frenchman as their hero. It was so in novels, plays, and after-dinner stories. Our first personal acquaintance often confirmed this prejudice; for the chance was that the one specimen of the Grand Nation familiar to our childhood proved a poor emigre who gained a precarious livelihood as a dancing-master, cook, teacher, or barber, who was profuse of smiles, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... with the Italian-Group Headquarters and with one of the French Batteries on our left. The Italian Major commanding this Group was a Mantuan and he and I became firm friends. It was in his Mess one night, in reply to the toast of the Allies, that I made my first after-dinner speech in Italian. I do not claim that it was grammatically perfect, but all that I said was, I think, well understood, and I was in no hesitation ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... The Banquet Book. Subject: Quotations designed for general reference, and also as an aid in the preparation of the toast list, the after-dinner speech, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... respected by all; but people were very 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 broach the subject ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... generally recognized in the realm of high finance as carrying weight. It is not derisive or contemptuous; it is dismissive. The subject of it simply ceases to exist. In the present instance, it was so mild as scarcely to stir the smoke from his after-dinner cigar, yet it had all the intent, if not the effect, of finality. The reason why it hadn't the effect was that it was directed at ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... his cards fanwise, kept himself with difficulty from dropping into his usual after-dinner nap, and laughed at everything. The young people, at the countess' instigation, gathered round the clavichord and harp. Julie by general request played first. After she had played a little air with variations on the harp, she joined the other young ladies ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... AMERICAN AMBASSADOR has been called to the danger of after-dinner speaking. There is many a true word said in digestion—and the truth is apt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... broad entrance of the brilliantly-lighted hotel. Several loungers, smoking their after-dinner cigars, gazed at the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... the mid-week after-dinner dance, Gore appeared suddenly in the doorway. It was ten o'clock. The Hubbells were dallying with their after-dinner coffee at one of the small tables about ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... law were involved, and I needed for success the best talent the bar afforded. A Mr. B——, I will call him, stood very high in the profession, and I chose him for my counsel. He was a man of fine social qualities, and admirable for his after-dinner speeches. You always met him on public occasions. He was one of your good temperate drinkers and not afraid of a glass of wine, or even brandy, and rarely, if ever, refused a friend who ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... eloquently described by grave and wise historians, but rather to follow the fortunes of an humble private in the ranks, and relate the events of a certain court-martial, as I learned them from the after-dinner talk of a gallant officer who had officiated ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... 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, at Laxton, the books had been so judiciously brought together, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... The after-dinner ceremony thus completed, old Mazey made his bow, and walked out of the room again. Brutus and Cassius stretched themselves on the rug to digest mushrooms and made gravies in the lubricating heat of the fire. "For what we ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... recognized principles of etiquette and intercourse and common customs of amusement and fashion. Taken in this wide sense of the word, no personage in the history of Europe during the nineteenth century wielded so great an influence as His Royal Highness. He helped to make the unbounded after-dinner drinking of a previous period unpopular and socially un-orthodox; he encouraged in his more youthful days and always enjoyed the pleasures of dancing; he introduced very largely the popular fashion of a cigarette after dinner in place of endless heavy cigars and their accompaniment of liquors; ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... Keene, speaking for the after-dinner loungers, "you must take a little human advice. Go, get the air on the Plaza. We will keep shop for you. Stay as long as you like and come home in any condition you think best." And Joseph, tormented into this course, put on his ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... 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 upon his friends, and convinced them that if ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... 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 for them, too. Haven't ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... always the same, and it is not easy to speak at one of these gatherings without going over the same ground as that covered on previous occasions. I remember that a colleague of mine who was a clever diplomat, and for whom I had great respect, once when asked to make an after-dinner speech, reluctantly rose and, as far as I can remember, spoke to the following effect: "Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I thank your Association for inviting me to this splendid banquet, but as I had the honor of speaking at your banquet last year ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... upon the bush for his after-dinner nap, as was his wont; but the branches shook under him to such an extent that he could not close an eye and he flew away quite frightened to the laburnum. He asked his wife what on earth could be the matter with that decent bush; ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... himself alone in the world; impossible to revive the mood in which he deliberately planned to consume his economies in a year or two of desert wandering; far other were the anticipations which warmed his mind when the after-dinner repose attuned him to unwonted hopefulness. This family were henceforth his friends, and it depended only upon himself to make the connection lasting, with all manner of benefits easily imagined. Established in the country, the ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... tranquillity at Versailles, and even at Meudon, everything had changed its aspect at the chateau. The King had seen Monseigneur several times during the day; but in his after-dinner visit he was so much struck with the extraordinary swelling of the face and of the head, that he shortened his stay, and on leaving the chateau, shed tears. He was reassured as much as possible, and after the council he took ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... came flinging into the yard at one o'clock—no later. That's certain, because Frodsham was at his after-dinner pipe—or should have been: instead of which he came running in after him. Just about that time, or maybe a little before, Mr. Menzies had been asking for Struan? Where was he? Did anyone ever see such a wastrel? No man's account, he called him. Mrs. Benson tolled ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... men and women have met to partake of good food under charming surroundings and have enjoyed legitimate gastronomic delights it is regrettable that a disagreeable element should be added by a series of dull, long-winded, un-appropriate after-dinner speeches. The preceding adjectives suggest the chief faults of those persons who are repeatedly asked to speak upon such occasions. They so often miss the mark. Because after-dinner speaking is so informal it is proportionally ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... thinly-disguised form, attended the assiduous efforts of the Shalems to play a leading role in the world that they had climbed into. The Baron began to observe to his acquaintances that "gadding about" and entertaining on a big scale was not much in his line; a quiet after-dinner pipe and talk with some brother legislator was his ideal ...
— When William Came • Saki
... intervals. Every man of the Carpathia's crew was unsparing in his efforts to assist, to tenderly comfort each and every survivor. In all, sixteen boatloads were receives, containing altogether 720 persons, many in simply their night attire, others in evening dress, as if direct from an after-dinner reception, or concert. Most conspicuous was the coolness and ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... with the appearance of the steak, which was found to have survived the period of waiting, and to be incredibly juicy and tender. Presently we were all settled once more in the great beamed living room, Sis at the piano, the two men smoking their after-dinner cigars with that idiotic expression of contentment which always adorns the masculine face on ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... had come about. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch had been enjoying an after-dinner nap on the couch in his study when Alexey Yegorytch had announced the unexpected visitor. Hearing the name, he had positively leapt up, unwilling to believe it. But soon a smile gleamed on his lips—a smile of haughty ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... was taking on strange and wilful characteristics, which would have disabled me in the presence of a much less formidable force. I think the only person really able to interpret me was the amiable mistress of the Croix Blanche, to whose hostelry I went every day for my after-dinner coffee. She knew what I wanted whenever I asked for it, and I simplified my wants so as to meet her in the same spirit. The inn stood midway of the village street that for hundreds of yards followed ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... a glass of port," said the prince, turning to Wanda, and indicating the decanter from which, despite his gout, he had just had his after-dinner wine. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... the Lord in worship and communion. George Muller meditated much on this; and determined, even at the risk of damage to bodily health, that he would no longer spend his best hours in bed. Henceforth he allowed himself but seven hours' sleep and gave up his after-dinner rest. This resumption of early rising secured long seasons of uninterrupted interviews 'with God, in prayer and meditation on the Scriptures, before breakfast and the various inevitable interruptions that followed. He found himself not worse but better, physically, and ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... residence. To this place he now hurried. It was a large room in a first-class boarding-house whose landlady and boarders would have been horror-stricken had they known that "Mr. Williams," the jolly, good-natured young fellow who had proved such a valuable acquisition to their after-dinner gatherings, was the desperate free-booter who had walked away ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... comment published, written presumably at the request of the late Hamilton Wright Mabie, which is not only worth preserving as a matter of record, but as measuring a certain facility in anecdote and felicity of manner which have always made Thomas a welcome chairman of gatherings and a polished after-dinner speaker. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: In Mizzoura • Augustus Thomas
... that's good," he sighed, when he had finished. "Real, live, after-dinner coffee, too. Why, gentlemen, I haven't eaten a civilised meal, with all the trimmings, for over two years. Doctor, do you think a little of the real stuff would hurt me? It's a pretty ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... gulls to be seen at this end of the island; it is a tranquil, forsaken place where we can sit beside our fire of driftwood and eat our broiled fish and bread, and smoke an after-dinner pipe of peace. A grassy foot-path leads down the fields, and across a salt-meadow, and along a high sea-wall of rocks and pebbles cast up by the storms, and so by a rude wood-road through a forest of spruce-trees ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... pregnant query, not hastily to be dealt with by genial after-dinner oratory about the self-governing capacity of the Anglo-Norman race—still less by Fourth of July declamations over what the leader of the Massachusetts Bar used to call the 'glittering generalities' of ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... one beginning there: at a printers' banquet he delivered his first after-dinner speech; a hilarious speech—its humor of a primitive kind. Whatever its shortcomings, it delighted his audience, and raised him many points in the public regard. He had entered a field of entertainment in which he would one day have no rival. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine |
