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More "Showman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... father's despair, Sleary the showman saved the day for the shivering thief. He agreed with the porter that as Tom was guilty of a crime he must certainly go with him, and he offered, moreover, to drive the captor and his prisoner at once to the nearest railroad station. He winked at Sissy as he proposed this, and she was not alarmed. ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... each other for about twenty minutes, and Merritt had been bumped against pretty nearly every cask in the hold before he finally succeeded in drawing the sack over the snake's head. Then it was easy, and in spite of his lack of breath the showman in Merritt asserted itself. He put the sack on the floor, and with one foot on the neck of it he prodded the snake's body with the other while he made mysterious passes with his hands until the tip of the tail disappeared. When the sack was securely tied up ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... is value in her; but to fetch it out she must go back, begin lower, and give years to training, education, and hard work. She can labor ten years for the sake of living five. As for her support, it was of the sort afforded by John T., the showman, and very funny. Mrs. Germon, God bless her! was properly funny. She is the best old woman on ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... I'll set, my friends, to do you honour, Set every inch of sail upon her." So said, so done; and masts, sails, yards, 400 He names them all; and interlards His speech with uncouth terms of art, Accomplished in the showman's part; And then, as from a sudden check, Cries out—"'Tis there, the quarter-deck 405 On which brave Admiral Nelson stood— A sight that would have roused your blood! One eye he had, which, bright as ten, Burned like a fire among his men; Let this be land, and that be sea, 410 ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... modern times, is less likely to conciliate the good opinion than to excite the disgust of his readers. There is no artifice that a translator can resort to with less chance of success, than this blowing of the showman's trumpet as he goes on exhibiting the wonders of his original. There are some puerile hyperboles, for which I know not whether he or Camoens is responsible; ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... Manuel," said Bob. "We shall all be coming to you to shoot us, if you'll just bind us up as beautifully afterwards. Did you learn that in the shooting galleries too, in case you put the showman's eye out?" ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... Torrance whistled through his teeth. "I know a showman would swop his whole caboodle for half an hour of that. I wonder what I'm expected to do over here to hold up my end. I want to be civil. I don't know anything that wouldn't look cheap after that. Wish I'd done ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... Perhaps, too, it is because I cannot help experiencing a certain feeling of resentment when I read such notes, that I am unwilling to intrude upon others what I should regard myself as impertinent. They are in reality too personal and objective, and turn the commentator into a showman. With such sign-post criticism I have no sympathy. Nor do I wish to add to the awful amazement which must possess the soul of Shakespeare when he knows of the manner in which his works have been tabulated, and classified, and labelled with a purpose, after the most approved ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... by what you say. I should have thought that a boy of your poetical and artistic temperament would have had his imagination somewhat fired, even by the efforts of the poor showman whom we've seen to-night. Now I will make you a confession. At the bottom of my heart I agree with every word you've said. I may be one-sided, prejudiced, what you will, but I cannot help looking upon a ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... gorilla, having subdued the brute with a discharge from a squirt charged with ammonia; but Professor Thunder was not thankful, he hadn't time, his magnificent mind was already busy on ways and means of repairing the mischief done to his Missing Link and to his reputation as an honourable showman. ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... through the tradition, and then everyone will wonder at its folly. If only I could talk the matter over, in a friendly spirit, with mother, but she won't let me. Ah! if it were not that one is born with feelings and energies and ambitions of one's own, parents might treat one as a showman treats his marionettes, and we should all be charmed to lie prone on our backs, or to dance as may be convenient to our creators. But, as it is, the life of a marionette—however affectionate the wire-pullers—does become ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... character of showman, threw himself into his work with even more than his customary energy. His flow of speech never faltered. He spoke of the New Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, Osiris and Ammon; waxed eloquent concerning Mut, Bubastis, Cheops, the Hyksos kings, cylinders, bezels and Amenophis ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... more to an honest desire to produce an amusing and interesting book." {93a} Borrow was a great admirer of the "Memoirs" {93b} of Vidocq," principal agent of the French police till 1827—now proprietor of the paper manufactory at St. Maude," and formerly showman, soldier, galley slave, and highwayman. Of this book ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... the doubt comes from scholars, from persons who have tried these methods. In their experience the scholar was not raised by the sacred thoughts amongst which he dwelt, but used them to selfish ends. He was a profane person, and became a showman, turning his gifts to a marketable use, and not to his own sustenance and growth. It was found that the intellect could be independently developed, that is, in separation from the man, as any single organ can be invigorated, and the result ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... slapping Ralph boisterously on the shoulder, "you're a natural showman. Write me the dodger, will you, and I'll have it over the streets ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... dressed-up marionettes. Our voice is the voice of the unseen showman, Convention; our very movements of passion and pain are but in answer to his jerk. A man resembles one of those gigantic bundles that one sees in nursemaids' arms. It is very bulky and very long; it ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... touched by this than otherwise, because it seemed to him that Jack was really, if unconsciously, a little jealous. His whole visit had been rather too much of a success: Jack had expected to act as showman of his menagerie, and to play the principal part; and Howard felt that Jack suspected him of having taken the situation too much into his own hands. He felt that Jack was not pleased with his puppets; his father had needed no apologies or explanations, Maud had ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and clambering, is indeed very great. Henry flatters himself that he shall some time or other have the pleasure of exhibiting his collection to Cousin Sophy, and rehearses frequently in the character of showman. Dr. Darwin has been so good as to send him several fossils, etc., with their names written upon them, and he is every day adding to his little stock of larning. There is a very sensible man here who has also ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... specimens of deformity, which ought to have been destroyed, rather than preserved to gratify a morbid taste for the horrible and erratic in nature. But while persons of the highest station and education in England patronised an artful and miserable dwarf, cleverly exhibited by a showman totally destitute of principle, it is not surprising that the American people should delight in yet more hideous exhibitions, under ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... guesses were made as the showman held it aloft. Then with a conjuror's gesture he suddenly placed his thumbs within the rim, released the spring and extended the hat. The assembly ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... been forced into aids to a system of puffing at which Barnum himself would stare amazed, and confess that he had never conceived of "a dodge" in which literary genius and philanthropy could be allied with the grossest bookselling humbug. But we trust, that, after our American showman has recovered from his first shock of surprise, he will vindicate the claim of America to be considered the "first nation on the face of the earth," by immediately offering Dickens a hundred thousand dollars to superintend his exhibition of dogs, and Florence Nightingale ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... you've saved my losing all that valuable stuff!" exclaimed the showman. "I should say so," added the speaker with force, as he moved over and glanced at the heaps his servants were massing together, upon the lower step. "Watches, rings, silverware, my fur winter coat, and hello—my ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... have been the case with Mr. Smith, when, through the brilliant medium of his glass of old Madeira, he beheld three figures entering the room. These were Fancy, who had assumed the garb and aspect of an itinerant showman, with a box of pictures on her back; and Memory, in the likeness of a clerk, with a pen behind her ear, an inkhorn at her buttonhole and a huge manuscript volume beneath her arm; and lastly, behind the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... used as an auction room by Mr T. S. Lister). I painted a glowing scenic piece for the entrance to the exhibition—picturing the shark swallowing a whole boat-load of people! I was also put on to act as showman, and in that capacity—not in my capacity as a private citizen—I told stories of the voracious appetite of the shark when alive. Many blankets had been found in the shark, not to mention a barrel or two of beer. Leach stood at the door turning a box ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... proportion. I saw the other day, with envy, an old and a very clever lady setting forth on a second or third voyage into Monte Cristo. Here are stories which powerfully affect the reader, which can be reperused at any age, and where the characters are no more than puppets. The bony fist of the showman visibly propels them; their springs are an open secret; their faces are of wood, their bellies filled with bran; and yet we thrillingly partake of their adventures. And the point may be illustrated still further. The last interview between Lucy and Richard ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their verdict and the severity of the procedures how thoroughly in earnest they were. But whilst I was compelled to absent myself an hour because the Emperor wished to inspect the new towers on the city wall, and I had to attend him in the character of showman, they sentenced the poor fellow, since his loose tongue had brought the whole rout and rabble against him, to torture so severe that I shuddered when ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was a safe to keep meat cool in, and approached. Chapin threw back the doors of it like a showman about to disclose the What Is It? and Caper saw a dropsical-looking Cupid with a very short shirt on, and a pair of winged shoes on his feet. The figure was starting forward as if to catch his equilibrium, which he ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... out came the showman. He was very big, and so ugly that the sight of him was enough to frighten anyone. His beard was as black as ink, and so long that it reached from his chin to the ground. I need only say that he trod upon it when he walked. ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... smart at school in the winter, and at everything else. Was the life good for her? Yes, why not? Rough company and bad language? They could hear worse talk every day in the street. "Sometimes a feller would come in with too much liquor aboard," the showman admitted, "and would begin to talk his nonsense; but Comstock wouldn't ask nothin' better than to pitch such a feller out, especially if he should sarce the little gals. They were good little gals, and Delia set ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... before reaching the Carson River. While camping in this vicinity two pelicans sailed around and lighted in the clear lake, beyond reach of rifle-shot. These were the first birds of the kind I had ever seen outside of a showman's cage, and I was determined to have one of them if possible; so, with rifle in hand, I waded out till the water came up under my arms, and, not being able to go any farther, I fired, ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... his question in that particular form: "Which is the Cobbler and which is his Wife?" He told me he was thinking of a question so expressed many years ago, long before revolving pictures were thought of, and when pictures of any kind were very scarce. A fair was being held in the country, and a showman was exhibiting pictures which were arranged in a row alongside his booth or van in such a way that his customers could pass from one picture to another and which they could see by looking through slightly magnifying glasses placed in pairs, one to fit each eye after the fashion of ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... will allow that some players are better than others?" "Yes, sir, as some dogs dance better than others." So when Goldsmith accused Garrick of grossly flattering the queen, Johnson exclaimed, "And as to meanness—how is it mean in a player, a showman, a fellow who exhibits himself for a shilling, to flatter his queen?" At another time Boswell suggested that we might respect a great player. "What! sir," exclaimed Johnson, "a fellow who claps a hump upon his back and a lump on his leg and cries, 'I am Richard ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... the first trace of excitement that he had yet betrayed, but King kept on, and I suppose that the man who was acting showman did something, because King crossed the line without anything happening and then stood with one foot on each side of the ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... character. Its first constituent is obedience: a soldier is, of all descriptions of men, the most completely a machine; yet his profession inevitably teaches him something of dogmatism, swaggering, and sell-consequence: he is like the puppet of a showman, who, at the very time he is made to strut and swell and display the most farcical airs, we perfectly know cannot assume the most insignificant gesture, advance either to the right or the left, but as he is moved ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... yourself," Mrs. Cockayne exclaims, taking her husband firmly by the arm. "One would think you were an hotel guide, or a walking handbook, or—or a beadle or showman. What do you want to know about the massacre of St. Bartholomew now? There'll not be a mantle or a pair of gloves left. Come in—do! You can go gesticulating about the streets with Carrie to-morrow, if you choose; but do contrive to ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... said Mr. Hobson, waving his broad paw, like a showman displaying his goods, with a sort of enraged self-satisfaction. "There is the schooner, ready to hoist sail as soon as he comes alongside. And that there black point which you may see, if your eyes are good enough, is a six-oared galley with as ship-shaped a crew—if it's ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... expositor, expounder, exponent, explainer; demonstrator. scholiast, commentator, annotator; metaphrast[obs3], paraphrast[obs3]; glossarist[obs3], prolocutor. spokesman, speaker, mouthpiece. dragoman, courier, valet de place, cicerone, showman; oneirocritic[obs3]; (Edipus; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... I was not yet too old to feel as if I were approaching a great magical city—like some of those in the "Arabian Nights"—that was even more intensely poetical than Nature itself. I did somewhat chide the tantalizing mist, that, like a capricious showman, now raised one corner of its curtain, and anon another, and showed me the place at once very indistinctly, and only by bits at a time; and yet I know not that I could in reality have seen it to greater advantage, or after a mode more in harmony with ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... The showman's work is very profitable at the country-house of Voltaire, at Ferney, near Geneva. A Genevese, an excellent calculator, as are all his countrymen, many years ago valued as follows the yearly profit derived by the above ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... point, the principle, the law which he labours to bring forward into light. If he can convince you or himself of the principle a priori, he generally leaves the facts to take care of themselves. He leads us into the laboratories of art or nature as a showman guides you through a caravan crusted with spar and stalactites, all cold, and dim, and motionless, till he lifts his torch aloft, and on a sudden you gaze in admiration on walls and roof of flaming crystals and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... there where they can see you!" admonished a clown. "If you're going to be a showman you mustn't be afraid to get yourself in ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... you mean to say it? We've got them! We've beaten them!' He had an extraordinary way of taking your help for granted. 'The miner chaps, mostly English and Welsh, went mad over the poor old showman, and made him so wealthy that in sheer gratitude he ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... not very easy to sketch undisturbed in the streets of Falaise; and both in the churches and in the castle the showman is perpetually treading on the traveller's heels. Everywhere we turn, in the neighbourhood of the castle, we are reminded of historic deeds of valour, and of deadly fights in the middle ages; and every day that we remain in the town, we are reminded (by the ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... bright red sides, a bright blue door, and bright yellow steps. On the bright blue door there was a bright brass knocker, which was polished up at such a rate that you could see your face in it, looking as l-o-n-g as anything; and underneath that was a bright brass door plate, with the old showman's name, "Timmy Timmens," on it, which was also polished up until you could see your face in it, looking as b-r-o-a-d as anything. Did you ever? ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow
... to thinking, with the result that in one instance, at least, he had been too hasty in his conclusions. He had been somewhat ashamed that his uncle should act the part of showman with a river panorama, and had supposed that it was done from a desire to display his own accomplishments. Now he wondered if, after all, this was not the one delicate and unobtrusive way in which Cap'n Cod's poor little undertaking could ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... not. You shall see them whenever you like," he answered. "Julius knows all about them. He'll be only too delighted to act showman." ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... something very fundamental indeed about the ancient showman's trick—divert their attention from the thing you're ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... on the rope, and scientifically chewing a straw while he talked, Ben played showman to his heart's content till the neigh of a horse from the circus tent beyond reminded him ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... in a collection of "natural curiosities," that had by chance been carried through his native town; and whose inspection, perhaps, had much to do with that impulse that first caused him to "run away to sea." Under a glass-case he had examined that piece of osseous structure, described by the showman as the sword of the sword-fish. Under the waves of the tropical Atlantic,—but little less translucent than the glass,—he had no difficulty in identifying ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... than a showman's dog. If scholdin' didn't do for Finn, she'd cry at him, an' had tin childher that she larned to cry at him too, an' when she begun, the tin o' thim 'ud set up a yell that 'ud deefen a thrumpeter, so Finn ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... that the packages were damaged or spoiled, and the costs of inspection and reinspection ate up all profits. I once used an illustration of this at the Foreign Office that seemed to produce some effect. It was the story of the Yankee showman who, having been very successful in our Northern and Middle States, took his show to the South, but when he returned had evidently been stripped of his money. Being asked regarding it, he said that his show had paid him well at first, but that on arriving in Texas the authorities of each ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... should be a descendant of Miles Standish, and blood relation to these Cape Codders yourself. And Uncle Amazon and Uncle Abram are fine old gentlemen." She said it boldly, whether she could believe it about Cap'n Amazon or not. "I will not play showman." ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... the lion at feeding time. Like those noble animals, I too was used to it, and it did not affect my appetite. The children here were more shy than at Tabokan, and I could not persuade them to play. I therefore turned showman myself, and exhibited the shadow of a dog's head eating, which pleased them so much that all the village in succession came out to see it. The "rabbit on the wall" does not do in Borneo, as there is no animal it resembles. The boys had tops shaped something like whipping-tops, but spun ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... of that remarkable and truly catholic body of Christians known as the Salvation Army. His picturesque father and his wonderful mother were the humanity of that movement, but their son was its first impulse of spiritual fanaticism. The father was the dramatic "showman" of this movement, the son its fire. The mother endowed it with the energy of a deep and tender emotion, the son provided ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... take his turn with several in acting showman to the gazing crowd, and by and by the part fell to him oftenest. Each had his own way of filling the office. One would repeat his information like a lesson in which he was not interested, and expected no one else to be interested. Another made himself the clown ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... time Yamba had been as busy as a showman out West. She had followed with unusual vigour her customary role of "advance agent," and had spread most ridiculously exaggerated reports of my supernatural prowess and magical attributes. I controlled the denizens ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... interest. It will be an annual fair, to last three days, in which he will be the only exhibitor. He's spending half his mornings now in conference with Mr. Agar and Mr. Pitts. Mr. Agar is his sales manager, and Mr. Pitts his showman." ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... had all the trophies which had been produced in court; but the officer who acted as showman to Langholm admitted that they had no right to retain any of them. They were Mrs. Minchin's property, and if they knew where she was they would of ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... the Public is still outside, listening open-mouthed to a comic dialogue between the Showman and a juvenile and irreverent Nigger. Those who have come in find that, with the exception of some particularly tame-looking murderers' heads in glazed pigeon-holes, a few limp effigies stuck up on rickety ledges, and an elderly Cart-horse ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... "the great American showman," as he loves to hear himself called, who furnishes more amusement for a quarter of a dollar than any other man in America, is, we are happy to announce, himself again. He has disposed of the last of those villainous clock notes, re-established ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... with an English friend and came to the "penny shows." They had immense cartoons outside, portraying the wonderful curiosities to be seen "all for a penny." Being a little in the "show line" myself, I said "let us go in here." We soon found ourselves in the presence of the illustrious showman, and he proved to be the sharpest man in that line I had ever met. He told us some extraordinary stories in reference to his bearded ladies, his Albinos, and his Armadillos, which we could hardly believe, but thought it "better to believe it than look after the proof'." He finally begged to call ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... fist, which she shook most entrancingly before the very eyes of the young man by her side. The eyes turned such a peculiar look upon her that she hastened to add: "Go on with your dissolving views. It is number eight's turn next. You are the showman, and I ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... A SHOWMAN giving entertainments in Lafayette, Ind., was offered by one man a bushel of corn for admission. The manager declined it, saying that all the members of his company had been ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... it, and resolved to keep his arm whirling all the time he studied his arithmetic lesson the next morning. Equally inadequate is it to relate in full how he became so confused among the wax-works that he pinched the solemnest showman's legs to see if he was real, and perplexed the beautiful Circassian to the verge of idiocy by telling her he had read in his geography all about the way they sold ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... critics have censured Thackeray severely because of his tendency to preach, and also because he regarded his characters as puppets and himself as the showman who brought out their peculiarities. There is some ground for this criticism, if one regards the art of the novelist as centered wholly in realism; but such a hard and fast rule would condemn all old English novelists from Richardson ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... then takes up the character of the writer of "The Seven Vagabonds," saying, "The idea of becoming a wandering story-teller had been suggested, a year or two before, by an encounter with several merry vagabonds in a showman's wagon, where they and I had sheltered ourselves, during a summer shower;" and he announces that he determined to follow that life, the account of which he proceeds to give with this preliminary word ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... "lights out" (11) and we lounged along the spacious vague solitudes of the deck and smoked the peaceful pipe and talked. He told me an incident in Mr. Barnum's life which was evidently characteristic of that great showman in several ways: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... government for support, either directly through pension payments or indirectly through some form of industrial paternalism. Incidentally, a profuse public expenditure is condoned where not actually encouraged. Jeffersonian simplicity is preached; extravagance is practised. As the New York showman long since shrewdly observed: "The American people love to ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... horses on their hind-legs; and portraits. I think it is nonsense for people to try to paint battles; they can't do it; and, besides, as far as the fighting goes, one fight is just like another. Mr. Dillwyn told me of a travelling showman, in Germany, who travelled about with the panorama of a battle; and every year he gave it a new name, the name of the last battle that was in men's mouths; and all he had to do was to change the uniforms, he said. He had a pot of green paint for the Prussians, and red for the English, and blue, I ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... we now saw clearly did not look like a showman. He was a very old man, lean and shrivelled; his brown skin so wrinkled that his face looked like some sort of curiously withered nut. Yet there was a wonderful sinewiness about him, and a most extraordinary ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... elbowing a saucy spark from the wall for the tenth time in as many paces. "Pardieu, you can't hear yourself think! Shut up to you!" he called to a bawling 'prentice dressed in white velvet waistcoat like a showman's dummy to exhibit the fashion. ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... this sort would fain know what is meant by the doctrines concerning the many 'true Gods' they hear such precious rigmaroles about in Church and Conventicle, as well as the many orthodox opinions of that God, whose name is there so often 'taken in vain.' But Priests like the showman in question, answer, in language less inelegant to be sure, but substantially the same, 'Vichever you please, my little dears, it makes no ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... came out in front of the children. He was dressed like a real showman. He had on a high hat and a long coat. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, in a funny deep voice, "the big show is about to begin. Will you please find seats in the show tent?" The children laughed and sat down ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams
... dictates, he is like a man blowing wild blasts upon a shrill trumpet. Then Carlyle—his big books, his great tawdry, smoky pictures of scenes, his loud and clumsy moralisations, his perpetual thrusting of himself into the foreground, like some obstreperous showman; he wearies and dizzies my brain with his raucous clamour, his uncouth convolutions. I saw the other day a little Japanese picture of a boat in a stormy sea, the waves beating over it; three warriors in the boat lie prostrate and rigid with terror and misery. Above, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... different troops of animals, pointing out from two to eight players for each troop, according to the number who are taking part. These must come forth into the center of the ring and go through their paces as indicated by the showman. He may thus display the growling and clawing bear, the hopping and croaking frog, the leaping kangaroo, the roaring and ramping lion, the humped camel, the stubborn and braying donkey, the screaming and wing-flapping eagle, the hooking and mooing ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... come across a young imp, with hoofs, tail, and budding horns, a lineal descendant of one of those "daemons" which the good people of Gloucester fired at, and were fired at by "for the best part of a month together" in the year 1692, the, great showman would have him at any cost for his museum or menagerie. Men are cowards, sir, and are driven by fear as the sovereign motive. Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don't make it of wood, you ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... wedding In her own mind, and that's enough for woman; But then with whom? There was the sage Miss Redding, Miss Raw, Miss Flaw, Miss Showman and Miss Knowman, And the two fair co-heiresses Giltbedding. She deem'd his merits something more than common. All these were unobjectionable matches, And might go on, it well wound up, like ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... there's the marvel! If to enter life Needed some courage, 'twere a kind of wages, As they let sacking soldiers take home loot: But we are shuffled into life like puppets Emptied out of a showman's bag; and then Made spenders of the joys current in heaven! (Not such a marvel neither, if this love Be but the price I'm paid for my free soul. Who's the old trader that has lent this girl The glittering cash of pleasure to pay me with? Who is ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... Dwarf is always advertised that way. It's a custom of the profession, and we don't consider it to be lying, any more than a President considers the tough statements lying that he makes in his annual message. A showman and a politician must be allowed a little liberty of statement, or they couldn't carry on their business. Well, as I was saying, thishyer Major Microbe was in my show a matter of ten years ago, when we were in Cincinnati, and he ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... of other people going in the same direction, for my landlady had given no exaggerated account of the curiosity which it had excited. Jacques Chacot evidently possessed the talent of a showman. He had enlarged the front of his cottage so as to form a sort of theatre, the inner part serving as a stage. We found him standing at the door with a couple of stout young fellows, his sons, ready to receive visitors, for he allowed no one to go in until he had obtained payment. A strong bar ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... by the elbow, herself conscious of a curl or two awry, and Judge Buller tramping heavily at her side, all took on to her the aspect of a well-chosen peep-show with the satanic Kerr officiating as showman. Even the smooth and pallid Clara, who usually coerced by her sheer correctness, failed to dominate this fantastic image; rather, she took on, as she was handed into the supper-room, the aspect ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... his fleeting suffrages; and with the aid of pen and ink and a shilling box of watercolours, he had soon turned one of the rooms into a picture-gallery. My more immediate duty towards the gallery was to be showman; but I would sometimes unbend a little, join the artist (so to speak) at the easel, and pass the afternoon with him in a generous emulation, making coloured drawings. On one of these occasions, I made the map of an island; it was elaborately and (I thought) beautifully coloured; the shape of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that most of those evils from which speakers and singers suffer, whatever the part of the vocal mechanism affected, arise from faulty methods of voice-production, or excess in the use of methods in themselves correct. A showman may have a correct method of voice-production—indeed, the writer has often studied the showman with admiration—but if he speak for hours in the open air in all sorts of weather, a disordered throat is but the natural consequence; ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... three, or four trained boys and girls do some very creditable acting, chiefly in comedy. Raree shows, in which the looker-on sees the inside splendors of the nobles' homes, or the heroic acts of Japanese warriors, or some famous natural scenery, are very common. The showman, as he pulls the wires that change the scenes, entertains the spectators with songs. The outside of his box is usually adorned with pictures of famous actors, nine-tailed foxes, demons of all colors, people committing hari-kiri or stomach cutting, bloody massacres, or ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... salad, an' government illuminated by figures of spache an' inspired wid seltzer-wather—I'm thinkin' it would make its fortune, sure, by exhibition of itself in the capitals of the worrld, ma'am. Not Barnum's, nor the Flannagan an' Imparial, would compare with it. An' 'tis thrue, ma'am, as a showman in the profession, I couldn't be exprissin' betther ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... sarcasm upon the clergy. In the Introduction to Pendennis is a letter written from Spa, in which he says, 'They have got a Sunday service here in an extinct gambling-house, and a clerical professor to perform, whom you have to pay just like any other showman who comes.' It does not seem to have occurred to Thackeray that the turning of a gambling-house into a place of prayer is no bad thing of itself, or that you have no more right to expect your religious services to be done for you in a foreign ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... mirror, to kiss the blue Canadian skies. Near Conneaut I whirl the dust of the Buckeye State from my tire and cress over into Pennsylvania, where, from the little hamlet of Springfield, the roads become good, then better, and finally best at Girard-the home of the veteran showman, Dan Rice, the beautifying works of whose generous hand are everywhere visible in his native town. Splendid is the road and delightful the country coming east from Girard; even the red brick school-houses are embowered amid leafy ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... and besides, she was so pretty, and so graceful, and so sympathetic: but he felt he must not take her away from her host for the time being, who had a sort of proprietary right in the pleasing duty of acting as showman to her over his own college. So he dropped behind with Harry Oswald and old Mrs. Martindale, and endeavoured to simulate a polite interest in the old lady's scraps of conversation upon the heads of houses, their wives ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... found myself in a Northern capital, and committed myself to the guidance of a native coachman, whose business and pride it was to drive me from place to place, and indicate to me the important buildings of his majestic city. He was a patriotic showman, and I am bound to say he showed us a great deal; but the most memorable moment of that instructive day was when he stopped before, what seemed to us, a respectable mansion in a respectable street, and announced to us that "you" was "the Free Kirk Univairsity." It was the first time in my ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... mob had subsided; now that there was no dead butcher to look upon, they fancied themselves most grievously injured; and, somehow or other, Dick, notwithstanding all his exertions in their service, was looked upon in the light of a showman, who had promised some startling exhibition and then had ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... humour in him, but he did not seem to perceive the humour of acting as showman to himself. He was ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... that hitherto we had believed the New Orleans creole (e.g.) to be as far removed from Hebraising as any type we knew of. It is strikingly characteristic of the weak side of Mr. Arnold's outlook on America that he went to stay with Mr. P.T. Barnum, the celebrated showman, without the least idea that his American friends might think the choice of hosts a peculiar one. To him, to a very large extent, Americans were all alike middle-class, dissenting Philistines; and so far as appears on the surface, ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Verger and Showman, and accustomed to be high with excursion parties, declines with a silent loftiness to perceive that any suggestion has been ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... straining their minds without an aim; alternating, it may be, with some feats of dexterity and effort, like a man trying to lift himself in his own arms, or take his head in his teeth, exploits as dangerous, as ungraceful, and as useless, except to glorify the showman and bring wages in, as the feats of ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... thoroughly good time. But the Islip Chapel has no cheerful intent. It is, indeed, a place set aside, with all reverence, to preserve certain relics of a grim, yet not unlovely, old custom. These fearful images are no stock-in-trade of a showman; we are not invited to 'walk-up' to them. They were fashioned with a solemn and wistful purpose. The reason of them lies in a sentiment which is as old as the world—lies in man's vain revolt from the prospect of death. ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... have parades and reviews two or three times a week and the Sovereigns of Russia, Austria and Prussia constantly attend; Wellington is their showman. These crowned Heads like mightily playing at soldiers; I should think His Grace must be heartily tired of them. Massacres and persecutions of the Protestants have begun to take place in the South of France, and the priests ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... a numerous and grotesque assemblage, in which they soon mixed, and were highly diverted by the following whimsical exhibition, displaying the astonishing sagacity and feelings of the monkey species. An itinerant showman, who for some time past exhibited two dancing monkeys about the town, had pitched his stage in a part of the Market. When his poles and cords were fixed, and the monkeys in their full dress were about to commence, the celebrated flying pieman came by with his basket, and, having furnished ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... drawn and trembling. "He's killed a bear!" said he, with glittering eye; "you should have seen it, ah! a tame bear, of course. Listen—he was coming back from hunting with the Marquis and Mademoiselle Berthe and some people behind. And he comes on a wandering showman with a performing bear. A simpleton with long black hair like feathers, and a bear that sat on its rump and did little tricks and wore a belt. The prince had got his gun. I don't know how it came about but the prince he got an idea. He said, 'I'd like to kill that bear, as I do in ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... should ever meet La Palferine you will understand perfectly the success obtained in a single evening by that sparkling mind, that animated fancy, especially if you take into consideration the admirable adroitness of the showman who consented to superintend this debut. Nathan was a good comrade, and he made the young count shine, as a jeweller showing off an ornament in hopes to sell it, makes the diamonds glitter. La Palferine was, discreetly, the first ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... more than an affectation. The reform organization of 1876 lasted but five years; and then disbanded without having accomplished anything; Train was put on trial for "debauching the young" with an "obscene" serial;[54] juries refused to bring in punitive verdicts against the master showman. ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... (having got our show) Some man, that had a name or so, To be our public showman; But this one shuts and locks the gate: Who'll answer but he'll peculate, (And, faith, some stars are missed of late,) Now that he's watched ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... "Yes," replied the showman, "that's just what I am." Coming over to Von Barwig he took him by the arm and led him almost by force into the entrance of the Museum. "Say, professor," he asked, "how would ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... Mrs Amy's skill in draping and posing, the white wigs and cotton-flannel robes were classically correct and graceful, though sundry modern additions somewhat marred the effect, while adding point to the showman's learned remarks. Mr Laurie was Professor Owlsdark in cap and gown; and, after a high-flown introduction, he proceeded to exhibit and explain his marbles. The first figure was a stately Minerva; but a second glance produced a laugh, for the words 'Women's ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Saturday nights, when the Auld Licht young men came into the square dressed and washed to look at the young women errand-going, and to laugh sometime afterwards to each other, it presented a glare of light; and here even came the cheap jacks and the Fair Circassian, and the showman, who, besides playing "The Mountain Maid and the Shepherd's Bride," exhibited part of the tail of Balaam's ass, the helm of Noah's ark, and the tartan plaid in which Flora McDonald wrapped Prince Charlie. More select entertainment, such as Shuffle Kitty's waxwork, whose ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... touched. After the trials, it is manifest that Hone was {186} to be unassailed, do what he might. The Political House that Jack built, in 1819; The Man in the Moon, 1820; The Queen's Matrimonial Ladder, Non mi ricordo, The R—l Fowls, 1820; The Political Showman at Home, with plates by G. Cruickshank,[416] 1821 [he did all the plates]; The Spirit of Despotism, 1821—would have been legitimate marks for prosecution in previous years. The biting caricature of several of these works are remembered to this day. The Spirit of Despotism was a tract of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... the Shown pretend to ken aught of the Showman or the Show? Why meanly bargain to believe, which only means ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... funny, Zan. A big strong wrestler like that to be foolish over a very little woman. And for a cheap showman of the market-place to be lifting his eyes to a daughter of the ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... sermon that did them all good. He dwelt upon the hard life of the showman, and gave them such good advice that when it was all over and he said he wanted to shake hands with every man in the bunch, Ike marshaled them all up to the ring and introduced them, and no minister ever was more cordially congratulated, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... structures, the Herald building and the Park Bank. Hither flowed daily and nightly a crowd of visitors who certainly got the worth of their money, only twenty-five cents, in the numberless varied curiosities which the unequaled showman had gathered from all quarters ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... the famous Showman relates many exciting experiences of his early days on the road, and recalls the trials and triumphs of a career more interesting than many a work ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... Briley. "I expect they must have to keep limber as eels. I used to think, when I was a boy, that 'twas the only thing I could ever be reconciled to do for a livin'. I set out to run away an' follow a rovin' showman once, but mother needed me to home. There warn't nobody but me an' ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... account, Erik was born in a small town not far from Rouen. He was the son of a master-mason. He ran away at an early age from his father's house, where his ugliness was a subject of horror and terror to his parents. For a time, he frequented the fairs, where a showman exhibited him as the "living corpse." He seems to have crossed the whole of Europe, from fair to fair, and to have completed his strange education as an artist and magician at the very fountain-head of art and magic, among ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... way to talk," he said. "I don't know you very well, but I've watched you close. I'm just a common, ordinary showman, who never had much money, and I'm going out o' date. I've spent most of my time with nigger minstrel shows and circuses, but I've been on the square. That's why I'm broke." Rather sadly he added: "Once I thought the missis would have to go back and do her acrobatic act, but ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... features—a perfect Targhee. His manners were very mild, and indeed all this tribe are gentle enough here in a foreign country. The Sheikh shook me cordially by the hands. I then commenced business as showman to the prince and this mass of people. At first his highness was timid, and would not look through the glasses of the peepshows, but when the people began he followed, and acquired the knack of looking through in a very short time. My compass ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... reap the harvest of the world; while incarnated man, as represented in the wrestling youths, is struggling for that which he did not produce, and which only death can reap. The poppy reveals the secret of the illusions of Nature's master-showman. All earthly things are unreal to the spirit, which is the only real thing. Man's effort to hoard and save the things of this world IS INJUSTICE TO OTHERS. The struggle is eternal, and no matter how careful or cunning man ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... while Scott, no doubt, wrote a chapter of Rob Roy, Mr. Irving, under young Charles's guidance, saw Melrose Abbey, and Johnnie Bower the elder, whose son long since inherited his office as showman of the ruins, and all his enthusiasm about them and their poet. The senior on this occasion was loud in his praises of the affability of Scott. "He'll come here sometimes," said he, "with great folks in ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... is one; it's his business, his calling. He gets his living thereby, as the showman did ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... such a company of mean fellows 'would have attacked Us, if they had not been supported by vast unseen forces behind the scenes.'[58] With what cruel craft, but seeming indifference, the artful old showman treated his manikins! He cut off the heads of some amongst those who responded most vigorously to his touch; whilst others, not less free upon the wire, were carefully packed up, and sent home safe. By seizing and boxing up in the Tower mere bystanders, wholly ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... moved swiftly, was by no means noiseless. His progress through the room resembled in almost equal proportions the finish of a Marathon race, the star-act of a professional juggler, and a monologue by an Earl's Court side-showman. Constant acquaintance rendered regular habitues callous to the wonder, but to a stranger the sight of Paul tearing over the difficult between-tables course, his hands loaded with two vast pyramids of dishes, ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... shown in the previous chapter that the development of the airship had been practically neglected in England prior to the twentieth century. Ballooning had been carried out both as a form of sport and also by the showman as a Saturday afternoon's sensational entertainment, with a parachute descent as the piece de resistance. The experiments in adapting the balloon into the dirigible had, however, been left to ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... hard on every benefaction is the trail of ingratitude, and certain of the irreverent in the crowd found a piquant zest in secret derision of the doctor, who sometimes did, in truth, present the air of a showman with a panorama. More especially was this the case when his enthusiasm waxed high, and his satisfaction in the glories of the comet partook of a positive ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... One man who has since made seven or eight hundred thousand francs by traveling from fair to fair began here by hanging out a signboard, a revolving sun in a blackboard, and the inscription in red letters: "Here Man may see what God can never see. Admittance, two sous." The showman at the door never admitted one person alone, nor more than two at a time. Once inside, you confronted a great looking-glass; and a voice, which might have terrified Hoffmann of Berlin, suddenly spoke as if ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... drowned by the noisy greetings of the guests, who streamed in two and two, or one at a time, after the manner of tables-d'hote. Giardini stayed by the Count, playing the showman by telling him who the company were. He tried by his witticisms to bring a smile to the lips of a man who, as his Neapolitan instinct told him, might be a wealthy patron to ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... stories, and cracking regimental jokes, which he did with such prodigal exuberance, that Carker was (or feigned to be) quite exhausted with laughter and admiration: while Mr Dombey looked on over his starched cravat, like the Major's proprietor, or like a stately showman who was glad to see ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... hinges turning." But, for the greater part, the musician who would tell so much speaks to unheeding ears. We comprehend him but infinitesimally. It is the Battle of Prague. Adrianus sits down to the piano, and Dion stands by his side, music-sheet in hand, acting as showman. "The cannon," says Dion, at the proper place, and you imagine you recognize reverberation. "Charge," continues Dion, and with a violent effort you fancy the ground trembles. "Groans of the wounded," and you are partly horror-struck and partly incredulous. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Sandgate's face and gesture apparently signified; but another question diverted her. "You're clearly a wonderful showman, but do you mind my asking you whether you're on such an occasion ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... murmured something about compliments as she released her hand from his grasp. Mr. Browne extended his open hand towards her and said to those who were near him in the manner of a showman introducing a prodigy to ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... ready at some other time to talk of the Atlantic spirit.) Against the barbarians of the North and the East they pompously set up the heirs of a new Roman Empire.... Words, words, all second-hand. The refuse of the libraries scattered to the winds.—Like all his comrades, young Jeannin went from one showman to another, listened to their patter, was sometimes taken in by it, and entered the booth, only to come out disappointed and rather ashamed of having spent his time and his money in watching old clowns buffooning in shabby rags. And yet, such is youth's ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... Ferret, he proceeded: "An't you a limb of the law, friend?—No, I cry you mercy, you look more like a showman or a conjurer."—Ferret, nettled at this address, answered, "It would be well for you, that I could conjure a little common sense into that numskull of yours." "If I want that commodity," rejoined the squire, "I must go to another market, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... amusing.—When the Doctor first became acquainted with David Mallet, they once went, with some other gentlemen, to laugh away an hour at South-wark-fair. At one of the booths where wild beasts were exhibited to the wondering crowd, was a very large bear, which the showman assured them was "cotched" in the undiscovered deserts of the remotest Russia. The bear was muzzled, and might therefore be approached with safety; but to all the company, except Johnson, was very surly and ill tempered. Of the philosopher he appeared extremely ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Mr. Tooting, who had the true showman's instinct. "Can't you see that folks are curious? They're afraid to come 'emselves, and they're sendin' their wives and daughters. If you get the women tonight, they'll go home and club the men ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the loud playfulness and mirth. Of those who passed him, gay in youth and hope, He took at Jupiter a shilling's worth Of gazing, through the showman's telescope; Sounds as of far-off bells came on his ears, He fancied 'twas ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Kaner caught wise as the flight began. He was an amateur magician and spotted the gimmick at once. He kept silent with professional courtesy, and smiled ironically as the rest of the bunch grew silent one by one. The colonel was a good showman and he had set the scene well. He almost had them believing in the Space Wave Tapper before he was through. When the model had landed and he had switched it off he couldn't stop them from crowding around ...
— Toy Shop • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... companions, for in the led golilla or oolang-ootang of his peculiar pronunciation, they recognised the long known and world-renowned ape of Borneo, which, although safe enough when seen inside the cage of the showman, is a creature to be dreaded—at least the species spoken of—when encountered in its native haunts, the forests ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... showman had fallen short of his printed promise. The hurricane had come by night, and with one fell swash had made an irretrievable sop of everything. The circus trailed away its bedraggled magnificence, and the ring was ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... twisted themselves into fantastic shapes, the enlarged shadows of which on the curtain bore resemblance to animals, and paper accessories were worked in to vary and enlarge the repertoire of action figures. The youthful showman was quite successful in catering to the public taste, and the knowledge he then gained proved valuable later in enabling him to approach his countrymen with books that held their attention and gave him the opportunity to tell them of shortcomings which it was necessary ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... annual fair, to last three days, in which he will be the only exhibitor. He's spending half his mornings now in conference with Mr. Agar and Mr. Pitts. Mr. Agar is his sales manager, and Mr. Pitts his showman." ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... a sermon that did them all good. He dwelt upon the hard life of the showman, and gave them such good advice that when it was all over and he said he wanted to shake hands with every man in the bunch, Ike marshaled them all up to the ring and introduced them, and no minister ever was more cordially congratulated, and they wanted him to go along ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... came across it everywhere. I took proceedings about it, but in every State I was obliged to begin all over again, as the law varied in the different States. And every time I arrived at a fresh hotel I found there an immense bouquet awaiting me, with the horrible card of the showman of the whale. I threw his flowers on the ground and trampled on them, and much as I love flowers, I had a horror of these. Jarrett went to see the man and begged him not to send me any more bouquets, but it was all of no use, as it was ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... galley-slave set free by Don Quixote. He returned the favor by stealing Sancho's wallet and ass. Subsequently he reappeared as a puppet-showman.—Cervantes, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of these, my chief favourites are "Sunday at Home," "Night Sketches," "Footprints on the Seashore," and "The Seven Vagabonds." This last seems to me almost the most exquisite thing which has flowed from its author's pen—a perfect little drama, the place, a showman's waggon, the time, the falling of a summer shower, full of subtle suggestions which, if followed, will lead the reader away out of the story altogether; and illuminated by a grave, wistful kind of humour, which plays in ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... many strange salutations. Alarmed, she would have run away had not Joqard broken from his master, and leaped with a roar into the water. The poor beast seemed determined to enjoy the bath. He swam, and dived, and played antics without number. In vain the showman, resorting to every known language, coaxed and threatened by turns—Joqard was self-willed and happy, and it were hard saying which appreciated his liberty most, he or the spectators ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... sub-committee sitting at my own house. This, however, broke up suddenly, for I found even philosophers were not calm in their examination of unpalatable facts. One gentleman who approached the subject with his mind fully made up, accused the lady medium of playing tricks, and me of acting showman on the occasion. As there was no method of shunting this person, I was obliged to break up my sub-committee. To mention spiritualism to these omniscient gentlemen is like shaking a red rag at a bull. As a case in point ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Juan's wedding In her own mind, and that's enough for Woman: But then, with whom? There was the sage Miss Reading, Miss Raw, Miss Flaw, Miss Showman, and Miss Knowman,[nu] And the two fair co-heiresses Giltbedding. She deemed his merits something more than common: All these were unobjectionable matches, And might go on, if well wound up, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... native town; and whose inspection, perhaps, had much to do with that impulse that first caused him to "run away to sea." Under a glass-case he had examined that piece of osseous structure, described by the showman as the sword of the sword-fish. Under the waves of the tropical Atlantic,—but little less translucent than the glass,—he had no difficulty in identifying ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... this volume the famous Showman relates many exciting experiences of his early days on the road, and recalls the trials and triumphs of a career more interesting than many ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... of the mob had subsided; now that there was no dead butcher to look upon, they fancied themselves most grievously injured; and, somehow or other, Dick, notwithstanding all his exertions in their service, was looked upon in the light of a showman, who had promised some startling exhibition and then had ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... of races, animals and birds, were stuck round the room, giving it rather the air of a circus and menagerie. This, however, made it only the more home-like to its present owner, who felt exceedingly rich and respectable as he surveyed his premises; almost like a retired showman who still fondly remembers past successes, though now happy in the more private ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... must keep the conversation going, if it lags, but this is not as definitely their duty at a formal, as at an informal dinner It is at the small dinner that the skilful hostess has need of what Thackeray calls the "showman" quality. She brings each guest forward in turn to the center of the stage. In a lull in the conversation she says beguilingly to a clever but shy man, "John, what was that story you told me——" and then she repeats briefly an introduction to a topic ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... author's experience as a laryngologist tended to convince him that most of those evils from which speakers and singers suffer, whatever the part of the vocal mechanism affected, arise from faulty methods of voice-production, or excess in the use of methods in themselves correct. A showman may have a correct method of voice-production—indeed, the writer has often studied the showman with admiration—but if he speak for hours in the open air in all sorts of weather, a disordered throat is but the natural consequence; and the Wagnerian singer who will shout instead of ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... road," said our A.S.C. driver cheerfully, "but they don't generally begin not till about 4 o'clock," so, as it was then 2.30, we weren't alarmed. They know it is used for transport and troops and often send a few shells on to it. We sat next him and he did showman. Before long we got into the area of ruined houses—and they are a sight! They spell War, and War only—nothing else (but perhaps an earthquake?) could make such awful desolation; in a few of the smaller cottages with a roof on, the families had gone back to ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... swiftly, was by no means noiseless. His progress through the room resembled in almost equal proportions the finish of a Marathon race, the star-act of a professional juggler, and a monologue by an Earl's Court side-showman. Constant acquaintance rendered regular habitues callous to the wonder, but to a stranger the sight of Paul tearing over the difficult between-tables course, his hands loaded with two vast pyramids of dishes, shouting ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... was dining at Gresham Gardens about a fortnight ago, and Jacobi told me in the course of conversation that his sister had never been to Oxford, and that they meant to run down for a day or two, and that a friend of theirs had offered to be showman and pilot them ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... course, was to see the Abbey, which stands just on the outskirts of the village, and is attainable only by applying at a neighboring house, the inhabitant of which probably supports himself, and most comfortably, too, as a showman of the ruin. He unlocked the wooden gate, and admitted us into what is left of the Abbey, comprising only the ruins of the church, although the refectory, the dormitories, and the other parts of the establishment, formerly ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rusty wires some time before going to bed. It tinkled a plea to her to let it alone, but what little girl could look at the queer instrument and keep her hands off it? The landlady said it was left there by a travelling showman who could not pay his board. He hired the bar-room to give a concert in, and pasted up written advertisements of his performance in various parts of the town. He sent free tickets to the preacher and schoolmaster, and the landlord's family went in ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... hand of power, in one night, smote and swept away the sciences: to which succeeded the low vulgar buffoonery of a showman. Virgil and Cicero made way for a wild beast from Angola! and now a guard is on duty at the very gate where, in times long past, ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... the father's despair, Sleary the showman saved the day for the shivering thief. He agreed with the porter that as Tom was guilty of a crime he must certainly go with him, and he offered, moreover, to drive the captor and his prisoner at once to the nearest railroad station. He winked ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... consisting almost wholly of murderers and their victims,—Gibbs and Hansley, the pirates, and the Dutch girl whom Gibbs murdered. Gibbs and Hansley were admirably done, as natural as life; and many people who had known Gibbs would not, according to the showman, be convinced that this wax-figure was not his skin stuffed. The two pirates were represented with halters round their necks, just ready to be turned off; and the sheriff stood behind them, with his watch, waiting for the moment. The clothes, halter, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... which held many treasures in the shape of lyrebirds, musk, ferns, and such scenery as would make the thing perfection. After this auntie and I were to have our three months' holiday in Sydney, where, with Everard Grey in the capacity of showman, we were to see everything from Manly to Parramatta, the Cyclorama to the Zoo, the theatres to the churches, the restaurants to the jails, and from Anthony Hordern's to Paddy's Market. Who knows what might happen then? Everard ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... the spiral, inclining to whites and greens, becoming brilliantly effective upon the dark facial backgrounds of Herman and Verman; while the countenances of Sam and Penrod were each supplied with the black moustache and imperial, lacking which, no professional showman can be ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... may have been attracted by the rumour of the gathering. A tight-rope dancer, a snake charmer, an itinerant showman with a performing goat, monkey, or dancing bear, may make his appearance ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... humorous touch in one of Bewick's tail-pieces, or to some plump figure in a group by his favourite Stothard than when handling a Michael Angelo drawing or an amazing Blake. Yet, had it been his humour, he could have played the showman to Michael Angelo and Blake at least as well as to Bewick, Stothard, or Chodowiecki. But a modesty, marvellously mingled with irony, was of the very essence of his nature. No man expatiated less. He never expounded anything in his born days; he very soon wearied of those he called 'strong' ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... pay him some attention. When all that failed, he boldly accosted him, and asked him, whether he did not remember him? Agesilaus turned, and looking him in the face, "Are you not," said he, "Callippides the showman?" Being invited once to hear a man who admirably imitated the nightingale, he declined, saying, he had heard the nightingale itself. Menecrates, the physician, having had great success in some desperate diseases, was by way of flattery called Jupiter; he was so vain as to take the name, and having ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Museum they had all the trophies which had been produced in court; but the officer who acted as showman to Langholm admitted that they had no right to retain any of them. They were Mrs. Minchin's property, and if they knew where she was they would ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... American showman, was born in Bethel, Connecticut, on the 5th of July 1810, his father being an inn- and store-keeper. Barnum first started as a store-keeper, and was also concerned in the lottery mania then prevailing in the United States. After failing in business, he started in 1829 a weekly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... flattery, however, is so gross as that of the Augustan age, where the Emperour was deified. "Proesens Divus habebitur Augustus." And as to meanness, (rising into warmth,) how is it mean in a player,—a showman,—a fellow who exhibits himself for a shilling, to flatter his Queen? The attempt, indeed, was dangerous; for if it had missed, what became of Garrick, and what became of the Queen? As Sir William Temple says of a great General, it is necessary not only that his designs be formed in a masterly ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... "the wusser." Those curious individuals who desired to see the wusser were introduced into an apartment where appeared before them nothing more than a little lean shrivelled hideous blear-eyed mangy pig. Everyone cried out "Swindle!" and "Shame!" "Patience, gentlemen, be heasy," said the showman: "look at that there hanimal; it's a perfect phenomaly of hugliness: I engage you never see such a pig." Nobody ever had seen. "Now, gentlemen," said he, "I'll keep my promise, has per bill; and bad as that ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... above assertion, in the true showman phraseology, just "Walk up! walk up!" to Madame Tussaud's, the real Temple of Fame, and let such doubts vanish for ever; convince yourselves that the mighty attribute not more survives from good than evil deeds, though, like poverty, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... people speedily grew tired of observing him. As it happened, there was other amusement at hand. An old German Jew travelling with a diorama on his back, was passing down the mountain-road towards the village just as the party turned aside from it, and, in hopes of eking out the profits of the day, the showman had kept them company ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... built. At the beginning of the century the basilicas of the churches were repaired throughout Latin Christendom.[2094] The Jongleurs of the twelfth century were the popular minstrels. "Poet, mountebank, musician, physician, beast showman, and to some extent diviner and sorcerer, the jongleur is also the orator of the public market place, the man adored by the crowd to whom he offers his songs and his couplets. Questions of morals and politics, toothache, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the latter had the upper hand, and his life has been described by his best editor, Professor George Herbert Palmer, as twenty-seven years of vacillation and three of consecrated service. Appointed Public Orator, or showman, of his university, Cambridge, he spent some years in enjoying the somewhat trifling elegancies of life and in truckling to the great. Then, on the death of his patrons, he passed through a period of intense crisis from which he emerged wholly spiritualized. ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... that has lived for a hundred years, devoured human beings, devoured paper, devoured roles, devoured fame until it died from indigestion," cried Wawrzecki, imitating the voice and speech of a provincial showman. ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... the magnetic wires, troop all the famous performers from the four quarters of the globe. Looked at from a point of criticism, tiny puppets they seem all, as the editor sets up his booth upon my desk and officiates as showman. Now I can truly see how little and transitory is life. The earth appears almost as a drop of vinegar, on which the solar microscope of the imagination must be brought to bear in order to make out any thing distinctly. That animalcule there, in the pea-jacket, is Louis ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... the caravan; we need not be too scrupulous about this trifling inaccuracy, but might do our part of the show, without loss of character or remorse of conscience. We are the fiddlers, and play our tunes only; you are the showman." ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... other epic poets of ancient and modern times, is less likely to conciliate the good opinion than to excite the disgust of his readers. There is no artifice that a translator can resort to with less chance of success, than this blowing of the showman's trumpet as he goes on exhibiting the wonders of his original. There are some puerile hyperboles, for which I know not whether he or ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... crowd returned towards sunset, and almost all night long, the streets and the whole air of the old town were full of song and merriment. There was a ball in a temporary structure, covered with an awning, in the Place d'Horloge, and a showman has erected his tent and spread forth his great painted canvases, announcing an anaconda and a sea-tiger to be seen. J——- paid four sous for admittance, and found that the sea-tiger was nothing but a large seal, and the anaconda altogether ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... general smash and giving away were certain, in which case the girl was sure to go spinning through the limbs and branches, as though driven forth by the springs within the big gun which fling the young lady outward just as the showman touches off ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... Islip Chapel has no cheerful intent. It is, indeed, a place set aside, with all reverence, to preserve certain relics of a grim, yet not unlovely, old custom. These fearful images are no stock-in-trade of a showman; we are not invited to 'walk-up' to them. They were fashioned with a solemn and wistful purpose. The reason of them lies in a sentiment which is as old as the world—lies in man's vain revolt from the prospect of death. If the soul must perish from the body, may not at least the body ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... the tutor sailed for home and Peter was left alone to pursue, as he supposed, the Order of the Crescent. On the contrary, he found that the Order of the Crescent was pursuing him. He had not appreciated that, from underlings and backstair politicians, an itinerant showman like Stetson and the only son of an American Croesus would receive ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... monstrous opinions; some were bigger, some less, none of them having human shape, but shaped like her opinions: Mistress Dyer also, another of the same crew, was delivered of a large—" [here follows a minute description of a feminine monster that would have made the fortune of any travelling showman, so complexly-horrible was its physiology]. Thus God punished those monstrous "wretches," But the civil authorities of New England, as we know, had punished them too. "God put it into the hearts of the civil magistrates to convent the chief leaders of them; and, after fruitless ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... marionettes. Our voice is the voice of the unseen showman, Convention; our very movements of passion and pain are but in answer to his jerk. A man resembles one of those gigantic bundles that one sees in nursemaids' arms. It is very bulky and very long; it looks a mass of delicate lace and rich fur and fine woven stuffs; ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... assumed the office of showman, brought a chair out under the tree, pulled down the branch, and invited every passer-by to step up and look, with the comment, "Big business raising such a family as that!" while I sat in terror, ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... do. Only I object to them indoors. Walk in. Observe again, as a showman would say, how very few my articles of furniture are. Notice, however, that they are all scrupulously clean. Nevertheless, I have every convenience. That thong-bottomed sofa is my bed. My skins and rugs are kept in a bag all day, and hermetically sealed ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... their hind-legs; and portraits. I think it is nonsense for people to try to paint battles; they can't do it; and, besides, as far as the fighting goes, one fight is just like another. Mr. Dillwyn told me of a travelling showman, in Germany, who travelled about with the panorama of a battle; and every year he gave it a new name, the name of the last battle that was in men's mouths; and all he had to do was to change the uniforms, he said. ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... you think that' such a company of mean fellows 'would have attacked Us, if they had not been supported by vast unseen forces behind the scenes.'[58] With what cruel craft, but seeming indifference, the artful old showman treated his manikins! He cut off the heads of some amongst those who responded most vigorously to his touch; whilst others, not less free upon the wire, were carefully packed up, and sent home safe. By seizing and boxing up in the Tower mere bystanders, wholly unconcerned ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... sciences was natural enough, but when the Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself, appeared, and he sat up nights to absorb it, and woke early and lighted the lamp to follow the career of the great showman, she was at a loss to comprehend this particular literary passion, and indeed was rather jealous of it. She did not realize then his vast interest in the study of human nature, or that such a book contained what Mr. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... said Mr. Tooting, who had the true showman's instinct. "Can't you see that folks are curious? They're afraid to come 'emselves, and they're sendin' their wives and daughters. If you get the women tonight, they'll go home and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... up for a moment, to comment on the quaint scene from a showman's point of view. "It would fill the tent in old Noo York, but it's n. g. in this here country, where everybody's either a coryphee or a clown or a pantaloon! Camuels ain't no rara avises in the Sairy, an' no niggers go to burnt-cork shows. Phylosophy is the thing, ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... to bias the reader's judgment by saying which side I believed to be right. As the historic British showman said, in reply to the question as to whether an animal in his collection was a rhinoceros or an elephant, "You pays your money and ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... and generation remains, and the value of it can hardly be overestimated. What others have said for years as in a glass darkly, with noble seriousness of utterance, he proclaims again through his brazen megaphone, with all the imperturbable aplomb of an impudent showman, having as little self-respect as he has respect for his public; and, as a consequence, that vast herd of middle-class minds to whom finer spirits appeal in vain hear for the first time truths as old as philosophy, and answer to them with assenting instincts ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... their ankles, each making the end of his own fast round his wrist, so as not to impede their onward march. This done, they all moved on again, the Mexican, of course, foremost, Kearney at his heels. After him, Cris Rock, chain in hand, half leading, half-dragging the dwarf, as a showman might ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... example, she stepped into the flame to encourage him—something went wrong with the works, and she was instantly redooced to a cinder. I fortunately 'appened to be near at the time (you will escuse a little wild fib from a showman, I'm sure!) I 'appened to be porsin by, and was thus enabled to secure the ashes of the Wonderful She, which—(draws hangings and reveals a shallow metal Urn suspended in the centre of scene), are now before you enclosed in that little urn. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... jokes, which he did with such prodigal exuberance, that Carker was (or feigned to be) quite exhausted with laughter and admiration: while Mr Dombey looked on over his starched cravat, like the Major's proprietor, or like a stately showman who was glad to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... bound as she read this letter, and went on with faster beats than usual after she had folded it up. A voyage, and London, and Pitt Dallas for a showman! What could be more alluring in its temptation and promise? Going about in London with him to guide and explain things—could opportunity be more favourable to finish the work which last summer left undone? ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... some money into the showman's hand, and he and Grace mingled with the noisy sight-seers flocking ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... Clive, Mrs. Coffee-houses of Addison's day Collier, William Colman's "Random Records" Congreve Corelli, Arcangelo Costumes, Stage Courthorpe's "Addison" Covent Garden Theatre Craggs, Mr. Secretary Crawley, the showman Critics, Addison on dramatic ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... through his teeth. "I know a showman would swop his whole caboodle for half an hour of that. I wonder what I'm expected to do over here to hold up my end. I want to be civil. I don't know anything that wouldn't look cheap after that. Wish I'd done mine first. Hi, you!" He was adding voice to arms. ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... scattering bows and compliments on every side with the off-hand ease of an accomplished society man. He paid no heed to Dennis, evidently regarding him as the showman. ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... nearly mad with excitement, and frightened the inhabitants out of their wits. Every window was opened, the cure, the garde champetre, the school-master, all peering out anxiously into the night, and asking what was happening. Was it tramps, or a travelling circus, or a bear escaped from his showman, or perhaps a wolf? I have wished sometimes since, when I have heard various barons talking politics, that I, too, could wander out into the night and seek ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... tune, half "Patrick's Day" And half "Boyne Water," take their cantering way, While Peel, the showman in the middle, cracks His long-lasht whip to cheer the doubtful hacks. Ah, ticklish trial of equestrian art! How blest, if neither steed would bolt or start;— If Protestant's old restive tricks were gone, And Papist's winkers could be still kept on! But no, false hopes—not even the great ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... perseveres in following, and after having, by her most graceful grimaces, sought to conciliate him, marches beside him. Not caring to arrive at Coquimbo escorted by such a companion, which would give him in a city the appearance of a mountebank and showman of monkeys, Selkirk, this time, repulses her rudely, not with his hand, but with the ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... Barnum to a friend in 1841, "I am going to buy the American Museum." "Buy it!" exclaimed the astonished friend, who knew that the showman had not a dollar; "what do you intend buying it with?" "Brass," was the prompt reply, "for silver and ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... as at a village fair A showman's views, dissolving into air, Again appear transfigured on the screen, So in my fancy this; and now once more, In part transfigured, through the open door Appears ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... out in front of the children. He was dressed like a real showman. He had on a high hat and a long coat. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, in a funny deep voice, "the big show is about to begin. Will you please find seats in the show tent?" The children laughed and sat down on ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams
... again, sir," said Mr. Hobson, waving his broad paw, like a showman displaying his goods, with a sort of enraged self-satisfaction. "There is the schooner, ready to hoist sail as soon as he comes alongside. And that there black point which you may see, if your eyes are good enough, is a six-oared galley with as ship-shaped ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... costumes which Charles, who had begun to learn the elements of diplomacy, pretended to note down. Sir Henry was magnanimous. He avoided his wife and his usual cronies, and devoted himself to Charles and Clara, whom his showman's eye had marked down as potentially a ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... other critics have censured Thackeray severely because of his tendency to preach, and also because he regarded his characters as puppets and himself as the showman who brought out their peculiarities. There is some ground for this criticism, if one regards the art of the novelist as centered wholly in realism; but such a hard and fast rule would condemn all old English novelists from Richardson ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... the language in which it is written. All this of course. But, apart from this, the work must be complete in and of itself, so as to be intelligible without a commentary. And any work which requires a sign or a showman to tell the beholder what it is, or to enable him to take the sense and virtue of it, is most certainly ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... journeys; but it is not difficult to discriminate between sound advice and the croakings which are based on lack of real information. I knew this was sound advice, and as usual I disliked to follow it. At last I got some encouragement. It came from a retired Wild West showman,—the real thing, one who knew the West from its early days. He laughed at the idea of danger and said I was not likely to find any one, even if I was anxious to do so, until I got to the La Bolso Ranch ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... himself would stare amazed, and confess that he had never conceived of "a dodge" in which literary genius and philanthropy could be allied with the grossest bookselling humbug. But we trust, that, after our American showman has recovered from his first shock of surprise, he will vindicate the claim of America to be considered the "first nation on the face of the earth," by immediately offering Dickens a hundred thousand dollars to superintend ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a hearing and reception abroad. Ever since the invention of Hosea Biglow, an imaginary personage of some sort, under cover of whom the author might conceal his own identity, has seemed a necessity to our humorists. Artemus Ward was a traveling showman who went about the country exhibiting a collection of wax "figgers" and whose experiences and reflections were reported in grammar and spelling of a most ingeniously eccentric kind. His inventor was Charles F. Browne, originally of Maine, a printer by trade and afterward a newspaper writer and ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... the Brahman and the showman were certainly saved by the wonderful intelligence of ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... standing one day in the street, enjoying the vagaries of punch with the rest of the crowd, the showman came up to her and solicited a contribution. She was not very ready in answering the demand, when the fellow, taking care to make her understand that he knew who she was, exclaimed, "Ah! it's all over with the drama, if we don't encourage ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... years before, while the store and the Agency swarmed with native men and women, many in mixed costume of cloth and skin. Zulime's artistic joy in them filled me with complacent satisfaction. I had the air of a showman rejoicing in his exhibition hall. With keen interest we watched the young warriors as they came whirling in on their swift ponies, each in his gayest garments, the tail of his horse decorated with ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... literature; it was the art of Raphael that received his fleeting suffrages; and with the aid of pen and ink and a shilling box of watercolours, he had soon turned one of the rooms into a picture-gallery. My more immediate duty towards the gallery was to be showman; but I would sometimes unbend a little, join the artist (so to speak) at the easel, and pass the afternoon with him in a generous emulation, making coloured drawings. On one of these occasions, I made the map of an island; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Hone had this faculty in a large degree, and one of his best political satires, the "Political Showman at Home," is entirely made out of quotations from older authors applicable to the real or fancied characteristics of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... destroyed, rather than preserved to gratify a morbid taste for the horrible and erratic in nature. But while persons of the highest station and education in England patronised an artful and miserable dwarf, cleverly exhibited by a showman totally destitute of principle, it is not surprising that the American people should delight in yet more hideous exhibitions, under the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... cavaliers of the party—but all came right in due time. For after supper, which was early, Barty played the fool with Mr. Gibson, and taught him how to do a mechanical wax figure, of which he himself was the showman; and the laughter, both baritone and soprano, might have been heard in Russell Square. Then they sang an extempore Italian duet together which ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... enters a group of tourists, dressed more or less in the approved "smart" style. A guide, with a droll countenance, recites to them the beauties of the place, bellowing at the top of his voice like a showman at a fair. And one of the travellers, stumbling in the sandals which are too large for her small feet, laughs a prolonged, silly little laugh like the clucking of a ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... to-day, if you should ask ten Boston men, 'Who was Artemas Ward?' nine would say he was an amusing showman. If you asked 'Who was John Thomas?' nine would say he was a flunky commemorated by Thackeray."—E. E. HALE, "Memorial History ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... was contributed by Mr. Browne to "Vanity Fair," the New York "Punch," which terminated its career during the late war. Some of the allusions are, of course, to matters long past; but the old fun and genuine humour of the showman are as enjoyable now ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... four wheels, in charge of the great showman himself, aided by that experienced nurse, Mrs. Gamp, in somewhat dilapidated attire, followed. The babies, from a span long to an indefinite length, of all shapes and sizes, black, white, and snuff-colored, twins, triplets, quartettes, and quincunxes, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... dismantled library. He and his were, it seemed, "ruined"—as many people here already guessed. He looked at the full-length Van Dycks on the wall of the Tamworths' ballroom, and thought, not without a grim leap of humour, that he would be acting showman and auctioneer, within a few days perhaps, to his father's ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... enough to turn, beheld the colonel with a handkerchief to his eyes, his shoulders heaving. Somehow the colonel's noisy grief failed to excite the sympathy of those assembled. It was suspected that the wrecked showman was ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... as a showman's dog has he distinguished himself. He is something more than a mountebank of the booths, trained to walk the tight rope and stand on his head. He is an adept at performing tricks, but it is his alertness ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... morally, as he was intellectually. A notorious instance of a personal attack under various characters in one play is to be found in Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair," wherein he boasts of having, under the characters of Lanthorn, Leatherhead, the Puppet-showman, and Adam Overdo, satirized ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... as you please, the more complete the disguise the more effective being the giant. A ferocious-looking moustache and whiskers will greatly add to his appearance. If some ready-witted member of the party will undertake to act as showman, and exhibit the giant, holding a lively conversation with him, and calling attention to his gigantic idiosyncrasies, a great deal of fun may be produced. The joke should not, however, be very long continued, as the feelings of the "legs" ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... doubled it into a small but very pugnacious looking fist, which she shook most entrancingly before the very eyes of the young man by her side. The eyes turned such a peculiar look upon her that she hastened to add: "Go on with your dissolving views. It is number eight's turn next. You are the showman, ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... that those who present a correspondence for perusal should play too much the part of a showman. Letters speak for themselves. Yet that which Selwyn wrote on April 14th may well be pointed to as giving, in a few lines, a reflection in miniature of the events grave and gay which were then interesting London society. We see it ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... pair o' pants on," answered Mr. Briley. "I expect they must have to keep limber as eels. I used to think, when I was a boy, that 'twas the only thing I could ever be reconciled to do for a livin'. I set out to run away an' follow a rovin' showman once, but mother needed me to home. There warn't nobody but me an' ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... benefaction is the trail of ingratitude, and certain of the irreverent in the crowd found a piquant zest in secret derision of the doctor, who sometimes did, in truth, present the air of a showman with a panorama. More especially was this the case when his enthusiasm waxed high, and his satisfaction in the glories of the comet partook ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... up there where they can see you!" admonished a clown. "If you're going to be a showman you mustn't be afraid to get yourself ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... "crowner's quest" Sit on my worst or best? Why should the showman claim The poor ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... but to fetch it out she must go back, begin lower, and give years to training, education, and hard work. She can labor ten years for the sake of living five. As for her support, it was of the sort afforded by John T., the showman, and very funny. Mrs. Germon, God bless her! was properly funny. She is the best old woman on end ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... If to enter life Needed some courage, 'twere a kind of wages, As they let sacking soldiers take home loot: But we are shuffled into life like puppets Emptied out of a showman's bag; and then Made spenders of the joys current in heaven! (Not such a marvel neither, if this love Be but the price I'm paid for my free soul. Who's the old trader that has lent this girl The glittering cash of pleasure to pay me with? Who is it,—the world, or the devil, or God—that ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... biography published by his showman, BARNUM—the son of a Yankee carpenter, we should much like to know the General's arms. Did Her Majesty, before the 'performance,' send to learn them, that they might be duly engraved? or were they, as MATHEW'S French Shoemaker made his little boot, struck off in ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... first constituent is obedience: a soldier is, of all descriptions of men, the most completely a machine; yet his profession inevitably teaches him something of dogmatism, swaggering, and sell-consequence: he is like the puppet of a showman, who, at the very time he is made to strut and swell and display the most farcical airs, we perfectly know cannot assume the most insignificant gesture, advance either to the right or the left, but as he ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... allowing any strangers to visit his excavations. He seemed to keep them for his own gratification, and it was with the greatest difficulty permission could be obtained to go through them. He would say to the numberless persons who applied, "they were not show-shops, nor he a showman." When he did grant permission he always gave the obliged parties fully and unmistakably to understand that he was conferring upon them a great favour. His temper was suspicious. I recollect being told of ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... thing," said the San Reve, "from which you may wring a warning. My father was a showman—a tamer of lions and leopards. When I was twelve, I went into the den with him to hold a hoop while he lashed those big cats through it. Yes, Storri," cried the San Reve, a sudden flame to burst forth ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... came to hand yesterday and was opened in the midst of us with due admiration, and with pleasure at the prospect it held out for the winter. My wife, I say; for she is the great reader, while I am, in comparison, like the owl, which the showman said kept up-you remember what sort of a thinking. But, comparisons [349] apart, it is really interesting to see how much she reads; how she keeps acquainted with what is going on in the world, especially in its philanthropic ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... dwindled. He dared not drop back to set fire to the base of the heap. But even in the exhaustion and strain of the moment Jerry Foster still knew the value of the showman's tricks in reaching the fears of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... Mokarzel and the other friends of Sardi Babu the deceased pillow-sham vender was simplicity itself. Besides Sardi Babu and Mokarzel there had been Nicola Abbu, the confectioner; Menheem Shikrie, the ice-cream vendor; Habu Kahoots, the showman; and David Elias, a pedler. All six of them, as they claimed, had been sitting peacefully in Ghabryel & Assad's restaurant, eating kibbah arnabeiah and mamoul. Sardi had ordered sheesh kabab. It was about nine o'clock in the evening, ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
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