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More "Laughable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of life in a girl's college that has ever been written. It is bright, whimsical and entertaining, lifelike, laughable and thoroughly human. ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... literature, one may make a very fair guess at some part of his character. So, too, "Patchwork"—a kind of scrap-book, a collection of miscellaneous anecdotes, mostly humorous, but not as a rule broadly or farcically funny—illustrates his delicate and subtle perception of the laughable. ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... her face, Archdale fancied that he saw a moist brightness in her eyes. But certainly no tear fell, and when the next moment Katie declared it Elizabeth's turn for a story, she told some trifling anecdote that had in it neither sentiment nor heroism. It was laughable though, and was about to receive its deserts of praise when at Archdale's first ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... stew, or "boyaw," thus falling directly into the trap set for them by the missionary society. The missionary stationed at the next town, who furnishes the society with the data, says it was the most laughable thing he ever witnessed, to see the heathen chew on those cork limbs. They boiled them all day and night, keeping up a sort of a go-as-you-please walk around, or fresh meat dance, and giving a sacred concert about like our national "Whoop ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... the intermediate party, composed of officials and others who paid court to the higher powers, kept the nobles informed of all that was done and said in the Liberal camp, and much of it was abundantly laughable. Du Croisier's adherents smarted under a sense of inferiority, which increased their thirst ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... a greyhound is his rudder and his brake, and the sight is most laughable when a whole pack of them are trying to stop, each tail whirling around like a Dutch windmill. Sometimes, in their frantic efforts to stop quickly, they will turn complete somersaults and roll over in a cloud of dust and dirt. But give up they never do, and once on their feet they start ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... It was alone laughable to see the old mare travel at a high rate of speed on account of lifting her hind feet so very high in consequence ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... and shook her head, but Mercedes, elated at the opportunity of singing the praises of her idol, regaled them with a laughable description of Tabitha's mishap. This led to other boarding school reminiscences,—the christening of the vessel, when Cassandra took her memorable plunge into the ocean; the night of the opera and their experiences with ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... men still more repulsive. Some were wrapped in the countess's shawls, others wore the trappings of horses and muddy saddlecloths, or masses of rags from which the hoar-frost hung; some had a boot on one leg and a shoe on the other; in fact, there were none whose costume did not present some laughable singularity. But in presence of such amusing sights the men themselves were grave and gloomy. The silence was broken only by the snapping of the wood, the crackling of the flames, the distant murmur of the camps, and the blows of the sabre given ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... manifesting the most ferocious of cynicisms even if he had been a cynic—which he was not. The Campaigner, Mrs. Clapp, the landlady in "Vanity Fair," Mrs. Baynes, and all the rest of the deplorable bevy rest like nightmares upon our memory. Dickens always made the shrew laughable, so that we can hardly spare pity for the poor Snagsbys and Raddles and Crupps, or any of her victims in that wonderful gallery; but Thackeray's, Trollope's, Charles Reade's, Mrs. Oliphant's, and even Miss Broughton's shrews are always odious, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... which they never intended to keep, and often gave deceptive accounts of articles which were exposed for sale. Thus the carcases of foxes were offered, after having been flayed and the head and feet cut off, on several occasions as hares, and it was laughable to see their astonishment at our immediately discovering the fraud. The Chukches' complete want of acquaintance with money and our small supply of articles for barter for which they had a liking besides compelled even me to hold at least a portion ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... so much in earnest, that if I had egged him on, I verily believe he would have got the keg for me himself. It seemed laughable at the time; but I don't laugh now. I almost think that good-natured American was right; ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... and plant life for the teleological argument is very laughable; take, for example, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... of his bald head, with his grimly-grinning face empurpled by the violent physical exertion of the moment, and with his thick heavy figure ridiculously perched on one leg. Mr. Blyth, however, was beyond all comparison the more laughable object of the two, as he soared nervously into the air on Mat's foot, tottering infirmly in the strong grasp that supported him, till he seemed to be trembling all over, from the tips of his crisp black hair to the flying tails of his frock-coat. As for the expression of his round rosy face, ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... vinegar aspect That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile, Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable." ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... what I've done!" she laughed. Somehow everything seemed merely light-hearted and laughable since Mr. De Guenther's most fairy-tale visit, with its wild hints of Lines of Work. Anna Black ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... gracefully and easily that you might think you could quickly become a good gondolier if you tried. You would change your mind, however, after the laughable experience of rowing yourself overboard several times, and admit that rowing a gondola ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... adventures after leaving his home, how I had telephoned him from the hills, how I had taken a swim in the mill-pond, and especially how I had lost myself in the old cowpasture, with an account of all my absurd and laughable adventures and emotions. ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... car? UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES WILL A TRAIN ROBBER SHOOT A PASSENGER OR A TRAIN MAN—suppose a man refuses to throw up his hands? Queer articles found on passengers (a chance here for some imaginative work)—queer and laughable incidents of any kind. Refer whenever apropos to actual hold-ups and facts concerning them of interest. What could two or three brave and determined passengers do if they were to try? Why don't they try? How long does it take to do the business. Does ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... the laughable farce of a trial of the 'Enossis' on board a vessel lying in port (I dare not land), which ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... might have helped to make a man of Feeble- mind, saw a laughable, if it had not been such a lamentable, spectacle. For it saw this poor creature hanging as limp as wet linen on the back of one of the Interpreter's sweating servants. Your little boy will explain the parable to you. Shall I do this? or, shall I rather do that? asks Feeble-mind ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... know it; and he is a madman; and he fell in love with you." Helen uttered an ejaculation of great surprise. The general resumed: "He can only have seen you at a distance, or you would recognize him; but (really it is laughable) he saw you somehow, though you did not see him, and— Well, his insanity hurt himself, and did not hurt you. You remember how he suspected burglars, and watched night after night under your window. That was ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Ollapodiana will be remembered with admiration and pleasure, by readers in every section of the United States. Their rich variety of subject; their alternate humor and pathos; the one natural, quiet, and irresistibly laughable; the other warm from the heart, and touching in its tenderness and beauty; won for them the cordial and unanimous praise of the press throughout the Union, and frequent laudatory notices from the ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... Another laughable story is related of Buffalmacco's ingenuity to rid himself of annoyance. Soon after he left Tafi, he took apartments adjoining those occupied by a man who was a penurious old simpleton, and compelled his wife to rise long before daylight to commence work at her spinning wheel. The old woman ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... familiar, that they have embodied their national oddities in the figure of a sturdy, corpulent old fellow with a three-cornered hat, red waistcoat, leather breeches, and stout oaken cudgel. Thus they have taken a singular delight in exhibiting their most private foibles in a laughable point of view, and have been so successful in their delineations that there is scarcely a being in actual existence more absolutely present to the public mind than that eccentric personage, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... sacrifice in some degree to the genius of the mob, persons expressly appointed went behind the procession, loosened the cloth from the bridge, wound it up like a flag, and threw it into the air. This gave rise to no disaster, but to a laughable mishap; for the cloth unrolled itself in the air, and, as it fell, covered a larger or smaller number of persons. Those now who took hold of the ends and drew them towards them, pulled all those in the middle to the ground, enveloped them and teased them ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... highly displeased at what he considered an act of disrespect. The master of ceremonies was in consternation, and exclaimed with a look of horror to General Damuriez, "My dear sir, he has not even buckles in his shoes!" "Mercy upon us!" exclaimed the old general, with the most laughable expression of affected gravity, "we shall then all ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... sublime ideas are mixed with admiration, beautiful ones with love, new ones with surprise; and these exertions of our ideas prevent the action of laughter from being necessary to relieve the painful pleasure above described. Whence laughable wit consists of frivolous ideas, without connections of any consequence, such as puns on words, or on phrases, incongruous junctions of ideas; on which account laughter is ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... insults, it was the one that robbed her of the very dignity she should assume to rebuke it. The more vehemently she resented it, the more laughable became the ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... officer commanding the soldiers who had been drawn into the house by the disturbance. The sudden and inexplicable change of conduct on the part of the soldiers petrifies Bartolo; he is literally "astonied," and Figaro makes him the victim of several laughable pranks before ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... known either to strike or kick one another. It is not uncommon for one of them to cut off his hair and to grease his ears immediately before the contest begins. This, however, is done privately; and it is sometimes truly laughable to see one of the parties strutting about with an air of great importance, and calling out: 'Where is he? Why does he not come out?' when the other will bolt out with a clean-shorn head and greased ears, rush on his antagonist, seize him by the hair, and, though perhaps ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... most laughable effect the raising of a whole host of phantoms, and when a State is so far gone that civic Fear is quite normal to the citizens, then you will find them blenching with terror at a piece of print, a whispered accusation. Bankruptcy, though they be possessed of ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... basis of physical evolution—that automatically acting principle—which causes plants to turn towards the sun, animals to seek their proper food, and both animals and men to try instantly to escape from immediate danger. It is what we call instinct which does not reason. I may give a laughable experience of my own to illustrate the fact that conscious reason is not the method of this faculty. Once when on leave from India I was walking along a street in London in the heat of a summer's day and suddenly noticed just at my feet a long dark ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... no exaggeration in all this. That was evident Jack's misery was real, and was manifest in his pale face and general change of manner. This accounted for it all. This was the blow that had struck him down. All his other troubles had been laughable compared with this. But from this he could not rally. Nor, for my part, did I know of any consolation that could be offered. Now, for the first time, I saw the true nature of his sentiments toward Louie, and learned from him the sentiments of that poor little thing toward him. It was ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... A good, wholesome, laughable presentation of some Americans at home and abroad, on their vacations, and during their hours ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... sentiments are without doubt in a sense revealed to us by others. How many, as Rochefoucauld says, would be ignorant of love if they had never read novels! How many in the same way would never have discovered by themselves the laughable side of people and things. Yet even the feelings which one experiences by contagion one can experience only of one's own accord, in one's own way, and according to one's disposition. This fact alone of their contagion ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... painter wishes to see beautiful things which will enchant him he is able to beget them; if he wishes to see monstrous things which terrify, or grotesque and laughable things, or truly piteous things, he can dispose of all these; if he wishes to evoke places and deserts, shady or dark retreats in the hot season, he represents them, and likewise warm places in the cold season. If he wishes valleys, if he wishes to descry a great {91} plain from ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... gins showed such curiosity about Lizzie's pipe, that she handed it round and made them each take a puff. Their expressions, when the pungent smoke caused them either to sneeze, cough, or choke, were most laughable; and I have no doubt that it is still a matter of wonder to them, and a fruitful source of debate over the camp-fires, what pleasure the white man can find in filling his mouth with smoke, apparently with no better object than to puff it out again as soon as possible. ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... husband. I always make you smile at me, Mrs. Ormonde. But now, I am so very, very sorry, but I'm obliged to go. I manage to catch a 'bus just at the top of the street; if I missed it, I should be half an hour late, and these are very particular people. Oh, I've such a laughable story to tell you about them, but it must wait till to-morrow, Harold says I tell it so well; he's sure I could write a novel if I tried. I think I will try some day; I believe people make a great deal of money out of ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... their first fight they had faced Lee's best veterans, and defeated them. The old soldiers were inclined to regard it as rather a joke—the lively manner in which the rebs welcomed them to the front. This disposition to see a bright, a laughable side to every thing, may be set down as one of the peculiarities of the Yankee soldier. In victory or defeat, success or disaster, ease or hardship, some one of a group of soldiers could find something from which to extract a jest or on which ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... Unfortunately, it does not concern the narrative I now write, and I would not like to record his denunciations and invective directed at the Government. He handled it without mercy, and his comments upon the character of President Davis were exceedingly bitter. One of these was laughable for the grim humor of the idea. Opening a volume of Voltaire—whose complete works he had just purchased—he showed me a passage in one of the infidel dramas of the great Frenchman, where King David, on his death-bed, after invoking maledictions upon his opponents, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... in silence that he made as haughty as he could, but not so haughty that Trannel did not find it laughable, and he laughed in a teasing way that made Breckon more and more serious. He was aware of becoming even solemn with the question of his likeness to Trannel. He was of Trannel's quality, and their difference was a matter of quantity, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... are not Christian, but then, by an entertaining coincidence, they are also not true. His hatred of pity is not Christian, but that was not his doctrine but his disease. Invalids are often hard on invalids. And there is another doctrine of his that is not Christianity, and also (by the same laughable accident) not common-sense; and it is a most pathetic circumstance that this was the one doctrine which caught the eye of Shaw and captured him. He was not influenced at all by the morbid attack on mercy. It would require more ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... nor the experience and coolness of Bracy Tibbetts, the courteous express messenger, both of whom have since confessed to have been more than astonished at the Christian and lamb-like submission of the insiders. Amusing stories of some laughable yet sickening incidents of the occasion—such as grown men kneeling in the road, and offering to strip themselves completely, if their lives were only spared; of one of the passengers hiding under the seat, and only being dislodged by pulling his coat-tails; ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... commenced; and the house was filled by a fashionable audience,—one rarely seen at a minstrel entertainment. The troupe have made a decided hit, and their performances last night were received with great enthusiasm. Their songs and choruses are excellent; their puns, jokes, and stories, fresh and laughable; and their special acts new, and of a superior order. The performances of the troupe have happily filled a void which ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... great joy, an unclouded sun rose upon the prairie. We presented rather a laughable appearance, for the cold and clammy buckskin, saturated with water, clung fast to our limbs; the light wind and warm sunshine soon dried them again, and then we were all incased in armor of intolerable ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... first it was only a tremor; but soon Christophe was left without a doubt; they were laughing. The musicians of the orchestra had given the signal; some of them did not conceal their hilarity. The audience, certain then that the music was laughable, rocked with laughter. This merriment became general; it increased at the return of a very rhythmical motif which the double-basses accentuated in a burlesque fashion. Only the Kapellmeister went on through the uproar imperturbably ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... and loved glory, and being a popular hero, he was forgiven all his amorous sins, which were by many looked upon as being part of his heroism. His laughable efforts to obscure the facts might have satisfied those who wished to rely on Hamilton's benedictory absolution, had not Nelson and Emma, as I have already said, left behind them incriminating letters and documents which leave no doubt as ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... the party of the second part promptly throws himself prone upon the ground, and with four free feet concentrated upon the head of the other bear forces him to let go. This movement, and the four big, flat foot soles coming up into action is, in large bears, a very laughable spectacle, ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... accustomed to play a minor role herself in her sister's household, was yet too much a woman not to like an admirer of her own. She took more pains with her dress, looked at herself more often in the glass than she had done in years. It was laughable; it was absurd; and she joined as readily as anyone in the mirth that Raymond's devotion excited in the family, but, deep down within her, she was pleased. At the least it showed she had not grown too old to make men love her; it was the vindication of the mounting years; ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... pre-introduction phase of Julius—had, in fact, thought little enough about it. Perhaps her taking care to say nothing at all of it in his later phase was her most definite acknowledgment of its existence at any time. It was only a laughable incident. She saw at once, when she took note of that sofa seance, which way the cat was going to jump; and we are bound to say it was a cat that soon made up its mind, and jumped ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... simple-minded old gentleman, is the founder of the Pickwick Club. He and three other members, Mr. Winkle, Mr. Snodgrass, and Mr. Tupman, form the Corresponding Society of the club, and they travel over England together, meeting with many laughable adventures. They are accompanied by Samuel Weller, Mr. Pickwick's servant, an inimitable compound of cool impudence, quaint humor, and fidelity. The Pickwickians have accepted the invitation of Mr. Wardle, of Manor Farm, Dingley Dell, to be present at the marriage ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... This Maypole is hung as usual with garlands on the top, and, in these garlands, spoons, and other little valuables, are placed. The high smooth round pole is then well greased; and now he who can climb up to the top may have what he can get,—a very laughable scene as you may suppose, of awkwardness and agility, and failures on the very brink of success. Now began a dance. The women danced very well, and, in general, I have observed throughout Germany that the women in the lower ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... neighbouring states. A peculiar race of people is found here, the Soumali—tall, gaunt-looking fellows, with a mass of moppy hair dyed a brilliant red. This head-gear, surmounting a small black face, is laughable in the extreme. Plenty of ostrich feathers may be obtained of the Arabian Jews; and though, of course, you pay sailors' prices for them, yet even then the sums given are not nearly so much as would be charged in England for a ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... to anything in the curriculum or programme of studies. Indeed, to any one accustomed to the best models of a university curriculum as it flourishes in the United States and Canada, the programme of studies is frankly quite laughable. There is less Applied Science in the place than would be found with us in a theological college. Hardly a single professor at Oxford would recognise a dynamo if he met it in broad daylight. The Oxford student learns nothing ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... next spring, another, who had lived long in Macedonia, is positive it will take two years from now. General Hunter-Weston took no part in this discussion, but looked interested and amused while his juniors threshed the subject out. All agreed that it was most laughable to read the forecasts in the papers at home, and that it was only now that England was realising how enormous the task before her was, and that the war will continue till both sides are just about played out, but there can be no doubt of our ability ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... but what I make myself, or help to make with my Parson's son and daughter. We, with not a voice among us, go through Handel's Coronation Anthems! Laughable it may seem; yet it is not quite so; the things are so well-defined, simple, and grand, that the faintest outline of them tells; my admiration of the old Giant grows and grows: his is the Music for a Great, Active, People. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... young wife's first dinner-party! If remembered, they become laughable enough when looked back upon from future years; but they are no laughing matter at the time. The terror lest there should be too little on the table, and the consequent danger of there being too much: the fear at once of worrying the cook with too many directions, and leaving any necessary ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... all the difficulties to contend with resulting from inexperienced riders and untrained horses. No one who has not beheld the scene, can imagine the awkward appearance of a troop of recruits mounted on horses unaccustomed to the saddle. The sight is one of the most laughable that can be witnessed. We have seen the attempt made to put such a troop into a gallop across a field. Fifty horses and fifty men instantly became actuated by a hundred different wills, and dispersed in all directions—some of the riders hanging on to the pommels, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his mistress's pet monkey alone one day, he wrote an autobiography of his monkeyship's surprising adventures in the course of his many transmigrations. Leaving this precious document in the monkey's hands, his mistress found it on her return, and was vastly bewildered by its pathetic and laughable contents.15 The fifth number of the "Adventurer" gives a very entertaining account of the "Transmigrations of a Flea." There is also a poem on this subject by Dr. Donne, full of strength and wit. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... It was laughable to see how the eyes of some of the scouts seemed to almost stick out of their heads when they listened to how Paul first discovered the moving object up in the big oak. They turned their heads, and looked up eagerly, as though half expecting to see another ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... suppose I might go so far as to say in most ways, and be within the facts, but never mind; let it go at SOME. One of the ways in which it exercises this birthright is—as I think—continuing to use our laughable alphabet these seventy-three years while there was a rational one at hand, to be ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of a game after that, however, as the laughable incident had put all the players in a more or less frivolous mood. It finally ended in a score of six to three in favor of the All-Americans, and the teams made a break ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... United States, and almost every city now has at least one private club devoted to the pursuit of this stylish pastime. Indeed, in many of our larger metropolises, the popular enthusiasm has reached such heights that free "public" courses have been provided for the citizens with, I may say, somewhat laughable results, as witness the fact that I myself have often seen persons playing on these "public" courses in ordinary shirts and trousers, tennis ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... the East, who in pursuance of his promise to a Jogi or Magician, brings to him the Baital (Vampire), who is hanging on a tree. The difficulties King Vikram and his son have in bringing the Vampire into the presence of the Jogi are truly laughable; and on this thread is strung a series of Hindu fairy stories, which contain much interesting information on Indian customs and manners. It also alludes to that state, which induces Hindu devotees to allow themselves to be buried alive, and to appear dead for weeks or ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... fetching, I'm sure. First, I am going to see if they are afraid of us." He suddenly threw up both hands and cried "Boo!" in a loud tone. The eyes of the watchers hung out and they jumped like so many mice at the sound. It was so laughable that she was compelled to place her handkerchief over her mouth and turn her head away. "I guess we've got 'em pretty well paralyzed," grinned Hugh. Then he went among them, placing his hands gently upon their woolly ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... proclamation which, signed by Jose Reyes, Celestins Dominguez and Genara Cautino, was issued to the people of Guayama on May 20, 1898. As one of the curiosities of the war, it can only be compared to the celebrated and laughable manifesto which Captain-General Augustin issued at Manila just before the ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... and sometimes laughable adventures have attended the operations of the scouts of both sections; but more difficulty and danger have undoubtedly been encountered by the partisans of the North than of the South. Operating mostly within the circle of their own acquaintance, the latter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... and its end wall formed an enclosure or backyard. My horse was there, and I found my saddle in one of the rooms of the building, hidden under a blanket. I entered the corral through the back door of the house, caught and saddled my horse, and then led him out to the street. This was a very laughable manner of leave-taking. The house was cut up into a labyrinth of small rooms, just large enough for a horse to turn around in, and the doors were low and narrow. As I could not find the outer door, I led my horse successively into every room in ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... bad shot. Nevertheless Henri was an immense favourite in the settlement, for his good-humour knew no bounds. No one ever saw him frown. Even when fighting with the savages, as he was sometimes compelled to do in self-defence, he went at them with a sort of jovial rage that was almost laughable. Inconsiderate recklessness was one of his chief characteristics, so that his comrades were rather afraid of him on the war-trail or in the hunt, where caution and frequently soundless motion were essential to success or safety. But ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... snow, which now, with the approach of morning, began to fall to purpose. I chose the name of Ramornie, I imagine from its likeness to Romaine; Rowley, from an irresistible conversion of ideas, I dubbed Gammon. His distress was laughable to witness; his own choice of an unassuming nickname had been Claude Duval! We settled our procedure at the various inns where we should alight, rehearsed our little manners like a piece of drill until it seemed impossible we should ever be taken unprepared; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... clothed in skins of the seal, instead of the kangaroo, was described to them, they were exceedingly delighted; and this picture of half-savage life, so different from their own, threw quite into the shade all the other stories they had heard. It is, indeed, really laughable to find with what cool contempt some of these natives, who have never had any intercourse with Europeans, treat our comforts, our tastes, and pursuits. We may contemn and pity them, but they seem to have very much the same feelings for us. We are horrified at the greediness with ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... judge on the Bench, the Lord President himself, greatest potentate of all, was not more safe from the audacious wits than poor Peter Peebles. There was nothing they did not laugh at, themselves and each other as much as Lord Braxfield, and all the humours of a town more full of anecdote and jest, laughable eccentricity and keen satire and amusing comment, than any town in literature. The best joke of all perhaps was Sydney Smith's famous bon mot about the surgical operation, which no doubt he meant as an excellent joke in the midst of that laughing community, where the fun was only too fast and ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... the only legacy, indeed, that Joe was conscious of, but everybody else was aware that old Peter had left him something even more dangerous than dreams. That was nothing less than a bridling, high-minded, hot-blooded pride—a thing laughable, the neighbors said, in one so bitterly and ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... depended on his speed, a little tawny beetle of a thing, who placed his forepaws against his master's ankles and looked up into his face; then, catching sight of the strangers, hurriedly he took up his position between them and M'Adam, assuming his natural attitude of grisly defiance. Such a laughable spectacle he made, that martial mite, standing at bay with bristles up and teeth bared, that ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... and crowning summit of all Friedrich Wilhelm's endeavors; to which he devoted himself, as only the best Spartan could have done. Of which there will be other opportunities to speak in detail. For it was a thing world-notable; world-laughable, as was then thought; the extremely serious fruit of which did at ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... none of 'em be missed," and if the play were compressed into one Act, it would contain the essence of all that was worth retaining, and, with a few songs and dances, might make an attractive lever de rideau or "laughable farce to finish," before, or after, a revival of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... shown by the old man's laughter at the distress of his fellowmen roused Jon's ire. He could see nothing laughable about the ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... arms, and the sobs that shook her seemed to be meeting no resistance whatever. It wasn't like her to work herself up in that way over trifles, either; yet, surely a trifle was all this could be called—a laughable mistake he couldn't help loving her for, or a touching demonstration of affection that he couldn't help smiling at. Either way you took it, it was nothing to make a scene about. Where was her sense of humor? That was the thing to do—get her quiet first, and then persuade ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the droll thing that came about. We had a day after the otters at the Bennan, a wet cold day, with little that was laughable in it, except that a man of the Macdonalds took an otter home over his shoulders, and the beast dead, as we thought; but coming in at his own door it gripped him by the back of his hip, and at the start he got he let a great cry to his ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... told me, after we knew each other better, that she was doing graduate work in regional superstitions and had decided that her thesis would treat of the history of vampirism. She found it terribly amusing, but at the same time frightening: Didn't I? I fear I saw nothing laughable about it, but I held my peace. Why, I could have done a thesis for her that would have driven some mild-mannered prof completely out of his mind! I kept my knowledge to myself, though; I didn't want to ...
— Each Man Kills • Victoria Glad
... And, Enid, you and he, I see with joy, Ye sit apart, you do not speak to him, You come with no attendance, page or maid, To serve you—doth he love you as of old? For, call it lovers' quarrels, yet I know Tho' men may bicker with the things they love, They would not make them laughable in all eyes, Not while they loved them; and your wretched dress, A wretched insult on you, dumbly speaks Your story, that this man loves you no more. Your beauty is no beauty to him now: A common chance—right well I know it—pall'd— For I know men: nor will ye win him back, For the man's ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... the nature of the colony to which she was about to emigrate, and of the manners and customs of the people among whom she was to find a new home, and of whom she had formed the most laughable and erroneous notions, many of her purchases were not only useless, but ridiculous. Things were overlooked, which would have been of the greatest service; while others could have been procured in the colony for less than the expense ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... enough to think that that is really the only kind worth knowing, when first he is brought into contact with the other. Two or three times I have known men try to follow hounds on stock-saddles, which are about as ill-suited for the purpose as they well can be; while it is even more laughable to see some young fellow from the East or from England who thinks he knows entirely too much about horses to be taught by barbarians, attempt in his turn to do cow-work with his ordinary riding or hunting rig. It must be ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... friends, Betty, Amy and Louise give a play which is full of laughable mishaps. They have lots of fun getting ready for the great event and it is voted a ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... says I to Norah; and I don't know when I've been that amused. After disportin' me-self among the most laughable moral improvements of the revised shell games I took meself to the shore for the benefit of the cool air. 'And did ye observe ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... quickly. She did not miss her way, but found the path and hastened her steps to a run. What were they doing to Axel? She was going to his house, alone. People would talk. Who cared? And when she had heard all that could be told her there, she was going to Axel himself. People would talk. Who cared? The laughable indifference of slander, when big issues of life and death were at stake! All the tongues of all the world should not frighten her away from Axel. Her eyes had a new look in them. For the first time she was wide awake, was facing life as it is without dreams, facing its absolute cruelty and pitilessness. ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... produce the healthy bronze hue of his skin; his curly hair, bound by a fillet, was unruly from the outdoor life he had been leading; the strong sinews of his arms and legs belied the ease of his pretended calling and the starry cloak he wore was laughable in its failure to disguise the man of action. He saluted the three women with a gesture of the raised right hand that no man unaccustomed to the use of arms could imitate, then turning slightly toward Livius, acknowledged his nod with a ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... fire. For the first time Rod saw the making of a wilderness shelter. Whistling cheerily, Wabi got an ax from the canoe, went into the edge of the cedars and cut armful after armful of saplings and boughs. Tying his blankets about himself, Rod helped to carry these, a laughable and grotesque figure as he stumbled about clumsily in his efforts. Within half an hour the cedar shelter was taking form. Two crotched saplings were driven into the ground eight feet apart, and from one to the other, resting in the crotches, was placed another sapling, which formed the ridge-pole; ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... tells a plain tale better than you. I will enumerate some woful blemishes, some of 'em sad deviations from that simplicity which was your aim. "Hailed who might be near" (the "canvas-coverture moving," by the by, is laughable); "a woman and six children" (by the way, why not nine children? It would have been just half as pathetic again); "statues of sleep they seemed;" "frost-mangled wretch;" "green putridity;" "hailed him immortal" ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... The monks standing round laughed sneeringly. They had shown a little interest, Mr. R. said, on his earlier visits. The abbot accepted a copy of the Gospel of St. John. 'St. Matthew,' he observed, 'is very laughable reading.' Blasts of wild music and the braying of colossal horns honoured our departure, and our difficult descent to the apricot groves of Deskyid. On our return to Hundar the grain was ripe on Gergan's fields. The first ripe ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... peoples have suffered from the same cause that has brought so much mortification and so great loss immediately home to us. Our panic is the greatest that ever was known only because it is the latest one that has happened, and because it has happened to ourselves. It is idle, and even laughable, to attempt to argue it out of sight. We should admit its occurrence as freely as it is asserted by the bitterest and most unfair of our critics; and we should recognize the truth of what has been well said on the subject, that the only possible answer to the attacks that have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... something a little grotesque or laughable in these youthful relations. An anecdote will illustrate it, and, at the same time, convey the corrective moral. There were a couple of school-girl friends, each of whom loved to do and experience whatever the other did or experienced. One of them accidentally ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... error meant, Sing through the air irreverent. I blame her not, the young athlete Who plants her woman's tiny feet, And dares the chances of debate Where bearded men might hesitate, Who, deeply earnest, seeing well The ludicrous and laughable, Mingling in eloquent excess Her anger and her tenderness, And, chiding with a half-caress, Strives, less for her own sex than ours, With principalities and powers, And points us upward to the clear Sunned heights of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... glass and see him throw back his head, expand his throat and chest, and open his mandibles as wide as he can, you quickly decide that he is not the apathetic creature his desultory song would lead you to infer. It really is laughable, and almost pathetic, too, to note how much energy he expends in the production of his poor ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... making deliberately the most laughable blunders, at some of which Miss Davis herself had to smile. Even Phyllis had to give way on one occasion, and in the midst of a chorus of laughter Hetty stood making a piteous face, pretending not to know what they were ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... was as clear as the red and white on her face; and foolish Francis felt in his turn flattered, for he too was fond of himself. There is no more pitiable sight to lovers of their kind, or any more laughable to its haters, than two persons falling into the love rooted in self-love. But possibly they are neither to be pitied nor laughed at; they may be plunging ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... took place were watched from a high tower. The favourite game was to place a Christian in one corner cell and a lion in the diagonally opposite corner and then leave them with all the inner doors open. The consequent effect was sometimes most laughable. On one occasion the man was given a sword. He was no coward, and was as anxious to find the lion as the lion undoubtedly was ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... commander was pale, M. Dupin was livid. Both sides were afraid. M. Dupin was afraid of the colonel; the colonel assuredly was not afraid of M. Dupin, but behind this laughable and miserable figure he saw a terrible phantom rise up—his crime, and he trembled. In Homer there is a scene where Nemesis appears ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... said, and I naturally used her husband, who was thirty-one, for the comparison. Why, this man? It would have been a laughable flattery to have guessed his age to be forty-five. Yet that was really the fact. Many a man looks younger at sixty—oh, at sixty-five! He was dark, bloodless, bowed, thin, weatherbeaten, ill-clad— ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... dining-room I was sitting, hot, and a trifle anxious, at the head of the table awaiting them. My respect for the powers in the kitchen that carried on our domestic machinery with so little jar, greatly increased. We had a laughable time changing the plates for our different courses. Thomas, who was installed in Esmerelda's place at the back of my chair, was about as awkward in his new situation as I was; but at the close of our repast, Mr. Winthrop, with ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... him at a review or a levee; and the fashionable beauties and celebrated characters of the hour have all passed and repassed through the magic lantern. A fresh showman might make his figures a little more correct, or a little more in laughable caricature, but he could produce nothing new. Alas! there is nothing new under the sun. Nothing remains for the moderns, but to practise the oldest follies the newest ways. Would you, for the sake of your female friends, know the fashionable dress of a Parisian elegante, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... France was seized with a shiver at their sinister approach, when Waterloo could be dimly discerned opening before Napoleon, the mournful acclamation of the army and the people to the condemned of destiny had nothing laughable in it, and, after making all allowance for the despot, a heart like that of the Bishop of D——, ought not perhaps to have failed to recognize the august and touching features presented by the embrace ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the artists have caught the true spirit of Lincoln's humor, and while showing the laughable side of many incidents in his career, they are true to life in the ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... cried Alan, with a start. "There may be a trifling matter of an inch or two; I'm no saying I'm just exactly what ye would call a tall man, whatever; and I dare say," he added, his voice tailing off in a laughable manner, "now when I come to think of it, I dare say ye'll be just about right. Ay, it'll be a foot, or near hand; or may be ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the Schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... Probably Juliet would die in blank verse, disguised as prose. But Mercutio, altho he would certainly cease to be a gentleman, would be a most amusing personality whose whimsical behavior would seem highly laughable; and the nurse might become another Mrs. Gamp, with a host of peculiarities realized with riotous humor. And it is possible also to make a guess at the treatment which would have been accorded to the pitiful tale if Thackeray ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... Once for all, whatever happens to you, I'll carry on. I'll do everything exactly as if you were there. You can rest easy. But—— Oh, how can you think such a thing? I never in all my life saw any one less likely to go under. You're not the type, sir. It's—it's laughable." The words came tumbling out of an honest heart. "I saw men go mad in France, but they were hardly your sort. Perhaps you're too much alone. Will you let me live with you? Or, if ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Lescaut and Manon were in an agony of fear during my recital, especially while I was drawing his portrait to the life: but his own vanity prevented him from recognising it, and I did it so well that he was the first to pronounce it extremely laughable. You will allow that I had reason for dwelling on ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... twisting, the squirming of the Republicans at this crisis under the double fire of the Democrats and the women, would have been laughable, had not their proposed action been so outrageously unjust and ungrateful. The tone of the Republican press[53] was stale, flat, and unprofitable. But while their journals were thus unsparing in their ridicule and criticism of the loyal women who had proved ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... daydream, illustrated by the young person who suddenly breaks into a laugh and when you ask why replies that she was thinking how funny it would be if, etc., etc. She is very fond of a good laugh, and not having anything laughable actually at hand proceeds to imagine something. So, a music lover may mentally rehearse a piece when he has no actual music to enjoy; and if he has some power of musical invention, he may amuse himself, in idle moments, by making up music in his head; just as one who has some ability ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... men entangle themselves in their own schemes,' iii. 386; 'Most schemes of political improvement are very laughable ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... all that was worth reading in the magazines, she laughed at all that was laughable in Punch, and the long, slow day wore on somehow. Mrs. Topman brought her lunch, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... 'King or devil, but no merchant under the sun.' So the news spread abroad, and Gunther puffed his cheeks over it. A six-foot-two man, a monstrous leisurely merchant, who rose not to the lord of a castle and town, who did not wait for his lordship's humour, but found laughable matter in his own; who was taller than the Archduke and thought his Grace a dull dog; who made a Danae of his landlord! Was this man Jove? Who could think the Archduke a dull dog except an Emperor, or, perhaps, a great ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... last volume (16) of your interesting miscellany, I was much amused with a humorous legend at page 108, called the Rat's Tower, and according to your reference, having turned to page 68, of vol. xii. was equally entertained with the same laughable and well told story versified. This humorous production is extracted from a work entitled, if I mistake not, "The Rhinish Keepsake," containing many of the most wonderful and spirit-stirring legends connected with old chateaux, &c. on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... from his personal courage, he had no military qualities whatever, and failed to acquire any during his entire service. He never could learn the drill, except the most simple company movements. He was also very illiterate, and could barely write his name. And his commands on drill were generally laughable. For instance, in giving the command of right or left wheel, he would supplement it by saying, "Swing around, boys, just like a gate." Such directions would mortify us exceedingly, and caused the men of the other companies to laugh at and twit us about our Captain. He would ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... frozen parts of the face, and in attempting to warm the hands, in order to be prepared for the next operation. Scarcely was one place cured by constant friction than another was frozen; and though there was nothing pleasant about it, yet it was laughable enough to observe the dexterity which was used in changing the position of the hand from the face to the mitten, and vice versa. One of the men was severely affected, the whole side of his face being nearly raw. Towards sunset I suffered ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... about the size of a tan-terrier, and so full of play, that he got himself into all sorts of shapes, and performed all the antics imaginable. But the most laughable thing was to see him as a tight-rope performer. I am sure he outdid any circus ...
— The Nursery, No. 103, July, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... conscientiously declare that I never feel surprised at any one sticking to the belief of immutability; though I am often not a little surprised at the arguments advanced on this side. I remember too well my endless oscillations of doubt and difficulty. It is to me really laughable when I think of the years which elapsed before I saw what I believe to be the explanation of some parts of the case; I believe it was fifteen years after I began before I saw the meaning and cause of the divergence of the descendants of any one ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... Klostergeschichte, Gespensterlied) both in Germany and England, satisfied, however crudely, the longing of the time for freedom, adventure, strong action, and emotion. As Lowell said of the transcendental movement in New England, it was a breaking of windows to get at the fresh air. Laughable as many of them seem today, with their improbable plots and exaggerated characters, they met a need which had not been met either by the rationalizing wits of the Augustan age or by the romanticizing poets ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the interests that oppose betterment of the worker's hard lot in New York, that dictated the appointment by Tammany of a commission composed of builders to revise its code of tenement laws, and that sneered at the "laughable results of the Gilder Tenement House Commission." Those results made for the health and happiness and safety of a million and a half of souls, and were accounted, on every humane ground, the longest step forward that had been taken by this community. For the old absentee ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... his disguise, and comes forth tricked up with false hair and the dress of a Bacchanal; but still with some misgivings at the thought of going thus attired through the streets of Thebes, and with many laughable readjustments of the unwonted articles of clothing. And with the woman's dress, his madness is closing faster round him; just before, in the palace, terrified at the noise of the earthquake, he had drawn sword upon a mere fantastic appearance, and pierced only ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... though fearsome in the main, was in some parts almost laughable. Every thing was to be divided, and every one made alike: houses and lands were to be distributed by lot; and the mighty man and the beggar—the auld man and the hobble-de-hoy—the industrious man and the spendthrift—the maimed, the cripple, and the blind, the clever man of ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... at least half a dozen times, he retired without uttering another sentence. We have heard since, that Sir Thomas is become an orator, he having made several brilliant speeches in Parliament. It may be so; but his debut at Wells was most laughable. Mr. Goodford, one of the Ilchester Bastile Visiting Magistrates, next came forward, to disclaim any participation in calling the meeting: he had, he said, certainly signed the requisition, but he did not know the object of it. He was succeeded ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... not coffee, it was some heavenly nectar, and his bread was more than the staff of life, it was the bread of love. She brought her chair close to his side, she said that was the place of honor. She fed his heart with soft, beaming glances, and she amused him with laughable descriptions of her partners. "After you, John," she said with a pretty seriousness, "after you, John, all other men look so small!" And what man wholly devoted to his wife, would not have been intoxicated with the rapture of a love so near and yet ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Annamooka, in the Friendly Islands, we were entertained with great civility by Toobou, the chief, who gave us much amusement by a sort of pantomime, in which some prizefighters displayed their feats of arms, and this part of the drama concluded with the presentation of some laughable story which produced among the chiefs and their attendants the most immoderate mirth. This friendly reception was also repeated in the island of Hapaee, where Captain Cook ordered an exhibition of fireworks, and in return the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... to furnish laughable amusement," said Detective Gubb seriously. "What did Mrs. Canterby say when she asked for ink ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... by three rows of hussar-jacket buttons, and warmly ornamented with a little fur collar of fox's skin. Great-coats, formerly of bottle-green, rendered by time invisible, edged with a black cord, and brightened by a lining of plaid, blue and yellow, which had a most laughable effect. Coats, formerly styled the "swallow-tails," of a reddish-brown, with a handsome collar of plush, ornamented with buttons, once gilt, but now of a copper color. There were also to be seen Polish cloaks, with collars of cat-skin, frogged, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... delay cost me all, and more than all. I was still fiddle-faddling with the girth strap, the better to impose upon my Indian horse-guards, when suddenly there arose a yelling hubbub of laughter in the camp behind. I turned to look and beheld a thing laughable enough, no doubt, and yet it broke no bubble of mirth in me. Half-way from the nearest forest fringe to the great fire a man, white of skin, and clothed only in a pair of trooper boots, was running swiftly for cover to the nearest pine-bough shelter, shouting like an escaped Bedlamite as he fled. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... opened on an entirely new line, an Universal Comic Railroad, and Cosmopolitan Pleasure Van for the transmission of bon mots, puns, witticisms, humorous passengers, and queer figures, to every part of the world. The engines have been constructed on the most laughable principles, and being on the high-pressure principle, the manager has provided a vast number of patent anti-explosive fun-belts, to secure his passengers against ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... & put up the tent, then for a fire, no wood, but chips in abundance, no alternative, soon had a large pile of them, & set fire to them, when they immediately blazed up & burned like dry bark, it was laughable to see the boys jump around it, particularly Beth & saying it "wooled them" bad. On saying that I feared the dust would get in the meat, as it was frying, George said he would as soon have his broiled as any way, so laughing, & jokeing we forgot our antipathies to the fire some said ...
— Across the Plains to California in 1852 - Journal of Mrs. Lodisa Frizzell • Lodisa Frizell
... A laughable instance of their dexterity took place in the Great Pagoda, on the night of the 2nd July. The soldiers, for several nights previous, had missed some arms, although a sentry was before the door, and they generally slept with their firelocks ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... process of articulating reality philosophy tends to create an artificial world of its own, which in the end gets so far away from reality that its conclusions when they are confronted with the pell-mell of ordinary experience appear remote, strange, fantastic, arbitrary, and even laughable. ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... discovered in his study, engaged in the deepest meditation on a grammatical crux; and had received the news of his arrest with a blank horror and amazement very laughable in the eyes of Sir Piers. Master Aristoteles was pounding rhubarb with his sleeves turned up, and required some convincing that he was not wanted professionally. Father Warner was no where to be found. The three priests were spared fetters in consideration of their sacred character: ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... the emperor dislikes etiquette, and he has strictly forbidden all Spanish customs as laughable and ridiculous. He has forbidden all attendance upon the imperial family, except on new year's day. He has also forbidden us to kneel before his majesty, because it is an outlandish Spanish custom, and a homage due to God alone. All the French ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the whole superstructure of necessity fell to the ground. Those who were obliged to reject the ridiculous legends which invested the whole of their Pantheon, together with the fabulous adjudgers of future punishments, could not but dismiss the punishments, which were, in fact, as laughable, and as obviously the fictions of human ingenuity, as their dispensers. In short, the civilized part of the world in those days lay in this dreadful condition; their intellect had far outgrown their religion; the disproportions ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... forbear to foster an opinion every way so advantageous to himself; at times, for the sake of the joke, assuming airs of superiority over myself, which, though laughable enough, were ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... through the air irreverent. I blame her not, the young athlete Who plants her woman's tiny feet, And dares the chances of debate Where bearded men might hesitate, Who, deeply earnest, seeing well The ludicrous and laughable, Mingling in eloquent excess Her anger and her tenderness, And, chiding with a half-caress, Strives, less for her own sex than ours, With principalities and powers, And points us upward to the clear Sunned heights ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... lost your senses," she said, and slipped her hand into his arm. "Come down into the garden: I like it in the twilight—and that pile of stones over there will not weigh upon our eyes; the trees hide it. Come, my Ange: tell me all your news, serious and laughable. I am glad you were helping your uncle; but I do not like you to ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... and sat gazing wistfully into the fireplace. Whatever he saw there fixed his attention, for Uncle Remus spoke to him several times without receiving a response. Presently, however, Daddy Jack exclaimed with characteristic but laughable irrelevance: ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... solemnity against which Lagardere protested, laughing louder than before. "On the contrary, it is more laughable than ever. A secret marriage. A romance. Perhaps I shall have to soothe a widow when I hoped to woo ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... significant of men's character than what they find laughable." The truth of this observation would perhaps have been more apparent if he had said culture instead of character. The last thing in which the cultivated man can have community with the vulgar is their jocularity; and we can hardly exhibit more strikingly ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... place of your magnificent black ringlet (which I now wear next my heart, and shall ever keep as a love-token), she had only a sorry specimen of your hand-maiden's lint-white locks. As I live, it was truly laughable. The good lady would have annihilated me if she could; and threatened me with terrible reprisals. At first, she tried to attribute the transformation, which she could not otherwise account for, to witchcraft; and though I derided the charge, I must needs say, the trick was so cleverly ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... skin, integument sleep-walking, somnambulism hide, epidermis bird, ornithology fleshly, carnal bird, aviary hearer, auditor bee, apiary snake, serpent bending, flexible heap, aggregation wrinkle, corrugation laugh, cachinnation slow, dilatory laughable, risible lime, calcimine fear, trepidation coal, lignite live, exist man, anthropology bridal, nuptial winter, hibernate wed, marry gap, hiatus husband/wife, spouse right, ethical shore, littoral showy, ostentatious forswear, perjure spelling, orthography ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... her daughters had a good word, a soft word from you, till you found out their beards. No mercy with them after that with you—the cowardly disguise—pike for pike was the cry. It was laughable to see you, and to hear you, as you brought a battery that could never reach them—fired upon them the reproach of Diogenes to an effeminate—"If he was offended with nature for making him a man, and not a woman;" and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... quite an accumulation of mail when Uncle Jeb, looking strange and laughable in his civilized clothes, as Barnard called them, arrived on Saturday morning. The bus, which brought him up from Catskill, brought also the advance guard of the scout army that would shortly ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... worldly possessions—and often with even less inquiry as to moral qualities than persons so situated would make; God's ordinances are not to be so mocked, and such violations of his laws are severely visited upon offenders against them. It would be laughable, if it were not too melancholy, to see beings bound by the holiest ties, who ought to be the sharers in the most sacred duties—united, perhaps, but in one aim, and that to secure from a world which cares not for ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... an officer in your American army at home. To be a corporal must seem laughable to you. And yet, the stripe is more than just a mere stripe. ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... pretensions are extravagant, his logic is blundering, his threats laughable; but he has hit his mark. We can trace his influence in the detention of the Alexandra and the protracted judicial proceedings which have arisen out of it; in the sudden raid upon the rams at Birkenhead; in the announced intention of the Government ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... much better without a cargo, fellows," he declared, earnestly. "Now, listen to him, would you, calling me a cargo?" whimpered Nick; but while he thus pretended to be offended, it was laughable to see how quickly he made the transfer, as though afraid Jack might change his mind, or ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... add to Peace's rapidly growing collection. At one time Mrs. Campbell would suddenly appear on the threshold with her hands filled with colored plates from some magazine article relating to birds or bees, plants or other nature study. Again Faith would bring in a bundle of laughable incidents gleaned from the "funny" pages of popular magazines; or Allee would lay a carefully trimmed bunch of short poems gathered from children's publications upon the white counterpane of Peace's bed. And once Hope triumphantly displayed a thick package of beautiful illustrations for articles ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... swear he feared him as much at least as he respected him. Scaliger will not allow Persius to have any wit; Casaubon interprets this in the mildest sense, and confesses his author was not good at turning things into a pleasant ridicule, or, in other words, that he was not a laughable writer. That he was ineptus, indeed, but that was non aptissimus ad jocandum; but that he was ostentatious of his learning, that by Scaliger's good favour he denies. Persius showed his learning, but was no boaster of it; he did ostendere, but not ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... suddenly took me in his arms and embraced me very hard; then held me at arm's length, looking at me with his face all working with sorrow; and then whipped about, and crying good-bye to me, set off backward by the way that we had come at a sort of jogging run. It might have been laughable to another; but I was in no mind to laugh. I watched him as long as he was in sight; and he never stopped hurrying, nor once looked back. Then it came in upon my mind that this was all his sorrow at my departure; and my conscience smote me hard ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... DE LA HALLE. In the Jeu d'Adam or de la Feuillee (c. 1262) satirical studies of real life mingle strangely with fairy fantasy; the poet himself, lamenting his griefs of wedlock, his father, his friends are humorously introduced; the fool and the physician play their laughable parts; and the three fay ladies, for whom the citizens have prepared a banquet under la feuillee, grant or refuse the wishes of the mortal folk in the traditional manner of enchantresses amiable or perverse. The Jeu de Robin et Marlon—first performed at Naples ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... by the old man's laughter at the distress of his fellowmen roused Jon's ire. He could see nothing laughable about the ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... conflagration that perhaps ever occurred was that at Mr. Phillips's workshop, when the whole of his stock of instruments for extinguishing flame were at one fell swoop destroyed. "'Tis rare to see the engineer hoist with his own petard," says the poet; and certainly it was a most laughable contre-temps to see the fire-engines arrive at the manufactory just in time to witness the fire-annihilators annihilated by the fire. A similar mishap occurred to these unfortunate implements at Paris. ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.
... middle. It affected one like a man standing on his armpits. The capital of the Territory was composed chiefly of roofs and dormer windows, of squatty wooden islands in a boundless sea. The Church of the Immaculate Conception was a laughable tent of masonry, top-heavy with its square tower. As for cultivated fields and the pastures where the cattle grazed, such vanished realities were forgotten. And what was washing over the marble tombs and slate ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the frigate and corvette have been sent to sea; if not, Higson will have pretty soon to give up his command, and we three, degraded from our rank, shall be ignominiously sent back into the midshipman's berth," said Tom, with a laughable grimace. ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... out of season. Beware of bursting out into laughter, beyond the limits of decorum, and of doing so without reasonable cause, merely from an inclination to laugh. Never laugh at the misfortunes of others, although they seem in some sort laughable ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... which sometimes makes a fool of a woman who has lost her true feelings among the accidents of life. All the wonder was how the gentleman, with his lack of worldly wisdom and agonizing consciousness of ridicule, could have been induced to take a measure at once so prudent and so laughable. But while people talked the wedding-day arrived. The ceremony was to be solemnized according to the Episcopalian forms and in open church, with a degree of publicity that attracted many spectators, who occupied the front seats of the galleries ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... spring, another, who had lived long in Macedonia, is positive it will take two years from now. General Hunter-Weston took no part in this discussion, but looked interested and amused while his juniors threshed the subject out. All agreed that it was most laughable to read the forecasts in the papers at home, and that it was only now that England was realising how enormous the task before her was, and that the war will continue till both sides are just about played out, but there can be no doubt of our ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... Whit-Tuesday. This Maypole is hung as usual with garlands on the top, and, in these garlands, spoons, and other little valuables, are placed. The high smooth round pole is then well greased; and now he who can climb up to the top may have what he can get,—a very laughable scene as you may suppose, of awkwardness and agility, and failures on the very brink of success. Now began a dance. The women danced very well, and, in general, I have observed throughout Germany that the women in the ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... against the workers fill one's soul at the spectacle of the ridiculous strike methods so often employed and that as often frustrate the possible success of every large labor war. Or is it not laughable, if it were not so deadly serious, that the producers publicly discuss for months in advance where and when they might strike, and therewith give the enemy a chance to prepare his means of combat. For months the papers of the money power bring long interviews with ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... country; at twelve miles we arrived at another fine watercourse. The horses were almost unmanageable with flashness, running about with their mouths full of the rich herbage, kicking up their heels and biting at one another, in a perfect state of horse-play. It was almost laughable to see them, with such heavy packs on their backs, attempting such elephantine gambols; so I kept them going, to steady them a bit. The creek here I called Winter* Water. At five miles farther we passed a very high mountain in the range, which appeared the highest ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... well manifested by a proclamation which, signed by Jose Reyes, Celestins Dominguez and Genara Cautino, was issued to the people of Guayama on May 20, 1898. As one of the curiosities of the war, it can only be compared to the celebrated and laughable manifesto which Captain-General Augustin issued at Manila just before the appearance of Admiral ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... being all comfortably seated, we now rattled away merrily, accomplishing a greater distance in ten minutes than Christian probably trudged over in a day. It was laughable, while we glanced along, as it were, at the tail of a thunderbolt, to observe two dusty foot travellers in the old pilgrim guise, with cockle shell and staff, their mystic rolls of parchment in their hands and their intolerable burdens on their ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this point the car slowed down. Phin Drayne looked as though he were exhibiting his fellow students of Gridley High School as so many laughable freaks. ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... maimed hands, Or oozing slowly, like blind tentacles Up to the gates; higher than that heaped brick Man piled to smite the sun. And all around Are devils. One can laugh... but that hunched shape The face one stone, like those Assyrian kings! One sees in carvings, watching men flayed red Horribly laughable in leaps and writhes; That face — utterly evil, clouded round With evil like a smoke — it turns smiles sour! ... And Nero there, the flabby cheeks astrain And sweating agony... long agony... Imperishable, unappeasable For ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... twitch away in silence that he made as haughty as he could, but not so haughty that Trannel did not find it laughable, and he laughed in a teasing way that made Breckon more and more serious. He was aware of becoming even solemn with the question of his likeness to Trannel. He was of Trannel's quality, and their difference was a matter of quantity, and there was not enough difference. In his sense ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... literature. If our stage in civilization and scientific attainments were to be gauged by the contents of that set of papers, it would be low indeed. The actions of men and the condition of things are judged from a view-point that corresponds with centuries gone by, and that has been long since proved laughable and untenable by science. A considerable portion of our journalists are people who, as Bismarck once put it, "missed their calling," but whose education and standard of wages fit with bourgeois interests. Furthermore, these newspapers, as well as the majority of the belles-lettric ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... might have something else on his mind. They raised their eye-brows languidly when he spoke of the Wainwright party in gentle surprise that he had not yet learned that they were gone some time. They were departed on some excursion. Where? Oh, really-it was almost laughable, indeed-they didn't know. Were they sure? Why, yes-it was almost laughable, indeed -they were quite sure. Where could the gentleman find out about them ? Well, they-as they had explained-did not know, ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... passengers, all gentlemen, walked the whole of that stage. The next was no better, the fresh pair of horses jibbing and kicking worse than ever. At last one kicked himself free of all the harness, and fell on his back in a deep ditch. If it had not been so tiresome, it really would have been very laughable, especially as everybody was more or less afraid of the poor horse's heels, and did not in the least know how ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... your pity for life, your serenity, and to speak truly, your greatness.—I, poor wretch, I am stuck on the earth as with soles of lead; everything disturbs me, tears me to pieces, ravages me, and I make efforts to rise. If I should take your manner of looking at the whole of life I should become laughable, that is all. For you preach to me in vain. I cannot have another temperament than my own; nor another esthetics than what is the consequence of it. You accuse me of not letting myself go, according to nature. Well, and that discipline? that virtue? what shall we do with it? I admire M. Buffon ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... and we had to tell the Indians that we were quite out of victuals. Then we sent Aleck to the Jesuit priest to ask him if he would kindly send us a little butter and milk. In the evening the good man came down himself, and expressed the greatest distress at our laughable condition. He was a German by birth, but spoke English very well. "I think I have a leetle cock," he said, "and I will give him to you, and if you have some rice, you may make some soup; that will be better than to starve." We thanked him warmly, and Aleck ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... ridicule, even down to his pretty cap with its ear-flaps and its ribbon adorned with representations of harvest implements. He had come to town so calmly confident in himself—to make the painful discovery that he was a laughable object! Every time he tried to make one of a party, he was pushed to one side; he had no right to speak to others; he must ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... is pretty well settled that the popular weekly paper Life is not equalled by any of its contemporaries. From the fifty-two numbers of the last twelve months the best of the humorous designs have been selected and bound into a handsome quarto volume.[M] Pen and pencil combine in making its pages laughable, and there are many incisive thrusts at the weak spots in society, but without coarseness ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... early shown a faculty for draughtsmansbip; when at school, he made decidedly clever caricatures of such persons as displeased him, and he drew such wonderful horses (on the race-course or pulling cabs), such laughable donkeys in costers' carts, such perfect dogs, that on several occasions some friend had purchased with a veritable shilling a specimen of his work. 'Put him to the die-sinking,' said an acquaintance of the family, himself so employed; ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... to our great joy, an unclouded sun rose upon the prairie. We presented rather a laughable appearance, for the cold and clammy buckskin, saturated with water, clung fast to our limbs; the light wind and warm sunshine soon dried them again, and then we were all incased in armor of intolerable ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... volunteer in the days of Wellington and Bonaparte, and was one of the—if not the one—oldest Volunteers present. "Our comrade, Mr George Hattersley," was toasted with musical honours and great cheering by the whole company. During the evening Captain Ferrand gave some very interesting and laughable anecdotes about his military experiences, especially as a Cavalryman during the Plug-drawing and Chartist Riots. He told us that his uncle, Major Ferrand, had commanded the Bingley corps of Volunteers, and Captain Ellis, ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... draw a comparison between the two people, I almost invariably cast the balance against ourselves." And he writes at another time:—"I received several private letters and printed notices of Our Old Home from England. It is laughable to see the innocent wonder with which they regard my criticisms, accounting for them by jaundice, insanity, jealousy, hatred, on my part, and never admitting the least suspicion that there may be a particle of truth in them. The monstrosity of their self-conceit is such ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... always be a laughable side, even to the grimmest events, the comic element was supplied in this case by our professors of languages, drawing, and so forth, who had not dared to go back into Paris after leaving it on the 28th, on account of the fighting. When they had made up their minds to return on the 29th, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... which the English tyrant exacts from his consort. One may often hear an American matron commiserate a friend who has married in Europe, while the daughters declare in chorus that they will never follow the example. Laughable as all this may seem to English women, it is perfectly true that the theory as well as the practice of conjugal life is not the same in America as in England. There are overbearing husbands in America, but they are more condemned by the opinion ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... black skull-cap pushed a little on one side, and showing an inch or so of his bald head, with his grimly-grinning face empurpled by the violent physical exertion of the moment, and with his thick heavy figure ridiculously perched on one leg. Mr. Blyth, however, was beyond all comparison the more laughable object of the two, as he soared nervously into the air on Mat's foot, tottering infirmly in the strong grasp that supported him, till he seemed to be trembling all over, from the tips of his crisp black hair ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... in her features—a resemblance which was confirmed by a pretty little petulance of temper—made it convenient now and again to convey a number of tea cakes into Mingo's hat, which happened to be sitting near, the conveyance taking place in spite of laughable pantomimic protests on the part of the old man, ranging from appealing nods and grimaces to indignant frowns ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... was not laughable. Only he that is lord of the years is obdurate. If a man prayed for life to a furious, merciless Sultan well might the Sultan's slaves laugh. Yet it is not ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany
... with huzzas, three-times-three, [p 15] Which echo repeated with rapturous glee. Now mirth and good humour pervaded the throng, And each was requested to furnish a song, Which many comply'd with; but such as deny'd, Some whimsical laughable story supply'd. The Lion, "Britannia Rule," sung mighty well: The Tiger, "in English Roast Beef," did excel. While others made all the wide valley to ring, With "Nile's Glorious Battle," and "God Save the King." In such good amusements the evening ...
— The Elephant's Ball, and Grand Fete Champetre • W. B.
... public is very much more concerned to have matter than form; and for this very reason it is deficient in any high degree of culture. The public shows its preference in this respect in the most laughable way when it comes to deal with poetry; for there it devotes much trouble to the task of tracking out the actual events or personal circumstances in the life of the poet which served as the occasion of his various works; nay, these events and circumstances come ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... works, swarms the innumerable legion of satirical fabliaux and laughable tales. They, too, cross the sea, slight, imperceptible, wandering, thus continuing those migrations so difficult to trace, the laws of which learned men of all nations have vainly sought to discover. They follow all roads; nothing stops ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Vigne, to Vigne and young Sandby with his fresh cheeks and impending penniless years acquiring a comprehension of the bond market. She said, "I wonder if she really likes Bailey?" Arnaud's energy of dismay was laughable, "What criminal folly! They haven't finished ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... only compassion, did not their stretched necks, their heads twisted to the right or left, their back-bones crooked, one shoulder up to their ears, and a number of other whimsical attitudes, which are the consequences of the disorder, present the most ludicrous and the most laughable picture.—Vide De Tott's Memoirs.] ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... has for its most laughable effect the raising of a whole host of phantoms, and when a State is so far gone that civic Fear is quite normal to the citizens, then you will find them blenching with terror at a piece of print, a whispered ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... thus tenderly engaged, are naturally bending down their heads. Between them and eternity, to all human calculation, there is but a minute and a half. Oh heavens! what is it that I shall do? Speaking or acting, what help can I offer? Strange it is, and to a mere auditor of the tale might seem laughable, that I should need a suggestion from the "Iliad" to prompt the sole resource that remained. Yet so it was. Suddenly I remembered the shout of Achilles, and its effect. But could I pretend to shout like the son of Peleus, aided by Pallas? ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... of some of the signs out in front and in the lobby? We have noticed how audiences enjoy these funny signs which have been shown on the screen in The Literary Digest 'Topics of the Day.' Here are some of the most laughable ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... of Monastier was just striking nine as I got quit of these preliminary troubles and descended the hill through the common. As long as I was within sight of the windows, a secret shame and the fear of some laughable defeat withheld me from tampering with Modestine. She tripped along upon her four small hoofs with a sober daintiness of gait; from time to time she shook her ears or her tail; and she looked so small under the bundle that my mind misgave me. We got across the ford without difficulty—there ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... camp. The clothing could be freed of them by boiling in salt water or by going carefully over the seams and picking them off. The latter operation was a frequent occupation with the men on any day which was warm enough to permit them to disrobe for the purpose. One of the most laughable sights I ever beheld was the whole brigade, halted for a couple of hours' rest one hot day, with clothing off, "skirmishing," as the boys called it, for "graybacks." This was one of the many unpoetical features ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... Watson wants to see his Cardinals crawl up out of the subway why doesn't he give Matson a chance? The youngster can pitch good ball, and the line of twirling that has been handed out by the Cardinals thus far this season would be laughable, were it ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... not see anything so very laughable in that. I was at that battle, and therefore this gentleman might very well have remarked me; in fact, I think I can ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... this is the droll thing that came about. We had a day after the otters at the Bennan, a wet cold day, with little that was laughable in it, except that a man of the Macdonalds took an otter home over his shoulders, and the beast dead, as we thought; but coming in at his own door it gripped him by the back of his hip, and at the start he got he let a great cry to his wife in ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 'if' or 'but' remains behind?" asked the old man. "Let us be reckless for once, brother! If the whole business were not so diabolically serious, it would be quite laughable. The young one for me and the old one for you in our leisure hours, my son; better washed linen; clothes without holes in them; no dust on our books; a pleasant 'Rejoice' every morning, or at meal-times;—only ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not visit his people enough, or there is "a row" about the singing, or about a change in the hymn-books, or about repairing the church, or buying an organ, or something or other, and straightway sides are taken, and the wills of both parties get roused. It is sometimes laughable—it would always be, only that it is too sad—to see how quickly both parties grow pious, as they grow perverse. It would seem, as the strife waxes hot, that the glory of God was never so much in their hearts as now. They pray with ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... the "Horse Fair" and other similar pictures, which have brought her much into the company of men, she has found it wise to dress in male costume. A laughable incident is related of this mode of dress. One day when she returned from the country, she found a messenger awaiting to announce to her the sudden illness of one of her young friends. Rosa did not wait to change ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... Clifton to give four readings on the Georges; the first reading had only three auditors, the second not one; so Thackeray went away. Bellew is uncertain; sometimes having empty benches, sometimes overflowing ones, according to the programme, whether serious or laughable. Tom Hood gave a lecture on Humour, which was so dull that the audience left him. Miss Glyn Dallas often reads 'Cleopatra,' magnificently too, to empty benches. Sims Reeves draws a vast audience, but sometimes at the last moment refuses to sing (probably paying forfeit) because ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of your glass and see him throw back his head, expand his throat and chest, and open his mandibles as wide as he can, you quickly decide that he is not the apathetic creature his desultory song would lead you to infer. It really is laughable, and almost pathetic, too, to note how much energy he expends in the production of his ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... make me laughable in another way. I can't see what right you have to interfere," she breaks out suddenly, standing before him, wilful but lovely. "What are you to me, or I to you, that you should order me about ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... few weeks ago a laughable incident occurred in the neighborhood of Nashville, which is worthy of record. A saucy, dashing young girl, of the Southern persuasion, was, with a number of other ladies, brought into the presence of Gen. Rosecrans, in order that their Southern ardor ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... on hand for the fun; and it was a laughable sight to see the great awkward fellow straining every nerve to overtake the little streak of animated lightning that flashed before him. Landy was a Newfoundland shepherd, and I knew that nothing could induce him to hurt the fawn ...
— The Nursery, No. 106, October, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... story-telling, I suppose I should be gayer than I am; but as it is, we two get a little fun out of my comic pieces. I begin them half-crying sometimes, but after they are done they amuse me. I don't suppose my comic pieces are very laughable; at any rate the man who makes a business of writing me down says the last one I wrote is very melancholy reading, and that if it was only a little better perhaps some bereaved person might pick out a line or two that would do ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the day, and the scene changes to a view of Hyde Park and the Serpentine River on a frosty morning in January: in which is represented, with admirable effect, a display of patent skating. An oil cloth is spread upon the stage, a group comprised of various laughable characters are assembled on it, and skate about with as much rapidity, and precisely as though it were a sheet of ice. The adroit skill of old stagers on the slippery surface, with the clumsy awkwardness and terror of novices in the art, are well represented. A prodigious fat ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... I know, but I am showing you the absurdity of your theory. It can't be correct, and we can't believe in Marie Fauville's innocence unless we are prepared to suppose an unheard-of thing, that M. Fauville took part in his own murder. Why, it's laughable!" ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... individuality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state but the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words-where death was an almost laughable impossibility-the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life." He wrote further: "It is no nebulous ecstasy, but a state of transcendent wonder, associated with absolute ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... she help wondering at his stupidity in imagining she couldn't see through his desire for information about children. It was laughable, coming after Toby's. Oh, these men! They were dear, foolish creatures. Poor kids, she thought, her mind reverting to Zip's twins. What had they done to have this pack of foolish people worrying over them? Were they all going to take a ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... wharf, and the stare of bewildered astonishment with which the 'fares' resign themselves and their luggage into the hands of the porters, who seize all the packages at once as a matter of course, and run away with them, heaven knows where, is laughable in the extreme. A Margate boat lies alongside the wharf, the Gravesend boat (which starts first) lies alongside that again; and as a temporary communication is formed between the two, by means of a plank and hand-rail, the natural confusion of the scene ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... and tore them all to pieces. As soon as they had done with the bundle, two of them came towards the inner cave and saw us. One put his long paw in to seize us; but Hastings gave him a slash with his knife, and the animal took his paw out again fast enough. It was laughable to see him hold out his hand to the others, and then taste the blood with the tip of his tongue, and such a chattering I never heard - they were evidently very angry, and more came into the cave and joined them; then another put in his hand, and received a cut just ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... adulterated the pure love of liberty, had not seen far enough. What could a theory of freedom give the country better than the peace and the prosperity brought about by the magnanimous Emperor? Horace's part in the battle of Philippi had long since become to him a laughable episode of youth. He had even made a merry verse about it, casting the unashamed story of his flight in the words of Archilochus and Alcaeus, as if the chief result for him had been a ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... King Arthur of the East, who in pursuance of his promise to a Jogi or Magician, brings to him the Baital (Vampire), who is hanging on a tree. The difficulties King Vikram and his son have in bringing the Vampire into the presence of the Jogi are truly laughable; and on this thread is strung a series of Hindu fairy stories, which contain much interesting information on Indian customs and manners. It also alludes to that state, which induces Hindu devotees to allow themselves to be buried ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... a great impediment and whose favour is productive of mighty fruits? No one should move his lips, arms and thighs, before the king. A person should speak and spit before the king only mildly. In the presence of even laughable objects, a man should not break out into loud laughter, like a maniac; nor should one show (unreasonable) gravity by containing himself, to the utmost. One should smile modestly, to show his interest (in what is before him). He that is ever ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... would have vulgarized any one else but a general. He made himself very pleasant, accepted a cup of tea, praised Mary's French, said that he intended to dine with us at the Commandant's to-morrow, and told us some laughable stories about the Arabs. I noticed that the Lieutenant seemed quite overawed by the presence of the General, and sat flute in hand, like a statue. Mary tried to put him at his ease, but to no purpose. ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... generally deemed not sufficiently interesting, so much noise is made, and such bursts of laughter are raised, that the member who is speaking can scarcely distinguish his own words. This must needs be a distressing situation; and it seems then to be particularly laughable, when the Speaker in his chair, like a tutor in a school, again and again endeavours to restore order, which he does by calling out "To order, to order," apparently often without much attention being paid ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... it was laughable to see the tremendous excitement caused by the small striped animal with the bushy tail. The skunk emerged from the window in something of haste. Reaching the ground it seemed to cast one look backward, as though either feeling provoked at being forced to vacate ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... easy to him, but he really cares for none but literature. He spends all his spare time in reading and in amusements, and begins to write a tragic opera. This proves, however, eminently unsuccessful, and he burns it in a comic fit of anger. One laughable love-affair in which he engaged at Udine exhibits his adventures in their truly comic aspect. It reminds us of the scene in 'Don Giovanni,' where Leporello personates the Don and deceives Donna Elvira. Goldoni had often noticed a beautiful ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... in looking over the beautiful views which Rutherford had collected since he left his distant, eastern home. The pictures taken among the mountains had developed finely, and they all grew enthusiastic over them. Then there were pictures of his friends, in groups and singly, and in laughable combinations and positions; among them, some which Rutherford had taken of his friend, Tom Durston, and his family, at the ranch where he had stopped over night on his way out. There was one of Tom himself, in a futile attempt to milk a refractory cow, where he lay sprawling ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... family of Julius Caesar disappears from history. After so much greatness, genius, and wisdom, the fall may seem petty and almost laughable. It is absurd to lose the Empire for the pleasure of singing in a theatre. And yet, bizarre as the end may seem, it was not the result of the vices, the follies, and the crimes of Nero alone. In his way, Nero himself was, like all members of ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... their national rights, they must be content to suffer accordingly—but I meddle not with politics, and with all my heart abhor them. Whatever the gaities of the Carnival may have been formerly, it is scarce possible to conceive a more fantastic, a more picturesque, a more laughable scene than the Strada di Toledo exhibited to-day; the whole city seemed to wear "one universal grin;" and such an incessant fire of sugar-plums (or what seemed such) was carried on, and with such eagerness and mimic fury, that when our carriage ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... knees, he fixed his gaze upon us for some time; but, seeing that we remained immovable, he began to throw himself into the most extravagant attitudes, shaking his foot from time to time. When he found that all his violence had no effect, he turned his rear to us in a most laughable manner, and absolutely groaned in spirit when he found that this last insult ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... knickknacks,—tobacco, pipes, paper, and pens, to send letters to loved ones far away. At a gingerbread stall, a half-dozen are taking a lunch. The oyster-saloons are crowded. Boys are crying their newspapers. There are laughable and solemn scenes. Yonder is the hospital. A file of soldiers stand waiting in the street. A coffin is brought out. The fife begins its mournful air, the drum its muffled beat. The procession moves away, bearing the dead ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... strange fellows in her time: Some that will evermore peep through their eyes, And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper; And other of such vinegar aspect That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable. ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... convulsed us with laughter. The gins showed such curiosity about Lizzie's pipe, that she handed it round and made them each take a puff. Their expressions, when the pungent smoke caused them either to sneeze, cough, or choke, were most laughable; and I have no doubt that it is still a matter of wonder to them, and a fruitful source of debate over the camp-fires, what pleasure the white man can find in filling his mouth with smoke, apparently with no better object than to puff it out again as soon as possible. Our course now ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... snatched off his wig and trampled upon it, and Bentley choked himself purple again. I will admit that Jack's round bullet head, with its close-cropped, grizzled hair standing on end, would have been a whimsical, not to say laughable sight in any other (Bentley for instance)—but Jack in a rage ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... was. However he arrived safely with his black face pale, dripping with perspiration and saying he was sick. What was most amusing was to see him hooking his legs one in front of the other on his way over, but I dare say I was equally laughable to anyone on terra firma. He told me afterwards "water all go down, and I go up and get sick and giddy." Another two miles over a low ridge and I got to Mozufferabad and put up at the Barahduree provided by the Maharajah for the convenience of English travellers free of ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... who sent thee on such errand must be an ignorant fool, taking no thought to the issue of things and having no Wazir of sense and good counsel, with whom he may advise. Were he a man of mind, he had taken counsel with a Wazir, ere sending us the like of this laughable letter. But he shall have a reply similar to his script and surpassing it, for I will give it to one of the boys of the school to answer.' Then send for me and, when I come to the presence, bid me read ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... (celebrate) 883; make merry &c. (sport) 840. laugh, raise laughter &c. (amuse) 840. Adj. rejoicing &c. v.; jubilant, exultant, triumphant; flushed, elated, pleased, delighted, tickled pink. amused &c. 840; cheerful &c. 836. laughable &c. (ludicrous) 853. Int. hurrah! Huzza! aha[obs3]! hail! tolderolloll[obs3]! Heaven be praised! io triumphe[obs3]! tant mieux[Fr]! so much the better. Phr. the heart leaping with joy; ce n'est pas etre bien aise que de rire[Fr]; "Laughter holding both his sides" [Milton]; " le roi est ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the Prince of Bohemia was not without a taste for ways of life more adventurous and eccentric than that to which he was destined by his birth. Now and then, when he fell into a low humour, when there was no laughable play to witness in any of the London theatres, and when the season of the year was unsuitable to those field sports in which he excelled all competitors, he would summon his confidant and Master of the Horse, Colonel Geraldine, and bid him prepare himself ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... appreciate or realize it in the interior, though to me the exterior outline and architecture were always soft and beautiful. Unfortunately, one is greatly pestered outside by a voracious band of touts, miscalled guides, some of them mere uneducated-looking, parrot-like roughs, and whom it is laughable to suppose could have any pretensions to refined knowledge and art history—irreverent monsters who have no sympathy with, or appreciation of, anything, except what you ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... important people, because nearly every Englishman with any ambition is a parliamentary candidate, actual or potential—that grave anxiety, that sober rigour, that immense caution, which are all so really laughable, because so many of those men are only anxious lest they should make a mistake in finding out what the majority of their constituents would like them to think; only rigorous against those who are indiscreet enough to press a principle against the ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... something grotesque in their decrepitude. Their toothless mouths, their hooked noses, the meagreness of the active one, and the hanging yellow cheeks of the other (the still one, whose head trembled) would have been laughable if the sight of their dreadful physical degradation had not been appalling to one's eyes, had not gripped one's heart with poignant amazement at the unspeakable misery of age, at the awful persistency of life becoming at last an object of ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... For sublime ideas are mixed with admiration, beautiful ones with love, new ones with surprise; and these exertions of our ideas prevent the action of laughter from being necessary to relieve the painful pleasure above described. Whence laughable wit consists of frivolous ideas, without connections of any consequence, such as puns on words, or on phrases, incongruous junctions of ideas; on which account laughter is so ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... forget a most lamentable, though somewhat laughable, occurrence which took place five years ago. Foolishly responding to the entreaties of our enthusiastic friend the keeper, we actually did ask five people to fish one "Durby day." As luck would have it they all came; but unfortunately a neighbouring squire, ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... the watcher, weary of his fruitless contemplation, or of the silence in which the house was buried, like the whole neighborhood, dropped his eyes towards the lower regions. An involuntary smile parted his lips each time he looked at the shop, where, in fact, there were some laughable details. ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... Europe, the remarks here thrown together will serve to show the extreme folly of Britain, in resting her hopes of success on the extinction of our paper currency. The expectation is at once so childish and forlorn, that it places her in the laughable condition of a famished lion watching for prey ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... those strange figures, whose heads in profile, with the eye drawn in full face, are attached to a torso seen from the front and supported by limbs in profile. These are truly anatomical monsters, and yet the appearance they present to us is neither laughable nor grotesque. The defective limbs are so deftly connected with those which are normal, that the whole becomes natural: the correct and fictitious lines are so ingeniously blent together that they seem to rise necessarily from ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
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