"Harlequin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... National Guard who came after the royal carriage out-Heroded Herod by their deafening cries of loyalty. Who would have imagined these gentlemen would have played the harlequin and receive their dethroned Emperor as they did when he entered Paris again? "Put not your trust in men, particularly Frenchmen in 1814, O ye house of Bourbon, for they made ye march out of ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... interloping—(against which the priests seem to have fought hard and yet in vain) the most ludicrous images were mixed with the most awful personations; and whatever the subject might be, however sublime, however pathetic, yet the Vice and the Devil, who are the genuine antecessors of Harlequin and the Clown, were necessary component parts. I have myself a piece of this kind, which I transcribed a few years ago at Helmstadt, in Germany, on the education of Eve's children, in which after ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... several centuries.[2041] These personages, remaining unchanged in character, were put in various assumed positions and conjunctures. The actors had to invent the dialogue and work out the situation. The characters have come down to us as Punch, Harlequin, Pantaloon, etc.[2042] Punch (Pulcino, Pulcinella) is only a Neapolitan rendering of Maccus, a character in the atellans. "Maccus," in Etruscan, meant a little cock.[2043] Christian antiphonal singing, like the Greek mystery acts of Dionysus, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... to Drury Lane; the King being there to-night, very much crowded. Miss Gunning and her two sisters and a number of people of quality. 'The Tempest,' and 'Harlequin Ranger'; both very foolish to see. ...
— Extracts from the Diary of William Bray, Esq. 1760-1800 • William Bray
... it for a baby harlequin, this cap? Made of gray stuff, with peaks of green and black fustian, and a bedtick lining!" This description of the cap was received with shouts ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... what one does not want to win; but parry those invitations ludicrously, 'et en badinant'. Say that, if you were sure to lose, you might possibly play, but that as you may as well win, you dread 'l'embarras des richesses', ever since you have seen what an encumbrance they were to poor Harlequin, and that, therefore, you are determined never to venture the winning above two louis a-day; this sort of light trifling way of declining invitations to vice and folly, is more becoming your age, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... The Young Quaker; or the Fair Philadelphian by O'Keefe, a sketch that was followed by a pantomimic ballet, a musical piece called The Children in the Wood, a recitation of Goldsmith's Epilogue in the character of Harlequin, and a "grand finale" by some adventuresome actor who made a leap through a barrel of fire! Truly vaudeville ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... jostled together as they are to-day upon this continent, and within the boundaries of our nation. We have taken the ages out of their processional arrangement and set them marching disorderly abreast in our wide territory, a harlequin platoon. We citizens of the United States date our letters 18—, and speak of ourselves as living in the present era; but the accuracy of that custom depends upon where we happen to be writing. While portions of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco are of this nineteenth century, we have ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... long," he said, "but I've arranged something rather nice for to-night. There's rather a jolly masquerade ball on. I've 'phoned about getting a costume for you and it's alright. It will suit you beautifully, and I've got my harlequin dress with me. Madame Kelnicort, excellent soul, is going to chaperone you, and she'll take you back any time you like; I'm quite unreliable when I get into fancy dress. I shall probably keep going till some ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... eyes. Beyond the hedge other figures were moving. Three at that moment came crowding into the gap—a saucy-faced girl with a tip-tilted nose, whom he supposed to be Columbine, the soubrette; a lean, active youngster, who must be the lackey Harlequin; and another rather loutish youth who might be a zany or ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... an artist, and as such I salute madame and monsieur her son. She is greater artist than I, but I shall help her. They shall dance better this time, her harlequin and columbine. Why? Because they shall dance to my music—the music that I shall make here, on this spot, under the stars. Tiens! I shall play as if possessed. I feel that. I bet you. It is because I have found an artist—an artist ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the old house, were four paintings by Hogarth: one representing the Hudson's Bay Company's Porters; another, his first idea for the Modern Midnight Conversation, (differing from the print in a circumstance too broad in its humour for the graver,) and another of Harlequin and Pierot seeming to be laughing at the figure in the last picture. On the first floor was a picture of Harlow Bush Fair, covered over with paint. This information is copied from an old print picked up in our "collecting" rambles, at the foot of which it is stated to have been obtained from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... necessity consist, what service does it perform, what is its business, and what are its merits? Does the virtue consist in the metaphor, or in the man? Doth the goldsmith that makes the crown, make the virtue also? Doth it operate like Fortunatus's wishing-cap, or Harlequin's wooden sword? Doth it make a man a conjurer? In fine, what is it? It appears to be something going much out of fashion, falling into ridicule, and rejected in some countries, both as unnecessary and expensive. In America it is considered as an absurdity; and in France it ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... tree. Then out came the Spider, with finger so fine, To show his dexterity on the tight line. From one branch to another his cobwebs he slung, Then quick as an arrow he darted along. But just in the middle, oh, shocking to tell! From his rope in an instant poor Harlequin fell. Yet he touched not the ground, but with talons outspread, Hung suspended in air at the end of a thread. Then the Grasshopper came with a jerk and a spring; Very long was his leg, though but short was his wing; He took but three leaps, and was soon out of ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... sometimes vehemently; but with that strong sincerity which administers eloquence to even the most untaught orders of mankind, and without which the most decorated eloquence is only the wooden sword and mask of harlequin. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... Eccellenza,' said the lazzarone at last, placing his hand upon the side of the barouche, and jumping out as lightly as a harlequin. 'Pardon me, Eccellenza, but I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... was up on the bank lying full length on the sweet-scented grass, gasping in company with my first salmon caught, played, and landed on an eight-ounce rod. My hands were cut and bleeding. I was dripping with sweat, spangled like harlequin with scales, wet from the waist down, nose peeled by the sun, but utterly, supremely, and consummately happy. He, the beauty, the daisy, the darling, my Salmon Bahadur, weighed twelve pounds, and I had been ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... there are who never smile; Their foreheads still unsmooth'd the while, Some lambent flame of mirth will play, That wins the easy heart away; Such only choose in prose or rhyme A bristling pomp,—they call sublime! I blush not to like Harlequin, Would he but talk,—and all his kin. Yes, there are times, and there are places, When flams and old wives' tales ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... but his nights, to gleaning the scanty portion of actual information that he scatters through his volumes; they will have a much more substantive foundation than those of the theologian, who shall construct his morality upon the harlequin scenery of systems that so frequently change, even in his own distempered brain. If the atheist, as they please to call those who differ in opinion with themselves, objects to the correctness, of—their systems, he cannot deny his own existence, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... him knowing that I should find opportunity for reproof, but should probably lack the will. For Pierre was my harlequin, and what man can easily censure his own amusements even when he sees their harm? Then there was more to make me lenient. The man's family had served my own for as many generations as the rooks had builded in our yews, and so, on one ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... the play his stage was chastely beautiful. In the gaudy foliage of the exotic island, with the three chandeliers of a bygone epoch, the sharp dissonance of styles is indicated. Aubrey Beardsley would have rejoiced at this mingling of genres; at the figures of Harlequin, Scaramuccio; at the quaint and gorgeous costuming; at the Dryad, Naiad, Echo, and all the rest of seventeenth-century burlesque appanage. And yet things didn't go as they should have gone. The music is sparkling for the minor characters, and for Zerbinetta Strauss has planned an aria, the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... it? It is a delicate membrane, thin and light; see, I blow it away. You saw the split in the back, through which the former tenant left the abode. It is the cast-off skin of the green drake, now metamorphosed into a creature more active than harlequin or columbine, the male into a dark brown insect, with gauze-like wings, the female into a beautiful creature, with body marbled white and brown, and able to fly well and strongly, now high in the air, now sailing along close to the surface of the water, ever and anon dipping gently into it ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... [Pantaloon, Clown, Harlequin, and Columbine are the characters of an old sixteenth-century drama, acted in dumb-show. "Pantaleone" is a Venetian type; Columbine ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... As I say, it is all rather astonishing from Mr. CALTHROP. The men who love Flip, and whose lives are ruined by her, are easier to understand. About Sir Timothy Swift, for example, there is a touch of the Harlequin, or rather Pierrot, that betrays his origin. I will not tell you the story, for one reason because its charm is too elusive to retrieve. I content myself by saying that it seems to me the best work we have yet had from Mr. CALTHROP, combining his special and expected graces ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... vociferous, that in my momentary anger I prayed some one might burst a blood-vessel, and frighten the rest. I put on a look of indescribable indignation, and cast a glance of what I intended should be most withering scorn on the assembly; but alas! my infernal harlequin costume ruined the effect; and confound me, if they did not laugh the louder. I turned from one to the other with the air of a man who marks out victims for his future wrath; but with no better success; at last, amid the continued ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... nadir of Despair: for He is nimble as a weasel, and He twists like Proteus, and His solstices and equinoxes, His tropics and turning-points and recurrences are innate in Being, and when He falls He falls like harlequin and shuttlecocks, shivering plumb to His feet, and each third day, lo, He is risen again, and His defeats are but the stepping-stones and rough scaffolding from which He builds His Parthenons, and from the densest basalt gush His rills, and the last ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... finest tricks were undoubtedly those by which he turned, harlequin-like, a creditor into a lender This was done by sheer force of persuasion, by assuming a lofty indignation, or by putting forth his claims to mercy with the most touching eloquence over which he would laugh heartily when his point was gained. He was often compelled ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... tongue could rest, ere the lips could close The sound of a listener's laughter rose. It was not the scream of a merry boy When harlequin waves his wand of joy; Nor the shout from a serious curate, won By a bending bishop's annual pun; Nor the roar of a Yorkshire clown;—oh, no! It was a gentle laugh, and low; Half uttered, perhaps, perhaps, and stifled half, A good old-gentlemanly ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... to lay another child to my son's account; but he replied, "No, that child is too much of a harlequin." ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... James's Street, or Pall Mall, in London! Look at yonder prematurely old man, doubled up with work, and leaning on a rude stick more crooked than himself, slowly trudging to the club-house, in a shapeless hat like an Italian harlequin's, or an old brown- paper bag, leathern leggings, and dull green smock-frock, looking as though duck-weed had accumulated on it—the result of its stagnant life—or as if it were a vegetable production, originally meant to blow into something better, but stopped somehow. Compare him with ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... time my appetite for "seeing the world" had got somewhat satisfied, and I stayed at home for a while. I happened to become acquainted with a man of the name of Howard, who went under the nick-name of Harlequin Dick. By trade he was a wood-carver, and a first-class hand at his job. He was a Liverpool man, and during his stay in Keighley he did wood-carving for many firms in the district. Then he was taken into ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... brethren arrived at Greenwich, wishing to aggrandize themselves by indulging in exemplary relaxation, indicatory of implacable detestation of integral tergiversation and exoteric intrigue. They fraternized with a phrenological harlequin who was a connoisseur in mezzotint and falconry. The piquant person was heaping contumely and scathing raillery on an amateur in jugular recitative, who held that the Pharaohs of Asia were conversant with his theory that morphine and quinine ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... imagined she could act. Mrs. Timberlake, a fat, indulgent mother, rather agreed with her. The whole idea, after a few discursive performances of Milton's "The Masque of Comus," "Pyramus and Thisbe," and an improved Harlequin and Columbine, written by one of the members, was transferred to the realm of the studios, then quartered in the New Arts Building. An artist by the name of Lane Cross, a portrait-painter, who was much less of an artist than ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... few cigars, and two men not a whit above the mental or moral level of the ordinary citizen. Government imposes when you meet it in respectful capitals in the public prints, but when you get a glimpse of it in its shirt sleeves, en famille, or playing harlequin upon the top of a barrel at the hustings, or tickling the yokels with bits of cheap millinery and silk stockings, and reflect that you have paid homage to that, you begin to doubt the saving efficacy of the ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... enticements of the palate; and he thought that more respect should be paid to his strenuous and manly purpose than to the tickling of the ears or the lures of the feast. Accordingly he flung the bone, which he had stripped in eating the meat, in the face of the harlequin, and drove the wind violently out of his puffed cheeks, so that they collapsed. By this he showed how his austerity loathed the clatter of the stage; for his ears were stopped with anger and open to no influence of delight. This reward, befitting an actor, punished an unseemly ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... humourists of the past age, it is of the men and of their lives, rather than of their books, that I ask permission to speak to you; and in doing so, you are aware that I cannot hope to entertain you with a merely humourous or facetious story. Harlequin without his mask is known to present a very sober countenance, and was himself, the story goes, the melancholy patient whom the Doctor advised to go and see Harlequin—a man full of cares and perplexities like the rest of us, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... were unheard. He was looking up at a window, with a couple of sooty scarlet geraniums in it. This was the court where Dame Dutton dwelt. He glided up her narrow stair and let himself in by the latch; and with his cane made a smacking like a harlequin's sword upon the old woman's deal table, crying: 'Mrs. Dutton; Mrs. Dutton. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the youngest and spryest wrestle till one falls into the water.... But all the fun's gone now. When I was young, there was different sport going. That was a sight! the corporation procession with the banners and the harlequin atop, and at Shrovetide, when the butchers led about an ox decked with ribbons and carnival twigs, with a boy on his back with wings and a little shirt.... All that's past now, people are got so fine. St. Knud's Fair is not what ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... betraying the weakness of their nature. But why may not nature show itself in tragedy, as well as in comedy or farce? We see persons not ashamed to laugh loudly at the humour of a Falstaff,—or the tricks of a harlequin; and why should not the tear be equally allowed to flow for the misfortunes of a Juliet, or the forlornness of an Ophelia?" Sir Richard Steele records on this subject a saying of Mr. Wilks the actor, as just as it was polite. Being told in the green-room that there ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... of the tunnel! and now, I presume, in the caves. Here someone, gradually assuming a palpable form, emerges from somewhere out of a dark corner, and hands to each of us a long piece of wood about the length of a harlequin's bat (note, pantomime again), only that this is an inch or so thick and quite two inches wide at one end, where presently a candle is fixed by an attendant sprite,—the slave of the tallow candle,—and the wand, so to speak, tapers off towards the handle. A propos ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... poisonous, but of such retiring habits as hardly to be classed as dangerous. Most of their time is spent hidden under the sand and in the ground, but when they do come out their colors are so brilliant as not to be mistaken. On the harlequin snake the colors are bright coral-red, yellow, and black, which alternate in stripes that encircle the body. Its head is always banded with a broad yellow stripe. The coral-snake is much the same in color, and only a close observer would notice the difference. ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... round to a capering varlet, Array'd in blue and white and scarlet, And cried, "Oh! brown of slipper as of hat! Lend me, Harlequin, thy bat!" He seized the wooden sword, and smote the earth; When lo! upstarting into birth A fabric, gorgeous to behold, Outshone in elegance the old, And Veeshnoo saw, and cried, "Hail, playhouse mine!" Then, bending ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... of many occasional pieces in poetry, of which his Harlequin Horace is the most considerable. This Satire is dedicated to Mr. Rich, the present manager of Covent-Garden Theatre, in which with an ironical severity he lashes that gentleman, in consequence of some offence ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... as harlequin, Or clad yourself in Zamiel's skin, Your tending spirits we; Or "Peeping Tom" may be more apt, Since all are in your record clapp'd We send ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... fool, most valiant in words, but constantly being drubbed by Harlequin. Scaramouch is a common character in Italian farce, originally meant in ridicule of the Spanish don, and therefore dressed in Spanish costume. Our clown is an imbecile old idiot, and wholly unlike the dashing poltroon ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... men could devise. Poisoned spears from tropic seas, That natives, under banana trees, Smear with the juice of some deadly snake. Blood-dipped arrows, which savages make And tip with feathers, orange and green, A quivering death, in harlequin sheen. High up, a fan of glancing steel Was formed of claymores in a wheel. Jewelled swords worn at kings' levees Were suspended next midshipmen's dirks, and these Elbowed stilettos come from Spain, Chased with some splendid ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... gain admittance to the fort in that harlequin dress," said Hector; "and I can save you the trouble of attempting it, by answering all the inquiries you may ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... TERRISS'S sudden appearance in somewhat anti-Lord-Chamberlain attire, as he bounded on, with a wand, and struck an attitude, was suggestive of the Good Fairy in the pantomime; and his subsequent proceedings, when he didn't change anybody into Harlequin, Clown, and so forth, puzzled the unlearned spectators considerably. But Mr. TERRISS came out all right, and acquitted himself (being his own judge and jury) to the satisfaction of the public. His speech about Dover Cliff, generally supposed to convey ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 19, 1892 • Various
... theatre? You see here, behind the ostensible scenery, all the crooked working of the machinery developed and laid open to the world. You now see by what secret movement the master of the mechanism has conducted the great Indian opera,—an opera of fraud, deceptions, and harlequin tricks. You have it all laid open before you. The ostensible scene is drawn aside; it has vanished from your sight. All the strutting signors, and all the soft signoras are gone; and instead of a brilliant spectacle of descending chariots, gods, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... at Zage, we were struck by the simplicity of his dress, in every respect the same as that of his common soldiers; of late, however, he had adopted a more gaudy attire, but nothing compared to the harlequin coat he ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... contrary to Tait's discreet, usual habit, had been left open. He vanished through it with harlequin-like agility as a terrible, white-faced black figure seemed ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... constantly making for him, but in a radiant tartan, of such huge pattern that his little tunic barely contained a sample of one of each portentous check, made up crosswise, so as to give a most comical, harlequin effect to his spare limbs and weird, black eyes. The disappointment that Phoebe had to inflict was severe, and unwittingly she was the messenger whom Mrs. Murrell was likely to regard with the most suspicion and dislike. 'Come home along with me, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... good conduct, I can say, like Harlequin, that 'tis just as it is with you; and the Turkish ladies don't commit one sin the less for not being Christians. Now I am a little acquainted with their ways, I cannot forbear admiring either the exemplary ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... arrival of Adele, looking sweet as "Pierrette," and Jonah in the traditional garb of "Harlequin," cut short ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... more glaring faults. The characters that oftenest reappear in them are Maccus, Bucco, and Pappus; the first of these is prefixed to the special title, e.g. Maccus miles, Maccus virgo. He seems to have been a personage with an immense head, who, corresponding to our clown or harlequin, came in for many hard knocks, but was a general favourite. Pappus took the place of pantaloon, and was the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... collect at the village of Loreto. I believe it, but do not wish to confirm it. There, Minha, you can take your choice between the gray mosquito, the hairy mosquito, the white-clawed mosquito, the dwarf mosquito, the trumpeter, the little fifer, the urtiquis, the harlequin, the big black, and the red of the woods; or rather they make take their choice of you for a little repast, and you will come back hardly recognizable! I fancy these bloodthirsty diptera guard the Brazilian frontier ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... then, again, no inferences of immediate duty can be drawn from the apprehended hereafter. Being quasi actors in a scene prearranged and with a plot predetermined, we can no more be capable of any obligation or choice, in regard to the end, than puppets which some unseen Harlequin moves by the terrible wires of primitive decree or transmitted depravity towards the genial or the tragic crisis. If the soul's fate there is to be heaven or hell according to the part enacted here, it must have free will and a fair opportunity to work the unmarred problem ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... of Heaven." Indeed, had it not always run through his work, this conception of humor in the grotesqueries of history, "the dream of an intoxicated divinity"? But his amusement thereat had been genial. "Like a mad harlequin," he had written of Byron, the man to whom he felt himself most related, "he strikes a dagger into his own heart, to sprinkle mockingly with the jetting black blood the ladies and gentlemen around.... My blood ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 1807, when it was introduced into Golden Lane on the 16th of August. Pall Mall, however, was not lighted with gas until 1809, and it was really not finally and generally introduced into London until the year 1820. We meet with an excellent satire published by S. W. Fores, in 1807, wherein a harlequin is depicted sitting on a rope suspended between a couple of lamp posts. The lamps and the hat of the figure are garnished with lighted burners; the neighbours in the windows of the adjoining houses, the people on the pavement below, the fowls, the dogs, the cats on the roofs, are suffocated ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... saw through a whole play without suspecting it was he. Alas! four-and-twenty years make strange havoc with us mortals! You cannot imagine how this struck me! The Italian comedy, now united with their opera comique, is their most perfect diversion; but alas! harlequin, my dear favourite harlequin, my passion, makes me more melancholy than cheerful. Instead of laughing, I sit silently reflecting how everything loses charms when one's own youth does not lend it gilding! When we are divested of that eagerness and illusion with which ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... He is one, Who behind the scenes hath been, Caught Life with his make-up off, Found him but a harlequin Cast to play a tragic part— And the two laughed, ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... a philosopher, Raspe next sought to display his vocation for polite letters, by publishing an ambitious allegorical poem of the age of chivalry, entitled "Hermin and Gunilde," which was not only exceedingly well reviewed, but received the honour of a parody entitled "Harlequin and Columbine." He also wrote translations of several of the poems of Ossian, and a disquisition upon their genuineness; and then with better inspiration he wrote a considerable treatise on "Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry," with metrical translations, being thus the first ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... (irresolution) 605; fluctuation, vicissitude; alternation &c (oscillation) 314. restlessness &c adj.. fidgets, disquiet; disquietude, inquietude; unrest; agitation &c 315. moon, Proteus, chameleon, quicksilver, shifting sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the minute, April showers^; wheel of Fortune; transientness &c 111 [Obs.]. V. fluctuate, vary, waver, flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, shift, shuffle, shake, totter, tremble, vacillate, wamble^, turn and turn about, ring the changes; sway to and fro, shift to and ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and the same indolence as himself. Men who could all say such witty things in their cups or in company with a danseuse, how could they help being friends? If des Lupeaulx had not been a general-secretary he would certainly have been a journalist. Thus, in that fifteen years' struggle in which the harlequin sabre of epigram opened a breach by which insurrection entered the citadel, des Lupeaulx never received ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... burning idol of their devotion almost converted me into a worshipper. I was awe-struck, and believed those significations to be something more than elemental fires. It was all enchantment and a dream. No such pleasure has since visited me but in dreams.—Harlequin's Invasion followed; where, I remember, the transformation of the magistrates into reverend beldams seemed to me a piece of grave historic justice, and the tailor carrying his own head to be as sober a verity as ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... invincible, on having exorcised my brain of its legionary spectres, and brushed away the swarming thoughts that used to persecute my solitude; I can now lie down as calmly as the lamb, and rise as gayly as the lark; instead of a writhing Laocoon, my just-found Harlequin's wand has changed me into infant Hercules brandishing his strangled snakes; I have mowed, for the nonce, the docks, mallows, hogweed, and wild-parsley of my rank field, and its smooth green carpet looks like a rich meadow; I am free, happy, well ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... where, shall he begin Who would paint thee, Harlequin? With thy waxen burnished leaf, With thy branches' red relief, With thy polytinted fruit,— In thy spring or autumn suit,— Where begin, and oh, where end, Thou whose charms all ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... whom every lover of 'prose as a fine art' looks up with an admiration which may well become despair. What is it in this style, this way of putting things, so occasional, so variegated, so like his own harlequin in his 'ghastly vest of white patchwork,' 'the apparition of a dead rainbow'; what is it that gives to a style, which no man can analyse, its 'terseness, its jocular pathos, which makes one feel in laughter?' ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... segmental displacement of the imaginal discs with regard to the larva is noticeable in some Diptera. In the larva of the harlequin-midge (Chironomus) as described by Miall and Hammond (1900) the brain is situated in the thorax, and the imaginal discs for the head, eyes, and feelers of the adult lie in close association with ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... just three black cats, but those who are really acquainted with animals know that their physiognomy is as various as that of the human race. I was perfectly well able to distinguish between these little faces, as black as Harlequin's mask, and lighted up by disks of emerald with golden gleams. Enjolras, who was much the handsomest of the three, was remarkable for his broad, leonine head and full whiskers, strong shoulders, and a superb feathery ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... bride-elect to receive a few engagement presents. (These are entirely apart from wedding presents which come later.) A small afternoon teacup and saucer used to be the typical engagement gift, but it has gone rather out of vogue, along with harlequin china in general. Engagement presents are usually personal trifles sent either by her own very intimate friends or by members of her fiance's family as especial messages of welcome to hers—and as ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... of a bright copper colour, so different from black that one had painted his thighs with black chequered lines which made his skin very much resemble the dress of a harlequin. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... egg-shaped body, bounding forward, with most grotesque strides, over the uncouth heap of dead bodies, ungainly masses with soles and nostrils uppermost, lying in beast-like confusion. This youth, with something of a harlequin in his jumps and in his ridiculous thin legs and preposterous round body, is evidently the model for the naked demi-gods of the "Resurrection" and the "Paradise:" he is the handsome boy as the fifteenth century gave him ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... hurled him into the ocean. At the noise of his fall, the dying Powers sat up in their beds of pain; and stealthily advancing with furtive tread, the royal spiders made partition of Europe, and the purple of Caesar became the motley of Harlequin. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... for our outing." But afterwards—when the boy had gone and he was alone in the room—he walked back to the potted rose bush and touched its buds lovingly, and stood leaning over it and saying nothing for a long time. And though the necktie that hung on its branches was a harlequin thing of red and green and violent purple, when he came to dress for that promised outing he put it on and adjusted it as tenderly, wore it as proudly as ever knight of old wore the colours of ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... period, my mother returned from St. Petersburg, where the Empress Anne Iwanowa had not approved of the Italian comedy. The whole of the troop had already returned to Italy, and my mother had travelled with Carlin Bertinazzi, the harlequin, who died in Paris in the year 1783. As soon as she had reached Padua, she informed Doctor Gozzi of her arrival, and he lost no time in accompanying me to the inn where she had put up. We dined with her, and before bidding us adieu, she presented the doctor with a splendid ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and perceived a large and savage dog rushing rapidly from side to side, with his nose to the ground, evidently in search of game or prey. I could not mistake the nature of his hunt. With the agility of a harlequin, I sprang to my friendly perch just in time to save myself from his fangs. The foiled and ferocious beast, yelling with rage, gave an alarm which was quickly responded to by other dogs, three of which—followed by two armed men—promptly made their appearance beneath my ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... thoughts as she reviewed the situation, her head leaned in the pose of the most plaintive of the pastels that Lord Dungory had commissioned his favourite artist to execute in imitation of the Lady Hamilton portraits. And now, his finger on his lip, like harlequin glancing after columbine, the old gentleman, who had ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... a quaint costume, was the Harlequine to her husband's Harlequin. They made a very funny love scene, because, being man and wife, they could make all their kissing real, and so ridiculously loud, that one could hear it all over the theater. Every one laughed till they cried, and particularly as Pan was rolling his ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... Montagu again. Devil take it, you have an awkward way of playing harlequin when you're not wanted! Now to come blundering in upon a lady and her friend is— Well, not the best of form. Better drop it before it becomes a ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... "Tabarin" operas, The "Drama Nuevo" of Estebanez and Mr. Howells's "Yorick's Love," What is a Pagliaccio? First performances of the opera in Milan and New York, The prologue, et seq.—The opera described, et seq.—Bagpipes and vesper bells, Harlequin's serenade, The Minuet, The Gavotte, "Plaudite, amici, la commedia finita est!" Philip Hale on who should speak ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... spirit was characteristic of Portsmouth. The town did a profitable business in the war of 1812, sending out a large fleet of the sauciest small craft on record. A pleasant story is told of one of these little privateers—the Harlequin, owned and commanded by Captain Elihu Brown. The Harlequin one day gave chase to a large ship, which did not seem to have much fight aboard, and had got it into close quarters, when suddenly the shy stranger threw open her ports, and proved to be His ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... career to an abrupt conclusion. The sudden stoppage of the horse was one thing, but the arresting of Master Charley was another and quite a different thing. The instant his charger landed, he left the saddle like a harlequin, described an extensive curve in the air, and fell head foremost into the drift, above which his boots and three inches of his legs alone remained to tell ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the stage are benches. The curtain is composed of two tapestries which can be drawn aside. Above a harlequin's mantle are the royal arms. There are broad steps from the stage to the hall; on either side of these steps are the places ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... curiosities and anatomical figures; and the proprietor put Sir Isaac Newton's head over the door for a sign. Among other prodigies was the skeleton of a whale more than seventy feet long. Donovan, a naturalist, succeeded Rackstrow (who died in 1772) with his London museum. Then, by a harlequin change, No. 197 became the office of the Albion newspaper. Charles Lamb was turned over to this journal from the Morning Post. The editor, John Fenwick, the "Bigot" of Lamb's "Essay," was a needy, sanguine man, who had purchased the paper of a person named Lovell, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... America, become the god Odin or Woden in Scandinavia; and when his worship as a god dies out Odin survives (as Dr. Dasent has proved) in the Wild Huntsman of the Hartz, and in the Robin Hood (Oodin) of popular legend. The Hellequin of France becomes the Harlequin of our pantomimes. William Tell never existed; he is a myth; a survival of the sun-god Apollo, Indra, who was worshipped on the ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... (circ. 1682-1761) was the creator of pantomime in England, which he introduced at Lincoln's Inn Fields in April, 1716, and in which, under the stage name of Lun, he played the part of Harlequin. At Lincoln's Inn Fields, January 29, 1728, he produced 'The Beggar's Opera', which, after being refused at Drury Lane, made "Gay 'rich', and Rich 'gay'." "Great Faustus" probably alludes to the war between ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... near that they could not use their oars and only pulled their boats along by the gunwales of the other boats, laughed at these witticisms rather inquiringly. Always slightly unconvinced, they seemed to have no inward desire to laugh, but yielded politely to the requirements, owing to the niggers' harlequin costume ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... which made him not easily distinguishable from the Frog, and the Spider was actually descending by a rope from the balusters, while his mother, standing somewhat aghast, breathed a hope that 'poor Harlequin's' fall was not part of the programme. But she did not interfere, having trust in the gymnastics that were studied at school by Jasper, who had been beguiled into the ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have we not said, that however poor an Irish gentleman is, he always has a poorer Irish gentleman to run on his errands and transact his pecuniary affairs?) call a cab from the nearest stand, and rattle down to the Roscius's Head, Harlequin-yard, Drury-lane, where the captain was indeed in pawn, and for several glasses containing rum and water, or other spirituous refreshment, of which he and his staff had partaken. On a third melancholy occasion he wrote that he was attacked by illness, and wanted money to pay the physician whom he ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... promptly sent up our two rockets abeam, and experienced no further trouble, easily avoiding a sloop of war cruising off the end of the Frying Pan Shoals. The fact is, a blockade-runner was almost as invisible at night as Harlequin in the pantomime. Nothing showed above the deck but the two short masts, and the smoke-stack; and the lead colored hull could scarcely be seen at the distance of one hundred yards. Even in a clear day, they ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... "Don't alarm yourself unnecessarily. But may I ask what all this means, and why you were hiding behind my curtains as though you were a burglar or a Bashi-Bazouk? But that the pantomime season is over, I should say you were practicing for the Harlequin's window trick." ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... at the pantomime, and even I was able to go to it. We put our young sailor and our sister in the forefront, and believed that every one was as much struck with them as with the wonderful transformations of Goody-Two-Shoes under the wand of Harlequin. Brother-like, we might tease our one girl, and call her an affected little pussy cat, but our private opinion was that she excelled all other damsels with her bright blue eyes and pretty curling hair, which had the same chestnut shine as Griff's— enough ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that this manifest brilliancy and Harlequin's-jacket character is essential in the color school. The essential matter is only that everything should be of its own definite color: it may be altogether sober and dark, yet the distinctness of hue preserved with entire fidelity. Here, for instance, is a picture of Hogarth's,—one ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... say I have no vacancy in my own company at present; but would you be willing to take a part in my Christmas pantomime? I may say that I myself began life as harlequin." ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... goes on to say that false humour is given to little apish tricks, and buffooneries. Now the reason why Addison and cultivated men in general do not laugh at buffooneries and place them in the catalogue of false humour, is simply because they do not present to their minds any complication. When harlequin knocks the clown and pantaloon over on their backs, "the gods" burst with laughter, unable to understand the catastrophe, but those who have seen such things often, and consider that men make a living by such tricks, see nothing at all strange in it, remain grave and ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... descended slowly into a valley, already filled with the long shadows of the afternoon-a valley of ripening crops laid out in lozenges of green and purple and gold, like a harlequin suit, girdled at the waist by the blue ribbon of the river, a cap of green and purple where a clump of young oaks perched jauntily on the bald contour of the distant hilltop; above, a sky of blue flecked with saffron ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... horrible things about her! I know how she appears—she likes admiration. But the admiration in the world which she would most delight in just now would be yours. She plays with Captain Lovelock as a child does with a wooden harlequin, she pulls a string and he throws up his arms and legs. She has about as much intention of eloping with him as a little girl might have of eloping with a pasteboard Jim Crow. If you were to have a frank explanation with her, Blanche ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... Jack's fame that a pantomime entertainment, called "Harlequin Jack Sheppard," was devised by one Thurmond, and brought out with great success at Drury Lane Theatre. All the scenes were painted from nature, including the public-house that the robber frequented in Claremarket, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... upon the little platform that represented a stage bounded a sort of anomalous being, supple and charming, in the traditional dress of Pierrot, whom the English vulgarize and call Harlequin. He had white camellias instead of buttons on his loose white jacket, and the bright eyes of Wanda shone out from his red-and-white face. He held a mandolin, and imitated the most charming of serenades, before a make-believe window, which, being opened by a white, ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... nation is ashamed of a body so determinately below its functions. But Lord John Russell is individually superior to his party. He is a man of sense, of information, and of known official experience. Now, if he, so notoriously the wise man of "her Majesty's Opposition," is capable of descending to harlequin caprices of this extreme order, the nation sees with pain, that a constitutional function of control is extinct in our present senate, and that her Majesty's Ministers must now be looked to as their own controllers. With the levity of a child, Lord ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... pattern." The practice, however, of using for the dessert-service plates of Worcester china painted by hand, and the execution of many of which as works of art call for our admiration as much as any enamel, created a taste for forming what are called harlequin sets, among which, if a ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... HARLEQUIN WRESTLE.—This is a one-sided wrestle between two persons. Each stands on one leg; they then grasp right hands and each tries to make the other lower his upraised foot to the ground, or touch the floor with his free hand. The opponent may not be ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... Ville, sketching the scene to the life, but with a kind of grace—a marvellous tact of omission, as my father pointed out to us, in dealing with the vulgar reality seen from one's own window—which has made trite old Harlequin, Clown, and Columbine, seem like people in some fairyland; or like infinitely clever tragic actors, who, for the humour of the thing, have put on motley for once, and are able to throw a world of serious innuendo ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... nothing in Parliament, or seeking entrance to it, except this variously tinted Whiggery, this Harlequin of Reaction? Well, inside Parliament, setting aside the Irish party, which is, we may now well hope, merely temporarily there, there is not much. It is not among people of "wealth and local influence," who I see are supposed ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... All at once Harlequin stopped short and, turning to the public, he pointed with his hand to some one far down in the pit and exclaimed in a ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... something; and then, as though he feared to bring on himself one of Erle's jesting; remarks, he roused himself with an effort. "Well, Toddlekins, how's Flibbertigibbet; come and sit on my knee, and I will tell you the story of Mr. Harlequin Puss-in-boots." ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... amongst whom were several gumbie—men and flute—players, and John Canoes, as the negro Jack Pudding is called; the latter distinguishable by wearing white false faces, and enormous shocks of horsehair, fastened on to their woolly pates. Their character hovers somewhere between that of a harlequin and a clown, as they dance about, and thread through the negro groups, quizzing the women and slapping the men; and at Christmas time, the grand negro carnival, they don't confine their practical jokes to their own colour, but take all manner of comical liberties with the whites equally ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... into an open space, drew a circle around him, and then began to build up on the sward two little human figures about three feet high, as boys build up figures of snow at the commencement of a thaw. Harlequin performs a somewhat similar feat in one of the pantomimes. He first sets up two carrots on end, to serve for legs; balances on them the head of a large cabbage, to serve for a body; sticks on two other carrots, to serve for arms; places a round turnip between them, to serve for ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... Commedia dell' arte, the improvisatory farce with standing masks. A striking affinity between the latter and the Atellanae consists in the employment of dialects to produce a ludicrous effect. But how would Harlequin and Pulcinello be astonished were they to be told that they descended in a direct line from the buffoons of the ancient Romans, and even from the Oscans!—With what drollery would they requite the labours of the antiquarian who should trace their glorious pedigree to such a root! From the figures ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... and secondly a swindler: while if we met an old Puritan, we should consider him a man gracefully and picturesquely drest, but withal in the most perfect sobriety of good taste; and when we discovered (as we probably should), over and above, that the harlequin cavalier had a box of salve and a pair of dice in one pocket, a pack of cards and a few pawnbroker's duplicates in the other; that his thoughts were altogether of citizens' wives and their too easy virtue; and that he could not open his mouth without ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... the finest of a cruel series. M. Eugene Montrosier says of it that "The drawing is masterly, incomparably firm, the composition superb, the general impression quite of the first order." It exhibits a pair of lean, hungry mountebanks, a clown and a harlequin beating the drum and trying a comic attitude to attract the crowd, at a fair, to a poor booth in front of which a painted canvas, offering to view a simpering fat woman, is suspended. But the crowd doesn't ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... adored its theatrical monarch. With his subjects he could do anything, take any liberty, without fear of dethronement. One evening, during an act in which he had not to appear on the stage, he was leaning while chatting with a comrade against that part of the wings known in French as "harlequin's cloak"—in our stage language the prompt-place. A brass knob was under his elbow. "What's this machine for?" he said, examining it. "Don't touch it, Monsieur Frederic," cried an employe: "it's the gas-regulator." "Bah! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... see that the window through which they had come, and which he was quite sure had always been a straight-up-and-down, old-fashioned window, was now a round affair, with flaps running to a point in the centre, like the holes the harlequin jumps through in ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... she naturally laid her friends and the world under contribution; and no other sort of writing was possible. Percy had not a common interest in fiction; still less for high comedy. He liked the broad laugh when he deigned to open books of that sort; puns and strong flavours and harlequin surprises; and her work would not admit of them, however great her willingness to force her hand for his amusement: consequently her inventiveness deadened. She had to cease whipping it. 'My poor old London cabhorse of a pen shall go to grass!' she sighed, looking to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a thing of literature, no other sort of book admits of such variety of topics, style, and treatment as the novel. As diverse in talent and quality as the story-teller himself,—now harlequin, now gossip, now threnodist,—with weird ghostliness, moping melancholy, uncouth laughter, or gentle serious smile,—now relating the story, with childlike interest in it, now with a good heart and now with a bad heart ridiculing mankind, now allegorical with rich meanings, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... brought home from over the lines new reports of fantastic creations encountered amid the clouds. The gayest feathered songsters that came north with the Spring did not rival the variegated hues of the harlequin birds that rose daily from the German airdromes. The coming of this fantastic order of things in the air was first heralded by a squadron of scarlet German planes. It then was noticed that some of the enemy machines were striped about the ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... bill of fare; in short, if our national sirloin obtained knighthood, such a good lenten substitute as the tunny deserves canonization.[39] I cannot say so much for the dish, common enough among Frenchmen, which a well-dressed man, the harlequin to a troop of comedians, was eating in the salle-a-manger when we entered; viz. a raw artichoke with oil and vinegar. Sterne, it appears, little knew the extent of the ass's good taste, when he deprived him of this article ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... well-deserved. On the black background of the larva, vermillion-red, chrome-yellow and chalk-white figure side by side in circles, spots, freckles and stripes, as clearly marked as the glaring patches of a harlequin's dress. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... diligent about everybody's business but his own. That the said Timothy, while he was in the family, used to be playing roguish tricks; when his mistress's back was turned, he would loll out his tongue, make mouths, and laugh at her, walking behind her like Harlequin, ridiculing her motions and gestures; but if his mistress looked about, he put on a grave, demure countenance, as if he had been in a fit of devotion; that he used often to trip up-stairs so smoothly that you could not hear ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... loose with the mind? Am I turning in upon myself and playing the mere harlequin in the ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... story which is substantially the foundation of the slender plot of most modern scenic pantomimes preliminary to the bursting forth from their chrysalides of Harlequin, Columbine, Pantaloon, and company. A young girl, with the consent of her parents, has for some time promised her hand to an honest youth. The old mother, in despite of her word, has taken a caprice to give her daughter ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... with the salmon, and fathomed the motives of the climbing-perch. I heard the narrative of a siluris tossed out of a volcano, and talked with a haddock which produced at a birth more young than there are men upon the globe. I have noted the harlequin-angler, which lived three weeks in Amsterdam, hopping about on his fins like a toad; the sucking-fish which adhered to Marc Antony's galley and held it fast; the horned-fish (fil en dos) which the savages discard from their nets in terror and prayer; ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... the tragedy, and so forth. They would not quite be able to keep a coach, but they might get a chariot and pasteboard dragons from Mr. Rich's theatre. The baby might be christened in Macbeth's caldron; and Harry and harlequin ought ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... made their way to the palace. Gordon came out to meet them. The whole courtyard was filled with wild, harlequin figures and sharp, glittering blades. He attempted a parley. 'Where is your master, the Mahdi?' He knew his influence over native races. Perhaps he hoped to save the lives of some of the inhabitants. Perhaps in that supreme moment imagination flashed another ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... for a time in her now restored villa on Lake Como, celebrating her return by lavish charities to her poor neighbours, and by popular fetes and balls, in one of which "she danced as Columbine, wearing her lover's ear-rings, whilst Pergami, dressed as harlequin and wearing her ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... were being cast off, Jolivet appeared, tearing along. The steamer was already sheering off, the gangway had been drawn onto the quay, but Alcide Jolivet would not stick at such a little thing as that, so, with a bound like a harlequin, he alighted on the deck of the Caucasus almost in his ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... of literature, and harlequin's jacket, his black vizor, and his eel-like lubricity, are so many harmless satires on the weak sides of our nature. The pen of the satirist is as effective as the pencil of the artist; and provided it draw well, cannot fail to prove as attractive. Indeed, the characters ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... where there is a Spanish company, the same whom we saw two years ago in Vera Cruz. They are drawing away various persons from the principal theatre. Their object seems to be to make people laugh, and they succeed. On Christmas-eve we went there to see the gracioso (harlequin) in a woman's dress, dance Tripili, an old Spanish dance, accompanied with singing. They introduced some appropriate lines concerning the late troubles about the copper, which were received with great applause. Just as they were concluding ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... are too fond of the exhibition of art, and too regardless of the object, to which art should be made subservient. Dancing should never be considered as a mere display of agility and muscular power. It is then degraded to a level with Harlequin's tricks, wrestling, tumbling, or such other fashionable entertainments. The main object of the art unquestionably is, to display in full perfection the beauty and grace of the human form and movements. In so far as ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... merry, lively little fellow, with a good nose for the scent of a rabbit or a hare, and, when in fit condition, is able to follow, follow, follow, if needed, from earliest dawn till the coming of night. The chase being ended, he with his companions, Harlequin and Columbine, and all the stragglers of the panting pack, will surround the tired hare, and will wait, bellowing lustily, but without molesting the quarry, till the Master appears ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... left in their natural condition of bright green grass—while here and there stood up, white and ghost- like, the stumps of old trees, the last remnants of the forests, which were slowly retreating before the axe of the settler. These fields, which had rather a harlequin aspect with their varied colours, all melted together in the far distance into an indescribable neutral tint, and ended in the dark haze of the bush, which grew over all the undulating hills. On the horizon, however, at intervals, a keen eye could see some tall tree standing boldly ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... made with their monograms, to identify their creations, whether they be burned on the skins of Welsh Rabbits or Frying Pan Ramekins. Salamandering with an iron that has a gay, carnivalesque design can make a sort of harlequin Ramekin. ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... the Spider, with finger so fine, To show his dexterity on the tight line. From one branch to another his Cobwebs he slung, Then quick as an arrow he darted along; But just in the middle,—Oh! shocking to tell, From his rope in an instant poor Harlequin fell. Yet he touch'd not the ground, but with talons outspread Hung suspended in air, at the end of a thread. Then the Grasshopper came with a jerk and a spring; Very long was his Leg, though but short was his Wing: He took but three leaps, and was soon out of sight, ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... spread out my pinions, and sprang on my perch— 'Twas the dragon on Bow, that odd sign of the church, The episcopal centre of action; All Cheapside was crowded with black, brown, and fair, Like a harlequin's jacket, or French rocquelaire, A ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various
... aid of foreign instruments, delivered their melodies to the more appropriate music of the banjo. To the banjo, in a short time, were added the bones. The art had now outgrown its infancy, and, disdaining a subordinate existence, boldly seceded from the society of harlequin and the tumblers, and met the world as an independent institution. Singers organized themselves into quartet bands; added a fiddle and tambourine to their instruments—perhaps we should say implements—of music; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... There once she watch'd heaven, fearing God and the rain— Or gaz'd o'er her bleach-field so fairly engross'd, Till the lines wander'd idle from pillar to post! Ah, where are the playful young pinners—ah, where The harlequin quilts that cut capers in air— The brisk waltzing stockings—the white and the black, That danced on the tight-rope, or swung on the slack— The light sylph-like garments, so tenderly pinn'd, That blew into shape, and embodied the wind! ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... and of which the first and most distinguished practitioner was Cerberus;{2} bear-garden meetings of mismanaged companies, in which directors and shareholders abuse each other in choice terms, not all to be found even in Rabelais; burstings of bank bubbles, which, like a touch of harlequin's wand, strip off their masks and dominoes from 'highly respectable' gentlemen, and leave them in their true figures of cheats and pickpockets; societies of all sorts, for teaching everybody everything, meddling with everybody's ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... pretty serving-girls were running to and from the kitchen in a building apart with shrill, sweet promises of haste. The morning sun fell broken through the leaves on the gay hats and dresses of the ladies, and dappled the figures of the men with harlequin patches of light and shade. A tall woman, with a sort of sharpened beauty, and an artificial permanency of tint in her cheeks and yellow hair, came trailing herself up the sun-shot path, and found, with hardy insistence upon the publicity, places for the surly-looking, down-faced young ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and a "lord baron of Strabane" needed almost the alacrity in turning his coat of a harlequin or a modern politician! It is a comfort to know that at last, on the 16th of June 1655, he found rest, dying at Ballyfathen, "a Roman Catholic and a papist recusant." As we came back into the gardens and grounds, Lord Ernest showed me, imbedded in the earth, a huge anchor presented to the ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... own hands. She is an expert in beautiful costumes. I venture to promise you, Mr Savoyard, that what you are about to see will be like a Louis Quatorze ballet painted by Watteau. The heroine will be an exquisite Columbine, her lover a dainty Harlequin, her father a picturesque Pantaloon, and the valet who hoodwinks the father and brings about the happiness of the lovers a grotesque but perfectly tasteful Punchinello or ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... approaches that he hopes 'we shall sometimes think of him' in our own country. He wears a cloak, like Hamlet; and a very tall, big, limp, dusty black hat, which he exchanges on long journeys for a cap like Harlequin's. . . . He sings; and in some of our quarters, when his bedroom has been near ours, we have heard him grunting bass notes through the keyhole of his door, to attract our attention. His desire that I should formally ask him to sing, and his devices to make me do so, are irresistibly ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... curls a mouth shaped like a bud reluctant to open, blew him a kiss. Then came a cue of music like an avalanche, and quicker than Harlequin's wink ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... Eileen, "he takes life so strangely; at times tremendously seriously; at others as if it meant nothing at all. Now he plays the solemn and mysterious, and again he assumes the role of the irresponsible harlequin. I don't think ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... Pierrot. Pierrot only stared in the sky and laughed inanely. "If you persist in slighting me like this," she whispered in his ear, in a whisper which was like a hiss, "I will abandon you for ever. I will give my heart to Harlequin, and you shall never see me again." But Pierrot continued to stare at the sky, and laughed once more inanely. Then Columbine got up, her eyes flashing with rage; taking Harlequin by the arm she dragged him swiftly away. They danced across the grass semi-circle of the amphitheatre and up ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... acrimonious attack upon Lincoln's conduct of the war, predicated upon a private letter of General Scott, the possession of which he did not satisfactorily account for. The Tribune, referring to his campaign as "a rhetorical spree," called him a "buffoon," a "political harlequin," a "repeater of mouldy jokes,"[852] and in bitter terms denounced his "low comedy performance at Tammany," his "double-shuffle dancing at Mozart Hall," his possession of a letter "by dishonourable means for a dishonourable purpose," and his wide-sweeping statements "which gentlemen over their ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... "Harlequin Hamlet, or Daddy's Ghost and Nunky's Pison," which is all very well — but, gentlemen, if you don't respect Shakspeare, to whom will you be civil? The palace and ramparts of Elsinore by moon and snowlight is one of Loutherbourg's ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... profoundest emotions of trouble, do not fetter that exalted principle imbued in her very nature. It is true, her tender and feeling heart may often be moved (as she is thus constituted), but she is not conquered, she has not given up to the harlequin of disappointments, her energies have not become clouded in the last movement of misfortune, but she is continually invigorated by the archetype of her affections. She may bury her face in her hands, and let the tear of anguish roll, she may promenade the delightful walks of some garden, decorated ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Ceremonies; but it afterwards appeared, that though not apparently belonging to the Yens, but to the smaller race, he held several other offices in conjunction with this—those of cook and chamberlain, for example: his talent, however, seemed most to incline to that of court-fool or harlequin. ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... Canio rushes after him and Nedda falls on her knees to pray for her lover's escape, while Tonio the Fool triumphs over her misery. The husband however returns defeated; panting he claims the lover's name, and Nedda's lips remaining sealed, he is about to stab his wife, when Beppo the Harlequin intervenes, and, wrenching the dagger from his unfortunate master's hands intimates, that it is time to prepare for the play. While Nedda retires, Canio breaks out into a bitter wail of his hard lot, which compels him to take ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... of the coupe. Harlequin, and Colombine, and Humpty-Dumpty; shapes which came out of nowhere and instantly vanished into nothing, for all the world like the absurd pantomimes of his boyhood days. He kept close to the curb, scrutinizing the numbers as he went along. Never had he seen such a fog. Two paces away ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... to prelude the story by a reminder to the reader that the general characteristics of these various sources were "harlequin" in their diversity of apparent colour. The Amadis romances and, indeed, all the later examples of that great kind, such as Arthur of Little Britain, which Berners translated, were distinguished on the one side by a curious convention of unsmooth running of the ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... Italian, and Portuguese, within these nine years, to Rousseau, Goethe, Young, Aretine, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, 'an alabaster vase, lighted up within,' Satan, Shakspeare, Buonaparte, Tiberius, AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Harlequin, the Clown, Sternhold and Hopkins, to the phantasmagoria, to Henry the Eighth, to Chenier, to Mirabeau, to young R. Dallas (the schoolboy), to Michael Angelo, to Raphael, to a petit-maitre, to Diogenes, to Childe Harold, to Lara, to the Count in Beppo, to Milton, to Pope, to Dryden, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... ground, yet I own I was not a little scandalized at the introduction of theatrical airs and gestures into a place set apart to remind us of the saddest realities. Going nearer, I found inscribed under this harlequin figure ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... chapel of the Holy Sacrament. We found a good many people in the church, but not an inconvenient number; indeed, not so many as to make any remarkable show in the great nave, nor even in front of the chapel. A detachment of the Swiss Guard, in their strange, picturesque, harlequin-like costume, were on duty before the chapel, in which the wax tapers were all lighted, and a prie-dieu was arranged near the shrine, and covered with scarlet velvet. On each side, along the breadth of the side aisle, were ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and Mimickry. I'm a very good Mimick; I can act Punchinello, Scaramoucho, Harlequin, Prince Prettyman, or anything. I can act the rumbling ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... transformed—suddenly as by the shifting of a panoramic view; or, as upon the stage, the Harlequin and brilliant Columbine emerge from the sober disguisement of their dominoes. If in winter the scene might be termed rude or commonplace, it now no longer merits such titles. Nature has girded on her robe of green, and by the touch of ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... puts on a tragical face, and complains that it is a base and soulless world. At this very moment, I make no doubt, he is requiring that under the masks of a Pantaloon or a Punch there should be a soul glowing with unearthly desires and ideal aspirations, and that Harlequin should outmoralize Hamlet on the nothingness of sublunary things: and if these expectations are disappointed, as they can never fail to be, the dew is sure to rise into his eyes, and he will turn his back on the whole motley ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck |
