"Lisp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a moment to herself till Fay had said the Lord's prayer at her knee, and Amoret, with much persuasion, had been induced to lisp out— ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and the drink, though I must say of him that he was a clever fellow, and perfect master of his trade, by which he made a power of money, and bating his not being able to learn Irish, and a certain Jewish lisp which he had, a great master of his tongue, of which he was very proud, so much so that he once told me that when he had saved a certain sum of money he meant to leave off the thimbling business, and enter Parliament, into which he said he could get at any time, through the interest of a ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... why is thy countenance sad? am I not better to thee than ten friends? Then has he turned my heart to him, made me feel myself close to him; he has suffered me to lean on his bosom, hang on his arm, and lisp out, Abba. At such blest moments I have thought the whole earth but one point, and from that to heaven but one step, and the time between but as one moment; and my company here sufficient to satisfy me ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... arrangements for starting in the world together, when her cheeks were ruddier than now, when wealth and fame and happiness seemed lying just before me, ready to be gathered in, and farther away still, to a gentle, blue-eyed mother—now long gone—teaching her child to lisp ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... lisp of hidden meanings.] Yes, the family mustn't forget—her condition. [The door from the study is opened and CURT appears. His face shows his annoyance at being interrupted, his eyes are preoccupied. They all turn and greet him ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... a silver mist, In silver silence all the day, Save for the low, soft kiss of spray, And the lisp of sands by waters kissed, As the ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... says sternly, "Say salaam to the Miss Sahib," and the baby puts his small hand gravely to his forehead, bowing low with a "Talaam, Mees Tahib," then snaps up the prize. I shall miss my little companion. I wonder what will become of him—little brown heir of the ages. Already he can lisp to idols, but he has never even heard of the Christ who said, "Suffer ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... all dinners were as wearisome as this. Rollins finally followed Trennahan's example and devoted himself to Caro Folsom, a yellow-haired girl with babyish green eyes, a lisp, and an astute brain. On Magdalena's left was a blond and babbling youth named Ellis, who made no secret of the fact that he was afraid of his intellectual neighbour; he stammered and blushed every time she spoke to him. He had gone in with Rose ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... gale from the southwest. But there it stood, and there it stands as yet,—though its obituary was long ago written after one of the terrible storms that tore its branches,—leafing out hopefully in April as if it were trying in its dumb language to lisp "Our Father," and dropping its slender burden of foliage in October as softly as if it were ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... knowledge. He gave the song with all the rank suggestiveness that could be put into it. Joe looked upon him as a hero. He was followed by a little, brown-skinned fellow with an immature Vandyke beard and a lisp. He sung his own composition and was funny; how much funnier than he himself knew or intended, may not even be hinted at. Then, while an instrumentalist, who seemed to have a grudge against the piano, was hammering out the opening bars of a march, Joe's attention was attracted by a woman entering ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... stranger, and who remembers and babbles at last—ere the silver cord of memory is utterly and finally loosed—one language only, and that some few words merely, in the long unspoken tongue which he first learned to lisp in his earliest infancy. ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... to study the Aino language, with a view to elucidate by its means the obscure problem of the geographical nomenclature of Japan. But, as is apt to happen on such occasions, the chief object of my visit soon ceased to be the only object. He who would learn a language must try to lisp in it, and more especially must he try to induce the natives to chatter in it in his presence. Now in Yezo, subjects of discourse are few. The Ainos stand too low in the scale of humanity to have any notion of the civilised art of "making conversation." When, therefore, ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... had been minded to talk of the child, what had they to say of her? They had no memories to recall, no sweet childish sayings, no simple broken speech, no pretty lisp—they had nothing to bring back out of any harvest of the past of all the dear delicious wealth that lies stored in the treasure-houses of the hearts of happy parents. That way everything was a waste. ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... were cruel to neutralise such a prodigy—and he is just learning to walk and lisp. Khalid teaches him the first step and the first monosyllable, receiving in return the first kiss which his infant lips could voice. With what joy Najib makes his first ten steps! With what zest would he practise on the soft sands, laughing ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... this man hath been set upon thee by Athena. Foolish one, he knoweth not in his heart that no man liveth long who fighteth with the gods; no children lisp 'father' at his knees when he returneth from war and dread conflict. Therefore, albeit he is so mighty, let him take heed lest a better than thou meet him, for one day his prudent wife shall wail in ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... you, and rear you, when you are unable to help yourselves; to guide your first steps, and teach you to lisp your first syllables. For this purpose, God has given her qualities that attract sympathy and engender love. She is so constituted as to impart a charm to your lives, to share in your labors, to soothe you when you are ruffled, to smooth your pillow ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... his mind's eye which he no longer expected to see, no longer ventured to hope for. He saw his smiling wife with a smiling child on her lap; he saw himself smile, and felt a pride he had never known when he heard its soft childish voice lisp: "Fa-ther." Yes, Kate was right, all the other things that go by the name of happiness are nothing compared to this happiness. Only a father, a mother, knows ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... explain." She spoke in a low, eager voice, with a curious lisp in her utterance. "But for God's sake do what I ask you. Go back and never set foot upon ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... womanhood, rich, glorious, and warm? Like a sunbeam, like a shadow, she flitted through the corridors and galleries of the Louvre and the Palais Royal, and whenever he had sought to point her out to some one, to discover her name, lo, she was gone! Tormenting mystery! Ah, that soft lisp of hers, those enchanting caprices, those amazing extravagances of fancy, that wit which possessed the sparkle of white chambertin! He would never forget that summer night when, dressed as a boy, she ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... its sea a shimmering shield of opalescence, its lawns and terraces argentine shadowed with deepest violet. There was never a definite sound, only the sibilance of a stillness made of many interwoven sounds, soft lisp of wavelets on the sands a hundred feet below, hum of nocturnal insect life in thickets and plantations, sobbing of a tiny, vagrant breeze lost and homeless in that vast serenity, wailing of a far violin, rumour of distant motor-cars. A night of potent ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... hand or the left we made out faint shadow-pictures of wooded islands that endured but a moment and then deliberately faded into whiteness. They formed on the view exactly as an image develops on a photographic plate. Sometimes a faint lisp-lisp-lisp of tiny waves against a shore nearer than it seemed cautioned us anew not to break the silence. Otherwise we were alone, intruders, suffered in the presence of a brooding nature only as long as we refrained ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... during the first three or four decades of life, each umbrella is selected from a whole shopful, as being most consonant to the purchaser's disposition. An undoubted power of diagnosis rests with the practised Umbrella-Philosopher. O you who lisp, and amble, and change the fashion of your countenances—you who conceal all these, how little do you think that you left a proof of your weakness in our umbrella-stand—that even now, as you shake out the folds to meet the thickening snow, we read in its ivory handle the outward ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that quiet hamlet, and the roll of honour in the little grey stone church grows longer and longer. In the big house on the hill, at sunrise and at sunset, the young Lady of the Manor stands at the bedside of her little son, and hears him lisp his simple prayers to God, and they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... she had no children—could she live to be shamed by them, scorned by them? And yet—how sweet it would have been to feel clinging arms about her neck; to hear little voices lisp the sweetest word on earth to a mother's ear, if only she might have been as other mothers—as other wives! Never, never once had she breathed or hinted a wish that Philip should marry her; she had a superstitious dread that ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... sound at once and smite. Sweet are even the mild low notes of wind and sea, but sweeter Sounds the song whose choral wrath of raging rhyme Bids the shelving shoals keep tune with storm's imperious metre, Bids the rocks and reefs respond in rapturous chime. Sweet the lisp and lulling whisper and luxurious laughter, Soft as love or sleep, of waves whereon the sun Dreams, and dreams not of the darkling hours before nor after, Winged with cloud whose wrath shall bid love's day be done. ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... characteristically those of the House of Cavendish, as may be seen by comparing his portrait with that of his mother. His expression was placid, benign, but very far from inert; for his half-closed eyes twinkled with quiet mirth. His voice was soft and harmonious, with just a trace of a lisp, or rather of that peculiar intonation which is commonly described as "short-tongued." His bearing was the very perfection of courteous ease, equally remote from stiffness and from familiarity. His manners ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... wooden and inexpressive as the figure-head of a merchantman. Occasionally, it is true, physical defects have been actually conquered, individual peculiarities have been in a great measure counteracted, by rhetorical artifice, or by the arts of oratorical delivery: instance the lisp of Demosthenes, the stutter of Fox, the brogue of Burke, and the ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... Look you lisp, and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think you have ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... to have lost her own teeth some years ago, owing to a country dentist who did not know his business. And when excited she has a way of losing her hold, as one may say, on her upper set. She then speaks in a thick tone, with a lisp. ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that its locks are crisp; Your humble servant's hair is crisper, It is not that its accents lisp; I, too, affect a stammered whisper: Nor that a gorgeous bow it wears And struts with particoloured bib on; I like these macaronic airs; I'm ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... home. How handsome he was then! With his deep, dark, lustrous eyes, that you saw yourself in, and the merry mouth wreathed with laughter, and the luxuriant mass of dark hair that he wore in a sort of stack over his lofty forehead! He had a slight lisp in his pleasant voice, and ran on in rapid talk for an hour, with a shy reluctance to talk about his own works, but with the most superabounding vivacity I have ever met with in any man. His two daughters, ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... me. She called him Monsieur de la Tourelle, and he began to speak to me in French; but though I understood him perfectly, I dared not trust myself to reply to him in that language. Then he tried German, speaking it with a kind of soft lisp that I thought charming. But, before the end of the evening, I became a little tired of the affected softness and effeminacy of his manners, and the exaggerated compliments he paid me, which had the effect of making ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... this double-barrelled affair took place in the quaint, old-fashioned, non-ritualistic, semi-Gothic, and many-galleried old village church, of which so few remain now in England, situated close to our cottage, and where our widowed mother had, in our childhood, taught us to lisp our first prayers to heaven, our dead father resting in the ivy-grown and flower-adorned graveyard adjoining. The nuptial knot was tied by Parson Goldwire, as everybody called him in the neighbourhood, assisted by Matthew Jacon, the equally elderly parish clerk, without whose joint ministration ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... we draw near home; 'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark Our coming, and look brighter when we come; 'Tis sweet to be awakened by the lark Or lulled by falling waters; sweet the hum Of bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds, The lisp of children, and ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... friend and companion in sorrow warmly by the hand, his bronzed face brightens with an air of satisfaction, and like pure water gushing from the rude rock his eyes fill with tears. How honest, how touching, how pure the friendly lisp-good bye! "Keep up a strong heart, Tom,—never mind me. I don't know by what right I'm kept here, and starved; but I expect to get out one of these days; and when I do you may reckon on me as your ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... precipice; For who would lose his temper and his breath To keep a brute alive that's bent on death? Yet one thing more: your fate may be to teach In some suburban school the parts of speech, And, maundering over grammar day by day, Lisp, prattle, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... such a complexion. It combined extremely marvellous whites and extremely marvellous pinks, and the skin had the exquisite, incredible softness of a baby's. Next he was struck by her candid, ingenuous, inquiring gaze, and by her thin voice with the slight occasional lisp. The splendid magnificence of her frock and jewels came into play later. Lastly her demeanour imposed itself. That simple gaze showed not the slightest diffidence, scarcely even modesty; it was more brazen than effrontery. She preceded the other three into the ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... gracious prince that gives him life Would crown a never-dying flame, And every tender babe I bore Should learn to lisp the ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... the child must follow to win the favor of its gods. Thus the first object which the child is made to behold at the very dawn of its existence is the sun, the great object of their worship; and long ere the little lips can lisp a prayer it is repeated for it by ...
— The Religious Life of the Zuni Child - Bureau of American Ethnology • (Mrs.) Tilly E. (Matilda Coxe Evans) Stevenson
... hidden away in the security of this sea of roofs, whom the messengers of your power never could discover. Destroy us, you may; sweep from the face of Rome every individual whom the most diligent search can find, from the gray-haired man of fourscore to the infant that can just lisp the name of Jesus, and you have not destroyed the Christians; the Christian church still stands—not unharmed, but founded as before upon a rock, against which the powers of earth and hell can never prevail; and soon as this ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... three most influential papers did not comment upon Miss Clay's acting at all. In two more, little Miss Elsie Eaton and Bryan Masters shared the honors. The Sun remarked frankly that Miss Clay's amateurish acting, her baby lisp, her utter unacquaintance with whatever made for dramatic art, would undoubtedly insure the play a long run. Rachael knew that Warren would see all these papers, but she cut out all the pleasanter reviews and put ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... way in 1916. He was beginning to lisp a little along that restless line of thought in 1910. And in 1940 he may be sitting in that same sanctum with walls of heavy books on two sides of him, telling somebody just how it came to be that an economic cyclone on the prairies once caught up all ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... spring are on winter's traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... on the shoulder," the Port Security Officer said. "Won't you Earthmen ever learn?" The splay-tongued reptile-humanoids of Irwadi always spoke Interstellar Coine with a pronounced lisp which Ramsey found annoying, especially since it went so well with the officious and underhanded behavior for which the Irwadians ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance
... and bowed deeply when they were introduced, but we haven't spoken yet. The Marquise de Vermondoise is perfectly lovely, so fascinating, with such a queer deep voice, and one tooth at the side of the front missing; and her tongue keeps getting in there when she speaks, which gives her a kind of lisp, and it is awfully attractive. I think de Tournelle would like to kiss her, by the way he looked at her when she thanked him for ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... poor parson, threadbare, learned, and devout, ("Christ's lore and his apostles twelve he taught, and first he followed it himself")—the summoner with his fiery face—the pardoner with his wallet "bretfull of pardons, come from Rome all hot"—the lively prioress with her courtly French lisp, her soft little red mouth, and "Amor vincit omnia" graven on her brooch. Learning is there in the portly person of the doctor of physic, rich with the profits of the pestilence—the busy serjeant-of-law, "that ever seemed busier than he was"—the hollow-cheeked clerk of Oxford with his love ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... with a sickly mien, Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen; Practised to lisp, and hang the head aside, Faints into airs, and languishes with pride; On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe, Wrapp'd in a gown, for sickness, and for show. The fair ones feel such maladies as these, When each new ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... mother, sharply. She had a heavy voice and a slight lisp, which seemed to make it more impressive and more distinctively her own. Caleb read ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... a pale-faced man, with a slight lisp; and the men despised him because he had not the nerve even to handle them on church parade without priming himself beforehand. I had been vaccinated by virtue of a general order, and in a while my arm became swollen and very painful. ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... for these reasons, continued my father, that the governor I make choice of shall neither (Vid. Pellegrina.) lisp, or squint, or wink, or talk loud, or look fierce, or foolish;—or bite his lips, or grind his teeth, or speak through his nose, or pick it, or blow it with his fingers.—He shall neither walk fast,—or slow, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care; No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... the tones of that soft voice, in which sounded sometimes a sort of gentle lisp, like the hissing of ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... are!" she greeted her. "Goody! What a relief! I've been worrying about what you'd be like, and just praying you wouldn't have spectacles and talk with a lisp. Miss Todd gave me to understand you were a peach, and I might think myself in luck to room with you, but you never can trust head mistresses till you see for yourself. She's told me the truth, though, after all. Yes, I like you right straight ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... domestic duties which require manual efforts, but in the general education of her brothers or sisters, she may prove a powerful ally with their natural teacher. Having composed the infant to rest, let its childhood continue to be her care. She can aid it to lisp the first accents of its native tongue. In the rudiments of knowledge she may be an efficient instructor. For this work her age peculiarly qualifies her. As the breath of spring quickens the tender bud, so let her youthful spirit ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... upon him. Rosemary stood by the quay for a few minutes, uncertain what to do. Two or three deep-eyed, long-lashed Monegasque men smiled at her kindly, as Monegasque men and Italians smile at all children. She had learned to lisp French with comparative fluency, during the months she and "Angel" had spent in Paris; and now she asked where the people went who had come in on ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... girl, sinking at her mistress's feet in a fit of wild weeping, "don't, don't ask me this. I never knew it myself till yesterday, and then I wrung it from my mother, who charged me, if I valued her life, never to lisp it again. It made me wretched. Oh, Miss Della, it ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... lightly but strongly built, with a keen, smiling, subtle face, a finely-developed forehead, light wavy hair, and gray eyes, very penetrating and bright. There was a pleasing kind of eagerness and volubility in his manner of talking, and a slight imperfection, not amounting to a lisp, in his utterance, which imparted a naive charm to his speech. He used expressive and rapid gestures with his hands and arms, and there was a magnetism, a fascination, about the whole man that strongly impressed me. I was at that period much more susceptible of impressions, and prone to yield ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... where my clergyman of to-day failed utterly," said Mrs. Evelyn;—"he aimed at strengthening that feeling and driving it down as hard as he could into everybody's mind—not a single lisp of anything to do it away or lessen the gloom with which we are, naturally as you say, disposed to invest ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... Derwent's side my father dwelt—a man Of virtuous life, by pious parents bred; [7] 200 And I believe that, soon as I began To lisp, he made me kneel beside my bed, And in his hearing there my prayers I said: And afterwards, by my good father taught, I read, and loved the books in which I read; 205 For books in every neighbouring house I sought, And nothing to my mind ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... as it had grown; the night wore on, and the other doctor came in the small hours. Lucetta had been much soothed by Donald's arrival; he seldom or never left her side; and when, immediately after his entry, she had tried to lisp out to him the secret which so oppressed her, he checked her feeble words, lest talking should be dangerous, assuring her there was plenty of time ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... made a lawful target of itself. But against your friend your hands are tied. He has injured you. He has disgusted you. He has infuriated you. But it was most Christianly done. You cannot hurl a thunderbolt, or pull a trigger, or lisp a syllable, against those amiable monsters who with tenderest fingers are sticking pins all over you. So you shut fast the doors of your lips, and inwardly sigh for a good, stout, brawny, malignant foe, who, under any and every circumstance, will design you harm, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... married Dolly shortly after my promotion to the office of general superintendent, and the little fellow that is learning to lisp 'papa,' you know, has been named after you, my old, true, and invaluable friend, to whose counsel and kindness I feel I ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... if he wants to make it sell," said she. "Only they mightn't allow it at the libraries. Splodgkins's vocabulary is fortunately sometimes indistinguishable for his lisp." ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... for this idle trade; No duty broke, no father disobey'd; While yet a child, ere yet a fool to fame, I lisp'd in numbers, for the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... always been his misfortune to fail of his designs. Not a scrap of a warrant or other process could he obtain. Not the lisp of a word or oath would the good Squire take from his lying lips. "Get rid of your passion; go home, and work, and help me keep the peace," was Fabens' ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... as of the singular favours which that generous Mother reserved for her well-loved child. It was her happiness to be surrounded from earliest infancy with none but holy influences, and to breathe from her very cradle an atmosphere of purity. The first words which she heard, the first she tried to lisp, were the sweet names of Jesus and Mary. The first bent she received was an inclination to virtue; the first and only examples she witnessed were examples of piety. Thus passed the years preceding the dawn of reason, her beautiful soul expanding under the combined action of the baptismal ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... Her tears fell on her lover's face, but they were tears of joy; and with them were mingled tiny bursts of laughter and a thousand endearing words without sense, like the lisp of a little child. She quite forgot that the sight of her joy might sadden the ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... playing with their big coloured ball, happy as the day was long. And Edy Boardman was rocking the chubby baby to and fro in the pushcar while that young gentleman fairly chuckled with delight. He was but eleven months and nine days old and, though still a tiny toddler, was just beginning to lisp his first babyish words. Cissy Caffrey bent over to him to tease his fat little plucks and the dainty ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... my Muse! guid auld Scotch Drink, Whether thro' wimplin worms thou jink, [winding, dodge] Or, richly brown, ream owre the brink, [cream] In glorious faem, [foam] Inspire me, till I lisp an' ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... his English gaining piquancy from his slight lisp, "you come from England—from dear England. I love your country greatly. It has fog, and it is dark, too, for the sun forgets to shine at times; but it is beautiful—like a picture, and when it smiles, what ...
— A Day with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy • George Sampson
... "Snaky-haired monster." Period! Imagine that a pile is driven there! You've got to stop, to pause. There must be silence like the silence of the dead! You've got to imagine yourself wiped out of existence for the moment, Kaeferstein. And then—out with your best trumpeting chest-notes! Hold on! Don't lisp, for God's sake. "For ..." ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... inimitable grace. Its gradations of colour, its translucent opalescence framed in gleaming greens and tender greys, wreathed with the radiance of the foam, are of inimitable charm. Its gamuts of sounds, the faint lisp of the wavelet on the pebbly beach, the rhythmic rise and fall of the plashing or plunging surf, the roar and scream of the breaker, and the boom of the billow, are of inimitable range. What marvel is it that even the commonplace of the sons ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... came, she'd jump up and hang on to his neck until he groaned, then run away, but presently come stealing back on tiptoe. I used to listen for her footsteps on the stairs, then the knock, the door flung back or opened quietly—you never could tell which; and her voice, with a little lisp, 'Are you better today, Mr. Brune? What funny things you say when you're delirious! Father says you've been ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... there were any among them with whom it would be imprudent to risk an indiscretion, he took care to talk "for safety." With him, a secret was a secret, and he could be as silent as an unopened Egyptian tomb. Certain diplomatic affairs he did not lisp, even to his Secretary of State. So far as appears, John Hay knew nothing about the President's interviews with the German Ambassador Holleben, which forced William II to arbitrate. And he sometimes prepared a bill for Congress with out consulting his Cabinet, for fear that the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... am, you know also. Not more fixed is fate than my purpose. Your brother dies even on the spot on which my nephew died; and you, Clara, shall be my bride; and the first thing your children shall be taught to lisp shall be curses on the vile name ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... on the point of the man's glasses and the sick man's flannels, I gave him no unkind answer. And where was the quarreling? Nowhere. It did not exist. He taught me my bounds after the manner he did, and I accepted them and conformed my moves thereto with not a lisp of fault-finding. He never spoke a word in disapprobation of what I was doing, but that all was agreeable to his mind. Again, where was that place of quarreling? Not in the prison between the warden and chaplain. ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... nursery, teaching little fingers to play before the tongue can lisp a sentence. Alas! this natural training has often been stopped at school. Hitherto, until quite lately, in schools both low and high, rede-craft has had the place of honor, hand-craft has had no chance. But a change is coming. In the highest of all schools, universities, for example, work rooms, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... pulque from a jarrito (little earthen jar); the portly and well-looking padre prior del Carden (the Carmelite friar), sauntering up the lane at a leisurely pace, all the little ragged boys, down to the merest urchin that can hardly lisp, dragging off their large, well-holed hats, with a "Buenos das, padrecito!" (Good-morning, little father!)—the father replying with a benevolent smile, and a slight sound in his throat intended for a Benedicite; and all that might be dull ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... of evil deeds, who with his bow Assail'd the Gods, who on Olympus dwell. The blue-ey'd Pallas, well I know, has urg'd Tydides to assail thee; fool and blind! Unknowing he how short his term of life Who fights against the Gods! for him no child Upon his knees shall lisp a father's name, Safe from the war and battle-field return'd. Brave as he is, let Diomed beware He meet not some more dangerous foe than thee. Then fair AEgiale, Adrastus' child, The noble wife of valiant Diomed, Shall long, with lamentations loud, disturb The slumbers of her ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... shot fire, but instead of a reply, she bent down to the little Archduchess Josepha, who was just old enough to lisp ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... mild. None could manage her. Her baby training left wholly to neglected and loose-living servants, she had spent her first years in kitchens, garrets, and stables. The stables and the stable-boys, the kennels and their keepers, were loved better than aught else. She learned to lisp the language of grooms' and helpers, she cursed and swore as they did, she heard their songs and stories, and was as familiar with profanity and obscene language as other children are with nursery ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... I would go upstairs, and stand before the ikons, and say with a rapturous feeling, "God bless Papa and Mamma!" and repeat a prayer for my beloved mother which my childish lips had learnt to lisp-the love of God and of her blending strangely in a ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... with a charming affectation of a little lisp. 'I'm so glad I've caught you. I thought I should. What ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... her birth; knew her strong-hearted mother, and her gentle father, who slipped the noose of life when Claudia was a tiny thing, too young to more than lisp his name. Yet, with his last breath he blessed her, and blessed the man into whose arms he placed her, and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... thoughtful, and was never so without cause; after remaining silent for a time, she almost always ended by turning to some one of her elders, with a question which showed that her brain was working over a new impression. She very early ceased to lisp, and already in her fourth year she spoke with perfect distinctness. She was afraid of her father; her feeling toward her mother was undefined,—she did not fear her, neither did she fondle her; but she did not fondle Agafya either, although she loved ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... the old, old melody of youth and home! Again we are around the old hearthstone. Again do we kneel at mother's knee to lisp the evening prayer. Again she takes us in her arms, and sings to her tired child the soft, low lullaby of childhood's happy days.—Oh, Music, Music! Art Divine! Thou dost move and stir the heart as nothing else can do! Yet never canst thy sweet potency be ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... crowning, The West leads on a host, to cure the drouth Only when meadow, field, and you are drowning. They gladly hearken, prompt for injury,— Gladly obey, because they gladly cheat us; From Heaven they represent themselves to be, And lisp like angels, when with lies they meet us. But, let us go! 'Tis gray and dusky all: The air is cold, the vapors fall. At night, one learns his house to prize:— Why stand you thus, with such astonished eyes? What, in the twilight, can your mind ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... whose rich mine of wit we here behold As porcelain earth, more precious, 'cause more old; Who, like an aged oak, so long hath stood, And art religion now as well as food: Though thy grey Muse grew up with elder times, And our deceased grandsires lisp'd thy rhymes; Yet we can sing thee too, and make the lays Which deck thy brow look fresher with thy praise. * * * * * Though these, your happy births, have silent past More years than some abortive wits shall last; He still writes new, who once so well hath ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various
... quite sure before he spoke, but his lisp, though slight, betrayed the Jew. His features were coarse, almost brutal; but the restless eyes were so brilliant, the whole face so suggestive of power and character, that, taking him as a whole, the feeling he inspired was admiration, ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... be,—for the master noticed once, when her necklace was slightly displaced, that a faint ring or band of a little lighter shade than the rest of the surface encircled her neck. What was the slight peculiarity of her enunciation, when she read? Not a lisp, certainly, but the least possible imperfection in articulating some of the lingual sounds,—just enough to be noticed at first, and quite forgotten after being a few ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... write that ditty or did I? Upon my word, I can hardly tell. I am being hypnotised by Bayly. I lisp in numbers, and the numbers come like mad. I can hardly ask for a light without abounding in his artless vein. Easy, easy it seems; and yet it was Bayly after all, not you nor I, who ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... they are so unimportant that the audience will not pay much attention to them, the playlet writer must give peculiar individuality to every word spoken by the chief characters. By this I do not mean that, merely to show that a character is different, a hero or heroine should be made to talk with a lisp or to use some catch-word—though this is sometimes done with admirable effect. What I mean is that the words given to the chief characters must possess an individuality rising from their inner differences; their speech should show them as not only different from ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... return. He spoke no more than was necessary till bedtime, but meditated on new colors and sounds and lights and music and things as far as he understood them; the deep-mouthed agony of Mr. Pepper mingling with the little girl's lisp. That night he made a new tale, from which he shamelessly removed the Rapunzel-Rapunzel-let-down-your-hair princess, gold crown, Grimm edition, and all, and put a new Annieanlouise in her place. So it was ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... of Liberty' will be planted in the midst, and its branches will extend to the ends of the earth, while the friends of freedom meet and fraternize and amalgamate under its consolatory shade. There our infants shall be taught to lisp in tender accents the revolutionary hymn, there with wreaths of myrtle, and oak, and poplar, and vine, and olive and cypress, and ivy, with violets and roses and daffodils and dandelions in our hands, we will swear respect to childhood and manhood, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... the eldest son of one of the great up-country Chiefs. He was returning from Singapore with the Raja, to whom he had fled after some escapade of his had excited the paternal wrath. He was a nice-looking youngster, with a slight lisp, and a manner as soft as floss-silk, and he was always smartly dressed in pretty Malay garments. We travelled together for more than three months, and I got to know him pretty well, and took something of a liking to him. I knew, of course, that his manner to his own ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... imperfectly the end of beauty and art. As a "livelier iris changes on the burnished dove," and the fancy of the young man turns lightly to thoughts of his pretty cousin, so the same renewing spirit touches the "silent singers," and they are no longer dumb; faintly they lisp the first syllables of the marvelous tale. Witness the clear sweet whistle of the gray-crested titmouse,—the soft, nasal piping of the nuthatch,—the amorous, vivacious warble of the bluebird,—the long, rich note of the meadowlark,—the whistle of the quail,—the drumming ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... of swift surprise From the depths of childish eyes, Yet my soul to judgment came, Cowering, as before a flame. Not a word, a lisp of blame: Just a look of swift surprise In the ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... in hopes and fears In joys and griefs the same— Since first we learned in childhood's years To lisp ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... "Tom!" or "Steward!" according to the terms of friendship and familiarity on which you may stand with this dignitary, who, by the way, has a vote on board worth canvassing for;—I say bawl out, because, firstly, your mincing and Clarendon-like lisp of "Waiter!" would not be heard by one used to listen to the rush of the tempest and the shriek of the scourged Atlantic; also, for that your stirring call may remind some wretched skulker of a circumstance which he is miserably dozing out of remembrance, viz. that breakfast is under ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... as a child can speak he should be made to lisp the noble words of truth, and to love it, and to abhor a lie! What a beautiful character he will then make! Blessed is the child ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... so insipid," said I, "as that mock literary air which it is so much the fashion to assume. 'Tis but a wearisome relief to conversation to have interludes of songs about Strephon and Sylvia, recited with a lisp by a gentleman with fringed gloves ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the gathered clouds depart, Till not a shadow lies upon my path. Night, with its long and sombre shadows, treads Upon the steps that morn and noon have trod; And, as our children gather round my knee, And lisp those evening prayers thy lips have taught, I cannot but believe that thou art near. But when they speak of "mother," when they say "'T is a long time since she hath left our side," And when they ask, in their soft infant tones, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... weep for thee! and yet not tears Of hopelessness, but triumph, and sit down And weave for thee wet wild-flowers for a crown— Then up, and sound rich music in thine ears; And teach thee, that sweet lips, in coming years, Shall lisp the songs which cold dull hearts disown,— That all which hope could pant for is thine own,— Dimmed, for a moment's space, with human fears. Then watch the new-born glories in thine eye, Glancing like lightning from its chariot cloud, And list these words, which ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... himself, in his poems, that, "he lisp'd in numbers;" and used to say that he could not remember the time when he began to make verses. In the style of fiction it might have been said of him as of Pindar, that when he lay in his cradle, "the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... our century may yet witness the time when it will be considered the highest mixture of philosophic courtesy and Christian urbanity to make the most graceful semi-lateral bow, as you pass your friend in the street, and, kissing the tip of your finger, to lisp, with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... cap and patting his own head, "but I'd give a good deal to know when and how I am going to get rid of that man. Whatever I do I must look out for mother's comfort and peace of mind, and so I will not lisp a ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... go down and talk things over with the pal when he comes," said another voice that was very smooth, and had a lisp. Clo deduced that it was the ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... stage for nothing," I assured him. "I'll change my voice very little, not enough to make it difficult to keep up—throw in a lisp or something of that kind. You can trust me to do ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... the night, And he shuffles the shadows about As he gathers the stars in a nest of delight And sets there and hatches them out: The Zhederrill peers from his watery mine In scorn with the Will-o'-the-wisp, As he twinkles his eyes in a whisper of shine That ends in a luminous lisp. ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... make a propothition," says a long, thin, young Gold Leaguer, with a yellow beard and a slight lisp. "I rise to suggest that we send down to Reiley's for all hith bottled beer, and drink the health of ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... is born in a Christian family; as soon as he is able to join words together into sentences his mother teaches him to lisp the child's prayer: "Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." A little later the boy is taught the Lord's Prayer ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... body, a restless mind, and a restless soul, all tending in different directions, and at last they stood in a row before their aunt to recite their morning's task. Even little Jamie had his verse of Scripture to lisp, and was patted on the ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... angry, and he gave Parr such a severe rebuke as sent him from the room in ill-humor. The rest walked on the lawn, amusing the Americans with sketches of the Doctor. There was a dark cloud overhead, and from that cloud presently came a voice which called Tham (Parr-lisp for Sam). The company were astonished for a moment, but thought the Doctor was calling his servant in the house, and that the apparent direction was an illusion arising out of inattention. But presently the sound was repeated, certainly ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... the child's letter. But, unfortunately, what with his real emotion and the intoxication of an audience, he read it extravagantly, and interpolated a child's lisp (on no authority whatever), and a simulated infantile delivery, which, I fear, at first provoked the smiles rather than the tears of his audience. Nevertheless, at its conclusion the little note ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... tragedy, which decided the point; and Mr Revel, who knows all the actors, persuaded Mr Y—- (you know whom I mean, the great tragic actor) to come here, and give his opinion of her recitation. Mr Y—- was excessively polite; declared that she was a young lady of great talent; but that a slight lisp, which she has, unfitted her most decidedly for tragedy. Of course it was abandoned for comedy, which she studied some time; and when we considered her competent, Mr Revel had interest enough to ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... solar rays, while a brisk breeze, blowing in from the south-west, gave a feeling of freshness to the air and raised a little wave of surf, that broke on the beach with a rippling splash far astern; the cooing of the doves in the distance chiming in musically with the lisp of the ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... stood with one hand grasping the collar of her gorgeous mandarin coat. But Claire was more interested in the turquoise pendants than in her aunt. She had never seen the jewels before, but she had heard about them almost from the time she was able to lisp. ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... races; the Norman's faculty of observation, are allied to the emotion and tenderness of the Saxon. This fusion had been brought about slowly, when however the time came, its realisation was complete all at once, almost sudden. Yesterday authors of English tongue could only lisp; to-day, no longer content to ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... should they not have known When the rich rainbow on the morning cloud Reflects its radiant dies, the husbandman Beholds the ominous glory sad, and fears Impending storms? they augur'd happily, For thou didst love each wild and wonderous tale Of faery fiction, and thine infant tongue Lisp'd with delight the godlike deeds of Greece And rising Rome; therefore they deem'd forsooth That thou shouldst tread PREFERMENT'S pleasant path. Ill-judging ones! they let thy little feet Stray in the pleasant paths of POESY, And when thou shouldst have prest ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... or three laboring men, of farmerlike appearance, who were probably intending to work in the mines; one or two others, who could not be classified, and a genuine dude, as far as appearance went, a slender-waisted, soft-voiced young man, dressed in the latest style, who spoke with a slight lisp. He hailed from the city of New York, and called himself Mortimer Plantagenet Sprague. As next to himself, Luke was the youngest passenger aboard the stage, and sat beside him, the two became quite intimate. In spite of ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... lisp from the waters: the skies were not silenter. Peace Was between them; a passionless rapture of respite as soft as release. Not a sound, but a sense that possessed and pervaded with patient delight The soul and the body, clothed round with the comfort ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... all the actors, persuaded Mr Y—— (you know who I mean, the great tragic actor) to come here, and give his opinion of her recitation. Mr Y—— was excessively polite; declared that she was a young lady of great talent, but that a slight lisp, which she has, unfitted her most decidedly for tragedy. Of course, it was abandoned for comedy, which she studied some time, and when we considered her competent, Mr Revel had interest enough to induce the great Mr M—— to come and give ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... pride in his German ancestry, and having been present when, in seasons of swollen pride, he had reflected invidiously in Andrea's presence on Mexico and all things Mexican, the artist, in a wicked moment, taught her to lisp "Hoch der Kaiser!" lese-majeste that almost caused ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... appellation, taught Boy when first he could lisp, roused the man as perhaps nothing else would have done. The three of them still needed him, needed him more than ever. He was there at their sides like a wall of stone, to defend, to love and protect. And whatever ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... leather shoes he could not walk in, and pants he could not sit down in—dressed like a grasshopper! Well, this human cricket came up to the clerk's desk just as I came in. He adjusted his unseeing eye-glass in this wise and lisped to the clerk, because it's "Hinglish, you know," to lisp: "Thir, thir, will you have the kindness to fuhnish me with thome papah and thome envelopehs!" The clerk measured that man quick, and he pulled out a drawer and took some envelopes and paper and cast ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... dear, but laughable, had recurred to her memory. Yes, she laughed and wept at the same time. What was I to do? I was like a man in a fever. I remember that she began to say something to me—though WHAT I do not know, since she spoke with a feverish lisp, as though she were trying to tell me something very quickly. At intervals, too, she would break off into the smile which I was beginning to dread. "No, no!" she kept repeating. "YOU are my dear one; YOU are the ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... answered breathlessly, because the man's garb suggested, before he uttered another syllable, that be was a doctor. He had a curiously foreign aspect, and spoke with a pronounced lisp. ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... ring brought me to my feet before he opened the door. Significant as was his first hasty look round the room, he recovered at sight of me all his habitual SANG-FROID. He saluted me, and spoke coolly, though rapidly. But he panted, and I noticed in a moment that he had lost his lisp. ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... cabin floor as Totty ran about hunting hers and Benny's stockings, and after she had hung them up, heard her sweet voice again as she wondered over and over if Santa really would forget them. He heard the mother, in a choking voice; tell her treasures to get ready for bed; heard them lisp their childish prayers, the little girl concluding: "And, O, Lord! please tell good Santa Claus that we are very poor; but that we love him as much as rich children do, for ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... Link torcxo. Lint cxarpio. Lion leono. Lip lipo. Liquefy fluidigi. Liquid fluida. Liquid fluidajxo. Liquidate likvidi. Liquidation likvido. Liquidator likvidanto. Liquor likvoro. Liquorice glicirizo. Lisp lispi. List registro. List of names nomaro. List (index) tabelo. Listen auxskulti. Listless senvigla. Litany litanio. Literal lauxlitera. Literally lauxlitere. Literary literatura. Literateur literaturisto. Literature literaturo. Lithe aktiva. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... he has received in confidence, as it were, he almost blushes, as if he had been guilty of spying on Adam and Eve in their nuptial bower. Alas, if one could but muffle his speech with the unconscious lisp of infancy, or veil and tone his picture to correspond to the perspective of antiquity, he might feel at least that, like Watteau, he had dealt worthily, if not truly, with that ideal age which we ever think of ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... yesterday. And then father struck him with his cane. John fell as if he were dead. I was looking in at the window, not thinking any harm, and saw it all. I thought he had killed John, and ran away, determined not to tell. I never breathed a lisp of it before, son, and nobody ever knew of that quarrel, only your grandfather and me. I know it troubled him greatly after John died. Oh, I can see that awful paper, as John held it up to the light, as plain as this ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... money?' asked the other, balancing the letter in a careless grip between thumb and finger. 'Nobody asks you to stop to hear yourself described. You were a cad from your cradle; you were a liar as soon as you could learn to lisp, and a sponge from the happy hour when you found the first fool to lend you half a crown. You needn't wait, George, but so long as you are here I will do my best to tell you what you are. You are a fruitful theme, and I could be fluent for a week or two. Going? Well, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... sultana's satin tunic. We could drop a stone from our windows into the sea; we ran dripping from our sea-baths up long stairs, across tiled balconies, into our vast rooms; all day and all night the swish and lisp of the soft tides mingled with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... in the thicket of hair wrinkled above high cheek bones shone two very merry blue eyes. He was indeed an outlander, but yet a Thibetan in language, habit, and attire. He spoke the Lepcha dialect with an indescribable softening of the gutturals. It was not so much a lisp as ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... heedless gazing teach me more than toil? Can swaying of sere sedge along the slope, Or the dull lisp of oaken limbs that foil The sun's ensheathing fervor, interfuse My vacant being with far meanings whose Soft airs blow from the hidden seas of Hope? Or can the wintry sumac sably stooping So charm and lift my heart from heartless drooping When other healings all were asked in ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... All sciences a fasting Monsieur knows, And, bid him go to hell, to hell he goes. [r]Ah! what avails it, that, from slav'ry far, I drew the breath of life in English air; Was early taught a Briton's right to prize, And lisp the tale of Henry's victories; If the gull'd conqueror receives the chain, And flattery prevails, when arms are vain![G] [s]Studious to please, and ready to submit, The supple Gaul was born a parasite: Still to his int'rest true, where'er ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... audience became more enthusiastic and clamored loudly for encores. Elfreda's imitations provoked continuous laughter, and dainty Arline Thayer, looking not more than seven years old, was a delightful success from her first babyish lisp. Her song of the goblin man who stole little children to work for him in his underground cellar, with its catchy chorus of "Run away, you little children," was immediately adopted by Overton, and when later it was noised about that Ruth had written ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... floating softness, which suggested more than it revealed of her person, like a nymph's drapery. She was the centre of attraction and talked and laughed a great deal, the latter in little tinkles like a child of five, the former from the top of her throat with the faintest lisp and in the strange jargon that was the slang of the moment. She knew no more of Florentine art or Wagner or Egyptology than Julia did, and cared even less. She set out to be intelligently ignorant—to be anything else was called "middle-class" in her set—and she achieved her end, ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... only son the vocation of their later life. He might be anything he liked. Did he lisp in numbers, the boyish rhymes were duly scanned and criticised; had he a turn for painting, lessons were provided. He might be anything he chose, and everything by turns. Many of us have been lately reading ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... governess, her friend, her confidante, I may almost say her mother. Rosabella had lost her parents early. Her mother died when her child could scarcely lisp her name; and her father, Guiscardo of Corfu, the commander of a Venetian vessel, eight years before had perished in an engagement with the Turks, while he was still in the prime of life. Camilla, ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... honor of her ladyship's acquaintance,' replied he in a lisp, evidently enjoying my perplexity, which was ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... afraid in my heart that you may have been visited by the new spirit of infidelity that is abroad to-day; If it is so, I pray for you. Remember, dear boy, how in your childhood, when your father was living, you used to lisp your prayers at my knee, and how happy we all were in those days. Good-bye, till we meet then—I embrace you ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... point. It was impossible to see more than a yard or two ahead, but the same dense obscurity would prevent any further range of vision from the other boat, and, if it was still at its work, the sound of its oars or of voices, Michael reflected, might guide him to it. From the lisp of little wavelets lapping on the shore below the woods, he knew he was quite close in to the bank, and close also to the place where the invisible boat had been ten minutes before. Then, in the bewildering, unlocalised manner in which sound without ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... as soon as it can be made to understand any thing, is taught mechanically to join its little hands in prayer. His tongue is forced to lisp a formula which it does not comprehend, addressed to a God which its understanding can never conceive. In the arms of its nurse it is carried into the temple or church, where its eyes are habituated to contemplate spectacles, ceremonies, and pretended ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... happy times, Fair children of the glowing days, How sweet the music of your lays Is mingled into fairy chimes! Ye lisp again the songs of yore, The stories of my infant years, And throw a sweeter cadence o'er My hoary ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... accounts, too, for his way of cataloguing objects without selection. His single expressions arc often unsurpassed for descriptive beauty and truth. He speaks of "the vitreous pour of the full moon, just tinged with blue," of the "lisp" of the plane, of the prairies, "where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles." But if there is any eternal distinction between poetry and prose, the most liberal canons of the poetic art will never agree to ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... in the Great House of Shanitha, thcarred man." He spoke the Shainsa dialect with an affected lisp. "Will it ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... stopped when they had entered the garden. Ever since Virginia could remember, she had heard threats of cutting down the paulownias because of the litter the falling petals made in the spring, and ever since she could lisp at all she had begged her father to spare them for the sake of the enormous roots, into which she had ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... that he could not walk in, and pants that he could not sit down in—dressed like a grasshopper. This human cricket came up to the clerk's desk just as I entered, adjusted his unseeing eye-glass, and spake in this wise to the clerk. You see, he thought it was "Hinglish, you know," to lisp. "Thir, will you have the kindness to supply me with thome papah and enwelophs!" The hotel clerk measured that man quick, and he pulled the envelopes and paper out of a drawer, threw them across the counter toward ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... simplicity gives even to the most forcible reasoning and the most brilliant wit an infantine air, generally delightful, but to a foreign reader sometimes a little ludicrous. Heroes and statesmen seem to lisp when they use it. It becomes Nicias incomparably, and renders all his silliness infinitely more silly. We may add, that the verses with which the Mandragola is interspersed, appear to us to be the most spirited and correct of all that Machiavelli has ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... started—the envious eye-lid shrouded no more its lustrous jewel—the wondering eyes dilated, as they met her lover's—and she murmured something with that sweet Venetian lisp, in which the Greek women breathe their Italian. But, as she saw the stranger, her face and neck became suffused with crimson, and her small hand wrapped the snowy sheet ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... The lisp of children's voices, The chance of happy choices, The bugle sounds of hope and faith, through fogs and mists that call; The heaven that stretches o'er us, The better days before us, They all combine to make this earth a good world ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... only in a less life-like way. For example, where Mr. Mackail says of Morris that "by the time he was seven years old he had read all the Waverley novels, and many of Marryat's," Mr. Compton-Rickett vaguely writes: "He was suckled on Romance, and knew his Scott and Marryat almost before he could lisp their names." That is typical of Mr. Compton-Rickett's method. Instead of contenting himself with simple and realistic sentences like Mr. Mackail's, he aims at—and certainly achieves—a kind of imitative ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... life Strange welcome found, Jeanne, in this time of strife. Like wild-bee humming through the woods your play, And baby smiles have dared a world at bay: Your tiny accents lisp their gentle charms To mighty Paris clashing mighty arms. Ah! when I see you, child, and when I hear You sing, or try, with low voice whispering near, And touch of fingers soft, my grief to cheer, I dream this darkness, where the tempests groan, Trembles, and passes ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo |
