"Impromptu" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with gray; lumberman's boots, flat-footed, shapeless, with loose leather legs strapped just below the knee, and wrinkled like the hide of an ancient rhinoceros; and a soft brown hat with several holes in the crown, as if it had done duty, at some time in its history, as an impromptu target in a shooting-match. A red woollen scarf twisted about his loins gave a touch of colour ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... when some children came along and commenced to toss fruit, apples and pears, over their heads to the prisoners; the next thing was they allowed the people of the neighborhood to enter the lines, so that in a short time the camp was swarming with impromptu merchants, men and women, offering for sale bread, wine, cigars, even. Those who had money had no trouble in supplying their needs so far as eating, drinking, and smoking were concerned. A bustling animation prevailed in the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... men enjoying a convivial evening at the tavern a contest of wit and satire arose between Dr. Gott and Elihu Phinney who had become warm friends. Finally it was proposed that each should compose an impromptu epitaph for the other. In the epitaph which he improvised for Judge Phinney Dr. Gott, adapting the conceit of the schoolmen, made out Judge Phinney's soul to be so small that thousands of such could dance on the point of a cambric needle. Judge Phinney ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... discovered that the excitement came from a kind of impromptu mass meeting that had followed upon the appearance of Apleon riding on his ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... Malibran's viciousness in rehearsing her death-scene, she resigned herself to the impromptu imposed upon her, and prepared to follow her Romeo, wherever she might choose to die; but when the evening came, Malibran contrived to die close to the foot-lights and in front of the curtain; Sontag of necessity followed, and fell beside ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... impromptu lunches, without the restraint of Gordon's presence, he had revealed to her a new phase of his character which had interested her still more deeply. It was here that she discovered the secret of his real attitude toward women, his deep hunger for love, tenderness ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... you spoke the truth in respect to ordinary men, but you did yourself injustice. The common excitement and warm blood of youth pass away; but the heart of the wise man, the older it grows the warmer it feels." It is difficult to imagine a more graceful impromptu ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... to see you, Carol," she cries. "I have sent all the servants to bed, Eleanor, but told them to leave out some aspic and champagne, as I know the Hilliers starve their guests. What do you say to an impromptu supper party? It would ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... never given to guests. It was little more than a closet and was not even furnished. A cot had been put in that very afternoon, but only to meet a special emergency. A long-impending conference was going to be held between him and his employers subsequent to closing up time, and he had planned this impromptu refuge to save himself a late walk to the stable. At his offer to pass the same over to the Demarests, the difficulty of the moment vanished. Miss Demarest was shown to the one empty room in front, and the mother—as being the one less ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... these verses, my friends? Is that piece an impromptu? said my landlady's daughter. (Aet. 19. Tender-eyed blonde. Long ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold pencil-case on a chain. Locket. Bracelet. Album. Autograph book. Accordeon. Reads Byron, Tupper, and Sylvanus ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... earlier years—another instance of Life's reversing the judgment of College. As a writer of agreeable trifles for the amusement of the drawing-room, he has had few superiors, and it is said that a large number of his impromptu effusions are still in the possession of his friends unpublished. Two editions of his poems have appeared in New York, one by Langley in 1844, and another by Redfield a ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... built every night, where singing, storytelling, and open air amusements of an impromptu nature are indulged in to one's heart's content, though visitors are all expected to remember the rights of others and ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... a toast to their young hostess, which was drunk standing, and then the guests repaired to the drawing room, where impromptu stunts were in order. Every one was obliged to do something, if only to make a remark appropriate to the occasion. Nora sang, Anne recited, Grace and Miriam did a Spanish dance that they had practised during vacation with remarkable spirit and effect. Jessica was ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... accurate touch of the artificer in jewels and costly metals was one of the gifts transmitted to Robert Herrick. Much of his work is as exquisite and precise as the chasing on a dagger-hilt by Cellini; the line has nearly always that vine-like fluency which seems impromptu, and is never the result of anything but austere labor. The critic who, borrowing Milton's words, described these carefully wrought poems as "wood-notes wild" showed a singular lapse of penetration. They are full of subtle simplicity. Here we come across a stanza as severely ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... for Mexico, wouldn't he? Still, long as I'd let Plummer put me on the committee, it was up to me to answer any calls. Might be entertainin' to see who he'd mistaken for an enemy alien this time. And if all I was expected to do was spill a little impromptu strategy—well, maybe I could, and then again maybe I couldn't. ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... opened by an impromptu bye-battle between the indignant cockney and the gentleman from Bristol, but a prolonged roar of applause broke in upon their altercation. It was caused by the appearance in the ring of Crab Wilson, followed by Dutch Sam and Mendoza carrying the basin, ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... members of the Set to a tennis party in the Palace gardens, at which the Sultan of Dafur and a bodyguard armed with battle axes would be the chief attraction. Also I induced the landlord of our hotel to promise special illuminations, music, and an impromptu dance for the evening. This was to make sure that none of our friends should find time to see me off at the train. Anthony was to join me there, in mufti, and might be recognised by sharp eyes on the lookout for mysteries. Once we got away, that danger would be past: unless Cleopatra ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... using popular prejudice and bigotry to his purpose, exceptionally unscrupulous in appealing to those baser motives that turn a meeting of citizens into a mob of barbarians, he should yet have won his case before a jury of the people. Mr. Lincoln was as far as possible from an impromptu politician. His wisdom was made up of a knowledge of things as well as of men; his sagacity resulted from a clear perception and honest acknowledgment of difficulties, which enabled him to see that the only durable triumph of political opinion is ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... being taken to preserve the natural outline, not to leave jagged edges. Attention to this matter results in the lengthening of the lashes. Dyeing them is another expedient often resorted to for increasing their effect. A good permanent black is all that is needed, and for this use Indian ink. As an impromptu expedient to serve for one night, a hairpin held for a few seconds in the flame of a candle, and drawn through the lashes, will serve to color them well, and with sufficient durability. It need scarcely be added that the hairpin must be suffered to grow cold before it is used, ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... the sayings can scarce be quoted with their full effect beyond the circle of common friends. To have their proper weight they should appear in a biography, and with the portrait of the speaker. Good talk is dramatic, it is like an impromptu piece of acting where each should represent himself to the greatest advantage; and that is the best kind of talk where each speaker is most fully and candidly himself, and where, if you were to shift the speeches round from one to another, there would be the greatest loss in significance and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... real, more truthful, more spontaneous, and more delightful than the laborious productions of our ancestors, who had to weigh every phrase, and to think out their bon mots, epigrams, and smart things for weeks beforehand, so that the letter might appear full of impromptu wit. I should like, for instance, just for once, to rob the outward or the homeward mail, in order to read all the delightful letters which go every week backward and forward between the folk in India and ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... this speech from the Court, and the district attorney added his own tribute, while Silvia was given an impromptu reception by jurors, court officers and spectators. When this was over, and the throng that had surrounded her and her client went their way on the quest of new sensations, she found herself standing alone with him before the bench, in almost the identical spot where ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... drinking, a large earthenware jug of water served the whole party. Yet this man was the owner of several square miles of land, of which nearly every acre would produce corn, and, with a little trouble, all the common vegetables. The evening was spent in smoking, with a little impromptu singing, accompanied by the guitar. The signoritas all sat together in one corner of the room, and did not ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... shed containing a carpenter's bench, a chest for bats and stumps, and various other things belonging to different boys. Acton, as head of the school, kept the key, and having unfastened the door, summoned his followers inside to hold an impromptu council of war and discuss the situation. There was a grave expression on each face, for every one felt that things were beginning to look serious. Mason, the only one of their number who had been physically equal to the leaders of their opponents, was no longer among them, and the enemy, ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... was always happy to join in these impromptu musical assemblies, when occasion offered, although performing music was one of the few things which he never succeeded in doing well. He invariably played the viola on these occasions,—perhaps, as Schindler hints about Beethoven, because indifferent playing on the viola ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... Course in Practical English How to Speak Without Notes Something to Say: How to Say It Successful Methods of Public Speaking Model Speeches for Practise The Training of a Public Speaker How to Sell Through Speech Impromptu Speeches: How to Make Them Word-Power: How to Develop It Christ: The Master Speaker Vital English for Speakers ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... Andy gasped at length, in a whisper. "Best I ever saw in m'life, impromptu on the spot, like that. I saw you had the makings in you, soon as I caught your eye. And the whole, blame bunch fell for it—woo-oof!" He laid his face down again upon his folded arms and shook in all the long ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... other targets are fired upon, the gun can always be brought back to its zero line by means of the aiming-posts. Absolute accuracy being essential, the aiming-posts are specially designed and are of a settled pattern. Judge of the two colonels' astonishment then when they perceived Dumble's impromptu contrivance. ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... prayer, in which he poured forth his thanks to the God who rules the sea and the land for the mercy that had spared their brothers from other lands from the mighty power of the raging billows. Instead of reading a printed sermon as usual, he gave an impromptu address relating to the event of the early morning. Its bearing was very religious, and it was as eloquent as it was ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... furnishing of the camp, there were impromptu stools and tables made of packing-boxes and trunks, all covered with bright Turkey-red cotton; there were no less than three rustic lounges and two arm-chairs made from manzanita branches, and a Queen Anne bedstead was being slowly constructed, ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... The uncontrollable exasperation of the temper obliged me at length to draw the charge from the pistol, through fear of yielding to some sudden impulse of despair. I had also put out of reach my razors, a hammer, and whatever else might serve as an impromptu means of violence. I remember the grim satisfaction with which I looked upon the brass ornaments of the bedroom fire-place, and reflected that, if worse came to worst, I was not wholly without a resource with which to end my sufferings. For nearly a ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... in the third folio of his collected works,(1664). Schlegel and a few other critics of repute have, on no grounds that merit acceptance, detected signs of Shakespeare's genuine work in one of the six, 'The Yorkshire Tragedy;' it is 'a coarse, crude, and vigorous impromptu,' which is clearly by a far less ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... an uproar. The old corporal was seized, and after undergoing sundry kicks and cuffs, and cudgelings, which are generally given impromptu by the mob in Spain, as a foretaste of the after penalties of the law, he was loaded with irons, and conducted to the city prison; while his comrades were permitted to proceed with the convoy, after it had been well rummaged, to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... and bewildered Arthur Inglewood almost struggled against his own growing importance. He felt as if, in spite of him, his photographs were turning into a picture gallery, and his bicycle into a gymkhana. But no one had any time to criticize these impromptu estates and offices, for they followed each other in wild succession like the ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... me to tell you his request was refused, that his regiment was even then embarking to cross the Delaware, and that therefore he could not return, whatever his wish. The Twenty-sixth is under orders to follow at daybreak to-morrow, and so we plan an impromptu farewell supper this evening at my quarters. Will you forgive such brief notice and help to cheer our ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... morning we were up with the first streak of dawn. It was with some curiosity that I looked round at our impromptu dwelling and its surroundings, upon which we had descended in total obscurity the night before. The position of our camping-place was not badly chosen; we were just within the girdle of forest above which rises the grassy Alpen. About forty yards to the left or north-east of us was ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... he asked. Edward looked at him. Mr. Beecher's face was tense. After a few moments he said: "That's generally the way with extemporaneous remarks: they are always dangerous. The best impromptu speeches and remarks are the carefully prepared kind," ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... springing from the same fervid abundance, that links the Spanish tradition to ours of the present day is the strangely impromptu character of much Spanish art production. The slightly ridiculous proverb that genius consists of an infinite capacity for taking pains is well controverted. The creative flow of Spanish artists has always been so strong, so full of vitality, that there ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... instead of some of the provisions that are sent, cooking utensils should arrive. Fifty stoves arrived from Pittsburgh this morning, and it is said more are coming. At both the depots where the supplies are received and stored a big rope line encloses them in an impromptu yard so as to give room to those having the supplies in charge to walk around and see what they have got. On the inside of this line, too, stalk back and forth the soldiers with their rifles on their ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... had always been considered as the most hospitable and pleasant estancia in the district, became more than ever popular, and many were the impromptu dances got up. Sometimes there were more formal affairs, and all the ladies within twenty miles would come in. These were more numerous than would have been expected. The Jamiesons were doing well, and in turn going for a visit to ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... Bermondsey, in Blackwall and Oxford Street, were gathered bundles of hilarity, lingering near the scenes of their recent splendours. A thousand sounds, now of revelry, now of complaint, disturbed the brooding calm of the sky. A thousand impromptu concerts were given, and a thousand insults grew precociously to blows. A thousand old friendships were shattered, and a thousand new vows of eternal comradeship and blood-brotherhood were registered. A thousand wives were waiting, sullen and heavy-eyed, ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... fact, he telegraphed that Eugene could come if he liked, but he, Rickmansworth, thought he'd find it beastly slow. Eugene went, but found, to his dismay, that Claudia was not there. Some mystery hung over her non-appearance; but he learned from Bob that her departure had been quite impromptu,—decided upon, in fact, after his telegram was received,—and that she was staying some five miles off, at the Dower House, with her aunt, Lady Julia, who occupied ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... unnaturally take some risks to get there first. Those were the moments that resulted in methods in the engine room picturesquely described as "feeding the fires with fat bacon and resin, and having a nigger sit on the safety valve." To such impromptu races might be charged the most terrifying accidents in the history of ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... calculating thing that, at fifteen, he thought it. Her one simple idea was to be happy and, as a means to that end, to have people happy about her. His father, or Anne's father, could have told him that all her ideas were simple as feelings and impromptu. Impulse moved her, one moment, to seize on the faithful, defiant little heart of Anne, the next, to get up out of the sun. Anne's tears spoiled her bright world; but not for long. Coolness was now the important thing, not Anne and not ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... fastidious tastes and with ample means to gratify them, proved a delightful host. In his earlier days he had been a constant diner-out; he understood the ordering of impromptu meals, and he had that decision and air which inspires respect even in a head-waiter. He marshalled his little party to the table reserved for them, waved away the table d'hote card, and ordered his ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... discovered his loss the other fellow was gone. These rascals said it was the best dish of ham and eggs they ever ate. Many houses had fine pianos and other musical instruments, and in some instances impromptu dances were on whilst Confederate shells whanged through the house above their heads. It is safe to say that there was little left of valuable bric-a-brac to greet the fugitive people on their return. And it is highly probable that pianos and handsome furniture needed considerable ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... it was wet, amusing concerts were given instead at the Masonic Hall. On these occasions Colonel Baden-Powell was the leading spirit, as well as one of the principal artistes, anon appearing in an impromptu sketch as "Signor Paderewski," or, again, as a coster, and holding the hall entranced or convulsed with laughter. He was able to assume very various roles with "Fregoli-like" rapidity; for one evening, soon after the ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... who could find nothing to complain of in heaven except that "his halo didn't fit," or said in her quick way, when the plainness of a lady's dress was commended, "Why, I didn't suppose that anybody could go to heaven now-a-days without an overskirt," or wrote her sparkling impromptu rhymes for our children's games, her mirth was all in harmony with her earnest life. Her quick perceptions, her droll comparisons, her readiness of expression, united with her rare and tender sympathies, made her the most ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... vanquish the wolf in no time, no dialogue had been provided for the friends and neighbors waiting outside, and as time passed and no signal to "draw up," came, they grew somewhat embarrassed. Tom, urged by necessity, spoke impromptu: "He fighteth the wolf!" he cried; "he fighteth fiercely!" Then, in an undertone to his next neighbor, "say something, Will; anything will do." But Will could think of nothing but "He fighteth the wolf!" also; so he said it to Dick and kicked him on ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... and answered solemn questions, put in a deep bass voice, until household prayer-time came, at eight o'clock, when Mrs Peters came in, smoothing down her apron, and the maid-of-all-work followed, and first a sermon, and then a chapter was read, and a long impromptu prayer followed, till some instinct told Mr Peters that supper-time had come, and we rose from our knees with hunger for our predominant feeling. Over supper the minister did unbend a little into one or two ponderous ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... in and I'll come to the theatre with you." The thought was impromptu, an evening with a bed-ridden woman was not exhilarating ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... see only the humor of it. She was fascinated by the social niceties and the surroundings of the set she had drifted into. The little dinners, the impromptu teas, the light chatter and general atmosphere of luxury more than counterbalanced any other lack. She wanted only to play, and she was prepared to seize avidly on any form of pleasure, no matter if in last analysis it were utterly frivolous. She ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... wit and sprightliness of Chloe were so famous as to be considered medical, he affirmed; she was besieged for her company; she composed and sang impromptu verses, she played harp and harpsichord divinely, and touched the guitar, and danced, danced like the silvery moon on the waters of the mill pool. He concluded by saying that she was both humane and wise, humble-minded and amusing, virtuous yet not a Tartar; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a long and wandering impromptu prayer by somebody, a prayer which "Shirley" found disagreeable (since she herself was a churchwoman, and missed the burial service), the procession, containing twenty men and three ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... in the direction of his impromptu Webster's Unabridged. "Mr. Slocum does not propose to split the difference. The wages in every department are to be just what they are,—neither more nor less. If anybody wishes to make a remark," he added, observing a restlessness in several of the men, ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... color of mahogany, and our legs and feet were swollen and blistered from being so much in the salt water, and the action of the hot sun on them made them excessively painful. Fortunately, but little exertion was now necessary, and our only relief was in lying still, with an impromptu awning over us. General Breckinridge took charge of the water and rum, doling it out at regular intervals, a tot at a time, determined to make it last ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... several yards of snow-white muslin—the innocent cause of the disaster; and how, light as a bird, she sprung, merrily laughing, from the room, with the fluttering fragments of her cobweb dress gathered in an impromptu drapery around ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... seemed as if desserts were impromptu and unusual things at the parsonage; whereas, if Mr. Hale would only have looked behind him, he would have seen biscuits and marmalade, and what not, all arranged in formal order on the sideboard. But the idea of pears had taken possession ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... follies and fashions of the day. Besides the written text Giovanni was wont to add some patter of his own, improvised according to the mood of his audience and the scene of the performance, but he ventured on very little of this impromptu comedy on such an occasion as this. Too ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... European widow, the humpy type of widow! One could spend whole days in their company—I had done it—commencing quite early in the morning with a sleighing excursion, finishing up quite late in the evening with a little supper party, followed by an impromptu dance; and never detect from their outward manner that they ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... with a bass roar, Philosopher Jack with a stentorian shout. Ben Trench did his best to follow Jack's example. Simon O'Rook uttered an Irish howl, threw his cap into the air, and forthwith began an impromptu hornpipe, in which he was joined by Bob Corkey. Baldwin Burr and his comrades vented their feelings in prolonged British cheers, and Mr Luke, uttering a squeak like a wounded rabbit, went about wanting to embrace everybody, but nobody would let him. In short ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... for a short time at the station and returned with the luggage which he had left there. While he was away I stole into my room and took a good look at my new treasure; he still slept peacefully and calmly on. We were deep in impromptu carpentering and contrivances for use and comfort, when it occurred to me to ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... wider still stared out my wonder, to hear my usually sober friend so voluble in words and so profuse of images: I saw at once it was a set speech, prepared for an impromptu occasion; nevertheless, as he was clearly in an enviable state of disenthraldom from thoughtfulness, I graciously accorded him a sympathetic smile. And then this more than Gregorian cure for the head-ache! here was an anodyne infinitely precious to one so brain-feverish ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... California by that association, met with the approval of all those interested in the movement. Soon after this Mrs. Schenck with her gifted ally, Mrs. Stevens, decided to organize a suffrage society, and at an impromptu meeting of some of the friends at the residence of Mrs. Nellie Hutchinson, July 27, 1869, the first association for this purpose on the Pacific coast was formed. There were just a sufficient number of members[499] to fill the offices. This society grew rapidly and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... tables overflow on to the grass and side- walks, and even into the middle of the streets. Later in the evening the open-air concerts and theatres are packed, and every little square organizes its impromptu ball, the musicians mounted on tables, and the crowd dancing gayly on the ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... criticized Sally. Janet often stayed out for the evening; that was by no means an uncommon occurrence. Art students are convivial souls; they love the unconventionality of the evenings in each other's company. Sometimes Sally went with her to a small impromptu dance or a musical at-home in the purlieus of Chelsea. But never before had she announced that she was going out by herself. Mrs. Hewson did not profess to have any control over the morals of her lodgers, so long as they did not reflect in any way upon her own respectability; ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... for his reflections and his walk, he had rested in the shade of a tree and had written two poems. One of these was the serenade which he would have roared out on the night air on a very recent occasion if he had had time to prepare it. It was, in his opinion, far superior to the impromptu verses of which he had been obliged to make use, and it pleased him to think that if things should go well with him after the interview to which he was looking forward, he would read that serenade ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... stood in this time, handing out gifts, and when I saw Mrs. Allen buying a whole wheelbarrow-load of golden-looking doughnuts, brought by a woman of the village close by, I wondered with some apprehension if she were meaning to reward us for our excessive virtue. But they were an impromptu treat for the soldiers standing in the yard—some already lined up to march—and the way they disappeared down those brown throats made ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... brilliant conversation, rather than to apply himself to routine work. His comrades used to lock him into a room to make him work, and even then he would outwit them by dashing off a witty parody or a bit of impromptu verse. Among his literary jeux d'esprit was an examination paper on 'Pickwick,' prepared as a Christmas joke in exact imitation of a genuine "exam." The prizes, two first editions of Pickwick, were won by W. W. Skeat, now famous as ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... lighted by tallow candles, he was unable to read them when he arose to address the court and jury, paying them aside, he depended entirely upon his memory and found it perfect. He made an eloquent plea, produced a marked impression, and won the case. Since then he has always been an impromptu speaker. Formed a partnership later with William Wallace, but in 1860 the latter became clerk of Marion County, and the firm was changed to Harrison & Fishback, which was terminated by the entry of the senior partner into the Army in 1862. Was chosen reporter ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... these entertainments with her daughters, which to the young people afforded a cheerful break in the dullness and monotony of their usual life; for owing to the absence of almost all the young men with the army, there had been a long cessation of the pleasant interchange of visits, impromptu parties, and social gatherings that had formed a feature ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... Trojan at the athletic graces he should have cultivated in his younger days. He rode every morning; he practised every day at tennis and croquet; every evening he bowled; and every time some one sat at the piano and played dance music and the young people fell into impromptu waltzes and two-steps on the porch, he joined them and danced religiously with whomsoever he found to hand; usually Miss ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... late breakfast, some one proposed impromptu charades and tableaux. Madame Arnault good-naturedly sent for the keys to the tall presses built into the walls, which contained the accumulated trash and treasure of several generations. Mounted on a stepladder, Robert Beauvais explored the recesses, and threw down to the ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... was tracts! An' yet some'ow I didn't." Mr. Pyecroft nodded his head wonderingly. "Our old man was quite right—so was 'Op—so was I. 'Ere, Glass!" He kicked the Marine. "Here's our Antonio 'as written a impromptu book! He was a ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... Margrave's fingers rushed over the keys, and there was a general start, the prelude was so unlike any known combination of harmonious sounds. Then he began a chant—song I can scarcely call it—words certainly not in Italian, perhaps in some uncivilized tongue, perhaps in impromptu gibberish. And the torture of the instrument now commenced in good earnest: it shrieked, it groaned, wilder and noisier. Beethoven's Storm, roused by the fell touch of a German pianist, were mild in comparison; ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the twentieth century has seen a steady growth of serious scholarly interest in graffiti. Sociologists, psychologists, and historians have increasingly turned to the impromptu "scratchings" of both the educated and the uneducated as indicators of the general mental health and political stability of specific populations.[2] Although most of us are familiar with at least a few of these studies and all of us ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... athletics, was crowded and inconvenient, even for practice games; while the old fair grounds in the southeastern part of the city were not under University control, besides being ill-adapted to college games. The streets and Campus were popular for impromptu games, although the arm of the law was unduly active in the spring, and "the batting of balls" was conspicuously forbidden on a sign which long decorated the south wall of the Museum. The Regents recognized this need of a great playground, ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... to listen to Social Democrats, Socialist Revolutionaries, Anarchists, anybody, whatever they had to say, as long as they would talk! For months in Petrograd, and all over Russia, every street-corner was a public tribune. In railway trains, street-cars, always the spurting up of impromptu ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... the odd pair a good lift, and took them along so rapidly that towards evening they reached the shoemaker's cottage. Nono thought best to be set down there, and he was hardly on the ground with Blackie beside him when there was an impromptu concert of singing and scolding that brought the inmates of the house at ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... returned the little maiden, and going to the piano she dashed off a wild, impassioned, mixed-up impromptu, resembling now the soft notes of the lute or the plaintive sob of the winter wind, and then swelling into a full, rich, harmonious melody, which made the blood chill in Edith's veins, and caused both Richard and Arthur to ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... gentleman; and certainly the silver-grey frock-coat, and gold eye-glass, and varnished shoes struck her as singularly out of harmony with the extraordinary speech he had just delivered. Yet it was evidently impromptu, and possibly would never have been delivered at all had not she herself so blunderingly led up to it. And it was not a bad speech in its way. There was something really effective about it—or perhaps it was in the manner of ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... pulled up the collar of his invisible shirt, while the comique exclaimed "gnouf! gnouf!" with a gesture forgotten by Parisians for ten years, Desiree thought with dismay of the enormous hole that impromptu banquet would make in the paltry earnings of the week, and Mamma Delobelle, full of business, upset the whole buffet in order to find ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... wonder of the upward rush; the strange exhilaration coming with relivening confidence; the unspeakable loveliness and grandeur of the prospect; the thousand varied incidents of the too-brief journey; the short, sharp excitement of the landing; the awe and curiosity of the impromptu crowd invariably on the ground before the balloon, and reluctantly leaving it only when the last whiff of gas is rolled out of it and the last rope thrown into the wagon; the moonlight ride to the station with the gas-bag for a pillow and the brain too busy with the strangeness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... quarter, if that worthy had not at the moment been comfortably ensconced in the neighboring "Rainbow" bar-room, listening to the improvisations of that talented vocalist, Mr. Harrison, who was making impromptu verses on every possible subject, to the accompaniment of a cithern which was played by a sad little Italian in a large cloak, to whom the host of the "Rainbow" gave so many toddies and a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the morning whose dawn T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., had blithesomely hailed with an impromptu musicale and saengerfest on "Lookout There!" rock, and the football triumvirate were in togs. The squad, over in the bunkhouse, noisily donned gridiron armor for the morning practice, and the pestiferous Hicks was ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... rooms, even in the law schools—anywhere rather than in their horrible rooms—horrible for purposes of study, delightful as soon as they were used for gossiping and smoking in. Put a cloth on the table, and the impromptu dinner sent in from the best eating-house in the neighborhood—places for four—two of them in petticoats—show a lithograph of this "Interior" to the veriest bigot, and she ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... representative of his beloved country in his travels abroad, and that he would be true to the stars and stripes wherever fortune might place him, and all that rot, when the boat got so far away they could not hear him, and then he came off his perch, and said, "Hennery, that little impromptu demonstration to your father, on the eve of his departure from his native land, perhaps never to return, ought to be a deep and lasting lesson to you, and to show you that the estimation in which I am ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... said Tom, easily. But, though he showed much confidence he asked Mr. Sharp in private, just before the impromptu contest: "Do you ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... sofa beside you, make her give you an account of Francis's play, Catiline, which he and Fanny, and Harriet and Sophy, and James Moilliet and Pakenham got up without our being in the secret, and acted the night before last, as it were impromptu, to our inexpressible surprise and pleasure. Francis, during his holidays with us in London, used to be often scribbling something; but I never inquired or guessed what it was. Fanny and Harriet, in the midst of the hurry of London dissipation, and of writing all manner of notes, etc., for me, ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... chamois. In about twenty minutes he reappeared, bearing on his shoulder a long plank which he had detached from the inclosure of a piece of pasture-land. He threw it across the torrent, secured it as well as he could, crossed this impromptu foot-bridge of his own device, and joined M. Moriaz, who was ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... great pleasure to get your last letter, for these little impromptu effusions are the genuine letters. I rejoice that man and nature seem harmonious to you, and that the heart beats in unison with the voices of Spring. May all that is manly, sincere, and pure, in your wishes, be realized! Obliged to live myself without the sanctuary of the central relations, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... had been Mr. Victor Hugo, my dear, or a poet of any note, I would, in a few hours, have made an impromptu concerning that Lafayette-crowned pump, and compared its lot now to the fortune of its patron some fifty years back. From him then issued, as from his fountain now, a feeble dribble of pure words; then, as now, some faint circles of disciples were willing to admire him. Certainly ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... please, has always sought the measured cadence of poetry or the unmeasured symmetry of rhymed prose. Its first lispings are in the "trembling" (rajaz) metre,—iambics, rhyming in the same syllable throughout; impromptu verses, in which the poet expressed the feelings of the moment: a measure which, the Arabs say, matches the trembling trot of the she-camel. It is simple in its character; coming so near to rhymed prose that Khalil (born 718), the great grammarian, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... warfare. He at once saw what would be the effect of the new departure. And so promptly and energetically did he denounce the "arch-apostate Egerton, alias Arnold, Ryerson" as a deserter, that he secured with little difficulty an impromptu verdict from the public against him. This he the more readily accomplished, by the aid of at least half a dozen editors of newspapers in various parts of the province, while Dr. Ryerson was single-handed. Not only did ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Mr. Hammond were exchanging their vows in the rectory of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, of which both bride and groom have been members since childhood, Captain John Strawn of the Homicide Squad was listening to Tracey Miles' account of the strange disappearance of Dexter Sprague last night from an impromptu bridge game, after he had announced his intention of taking advantage of the fact that he was 'dummy' to telephone for ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... into something," they had decided, and then he would marry Dolly, and they would all enjoy the attendant festivities. And in the mean time they allowed the two to be happy, and made Griffith welcome, inviting him to their little impromptu suppers, and taking care never to be de trop on ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... partly social. From about 1750 to 1780 the amusements varied constantly, from all-day parties in the country to cafes served by the great women themselves, from playing proverbs to playing synonyms, from impromptu compositions to questionable stories, from laughter to tears, from Blind-man's-buff to Lotto. Some of the proverbs were quite ingenious and required elaborate preparations; for example, at one place Mme. de Lauzun dances with M. de Belgunce, in the simplest kind of a costume, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... little Pat woke up, several times, and made things unpleasant by his wails. On the first two occasions, I got up and walked him about, singing impromptu lines to the tune of "weak and wounded," but the third time, Euphemia herself arose, and declaring that that doleful tune was a great deal worse than the baby's crying, silenced him herself, and arranging his couch more comfortably, ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... middle-aged men still holds its impromptu sessions, members comparing experiences and solicitously inquiring as to each other's condition. So far as I can see we are keeping up pretty well, except for the ability to make such awful repeated dashes as today's ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... he said at last. As an impromptu it would have served, but as the result of half an hour's earnest thought he felt that it ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... to consider what to say or do, her refuge was always in the impromptu, and she was far more bent on forcing Mr. Prendergast to smile, and distracting herself from her one aching desire that the Irish journey had never been, than of forming any plan of action. In walking to the cabstand they ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mind of its swaddling-clothes, showed him the dark holes of the business, taught him its dialect, took the mechanism apart bit by bit, dissected for his instruction the particular public he was expected to gull, crammed him with phrases, fed him with impromptu replies, provisioned him with unanswerable arguments, and, so to speak, sharpened the file of the tongue which was about to operate upon the life ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... self-reliance, and impatience of control. His lip and eye denoted the man of unyielding temper, and his very hair, slightly silvered, stood erect like quills round his wrinkled brow, as if they scorned to bend. Some sneered, it is true, at what they called a military tyro, at the impromptu general who had sprung out of the uncouth lawyer and the unlearned judge, who in arms had only the experience of a few months, acquired in a desultory war against wild Indians, and who was, not only without any previous training ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... He is the life and soul of every party, and his impromptu singing after supper will make you die of laughing. He is meditating an impromptu now, and at the same time thinking about a bill that is coming due next Thursday. ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and Lightbody, and that Miss Hunter was made use of against her. Having a most contemptible opinion of her Albina's understanding, and knowing that her young friend had too little capacity to be able to deceive her, or to invent a plausible excuse impromptu, Mrs. Beaumont turned quick, and exclaimed, "My dear, what could Lightbody be saying to you when I came up?—for I remember he stopped short, and you both ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... construction company of the Kansas Pacific Railroad, in 1867-68, killed nearly five thousand buffalo, which were consumed by the twelve hundred men employed in track-laying. He tells in his autobiography of the following remarkable experience he had at one time with his favourite horse Brigham, on an impromptu buffalo hunt:— ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... but turned her head to look back. In the distant boats they had fallen to singing glees. In this they obeyed tradition: for there is one accomplishment which all Trojans possess—of fitting impromptu harmonies to the most difficult air. And still in the pauses of the ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the little ring the area is gradually enlarged: first one other couple and then another are moved to follow the example, and they in their turn assist in bumping out the limits of the ring till it has become some twenty feet or so in diameter. These impromptu ball-rooms rarely much exceed that size, but dozens of them may be found in the course of one's peregrinations around the large piazza. The occupants of some of them will be found to consist of town-bred Romans, and those of others of people from the country. There ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... never had the impromptu vivacity of her sister, but was lively in games that engaged her mind. Her music was very correct, but entirely cultivated by practice and perseverance. Anything underhand was detestable to both Mary and Martha; they had no mean pride ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... visiting girl be danced to death. Of course I had planned to make a dignified debut under my own roof, backed up by the presence of ancestral and marital rosewood, silver and mahogany, as a widow should, but duty called me to de-weed myself amidst the informality of an impromptu dance at the little town hotel. And in the fifteen minutes Tom gave me I de-weeded to some purpose and flowered out to still more. I never do ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... seen by all except those in authority that the return of the exile, Corporal Violet, as he was now called, was inevitable. So it came about that on the 20th of February, his pockets stuffed with impromptu addresses to the people and the army, Bonaparte, eluding those whose duty it was to watch him, set sail, and on the 1st of March he reached Cannes, whence he immediately marched, gaining recruits at every step, ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... the country especially, nothing can be more fun or more appropriate than a barn dance, or an impromptu play, or a calico masquerade, with properties and clothes made of any old thing and in a few hours—even in ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... to pretend the slightest affection for her, and a certain coldness even has grown up between us, especially when we are alone.) But to-day I turn to her with a smile, and wave my hand for her to continue. "Go on, it amuses me to listen to your quaint little impromptu." It is singular that the music of this essentially merry people should be so plaintive. But undoubtedly that which Chrysantheme is playing at this moment is worth listening to. Whence can it have come to her? What unutterable dreams, forever hidden from me, fly through her yellow head, when she ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... delays. They show him refusing to work except at the moment of invention, scornful of whoever thought that art was a work of mere industry and rule, often coming the whole length of Milan to give a single touch. He painted it, not in fresco, where all must be impromptu, but in oils, the new method which he had been one of the first to welcome, because it allowed of so many afterthoughts, so refined a working out of perfection. It turned out that on a plastered wall no process could have been less durable. Within fifty years it ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... "Impromptu, you know; but they expressed my feelings. That is one of the best things the war has done for us. It has permitted us to express our emotions more openly. I thought it a beautiful sight to see the noble tears coursing down your father's furrowed cheeks. Those few words of yours have ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... dinner. The commandant bowed from the window, but a young Hungarian journalist leaned out and without a moment's hesitation poured forth a torrent for fully fifteen minutes with scarce a pause for breath. I told him that such impromptu oratory seemed marvellous, but he dismissed it as nothing. "I'm politiker!" he explained, with a wave ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... happy endurance; the temptation to join that dance was irresistible, and Gethin, suddenly succumbing to it, sprang out upon them. There was a little scream, a bark, and a flutter, and Morva, clasped in Gethin's arms, was wildly whirled in an impromptu dance, round and round the green sward, up and down, and round again, until, breathless and panting, they stopped from sheer exhaustion; and when Gethin at last led his laughing partner to rest under the golden broom bushes, he cared not a whit that she chided him with a ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... for the horses, and not seeing the utility of fatiguing them for nothing, had a space cleared where they were, and a tall sapling stripped of its boughs for a flagstaff; on this he hoisted the Union Jack he had carried with him. A memorial of the visit was then buried at the foot of the impromptu staff. It was an air-tight tin case containing ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... time left to them. They installed Neil on the train impressively, stowed his luggage around him and then took up positions outside the window, where, to the mingled curiosity and amusement of other travellers, they conducted farewell exercises. These included an entirely impromptu and unsolicited duet by Perry and Han, a much interrupted speech by Joe, and, finally, as the train moved out of the station, a hearty Dexter cheer with three "Neils!" on the end. In such manner the Adventurer lost her cabin boy and the ranks of the ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... After pronouncing an impromptu speech, composed for them by their father, and so stuffed with erudition that even the writer hardly understood it, they announced their wish to prove, by ocular demonstration, the truth of a science upon which their short-sighted rivals of Jayasthal had cast cold water, ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... English society and English talk. Let everybody take a lesson from the French! After which the lists were opened, so to speak, and Lady Dunstable, Meadows, the Dean, and about half the young people produced elegant pieces of translation, astounding copies of impromptu verse, essays in all the leading styles of the day, and riddles by the score. The Home Secretary, who had been lassoed by his hostess, escaped towards the middle of the ordeal, and wandered sadly into a further room where Doris sat chatting with Lord Dunstable. ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... course it was she) trembled with excitement. This was really a chance of escape. She had seen the young huntsman from her perch in the pear-tree, and had made up the impromptu song. She thought it was even more original than her cooking. Now she ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... a transcendental connection between a symbol C and a signification A, as if the Unconscious Mind disposed of ready-made symbols of its own. Barring words used in their proper sense, and similar borrowings from waking habit, the so-called symbols in dreams are essentially impromptu fabrications, in which the association is not a direct causal connection between A and C, but a mediate association involving a third element, which psycho-analysts usually ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... both in war and in the civil professions. At these gatherings, Mingo, bustling around and serving his guests, would keep the table in a roar with his quaint sayings, and his local satires in the shape of impromptu doggerel; and he would also repeat snatches of orations which he had heard in Washington when Judge Wornum was a member of Congress. But his chief accomplishments lay in the wonderful ease and fluency with which he imitated the eloquent ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... white lids. She grew confidential with the young noble, and was easily led by the cool, versatile man, into conversation that she would have stubbornly avoided earlier in the evening. In one of her bold snatches of song she rounded off with a rollicking impromptu, which carried all the richness and force of her voice with it. This threw the whole company into a tumult of applause, but Hilton sat quietly and looked on, with a smile of supreme contempt ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... Downstairs I found a loaf and some rank cheese—more than sufficient to satisfy my hunger. I took some brandy and water, and then went up past my impromptu bag—he was lying quite still—to the room containing the old clothes. This looked out upon the street, two lace curtains brown with dirt guarding the window. I went and peered out through their interstices. ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... impromptu, new, and hurried machine civilization which we have been piling up around us for a hundred years we have made machines out of everything, and our one consummate and glaring failure in the machines we have made is the machine we have ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... her breath as years prevail At this sad wicked world to rail, To slander all her sex impromptu, And wonder what ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... next Monday. We'll all have a good time together and I'll make you some more of them fritters you liked for supper the other night." The widow fairly beamed like a headlight at the thought of the successful impromptu supper party a few nights before, when Doctor Mayberry had brought Miss Wingate down upon her unexpectedly with a demand to be invited to stay to supper for that especial dainty. As she spoke she was half-way down ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... out the jokes some two or three minutes after they were made, and who laughed apparently at some grave statements of fact. Reduced to paper, the showman's jokes are certainly not brilliant; almost their whole effect lies in their seeming impromptu character. They are carefully led up to, of course; but they are uttered as if they are mere afterthoughts of which the speaker is ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... deduct a grain! Vaudemont felt this as he saw her glide towards the beggar; but when she came bounding back to him, she had forgotten his dislike to her songs, and was chaunting, in the glee of the heart that a kind act had made glad, one of her own impromptu melodies. ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... any youthful shortcoming, and the strong voice rang with a hope which sent fear and doubt skulking away in shamefaced silence. It was the brightest part of the day, this short respite, before mother, marshalling her young army, led them to the study-room. This impromptu lesson-hour was filled with a teaching so trenchant, that oftentimes, in these lonelier days, when perplexed in the intricacies of life's journeyings, a word spoken in some long ago summer morning, floats down the years and rises before my troubled ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... find here and there impromptu lines which have no connexion with any song. Perhaps the best known are those which 'my lady Bowley' quotes in The Chimes, and which she had 'set to ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... why he no longer spoke to a lawyer named Peat; to which he replied, "I choose to give up his acquaintance—I have common of turbary, and have a right to cut peat!" An impromptu of his on a learned serjeant who was holding the Court of Common Pleas with his ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... audience with those two cheerful melodies, young Pedgift respectfully requested the rest of the company to follow his vocal example in turn, offering, in every case, to play "a running accompaniment" impromptu, if the singer would only be so obliging as to ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins |
