"Mimicry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these savages, and we would also charitably believe him at least half ashamed of having to employ them at all, when he saw them brandishing their tomahawks over the heads of imaginary victims; beheld them twisting their bodies about in hideous contortions, in mimicry of tortured prisoners; or heard them howling, like wild beasts, their cry of triumph when the scalp is torn from ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... so that he is supposed to give free music-lessons to all the other birds. His own notes, belonging solely to himself, are beautiful and varied, and he sandwiches them in between the rest in a way to suit the best. No matter who is the victim of his mimicry, he loves the corner of a chimney better than any other perch, and carols out into the sky and down into the black abyss as if chimneys were made ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... always hunted by bailiffs and duns; how, to the landlady's horror, though she never could abide the woman, he did not marry his wife till a short time before her death; and what a queer little wild vixen his daughter was; how she kept them all laughing with her fun and mimicry; how she used to fetch the gin from the public-house, and was known in all the studios in the quarter—in brief, Mrs. Bute got such a full account of her new niece's parentage, education, and behaviour as would scarcely have pleased Rebecca, had the latter known ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... every way. Amongst them Wright and Paul Bedford. Such companions as these are not to be met with twice, each with his individuality, while the two in combination were incomparable. They kept one in a perpetual state of laughter. Paul was irresistible in his drollery, and whether it was mimicry or original humour, you could not but revel in ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... our dreamy eyes Where our reflection lies Steeped in the sea, And, in an endless fit Of languor, smile on it And its sweet mimicry. Where ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... the same scheme to ridicule a third, and either take advantage of, or invent, some story for that purpose, and mimicry will have already produced a sort of rude comedy. It becomes an inviting treat to the populace, and gains an additional zest and burlesque by following the already established plan of tragedy; and the first man of genius who seizes the ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... first is the method of the universal barbarian mind, which paints the life to come as a shadowy reflex or copy of the present world and life, an unsubstantial, graspless, yet actual and conscious realm of ghosts, carrying on a pale and noiseless mimicry of their former adventures in the body. Holding fast to that clew of analogy which is the nucleus of philosophy in this view, but rejecting the rest as fantastic figment, we arrive at the next way in which those who are unwilling to leave their thoughts of the future life in empty rational abstraction, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the songs were not Mac's. They belong to the lore of the bushmen; but he sang or crooned them with such perfect mimicry of tone or cadence, that never again was it possible to hear these songs of the Never-Never without associating the ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... written, and would do credit, from a literary point of view, to any private person. His talents and conversation, his wit and repartee, and his felicitous description of character are undeniable. He is said to have had the talent of telling stories to perfection. His powers of mimicry were remarkable, and he was fond of singing songs at his banquets. Had he been simply a private person or an ordinary nobleman, he would have ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... showed a strong liking for these banks was the horned poppy (glaucium luteum), which I had only found elsewhere near the sea-coast. Brown stalks of broomrape were still standing, and I lighted upon a lingering bee-ophrys, a plant which by its amazing mimicry makes one look at it with awe as if it ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... the change from Old to New Comedy as great as has been represented? Does not the change consist rather in the outer form and in the ideas expounded than in the spirit of the histrionism and mimicry? And must not the vigor, from what we have seen, have been intensified in Plautus? LeGrand alone seems to have caught the essence of this:[109] "Que dire de la mimique? D'aprA"s les indications contenues dans le texte mAme des comA(C)dies, d'aprA"s les commentaires—notamment ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... unconscious child's have. They love dress, and in one lightning flash will take you in from head to foot, note every detail of your costume, and, the next day, imitate whatever parts of it please their fancy and fall in with their national customs. They are adepts at mimicry and among themselves will lash us mercilessly. They straighten up their shoulders, pull in the abdomen, and strut about with a stiff-backed walk and with their hands hanging stiffly at their sides. They themselves are ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... began to feel that in acquiescing she was conferring a favour. It was not the first deception he had arranged for the public, and he appeared to be half in love with his own cleverness. She even found herself laughing at his mimicry of what this acquaintance and that would say. Her spirits rose; the play that might have been a painful drama seemed turning ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... differ from the ordinary festal dancing except that they are a pantomimic representation, by gestures, by postures, and by mimicry of some feature of Manbo life. So far as I know these dances are ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... malady was so accurate, that I almost fancied myself again in the cockpit of the Actaeon, and all the terrors of the voyage across the Adriatic arose fresh to my imagination. After many other adventures, he returns safe to [Sidenote: INGENIOUS MIMICRY.] Aleppo, his native city, no richer than he set out; but, like the monkey who had seen the world, "full of wise saws," and strange assertions. His hairbreadth escapes, the unlucky scrapes he gets into, the blunders he is incessantly committing from his imperfect knowledge of the languages of ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... is, that this delusion is the more easy from the fact that the results of the two kinds of causes resemble each other. You may galvanize the nerve of a corpse till the action of a limb startles the spectator with the appearance of life. It is not life, it is only a spasmodic hideous mimicry of life. Men having seen that the spiritual is always associated with forms, endeavour by reproducing the forms to recall spirituality; you do produce thereby a something that looks like spirituality, ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... much struck this morning by a remarkable instance of protective mimicry on the part of a grey squirrel, which assumes attitudes and adopts gestures which at a little distance render him almost indistinguishable from a small monkey. WHITE'S Selborne throws no light on this strange phenomenon, which I can only explain as a result on the animal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... ends, is a superficial and transitory affair which leaves little effect upon disposition. Idiots are especially apt at this kind of imitation; it affects outward acts but not the meaning of their performance. When we find children engaging in this sort of mimicry, instead of encouraging them (as we would do if it were an important means of social control) we are more likely to rebuke them as apes, monkeys, parrots, or copy cats. Imitation of means of accomplishment is, on the other hand, an intelligent ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... these rather beg the question as they are so extremely programmistic, dramatic or even theatric. This one-sided development of French music was chiefly caused by the people's innate fondness for the drama, and by the national genius for acting, mimicry and dancing. ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... as they go to hear a tenor, and they arrogate to themselves the right to judge the conductors as they do the tenors. But what a fine sport it is! The qualities of an orchestra conductor which the public appreciates are his elegance, his gestures, his precision, and the expressiveness of his mimicry, all of which are more often directed at the audience than at the orchestra. But all these things are of secondary consideration. What makes up an orchestra conductor's worth are the excellence of execution he obtains from the musicians ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... an interesting phase of colonial existence. There are stations, of course, in these degenerate days, where a great deal of style and vulgar "side" is put on; where the house-servants are in livery; the dinner is served on silver plates, in empty mimicry of a ducal mansion; where all travelling sprigs of nobility are welcomed by the proprietor (who was probably a costermonger before his emigration) to whom he is glad to introduce his daughter with the ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... seeks to make the object derided seem utterly despicable—to laugh it to scorn. Chaff is the coarse witticism of the streets, perhaps merry, oftener malicious; jeering is loud, rude ridicule, as of a hostile crowd or mob. Mockery is more studied, and may include mimicry and personal violence, as well as scornful speech. A satire is a formal composition; a sarcasm may be an impromptu sentence. The satire shows up follies to keep people from them; the sarcasm hits them because they are foolish, without inquiring whether it will do ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... her and drew her to his shoulder. And the scene of mimicry in his office flashed into his mind, and the blood burned in his cheeks. But he had no such access of insanity as to entertain ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... mimicry seem extraordinary, and their shrewdness shines even through the medium of imperfect language and renders them ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... his share of the repast, evidently quite unsuspicious that we were devouring his mate; he did not seem at all inclined to quit us. The little monkey, too, was quite at home with the boys, leaping from one to another for food, which he took in his forepaws, and ate with such absurd mimicry of their actions, that he kept us in continual convulsions of laughter. To augment our satisfaction, our great sow, who had deserted us for two days, returned of her own accord, grunting her joy at our re-union. ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... was Vanwigglevandoozen's idea to have Clarence Fussyface play the monkey, because Clarence's intelligence is built on a plan to suggest such mimicry, but a hand-organ proprietor by the name of Guissepi, who is summering at Newport, came to the rescue with a real monkey ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... were enlivened by minstrels and gleemen, whose visits were welcome breaks in the monotony of the people's lives. They added to their musical performances mimicry and other means of promoting mirth, as well as dancing and tumbling, with sleights of hand, and a variety of deceptions to amuse the company.[183:1] In the intervals between the musical exercises, the guests talked, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... had been alarmed and hurt at the strange evasion of Mr. George; nor could she see the fun of his mimicry of the fox and his flight away from instead of into her neighbourhood. She had also, or she now thought it, remarked that when Mr. George had been spoken of casually, the Countess had not looked a natural look. Perhaps it was her present inflamed fancy. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Socrates in "The Clouds," to mention no other examples; and in English drama this kind of thing is alluded to again and again. What Jonson really did, was to raise the dramatic lampoon to an art, and make out of a casual burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary pretensions and permanency. With the arrogant attitude mentioned above and his uncommon eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no wonder that Jonson soon involved himself ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... fellows." Then Their Majesties would unite with the children and a few intimates, including the Father and Anna of course, and they would have a little fun. Maklakoff was famed for his power of mimicry. He could imitate the barking of dogs, and frequently announced his presence to the Imperial family by barking in the corridors of Tsarskoe-Selo, while his most famous imitation was that of a panther. And this of a Cabinet Minister in days ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... More mimicry. Our friend spreads his two hands round his leg, at a distance, so as to denote the girth ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... the futility of this arrangement was soon manifest, and surely no man less temperamentally equipped for the law ever lived. It has been said of the Fields, speaking generally of the New England division, that they were well adapted to be either musicians or actors, though the talent for music or mimicry has been in no case carried out of private life save in my brother's public readings. Eugene had more than a boy's share of musical talent, but he never cultivated it, preferring to use the fine voice with which he was endowed for recitation, of which he was always fond. Acting was his ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... hung over the kitchen stove. The room across from Sara Lee's bedroom contained a small round dining table and chairs. Sara Lee, enveloped in a large pinafore apron, made the omelet in the kitchen. Marie brought a pail of fresh milk. Henri, with a towel over his left arm, and in absurd mimicry of a Parisian waiter, laid the table; and Jean, dour Jean, caught a bit of the infection, and finding four bottles set to work with his pocketknife to fit candles into ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... stern features and white head, began to give him a graphic account of what little Peter Melcombe had been teaching them, John Mortimer, while he unlocked his desk and sorted out certain papers, now and then adding a touch or two in mimicry of ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... and when Pilar wanted to know what amused him, asked my permission to tell. I gave him leave; and with a memory for detail which I could have spared, to say nothing of an attempt at mimicry, he repeated, word for word, my objections to meeting the Irish friends of Angele de ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... not consider the Sand Hills a happy hunting ground. There the dead, who are themselves shadows, live in shadow lodges, hunt shadow buffalo, go to war against shadow enemies, and in every way lead an existence which is but a mimicry of this life. In this respect the Blackfeet are almost alone. I know of scarcely any other American tribe, certainly none east of the Rocky Mountains, who are wholly without a belief in a happy future state. The Blackfeet do ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... might be moulded into one permanent and unchanging expression, is favourable only to a partial and inharmonious effect; it is fit for nothing but a monologue, where all the attention may be directed to some great master of ideal mimicry. The modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy, though liable to great abuse in point of practice, is undoubtedly an extension of the dramatic circle; but the comedy should be, as in King ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... same loud uncontrollable bursts of laughter, which are so often excited by representations of this kind in London. There are no such actors, at the principal theatres, as Matthews, or Liston, or Bannister, or Munden, or Emery, whose principal merit lies in mimicry and buffoonery. There are hardly any entertainments corresponding in character to our farces; the after-pieces are short comedies, and characters in low life are introduced into them, not as objects of derision, but ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... sally sounded perhaps a trifled forced and hard, but neither Sir Andrew nor Lord Tony were very keen observers. The mimicry was so perfect, the tone of the voice so accurately reproduced, that both the young men joined in a hearty ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... each remark with a pantomime mimicry of the air and gesture of the individual. He showed in a second the contortions of Harry Weston in drawing the bow, and in another the grimaces of Henry Hope, the choir man, in producing bass notes, or the swelling majesty of Randall Porcher, the cross-bearer, till it really seemed as ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... about the same as mine—your shoulders are a trifle stooped and you walk with a curious drag of your left foot. Your hair is white but thick: the contour of our faces is quite similar, and so with dry cosmetics, some physical mimicry, and the use of a pair of horn-rimmed glasses like yours I can make a comparatively good double. The only exposure to the sharp eyes of your enemies will be, first, when I substitute myself for you and take your automobile back home; second, when I go down to the theatrical ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... case of Volucella of which I had never heard. (134/2. Volucella is a fly—one of the Syrphidae—supposed to supply a case of mimicry; this was doubtless the point of interest with Bates. Dr. Sharp says ["Insects," Part II. (in the Camb. Nat. Hist. series), 1899, page 500]: "It was formerly assumed that the Volucella larvae lived on the larvae of the bees, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... O'Connell's courts, where the parties played at going to law; from the moment when they ceased to play, and no longer "made believe" to be disputing, the award of the judge became as entire a mockery, as any stage mimicry ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... his "Monthly Review," that the writer of a very elaborate article on the works of Dr. Parr, was no less a personage than the Doctor himself. His egotism was so declamatory, that it unnaturalized a great mind, by the distortions of Johnsonian mimicry; his fierceness, which was pushed on to brutality on the unresisting, retreated with a child's terrors when resisted; and the pomp of petty pride in table triumphs and evening circles, ill compensated for the lost century he might have ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Robert's protest that his "mind comes and goes", his memory is keen, and his sense of humor unimpaired. His reminiscences of slave days are enriched by his ability to recreate scenes and incidents in few words, and by his powers of mimicry. "If I had my life to live over," he declares, "I would die fighting rather than be a slave again. I want no man's yoke on my shoulders no more. But in them days, us niggers didn't know no better. All we knowed was work, and hard work. We was learned ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... are so arranged that speech becomes potent enough to guide the elements, and human speech becomes the speech of the gods—there is no kinship between this ideal language and the ejaculations and mimicry which so many hold to be the root and beginning of it. Yet those who wish to defend their right to hold the occult teaching have little to fear from the champions of these theories; they need not at all possess any deep scholarship or linguistic attainment; the most cursory ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... sorts of twitching grimaces in the endeavour to speak correctly. Taking advantage of this, the boy Orundelico—"blackamoor," as he is being called—has so turned the tables on him by successful mimicry of his speech as to elicit loud laughter from a party of sailors loitering near. This brings on a climax, the incensed bully, finally losing all restraint of himself, making a dash at his diminutive mocker, and felling him to the ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... flame of Jimmy's rage. He felt impotent, moreover, which never serves as a poultice to anger. But he got himself in hand, though imitation courtesy was not much in his line. He tuned his big hearty voice to a pitch with the Frenchman's nasal pipe, and clipped off his words in mimicry. ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... resolve themselves into four kinds, voluntary, sensitive, irritative, and associate. The voluntary imitations are, when we imitate deliberately the actions of others, either by mimicry, as in acting a play, or in delineating a flower; or in the common actions of our lives, as in our dress, cookery, language, manners, and even ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the most common causes is Mimicry, or, as it is probably more often called, Imitation. Mimicry or Imitation is almost wholly confined to children. After reaching the age of discretion, the adult is usually of sufficient intelligence to ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... and possibly is an essential ingredient of friendship. That it should be possible shows what an invigorating climate this must be. Major Swinburne, in an aggravating tone, begins upon some peculiarity or foible, real or supposed, of his friend, with a deluge or sarcasm, mimicry, ridicule, and invective, torments him mercilessly, and without giving him time to reply, disappears, saying, Parthian-like, "Now, my dear fellow, its no use resenting it, you haven't such a friend as me in the world—you know if it were not for me you'd be absolutely intolerable!" All this ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... undeniable. Experience shews that the human voice can imitate the voice of all men and of all inferior animals. The sound of musical instruments, and even noises from the contact of inanimate substances, have been accurately imitated. The mimicry of animals is notorious; and Dr. Burney (Musical Travels) mentions one who imitated a flute and violin, so as ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... of rites it may broadly be said they are the myth dramatized. Indeed, the drama owes its origin to the mimicry by worshippers of the supposed doings of the gods. The most ancient festivals have reference to the recurrence of the seasons, and the ceremonies which mark them represent the mythical transactions which are supposed to govern ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... ceremonial songs received a wanton and wild addition, as, in order, perhaps, more closely to represent and personify the motley march of the Liber Pater, the chorus-singers borrowed from the vine-browsing goat which they sacrificed the hides and horns, which furnished forth the merry mimicry of the satyr and the faun. Under license of this disguise, the songs became more obscene and grotesque, and the mummers vied with each other in obtaining the applause of the rural audience by wild buffoonery and unrestricted jest. Whether as ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to be worthy of being well served. All nature and all humanity will serve a good master and rebel against an ignoble one. And there is no surer test of the quality of a nation than the quality of its servants, for they are their masters' shadows and distort their faults in a flattened mimicry. A wise nation will have philosophers in its servants'-hall, a knavish nation will have knaves there, and a kindly nation will have friends there. Only let it be remembered that 'kindness' means, as with your child, not indulgence, but care." Substitute "mistress" ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... ghosts, and the governor turned to the murmuring shore with its gentle mimicry of ocean. Half sheltered by a clump of sumach sat a woman upon a bit of driftwood and flung pebbles in the lake. He stared, and then went slowly down ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... Admiral Mocenigo';" the other answered lingering on the name with a fine mimicry of her tone; "not thine nor mine. Thou hast a foolish way with thee of mine and thine, as if all that came from Venice were held close to thy little heart.—How goes it with ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... old soldiers in the colony, who were amused, without being repelled by this mimicry of war. More busy civilians, were anxious for the formality of incorporation, and the gradations of command. The townspeople were allowed their choice, between more active service and garrison duties. "Gentlemen," said ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... youth are employed about the thoughts, the acts and suggestions of other men. This is all mimicry, and a sort of second-hand business. It resembles the proceeding of the fresh-listed soldier at drill; he has ever his eye on his right-hand man, and does not raise his arm, nor advance his foot, nor ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... are the three great passions which are concerned in true sculpture. I cannot find better, or, at least, more easily remembered, names for them than "the Instincts of Mimicry, Idolatry, and Discipline;" meaning, by the last, the desire of equity and wholesome restraint, in all acts and works of life. Now of these, there is no question but that the love of Mimicry is natural and right, and the love of Discipline is natural and right. But it looks a ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... half-grown son, whose ear for any fine distinctions in sound might be presumed to have been destroyed by the clamors of the mill, sat a trifle in the background, and sawed away on an imaginary violin with many flourishes and all the exaggerations of mimicry; he thus furnished the zest of burlesque relished by the devotees of horse-play and simple jests, and was altogether unaware that he had a caricature in his shadow just behind him, and was doing double ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... described as "perhaps the most striking imitation we have of the great works of nature:" at all events, it has less of the mimicry of art than similar works ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... as 'The Vanishing Lady.' As I have not heard anything of them nor seen their names billed for a couple of years past, I fancy they have either retired from the profession or gone to some other part of the world. The man was not only a very clever magician, but a master of mimicry. I always believed, however, that in spite of his name he was of English birth. The woman's face I never saw, of course, as she was always veiled to the eyes after the manner of Turkish ladies. But although a good many persons suspected that her birthplace was no nearer ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... and open, dark and intelligent, had an intent gaze, as though looking for something. She walked like her father with a little hurried step. She talked a great deal and was fond of arguing, accompanying every phrase, however insignificant, with expressive mimicry and gesticulation. No doubt she was nervous ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... as to imitative and conspicuous colouring lead on to the yet more remarkable facts of what is called mimicry. By mimicry is meant the imitation in form and colour of one species by another, in order that the imitating species may be mistaken for the imitated, and thus participate in some advantage which the latter enjoys. For instance, if, as in the case of the conspicuously-coloured caterpillars, ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... there. And the man had worn his hat, Manderson's broad-brimmed hat! There is too much character in the back of a head and neck. The unknown, in fact, supposing him to have been of about Manderson's build, had had no need for any disguise, apart from the jacket and the hat and his powers of mimicry. ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... hard, steady work; and the result was a period of upheaval and disquiet. Vicente suffered like the rest. He had embodied in his plays the simple pastimes of the Portuguese people, their delight in the processions, services and dramatic displays of the Church, in the mimicry of the early arremedillos, in the rich fancy-dress momos which were an essential element at great festivities. But his drama was not classical, often it was not drama. Technically he is less dramatic than Lucas Fern['a]ndez or Torres Naharro. He ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... at the French court the courtier to whom he applied for promotion always put him off with the answer, "Lascia fare mi." Weary of waiting, Josquin composed a mass upon the subject la, sol, fa, re, mi, repeated over and over in mimicry of the oft repeated answer. The king was so much amused that he at once promised Josquin a position, but his memory not having proved faithful, Josquin appealed to him with a motette: "Portio mea non est in terra viventium" ("My portion is not in the land of the living"); ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... reasserting itself, Spain you see—down with feudalism, but let us have the game. Look down the long list of hounds kept in England, not one of which could get a run were it not for the good-will of the farmers, and indeed of the labourers. Hunting is a mimicry of the mediaeval chase, and this is the nineteenth century of the socialist, yet every man of the fields loves to hear the horn and the burst of the hounds. Never was shooting, for instance, carried to such perfection, perfect guns made with scientific accuracy, plans of campaign ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... so you did not get on with the Englishwoman then I suppose, Giuseppe, and took Madame the next time?" We were both laughing heartily at the man's mimicry when once again the parrot shrieked. "But for goodness sake don't say I told you!" Giuseppe walked off to speak to it and my friend and ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... as wisely as Solomon himself in the puppet-show. I own that I love that sight: 'tis a pleasure to the littleness of human nature to see great things abased by mimicry; kings moved by bobbins, and the pomps of the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mimicked both in appearance and flight by a very different kind of butterfly; and, again, we see that certain birds, without any particular desire of gain, no sooner hear any sound than they begin to mimick it, merely for the pleasure of mimicking; so we all enjoy to mimick, or to hear good mimicry, so also monkeys imitate the actions which they observe, from pure force of sympathy. To mimick, or to wish to mimick, is doubtless often one of the first steps towards varying in any given direction. Not less, in all probability, ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... about England, went to Ireland, and there obtained credit as an actor; then returned to London, and appeared at Drury Lane, where his skill as a mimic enabled him to perform each part in the manner of the actor who had obtained chief credit by it. His power of mimicry made him very diverting in society, and as he had natural politeness with a sprightly wit, his company was sought and paid for at the entertainments of the great. Dick Estcourt was a great favourite with the Duke of Marlborough, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... ceiling, and said that he thought they were high enough. Sir Christopher was very small in stature. Charles accordingly squatted down as well as he could, to get his head in as low a position as the architect's, and walked about the room in that ridiculous attitude, looking up in mimicry of Sir Christopher's manner, and then said, "Oh, yes, now I think they ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... the means and methods of protection that are to be observed in the lower animals, I have brought forward only those in which mind-element was to be discerned. Mimicry and kindred phenomena hardly have a place in this treatise, for they are, undoubtedly, governed and directed by unconscious mind, a psychical phase which, as I intimated in the introductory chapter of this book, ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... His voice, till then artificially cadenced, suddenly became vivacious; his gestures, at first constrained, became dramatic. He used to act his subject, apparently without premeditated art, in the liveliest pantomime. He had no power of voice-mimicry, and none of the ordinary gifts of the actor. A tall and slim figure, not yet shortened from its five feet ten or eleven by the habitual stoop, which ten years later brought him down to less than middle height; a stiff, blue frock-coat; ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... surveying an amphitheatre, while he held his fingers down perpendicularly toward the keys. But then in another instant he wheeled round on the stool, looked at Mirah and said, half timidly—"Perhaps you don't like this mimicry; you must always stop my nonsense when you ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... said the countess; "but she was brought up by the mother whom you know; she was never shown the face of true piety; she saw only the mimicry of it. Repentant Magdalens of the Madame Colleville species always assume an air of wishing to retire to a desert with their death's-head and crossed bones. They think they can't get salvation at a cheaper rate. But after ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... and mauling it. Brave, still on the crypt-slab, was quivering with hunger and eagerness, but he remained in place until the second chunk was tossed and he was ordered to take it. Then he, too, leaped and caught it, savaging it in mimicry of a kill. For a while, he stood watching them growl and snarl and tear their meat, great beasts whose shoulders came above his own waist. While they lived to guard it, the Crown was safe. Then he crossed to the hearth, ...
— The Keeper • Henry Beam Piper
... and roar with glee By my transcendent feats of mimicry, And humour wanton as an elvish sprite: I wake from daydreams to this ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... moonlight takes them with capricious touch. They flash, and are quenched, and flash again, light darting to light along the level surface, while the sailing planets and the stars look down complacent at this mimicry of heaven. Everything above, around, beneath, is very beautiful—the slumbrous woods, the snowy fells, and the far distance painted in faint blue upon the tender background of the sky. Everything is placid ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... then, be named the art of mimicry, and this the province assigned to it; as for the other division, we are weary and will give that up, leaving to some one else the duty of making the class and ...
— Sophist • Plato
... greatest charm? Although not fallen to a crippled state, are you not now too advanced to smudge your upper lip and stalk agreeably as a villain? Surely you can no longer frisk lightly in a comedy. If you should wheeze and limp in an old man's part, with back humped in mimicry, would you not fear that it bordered on the truth? But doubtless there was a time when you ranged upon these heights—when Kazrac the magician was not too heavy for your art. In those soaring days, let us hope that you played the villain ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... babyhood he had been a child of one purpose: to increase by burlesques the sufferings of unfortunate friends. If one of them wept, Wallie incessantly pursued him, yelping in horrid mimicry; if one were chastised he could not appear out-of-doors for days except to encounter Wallie and a complete rehearsal of the recent agony. "Quit, Papa! Pah-puh, quee-yet! I'll never do it again, ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... impression on the minds of his untutored observers, by resorting to a proper amount of mummery and mystical action. This he was enabled to do with some effect, in consequence of having practised as a lad in similar mimicry, by way of pastime. The Germans, and the descendants of Germans in America, are not of a very high class, as respects education, taken as a body, and they retain many of the most inveterate of the superstitions of their ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... of Nicolo Musso; they overflowed with wit, humour, and genius, and lashed the follies of the day with an unsparing scourge. The audience were quite carried away by the incomparable characterisation which distinguished all the actors, but particularly by the inimitable mimicry of Pasquarello,[4.2] by his marvellously natural imitations of the voice, gait, and postures of well-known personages. By his inexhaustible humour, and the point and appositeness of his impromptus, he quite carried his audience away. The man ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... of Bates; for no two sets of facts have done more to fix in ordinary intelligent minds a belief in organic evolution and in natural selection as its guiding factor than the facts of geographical distribution and of protective colour and mimicry. The facts of geology were difficult to grasp and the public and theologians heard more often of the imperfection than of the extent of the geological record. The witness of embryology, depending to a great extent upon microscopic work, was and is beyond the appreciation ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... later see) more justifiable misinterpretation of the word Empathy is based on its analogy with sympathy, and turns it into a kind of sympathetic, or as it has been called, inner, i.e. merely felt, mimicry of, for instance, the mountain's rising. Such mimicry, not only inner and felt, but outwardly manifold, does undoubtedly often result from very lively empathic imagination. But as it is the mimicking, inner or outer, of movements and actions which, like the rising of the mountain, take place only in our imagination, it presupposes ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... astonishment he kept his word, remaining with us all through the trip and returning with us to Chicago. Outside of his dancing and his power of mimicry he was, however, a "no account nigger," and more than once did I wish that he ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... absolute novelty. Her eyes wandered from Georgiana's vivid face to her father's delicate one; to James Stuart's comely features glowing ruddily in the firelight as he tended his chestnuts, showing splendid white teeth as he roared at Georgiana's clever mimicry or turned to laugh into Jeannette's eyes as he offered her a particularly plump and succulently bursting specimen of his labours; to Mr. Jefferson's maturer personality, his brown eyes keenly intent, his face lighted with enjoyment, his occasional comments on Georgiana's adventures flashing with ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... fellows of the tribe of Kerchak followed his example. The shes came down from their perches of safety and struck and reviled the dead body of Sheeta. The young apes refought the battle in mimicry of their ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... beleaguered city, or carried some hillock by desperate and impetuous assault, this boy, their master in running, in swimming, in wrestling, in sitting a horse as he galloped freely, was not content with mimicry, but dreamed of real deeds in a ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... fore—legs of the balanced chair with his toe, while he finished Gelid's sentence by interjecting, "iors," as the conch fell back and floundered over on his stem; his tormentor drawling out in wicked mimicry. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... doughnuts, interspersed themselves between. Green wreaths streaming with scarlet ribbons hung nonchalantly across every chair-top. Tinsel garlands shone on the walls. In the doorway reared a hastily constructed mimicry ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... one mocker. Oftener two or three were singing at once in as many different directions. And, speaking of them, I must speak also of their more northern cousin. From the day I entered Florida I had been saying that the mocking-bird, save for his occasional mimicry of other birds, sang so exactly like the thrasher that I did not believe I could tell one from the other. Now, however, on this St. Augustine road, I suddenly became aware of a bird singing somewhere in advance, ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... Coleridge even if he only read out a page of Bradshaw." To these gifts were added an immense store of varied knowledge, a genuine enthusiasm for whatever is beautiful in literature or art, an inexhaustible copiousness of anecdote, and a happy knack of exact yet not offensive mimicry. It is always pleasant to see a man in great station, who, in the intercourse of society, is perfectly untrammelled by pomp and form, can make a joke and enjoy it, and is not too cautious to garnish his conversation with personalities ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... presidential campaign; Senator Anthony, Senator Edmunds, the former Vice-President Mr. Hamlin, Senator Carpenter, and others. Many good stories were told, and one amused me especially, as it was given with admirable mimicry by Senator Carpenter. He described an old friend of his, a lawyer, who, coming before one of the higher courts with a very doubtful case, began his plea as follows: "May it please the court, there is only one point in this case favorable to my ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... passage from John Woodvil, takes it for a choice fragment of an old dramatist, and goes to Lamb to assist him in finding the author. His power of delicate imitation in prose and verse reaches the length of a fine mimicry even, as in those last essays of Elia on Popular Fallacies, with their gentle reproduction or caricature of Sir Thomas Browne, showing, the more completely, his mastery, by disinterested study, of those elements of the man which were the real source of style in that great, solemn master ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... caught up the unsatisfactory reply in an exasperated burlesque of mimicry: "I cannot say, sir—you cannot say? Pooh, pooh, there is no shame in being in love with her. We all are more or less; pass the bottle. As for you, since you clapped eyes on her you have been like a man in the moon, not a word to throw to a dog, no eyes, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... of the pedigree of our species in the inherent taste for mimicry which we share, at all events, with the anthropoid apes. This instinct of mimicry I take to be the humble beginning from which dramatic art has sprung, and it appears in the individual at a very early stage. Perhaps it is even expressed in the first squalls of infancy, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... as without this I felt they would lose their weight and dignity, which does seem to me the essential business in a mural decoration, and which makes Puvis de Chavannes a great decorator far more than his flat mimicry of fresco does.... Tintoretto, in S. Rocco, is my idea of the big way to decorate a building; great clustered groups sculptured in light and shade filling with amazing ingenuity of design the architectural spaces at his disposal: a far ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... playing, what does it really mean? Nothing more than the interpretation of one's real self instead of the artificial self which traditions, mistaken advisors and our own natural sense of mimicry impose upon us. Seek for originality and it is gone like a gossamer shining in the morning grass. Originality is in one's self. It is the true voice of the heart. I would enjoin students to listen to their own inner voices. I do not desire to deprecate teachers, but I think that many teachers are ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... the same.— Arrived in London, he finds the lady gone abroad. Suspects Belford. His unaccountable freaks at Smith's. His motives for behaving so ludicrously there. The vile Sally Martin entertains him with her mimicry of the ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... obscenity and ribaldry; all which, floated on the breeze through the sinuous labyrinths: of the mountains in company with the Catholic chaunts and anthems which attended the body of Captain le Harnois. Never man had merrier funeral. Singing being over, then commenced every possible variety of ingenious mimicry oft every possible sound known to the earth beneath or the waters under the earth—howling, braying, bleating, lowing, neighing, whinnying, hooting, barking, catterwauling; until at length a grave and well-dressed man stepped forward ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... and in it everybody takes a part, wedding-guests and outsiders, occupants of the houses and passers-by, for three or four hours in the day, as we shall see. The theme is always the same, but it is treated in an infinite variety of ways, and therein we see the instinct of mimicry, the abundance of grotesque ideas, the fluency, the quickness at repartee, and even the ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... crushed by her mocking mimicry. But Concha, as if she took pity on him, hastened to add, in ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... each blunder she made, and held it up, shrinking and bare, under the light of their laughter-loving eyes. They ridiculed it interminably, and were unflaggingly entertained by it, repeating it for the edification of each new-comer so often and so faithfully that from conscious mimicry they turned to use of it without quotation-marks, till, insensibly, at last it was received into their vocabulary—which fact, by the way, made the Madigan dialect at times difficult for strangers ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... with that wonderful power of accurate mimicry which is so strong in all natural human beings, began to trill out at once, with a very good Parisian accent, a few lines from a well-known song in ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... read about the noble boy who would not tell a lie to save himself from punishment, I was for the first time truly repentant of my sins. Formerly I had fasted and prayed and made sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, but it was more than half play, in mimicry of my elders. I had no real horror of sin, and I knew so many ways of escaping punishment. I am sure my family, my neighbors, my teachers in Polotzk—all my world, in fact—strove together, by example and precept, to ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... hard into his throat, while his eyebrows were wrinkled up to their highest elevation. From this attitude, expressive of the accurate balancing of the claims of an internal debate, he emerged into the posture of a cock crowing, and Emilia heard again his bitter mimicry of her miserable broken tones, followed by Ha! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... her. He made her laugh with his funny stories, his fairy tales about himself, his terrible struggle with a snake in the streets of 'Frisco, after a champagne supper: girls, by Jove! He toned down his anecdotes and dished them up for Lily's entertainment; told her absurd yarns enlivened with mimicry, in which he excelled, like the real mummer that he was, and Lily shrieked with ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... now the Red Lion Hotel in Boscawen Street, has retained a good many of its original features, including a very fine oak staircase. Foote is generally considered to be the greatest of the dramatic authors of his class, while in power of mimicry and broad humour he had few equals. In late life he lost his leg through an accident in riding, a circumstance that led to his producing a play, The Lame Lover, in which his loss of a limb might be made ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... is not only bold and vociferous, but possesses a considerable talent for mimicry, and seems to enjoy great satisfaction in mocking and teasing ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... mourn'd his Addison. If Anna's happy reign you praise, Pray, not a word of halcyon days: Nor let my votaries show their skill In aping lines from Cooper's Hill;[2] For know I cannot bear to hear The mimicry of "deep, yet clear." Whene'er my viceroy is address'd, Against the phoenix I protest. When poets soar in youthful strains, No Phaethon to hold the reins. When you describe a lovely girl, No lips of coral, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... the excellent parodies by women—as Grace Greenwood's imitations of various authors, written in her young days, but quite equal to the "Echo Club" of Bayard Taylor. How perfect her mimicry of Mrs. Sigourney! ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... knowledge?" mused Gilbert Talbot, as he led the Queen out on the sward which had been the theatre of their mimicry. ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge |
