"Pantomime" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with that pantomime spear," said Butler, "he must have thrust from four yards away. How do you account for signs of struggle, like the dress dragged off the shoulder?" He had slipped into treating his mere witness as an expert; but no one noticed ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... whom Radley could not see flipped their fingers to express delight. Others lifted up the lids of their desks, and behind these screens went through a pantomime that suggested pleasure at good news. The fact was that the announcement that we were to have second period with the German, Reinhardt, was as good as promising us a holiday. Nay, it was rather better; for, in an unexpected holiday, we might have been at a loss what to do, whereas ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... simply pathetic the chief shook his head and tried to explain something in weary-motioned pantomime. Fred took the rifle back from Will. The chief nodded. Fred started to follow him, and then the whole tribe sighed, with a sound like the evening ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... of fact. "I'm a married man; I'm going to support my wife!" He ran his fingers through his thick blond hair in ridiculous pantomime of terrified responsibility. "Yes, sir! I'm out for dollars. Well, I'm glad I haven't any near relations to get on their ear, and try and mind my business for me. Of course," he ruminated, "Bradley will kick like a steer, when I tell him ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... experience and close attention have shown us the connection of these variations with the acts that accompany or precede them. Animals evidently understand these inflections at once. We cannot better compare the language of animals than with what takes place in a pleasant sport, a kind of pantomime of the voice or language which many youth doubtless understand, and which I venture to refer to here to aid in more easily conceiving of the communication of thought among animals by sounds which seem to us all alike. When I was engaged in hospitals, the evenings ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... still for the very life that was in him. He seemed to have some grand secret with the conductor and frequently looked around at him, his eyes full of careless laughter, and once or twice he called out—some jocose remark. He helped the conductor, in pantomime, to pull the cord and stop or start the car, and he watched with the liveliest interest each passenger getting on or getting off. A rather mincing young girl with a flaring red ribbon at her throat was ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... few eloquent gestures, including the pantomime of swinging a whip, before the Martian understood and complied. After he backed into the circle of his fellows, Cleve dropped the cruel overseer manner and turned with satisfaction to Larkin. "I think there will be no trouble at all," he said. "Tomorrow we'll really get ...
— The Terrible Answer • Arthur G. Hill
... i. 6. In the Gent. Mag. xxii. 568, it is stated that he had acted pantomime, tragedy and comedy, and had been ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... saw myself lying shattered at my own feet, to pick up the bits and say nothing to Jack, lest he should blame his own inadvertent dropping of my name for all present and future mischief. Being a man, he can see things only with his eyes; and as he happened to be looking at me, he missed the pantomime at the other end of the room. I was looking at him too, but of course that didn't prevent me from seeing other things; and while I was chatting with him, and wondering how long it might be before the thunderbolt (Monsieur Charretier) should fall, I received ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Adults have never yet invented any institution, festival or diversion specially for the benefit of children. The egoism of adults makes such an effort impossible, and the ingenuity and pliancy of children make it unnecessary. The pantomime, for example, which is now pre-eminently a diversion for children, was created by adults for the amusement of adults. Children have merely accepted it and appropriated it. Children, being helpless, are of course fatalists and imitators. They take what comes, and they do the best they can with it. ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... make you the dupe of one charlatan after another. Take up science, for a change; study natural philosophy; try and acquire accurate notions of the system under which we live; realise that we are not moving on the stage of a Christmas pantomime, but in a universe governed by fixed laws, in which the miraculous performances you describe to me never can, and never could, have taken place. And be sure of this, that any book and any teacher, however admirable their moral ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... The pantomime of piteous beseeching hands, of eyebrows exquisitely arched, told more than his words. They showed to a hair's breadth how far he expected, how far was prepared, to tempt his customer. No pedlar before a doorful of girls' sidelong heads ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... one single word—indifferent, and meaningless, it is true, but still containing, among well-bred people brought together by chance, at least some pretence of civil commiseration—he now heard hostile ejaculations and muttered complaints. Society there assembled disdained any pantomime on his account, perhaps because he had gauged ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... much in a fierce whisper, only to have her grin recklessly back at him. In pantomime she gestured that he might try to make her. Val decided that he should have known the result of his efforts. Ricky was a Ralestone, too. And short of throwing her off the platform and so unmasking themselves completely, he could not move her ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... beasts. The survivors developed into apes. Next came a period occupied by the wildest feats of the magnified non-natural race and of animals. The record is like the description of a supernatural pantomime—the nightmare of a god. The Titans upset hills, are turned into stone, and behave like Heitsi Eibib ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... idea of the forthcoming new Opera at the Savoy appears to be "all Dance to SOLOMON's music." Is it to be a pantomime-drama, like L'Enfant Prodigue, or simply a ballet? If neither, where do song-words and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 2, 1891 • Various
... ridiculous. His seat was immediately under the eye of the master, with his face to the wall, and a large map of ancient Rome before him, but this did not prevent him from turning about on all possible occasions and expressing his various states of mind in such ludicrous pantomime as would set off the young girls and small boys like a row of torpedoes. Whatever might be said or done in the school without bringing condign punishment on his head David was sure to say or do; and his criticism of passing events and comments during recitations were ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... them. He scowled at her, put a finger to his lips and then went through an involved pantomime to indicate looking for a microphone. He ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... like drops of poison upon his heart. He felt at once, and as if by a magical inspiration, the truth of the verdict; the scales of self-delusion fell from his eyes; by a hideous mockery, a kind of terrible pantomime, his goddess seemed at a word, a breath, transformed into a monster: life, which had been so lately concentrated into a single hope, seemed now, at once and forever, cramped, curdled, blistered ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... plump companion, were engaged in conversation, on the strange incidents which had passed, Fathom acted a very expressive pantomime with this fair buxom nymph, who comprehended his meaning with surprising facility, and was at so little pains to conceal the pleasure she took in this kind of intercourse, that several warm squeezes were interchanged ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... Henry Morley thus records the introduction of the modern English pantomime, which has since been the ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... And while Jacqueline was trying to get away, not knowing exactly what she was saying, but frightened, pleased, and much excited, Colette went on: "Oh! I am so glad, so glad you came to-day; now you can see the pantomime! I dreamed, wasn't it odd, only last night, that you were acting it with us. How can one help believing in presentiments? Mine ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... true conservative, early began mentioning veils, orange-blossom, and white satin; but Jane said: "My dear Aunt! Fancy me—in orange-blossom! I should look like a Christmas pantomime. And I never wear veils, even in motors; and white satin is a form of clothing I have always ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... a poor, vulgar show—a pantomime jerry-built to accommodate her particular talent. She walked through it—the dumb but irresistible model of a French atelier, who made fools of all her lovers, cheated them, sucked them dry and tossed them off with a merry cynicism. When the mood took her ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... this ended in Mrs. Mountjoy going and promising that she would send Florence down in her place. She knew that it would be in vain; but to a young man who had behaved so well as Mr. Anderson so much could not be refused. "Here I am again," he said, very much like Punch in the pantomime. ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... not a leering giggler frisking a rattle. A lively woman would be the death of me.... Why shouldn't the Sherrick be stupid, I say? About great beauty there should always reign a silence. As you look at the great stars, the great ocean, any great scene of nature, you hush, sir. You laugh at a pantomime, but you are still in a temple. When I saw the great Venus of the Louvre, I thought,—Wert thou alive, O goddess, thou shouldst never open those lovely lips but to speak lowly, slowly; thou shouldst never descend from that pedestal but to walk stately to some near couch, and ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... prodigious notoriety all over the islands. The natives of Nukuheva would frequently recount in pantomime to our ship's company their terrible feats, and would show the marks of wounds they had received in desperate encounters with them. When ashore they would try to frighten us by pointing, to one of their own number, and calling him ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... of most of the senators. They knew that they were no other than candle-snuffers, revolutionary scene-shifters, second and third mob, prompters, clerks, executioners, who stand with their axe on their shoulders by the wheel, grinners in the pantomime, murderers in tragedies, who make ugly faces under black wigs,—in short, the very scum and refuse of the theatre; and it was of course that the contrast of the vileness of the actors with the pomp of their habits naturally excited ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... difficulty while Dawn struck matches to see what he was like, and a more deplorably ludicrous spectacle never could be seen in a pantomime. The only pity of it was that it was not a punishment more frequently meted out to the sinners of his degree. He raved and stuttered how he would move in the matter, but Dawn, who had a commendable fearlessness in carrying out her undertakings, only laughed merry ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... unfortunate princess for whose nuptials the first opera had been written. French opera grew out of the ballet. This term, which at present is restricted to entertainments in which dancing is the principal feature, and the story is entirely told in pantomime, had formerly a more extended signification. It was equivalent to the English term "Mask," a play in which dancing, songs and even dialogue found place. This light and sprightly form of drama has been favored in France from a remote period. As early as the first quarter of ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... ill-informed, who contended that such pageantry was ill-timed. They advanced against it all sorts of objections which would have been quite appropriate if the public had been bidden to witness some colossal farce or burlesque; some raree-show of tasteless oddities, or some untimely pantomime of fairy-lore. What was really intended, and was performed, at a great cost of toil and organizing skill, was the opposite of all this. All the best elements of a great and glorious ceremonial were displayed—colour ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... one reason why there is no news in my letters is because there is so little in my life. I always tell you of my concerts: I was at another yesterday afternoon: a recital of Halle and Norman Neruda. I went in the evening to the pantomime with the Mackintoshes—cousins of mine. Their little boy, aged four, was there for the first time. To see him with his eyes fixed and open like saucers, and never varying his expression save in so far as he might sometimes open his mouth a little wider, was worth the money. He laughed only once—when ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fantastic raiment and languid lives, or at the strife of the Professional Beauties. It is easy to laugh at all that ensued when first the mummers and the stainers of canvas strayed into Mayfair. Yet shall I laugh? For me the most romantic moment of a pantomime is always when the winged and wired fairies begin to fade away, and, as they fade, clown and pantaloon tumble on joppling and grimacing, seen very faintly in that indecisive twilight. The social condition of 1880 ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... and you'll make the fellows die with laughing. And mind you illustrate it with plenty of life-like pantomime, ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... greater difficulty, and nothing but some ferocious pantomime and a shilling persuaded him to forego a choice fantasia ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... time Max understood the meaning of the Ouled Nail dance. This child-woman of the desert, with her wicked eyes and sweet mouth, made it a pantomime of love in its first timid beginnings, its fears and hesitations, its final self-abandon and rapture. Ahmara was a dangerous rival for a daughter of Europe with such a ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... age had come to Anhayea, from this province in company with some Indian traders. So far as they could make themselves understood, though very unskilful interpreters, they represented the country as abounding in silver, gold and precious stones. In pantomime they described the process of mining and smelting the precious metals so accurately that experienced miners were convinced that they must ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... "like a cloud." For the length of three winter months she did not stir out of doors. Then arrived spring and sunshine, carnival time and universal madness in Florence, with streets "one gigantic pantomime." Penini begged importunately for a domino, and could not be refused; and Penini's father and mother were for once drawn into the vortex of Italian gaiety. When at the great opera ball a little figure in mask and domino was struck on the shoulder with the salutation "Bella mascherina!" it was Mrs ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... thing I was getting; for my holiday already far outspangled the motliest dream that ever visited me, and I settled down to it as we settle down in our theatre chairs, well pleased with the flying pantomime. And when, after the hymn and a blessing—the hymn was poor stuff about wanting to be a Mormon and with the Mormons stand—I saw the Bishop get into a wagon, put on a yellow duster, and drive quickly away, no surprise struck me at all. I merely said to ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... their friends; that dear Buckhurst, who had just been called out for styling his opponent a Venetian, and all their companions of early days. What a sudden and marvellous change in all their destinies! Life was a pantomime; the wand was waved, and it seemed that the schoolfellows had of a sudden become elements of power, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... clump of woods. This seemed to be the hottest place of all. I would watch it. Nothing except the blanket of shell-smoke hanging over the trees was visible for a time, unless you counted figures some distance away moving about in a sort of detached pantomime. ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... being dull in Fleet Street, the crowds, the very dirt and mud, the sun shining upon houses and pavements, the print shops, the old bookstalls, parsons cheapening books, coffee-houses, steams of soups from kitchens, the pantomime, London itself a pantomime and a masquerade—all these things work themselves into my mind and feed me, without a power of satiating me. The wonder of these sights impels me into night-walks about ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... spoken chosen gondola melody police tobacco composition licorice open potato trophy coquet location opponent promotion zodiac cupola locust pantomime ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... enough for a pantomime, looked seriously at each other; but not so Amiria, whose face appeared in ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... gesture; his hand opened and shut and fell roughly on the table; and his voice was loud and heavy. The Prince, on the other hand, seemed the very type of urbane docility and quiet; the least movement, the least inflection, had with him a weightier significance than all the shouts and pantomime of his companion; and if ever, as must frequently have been the case, he described some experience personal to himself, it was so aptly dissimulated as to pass unnoticed ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... life sets before you. Look at the stage, for example; the stage is universally acknowledged at the present day to be a great teacher of morals. Does not Irving say so?—and he ought to know. There is that splendid model for imitation, for instance, the Clown in the pantomime. How does Clown regulate his life? Does he take heed for the morrow? Not a bit of it! "I wish I had a goose," he says, at some critical juncture; and just as he says it—pat—a super strolls upon the stage with a property goose on a wooden tray; and Clown cries, "Oh, look ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... of the buffalo. These they don, and continue to dance until worn out. Ten or fifteen dancers form a ring and, accompanied by drumming, yelling, and rattling, dance until the first exhausted one goes through the pantomime of being shot with the bow and arrow, skinned, and cut up; but the dance does not lag, for another masked dancer takes the place of the fallen one. The dance continues day and night, without cessation, ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... the light and examined it carefully, then put it away in a pocket of his waistcoat. The look of pain returned to his face, and he coughed feebly as if suffering from a severe cold. The hour being late I intimated by pantomime that I desired him to occupy my bed. He understood me readily enough and began feebly to remove his clothing, while I prepared a sofa for myself. He was soon sound asleep, but I lay awake long after the light was extinguished. He was evidently quite ill, and I determined to ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... to him, however, that if the fellow wanted to catch that brute, he ought to have sense enough to get a horse. No one but a plumb idiot would mill around in that snow afoot. He jogged down the slope at a shuffling trot, grinning tolerantly at the pantomime below. ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... not like the looks of the man, and courteously declined his pasteboard suggestions. All the time the young woman stood a little way off and looked wistfully at the red-shirted soldier. Her lips moved in pantomime—she was trying to say something to him. Garibaldi talked about nothing, laughed aloud, and requested his host to mix him a drink. While the man was busy at the sideboard, Garibaldi moved carelessly toward the woman and caught her whispered words, "Do not drink—go at once—he has sent ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... them. But they held the Dumb Negro himself in almost superstitious regard as one who, though a deaf-mute, knew everything that was going on, and could make you understand anything he wished. He was, in fact, a master of most eloquent pantomime; he had gestures that could not be mistaken, and he had a graphic dumb-show for persons and occupations and experiences that was delightfully vivid. For a dentist, he gave an upward twist of the hand from ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... were all at the disposal of the Man from Outside, who worked as though it was a real stage, and they were real players, and there were great audiences to see them. It was all quite wonderful, and it involved certain posings, attitudes, mimicry and pantomime, for they were really ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... had begun to read; and Satan read rapidly, with shame, and without pantomime, not pausing at what times he was abused and charged with lying; and he read correctly, for the Records Clerk followed him word by word in the Book of the Watchers; and for every sin to which he confessed Moses placed a scarlet tablet in the scale ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... lost patience. At nine o'clock in the evening of August 18th, he came again; Lucretia and Sancia drove him from the room, whereupon he called his captain, Micheletto, who strangled the duke. There was no noise, not a sound; it was like a pantomime; amid a terrible silence the dead prince was borne away ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... wonderfully beautiful under the blazing sunlight, and in the crystal-clear atmosphere, that the Guardsman refused to accept it as genuine. "It can't be real!" he cried, "this is January. We have got somehow into a pantomime transformation scene. In a minute it will go, and I shall wake up in Wellington Barracks to find it freezing like mad, with my owl of a servant telling me that I have to be on parade in five minutes." This lengthy warrior ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... and proscribe infidels and freethinkers, to leave the ludicrous for the serious, Grub Street for theology, the mock-heroic for metaphysics—which occasion a marvellous mixture and jumble of images and sentiments, pantomime and philosophy, journals and moral evidence, Fleet Ditch and the High Priori road, Curl and Clarke." That reads like a bit of a prize-essay by a bachelor of arts in the "College of the Goddess in the City." The Dunciad ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... his ears. He kept up his martial promenade as long as he liked the sport; and when he had had enough, ended by flinging down the head of the animal with an air of contempt, to show that his warlike appetite craved meat of another sort."[496] Others followed with similar songs and pantomime, and the festival was closed at last by ladling out the meat from ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... Robertson answered more promptly than Thomas John, and obtained the first place, Speug's face lit up with unaffected delight, and he was even known to smack his lips audibly. When the rector's back was turned he would convey his satisfaction over Thomas John's discomfiture with such delightful pantomime that the united class did him homage, and even Thomas John was shaken out of his equanimity; but then Duncan Robertson's father was colonel of a Highland regiment, and Duncan himself was a royal fighter, and had not in his Highland ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... when the dancing began, though her partners scared her horribly. They all made exactly the same remarks about the excellence of the floor, the taste of the decorations, and the beauty of the music, and asked her if she had been to the pantomime, and whether she played golf. Small talk is an art, and though Quenrede had many interests, and in ordinary circumstances could have discussed them, to-night she felt tongue-tied, and let the ball of conversation ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... to you any more if you talk so foolishly. Try and think of something else—of the Christmas pantomime. You know grannie says you shall go if you do your lessons well," ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... The pantomime was most convincing, and provoked roars of laughter that completely drowned the shrill pipe of the policeman fiercely demanding order; when the noise had subsided Gable, flushed with excitement and ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... candles, but the red light from the burning pine knots on the hearth glows over all, repeating, in fantastic pantomime on the brown walls and closed shutters, the varied activities around it. These are occasionally brought into a higher relief by the white flashes, as the boys throw handfuls of hickory shavings on to the fore-stick, or punch the back-log with the long iron peel, while wishing they ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... it remembered, for sum of all, that a museum is not a theater. Both are means of noble education—but you must not mix up the two. Dramatic interest is one thing; aesthetic charm another; a pantomime must not depend on its fine color, nor a picture on its ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... something gorgeous this year in "The Hall of a Million Mirrors," the tenth Scene of his Pantomime entitled Little Bo-Peep, Little Red Riding Hood, and Hop o' My Thumb, who are three very small people,—"small by degrees and beautifully less"—to make so big a Show. In the Hall of Mirrors appear all the well-known representatives of ancient ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... They always understand pantomime. There's no use saying we've got beds—not when George has to say it. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... roaming at will in her enchanted garden; "I'd hire somebody to take all the bother of buying them and hemming them and doing them up and putting them on the table. All I'd do, would be to shake them out and lay them across my lap," she went through a dainty-fingered pantomime, "and never think a thing about how they got there. That's all I want to do with napkins. But I do love 'em big and ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... believed) was performed at the Surrey Theatre. Its name is now unknown, but it had a good run in its day; a similar fate has befallen an entertainment which he wrote for Mathews. He also composed a pantomime for the Adelphi; and, along with Reynolds, dramatized Gil Blas. This play is understood to have been acted at Drury Lane. The novel of Tylney Hall, and the poem of the Epping ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... southern windows, some fling cartridges, in sign of brotherhood; on the eastern outer staircase, and within through long stairs and corridors, they stand firm-ranked, peaceable and yet refusing to stir. Westermann speaks to them in Alsatian German; Marseillese plead, in hot Provencal speech and pantomime; stunning hubbub pleads and threatens, infinite, around. The Swiss stand fast, peaceable and yet immovable; red granite pier in that ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... stood in my doorway, silent and patient, intimating her presence, if my attention were preoccupied, by a slight cough from her baby, whom I shall always believe had its part to play in this little pantomime, and generally obeyed a secret signal from the maternal hand. It was useless for me to refuse alms, to plead business, or affect inattention. She never moved; her position was always taken with an appearance ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... Rev. Eustace's amazement to behold his wife suddenly execute a series of capers round the room, which would not have disgraced a coryphee at a Christmas pantomime, but were hardly in keeping with the demure and highly respectable bearing of the wife of the vicar ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... that in many senses we are still in mid-Renaissance. The evolution has not been completed. The new life is our own and is progressive. As in the transformation scene of some pantomime, so here the waning and the waxing shapes are mingled; the new forms, at first shadowy and filmy, gain upon the old; and now both blend; and now the old scene fades into the background; still, who shall say whether the new ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... surface—the shadows of a man and a woman. Evidently they had come between the lamp and the window, and so, quite unknowingly, revealed their actions to the watcher. Curious to see the end of this shadow pantomime, Lucian stood still and ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... Coming round the corner of the deck-house, he stopped at the galley door like a crow outside a hut, waiting. We watched him getting a light for his cigarette at the galley door with much dignified pantomime. The negro cook of the Lion, holding out to him in the doorway a live coal in a pair of tongs, turned his Ethiopian face and white ivories towards a group of sailors lost in the contemplation of the proceedings.' And, when Castro had passed them, spurting jets of smoke, they swung about ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... He must have been a mesmerist. Red fire ran over the stage, steam hissed, the orchestra rattled, and the bass roared. Finally, to tinkling bells and fourth of July fireworks, the curtain fell on the silliest pantomime I ever saw. ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... and "Jack Harkaway's Schooldays!" I felt I could wait a while. There was a chap called Aristophanes who had written comedies, satirising the political institutions of a country that had disappeared two thousand years ago. I say, without shame, Drury Lane pantomime and Barnum's Circus ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... strains of the cithara. Her son—a decrepit abortion, of no age and no sex—ill-treated the child, on whom he vented the hate he had for all womankind. Like the dancing-girls whose grace he affected, he knew, and taught Thais, the art of pantomime, and how to mimic, by expression, gesture, and attitude, all human passions, and more especially the passions of love. He was a clever master, though he disliked his work; but he was jealous of his pupil, and as soon as he discovered that she was ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... meeting his fair inamorata, and employs ingenious subterfuges to gain a stolen interview. He tells his passion not in words, but with profound sighs and significant glances, as he passes her flower-decked balcony, while she, although perfectly understanding his pantomime, assumes the most profound innocence and even indifference. This fires the suitor's ardor; he bows sadly when passing her balcony, with his right hand pressed vehemently upon his left breast, where a youthful lover's heart is popularly supposed to be located. Finally, after a good deal of pretentious ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... conveyed had expanded in her mind—fear not only of Clara's laughter, that such a jewel had come from a junk shop, but of her wonder, her questions, her ability of getting out the story of the whole erratic proceeding, even to the strange pantomime between Harry and the blue-eyed Chinaman. ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... Speech implies analysis; when we are overcome by sensation or by feeling analysis ceases, and with it speech and liberty. Our only resource, after silence and stupor, is the language of action—pantomime. Any oppressive weight of thought carries us back to a stage anterior to humanity, to a gesture, a cry, a sob, and at last to swooning and collapse; that is to say, incapable of bearing the excessive ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fast becoming pure Formalism. More and more the people are beginning to regard them as 'performances,' in which they only 'assist' in the French sense. And it is specially bad for the little boys. They'd be much less self-conscious as pantomime-fairies. With all that dressing-up, and stagy-entrances and exits, and being always en evidence, no wonder if they're eaten up with vanity, ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... he knew the meaning of this pantomime. "You remind me of old Uncle Toby. He had money which he lost because he hid it in the ground instead of putting it where it would ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... a moment, made an ugly mouth, closed his left eye, and hissed through his teeth, as if he would express by all this pantomime that there are things which cannot be held under ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... man follows behind and to the right of the groom, and the maid of honor (or "first" bridesmaid) leaves her companions and advances behind and to the left of the bride. The pseudo bride (in pantomime) gives her bouquet to the maid of honor; the best man (also in pantomime) hands the ring to the groom, this merely to see that they are at a convenient distance for the services they are to perform. The recessional is played, and the procession goes out in reversed ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... from the enchanting pantomime, took a step towards her; but she raised her hand pleadingly, restrainingly, and he paused. With his eyes he asked her mutely why. She did not answer, but, all at once transformed into a thing of abundant sprightliness, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... pulling out my watch, I informed them by pantomime and bad Spanish that if they got the teams in harness and the luggage all packed on the carts in twenty minutes I would take them into my favor and ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... was of that decided nature, which enabled Cromwell to throw off the mask, to dissolve that pantomime of a Parliament in whose name he had hitherto governed, and to assume the title of "Protector of the liberties of England." He now exercised a more despotic tyranny than this nation suffered either from her Danish or Norman conquerors. He confined the elective franchise ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... musicians followed, blowing hideous discord through pipes of reeds, while he seated himself on the ground "like a monkey," as Le Moyne has it in the grave Latin of his Brevis Narratio. A council followed, in which broken words were aided by signs and pantomime; and a treaty of alliance was made, Laudonniere renewing his rash promise to aid the chief against his enemies. Satouriona, well pleased, ordered his Indians to help the French in their work. They obeyed with alacrity, and in two days the ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... orator, after this effort, would return to the place whence he had come, and another, succeeding to him, after repeating the same pantomime as the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... least of all would have believed that, in time of deadly need, men would die at arm's length of plenty, sooner than touch food they did not know. In vain the interpreters interpreted; in vain his two policemen showed by vigorous pantomime what should be done. The starving crept away to their bark and weeds, grubs, leaves, and clay, and left the open sacks untouched. But sometimes the women laid their phantoms of children at Scott's feet, looking back as they ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... our friends of the First Blankshire could not understand all this, whatever officers of other corps may have done, the pantomime of the men, women, and children was unmistakable, and was only intended to express the most ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... having been left all alone. More yet showed themselves—children dragging puppies after them, an old man with a large rusty sword, a couple of lads each with a pike—these appeared, like figures in a pantomime play, whisking into sight from between the houses, and all disappearing ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... honour of martyrdom, or assist at his apotheosis, are much better satisfied both with his christian and heathen glories, than they were while he was living to propagate anarchy and pillage. The reverence of the Convention itself is a mere political pantomime. Within the last twelve months nearly all the individuals who compose it have treated Marat with contempt; and I perfectly remember even Danton, one of the members of the Committee of Salut Publique, accusing him ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... sang some French military songs, and it came out that he had served in the French army. Father Roget sang, also in French, explaining himself with a humourous skill in pantomime that set the room in ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... creaking of machines, or the fiddlers laughing; nor see a Columbine practising a pirouette in sober sadness, nor Mr. Grimaldi's face drop from mirth to sudden melancholy as he passes the side-scene, as if a shadow crossed it, nor witness the long-chinned generation of the pantomime sit twirling their thumbs, nor overlook the fellow who holds the candle for the moon in the scene between Lorenzo and Jessica! Spare me this insight into secrets I am not bound to know. The stage is not a mistress that we are sworn to undress. Why should we look behind ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... their escape and find their way home, when they relapsed their vigilance slightly, and they were permitted to walk about a little within short limits from the bivouacs; but they were given to understand by unmistakable pantomime that death would be the certain penalty of the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... trifle from us now and again. One morning a couple of roses and a sprig of lemon verbena were added to his small gratuity. The effect upon that sightless countenance was electrical, and the poor mendicant, having only pantomime with which to express his delight, seemed half frantic. The money fell to the ground, but the flowers were ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... of his own parlour, and immediately to withdraw to China or some other remote and unknown region, there to dwell for evermore, or at least until he had got rid of his remaining arm and both legs, and perhaps an eye or so, into the bargain. It was with a peculiar kind of pantomime that Mr Willet filled up every pause; and in this he was considered by the Black Lion, who had been his familiar for some years, quite to surpass and go beyond himself, and outrun the expectations of his most ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... closing hours he died for the benefit of the Public? We know not—except that both delinquents were let off—like squibs—and Mine Host, the Boniface, had to pay all the fines. He at all events had a Fine old time of it! Sic transit! So fitly ends the long run of a good Pantomime. Finis coronat opus! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... of this thing to me?" commented Clodd. "Sort of thing for a dude in a pantomime! The fellow ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... that a dancer must have some skill as an actor, and some acquaintance with mythology—the reason being that the dances at the festivals of the gods partook of the character of pantomime, and represented the most picturesque events and passages in the popular religion. Religious knowledge is happily no longer regarded as a necessary qualification for the dance, and, in point of fact no thing is ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... By pantomime and pointing to the sun, Meillard managed to inform them that the next day, when the sun was in the same position, the Terrans would visit their village, bringing more gifts. The natives were quite agreeable, ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... One of the questions I asked when conversing with Harvey was, "Will you tell me how you died?" to which the only reply was a fixed stare on the part of Miss A., though every other question was answered, by pantomime, affirmative or negative signs, or writing, and always in writing when it was insisted on. Miss A.'s pantomimic powers in this state exceeded anything I have ever seen in professional pantomime, and ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... the trenches and gray with grime, Silent they march like a pantomime; "But what need of music? My heart ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... they lie Beneath the many-changing sky And mirror all of life and time, — Serene and dainty pantomime. ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... preceding chapter, had a child, a son, who by a freak of heredity was brooding and imaginative, fond, in a childish way, of pictures and books, but quite indifferent to scientific criticism and the methods of the analytic men. During his school holidays his mother would take him to the pantomime, and to the National Gallery. Dazed, he would scan the walls of pictures, wondering why so many of them dealt with Scriptural subjects, and why some were so coloured, ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... Carey's eye he laughed loudly, and in the most perfectly good-humoured way, as if they were the very best of friends, and when the beachcomber was looking another way he raised one hand to go through the pantomime of licking treacle off his fingers and rubbing his front, to the delight ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... side of the door, she held in readiness her Italian. She counted on understanding Giovanna's answer to her question, for she had, as she boasted, "quite a vocabulary." But much more than to this she trusted to the talent which Italians have for making their meaning clear through pantomime and ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... drawing-room door, pressed his hand, and when they parted at the door exchanged a significant look with him, at the same time touching her lips with her index finger—a very confidential piece of pantomime as any connoisseur ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... festivity; and the constant swaying backward and forward, and vehement tossing of long streaks of heads and arms on the blinds, resembled the action of a violent domestic scene, in which the angry passions were strenuously engaged. I hardly knew what to conclude from this incoherent pantomime. Either Astraea was there, in the midst of a stormy contention; or she had left the house, and they were disputing furiously over the causes of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... to see plainer, made an unwise move, and attracted the attention of the man on the step. The boy flushed scarlet as their eyes met, for Anthony Crawford, without making a sound, went through a pantomime of an ecstasy of glee. He had evidently expected to arouse Oliver's curiosity by his suggestion the day before, and was overcome with ill-natured delight to catch him in the ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... these ghiribul are not translatable, being little songs describing the things to be guessed, whose peculiarities the singer acts as he sings—a sort of one-man show, pantomime in miniature, with ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... eyes.] I was a pupil of Tedder's for twelve months, and then he got me on at the Canterbury; and from the Canterbury I went to Gatti's, and from Gatti's to the Lane, for a few lines in the pantomime and an understudy— my first appearance in the West End— [singing] "Oh, the West End is the best end!"— and from there I went to the old Strand, and there Morrie Cooling spotted me, and that led ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... understand what it is all about." But the situation was too critical on every hand for the young friends to give way to the wonderment caused by the discovery. It speedily became clear that while the Shawanoe dare not speak, he was trying very hard to convey some message to his friends by means of pantomime. Holding the gun of the Miami in one hand, he kept the other going energetically, but neither Jack nor ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... had gradually drawn nearer the corner, thrust his hand into his pocket as he heard Eliza's complaint. But he drew it out as quickly. His pocket was empty. Mortified and angry, he stamped his foot in despair. But no one noticed this pantomime. ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... She made swift pantomime of sighting along a gun barrel at him, and even in the shadows he could fancy the deadly half closing of her ungirlish eyes. Tula did ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... day, though rife With its toil, hath ended soon; We have had our share of strife, Tumblers in the mask of life, In the pantomime of noon Clown ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... an intimation on the part of the god that the people ought to have been more attentive to the wishes of the white men, for it so happens that Mahadeo is the only one of the Hindoo gods who is represented with a white face.[9] He figures among the dramatis personae of the great pantomime of the Ramlila[10] or fight for the recovery of Sita from the demon king of Ceylon; and is the only one with a white face. I know not whether the fair has ever been revived, but [I] ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... and the great orb of day set in a crescent of ruby light, making the sea like a gorgeous pantomime sea of molten gold as far as the eye could reach; and still the wind held up fair and strong, and the vessel careered over the expanse of ocean, that looked like living fire, without slackening her ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the frequenters of all the clubs and coffee-houses in the town. He was liked in all company because he liked it; and you like to see his enjoyment as you like to see the glee of a box full of children at the pantomime. He was not of those lonely ones of the earth whose greatness obliged them to be solitary; on the contrary, he admired, I think, more than any man who ever wrote; and full of hearty applause and sympathy, wins upon you by calling you to share his delight and good humour. His laugh rings through ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... scarcely credit my explanation: yet I assure you I perfectly understand the pantomime. Florry, look more particularly at the picture suspended in the rain. What does it most resemble, ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... by passionate and despairing entreaties to "stay" on the other. It is the old story of Cavour and the door-knob over again; and even the great Bismarck, by the way, does not disdain a resort occasionally to the same terrible pantomime. "The only coup d'etat to be feared from M. Thiers," said M. Dufaure in the Assembly, "is his withdrawal." It is, the quarreling and reconciliation of Horace and Lydia: "What if the door of the repudiated Lydia again open to me?" "Though you are stormier than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... the long length, had put together a little story full of facetious suggestions, and accompanied it with pantomime, which made the thing ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... feel for a moment that we are living invisible amidst the characters, but we sit aloof like Puck, thinking: "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" His supernatural machinery is as undignified as the pantomime properties of Jack the Giant-killer. The huge body scattered piecemeal about the castle, the unwieldy sabre borne by a hundred men, the helmet "tempestuously agitated," and even the "skeleton in a hermit's cowl" are not only unalarming but mildly ridiculous. Yet to the readers ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... and entering the boat; and anon bending over imaginary oars with the air of a hurried boatman; but all with the same solemnity of manner, so that I was never even moved to smile. Lastly, he indicated to me, by a pantomime not to be described in words, how he himself had gone up to examine the stranded wreck, and, to his grief and indignation, had been deserted by his comrades; and thereupon folded his arms once more, and stooped his head, ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pantomime which I saw through the window. It was probably by no means so mysterious in reality as it appeared to me. Yet what could it have been? or, rather, how can I appropriate it for my purposes? I have it! The very situation of looking through a window ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... produces. One may describe a painting; but no description will produce the effect which the painting will produce. So neither music, nor painting, nor both combined, can produce the same effect on the soul as poetry. The "Midsummer Night's Dream" enacted in pantomime, with Mendelssohn's music, would no more produce the same effect on the auditors which would be produced by the interpretation of the play in spoken words, than would the reading of the play at home ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... means "travel," we have felt riding on a motor-bike through the New Forest at nightfall when the forest seemed full of pixies and the fading sunset was red and grey and golden like the transformation scene of a pantomime. But alas! the next day we found the forest unromantic, and Clapham Common looked indescribably common in the morning sunlight. Our mood had vanished, and although we tried to reproduce the same ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... countenance cleared. He was standing in the window, and caught a glimpse of Bessie Gottley, who was passing at the moment on the opposite side of the road, and looked across at him, smiling and nodding invitingly. Mrs. Caldwell saw the pantomime, and her heart contracted with a pang when she saw how readily her husband responded. It was hard that the evil moods should not be conquered for her as well as for ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... sand that glittered like diamond dust, and there were fruit trees and rose bushes, rows of tall hollyhocks, and buds of tulips all apparently made of illuminated jewels, something like the transformation scene in a Pantomime they once took me to ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... perplexity. They were, of course, incapable of learning anything from experience. At other times he hid himself or others in the straw, in the chest, or under the table. When, in a country district such as this, one hears the laughter that greets so venerable a piece of pantomime, one is surprised that circus owners think it worth while to secure novelties at all. The primitive taste of West Sussex, at any rate, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... should arise. They watch hand and eye like faithful dogs, for their language is unintelligible to us as ours to them, and the only attempt at speech is "Chow-chow, mister!" when the dinner-bell rings, the mystic words accompanied by a realistic pantomime of mouth ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... was lavish of his pantomime. Gesture is the strong point of the refrain. His face, an inexhaustible repertory of masks, produced grimaces more convulsing and more fantastic than the rents of a cloth torn in a high gale. Unfortunately, as he was alone, and as it was night, this was neither seen nor even visible. Such ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... recognise us by them, and commanded absolute silence. The light was on her side of the screen, and the semi-darkness in which we sat, added to the breathless silence, made us unnaturally solemn. The girls motioned me to put my hands through the screen first; and I wish you could have seen the pantomime they went through as she enumerated my familiar traits of character. They nodded their heads in emphatic agreement, each one growing more eager every moment for her turn, as all recognised the truth of Elsie's reading. Some of us found that ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... showed the money therein to the gendarme, at the same time exclaiming, "Hotel! hotel!" and pointing to himself. The officer evidently comprehended this pantomime, for, with a nod to the ticket agent, who had all the while been grinning through his little wicket, he motioned for Will to follow him ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various |
