"Divertisement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... effeminated by coaches, they are so far from managing great horses, that they know not how to ride hunting-horses, besides the spoiling of several trades dependant. In the last age every yRoman almost kept a sparrow-hawk; and it was a divertisement for young gentlewomen to manage sparrow-hawks and merlins. In King Henry VIII.'s time, one Dame Julian writ The Art of Hawking in English verse, which is in Wilton Library. This country was then a lovely champain, as that about Sherston and Cots-wold; very ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... in my turn? By this darkness, if you keep me silent any longer, I will turn Independent preacher, and stand up in your despite for the freedom of private judgment.—And so, reverend sir, I was dreaming of a carnal divertisement called a bull-baiting; and methought they were venturing dogs at head, as merrily as e'er I saw them at Tutbury bull-running; and methought I heard some one say, there was the Devil come to have a sight of the bull-ring. ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... placards posted about the town, intimating that, at a certain period, a celebrated dramatic company would perform, for a few days, a series of "side-splitting" and "screaming farces"; that, alternating pleasantly with this, there would be some melodrama and a grand divertisement which would include singing, dancing, etc. These announcements occasioned a great fluttering among the little folk, and were the theme of much excitement and great speculation among the master's scholars. The master had promised Mliss, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... thereto, having darkened my Chamber, and made a small Hole in my Window-Shuts, to let in a convenient Quantity of the Sun's Light, I placed my Prism at its Entrance, that it might be thereby refracted to the opposite Wall. It was at first a very pleasing Divertisement, to view the vivid and intense Colours produced thereby; but after a while applying my self to consider them more circumspectly, I became surprised to see them in an oblong Form; which, according to the receiv'd Law of Refractions, I expected should have been circular. They were terminated ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... I cannot but bless God for my journey, observing a whole course of success from the beginning to the end of it, and I do find it to be the reward of my diligence, which all along in this has been extraordinary, for I have not had the least kind of divertisement imaginable since my going forth, but merely carrying on my business which God has been pleased to bless. So to bed very hot and feverish by being weary, but early morning the fever ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... transgressed any rule of the game:—Sam will certainly be a great player some day or other, and so (if he be not a girl, for really there's no telling) will the young gentleman standing out. In spite, however, of the great temptation of overlooking a favourite divertisement, with variations so truly original, home we went, hardly pausing to observe the housing of Master Keep's wheat harvest. Home we went, adding at every step a fresh story to our Castle in the Air, anticipating happy mornings and joyous evenings ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various |
