"Amusingly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... qualities which his subject did not possess. Though far from devoid of worldly wisdom, and indeed possessed of not a little shrewdness in his dealings with his buyers (often exhibiting that rarest quality of the successful trader, the art of linking one transaction with another), he was sometimes amusingly deficient in what is known as common sense. In later life he used to tell with infinite zest a story of a blunder of earlier years which might easily have led to serious if not fatal results. He had been suffering from nervous exhaustion and ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... the play is centred in Hubert the other characters, also, are fairly well drawn. There is ample matter for cogitation in watching the peaceful end of Genzerick, who spends his dying moments in steeling his son's heart against the Christians. The consultation between the physicians, in Act 3, amusingly ridicules the pomposity of by-gone medical professors. Eugenius, the good bishop, is a model of patience and piety; and all respect is due to the Saintly Victoria and her heroic husband. The songs, too, are ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... energy to a noble cause. Only his sister and I knew that he was the villain of the piece, and for different reasons neither of us could explain the mistake about his role. He was sure of us both; impudently, aggravatingly, yet (I can't help it, Padre!) amusingly sure of me. He tried to "isolate" me, as if I'd been a microbe while we were still at Soissons, and again just after Father Beckett and Brian went away from Amiens in the big gray car. There was something, something very special ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and the fire-breathing dragons, which guarded the Hesperian fruit; yet are they not disgusting, nor mischievous: and in the manner you have chained them together in your exhibition, they succeed each other amusingly enough, like prints of the London Cries, wrapped upon rollers, with a glass before them. In this at least they resemble the monsters in Ovid's Metamorphoses; but your similies, I suppose, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... was awfully sweet of her. Evidently she'd been bullied about her unseemly behaviour when she was small, till you, and I, and Brockhurst, had been made into a perfect bugbear. She's quite amusingly afraid of you still. But she's no notion what really happened. Of course she can't have, or she could not have mentioned the subject to me." Richard shrugged his shoulders. "Obviously it would ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... talked more amusingly than he wrote," explained Joan. "Get Boswell's Life of him. Or I'll lend you mine," she added, "if you'll be careful of it. You'll find all the passages marked that are best worth remembering. At least, ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... pedestrians was not apparently less, and of equestrians and carriage-occupants, an increase; the two latter description of the ton, actually or would-be, passing onwards to the general Sunday rendezvous, Hyde-Park, where Real Life in London is amusingly diversified; and where may be seen frequently, amongst the promiscuous promenaders of the Mall, a prince of the blood-royal undistinguishable by external ornament from any of the most humble in the moving panorama; while an endless succession of carriages, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the country, supplemented by the regular army, and a police force in the cities. That of Paris consisted of 240 archers, among them twenty-four mounted men. The inefficiency of some of the English officers is amusingly caricatured in the persons of Dogberry and Verges who, when they saw a thief, concluded that he was no honest man and the less they had to meddle or make with him ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... vivacity of joyousness of Chaucer's poetic temperament ... make him amusingly impatient of epical lengths, abrupt in his transitions, and anxious, with an anxiety usually manifested by readers rather than by writers, to come to the point, 'to the great effect,' as he is wont to call it. 'Men,' he says, 'may overlade a ship or barge, and therefore I will skip at once ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and Sweden in olden times. This was published in Paris and the French government, tendered him the decoration of the legion of honor which, however, he refused very politely, explaining that he never wore a frock coat! The episode ends amusingly with the publisher, a Swede, receiving the decoration instead. In 1884 the first volume of his famous short stories, called "Marriages" appeared. It was aimed at the cult that had sprung up from Ibsen's "A Doll's ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... persecutions of government, her sons have had an honorable part in every upward movement in American life. Testimony adduced from the sources from which this imperfect sketch is drawn cannot be called into question, and its perusal by those who so amusingly glorify the "Anglo-Saxon" as the founder of the American race and American institutions would have a chastening influence on their ignorance of early American history, and would reopen the long vista of the years, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... short time after this took place in honour of those who had been killed in the late fight. The dancers were grotesquely got up, and are amusingly described by Mr Baker. "Each man had about a dozen huge ostrich feathers in his helmet, a leopard or monkey-skin hung from his shoulders, while a large iron bell was strapped to his loins like a woman's bustle. This he rang during the dance, by jerking ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... heroic couplet, which was the last word in poetical expression in the age of Queen Anne, we consider to-day as little more than a mechanical jingle. Last year's fashions in dress, which seemed at the time to have their merits, are this year amusingly grotesque. In our judgment of beauty, therefore, allowance must be made for standards which merely are imposed upon us from without. It is necessary to distinguish between a formula and the reality. As far as possible we should seek to come into "original relation" ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... toward error is greater still when it comes to finding the central thought for a portion of text. This was once amusingly illustrated by a class composed only of the principals and high-school teachers in a county institute, some seventy-five persons in all. The text under discussion was the first chapter of Professor James's well- known book, Talks to Teachers. The title ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... very poor substitute. On more than one occasion when we came upon the brigands in a farm they thought themselves sufficiently strong to hold it against us, and once the cowardice of the volunteers was amusingly illustrated. The band was estimated at about 200, and we had 100 volunteers and a detachment of 50 cavalry. On coming under the fire of the brigands the cavalry captain, who was in command, ordered the volunteers to charge, intending when they had dislodged ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... efforts to be concrete they will make their creeds amusingly simian. Consider the simian amorousness of Jupiter, and the brawls on Olympus. Again, in the old Jewish Bible, what tempts the first pair? The Tree of Knowledge, of course. It appealed to the curiosity of their nature, and ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... severely trim frocks were still hers, but the old delicious youth, her roses, her limpid gaze, the velvety curve of throat and cheek, these were gone. Billy had been spirited, now she was noisy. She had been amusingly precocious, now she was assuming an innocence, a naivete, that were no longer hers, had never been natural to her at any time. She had always been coolly indifferent to the lives of other men and women. Now she was embittered as to her own destiny, and full of ugly and eager gossip concerning ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... had swung at two balls, and missed both, it began to seem that he was destined to strike out. A few seconds later, however, he caught the ball fairly on the trade mark and drove it over the head of Carney, who made an amusingly ineffective leap ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... escaped, and at the hands of the Ferrarese, into which we were rushing (at the rate of five miles scant an hour), that I was almost minded to stop between the nests of those brigands and pass the rest of my days at Rovigo, where the honest man lived. His talk was amusingly instructive, and went to illustrate the strong municipal spirit which still dominates all Italy, and which is more inimical to an effectual unity among Italians than Pope or Kaiser has ever been. Our honest man of Rovigo was a foreigner at Padua, twenty-five miles north, and a foreigner ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... noiseless by some good covering help wonderfully to keep voices pitched low. I have seen this illustrated almost amusingly in Newark, where frequent visits of large classes were made from the schools to the public library. The tramp of forty or fifty pairs of feet in the marble corridors made such a noise that the legitimate questions and answers of children and librarian had to be given in tones to be ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... respect to the Hana no Gosho, as the shogun was called. So close were the relations that for ceremonial purposes at the Bakufu, it was customary to employ Court officials, and witty writers of the time discourse amusingly on the often clumsy efforts made by the courtiers to ape the customs and acquire the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... he could rouse to a remarkable pitch that sentiment known as college spirit. His whole figure was expressive of a benign goodness, illuminated most humanly by the worldly wisdom of an old diplomat. His ability to deal with those who came to him on various errands was remarkable. This is amusingly illustrated by the experience of one man who went to him to present his claims for an increase in salary. His memories of the interview were most delightful but exceedingly hazy as to the matter in question. His only distinct impression was that the interview ended with ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... the king will be humiliated before the whole court; and what a delightful story it will be, too, for him to whom I am really attached, a part of my dowry for my husband, to have the adventure to relate of the king who was so amusingly deceived by ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... botanists confessed his inability to explain this strange peculiarity, we may excuse the savage if he regard it as another proof of a distinct personality in plant life. Thus, some years ago, a correspondent of the Botanical Register, describing the toad orchis (Megaclinium bufo), amusingly spoke as follows of its eccentric movements: "Let the reader imagine a green snake to be pressed flat like a dried flower, and then to have a road of toads, or some such speckled reptiles, drawn up along the middle in single file, their backs set up, their forelegs sprawling ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... of Lord Chesterfield's rule—that his dinner party, himself included, should not fall below the number of the Graces—nor exceed that of the Muses. In the whole economy of his household arrangements, and especially of his dinner parties, there was something peculiar and amusingly opposed to the usual conventional restraints of society; not, however, that there was any neglect of decorum, such as sometimes occurs in houses where there are no ladies to impress a better tone upon the manners. The invariable ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... and never did Prince Hohenloe, himself, perform a miracle more cleverly; for she bounced almost as high as the ceiling, and flounced about the room, as well and as actively as ever she did, with a countenance in which shame, anger, and a great portion of natural humour were so amusingly blended, that I was tempted to provoke her still further by a salute. Having thus satisfied the mother that I had been the means of restoring her daughter to her usual state of health, she thought it prudent to ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... perfection, so soothed and amused him that he soon forgot any momentary displeasure, and more than once gave up his evening visit to the club at Moate to listen to her as she sang, or hear her sketch off some trait of that Roman society in which British pretension and eccentricity often figured so amusingly. ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... above not very original memorandum I had passed a perfectly uneumoirous week among my friends and social acquaintances. I had stood godfather to my sister Agatha's fifth child, taking upon myself obligations which I shall never be able to perform; I had dined amusingly at my sister Jane's; I had shot pheasants at Farfax Glenn's place in Hampshire; and I had paid a long-promised charming country-house visit ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... and it is a significant fact that the most resonant woods, such as pine, poplar, and willow, yield the charcoals best adapted for the microphone. Professor Hughes' experimental apparatus is of an amusingly simple description. He has no laboratory at home, and all his experiments were made in the drawing-room. His first microphones were formed of bits of carbon and scraps of metal, mounted on slips of match-boxes by means of ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... with aigrettes and sparkled with diamonds and determination. She was marvellously garrulous about nothing in particular. She was a woman who never stopped talking for a single moment, but in a way that resembled leaking rather than laying down the law. Tepidly, indifferently and rather amusingly she prattled on without ceasing, on every subject under the sun, and was socially a valuable help because where she was there was never an awkward pause—or ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... municipal affairs. In that respect she was in advance of this professed republic. In England there is an hereditary aristocracy, here, an aristocracy of sex"; or, as the spirited Lillie Devereux Blake who was present once amusingly termed it, of "the bifurcated garment." And now perhaps some materially-minded person will ask, "What are you going to do about it? You can't fight!" forgetting that we are now fighting the greatest of all battles, and that the weapons of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... repeated she, with a bitter laugh, as if there were something amusingly absurd in the idea. 'It suits me better as it is,' she added, in a tone ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... many compliments, he said, from Dr. Warton, of Winchester, where he had lately been quartered with his regiment. He rattled away very amusingly upon the balls and the belles he had seen there, laughing at his own gallantry, and pitying and praising himself alternately ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Thence he was brought to New York to conduct the opera for Mr. E. P. Fry, as has already been mentioned, in 1848. After one season as conductor he started in on his career as manager, which lasted twenty-five years, the first five of which are amusingly described in his book "Crotchets and Quavers." More than twenty years later he attempted to continue the story in a musical journal, and gathering the disconnected chapters together, issued them in an unattractive form ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... will of course understand that these facts are not by any means inconsistent with that very sparing use of pronouns so amusingly discussed in Percival Lowell's "Soul of the Far East." In societies where subjection is extreme "there is an avoidance of the use of personal pronouns," though, as Herbert Spencer points out in illustrating ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... are shy and wild; and though they will haunt, like skylarks, on the bleakest northern moor as cheerfully as on the sunny hills of Greece, and rise thence singing into the heaven of heavens, yet they are hard to tempt into a gilded cage, however amusingly made and plentifully stored with comforts. Royal societies, associations of savants, and the like, are good for many things, but not for the breeding of art and genius: for they are things which cannot be bred. Such institutions are excellent for physical science, when, as ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... spendthrift: you saw it in the roll of his walk. Men who make money rarely saunter; men who save money rarely swagger. But saunter and swagger both united to stamp PRODIGAL on the Bond Street Lounger. And so familiar as he was with his own set, and so amusingly supercilious with the vulgar residue of mortals whose faces were strange to Bond Street! But he is gone. The world, though sadder for his loss, still strives to do its best without him; and our young men, nowadays, attend ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... about as much like a sylph as—well, as Mary Ann does!" said Jim. Since the stout, good-natured cook was heavy, and nearly square in figure, the comparison was amusingly apt. ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... rowing us, and the good-humored, broad-shouldered 'novice,' the scow to be used for our return, in case we were not back at the time then supposed probable. 'Bill's' rowing was the source of much merriment, the strokes proving powerful, but the course amusingly devious. So little does it take to entertain people in the woods, who have laid aside grim behavior and questioning philosophies, and have for the nonce become veritable children of nature, knowing that this earth is beautiful and that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... size and height, aged—: but we cannot state his age, any more than his nationality. Besides, it matters little; let it suffice that he was a strange personage, impetuous and hot-blooded, a regular oddity out of one of Hoffmann's volumes, and one who contrasted amusingly enough with the good people of Quiquendone. He had an imperturbable confidence both in himself and in his doctrines. Always smiling, walking with head erect and shoulders thrown back in a free and unconstrained manner, with a steady gaze, large open nostrils, a vast mouth which inhaled the air ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... he does not hold his tongue easily. He certainly does not, and when it wags it wags foolishly, and, as he admits, maliciously, albeit sometimes amusingly, and with superficial brilliance. He says the Irish do not consider England their country yet. Of course they do not. Why should the Irish consider themselves English? Neither do the Scots, nor the Welsh, nor the Canadians, nor will they ever so think. But they are all ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... made of the blubber. The consequence of all this, and other similar indulgences, necessarily was, that some of them complained, for several days after, of the pains usually arising from indigestion; though they all, amusingly enough, attributed this effect to the quality, and not the quantity of meat they had eaten. However, notwithstanding these excesses at first, we were really thankful for this additional supply of meat; for we had observed for some time past, that the men were evidently not so strong as ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... she exclaimed, her face changing. And she advanced and took both Anita's hands. "Mr. Ball is so stupid," she went on, with that amusingly affected accent which is the "Sunday clothes" ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... dialectician) would he carry on the discussion that it was difficult to believe that he did not really hold the opinions for which he so pertinaciously contended. Sometimes this habit of mind reacted very amusingly upon himself, as the following will show. The subject fixed one Friday evening for debate in the discussion class was, "Have animals souls?" Though fully accepting the common belief that they have not, Gilmour, purely for the sake of argument, took the affirmative, and with such enthusiasm pleaded ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... his charges are really too elderly to receive chastisement) to the Royal Exchange, the Thames Embankment, and, lastly, to the Empire. During their travels, they meet Mr. Rapless, known as "the Oofless Swell," (a part amusingly played by Mr. W. WARDE), and John Brough, a carpenter with a taste for ballet costumes and drink, the carpenter's wife, and the carpenter's child. Dr. Burch, who is evidently easy-going, but good-hearted, after flirting ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... couldn't resist this appeal. I was more and more impressed by the fineness, the charm of Mrs. Farnsworth. When she dropped the make-believe foolishness in which she indulged quite as amusingly as Alice, she appeared to be a very sensible person. The humor danced in her eyes now, but her glance was more than an appeal; it ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... everywhere attracted attention. No portrait, it was said, ever did justice to her virginal beauty. "When she was in any company you could look at no one else," the charm of her manner exceeded even the graces of her person, but her education was defective, and she was amusingly superstitious. She could be heard saying at every turn: "This is a good omen; that a bad one; oh, shocking! ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... readers can be so hard-hearted as to enjoy a laugh at the expense of poor Pyramus and Thisbe, they may find an opportunity by turning to Shakspeare's play of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," where it is most amusingly burlesqued. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... I knew too well internally. They most of them had the air of my aunt's solicitor when he had said, "Even I did not realise...." their positions saving them the necessity of concealing surprise. "One can't know everything." They fumbled amusingly about the causes, differed with one another, but were surprisingly unanimous as to effects, as to the panic and the call for purification. It was rather extraordinary, too, how large de Mersch loomed on the horizon over here. It was as if the whole world centred ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... suppressed. But never could we question the Author's veracity and sincerity of purpose. Whether he crawled like a zoophyte, soared like an eagle, or fought, like Ali, the giants of the lower world, he is genuine, and oft-times amusingly truthful. But the many questionable pages on this curious subject of the eremite, what are we to do with them? If they are imaginary, there is too much in this Book against quackery to daunt us. And yet, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... been a member of this fraternity of fine fellows, ere I discovered that Jack Chase, our captain was—like all prime favorites and oracles among men—a little bit of a dictator; not peremptorily, or annoyingly so, but amusingly intent on egotistically mending our manners and improving our taste, so that we might reflect credit upon ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... gravity of the air he seems to be amusingly uncertain,—making it first 833 times and afterwards 770 times less than that of water; and in the same connection he says, in chosen phrase, that 'density, or closeness, is another quality of the atmosphere,'—as if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... cleared out and retired farther up the river. So we steamed up after them and when we reached Kut-el-Amara we found the army there." The friendly but keen rivalry that existed between the two services is amusingly shown in the sea-man's final comment, "This is the first place that the army has ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... age, Montaigne was a gay, cheerful, untiring traveller, always eager to be going on, delighted with every place he visited, and yet anxious for constant change of scene and for new experience. To be amusingly and simply selfish is ever part of the charm of Montaigne. He adds to his reader's pleasure in life by the keenness with which he relished his own existence, and savoured every little incident as a man relishes the bouquet of wine. Without selfishness, how can this be managed? and without ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... recollections of Rochester and Chatham are amusingly confused, or rather, in defiance of all known regulations. Thus, at the Ball, we find Colonel Bulder as "head of the garrison"—one would think at so important a quarter, where there was a large garrison, a General at least would be ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... of a miracle could make them assent to some of the dogmas of their assailant. Indeed, the incapacity of our preacher to discern, or mentally to reproduce, a religious character differing in creed from his own, makes him the most amusingly intolerant of Popes, not because he is malignant, but because he is Spurgeon. If he had learning or largeness of mind, he would probably lose the greater portion of his power. He gets his hearers into a corner, limits the range of their vision to the doctrine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... rationale of his enemy. There was a kind of impudent virtuosity in his "proofs," in his manner of drawing a large, impressive cluster of names into his ironic net and making all of them appear to be credible witnesses in his defense. Even Swift, amusingly compromised as "one of the greatest Droles that ever appear'd upon the Stage of the World" (p. 39), was brought to the witness box as evidence of the privileged status to which satiric writing was entitled. Collins enforced erudition with cool intelligence so that contemptuous amusement is present ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... firm master leads him perforce to the spot and proves beyond all doubt that the danger is of his own imagining; after which he will throw up his head and deny that he ever was afraid—and be quite amusingly sincere ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... then, the very famous, if not perhaps very felicitous, nickname-classification of "Barbarian-Philistine-Populace" is launched, defended, discussed in a chapter to itself. To do Mr Arnold justice, the three classes are, if not very philosophically defined, very impartially and amusingly rallied, the rallier taking up that part of humble Philistine conscious of his own weaknesses, which, till he made it slightly tiresome by too long a run, was piquant enough. The fourth chapter, "Hebraism and Hellenism," ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... excellent clap-trap—or, as they term it in America, Buncombe—speech, aiding and emphasizing, by energetic shakings of the forefinger, such passages as he thought would tell in the gallery above; his voice was loud and clear, his language blunt and fluent, and amusingly replete with "dares and daren't;" "England's in the wrong, and she knows it;" if the original treaty, by which America was to have had the canal exclusively, had been concluded, "America would have had a rod to hold over all the nations." Then came "manifest destiny;" then ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... to the infinite centres of sorrow—and it became a kind of dream of his—the time when they would go together, not holidays alone, but always. The great fortune slowly became identified in his mind with the work he had to do; but Equatoria, the base, amusingly enough, sank away into vaster remoteness. There were moments in which Bedient almost believed there was a little garden of his planting in the heart of the lustrous lady; moments, even, when he thought it was extending broader and broader upon ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... patent that the distinction of caste is very strong. A first-classman—cadet officers are selected from this class—looks down upon lower grade men, while second-class cadets view their juniors with something nearly allied to contempt, and third-class men are amusingly patronizing in their treatment of 'plebes' or new-comers. For the first year of their Academy life the 'plebes' have rather a hard time of it; but no sooner do they emerge from their chrysalis state than they are as hard upon their unfortunate successors ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... report that I was a sot—an unfounded rumor, which originated with a Richmond paper." Governor Marcy used to joke Mr. Mason a good deal on the forwardness of the Old Dominion, the mother of Presidents, in urging the claims of her children for Federal office—a propensity which was amusingly illustrated at a private dinner where they were both in attendance. "How strange it is, Mason," said he, "that out of the thousands of fat appointments we have had to make, there is not one that Virginia does not furnish a candidate for, and that ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... piano to be sent to his country-house from the town: a piano for his—Lemm's—use. Together they went to the Kalitins', and spent the evening, but not so agreeably as on the former occasion. Panshin was there, had a great deal to narrate about his journey, and very amusingly mimicked and illustrated in action the country squires he had seen; Lavretzky laughed, but Lemm did not emerge from his corner, maintained silence, quietly quivered all over like a spider, looked glum and dull, and grew animated only when Lavretzky began to take his leave. Even ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... uncertainty on the author's part as to what particular hare he is coursing. Part of the interest, after the description of the printing office and of old Sechard's swindling of his son, is a doubling, it is true, upon that of La muse du Departement, and is perhaps a little less amusingly done; but it is blended with better matters. Sixte du Chatelet is a considerable addition to Balzac's gallery of the aristocracy in transition—of the Bonaparte parvenus whom perhaps he understood even better than the old nobility, for they were already in his time becoming adulterated and ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Amusingly enough, I didn't actually know at the time that it meant "What's the matter?" I had an idea it was a liberal translation of "Who's looney now?" And that seemed pat enough ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... abstraction of the young poet must often have been regarded as self-conscious attitudinizing by his neighbours—especially by the "stupid stout woman" who lived in the villa next to his father's, and who, as he amusingly relates, mocked him aloud:— ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... at soul in its success. But contrary to his expectation, the business could not have adjusted itself better. The proprietress of an establishment (this was in Kharkov) willingly met his proposition half-way. She had known long and well Simon Yakovlevich, who played amusingly on the piano, danced splendidly, and set the whole drawing room laughing with his pranks; but chiefly, could, with unusually unabashed dexterity, make any carousing party "shell out the coin." It only remained to convince the mate of his life, and this proved the most difficult of ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... Dark Tower is similar to that of the Red Ettin, (cf. Koehler on Gonzenbach, ii. 222). The formula "youngest best," in which the youngest of three brothers succeeds after the others have failed, is one of the most familiar in folk- tales amusingly parodied by Mr. Lang in his Prince Prigio. The taboo against taking food in the underworld occurs in the myth of Proserpine, and is also frequent in folk-tales (Child, i. 322). But the folk-tale parallels to our tale fade into insignificance before its brilliant ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... communion of tongue amongst guests at dinner, forms an agreeable episode in the life of him whom education and English reserve have inured, without ever reconciling, to a different state of things at home. The difference of the English and French character peeps out amusingly at this critical time of the day; when, oh! commend us to a Frenchman's vanity, however grotesque it may sometimes be, rather than to our own reserve, shyness, formality, or under whatever other name we please to designate, and seek to hide its unamiable synonym, pride. Vanity, always a free, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... in an amusingly polite manner arose and bowed. "All right, Bedelia, and if it's all the same to you, you may as well waltz ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... this scheme, and was probably the cause of Pierre d'Ailly's temporary retirement to Noyon, where he held a canonry. There he continued the struggle for his side in a humorous work, in which the partisans of the council are amusingly taken to task by the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... her children's teacher found was wonderfully adapted to Froebel's purpose, and seemed to promise great advantages both to the pupils and to the institute. There was much building and arranging to be accomplished, but means to do so were obtained, and the first pupil described very amusingly the entrance into the new home, the furnishing, the discovery of all the beauties and advantages which we found as an old possession in Keilhau, and the endeavour, so characteristic of Middendorf, to adapt even the less attractive points ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... determined that he was at last allowed by his bourgeois parents to have his way, and was sent to study under that very rough diamond Couture. Now again his "revolting" qualities showed themselves, this time in the life class. Theodore Duret, his friend and biographer, puts it so amusingly that a quotation, untranslated, is imperative:—"Cette repulsion qui se developpe chez Manet pour l'art de la tradition," he says, "se manifeste surtout par le mepris qu'il temoigne aux modeles posant dans l'atelier et a l'etude du nu telle qu'elle ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... the ground smiling. It gave him a certain pleasure to see such a complete discomfiture; Nicholas was always so amusingly angry when he failed, and so full ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... sturdy home-fortress of the fourteenth century, and has kept throughout such rigid terms with his model that the result is literally uninhabitable to degenerate moderns. It is simply a massive facsimile, an elegant museum of archaic images, mainly but most amusingly counterfeit, perched on a spur of the Apennines. The place is most politely shown. There is a charming cloister, painted with extremely clever "quaint" frescoes, celebrating the deeds of the founders of the castle—a cloister that ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... shrimps had long since amused Lady Martin's large circle of acquaintances; and although no one had ventured to breathe a word before either Owen Rose or his wife, it was hardly surprising that Toni came to be considered rather amusingly unsophisticated; so that the slightest gaucherie into which the unconscious Toni was betrayed during those first weeks of her introduction into the society of the district was eagerly noted and joyfully magnified in a ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... U. C. H. dinner, you would probably have been amused and somewhat surprised to learn that one of those whom you addressed had often accompanied you over that 'field of forty footsteps' to which you so aptly and amusingly alluded. It is now some years since I was accidentally reading a paper written by yourself in the Household Words, when I was first impressed with the idea that the writer described scenes and persons with which ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... cared for him at all, if she wished or intended to marry him? She replied lightly, 'Perhaps, when you become Sir Duke Lawless.' Then Lawless accused her of heartlessness, and of encouraging both his uncle and Just Trafford. She amusingly said, 'Perhaps she had, but it really didn't matter, did it?' For reply, Lawless said her interest in the whole family seemed active and impartial. He bade her not vex herself at all about him, and not to wait ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... also, and the burden of the talk fell upon Congdon, who proceeded in his amusingly hit-or-miss way to detail the important or humorous happenings, of the town, and so they rolled along up the wide avenue to the big stone steps before the looming, lamp-lit palace which ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... play falls into three portions: first, a rustic farce; secondly, the apparition and announcement of the angels; and thirdly, the adoration. The two latter do not particularly concern us. Though in the Chester cycle the shepherds show themselves amusingly ignorant of the meaning of the Gloria, in the Towneley plays they are apt to fall out of character, and certainly display a singular ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... much too fond of ruins; people built sham ruins on their estates. Rich men, who could afford the luxury, kept a dilapidated hermit in a cavern. Their chief pleasure on the continent was measuring ruins in the way described so amusingly by Goldsmith in The Citizen of the World. Though no century was more thoroughly pleased with itself, I might almost say smugly self-satisfied, the men of that century were always lamenting the decline of the age. The observations of Johnson and Goldsmith I need scarcely repeat. But here is one ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... 'feminism,' an attitude. I am not a feminist. It was Fyne who on certain solemn grounds had adopted that mental attitude; but it was enough to glance at him sitting on one side, to see that he was purely masculine to his finger-tips, masculine solidly, densely, amusingly,—hopelessly. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... my supposed safeguard of drudgery has been cut off at the meter by that amusingly short-sighted old Conspirator, it will be only fair to notify him that his age and experience, even his captivating habits and well-known hospitality, will be treated with scorn, rather than respect, in the paragraphs which he virtually forces me to write; and he is hereby invited to view ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... regretted Sir Hyde being on shore. We breakfasted that morning as usual, soon after six o'clock, for we were always up before daylight. We went on shore, so as to be at Sir Hyde's door at eight o'clock, Lord Nelson choosing to be amusingly exact to that hour, which he considered as a ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... he laboured at his gentle craft all day - "No doubt you mean his Cal-craft," you amusingly will say - But, no—he didn't operate with common bits of string, He was a Public Headsman, which is ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... not a man of a very pleasing appearance, as he was covered with a kind of leprosy; but that did not prevent him having a good appetite, writing, and enjoying all his bodily and intellectual faculties; he talked well and amusingly. He never went into society, as, besides his personal disfigurement, he was tormented with an irresistible and frequent desire of scratching himself, now in one place, and now in another; and as all scratching is accounted an abominable thing in Paris, he preferred to be able to use ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... gathered round us at the landing, and escorted us up the rugged street to the palais de justice. They all seemed to be affected with the spirit of fear, except our partisans, who were in a state of exultation from the like cause. Two individuals in particular were amusingly and palpably possessed with the spirit of triumph, and they were the two attendants of the vice-consul. These men were worthy of notice on other accounts, but singularly remarkable in respect of the effectual manner in which they seemed to have divested ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... king of France. "We recommend this noble young man," said the letter of Congress, "to the favor of your majesty, because we have seen him wise in council, brave in battle, and patient under the fatigues of war." He was received in France with great distinction, which he amusingly describes: ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Prince, they tell me you are a man of taste, a man who is well acquainted with those godless Greek and Roman doings. As it is in my mind to celebrate my daughter's wedding with all pomp worthy of my crown—I want to ask you—to consult with my son—as to how most gracefully and amusingly to entertain the Courts of Poland, Saxony, Brunswick and Mecklenburg, who will all be here for an entire week—in a word, how we can win much honor and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... advertised as "Written by Mrs. Eliza Haywood" and bore her name in full prominently displayed on the title-page. That her signature possessed a distinct commercial value in selling popular fiction was amusingly illustrated by a bit of literary rascality practiced in 1727, when Arthur Bettesworth, the bookseller, issued a chapbook called "The Pleasant and Delightful History of Gillian of Croydon." After a long summary of the contents in small type came the statement, "The ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... friend to the Bodleian. When quite a youth he cut down fifty great oaks to purchase a building-site near Exeter College. The laying of the foundation-stone in 1634 was amusingly described by Wood. The Heads of Houses were all assembled, and the University musicians 'had sounded a lesson on their wind-music,' standing on the leads at the west end of the library; but while the Vice-Chancellor was placing a piece of gold ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... with loose statements about his past services, boldly claiming the honors of the last short but successful Italian campaign. The paper was referred to the proper authorities, and, a fortnight later, its writer received peremptory orders to join his corps in the west. What could be more amusingly characteristic of this persistent man than to read, in a letter to Joseph under date of the following day, August twentieth: "I am attached at this moment to the topographical bureau of the Committee of Safety for the direction of the armies in Carnot's place. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... this, again, rendered specially absurd by being applied to the most current subjects and occurrences. The phrases and modes of combination in argument were caught by the most ignorant from the custom of the age, and their ridiculous misapplication of them is most amusingly exhibited in Costard; whilst examples suited only to the gravest propositions and impersonations, or apostrophes to abstract thoughts impersonated, which are in fact the natural language only of the most vehement agitations of the mind, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... Etonian—his pranks, his follies, his loves, his fortunes, and misfortunes—is here amusingly drawn and happily coloured by an accomplished artist. The work is full of anecdote and lively painting of ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... extreme Pacifist. I am against the man who first takes up the weapon. I carry my pacifism far beyond the ambiguous little group of British and foreign sentimentalists who pretend so amusingly to be socialists in the Labour Leader, whose conception of foreign policy is to give Germany now a peace that would be no more than a breathing time for a fresh outrage upon civilisation, and who would even ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... unconventional. Her writings were not religious in any stereotyped, popular sense. Her characters were not stenciled. The holiest of them were strongly and often amusingly individualized. She did not try to make automatons to repeat religious commonplaces, but actual men and women, through whose very peculiarities the Holy Spirit ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... President Roosevelt to Alice in Wonderland asking for her views on the tariff. Then having completed these messages, the answers may also be prepared, using the same letters. But, of course, as in all games, family matters work out more amusingly than public ones. ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... and obey, two lessons the Indian never had and never respected. Beside these valuable lessons the negro was taught the fundamental principles of Christianity and at the opening of the war nearly every negro belonged to some church. Their preachers used to get their dictionary and Bible very amusingly mixed at times. Elder Barton exhorting his hearers said: "Paul may plant and Apolinarus water, but if you keeps on tradin' off your birthright for a pot of Messapotamia you'se gwine to git lost. You may go down into de water and come up out ob de water like dat Ethiopian Unitarium, ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... purpose," says Heine, "was merely to describe the fools who sought to restore the chivalry of the Middle Ages, . . . then it is a peculiarly comic irony of accident that the romantic school should furnish the best translation of a book in which their own folly is most amusingly ridiculed." ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... of Benares at that time, who was deposed by Warren Hastings on account of his refusal to comply with the demands of the British Government. In Macaulay's famous Essay on Warren Hastings there is a long narrative of this contest, which is amusingly at variance with the narrative given by Warren Hastings himself. This building is still called Cheit-Singh's Palace, but since his day it has been the property of the British Government, and has been for many years the residence ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... to touch any of us, or else we should be reduced forthwith to our original dust. The pulsing grasp of his great hands and heavy fingers, soft and springing in their manipulation of one's shoulders as the touch of a wild thing, was amusingly harmless, considering the howls with which his onslaught was evaded as long as our flying legs were loyal to us. My father's gentle laughter and happy-looking lips were a revelation during these bouts. I remember with ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... boy suddenly become a hero, touched them with a tenderness never before felt. In spite of their anxiety, Maxime's enthusiasm intoxicated them, and it made them ungrateful toward their former life, that peaceful affectionate existence, with its long monotonous days. Maxime was amusingly contemptuous of it, calling it absurd after one had seen what was going ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... influences had seriously perturbed the balance of taste in Europe. I do not know that Lord Cromer had pursued these impressions very far, or that he had formed any conscious theory with regard to them. But he was very "eighteenth century" in his suspicion of enthusiasm, and I always found him amusingly impervious to ideas of a visionary or mystical order. It was impossible that so intelligent and omnivorous a reader as he should not be drawn to the pathetic figure of Pascal, but he was puzzled by him. He described him as "manifestly a man full of contrasts, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... said to his officers, "let us do something to-day which the world may talk of hereafter." Collingwood, in reality, was a great man and a great seaman, and in the battle which followed he "fought like an angel," to quote the amusingly inappropriate metaphor ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... chessboard, it is out of the question, and nobody who knows the character of the people will attempt to do it. Unquestionably there is no such country in the world for anomalies of all kinds. Cosas de Espana! as Captain Widdrington amusingly enough says, when he meets with some huge piece of inconsistency that astonishes even him, accustomed though he be to the most contradictory vagaries on the part of his Iberian friends. And it is exactly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... hand, but she refused it angrily. She stood, biting her lip, tapping her foot, her head averted, upon the kerb; her attitude of pique was amusingly familiar to him; often it had gained for her the gratification of some petulant desire; but now all that he wanted was to hurry back to the ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... anything against me you can pull me for it," he said insolently: "that's your business. As to the profession I followed before I started on that career of crime which brought me into contact with the crude representatives of what is amusingly called 'the law,' ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... till a month before Balzac's return in May, 1850, when illness necessitated her removal to her daughter's house.[*] The nieces, of whom Balzac was really extremely fond, "sulked" no longer, but wrote letters which their uncle praised highly, and which he answered gaily and amusingly. The shadowy cloud, too, which had prevented the brother and sister from seeing each other clearly, dispersed for ever; and one of Honore's letters to Laure about this time contains the loving words, "As far as you are concerned, every day is your festival in my heart, companion of ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... for our benefit. Of these good things we ate almost immoderately, for it was the only warm meal we had made for several days. While preparing it, and after dinner, Lincoln entertained them, and they entertained us for a couple of hours very amusingly." Kindly human companionship was a luxury in that green wilderness, and was readily ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... this Hamil learned through the indiscriminate volubility of his host who, when his feelings had been injured, was amusingly naive for such ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... contending parties towards each other. The Fates display throughout a proper contempt for what they regard as the showy but unsubstantial personality of the young god; and the natural antagonism of light and darkness, hope and despair, is as amusingly parodied in the mock deference and ill-disguised aversion with which he approaches them. Apollo finally vindicates Mr. Browning's optimistic theism by claiming the gifts of Bacchus, youngest of the gods, for the beneficent purpose ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... after Suzanna had gone. A kerosene lamp set upon a center table sent an apologetic light over the shabby furniture. Above the mantel with its velvet cover and statuette of a crying baby, was a picture of Suzanna, a "crayon," Mr. Bartlett amusingly surmised. The small face looked out with a distorted artificial smile quite unknown to the face it sought to represent. Yet Suzanna's aura was visible, Mr. Bartlett thought. That little girl who so simply and lovingly had called his mother Drusilla because no one in the world was ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... herself at first; but a dozen chances that furthered the whole appearance had risen to the surface, pleasant pretexts, oh certainly pleasant, as pleasant as Amerigo in particular could make them, for associated undertakings, quite for shared adventures, for its always turning out, amusingly, that they wanted to do very much the same thing at the same time and in the same way. Funny all this was, to some extent, in the light of the fact that the father and daughter, for so long, had expressed ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... beggar uses it to scare away the dogs; the father takes hold of his little boy's queue instead of his hand when walking with him on the street, or the child follows holding to his father's queue, and the boys use it as reins when they play horse. I saw this amusingly illustrated on the streets of Peking. Two boys were playing horse. Now I have always noticed that when a boy plays horse, it is not because he has any desire to be the horse, but the driver. He is willing to be horse ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... extra expense by the necessity of knighting his eldest son or providing a dowry for his daughter, or when he was in captivity and was held for a ransom. Lastly, the vassal might have to entertain his lord should the lord come his way. There are amusingly detailed accounts, in some of the feudal contracts, of exactly how often the lord might come, how many followers he might bring, and what he should ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... droll of the Irish bar, sent an amusingly equivocal invitation to an Irish nobleman of his acquaintance: "I hope, my Lord, if ever you come within a mile of my house, that you'll stay there all night." When he was suffering from an attack of gout, he thus rebuked his shoemaker: "O, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... appeal of his music to different temperaments, is an artistic personality to be reckoned with; one not to be ticketed and laid on the shelf. Although a century and more has elapsed since his birth the permanent value of his music is still debated, often amusingly enough, by those who seem unaware that, whatever the theoretical rights of the case, in practice his principles are the reigning ones in modern music. As Berlioz stands as the foremost representative of program music and never ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... "May I have the (honor/pleasure) of a dance?" would be conventionally reprobated as discourteous, and is practically impossible. The natural consequence is, that the fair answerer is driven to all manner of distressing—sometimes almost amusingly distressing—shifts and equivocations, merely to escape the necessity of dancing with men whom she doesn't wish to dance with, but who insist on asking her to do so. Sometimes she salves her conscience by the device of arranging beforehand with a brother ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... performed. Those who had stood up for its merits, and been irritated and disgusted by the treatment it had received from the manager, determined to muster their forces, and aid in giving it a good launch upon the town. The particulars of this confederation, and of its triumphant success, are amusingly told by Cumberland in ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... but he has little to say about his character as Prince William beyond noting, when there was some talk of the Prince directly succeeding Emperor William, that he was "too young." On an occasion subsequently Prince Hohenlohe amusingly notes that the Emperor shook hands with him until his fingers "nearly cracked." This is still a ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... of June my son Theodore's wife and daughter came over from France to spend a month with us. Lisette and Nora, about the same size, played and quarreled most amusingly together. They spent their mornings in the kindergarten school, and the afternoons with their pony, but rainy days I was impressed into their service to dress dolls and tell stories. I had the satisfaction to hear them say that their dolls were never so prettily dressed before, and that my stories ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... social sphere from Horace Walpole—and it is a pleasant relief, after reading the solemn histories which recall the struggles of Walpole and Chesterfield and their like, to drop in upon this quiet little coterie of homely commonplace people leading calm domestic lives and amusingly unconscious of the political and intellectual storms which were raging outside. Richardson himself was the typical industrious apprentice. He was the son of a London tradesman who had witnessed with due horror the Popish machinations of James II. Richardson, born ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... at length roused from his revery by the voice of Faria, who, having also been visited by his jailer, had come to invite his fellow-sufferer to share his supper. The reputation of being out of his mind, though harmlessly and even amusingly so, had procured for the abbe unusual privileges. He was supplied with bread of a finer, whiter quality than the usual prison fare, and even regaled each Sunday with a small quantity of wine. Now this was a Sunday, and the abbe had come to ask his ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... worse. But, as Mr Dixon happily says: 'Blake took no trouble to justify his noble instincts against such critics. His was indeed a happy fate: the only fault ever advanced by friend or foe against his public life, was an excess of generosity towards his vanquished enemies!' His sense of the comic is amusingly evidenced by the story of his ruse during a dearth in the same siege. Tradition reports, that only one animal, a hog, was left alive in the town, and that more than half starved. In the afternoon, Blake, feeling that in their depression a laugh would do the defenders as ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... conquering predominance, as they who deserve it always do, like men, are whimpering like babies after dearly coveted but utterly unattainable enjoyments—to be had at the expense of the interests of the Negroes whom they, rather amusingly, affect to despise. When Mr. Froude shall have become able to present for the world's contemplation a question respecting which the Anglo-Saxon family, in its grand world-wide predominance, and the African family, in its yet feeble, albeit promising, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... may be called historical, "The Canavans" (1906) is the best, because it is of the peasantry, I suppose, who change so little with the years, and whom Lady Gregory presents so amusingly and so truly in her modern farce comedy. "Kincora" (1903) takes us all the way back to the eleventh century, deriving its name from Brian's Seat on the Shannon and ending with his death at Clontarf. It is undistinguished melodrama. ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... daresay," suggested Robina, "that if one put it into a book—I mean that if you put it into a book, it would read amusingly." ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... Meanwhile, since 1707, a Colonel Hooke had been acting in Scotland, nominally in Jacobite, really rather in French interests. Hooke's intrigues were in part betrayed by De Foe's agent, Ker of Kersland, an amusingly impudent knave, and were thwarted by jealousies of Argyll and Hamilton. By deceptive promises (for he was himself deceived into expecting the aid of the Ulster Protestants) Hooke induced Louis XIV. ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... off together to the Kalitins' and spent the evening with them, but not so pleasantly as on the last occasion. Panshin was there, he talked a great deal about his expedition, and very amusingly mimicked and described the country gentry he had seen; Lavretsky laughed, but Lemm would not come out of his corner, and sat silent, slightly tremulous all over like a spider, looking dull and sullen, and he only revived when ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... rivals of my own nationality; though one expatriated person, whose name I have not heard, was writing a series of prejudiced articles for Fraser, which he signed "A White Republican." I thought him a very dirty white. One or two English travellers at the same time were making amusingly stupid notices of America in some of the second-rate monthlies; and Maxwell, a bustling Irishman, who owns Temple Bar, the Saint James, and Sixpenny Magazine, and some half dozen other serials, was employing a man to invent all varieties of rubbish upon a country which ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... conversation," of an opposition party already formed in the club, of how they were all in a hubbub over the new ideas, and how charmingly this suited him, and so on. He talked for a quarter of an hour and so amusingly that I could not tear myself away. Though I could not endure him, yet I must admit he had the gift of making one listen to him, especially when he was very angry at something. This man was, in ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... early age had made him romantic about everything connected with London. As soon as he was able to leave his bank in New York—in fact, the moment he had retired from business—he had realised his dream and come to live in London. And Harry seemed to him the incarnation of everything delightfully, amusingly English. He had a real hero-worship for Harry, who was so astonishingly clever as well. Van Buren was not a snobbish Anglomaniac, at least his snobbishness was not of the common quality nor about the obvious things; ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... to examine was an identification folder done up in oiled fabric. Thanks to German thoroughness it was amusingly complete. On the first page appeared what I soon discovered to be pedigree for four generations back. The printed form on which all this was minutely filled out made very clear statements from which I determined that my father and ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... muttering in his sleep: "Tally-ho! Hark to Rover! Stown away!" she knew that, when the hooter sounded at half-past five, it would summon him, not to work, but to a day with the hounds. He would return home between four and five, mud-stained from head to foot, triumphant at heart, but with an amusingly cowed expression on his face, as of a dog that expects ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... consequence.—Lafaele, provost of the cattle. The cattle are Jack, my horse, quite converted, my wife rides him now, and he is as steady as a doctor's cob; Tifaga Jack, a circus horse, my mother's piebald, bought from a passing circus; Belle's mare, now in childbed or next door, confound the slut! Musu—amusingly translated the other day "don't want to," literally cross, but always in the sense of stubbornness and resistance—my wife's little dark-brown mare, with a white star on her forehead, whom I have been riding of late to steady ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Aberdeen Friends in 1692 a "weighty paper containing several heads of solid advyces and Counsells to friends" sent by Irish Quakers, was read. These counsels abound with amusingly prim suggestions. Among them is the warning to "take heed of being overcome with strong drink or tobacco, which many by custome are brought into bondag to the creature." The Aberdeen Friends themselves a little later ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... flowers. He looked down into her hair. It struck him that it was a remarkably beautiful idea—a woman's hair—especially hers, streaked as it was with white—silken silver. When she shook her head a snowy thread tickled his nose amusingly. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... the truth, that, confronted with the evidence that Master Mullens and his family were from Dorking in England, it does not occur to her to doubt the correctness of the impression which the recklessness of Baird had created,—that they were of Leyden,—and she hence amusingly suggests that "they must have moved from Leyden to Dorking." These careless utterances of one who is especially bound by his position, both as a writer and as a teacher of morals, to be jealous for the truth, might be ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... the Edinburgh Academy, where he was the classmate of Tait and Clerk Maxwell, bore away many prizes, and was once unjustly flogged by Rector Williams. He used to insist that all his bad schoolfellows had died early, a belief amusingly characteristic of the man's consistent optimism. In 1846 the mother and son proceeded to Frankfort-on-the-Main, where they were soon joined by the father, now reduced to inaction and to play something like third fiddle in his narrow household. The emancipation ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... more amusingly cheerful than Montaigne, who more amusingly wise, who so well bred and attractive, who knew the world better and took it only as the world? Give me the old volume of Montaigne and a loaf of bread—no Victrola singing to me in the wilderness!—a ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... before others anything like delight at it, well, in that case, the king will be humiliated before the whole court; and what a delightful story it will be, too, for him to whom I am really attached, in fact part of my dowry for my husband, to have the adventure to relate of the monarch who was so amusingly deceived by ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... The Hellenising fashion is amusingly exemplified in the Grecising of the Jewish names; e.g., Alcimus Eljakim, Jason Jesus, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen |
