"Harlequin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shall see the shows, and stand all in a crowd before them, with open eyes and open mouths, wondering at the beauty of the dancing-women, and their gowns all over spangles, and at all the wit and grimaces, and somersets of harlequin and clown. They have had a merry dinner and a dance, like a dance of elephants and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... HARLEQUIN WRESTLE.—This is a one-sided wrestle between two persons. Each stands on one leg; they then grasp right hands and each tries to make the other lower his upraised foot to the ground, or touch the ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... coaches, dressed like Parisians, fresh from the boulevards; Amsterdam children in charity uniforms; girls from the Roman Catholic Orphan House, in sable gowns and white headbands; boys from the Burgher Asylum, with their black tights and short-skirted, harlequin coats. *{This is not said in derision. Both the boys and girls of this institution wear garments quartered in red and black, alternately. By making the dress thus conspicuous, the children are, in a measure, deterred from wrongdoing while going ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... could have gone as harlequin, Or clad yourself in Zamiel's skin, Your tending spirits we; Or "Peeping Tom" may be more apt, Since all are in your record clapp'd ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... every species of gratification of this kind; while the glasses are filled to a great height, in a pyramidal shape, and some of them with layers of strawberry, gooseberry, and other coloured ice—looking like pieces of a Harlequin's jacket—are seen moving to and fro, to be silently and certainly devoured by those who bespeak them. Add to this, every one has his tumbler and small water-bottle by the side of him: in the centre of the bottle is a large piece of ice, and with a tumbler of water, poured ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... out my pinions, and sprang on my perch— 'Twas the dragon on Bow, that odd sign of the church, The episcopal centre of action; All Cheapside was crowded with black, brown, and fair, Like a harlequin's jacket, or French rocquelaire, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various
... fox. But he was no novice in the laying of sieges, and had recourse to his bag of rascally tricks. He pretended to climb the tree; stood upon his hind legs; counterfeited death; then came to life again. Harlequin himself could not have acted so many parts. He reared his tail and made it gleam in the moonshine, and practised a hundred other pleasantries, during which no turkey could have dared to go to sleep. The enemy tired them out at last by keeping ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... not think it is reported that he showed any very early predilection for Music; Mozart, we know, did. They say Holmes has published a very good life of M. Only think of the poor fellow not being able to sell his music latterly, getting out of fashion, so taking to drink . . . and enact Harlequin at Masquerades! When I heard Handel's Alexander's Feast at Norwich this Autumn I wondered; but when directly afterward they played Mozart's G minor Symphony, it seemed as if I had passed out of a land of savages ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... are; there is a great colony of Blackbirds I want you to see, for our next family is a very interesting one. It contains a harlequin, a tramp, a soldier, a tent-maker, a hammock-maker, and a basket-maker; and we shall probably see them all, sooner or later, but certainly one or two of ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... harlequin, fat boy, jester, funny rustic, vied with each other in mirth-provoking antics so aptly described by the circus press agent as a "merry-hodgepodge of fun-provoking, acrobatic idiosyncrasies of an ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... gentleman, a person of Costigan's country too (for have we not said, that however poor an Irish gentleman is, he always has a poorer Irish gentleman to run on his errands and transact his pecuniary affairs?) call a cab from the nearest stand, and rattle down to the Roscius's Head, Harlequin-yard, Drury-lane, where the captain was indeed in pawn, and for several glasses containing rum and water, or other spirituous refreshment, of which he and his staff had partaken. On a third melancholy occasion he wrote that he was attacked by illness, and wanted ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... calculated to rend the heart with the profoundest emotions of trouble, do not fetter that exalted principle imbued in her very nature. It is true, her tender and feeling heart may often be moved (as she is thus constituted), but she is not conquered, she has not given up to the harlequin of disappointments, her energies have not become clouded in the last movement of misfortune, but she is continually invigorated by the archetype of her affections. She may bury her face in her hands, and let the tear of anguish roll, she may promenade the delightful ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... take any liberty, without fear of dethronement. One evening, during an act in which he had not to appear on the stage, he was leaning while chatting with a comrade against that part of the wings known in French as "harlequin's cloak"—in our stage language the prompt-place. A brass knob was under his elbow. "What's this machine for?" he said, examining it. "Don't touch it, Monsieur Frederic," cried an employe: "it's the gas-regulator." "Bah! has the gas got a regulator, then? Lucky gas! Let's see what will happen." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... comparisons,—like Harlequin! No sooner out of one scrape, than we get into another; and all for the sake of those Big Blockheads (L'AMOUR DE CES GRANDS COLOSSES). What the Kurfurst of Koln has done, in his character of Bishop of Osnabruck,"—a deed not known to this Editor, but clearly in the ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... again. Devil take it, you have an awkward way of playing harlequin when you're not wanted! Now to come blundering in upon a lady and her friend is— Well, not the best of form. Better drop it before it ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... or good conduct, I can say, like Harlequin, that 'tis just as it is with you; and the Turkish ladies don't commit one sin the less for not being Christians. Now I am a little acquainted with their ways, I cannot forbear admiring either the exemplary ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... was so fine a specimen—he could not but know it!—so much the free man, the honorable man, the man of the world! He tried to see himself with his hair clipped and his beard shaven and the white cravat and waistcoat replaced by the harlequin costume of the jailbird. He tried to see himself making his own bed, and scrubbing his own floor, and standing at his cell door with a tin pot in his hand, waiting for his skilly. It was so absurd, so out of the question, that he nearly laughed outright. He was in a dream—in ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... back over his shoulder, he could see the black figure of the old gentleman coming after him with long, swinging strides like a man winning a mile race. But the head upon that bounding body was still pale, grave and professional, like the head of a lecturer upon the body of a harlequin. ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... white domino, who for a few minutes had been a very attentive spectator, suddenly came forward, and exclaiming, "I'll cross him though he blast me!" rushed upon the fiend, and grasping one of his horns, called out to a Harlequin who stood near him, "Harlequin! do you ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... to say I have no vacancy in my own company at present; but would you be willing to take a part in my Christmas pantomime? I may say that I myself began life as harlequin." ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... celebrate an expulsion of devils every seven years, at which the devils are represented by disguised men. "Twenty or thirty men array themselves in harlequin rig and barbaric paint, and put vessels of pitch on their heads; then they secretly go out into the surrounding mountains. These are to personify the devils. A herald goes up to the top of the assembly-house, and makes a speech to the multitude. At a signal agreed upon in the evening the masqueraders ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... text of a great poet (for mysterious is the life that connects all modes of passion with rhythmus), let us suppose the casual reader to have had enough. And now at closing for the sake of change, let us treat him to a harlequin trick upon another theme. Did the reader ever happen to see a sheriff's officer arresting an honest gentleman, who was doing no manner of harm to gentle or simple, and immediately afterwards a second sheriff's officer arresting the first—by which means that second officer ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... heathen gods and heroes, who were certainly the worst and dullest company into which an audience was ever introduced; and (which was a secret known to few) were actually intended so to be, in order to contrast the comic part of the entertainment, and to display the tricks of harlequin ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... ravaged the whole province; took the city by storm; and cut down in indiscriminate slaughter twenty-five thousand men, women and children. The brother of Ivan IV. was seized and thrown into prison, where he miserably perished. The archbishop was stripped of his canonical robes, clad in the dress of a harlequin, paraded through the streets on a gray mare, an object of derision to the people, and then was imprisoned for life. Such cruelty does not seem at all in accordance with the character of Ivan, while the grossest exaggeration is in accordance ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... somewhat after the plan of that of Hadrian, but on a much smaller scale. The interior has been cleared out, seats erected around the walls, and the whole is now a summer theatre, for the amusement of the peasantry and tradesmen. What a commentary on greatness! Harlequin playing his pranks in the tomb of an Emperor, and the spot which nations approached with reverence, resounding with the mirth of beggars and ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... wild turkey, great auk, trumpeter swan, Labrador duck, harlequin duck, Eskimo curlew, upland plover, golden plover, whooping crane, sandhill crane, purple martin, pileated woodpecker, moose, caribou, bison, elk, puma, gray wolf, wolverine, marten, fisher, beaver, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... they had entered. 'Not so bad!' cried Blondy, when I had finished my lecture, 'not so bad.' 'But can you, in the mean time, point out to us any apartment that we can ransack? We are, you see, like Harlequin, and have more need of cash than advice;' and they left me, laughing deridingly at me. I called them back, to profess my attachment to them, and begged them not to call again at my house. 'If that is all,' said Deluc, 'we will keep from that.'—'Oh ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... to Drury Lane; the King being there to-night, very much crowded. Miss Gunning and her two sisters and a number of people of quality. 'The Tempest,' and 'Harlequin Ranger'; both very foolish to see. Home ...
— Extracts from the Diary of William Bray, Esq. 1760-1800 • William Bray
... beautiful costumes. I venture to promise you, Mr Savoyard, that what you are about to see will be like a Louis Quatorze ballet painted by Watteau. The heroine will be an exquisite Columbine, her lover a dainty Harlequin, her father a picturesque Pantaloon, and the valet who hoodwinks the father and brings about the happiness of the lovers a grotesque but perfectly tasteful Punchinello ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... man in graver tragic known (Though his best part long since was done), Still on the stage desires to tarry; And he who played the Harlequin, After the jest still loads the scene, Unwilling to retire, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... you object to the costume of the gentler sex, what do you say to the spangles and wand of a harlequin?" ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... at Zage, we were struck by the simplicity of his dress, in every respect the same as that of his common soldiers; of late, however, he had adopted a more gaudy attire, but nothing compared to the harlequin coat ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... was blue, of a silky texture, their own work, and bordered with small gold chain. The body-dress, likewise of their own weaving, was of cotton mingled with silk, richly striped and mixed with gold thread; but they wear it no lower than the knees. The youths of fashion were in a kind of harlequin habit, the forepart of the trousers white, the back-part blue; their jacket after the same fashion. They delighted much in an instrument made from some part of the iju palm-tree, which resembled and produced a sound like ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... a very portly man who had passed the maturity of manhood, but active as Harlequin. He had a well-favoured countenance; fair, good-humoured, but very sly. He was dressed like the head butler of the London Tavern, and was particular as to his white waistcoats and black silk stockings, punctilious as to his knee-buckles, proud of his diamond pin; ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the police, and say: "Would you like to go back to Italy? Here is a steamer ticket. A boat sails for Genoa tomorrow. And here is a thousand dollars. It will buy you a vineyard in Sicily. Go home and bid the signora get ready." And then to disappear once more, like Harlequin, to flash your wand in some other corner of the human multitude. Oh, there would be fun for one's money, something worth while having ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... plainly fee what a Clock it is by one of the Dials in the Moon, as if it were no farther off than Windsor-Castle; and had he liv'd to finish the Speaking-trumpet which he had contriv'd to convey Sound thither, Harlequin's Mock-Trumpet had been a Fool to it; and it had no doubt been an admirable Experiment, to have given us a general Advantage from all their acquir'd Knowledge in those Regions, where no doubt several useful Discoveries are daily made by the Men of Thought for the Improvement ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... Figeac made his entry into that town, the lord of Montbron, dressed in a harlequin's coat, and one of his legs naked, was compelled by an ancient custom to conduct him to the door of his abbey, leading his horse by the bridle. Blount's "Jocular Tenures" is a curious collection of such capricious clauses in the grants of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... tragical face, and complains that it is a base and soulless world. At this very moment, I make no doubt, he is requiring that under the masks of a Pantaloon or a Punch there should be a soul glowing with unearthly desires and ideal aspirations, and that Harlequin should outmoralize Hamlet on the nothingness of sublunary things: and if these expectations are disappointed, as they can never fail to be, the dew is sure to rise into his eyes, and he will turn his back on the whole motley ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... blunders of the past. Knowing that contemporary criticism has damned almost every true artist of the nineteenth century, they are determined not to be caught napping; and they join in shouts of applause as each new harlequin steps upon the stage. They forget that it is as dangerous to praise ignorantly as to blame unjustly, and that the railer at genius, though he may seem more malevolent, will scarce appear so ridiculous ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... species of poisonous snakes, belonging to four genera. The first genus is the Crotalus, or rattlesnake proper; the second is the Caudisona, or ground-rattlesnake; the third is the Ancistrodon, or moccasin, one of the species of which is a water-snake; and the fourth is the Elaps, or harlequin snake. There is some dispute over the exact degree of the toxic qualities of the venom of the Heloderma suspectum, or Gila monster. In India the cobra is the most deadly snake. It grows to the length of 5 ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Harlequin three-quarters of us all. For one who had never played Rugby football George handled the situation well. He drew the defence with a feint to the left, then, swerving to the right, shot past into the friendly darkness. From behind ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... be said to be the worst feature of their general taste. They are too fond of the exhibition of art, and too regardless of the object, to which art should be made subservient. Dancing should never be considered as a mere display of agility and muscular power. It is then degraded to a level with Harlequin's tricks, wrestling, tumbling, or such other fashionable entertainments. The main object of the art unquestionably is, to display in full perfection the beauty and grace of the human form and movements. In so far as perfect command of the ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... amongst whom were several gumbie—men and flute—players, and John Canoes, as the negro Jack Pudding is called; the latter distinguishable by wearing white false faces, and enormous shocks of horsehair, fastened on to their woolly pates. Their character hovers somewhere between that of a harlequin and a clown, as they dance about, and thread through the negro groups, quizzing the women and slapping the men; and at Christmas time, the grand negro carnival, they don't confine their practical jokes to their own colour, but take all manner ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Ullaloo in Ireland. In a comic theatrical entertainment, represented not long since on the Dublin stage, a chorus of old women was introduced, who set up the Irish howl round the relics of a physician, who is supposed to have fallen under the wooden sword of Harlequin. After the old women have continued their Ullaloo for a decent time, with all the necessary accompaniments of wringing their hands, wiping or rubbing their eyes with the corners of their gowns or aprons, &c. one of the mourners suddenly suspends her lamentable cries, and, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... out in harlequin flannel surmounts a full brim of restful willow-green. Garnished with intertwined laurel and St. John's-Wort, and decorated with the tail feather of a Surrey fowl, it makes a comfortable and distinguished headdress for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... come in, answered the other.—Here we are!" and entering the room he folded his arms and began twirling his head round and round with immense rapidity, like Harlequin in the Pantomime when he first issues from his cocoon or envelope. Miss Fotheringay laughed with all her heart: a wink of Foker's would set her off laughing, when the bitterest joke Bows ever made could not get a smile from ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Scandinavia; and when his worship as a god dies out Odin survives (as Dr. Dasent has proved) in the Wild Huntsman of the Hartz, and in the Robin Hood (Oodin) of popular legend. The Hellequin of France becomes the Harlequin of our pantomimes. William Tell never existed; he is a myth; a survival of the sun-god Apollo, Indra, who was worshipped on ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... of Tunbridge ware, on the surface of which the eye and intellect are to be interested by the relations of dimension and curve between pieces of incrusting marble of different colors, which have no more to do with the real make of the building than the diaper of a Harlequin's jacket has ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... persons think it makes them look ridiculous, by betraying the weakness of their nature. But why may not nature show itself in tragedy, as well as in comedy or farce? We see persons not ashamed to laugh loudly at the humour of a Falstaff,—or the tricks of a harlequin; and why should not the tear be equally allowed to flow for the misfortunes of a Juliet, or the forlornness of an Ophelia?" Sir Richard Steele records on this subject a saying of Mr. Wilks the actor, as just ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... vehemently; but with that strong sincerity which administers eloquence to even the most untaught orders of mankind, and without which the most decorated eloquence is only the wooden sword and mask of harlequin. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... with finger so fine, To show his dexterity on the tight-line, From one branch to another his cobwebs he slung, Then quick as an arrow he darted along, But just in the middle—oh! shocking to tell, From his rope, in an instant, poor Harlequin fell. Yet he touch'd not the ground, but with talons outspread, Hung suspended in air, at the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... he, with solemn frown, "I tremble for each dancing frater, Like unregenerated clown And harlequin at some the-ayter." ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... groomsman; that the first child should be called Carpezan or Sybilla, after the tragedy, and so forth. They would not quite be able to keep a coach, but they might get a chariot and pasteboard dragons from Mr. Rich's theatre. The baby might be christened in Macbeth's caldron; and Harry and harlequin ought ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Adele, looking sweet as "Pierrette," and Jonah in the traditional garb of "Harlequin," cut short ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... No, by all the treasures of Mammon, I should not like to go through it a second time. Death is something more than a harlequin's leap, and its terrors are even worse ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... heart that kept him from smiling, a strange comedy of words in his thought, a harlequin with the night sitting on his lap. There were things to remember. There were memories. Unnecessary to think. Words formed themselves into phrases. Phrases made dim pictures as if the past was struggling fitfully to remain somehow alive.... His good-bye to Mathilde. ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... here, behind the ostensible scenery, all the crooked working of the machinery developed and laid open to the world. You now see by what secret movement the master of the mechanism has conducted the great Indian opera,—an opera of fraud, deceptions, and harlequin tricks. You have it all laid open before you. The ostensible scene is drawn aside; it has vanished from your sight. All the strutting signors, and all the soft signoras are gone; and instead of a brilliant spectacle of descending ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the 16th of August. Pall Mall, however, was not lighted with gas until 1809, and it was really not finally and generally introduced into London until the year 1820. We meet with an excellent satire published by S. W. Fores, in 1807, wherein a harlequin is depicted sitting on a rope suspended between a couple of lamp posts. The lamps and the hat of the figure are garnished with lighted burners; the neighbours in the windows of the adjoining houses, the people on the pavement below, the fowls, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... in the grandstand. Her relations with the doctor were almost common talk. That was amply proved by the fury with which the gentlemen of her coterie pulled him to pieces, declaring that he was an idiot and that his book was a Harlequin's coat, a series of excerpts from other men, poorly basted together, with the daring of ignorance. They, too, were stung by envy, in their senile, silent love, by the triumph of that stripling who carried off their idol, whom they ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... with the Foreign Office, again, one still less knows. Seizures of Sapienza, and the like sudden appearances of Britain in the character of Hercules-Harlequin, waving, with big bully-voice, her huge sword-of-sharpness over field-mice, and in the air making horrid circles (horrid catherine-wheels and death-disks of metallic terror from said huge sword), to see how they ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... wipe out their uniforms almost as effectively as their skins. One has fastened on his back a square of linoleum, with a big draught-board pattern in white and red, that he found in the middle of the dining-room of some temporary refuge. That is Pepin. We know him afar off by his harlequin placard sooner even than by his pale Apache face. Here is Barque's bulging chest-protector, carven from an eiderdown quilt, formerly pink, but now fantastically bleached and mottled by dust and rain. There, Lamuse the Huge rises like ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... high was Jack's fame that a pantomime entertainment, called "Harlequin Jack Sheppard," was devised by one Thurmond, and brought out with great success at Drury Lane Theatre. All the scenes were painted from nature, including the public-house that the robber frequented in Claremarket, and the condemned cell ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Catholics abroad as to shut players altogether out of consecrated ground, yet I own I was not a little scandalized at the introduction of theatrical airs and gestures into a place set apart to remind us of the saddest realities. Going nearer, I found inscribed under this harlequin ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... and suspicious, bubbling over with something important to tell, and afraid he will not be the first to tell it. When he discovers us watching, he sets up his clamorous cry of "Thief! Thief!" and hurries away to spread the alarm. A mighty borrower of trouble, this gayly dressed harlequin of the woods, and yet the forest would not seem complete without his ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... flags.... Then they lay a board between two boats, and on this two of the youngest and spryest wrestle till one falls into the water.... But all the fun's gone now. When I was young, there was different sport going. That was a sight! the corporation procession with the banners and the harlequin atop, and at Shrovetide, when the butchers led about an ox decked with ribbons and carnival twigs, with a boy on his back with wings and a little shirt.... All that's past now, people are got so fine. St. Knud's Fair is not what ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... poisonous, but of such retiring habits as hardly to be classed as dangerous. Most of their time is spent hidden under the sand and in the ground, but when they do come out their colors are so brilliant as not to be mistaken. On the harlequin snake the colors are bright coral-red, yellow, and black, which alternate in stripes that encircle the body. Its head is always banded with a broad yellow stripe. The coral-snake is much the same in color, and only a close ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... humor seized Packy, or some stage in the game made such action desirable, he would leap the barrier, and jumping up and down like a harlequin in front of the bleacher benches, start his cohort into a combined school yell that must make the hot blood leap through the veins of everyone who called Chester his or ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... ropes were being cast off, Jolivet appeared, tearing along. The steamer was already sheering off, the gangway had been drawn onto the quay, but Alcide Jolivet would not stick at such a little thing as that, so, with a bound like a harlequin, he alighted on the deck of the Caucasus almost in ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... at Christmas-time, And braves its icy breath, To play in that favourite pantomime, Harlequin Life ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... the coupe. Harlequin, and Colombine, and Humpty-Dumpty; shapes which came out of nowhere and instantly vanished into nothing, for all the world like the absurd pantomimes of his boyhood days. He kept close to the curb, scrutinizing the numbers as he ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... was Cerberus;{2} bear-garden meetings of mismanaged companies, in which directors and shareholders abuse each other in choice terms, not all to be found even in Rabelais; burstings of bank bubbles, which, like a touch of harlequin's wand, strip off their masks and dominoes from 'highly respectable' gentlemen, and leave them in their true figures of cheats and pickpockets; societies of all sorts, for teaching everybody everything, meddling with everybody's business, and mending everybody's morals; mountebank advertisements ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... held. I was up the bank lying full length on the sweet-scented grass and gasping in company with my first salmon caught, played and landed on an eight-ounce rod. My hands were cut and bleeding, I was dripping with sweat, spangled like a harlequin with scales, water from my waist down, nose peeled by the sun, but utterly, supremely, ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... turn in the Park, and so down again to sleep with my forefathers.' In Mountford's farce, Dr. Faustus (4to 1697, but produced at the Theatre Royal November-December, 1685, or very early in 1686), we have Scaramouch asking what practice the Doctor has, and Harlequin replies: 'Why his Business is to patch up rotten Whores against the Term for Country Lawyers and Attorneys Clerks; and against Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun Holidays, for City Apprentices.' cf. Southerne's Oroonoko (1696), I, i, when Charlot Welldon says ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... Spider, with finger so fine, To show his dexterity on the tight line. From one branch to another his Cobwebs he slung, Then quick as an arrow he darted along; But just in the middle,—Oh! shocking to tell, From his rope in an instant poor Harlequin fell. Yet he touch'd not the ground, but with talons outspread Hung suspended in air, at the end of a thread. Then the Grasshopper came with a jerk and a spring; Very long was his Leg, though but short was his Wing: He took but three ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... pursue, What are the prodigies they cannot do? A magic edifice you here survey, Shot from the ruins of the other day! As Harlequin had smote the slumberous heap, And bade the rubbish to a fabric leap. Yet at that speed you'd never be amazed, Knew you the zeal with which the pile was raised; Nor even here your smiles would be represt, Knew you the rival flame that fires our breast, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... seemed one vast puppet-show; and the noisy gaiety of the crowded streets almost stunned me. One of the first objects we encountered was a barouche full of Turks and Sultanas, driven by an old woman in a tawdry court dress as coachman; while a merry-andrew and a harlequin capered behind as footmen. Owing to the immense size of the city, and the difficulty of making our way through the motley throng of masks, beggars, lazzaroni, eating-stalls, carts and carriages, we were nearly three hours traversing the streets before we reached ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... English humourists of the past age, it is of the men and of their lives, rather than of their books, that I ask permission to speak to you; and in doing so, you are aware that I cannot hope to entertain you with a merely humorous or facetious story. Harlequin without his mask is known to present a very sober countenance, and was himself, the story goes, the melancholy patient whom the Doctor advised to go and see Harlequin(21)—a man full of cares and perplexities like the rest of us, whose Self must always be serious to him, under whatever ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of old to Jove The same harlequin is now; The former was buffoon above, The latter is a ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... abrupt conclusion. The sudden stoppage of the horse was one thing, but the arresting of Master Charley was another and quite a different thing. The instant his charger landed, he left the saddle like a harlequin, described an extensive curve in the air, and fell head foremost into the drift, above which his boots and three inches of his legs alone ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Wit, in each politer Age, Triumphant, rear'd the Trophies of the Stage: But only Farce, and Shew, will now go down, And Harlequin's ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... James's Street, or Pall Mall, in London! Look at yonder prematurely old man, doubled up with work, and leaning on a rude stick more crooked than himself, slowly trudging to the club-house, in a shapeless hat like an Italian harlequin's, or an old brown- paper bag, leathern leggings, and dull green smock-frock, looking as though duck-weed had accumulated on it—the result of its stagnant life—or as if it were a vegetable production, originally meant to blow into something better, but ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... have that long string," said W, "but he breaks down badly here and there. Where's his six-foot-six left-handed bowler and bat? He hasn't got one. I have, though, in WOOLLEY. And where's his master of the game, practical and theoretical, in a harlequin cap? The wisest captain any county ever had and the most enthusiastic and stimulating? In short, where is H's P.F. WARNER, whom we're all so sorry to lose, but who had such a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... head leaned in the pose of the most plaintive of the pastels that Lord Dungory had commissioned his favourite artist to execute in imitation of the Lady Hamilton portraits. And now, his finger on his lip, like harlequin glancing after columbine, the old gentleman, who had ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... Reaumur in fact calls it la Belle. The flattering title is well-deserved. On the black background of the larva, vermillion-red, chrome-yellow and chalk-white figure side by side in circles, spots, freckles and stripes, as clearly marked as the glaring patches of a harlequin's dress. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... By his own ostentatious confessions, the only intellectual comprehensiveness to which he can lay claim is an astonishingly comprehensive ignorance. In view of this, his sage discoursings upon grave questions of political and social economy have about as comical an effect as the moralizings of a harlequin. But he is a lively describer of what passes under his eyes, and his sketches of what he heard and saw among the planters and on the plantations are doubtless authentic. However, he did not visit the small settlers; and to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Much scrubbing had removed from it the objections manifest in Glad's room above. There was a small red fire in the grate, a strip of old, but gay carpet before it, two chairs and a table were covered with a harlequin patchwork made of bright odds and ends of all sizes and shapes. The fog in all its murky volume could not quite obscure the brightness of the often rubbed window and its harlequin curtain drawn across ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to Pierrot. Pierrot only stared in the sky and laughed inanely. "If you persist in slighting me like this," she whispered in his ear, in a whisper which was like a hiss, "I will abandon you for ever. I will give my heart to Harlequin, and you shall never see me again." But Pierrot continued to stare at the sky, and laughed once more inanely. Then Columbine got up, her eyes flashing with rage; taking Harlequin by the arm she dragged him ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... against the coming aridity of summer. In the open spaces on the slope, beyond the farthest shadow-reach of the manzanita, poised the mariposa lilies, like so many flights of jewelled moths suddenly arrested and on the verge of trembling into flight again. Here and there that woods harlequin, the madrone, permitting itself to be caught in the act of changing its pea-green trunk to madder-red, breathed its fragrance into the air from great clusters of waxen bells. Creamy white were these bells, shaped like lilies-of-the-valley, with the ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... On the stage Harlequin and Punch were as usual quarrelling with each other and threatening every moment ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... infest the banks of the Amazon collect at the village of Loreto. I believe it, but do not wish to confirm it. There, Minha, you can take your choice between the gray mosquito, the hairy mosquito, the white-clawed mosquito, the dwarf mosquito, the trumpeter, the little fifer, the urtiquis, the harlequin, the big black, and the red of the woods; or rather they make take their choice of you for a little repast, and you will come back hardly recognizable! I fancy these bloodthirsty diptera guard the Brazilian frontier considerably better than ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... appetite for "seeing the world" had got somewhat satisfied, and I stayed at home for a while. I happened to become acquainted with a man of the name of Howard, who went under the nick-name of Harlequin Dick. By trade he was a wood-carver, and a first-class hand at his job. He was a Liverpool man, and during his stay in Keighley he did wood-carving for many firms in the district. Then he was taken ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... powdered hair, in a blue velvet coat, offered them programmes of the entertainment; a little Moorish girl, with a necklace of gold coins, showed them her flower-basket, and a stately Queen Elizabeth smiled at Edna across the counter. A harlequin and a cavalier mounted guard over the post-office, and a gypsy presided over a fish pond. Mary Stuart and a Greek lady were in charge of the refreshment stall. It was a relief when the band struck ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... on the table, he addressed the assemblage: "You shall see whether we are not Paris republicans. Now, sir, say your republican catechism—'What is God? what are the People? and what is a King?' His friend, with an air of contrition and in a nasal tone of voice, twisting himself about like a harlequin, replies: 'God is matter, the People are the poor, and the King is a lion, a tiger, an elephant who tears to pieces, devours, and crushes the people down.'"—"They could no longer restrain themselves. The shouts, cries, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... last—out of the tunnel! and now, I presume, in the caves. Here someone, gradually assuming a palpable form, emerges from somewhere out of a dark corner, and hands to each of us a long piece of wood about the length of a harlequin's bat (note, pantomime again), only that this is an inch or so thick and quite two inches wide at one end, where presently a candle is fixed by an attendant sprite,—the slave of the tallow candle,—and the wand, so to speak, tapers off towards the handle. A propos of "tapers off"—the ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... us to remain with her over Christmas. I longed to see the pantomime, having heard much from my cousins and from Leo of its delights—and of the harlequin, columbine, and clown. But my father wanted to be at home again, and he took me and Rubens and Nurse Bundle with him at ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... street, a luxurious couch of a street in which the afternoon lolls like a gaudy sybarite. Overhead the sky stretches itself like a holiday awning. The sun lays harlequin stripes across the building faces. The smoke plumes from the I. C. engines scribble gray, white and lavender ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... severe fire. The waters of the bayou seemed to be boiling like a kettle. An officer came to the side of the boat to speak to me, but before he could open his mouth a shell struck him, and he disappeared as suddenly as Harlequin in a pantomine. Semmes then reported his condition. Conical shells from the enemy's Parrotts had pierced the railway iron, killed and wounded several of his gunners and crew, and cut a steam pipe. Fortunately, he had kept down his fires, or escaping steam would have driven every one ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... and a "lord baron of Strabane" needed almost the alacrity in turning his coat of a harlequin or a modern politician! It is a comfort to know that at last, on the 16th of June 1655, he found rest, dying at Ballyfathen, "a Roman Catholic and a papist recusant." As we came back into the gardens and grounds, Lord Ernest showed me, imbedded in the earth, a huge anchor presented to the present ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... it ever was my fortune to behold, as the beauteous Selina looked up from the perusal of her handkerchief hem. It was a pity that the other features were not corresponding; for the nose was flat, and the mouth of such dimensions that a harlequin might have jumped down it with impunity; ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... machinist Of former Drury, imitated life Quite to the life. The elephant in Blue Beard, Stuffed by his hand, wound round his lithe proboscis As spruce as he who roared in Padmanaba. [Footnote: "Padmanaba," viz., in a pantomime called Harlequin in Padmanaba. This elephant, some years afterward, was exhibited over Exeter 'Change, where it was found necessary to destroy the poor animal by discharges of musketry. When he made his entrance in the pantomime ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... dress and the white wimple which bound her hair under the sable mantilla. But the feminines on board the Senegal bound for Sierra Leone outrage all our sense of fitness by their frightful semi-European gowns of striped cottons and chintzes; by their harlequin shawls and scarves thrown over jackets which show more than neck and bare arms to the light of day, and by the head-gear which looks like devils seen in dreams after a heavy supper of underdone pork. Africa lurks in the ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... forcible presentation of grave issues. The essential type of the man was presented to public gaze about two years ago, when he stood on the City Hall steps dressed from head to foot in a suit of green to review a St. Patrick's procession. He is a harlequin with the literary ambition of a Richelieu. He affects an intimacy with the stage, and has done something in the way of producing plays. He can write clearly and concisely when he will, but prefers to provoke with ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... a bright copper colour, so different from black that one had painted his thighs with black chequered lines which made his skin very much resemble the dress of a harlequin. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... nose for the scent of a rabbit or a hare, and, when in fit condition, is able to follow, follow, follow, if needed, from earliest dawn till the coming of night. The chase being ended, he with his companions, Harlequin and Columbine, and all the stragglers of the panting pack, will surround the tired hare, and will wait, bellowing lustily, but without molesting the quarry, till the Master appears and ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees |
