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Rollicking   /rˈɑlɪkɪŋ/   Listen
Rollicking

adjective
1.
Given to merry frolicking.  Synonyms: coltish, frolicky, frolicsome, sportive.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Rollicking" Quotes from Famous Books



... landed, bearing a white flag, and walked on until we reached the entrance. We were at once admitted, when we had an opportunity of taking a glance round the fortifications. The castle was filled with men, a large number being evidently, from their dress and appearance, officers. They were rollicking-looking gentlemen, and were laughing, and joking, and amusing themselves at our ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston

... shadow rested on the hilarity of the day. He had been dubbed a good fellow, a true sport, a benefactor to the school—every complimentary pseudonym imaginable—and had glowed with pleasure beneath the avalanche of flattery. As the big car with its rollicking occupants had spun along the highway, many a passer-by had caught the merry mood of the cheering group and waved a smiling salutation ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett

... then he Realized that they were All Right. The third Well-Bred Young Man, whose Male Parent got his Coin by wrecking a Building Association in Chicago, then announced that they were Gentlemen, and could Pay for everything they broke. Thus it will be seen that they were Rollicking College Boys ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade

... "Oh, do help me, Rollicking Robin!" sobbed Lesa. "I have lost my comb, my golden comb. What shall I do? My mother will fret, my father will scold, my little sister will cry, and some harm will surely come to me if ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie

... he carefully arranged his forelock before a mirror in the corridor, in reply to a communication recently made to him by Mr. Punch en route, "and so we're to make a regular rollicking night of it'? You insist on taking me into every Music Hall in Seriocomix, hey, you young dog, you! Well, well, Sir, I'm not so young as I used to be—but I'm as fond of a bit of good honest wholesome fun as ever I ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various

... giant. His jolly person and frank manners seemed to fill all the field with good humour, and from his station he cried challenges to his cousin the Earl and defiances to his brother Hugh, with that broad rollicking wit which endeared him to the commons, to whom "Mickle Lord Jamie" had ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... living Bohemian authorities on this subject. They had not even heard of our carol: I hummed the tune to them—it told them nothing. They tried to palm me off with St. Wenceslaus, but I declined him; he is not quite suitable as "theme" of a rollicking carol; besides, he gets plenty of attention in his own country. I grant that St. Wenceslaus was full of good works, all of the kind that looks well in frescoes, and in which everybody moves with feet in the first position, it was de rigueur. King Wenceslaus IV, also performed acts of kindness ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... dumbfounded. Then he was furious again. He perfectly saw the humour of the situation, but it was not the kind of humour that induced rollicking laughter. He was furious, and employed the language of fury, when it is not overheard. Absorbed by his craft of painting, as in the old Continental days, he had long since ceased to read the newspapers, and though he had not forgotten his bequest to the nation, ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... Point, on the eastern end of Long Island. Through this camp, which had been hastily put into condition to receive them, there passed about thirty-five thousand soldiers, of whom twenty thousand were sick. When the public saw those who a few weeks before had been healthy and rollicking American boys, now mere skeletons, borne helpless in stretchers and looking old and shriveled, a wave of righteous indignation against Secretary Alger swept over the country, and eventually accomplished enough to prevent ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... tall, handsome fellow, so full of life and spirits that "his happy disposition," to quote Lady Mary, "made him forget every evil when he was before a venison-pastry, or over a flask of champagne." This rollicking, careless joyousness is the tone of his books. Whether taken to a prison, an inn, or a lady's boudoir, whether watching the breaking of heads, the blackening of eyes, or the making of love, the reader ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... maids, Who deftly ply your pails and spades, All you who sturdily take your stand On your pebble-buttressed forts of sand, And thence defy With a fearless eye And a burst of rollicking high-pitched laughter The stealthy trickling waves that lap you And the crested breakers that tumble after To souse and batter you, sting and sap you— All you roll-about rackety little folk, Down-again, up-again, not-a-bit brittle folk, Attend, attend, And let each girl and boy Join ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... say?" cried the Ritualistic clergyman, with a start, and sudden change of countenance. "Surely you're not the rollicking fellow-student who ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various

... about his guard and reckless in his attack. Even so hits were infrequent, since each, even when most lax, had an instinctive guard superior to that of the most expert and cautious fencer among all other contemporary fighters. Even when, very occasionally, if Palus happened to be in a rollicking mood, each substituted a second quarter-staff for his shield and, as it were, travestied a dimachaerus, as what might be called a two-staff-man or a double-staff-man, hits were still not frequent. Each had a marvellously impregnable defence and they were very evenly matched in the use ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... eye with its spread, pink palm, and was saying "Pik-k?" and laughing with the funniest little squint to its nose that Bud had ever seen. It was so absolutely demoralizing that to relieve himself Bud gave the squaw a shake. This tickled the baby so much that the chuckle burst into a rollicking laugh, with a catch of the breath after each crescendo tone that made it absolutely individual and like none ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower

... as we rolled over the sand, past green meadows, and sloping orchards; over little bright brooks that chattered musically to the bobolinks on the fence-posts, and were echoed by those sacerdotal gentlemen in such liquid, bubbling, rollicking, uproarious bursts of singing as made one think of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... hills of Paradise Ridge. A flood of love and reverence rose in my heart for her as I sat quiet and let her spirit roam. Mother Spurlock had been the gayest young matron in Goodloets, living in the great old Spurlock home with handsome, rollicking young George Spurlock for a husband, and three babies around her knees, and in one short year she had been left with only one large and three tiny graves out in the placid home of the dead, beyond the river bend. The babies ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... followers went into the woods to kill game. They had nothing in reserve to live upon, and in a hard season their women and children would have suffered. The French residents here seem to have been a gay, rollicking set, playing flutes and fiddles, dancing and playing cards, and generally going home drunk from every social gathering. The few English among them were no better, and we have the edifying spectacle of one giving away his daughter to another over a bottle of ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... occasion like this, when the rigors of the village point of view were relaxed. It would relieve him of several dozen private visits of apology, and altogether he felt that his courage would have wavered had he not been disguised as another person altogether: a popular favorite; a fat jolly, rollicking dispenser of bounties to the general public. When he finally discarded his costume, would it not be easier, too, to meet his father first before the church full of people and have the solemn hour with him alone, later at ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... HARRY LAWSON, jealous for the reputation of Metropolitan Members, even though some sit on the Benches opposite. With folded hands thrust behind coat-tails, rollicking stride, thunderous voice, and blooming countenance, Sir ROBERT positively pervades the Lobby. Personally receives POPE HENNESSY; shakes hands with everybody; and finally halting for a moment under the electric-lit archway leading into House, presents interesting and attractive picture ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various

... especially trying for Margaret. It seemed as if the children were possessed with the very spirit of mischief, and she could not help but see that it was Rosa who, sitting demurely in her desk, was the center of it all. Only Bud's steady, frowning countenance of all that rollicking, roistering crowd kept loyalty with the really beloved teacher. For, indeed, they loved her, every one but Rosa, and would have stood by her to a man and girl when it really came to the pinch, but in a matter like a little bit of ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... are: "Boreen," "Holsteiner's Band," "The Hoodoo," "Jay Bird," "The Man in the Moon's Ball," "Mrs. Craigin's Daughter," "O'Grady's Goat," "The Party at Odd Fellows' Hall," "The Phantom Band," "Romeo and Juliette," "Schneider's Band," and "The Versatile Baby." The book is full of the rollicking college spirit, and college men and their sweethearts will find it an unfailing source of delight. It is adapted either for glee club or home use, ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various

... enjoys a good rollicking song, preferably of a patriotic turn, but is very unreliable as to the ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood

... change on Steve was to make him almost rollicking in his manner, as if he and Mr. Bannister were the nucleus of an Old Home Week celebration or two old college chums meeting after long absence. Nervousness, on the rare occasions when he suffered from it, generally ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... jolly, rollicking bird, winked, and added: "No, he isn't much of a doctor, it's true, but he's got one medicine that nearly always works. I'll ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh

... Fleet, the finest transport of the Pacific service, thronged with boys in blue at last ordered on to Manila, lay at the wharf at Honolulu, awaiting her commander's orders to cast loose. In strong force, and with stentorian voices, the Primeval Dudes joined in rollicking chorus to the crashing accompaniment of their band and, when they could take time to rest, the crowd ashore set up a cheer. The Hawaiian National Band, in spotless white, forming a huge and melodious circle on the wharf, vied with the musicians from the States ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King

... begin early to lay the foundations of health. Children should have plenty of vigorous, joyous exercise out of doors. They should have romping, rollicking fun every day, at the same time giving exercise to every part of the body, and a healthy tone to the spirits. The body and soul are so intimately blended that exercise for the one is of little value when the other is ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill

... Someone was singing a rollicking song of the range at one end of the bar, and a chorus of four bellowed a profane ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand

... Abbey, the Naval Review, The Maske at Gray's Inn and the Institute too; In fact I feel just like the Wandering Jew, Or other historical rover: I've turned day into night and the night into day, In a regular rollicking Jubilee way, And now I can truly and thankfully say, I'm uncommonly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various

... almost heard again that low, cheerful strumming that had seemed to beat upon his ears when he first saw the poster of the elephant jumping the fence. He said nothing about it and soon lost all recollection of the rollicking strains in the anticipation of the circus joys that ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell

... there was no necessity to suggest administrative reforms only. The Liberals were certain of a majority, and they had no programme: they were bound to win, not on their merits, but on the defects of their opponents. The Letter, written by Webb in a rollicking style, to which he rarely condescends, touched on each of the great departments of Government, and advocated both the old policy of Trade Union hours and wages, for which the new Prime Minister had made himself in 1893 personally responsible, but also all ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease

... They were a sturdy, rollicking band of men, tucked away in the depths of the forest. In the summer they did a little farming along the St. John River and its tributaries. But the inducement of good wages lured them to the camps during the long winter months. ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody

... and then there was a cheer. The two teams went rollicking and tumbling up and down the field for a few moments; then Collingwood and the Harvard captain met in the centre, Mr. Barclay tossed a coin, and the players went to their positions. Mr. Barclay blew a whistle; the ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier

... invite some friends to dinner and drown his cares in grog and wine. No sooner was the carouse decided upon than he put it in hand; those invited being mostly neighbouring landholders, all smaller men than himself, members of the hunt; also the doctor from Evershead, and the like—some of them rollicking blades whose presence his wife would not have countenanced had she been at home. 'When the cat's away—!' ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy

... knew. She had a strong sense of humour, too, which is unusual with cats, and when something amused her she would throw back her head and open her mouth wide, and laugh a silent laugh that was as hearty and rollicking as a Methodist parson's laugh when he hears a grey-haired joke at a negro minstrel show. Martha was perhaps the most popular cat in the town, and there was scarcely a minute in the day when there wasn't ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... instructions, the girl grasped the slack of the line and prepared to walk away with it as the rope paid in on the windlass. Cardigan inserted a belaying-pin in the windlass, paused and looked at the girl. "Raise a chantey," he suggested. Instantly she lifted a sweet contralto in that rollicking old ballad of the sea—"Blow ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... Spurious monasteries sprang up with rich lay-abbots at their head, who made the office hereditary in their families. Laymen were appointed to rich benefices simply that they might enjoy the revenues. These lay-abbots even went so far as to live with their families in their monasteries, and rollicking midnight banquets were substituted for the asceticism demanded by the vows. They traveled extensively attended by splendid retinues. Some of the monks seemed intent on nothing but obtaining charters of privileges and exemptions from civil and ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... the icicles from the hedges with his stick. I stood there some time looking after him, for I love him very dearly, and then a strange thing happened. After he had walked quite a distance from the house, he suddenly raised his head and began to whistle a jolly, rollicking sea-song. I could hear him for some minutes. I was glad to think he took it so light-heartedly. It is good to know that he is not ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... authentic instance of professional attachment and pride. When I was quite a small boy a brig ran on to the rocks beneath my father's house. The captain was a fine, rollicking, sailorly-looking man, with a fascinating manner. He often came to our house during his stay in the locality, and one of the first things he told my parents was that in his younger days he was a smuggler, ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman

... end of the lane came Kenny's final gift of reassurance. His rollicking voice swept into the quiet, soft with brogue, as care-free in song as it had been ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... cannot do, the brisk winds will contribute. The result is usually a red-eyed, red-nosed, flakey-skinned little woman, whom one would never suspect of having been rollicking through a few weeks of midsummer joys. If her ears are not blistered, her nose is, and if her complexion is not harsh and rough from lack of care, it is bespeckled with freckles and covered with a deep layer of golden brown tan that has distributed ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans

... is brought into this here country shall be paid for, so much on, to me, and that's called a tax, miss, and for that there are the custom houses and custom officers—which is me—to see his Majesty paid right and proper his lawful dues. But what does your smuggler do, miss—your rollicking, dare-devil chap of a smuggler? Why he lands his lace and his brandy and his 'baccy unbeknownst and sells 'em on the sly—and pockets the profit! D'ye see?—and so he cheats his Majesty, which is a very grievous breaking of the law; so much so that he might as well murder at once—Kind o' treason, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... precept, "Keep wine and water apart," is conveyed at the close of a lyric distinguished in other respects for the brutal passion of its drunken fervour. I have not succeeded in catching the rollicking swing of the original verse; and I may observe that the last two stanzas seem to form a separate song, although their metre is the same as that ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... which Kalidasa wrote. He has also less humour. The real humorous relief is given by the fisherman and the three policemen in the opening scene of the sixth act. This, it may be remarked, is the only scene of rollicking ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa

... forced to admit. "But for the most part the girls were a rollicking lot, going nearly to the extreme limits of behavior when any fun promised, but keeping safely within the rules. There is no doubt, Aunt Betty, but that Miss Tross-Kingdon was secretly fonder of us than ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond

... of this feeble old man, one would hardly think that he was once a rollicking scrapper, with ready fists like rawhide mallets. Old Dave dutifully gives full credit ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... cliff-swallows scattered all through these canyons, wheeling and darting, ever on the wing. These, with the noisy crested jays, an occasional "camp-robber," the little nuthatches, the cheerful canyon wren with his rollicking song, the happy water-ousel, "kill-deer," and road-runners and the water birds,—ducks, geese, and mud-hens, with an occasional crane,—made up the bird life seen in the open country and in these upper canyons. Earlier in the season it must be ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... her head. Forthwith she crossed the room to her piano and plumped herself down hard on to the stool. Then, from under her fingers there fell a rollicking melody that seemed to fill the room with little dancing feet. Faster and faster sped Billy's fingers; swifter and swifter twinkled the little dancing feet. Then a door was jerked open, and ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter

... He who is sitting there, With a rollicking, Devil may care, Free and easy look and air, As if he were used to such feasting ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... hints here and there of something better to come, and in the many examples of verse remaining it is easy to discern a coming era of free thought and more musical expression. Peter Folger had sent out from the fogs of Nantucket a defiant and rollicking voice; John Rogers and Urian Oakes, both poets and both Harvard presidents, had done something better than mere rhyme, but it remained for another pastor, teacher and physician to sound a note that roused all New England. Michael Wigglesworth might have been immortal, could ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... the saddle, Ramona recovered cheerfulness. Baba was in such gay heart, she could not be wholly sad. The horse seemed fairly rollicking with satisfaction at being once more on the move. Capitan, too, was gay. He had found the canon dull, spite of its refreshing shade and cool water. He longed for sheep. He did not understand this inactivity. ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... quality, has its pitch naturally set above that of prose. So, if you will turn to your Walton and read the page following this passage, you will see that, still by a sure instinct, he proceeds from this scrap of reflective verse to a mere rollicking 'catch': ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... has; down to the chickens, and the box bushes bordering the walks. About his coming South for the climate, hoping to escape the hereditary foe of his family. All about his three months on a ranch; the deer hunts, the rattlers, and the rollicking in the cow camps. Then of his advent to Santone, where he had indirectly learned, from a great specialist, that his life's calendar probably contains but two more leaves. And then of this death-white, choking night which has come and strangled his fortitude and ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... invitation to a crossroads tavern, frequented by poor whites and enlisted men, or when the nights were warm, to a moonlit sward, on which he would invite his audience to a reel which left all breathless. While there was a rollicking element in the strains of his fiddle which a deacon could not resist, he, with the intuition of genius, adapted himself to the class before him. In the parlor, he called off the figures of a quadrille with a "by-yer-leave-sah" air, selecting, as a ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... his sleep for the purpose of wrecking studies. Chapple might disappear from the list. Now there were only Linton and Rand-Brown to be considered. His suspicions fell on Rand-Brown. Linton was the last person, he thought, to do such a low thing. He was a cheerful, rollicking individual, who was popular with everyone and seemed to like everyone. He was not an orderly member of the house, certainly, and on several occasions Milton had found it necessary to drop on him heavily for creating disturbances. But he was not ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse

... to a county called Orangeburg, where all were Dutchmen like Hans, and very few spoke English. And they all thought like Hans, and loved peace, and hated the Congress. On Sundays, as we lay over at the taverns, these would be filled with a rollicking crowd of fiddlers and dancers, quaintly dressed, the women bringing their children and babies. At such times Hans would be drunk, and I would have to feed the tired horses and mount watch over the cargo. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... excuse to warrant their having some fun of their own to enliven the dull hours of the night, Numbers 7 and 8 touched off their triggers and yelled "Fire;" 5 and 6, nearer home, followed suit, and in two minutes the bugles were blowing the alarm all over Ermita and Malate, and rollicking young regulars and volunteers by the hundred were tumbling out into the street, all eagerness and rejoicing at the prospect of having a lark with the Bomberos, the funny little Manila firemen with their ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King

... invited all English and Americans in Rome, interested in the subject, to attend at the English cemetery at three o'clock, the day having been fixed by the fact that it was the anniversary of the day of Keats's death. It was also, as it happened, the second day of our boisterous and rollicking Carnival, and those who attended had to absent themselves from the attractions of the Corso. Nevertheless, the gathering was a large one, and the contrast between the scene passing in that remote and quiet corner of old Rome under the cypresses ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... in silent envy the annoying sight of the rollicking crowd and the joyful JOHNNY with his troop of apprentices, who have all they can possibly do to attend to their numerous customers, and who receive their broad pieces of money with a careless ease that makes the fingers of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various

... remarks that flew between the skaters circling around, many of the members of the troop had spent a rollicking vacation the previous summer while aboard a couple of motor boats loaned to them by influential citizens of their home town. The strange adventures that had befallen the scouts on this cruise through winding creeks and across several lakes have been given ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren

... we have seen, though there was an outward likeness between the lives of Herbert and of Herrick, it was only an outwards likeness. Herbert was tender and kindly, the very model of a Christian gentleman. Herrick was a jolly old Pagan, full of a rollicking joy in life. Even in appearance these two poets were different. Herbert was tall and thin with a quiet face and eyes which were truly "homes of silent prayer." In Herrick's face is something gross, his great Roman nose and thick curly hair seem to suit his pleasure-loving ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... almost within cannon range, Stede Bonnet with his own hand bent the "Jolly Roger" to the lanyard and sent the great black flag with its skull and crossbones to fly from the masthead. The grog was served out. No man would have believed that the roaring, rollicking gang of cutthroats who tossed off their liquor in cheers and ribald laughter was identical with the grumbling, sour-faced crew of twenty hours before. As they finished, something came skipping over the water astern and ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... they scamper along, eager to walk the deck of that trim little craft, the Falcon, anchored in the stream, and sitting like a bird on the bosom of the famed river. Wait a minute and you will see the mainsail flutter in the breeze. Now our rollicking young friends have marched past ruins of "chapel, convent, hospital," &c., on the beach; you surely did not expect them to look glum and melancholy. Of course they knew all about "Monsieur Puiseaux," "le ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... great eyes in astonishment. It was so unlike his old friend's brusque rollicking character to propose prayer, that he fancied he must be dreaming, and the possibility of the visit turning out unreal, induced an expression of distress on his haggard countenance. On being ordered, ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne

... Then rollicking Seymour and silent Fiske told of their scouting on the trail of the beaten foe; and all asked, "Where is Kittering?" So talk was rife, and there was one who showed a knife he had picked up near the ambuscade with R. K. ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... went over the top with us and was in the thick of the fighting, and he had the military cross for bravery. He passed down the line, giving us a slap on the back or a hand grip and started us singing. No gospel hymns either, but any old rollicking, good-natured song that he happened to think of that would loosen things up ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes

... own account. Every movement of the man was theatrical, and he used to look covertly at you every now and then to see if he had produced his impression, which was evidently intended to be that of a reckless, rollicking skipper. There was a Hallo-my-Hearty atmosphere coming off him from the top of his hat to the soles of his feet, like the scent off a flower; but it did not require a genius in judging men to see that behind, and under this was a very different sort of man, and if ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... Sneezing or coughing in the face. Irregular or too frequent feedings. Sleeping on the mother's breast while nursing. Spitting on handkerchief to remove dirt from baby's face. Allowing a person with a cough or a cold to hold the baby. Violent rocking, bouncing, and rollicking play at any time. Dirty playthings, dirty nipples, dirty bottles, dirty floors. Allowing any person with tuberculosis to take care of the baby. Testing the temperature of the baby's milk by taking ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... silk and the cock-feathers in his hat,' the type of the dissolute man-about-town of the period. To me it seems very natural that, dispirited by his first contact with the outer world—unable to feel any real sympathy with the rollicking and sleek self-sufficiency of that holiday crowd, Faust should turn again to reflexion and speculation, and that when he is in this depressed and metaphysical mood the demonic element in his nature should first present itself—and that too in the disguise of an itinerant ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... what you could do." They were talking to some rollicking Creoles who had assumed an absolute necessity for doing something. "What is it you call this thing where an old man marries a young girl, and you come out ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... and to enhance His children's pleasure in their harmless rollicking, He, like a good old fellow, stood to dance; When something checked the current of his frolicking: That curate, with a maid he treated lover-ly, Stood up and figured with him ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... to the effect that Claudius was a mental defective, a sort of town fool, patronized by the nobles for their sport and jest. We are also told that he was made Emperor by the Pretorian Guards, in a spirit of rollicking bravado. Men too much abused must have some merit, or why should the pack bay so loudly? Possibly it is true that, in the youth of Claudius, his mother used to declare, when she wanted a strong comparison, "He is as big a fool as my son, Claudius." But then the mother of Wellington ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... March it was! And after an unusually mild season, too. Old Winter seemed to have hoarded up all his stock of snow and cold weather, and left it as an inheritance to his wild and rollicking heir, that was expending it with ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley

... man of merry disposition and rollicking nature, and sometimes joined so heartily in the children's play that he seemed scarcely older ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells

... wonderful new future whose door was about to be flung wide to him, felt the inspiration of those rugged mountain influences, the like of which had been his familiars all the seventeen years of his life. The chattering brooks had nothing to say to him as they came dashing down from the hills to join the rollicking stream whose course his path followed; the sunflowers, gilding the edge of the road, were but frills and furbelows to his thinking. But in the pine-trees there was a perfectly clear significance,—in those hardy growths, finding a foothold among the rocks, ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... over the long, yellow-gray stretches pricked out with hints of brightness, to the peaceful refuge of the pines, and again to the naked and impudent meanness of the town. Across to her ears, borne on the air heavy with rain still unshed, came the rollicking, ragging jangle of the piano ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... moment Tom White, as rollicking as ever, but unusually sober, stood in it, and gazed round the place in a ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... ten o'clock—on Christmas Eve, when the streets were surging with voices and gay steps, when rollicking piano-tunes from across the street penetrated even closed windows, and a German voice as rich as milk chocolate was caressing, "Oh Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum, wie gruen sind deine Blaetter."... Then slept for nine hours, woke with rapturous remembrance that he didn't have to go ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... the butcher took the string from the hook. Jinnie slipped the stem of the cobbler's rose between her white teeth, grasped the sausage in one hand and gripped the shortwood strap with the other. Then the man started a rollicking whistle, and Jinnie took a step ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White

... Some of the Governors will speak; all of them will resolute. They will behold evidences of the greatness of our common country and the evidence of the greatness of our public men, as displayed in the rollicking debates in the House, and the "knot on the log" discussions of the Senate. Everything will be as lovely as a Christmas tree. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... was finding all things happy, which is the only way to make them so) was startled by a sharp jerk of his dear friend's head. Following the clue of gaze, there he saw, coming up the river with a rollicking self-trust, a craft uncommonly like that craft which had mounted every sort of rig and flag, and carried every kind of crew, in his many dreams about her. This made him run back to his room at once, not only in fear of being seen upon the bank, but also that he might command a better view, with ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... There was no rollicking about the camp-fires any more. When evening came the men were weary from hurrying their wagons over rugged ground or climbing lofty buttes to look ahead for signs of water. Isham the fiddler left his violin in its case; he never took it from that case again. The oxen had ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... breezy, rollicking old saga it is! Can't you almost catch the spray and sea-swell in ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... impressively, this rollicking, devil- may-care, perfectly sound and hearty young Hibernian had ever been absolutely, entirely, and completely sober since his sojourn in the land of the free, no one of his fellow-boarders had ever ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... rule she chose grave music—it suited the depth and quality of her voice; but very rarely would she favor her audience with rollicking sea-songs, or anything with a comic element. Her taste, as regarded music, was absolutely pure and good, and she had a wonderful faculty for picking up both words and ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade

... have bought a very promising little gold-mine from a rollicking Irish nobleman called Patrick Terence O'Ryan, who is retiring on Mayo to take up the paternal estates. H-m!—have you? And you think you yourself will be retiring home presently on the proceeds of the said mine? H-m! again. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various

... companion of the dissolute Narcisse; whom, in a giddy moment he had made acquainted with the family matrimonial design on young Montigny. Narcisse, in his turn, had a domestic story, that instinct, revenge, and a mother's command impelled him to relate, and which he told to the rollicking, but now attentive Alphonse, with a wicked glee, raised by the prospect of mischief. A discovery had been made by his brooding and despised parent. Chance had thrown in her way an opportunity for which she had watched for years. ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... recollect the rollicking young attendant who drove Father O'Shane in the snowdrifts from Vermont, a specimen of whose oratory we have given in a preceding chapter. The antagonist of Parson Grinoble was no other than the same young man. He had rambled up to this neighborhood in ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... but it was broken soon by a lively whistle, shrilling out a rollicking tune; the next moment a boy came running into the room. Curly, rosy, dirty, ragged, laughing, panting, little Benjamin stood still and looked round on all the ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards

... 'tis nigh sundown an' I reckon they hope to shoot something fer supper," saying which he began to sing in a rollicking voice the following, which may be presumed to be ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane

... The bouillabaisse of Marseilles, the Norman ragout of eels, the roast goose of Arles, the pigs' feet of Spain, the partridge pasty of Periguex,—all the luscious dishes of a land of good eating were described in a way that made these old campaigners howl with reminiscent joy. The rollicking, impudent tune, the allusions to camp customs more notorious than honest, went straight to the heart of the blackguard audience, and half the voices in the room promptly joined the chorus. Eurydice, the singer went on, ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... the little music box and, catching the French doll about the waist, started a rollicking dance which lasted until the roosters in the ...
— Raggedy Andy Stories • Johnny Gruelle

... presentable; and they were all Christian martyrs compared to Rowley; but they were in a frolicsome and rollicking humour that promised danger as we approached the town. They sang songs, they ran races, they fenced with their walking-sticks and umbrellas; and, in spite of this violent exercise, the fun grew only the more extravagant with the miles they traversed. Their drunkenness was deep-seated and permanent, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "I propose that we play the most innocent and rollicking of games—blindman's buff." [Footnote: ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... lovely was their domain that some of the facetious spirits, in looking about for sites for future dwellings, affected a rollicking indifference to situations that would have been prized by any nobleman in making choice of ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... learned but little law. That he fully sustained the reputation which he had gained in the Waxhaws is indicated by testimony of one of Macay's fellow townsmen, after Jackson had become famous, to the effect that the former student had been "the most roaring, rollicking, game-cocking, card-playing, mischievous fellow that ever ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... Corot became a great favorite among the students because of his happy nature and the rollicking, jolly songs he could sing. But as for his pictures,—they ...
— Stories Pictures Tell - Book Four • Flora L. Carpenter

... till he roared like a wounded bull. The woman with the brand cried out on him with vile words that made my face burn in the dark, and belaboured him about the head with her blazing cudgel. At every blow a shower of sparks flew out that drove his rollicking mates into a ring around them at a safe distance away. The man must have been set afire had he not been soused in the river beforehand. None of his fellows tried to help him, just as before none had tried to hinder him. It was his look out either way, and they enjoyed ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... deepened the contrast between the two brothers; and Frank smiled with affectionate pride as he looked up in Amyas's face, and saw that he was no longer merely the rollicking handy sailor-lad, but the self-confident and stately warrior, showing in every look ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... the masthead of the flagship, and the headlights twinkled out. Marcella and Louis grew very quiet as the streets quietened and only an occasional car clanged by in George Street, an occasional band of singing sailors went back rollicking down the street, a solitary ferry glided along in the water, with brilliant reflections and blaring German band. She crept a little closer to him; when he did not speak she forgot, for the while, the chasm between them. It is so easy not to criticize anything seen through ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... great, rollicking boy, that had an eye gouged out at the widow Mulloney's wake, and an ugly cut that made his mouth six inches wide: and, before he got the cut, it was as broad as yer own out there. Besides, his hair being of a fire's own red, you may safely ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... I, and I faithfully served the ships With apples and cakes, and fowls, and beer, and halfpenny dips, And beef for the generous mess, where the officers dine at nights, And fine fresh peppermint drops for the rollicking midshipmites. ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... a tossing avenue of villagers, weeping and blessing, and divined from their torment of sympathy that "his honour" was already in his grave. Poor feckless father, how she had loved him spite all his rollicking ways, or perhaps because of them. Through her tears she saw him counting—on his entry into Paradise—the children who had preceded him, and more than ever fuzzled by the flapping of their wings. Oh, poor dearest, how unhomely it would all ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... one of intense gloom. Of all the dark books in fiction, no works sound such depths of suffering and despair as are fathomed by the Russians. Many English readers used to say that the novels of George Eliot were "profoundly sad,"—it became almost a hackneyed phrase. Her stories are rollicking comedies compared with the awful shadow cast by the literature of the Slavs. Suffering is the heritage of the Russian race; their history is steeped in blood and tears, their present condition seems intolerably painful, and the future is ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... reserve that fell upon my table companions as I took my seat among them. But, as this was unpleasant for everybody, I soon found an opportunity of dispelling the mystery that hung over me. Then they threw off all restraint, and showed themselves to be the jolly, rollicking, good-natured beings that these men almost invariably are. They were much more polite to me than Englishmen generally are to strangers, who are felt to be something like intruders—recognising me as a guest, and insisting upon my helping myself first to every dish that ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... shows that our criterion is not the one by which nature judges. We like the birds which serve our purpose. We admire the brilliant plumage of the jay, cardinal and goldfinch. We love the mellow notes of the woodthrush, and of the veery, the clear, rollicking outpourings of the bobolink, the musical love song of the brown thrasher, the cheerful scolding of the wren. We are fond of the birds who busy themselves taking the insects out from among our grain and from off our fruit trees. We can only understand the value of the bird ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... for enlivening the monotony of a workhouse infirmary. Literary clerks plied me with questions about the sources of my quotations. A Scotch doctor demurred to the prayer—"Water that spark"—on the ground that the water would put the spark out. Elderly clergymen in country parsonages revived the rollicking memories of their undergraduate days, and sent me academic quips of the forties and fifties. From the most various quarters I received suggestions, corrections, and enrichments which have made each edition an improvement on the last. The public ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... his rollicking voice. She turned back, smiling. "Oh, since just this morning," she replied. "The boss fired the cashier just before I went off watch last night. He said he was going to call up the employment agency and get another the first thing ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins

... some rollicking ditty that pleased the ear. The two girls enjoyed the music, and Helen searched her purse for a coin to give whichever of the musicians came around for the collection at the end of the concert. There was but one person on the forward deck who did not seem to care for ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson

... last had not been by any means a popular resort. There were said to be things heard, seen, and felt, even in the brightest summer day, which commended the spot to the creatures that fear mankind, but not their spectres. The very last of all to approach it now would have been the two rollicking tars who had trodden their wooden-legged watch around it. Nicholas the fish was superstitious also, as it behooved him well to be; but having heard nothing of the story of the place, and perceiving no gnats in the neighborhood, he ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... his life a poisoned draught, With a scornful smile and a cold, cold glance, And the merry bystanders loudly laughed (For the rollicking world was gay!). ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... own gay care for naught self; see," she added, kindly as they neared the music and revellers, "see the gay butterflies are as chic (even if their wings have lost some of their bloom); the scent of the rose as sweet as at the first dance; be your own gay rollicking self once more." ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... was the ordinary, one-story, rambling house of pine, with spruce-clad hills rising behind it, and a little stream, rollicking down between it and the corrals. But a wide veranda had been constructed on three sides of it, furnished with wicker chairs, and half-screened with boxes of growing flowers. All around the house flowers grew,—old-fashioned ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham

... was sick and discouraged and strangling; but after some time he closed his book and asked Luigi to sing "From Greenland's Icy Mountains" with him, but he would not, and when he tried to sing by himself Luigi did his best to drown his plaintive tenor with a rude and rollicking song delivered in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... to have seen them! Now there was life in them! You would scarcely have dreamed that they were the same creatures who, a moment ago, looked so listless and miserable. What rollicking laughter and fun, while they bundled one another in scarfs, cardigan-jackets, ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... lay-dees," he added in quite another tone, on his way to the door. "Five o'clock by the town clock, and al-ll's well!" This last in still another tone, as he pushed out against the swooping wind and pulled the door shut with a slam. They heard him whistling a shrill, rollicking air on his way to the creek; at least, it sounded rollicking, the ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... had seized on the imagination of the children and grown in association until it belonged to everybody, by sheer use and wont. It was a papier-mache Santa Claus, three feet high, white-bearded, gray-gowned, with tall pointed cap—rather the more sober Saint Nicholas of earlier days than the rollicking, red-garbed Saint Nick of now. Only, whereas for years he had graced the window of the Exchange, bearing over his shoulder a little bough of green for a Christmas tree, this season he stood treeless, and instead bore on his shoulder ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale

... could hardly be raining mud. Yet the alternative theory, that someone in the next garden was throwing it, was hardly less bizarre. The nature of his friendship with Sally's Aunt Jane and old Mr Williams, her husband, was comfortable rather than rollicking. It was inconceivable that they should ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... Steele was in almost every respect the antithesis of his friend and fellow-worker,—a rollicking, good-hearted, emotional, lovable Irishman. At the Charterhouse School and at Oxford he shared everything with Addison, asking nothing but love in return. Unlike Addison, he studied but little, and left the university to enter the Horse Guards. ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... for men to hurl their darts at, and one cannot help feeling that a good deal of the fun got its point from the knowledge that the charges were exaggerated or untrue. You find the Jewish satirists exhausting all their stores of drollery on the subject of rollicking drunkenness. They roar till their sides creak over the humor of the wine-bibber. They laugh at him and with him. They turn again and again to the subject, which shares the empire with women in the Jewish ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... the rollicking mariner, laughing at the joke that had been played upon him, "we sailors express ourselves that way, but we ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... a problem is a strange experience,—peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first bursts upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghkanic ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... out of the crowd with some acquaintances, to have his smarting eye attended to, while the procession reformed, and the rollicking students began again to shout their "Omega ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish

... replied. "They feel sorry for other houses where the carvings and tapestries have to stay back in their own old times. Now hear these old rafters ring to modern music," and seating herself at the piano, Patty began some rollicking songs that were of decidedly later date than the ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells

... filled the pages of Rabelais with such a superabundant energy, appears in a quieter and more cultivated form. The first fine rapture was over; and the impulsive ardours of creative thought were replaced by the calm serenity of criticism and reflection. Montaigne has none of the coarseness, none of the rollicking fun, none of the exuberant optimism, of Rabelais; he is a refined gentleman, who wishes to charm rather than to electrify, who writes in the quiet, easy tone of familiar conversation, who smiles, who broods, and who ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... his hand, and her white ensign, whose blood-red cross of Saint George stood out in bold relief, dipped in parting salute to our vessel, which reciprocated the compliment as the man-of-war bore away on her course to the northward, a group of officers rollicking round their captain on her deck aft and gazing at us as she moved off rapidly under a full pressure of steam, evidently admiring ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... was evidently a very merry party. The meal was protracted for two or three hours, and the noise grew louder and louder. They were shouting so that one could hear them all over the house. They were singing songs—wild rollicking choruses which were very wonderful to listen to, and yet terribly disturbing to Samuel. These fortunate successful ones—he would grant them the right to any happiness—it was to be expected that they should dwell in perpetual merriment and delight. But he could hear ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair

... Mansfield after tea. "I've been and let the house in for a rollicking time," he said, abstracting the copy of Latin verses which his friend was doing, and sitting on them to ensure undivided attention to his words. "Wanting to score off old Henfrey—I have few pleasures—I told him that Shields' was ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... gathering of the settlers which was not accompanied by the work of reaping the harvest, building a cabin, planning an expedition to relieve some distant settlement, or a defense for themselves. For all, it meant a rollicking good time; to the old people a feast, and the looking on at the merriment of their children—to the young folk, a pleasing break in the monotony of their busy lives, a day given up to fun and gossip, a day of romance, a wedding, and best of all, a dance. Therefore Alice Reynold's wedding ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... it seems to me that till they were over, I never thought at all except how to get the most rollicking and the finest rowing out of life. It seems to me that I had about as much sense as a ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... fellow, I don't think much of it is true either. We allow sailors to spin yarns and only believe as much as we like." Jeff was much better satisfied to feel that a hero was not an impossible being, and that these rough and ready, hard swearing, rollicking men were not in reality the stuff out of which was moulded true heroism, endurance, and nobility. He took comfort now in laughing at their "make believe" tales ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave

... over the terse realism and pathos of Lawson, and enjoyed Paterson's redolence of the rollicking side of the wholesome life beneath these sunny skies, which he depicted with grand touches of power flashing here and there. I learnt them by heart, and in that gloriously blue receptacle, by and by, where ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... say it is the most delightful sport in the world. If you think, however, that you would not like to participate in such pleasures, we have the fox hunt, which is the most charming and innocent diversion imaginable. You don't bet any money in that, but have a rollicking good time riding over the country, ladies and gentlemen—leaping hedges and ditches, following the hounds, running Reynard to cover, and having a lunch at the close ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... nervous when he entered, and more so because Myra was not in the room. But his trepidation was absorbed in his amazement when in the distance he observed St. Barbe, with a very stiff white cravat, and his hair brushed into unnatural order, and his whole demeanour forming a singular contrast to the rollicking cynicisms ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... snow-white crystals? Why—where no eyes see them—should parti-coloured algae flaunt such graceful, flawless plumes? What marvellous fertility of imagination in form and design is exhibited in every quiet coral garden! Stolid battlemented walls, massive shapeless blocks, rollicking mushrooms, tipsy toadstools; narrow fjords, sparklingly clear, wind among and intersect the stubborn masses. Fish, bright as butterflies and far more alert, flash in and out of mazes more bewildering than that in which ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... its head. "Hook cat!" The fall was stretched along the decks; all hands laid hold;—"Hurrah, for the last time," said the mate; and the anchor came to the cathead to the tune of 'Time for us to go,' with a rollicking chorus. Everything was done quick, as though it was for the last time. The head yards were filled away, and our ship began to move through the water on her ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... good Madame Baudot. The hotel has a chalet-like appearance which is unconventional and pleasing. Here too, as at Eaux Chaudes, our rooms overlook the Gave, but this stream is running sedately through the town itself instead of rollicking down a ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... but not as though he liked the jest, while the butchers said, one to another, "Before Heaven, never have we seen such a mad rollicking blade. Mayhap, though, he will make the ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... could have looked an hour ahead an hour ago, you and I, dripping pity on that boy, feeling so utterly secure ourselves—'Why should the spirit of mortal be proud?' M.D., I got a silver thimble for learning that by heart when I was eight. Rollicking nursery rhyme, wasn't it? But I adored it, especially the parts I didn't understand. 'From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud'—you know, for years I thought it meant one of those fascinating places with swinging half-doors and rows and rows of feet ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... finished till nearly eight a.m. (March 23rd), when the old corvette swung round on her heel; and, with the black hills of Salbah to port, resumed her rolling, rollicking way southwards. Her only ballast consisted of some six hundred conical shot, or twelve tons for a ship of eight hundred. After one hour of steaming ( seven miles) we passed the green mouth of the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... ever such a morning! It did seem as if the sun fairly outdid itself, such billows of light did it pour forth. The rollicking breeze danced round and about the caravan, and would by no means be left behind. The corn in Farmer Tucker's field waved its silken tassels in a delighted frenzy. All the golden-rod and asters were alert ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... suggestive pictures, however, cannot be passed by. This dear little fellow is the son of Mr. B. J. Farjeon. Mr. Farjeon married "Rip Van Winkle" Jefferson's daughter, and the youngster is pictured dressed in the tattered garments of merry, rollicking Rip. You know how Rip always drinks your health? He holds the glass of hollands high up and cries, "Here's your health and your family's good health, and may they all live long and prosper!" ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... the two go to the city to see a wonderful picture of Gerome's just arrived. They stop at Mrs. Latimer's, who promises to accompany them if they will stay to lunch, and they spend the intervening time in the nursery. A rollicking baby is Polly's delight, a baby who can be pinched and squeezed and kissed and bitten ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... travelling, they halted by the trail at sunrise to eat, and to dry out what had been wet. This part of the trail traversed the heavily wooded bottom-lands, before starting to climb the grassy steeps of the further bank. As they sat on a log discussing their bread and cocoa, a rollicking song came, as a sound comes fluctuating through the woods, now from this side, now from that, and curiously deadened. It finally resolved itself into the air of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay with words in Cree. While it still seemed some distance away, suddenly the singer rode upon them; and ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... got it, sir?' repeated Mr Willet, eyeing him from top to toe. 'You haven't got it, sir? You HAVE got it, sir. Don't I tell you that His blessed Majesty King George the Third would no more stand a rioting and rollicking in his streets, than he'd stand being crowed over by ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... that I am telling you the truth about the sea. I am not one to sit upon the shore and write you poetry (of the kind that is described as rollicking) about it. What occupation could be more despicable than that of making sea-songs to mislead ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street

... hot cakes. Before the evening was over more than two thousand copies of that edition had been sold. Many more than two thousand people had crowded to the "Blade's" show window to catch a glimpse of the exhibits described in the rollicking ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock

... he took a sudden journey into the country, and returned home to his boys with a wife, the daughter of an Oxfordshire Cavalier. Poor Mary Powell was but seventeen, her poetic lord was thirty- five. From the country-house of a rollicking squire to Aldersgate Street was somewhat too violent a change. She had left ten brothers and sisters behind her, the eldest twenty-one, the youngest four. As one looks upon this picture and on that, there is no need to wonder that the poor girl was unhappy. The poet, though keenly alive to the ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... Cid," by Massenet, and the Princess Tekau accompany her effectively on the piano. A solo de piston, a violin, a flute, all played by Tahitians, entertained us, and then came the fun. M. X—— was down for a monologue. Who could it be? He bounced on the stage in a Prince-Albert coat and a Derby hat, rollicking, truculent, plainly exhilarated. Why, it was M. Lontane in disguise, the second in command of the police, the hero of the battle of the limes, the coal, and the potatoes. He gave a side-splitting burlesque of the conflict. He acted the drunken stoker, the man ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... Well-fed, rollicking priest is Father O'Toole of Dublin, with a big, round face, a double chin, and a brogue that you can ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... teaching them to drink beer spilled upon his desk for that purpose. On the night of the cat's return, the three bugs had become disgracefully intoxicated, and were reeling around the desk beating time with their legs to a rollicking catch sung by the Snake Editor. Before the muddled insects could crawl into a crack, the Mutilator was upon them, and had bolted every one. Then with a look of reproach at the Snake Editor, he drew three perpendicular red lines across that gentleman's features with ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... most women when they get glimpses into the undiscovered land of their own hearts and are appalled thereby. Suddenly she hugged the chuckling baby very close and began a rapid rocking to the humming accompaniment of a rollicking street tune, a seemingly inexplicable ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess

... to make themselves heard, though none had done great work. In poetry there were Prior, Gay, and Pope, while in prose we find names that stand high in the roll of fame,—the story-teller Defoe, the bitter Swift, the rollicking ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden

... was agreeable to the inclination of his own rollicking, blundering, floundering, crashing disposition, and because he would have joined anything that had been joined by ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... cloven hooves, and trailing out behind, danced a multitude of creatures—lambs and kids gamboling, goats and rams tossing their horns, foxes, furry waves of squirrels, rabbits kicking up their heels, Fauns and Nymphs rollicking, frogs and crickets and serpents. Above them flew birds and butterflies and beetles and bats in swirling clouds. Full-voiced, the glorious pipes sang. "Come, come, run, run! Follow, leap and dance, adore and obey! Run, oh, run, heed me before all passes! ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd

... came up for judgment. He was a handsome, rollicking chap—a charming combination of his graceful father and his lovely mother—and he greeted his uncle and aunt with frank affection. Even in those days Lansing Hertford could will his emotions—or his emotions could will him—to sincerity for the time being. ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... tone, and gave the old soldier his hand at parting. Then the guard closed the door, and father and daughter were left alone. As the groups around the guard-house began to break up and move away, and the officers, re-entering the carriages, drove over to head-quarters, a rollicking Irishman called to the ...
— The Deserter • Charles King

... escapade Goldsmith made his comedy of manners, a lively, rollicking comedy of topsy-turvy scenes, all hinging upon the incident of mistaking a private house for a public inn. We have called She Stoops to Conquer a comedy of eighteenth-century manners, but our continued interest in its absurdities would ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... living creature made what noise it could, to show its joy in being happy and free in the beautiful Bush. Rich and gurgling came the note of the magpies, the jovial Kookooburras saluted the sun with rollicking laughter, the crickets chirruped, frogs croaked in chorus, or solemnly "popped" in deep vibrating tones, like the ring of a woodman's axe. Every now and then came the shriek of the plover, or the shrill cry of the peeweet; and gayer and more lively ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... of service was in the store itself, tactfully lubricating that complicated engine of goods and personalities. But he learned to utter, when called upon, a few suave generalities, barbed with a rollicking story. This made him always welcome. He was of a studious disposition, and liked to examine this queer territory of life with an unprejudiced eye. After all, his inward secret purpose had nothing to do with the success or failure of retail trade. He was still ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... not but note how softly the November sun fell through the half-bare branches, flecking the path with shine and shadow; how glowing cardinals and flaming orioles, not yet started south, flitted through the trees in rollicking sport; and how the sweet odor of dying leaves mingled with the soft call of wood-thrushes. The cottonwoods had laid down a path of gold for me to walk upon, but, fortunately, it had rained the night before ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... had closed, the hall had been cleared of chairs and canvas, exposing a glassy, tempting surface, and the orchestra had moved to the stage. They played a rollicking, blood- stirring two-step, while the floor ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... recollections of the flies and mud and portages and the need of manufacturing skidways over the bogs, but they would also recall the irrepressible and uproarious spirit in which they used to sing of their additional accomplishments in the rollicking ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... distant hum of voices crept upon them, they would not believe it; but sat with eyes glued to the ground, though their ears were strained. But when one of the approaching voices broke into a rollicking drinking-song, which was caught up by the group around the fire and tossed joyously back and forth, there could no longer be ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... continued Bob Smart, in a moralising tone, and looking intently at the wreaths of smoke that curled from his lips as if for inspiration, "I've often wondered how it is that sailors—especially British sailors—appear to possess such an enormous fund of superabundant rollicking humour, insomuch that they will jest and sing sometimes in the midst of troubles and dangers that would take the spirit out of ordinary men such as you ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne

... there in the open. Whistling a lively, rollicking air, with a note as clear and strong as a bird's. Horror! The workmen must have come! Margaret was down on the grass in an instant, pulling desperately at her shoes and stockings. From the panic she was in, one ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards



Words linked to "Rollicking" :   playful, sportive, frolicsome, coltish



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