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More "Impromptu" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... battering-ram stove at the door and the middle bolt crashed. The flimsy impromptu barricade toppled, then swayed back into place and a shuddering sigh went up from the handful of white-faced men. One more drive, and the end ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... had always been considered as the most hospitable and pleasant estancia in the district, became more than ever popular, and many were the impromptu dances got up. Sometimes there were more formal affairs, and all the ladies within twenty miles would come in. These were more numerous than would have been expected. The Jamiesons were doing well, and in turn going for a visit to their native country, had brought ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... Illustrations, either impromptu or carefully prepared beforehand, are always hailed with delight by the children. Nor need you hesitate to try your "'prentice hand" at this work. Never mind if you "cannot draw." It must be a rude picture, indeed, which ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... boys had to mount the dormitory steps and make impromptu speeches, and then submit to a general handshaking and leave-taking all around. "Fair Brighton" was sung, and the familiar old Brighton yell chorused over and over, with three long 'rahs for Jack Hammond ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... upon them. Frank Merrill showed only a slight seriousness. Billy Fairfax, however, wore a look permanently sobered. Pete Murphy became subject at regular intervals to wild rhapsodical seizures when he raved, almost in impromptu verse, about the beauty of sea and sky. These were followed by periods of an intense, bitter, black, Celtic melancholy. Ralph Addington degenerated into what Honey described as "the human sourball." He spoke as seldom as possible and then only to snarl. He showed a tendency to disobey the ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... looked at these girls with little scruple, they looked at me with still less. Eulalie raised her unmoved eye to mine, and seemed to expect, passively but securely, an impromptu tribute to her majestic charms. Hortense regarded me boldly, and giggled at the same time, while she said, with an air of ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... Merchandising Uplift Group of Murray Hill will meet at the Commodore for an informal lunch. It has been suggested that you contribute to the discussion on Underwriting Overhead."—"The Executives Association plans a clambake and barbecue at the Barking Rock Country Club. Around the bonfire a few impromptu remarks on Business Cycles will be called for. May we count on you?"—"Will you address the Convention of Knitted Bodygarment Buyers, on whatever topic is nearest your heart?"—"Will you write for Bunion and Callous, the trade organ of the Floorwalkers' ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... slid across her vision. She saw herself begin a slow, sinuous dance: and stop suddenly in the middle of a figure, conscious that the dance was not impromptu, her own, but native—the same dance she had quitted but a few minutes gone. She had fallen into it naturally, the only expression of the dance she had ever seen or known, and that a stolen sweet. That was odd: when young people were joyous, they had to ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... to Mr. Meighen for the cordiality with which he greeted me, as the inventive Canadian press had added impromptu reflections of their own to what I had said of him. I sat next to Mr. MacKenzie King, but as we had no opportunity of private conversation, he invited me to go to his house for supper ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... later was six o'clock, and Perry had lost all resemblance to the young man in the liniment advertisement. He looked like a rough draft fur a riotous cartoon. They were singing—an impromptu ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... it was tracts! An' yet some'ow I didn't." Mr. Pyecroft nodded his head wonderingly. "Our old man was quite right—so was 'Op—so was I. 'Ere, Glass!" He kicked the Marine. "Here's our Antonio 'as written a impromptu book! He was a ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... fortune of which Harrison Smith lost no time in availing himself. Lending a trifling support to his impromptu host they entered the building and ascended in the electric lift to the fourth floor. There was a brass plate on the front door which informed the curious that the owner of the ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... pleasure to get your last letter, for these little impromptu effusions are the genuine letters. I rejoice that man and nature seem harmonious to you, and that the heart beats in unison with the voices of Spring. May all that is manly, sincere, and pure, in your wishes, be realized! Obliged to ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Constance her chance. At an impromptu luncheon at the Knowle Hotel, before the intended dinner party at Valley House, she referred to the interest Society would begin to take in this ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the editor of the "Friendship's Offering" if he could gather for his Christmas bouquet a little pastoral story, suppose, by Miss Mitford, a dramatic sketch by the Rev. George Croly, a few sonnets or impromptu stanzas to music by the gentlest lovers and maidens of his acquaintance, and a legend of the Apennines or romance of the Pyrenees by some adventurous traveler who had penetrated into the recesses ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... sentence punctuated with a roar of laughter, cheers and protests, he sat down. Among the speakers I heard that night were Mr Beresford Hope and Sir Wilfrid Lawson, the latter of whom offered to the House quite a sheaf of carefully prepared impromptu. Again I got my guinea, and again I was asked to appear on the following night, and at the end of that week, the defaulting member of the staff not having again put in an appearance, I was formally enrolled for the rest of the session. I do not profess to record in anything like ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... entire party, as with one consent, remained sitting motionless just where their impromptu toboggans had come to a halt; for they felt that they needed a certain amount of time in which to become accustomed to the glorious change that had been wrought by that three- mile glissade. Above and behind them were furious tempest, deadly cold, and never-ceasing ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... as gaily as if she had known them both all her life, she introduced them to Pa. Pa, whose youngest daughter was just now in high favour, was mildly pleased with the invasion. This impromptu hospitality smacked of prosperity, of worldliness. He went stiffly into the study with John, to bore the poet with an old volume about California: "From ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... and bright. There was no snow, and by early afternoon clouds of dust were rising on every trail leading to the Y.D. The old ranchers and their wives drove in buckboards, and one or two in automobiles; the younger generation, of both sexes, came on horseback, with many an exciting impromptu race by the way. Y.D. received them all in the yard, commenting on the horses and the weather, and how the steers were wintering, and revealing, at the proper moments, the location of a well-filled stone jug. The faithful Linder was on hand to assist in caring for the horses and maintaining organization ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... firing as we ran. The order to fire at will was seldom given, the men waiting patiently for the officers' signal, and then answering in volleys. Some of the men who were twice Day's age begged him to let them take the enemy's impromptu fort on the run, but he answered them tolerantly like spoiled children, and held them down until there was a lull in the enemy's fire, when he would lead them forward, always taking the advance himself. By the way they made these rushes, it was easy to tell which ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... the little maiden, and going to the piano she dashed off a wild, impassioned, mixed-up impromptu, resembling now the soft notes of the lute or the plaintive sob of the winter wind, and then swelling into a full, rich, harmonious melody, which made the blood chill in Edith's veins, and caused both Richard and Arthur ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... In this amazing, impromptu, new, and hurried machine civilization which we have been piling up around us for a hundred years we have made machines out of everything, and our one consummate and glaring failure in the machines we have made is the machine we ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... led his gallant band of shouters in an impromptu war-dance back of the grandstand, their frenzied shouts of joy at the splendid play sounding loud ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... he might catch sight of Andy Foger, for the bully also owned a boat, called the Red Streak and, more than once, in spite of the fact that Andy's craft was the more powerful, Tom had beaten him in impromptu races. But there was no sign of his rival this morning, and Tom kept on to Waterfield. He found that Mr. Damon had not ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... me, and I believe quite new to himself, at least so far as the arrangement of his words were concerned. The floating thoughts were most beautifully arranged, and delivered on the spur of the moment. What accident gave rise to the singular request, that he should deliver this lecture impromptu, I never learnt; nor did it signify, as it afforded a happy opportunity to many of witnessing in part the extent of his reading, and the ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... led my new wife away to the little "humpy," or hut, that had been built for me by the women. That night an indescribably weird corroboree was held in my honour, and I thought it advisable, since so much was being made of me, to remain there all night and acknowledge the impromptu songs that were composed and sung in my honour by the native bards. I am afraid I felt utterly lost without Yamba, who was, in the most literal ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... herself could see only the humor of it. She was fascinated by the social niceties and the surroundings of the set she had drifted into. The little dinners, the impromptu teas, the light chatter and general atmosphere of luxury more than counterbalanced any other lack. She wanted only to play, and she was prepared to seize avidly on any form of pleasure, no matter if in last analysis it were utterly frivolous. She ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... into the modern sin of extempore writing, and deluged the world with the first hasty overflowings of his mind, instead of straining and refining it till he could bestow the pure essence upon us. In short, his career is summed up in the phrase that it was 'writing impromptu novels to buy farms with'—a melancholy end, truly, for a man of rare genius. Nothing is sadder than to hear of such a man 'writing himself out;' and it is pitiable indeed that Scott should be the example of that fate ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... he cannons against a potman, upsetting him and the measure of scalding liquor he carries over another angry, blaspheming sailor man; another sea worthy, snoring drunk, has converted his quart pot into an impromptu pillow, his own recumbent form serving the purposes of a footstool to a companion. The females are a combination of the styles of Gillray and Cruikshank, and, with one exception, are old, ugly, and preposterously fat. A comical illustration ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... taking a swollen and brown-coated potato from the impromptu platter, breaking it in half, and beginning to eat with ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... said Mrs. Gibson, laughingly, "this impromptu reception is liable to last all night unless it is checked by a stern hand. It is almost five o'clock, and we haven't even seen our rooms yet. Besides, Anne will have to leave before long for the theatre. Let us hurry with our dressing, order an early dinner and keep Anne ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... and downcast eyes she sank backward before her guest. Another knock was heard, and when the names of three more of the garrison officers were announced, Miss Elliott whispered to Billy a hasty message to some of her fair friends in the neighborhood to come in and help her entertain them. These impromptu parties were quite common, and in a little while the room was sparkling with beauty, gallantry and wit. It may seem strange that the patriotic belles of the day, the fair Brewtons and Pinckneys and Rutledges, the Ravenels and Mazycks, should have cultivated such pleasant associations with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... seated at the table, where she had already begun the meal, talking with the inn-keeper's daughter. She was too well used to Mozart's habits of forming acquaintances and accepting impromptu invitations to be greatly surprised at the appearance and message of the young officer. With undisguised pleasure she prepared to accompany him, and thoughtfully and quickly gave all necessary orders. Satchels were repacked, the inn-keeper was ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... couples who were to compose this impromptu ball, yielded quickly to the spell of ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... was one thing Polly could do it was whistle. Indeed, she insisted that it was her only accomplishment and many a happy little impromptu concert was given in Middies' Haven with Happy's guitar, Shortie's ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Elizabeth T. Schenck as vice-president for California by that association, met with the approval of all those interested in the movement. Soon after this Mrs. Schenck with her gifted ally, Mrs. Stevens, decided to organize a suffrage society, and at an impromptu meeting of some of the friends at the residence of Mrs. Nellie Hutchinson, July 27, 1869, the first association for this purpose on the Pacific coast was formed. There were just a sufficient number ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... care of a mother, even such an extraordinary, incredible mother as Mrs. "Bal" MacDonald: a good plan for the girl's sake, and for everybody's sake, because it was arranged to start for Scotland the day after to-morrow. Still, Barrie's impromptu ode to the heather moon had for a moment irradiated his mind with a light such as had not shone for Somerled on land or sea since he had become rich enough to afford the most expensive lighting. Then as quickly it had died down. He saw himself spinning agreeably through Scottish scenes with Mrs. ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... frozen, he did not know: nor can one say how long he would have stood there had nothing further come to invite his notice elsewhere. But, suddenly, drowning even the impromptu concert, there came from somewhere upstairs the roar of a gun, and, when he heard that, Sam's rigid limbs relaxed and a violent activity descended upon him. He bounded out into the hall, looking to right and to left for a hiding-place. One of the suits of armour which ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... arrived accepting the invitation, for both the lady and the lion. They would arrive that afternoon, as little preparation was needed for this impromptu journey, the novelty of which was its chief charm to these ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... Palais Royal all was calm again; my son came to me immediately, and, notwithstanding the alarm I had felt, he made me laugh; as for himself, he had not the least fear. He told me that the first president had made a good impromptu upon this affair. Having occasion to go down into the court, he heard what the people had done with Law's carriage, and, upon returning to the Salon, ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... forbade, dilly-dallying giddily along the campus paths or the town sidewalks with some new and pretty Skirt. And when Ramsey tried to fluster him about such a matter Fred would profess his ardent love for the new lady in shouts and impromptu song. Nothing could be done to him, and Ramsey, utterly unable to defend his own sensibilities in like manner, had always to retire in bafflement. Sometimes he would ponder upon the question thus suggested: ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... himself up to his full height, took off his little cap with graceful self-possession, and bowed down formally to the ground, like a little ambassador. They drove past, and he went on unconcernedly with his play: the impromptu readiness and good judgment being clearly a part of his nature. His genial and open expression of countenance was none the less ingenuous and fearless for a certain tincture of fun; and it was in this mingling of qualities that he so ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... who had seldom leisure to talk to his children, must sit up an extra hour to talk to them. And yet, amidst the pressure of overwhelming toil, his vivacity seldom flagged, and his politeness never. Perhaps the severest thing he ever said was an impromptu on a shallow-pated student who was unfolding a scheme for flying to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... some central musical theme as is the Sonata or sound-piece. The Toccata, in its early and pure form, possessed no decided subject, made such by repetition, but bore rather the form of a capricious Improvisation, or 'Impromptu.'" ("A Toccata of Galuppi's" by Mrs. Alexander Ireland, published ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... the guard of the Emperor Alexander. At the end of this exceedingly gay and fraternal banquet, each French soldier exchanged uniforms with a Russian, and promenaded thus before the eyes of the Emperors, who were much amused by this impromptu disguise. ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... lost. Somehow, the "lovely and gifted heiress" of the newspapers never seemed to Susan at all reconcilable with Dolly Ripley, vapid, overdressed, with diamonds sparkling about her sallow throat, and the "jolly impromptu" trip of the St. Johns to New York lost its point when one knew it was planned because the name of young Florence St. John had been pointedly omitted from Ella Saunders ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... pulp wrangles, he worked like a Trojan at the athletic graces he should have cultivated in his younger days. He rode every morning; he practised every day at tennis and croquet; every evening he bowled; and every time some one sat at the piano and played dance music and the young people fell into impromptu waltzes and two-steps on the porch, he joined them and danced religiously with whomsoever he found to hand; usually Miss ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... before the glass, and capered through a Spanish bolero with considerable grace and dexterity, while she sang an impromptu verse to ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... and we all returned together, on the foreign plan, to coffee and cigars in the drawing-room. The women smoked, and drank liqueurs as well as coffee, with the men. One of them went to the piano, and a little impromptu ball followed, the ladies dancing with their cigarettes in their mouths. Keeping my eyes and ears on the alert, I saw an innocent-looking table, with a surface of rosewood, suddenly develop a substance of green cloth. ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... overlooked. Mrs. Salisbury had been keeping house in a suburban town for twenty years; she was not considered an exacting mistress. She was perfectly willing to forgive Lizzie what was said in the hurried hours before the company dinner or impromptu lunch, and to let Lizzie slip out for a walk with her sister in the evening, and to keep out of the kitchen herself as much as was possible. So much might be conceded to a girl who was honest and clean, industrious, respectable, and ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... exhilaration coming with relivening confidence; the unspeakable loveliness and grandeur of the prospect; the thousand varied incidents of the too-brief journey; the short, sharp excitement of the landing; the awe and curiosity of the impromptu crowd invariably on the ground before the balloon, and reluctantly leaving it only when the last whiff of gas is rolled out of it and the last rope thrown into the wagon; the moonlight ride to the station with the gas-bag for a pillow and the brain too busy with the strangeness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... entertainment was only an impromptu affair. A few nights later the house party was formally invited to a "ball" at the men's quarters. The big dining room next the bunk house was cleared out, two fiddles and an accordion obtained from Osaka, and the Rose Ranch outfit showed the ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... to her by the courtly earl testify to his admiration of her beauty and accomplishments. On seeing her wear an orange lily on the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne he addressed her in the following impromptu: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... before you in uncovered dishes. Of course, when you arrive at the last, it retains scarcely a memory of the fire. I saw some of the indigenes obviate the inconvenience, by taking fish, flesh, and fowl on their plate at one and the same time, consuming the impromptu "olla" with a rapid impartial voracity; but so bold an innovation on old-world customs would hardly suit a stranger. All liquors are rather high in price and lower in quality than one would expect, considering ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... at that moment, Dinah retailed their little plan for his benefit. Cedric was delighted, and voted Betty a brick. Any form of sociability was welcome to him—an impromptu garden-party in Malcolm's honour met with ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the standing, for it prescribes the conduct—an English girl would never listen to such outpourings with this obvious air of approbation; maybe she would ask where you had been drinking; in every case, your chances would be seriously diminished. She prefers an impromptu frontal attack, a system which is fatal to success in this country. The affair, here, must be a siege. It must move onward by those gradual and inevitable steps ordained of old in the unwritten code of love; no lingering ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... a valentine tea. Call on each one for an impromptu valentine. Award a book of rhymes for the best. Turn down the lights and require each man to propose to his partner. Prepare red cardboard hearts and write fortunes on them with baking powder and ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... determined that, as it was St. John's eve, the maid-servants of Pepita should be to-night released from all their occupations, and should go to amuse themselves at the farm-house, where, in union with the rustic laborers, they might get up impromptu amusements, to consist of fandangos, the recitation of pretty verses, playing ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... spends her breath as years prevail At this sad wicked world to rail, To slander all her sex impromptu, And wonder what ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... the same fervid abundance, that links the Spanish tradition to ours of the present day is the strangely impromptu character of much Spanish art production. The slightly ridiculous proverb that genius consists of an infinite capacity for taking pains is well controverted. The creative flow of Spanish artists has always been so strong, so full of vitality, that there ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... the country especially, nothing can be more fun or more appropriate than a barn dance, or an impromptu play, or a calico masquerade, with properties and clothes made of any old thing and in a few hours—even ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... impromptu speakers, a white-haired, toil-marked farmer, told how forty years before he had gone to the next prefecture and opened new land. "With his spectacles and moustache," explained the chairman—if the man who takes the initiative from time to time at a Japanese ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... at these impromptu lunches, without the restraint of Gordon's presence, he had revealed to her a new phase of his character which had interested her still more deeply. It was here that she discovered the secret of his real attitude toward ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... Italy's loss is the island's gain (semicolon); and I am looking forward with the keenest pleasure to seeing you again (period, paragraph). May I hope that it will be not later than to-night (point of interrogation)? I have arranged an impromptu masquerade by moonlight on the terrace (period). It should be a pretty sight (period). From ten o'clock till any time you like (dash) masks until one (period). Do come and help make the evening a happy one for ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... time to look at the charred timbers and the ashes of his home, and in the course of a week he may possibly spin a few rhymes about it. Or suppose he was making an offer of his hand and heart, do you think he would declaim a versified proposal to his Amanda, or perhaps write an impromptu on the back of his hat while he knelt ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... waiting for; but, being unable to punish Roosevelt, it severely reprimanded General Wood, who had not been aware of what the Colonel intended to say. Indeed, the offensive remarks seem to have been extemporaneous, because, as it was too dark for him to read his prepared speech, he spoke impromptu. In any event, Secretary Garrison had due notice that Roosevelt was to speak, and if he had had any doubts he should have sent word to General Wood to cancel the engagement. The Administration made as much as it could out of this impropriety, but the public saw the humor of it, because ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... sister, Mr. Field. SHE'S getting on very well too. I've a deal of trouble with 'em, sir, but I'm richly rewarded, now I see 'em all a doing so well, and growing up so creditable. That's a great comfort, that is, an't it, sir? - In the midst of the kitchen (the whole kitchen is in ecstasies with this impromptu 'chaff') sits a young, modest, gentle-looking creature, with a beautiful child in her lap. She seems to belong to the company, but is so strangely unlike it. She has such a pretty, quiet face and voice, and is so proud to hear the child admired - thinks you would hardly believe that he is only ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... was playing host (for France) to the newspaper men in this old chateau, once a convent. You see, the two cars had shot past as we walked; and by the time we reached the door preparations were being made for an impromptu party. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... had gathered about an impromptu speaker in the Ringstrasse, not far from the Hotel Bristol, in Vienna, one pleasant August evening in 1914. His theme was the military prowess of Austria-Hungary ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... walks into the parsonage—war plumes, moccasins, and all—gives us complimentary seats, and eats the better half of our dinner. This incident is a source of pride to ourself beyond any thing experienced by any urchin besides. We boast of it frequently, and, being disliked therefor, commit several impromptu ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... they're all rather mild." I kept talking to the man, but really addressing myself to the women. "There's something nearly every evening: prestidigitating, or elocutioning, or a little concert, or charades, or impromptu theatricals, or something of that sort. I can't say there's dancing, though really, I suppose, if any one wanted to dance there ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... an emu's egg in a quart-pot?" the man from Beyanst asked, "lending a hand" with another piece of fencing wire, using it as a fork to turn the steak on the impromptu gridiron. "It goes in all right, but when it's cooked it won't come out, and you have to use the quart-pot for an egg-cup and make tea ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... an old maid, my dear," denied the impromptu poet pertly. "I merely said, or meant to say, that the idea you expressed might better be expected from an old maid, although I doubt if many old maids could have expressed it as well ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... cleverness in treating the pianoforte, which is already sufficiently evident in the dramatic accompaniments of his larger songs, before mentioned, attention is called to the Impromptu in B-flat—the air and variations known as "The Fair Rosamunde," the title due to the appearance of this melody in his opera of "Rosamunde." At least three of these variations display great finesse in treating the pianoforte. The first ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... were swollen and blistered from being so much in the salt water, and the action of the hot sun on them made them excessively painful. Fortunately, but little exertion was now necessary, and our only relief was in lying still, with an impromptu awning over us. General Breckinridge took charge of the water and rum, doling it out at regular intervals, a tot at a time, determined to make it last as ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... dump we had exchanged for the impromptu motor-truck, automobiles of the French staff, and as "Jimmie" Hare and I were alone in one of them we could stop where we liked. So we halted where an English battery was going into action. It had dug itself into the ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... you did yourself injustice. The common excitement and warm blood of youth pass away; but the heart of the wise man, the older it grows the warmer it feels." It is difficult to imagine a more graceful impromptu recognition ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... convicts? or because it is feared that convicts taught to act in unison by military drill would combine more readily for mutiny? But order does not naturally lead to disorder but away from it, and mutinies are mostly impromptu affairs, contemplating revenge rather than escape. As for the other argument, a lie is not a sound basis to build on, and it is a lie that convicts are not human. To admit this ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... fragrant breath of the cedar swamp, when somehow the chat drifted to the subject of assaying and refining the precious metals. That was just where one of the party, Mr. D.W. Baker, of Newark, was at home, and in the course of an impromptu lecture he told the party more about the topic under discussion, and especially the platinum branch of it, than they ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... The accurate touch of the artificer in jewels and costly metals was one of the gifts transmitted to Robert Herrick. Much of his work is as exquisite and precise as the chasing on a dagger-hilt by Cellini; the line has nearly always that vine-like fluency which seems impromptu, and is never the result of anything but austere labor. The critic who, borrowing Milton's words, described these carefully wrought poems as "wood-notes wild" showed a singular lapse of penetration. They are full of subtle simplicity. Here we come across a stanza as severely cut as an antique ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... most enjoyable Bohemian affairs we know of have been full dress gatherings, carefully planned and delightfully carried out; others have been impromptu, neither the hour, the place, nor the ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... wait and see," said Tom, easily. But, though he showed much confidence he asked Mr. Sharp in private, just before the impromptu contest: "Do you think we can ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... moment of invention, scornful of whoever thought that art was a work of mere industry and rule, often coming the whole length of Milan to give a single touch. He painted it, not in fresco, where all must be impromptu, but in oils, the new method which he had been one of the first to welcome, because it allowed of so many afterthoughts, so refined a working out of perfection. It turned out that on a plastered wall no process could have been ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... nominated I moved that the nomination be made unanimous. The convention called for speech and platform so insistently that their call had to be obeyed. The following is an account from a newspaper of that date of my impromptu speech. The story which is mentioned in the speech was told to me as I was ascending the platform by Senator Proctor ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... county road crater. And around the fence that now enclosed the immediate vicinity of the Circle T ranch buildings. Floodlights bathed the wire and cast an eerie glow over the mass of parked cars and persons jammed outside the fence. A small helicopter sat off to the right of the impromptu parking lot and an NBC newscaster gave the world a verbal description of the scene while he tried to talk above the snorting of the gas-powered generator that was supplying the Associated Press radio-telephone link to ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... stage-plays. It pleases her now to see this wonderful fairy piece, of which she has heard so much since, two years ago, it graced the nuptials of the Earl of Derby. Does she not remember also that pretty impromptu verse of the author when acting the part of King in another man's play, two years ago at Greenwich? Did she not twice drop her glove near his feet in crossing the stage? And how happily had he responded ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... a hundred yards. For a time my beach walks resulted in inarticulate reaction. After months in the blindfolded canyons of New York's streets, a hemicircle of horizon, a hemisphere of sky, and a vast expanse of open water lent itself neither to calm appraisal nor to impromptu cuff-notes. ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... Master, now listens attentively to David's exposition of the school's rules and regulations. In the mean while the apprentices come filing in, prepare the benches and chairs, arrange the Marker's curtained box, and gayly chaff each other as they join in an impromptu dance. ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... them; garlands of flowers, transparencies, flags, and the other insignia of rejoicing, were everywhere in preparation, and, at the end of Sackville-street, a considerable erection, very much resembling an impromptu gallows, was being built, for the purpose, as I afterwards learnt, of giving the worshipful the lord mayor the opportunity of opening the city gates to royalty; creating the obstacle where none existed; being a very ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... regarded as an extemporaneous preacher. This is a mistake. He prepared most of his discourses carefully, and full one-half of many of them were written out. Among these written passages he interjected bursts of impromptu thoughts; and these were generally the most effective passages in the sermon. While he repeated himself often—especially on his favorite topic of God's love—yet it was always in fresh language and with new illustrations. Abraham Lincoln said to me, ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... anniversary of the Atlanta University, the meeting of the Alumni, (May 28th), was made pleasant and memorable by the presentation to Mrs. Ware of a large portrait of herself. It was wholly unexpected to her, and her impromptu acknowledgment of the gift was made in the vein of her characteristic vivacity and kindness. Among the addresses made at the presentation, was one by Mrs. Chase, herself one of our earliest and most ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various
... that the Italians are not a laughing nation: were ridicule to step in among them, many innocent pleasures would soon be lost; and this among the first. For who would risque the making impromptu poems at Paris? pour s'attirer persiflage in every Coterie comme il faut[Footnote: To draw upon one's self the ridicule of every polite assembly.]? Or in London, at the hazard of being taken off, and held up for a laughing-stock at every print-seller's window? ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... hand, and terror and cowardice prevailed in his bosom alternately, like the hot and the cold fit of an ague. Courage was uppermost during the singing, which he accompanied through all its length with this impromptu strain: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... last time we had seen Mr. Tooly made the present occasion seem opportune. An impromptu "court" was organized: judge, sheriff and deputies; and these, with a few chosen men of the company, went to the trading post to convene an afternoon session. The members of this "court" dropped ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... ceremony. These dancers gave way to a chorus of singers. For interminable hours, so it seemed, they chanted a high, shrill recitative, carried in fugue by deeper voices. The burden of the song was evidently an impromptu. Occasionally some peculiarly apt or pleasing phrase was caught up for endless repetition. And in the background, against the farther background of the undistinguished masses, those who had formerly carried on their performances in the full ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... ourselves, Old Probabilities has got down to business. He has opened an impromptu peripatetic school of navigation, and triumphantly sticks a pin into every point that tallies with his yard-square chart. The evangelist has his field-glass to his eye in search of the unregenerated aborigines. The swell tourists are much swollen with travel; they ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Pitt's mind was enthusiasm for his country, Fox was swayed by the still nobler enthusiasm of Humanity. His style of oratory was the exact reflex of his mind. He was unequalled in passionate argument, in impromptu reply, in ready and spontaneous declamation. His style was unstudied to a fault. Though he was so intimately acquainted with the great models of classical antiquity, his oratory owed little to the contact, and nothing to the formal arts of rhetoric; everything ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... "Yes, an impromptu volcano, whose fury we can regulate. There are plenty of vapors ready to hand, and subterranean fires ready to issue forth. We can have an eruption ready ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... Lightbody, and that Miss Hunter was made use of against her. Having a most contemptible opinion of her Albina's understanding, and knowing that her young friend had too little capacity to be able to deceive her, or to invent a plausible excuse impromptu, Mrs. Beaumont turned quick, and exclaimed, "My dear, what could Lightbody be saying to you when I came up?—for I remember he stopped short, and you both ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... translate the paragraph into Norwegian! Besides, it would not do to translate it literally, so I made a sort of impromptu ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... and looked. Upon the page of folio, close to an illuminated capital, the black drop had flattened itself. Around the original sphere had been shed splashes of all conceivable shapes-rays, rockets, dotted lines, arrowheads, all the freakish impromptu of chaos. Next, the slope lending its aid, the channels had drained into one, and by this time a black rivulet was crawling downward to the margin. One or two readers near had risen, and now eyed me like examining magistrates. I waited for an outbreak, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... she was upheld by the doctor, produced a chicken pie, which had been originally intended for his dinner alone, and which she had at first designed, when she proposed the oysters, to keep over until the morrow. This was flanked by various dishes, impromptu but delectable, and followed by a round of winter fruit and spongecake—the latter the pride of the housekeeper's heart, and dear to her master from ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... he insisted upon the unprecedented merit of the lady. Nevertheless I got the better of him; for he was struck absolutely dumb, when (waving her present perverseness, which yet was a sufficient answer to all his pleas) I asserted, and offered to prove it, by a thousand instances impromptu, that love was not governed by merit, nor could be under the dominion of prudence, or any other reasoning power: and if the lady were capable of love, it was of such a sort as he had nothing to do with, and which never before reigned ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... of the ball, 6 a.m. next morning. In the days of its prime, before busy bustling Birmingham pushed up to its walls, it ranked as one of the finest places of amusement anywhere out of London. The following verse (one of five) is from an "Impromptu written by Edward Farmer in one of the alcoves at Old ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... who could find nothing to complain of in heaven except that "his halo didn't fit," or said in her quick way, when the plainness of a lady's dress was commended, "Why, I didn't suppose that anybody could go to heaven now-a-days without an overskirt," or wrote her sparkling impromptu rhymes for our children's games, her mirth was all in harmony with her earnest life. Her quick perceptions, her droll comparisons, her readiness of expression, united with her rare and tender sympathies, made her the most fascinating ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... daybreak, blue and cold as the reflection of steel, threw into relief the two masses of armed men who formed a narrow passageway. At the end of this impromptu lane there was a post planted in the ground and beyond that, a dark van drawn by two horses, and various ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... one gentleman who lies awake all night after reading it; and Mrs. Inchbald promises a candid opinion, which, however, we do not get. Besides stories and novels, Mrs. Opie was the author of several poems and verses which were much admired. There was an impromptu to Sir James Mackintosh, which brought a long letter in return, and one of her songs was quoted by Sydney Smith in a lecture at the Royal Institution. Mrs. Opie was present, and she used to tell in after times ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... scholars, girls, old men and women, and fools is essential, and in which are furthermore introduced the lyrics of the Southern and Northern Palaces. These fairy songs consist either of elegaic effusions on some person or impressions of some occurrence or other, and are impromptu songs readily set to the music of wind or string instruments, so that any one who is not cognisant of their gist cannot appreciate the beauties contained in them. So you are not likely, I fear, to understand this lyric with any clearness; and unless you first peruse the text and then listen ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Shakspere must have been an excellent trainer, however modest may have been his own native gifts as an actor. Moliere, like Shakspere in so many ways, was like him in being author and actor and manager; and in the 'Impromptu de Versailles' he has left us a most instructive record of his own methods of rehearsing his ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... own way," said the Rector. "I always felt sure that Proctor would make a mess of any parish he took in hand, but I did not imagine he would have left it to anybody who pleased to work it. You may imagine what my feelings were to-day, when I came upon a kind of impromptu chapel in that wretched district near the canal. I thought it a Little Bethel, you know, of course; but instead of that, I find young Wentworth goes there Wednesdays and Fridays to do duty, and that there is service on Sunday evening, and I can't tell ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... this matter results in the lengthening of the lashes. Dyeing them is another expedient often resorted to for increasing their effect. A good permanent black is all that is needed, and for this use Indian ink. As an impromptu expedient to serve for one night, a hairpin held for a few seconds in the flame of a candle, and drawn through the lashes, will serve to color them well, and with sufficient durability. It need scarcely be added that the hairpin must be suffered to grow cold before it ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... sunshine when it breaks through the clouds after days of gloom. Quite a friendship sprang up between the two women, and when tired of writing, Shirley would go into Mrs. Ryder's room and chat until the financier's wife began to look forward to these little impromptu visits, so much ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... who speaks, or (if that were not impossible) the taciturn Englishman who accompanies me; and Huysmans, without looking up, and without taking the trouble to speak very distinctly, picks up the phrase, transforms it, more likely transpierces it, in a perfectly turned sentence, a phrase of impromptu elaboration. Perhaps it is only a stupid book that some one has mentioned, or a stupid woman; as he speaks, the book looms up before one, becomes monstrous in its dulness, a masterpiece and miracle of imbecility; the unimportant little woman grows into ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... fluently, "all of a sudden he stopped for want of a word which did not occur to him, and thus put an end to his peroration." In this awkward dilemma, the reputation of the Andalusian rhetoricians was saved by Mundhir Ibn Said, who not only poured forth a torrent of impromptu eloquence, but delivered a long ex-tempore poem, "which to this day stands unequalled; and Abdurrahman was so pleased, that he appointed him preacher and Imam to the great mosque; and some time after, the office of Kadi-'l-jamah, or supreme judge, being vacant, he named him to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... assistance was sought by professional workers in those branches of knowledge. Carlyle has charged against Scott that he poured out his vast floods of poetry and romance without preparation or forethought; that his production was always impromptu, and rooted in no sufficient past of acquisition. The charge cannot stand. From his earliest boyhood until his thirtieth year, when he began his brilliant career as poet and novelist, his life was one long preparation—very individual ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... athletic graces he should have cultivated in his younger days. He rode every morning; he practised every day at tennis and croquet; every evening he bowled; and every time some one sat at the piano and played dance music and the young people fell into impromptu waltzes and two-steps on the porch, he joined them and danced religiously with whomsoever he found to hand; usually ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... immediate vicinity of the Circle T ranch buildings. Floodlights bathed the wire and cast an eerie glow over the mass of parked cars and persons jammed outside the fence. A small helicopter sat off to the right of the impromptu parking lot and an NBC newscaster gave the world a verbal description of the scene while he tried to talk above the snorting of the gas-powered generator that was supplying the Associated Press ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... entertainment, this news spread lively joy throughout this city. This proof of the Empress's kindness, accompanied by the gracious memory she wished to testify for the people of Strassburg, made the preparations for this impromptu event easy, and in spite of the brief time between the announcement and the arrival of Her Majesty, a numerous and brilliant company was soon assembled at the Prefecture. The hall was elegantly decorated; the emblems and mottoes recalled the object of the festivity. ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... duty to-night to decide upon the means by which the plan we have been considering may be carried into execution, or abandoned," states the chairman of this impromptu meeting in a perfunctory tone. "If there is any preliminary matter to be discussed, I am ready to ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... periodicals. It was enough for the editor of the "Friendship's Offering" if he could gather for his Christmas bouquet a little pastoral story, suppose, by Miss Mitford, a dramatic sketch by the Rev. George Croly, a few sonnets or impromptu stanzas to music by the gentlest lovers and maidens of his acquaintance, and a legend of the Apennines or romance of the Pyrenees by some adventurous traveler who had penetrated into the recesses of their ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the white radiance of the moon slowly climbing the warm heights of heaven. It was so quiet that the sound of waves and insects seemed like the softest whispers of nature. Rose and Edward had rowed down the bay for Helene, who usually accompanied them on their impromptu excursions by lake and wood. Seen in the pale brilliance of sky and water her loveliness had an almost unearthly quality, perfectly akin to the night, but giving her a strange effect of soft remoteness from ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... human nature. But of this neither the preacher nor his audience seemed to be aware, indeed, few of the latter were listening at all. The sermon was short and ended with a passage of real power and beauty—or rather it did not end, for, closing the MS. sheets, Mr. Granger followed on with a few impromptu remarks of his own. ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... physiognomical outlines of sneaks' noses on a slate; and silence prevailed till the church clock struck the half-hour, when Clement got up, and taking the slate, where he had been solacing himself with imitating Edgar's caricatures, he was about to make it an impromptu dust-pan, and went down on his knees to sweep up Fulbert's malicious litter, but was rewarded with a vicious kick on the cheek. It was under the table, out of sight; and Clement, like a true son of his mother, made no sign, but went off to bed ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Richard, glancing in the direction of his impromptu Webster's Unabridged. "Mr. Slocum does not propose to split the difference. The wages in every department are to be just what they are,—neither more nor less. If anybody wishes to make a remark," he added, observing a restlessness in several ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... twenty without another mouthful, so far as that was concerned. Ward was simply behaving in a perfectly normal manner and was not letting his feelings get the better of him in the slightest degree. As to his impromptu vacation, he was certainly entitled to it; he ought to have taken one long ago, he told himself virtuously. He had panned dirt all day, the Fourth of July; that was last week, he believed. And he had not made more than ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... irresistibly into the current. She would learn to jump rope and roll hoops; to participate in paper chases 'cross country; to skate and coast and play hockey on winter afternoons, to enjoy molasses-candy pulls and popcorn around the big open fire on Saturday nights, or impromptu masquerades, when the school raided the trunks in the attic for costumes. After a few weeks' time, the most spoiled little worldling lost her consciousness of calls outside of "bounds," and surrendered to the spirit ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... went off into the splendid fantastic nonsense that the wits loved to talk; that grotesque, exaggerated phrasing made fashionable by Lyly. It was like a kind of impromptu sword-exercise in an assault of arms, where the rhythm and the flash and the graceful turns are of more importance than the actual thrusts received. The two old ladies embroidered on in silence, but their eyes twinkled, and little wrinkles flickered about the corners of their lips. But poor Isabel ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... you think of these verses, my friends? Is that piece an impromptu? said my landlady's daughter. (Aet. 19. Tender-eyed blonde. Long ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold pencil-case on a chain. Locket. Bracelet. Album. Autograph book. Accordeon. Reads Byron, Tupper, and Sylvanus Cobb, junior, while ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... were enunciated with immense importance, as he stopped his impromptu dance before the chair where his sober cousin Fanny was patiently working at her crochet; but she did not look so much affected by the announcement as the boy seemed to demand, so he again exclaimed, "And then, Miss Fanny, I shall ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... When I think how the railroad has been pushed through this unwatered wilderness and haunt of savage tribes; how at each stage of the construction roaring, impromptu cities, full of gold and lust and death, sprang up and then died away again, and are now but wayside stations in the desert; how in these uncouth places Chinese pirates worked side by side with border ruffians and broken men from Europe, gambling, drinking, quarreling, ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... adjourned, Maignan, followed by four pages bearing lights, leading the way to that end of the terrace which abuts on the linden avenue. Here, a score of grooms holding torches aloft had been arranged in a circle so that the impromptu theater thus formed, which Maignan had ordered with much taste, was as light as in the day. On a sloping bank at one end seats had been placed for those who had supped at my table, while the rest of the company found such places ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... that Eve's manner toward him had undergone no change by reason of his impromptu declaration. They met quite as before, and if there was any embarrassment on the part of either of them it was not on hers. During the next few days it happened that he seldom found himself alone with her for more than a few ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... rush of visitors last night! One would imagine they had all come by appointment, expressly to have an impromptu dance, which they certainly enjoyed, by the way. There was little Captain C——, the Susceptible and Simple, who so innocently says "I seen" and "I done it," without the faintest suspicion of the peculiarity, and looks so sweet, and guileless, and amiable, and soft, that I can't help ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... her with more attention, I fancied I recollected her features. She was the Catinella, a dancer of reputation, but I had never spoken to her before. I easily guessed that she was giving me an impromptu part in a play of her own composition, and I was to be a 'deux ex machina'. Whatever is singular and unexpected has always attracted me, and as my cousin was pretty, I lent myself most willingly to the joke, entertaining no doubt that she would ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Menefee felt crushed, humiliated, relegated. Second place galled him. Why had this blatant, obtrusive, unpolished man of windmills been selected by Fate instead of himself to discover the sensational apple? He could have made of the act a scene, a function, a setting for some impromptu, fanciful discourse or piece of comedy—and have retained the role of cynosure. Actually, the lady passenger was regarding this ridiculous Dunboddy or Woodbundy with an admiring smile, as if the fellow had performed a feat! And the windmill man swelled and gyrated like a sample ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... turned out and the doors closed, leaving Cleek alone in the stable; and the last Logan and Sir Henry saw of him until he came out and rejoined them he was standing in the middle of the floor, with his hands on both hips, staring fixedly at the impromptu bed in front of the ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... names of three more of the garrison officers were announced, Miss Elliott whispered to Billy a hasty message to some of her fair friends in the neighborhood to come in and help her entertain them. These impromptu parties were quite common, and in a little while the room was sparkling with beauty, gallantry and wit. It may seem strange that the patriotic belles of the day, the fair Brewtons and Pinckneys and Rutledges, the Ravenels and Mazycks, should have cultivated such pleasant associations ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... the arrangement of his words was concerned. The floating thoughts were beautifully arranged, and delivered on the spur of the moment. What accident gave rise to the singular request, that he should deliver this lecture impromptu, I never learnt; nor did it signify, as it afforded a happy opportunity to many of witnessing in part the extent of his reading and the extraordinary strength of ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... contempt of court, forfeited bail, and consequent disbursements, flitted before the mind of the agitated Mr. Adolphus Casay. Ten o'clock came; Bunken seemed to snore the louder and sleep the sounder. What was to be done? why, nothing but to get up an impromptu influenza, and try his rhetoric on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... was too plain; I beg your pardon. I ought to have replied that it was not easy to give an impromptu answer to a question about appearances; that tastes mostly differ; and that beauty is of little consequence, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... In the blows they struck were anger and pain and bewilderment and fear. And the gloves just would come off, so that they were ripping and tearing at each other, biting as well as making the fur fly, like furies, when the curtain went down. In the eyes of the audience this apparent impromptu was always the ultimate scream, and the laughter and applause would compel the curtain up again to reveal Duckworth and an assistant stage- hand, as if caught by surprise, fanning the two belligerents ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... constructive as well as destructive talent. Upon a sort of impromptu table covered with green cloth he had arranged all the toys in rough imitation of a town, with its streets and buildings. The relative proportion of the parts was certainly not good; but it was not Sam's fault that ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... "Impromptu, you know; but they expressed my feelings. That is one of the best things the war has done for us. It has permitted us to express our emotions more openly. I thought it a beautiful sight to see the ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... (puff); that's Puddingpote Bower (wheeze),' replied Crowdey slowly and pompously, adding an 'e' to the syllable, to make it sound better, the haddocks, hashed mutton, and all the horrors of impromptu hospitality rushing ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... imperfect vicariat of what is called representative government. Your House of Commons, that has absorbed all other powers in the State, will in all probability fall more rapidly than it rose.' In short, the press will take its place. This is one of those impromptu theories of history which are not to be taken too literally. Indeed, the satirical background is intended to throw into clearer relief a band of men of genius to whom has been granted some insight into the great political mystery. Who, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... the scenes, Binet—listening to that glib impromptu of which the scenario gave no ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... the pieces played were, Les Cloches, Chasse Neige, Eclogue, Cloches de Geneva, Eroica, Feux Follets and Mazeppa. Also the big Polonaise in E, the two Etudes, Waldesrauschen and Gnomenreigen; the Mazourka, Valse Impromptu, and the first Etude, of which last he remarked: "You can all play this; thirty years have passed since it was composed and people are only just finding out how fine it is. Such is the case with many of Liszt's ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... child, Lord Elster; and after two or three weeks' sinking he died, and was buried at Hartledon by the side of his mother. Hartledon's sister quitted Hartledon House for a change; but the countess-dowager was there still, and disturbed its silence with moans and impromptu lamentations, especially when going up and down the staircase ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the better of him; for he was struck absolutely dumb, when (waving her present perverseness, which yet was a sufficient answer to all his pleas) I asserted, and offered to prove it, by a thousand instances impromptu, that love was not governed by merit, nor could be under the dominion of prudence, or any other reasoning power: and if the lady were capable of love, it was of such a sort as he had nothing to do with, and which never before reigned ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... many ways of making pleasant entertainments out of these informal gatherings. Such an evening may last from nine to twelve o'clock. Where impromptu dancing is resorted to, as it so often is, another hour is sometimes added. If dancing be excluded, games, music, cards, or recitations should take its place. If neither card-playing, nor dancing is permitted, the supper usually becomes ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... jovial he looks! He is the life and soul of every party, and his impromptu singing after supper will make you die of laughing. He is meditating an impromptu now, and at the same time thinking about a bill that is coming due ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... drawing-room, which had been transformed into an impromptu ball-room by taking up the rugs and moving the piano to one end of it, introductions followed ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... Osgoode ever offered him such a chance to say the right thing wrongly or the wrong thing first. It was a fascinating topic. Other Premiers had done such things off-hand, almost impromptu as it seemed, and inspired by merely patriotic sentiment. This was a notice that the Premier of Canada could speak his mind in advance, or if he so preferred, wait till the Conference of Premiers opened and spring a surprise. Meighen lost no ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... rich ornament on her bosom, where it seemed as much out of place "as a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear," and hastily walked off with the prize before I could recover from my astonishment! I was a stranger to the ways of the world, and it did not occur to me, until years afterwards, that this was an IMPROMPTU comedy, ingeniously devised and skilfully performed by two capital actresses, for the purpose of swindling me out ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... The more ill-humored Mrs. Fotheringham grew, the more Lady Niton enjoyed the evening and her own "Nitonisms." It was she who after dinner suggested the clearing of the hall and an impromptu dance—on the ground that "girls must waltz for their living." And when Diana proved to be one of those in whom dancing is a natural and shining gift, so that even the gilded youths of the party, who were perhaps inclined to fight shy of Miss Mallory as "a girl ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in rehearsing her death-scene, she resigned herself to the impromptu imposed upon her, and prepared to follow her Romeo, wherever she might choose to die; but when the evening came, Malibran contrived to die close to the foot-lights and in front of the curtain; Sontag of necessity followed, and fell beside her there; the drop came ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Professor further aspired to become an Englishman in his habits and amusements, as well as in his personal appearance. Finding us distinguished, as a nation, by our love of athletic exercises, the little man, in the innocence of his heart, devoted himself impromptu to all our English sports and pastimes whenever he had the opportunity of joining them; firmly persuaded that he could adopt our national amusements of the field by an effort of will precisely as he had adopted our national gaiters and our ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... admiring group, tested the impromptu platform. He accepted a short riding whip handed up to him by Alf Warren with a truly professional flourish. Andy stood easy and erect, one hand on his hip. All that seemed lacking was the sawdust ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... in Boston the tragic scene exhibited in St. George's Fields." It was a wanton fire on an unarmed populace that was protected against; and the protest was by men who involuntarily shrank from mob-law as they would from the hell of anarchy. They apprehended an impromptu collision between the people and the troops; they knew that an illegal and wanton fire on the people would produce such collision; the danger of this result formed, undoubtedly, a large portion of the common talk; and the frequency and manner in which the subject was discussed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... symbolic syncopation that indicated the Lion Dance was a very ancient and conventional ceremony. These dancers gave way to a chorus of singers. For interminable hours, so it seemed, they chanted a high, shrill recitative, carried in fugue by deeper voices. The burden of the song was evidently an impromptu. Occasionally some peculiarly apt or pleasing phrase was caught up for endless repetition. And in the background, against the farther background of the undistinguished masses, those who had formerly carried on their performances in the full glare of front-row ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... fear before me of being thought to be prolix. But I had no power of combining, as a public speaker should always do, that which I had studied with that which occurred to me at the moment. It must be all lesson,—which I found to be best; or else all impromptu,—which was very bad, indeed, unless I had something special on my mind. I was thus aware that I could do no good by going into Parliament—that the time for it, if there could have been a time, had gone by. But still I had an almost insane desire ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... an impressive scene, this impromptu gathering at the foot of the flag-staff while anxiously awaiting further tidings from the agency. Over among the quarters the humid eyes of frightened women peered from many a door-way, watching with fluttering hearts for sign of action. Stacking arms in ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... only the humor of it. She was fascinated by the social niceties and the surroundings of the set she had drifted into. The little dinners, the impromptu teas, the light chatter and general atmosphere of luxury more than counterbalanced any other lack. She wanted only to play, and she was prepared to seize avidly on any form of pleasure, no matter if in last analysis it were utterly frivolous. She could smile at ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... myself the trouble to pretend the slightest affection for her, and a certain coldness even has grown up between us, especially when we are alone.) But to-day I turn to her with a smile, and wave my hand for her to continue. "Go on, it amuses me to listen to your quaint little impromptu." It is singular that the music of this essentially merry people should be so plaintive. But undoubtedly that which Chrysantheme is playing at this moment is worth listening to. Whence can it have come to her? What ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... of dust were rising on every trail leading to the Y.D. The old ranchers and their wives drove in buckboards, and one or two in automobiles; the younger generation, of both sexes, came on horseback, with many an exciting impromptu race by the way. Y.D. received them all in the yard, commenting on the horses and the weather, and how the steers were wintering, and revealing, at the proper moments, the location of a well-filled stone ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... army had organized with the promptness characteristic of the bourgeois whenever they are moved by any sentiment whatever to disguise themselves as soldiers. On the nineteenth the impromptu army had attempted a sortie, more to assure itself and others of its actual existence than with any more serious intention. They carried a banner, on which could be read this strange device: "We are ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "his halo didn't fit," or said in her quick way, when the plainness of a lady's dress was commended, "Why, I didn't suppose that anybody could go to heaven now-a-days without an overskirt," or wrote her sparkling impromptu rhymes for our children's games, her mirth was all in harmony with her earnest life. Her quick perceptions, her droll comparisons, her readiness of expression, united with her rare and tender sympathies, made her the most fascinating of companions to both young ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... of Dick's arrival with his companions was a great day in the annals of the Mustang Valley, and Major Hope resolved to celebrate it by an impromptu festival at the old block-house; for many hearts in the valley had been made glad that day, and he knew full well that, under such circumstances, some safety-valve must be devised for the escape ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... of Robert Louis Stevenson I have learned from his books, and from one unexpected impromptu letter which he wrote to me years ago in friendly recognition of my own work. I add the testimonies of friends who may have been of less actual service to him than Mr Henley, but who surely loved him better and more lastingly. These do not represent him as the victim of an overweening personal vanity, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... by a crocodile, he told himself. The road to wealth did not lie that way; and the cruel sneer that drooped his lips as he lowered his weapon was not good to behold, as he stood up to witness the end of this impromptu ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... for an escape (?), a happy idea possessed me. I was carrying four sacks of patent office books which would weigh about 240 pounds a sack, the sacks were eighteen inches square by four and a half feet long, so I concluded to use these books to make an impromptu bridge. I cut the ice open for twenty inches, wide enough to fit the tracks of the coach for the wheels to run on, then placed four of these sacks of books in the water and drove my mules across Red River. I was fully aware that the books were government property, but ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... about that. There's been talk about rockets to the Moon for years. You included something about that in your future-history fantasy, and then, after the event, you convinced yourself that you'd known all about it, including the impromptu christening of the rocket, ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... Rom. viii., rank among the finest compositions in later Greek literature. Regarded merely as a piece of poetical prose, 1 Cor. xiii. is finer than anything that had been written in the Greek language since the great Attic prose-writers. And if this was dictated impromptu, similar outbursts of splendid eloquence were probably frequent in his mission-preaching. Their effect must have been overwhelming, when reinforced by the flashing eye of the speaker, and by the absolute sincerity which none could doubt who saw his face ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... qualifications as a basso profondo, or a brass-bandsman, were always treated with the greatest indulgence by the ladies, and my high soprano flourished and positively reached unknown altitudes under the beneficent sunshine of their applause. (For all that I never attempted Chopin's "Impromptu.") ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... are low and mostly thatched, the roof being often covered with soil, and are not infrequently rendered attractive with blooming heather and little blue and pink blossoms planted by Nature's hand,—the hieroglyphics in which she writes her impromptu poetry. In the meadows between the hills are sprinkled harebells, as blue as the azure veins on a delicate face; while here and there patches of large red clover-heads are seen nodding heavily with their wealth of golden sweets. Further away, in solitary glens, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... through, then we went to an impromptu shelter which had been rigged up on a balcony. And we talked. There's something sympathetic about Miss Grayling which leads one to talk about one's self,—before I was half aware of it I was telling ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... not realize it then, Paul Zept's impromptu tribute in farewell marked the great turning ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... found a loaf and some rank cheese—more than sufficient to satisfy my hunger. I took some brandy and water, and then went up past my impromptu bag—he was lying quite still—to the room containing the old clothes. This looked out upon the street, two lace curtains brown with dirt guarding the window. I went and peered out through their interstices. Outside the day was bright—by contrast with the ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... were suspended to a pillar in the hall. Each of the company in succession then threw some salt into his goblet, and, placing himself under these symbols of the brotherhood, repeated a jingling distich, produced impromptu for the occasion. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... second tale was done, and I was now entrancing Messer Ramiro with some impromptu verses upon the divorce of Giovanni Sforza, a theme set me by himself, when I was interrupted by the arrival of a soldier, who ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... times. Carried originally by a mixed force from Savaii and Tuamasanga, the victors, instead of completing fresh defences or pursuing their advantage, fell to eat and smoke and celebrate their victory with impromptu songs. In this humour a rally of the Tamaseses smote them, drove them out pell-mell, and tumbled them into the ravine, where many broke their heads and legs. Again the work was taken, again lost. Ammunition failed the belligerents; and they fought hand to hand in the contested fort with axes, clubs, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Hotel Continental formed part of a group of hotels—which seemed to have been the result of some violent volcanic eruption, when the mountain threw up several hotels, and left them there anyhow—is at present separated from the Splendide and its other former companions by an impromptu wall, and from all its front windows it commands varied, beautiful, and, on the Clermont-Ferrand side, extensive views. It has a pleasant garden, a most enjoyable terrace, and it only wants to be in the hands of a firmly fixed and intelligent management ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... in readiness and daring of utterance, practice impromptu discussion of any of the topics in Activity ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Maggie only in the plain dark suit which she had worn to her daily business of selling cigarettes at the Ritzmore; and once, on the night of his return from Sing Sing, in that stage gypsy costume, which though effective was cheap and impromptu and did not at all lift her out of the environment of the Duchess's ancient and grimy house. But Larry was so startled by this changed Maggie that for the moment he could not have moved from the door even had he so desired. She was accoutered in the smartest of filmy evening gowns, ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... continued to fall. At six o'clock the hearse drew up to the door to bear away its pathetic burden. As they lifted the casket, Paine began playing on the orchestrelle Schubert's "Impromptu," which was Jean's favorite. Then he played the Intermezzo; that was for Susy; then he played the Largo; that was for their mother. He did this at my request. Elsewhere in my Autobiography I have told how the Intermezzo and the Largo came to be associated in my heart ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... said Adelaide; "and I suspect it is some one for us. You know we never venture on impromptu visits, except to you, and our ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... work cutting planks, keels, and all the necessary wood for boat-building. It is a pleasure to see English mechanics at work in a wild country; they finish a job while an Egyptian workman is considering how to do it. In a very short time Mr. Jarvis, the head shipwright, had constructed an impromptu workshop, with an iron roof, within the forest; several sets of sawyers were at work, and in a few days the keel of a new boat ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... very hot. There was scarcely a stir in the air, and the sun beat down on the sand-hills in no gentle manner. The perspiration ran down the men's faces as they carried, and the flies were beginning to come. After lunch Job set up two impromptu wigwams, stringing a tarpaulin over each, and under these shelters the men rested till 4 P.M. By camping time the outfit had been moved up over the portage about a mile, and I had learned something ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... N. impulse, sudden thought; impromptu, improvisation; inspiration, flash, spurt. improvisatore^; creature of impulse. V. flash on the mind. say what comes uppermost; improvise, extemporize. Adj. extemporaneous, impulsive, indeliberate^; snap; improvised, improvisate^, improvisatory^; unpremeditated, unmeditated; improvise; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... his head. The professor was out of the room; the demonstrator sat aloft on his impromptu rostrum, reading the Q. Jour. Mi. Sci.; the rest of the examinees were busy, and with their backs to him. Should he own up to the accident now? He knew quite clearly what the thing was. It was a lenticel, a characteristic ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... this fact had made them feel very sad, for the Atlantic is a big thing and cannot be ignored, particularly in love affairs. It would have been better for the poet if he had accepted the bourgeois' invitation to dinner; friends, as I suggested, might have come in, an impromptu dance might have been arranged, or the rain might have begun again; something would certainly have happened to make them miss the train; and they would have been asked to stay the night. The widow did not speak French, the young ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... disparities from which wisdom and moralising never deduct a grain! Vaudemont felt this as he saw her glide towards the beggar; but when she came bounding back to him, she had forgotten his dislike to her songs, and was chaunting, in the glee of the heart that a kind act had made glad, one of her own impromptu melodies. ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of such an experiment would be. I, to whom nature had denied the impromptu faculty; who, in public, was by nature a cypher; whose time of mental activity, even when alone, was not under the meridian sun; who needed the fresh silence of morning, or the recluse peace of evening, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... secretary-general of the enterprise, who freed his mind of its swaddling-clothes, showed him the dark holes of the business, taught him its dialect, took the mechanism apart bit by bit, dissected for his instruction the particular public he was expected to gull, crammed him with phrases, fed him with impromptu replies, provisioned him with unanswerable arguments, and, so to speak, sharpened the file of the tongue which was about to operate upon the ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... exclaimed that it certainly would; the young girls adding that they could crowd a little closer together without feeling it any inconvenience, and the captain saying laughingly that impromptu beds would have to be provided in the saloon for Chester and Frank, and he would join them there, so leaving a vacant place for her with his wife; and with a little more persuasion Annis accepted the invitation, knowing that she could be well spared ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... "Way Down upon the Swanee Ribber," and everybody joined in. "Nearer, my God, to Thee" was also most impressive from the vast impromptu chorus. In the foreground Lake Michigan lay darkly expectant, with a large black cloud upon its horizon, though the stars shone overhead. A half-circle of boats extended from the long Exhibition Wharf on the right, round to the warship Illinois on the left, and from ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... to describe with great zest and a wonderful richness of local colour, the impromptu fetes in which he bore a part; his raids upon the cherry and plum orchards—for the neighbourhood of Agen is rich in plum-trees, and prunes are one of the principal articles of commerce in the district. Playing at soldiers was one of Jasmin's favourite amusements; and he was usually ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... suddenly the Black Growler darted forward almost as if she was a thing alive. The Varmint II started at the same moment and an impromptu race was on. ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... modestly sought the shade. No man was less conscious of his powers, or attached less value to his literary performances.[73] Of his numerous poetical compositions each was the work of a sitting, or had been uttered impromptu; and, unless secured by a friend, they were commonly laid aside never to be recollected. As a clergyman, he retained, during a lengthened incumbency, the respect and affection of his flock, chiefly, it may be remarked, from the acceptability of his private ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... for which the guild of the shipwrights would build Noah's Ark or the guild of the barbers provide golden wigs for the haloes of the Twelve Apostles. The list of those crude pieces of stage furniture had a curious colour of poetry about it, like the impromptu apparatus of a nursery charade; a cloud, an idol with a club, and notably among the rest, the walls and towers of Jerusalem. I can imagine them patiently painted and gilded as a special feature, like the two tubs ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... Miss Ambrose, a title by which she was known ever after. Many graceful compliments paid to her by the courtly earl testify to his admiration of her beauty and accomplishments. On seeing her wear an orange lily on the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne he addressed her in the following impromptu: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... crowd outside wept and wailed; some clasped their hands over their heads with an upward look to heaven, some pressed them on their hearts, some rocked and moaned, some prayed aloud—not set prayers, but impromptu utterances wrung out by grief. The agony was so infectious that before I knew what I was about ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... two of the largest stockholders of the enterprise; together with all the professors, and some dozen of Russia's celebrated musicians and writers. The meal over, Anton Rubinstein, originator of the plan, and Zaremba, his able co-adjutor, made brief speeches. There were one or two impromptu replies; a little discreet cheering; the customary toasts to the Czar and the persons and the subject in hand; and then Ivan, carried out of his usual shyness, proposed the health of the sister Conservatoire ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... of his impromptu meal. He seemed anxious to put an end to his housekeeper's affectionate interest in himself and his health, and to get her out of the room. She had nursed him nearly thirty years before, and the recollection that ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Raymond and Azalea had what he called an impromptu scrap. A few words of instruction were enough for Azalea's dramatic instinct to grasp his meaning, and they had a lively tiff followed by a sentimental "making-up" that was good enough for a vaudeville performance, and which ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... start; the thrill and wonder of the upward rush; the strange exhilaration coming with relivening confidence; the unspeakable loveliness and grandeur of the prospect; the thousand varied incidents of the too-brief journey; the short, sharp excitement of the landing; the awe and curiosity of the impromptu crowd invariably on the ground before the balloon, and reluctantly leaving it only when the last whiff of gas is rolled out of it and the last rope thrown into the wagon; the moonlight ride to the station with the gas-bag for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... in the 'Edinburgh.' We hear of one gentleman who lies awake all night after reading it; and Mrs. Inchbald promises a candid opinion, which, however, we do not get. Besides stories and novels, Mrs. Opie was the author of several poems and verses which were much admired. There was an impromptu to Sir James Mackintosh, which brought a long letter in return, and one of her songs was quoted by Sydney Smith in a lecture at the Royal Institution. Mrs. Opie was present, and she used to tell in after times 'how unexpectedly the compliment came upon her, and how she shrunk ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... that are sent, cooking utensils should arrive. Fifty stoves arrived from Pittsburgh this morning, and it is said more are coming. At both the depots where the supplies are received and stored a big rope line encloses them in an impromptu yard so as to give room to those having the supplies in charge to walk around and see what they have got. On the inside of this line, too, stalk back and forth the soldiers with their rifles on their shoulders, and by the side of the lines pressing against the ropes there ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... self-reliance, and the like. The masters in our public schools are far from blameless in this respect, and you may gauge the quality of many of these gentlemen pretty precisely by their disposition towards the "school pulpit" line of business. Half an hour's "straight talk to the boys," impromptu vague sentimentality about Earnestness, Thoroughness, True Patriotism, and so forth, seems to assuage the conscience as nothing else could do, for weeks of ill- prepared, ill-planned teaching, and years of preoccupation with rowing- ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... usual to regard the rebellion of 1837 in Lower Canada as no less a fiasco than its counterpart in Upper Canada. There is no doubt that it was hopeless from the outset. {102} It was an impromptu movement, based upon a sudden resolution rather than on a well-reasoned plan of action. Most of the leaders—Wolfred Nelson, Thomas Storrow Brown, Robert Bouchette, and Amury Girod—were strangers to the men under their command; and ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... stage-setting. These can well be made in the school as a part of the manual training and sewing work. In giving the play, it will generally be better not to have pupils memorize the exact words of the book, but to depend upon the impromptu rendering of their parts. This method will contribute more largely to the training ...
— Children's Classics in Dramatic Form - Book Two • Augusta Stevenson
... well knowing that you never allow such things to pass, uncensured. A good joke, and it slipped out most impromptu—ishly.) ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... she let him think he was making rapid progress, and then, as if surprised at the sentiment she was feeling, she showed a sudden coolness which charmed him, and served to increase imperceptibly his impromptu passion. She was like a fisherman who lifts his line from time to time to see if the fish is biting. The poor count allowed himself to be deceived by the innocent air with which she accepted two or three neatly turned compliments. Emigration, Brittany, the Republic, and the Chouans were ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... evening, which we spent in rowing, walking, and later at a little impromptu supper, I was interested in observing the puzzling behavior of Beth and my chum. I had expected that he would avoid her as much as possible and speak to her only when common politeness made conversation obligatory, and that she, a born coquette, would seek to add his scalp to her collection. ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... emu's egg in a quart-pot?" the man from Beyanst asked, "lending a hand" with another piece of fencing wire, using it as a fork to turn the steak on the impromptu gridiron. "It goes in all right, but when it's cooked it won't come out, and you have to use the quart-pot for an egg-cup ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... authority, sallied forth boldly to recapture his Daisy. He thought he knew where to find her, and was not mistaken. The little impromptu lunch was in full swing when he entered the festive study. He had rarely felt so embarrassed, and the manifest excitement of his two pupils at his arrival did not tend ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... The other and the spaceman were prisoners, while Nymani rounded up in addition the man Dane had burned to save Tau. When the younger spaceman returned from making the medic comfortable in the shelter, he found Asaki and Jellico holding an impromptu court of inquiry. ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... conception of the Communion of Saints, a figure of Christ surmounting a crowd of all ages and stations, among whom were not only Dante, Petrarca, Giotto, etc., etc., but Plato, Cicero, and best of all, Arius. I said to the guide, in a tone of expostulation, "Heretico!" (a word of impromptu manufacture). Whereupon he nodded, smiled and was positively radiant with the latitudinarianism of the old Italian painter. It was interesting for it was a fresh proof that even the early Church united had a period of thought and tolerance before the dark ages closed around it. There is one thing ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... of politeness on our part not to attend Mr. Ketch in his impromptu evening visit! He shuffled along at the very top of his speed, his mouth watering, while the delicious odour of tripe and onions appeared to be borne on the air to his olfactory nerves: so strong is the force of fancy. Arrived at his destination, ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... which Tom was subjected in our presence, or by us, he invariably came off triumphant. Whether in deciding the pitch or component parts of chords the most difficult and dissonant; whether in repeating with correctness and precision any pieces, written or impromptu, played to him for the first and only time; whether in his improvisations, or performances of compositions by Thalberg, Gottschalk, Verdi, and others; in fact, under every form of musical examination,—and ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... that Mr. Dallas looked very wise on a certain occasion, his Lordship is said to have broke out into the following impromptu."—Life, Writings, Times, and Opinions of Lord Byron, 1825, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... breathless interest of all present—all the more because each one was unconsciously coloring his bit of the mosaic with his own individuality. Lottie's manner by no means tended to allay this interest as she began her part of the impromptu tale. She was a natural actress, and, for the moment, became little Ninon. The scene had grown actual to her vivid fancy, and by some process that cannot be explained she impressed it upon the minds of the others as real. They saw the ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... (see P. W., 1898, i. 34) Byron published a reply 'for insertion in the Morning Chronicle to the following illiberal impromptu on the death of Mr. Fox, which appeared in the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... said the widow, "quite what I call friendly. I love these impromptu little meetings; all the stiffness which generally surrounds a first introduction must vanish when four human creatures find themselves face to face with Nature in her grandest aspects. Look at those great rolling waves, Mr. Trevor, and tell me if you ever saw anything ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... by side with what would now be termed "local items," contemporary narratives of events, many of which have, in the lapse of more than a century, developed into historical proportions, but which here meet us, as it were, at first hand, clothed in such homely and impromptu dress as circumstances might require, with all their little roughnesses, excrescences, and absurdities upon them,—crude lumps of mingled fact and fiction, not yet moulded and polished into the rounded periods of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... term and the close of the Senior year appear to have been the seasons of conviviality, and Hawthorne's life of this sort ended with his being an officer of the Navy Club, an impromptu association of those of his classmates, fourteen out of thirty-eight, who for one reason or another were not to have a Commencement part on graduation. The Club met at the college tavern, Miss Ward's, near the campus, ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... being interrogated about the classic authors, he replies to a lady, the mother of three charming girls, "Madame, Anacreon is the only poet I can think of here!" Another, of the same age, replies to a question of Prince Henry of Prussia with an agreeable impromptu in verse.[2240] To cause witticisms, trivialities, and mediocre verse to germinate in a brain eight years old, what a triumph for the culture of the day! It is the last characteristic of the regime which, after having stolen man away from public affairs, from his own affairs, from marriage, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... as they approached, Willis, who had made a speaking-trumpet by joining his hands round his mouth, was roaring out alternately, "starboard," "larboard," "hard-a-port," just as if these terms had not been Hebrew to the impromptu mariners. ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... he could remember,—no copy being at hand,—and then improvised several others, equally, if not more difficult, to the surprise both of Sterkel and his friends. "What raised our surprise to real astonishment," said Ries, as he related the story, "was, that the impromptu variations were in precisely that graceful, pleasing style which he had just heard ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... warrior approached a certain point in the circle, he threw his horse back on its haunches, so that in a short time the entire band was once more gathered in a group. Alfred and the outlaw knew that this manoeuvre portended a more serious charge than the impromptu affair they had broken with such comparative ease. An Indian is extremely gregarious when it comes to open fighting. He gets a lot of encouragement out of yells, the patter of many ponies' hoofs, and the flutter of an abundance of feathers. Running in from the circumference ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... energies to make a free passage for it. In front walked the policeman carrying the little girl, a child apparently of about twelve years old. Her right foot lay stiffly across his arm, held straight and still in an impromptu splint of umbrellas and handkerchiefs. Immediately behind came the lady whom George had caught sight of, holding the other girl's hand in hers. She was bareheaded and in evening dress. Her opera-cloak, with its heavy sable collar, showed ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... explained that they understood that these things were given to them for having fed King. Some old clothes were then put on some of the men and women, and the affair ended in several of our party and several of the black fellows having an impromptu "corroboree," to the intense delight of the natives, and I must say, very much to our amusement. They left, making signs expressive of friendship, carrying their presents with them. The men all wore a net girdle; and of the women ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... Fly, Dipsas, and perhaps Demosthenes, suggest (4). A common form of exhibition was for a sophist to appear before an audience and let them propose subjects, of which he must choose one and deliver an impromptu oration upon it. ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... shyness that crept over him. He trembled at the thought of appearing before the examiners in public. He had always suffered from shyness: in class he would blush and choke when he had to speak: at first he could hardly do more than answer his name. And it was much more easy for him to reply impromptu than when he knew that he was going to be questioned: the thought of it made him ill: his mind rushed ahead picturing every detail of the ordeal as it would happen: and the longer he had to wait, the more he was obsessed by it. It might be said that he passed every examination at ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... hospitality, in which she was upheld by the doctor, produced a chicken pie, which had been originally intended for his dinner alone, and which she had at first designed, when she proposed the oysters, to keep over until the morrow. This was flanked by various dishes, impromptu but delectable, and followed by a round of winter fruit and spongecake—the latter the pride of the housekeeper's heart, and dear to her master from ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... pasteboard escutcheon with gold letters, spelling the word WELCOME. Piles of chairs, rented from I.O.O.F. hall in Bonneville, heaped themselves in an apparently hopeless entanglement on the ground; while at the far extremity of the barn a couple of carpenters clattered about the impromptu staging which ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... there and went up with Locke again to enjoy the brilliant moonlight and listen to the impromptu concert which the crew had begun with a mouth ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... see only the humor of it. She was fascinated by the social niceties and the surroundings of the set she had drifted into. The little dinners, the impromptu teas, the light chatter and general atmosphere of luxury more than counterbalanced any other lack. She wanted only to play, and she was prepared to seize avidly on any form of pleasure, no matter if in last analysis it were utterly ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... stairs, and the sound of voices, interrupted our odd impromptu conversation, as the Grenadier came up, followed by the tall, grave gentleman who was being shown over the house. My sister drew me along the corridor towards her room, where she went in and closed ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... serve either for (3) or (4); and The Hall, The Fly, Dipsas, and perhaps Demosthenes, suggest (4). A common form of exhibition was for a sophist to appear before an audience and let them propose subjects, of which he must choose one and deliver an impromptu oration upon it. ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... the menu was changed in deference to our visitor's tastes. 'This is fun!' she said. And by common consent we abandoned ourselves, three youthful, hungry mariners, to the enjoyment of this impromptu picnic. Such a chance might ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... be the case. Mrs. Cardew would welcome any girl introduced to her daughters through her dear friend Mr. Tristram. She sent a further invitation for the three young people to remain to an impromptu supper, which was pleasanter than late dinner in such hot weather, and asked if Mr. and Mrs. Tristram would join them ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... and cold as the reflection of steel, threw into relief the two masses of armed men who formed a narrow passageway. At the end of this impromptu lane there was a post planted in the ground and beyond that, a dark van drawn by two horses, and ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... navy-yards had, moreover, to be guarded against surprises by the enemy's cavalry; and as men were so scarce, it was generally arranged that the navy-yard should follow the army lines. Constantly shifting position—caused by the rapid movements of the enemy, left these impromptu ship-yards unprotected; and then a small party of raiders would either burn them, or force their builders to do so. It was not until the appropriation was nearly spent—although not one efficient gunboat of this class ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... seemed as if desserts were impromptu and unusual things at the parsonage; whereas, if Mr. Hale would only have looked behind him, he would have seen biscuits and marmalade, and what not, all arranged in formal order on the sideboard. But the idea of pears had taken possession ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... shadows of life. A funeral to me is a most fatiguing duty; more so when one has to give an address at the graves, and there is no time for preparation except on the march to the burying ground. I am getting reckless, for I am forced absolutely to rely on impromptu grace. I tremble, when I think what ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... dream. The sun was high for he had been asleep for several hours. So he got up willingly enough, and hurried his dressing because he remembered what Ernst had told him. Then he followed the soldier downstairs, and found himself the prisoner in an impromptu sort of court-martial. ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... was without real artistic value, though undoubtedly pretty and graceful. It was a mere acted charade of the 'Finding of Moses,' got up impromptu as it were; the ladies being in ball-room attire, with high powdered heads, strung with pearls and surmounted with feathers; their silken dresses trimmed with laces, and frills, and furbelows; their faces well whitened and rouged, according to the mode ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... with him several times when he was one of the speakers after an important dinner. It was a rare treat to hear him. The effort apparently was impromptu, and that added to its effect upon his auditors. That it was thoroughly prepared I found by hearing it several times, always unchanged and always producing ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... Bohemian affairs we know of have been full dress gatherings, carefully planned and delightfully carried out; others have been impromptu, neither the hour, the place, nor the ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... long table at one end of the room is the crowd of American students singing in a chorus. The table is full now, for many have come from dinners at other cafes to join them. At one end, and acting as interlocutor for this impromptu minstrel show, presides one of the best fellows in the world. He rises solemnly, his genial round face wreathed in a subtle smile, and announces that he will sing, by earnest request, that popular ballad, "'Twas Summer and the Little Birds ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... Democrats, Socialist Revolutionaries, Anarchists, anybody, whatever they had to say, as long as they would talk! For months in Petrograd, and all over Russia, every street-corner was a public tribune. In railway trains, street-cars, always the spurting up of impromptu debate, everywhere.... ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... Captain of Cavalry had set out from Lyndalberg to Schloss Breitstein by the shortest way—across the lake in a smart little motor-boat—promising to be back in time for dinner and a concert, the Baroness spent all her energy in getting up an impromptu riding-party, which would give Leopold the chance of another ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... spend whole days in their company—I had done it—commencing quite early in the morning with a sleighing excursion, finishing up quite late in the evening with a little supper party, followed by an impromptu dance; and never detect from their outward manner that they ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... that separated the gardens from the adjoining fields. Molly, too, plucked away her thoughts from the seventeenth century; and, somehow or other, that one question, which had so haunted her before, came out of her lips before she was aware—a literal impromptu,— ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... contemporary narratives of events, many of which have, in the lapse of more than a century, developed into historical proportions, but which here meet us, as it were, at first hand, clothed in such homely and impromptu dress as circumstances might require, with all their little roughnesses, excrescences, and absurdities upon them,—crude lumps of mingled fact and fiction, not yet moulded and polished into the rounded periods ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... only getting up from his seat. How wonderful he is! I never heard anything more impressive in my life. After all, unpremeditated art is the greatest art. Such an effect as that could never have been produced except impromptu." ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... divided, and is set down before you in uncovered dishes. Of course, when you arrive at the last, it retains scarcely a memory of the fire. I saw some of the indigenes obviate the inconvenience, by taking fish, flesh, and fowl on their plate at one and the same time, consuming the impromptu "olla" with a rapid impartial voracity; but so bold an innovation on old-world customs would hardly suit a stranger. All liquors are rather high in price and lower in quality than one would expect, considering the place and season; but the sum charged for unstinted ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... summoned to speak up, I faced my patrons for the first time with a smile. "Very well," I said, "I will try, though I don't suppose anybody wants to hear, and I can't see why anybody should." Audience and lecturer laughed together till the tears ran down; vociferous and repeated applause hailed my impromptu sally. Another hit which I made but a little after, as I turned three pages of the copy: "You see, I am leaving out as much as I possibly can," increased the esteem with which my patrons had begun to regard me; and when I left the stage at last, my departing form was cheered ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... between two men on one side, and somewhere about two dozen on the other, had neglected to close the street door. The consequence was, that all the cabmen on the stand outside, and all the vagabond night-idlers in the vagabond neighborhood of the Snuggery, poured into the narrow passage, and got up an impromptu riot of their own with the waiters, who tried, too late, to turn them out. Just as the police were forcing their way through the throng below, Zack and the stranger had fought their way out of the throng above, and had got ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... began to rage with determined fury, and the entire force of cavalry was engaged in an obstinate fight with the advancing enemy. It was a bitter and savage affair. The men charged; dismounted and fought behind impromptu breastworks of rails; fell back only when they were pushed by the weight of the great column rolling forward; and for hours the whole field was a hurly-burly of dust, smoke, blood, uproar, carbine shots, musket shots, and the long threatening ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... part of Count Almaviva; Hortense, Rosins; Eugene, Basil; Didelot, Figaro; I, Bartholo; and Isabey, l'Aveille. Our other stock pieces were, Projets de Mariage, La Gageltre, the Dapit Anloureux, in which I played the part of the valet; and L'Impromptu de Campagne, in which I enacted the Baron, having for my Baroness the young ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... at the door and the middle bolt crashed. The flimsy impromptu barricade toppled, then swayed back into place and a shuddering sigh went up from the handful of white-faced men. One more drive, and ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... opportunity of enjoying this innocent amusement. A solitary dinner at Muriel House, in one of those spacious and lofty chambers, rather appalled Lothair, and he was getting low again, remembering nothing but his sorrows, when Mr. Pinto came up to him and said: "The impromptu is always successful in life; you cannot be engaged to dinner, for everybody believes you are at Jericho. What say you to dining with me? Less than the Muses and more than the Graces, certainly, if you come. Lady Beatrice has invited herself, and she is to pick up a lady, and I was to look ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... guess that's pretty good on the spur of the moment," he wheezed, and, taking his inseparable note book from his pocket, wrote the impromptu down. "I guess She'll like that-it rings spontaneous. She'll be tickled, tickled to death, when she knows what's behind it." He repeated it with gusto. "She'll dote on it," he added—the person to whom he referred being the sister of the American Consul, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... war-mad crowd had gathered about an impromptu speaker in the Ringstrasse, not far from the Hotel Bristol, in Vienna, one pleasant August evening in 1914. His theme was the military prowess of Austria-Hungary ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... postponed until the general returned. The correspondents watched him motor to the chateau where they were and were surprised to see tears in his eyes as he stepped out of the automobile and received the cordial greetings and congratulations of his staff. Von Kirchhoff, in a brief impromptu speech, paid a high tribute to the German troops which were holding the French and said the decoration was not his but his troops'. And in a broken voice he remarked that these soldiers were sacrificing their lives for the Fatherland, but were called "Huns ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... waiting, and so much afraid he would have to wait a while longer, as the old Lisbon coach and the mules, with their harness, were not put together so speedily, as the London turn-out of a fashionable lady. "I am to blame," she continued, "for not having looked to it before, for Antonio Lobo, my impromptu postillion, is less skilled in the management of my vehicle, than of the olive trees among which he has lived until he has taken the color of their ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... about like that—an impressionist water-color. Between the one picture and the other there were twelve or fifteen of the bric-a-brac things already mentioned; also an oil-painting by Elihu Vedder, "The Young Medusa." Every now and then the children required me to construct a romance—always impromptu—not a moment's preparation permitted—and into that romance I had to get all that bric-a-brac and the three pictures. I had to start always with the cat and finish with Emmeline. I was never allowed the refreshment of a change, end-for-end. It was not permissible ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... a small room on the right of the hall—a room in which the remains of a cold, evidently impromptu supper lay on a table lighted by a shaded lamp. Two men had been partaking of that supper, but Levendale was alone. He gave his visitor another queer smile, and pointed, first to a chair ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... a grassy bank, and ate the food Bart had purchased. Mr. Hardman seemed to be thinking of many things, for he hardly spoke during the impromptu meal, and, when he had eaten a couple of sandwiches he arose from the bank and wandered off a little way into the woods. When he ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman
... down from his impromptu platform and closed the ponderous doors. Then he hurried to the main office, where he notified the clerks what had happened. He returned to his private office. He arranged his papers methodically, closed the desk, and sat down. His gaze ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... yacht piano in the cabin. Villona played a waltz for Farley and Riviere, Farley acting as cavalier and Riviere as lady. Then an impromptu square dance, the men devising original figures. What merriment! Jimmy took his part with a will; this was seeing life, at least. Then Farley got out of breath and cried "Stop!" A man brought in a light supper, and the young men sat down to it for form's sake. ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... the maid, their backs to the logs, and watched the shifting groups of warriors. He told her of the arrival of the Big Throat, and of the confusion that resulted. Then for a time they were silent, waiting for the impromptu council to reach a conclusion. The warriors finally began to drift away, though the younger and more curious ones still hung about. A group of braves came slowly toward ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... Shadynook Hill and joined it. New fair-grounds had then been established in another and more centrally located section of the district. In the old grounds the boys of the neighborhood now went to fly their kites and model airplanes, to hold impromptu bicycle and foot races, and to play tag and hide-and-go-seek in the cavernous sheds and around ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... perceived me and my victim. Of course, I and my two friends were well received in the wigwam, though the chief was absent upon an expedition, and when he returned a few days after, a great feast was given, during which some of the young men sang a little impromptu poem, on the subject ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... elegance," as I tell her, "always is what we aim at." But still you could put out the best service, and arrange some flowers, and ask cook what there is for dinner that she could send us for lunch, and make it all look pretty, and impromptu, and natural. I think you had better stay at home, Cynthia, and then you could fetch Molly from Miss Brownings' in the afternoon, you know, and you two ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... hundred people came to these receptions, which finished with a supper, and it was understood that the free expression of opinion should be the rule; consequently several repressed members of both Houses delivered impromptu speeches, in the guise of toasts, before that select audience; much to the amusement of Senator North and the Speaker of the House. Burleigh's was really impassioned and brilliant; and Armstrong's, ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... this ejaculation, stepped back and rested his fat hands on his fat hips. As he surveyed the impromptu butler, a shade of perplexity spread over his oily face. He smoothed his imperial and frowned. This groom certainly looked right, but there was something lacking in his make-up, that indefinable something which is always found in the true servant—servility. There was no humility ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... myself, repeating the phrases I had used then—"there is no reason why I should not tell a ghost story. True, I had never done so before, but the literary attainments which have enabled me to perfect my recent treatise upon the 'Disuse of the Comma' are quite equal to impromptu experimentation in the field of psychic phenomena." I was aware that the young people themselves hardly expected serious acquiescence, and that, too, stimulated me. I cleared my throat in a prefatory ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... failed to attract the attention of the policeman of the quarter, if that worthy had not at the moment been comfortably ensconced in the neighboring "Rainbow" bar-room, listening to the improvisations of that talented vocalist, Mr. Harrison, who was making impromptu verses on every possible subject, to the accompaniment of a cithern which was played by a sad little Italian in a large cloak, to whom the host of the "Rainbow" gave so many toddies and a dollar for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... hurry, and with the fear before me of being thought to be prolix. But I had no power of combining, as a public speaker should always do, that which I had studied with that which occurred to me at the moment. It must be all lesson,—which I found to be best; or else all impromptu,—which was very bad, indeed, unless I had something special on my mind. I was thus aware that I could do no good by going into Parliament—that the time for it, if there could have been a time, had gone by. But still I had an ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... she reads the whole of the Herakles, which Browning here translates. Aristophanes, naturally, is not convinced; impressed he must have been, to have borne so long a reading without demur: he flings them a snatch of song, finding in his impromptu a hint for a new play, the Frogs, and is gone. And now, a year after, as the couple return to Rhodes from a disgraced and dismantled Athens, Balaustion dictates to Euthukles her recollection of the "adventure," for the double purpose of putting the ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... like this. Even the little psychology I know, I've heard about that. There's been talk about rockets to the Moon for years. You included something about that in your future-history fantasy, and then, after the event, you convinced yourself that you'd known all about it, including the impromptu christening ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... f-fellah to do who ith n't much of a sportsman just about this time? There 'th n-nothing particular going on in London. Evewything is b-beathly dull; so I thought I would just run down on the Southeastern Wailway to be—ha, ha!—Bwightoned up a bit. (Come, th-that's not bad for an impromptu!) ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... dpit de sa naissance! Ivan Matveitch, however, rarely talked of that time; but two or three times a year, addressing himself to the crooked old emigrant whom he had taken into his house, and called for some unknown reason 'M. le Commandeur,' he recited in his deliberate, nasal voice, the impromptu he had once delivered at a soiree of the Duchesse de Polignac. I remember only the first two lines.... It had reference to a comparison between the ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... minister, joined in song, bowed her head in prayer, should have been rebuke enough to any light conduct. It did seem to impress Arthur; for, looking at her uplifted face and shining eyes, as in her high, sweet treble, she sang, "Throw Out the Life-Line," he lost the point of one of Genevieve's impromptu jokes and failed to laugh in the right place. Genevieve noticed his lapse. She also noticed the reason. She herself was not a whit impressed by Missy's devotions, but she was unduly quiet for several minutes. Then she stealthily ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... of danger, your reporter forgot his habitual caution, and giving his Oar-ist a hearing, made all sail for the mark-boat. The tow-line was passed from the bows aft, and there attached to the boat-hook, held by your representative. Upon this impromptu clothes-line was crowded all the canvas, velvet, linen, and other dry-goods appertaining to the gallant captain and his self-sacrificing crew. The latter gentleman might have been seen under this gay cloud ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... Cedric came in at that moment, Dinah retailed their little plan for his benefit. Cedric was delighted, and voted Betty a brick. Any form of sociability was welcome to him—an impromptu garden-party in Malcolm's honour met with ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... be sketching from the cast, and on another an impromptu sketch projet, to be completed in an hour. In addition to these there will be competed for three of the larger and more important regular projets, such as were made last season by the Club, and for which two prizes are offered to those obtaining the first ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, No. 10, October 1895. - French Farmhouses. • Various
... overturned and the royal party barely escaped being drowned. One of the aids who accompanied them recounted the fact that the impromptu bath had cured the king's toothache which he had acquired over a rather hasty meal just before leaving the palace. "Had I witnessed the adventure," said the Marquis de Verneuil, "I should have proposed the toast: 'Le Roi Boit!" As ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... come from a little impromptu ball at Mrs. Ann Pitt's. I told you she had a new pension, but did I tell you it was five hundred pounds a year? It was entertaining to see the Duchess of Bedford and Lady Bute with their respective forces, drawn up on different ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... event was not to be signalised by a picnic. They had been picnicking all the summer, and it was felt that the zest of novelty would be wanting to that form of entertainment; so it was decided in family counsel that a friendly dinner at home, with a little impromptu dancing, and perhaps a charade or two afterwards, would be an agreeable substitute for the usual outdoor feast. Brian, Mr. Jardine Dr. and Miss Rylance, Aunt Betsy, and Ida Palliser were to be the only guests; but these with the family made ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... engaged in a fierce struggle, in which poor Harry learned, when too late, that his wounded shoulder was almost powerless. Meanwhile, the Canadian having been assaulted by three Indians at once, floored one at the outset, and immediately began an impromptu war-dance round the other two, dealing them occasionally a kick or a blow, which would speedily have rendered them hors de combat, had they not succeeded in closing upon him, when all three fell heavily ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... anxiety to please her distinguished guests speedily displayed itself in a very plentiful, if not very dainty repast. To the duckling, peas, and other delicacies, intended for Mr. Kneebone's special consumption, she added a few impromptu dishes, tossed off in her best style; such as lamb chops, broiled kidneys, fried ham and eggs, and toasted cheese. Side by side with the cheese (its never-failing accompaniment, in all seasons, at the carpenter's ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... gym Rachel asked her to stay and play basket-ball with "The Stars" in the place of an absent member. Naturally she forgot everything else and it was nearly six o'clock when, sauntering home from an impromptu tea-drinking at the Belden House, she remembered the order sheet. It was very dusky in the basement. Betty, plunging down the steps that led directly into the small room where the bulletin board was, almost knocked down a girl who was curled up on the bottom step ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... Whitehead's decease came near leaving a royal birthday unsung,—an omission scarcely pardonable with one of George the Third's methodical habits. An impromptu appointment had to be made. It was made before the Laureate was buried. Thomas Warton, the Professor of Poetry at Oxford, received the patent on the 30th of April, and his ode, married to fitting music, was duly forthcoming on the 24th of May. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... indeed a marked peculiarity, and innumerable stories are told of his dancing pirouettes, singing impromptu songs, and rhyming a whole company to their infinite amusement. Each one of his personal friends, in talking of him, says, "But if you could only have heard him" at such a time; but of course no one can repeat such unpremeditated jests, and the flavor ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... Improvisatore; "the same, though in a better dress, which I should not have thought would have made so much difference in your eyes, though it makes all the difference between man and man in the eyes of the stupid vulgar. My genius has broken through the clouds of misfortune of late. A few happy impromptu verses I made on the Count de Flora's fall from his horse attracted attention. The count patronizes me. I am here now to learn the fate of an ode I have just composed for his lady's birthday. My ode was to have been set to music, and to have ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... songs, his charming voice, his clever caricatures—for he had talent with his pencil—and his brilliant conversation, rather than to apply himself to routine work. His comrades used to lock him into a room to make him work, and even then he would outwit them by dashing off a witty parody or a bit of impromptu verse. Among his literary jeux d'esprit was an examination paper on 'Pickwick,' prepared as a Christmas joke in exact imitation of a genuine "exam." The prizes, two first editions of Pickwick, were won by W. W. Skeat, now famous as a philologist, and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... lay to see that it was kept up. The greater number of the juniors with whom the senior was found ragging, the more heinous the offence. Circumstantial evidence was dead against Charteris. To all outward appearances he was one of the players in the impromptu football match. The soft and fascinating beams of the simper, to quote Mr Jabberjee once more, had not yet faded from the act. A well-chosen word or two from the Headmagisterial lips put a premature end to the football match, and Charteris was proceeding on his way ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... the shoji were pushed open; and drunken men could be seen with kimonos thrown back from their shoulders showing a body reddened with sake. They had taken the geishas' instruments from them, and were performing an impromptu song and dance, while the girls clapped their hands and writhed with laughter. Beyond the tea-house, the din of the festival was hushed. Only from the distance came the echo of the song, the rasp of the forced merriment, the clatter of ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... Fields." It was a wanton fire on an unarmed populace that was protected against; and the protest was by men who involuntarily shrank from mob-law as they would from the hell of anarchy. They apprehended an impromptu collision between the people and the troops; they knew that an illegal and wanton fire on the people would produce such collision; the danger of this result formed, undoubtedly, a large portion of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... news of a wrestling match then taking place in an Eastern city. As we came up they broke into a cheer at the news that the American wrestler had defeated his foreign opponent. There was a discussion as to what constituted the "toe-hold," three boys ran an impromptu foot-race, there was some talk on the poor condition of the range, and the ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... the picture of suburban innocence, and pink and white propriety; to stand facing her audience for a second of time, motionless and in perfect gravity—it was a trick that, though Poppy never varied it, had a more killing effect than the most ingenious impromptu. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... arrival with his companions was a great day in the annals of the Mustang Valley, and Major Hope resolved to celebrate it by an impromptu festival at the old block-house; for many hearts in the valley had been made glad that day, and he knew full well that, under such circumstances, some safety-valve must be devised for ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... happened precisely as had been expected; but all were agreed that, after the very strong representations made by the English Consul, Jack need have very little apprehension of further annoyance from Alvaros. Then Singleton mentioned their impromptu visit to the yacht, and expressed to Milsom his great satisfaction at the state in which he had found both the vessel and her crew; and this, in turn, led to a further discussion of Jack's proposal that the entire family should indulge in a cruise, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... return home we met a party of Eesa girls, who derided my colour and doubted the fact of my being a Moslem. The Arabs declared me to be a Shaykh of Shaykhs, and translated to the prettiest of the party an impromptu proposal of marriage. She showed but little coyness, and stated her price to be an Audulli or necklace [26], a couple of Tobes,—she asked one too many—a few handfuls of beads, [27] and a small present for her papa. She promised, naively enough, to call next day ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... say that?" he asked. Edward looked at him. Mr. Beecher's face was tense. After a few moments he said: "That's generally the way with extemporaneous remarks: they are always dangerous. The best impromptu speeches and remarks are the carefully prepared kind," ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... Crevel without a word; and Crevel could not help smiling at the child's astonishment when threatened with this impromptu tubbing. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... I think how the railroad has been pushed through this unwatered wilderness and haunt of savage tribes; how at each stage of the construction roaring, impromptu cities, full of gold and lust and death, sprang up and then died away again, and are now but wayside stations in the desert; how in these uncouth places Chinese pirates worked side by side with border ruffians and broken men ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... written,'' writes Browning, "to illustrate Maclise's picture, for which he was anxious to get some line or two. I had not seen it, but from Forster's description, gave it to him in his room impromptu.... When I did see it I thought the serenade too jolly, somewhat, for the notion I got from Forster, and I took up the ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... which my father's learning and my uncle's services and the amiable qualities of your humble servant were neatly interwoven, delivered in a falsetto tone, as if learned by heart, though it must have been necessarily impromptu; and then, reseating himself, he made a gracious motion of the head and hand, as if to authorize ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fools is essential, and in which are furthermore introduced the lyrics of the Southern and Northern Palaces. These fairy songs consist either of elegaic effusions on some person or impressions of some occurrence or other, and are impromptu songs readily set to the music of wind or string instruments, so that any one who is not cognisant of their gist cannot appreciate the beauties contained in them. So you are not likely, I fear, to understand this lyric with ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... colloquy between the two boys, encumbered with their dresses, shy and awkward, and rehearsing their lines like a task, was no small contrast to the merry impromptu under the oak, and the gay, free grace of ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is where Stonnicker was arrested by a "special order" from the 6th Ohio, and tried by an impromptu court-martial, for selling liquor to soldiers. The mock-trial took place amid the most grotesque queries and absurd improvised telegraph dispatches—the hand-writing of the telegraphic dispatches being sworn to as that of the individuals from whom they were ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... too, in groups. The statues were fashioned in clay by amateur hands, and the artistic effects were original and novel, to say the least. It was also the safest place, this "Lounge," because it was sunk four feet below the level of the trench itself. It accommodated twelve easily. Impromptu concerts were frequent here; our far-famed mouth-organ band performed at such intervals as our own military duties and the enemy's cascades of shells permitted. It was here the names of neighbouring streams and nullahs were chosen from which we drew our daily beverage of "Adam's ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... not to you. 'Have you seen Mrs. Pontellier? How is she looking?' he asks. 'As Mrs. Pontellier says,' or 'as Mrs. Pontellier once said.' 'If Mrs. Pontellier should call upon you, play for her that Impromptu of Chopin's, my favorite. I heard it here a day or two ago, but not as you play it. I should like to know how it affects her,' and so on, as if he supposed we were constantly in ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... course it was she) trembled with excitement. This was really a chance of escape. She had seen the young huntsman from her perch in the pear-tree, and had made up the impromptu song. She thought it was even more original than her cooking. Now ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... my search." I consented, and he soon went, and was gone for at least two hours before he returned loaded with his findings, having taken his shirt off and tied the sleeves and collar up, and then filled his impromptu sack quite full. He had evidently carried his burden no small distance, for on his return the perspiration was running down as big as peas. "Tare an' 'ounds," poor Paddy said, for he was an Irishman, "I've got a ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... and his crew were kind to him; for men still have compassion upon one another, and give succor according to the need of the moment,—not to the balance of good and evil in the sufferer. The wind freshened, an impromptu, bowsprit was rigged, and the "Resurrection" limped towards New York. Manetho's partial stupor was relieved by hot grog and the cook's stove. He gave no further account of himself than that he had fallen overboard at the moment of collision; adding a request to be landed in New York, since ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... went away with his eyes shining and his heart elate. Once more "his foot was on his native heath." And the dignified "Bull," after a cautious glance around to make sure that no one was looking, indulged himself in the luxury of an impromptu Highland fling. ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... It has been suggested that you contribute to the discussion on Underwriting Overhead."—"The Executives Association plans a clambake and barbecue at the Barking Rock Country Club. Around the bonfire a few impromptu remarks on Business Cycles will be called for. May we count on you?"—"Will you address the Convention of Knitted Bodygarment Buyers, on whatever topic is nearest your heart?"—"Will you write for Bunion and Callous, the ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... shrewd comment on the follies and fashions of the day. Besides the written text Giovanni was wont to add some patter of his own, improvised according to the mood of his audience and the scene of the performance, but he ventured on very little of this impromptu comedy on such an occasion as this. Too ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... quartered at the Capitol, while the wounded were taken to the Infirmary, where their wounds were dressed at once, any material on hand being used. When the supply of handkerchiefs gave out, Clara Barton, as well as other impromptu nurses, rushed to their homes and tore up sheets for bandages, and Miss Barton also filled a large box full of needles, pins, buttons, salves and other necessities, and carried it back to the Infirmary, where she had her first experience ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... fired upon, the gun can always be brought back to its zero line by means of the aiming-posts. Absolute accuracy being essential, the aiming-posts are specially designed and are of a settled pattern. Judge of the two colonels' astonishment then when they perceived Dumble's impromptu contrivance. ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... illustration of Schubert's cleverness in treating the pianoforte, which is already sufficiently evident in the dramatic accompaniments of his larger songs, before mentioned, attention is called to the Impromptu in B-flat—the air and variations known as "The Fair Rosamunde," the title due to the appearance of this melody in his opera of "Rosamunde." At least three of these variations display great finesse in treating the pianoforte. The first needs ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... came downstairs with pretty little Rose clinging to her like a sort of impromptu bridesmaid; and meeting Ned's eyes as he stood at the foot waiting for her, she forgot herself, lost the little sense of shyness which was creeping over her, and responded to his look with a tender, brilliant smile. ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... what the result of such an experiment would be. I, to whom nature had denied the impromptu faculty; who, in public, was by nature a cypher; whose time of mental activity, even when alone, was not under the meridian sun; who needed the fresh silence of morning, or the recluse peace of evening, to win from the Creative ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Mr. Gryce's first thought. "He is going to show us the bow and confess to what was undoubtedly an accident." But Mr. Gryce felt more or less ready to modify this impromptu conclusion when, on passing through the arch himself he came upon the young man still standing in Section VI, with his eyes on the opposite gallery and his whole ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... sprig was hourly to be seen, even when university rulings forbade, dilly-dallying giddily along the campus paths or the town sidewalks with some new and pretty Skirt. And when Ramsey tried to fluster him about such a matter Fred would profess his ardent love for the new lady in shouts and impromptu song. Nothing could be done to him, and Ramsey, utterly unable to defend his own sensibilities in like manner, had always to retire in bafflement. Sometimes he would ponder upon the question thus suggested: Why couldn't he do this sort of thing, ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... before it, spelt to her something distinctly discomfiting, not to say indecent. And in this, far from being a romantic idealist, she was entirely right and realistic. This explains why her taste inclined more resolutely to the adventurous idea of love, to the impromptu element, to the wild ardour of first embraces that must perforce flee from the sight of fellow creatures, than to the kind of graduated passion which begins with conversation, proceeds to a public engagement with staring people all about you, and ends with ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... the Pilgrims on the largest of the blackboards, and Nancy had written a merry little story that caused great laughter and applause in the youthful audience. Gilbert had taken part in a debate and covered himself with glory, and Kathleen closed the impromptu programme ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... When the cook discovered his loss the other fellow was gone. These rascals said it was the best dish of ham and eggs they ever ate. Many houses had fine pianos and other musical instruments, and in some instances impromptu dances were on whilst Confederate shells whanged through the house above their heads. It is safe to say that there was little left of valuable bric-a-brac to greet the fugitive people on their return. And it is highly probable ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... wanders and has lost his way I am tired & old; I wish I were with Livy I am tired wanting for that man to get old I would not call her back if I could If I could only see a dog that I knew in the old times Billiards Impatient as the Creator doubtless was to see man Impromptu speech It was his habit to grow fond of his surroundings Jester, who for forty years had been making the world laugh Last and best of life for which the first was made Learned the meaning of grief Letter on inadvertant ...
— Widger's Quotations from Albert Bigelow Paine on Mark Twain • David Widger
... the train impressively, stowed his luggage around him and then took up positions outside the window, where, to the mingled curiosity and amusement of other travellers, they conducted farewell exercises. These included an entirely impromptu and unsolicited duet by Perry and Han, a much interrupted speech by Joe, and, finally, as the train moved out of the station, a hearty Dexter cheer with three "Neils!" on the end. In such manner ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... curve of her body in the dance. She understood and carried into effect the French technical terms. It was called gymnastic and interpretive dancing. There was about it none of the spontaneity with which a child unconsciously endows impromptu dance steps. But it was graceful and lovely. Hannah thought Joan a second Pavlowa; took vast delight in watching her. Taking Joan and Peter to these dancing classes was one of the duties that often devolved upon her. In the children's early ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... to make Lord Colambre laugh in spite of his better feelings and principles. This he saw, and this seemed to him to be her sole object; but there he was mistaken. OFF-HANDED as she pretended to be, none dealt more in the IMPROMPTU FAIT A LOISIR; and mentally short-sighted as she affected to be, none had more LONGANIMITY for ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... derisive, incredulous look on the young medical man's face which stung him into adding: "If I understand rightly"—he turned to Varick—"something very like what I should call an impromptu materialization took place in the hall ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... garden and the garret. If one with a prescient glance could have looked into that garret on some Saturday afternoon while our century was not far advanced in its second score of years, he might have found three boys in cloaks and doublets and plumed hats, heroes and bandits, enacting more or less impromptu melodramas. In one of the boys he would have seen the embryo dramatist of a nation's life history, John Lothrop Motley; in the second, a famous talker and wit who has spilled more good things on the wasteful air in conversation than would ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to allow herself the comfort of the window-seat in the bow, Elsie dropped down on the floor before one of the long, low windows of the adjacent side of the room, and gazing drearily out into the dusky street, tried to prepare herself for an impromptu scene with the coming guest wherein the matter of extraordinary dimples or sticky babies might come up at any moment and be skilfully parried. But stage-fright, confusion, and tears threatened imminently, like an ugly nightmare, and she said to herself there was ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... the locksmith was brought and the gate was forced. The whole party, hosts and impromptu guests, hurried through the narrow courtyard, entered the house without further hindrance, and were met by a strange spectacle. The valet had been seized with a sudden fit of madness and had smashed ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... swell when they perceived me and my victim. Of course, I and my two friends were well received in the wigwam, though the chief was absent upon an expedition, and when he returned a few days after, a great feast was given, during which some of the young men sang a little impromptu poem, on the ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... old regime by their hauteur so enraged the new regime that by the new year of 1815 it was seen by all except those in authority that the return of the exile, Corporal Violet, as he was now called, was inevitable. So it came about that on the 20th of February, his pockets stuffed with impromptu addresses to the people and the army, Bonaparte, eluding those whose duty it was to watch him, set sail, and on the 1st of March he reached Cannes, whence he immediately marched, gaining recruits at every step, ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... she knew a thing or two of which we were ignorant, and like one man we fell to desiring knowledge of those things. I was nowhere. Doctors never are anywhere in regimental competitions, for they are usually, like myself, deadly poor. Sometimes Bertha danced with me, as on this occasion, at the impromptu entertainments given by ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... the opening of the cage at that height, by Mr. Potter's voice melodiously belling a flourish of laughter on the other side of a closed door bearing his card. It was rich laughter, cadenced and deep and loud, but so musically modulated that, though it might never seem impromptu, even old Carson Tinker had once declared that he liked to listen to it almost as ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... Tobies, who were the essence of good nature, coached her so well and so vigorously that before long she was a capital player; and when once Toni realized that Owen wished her to be as hospitable as she could possibly desire to be, she rejoiced in giving little impromptu tea-parties on the lawn, under the shade of one of the noble elms which were a feature ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... soldiers. They were promptly overpowered, disarmed, and their muskets used in disarming their friends who were panic stricken by the vigorous onslaught, and soon succumbed to Jack's bellicose persuasiveness. It then became an easy task to carry out the impromptu plan of campaign of putting each soldier into his sentry-box and casting both him and the box into the running stream. The call for help was unavailing; none came, and soon no voices were heard, but the ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... breath as years prevail At this sad wicked world to rail, To slander all her sex impromptu, And wonder what ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... the two went off into the splendid fantastic nonsense that the wits loved to talk; that grotesque, exaggerated phrasing made fashionable by Lyly. It was like a kind of impromptu sword-exercise in an assault of arms, where the rhythm and the flash and the graceful turns are of more importance than the actual thrusts received. The two old ladies embroidered on in silence, but their eyes twinkled, and little wrinkles flickered about the ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... Countess, in particular, I consider to have been an example of sustained invective such as one rarely encounters in this degenerate age. Well, her next essay in creative composition is my supper, which will be an equally spirited impromptu. To-morrow she will darn and sew me an epic; and her desserts will continue to be in the richest lyric vein. Such, sir, are the poems of Lisa, all addressed to me, who came so near ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... the professors, and some dozen of Russia's celebrated musicians and writers. The meal over, Anton Rubinstein, originator of the plan, and Zaremba, his able co-adjutor, made brief speeches. There were one or two impromptu replies; a little discreet cheering; the customary toasts to the Czar and the persons and the subject in hand; and then Ivan, carried out of his usual shyness, proposed the health of the sister Conservatoire of St. Petersburg, which was ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... came near leaving a royal birthday unsung,—an omission scarcely pardonable with one of George the Third's methodical habits. An impromptu appointment had to be made. It was made before the Laureate was buried. Thomas Warton, the Professor of Poetry at Oxford, received the patent on the 30th of April, and his ode, married to fitting music, was duly forthcoming on the 24th of May. The selection of Warton ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... asked. Edward looked at him. Mr. Beecher's face was tense. After a few moments he said: "That's generally the way with extemporaneous remarks: they are always dangerous. The best impromptu speeches and remarks are the carefully prepared kind," ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... ever after. Many graceful compliments paid to her by the courtly earl testify to his admiration of her beauty and accomplishments. On seeing her wear an orange lily on the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne he addressed her in the following impromptu: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... local color. It was the Rome of sunny winters; the Rome of gay excursions over that haunted sea of the Campagna to pictorial points in the Alban and Sabine hills; the Rome of young artist life, which organized impromptu festas with Arcadian freedom, and utilized the shadow or the shelter of ruined temples or tombs in which to spread its picnic lunches and bring the glow of simple, friendly intercourse into the romantic lights of the poetic, historic, ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... of visitors last night! One would imagine they had all come by appointment, expressly to have an impromptu dance, which they certainly enjoyed, by the way. There was little Captain C——, the Susceptible and Simple, who so innocently says "I seen" and "I done it," without the faintest suspicion of the peculiarity, and looks so sweet, and guileless, and amiable, and soft, that I can't ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... Major, on'y got mo' meat to 'em. But you got to know 'em fust to eat 'em. Now dis yer shell is de hot plate, an' ye do all yo' eatin' right inside it," said Chad, dropping a spoonful of butter, the juice of a lemon, and a pinch of salt into the impromptu dish. ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... on the Death of a Friend Lines: to a Young Lady who had jilted her Lover Vicarious Martyrs: to a Hen-pecked Schoolmaster Stanzas: on seeing Lady Noel Byron To Louisa The Orator and the Cask The Maid of the War Impromptu: on being asked by a Lady to write a Verse in her Album Mary: a Monody On the Marriage of Miss Nicholl Carne Impromptu: on the Death of Mr. Thomas Kneath, a well-known Teacher of Navigation, at Swansea EXTRACTS FROM ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... little impromptu sketch had the desired effect. Melted by the woes of Belinda, or Sophia, or Amelia, or Lavinia Paget, Mrs. Sheldon was moved to relate a sad event in her husband's family; and encouraged by the almost tearful sympathy of the Captain, she again repeated ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... nothing except for claiming to have invented the pickling of herrings, which was not at all the fact. Towards the latter part of the century, however, the poor little open village had been fortified to such purpose as to enable it to beat off the great Alexander Farnese, when he had made an impromptu effort to seize it in the year 1583, after his successful enterprise against Dunkirk and Nieuport, and subsequent preparation had fortunately been made against any further attempt. For in the opening period of the new century thousands and tens of thousands ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... crushed, humiliated, relegated. Second place galled him. Why had this blatant, obtrusive, unpolished man of windmills been selected by Fate instead of himself to discover the sensational apple? He could have made of the act a scene, a function, a setting for some impromptu, fanciful discourse or piece of comedy—and have retained the role of cynosure. Actually, the lady passenger was regarding this ridiculous Dunboddy or Woodbundy with an admiring smile, as if the fellow had performed a feat! And the windmill man swelled and ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... at a small port where for a long time there had been only one lady, who was naturally regarded as the belle of the place. Presently a rival appeared, and with her two pretty, unmarried sisters; whereon my messmates and I forthwith gave an impromptu dance. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... stowed his luggage around him and then took up positions outside the window, where, to the mingled curiosity and amusement of other travellers, they conducted farewell exercises. These included an entirely impromptu and unsolicited duet by Perry and Han, a much interrupted speech by Joe, and, finally, as the train moved out of the station, a hearty Dexter cheer with three "Neils!" on the end. In such manner the Adventurer lost her cabin ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... was in his hand; the latter was, however, though reserved in a large society, particularly agreeable in a more select one. Some of his letters remain, in which he alludes to his want of that facility at impromptu which gave such brilliancy to the conversation of some of his brother wits and contemporaries. But, while we admit the truth of this, let it be remembered, at the same time, that when he wrote this, he was by no means young; that he criticised his own defects with severity; that he was ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... was comfortable enough, but by no means profusely furnished. It contained a small truckle bedstead, two chairs, and a washstand, but no attempt at pictures or ornaments of any description. Evidently it was an impromptu bedroom. My entertainer in a few minutes kindled a cheerful fire upon the old-fashioned stone hearth. Then, after arranging my bed and placing my candle on the mantelpiece, he wished me a respectful goodnight and withdrew. When he was gone I dragged one of the chairs towards the fireplace, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... no longer spoke to a lawyer named Peat; to which he replied, "I choose to give up his acquaintance—I have common of turbary, and have a right to cut peat!" An impromptu of his on a learned serjeant who was holding the Court of Common Pleas with his glittering ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... Mr. Dallas looked very wise on a certain occasion, his Lordship is said to have broke out into the following impromptu."—Life, Writings, Times, and Opinions of Lord Byron, 1825, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... of themselves, and the combined volume of their glad, amazed outbursts might be heard for a distance of furlongs. On prankish impulse then they locked hands and with skippings and prancings and impromptu jig steps they circled about him; and he, had he sought to speak, could not well have been heard; and, anyway, he was for the moment past speech, because of being entirely engaged in giving vent to one vehement sneeze after another. And next, above the chorus of joyous whooping might be heard ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... calculated to make all their pet corns ache?" I told him I did not know what he meant, that of course I should say nothing but the most pleasant things I could think of; that, in fact, I intended to read my speech, lest, in the agitation of the moment, I might overlook some complimentary impromptu little touch. Then he laughed and said: "Why, that isn't the way to do at all—in New York. It is easy to see you are a stranger, and don't read the papers. The correct thing nowadays is for the guest ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... he said at last. As an impromptu it would have served, but as the result of half an hour's earnest thought he felt that it did ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... fanatics. A California graduate, his companion along the cocktail route, recognized him; immediately, he was riding shoulder high. His bearers broke for the sidewalk, and down Market Street he went, a blue-and-gold serpentine dancing behind him. There was his first Jinks at the Bohemian club—an impromptu affair, thrown in between the revelling Christmas Jinks in the clubhouse and the formally artistic Midsummer High Jinks in the Russian River Grove. The Sire, noting his smile and figure, impressed him into service for a small part. This brought a fortnight of rehearsal which ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... surrounding me, formed themselves into a sort of triumphal procession. First went Iguma and her supporters, then followed four of my attendants, then I came with two on either hand, the rest bringing up the rear, all shouting and singing impromptu verses in praise of me, for I could tell by certain words that such was the case. The words were to ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... Mr. Ruskin's class. To tell the whole truth, I thought the experiment would be well worth making, if I only gained by it a single personal interview with the Oxford graduate, though I was doubtful about the quality of my impromptu skies. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... Eastern city. As we came up they broke into a cheer at the news that the American wrestler had defeated his foreign opponent. There was a discussion as to what constituted the "toe-hold," three boys ran an impromptu foot-race, there was some talk on the poor condition of the range, and the party began to ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... was, of course, confidential. But all that it did was presently done over again, with wonderful freshness and spontaneity at a large public meeting open to all citizens. There was a splendid impromptu air about everything. For instance when somebody away back in the hall said, "I move that Mr. Lucullus Fyshe be president of the league," Mr. Fyshe lifted his hand in unavailing protest as if this were the newest idea he had ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... warfare. He at once saw what would be the effect of the new departure. And so promptly and energetically did he denounce the "arch-apostate Egerton, alias Arnold, Ryerson" as a deserter, that he secured with little difficulty an impromptu verdict from the public against him. This he the more readily accomplished, by the aid of at least half a dozen editors of newspapers in various parts of the province, while Dr. Ryerson was single-handed. Not only did these editors join with great ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... distinction of scholars, girls, old men and women, and fools is essential, and in which are furthermore introduced the lyrics of the Southern and Northern Palaces. These fairy songs consist either of elegaic effusions on some person or impressions of some occurrence or other, and are impromptu songs readily set to the music of wind or string instruments, so that any one who is not cognisant of their gist cannot appreciate the beauties contained in them. So you are not likely, I fear, to understand this lyric with any clearness; and unless you first peruse the text and then listen ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the theme of every conversation. Every one had something to relate of his affability, his condescension, or his goodness. His bon mots, too, were in every mouth; and the Parisians, who at every epoch have been so addicted to wit, were so much the more enraptured with the impromptu good things which fell from Joseph's lips, that the Bourbons were ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... usual, they won him round, and departed one morning gleefully in the little toy train that runs out across the Gwebi Flats to the Eldorado Gold Mine. And to Diana's joy, they had a luggage-van fitted up as an impromptu saloon for them, and were able to spin along with both doors wide open, enjoying the air and the country. The Eldorado is the show mine of Rhodesia, having a native compound equal to any in South Africa, ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... said Pen meditatively, "if I hadn't better rig up something evening-like for the dance to-night. If you could let me borrow a white muslin curtain, I could easily rig it up into an impromptu dance frock." ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... your hand is one of sober certainty compared with that of old-fashioned fathers, like Mr. Tulliver, when they selected a school or a tutor for their sons. Excellent men, who had been forced all their lives to spell on an impromptu-phonetic system, and having carried on a successful business in spite of this disadvantage, had acquired money enough to give their sons a better start in life than they had had themselves, must necessarily ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... his work, his accuracy of aim was momentarily at fault. The Emperor rebuked him for having made an unwarranted boast and handed him over to the monono-be for execution. After the unfortunate man had been led away, one of his comrades chanted an impromptu couplet lamenting his fate, whereat the Emperor, relenting, bade a messenger gallop off on "a black horse of Kai" to stay the execution. The mandate of mercy arrived just in time, and when Mane's bonds were loosed, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... on the various bonfires, and then the boys mingled with the other students in having a good time generally. The cadets sang songs and danced around the fires, and then organized an impromptu parade up and down the river front and around ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... radiance of the moon slowly climbing the warm heights of heaven. It was so quiet that the sound of waves and insects seemed like the softest whispers of nature. Rose and Edward had rowed down the bay for Helene, who usually accompanied them on their impromptu excursions by lake and wood. Seen in the pale brilliance of sky and water her loveliness had an almost unearthly quality, perfectly akin to the night, but giving her a strange effect of soft remoteness from her friends. The light from a brazier, fitted into a stanchion in the ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... crowd, principally in the direction of Tucker's Lane, where the Green Man was situated. One bore, 'Down with the Tryanites!' another, 'No Cant!' another, 'Long live our venerable Curate!' and one in still larger letters, 'Sound Church Principles and no Hypocrisy!' But a still more remarkable impromptu was a huge caricature of Mr. Tryan in gown and band, with an enormous aureole of yellow hair and upturned eyes, standing on the pulpit stairs and trying to pull down old Mr. Crewe. Groans, yells, and hisses—hisses, yells, and groans—only stemmed by the appearance ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... out! hold tight!" for suddenly the slant of the deck was reversed, and they came coasting down to an impromptu ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... I never expected to see him again this side of the grave—that my charge would be one hundred and fifty dollars. He nodded, and indicating his pocketbook, told me to help myself, which I did, regretting not having asked for more. That night he died, and my impromptu will was forwarded to California and became the subject of a litigation lasting over eleven years and costing ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... heard one Christmas week that the House was going to give a party to which they might come. They arrived one afternoon, when, unfortunately, there was no party on hand and, although the residents did their best to entertain them with impromptu music and refreshments, it was quite evident that they were greatly disappointed. Finally it was suggested that they be shown the Labor Museum—where gradually the thirty sodden, tired women were transformed. They knew how to use the spindles ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... you much—the thing Is hardly novel to your life; And, sans the feast and marriage ring, You make a good impromptu wife. ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... After pronouncing an impromptu speech, composed for them by their father, and so stuffed with erudition that even the writer hardly understood it, they announced their wish to prove, by ocular demonstration, the truth of a science upon which their ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... looks! He is the life and soul of every party, and his impromptu singing after supper will make you die of laughing. He is meditating an impromptu now, and at the same time thinking about a bill that is coming due next Thursday. ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at the phone and she learned with great relief that Steve had been found. She insisted that Mr. Polk and the boy must come over to supper, after which there would be a little impromptu party ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... impulse, sudden thought; impromptu, improvisation; inspiration, flash, spurt. improvisatore[obs3]; creature of impulse. V. flash on the mind. say what comes uppermost; improvise, extemporize. Adj. extemporaneous, impulsive, indeliberate[obs3]; snap; improvised, improvisate[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Some of them came home early, I believe. But it was all kept quiet, because Aline Pearsall is such a little shrinking violet, I suppose," Mrs. Breckenridge said. "The Pearsalls are to think it was just an impromptu affair. Billy and Aline of course have no idea what a party it was. But Clarence says that poor Berry was worse than he, and a few of them are still keeping it up. It's ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... this man was the owner of several square miles of land, of which nearly every acre would produce corn, and, with a little trouble, all the common vegetables. The evening was spent in smoking, with a little impromptu singing, accompanied by the guitar. The signoritas all sat together in one corner of the room, and did not ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Katherine waited with the penknife ready. Even the hitherto irreproachable Maudie Heywood and Cynthia Greene were occupied with scissors, making plates out of sheets of exercise paper. Beds drawn up alongside the impromptu table served for seats, and the girls crowded together as closely as they could. Raymonde and Morvyth, by virtue of their expedition to the shops, were voted mistresses of the ceremonies, and dispensed the provisions. Sardines on biscuits were the first course, followed by canned peaches, ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... evening impromptu concerts were held, at one of which, on the fo'c'sle decks the pipers played "The 5th H.L.I.'s Farewell to Aboukir," composed by Pipe Major Thomson. Can its plaintive harmonies still be heard, or did they perish with him when he fell just ten ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... looked. Upon the page of folio, close to an illuminated capital, the black drop had flattened itself. Around the original sphere had been shed splashes of all conceivable shapes-rays, rockets, dotted lines, arrowheads, all the freakish impromptu of chaos. Next, the slope lending its aid, the channels had drained into one, and by this time a black rivulet was crawling downward to the margin. One or two readers near had risen, and now eyed me like examining magistrates. I waited for an ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... put on their skates and dragged Tess and Dot to school. Almost all the older scholars who attended school that day went on steel. At recess and after the session the Parade was the scene of races and impromptu games of hockey. ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... and consequent disbursements, flitted before the mind of the agitated Mr. Adolphus Casay. Ten o'clock came; Bunken seemed to snore the louder and sleep the sounder. What was to be done? why, nothing but to get up an impromptu influenza, and try his rhetoric on the presiding magistrates of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... weaving wreaths for our hats! Then a hand opens to show 'such a dear' young frog! Another brings an endless variety of caterpillars, &c. Then there come shrieks of delight from a group of boys who have almost caught a squirrel A rowing boat glides down the river, and the children strike up an impromptu strain—'Row, ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... intended for a toreador. Such minor troubles, however, were overcome in time. A razor and a hot bath were by no means the least important items of the rejuvenating process, and when the two men entered the salon where Dom Corria was holding an impromptu reception they looked like a couple of coffee-planters from the Argentine. Schmidt was there already. For some reason, the new President seemed to be so fond of the Unser Fritz's commander that he refused to be parted from him. It was not until long ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... their arrival in Utica, the greatest enthusiasm prevailed, and the elderly ex-President was welcomed by an old-fashioned torchlight procession. In response to many urgent requests, Mr. Adams made an impromptu speech from the steps of the Johnson house, and proved himself to be indeed "the old man eloquent." Although he was not far from eighty years old, he was by no means lacking in either mental or physical vitality. ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... endeavored to organize an impromptu card-party, but that, also, was a failure; and, although, as a rule, they had a little music after dinner, on this particular evening each one seemed indisposed ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... civilization as it spread over the shores of Asia and Europe. And as in writing a book he was careful first to plan out the scheme of it and the balance of the parts, so, however much his public addresses gave the impression of being largely impromptu, he had always thought out carefully every word he meant to say. "There is," he said, "no greater danger than the so-called inspiration of the moment, which leads you to say something which is not exactly true, or ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... across her vision. She saw herself begin a slow, sinuous dance: and stop suddenly in the middle of a figure, conscious that the dance was not impromptu, her own, but native—the same dance she had quitted but a few minutes gone. She had fallen into it naturally, the only expression of the dance she had ever seen or known, and that a stolen sweet. That was odd: when young ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... design it as a toy bass-drum for the children to bang on on the morning of the Fourth of July. I would make a solemn affidavit to the fact that the maker of a baby-carriage never dreamed of its possible use as an impromptu toboggan for a couple of small boys to coast downhill on in midsummer. Yet these things have been used for these various purposes in our own household experience. A megaphone can be used as a beehive, and a hammock can be turned into a fly-net ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... before her guest. Another knock was heard, and when the names of three more of the garrison officers were announced, Miss Elliott whispered to Billy a hasty message to some of her fair friends in the neighborhood to come in and help her entertain them. These impromptu parties were quite common, and in a little while the room was sparkling with beauty, gallantry and wit. It may seem strange that the patriotic belles of the day, the fair Brewtons and Pinckneys and Rutledges, the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... with that peculiar smile at the corner of his lips, "that I have not in any way tried to come the heavy father? I can even command a certain amount of respect, Margaret, for a young man who is able to inaugurate his engagement by an impromptu meal of such perfection. I wish you both good morning. Any invitation which Margaret extends, Ledsam, please consider as confirmed ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... such different lines from those projected, that the orator of the evening, when his turn came, found the night too far advanced for his ordered speech, which would in other respects have been beside the mark. He accordingly, impromptu, delivered quite another speech, probably better than the one laboriously prepared in the seclusion of the closet. In the hurry and excitement of the moment he forgot to warn the Sheffield editor, with the consequence that the other ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... better dress, which I should not have thought would have made so much difference in your eyes, though it makes all the difference between man and man in the eyes of the stupid vulgar. My genius has broken through the clouds of misfortune of late. A few happy impromptu verses I made on the Count de Flora's fall from his horse attracted attention. The count patronizes me. I am here now to learn the fate of an ode I have just composed for his lady's birthday. My ode was ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... Impromptu charades are frequently organized at friendly parties. Unless you have really some talent for acting and some readiness of speech, you should remember that you only put others out and expose your own inability by taking part in these entertainments. Of course, if your help ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... del arte." In Italy the commedia del arte was the continuation or revival of the mimus. The speeches were impromptu; the characters and roles were stereotyped. The action and speeches must have grown by the contributions of talented men who played the parts from generation to generation. The characters have become traditional and universal.[2135] Such were Maccus ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... utensils should arrive. Fifty stoves arrived from Pittsburgh this morning, and it is said more are coming. At both the depots where the supplies are received and stored a big rope line encloses them in an impromptu yard so as to give room to those having the supplies in charge to walk around and see what they have got. On the inside of this line, too, stalk back and forth the soldiers with their rifles on their shoulders, and by the side of the lines pressing against ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... and his guests partook freely, in commemoration of the day. At the opposite end of the room had been raised a sort of tribune for the orator of the day, but as it was intended the address should be impromptu, no name had been mentioned, nor could any one know, until the moment when the majority of voices should select him on whom the office was to devolve. In the fear entertained by each that he should be the party selected, the glass, to impart the necessary courage, ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... manner than ever, in this but a partial Congress, representing but a section of a portion of the people-in my judgment not representing the people of the United States at allto act as a grand jury, with a large portion of that grand jury excluded from the juryroom here; and suddenly, impromptu perhaps, a vote is to be forced this very day-to impeach the President of ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... toward her. Was this an impromptu tale, or was it a fact that this child had been coldly treated and unhappy? "You have a sensitive ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... make. Pope's presentation, too, was beautifully done. He told Sam how his friends all loved him, and that this pipe, purchased at so great an expense, was but a small token of their affection. But Sam's reply, which was supposed to be impromptu, actually brought the tears to the eyes of some of us, and he was interrupted every other minute with applause. I never felt ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... They had been picnicking all the summer, and it was felt that the zest of novelty would be wanting to that form of entertainment; so it was decided in family counsel that a friendly dinner at home, with a little impromptu dancing, and perhaps a charade or two afterwards, would be an agreeable substitute for the usual outdoor feast. Brian, Mr. Jardine Dr. and Miss Rylance, Aunt Betsy, and Ida Palliser were to be the only ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... simple impromptu plays, Cinderella, Blue Beard, Beauty and the beast, on the lawn outside the long windows. The lawn has been in bad condition for nearly two years, on account of the building of the Morgan memorial, but has now been planted again. One May-day we had an old English festival ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... next Saturday was made up in this impromptu fashion, without one of the members realizing what an important occasion that ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... not know Speed's answer, nor the final struggle of the man's heart. We only know that on November 4, 1842, Lincoln was married, the wedding being almost impromptu. Mrs. Dr. Brown, Miss Todd's cousin, in the same letter quoted from ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... she received the Venetian ambassadors, the grace and gallantry of her bearing were irresistible. Whatever she did was done well. Her high spirits never failed, her strength never seemed to tire. She could ride all day and dance all night. She could answer Gaspare Visconti's verses in impromptu rhymes, and keep up animated literary controversies with Niccolo da Correggio and Messer Galeaz, or discuss grave political questions with the duke in the wisest and most sagacious manner. "As usual," wrote her secretary Capilupi, "Madonna's gracious ways and lively conversation have ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... breakfast, a few days since, a distinguished member of Parliament, who has been much in America, remarked, with emphasis, that he had formerly entertained a high opinion of 'JUDGE LYNCH,' looking with much favor upon that species of impromptu jurisprudence known as 'Lynch law,' but since it failed to hang FLOYD, COBB and THOMPSON, of BUCHANAN'S cabinet, he had ignored and was disgusted ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... crowd had gathered about an impromptu speaker in the Ringstrasse, not far from the Hotel Bristol, in Vienna, one pleasant August evening in 1914. His theme was the military prowess ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... when the house party began to settle into its stride, he made occasion, aping the other servants, to peep in at a door of the great ballroom, where an impromptu dance had been organized; and was rewarded by sight of the Princess Sofia circling the floor in the arms of a boldly good-looking young man whose taste was as poor in flirtation as ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... out whether possibly there were any the least foundation for Mrs. Barclay's scruples and fears. But it was no longer in his power. The Caruthers family had altered their plans; and instead of going abroad in the spring, had taken their departure with the first of December, after an impromptu wedding of Julia to her betrothed. Mr. Dillwyn did not seriously believe that there was anything his plan had to fear from this side; nevertheless he preferred not to move in the dark; and he waited. ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... man of reading, and left at his death a choice collection of old English literature. I should judge him to have been a man of wit. I know one instance of an impromptu which no length of study could have bettered. My merry friend, Jem White, had seen him one evening in Aguecheek, and recognising Dodd the next day in Fleet Street, was irresistibly impelled to take off his hat and salute him as the identical Knight of the preceding ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... these reports were coloured partly by a desire to set Tischbein down. But there seems to be no doubt that Goethe liked Kniep greatly and rejoiced in the quantity and quality of his work. At Palermo, one evening, Goethe sat reading Homer and 'making an impromptu translation for the benefit of Kniep, who had well deserved by his diligent exertions this day some agreeable refreshment over a glass of wine.' This is a pleasing little scene, and is ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... liked these informal receptions, where the company was composed, for the most part, of really interesting, agreeable people. There was always music, generally by amateur performers; occasionally there was some other form of impromptu entertainment, an impersonation or a recitation. Throughout the evening there was the simplest sort of buffet supper: tea, bouillon—a claret cup, perhaps, and possibly chocolate, little cakes, and sandwiches; never more. But the princess was one of those hostesses ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... conflict in Amarilly's conscience before she convinced herself it would not be wrong to allow the impromptu choir to don the surplices ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... were up with the first streak of dawn. It was with some curiosity that I looked round at our impromptu dwelling and its surroundings, upon which we had descended in total obscurity the night before. The position of our camping-place was not badly chosen; we were just within the girdle of forest above which rises the grassy Alpen. About forty yards to ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... reprimanded General Wood, who had not been aware of what the Colonel intended to say. Indeed, the offensive remarks seem to have been extemporaneous, because, as it was too dark for him to read his prepared speech, he spoke impromptu. In any event, Secretary Garrison had due notice that Roosevelt was to speak, and if he had had any doubts he should have sent word to General Wood to cancel the engagement. The Administration made as much as it could out of this impropriety, but the public ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... attending these entertainments with her daughters, which to the young people afforded a cheerful break in the dullness and monotony of their usual life; for owing to the absence of almost all the young men with the army, there had been a long cessation of the pleasant interchange of visits, impromptu parties, and social gatherings that had formed a feature in the ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... would." Karlov set the candle on Kitty's impromptu stepladder. "We saw your interest in the affair, and attacked you on that side. You had seen me once. Being a newspaper writer—the New York kind—you would not rest until you learned who I was. You would not forget me. You were too well guarded uptown. You have been out ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... it was thought he was joking, but when at last, in his calm and dreamy look, they saw he meant what he said, they arose and carried him round the room on a chair, making impromptu songs as they travelled. They toasted Billy Rufus again and again, some of them laughing till they cried at the thought of Averdoopoy going to the Arctic regions. But an uneasy seriousness fell upon these "beautiful, bountiful, brilliant boys," ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... that "much could be said on both sides of the question," might now fairly be urged; for, according to the march of events, it is but too probable that the melodrama now enacting before our eyes has not been an impromptu; and it is quite clear that the ordonnances have furnished the occasion, and the excuse (if such were ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... then sat down and gazed at each other in strained and unnatural silence. They could find nothing to say to each other. Ordinary topics seemed to be precluded by their festive appearance and the formal nature of the occasion. Their informal meetings were usually celebrated by impromptu wrestling matches. This being debarred, a stiff, unnatural atmosphere descended upon them. William was a "host," they were "guests"; they had all listened to final maternal admonitions in which the word "manners" and ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... have cultivated in his younger days. He rode every morning; he practised every day at tennis and croquet; every evening he bowled; and every time some one sat at the piano and played dance music and the young people fell into impromptu waltzes and two-steps on the porch, he joined them and danced religiously with whomsoever he found to hand; usually ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... centre of an admiring group, tested the impromptu platform. He accepted a short riding whip handed up to him by Alf Warren with a truly professional flourish. Andy stood easy and erect, one hand on his hip. All that seemed lacking was the sawdust ring ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... an impromptu of his moved the town to laughter. At some dinner party it appeared the ladies sat a little too long; Oscar wanted to smoke. Suddenly the hostess drew his attention to a lamp the shade ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... would give. The wonderful woman had something smart and apt to say about each fresh contribution, and used it to screw up the general interest a notch further toward benevolent hysteria. With songs and jokes and impromptu exhortations and prayers she kept the thing whirling, until a sort of duel of generosity began between two of the most unlikely men—Erastus Winch and Levi Gorringe. Everybody had been surprised when Winch gave his first $50; but when he rose again, half ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... it into his head to have an impromptu dinner party. He brought home a few waverers to talk to them where they had no chance ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lanterns swung on crazily in the trees along the way by which the bridegroom was to have borne his bride; while Madame Grandissime prepared an impromptu bridalchamber; while the Spaniard bathed his eye and the blue gash on his cheek-bone; while Palmyre paced her room in a fever and wild tremor of conflicting emotions throughout the night, and the guests splashed home after the storm as best they could, Bras-Coupe ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... be said to have accomplished until Vanity Fair had come out. In inquiring about him from those who survive him, and knew him well in those days, I always hear the same account. "If I could only tell you the impromptu lines which fell from him!" "If I had only kept the drawings from his pen, which used to be chucked about as though they were worth nothing!" "If I could only remember the drolleries!" Had they been kept, there might now ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... returning home by a different way through the town again, which we entered just as the cathedral bell and the bells of all the churches were pealing the Ave Maria. On our return we found a fire lighted and everything illuminated, and by half-past eight we had a capital impromptu dinner served. Chinese Tommy, who waited on us, had decorated the table most tastefully with flowers. Macao is a favourite resort for the European residents of Hongkong who are addicted to gambling. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... of these verses, my friends? Is that piece an impromptu? said my landlady's daughter. (Aet. 19. Tender-eyed blonde. Long ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold pencil-case on a chain. Locket. Bracelet. Album. Autograph book. Accordeon. Reads Byron, Tupper, and Sylvanus Cobb, junior, while her mother makes the puddings. Says, "Yes?" when you tell ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... good reason to believe that Shakspere must have been an excellent trainer, however modest may have been his own native gifts as an actor. Moliere, like Shakspere in so many ways, was like him in being author and actor and manager; and in the 'Impromptu de Versailles' he has left us a most instructive record of his own methods of rehearsing his ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... Hunter was made use of against her. Having a most contemptible opinion of her Albina's understanding, and knowing that her young friend had too little capacity to be able to deceive her, or to invent a plausible excuse impromptu, Mrs. Beaumont turned quick, and exclaimed, "My dear, what could Lightbody be saying to you when I came up?—for I remember he stopped short, and you both ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... There was no snow, and by early afternoon clouds of dust were rising on every trail leading to the Y.D. The old ranchers and their wives drove in buckboards, and one or two in automobiles; the younger generation, of both sexes, came on horseback, with many an exciting impromptu race by the way. Y.D. received them all in the yard, commenting on the horses and the weather, and how the steers were wintering, and revealing, at the proper moments, the location of a well-filled stone jug. The faithful Linder was on hand to assist in caring for the horses and maintaining organization ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... eulogistic article on anything new that came out in the world of Art. For months Schlesinger sent me with this object all sorts of novelties, among which, however, I could not find anything that seemed to me deserving of praise, until at last, when I was at the Lake of Como, Schumann's "Impromptu" in C major (properly variations), the "Etudes symphoniques," and the "Concert sans orchestre" [Concerto without orchestra] (published later, in the second edition, under the more suitable title Sonata in F minor) came into my hands. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... given myself the trouble to pretend the slightest affection for her, and a certain coldness even has grown up between us, especially when we are alone.) But to-day I turn to her with a smile, and wave my hand for her to continue. "Go on, it amuses me to listen to your quaint little impromptu." It is singular that the music of this essentially merry people should be so plaintive. But undoubtedly that which Chrysantheme is playing at this moment is worth listening to. Whence can it have come to her? What unutterable dreams, forever hidden from me, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... brick suddenly fell among the collegians. More bricks fell among those engaged in an impromptu meeting of Humanity Firsters. Police whistles blew. A plate-glass window crashed. A collegian suddenly had a bloody face and a flying wedge of Maharajas scornfully cut through the formerly singing group, wielding belts and bludgeons for the honor of having ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... Council Bill he must have met and been seen by a hundred times more of his adherents than in any similar period of his leadership. People all over Ireland heard him not only on the public platform but in small addresses to deputations, in impromptu speeches at semi-public dinners, and all of this strengthened him where an Irish leader most needs to be strengthened—in the hearts of the people. The hold which he gained then stood to him during the years which followed and up to the outbreak of the war. But it could have been still further strengthened, ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... the cook discovered his loss the other fellow was gone. These rascals said it was the best dish of ham and eggs they ever ate. Many houses had fine pianos and other musical instruments, and in some instances impromptu dances were on whilst Confederate shells whanged through the house above their heads. It is safe to say that there was little left of valuable bric-a-brac to greet the fugitive people on their return. And it is highly probable that pianos and handsome furniture needed considerable repairing after ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... the morning whose dawn T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., had blithesomely hailed with an impromptu musicale and saengerfest on "Lookout There!" rock, and the football triumvirate were in togs. The squad, over in the bunkhouse, noisily donned gridiron armor for the morning practice, and the pestiferous Hicks was ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... brought and the gate was forced. The whole party, hosts and impromptu guests, hurried through the narrow courtyard, entered the house without further hindrance, and were met by a strange spectacle. The valet had been seized with a sudden fit of madness and had smashed the crockery, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... want a lot of Georgino's tempo this week," she said, "for Peppino and I have quite settled we must give a little after dinner party next Saturday, and I want you to help me to arrange some impromptu tableaux. Everything impromptu must just be sketched out first, and I daresay Miss Bracely worked a great deal at her dance last night and I wish I had seen more of it. She was a little awkward in the management of her draperies I thought, but I daresay she does not know much about dancing. Still ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... the last few years become familiar to everybody. We do not, however, as a rule make quite such a business of the schooling as is usual where the term is short, and study is the sole object. One regular lecture a day for four days a week is the rule, but impromptu lectures or debates in the evenings, got up amongst the guests, are customary. Moreover, frequent conferences on special subjects are held, either by allied bodies, such as the Committee for the Prevention of Destitution, or by a Group, such as the ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... habitual caution, and giving his Oar-ist a hearing, made all sail for the mark-boat. The tow-line was passed from the bows aft, and there attached to the boat-hook, held by your representative. Upon this impromptu clothes-line was crowded all the canvas, velvet, linen, and other dry-goods appertaining to the gallant captain and his self-sacrificing crew. The latter gentleman might have been seen under this gay cloud of drapery working fitfully but energetically to and fro. But 't was all in vain! ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... in hand, and terror and cowardice prevailed in his bosom alternately, like the hot and the cold fit of an ague. Courage was uppermost during the singing, which he accompanied through all its length with this impromptu strain: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Farnborough's advice, she spent the first day's lessons in questioning the different classes as to their past work, and so turned the hour into an impromptu conversation class. The ugly English accents made her wince, and she winced a second time as she realised the unpleasant fact that just as her pupils would have to prepare for her, so would she ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... ancient prophet, upon whom the Spirit of the Lord had come, "the Golden Shoemaker" turned and preached, from the living text of his besotted friend, a telling impromptu Temperance sermon to the motley crowd. The whole incident was quite unpremeditated. He had never dreamt that he would do such a thing as he was doing now. But that by no means lessened the effect of his burning words, which went home to the hearts, and ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... the alley. Not rarely they had for an appreciative audience the big chief himself, who looked down from his window, and the uniformed policeman at the door. Even the commissioners deigned to smile upon the impromptu show in breathing-spells between their heavy labors in the cause of politics and pull. But the children took little notice of them; they were too happy in their play. They loved my flowers, too, with a genuine ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... the dark stairway, he told of J. Pinkney Hare's evidently impromptu experiences in the public square, which had undoubtedly knocked from his mind all memory of his engagement at the seamstress's; and of the sudden recollection of it, which, there could be no question, was what had sent him and his new friend bursting ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... war and in the civil professions. At these gatherings, Mingo, bustling around and serving his guests, would keep the table in a roar with his quaint sayings, and his local satires in the shape of impromptu doggerel; and he would also repeat snatches of orations which he had heard in Washington when Judge Wornum was a member of Congress. But his chief accomplishments lay in the wonderful ease and fluency with which he imitated ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... There was always "a steady hum of laughter and talk, dance, song, shout, and the twang of musical instruments." It was "a scene full of life and fun, of jostling, scuffling, and racing, of clown performances and cake-walks, of impromptu minstrelsy, speech-making, and preaching, of deviling, guying, and fighting, both real and mimic." The colonel found great difficulty in getting men to work alone. Two would volunteer for any service. "Colonel," said a visitor to the camp, "your sentinels ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... scientific discourse is limited. In order to pursue a safer, easier course, these persons will present along with their ideas the perceptions and separate cases to which they relate, and they leave it to the understanding of the reader to form a proper conception impromptu. Accordingly, the faculty of imagination is much more mixed up with a popular discourse, but only to reproduce, to renew previously received representations, and not to produce, to express its own self-creating power. Those special cases or perceptions ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... enterprise, who freed his mind of its swaddling-clothes, showed him the dark holes of the business, taught him its dialect, took the mechanism apart bit by bit, dissected for his instruction the particular public he was expected to gull, crammed him with phrases, fed him with impromptu replies, provisioned him with unanswerable arguments, and, so to speak, sharpened the file of the tongue which was about to operate upon ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... "Oreste," and on the little fellow being interrogated about the classic authors, he replies to a lady, the mother of three charming girls, "Madame, Anacreon is the only poet I can think of here!" Another, of the same age, replies to a question of Prince Henry of Prussia with an agreeable impromptu in verse.[2240] To cause witticisms, trivialities, and mediocre verse to germinate in a brain eight years old, what a triumph for the culture of the day! It is the last characteristic of the regime which, after having stolen man away from public affairs, from his own affairs, from marriage, from ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Science Forever Seasonable Parody, A Several Unsavory Renderings Ship Ahoy! Sic Semper Epluribus, &c Sorosian Impromptu, A Song of the Returned Soldier Song of the New Babel Song of the Red Cloud Song of the Chicago Lawyer Song of the Mosquito Society, &c Spencerian Chaff Spiritual Susceptibility of Cats Spring Fever Spirit of the Navy Standard Literature Stridor Pentium ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... distance had been covered, the bar was reversed, the travelers holding an impromptu ceremony as the great vessel spun around its center through an angle of one hundred and eighty degrees. A few days later the observers began to recognize some of the fixed stars in familiar constellations and knew that the yellowish-white star directly in their line of flight was the sun ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... locally. The accompaniment—an easy change of chords—was played on the piano colla voce. And no one minded in the least a foot, more or less, at the end of a verse. The joke was the thing with the Madigans, and the impromptu rhyme that brought down the house was the ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... sailor, Eric was, strangely enough, not half so fond of a daily bath; but, as he said in excuse to his brother, this was perhaps owing to his having so many impromptu and unexpected douches on board ship. Most seamen, especially those of foreign nationality, have seemingly a horror of water for ablutionary purposes, ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... gone up to town to see Sara, who was a little ailing, and she and Uncle Brian were to return later. Gladys and Giles were to dine with us, and Max would probably join them. Aunt Philippa was very fond of these impromptu entertainments, but she had not extended the invitation to Mr. Tudor, who had called the previous day, and I had got it into my head that ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... accompanies me; and Huysmans, without looking up, and without taking the trouble to speak very distinctly, picks up the phrase, transforms it, more likely transpierces it, in a perfectly turned sentence, a phrase of impromptu elaboration. Perhaps it is only a stupid book that some one has mentioned, or a stupid woman; as he speaks, the book looms up before one, becomes monstrous in its dulness, a masterpiece and miracle of imbecility; the unimportant little woman ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... a happily-adapted recollection than the actual impromptu of a boy of nine. But another, in which, after a painful silence, he replied to the brutal enquiry of a ne'er-do-well relative as to when he meant to grow handsome, by saying that he would do so when the speaker grew good,—is ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... the details of the plot, Clinton's adjutant-general, Maj. John Andr['e], met him near Stony Point on the night of the 21st of Sept. In the meantime, the man-of-war, "Vulture," upon which Andr['e] had arrived, was forced to move farther downstream to avoid an impromptu bombardment by American patriots. As a result Andr['e] had to start back to N.Y. by land. He bore a pass issued by Arnold, but he made the fatal mistake of changing to civilian clothes. Technically, therefore, he was a spy. At Tarrytown he was challenged ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... late, ma'am," said Adelaide; "and I suspect it is some one for us. You know we never venture on impromptu visits, except to you, and our people know where ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... excited by our near approach to Jerusalem. There were several other travellers along the road, all bound for the Holy City. We occupied seven and a half hours on the journey. We passed two cafes on the road, impromptu donkey sheds, where we found good Turkish coffee and narghilehs; and there were shady groves, and fields of marigolds, poppies, and such-like. At last I reached the crest of the hill, and beheld Jerusalem beneath me. I reined in my horse, and with ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... room, he recognized the face of his little brother among a set of young Civil Service fellows, attaches, and cornets. They had no women with them; but they had brought what was perhaps worse—dice for hazard—and were turning the unconscious Star and Garter unto an impromptu Crockford's over ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... long and wandering impromptu prayer by somebody, a prayer which "Shirley" found disagreeable (since she herself was a churchwoman, and missed the burial service), the procession, containing twenty men and three women, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... bed, we still sat and talked in the "Officers' Mess," and recalled jokes of George Robey and Harry Tate, or hummed over the tunes we had heard at the last Queen's Hall concert. As the Captain had said, we wanted "taking out of ourselves," and it had just needed an impromptu concert in an old Flemish barn ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... gives us good reason to believe that Shakspere must have been an excellent trainer, however modest may have been his own native gifts as an actor. Moliere, like Shakspere in so many ways, was like him in being author and actor and manager; and in the 'Impromptu de Versailles' he has left us a most instructive record of his own methods of ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... there was some sport of a rare kind on foot; and we adjourned, Maignan, followed by four pages bearing lights, leading the way to that end of the terrace which abuts on the linden avenue. Here, a score of grooms holding torches aloft had been arranged in a circle so that the impromptu theater thus formed, which Maignan had ordered with much taste, was as light as in the day. On a sloping bank at one end seats had been placed for those who had supped at my table, while the rest of the company found such places of vantage as they ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... her along the corridor, the women following. Men with pack animals were gathering in wonder around the cases in the plaza, and through the portal they saw the impromptu bridal procession, and fell silent. The Americano appeared to have a hand in every game,—and that was a ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... masses on the boughs of the great cedar and the crenelated coping of the stone walls, and then into a larger court, where there was another cedar, to find the beautiful choir long ago turned into stables, in the first instance perhaps after an impromptu fashion by troopers, who had a pious satisfaction in insulting the priests of Baal and the images of Ashtoreth, the queen of heaven. The exterior—its west end, save for the stable door, walled in with brick and covered with ivy—was ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... presented to the king a remonstrance against a false return made at the Middlesex election. The king expressed dissatisfaction at the remonstrance, but Beckford presented another, and to the astonishment of the Court, added the following impromptu speech:— ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... this impromptu trip to the Centennial proved to be one of the most timely acts of his life. On the following Sunday after-noon the judges were to make a special tour of inspection, and Mr. Hubbard, after much trouble, had obtained a promise that they would spend a few minutes examining Bell's telephone. By this ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... do that; but one of these days he'll be in London. I suppose he goes to the Park sometimes; we'll go too, you'll introduce me—a little impromptu, and I'll see if I can't get him ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... shores of Asia and Europe. And as in writing a book he was careful first to plan out the scheme of it and the balance of the parts, so, however much his public addresses gave the impression of being largely impromptu, he had always thought out carefully every word he meant to say. "There is," he said, "no greater danger than the so-called inspiration of the moment, which leads you to say something which is not exactly true, or ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... was always happy to join in these impromptu musical assemblies, when occasion offered, although performing music was one of the few things which he never succeeded in doing well. He invariably played the viola on these occasions,—perhaps, as Schindler hints about Beethoven, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... over," went on Frederik, by hard mental calisthenics creating an impromptu suggestion, "to propose that we insert a full-page cut of your new tulip in our midsummer ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... Pat woke up, several times, and made things unpleasant by his wails. On the first two occasions, I got up and walked him about, singing impromptu lines to the tune of "weak and wounded," but the third time, Euphemia herself arose, and declaring that that doleful tune was a great deal worse than the baby's crying, silenced him herself, and arranging his couch more comfortably, ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... the essence of good nature, coached her so well and so vigorously that before long she was a capital player; and when once Toni realized that Owen wished her to be as hospitable as she could possibly desire to be, she rejoiced in giving little impromptu tea-parties on the lawn, under the shade of one of the noble elms which were a feature ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... rising, a man in the third row picked up the snake and handed it to the gatherer. The writer shuddered but did not realize that the impromptu gatherer was her son, so bronzed by a summer's archaeology field trip that she did not recognize him. Afterward he merely said, "It was a harmless bull snake, and the priest couldn't reach it; it's a shame for visitors to crowd up and get in the way unless they are ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... face fell. I had remarked on the occasion when I had lunched with him his evident fondness for the pleasures of the table. Cold, impromptu dinners were plainly ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... welcoming while his late captors were riding away down the cottonwood-shaded avenue. When he realized what he was doing he was as nearly embarrassed as a self-contained young lawyer could well be. But his impromptu hostess quickly set ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... he no longer spoke to a lawyer named Peat; to which he replied, "I choose to give up his acquaintance—I have common of turbary, and have a right to cut peat!" An impromptu of his on a learned serjeant who was holding the Court of Common Pleas with his ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... venison, and a thousand other things, mingled in inextricable confusion. In the wide fire-place, which was supplied with stones for and-irons, a portion of the lately slaughtered deer was broiling on an impromptu and primitive species of gridiron, which would have disgusted Soyer and astonished Vatel. This had caused the smoke; and as Verty entered, the old woman had been turning the slices. Longears and Wolf were already stretched before the fire, their eyes ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... ordeal in Europe, because of the cultivated taste and superior foundries for which that capital is renowned; and it is remarkable that both the great statues there cast from Crawford's models by Mueller inspired those impromptu festivals which give expression to German enthusiasm. The advent of the Beethoven statue was celebrated by the adequate performance, under the auspices of both court and artists, of that peerless composer's grandest music. When, on the evening of his arrival, Crawford went ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... driven from the homes in which they had believed themselves settled for life. The man Redgrave—he of the six feet two who had presented the address to Mutimer—was a powerful agent of ill-feeling; during the first few days he was constantly gathering impromptu meetings in New Wanley and haranguing them violently on the principles of Socialism. But in less than a week he had taken his departure, and the main ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... times a year, addressing himself to the crooked old emigrant whom he had taken into his house, and called for some unknown reason 'M. le Commandeur,' he recited in his deliberate, nasal voice, the impromptu he had once delivered at a soiree of the Duchesse de Polignac. I remember only the first two lines.... It had reference to a comparison between the Russians and ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... guests. From one room the shoji were pushed open; and drunken men could be seen with kimonos thrown back from their shoulders showing a body reddened with sake. They had taken the geishas' instruments from them, and were performing an impromptu song and dance, while the girls clapped their hands and writhed with laughter. Beyond the tea-house, the din of the festival was hushed. Only from the distance came the echo of the song, the rasp of the forced merriment, the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... reason for this honor,—and Eads had not by any means lacked even earlier appreciation in England. Three years before, at a meeting of the British Association, he had been urged, nay pressed, to deliver an impromptu address on his works, both completed and projected. Nevertheless, it was not until after the Mersey report that the Albert Medal was conferred upon him. This medal, founded in 1862 in memory of the Prince Consort, is awarded annually by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... though a little taken aback in the morning, and not ready with an impromptu reply to the Colonel and his cane, could not allow the occurrence to pass without a protest; and indited a letter which Thomas Newcome kept along with some others previously quoted by the compiler of the ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of August, 1878, I made a visit to Ohio, first going to Mansfield where I was cordially received. In the evening I was serenaded, and after the band had played several times I went to the steps of the hotel and made a few impromptu remarks, reported as follows by ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... greeted this speech from the Court, and the district attorney added his own tribute, while Silvia was given an impromptu reception by jurors, court officers and spectators. When this was over, and the throng that had surrounded her and her client went their way on the quest of new sensations, she found herself standing ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... be prolix. But I had no power of combining, as a public speaker should always do, that which I had studied with that which occurred to me at the moment. It must be all lesson,—which I found to be best; or else all impromptu,—which was very bad, indeed, unless I had something special on my mind. I was thus aware that I could do no good by going into Parliament—that the time for it, if there could have been a time, had gone by. But still I had an almost insane ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... had rested in the shade of a tree and had written two poems. One of these was the serenade which he would have roared out on the night air on a very recent occasion if he had had time to prepare it. It was, in his opinion, far superior to the impromptu verses of which he had been obliged to make use, and it pleased him to think that if things should go well with him after the interview to which he was looking forward, he would read that serenade to its object, ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... island. He had hardly returned from the marquee with the prize in his hand, when it began to be understood that Wiry Ben proposed to amuse the company, before the gentry went to dinner, with an impromptu and gratuitous performance—namely, a hornpipe, the main idea of which was doubtless borrowed; but this was to be developed by the dancer in so peculiar and complex a manner that no one could deny him the praise of ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... slang—Burschen, Bargee, Parisian, Irish, Cockney, and English provincialisms—was awful and wonderful. Nothing was better than to get our uncle on his 'genteel behaviour,' which, of course, meant exactly the opposite, and brought forth inimitable stories, scraps of old songs and impromptu conversations, the choicest of which were between children, Irishwomen, or cockneys. He was the only man, I believe, who ever knew by heart the famous Irish Court Scenes—naughtiest and most humorous of tales—unpublished, of course, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... how we 've wanted an automobile!" she cried, when the impromptu omelet in her lap had been banished into oblivion. "The rides we 'll have—and we won't be pigs! We ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... unostentatiously, and walked to a place well toward the front, and he entered unobserved. The street before the hall was full of arguing, gesticulating men. Inside were other loudly talking knots, sweltering in the closeness of the place. In corners, small impromptu meetings were listening to harangues not on the evening's program. Already half the seats were taken by the less emotional, more stolid men, who were content to wait in silence for the real business of the meeting. There was an air of suspense, of tenseness, of excitement. Bonbright ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... Adeline Fielding's mind was not the clever, calculating thing that, at fifteen, he thought it. Her one simple idea was to be happy and, as a means to that end, to have people happy about her. His father, or Anne's father, could have told him that all her ideas were simple as feelings and impromptu. Impulse moved her, one moment, to seize on the faithful, defiant little heart of Anne, the next, to get up out of the sun. Anne's tears spoiled her bright world; but not for long. Coolness was now the important thing, not Anne and not Anne's ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... to see you, Carol," she cries. "I have sent all the servants to bed, Eleanor, but told them to leave out some aspic and champagne, as I know the Hilliers starve their guests. What do you say to an impromptu supper party? It ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... could smile so gently at any youthful shortcoming, and the strong voice rang with a hope which sent fear and doubt skulking away in shamefaced silence. It was the brightest part of the day, this short respite, before mother, marshalling her young army, led them to the study-room. This impromptu lesson-hour was filled with a teaching so trenchant, that oftentimes, in these lonelier days, when perplexed in the intricacies of life's journeyings, a word spoken in some long ago summer morning, floats down the years and rises before ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... certain interposing web spun by the brain between the soul and things divine, so Abt Vogler interprets music on the other side—that of immediate inspiration, to which the constructive element—real though slight—is subordinate. In the silence and vacuity which follow the impromptu on his orchestrion, the composer yearns, broods, aspires. Never were a ghostly troop of sounds reanimated and incarnated into industrious life more actually than by Browning's verse. They climb and crowd, they mount and march, and then pass away; ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... me great pleasure to get your last letter, for these little impromptu effusions are the genuine letters. I rejoice that man and nature seem harmonious to you, and that the heart beats in unison with the voices of Spring. May all that is manly, sincere, and pure, in ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... to regard the rebellion of 1837 in Lower Canada as no less a fiasco than its counterpart in Upper Canada. There is no doubt that it was hopeless from the outset. {102} It was an impromptu movement, based upon a sudden resolution rather than on a well-reasoned plan of action. Most of the leaders—Wolfred Nelson, Thomas Storrow Brown, Robert Bouchette, and Amury Girod—were strangers to the men ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... share the profits of my search." I consented, and he soon went, and was gone for at least two hours before he returned loaded with his findings, having taken his shirt off and tied the sleeves and collar up, and then filled his impromptu sack quite full. He had evidently carried his burden no small distance, for on his return the perspiration was running down as big as peas. "Tare an' 'ounds," poor Paddy said, for he was an Irishman, "I've got ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... the reaction. Lusty cheers rose from all sides, helmets were tossed into the air, rifles were stacked, and impromptu cake walks and fox trots staged with ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... had been occupied by many an important personage. The walls were covered with names. Above some of them impromptu verses had been scribbled; others had perpetuated their profiles; and still others had drawn caricatures of those who had been the means of lodging them here. The guillotine also ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... sailor whose capture is narrated in the foregoing chapter, defended himself with a red-hot poker. In what may be termed domestic as opposed to public pressing, the use of this homely utensil as an impromptu liberty-preserver was not at all uncommon. Hot or cold, it proved a formidable weapon in the hands of a determined man, more especially when, as was at that time very commonly the case, it belonged to the ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... star men's thoughts and memories had been winnowed at last and the result spread before this impromptu council. Rovers and Terrans were briefed on the invaders' master plan for taking over a world. Why they desired to do so even the dolphins had not been able to discover; perhaps they themselves had not been told ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... Dick's dinner-party on an impromptu invitation, and the clock striking the appointed hour warned Edward it was time to be off; so, jumping up on a jaunting car, he rattled off to Dick's lodgings, where a jolly party ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... attract the attention of the policeman of the quarter, if that worthy had not at the moment been comfortably ensconced in the neighboring "Rainbow" bar-room, listening to the improvisations of that talented vocalist, Mr. Harrison, who was making impromptu verses on every possible subject, to the accompaniment of a cithern which was played by a sad little Italian in a large cloak, to whom the host of the "Rainbow" gave so many toddies and a dollar ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... had exchanged for the impromptu motor-truck, automobiles of the French staff, and as "Jimmie" Hare and I were alone in one of them we could stop where we liked. So we halted where an English battery was going into action. It had dug itself into the side of a hill and covered itself with snow and pine branches. Somewhere ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... an enthusiast,' she writes, 'but at present it is impossible to describe the admiration I feel for this exalted character.' She speaks of his voice 'which she could listen to with transport even if he spoke in an unknown language!' she writes a sonnet to him, 'an impromptu, on hearing Mr. Whitbread declare in Westminster Hall that he fondly trusted his name would ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... me; and Huysmans, without looking up, and without taking the trouble to speak very distinctly, picks up the phrase, transforms it, more likely transpierces it, in a perfectly turned sentence, a phrase of impromptu elaboration. Perhaps it is only a stupid book that some one has mentioned, or a stupid woman; as he speaks, the book looms up before one, becomes monstrous in its dulness, a masterpiece and miracle of ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... speeches to which the writer refers were the more notable because they were altogether impromptu. They were what we call "off hand." They were delivered in the face of mobs or other bitterly hostile audiences—a circumstance that probably contributed not a little to ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... Paul Dialyn at the Hague, together with a sketch of his harangue and of the reply on behalf of the States. Her Majesty and her counsellors therefore, knowing that the same envoy was on his way to England with a similar errand, may be supposed to have had leisure to prepare the famous impromptu. Moreover, it is difficult to understand, on the presumption that these classic utterances were purely extemporaneous, how they have kept their place in all chronicles and histories from that day to the present, without ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... conceptions to which the scientific discourse is limited. In order to pursue a safer, easier course, these persons will present along with their ideas the perceptions and separate cases to which they relate, and they leave it to the understanding of the reader to form a proper conception impromptu. Accordingly, the faculty of imagination is much more mixed up with a popular discourse, but only to reproduce, to renew previously received representations, and not to produce, to express its own self-creating power. Those special cases or perceptions are much too certainly calculated ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... common herd of London street musicians. With what an air of the drawing-room did he of the velvet coat help the singer into the cart, and with what elegant abandon and ultra-dilettantism did he light a cigarette, reseat himself at the piano, and weave Scots ballads into a charming impromptu! I confess I wrapped my shilling in a bit of paper and dropped it over the balcony with the wish that I knew the tragedy behind ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... were fashioned in clay by amateur hands, and the artistic effects were original and novel, to say the least. It was also the safest place, this "Lounge," because it was sunk four feet below the level of the trench itself. It accommodated twelve easily. Impromptu concerts were frequent here; our far-famed mouth-organ band performed at such intervals as our own military duties and the enemy's cascades of shells permitted. It was here the names of neighbouring streams and nullahs were chosen from which we drew our daily ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... later I had another experience of speaking from an impromptu platform; perhaps the most unique audience I ever addressed. It was at Merchant Taylors' Hall, when a reception was given to hospital nurses from all over the kingdom. My pencil perhaps can give a better idea of the sundry and various varieties of the "nursus hospitalicus" from the different nurseries ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... wild rush was made upon several of the soldiers. They were promptly overpowered, disarmed, and their muskets used in disarming their friends who were panic stricken by the vigorous onslaught, and soon succumbed to Jack's bellicose persuasiveness. It then became an easy task to carry out the impromptu plan of campaign of putting each soldier into his sentry-box and casting both him and the box into the running stream. The call for help was unavailing; none came, and soon no voices were heard, but the following day the funeral ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... is honest," was Mr. Gryce's first thought. "He is going to show us the bow and confess to what was undoubtedly an accident." But Mr. Gryce felt more or less ready to modify this impromptu conclusion when, on passing through the arch himself he came upon the young man still standing in Section VI, with his eyes on the opposite gallery and his whole frame trembling ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... was a little godsend. She was commanded and officered by high-class sailors and educated gentlemen. An entertainment that was gotten up on her, impromptu, at the Notch would be hard to beat anywhere. One of her midshipmen sang popular songs in French, German, and Spanish, and one (so he said) in Russian. If the audience did not know the lingo of one song from another, it was no ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... my bag in and I'll come to the theatre with you." The thought was impromptu, an evening with a bed-ridden woman was not exhilarating at ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Susanna Torrebianca?" She tried the name on her tongue. "Yes, for an impromptu, Torrebianca is n't bad. It's picturesque, and high-sounding, and yet not—not invraisemblable. You don't think it invraisemblable? So here 's luck to that bold adventuress, that knightess-errant, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... them, he sat himself sideways in a straight-backed chair and cheerfully endured the little man's impromptu essays in ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... and recalled jokes of George Robey and Harry Tate, or hummed over the tunes we had heard at the last Queen's Hall concert. As the Captain had said, we wanted "taking out of ourselves," and it had just needed an impromptu concert in an old ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... appear he confined his remarks within the smallest possible limits. Furthermore, Lincoln was not a reader speaker and rarely did himself justice without careful preparation. Writers on Lincoln have failed to note the severe criticisms upon Lincoln's impromptu remarks that appeared in the opposition press and in the English newspapers. Even as late as 1863 newspaper writers not opposed to him did not hesitate to refer to the plainness of the President's ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... picture of life. The whole story hung upon the great musical talent of the youthful hero. The hero skated to church through the streets, gazed down the long aisle where the worshipers were assembled (presumably in pews), ascended to the organ gallery, sang an impromptu solo with trills and embellishments, was taken in hand by the enraptured organist who had played there for thirty years, and developed into a great composer. Omitting a mass of other absurdities scattered through the book, I will criticise this crucial point. There are no organs ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... everlasting grin on. Had to live up to my name, you see, in spite of my naturally cantankerous disposition; But come this way, ma'am, I can see the hunger sticking out of those youngsters' eyes. We'll have a sort of impromptu picnic here and now, I'll tell my housekeeper to send ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of the circuits had given out completely, as sometimes happens with the electric light. Bell leapt on a table and turned the hall light out. A second later and he was dragging the long spare flex from the impromptu operating-room to the swinging cord over the hall lamp. With a knife he cut the cord loose, he stripped the copper wires beneath, and rapidly joined one flex ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... is on the sofa beside you, make her give you an account of Francis's play, Catiline, which he and Fanny, and Harriet and Sophy, and James Moilliet and Pakenham got up without our being in the secret, and acted the night before last, as it were impromptu, to our inexpressible surprise and pleasure. Francis, during his holidays with us in London, used to be often scribbling something; but I never inquired or guessed what it was. Fanny and Harriet, in the midst ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... many fancy fixin's she had donned fluttered in the air in gayest mockery. Eventually she was thrown however, but without the least injury to herself, but somewhat disordered in raiment. When I saw Bennett he was standing half bent over laughing in almost hysterical convulsion at the entirely impromptu circus which had so suddenly performed an act not on the program. Arcane was much pleased and laughed heartily when he saw no one was hurt. We did not think the cattle had so much life and so little sense as to waste their energies so uselessly. The little mule ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... effect upon the mind. They seemed, with their flower-pots and smoking chimneys, their washings and dinners, a rooted piece of nature in the scene; and yet if only the canal below were to open, one junk after another would hoist sail or harness horses and swim away into all parts of France; and the impromptu hamlet would separate, house by house, to the four winds. The children who played together to-day by the Sambre and Oise Canal, each at his own father's threshold, when and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... proper person has been chosen for Justice a great deal of fun may be caused by the impromptu ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... the distance had been covered, the bar was reversed, the travelers holding an impromptu ceremony as the great vessel spun around its center through an angle of one hundred and eighty degrees. A few days later the observers began to recognize some of the fixed stars in familiar constellations and knew ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... delayed. Taciturn periods fell upon them. Frank Merrill showed only a slight seriousness. Billy Fairfax, however, wore a look permanently sobered. Pete Murphy became subject at regular intervals to wild rhapsodical seizures when he raved, almost in impromptu verse, about the beauty of sea and sky. These were followed by periods of an intense, bitter, black, Celtic melancholy. Ralph Addington degenerated into what Honey described as "the human sourball." He spoke as seldom as possible and then only to snarl. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... reward. Proceedings at the Nottingham meeting were so protracted, and took such different lines from those projected, that the orator of the evening, when his turn came, found the night too far advanced for his ordered speech, which would in other respects have been beside the mark. He accordingly, impromptu, delivered quite another speech, probably better than the one laboriously prepared in the seclusion of the closet. In the hurry and excitement of the moment he forgot to warn the Sheffield editor, with the consequence that the other speech was printed in full and formed ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... unusual spirit and success. The brass-heeled boots stamped in perfect time, the furred caps waved, and the braided jackets glittered as the gay troop swung to and fro or marched to the barbaric music of an impromptu band. Jessie looked on with such longing in her eyes that Fanny, who was ill with a bad cold, kindly begged her to take her place, as motion made her cough, and putting on the red and silver cap sent her joyfully away to ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... well; must lay it by for use. Take "Virtue," for instance. "Virtue" offers a fine field for paradox, brought strictly up to date. Must jot down stray thoughts. (Good idea in the expression "Stray Thoughts." Will think over it, and work it up either for impromptu or future play.) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... in the possession of Mataafa. Another had been taken and lost as many as four times. Carried originally by a mixed force from Savaii and Tuamasanga, the victors, instead of completing fresh defences or pursuing their advantage, fell to eat and smoke and celebrate their victory with impromptu songs. In this humour a rally of the Tamaseses smote them, drove them out pell-mell, and tumbled them into the ravine, where many broke their heads and legs. Again the work was taken, again lost. Ammunition failed the belligerents; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he had threatened, he would soon find himself standing alone. She promised the gentleman that she would repeat to her husband what he had said, and as soon as he had gone seized her pencil and wrote the following impromptu, which serves well to illustrate her firm persistence in any course she believes right, as well as the ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... Barclay's scruples and fears. But it was no longer in his power. The Caruthers family had altered their plans; and instead of going abroad in the spring, had taken their departure with the first of December, after an impromptu wedding of Julia to her betrothed. Mr. Dillwyn did not seriously believe that there was anything his plan had to fear from this side; nevertheless he preferred not to move in the dark; and he waited. Besides, he must allow time for the work he had sent Mrs. Barclay to do; to hurry ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... looking the Image of Misery, as if he and repose had known nothing of each other since we had parted from him. He was, however, very anxious for our welfare, and hoped we had slept well on our impromptu couches. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... lost to sight. At first the methods were very crude. One man held a coarse screen of willow branches which he shook continuously above an ordinary cooking pot, while his partner slowly shovelled earth over this impromptu sieve. When the pots were filled with siftings, they were carried to the river, where they were carefully submerged, and the contents were stirred about with sticks. The light earth was thus flowed over the rims of the pots. The residue ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... English society and English talk. Let everybody take a lesson from the French! After which the lists were opened, so to speak, and Lady Dunstable, Meadows, the Dean, and about half the young people produced elegant pieces of translation, astounding copies of impromptu verse, essays in all the leading styles of the day, and riddles by the score. The Home Secretary, who had been lassoed by his hostess, escaped towards the middle of the ordeal, and wandered sadly into a further room where Doris sat chatting ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... The impromptu tragedian recited several lines in a declamatory tone accompanied by gestures to match. Delsarte listened without a sign of praise or blame. Then he rose, struck an attitude appropriate to the text, but perfectly natural, and, in his ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... little more than a closet and was not even furnished. A cot had been put in that very afternoon, but only to meet a special emergency. A long-impending conference was going to be held between him and his employers subsequent to closing up time, and he had planned this impromptu refuge to save himself a late walk to the stable. At his offer to pass the same over to the Demarests, the difficulty of the moment vanished. Miss Demarest was shown to the one empty room in front, and the mother—as being the one less likely to be governed by ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... party for the next Saturday was made up in this impromptu fashion, without one of the members realizing what an important occasion ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... that seventh day, a meal much too long drawn out for Lanyard's liking, and marked to boot by the consumption of much too much champagne, he left the main saloon the arena of an impromptu poker party, repaired to the quarterdeck, and finding a wicker lounge chair by the taffrail subsided into it with a sigh of gratitude for this fragrant solitude of ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... and The Hall, The Fly, Dipsas, and perhaps Demosthenes, suggest (4). A common form of exhibition was for a sophist to appear before an audience and let them propose subjects, of which he must choose one and deliver an impromptu oration ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... cumbrous affairs which called into requisition all the baskets, and boxes, and available conveyances of the invited guests—parties of which the aim seems to be, to collect in one favoured spot in the country, all the luxuries, and airs, and graces of the town—but little impromptu efforts in the same direction in which Mrs Grove had all the trouble, and her guests all the pleasure. Very charming little fetes her guests generally pronounced them to be. Arthur enjoyed them vastly, and all the more that it never ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... graces he should have cultivated in his younger days. He rode every morning; he practised every day at tennis and croquet; every evening he bowled; and every time some one sat at the piano and played dance music and the young people fell into impromptu waltzes and two-steps on the porch, he joined them and danced religiously with whomsoever he found to hand; usually Miss Hastings ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... incredibly brief space of time will return with an excellent likeness of the individual whom they design to represent, not merely as regards his ordinary physique, but in facial expression. Practice has made them quite perfect in this impromptu modeling. Chihuahua, if we may credit the historians, as well as judge by the remains, once had a ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... have read Vicar of Wakefield and some of Jane Austen—thoroughly artificial. Have begun Children of the Abbey. It begins with this "Impromptu" ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the comfort of the window-seat in the bow, Elsie dropped down on the floor before one of the long, low windows of the adjacent side of the room, and gazing drearily out into the dusky street, tried to prepare herself for an impromptu scene with the coming guest wherein the matter of extraordinary dimples or sticky babies might come up at any moment and be skilfully parried. But stage-fright, confusion, and tears threatened imminently, like an ugly nightmare, and she ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... these several periodicals. It was enough for the editor of the "Friendship's Offering" if he could gather for his Christmas bouquet a little pastoral story, suppose, by Miss Mitford, a dramatic sketch by the Rev. George Croly, a few sonnets or impromptu stanzas to music by the gentlest lovers and maidens of his acquaintance, and a legend of the Apennines or romance of the Pyrenees by some adventurous traveler who had penetrated into the recesses of their mountains, and would modify the traditions of the country to introduce a plate by Clarkson Stanfield ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... qualities of children, but they had some of the vices of untrained children also, and petty thefts and tiresome acts of disobedience, gave their master and mistress abundant trouble, and often necessitated a species of impromptu court of justice, in which Mr Stevenson distributed reproofs and meted out punishments to the offenders in the midst of a full gathering of the domestic staff, both indoor and out, who all looked up to him much as one fancies the desert herdsmen did to Abraham, or as in later ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... beginning an impromptu justification and defence—but Hannah was destined never to have her conviction shaken, for just then I heard a sharp rapping at the library window, and gathering up the fragments of my fashion-plate ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... quantities of fruit, especially peaches. His inordinate love of tea has almost passed into a proverb,—he has actually been credited with twenty-five cups at a sitting, and he would keep Mrs. Thrale brewing it for him till four o'clock in the morning. The following impromptu, spoken to Miss ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... would be willing to spend the night with him in Edstrom's cabin. Not one shrank from this test of sincerity; they all got their blankets, and repaired to the place, where Hal lighted the lamp and held an impromptu check-weighman meeting—and incidentally entertained himself ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... YOU think of these verses my friends?—Is that piece an impromptu? said my landlady's daughter. (Aet. 19 . Tender-eyed blonde. Long ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold pencil-case on a chain. Locket. Bracelet. Album. Autograph book. Accordeon. Reads Byron, Tupper, and Sylvanus Cobb, junior, while her mother makes the puddings. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... morsel of bread. For drinking, a large earthenware jug of water served the whole party. Yet this man was the owner of several square miles of land, of which nearly every acre would produce corn, and, with a little trouble, all the common vegetables. The evening was spent in smoking, with a little impromptu singing, accompanied by the guitar. The signoritas all sat together in one corner of the room, and did ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... voices exclaimed that it certainly would; the young girls adding that they could crowd a little closer together without feeling it any inconvenience, and the captain saying laughingly that impromptu beds would have to be provided in the saloon for Chester and Frank, and he would join them there, so leaving a vacant place for her with his wife; and with a little more persuasion Annis accepted the invitation, knowing that she could be well spared for a time from the large circle of brothers and ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... themselves, their music of triangle and cymbal, gave him quite a new pleasure. In some of them poetry seemed to approach the nearest possible to bird-song—to unconscious seeming through most conscious art, imitating the carelessness and impromptu of warblings as old as the existence of birds, and as new as every fresh individual joy; for each new generation grows its own feathers, and sings its own song, yet always the feathers of its kind, and ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... breath of the cedar swamp, when somehow the chat drifted to the subject of assaying and refining the precious metals. That was just where one of the party, Mr. D.W. Baker, of Newark, was at home, and in the course of an impromptu lecture he told the party more about the topic under discussion, and especially the platinum branch of it, than they ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... then that, with an air of impromptu, Thurston informed her of his own contemplated journey and voyage, and of his intention to go to Baltimore by way ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... forbid only one, and that because it was Protestant, was an insult to every American citizen. Even Wall Street forgot its usual excitement, and leading men were heard violently denouncing this cowardly surrender of Mayor Hall to the threats of a mob. An impromptu meeting was called in the Produce Exchange, and a petition drawn up, asking the president to call a formal meeting, and excited men stood in line two hours, waiting their turn to sign it. The building was thronged, and the vice-president called the meeting to order, and informed it that ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... in the recent revival of interest in quilts has been the springing up of impromptu exhibits as "benefits" for worthy causes, the raising of funds for which is a matter of popular interest. Does a church need a new roof, a hospital some more furnishings, or a college a new building? And have all the usual methods of raising money become hackneyed ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... my new wife away to the little "humpy," or hut, that had been built for me by the women. That night an indescribably weird corroboree was held in my honour, and I thought it advisable, since so much was being made of me, to remain there all night and acknowledge the impromptu songs that were composed and sung in my honour by the native bards. I am afraid I felt utterly lost without Yamba, who was, in the most literal sense, ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... will be between us," and this fact had made them feel very sad, for the Atlantic is a big thing and cannot be ignored, particularly in love affairs. It would have been better for the poet if he had accepted the bourgeois' invitation to dinner; friends, as I suggested, might have come in, an impromptu dance might have been arranged, or the rain might have begun again; something would certainly have happened to make them miss the train; and they would have been asked to stay the night. The widow did not speak French, the young man did; he might have arranged it all with ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... work, old boy," Andy gasped at length, in a whisper. "Best I ever saw in m'life, impromptu on the spot, like that. I saw you had the makings in you, soon as I caught your eye. And the whole, blame bunch fell for it—woo-oof!" He laid his face down again upon his folded arms and shook in all the ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... those two cheerful melodies, young Pedgift respectfully requested the rest of the company to follow his vocal example in turn, offering, in every case, to play "a running accompaniment" impromptu, if the singer would only be so obliging as to ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... the thing rather tame. In the whole hour and a-half there was not so much savage fighting, not so much damage done, as a couple of earnest, but unscientific men, who have no time to waste, will frequently crowd into an impromptu affair not exceeding five minutes ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... made short work of his impromptu meal. He seemed anxious to put an end to his housekeeper's affectionate interest in himself and his health, and to get her out of the room. She had nursed him nearly thirty years before, and the recollection ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... person must have tumbled to William as well, for he increased the revolutions to one hundred and forty per minute and broke into a shrill lullaby of his own impromptu composition:— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... of his coat, stripped his arm, and while I went in search of an impromptu lancet, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... moon slowly climbing the warm heights of heaven. It was so quiet that the sound of waves and insects seemed like the softest whispers of nature. Rose and Edward had rowed down the bay for Helene, who usually accompanied them on their impromptu excursions by lake and wood. Seen in the pale brilliance of sky and water her loveliness had an almost unearthly quality, perfectly akin to the night, but giving her a strange effect of soft remoteness from her friends. The light from a brazier, fitted into a stanchion in the prow of ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... instructed; and what he knew was this—that should the water in that transparent thing disappear, the evil spirit inside the boiler would get angry through the greatness of his thirst, and take a terrible vengeance. So he sweated and fired up and watched the glass fearfully (with an impromptu charm, made of rags, tied to his arm, and a piece of polished bone, as big as a watch, stuck flatways through his lower lip), while the wooded banks slipped past us slowly, the short noise was left behind, the interminable ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... the new trenches, Birdwood, Godley and I sat down on a high spur above Godley's Headquarters which gave us a grand outlook over the whole Suvla area, and across to Chunuk Bair. Here we ate our rations and held an impromptu council of war; Shaw, commanding the new 13th Division, joining in with us. All three Generals were in high spirits and refused to allow themselves to be damped down by the repulse of the morning's attack on the high ridge. They put down that check to the lethargy of Suvla. Had ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... were the first fact that presented itself to his senses; an uproar that pervaded the house, a novel tumult waking all the echoes; glimpses of flying figures pursuing each other with brushes and mops, and other impromptu weapons; one astride upon the banisters of the stairs, sliding down from top to bottom; another clinging now and then, in the pauses of the conflict, to the top of one of the doors, by which it swung ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... thought that she "belonged" a little more than this; her unusual self-possession gave the impression perhaps. He glanced at the attenuated Mrs. Percy Parrott, at Mrs. Sylvanus Starr, exhilarated by numerous glasses of punch, capering through an impromptu cakewalk with Tinhorn Frank, at Mrs. Andy P. Symes, solemn and as stiffly erect as a ramrod, trying to manage her first train, and Van Lennop's lips curved upward ever so slightly, but his voice had the proper gravity when ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... attack, and Cooke's brigade led the charge. The result was unfortunate for the Confederates. General Warren, seeing his peril, had promptly disposed his line behind the railroad embankment at the spot, where, protected by this impromptu breastwork, the men rested their guns upon the iron rails and poured a destructive fire upon the Southerners rushing down the open slope in front. By this fire General Cooke was severely wounded and fell, and his ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... after midnight when the party at Roselawn retired to their rooms. There had been an impromptu dance, following some spirited bridge, and there was more than the usual chaffing and laughter as the guests dispersed to the various wings of ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... unwound from one foot of the prostrate six feet seven and a-half several yards of snow-white muslin—the innocent cause of the disaster; and how, light as a bird, she sprung, merrily laughing, from the room, with the fluttering fragments of her cobweb dress gathered in an impromptu drapery around ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... the impromptu platform, Patricia's embarrassment dropped from her, and she smiled a ready acknowledgment to the shouts that demanded a dozen different songs ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... music. A melody occurs to the composer, which he certainly connects with no act of the reason, which he is probably unconscious of connecting with any movement of his feeling, but which nevertheless is the form in sound of an emotional mood. When he reflects upon the melody secreted thus impromptu, he is aware, as we learn from his own lips, that this work has correspondence with emotion. Beethoven calls one symphony Heroic, another Pastoral; of the opening of another he says, 'Fate knocks at the door.' Mozart sets comic words to the mass-music ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... as far as Peter got with his impromptu conspiracy. Suddenly he heard a voice behind him: "What does this mean?" It was a male voice, fierce and trembling with anger; and Peter started from his silken cushions, and glanced around, thrusting up one arm ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... pet weaknesses was having his wife and the staff photographed. Sometimes he appeared in the group himself, but on the whole he preferred impromptu snap-shots of himself chatting with wounded officers in the grounds. For these posed photographs Lady Patterdale arrayed herself in a light grey costume, with large red crosses scattered over it: and as Vane was strolling out into the gardens after lunch, he ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... of Cavalry had set out from Lyndalberg to Schloss Breitstein by the shortest way—across the lake in a smart little motor-boat—promising to be back in time for dinner and a concert, the Baroness spent all her energy in getting up an impromptu riding-party, which would give Leopold the chance of another tete-a-tete ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... too, where was the harm? The very fact that it need not be concealed made it a matter of course. Friday evenings were always ones of exceptional liberty. Callers of both sexes came, and the girls danced, had candy pulls, or any sort of impromptu fun. Once a year, usually in February, a dance was given, which was, of course, the event of ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... well now if instead of some of the provisions that are sent, cooking utensils should arrive. Fifty stoves arrived from Pittsburgh this morning, and it is said more are coming. At both the depots where the supplies are received and stored a big rope line encloses them in an impromptu yard so as to give room to those having the supplies in charge to walk around and see what they have got. On the inside of this line, too, stalk back and forth the soldiers with their rifles on their shoulders, and by the side of the lines pressing against ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... nonsense rhymes, in the writing of which Miss Mitchell was an adept. Each student would have a few verses of a more or less personal character, written by Miss Mitchell, and there were others written by the girls themselves; some were impromptu; others were set to music, and sung by ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... charming little faces than brightened on his arrival. The way in which he radiated good humor, intelligence, benevolence, told stories and jokes that kept the little company shouting with laughter, and finally rose and got off an impromptu piece of doggerel with exactly ten verses, and each child's name and some peculiarity brought out in a way to convulse even mammas and the maids, was as indescribable as delightful. I am not sure that he did not enjoy it more than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... said, "took it into his head to have an impromptu dinner party. He brought home a few waverers to talk to them where they had no chance of ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stage born. In fact, nearly stage-born, as my mother played her part almost up to the night I made my debut in the great game of Life. My childhood was spent mostly in the flies, and my earliest memories are of being propped up on an impromptu, triangular divan formed by a piece of wood stuck between two joists and covered with cushions; of watching my mother use lip stick and other make-up things; of hearing the warning knock and admonition: 'Thirty minutes, Miss Lamont;' (No 'Mrs.' in stage lore, you know) and later, ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... was singing an impromptu doxology, but the face of him—so well was that face trained to do his bidding—became tinged with disgust and disappointment. With two "real boys" he was talking; he knew them by the unconscious range vernacular and the perfect candor with which they lied to him about themselves. But not so ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... can scarce be quoted with their full effect beyond the circle of common friends. To have their proper weight they should appear in a biography, and with the portrait of the speaker. Good talk is dramatic; it is like an impromptu piece of acting where each should represent himself to the greatest advantage; and that is the best kind of talk where each speaker is most fully and candidly himself, and where, if you were to shift the speeches round from one to another, there would be the greatest loss in significance ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... blue and cold as the reflection of steel, threw into relief the two masses of armed men who formed a narrow passageway. At the end of this impromptu lane there was a post planted in the ground and beyond that, a dark van drawn by two horses, and various men ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... masse, he seized a chair, and swung it flail-like about his head. For a few moments, there was a crashing of glass and china, and a clatter of furniture and a chaos of struggle. At its center, he stood wielding his impromptu weapon, and, when two of his assailants had fallen under its sweeping blows, and Farbish stood weakly supporting himself against the table and gasping for the breath which had been choked out of him, the mountaineer hurled ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
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