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More "Laughable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cares?" she replied, a little defiantly. "The very idea of a duel of wits between those two men is laughable." ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his adversary said; and though I could not distinguish what it was, the tone did more to convince me of some degree of earnestness than aught beside. This character might be wrought into a strange portrait of something sad, terrific, and laughable. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... talesmen grew into the hundreds and the same extraordinary antipathy to hanging continued to manifest itself, it occasioned remark, then ridicule. It would have been laughable had it not been so significant. The papers took it up, urging, exhorting, demanding that there be a stiffening of backbone; but to no effect. More than this, the Mafia had reigned so long and so autocratically, it had so shamefully abused the courts in the past, that a large proportion ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... as she had done—and many had appeared thus—invited to Enckworth; and if not, why were they not? That Lord Mountclere admired her there was no doubt, and for this reason it behoved her to be careful. His disappointment at parting from her was, in one aspect, simply laughable, from its odd resemblance to the unfeigned sorrow of a boy of fifteen at a first parting from his first love; in another aspect it caused reflection; and she thought again of his curiosity about her doings for the remainder ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... Nicholas was becoming by reputation among the refugees abroad, was a proper person to be entrusted even with the highest secrets; but after a very little conversation with him the night before, he had seen how ingenuous the old man was, with his laughable attempts at secrecy and his lamentable lack of discretion; and so he had contented himself with general information and gossip, and had really told Sir Nicholas very little indeed of ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... funny wording of some of the signs out in front and in the lobby? We have noticed how audiences enjoy these funny signs which have been shown on the screen in The Literary Digest 'Topics of the Day.' Here are some of the most laughable ones mentioned: ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... at the faces of the villagers; black countenances drawn into all the contortions of fright, but the contortions of their bodies were more laughable still, as they came forward like naughty children, driven by the soldiers, putting their hands out behind to evade ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Laughable incidents either from history or illustrations from any source, must not be forgotten, for if the speech be more than a few minutes long they ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... intensity of the consciousness of individuality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state but the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words—where death was an almost laughable impossibility—the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life. I am ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said the state is ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... hands of Sophie's father, of her mother, of the heroine herself, embraces with sobs all the servants of the family, and repeats the same things a thousand times with a disorder which, even to Jean Jacques's rudimentary sense of humor, would be laughable under circumstances less desperate. Sophie, on the other hand is quiet, pale and sad, without tears, insensible to the cries ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... killed the good missionary, and cut off his arms and legs for a sort of stew, or "boyaw," thus falling directly into the trap set for them by the missionary society. The missionary stationed at the next town, who furnishes the society with the data, says it was the most laughable thing he ever witnessed, to see the heathen chew on those cork limbs. They boiled them all day and night, keeping up a sort of a go-as-you-please walk around, or fresh meat dance, and giving a sacred concert about ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... say cowardly, but disinclined to action, who finds himself engaged in a fight. Lever has used him a score of times (beginning with Mr. O'Leary in the row at a gambling-hall in Paris), and whether he runs or whether he fights, his efforts to do either are grotesquely laughable. Shakespeare puts that view of Falstaff too: Prince Hal words it. But Falstaff, the humorist in person, rises on the field of battle over the slain Percy and enunciates his philosophy of the better part of valour. Falstaff's estimate of honour—"that word honour" ("Who hath it? he that ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... help variously to win him out of his morbid wrestling to mental and spiritual health. A live book this, and to be commended very warmly. But there are one or two difficulties. Those grotesqueries of the tramp and the fantastically laughable adventures of Wriford in his company—do they mingle quite smoothly with the painfully realistic manifestations of poor Wriford's state? Can so dreadful a theme ride off successfully on so bizarre a steed? And then again, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... porter answered, that 'he was not there; but that dinner was ordered to be kept back, as he was every moment expected.' Thus directed, 'Father Arthur's' apology for delay was a humorous and detailed account of his expedient—the evening flew quickly away on the wings of eloquence and wit, and the laughable incident was long remembered and ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... It is laughable to consider what the Spaniards have told the natives concerning these leaves. These good people believe the leaves speak in obedience to the command of the Spaniards. An islander had been sent by a Spaniard of Santo Domingo, the capital of Hispaniola, to one of his friends living in the interior ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... the messenger reported, be happy here, and also his journey to another life and return to this, instead of being rough and underground, would be smooth and heavenly. Most curious, he said, was the spectacle—sad and laughable and strange; for the choice of the souls was in most cases based on their experience of a previous life. There he saw the soul which had once been Orpheus choosing the life of a swan out of enmity to the ...
— The Republic • Plato
... His groom was a Chasseur, mine a Pole; but neither could ride Fairy, unless she happened to be in a very gracious mood. Lord Dalhousie's English coachman afterwards tried his hand at taming her, but all in vain. In an easy quiet way, she either sent her rider over her head, or by a laughable manoeuvre sitting down like a dog on her haunches, slipped him off the other way. Her drollery made the poor men so fond of her that she was rarely chastised; and such a wilful, intractable wild Arab it would be hard ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... had gone in for an examination at the Hotel de Ville, and had gained a certificate: People thought it was very ridiculous. What was the good of so much learning for a girl who would have such a large fortune, and who would never know want. Savinien thought it was affectation and most laughable! Madame Desvarennes thought it was most interesting; she liked workers, and considered that the richer people were, the more reason they had to work. Herzog had allowed his daughter to please herself ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... who loads the dice— for all my old comrades, the better men, are dead, and I, the least of them all, remain, having even outlived the cause. What praise shall I take for this? None—from all decent fellows of the earth, none at all. It is merely laughable that I should be left, the monument of a sacred loyalty greater than ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... it. But that was not what happened at all. Instead, she just went limp in his arms, and the sobs that shook her seemed to be meeting no resistance whatever. It wasn't like her to work herself up in that way over trifles, either; yet, surely a trifle was all this could be called—a laughable mistake he couldn't help loving her for, or a touching demonstration of affection that he couldn't help smiling at. Either way you took it, it was nothing to make a scene about. Where was her sense ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the gods, and thus reduce himself to the level of a common subject? Never! Let all the gods hear it! Never! 'Driven from among men!' Who shall be able to drive Nebuchadnezzar? 'Eat grass as oxen!' O, ye gods, is not that laughable? And yet I cannot laugh! Let it come! I fear not the gods! Ah, do I not? I fear not the gods, but still I have a dread of that one God. I destroyed his temple, I plundered his sanctuary, I carried his vessels to the house of my god, ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... the attitude of the scientists of the nineteenth century to the Old Dominant. We do not insist that our data and interpretations shall be as shocking, grotesque, evil, ridiculous, childish, insincere, laughable, ignorant to nineteenth-centuryites as were their data and interpretations to the medieval-minded. We ask only whether data and interpretations correlate. If they do, they are acceptable, perhaps only for a short time, or as nuclei, or scaffolding, or preliminary ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... though it were a sudden clap of thunder. But it was worse. It was laughable, yes, but oh, ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... It was laughable to see how the eyes of some of the scouts seemed to almost stick out of their heads when they listened to how Paul first discovered the moving object up in the big oak. They turned their heads, and looked up eagerly, as though half expecting to see another monkey-like form ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... drama—brandy, whisky-punch, and, latterly, toddy, overflow every page. Two things are rather marvellous,—first, that a man should live so long drunk, and, next, that he should have found a sober biographer. There are some very laughable things in it, nevertheless;—but the pints he swallowed, and the parts he performed, are ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... the majestic stream that then rolled between them. I had now a new-band of horses numbering altogether nine head, but three of them were wild brood mares that had never before been in harness, and laughable was the scene that ensued at starting. The snow was now sufficiently deep to prevent wheels running with ease, so we substituted two small horse-sleds for the Red River cart, and into these sleds the wild mares were put. At first they refused to ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... more or less unrestrained moods. At all events, the excuse of gaiety of heart—the plea of that vieil esprit Gaulois which is so often, and very rarely without need, invoked in an exculpatory capacity by modern French criticism—is the best defence ever made for Chaucer's laughable irregularities, either by his apologists or by himself. "Men should not," he says, and says very truly, "make earnest of game." But when he audaciously defends himself against the charge of impropriety by declaring that he must tell stories ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... commencement of this ludicrous exhibition, but her thoughts were not long in recurring to a subject in which she felt a nearer and a more tender interest. Sigismund walked thoughtfully at her side, and she profited by the attention of all around them being drawn to the laughable dialogue just mentioned, to renew the subject that had been so lightly touched ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... possession of the absolute truth. Of this he is so entirely sure that everyone who contradicts him seems to him an execrable monster and a public enemy. He does not suspect for a moment that after all his personal views are only hypotheses, and that he is all the more laughable for claiming a Divine right for them precisely because they deny divinity. Or, at least, they profess to do so; but they re-establish it in another shape, which immediately makes one regret the old. M. A—— is a sectary of the ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... kind of desperate haste ("Do you remember that row with Dickson about my hair, Robert?") had crumbled, after a moment's apparent vitality, into a heap of dust. It was all too utterly dead—too unreal to both of them. The things that had mattered so much, which had seemed so laughable or so tragic, were like the repetition of a story in which they could only force a polite interest. Their laughter, their ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... deck, my old friend Oscar greeted me with his usual joyous bark, and with the sagacity peculiar to his species, proceeded to shew me all the damage done to the vessel during the night. It was laughable to watch the motions of the poor brute, as he ran from place to place, stopping before, or jumping upon, every fractured portion of the deck, and barking out his indignation at the ruinous condition in which he found his marine home. Oscar had made eleven voyages in the Anne, and had ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... stories and is in his happiest vein of laughing satire. This travesty on the conventional traditions of the wraith is preposterously delightful, one of the cleverest ghost stories in our language. Zangwill has written engagingly of spooks, with a laughable story about Samuel Johnson. And there are others. But the fact remains that in spite of conceded and admirable examples, the humorous ghost story is for the most part American in creation and spirit. ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... first occurred, you know where the most educated and the least educated people are. Schopenhauer says that the intelligent man finds everything funny, the logical man nothing; and according to Erdmann (in ber die Dummheit), the distressing or laughable characteristics of an object, shows not its nature, but the nature of the observer. It would seem that the criminalist might save himself much work by observing the laughter of his subjects. The embarrassed, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... laughable side of the affair, but, to me at least, it has also a serious one; for, to my considerable embarrassment and distress, I find that my well-meaning attempt to point out the advantages of literature as a profession has received ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... in fact!" cried Elizabeth, clapping her little hands. "How will Munnich curse himself for cruelty which now comes home to himself! That is very witty in you, Herr Lestocq; very laughable, is it not, Alexis? But, Alexis, you do not laugh at all; you look sad. What is the matter with you? Who has disobliged, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... forded; icy mountain springs at which he had knelt and drank; deep wells from which he had thrown whole bucketfuls away after he had quenched what he then called thirst. Thirst! He never had known thirst. What he had called thirst was laughable in comparison with this awful longing, this madness, this desire beside which all ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... to be a sort of rule, that no old sailor who has not lost a limb, or an eye at least, shall be eligible to the office; but as the kind of maiming is so far circumscribed that all cooks must have two arms, a laughable proportion of them have but one leg. Besides the honour, the perquisites are good; accordingly, all old quartermasters, captains of tops, &c., look forward to the cookdom, as the cardinals look to the popedom; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... catch it as it came down, sift the gold dust through his fingers, look at the funny image of his own face as reflected in the burnished circumference of the cup, and whisper to himself, "O Midas, rich King Midas, what a happy man art thou!" But it was laughable to see how the image of his face kept grinning at him out of the polished surface of the cup. It seemed to be aware of his foolish behavior, and to have a naughty inclination to make fun ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... related of our new saints and fashionable devotees. They would be laughable were they not scandalous, and contemptible did they not add duplicity to our ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... at this was mostly her own. It is not a laughable sight to see the comfortable fractions of Christian communities everywhere striving, with sincere, pious, well-meant, criminal benevolence, to make their poor brethren contented with the ditch. Nor does it become so to see these efforts meet, or ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... tried to get the pay for his picture, but the lady and her husband obstinately refused. Hereupon he transformed her into a Danae, receiving the shower of gold, adding other figures, such as a turkey cock representing the eagle of Jove, which rendered the whole work as laughable as it was uncomplimentary to its subject. It was exhibited in one of the expositions in the time of the empire, and no picture was ever ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... to affect me has often made me wonder, when I have heard Hogarth described as a mere comic painter, as one of those whose chief ambition was to raise a laugh. To deny that there are throughout the prints which I have mentioned circumstances introduced of a laughable tendency, would be to run counter to the common notions of mankind; but to suppose that in their ruling character they appeal chiefly to the risible faculty, and not first and foremost to the very heart of man, its best and most serious feelings, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... seems to the Northern mind—useless, absurd, and ridiculous. It appears to us as groundless and almost as laughable as the frantic and impotent rage of the Chinaman who has lost his sacred queue by the hand of the Christian spoiler. To the Northern mind the cause is entirely incommensurate with the anger displayed. One is inclined to ask, with a laugh, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... if, as you say, it isn't right that he should ask for it now, can we predict that it would be any more reasonable and expedient in the future? These idle fancies of ours soon pass away, Luther, and will look laughable and grotesque enough to us by and by. Life is so full of changes, and ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... me of his laughable experiences with coyotes. When coming home at night with a haunch of venison on his shoulder, a band of these gamins of the wilds would follow him teasing at his heels. Ishi would turn upon them with feigned fury and chase them back into the shadows or wield his bow as a ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... constitution and good luck, but he had more tricks in his bag. A cocktail or two, or several, I found, cheered me up for the foolishness of foolish people. A cocktail, or several, before dinner, enabled me to laugh whole-heartedly at things which had long since ceased being laughable. The cocktail was a prod, a spur, a kick, to my jaded mind and bored spirits. It recrudesced the laughter and the song, and put a lilt into my own imagination so that I could laugh and sing and say foolish things with the liveliest of them, or platitudes with verve and ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... of master and man, that were originally the great attraction, and perhaps are so still to some extent with the majority of readers. It is plain that "Don Quixote" was generally regarded at first, and indeed in Spain for a long time, as little more than a queer droll book, full of laughable incidents and absurd situations, very amusing, but not entitled to much consideration or care. All the editions printed in Spain from 1637 to 1771, when the famous printer Ibarra took it up, were mere trade editions, badly and carelessly printed on vile paper and got up in the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... beaten; kotos and samisens screeched and twanged; geishas (professional women with the accomplishments of dancing, singing, and playing) danced,— accompanied by songs whose jerking discords were most laughable; story-tellers recited tales in a high key, and the running about and splashing close to my room never ceased. Late at night my precarious shoji were accidentally thrown down, revealing a scene of great hilarity, in which a number of people ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... affected one like a man standing on his armpits. The capital of the Territory was composed chiefly of roofs and dormer windows, of squatty wooden islands in a boundless sea. The Church of the Immaculate Conception was a laughable tent of masonry, top-heavy with its square tower. As for cultivated fields and the pastures where the cattle grazed, such vanished realities were forgotten. And what was washing over the marble tombs and slate crosses in ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... calls her. And I says no, I never could of guessed it if she hadn't already told me; but I says I know it is Madam Peach Blossom, and that Jap maid sure is one funny little mite, thinking up a thing like that, the Japanese being a serious race and not given to saying laughable things." ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... what I make myself, or help to make with my Parson's son and daughter. We, with not a voice among us, go through Handel's Coronation Anthems! Laughable it may seem; yet it is not quite so; the things are so well-defined, simple, and grand, that the faintest outline of them tells; my admiration of the old Giant grows and grows: his is the Music for a Great, Active, People. Sometimes too, I ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... volume Miss Ailie knew that her sister's hold on life was loosening. "How bright the world suddenly seems," Mr. McLean read, "when there is the tiniest improvement in the health of an invalid one loves." Is it laughable that such a note as this is appended to a recipe for beef-tea? "It is surely not very wicked to pretend to Kitty that I keep some of it for myself; she would not take it all if she knew I dined on ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... have the 'new diplomacy' which is shouting what other people whisper—or keep to themselves—and le gros gourdin—the laughable big stick; it amuses us more than it impresses, I assure you." He regarded the girl closely and ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... a laughable incident occurred, as scores of these bluejackets and marines passed up Esquimalt Road. A squad or more might have been seen walking along, headed by a bluejacket playing a lively tune on a fife or tin whistle. One or two were dancing to the tune, when all at once the ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... Lincoln ever made was made there. He used to call the exercising "practicing polemics." As these clubs were composed principally of men of no education whatever, some of their "polemics" are remembered as the most laughable of farces. Lincoln's favorite newspaper at this time was the "Louisville Journal." He received it regularly by mail, and paid for it during a number of years when he had not money enough to dress decently. He liked its politics, and was particularly delighted ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... out-of-date implements cannot be replaced by modern ones, as it has been the custom to use the former. Even the carrying of heavy burdens on the head cannot be given up; woe to any one who suggests substituting the carrying of a basket! A laughable incident is told of a European gentleman who employed a number of men to carry sand; thinking to lighten their labor, he purchased wheelbarrows, but on visiting the scene of action a week later, he found the men with the barrows ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... of the colony to which she was about to emigrate, and of the manners and customs of the people among whom she was to find a new home, and of whom she had formed the most laughable and erroneous notions, many of her purchases were not only useless, but ridiculous. Things were overlooked, which would have been of the greatest service; while others could have been procured in the colony for less than ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... unordered, from the office of the paper in an office wrapper. You know that English papers may not now be sent abroad to neutral countries except direct from the publishing offices of the newspapers themselves. It is a precaution of the censorship, childish and laughable, for what is easier than to imitate official wrappers? I guessed at once, when I saw this unordered copy of Punch, that the wrapper was a faked one, and that it had come to me bearing orders from my superiors. I applied my chemical tests ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... a magazine of his own. But the whole of this period was filled with bodily and mental trials, of which it is painful to read. Yet within this period it was that he wrote some of his finest things, both laughable and serious. It is, however, to be remarked, it was now he reached down to that well of tears which lay in the depth of his nature. Always before, there had been misty exhalations from it, that oozed up into the sunshine of his fancy, and that took ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... stranger is puzzled which to choose; and when he has made up his mind, he finds it no easy matter to jostle through the countless rival conveyances which completely surround him. He is also sure to make some laughable mistake in entering the palanquin. It requires a certain tact to steady the vehicle as you throw yourself into it, or it is apt to turn over, like a tailor's swinging cot. Another ridiculous error which a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... in silence that he made as haughty as he could, but not so haughty that Trannel did not find it laughable, and he laughed in a teasing way that made Breckon more and more serious. He was aware of becoming even solemn with the question of his likeness to Trannel. He was of Trannel's quality, and their difference was a matter of quantity, and there was not enough difference. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... but soon Christophe was left without a doubt; they were laughing. The musicians of the orchestra had given the signal; some of them did not conceal their hilarity. The audience, certain then that the music was laughable, rocked with laughter. This merriment became general; it increased at the return of a very rhythmical motif which the double-basses accentuated in a burlesque fashion. Only the Kapellmeister went on through the ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... that we have now to reckon. Russia, France, Belgium, England, Servia, Montenegro and Japan are now involved in this battle for "freedom and culture," which means fighting against Germany, against the world which has given birth to Goethe, to Kant and to Karl Marx! It would be laughable were the situation ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... number of sizes, according to where he is to stand. All soldiers in retreat turn into tin soldiers; all bears in rout into toy bears; as if on the ultimate horizon of the world everything was sardonically doomed to stand up laughable and little ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... a little surprised at my thinking it a laughable name. It was to his mind a singularly appropriate one; he assured me it was not the only case he knew of in which the surname Found had been bestowed on a child of unknown parentage, and he told me the story of one ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... the slightest divergence of opinion in the British ranks as to the German infantry fire. "Their shooting is laughable," "they couldn't hit a haystack in an entry," and "asses with the rifle," are how our men dispose of it. The Germans fire recklessly with their rifles planted against their hips, while Tommy Atkins takes cool and steady aim, and ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... folks. You—you suspected of cattle-duffing. McLagan ought to be ashamed of himself. It's cruel in such a country as this. And the evidence is so ridiculous. Oh, Jim, if it weren't so horrible it would be almost—almost laughable." ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... permission, play forthwith the laughable comedy of 'The Three Grey Gowns,' by Master Thomas Heywood, in which will be spoken many good things, old and new, and a brand-new song will be sung. Now, hearken ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... others. It forbids a man to say of himself what it would be ridiculous to hear from another. Now solipsism in another man is a comic thing: and a mind, prompted perhaps by hell and heaven to speak solipsistically, is stopped by the laughable echo of its own words, when it remembers its bold sayings. Language, being social, resists a virgin egotism and forbids it to express itself publicly, no matter how well grounded it may be in transcendental logic and in animal instinct. Social ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... forthcoming pantomime, wrote: "It must be very short, very laughable, and very cheap." If the great manager-actor's requirements were fairly met, it is certain that the entertainment in question was of a kind very different to the pantomime of our day—a production that is invariably very long, rarely laughable, and always of exceeding costliness. Leigh Hunt complained in 1831 that pantomimes were not what they had been, and that the opening, "which used to form merely a brief excuse for putting the harlequinade in motion," had come to be a considerable part of ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... lawyer knew how to make the most of his learning among those who had none. Like many other gentlemen of erudition, he was grave to a proverb when the occasion required it, and would not be seen to laugh out of the prescribed place, though "Nestor swore the jest was laughable." He relied greatly on saws and sayings—could quote you the paradoxes of Johnson and the infidelities of Hume without always understanding them, and mistook, as men of that kind and calibre are very apt to ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... gone, and Otto knew the length and breadth of his miscarriage, and how he had done the contrary of all that he intended, he stood stupefied. A fiasco so complete and sweeping was laughable, even to himself; and he laughed aloud in his wrath. Upon this mood there followed the sharpest violence of remorse; and to that again, as he recalled his provocation, anger succeeded afresh. So he was tossed in spirit; now bewailing ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... displeased at what he considered an act of disrespect. The master of ceremonies was in consternation, and exclaimed with a look of horror to General Damuriez, "My dear sir, he has not even buckles in his shoes!" "Mercy upon us!" exclaimed the old general, with the most laughable expression of affected gravity, "we shall then all go to ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... of humour which has given him a free hand to produce those exquisitely subtle studies of character which are his especial province. As examples of what a humorous drawing should be they are well-nigh perfect. To Reynolds it is not enough merely to depict a laughable situation or superficially comic types. The humour of his drawings is inherent, not extraneous; his pictorial jests are self-contained, so to speak, and the printed legend beneath them is incidental only. Frank Reynolds produces a comedy where other ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... something not so very different, had suddenly stepped into his life, and he knew it. The something was dressed in white and had stepped out of a tree. It was almost laughable. This woman had come into his dreams. The very sight of her attracted him—or was it the manner of her coming? She was just like an ideal he had often made for himself. Few men meet even the one who looks like the ideal, but he had seen the reality—coming out of a tree. ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... to one whose ire is a great impediment and whose favour is productive of mighty fruits? No one should move his lips, arms and thighs, before the king. A person should speak and spit before the king only mildly. In the presence of even laughable objects, a man should not break out into loud laughter, like a maniac; nor should one show (unreasonable) gravity by containing himself, to the utmost. One should smile modestly, to show his interest (in what is before him). He ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... most laughable effect the raising of a whole host of phantoms, and when a State is so far gone that civic Fear is quite normal to the citizens, then you will find them blenching with terror at a piece of print, a whispered accusation. Bankruptcy, though they be possessed of nothing, and even the ill-will of ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... had done with the bundle, two of them came towards the inner cave and saw us. One put his long paw in to seize us; but Hastings gave him a slash with his knife, and the animal took his paw out again fast enough. It was laughable to see him hold out his hand to the others, and then taste the blood with the tip of his tongue, and such a chattering I never heard - they were evidently very angry, and more came into the cave and joined them; then ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... nor learned enough, to enter upon the discussion of those high themes which agitated the schools and universities, as Dante did one hundred years before. He tells us how monks and friars lived, not how they dreamed and speculated. Nor are his sarcasms scorching and bitter, but rather humorous and laughable. He shows himself to be a genial and loving companion, not an austere teacher of disagreeable truths. He is not solemn and intense, like Dante; he does not give wings to his fancy, like Spenser; he has not the divine insight of Shakspeare; he is not learned, like Milton; he ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... Selina, and my aunt? Papa and mamma dine out, but you know I am always your faithful Chesterfield Street." And so on. He has all the domestic accomplishments; he plays on the violoncello: he sings a delicious second, not only in sacred but in secular music. He has a thousand anecdotes, laughable riddles, droll stories (of the utmost correctness, you understand) with which he entertains females of all ages; suiting his conversation to stately matrons, deaf old dowagers (who can hear his clear voice better than the loudest roar of their stupid sons-in-law), mature spinsters, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and covered with long beards, rendered more visible by the darkness of the night, joined to the noise of the waves and the roaring of ferocious beasts, which we heard in the distance, presented a spectacle at once laughable and imposing. ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... leaving his home, how I had telephoned him from the hills, how I had taken a swim in the mill-pond, and especially how I had lost myself in the old cowpasture, with an account of all my absurd and laughable ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... friend of this pre-introduction phase of Julius—had, in fact, thought little enough about it. Perhaps her taking care to say nothing at all of it in his later phase was her most definite acknowledgment of its existence at any time. It was only a laughable incident. She saw at once, when she took note of that sofa seance, which way the cat was going to jump; and we are bound to say it was a cat that soon made up its ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... how a balloon may be made to take a fresh lease of life is supplied by a voyage of M. Testu about this date, which must find brief mention in these pages. In one aspect it is laughable, in another it is sublime. From every point of view ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... demanded. She had lapsed into the dazed, sleepwalking horror of this morning. She whispered, "It's not a toy. Rindy had one. Joanna, where did he get it?" She pointed at the shining thing with an expression of horror which would have been laughable had it been less real, ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... formed an enclosure or backyard. My horse was there, and I found my saddle in one of the rooms of the building, hidden under a blanket. I entered the corral through the back door of the house, caught and saddled my horse, and then led him out to the street. This was a very laughable manner of leave-taking. The house was cut up into a labyrinth of small rooms, just large enough for a horse to turn around in, and the doors were low and narrow. As I could not find the outer door, I led my horse successively into every ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... your senses," she said, and slipped her hand into his arm. "Come down into the garden: I like it in the twilight—and that pile of stones over there will not weigh upon our eyes; the trees hide it. Come, my Ange: tell me all your news, serious and laughable. I am glad you were helping your uncle; but I do not like you to ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... more affected than I was. However he arrived safely with his black face pale, dripping with perspiration and saying he was sick. What was most amusing was to see him hooking his legs one in front of the other on his way over, but I dare say I was equally laughable to anyone on terra firma. He told me afterwards "water all go down, and I go up and get sick and giddy." Another two miles over a low ridge and I got to Mozufferabad and put up at the Barahduree provided by the Maharajah for the convenience of ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... laugh over this deliriously humorous novel, that pictures the sunny side of small-town life, and contains love-making, a dash of mystery, an epidemic of spook-chasing—and laughable, lovable Galusha. ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... "Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the schools had disciplined and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once? Why may not even I have already ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... a very salutary law in every land where gambling is permitted, that no inhabitant of that land be allowed to play at the public table, and if any one is caught red-handed, he is usually imprisoned, and his winnings, if any, confiscated. We can call to mind a laughable instance of this at Wisbaden. Two old peasants, who had probably come for a day's pleasure and to see the sights, managed to find their way into the Kursaal, and stood all entranced before the roulette-table. One of them, imagining it a right royal way of making money, and much better ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... stories of life in a girl's college that has ever been written. It is bright, whimsical and entertaining, lifelike, laughable ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... in his art made but slight and occasional use of a considerable gift of humour which he possessed. It was humour not of the highest or finest or subtlest kind; it was very far from the humour of Shakespeare or of Cervantes, which felt so profoundly all the incongruities, majestic, pathetic, and laughable, of human nature. But it had a rough vigour of its own; it was united with a capacity for exact and shrewd observation; and if it should ever lead him to play the part of a satirist, the satire must needs be rather that of love than of ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... spears into his body until the animal is exhausted from loss of blood, and they are so quick that the elephant seldom is able to destroy one of them. They consider the elephant of as high rank as one of their kings, and it is very laughable to hear them, as they wound him, beg pardon of him, and cry out, 'Great man, don't be angry; ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... adj. lu'dicrus, sportive, laughable); allude', literally, to play at, to refer ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... King of France having been commended of all the ladies,—began, by the queen's pleasure, boldly to speak as follows: "I also, I will not keep silence of a biting reproof given by an honest layman to a covetous monk with a speech no less laughable ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... preserved. I am the happiest husband in the world. Caroline is a devoted friend, she would sacrifice everything for me, even my cousin Ferdinand, if it were necessary: oh, you may laugh, but she is ready to do anything. You entangle yourself in your laughable ideas of dignity, honor, virtue, social order. We can't have our life over again, so we must cram it full of pleasure. Not the smallest bitter word has been exchanged between Caroline and me for two years past. I have, in Caroline, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... stories and laughable stories Townsend was in many ways an admirable raconteur. Many people would say that cannot be true. On your own confession he was too much of an exaggerator. I don't agree. Exaggeration is not a fair word for what he did to his ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... A LAUGHABLE blunder was made by Mrs. Gibbs, at Covent Garden Theatre, in the season of 1823, in the part of Miss Stirling, in "The Clandestine Marriage." When speaking of the conduct of Betty, who had locked the door of Miss Fanny's room, and walked away with ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... individual rebels against the narrow-templed Order, rushes to the other extreme; and we observe a laughable phenomenon—the eccentricities of genius. In truth these eccentricities merely betoken the chaos of the larger calibre. Order in the case of the genius is a superb result, because of the broader surfaces brought under cultivation. "The growth of the human spirit is from simplicity to complication, ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... tells a plain tale better than you. I will enumerate some woful blemishes, some of 'em sad deviations from that simplicity which was your aim. "Hailed who might be near" (the "canvas-coverture moving," by the by, is laughable); "a woman and six children" (by the way, why not nine children? It would have been just half as pathetic again); "statues of sleep they seemed;" "frost-mangled wretch;" "green putridity;" "hailed him immortal" (rather ludicrous again); "voiced a sad ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... exceedingly improbable,' continues our journal, 'that any villains who had committed such a murder as is here supposed, would have thrown the body in without weight to sink it, when such a precaution could have so easily been taken.' Observe, here, the laughable confusion of thought! No one—not even L'Etoile—disputes the murder committed on the body found. The marks of violence are too obvious. It is our reasoner's object merely to show that this body is not Marie's. He wishes to prove that ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to him, but he really cares for none but literature. He spends all his spare time in reading and in amusements, and begins to write a tragic opera. This proves, however, eminently unsuccessful, and he burns it in a comic fit of anger. One laughable love-affair in which he engaged at Udine exhibits his adventures in their truly comic aspect. It reminds us of the scene in 'Don Giovanni,' where Leporello personates the Don and deceives Donna Elvira. Goldoni had often noticed a beautiful young lady ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... world depended on his speed, a little tawny beetle of a thing, who placed his forepaws against his master's ankles and looked up into his face; then, catching sight of the strangers, hurriedly he took up his position between them and M'Adam, assuming his natural attitude of grisly defiance. Such a laughable spectacle he made, that martial mite, standing at bay with bristles up and teeth bared, that ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... in the world that are so praiseworthy that it seems a needless, indeed an almost laughable thing to praise them; such things are love and friendship, food and sleep, spring and summer; such things, too, are the wisest books, the greatest pictures, the noblest cities. But for all that I mean to try and make a little hymn in prose in honour of ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... disconnected, rolled up, and hung up, to be ready at any moment if required. There are plenty of amusements on board, such as single-stick, glove-boxing, wrestling, etc. But the game of the "Man in the Chair," is one of the most laughable. A piece of board, 12 inches by 18 inches, in which a strong rope is inserted in a hole in each corner and knotted on the underside, the four ropes are carried upwards and made fast to the forestay, and the ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... him to strip. 'Strip!' exclaimed the other; 'why surely you promised to carry me in my clothes!' 'By no means,' replied the Baronet; 'I engaged to carry you, but not an inch of clothes. So, therefore, My Lord, make ready, and let us not disappoint the ladies.' After much laughable altercation, it was at length decided that Sir John had won his wager, the Peer declining to exhibit in ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... palazzo was, needing but towers and machicolated parapets to seem a fortress, or an encircling wall to seem a frowning monastery where cowled figures met each other only to whisper sepulchrally, "Brother, we must die," it was yet the scene of not a few laughable experiences. And perhaps even in this respect it may not have differed so widely as one might think from cloistered shades of other days, when out of sad, earth-colored raiment and the habit of dismal speech human sentiment painted pictures ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... and Frank worked diligently all day. Of course many things were strange to them, and they made some laughable blunders; but they invariably took things so pleasantly that none of the customers seemed ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... should reveal the carefully guarded secret of Grant's Cabinet. To the end of his life, he wondered at the suddenness of the revolution which actually, within five minutes, changed his intended future into an absurdity so laughable as to make him ashamed of it. He was to hear a long list of Cabinet announcements not much weaker or more futile than that of Grant, and none of them made him blush, while Grant's nominations had the singular effect of making the hearer ashamed, not so much of Grant, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... sometimes happens that men entangle themselves in their own schemes,' iii. 386; 'Most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things,' ii. 102. ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... imperfect. Another example of the curious mixture of anarchy and despotism that the system of Irish government presents may be seen in the Annual Report of the Commissioners. With a mutinous audacity which would be laughable, if the case were one for laughing, the Commissioners openly rail at the Treasury for the parsimony of its grants, and, in order to stir its compassion, paint the condition of Irish education in black colours. ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... where he entered the bank, up popped Jack, as white with snow as if he had been into a flour barrel, tugging his sled after him, and grinning like a right merry fellow, as he was. Take it all in all, it was one of the most laughable sights I ever saw; and now as I write, and a sort of a daguerreotype likeness of Jack, just emerging, like a ghost, from that snow bank, comes up to my mind, I have to stop and laugh almost as heartily as I did at the scene ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... stand in the public eye as conspicuous victims, notoriety has been mistaken for fame by those desperate for public attention. To be superior some way, even if only in crime and foolishness, brings about an immense amount of laughable and deplorable conduct to which only a Juvenal could do justice. The world yields to superiority such immense tribute that to obtain recognition as superior becomes a dominant motive. How that superiority is to be reached presents ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... newspaper in his own palace, which is in the highest degree absurd and laughable. It does not treat of politics or the occurrences of the day, but exclusively of domestic incidents, conversation and relative affairs. It states, for example, "that the sultan's wife, A., owed the laundress, B., three rupees, and that the laundress came yesterday ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... 'Tis laughable, old Gerard said, And smiling as he spoke; That Mag should call his fav'rite maid, And ...
— The Maid and the Magpie - An Interesting Tale Founded on Facts • Charles Moreton
... fortunes. But although the standard Roman plays were constantly represented, dramatic literature had become extinct. The entertainments, which had now taken the place of comedy and tragedy, were termed mimes. These were laughable imitations of manners and persons, combining the features of comedy and farce, for comedy represents the characters of a class, farce those of individuals. Their essence was that of the modern pantomime, and their coarseness, and even indecency, gratified ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... was most unconventional. His sermons were direct talks, without any attempt at rhetoric. They were plentifully illustrated, largely from events in his own experience. Laughable allusions or quaint ways of putting things were frequently used. While there was not much attractive in the manner of the preacher, the directness of his remark and his evident earnestness always made his sermons ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES WILL A TRAIN ROBBER SHOOT A PASSENGER OR A TRAIN MAN—suppose a man refuses to throw up his hands? Queer articles found on passengers (a chance here for some imaginative work)—queer and laughable incidents of any kind. Refer whenever apropos to actual hold-ups and facts concerning them of interest. What could two or three brave and determined passengers do if they were to try? Why don't they try? How long does it take to do the business. ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... was Sarah Maitland, of the Maitland Works," said Blair, briefly; and the lawyer's involuntary exclamation of chagrin would have been laughable, if it had not been so significant. "But we should, of course, be glad to represent you, Mr. Maitland," he said. Blair, remembering Harry Knight's disinterested remark about pockets, said, dryly, "Thanks, ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... more risk in leaving the Fram than in remaining in her. It is a laughable absurdity to say, as Greely did after Nansen's almost miraculous return, that he had deserted his men in an ice-beset ship, and deserved to be censured for doing so.[13] The ship was left in the command ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... saying," answered Rose, nodding gaily, and trying hard not to flinch under the trying reception of her precious piece of information, "is that, by the funniest chance, I made the acquaintance of a friend of yours at St. Ebbe's. And the laughable coincidence of our meeting and happening to speak to each other, and then of my finding out that he knew all about you, is going to be a very good thing for poor dear Mrs. Jennings," Rose hastened to add, taking the ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... patch" sewn on to a sober narrative; the wine jar turning to a pitcher as the potter's wheel revolves; the injunction to keep a book ten years before you publish it; the near kinship of terseness to obscurity; the laughable outcome of a mountain's labour; the warning to be chary of bringing gods upon the stage; the occasional nod of Homer;—are commonplace citations so crisp and so exhaustive in their Latin garb, that even the unlettered scientist imports them into his ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... Nevertheless Henri was an immense favourite in the settlement, for his good-humour knew no bounds. No one ever saw him frown. Even when fighting with the savages, as he was sometimes compelled to do in self-defence, he went at them with a sort of jovial rage that was almost laughable. Inconsiderate recklessness was one of his chief characteristics, so that his comrades were rather afraid of him on the war-trail or in the hunt, where caution and frequently soundless motion were essential to success or safety. But when Henri had a comrade at his side to check him he ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... commonplace French household which incompatibility of temper has made unsupportable. And then take the following acts, and see how on this foundation of fact, and screened by an outward semblance of realism, there is erected the most laughable superstructure of fantastic farce. I remember hearing one of the two great comedians of the Theatre Francais, M. Coquelin, praise a comic actor of the Varietes whom we had lately seen in a rather cheap and flimsy farce, because he combined "la verite la plus absolue avec la fantasie ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... counterfeit, to jest, to be employed, and to fight again. That Falstaff valued himself, and expected to be valued by others, upon this piece of saving wit, is plain. It was a stratagem, it is true; it argued presence of mind; but it was moreover, what he most liked, a very laughable joke; and as such he considers it; for he continues to counterfeit after the danger is over, that he may also deceive the Prince, and improve the event into more laughter. He might, for ought that appears, have concealed the transaction; the Prince was too earnestly engaged ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... remark, do not look up at the waiters to see what effect it has upon them. If they are well-trained they will not move a muscle at hearing the most laughable story, nor will they give any sign whatever that they have not closed their ears like deaf adders to all that has been going on. In any case, however, you ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... in my ears, and making me afeard of going home, and wonder if I should hear 'em wailing out, if I lay cold and drowned at th' bottom o' th' canal, there—why, man, I cannot laugh at aught. It seems to make me sad that there is any as can make game on what they've never knowed; as can make such laughable pictures on men, whose very hearts within 'em are so raw and sore as ours were and are, God ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... has more hunger than usual, it is not for her, but for her child! When she begs you, with tears in her eyes, to spare these rags, which she has had so much trouble to collect, it is not for her, but for her child! This poor little cap, which you have made so much fun of, is laughable, perhaps; yet only to look at it makes me feel like weeping. I avow it. Laugh at us both, Mont Saint Jean and me, if you will." The prisoners did not laugh. La Louve even looked sadly at the little cap she held in her hand. "Come, now!" continued ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... of this, it had been a tremendous surprise to the young physician, returning from post-graduate work in Germany a few years later, to find that what had once been considered a sort of laughable weakness in him was called strength of character now; that what had been a clumsy boy's inarticulateness was more charitably construed into the silence of a clever man who will not waste his words; and that mothers whose sons he had once envied for their worldly ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... 'Laughable, ridiculous, comical, and absurd, as I always thought and believed Lieutenant Puddock to be, I yet believe the asking such a question of me to be a stretch of absurdity, from which his breeding, for he ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... throwing the responsibility upon the people they are necessarily lifted, sobered, broadened. Our women do not vote. What is the result? Not one woman in a thousand has any interest in, and not one in two thousand has any acquaintance with, political affairs. Their ignorance would be laughable were it not sad. Every father, husband, brother, can testify to the impenetrable ignorance of his feminine belongings concerning matters of public moment. It forms the topic of universal comment in male circles. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... armor joints of dignity, And, though alone for error meant, Sing through the air irreverent. I blame her not, the young athlete Who plants her woman's tiny feet, And dares the chances of debate Where bearded men might hesitate, Who, deeply earnest, seeing well The ludicrous and laughable, Mingling in eloquent excess Her anger and her tenderness, And, chiding with a half-caress, Strives, less for her own sex than ours, With principalities and powers, And points us upward to the clear Sunned ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the foils, and ‘rather indicating the wounds that might be given you than inflicting any.’ I have merely exposed your sayings to the light, without commenting on them. ‘If they have excited laughter, it is only because they are so laughable in themselves.’ These sayings come upon us with such surprise, it is impossible to help laughing at them; for nothing produces laughter more than surprising disproportion between what one hears and what one expects. In what other way could the most of these matters ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... Some that will evermore peep through their eyes, And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper; And other of such vinegar aspect That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable. ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... it laughable?" she said with a pinched smile. "Of course poor Regina's idea of remaining in New York has its ridiculous side, I suppose;" and Archer muttered: ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... were a sudden clap of thunder. But it was worse. It was laughable, yes, but oh, how mortifying ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... You—you suspected of cattle-duffing. McLagan ought to be ashamed of himself. It's cruel in such a country as this. And the evidence is so ridiculous. Oh, Jim, if it weren't so horrible it would be almost—almost laughable." ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... legs for a sort of stew, or "boyaw," thus falling directly into the trap set for them by the missionary society. The missionary stationed at the next town, who furnishes the society with the data, says it was the most laughable thing he ever witnessed, to see the heathen chew on those cork limbs. They boiled them all day and night, keeping up a sort of a go-as-you-please walk around, or fresh meat dance, and giving a sacred concert about like our national "Whoop it up, Liza Jane," and when they stuck a fork into ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... It was alone laughable to see the old mare travel at a high rate of speed on account of lifting her hind feet so very high in ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... acquainted with those strange figures, whose heads in profile, with the eye drawn in full face, are attached to a torso seen from the front and supported by limbs in profile. These are truly anatomical monsters, and yet the appearance they present to us is neither laughable nor grotesque. The defective limbs are so deftly connected with those which are normal, that the whole becomes natural: the correct and fictitious lines are so ingeniously blent together that they seem to rise necessarily from each other. The actors in these dramas are constructed in such a paradoxical ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... into more tender, wise and beautiful states of thought and being. Tennyson, in a famous letter published some time ago, mentioned that he had at different times experienced such a mood; the idea of death was laughable; it was not thought, but a state; "the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest." It would be easy ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... sorry I have always been for that prejudice. The father of Samuel J. Mills was a very eccentric man and anecdotes of him have been repeatedly told. I attended his church the summer I was in Torringford. He was the strangest man I ever saw, and would say so many laughable things in his sermon that it was next to impossible for me to keep from laughing out loud. His congregation was composed mostly of farmers, and in hot weather they appeared to be very sleepy. The ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... inhumanity, but knowing the imprudence of quarrelling with his bread and butter, and also aware of the laughable, drowned-rat figure he must then be cutting, he thought it best to laugh, and take his change out of Mr. Waffles another time. Accordingly, he chuckled and laughed too, though his jaws nearly refused their office, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... legacy, indeed, that Joe was conscious of, but everybody else was aware that old Peter had left him something even more dangerous than dreams. That was nothing less than a bridling, high-minded, hot-blooded pride—a thing laughable, the neighbors said, in one so bitterly ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... equally true that in the midst of solemn and terrible events some amusing things happen, even though they may not seem funny at the time. And so, in connection with the exciting events of July 3d, 1898, some laughable stories ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... pure love of liberty, had not seen far enough. What could a theory of freedom give the country better than the peace and the prosperity brought about by the magnanimous Emperor? Horace's part in the battle of Philippi had long since become to him a laughable episode of youth. He had even made a merry verse about it, casting the unashamed story of his flight in the words of Archilochus and Alcaeus, as if the chief result for him had been a ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... a while. I don't think Fanny was so much to blame; but her mother seemed to fancy that the new mistress of the house was not to be allowed to have her place without a struggle. Arthur saw nothing wrong. It was laughable, and irritating, too, sometimes, to see how blind he was. But it was far better he did not. I can ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... sent me a coach, and a mattress, and a little linen. As I was in so sorry a condition, I went to seek help at the Chateau Neuf, where Monsieur and Madame were lodged; but Madame had not her clothes any more than myself. Nothing could be more laughable than this disorder. I lodged in a large room, well painted and gilded, with but little fire, which is not agreeable in the month of January. My mattress was laid upon the floor, and my sister, who had no bed, slept with me. Judge if I were agreeably situated for a person who had slept but ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... integument sleep-walking, somnambulism hide, epidermis bird, ornithology fleshly, carnal bird, aviary hearer, auditor bee, apiary snake, serpent bending, flexible heap, aggregation wrinkle, corrugation laugh, cachinnation slow, dilatory laughable, risible lime, calcimine fear, trepidation coal, lignite live, exist man, anthropology bridal, nuptial winter, hibernate wed, marry gap, hiatus husband/wife, spouse right, ethical shore, littoral showy, ostentatious forswear, perjure spelling, orthography steal, peculate time, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... must always be a laughable side, even to the grimmest events, the comic element was supplied in this case by our professors of languages, drawing, and so forth, who had not dared to go back into Paris after leaving it on the 28th, on account of the fighting. When they had made up their minds to return ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... duty and desire is to gratify the wife, and render to her those services which the English tyrant exacts from his consort. One may often hear an American matron commiserate a friend who has married in Europe, while the daughters declare in chorus that they will never follow the example. Laughable as all this may seem to English women, it is perfectly true that the theory as well as the practice of conjugal life is not the same in America as in England. There are overbearing husbands in America, but they are more condemned by the opinion of the neighborhood ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... her?—fat, thick lips, and crooked teeth. Natalie D—— said to me, 'Have you ever been in love, Prince?" HAVE I, MAMAN? I did not know what answer to make. What is love? How does one feel, when one has it? They laugh at it here, and of course I should not wish to do what is laughable. Give me a hint: forewarned is forearmed, ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... merriment as it would be for a flower to keep its head determinately turned from the sun. In their darkest days Annie had managed to make her mother laugh; her little face was a sunbeam, her very naughtinesses were of a laughable character. ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... moroseness seemed entirely gone since they came to camp. He rowed and swam and fished and tramped with fully as much enthusiasm as did Jimmy himself, and with almost as much vigor. Around the camp fire at night he quite rivaled Jamie with his story-telling of adventures, both laughable and thrilling, that had befallen him ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... to our great joy, an unclouded sun rose upon the prairie. We presented rather a laughable appearance, for the cold and clammy buckskin, saturated with water, clung fast to our limbs; the light wind and warm sunshine soon dried them again, and then we were all incased in armor of intolerable rigidity. Roaming all day over the prairie and shooting two or three bulls, were scarcely enough ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the elopement—full, true, and particular—from the veracious lips of Cobbs himself, at that time, and again some years afterwards, when he came to call up his recollections, Boots at the Holly Tree Inn. Passages here and there in his description of the incident were irrisistibly laughable. Master Harry's going down to the old lady's in York, for example, "which old lady were so wrapt up in that child as she would have give that child the teeth in her head (if she had had any)." The arrival of "them two children," again at the Holly ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... of discussing in Parliament, as we have lately witnessed, the literary style of a Government state paper at a crisis so momentous, implies a levity that would be hateful if it were not ludicrous. But there is something peculiarly laughable in the pedantry of such criticism. When other men are thinking of what has been done, the reviewers and poetasters of the Whig Opposition can think only of what has been said. The facts that are before them have no value in their eyes; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... remarkable dinner reminds us of a laughable caricature which made its appearance some time ago upon the marriage of a Jew attorney, in Jewry-street, Aldgate, to the daughter of a well-known fishmonger, of St. Peter's-alley, Cornhill, when a certain Baronet, Alderman, Colonel, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... fearsome in the main, was in some parts almost laughable. Every thing was to be divided, and every one made alike: houses and lands were to be distributed by lot; and the mighty man and the beggar—the auld man and the hobble-de-hoy—the industrious man and the spendthrift—the maimed, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... interin (en el), in the meantime interino, interim interior, interior, inland intervista, interview interpretar, to interpret invertir, to invest (money) invierno, winter ir, to go, to lead to irrisorio, laughable, absurd, ridiculously low (of prices) irse, to go away isla, island ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... private each day. He was ignorant of the Krag-Jorgensen, and at Chickamauga he had made such a laughable exhibition of himself that the old Sergeant took him off alone one day, and when they came back the Sergeant was observed to be smiling broadly. At the first target practice thereafter, Crittenden stood among the first men of the ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... was a laughable singularity, that, of all the double-faced men employed by the Emperor, there was no one, in whom he had more confidence, than he had in M. de Mont**. He had formerly ill-treated, persecuted, and banished him: he knew, that he detested ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... a sick man to nurse, could have been more patient, more attentive, or more ingenious, than this common sailor. He had put off his shoes, so as to walk more softly; and he came and went on tiptoe, his face full of care and anxiety, preparing draughts, and handling with his huge bony hands, with laughable, but almost touching precautions, the small phials out of which he had to give a spoonful to ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... entered the bank, up popped Jack, as white with snow as if he had been into a flour barrel, tugging his sled after him, and grinning like a right merry fellow, as he was. Take it all in all, it was one of the most laughable sights I ever saw; and now as I write, and a sort of a daguerreotype likeness of Jack, just emerging, like a ghost, from that snow bank, comes up to my mind, I have to stop and laugh almost as heartily as I did at the scene ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... dusty between ships, but could quickly be made presentable. Sometimes, when large touring parties came into port, he confused his masks, being by habit rather an absent-minded man. But he possessed a great fund of humor, and these mistakes gave him laughable recollections for days. ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... 'ear you've 'ad a article printed by this 'ere Punch, Sir," he said. "Somethink laughable it'd ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... see beautiful things which will enchant him he is able to beget them; if he wishes to see monstrous things which terrify, or grotesque and laughable things, or truly piteous things, he can dispose of all these; if he wishes to evoke places and deserts, shady or dark retreats in the hot season, he represents them, and likewise warm places in the cold season. If he wishes valleys, if he wishes to descry a great {91} plain from the high ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... A laughable story, on this subject, is told of Shah Abbas, who having got drunk at the house of one of his favorites, and intending to go into the apartment of his wives, was stopped by the door-keeper, who bluntly told him, "Not a man, sir, besides my master, shall ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... a million," he went on, in a broken-hearted sort of voice which to us may seem laughable, but which brought the tears ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... help the sufferers. It is true it was not without its discomforts; it is true that I reeled about sometimes with a glass of water, and sometimes with a glass of drops in the hand; but I saw many a laughable scene; many an odd trait of human nature. I laughed, made my own remarks, forgot myself, and became friendly with all mankind. Certainly it would be a very good thing for me to be maid-servant ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... would appear laughable to him and he would feel like mussing up his hair, putting forth his knee and thrusting out his chest as though to receive heavy blows; saying: ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... one's uncle in an infinite number of sizes, according to where he is to stand. All soldiers in retreat turn into tin soldiers; all bears in rout into toy bears; as if on the ultimate horizon of the world everything was sardonically doomed to stand up laughable and little against heaven. ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... On the contrary, a great weight had lifted from him; clearly his defiance had been the proper thing; he had shown Laura that her power over him was but imaginary. Hypnotized by his own words to her, he believed them; and his previous terrors became gossamer; nay, they were now merely laughable. His own remorse and shame were wholly blotted from memory, and he could not understand why in the world he had been so afraid, nor why he had felt it so necessary to placate Laura. She looked very ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... the window, and send forth a shriek, at the strange agony of which everybody would come hastening to the rescue, well understanding it to be the cry of a human soul, at some dreadful crisis! But how wild, how almost laughable, the fatality,—and yet how continually it comes to pass, thought Hepzibah, in this dull delirium of a world,—that whosoever, and with however kindly a purpose, should come to help, they would be sure to help the strongest side! Might and wrong ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have always been great favorites as pets, being playful and affectionate when kindly treated. They can be trained to perform all kinds of amusing tricks; and their antics when playing together or with children are very laughable. They have been taught to execute difficult parts in theatrical displays; among other things, to ring bells, pretend to fall dead when shot at, beat the drum, and go through the manual exercise of the soldier ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... a capacity to wink that would have vulgarized any one else but a general. He made himself very pleasant, accepted a cup of tea, praised Mary's French, said that he intended to dine with us at the Commandant's to-morrow, and told us some laughable stories about the Arabs. I noticed that the Lieutenant seemed quite overawed by the presence of the General, and sat flute in hand, like a statue. Mary tried to put him at his ease, but to no purpose. It did not mend matters when the General began first to twit him about his musical accomplishments, ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... psychic or from myself. Nearly every one of the mediums I have studied has had at least one guide, whose voice and habit of thought were perilously similar to her own. This, in some cases, has been laughable, as when 'Rolling Thunder,' a Sioux chief (Indians are all chiefs in the spirit world), appears and says: 'Goot efening, friends; id iss a nice night alretty.' And yet I have seen a whole roomful of people receive communications from a spirit of ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... there, and I found my saddle in one of the rooms of the building, hidden under a blanket. I entered the corral through the back door of the house, caught and saddled my horse, and then led him out to the street. This was a very laughable manner of leave-taking. The house was cut up into a labyrinth of small rooms, just large enough for a horse to turn around in, and the doors were low and narrow. As I could not find the outer door, I led my horse successively into every ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... years, was't not, or so? - Were just a child, you know; And so you never said Things sweet immeditatably and wise To interdict from closure my wet eyes: But foolish things, my dead, my dead! Little and laughable, Your age that fitted well. And was it such things all unmemorable, Was it such things could make Me sob all night for your ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... gathered any eggs; one who was more successful, and had secured enough to make it extremely difficult for him to scale the rocks, slipped, fell on his face, and scrambled all his store. His plight was laughable, but he was scarcely in the mood to relish it, as he washed his sack and blouse in cold water, while we ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... is often something a little grotesque or laughable in these youthful relations. An anecdote will illustrate it, and, at the same time, convey the corrective moral. There were a couple of school-girl friends, each of whom loved to do and experience whatever ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... What I have told you is true, every word of it. You have a cousin down in the Sunny South who spends half his time in the water. What is more, I suspect that you and Jumper have other relatives of whom you've never heard. Such ignorance would be laughable if it were not to be pitied. This is what comes of never having traveled. Go to school to Old Mother Nature for a while, Peter. It will pay you." With this, Jenny Wren flew away to hunt for Mr. Wren that they might decide where to make ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... ramble among the American people and learn the language by ear, which proved in my case, and I believe, it is in every case, to be the best school for learning the correct pronunciation of any language you might desire to speak, and be not laughable when you address the natives of ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... programme she offered there was a generous one, for it included a "Stirring drama, entitled, Maidens, Beware! and the elegant and successful comedy, The Eton Boy," to which were added a "sparkling comedietta" and a "laughable farce." This was good value. The Geelong critic, however, did not think very much of the principal item in this bill. "It has," he observed solemnly, "an impossible plot, with situations and sentiments quite beyond the understanding of ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... their hearers. In vain Wiseman appealed to reason; Berners to feeling; and Vivian to humor; they would not do: the court had often heard all that before, and grown heartily tired of it. Wiseman's wisdom was found to be foolishness; Berner's pathos laughable; ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... attracted by a woman who was trudging with an immense turkey elevated on her head. He quite filled the tray; head and tail projecting beyond its bounds. He advanced, as was very proper, head foremost, and it was irresistibly laughable to see him ever and anon stretch out his neck and peep under the tray, as though he would discover by what manner of locomotive it was that he got along so fast while his own legs were ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... threats of damage suits for fright and delay, laughable stories of the mistakes of the volunteer crew of the Noa-Noa; discussions of the price of copra, mingled with the chants of the native feasters and ribald tales. The Tiare girls, all color and sparkle, exchanged quips with the male diners, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... in all Vanity Fair which Satire and Sentiment can visit arm in arm together; where you light on the strangest contrasts laughable and tearful: where you may be gentle and pathetic, or savage and cynical with perfect propriety: it is at one of those public assemblies, a crowd of which are advertised every day in the last page of the Times newspaper, and over which ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the air, when France was seized with a shiver at their sinister approach, when Waterloo could be dimly discerned opening before Napoleon, the mournful acclamation of the army and the people to the condemned of destiny had nothing laughable in it, and, after making all allowance for the despot, a heart like that of the Bishop of D——, ought not perhaps to have failed to recognize the august and touching features presented by the embrace of a great nation and a great man on the brink ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... America we should condescend toward our fiction! How ridiculous in a country even yet so weak and poor and crude in the arts, which has contributed so little to the world's store of all that makes fine living for the mind! What a laughable parallel of the cock and the gem he found and left upon the dung- heap, if we could be proved not to be proud of American fiction! For if the novel and the short story should be left out of America's slender contribution to world literature, the offering ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... accumulation of mail when Uncle Jeb, looking strange and laughable in his civilized clothes, as Barnard called them, arrived on Saturday morning. The bus, which brought him up from Catskill, brought also the advance guard of the scout army that ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... but I am showing you the absurdity of your theory. It can't be correct, and we can't believe in Marie Fauville's innocence unless we are prepared to suppose an unheard-of thing, that M. Fauville took part in his own murder. Why, it's laughable!" ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... then brought our dray back again, and are now busy getting ready for a fresh start to Bendigo. Among other things we shall take, are lemonade and ginger-beer powders, a profitable investment, though laughable. The weather is very hot—fancy 103 degrees in the ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... that we are even of more importance in Baton Rouge than we thought we were. It is laughable to hear the things a certain set of people, who know they can't visit us, say about the whole family.... When father was alive, they dared not talk about us aloud, beyond calling us the "Proud Morgans" and the "Aristocracy ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... husband in the world. Caroline is a devoted friend, she would sacrifice everything for me, even my cousin Ferdinand, if it were necessary: oh, you may laugh, but she is ready to do anything. You entangle yourself in your laughable ideas of dignity, honor, virtue, social order. We can't have our life over again, so we must cram it full of pleasure. Not the smallest bitter word has been exchanged between Caroline and me for two years past. I have, in Caroline, a friend to whom I can tell everything, ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... of Moliere's day, but they still assume the same portentous gravity of priests of Isis or astrologers, bristling with cabalistic formulae accompanied by movements of the head which lack only the pointed cap of an earlier age to produce a laughable effect. On this occasion the scene borrowed an imposing aspect from the surroundings. In the vast room, transformed, magnified as it were, by the master's immobility, those solemn faces approached the bed upon which the light was concentrated, revealing amid the ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... "Then he asked if I ever read any of the modern fashionable novels; on this point I thought he began to look positive, so I gave him a negative, with the exception of Bulwer's, and now and then a laughable one of the Theodore Hook's or Captain Marryat's." And so, with much excellent advice about exercise and sleep, and the way to win the Newdigate, he ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... twitch away in silence that he made as haughty as he could, but not so haughty that Trannel did not find it laughable, and he laughed in a teasing way that made Breckon more and more serious. He was aware of becoming even solemn with the question of his likeness to Trannel. He was of Trannel's quality, and their difference was a matter of quantity, and there was not enough difference. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... one day more, three full weeks; 'Tis writ so in the church's register, Lorenzo in Lucina, all my names At length, so many names for one poor child, —Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela Pompilia Comparini—laughable!" ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... there is very much; but there is something else that I consider very laughable, and that I will tell you if you will keep it a secret. You see, the Golden Dragon himself—I always call our innkeeper the Golden Dragon, just as you ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... every city now has at least one private club devoted to the pursuit of this stylish pastime. Indeed, in many of our larger metropolises, the popular enthusiasm has reached such heights that free "public" courses have been provided for the citizens with, I may say, somewhat laughable results, as witness the fact that I myself have often seen persons playing on these "public" courses in ordinary shirts and trousers, ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... reason, began to take account of the political interests which this whim of the Princess brought into play, and retracted, as King, the authority which he had given as head of a family. Contemporary writers seem never tired of dwelling upon the manifestations of Mademoiselle's grief, at times as laughable as at others it was touching; receiving the condolence of all the Court as though she had been a lone widow, Madame de Sevigne tells us, and exclaiming excitedly in her despair to every fresh visitor, as she pointed to the vacant place in her bed, "He ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... being no more any heat in our bodies, the non-conducting quality of a substance was no appreciable advantage. To avoid the greater cold near the floor, several of our number got upon the tables, presenting, with their feet tucked under them, an aspect that would have been sufficiently laughable under other circumstances. But, as a rule, fun does not survive the freezing point. Every few moments the beams of the house snapped like the timbers of a straining ship, and at intervals the frozen ground cracked with a noise like cannon,—the ...
— The Cold Snap - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... and my aunt? Papa and mamma dine out, but you know I am always your faithful Chesterfield Street." And so on. He has all the domestic accomplishments; he plays on the violoncello: he sings a delicious second, not only in sacred but in secular music. He has a thousand anecdotes, laughable riddles, droll stories (of the utmost correctness, you understand) with which he entertains females of all ages; suiting his conversation to stately matrons, deaf old dowagers (who can hear his clear voice better than the loudest roar of their stupid sons-in-law), mature spinsters, young beauties ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which we have agreed upon as the great central fact of human life is the golden thread that runs through all religions. When we make it the paramount fact in our lives we will find that minor differences, narrow prejudices, and all these laughable absurdities will so fall away by virtue of their very insignificance, that a Jew can worship equally as well in a Catholic cathedral, a Catholic in a Jewish synagogue, a Buddhist in a Christian church, a Christian in a Buddhist temple. ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... and a bad shot. Nevertheless Henri was an immense favourite in the settlement, for his good-humour knew no bounds. No one ever saw him frown. Even when fighting with the savages, as he was sometimes compelled to do in self-defence, he went at them with a sort of jovial rage that was almost laughable. Inconsiderate recklessness was one of his chief characteristics, so that his comrades were rather afraid of him on the war-trail or in the hunt, where caution and frequently soundless motion were essential to success ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... such as pity, love, reverence. For sublime ideas are mixed with admiration, beautiful ones with love, new ones with surprise; and these exertions of our ideas prevent the action of laughter from being necessary to relieve the painful pleasure above described. Whence laughable wit consists of frivolous ideas, without connections of any consequence, such as puns on words, or on phrases, incongruous junctions of ideas; on which account laughter is so frequent ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... It affected one like a man standing on his armpits. The capital of the Territory was composed chiefly of roofs and dormer windows, of squatty wooden islands in a boundless sea. The Church of the Immaculate Conception was a laughable tent of masonry, top-heavy with its square tower. As for cultivated fields and the pastures where the cattle grazed, such vanished realities were forgotten. And what was washing over the marble tombs and slate crosses ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Russia, France, Belgium, England, Servia, Montenegro and Japan are now involved in this battle for "freedom and culture," which means fighting against Germany, against the world which has given birth to Goethe, to Kant and to Karl Marx! It would be laughable were the situation ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... will laugh over this deliciously humorous novel, that pictures the sunny side of small-town life, and contains love-making, a dash of mystery, an epidemic of spook-chasing—and laughable, lovable Galusha. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... how moving this process proved, not only to Freeman, but to the crowd comprising his body-guard. The poor blusterer, entirely cut off from big companions, was in a laughable panic. His tawny skin became ashen, as he bounded from his seat and rushed to the extremity of the piazza; and, to make a long story short, in a few minutes he was as penitent and humble as ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... a stockade. This latter condition had been the result of allowing the church to interfere unwarrantedly in what was not its affair. Religion had calmly usurped this, the most potent of the motives of humanity; or, rather, it had fastened to it the ludicrous train of ritual. That laughable idea that God had a separate scrutinizing eye, like the eye of a parrot, on every ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... pretensions to vie with you in the sublime of poetry; but he tells a plain tale better than you. I will enumerate some woeful blemishes, some of 'em sad deviations from that simplicity which was your aim. "Hail'd who might be near" (the canvas-coverture moving, by the by, is laughable); "a woman & six children" (by the way,—why not nine children, it would have been just half as pathetic again): "statues of sleep they seem'd." "Frost-mangled wretch:" "green putridity:" "hail'd him immortal" (rather ludicrous again): "voiced a sad and simple tale" ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... in," said Mrs. Ellersly. With a laughable sense that I was doing myself proud, I crossed the room easily and took my stand in front of her. She shook hands with me politely enough. Langdon was sitting beside her; I had ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... making it more like "Wah! Wah!" Whenever mamma flew over he followed her movement with his eyes, turning his head, and showing an eager, almost painful interest, till some one took pity on him and fed him. As he saw food approaching his voice ran up several tones higher, in laughable imitation of a human baby cry. This note is of course the promise of a "caw," but the a is flattened to the sound of a in bar, which makes it a ludicrous caricature ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... of this as laughable. But Ormsby knew that the truth must out sooner or later, and it was necessary that he should be ready. The police were on the alert—reluctantly alert, for they respected the rector. The banker, however, was a more important ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... frequent intervals with his chaste Shakesperean quips and retorts." Lastly, he was to wind them up by appearing in his favorite character of Mr. William Button, of Tooley Street, in "the highly novel and laughable Hippo Comedietta of ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... that could not hide where once had been a tongue. He passed his hand along the shroud and lightly touched the ugly hump where the spine had been pressed and snapped, and the slanted shoulders and the twisted hips and legs. "Thou wast so laughable to all the court," he cried. "Thy bones were so comically broken. And now, another must be made for the court's delight, just so comical as thou. Aye, aye," and he sighed heavily, "Jesu have pity on the child's face of ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... forming each other's acquaintance under difficulties, as she phrased it. I can truthfully say that I never was so much embarrassed before a young girl in all my life. But do you know, Dorothy," he went on, "that that laughable incident which happened made us better acquainted with each other during that half hour's ride home than if we had met under ordinary circumstances and known ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state but the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words—where death was an almost laughable impossibility—the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life. I am ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said the state is utterly ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... encamped; turned out the cattle & put up the tent, then for a fire, no wood, but chips in abundance, no alternative, soon had a large pile of them, & set fire to them, when they immediately blazed up & burned like dry bark, it was laughable to see the boys jump around it, particularly Beth & saying it "wooled them" bad. On saying that I feared the dust would get in the meat, as it was frying, George said he would as soon have his broiled as any way, so laughing, & jokeing we forgot our antipathies to ...
— Across the Plains to California in 1852 - Journal of Mrs. Lodisa Frizzell • Lodisa Frizell
... college, the fellows used to make no end of fun of the air of superior and conclusive wisdom with which he assumed to lay down the law on every question, this being the more laughable because he was such a little chap. Potts did not pay the least attention to the jeers, and finally the jeerers were constrained to admit that if he did have an absurdly pretentious way of talking, his talk was unusually well worth listening to, and the result was that they took ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... age and position should have enabled them to conquer my esteem; and while I was yet a child, my father married a second wife, in whom (strange to say) the Fanshawe failings were exaggerated to a monstrous and almost laughable degree. Whatever may be said against me, it cannot be denied I was a pattern daughter; but it was in vain that, with the most touching patience, I submitted to my stepmother's demands; and from the hour ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as though running upon a dozen feet, laughable and terrible in his fury and entreaties, he threw himself madly in front of the crowd and charmed it with a certain strange power. He shouted that the Nazarene was not possessed of a devil, that He was simply an impostor, a ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... the pay for his picture, but the lady and her husband obstinately refused. Hereupon he transformed her into a Danae, receiving the shower of gold, adding other figures, such as a turkey cock representing the eagle of Jove, which rendered the whole work as laughable as it was uncomplimentary to its subject. It was exhibited in one of the expositions in the time of the empire, and no picture was ever ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... most too far, wa'n't it?" agreed Miss Pickett. "There, 't will be somethin' laughable to tell Mis' Timms. I never see anything more divertin'. I shall kind of pity that woman if we have to stop an' git her as we go back ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... better without a cargo, fellows," he declared, earnestly. "Now, listen to him, would you, calling me a cargo?" whimpered Nick; but while he thus pretended to be offended, it was laughable to see how quickly he made the transfer, as though afraid Jack might change his mind, or George want him ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... said, and slipped her hand into his arm. "Come down into the garden: I like it in the twilight—and that pile of stones over there will not weigh upon our eyes; the trees hide it. Come, my Ange: tell me all your news, serious and laughable. I am glad you were helping your uncle; but I do not like you ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... a most laughable spectacle this afternoon—viz., a negro dressed in full Yankee uniform, with a rifle at full cock, leading along a barefooted white man, with whom he had evidently changed clothes. General Longstreet stopped the pair, and asked the black man what it meant. He replied, "The two soldiers in ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... till after one. Drums, tom-toms, and cymbals were beaten; kotos and samisens screeched and twanged; geishas (professional women with the accomplishments of dancing, singing, and playing) danced,— accompanied by songs whose jerking discords were most laughable; story-tellers recited tales in a high key, and the running about and splashing close to my room never ceased. Late at night my precarious shoji were accidentally thrown down, revealing a scene of great hilarity, in which a number of people were bathing ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... Miss Ailie knew that her sister's hold on life was loosening. "How bright the world suddenly seems," Mr. McLean read, "when there is the tiniest improvement in the health of an invalid one loves." Is it laughable that such a note as this is appended to a recipe for beef-tea? "It is surely not very wicked to pretend to Kitty that I keep some of it for myself; she would not take it all if she knew I dined on the beef it was made from." Other entries showed too plainly that Miss Ailie stinted herself ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... self-interest and motives, and objects of desire, and the greatest happiness of the greatest number, is but a poor employment for a grown man, it certainly hurts the health less than hard drinking and the fortune less than high play; it is not much more laughable than phrenology, and is immeasurably more humane ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... self-ridicule was uppermost. To be a bridesmaid amongst the grand folks at Fairfield—could anything be more absurdly afflicting? To be a seamstress at Madame Michaud's—the odious idea of it! Poor Bessie, what a blessing to her was her gift of humor, her gift for seeing the laughable side of things and people, and especially the laughable side ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... locomotive engineer, but went to make a great master of the new motive power. "Steam is half an Englishman," said Emerson. The temptation is strong to say that workaday electricity is half an American. Edison's own account of the incident is very laughable: "The engine was one of a number leased to the Grand Trunk by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. It had bright brass bands all over, the woodwork beautifully painted, and everything highly polished, which was the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... and speculation was laughable enough; but when one was brought face to face with the reality of the thing, a grim humor was added to the situation. Comedy is ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... hallucination of that sort before his eyes—and if, as you say, it isn't right that he should ask for it now, can we predict that it would be any more reasonable and expedient in the future? These idle fancies of ours soon pass away, Luther, and will look laughable and grotesque enough to us by and by. Life is so full of changes, and people ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... through. Once for all, whatever happens to you, I'll carry on. I'll do everything exactly as if you were there. You can rest easy. But—— Oh, how can you think such a thing? I never in all my life saw any one less likely to go under. You're not the type, sir. It's—it's laughable." The words came tumbling out of an honest heart. "I saw men go mad in France, but they were hardly your sort. Perhaps you're too much alone. Will you let me live with ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... strikes a sea-otter twenty times across the back, it bears it patiently, but if its large beautiful tail be struck once it turns its head to its pursuer, as if to offer it as a mark for his club in place of the tail. If it eludes an attack it makes the most laughable gestures to the hunter. It looks at him, placing one foot above the head as if to protect it from the sunlight, throws itself on its back, and turning to its enemy as if in scorn scratches itself on the belly and thighs. The male ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... "some of the company begiu by caressing it, until an opportunity offers for one of them to seize it by the tail. In this position the muscles become contracted, the animal is unable to eject its fluid, and is quickly despatched." One might just as well talk of caressing a cobra de capello; yet this laughable fiction finds believers all over South and North America. Professor Baird gravely introduces it into his great work on the mammalia. I was once talking about animals in a rancho, when a person ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... of bursting out into laughter, beyond the limits of decorum, and of doing so without reasonable cause, merely from an inclination to laugh. Never laugh at the misfortunes of others, although they seem in some sort laughable ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... and that of other great men, and both amassed large fortunes. But although the standard Roman plays were constantly represented, dramatic literature had become extinct. The entertainments, which had now taken the place of comedy and tragedy, were termed mimes. These were laughable imitations of manners and persons, combining the features of comedy and farce, for comedy represents the characters of a class, farce those of individuals. Their essence was that of the modern pantomime, and their coarseness, and even indecency, gratified the love of broad humor which characterized ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... took into his head to choose his august partner from among his subjects, the administration could not even tell him the number of white lambs from whom he could make his choice. It would be obliged to resort to some competition which awards the rose of good conduct, and that would be a laughable event. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... turn than by their novelty. If it were true, Gentlemen, that the medical corps had ever tried, knowingly, to impose on the vulgar, to hide the uncertainty of their knowledge, the weakness of their theories, the vagueness of their conceptions, under an obscure and pedantic jargon, the immortal and laughable sarcasms of Moliere would not have been more than an act of strict justice. In all cases every thing has its day; now, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the most delicate, the most thorny points of doctrine were discussed with ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... circumstance that the natives, who have been now for fourteen or fifteen years in close intercourse and carrying on traffic with Europeans, should not, in the course of that period, understand the nature and value of money; a laughable instance of which occurred to us a few days since. A native came to our house with a serious countenance and business-like manner, and said he wished to purchase a musket: we asked to see what he had brought in exchange for one, when, with great ceremony, ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... We went through the laughable farce of a trial of the 'Enossis' on board a vessel lying in port (I dare not land), which ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... exclaimed the other; 'why surely you promised to carry me in my clothes!' 'By no means,' replied the Baronet; 'I engaged to carry you, but not an inch of clothes. So, therefore, My Lord, make ready, and let us not disappoint the ladies.' After much laughable altercation, it was at length decided that Sir John had won his wager, the Peer declining to ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... figure of a sturdy, corpulent old fellow with a three-cornered hat, red waistcoat, leather breeches, and stout oaken cudgel. Thus they have taken a singular delight in exhibiting their most private foibles in a laughable point of view, and have been so successful in their delineations that there is scarcely a being in actual existence more absolutely present to the public mind than ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... In one act a part of the chorus, squealing in some strange falsetto, produced very much the effect of our orchestra; in another, the dancers, leaping like jumping-jacks, with arms extended, passed through and through each other's ranks with extraordinary speed, neatness, and humour. A more laughable effect I never saw; in any European theatre it would have brought the house down, and the island audience roared with laughter and applause. This filled up the measure for the rival company, and they forgot themselves and decency. ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... majesty, the emperor dislikes etiquette, and he has strictly forbidden all Spanish customs as laughable and ridiculous. He has forbidden all attendance upon the imperial family, except on new year's day. He has also forbidden us to kneel before his majesty, because it is an outlandish Spanish custom, and a homage due to God alone. All the French ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... rattled on about his own affairs, my heart began to warm towards Farnham. He was not a particularly brilliant fellow, though a good business man; but he had such a whimsical face, with its bright eyes, its good-natured mouth, and its laughable, upturned nose! He was so frankly interested in life, so enthusiastic, so outspoken, so boyish in many of his ways, despite his forty years! I found myself almost inclined to be sorry that he was leaving ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... shown by the old man's laughter at the distress of his fellowmen roused Jon's ire. He could see nothing laughable about the desperate situation in ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... describe the state of Frederic's mind, if we left out of view the laughable peculiarities which contrasted so singularly with the gravity, energy, and harshness of his character. It is difficult to say whether the tragic or the comic predominated in the strange scene which was then acting. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of prejudice," how bad faith, idleness, disorder, and all the other evils of monopoly were fomented by a system of jealous trade-guilds, carrying compulsory subdivision and restriction of all kinds of skilled labour down to a degree that would have been laughable enough, if it had only been ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... of the prisoner's impudent charge against Mr. Strange, the latter's conduct is truly magnanimous. The charge that Strange tried to murder his employer is simply laughable. Twenty-nine years of faithful ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... of mirth and tears, of the tragic and grotesque, of cap and crown, of Socrates and Rabelais, of AEsop and Marcus Aurelius, of all that is gentle and just, humorous and honest, merciful, wise, laughable, lovable and divine, and all consecrated to the use of man; while through all, and over all, an overwhelming sense of obligation, of chivalric loyalty to truth, and upon all the shadow of ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... sketch of a woman of small means who aspires to a connection with the smart set. Her attempts to disguise the true state of affairs from her out-of-town friends are laughable; but the fun becomes tinged with pathos when she borrows a furnished mansion for an evening, and a rich relative, invited to dine with her, uncloaks ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... territories, and leaving the wretched provinces of the empire a prey to war and pillage. And if the assurances of friendship, of confidence, and of affection between Austria and Venice are but recalled to mind, the contrast was indeed laughable when the emperor was pleased to allow that loyal city to be ceded to him. The best friend was in this case the cloth from which the emperor cut ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... collection, that Johnson was once drawn to serve in the militia, the Trained Bands of the City of London, and that Mr. Rackstrow, of the Museum in Fleet-street, was his Colonel. It may be believed he did not serve in person; but the idea, with all its circumstances, is certainly laughable. He upon that occasion provided himself with a musket, and with a sword and belt, which I have ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... of MacBissing! They were evolutin' by numbers, performin' their Great Feat of Balancin' an' Barebacked Ridin', Aerial Trapeze an' Tight-rope Walkin', Loopin' the Loop by the death-defyin' Brothers Fritz, together with many laughable an' amusin' interludes by Whimsical Walker, the Laird o' Laughter, the whole concludin' with a Graund Patriotic Procession entitled Deutschland ower ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... to help bruin to the last of the seed-cakes, and escaped without injury, but in a ridiculous plight,—his hat smashed, his necktie and linen rumpled, and his watch dangling; but his fright was the most laughable ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... a man of undoubted talent, and who ought to be amongst the enlightened ones of his country and his age, indulging in such absurd visions and insane prophecies. Rhapsodies of this kind would be merely laughable, were it not for the weight which they unquestionably have with the younger and less reflecting classes of Frenchmen, especially when proceeding from a writer of M. Dumas's abilities and reputation. It is by this style of writing, which abounds in French periodical literature, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... whom I singularly honour and esteem; a word from whom (if I could hope that word) would fill my life with happiness. I was not worthy of that lady; when I was defeated in fair field, I presumed to make advances through her maid. See in how laughable a manner fate repaid me! The waiting-girl derided, the mistress denied, and now comes in this very ardent champion who publicly insults me. My vanity is cured; you will judge it right, I am persuaded, all of you, that ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... of our globe in a manner of such little uniformity, that in matters of religion men look upon each other with hatred and disdain. The partisans of the different sects see each other very ridiculous and foolish. The most respected mysteries in one religion are laughable for another. God, having revealed Himself to men, ought at least to speak in the same language to all, and relieve their weak minds of the embarrassment of seeking what can be the religion which truly emanated from Him, or what is the ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... whistle ends this drill for this voyage, and the hose-pipes are disconnected, rolled up, and hung up, to be ready at any moment if required. There are plenty of amusements on board, such as single-stick, glove-boxing, wrestling, etc. But the game of the "Man in the Chair," is one of the most laughable. A piece of board, 12 inches by 18 inches, in which a strong rope is inserted in a hole in each corner and knotted on the underside, the four ropes are carried upwards and made fast to the forestay, ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... which relieved them. These amusements were varied and often original. They played little comedies. They had mythological fetes, draping themselves as antique gods and goddesses. Sometimes they indulged in practical jokes and surprises, which were more laughable than dignified. Malherbe and Racan, the latter sighing hopelessly over the attractions of the dignified Marquise, gave her the romantic name of Arthenice, and forthwith the other members of the coterie took some nom de parnasse, by which they were ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... same time more ridiculous and more awful, more laughable and more taunting, than that little fan in those huge hands. It seemed like a make-believe sceptre in the hands of such an old, hideous, and bony giantess! A like effect was produced by the showy percale handkerchief adorning her face by the side of that cut-water nose, hooked and ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... replaced by modern ones, as it has been the custom to use the former. Even the carrying of heavy burdens on the head cannot be given up; woe to any one who suggests substituting the carrying of a basket! A laughable incident is told of a European gentleman who employed a number of men to carry sand; thinking to lighten their labor, he purchased wheelbarrows, but on visiting the scene of action a week later, he found the men with the barrows ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... plentifully throughout nearly the whole United States. The bushy tail, with its dark rings, will be sufficient to identify the animal in any community. Raccoon hunts form the subject of many very exciting and laughable stories, and a "coon chase," to this day is a favorite sport all over the country. The raccoon, or "coon," as he is popularly styled, is generally hunted by moonlight. An experienced dog is usually set on the trail and the fugitive soon seeks refuge in a tree, when its destruction is ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... now the order of the day, and the scene changes to a view of Hyde Park and the Serpentine River on a frosty morning in January: in which is represented, with admirable effect, a display of patent skating. An oil cloth is spread upon the stage, a group comprised of various laughable characters are assembled on it, and skate about with as much rapidity, and precisely as though it were a sheet of ice. The adroit skill of old stagers on the slippery surface, with the clumsy awkwardness and terror of novices ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... would be almost laughable to the observer to hear the employer's side of the case. Invariably it was just as bitter, just as unreasoning, and just as violent, as the statement of their case by the workers. Parker would endeavor to find, in all this heap ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... point the car slowed down. Phin Drayne looked as though he were exhibiting his fellow students of Gridley High School as so many laughable freaks. ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
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