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More "Personate" Quotes from Famous Books



... here intend to personate the bashful Author, and out of a point of Honour undervalue my Comedy. I should very unseasonably disoblige all the People of Paris, should I accuse them of having applauded a foolish Thing: as the Public is absolute ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere

... greatest name and glory among the Macedonians. Many among them began to say that this was the only king in whom there was any likeness to be seen of the great Alexander's courage; the other kings, and particularly Demetrius, did nothing but personate him, like actors on a stage, in his pomp and outward majesty. And Demetrius truly was a perfect play and pageant, with his robes and diadems, his gold-edged purple and his hats with double streamers, his very shoes being of the richest purple felt, embroidered over ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... now with his affections, and no longer able to personate an angry man, commanded all that were present to depart, that he might make himself known to his brethren when they were alone; and when the rest were gone out, he made himself known to his brethren; ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... he would choose to personate, for he never spoke in his own character. Now he rose slowly, put one hand in his bosom, and fixing his eye sternly on Grif, who was doing something suspicious with a pin, gave them a touch of Sergeant Buzfuz, from the Pickwick trial, thinking that the debate was not likely ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... the massacre at the palace. Knowing from report that the janissaries ran riot at such times, and being aware that my son Lucien—who is a noted linguist, Signor Bacri—spoke their language almost as well as a native, I suggested that he should procure a uniform and personate a janissary, while I should act the part of a runaway slave. Being a favourite with poor Achmet, as you know, Lucien had much influence among the domestics, and easily procured the disguise. The moment the insurrection ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne

... am master of the horse to the king of the magicians; I commonly reside in another house, which I have in the city, and come here sometimes to have the more liberty with my friends. You have made this lady believe you have a slave, though you have none; I will personate that slave, and that this may not make you uneasy, and to prevent your excuses, I repeat again, that I will positively have it to be so; you will soon know my reason. Go to your place, and continue to divert yourself. When I return again, and come to you in a slave's habit, chide me ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.

... while two return shots scattered the attack with the splinters from the heavy panels. Pleading, raging, maddened, Morales learned that the dash had failed, and that two of his most daring men, the two Americanos who had ridden forward to personate prospectors and who had led the rush in the southern front, were knocked out ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... by magic spells: on the stage it is an ass's head, and nothing more; certainly a very strange costume for a gentleman to appear in. Fancy cannot be embodied any more than a simile can be painted; and it is as idle to attempt it as to personate Wall or Moonshine. Fairies are not incredible, but fairies six feet high are so. Monsters are not shocking, if they are seen at a proper distance. When ghosts appear at mid-day, when apparitions stalk along Cheapside, then may the MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... irritated, but the trace of anger she felt was likely to enhance her interest. The meal, however, was a trial to him, for he had during eight long years lived for the most part apart from all his kind, a lonely toiler, and now was constrained to personate a man known to be almost dangerously skillful with his tongue. At first sight the task appeared almost insuperably difficult, but Winston was a clever man, and felt all the thrill of one playing a risky game just ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss

... thought John, "by the cut direct;" rising and bowing, therefore, to the company, as if intending to yield to their entreaties, he begged permission to retire to make some little arrangement in his dress, to personate Vanish; when, leaving them in the most anxious expectation for more than half an hour, on ringing the bell, they learned from the servant that Mr. Liston had suddenly Vanished by the street- door, and was, of course, never seen in ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... their portraits, d'Oliva, who was to personate the Queen, in an interview with the Cardinal, was not at all like Marie Antoinette. Her short, round, buxom face bears no resemblance to the long and noble outlines of the features of the Queen. But both women were fair, and ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... the disciple is required to give his wife to the Guru or preceptor as the acme of self-sacrifice. The guru calls the disciple by a female name of one of the milkmaids of Brindaban to indicate that the disciple regards Krishna with the same devotion as they did. Sometimes the guru and a woman personate Krishna and Radha, but reverse the names, the guru calling himself Radha and the woman Krishna. The other disciples wait upon and serve them, and they perform an immoral act in public. Parmarthi women sometimes ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... you saw, I durst not venture upon any device in our presentment, but was content to be no other then a simple page. Your arrows' properties, (to keep decorum,) Cupid, are suited, it should seem, to the nature of him you personate. ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... to personate the bashful Author, and out of a point of Honour undervalue my Comedy. I should very unseasonably disoblige all the People of Paris, should I accuse them of having applauded a foolish Thing: as the Public is absolute Judge of such sort of Works, ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere

... married her, got a friend of his, who was called Sygurd, the serpent-killer, to wrestle with her, disguising him in his own armour. Sygurd flung her down, and won her for his friend, though he loved her himself. I shall not use a similar deceit, nor employ Jasper Petulengro to personate me—so get up, Belle, and I will do my ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... doctor and the nurse were permitted to enter. Yet I learnt afterwards all that happened. Marie, my maid, who was slowly dying of consumption, was moved into the principal bedchamber; and when Martin arrived, she was made to personate me. It was the priest who gained her consent; the priest who confessed her and gave her absolution. His share of the spoil was to be the De Vaux estates, handed over to the Church if ever they carried out their plot successfully. Martin came, and, as he thought, granted that ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... that propensity for mischief that characterizes sailors on shore, he immediately formed, and proceeded to put in execution, a plan for the torment and vexation of his antagonist of the yard-stick. He promised the sable handmaid of his Mary a half dollar, if she would personate her mistress for a few minutes, which he imagined easily enough done in the dark, and instructing her "to behave prim and lady-like," went in quest of the boy Jim, whom he stationed in the entry to open the door for Mr. Millinet, and show him into the front parlor, and then went to the room ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... already acquainted with the secret reason which conceals from the eyes of the world my sex and family. You know that I was brought into this house, where I have passed my infancy, in order to preserve an inheritance which, on the death of young Ascanio (whom I personate), should have fallen to others; that is why I dare to unbosom myself to you with perfect confidence. But before we begin this conversation, Frosine, clear up a doubt which continually besets me. Can it be possible that Albert should know nothing of the secret, which thus disguises ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere

... befuddling themselves into that dreamy state regarded by the profession as necessary to the clear bringing out of all the beauties with which a beneficent providence endowed the kings and conquerors they are to personate at night, on that sequestered world called the stage. You may know by the downy state of his wardrobe that he has a place to sleep. But where he gets his breakfast is a mystery no friend has ever yet solved for me. Aside from taking ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... wolves waiting to spring. But you are not really hungry, except for something which is not food! And you are not waiting for anything except for permission to talk! I give it to you—talk, children! Talk yourselves hoarse! It will do you good! And I will personate supreme wisdom by listening to you ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... the play is a fantastic illusion, produced by magic spells: on the stage, it is an ass's head, and nothing more; certainly a very strange costume for a gentleman to appear in. Fancy cannot be embodied any more than a simile can be painted; and it is as idle to attempt it as to personate Wall or Moonshine. Fairies are not incredible, but fairies six feet high are so. Monsters are not shocking, if they are seen at a proper distance. When ghosts appear at midday, when apparitions stalk along Cheapside, ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... Bradys to the means the abductors employed to personate the undertaker and carry ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous

... great admiration of children and the amusement of older people, but it was very seldom this favor was granted, without earnest and reiterated entreaties. It was the first time she had ever spontaneously offered to personate the Sibyl, whose oracles she uttered, and it was a proof that an unusual fit of inspiration was ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... very restive, he saw a violet in the grass, and stooped to pick it. The horse lashed out with its heels, and struck him in the back of the neck and killed him.... Then the idea came to David to exchange clothes with the dead man, and to take his papers, and personate him. Thus, he could escape from the individuality which was his curse, and find his true self, as it were, in another person. He said, too, that his greatest hope had been to win my love and make me his wife; but he found that he could not bring ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... was pretty Ellen Kingsbury, who had agreed to personate the Queen of Scots, in the garden scene from Schiller's tragedy of Mary Stuart; and this circumstance accidentally afforded Master Horner the opportunity he had so long desired, of seeing his fascinating ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... as interested and as penetrating as the legitimate wife; had also accepted him as her former lover? Surely here was a mass of evidence sufficient to cast light on the case. Imagine an impostor arriving for the first time in a place where all the inhabitants are unknown to him, and attempting to personate a man who had dwelt there, who would have connections of all kinds, who would have played his part in a thousand different scenes, who would have confided his secrets, his opinions, to relations, friends, acquaintances, to all sorts of people; who had ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... an attendant at court, and one of his majesty's companions in his gay hours. On one such occasion, a stranger came with an important suit for an office of great value, just vacant. The king, by way of joke, desired the earl to personate him, and ordered the petitioner to be admitted. The gentleman, addressing himself to the supposed monarch, enumerated his services to the royal family, and hoped the grant of the place would not be deemed too great a reward. "By no means," answered the earl, "and I am only sorry that as soon as I ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... extraordinary love for supernatural stories of the gossiping variety found vent in 'A History of Apparitions,' and his 'System of Magic.' The position which he takes up is a kind of modified rationalism. He believes that there are genuine apparitions which personate our dead friends, and give us excellent pieces of advice on occasion; but he refuses to believe that the spirits can appear themselves, on account 'of the many strange inconveniences and ill consequences which would happen if the souls of men and ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... and varied entertainments at the house served also to beguile her time. On one occasion the young people were arranging a series of tableaux, and she was asked to personate Jephtha's daughter. When the curtain rose on her lovely face and large, dark eyes, the Hebrew maiden and her pathetic history grew into vivid reality against the ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... and my mind rapidly passed to the contemplation of the use that might be made of previous events. Some good genius would appear to you to have interposed to save you from injury intended by me. Why, I said, since I must sink in her opinion, should I not cherish this belief? Why not personate an enemy, and pretend that celestial interference has frustrated my schemes? I must fly, but let me leave wonder and fear behind me. Elucidation of the mystery will always be practicable. I shall do no injury, but merely talk of evil that was designed, ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... wine-party frolic; that Knighton, early an enthusiast for art, used to draw his own left hand in divers attitudes with his right every day for weeks; and that some not quite unknown cotemporary used to personate me at times for his own benefit. As he has been long dead, I may now state that he was believed to be Lord Douglas of Hamilton. Here is the true story. One day the Dean requested my presence, and thus addressed me: "I have long overlooked ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... any election for representative or delegate in the Congress of the United States, any person shall knowingly personate and vote, or attempt to vote, in the name of any other person, whether living, dead or fictitious, or vote more than once at the same election for any candidate for the same office, or vote at a place where he may not be lawfully entitled to vote, or vote without having a lawful right ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous

... two-pronged short-handled steel digging fork, admirably adapted to small properties, where labour is abundant. They alone of the peoples of western Europe have preserved specimens of almost every class of dance known to primitive races. These are (1) animal (or possibly totem) dances, in which men personate animals, the bear, the fox, the horse, &c.; (2) dances to represent agriculture and the vintage performed with wine-skins; (3) the simple arts, such as weaving, where the dancers, each holding a long coloured ribbon, dance round a pole on which is gradually formed a pattern like a Scotch tartan; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... spirit of mischief with which I am at all times possessed moved me to personate the character for which he took me, and I gruffly bade him stand and deliver toll of the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... to aid us. We assigned the parts and commenced studying and rehearsing. Gardner was to be Hamlet; Lieut.-Col. Theodore Gregg, 45th Pa., was to be Claudius, the usurping king; the smooth-faced Capt. William Cook was to be the queen-mother Gertrude; Capt. W. F. Tiemann, 159th N. Y., was to personate Marcellus; Lieut. C. H. Morton of Fairhaven, Mass., I think, was Horatio; and I, having lost about forty pounds of flesh since my capture—it was thought most appropriate that I should be the Ghost! ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague

... advised him to proceed cautiously; and offered (as Mr. Heartfree himself was, he said, too much flustered to examine the woman with sufficient art) to take her into a room in his house alone. He would, he said, personate the master of the shop, would pretend to shew her some jewels, and would undertake to get sufficient information out of her to secure the rogues, and most probably all their booty. This proposal was readily and thankfully ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... Port Logan—as well as she had known it herself. Mercy had only to read the manuscript journal to be able to answer any questions relating to the visit to Rome and to Colonel Roseberry's death. She had no accomplished lady to personate: Grace had spoken herself—her father's letter spoke also in the plainest terms—of her neglected education. Everything, literally everything, was in the lost woman's favor. The people with whom she had been connected in the ambulance had gone, to return no more. Her own ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins

... flash of lightning. In an instant I saw it as plainly as I see it now. It is horrible, it is unheard of, it outdares all daring; but, if I can only nerve myself to face one terrible necessity, it is to be done. I may personate the richly provided widow of Allan Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose, if I can count on Allan Armadale's death ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... was the man the creatures dared to personate! I hate the whole thing, Sutherland. It is full of impudence and irreverence. Perhaps the wretched beings may want another thousand years' damnation, because of the injury done to their character by the homage of men who ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... vengeance upon his enemies; his eyes as a flame of fire, superior intelligence and penetrating vision, etc.—but he distinctly announces himself to be the Christ of God. There is no creature in the universe that could personate "him that liveth, and was ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... a certain William Beresford was Bishop of Ossory once on a time, and I intend to personate this dignitary, clad in Dr. La Touche's cap and gown. We spend this sunny morning by the river-bank; Francesca hemming the last of the yellow window curtains, and I making souvenir programmes for the great occasion. ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... burned in the lodge, and shortly after dark the invalid appeared and sat upon a blanket, which was placed in front of the song-priest. Previously, however, three men had prepared themselves to personate the gods—Hasjelti, Hostjoghon, and Hostjobokon—and one to personate the goddess, Hostjoboard. They left the lodge, carrying their masks in their hands, went a short distance away and put on their masks. Then Hasjelti and Hostjoghon returned to the lodge, and Hasjelti, amid hoots, "hu-hoo-hu-huh!" ...
— Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis and Mythical Sand Painting of the - Navajo Indians • James Stevenson

... antiquated, because it had not for a long time been put in execution. This fellow he had likewise employed, among others, to excite the seamen to mutiny, as he had given money to other rogues to put on jackets to personate seamen, and to go about the country begging in that garb, and exclaiming for want of pay, while the people oppressed with taxes, were cheated of their money by the great officers of the crown. Heydon pretended to have been in all the duke's secrets, for near four years past, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... belonged to the band of Wa-ka-ra—not far off, as the man informed them—they had despatched him to the Utah chief, with a request that the latter would furnish them with a guide, and two or three of his best hunters. Before Marian had ended her explanation, I had divined the scheme. We were to personate the guide and hunters. That was the suggestion of the ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... snakes was due to the dim recollection of his childhood's favourite. Some of the games he invented to please his sisters were grotesque, and some both perilous and terrifying. "We dressed ourselves in strange costumes to personate spirits or fiends, and Bysshe would take a fire-stove and fill it with some inflammable liquid, and carry it flaming into the kitchen and to the back door." Shelley often took his sisters for long country rambles over hedge and fence, carrying them when the difficulties of the ground or their ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... pretend great love and kindness to you, and that he will marry you. You may expect a parson, for this purpose, in a few days; but it is a sly artful fellow, of a broken attorney, that he has hired to personate a minister. The man has a broad face, pitted much with the small-pox, and is a very great companion. So take care of yourself. Doubt not this advice. Perhaps you'll have had but too much reason already to confirm you in the truth of it. From ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... whom I labour—and wandered about on the shore, now passing the children, and assailed with a volley of cries and entreaties to look at this one's castle and that one's ditch, now leaving them behind, with what in its ungraduated flatness might well enough personate an endless desert of sand between, over the expanse of which I could imagine them disappearing on a far horizon, whence however a faint occasional cry of excitement and pleasure would reach my ears. The sea was so calm, and the ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... cried Patty with a merry laugh. "Order up gray Bess, and dress him to personate thee. He can put on a mask and drop his shoulders. Thy plaided camlet cape will do well. And put Moppet on a pillion behind. Someone else must go. Ah, Madam Kent! who will enjoy it mightily and sit up like a brigadier. Then, when he is out ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... however, in which the civilian's wife, observing the actress, was gratified; and it was so brief that she complained afterwards that Miss Howe was disappointing. She certainly went out of her way to be normal. Since it was her daily business to personate exceptional individuals, it seemed to be her pleasure that night to be like everybody else. She did it on opulent lines; there was a richness in her agreement that the going was as hard as iron on ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... work as is seen in Spiritualism. But how do we know, some one may ask, but that Spiritualism is the work of the good angels?—We know that it is not, because good angels do not lie. They never would come to men, professing to be the spirits of their dead friends, and imitate and personate them to deceive, knowing that the mediums did not know, and could not ascertain that they were altogether another and different order of beings. But the evil angels, led by the father of lies, and cradled, and drilled, and skilled, and polished, ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith

... a voice shrill with passion, while Agnes uttered a loud shriek; 'By St. Barbara, young Lady, you have an excellent invention! You must personate the Bleeding Nun, truly? What impiety! What incredulity! Marry, I have a good mind to let you pursue your plan: When the real Ghost met you, I warrant, you would be in a pretty condition! Don Alphonso, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for seducing a young ignorant ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... yet for our many transgressions. For we do at present suppose, that it may be a method within the severer but just transactions of the infinite majesty of God, that he sometimes may permit Sathan to personate, dissemble, and thereby abuse innocents and such as do, in the fear of God, defy the Devil and all his works. The great rage he is permitted to attempt holy Job with; the abuse he does the famous Samuel in disquieting his silent dust, by shadowing his venerable ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... prayer (Mantras) proper for the occasion, but retire when the animal is about to be killed by the Got who represents Bhairavi. The shrine, in which the images of the gods are kept, is always shut, and no person is allowed to enter but the priest (Pujari) and the Gots, who personate in masks these deities. Once in twelve years the Raja offers a solemn sacrifice. It consists of two men, of such a rank that they wear a thread; of two buffaloes, two goats, two rams, two cocks, two ducks, and two fishes. ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... of the girls was willing to represent the elderly bridegroom so unflatteringly described as "a laggard in love and a dastard in war." It was not an ingratiating character, and Nancy and Barbara flatly refused to personate it. Susan could do it, she was the smallest, and would best look the part. For two minutes on end Susan stoutly refused to do anything of the kind, and then placidly consented, being of a peace-at-any-price disposition, which found it easier to submit than to preserve a determined opposition. She ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... into ineffective and colourless forms. The Sir Peter Teazles and Sir Anthony Absolutes of the old comedy require indispensably the resources of the old art, and no thin, water-gruel realism, so-called, can personate them. In avoiding the declamatory Kembletonianism of the old school, our actors are right enough; but they cannot safely disregard the skill which sharpens and chisels, as it were, the sentences; nor forego the care, study, precision and stern adherence to rules of art, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce

... suddenly, pointing at me with a flash of intelligence, "HE can personate him, and say it. Can you?" he ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte

... was on the outside of the building), about some runaway cattle, and the old trapper thought all the while that he was talking to his chum, Dick Lewis. Now Archie had a new subject to practice upon. He laid himself out to personate Arthur Vane; and he not only successfully imitated that young gentleman's pompous style of talking, and his dignified manner of riding and walking, but even the tone of his voice. He criticised Frank and Johnny continually, and made them laugh, till their jaws ached, by recounting imaginary ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon

... introduced himself into the garden at the fete at Trianon, till he was brought to the King's cabinet when arrested, and interrogated, and confronted with her face to face. The Prince started when he saw her. The comparison of her features with those of the guilty wretch who had dared to personate her in the garden at Versailles completely destroyed his self-possession. Her Majesty's person was become fuller, and her face was much longer than that of the infamous D'Oliva. He could neither speak nor write an intelligible reply to the questions put to him. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... girl who had the care of me brought me into the nursery to see my mother. It happened that she wanted something from her own home, which she dispatched the girl to fetch, and desired her to leave me till her return. In her absence she changed our clothes: then keeping me to personate the child she was nursing, she sent away the daughter of sir Edward to be brought up in her ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... into ladies and gentlemen, if the ladies predominate they must personate gentlemen, and vice versa. The gentlemen then proceed to choose lady partners. One of the players next undertakes to question the couples. The fun consists of the questions being put to the lady and the gentleman answering for her. "Do you like your partner?" the lady is asked, ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain

... entertains a laudable hatred for Signor Zappa; and he undertook to pilot us here, either in the Ione, or in any way I proposed; but strongly urged me to employ stratagem to recover you. I accordingly resolved to pretend to be a Maltese seaman, as the character I could best personate, and to be unfortunately wrecked on the island. Once here, I felt sure I should find means to communicate with you; and I then proposed to cut out a boat from the harbour, and to carry you off in her. I directed our pinnace and jollyboat to wait every night ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... detected the officer's plan. He had determined to assume the man's clothes, personate him, and risk the chances of an escape. It was a perilous undertaking, but the officer had been ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"

... am appointed to act a part in the new tragedy called 'The Distressed Mother.' It is the celebrated grief of Orestes which I am to personate; but I shall not act it as I ought, for I shall feel it too intimately to be able to utter it. I was last night repeating a paragraph to myself, which I took to be an expression of rage, and in the middle of the sentence ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... insinuating, and artful, and his character was so supple that he could become as many different men as he had occasion to personate. But he was shortsighted even in his grandest projects; and, unlike his predecessor, whose mind was bold but his temperature timid, Mazarin was bolder in temper than in conception. A pretended moderation veiled his ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... saw that he was to personate the character of a most unsuspecting, confiding young gentleman, who possessed a certain natural aptitude for affairs of importance, and that amount of discretion such as suited him to be employed confidentially; and to perform this ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... to be found, of course, in conscious art, which, though it be derived from play, is itself an abstract, impersonal thing, and depends largely upon philosophical interests beyond the scope of childhood. It is when we make castles in the air and personate the leading character in our own romances, that we return to the spirit of our first years. Only, there are several reasons why the spirit is no longer so agreeable to indulge. Nowadays, when we admit this personal element into our divagations, we are apt to stir up uncomfortable ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... faith in the tale he told. We have seen in our own time how even an Arthur Orton could find sensible and good people to believe the tale with which he sought to enforce claim upon the Tichborne baronetcy. Savage had literary skill, and he could personate the manners of a gentleman in days when there were still gentlemen of fashion who drank, lied, and swaggered into midnight brawls. I have no doubt whatever that he was the son of the nurse with whom the Countess of Macclesfield had placed a child that died, and that ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson

... to the crown of Lombardy. It is the king's wish that he should marry Sophia, his only child, but the princess loves Pal'adore (3 syl.), a Briton. Bireno has a mistress named Alin'da, whom he induces to personate the princess, and in Paladore's presence she casts down a rope-ladder for the duke to climb up by. Bireno has Alinda murdered to prevent the deception being known, and accuses the princess of unchastity—a crime in Lombardy punished ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... being an amateur actor, a low comedy man; but he was not sincere enough to personate any character, or be anything either on the stage or off it but his own small inartistic self; and no amount of bawling could make him an actor, though he bawled himself hoarse as a rule, mistaking sound for the science ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... as the pioneers had never yet witnessed. Pete had received orders to prepare dinner for fifty guests and whiskey for twice as many. There was to be a grand rally early in the morning at the home of Tom Caldwell, who was to personate the great Protestant monarch, and at high noon a triumphal march up over the hills and down into the Glen to the feast,—with fifes and drums and a greater display in crossing the Oro than King William himself had had in ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... Christy that the remarkable attempt of one or the other of the officers on board as passengers to personate the other had been explained to those on the quarter-deck, for he observed that they all regarded him with curiosity, and were interested in the matter. As the surgeon passed near him ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... put in irons, by means of which they regained that symmetry with which nature had at first endowed them. Three years afterwards, in March, 1794, John Kemble was acting Macbeth at Drury Lane; and, in the "cauldron scene," he engaged some children to personate the supernatural beings summoned by the witches from that weird vessel. Little Edmund with his irons was the cause of a ridiculous accident, and the attempt to embody the ghostly forms was abruptly abandoned. But the child seems to have been ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving

... one, even for an experienced nurse. A lay woman might have taken upon herself to personate the priest and pronounce the words of the absolution in the hope of quieting the patient, but no member of a religious order would do such a thing, except to save life, and such a case could hardly arise. The Princess Chiaromonte was in no bodily danger, and the chances ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford

... conduct, though a very common way of management, is as ridiculous as the officer's would be, who had but few men under his command, and should take the charge of an extent of country rather than of a small pass. To pay for, personate, and keep in a man's hands, a greater estate than he really has, is of all others the most unpardonable vanity, and must in the end reduce the man who is guilty of it to dishonour. Yet if we look round us in any county of Great Britain, we shall see many in this fatal error; ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... to appreciate Othello" answered Rossi, "he never could have brought himself to personate Orosmane." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... of Beaufort having been selected by the Duchess of Cambridge to personate Louis XII., in the French Quadrille, of which Her Royal Highness was the leader, His Grace appeared in one of the most splendid dresses handed down by Monfaucon, in his Monarchie Francaise. The dress consisted of rich blue velvet, sumptuously embroidered in ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... inclined to do so," answered Michael Strogoff, in a tone somewhat too sharp for the simple merchant he wished to personate. ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... he consoled himself with music and singing, and refused to take any further part in the war. During his absence the Greeks were hard pressed, and at last he so far relaxed his anger as to allow his friend Patroclus to personate him, lending him his chariot and armour. The slaying of Patroclus by the Trojan hero Hector roused Achilles from his indifference; eager to avenge his beloved comrade, he sallied forth, equipped with new armour fashioned by Hephaestus, slew Hector, and, after dragging his body round the walls ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... more ironicler as my fear died away, leavin' in its void a great madness and tiredness, "if you'd brung your scythe along you might personate Old ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... there," I answered, pointing towards it. "I was brought into that room to personate your uncle, to receive an attack which was meant for him—a very clever scheme! I was drugged, and was to have lain there to cover this fellow's crime. But there, I don't suppose that I need tell you any of these ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... clan in material ways. The clans, therefore, pray to them that these material blessings may be given. "It is an almost universal idea of primitive man," says Fewkes, "that prayers should be addressed to personations of the beings worshipped. In the carrying out of this conception men personate the katchinas, wearing masks, and dressing in the costumes characteristic of these beings. These personations represent to the Hopi mind their idea of the appearance of these katchinas or clan ancients. The spirit beings represented in these personations ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... her tall, stately, elegant figure was admirably calculated to personate the tragic heroines of opera. Her face at this time was beautiful, her large eyes flashed with intellect, and her classical features were radiant with expression; her grandeur of conception, her tragic dignity, her glowing warmth and abandon rendered her worthy of the ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris

... the other one come down after you; and you come down first. Leave her behind, la Lazzeruola; and here, 'Luigi displayed a black veil, the common head-dress of the Milanese women, and twisted his fingers round and round on his forehead to personate the horns of the veil; 'take it, signorina; you know how to wear it. Luigi and the saints watch over you.' Vittoria found herself left in possession of the veil and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... hopping movement of a small bird, the same air of having nothing to do with time, and the clear, sure, piercing note, a miracle of exact vocalisation. She chaffed her companions, she chaffed the room; she might have been a very clever little girl trying to personate a more innocent big one. She scattered her amiability about—showing Miriam how the children of Moliere took their ease—and it quickly placed her in the friendliest communication with Peter Sherringham, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... look thoroughly into the affair. Of course there is only one feasible explanation. You have been brought there to personate someone, and the real person is imprisoned in this chamber. That is obvious. As to who this prisoner is, I have no doubt that it is the daughter, Miss Alice Rucastle, if I remember right, who was said to have gone to America. You were chosen, doubtless, as resembling her in height, figure, ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... Vinson from suicide, Fandor had made him promise to leave France and await developments, whilst Fandor, posing as Vinson, studied at close quarters the spies who had drawn the miserable corporal into their net. Fandor could personate Vinson with every chance of success, because the 257th of the line had never set eyes ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... of those men from whose lips nothing ever sounds as if it were meant seriously. His statement that he regarded a serving girl from the temple of Serapis as fit to personate Hebe, was spoken as naturally and simply as if he were telling a tale for children; but his words produced an effect on his hearers like the sound of waters ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... fellow, whose sole interest in theatricals lay in the consideration of his costume and the sound of his own voice in the ears of the audience. With such an unobjectionable person to enact the part of lover, the prominent character of leading young lady or heroine, which Paula was to personate, was really the most satisfactory in the whole list for her. For although she was to be wooed hard, there was just as much love-making among the remaining personages; while, as Somerset had understood the play, there could occur no flingings of her person ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... preposterous occasion. I never saw this play, rake as I was, but the impropriety of the epilogue sent me away dissatisfied with it, and with human nature too: and you only see, by this one instance, what a character that of an actor or actress is, and how capable they are to personate any thing for a ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... an artful and well-concocted way, which we may readily conceive, but it were weary to detail, John Dillaway managed to forge a will of Jane Mackenzie aforesaid; and inducing some dressed-up "ladies" of his acquaintance to personate the weeping nieces of deceased (doubtless with no lack of Irish witnesses beside, competent to swear to any thing), he contrived to pass probate at Doctors' Commons, and get twelve thousand two hundred and forty-three pounds, bank annuities transferred, as per will, to the two ladies ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... Madame cut Clement's hair as short as if he had been a Roundhead. She had kept plenty of money in the house ever since she had feared for her son, and this they put in a belt round his waist. Altogether, he came out not at all unlike the laquais Jacques Pierrot, whom he was to personate. Eustace said the old lady took leave of her son with her stern Jansenist composure, which my tender- hearted Clement could not imitate. Eustace rejoined the chairmen and came back through the dark streets, while Clement walked at some distance, and contrived to slip in ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the anger of the triumvir. She ascended the Cydnus in a gilded barge, with oars of silver, and sails of purple silk. Beneath awnings wrought of the richest manufactures of the East, the beautiful queen, attired to personate Venus, reclined amidst lovely attendants dressed to represent cupids and nereids. Antony was completely fascinated, as had been the great Caesar before him, by the dazzling beauty of the "Serpent of the Nile." Enslaved by her enchantments, and charmed by her brilliant wit, ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... Robert Evans, the other a merchant adventurer of his acquaintance whom I have not yet seen. Now you are to mark these two men well, note all they say and their manner of speaking, for to-morrow you will have to personate these characters before one who would be only too glad to ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... themselves must seek the aid of the Kindergarten guides, where will be found arranged to music the labors of the peasant, and cooper, and sawyer, the wind-mill, the watermill, the weather-vane, the clock, the pigeon-house, the hares, the bees, and the cuckoo. Children delight to personate animals, and a fine genius could not better employ itself than in inventing a great many more plays, setting them to rhythmical words, describing what is to be done. Every variety of bodily exercise might be made and kept within the bounds of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... or the sea, I know not which, but I still continued my road until I came up to a little cottage, the door of which opened just as I was passing it. An old woman came out and began to take down the shutters. Now, as I came along the road I had made up my mind to personate a deaf and dumb person, which would preclude the necessity of my speaking. I felt I could do this well and successfully. I determined to try the experiment upon this old lady. I walked quietly up to her, ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... in progress the hut is occupied by the qacal'i and his assistants and by the young men who assume the sacred masks and personate the various deities in the nightly dances. In the mornings the qacal'i sits under the western side of the hut and directs the young men in the process of sand painting, the making of curious sand mosaics delineating mythologic subjects. ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff

... crowning act in the great drama of deception, Satan himself will personate Christ. The church has long professed to look to the Saviour's advent as the consummation of her hopes. Now the great deceiver will make it appear that Christ has come. In different parts of the earth, Satan will manifest ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... costumes, and she helped Jack with his. He went as a comic Valentine. Pink begged her to dress as the Queen of Hearts, and she was almost persuaded to do so, thinking that would be the easiest of costumes to prepare, till she guessed from something he let fall that he intended to personate the King himself. Then nothing would have induced her to do it. She knew it would give occasion for the coupling of their names together in the familiar and teasing way they have ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston

... is great only in stature, quitted the rank of serjeant in the Gardes Francaises to become a bad player. In the character of kings, he scarcely now appears but to personate tyrants. He is very cold, and speaks through his nose like a Capuchin friar, which has gained him the appellation of the Reverend ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... thron'd. The Base o'th' Mount Is rank'd with all deserts, all kinde of Natures That labour on the bosome of this Sphere, To propagate their states; among'st them all, Whose eyes are on this Soueraigne Lady fixt, One do I personate of Lord Timons frame, Whom Fortune with her Iuory hand wafts to her, Whose present grace, to present slaues and ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... great models of her time, the Barrys, the Bellamys, the Yeates, and the Siddonses; that under a father so well qualified to instruct her, her talents were brought forth in the very bud, by constant exercise, and that while yet a child she had learned to personate the heroine. What then will the reader's surprise be, when he is informed that she had seen very few plays; perhaps fewer than the general run of citizens' daughters—and that the stage was never even for ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... me. She made me her sport—yours, too, perhaps, or she would at least have wished it. On that holy ground where my people lie in peace she made me deny my faith, she made me, in your eyes and her own, personate a renegade of my race, she made me confess in the Christian creed, she made me seem to die for a belief I abhor. Can you conceive of anything more devilish? A moment later she smiles upon me and presses my hand, and is anxious to know of my good health. And but for you, I should ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... it to be truth," rejoined Judith. "Your retainer and unscrupulous agent, Major Pillichody, applied to Chowles to find some one to personate a clergyman in a mock marriage, which your lordship wished to have performed, and promised a handsome reward for the service. Chowles mentioned the subject to me, and we speedily contrived a plan to outwit your lordship, and turn ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... wanted a deliverer more, so the eagerness of this hope, as it happens to weak minds, turned into a firm expectation that he would soon come. This proved a temptation to some bold, and to some cunning men, to personate the prince so much expected. And "nothing is more natural and common to promote rebellions, than to ground them on new prophecies, or new interpretations of old ones; prophecies being suited to the vulgar superstition, and operating with the force of religion." Accordingly, many such imposters ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock

... letter, and proclaim you to be an impostor, worthy of the severest punishment for attempting to personate a son of my late brother. However, for the sake of my friendship for Mr. Kennedy, your father, I give you twenty-four hours to leave the country, before laying any information against you, both as an impostor and as a rebel who has served against ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty

... notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, nearly two thousand persons had assembled. The work selected was the Christmas Carol. The high mimetic powers possessed by Mr. Dickens enabled him to personate with remarkable force the various characters of the story, and with admirable skill to pass rapidly from the hard, unbelieving Scrooge, to trusting and thankful Bob Cratchit, and from the genial fulness of Scrooge's nephew, to the hideous mirth of the party ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... and give the cue lustily, the house seems in wonderful accord with your opinions. An actor, like a king, should only appear on state occasions. He loses popularity by too much publicity; or, according to the proverb, familiarity breeds contempt. Both characters personate a certain abstract idea, are seen in a fictitious costume, and when they have 'shuffled off this more than mortal coil,' they had better keep out of the way—the acts and sentiments emanating from themselves will not carry on the illusion of our prepossessions. Ordinary transactions ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... ill humours and all such malignant matter as offended), but also to put pen to paper and appear in print (as in this imperfect and impolished piece, which as guilty of an high presumption here in all humility begs your Lordship's pardon) wherein my chief scope is to personate the Good Samaritan, that, as he cured the wounded traveller by searching his wounds with wine and suppling them with oil, so I have here both described the rise and progress of our national malady, and also prescribed the only remedy, that I might be in some ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... taunt, imitate, gibe, ridicule, jeer, schout; balk, disappoint, delude, tantalize, elude; defy, disregard; ape, mimic, personate. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... the President, authorized the purchaser to demand protection from the national arms, if molested. All this was well enough; but it was soon discovered that the speculators would hire miscreants and drunken Indians to personate the real possessors of lands, and, having paid them the money, would take it back as soon as the purchase was completed, give the Indian a jug of whiskey, or a small bag of silver, for the fraud, and so become lords of the soil. Great dissatisfaction arose, and lives were lost. An anonymous letter ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Benedict, was laying the foundations of the coenobitic life. In the first instance, Totila tried to deceive the Saint. He dressed up a high officer as king, and sent him, with three of his chief counts in attendance, to personate himself. When Benedict saw the Gothic train approaching he was seated, and as soon as they were within earshot, he cried out to the warrior pretending to be king: "Son, lay aside that dress which is not thine". ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... thus, Thus low to the most worthy and respected Lieger ambassadors, my modesty And womanhood I tender; but withal, So entangled in a curs'd accusation, That my defence, of force, like Perseus, Must personate masculine virtue. To the point. Find me but guilty, sever head from body, We 'll part good friends: I scorn to hold my life At yours, ...
— The White Devil • John Webster

... afterwards of governess, came to the rescue. She told her story, which was rather a strange one, to the Colonel, and they made an arrangement with her to come and take care of the child. It was planned between them that Percy (her name is Amy Percival) should personate the only child of a deceased brother of the Colonel, and be adopted by him as his own daughter. Thenceforward the poor pale Madame Guyot took up her abode with them, like Amram's wife at the Egyptian court. I remember how sad and silent she always was, and how much ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... childless, Alexander contracted a second marriage with Yolande, daughter of the Count de Dreux; and a splendid bridal took place at Jedburgh, with every kind of amusements, especially mumming and masquing. In the midst, some reckless reveller glided in arrayed in ghastly vestments, so as to personate death, and after making fearful gestures, vanished away, leaving an impression of terror among the guests that they did not quickly shake off—the ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... to describe the sacrifices in progress. The persons selected to personate the departed were necessarily inferior in rank to the principal sacrificer, yet for the time they were superior to him. This circumstance, it was supposed, would make them feel uncomfortable; and therefore, as soon as they appeared in the temple, ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... contemptible machinery by which they mimic the storm which he goes out in, is not more inadequate to represent the horrors of the real elements, than any actor can be to represent Lear: they might more easily propose to personate the Satan of Milton upon a stage, or one of Michael Angelo's terrible figures. The greatness of Lear is not in corporal dimension but in intellectual: the explosions of his passions are terrible as a volcano; they ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold

... popular but plain author who finds it necessary to cultivate society, would discover, if he would go about veiled or engage a better-looking man to personate him, a speedy increase in the circulation of his next work, and, if at all sensitive as to his own shortcomings, he would certainly be spared a considerable amount of pain, for it is trying for a man who rather enjoys ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... conducted outside the walls without meeting a single official. The ruse, however, got wind, and the decree of the 14th of June was the consequence. To frustrate this, the royalist committee caused several children to personate me, imparting to the impostors several circumstances connected with my family. One they sent to Bordeaux, another to La Vendee, a third to Germany, and so on. These are the children who, when they became men, ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various

... Nay, nay, put not on that strange face. I am privy to the whole design, and know that Waitwell, to whom thou wert this morning married, is to personate Mirabell's uncle, and, as such winning my lady, to involve her in those difficulties from which Mirabell only must release her, by his making his conditions to have my cousin and her fortune left to ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve

... Nat, "and I have no doubt that many persons have been ruined by going; but they did not go for the same object that we go. I am not going just for the pleasure of witnessing the play, by any means; I want to see how the actors personate the different characters. To read Shakspeare well, it must be read ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer

... divided into two equal parties, one of which personate defenders, and take their places in the barn, with the doors and windows open. The other party are the besiegers, and are stationed outside the barn. The fighting is done by means of weeds specially prepared for the purpose. The weeds commonly called redroot ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... packed, with a large quantity of salt, in a box of suitable dimensions, should be conveyed on board as merchandise. Nothing was to be said of the lady's decease; and, as it was well understood that Mr. Wyatt had engaged passage for his wife, it became necessary that some person should personate her during the voyage. This the deceased lady's-maid was easily prevailed on to do. The extra state-room, originally engaged for this girl during her mistress' life, was now merely retained. In this state-room ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... the plan was formed by which this woman was to personate the other. The striking similarity in the hair, which was the most conspicuous beauty of ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter

... of Shakespeare's playing. But Charles was so old and weak in mind that he could recall nothing except the faint impression that he had once seen "Will" act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein, being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping and unable to walk that he was forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company who were eating, and one of them sang a song. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... world," she said, "and I don't know that I can dispute you. Millie Lundsford has just gone home. She and I have been going through with our old-time play, when, with window curtains wound about us to represent long dresses, and with brooms to personate the brave knights who had rescued us from the merciless Turks, we danced in the castle. And I was just taking a turn with a duke when you came. What a knight you ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... in the heavens' (2 Cor 5:1). We have then, a house for our soul in this world, and this house is the body, for the apostle can mean nothing else; therefore he calls it an earthly house. 'If our earthly house'—our house. But who doth he personate if he says, This is a house for the soul; for the body is part of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... I presume thou wilt be very inquisitive to know what antic or personate actor this is, that so insolently intrudes upon this common theatre, to the world's view, arrogating another man's name; whence he is, why he doth it, and what he hath to say; although, as [7]he said, Primum si ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... cast a look of contempt on the Moor, who, thoroughly prepared for his part, most efficaciously assumed the appearance of the mercenary he was then undertaking to personate. ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... (Python) still lingered in Eastern Europe. Huge tame snakes were kept as sacred by the Macedonian women; and one of them (according to Lucian) Peregrinus Proteus, the Cagliostro of his time, fitted with a linen mask, and made it personate the god AEsculapius. In the "Historia Lausiaca," cap. lii. is an account by an eye-witness of a large snake in the Thebaid, whose track was "as if a beam had been dragged along the sand." It terrifies ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... dressed after the manner of the Creole Spanish ladies,—wholly in black. A small black bonnet on her head, covered by a veil thick with embroidery, concealed her face. It had been agreed that, in their escape, she was to personate the character of a Creole lady, and ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... theologians who are not only opposed to such a cult, but who go the length of saying that the phenomena and messages come from fiends who personate our dead, or pretend to be heavenly teachers. It is difficult to think that those who hold this view have ever had any personal experience of the consoling and uplifting effect of such communications upon the recipient. Ruskin has left it on record that his conviction of a future life ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle

... is to say, to the Duc d'Olivares, whom you are about to personate. Ah, my protege is a discreet conspirator, and I have had some trouble to get at the truth of things. He was addressed to Paris, to a certain La Jonquiere, who was to present him to the Duc d'Olivares. Do you ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... is possible for the Devil in the Shape of an innocent Person to do other mischiefs. As for those who acknowledge that Satan may personate a pious Person, but not to do mischief, their Opinion has been confuted by more than a few unhappy Instances. Mr. Clark[17] speaks of a Man that had been an Atheist, or a Sadduce, not believing that there are any Devils or any (to us) invisible World; this Man was converted, ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... "Craftsman." About this time the complete metamorphosis of the studious and ingenious John Henley began to branch out into its grotesque figure; and a curiosity in human nature was now about to be opened to public inspection. "The Preacher" was to personate "The Zany." His temper had become brutal, and he had gradually contracted a ferocity and grossness in his manners, which seem by no means to have been indicated in his purer days. His youth was disgraced by no irregularities—it was studious and honourable. But ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... for two strings, the 'E' and 'G,' the first was to personate the lady, the second himself. It commenced with a species of dialogue, intending to represent her indifference and his passion; now sportive, now sad; laughter on her part and tears from him, ending in an apotheosis of loving reconciliation. It affected the lady to that degree that ever ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa

... day-time to witness the rehearsals, and otherwise examine into the economy of the stage in general. I also made myself, without any evil intent at the time, entirely conversant with the localities of the place. To draw a full house, Mr. Betty, once the Young Roscius, had been engaged to personate the Earl of Warwick, and admirably he sustained it, too. During the performance, I had crept from the gallery—here always appropriated to the Etonians—through a door which had been purposely made not to appear such, into a place immediately over the stage. Across this space stretch ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.

... said Rollo, 'that Wych Hazel could not conveniently personate a pine tree or Primrose ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... thron'd: the base o' the mount Is rank'd with all deserts, all kind of natures That labour on the bosom of this sphere To propagate their states: amongst them all, Whose eyes are on this sovereign lady fix'd One do I personate of Lord Timon's frame, Whom Fortune with her ivory hand wafts to her; Whose present grace to present slaves and ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]

... we went out together to see Shakespeare's "Richard," or rather we went to see the man who was to personate Shakespeare's "Richard"—and so did thousands; we did not see him, however. There was a great tumult, I remember, in the theatre. The man who was to perform the part of Richard, and who it was said was ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... doors; Extol the Greek and Roman masters, And curse our modern poetasters; Complain, as many an ancient bard did, How genius is no more rewarded; How wrong a taste prevails among us; How much our ancestors out-sung us; Can personate an awkward scorn For those who are not poets born; And all their brother-dunces lash, Who crowd ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... To personate characters, time is represented by King Nimaera; birth, life, and death respectively by Kalim, Weemus, and Sero; while mankind is represented by Nimaera's subjects, and the world by his kingdom, heaven by "The Land of Bliss," and hell by ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar

... no appointments with tinkers," replied Melissa; "if you personate that young man, you must be content to wait for days or months to catch a glimpse of the hem of my garment; to bay the moon and bless the stars, and I do not know what else. It is, in short, catch me when you can; and now farewell, ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... the green. A ring is formed, and a tallow candle is stuck in a cut potato, and placed at intervals round the circle; and within this not very brilliant illumination, the cadets dance with each other to the excellent music of the band. Those who personate ladies, take hold of their little bob-tailed jackets, and prink and mince, and take fine airs upon themselves, and look so precisely like fine ladies, that the real fine ladies looking at them, want to give ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... and highest degree of the society requires a greater number of feasts than before, and the candidate, who continues to personate the Bear Spirit, again uses his sacred drum, as he is shown sitting before it in No. 78, and chants more prayers to Dzhe Manid[-o] for his favor. This degree is guarded by the greatest number and the most powerful of malevolent spirits, who make a last effort ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... condescend to do this or else fear to let themselves down by doing so. Warren had no timidities about assuming a lesser part, nor did he deem it condescension. Artists of questionable greatness may deem it a degradation to personate any save a leading part. Warren felt that he did not let himself down, he raised the character to his own elevation. From this it follows that no great actor within my recollection had undertaken such a variety of characters. He was found in every possible ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... worm-eaten chests, scouring the country far and near and even sending as far as Davenport and Rock Island for the necessary costumes. Andy himself had been asked by Harry Clifford to lend his Sunday suit, that young scamp intending to personate some raw New England Yankee; and that was how Mrs. Markham, senior, first came to hear of the proceedings which, to one of her rigid views, savored strongly of the pit, especially after she heard one of the parties described by an eye-witness, who mentioned ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... celebrated author is very much in vogue now, and is helpful in many ways. For instance, an evening with Dickens is observed in the following way: A number will personate the leading characters in any of Dickens' works, talking only in language and tone suited to the character, the invited guests ascertaining from his acquaintance with Dickens just where they belong. This can be done with or without costumes. Light refreshments are served by the ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm

... if one pupil reads the first six lines of the selection, and two others personate St. Philip ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... came to light. No such firm as "Campbell & Co." existed; Ganesh Babu and Salim Sardar were both accomplices of Jogesh, who had rented an office on the Strand for one month at Rs. 300 which was never paid. He had also engaged twenty or thirty loafers at 4 annas (4d.) a head to personate coolies for a couple of hours. This part of the inquiry was satisfactory enough—for the police; not so the efforts they made to trace Jogesh and his accomplices. From that day to this nothing ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... were very important and very private, and after discussion it was decided what ceremonies and mysteries were to be presented. The duke desired that I should personate the character of Holy Church of which he wished to make use at ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... will excuse you from any disturbance or intrusion here. The mulatto woman you have sometimes personated may be still in this house; I will appoint her to attend you. I suppose you can trust her, for you must personate her again, and escape in her clothes, while she takes your place in this room ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... the Cardinal, who awaited impatiently the promised interview with his royal mistress. There was at that time in Paris a young woman named D'Oliva, noted for her resemblance to the Queen; and Madame de la Motte, on the promise of a handsome reward, found no difficulty in persuading her to personate Marie Antoinette, and meet the Cardinal de Rohan at the evening twilight in the gardens of Versailles. The meeting took place accordingly. The Cardinal was deceived by the uncertain light, the great resemblance of the counterfeit, and his own hopes; and having received the flower from ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... ran so high that he was presented with a medal by the townsfolk. It was from here also that, a little while after, tidings of his own death reached him, together with most gratifying obituary notices. It would seem that, after his departure, an adventurer, attempting to personate ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... of Colossians and Philemon; and 2 Thessalonians and Ephesians are now being placed in the same list even by some extreme critics. In fact, the use made of St. Paul's Epistles in the 2nd century, and the impossibility of finding any one who had the genius to personate the great apostle, are two things which have disabled fancy-criticism. The Epistles to Timothy and Titus are still confidently rejected by some authors, but this confidence is being undermined. Some special attention is given to the question of ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan

... first tell you, friend Hamad," he began, for Haroun and Giafer were known to him only by their assumed names of Hamad and Yussuf—"I must first tell you how it came about that I was induced to personate our sovereign lord, Haroun Alraschid, whom may Allah preserve, and from whose ears may the story of my presumption be ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin

... completely thunderstruck at the revelation. "Why, then," he cried, after a pause, "this may supply the very motive-power that is wanting, for one to personate Fred Massingbird." ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... hear such a fellow speak nonsense. But he corrected himself by reflecting that he was perhaps as well entertained, and instructed too, by this same modest gauger, as he should have been by such a man as he had thought proper to personate. And surely the fault may more properly be imputed to that rank where the futility is real than where it is feigned: to that rank whose opportunities for nobler accomplishments have only served to rear a fabric of folly which the untutored hand of affectation, even among the meanest ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... us, that we were almost thrust off our beds; and who should be seated above me, but the cook who had made a goose of a hog, all stinking of pickle and kitchen-stuff; nor yet content that he sate amongst us, he fell immediately to personate Thespis the tragedian, and dare his master to a wager which of them two should ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... each other, except in one small particular. Craven Kyte had a black mole on his chin. And he was deeply in love with Mary Grey, and she could have done whatever she pleased with him. She could have persuaded him to personate Alden Lytton at that marriage ceremony; and I am sure that she has done so. I feel a positive conviction that he is ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... depicture^; portray; take a likeness, catch a likeness &c n.; hit off, photograph, daguerreotype; snapshot; figure, shadow forth, shadow out; adumbrate; body forth; describe &c 594; trace, copy; mold. dress up; illustrate, symbolize. paint &c 556; carve &c 557; engrave &c 558. personate, personify; impersonate; assume a character; pose as; act; play &c (drama) 599; mimic &c (imitate) 19; hold the mirror up to nature. Adj. represent, representing &c v., representative; illustrative [Slang]; represented &c v.; imitative, figurative; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... the lodging-house-keeper had gone away and died, and that nobody else in the street had any definite ideas as to your wife's personal appearance, and came and proposed the arrangement we carried out—that I should personate her. Your taking all this trouble shows that something more serious than love had to do ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... deception: I whitened my face, that they might not know me, and this had its desired effect. He did not go out of his house that night, and next morning I contrived a well plotted stratagem notwithstanding he had a gentleman in his house to personate him. My direction to the tipstaff, who got admittance into the house, was to conduct him to a judge, according to the writ. When he came there, his plea was, that he had not the body in custody, on which he was admitted to bail. ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano

... and young Pickle having composed an epistle for the occasion, the exciseman of the parish, a fellow of great impudence and some humour, in whom Hatchway could confide, undertook to transcribe and deliver it with his own hand, and also personate the man in whose favour it was feigned to be written. He, accordingly, one morning arrived on horseback at the garrison, two hours at least before Trunnion used to get up, and gave Pipes, who admitted him, to understand, that he had a letter from his master, which he was ordered to deliver ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... to Christy that the remarkable attempt of one or the other of the officers on board as passengers to personate the other had been explained to those on the quarter-deck, for he observed that they all regarded him with curiosity, and were interested in the matter. As the surgeon passed near him he ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... the promised interview with his royal mistress. There was at that time in Paris a young woman named D'Oliva, noted for her resemblance to the queen; and Madame de la Motte, on the promise of a handsome reward, found no difficulty in persuading her to personate Marie Antoinette, and meet the Cardinal de Rohan at the evening twilight in the gardens of Versailles. The meeting took place accordingly. The cardinal was deceived by the uncertain light, the great resemblance of the counterfeit, and his own hopes; and having received the flower from ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... the window; but the rain was now pouring down in torrents, and he could discern nothing but the lightning. Humbert was a favorite with the Lord of Hers. He played upon the harp with more than common skill, and could personate the regular minnesinger to perfection. His stock of ballads was inexhaustible, and some of his original songs might well compare with his borrowed lore. Besides this, he was a daring huntsman, an expert falconer, and a ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... your choice of metre a little too much of the measured elegiac, for the bursts of alternate passion, love, and anger—those sudden breaks of vexation, which I see, or fancy I see, in the original Latin. Now, Aquilius, let us hear you personate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... It is difficult to personate and act a part long, for where truth is not at the bottom Nature will always be endeavouring to return, and will peep out and betray herself one ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston

... abandoned altogether, because in the hands of the Realists they fade away into ineffective and colourless forms. The Sir Peter Teazles and Sir Anthony Absolutes of the old comedy require indispensably the resources of the old art, and no thin, water-gruel realism, so-called, can personate them. In avoiding the declamatory Kembletonianism of the old school, our actors are right enough; but they cannot safely disregard the skill which sharpens and chisels, as it were, the sentences; nor forego the care, study, precision and stern adherence ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce

... fellow speak nonsense. But he corrected himself by reflecting that he was perhaps as well entertained, and instructed too, by this same modest gauger, as he should have been by such a man as he had thought proper to personate. And surely the fault may more properly be imputed to that rank where the futility is real than where it is feigned: to that rank whose opportunities for nobler accomplishments have only served to rear a fabric ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... dogs, and the shrill screams of elderly ladies, entered the broad door of the clothes-warehouse, and thrust his nose into Mr. O'Brallaghan's face, just as that gentleman was cutting out the sixth pair of pantaloons for himself, in which he was to personate St. Michael. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... friend Hamad," he began, for Haroun and Giafer were known to him only by their assumed names of Hamad and Yussuf—"I must first tell you how it came about that I was induced to personate our sovereign lord, Haroun Alraschid, whom may Allah preserve, and from whose ears may the story of my presumption be hidden ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin

... ceremony is in progress the hut is occupied by the qacal'i and his assistants and by the young men who assume the sacred masks and personate the various deities in the nightly dances. In the mornings the qacal'i sits under the western side of the hut and directs the young men in the process of sand painting, the making of curious sand mosaics delineating mythologic subjects. The materials used are ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff

... cousin, was there one who would not think that it had been in his possession from before his uncle's death, and that he had now been driven by his fears to surrender it? Was there one who would not believe that he had hidden it with his own hands? How now could he personate that magnanimity which would have been so easy had he brought forth the book and handed it with its enclosure to Mr Apjohn when the lawyer came to ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... him some messages of which he was to be the bearer to this Spaniard. A thought flashed upon me—Montreuil's letter mentioned, accidentally, that the Spaniard had never hitherto seen Barnard: could I not personate the latter, deliver the messages myself, and thus win that introduction to the daughter which I so burningly desired, and which, from the close reserve of the father's habits, I might not otherwise effect? The plan was open to two objections: one, that I was known personally in the town ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who, leaving Europe in 1620 because not permitted to sing psalms through his nose, followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... often sought indeed yet sought in vain not only by dramatists who have very [Footnote 1 Deflexit jam aliquantul im] seldom attained it but by authors of a very great diversity of type and culture. One who undertakes to personate a character belonging to an age not his own hardly ever fails of manifest anachronisms. The author finds it utterly impossible to fit the antique mask so closely as not now and then to show through its chinks his own more modern ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis

... with a large quantity of salt in a box of suitable dimensions, should be conveyed on board as merchandise. Nothing was to be said of the lady's decease; and, as it was well understood that Mr. Wyatt had engaged passage for his wife, it became necessary that some person should personate her during the voyage. This the deceased lady's maid was easily prevailed on to do. The extra stateroom, originally engaged for this girl during her mistress's life, was now merely retained. In this stateroom the pseudo-wife slept, of course, every night. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... meetings were very important and very private, and after discussion it was decided what ceremonies and mysteries were to be presented. The duke desired that I should personate the character of Holy Church of which he wished to make use at ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... seaman soon appeared, seemingly issuing from the element whose deity he aspired to personate. Mops, dripping with brine, supplied the place of hoary locks; gulf-weed, of which acres were floating within a league of the ship, composed a sort of negligent mantle; and in his hand he bore a ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... nay, put not on that strange face. I am privy to the whole design, and know that Waitwell, to whom thou wert this morning married, is to personate Mirabell's uncle, and, as such winning my lady, to involve her in those difficulties from which Mirabell only must release her, by his making his conditions to have my cousin and her fortune ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve

... desirous of the empire, he had accepted it with the most sincere reluctance. "But it is no longer in my power," says Probus, in a private letter, "to lay down a title so full of envy and of danger. I must continue to personate the character which the soldiers have imposed upon me." [25] His dutiful address to the senate displayed the sentiments, or at least the language, of a Roman patriot: "When you elected one of your order, conscript ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... published great work on the development of moral ideas, has little to say of it. It is greatly complicated by the undoubted fact that among many peoples, perhaps to some extent even among the Latins, the earliest real priests had a tendency to personate the deity themselves, to be considered as the deity, or in some sense divine.[241] But in regard to Roman priests we may, I think, go at least as far as this. When a spirit was named and localised as a friendly being at a particular spot within the walls of the city, which ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... the painting are applied to the corresponding parts of the patient's body, then gathered up and carried off to the north. During the day two sets of beggars go out to the neighboring hogans. These personate Hasche{COMBINING BREVE}lti, Tonenili—Water Sprinkler, the God of Water, who is really a clown—and as many Haschebaad as care to go out. The beggars carry whips made of yucca leaves, and one who does not respond to their ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... for canvassers which was printed on the little card said that you must not persuade any one to personate a voter. I have no idea what it means. To dress up as an average voter seems a little vague. There is no well-recognised uniform, as far as I know, with civic waistcoat and patriotic whiskers. The enterprise resolves itself into one somewhat similar ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... whose relationship he is also entirely unconscious. His parlours are made with French windows; they are open, and invite the bailiff-hunted Brown into the house. What so natural as that he should find out the state of family affairs from a loquacious Abigail, and should personate the expected nephew? Mr. Tidmarsh (the property old gentleman of the farce-writers) is in ecstacics. Mrs. T. sees in the supposed Selbourne a son-in-law for her daughter, whose vision is directed to the same prospects. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various

... last:—first. Let the other one come down after you; and you come down first. Leave her behind, la Lazzeruola; and here, 'Luigi displayed a black veil, the common head-dress of the Milanese women, and twisted his fingers round and round on his forehead to personate the horns of the veil; 'take it, signorina; you know how to wear it. Luigi and the saints watch over you.' Vittoria found herself left in possession of the veil and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... indeed accordingly he apply'd to the only wound he was then griev'd with; which though it went quite through his Heart, yet thank God was not Mortal. He was not a little rejoyc'd at his good Fortune in getting so early a Favour from his Mistress, and notwithstanding the violence he did himself to personate a sick Man, he could not forbear giving some Symptoms of an extraordinary content; and telling her that he did not doubt to receive a considerable Proportion of ease from the Application of what had so often kiss'd her fair Hand. Leonora who did not suspect the Compliment, ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve

... Amsterdam. That's about twenty miles. Meanwhile Argyle shall come aboard here. The schooner shall take him up to Egmont; he'll get there this afternoon. He must come aboard disguised though. At Zaandam, we three will separate, Jermyn will personate me, remaining in Zaandam. The boy shall carry letters in a hurry to Hoorn; dummy letters, of course. While I shall creep off to meet Argyle—somewhere else. If we start in a hurry they won't have time to organize a pursuit. There are probably only a few secret agents ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... great wealth, and set forth his early and late relations with the prisoner, a dishonored and unscrupulous outcast of society. The prisoner had been intimately acquainted with the circumstances of Johnson's early life, with his history and his home. His plan, therefore, was to kill him, and then personate him. A celebrated case, which would be present to the minds of the jury, proved that a most plausible attempt at the personation of a long-missing man might be made by an uneducated impostor, who possessed none of the minute local and ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang

... in the lodge, and shortly after dark the invalid appeared and sat upon a blanket, which was placed in front of the song-priest. Previously, however, three men had prepared themselves to personate the gods—Hasjelti, Hostjoghon, and Hostjobokon—and one to personate the goddess, Hostjoboard. They left the lodge, carrying their masks in their hands, went a short distance away and put on their masks. Then Hasjelti and Hostjoghon ...
— Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis and Mythical Sand Painting of the - Navajo Indians • James Stevenson

... leaving them under a strong guard, proceed with two of his prows loaded to the gunwale with merchandise, to the port. The merchant-boats which he had previously sunk, and whose crews he had murdered, provided him with "port-clearances," which enabled him to personate the trader and regularly enter and clear the customs at Singapore, so as to cause no suspicion; then, returning to his place of rendezvous with a fresh supply of guns, ammunition, etcetera, he divided his ill-gotten gains and ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne

... and thus getting whole divisions of the hustings to themselves, where they polled every beggar from the streets. The question is not of title to vote in most cases, but of identity; most families being at this season out of town, a rascal was found to personate every absentee. The suborners of perjury not regularly conferring, very many instances occur of an absentee being represented by four or five, all admitted to vote on their ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... strong and massy bolts with which every door and hatchway was secured. Their appearance produced rather an uncomfortable sensation in him; so much so, that when the jailer asked him his name, he thought it more prudent, in consequence of a touch of conscience he had, to personate Art for the present, inasmuch as he felt it impossible to assume any name more safe than ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... read the forms of prayer (Mantras) proper for the occasion, but retire when the animal is about to be killed by the Got who represents Bhairavi. The shrine, in which the images of the gods are kept, is always shut, and no person is allowed to enter but the priest (Pujari) and the Gots, who personate in masks these deities. Once in twelve years the Raja offers a solemn sacrifice. It consists of two men, of such a rank that they wear a thread; of two buffaloes, two goats, two rams, two cocks, two ducks, and two fishes. The lower animals are first sacrificed in the outer part of the temple, ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... mount his horse, which was very restive, he saw a violet in the grass, and stooped to pick it. The horse lashed out with its heels, and struck him in the back of the neck and killed him.... Then the idea came to David to exchange clothes with the dead man, and to take his papers, and personate him. Thus, he could escape from the individuality which was his curse, and find his true self, as it were, in another person. He said, too, that his greatest hope had been to win my love and make me his wife; but he found that he could not bring himself to ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... out together to see Shakespeare's "Richard," or rather we went to see the man who was to personate Shakespeare's "Richard"—and so did thousands; we did not see him, however. There was a great tumult, I remember, in the theatre. The man who was to perform the part of Richard, and who it was said ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... Where Scribe and Sardou and the manufacturers of the "well-made play" give the performers only effective parts, to be presented as skilfully as might be, Ibsen has proffered to them genuine characters to get inside of as best they could,—characters not easy to personate, indeed, often obscure and dangerous. Because of this danger and this doubt, they are all the more tempting to the true artist, who is ever on the alert for a tussle with technical difficulty. The men and ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... proceeded far, when a large plantation became visible, the white mansion gleaming through the trees. Wright recognizing the place, suggested that Glazier might procure a good supper, and something for the haversack, if he would boldly call and personate a rebel officer, trusting to his face and ready wit to carry him through. He had heard from some negroes that the only occupant was a Mrs. Keyton and some young children, the wife and family of the planter, who was an officer ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... do I waste my time here?" said I, starting up, and seizing my hat. "The reptile is at work. Where lives Sir Reginald?—my demon— like double may be there before me. He may personate me long enough to kill my father and rifle his hoards. I must away—but, ere I go, know that, with these abstracted papers, he sought me in the West Indies, cheated me out of my name on my return to England, and, finally, waylaid and attempted, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... ways. The clans, therefore, pray to them that these material blessings may be given. "It is an almost universal idea of primitive man," says Fewkes, "that prayers should be addressed to personations of the beings worshipped. In the carrying out of this conception men personate the katchinas, wearing masks, and dressing in the costumes characteristic of these beings. These personations represent to the Hopi mind their idea of the appearance of these katchinas or clan ancients. The ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... Soldiers, horse and foot, very pleasantly illustrates an observation in a recent number of the Edinburgh Review, on the dramatic character of the amusements of children. The scene is a large, ancient, dilapidated building, and the little people personate the Duke of Wellington, the Marquess of Anglesea, &c., with all the precision of military tactics—but no one has a taste for being a private. So it is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various

... Spiritualism. But how do we know, some one may ask, but that Spiritualism is the work of the good angels?—We know that it is not, because good angels do not lie. They never would come to men, professing to be the spirits of their dead friends, and imitate and personate them to deceive, knowing that the mediums did not know, and could not ascertain that they were altogether another and different order of beings. But the evil angels, led by the father of lies, and cradled, and drilled, and skilled, ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith

... on the 10th by a noble-hearted Wallachian woman, Princess Cantacuzene, who undertook to conduct him to the frontier, and who kept her word. It was a troublesome task. Quinet had a foreign passport in the name of Grubesko, he was to personate a Wallachian, and it was arranged that he should not know how to speak French, he who writes it as a master. The journey was perilous. They ask for passports along all the line, beginning at the terminus. At Amiens they were particularly suspicious. But at Lille the danger was ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... was great, industrious, insinuating, and artful, and his character was so supple that he could become as many different men as he had occasion to personate. But he was shortsighted even in his grandest projects; and, unlike his predecessor, whose mind was bold but his temperature timid, Mazarin was bolder in temper than in conception. A pretended moderation veiled his ambition and his avarice; he said ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... not at first, she had learned to do it with perfect ease and indifference, neither letting her voice drag languidly and hesitatingly when she was tired, nor falling into that nerve-rending fault of readers who vainly endeavour to personate the characters in dialogue, and to give impressiveness in the descriptive portions. She never made a remark, or asked her hearer's opinion. If the Countess was in the humour to sleep, the reading was soporific; ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... monstrous to put it into the hands of the common people. Let that be left unto the Anabaptists, and other furies. It was great blasphemy, when the devil said, I will ascend, and be like the highest; but it is greater blasphemy, to personate God, and bring him in saying, I will descend, and be like the prince of darkness; and what is it better, to make the cause of religion to descend, to the cruel and execrable actions of murthering princes, butchery of people, and subversion of states and governments? ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... continued my road until I came up to a little cottage, the door of which opened just as I was passing it. An old woman came out and began to take down the shutters. Now, as I came along the road I had made up my mind to personate a deaf and dumb person, which would preclude the necessity of my speaking. I felt I could do this well and successfully. I determined to try the experiment upon this old lady. I walked quietly up to her, took the shutters out of her ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... 544; celluloid. imitator, echo, cuckoo|, parrot, ape, monkey, mocking bird, mime; copyist, copycat; plagiarist, pirate. V. imitate, copy, mirror, reflect, reproduce, repeat; do like, echo, reecho, catch; transcribe; match, parallel. mock, take off, mimic, ape, simulate, impersonate, personate; act &c. (drama) 599; represent &c. 554; counterfeit, parody, travesty, caricature, lampoon, burlesque. follow in the steps of, tread in the steps, follow in the footsteps of, follow in the wake of; take pattern by; follow suit, follow the example of; walk in the shoes of, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... love scene for two strings, the 'E' and 'G,' the first was to personate the lady, the second himself. It commenced with a species of dialogue, intending to represent her indifference and his passion; now sportive, now sad; laughter on her part and tears from him, ending in an apotheosis of loving reconciliation. It affected the lady to that degree that ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa

... serpent-killer, to wrestle with her, disguising him in his own armour. Sigurd flung her down, and won her for his friend, though he loved her himself. I shall not use a similar deceit, nor employ Jasper Petulengro to personate me—so get up, Belle, and I will do my best ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... was simply a swindling transaction between the squatter on the one hand and some wretched fellow on the other, often a labourer in the employment of the squatter, in which the former for a consideration induced the latter to personate the character of a free selector, to acquire from the State, for the purpose of transferring to himself, the land he most coveted out of that thrown open for ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... observed when the state of innocence had to be represented: "Now must Adam rise all naked and look round with an air of admiration and wonder."[796] Beholders doubtless returned his wonder and admiration. In the Chester Mysteries a practical recommendation is made to the actors who personate the first couple: "Adam and Eve shall stande nakede, and shall not be ashamed."[797] The proper time to be ashamed will come a little later. The serpent steals "out of a hole"; man falls: "Now must Adam cover himself and feign to be ashamed. The woman must ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... play is not to be found, of course, in conscious art, which, though it be derived from play, is itself an abstract, impersonal thing, and depends largely upon philosophical interests beyond the scope of childhood. It is when we make castles in the air and personate the leading character in our own romances, that we return to the spirit of our first years. Only, there are several reasons why the spirit is no longer so agreeable to indulge. Nowadays, when we admit this personal element into our divagations, we are apt to stir up uncomfortable and sorrowful ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... condemned by a statute which could only be said to be antiquated, because it had not for a long time been put in execution. This fellow he had likewise employed, among others, to excite the seamen to mutiny, as he had given money to other rogues to put on jackets to personate seamen, and to go about the country begging in that garb, and exclaiming for want of pay, while the people oppressed with taxes, were cheated of their money by the great officers of the crown. Heydon pretended to have been in all ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... dialogue or his soliloquies, and his strong dramatic power, his realistic power as an actor, is as effective as ever. A great critic at the beginning of this century said that Hamlet is the most difficult part to personate on the stage, that it is like the attempt to 'embody a shadow.' I cannot say that I agree with this idea. Hamlet seems to me essentially a good acting part, and in Mr. Irving's performance of it there is that combination ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... rescue. She told her story, which was rather a strange one, to the Colonel, and they made an arrangement with her to come and take care of the child. It was planned between them that Percy (her name is Amy Percival) should personate the only child of a deceased brother of the Colonel, and be adopted by him as his own daughter. Thenceforward the poor pale Madame Guyot took up her abode with them, like Amram's wife at the Egyptian court. I remember how sad and silent she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... appointments with tinkers," replied Melissa; "if you personate that young man, you must be content to wait for days or months to catch a glimpse of the hem of my garment; to bay the moon and bless the stars, and I do not know what else. It is, in short, catch me when you can; and now farewell, good ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... unifolium), for the most part tubulated, or reminding one of a paper hood (cucullum papyraceum); and, secondly, that its pistil ripens into a fruit consisting of four seeds, which ripen in the calyx itself, as if in their own seed-vessel, by which a labiate flower is distinguished from a personate one, whose pistil becomes a capsule far divided from the calyx (a calyce longo divisam). And a labiate flower differs from rotate, or bell-shaped flowers, which have four seeds, in that the lips of a labiate flower ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... de Dreux; and a splendid bridal took place at Jedburgh, with every kind of amusements, especially mumming and masquing. In the midst, some reckless reveller glided in arrayed in ghastly vestments, so as to personate death, and after making fearful gestures, vanished away, leaving an impression of terror among the guests that they did not quickly shake off—the jest was ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... for Signor Zappa; and he undertook to pilot us here, either in the Ione, or in any way I proposed; but strongly urged me to employ stratagem to recover you. I accordingly resolved to pretend to be a Maltese seaman, as the character I could best personate, and to be unfortunately wrecked on the island. Once here, I felt sure I should find means to communicate with you; and I then proposed to cut out a boat from the harbour, and to carry you off in her. I directed ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... Beaufort having been selected by the Duchess of Cambridge to personate Louis XII., in the French Quadrille, of which Her Royal Highness was the leader, His Grace appeared in one of the most splendid dresses handed down by Monfaucon, in his Monarchie Francaise. The dress consisted of rich blue velvet, sumptuously embroidered in gold, with which were ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... condition will excuse you from any disturbance or intrusion here. The mulatto woman you have sometimes personated may be still in this house; I will appoint her to attend you. I suppose you can trust her, for you must personate her again, and escape in her clothes, while she takes your place in this ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... the Earl of Warwick had escaped from the Tower gave an opportunity for an imposter, Lambert Simnel, to personate the earl. In order to satisfy the Londoners that the rumour of Warwick's escape was a fabrication, Henry caused his prisoner to be paraded through the streets of the city, and exposed to public view at St. Paul's. After Simnel's defeat (16 June, 1487), the Common Council ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... according to Lord Bacon, was possessed of "very pregnant parts," was selected to disturb the usurper's government, by appearing as a pretender to his crown. At first it was the intention of the conspirators that he should personate Richard, duke of York, the second son of Edward IV., who was supposed to have escaped from the assassins of the Tower, and to be concealed somewhere in England. Accordingly, the monk Simon, who was the tool of higher persons, carefully instructed young Simnel in the role ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... not venture upon any device in our presentment, but was content to be no other then a simple page. Your arrows' properties, (to keep decorum,) Cupid, are suited, it should seem, to the nature of him you personate. ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... the murder the plan was formed by which this woman was to personate the other. The striking similarity in the hair, which was the most conspicuous beauty of each, ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter

... his words, "If AEneas were here!" The mist scatters. AEneas appears; thanks Dido, and greets Ilioneus (662-723). Dido welcomes AEneas to Carthage and prepares a festival in his honour. AEneas sends Achates to summon his son and bring gifts for Dido (724-774). Cupid, persuaded by Venus to personate Ascanius and inspire Dido with love for AEneas, comes with the gifts to Dido's palace, while Ascanius is carried away to Idalia. The night is passed in feasting. After the feast Iopas sings the wonders of the firmament, and Dido, bewitched by Cupid, begs AEneas to tell the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... with a merry laugh. "Order up gray Bess, and dress him to personate thee. He can put on a mask and drop his shoulders. Thy plaided camlet cape will do well. And put Moppet on a pillion behind. Someone else must go. Ah, Madam Kent! who will enjoy it mightily and sit up like a brigadier. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... man, and a tall woman, hired at a vast price. A strong man exceeding dear. Two dogs that walk on their hind legs only, and personate human creatures so well, they might be mistaken for them. A human creature that personates a dog so well that he might almost be taken for one. Two human cats. A most curious set of puppies. A pair of pigeons. A set of rope-dancers and ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... made studies of various parts of it,—heads and hands, and arms and legs, and so forth,—and having done so, he then puts together all his various studies of details, so as to form a new whole, which is intended to personate an idea formed in his own mind. Do you go ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... his majesty's companions in his gay hours. On one such occasion, a stranger came with an importunate suit, for an office of great value, just vacant. The king, by way of joke, comsired the earl to personate him, and demanded the petitioner to be admitted. The gentleman addressing himself to the supposed monarch, enumerated his services to the royal family, and hoped the grant of the place would not be deemed too great a reward. "By no means," answered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various

... her do, and I declare the sprite drove her about like a slave—"Grandmamma, fetch me this," "grandmamma, you must do that," till at last she brought my poor mother down on her knees, stooping under the table to personate an old cow in ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... as overcome now with his affections, and no longer able to personate an angry man, commanded all that were present to depart, that he might make himself known to his brethren when they were alone; and when the rest were gone out, he made himself known to his brethren; and said, "I commend you for your ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... the gait of some of his friends so cleverly, that there was no mistaking whom he intended to personate. His teacher then mocked his own awkward style, when he exclaimed several times: "me walk so?" Being assured that it was true, he rolled upon the floor until his mirth exhausted ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker

... flout, taunt, imitate, gibe, ridicule, jeer, schout; balk, disappoint, delude, tantalize, elude; defy, disregard; ape, mimic, personate. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... was to appear as Henry Bertram. A Meg Merrilies had to be improvised. The obscure "utility" actress was called upon to take Mrs. Chippendale's place. She might read the part if she could not commit it to memory but personate Meg Merrilies after some sort she must. She had never especially noticed the part; but as she stood at the side scene, book in hand, awaiting her moment of entrance, her ear caught the dialogue going on upon the stage between two of the gypsies, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... of mischief with which I am at all times possessed moved me to personate the character for which he took me, and I gruffly bade him stand and deliver toll of the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... slave Briseis. Achilles withdrew in wrath to his tent, where he consoled himself with music and singing, and refused to take any further part in the war. During his absence the Greeks were hard pressed, and at last he so far relaxed his anger as to allow his friend Patroclus to personate him, lending him his chariot and armour. The slaying of Patroclus by the Trojan hero Hector roused Achilles from his indifference; eager to avenge his beloved comrade, he sallied forth, equipped with new armour fashioned by Hephaestus, slew Hector, and, after dragging ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Bellisant. The lovers are betrayed, and Amiles is unable to find the necessary supporters to enable him to clear himself by the ordeal of single combat, and fears, moreover, to fight in a false cause. He is granted a reprieve, and goes in search of Amis, who engages to personate him in the combat. He thus saves his friend, but in so doing perjures himself. Then follows the leprosy of Amis, and, after a lapse of years, his discovery of Amiles and cure. There are obvious reminiscences in this story ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... man may personate Ukuku or issue commands for the family. On other occasions, as in Shiku, to raise prices, the society lays its ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... "and I have no doubt that many persons have been ruined by going; but they did not go for the same object that we go. I am not going just for the pleasure of witnessing the play, by any means; I want to see how the actors personate the different characters. To read Shakspeare well, it must be read just ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer

... pretty Ellen Kingsbury, who had agreed to personate the Queen of Scots, in the garden scene from Schiller's tragedy of Mary Stuart; and this circumstance accidentally afforded Master Horner the opportunity he had so long desired, of seeing his fascinating correspondent without ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... each one. The host or hostess should not have any conspicuous part assigned them, unless it is urged by all the other performers. Those who are to participate, should not only learn their parts, but endeavor to imbue themselves with the spirit of the character they personate, so as to afford pleasure to all who are invited to witness its performance. When persons have consented to participate in any such entertainment, only sickness or some very grave cause should prevent them from undertaking their part. Supper or refreshments usually ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

... suggestion among themselves, and at length agreed to make the attempt. I then returned to my comrades, and explained to them more fully my design. It was nothing less than to personate the French captain, and to lead my party across country just as he had been doing. The three deserters would exchange their peasant rags for the uniforms of three of the French soldiers, and three of my comrades would wear the uniforms of the rest. I hoped that with ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... with violence: his love is calm and active; his rejection is implied, rather than pronounced; meek and gentle, though we see that it is thorough, and never to be revoked. The noblest and the basest he not only seems to comprehend, but to personate and body forth in their most secret lineaments: hence actions and opinions appear to him as they are, with all the circumstances which extenuate or endear them to the hearts where they originated and are entertained. This also is the spirit of our Shakespeare, and perhaps of ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... secret reason which conceals from the eyes of the world my sex and family. You know that I was brought into this house, where I have passed my infancy, in order to preserve an inheritance which, on the death of young Ascanio (whom I personate), should have fallen to others; that is why I dare to unbosom myself to you with perfect confidence. But before we begin this conversation, Frosine, clear up a doubt which continually besets me. Can it be possible that Albert should know nothing of the secret, which ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere

... and rehearsing for the coming ceremony. The second day all go for wood, bringing it home on their backs, for so the ancients did when beasts of burden were unknown to them. The third day is also spent in gathering wood, and the fourth day likewise. On the same day the ten men who are to personate the K[o]-y[e]-m[e]-shi, in company with the [t]S[i]-[t]s[i]-[t]ki (great-grandfather of the K[o]-y[e]-m[e]-shi), pass through the village, inquiring for the boys who are to be initiated; before such houses as have boys ready ...
— The Religious Life of the Zuni Child - Bureau of American Ethnology • (Mrs.) Tilly E. (Matilda Coxe Evans) Stevenson

... a Roundhead. She had kept plenty of money in the house ever since she had feared for her son, and this they put in a belt round his waist. Altogether, he came out not at all unlike the laquais Jacques Pierrot, whom he was to personate. Eustace said the old lady took leave of her son with her stern Jansenist composure, which my tender- hearted Clement could not imitate. Eustace rejoined the chairmen and came back through the dark streets, while ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of being an amateur actor, a low comedy man; but he was not sincere enough to personate any character, or be anything either on the stage or off it but his own small inartistic self; and no amount of bawling could make him an actor, though he bawled himself hoarse as a rule, mistaking sound for the science of expression. Still, it was the fashion to consider him funny. People called ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... And from the Stage, hath been translated to any Representer of speech and action, as well in Tribunalls, as Theaters. So that a Person, is the same that an Actor is, both on the Stage and in common Conversation; and to Personate, is to Act, or Represent himselfe, or an other; and he that acteth another, is said to beare his Person, or act in his name; (in which sence Cicero useth it where he saies, "Unus Sustineo Tres Personas; ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... have been deeply interesting to the lieutenant at any time, but especially at the present, when he was sadly in want of the information which would enable him to personate the difficult part he had chosen to perform. Seating himself on the ground again, he was soon absorbed in the contents of the note-book. The owner's name was Owen Raynes; and from the diary Somers learned that he had ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic

... rejoinder: "Lincoln, I remember of reading somewhere in the same book from which you get your Agrippa story, that Paul, whom you seem to desire to personate, admonished all servants (slaves) to be obedient to them that are their masters according to the flesh, ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... rehearsing. Gardner was to be Hamlet; Lieut.-Col. Theodore Gregg, 45th Pa., was to be Claudius, the usurping king; the smooth-faced Capt. William Cook was to be the queen-mother Gertrude; Capt. W. F. Tiemann, 159th N. Y., was to personate Marcellus; Lieut. C. H. Morton of Fairhaven, Mass., I think, was Horatio; and I, having lost about forty pounds of flesh since my capture—it was thought most appropriate that I should be the Ghost! Every morning for ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague

... might do most of the talking, and shape his course by whatever might occur, Nick had decided to personate the interpreter. ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter

... Donati had died without making a will, whereupon his nephew suborned Gianni Schicchi to personate the dead man in bed, and to dictate a will in his favor. This Gianni did, but with a clause leaving to himself a favorite mare of Buoso's, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... contemplation of the use that might be made of previous events. Some good genius would appear to you to have interposed to save you from injury intended by me. Why, I said, since I must sink in her opinion, should I not cherish this belief? Why not personate an enemy, and pretend that celestial interference has frustrated my schemes? I must fly, but let me leave wonder and fear behind me. Elucidation of the mystery will always be practicable. I shall do no injury, but merely ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... Scotland, but desiring to marry the princess herself, and not being able to compass his design by reason of her being in love with a gentleman from Italy named Ariodante, persuades the damsel, in his revenge, to personate Ginevra in a balcony at night, and so make her lover believe that she is false. Ariodante, deceived, disappears from court. News is brought of his death; and his brother Lurcanio publicly denounces Ginevra, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... no terrors. However, while it is impossible, or at least inexpedient, for papa to play at being his own urchin, the latter is restrained by no considerations, moral or otherwise, from attempting to personate his papa. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... the Roman yoke; and as they never wanted a deliverer more, so the eagerness of this hope, as it happens to weak minds, turned into a firm expectation that he would soon come. This proved a temptation to some bold, and to some cunning men, to personate the prince so much expected. And "nothing is more natural and common to promote rebellions, than to ground them on new prophecies, or new interpretations of old ones; prophecies being suited to the vulgar superstition, and operating with the force of religion." Accordingly, ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock

... and Roman masters, And curse our modern poetasters; Complain, as many an ancient bard did, How genius is no more rewarded; How wrong a taste prevails among us; How much our ancestors out-sung us; Can personate an awkward scorn For those who are not poets born; And all their brother-dunces lash, Who crowd the press with ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... matter as offended), but also to put pen to paper and appear in print (as in this imperfect and impolished piece, which as guilty of an high presumption here in all humility begs your Lordship's pardon) wherein my chief scope is to personate the Good Samaritan, that, as he cured the wounded traveller by searching his wounds with wine and suppling them with oil, so I have here both described the rise and progress of our national malady, and also prescribed the only remedy, that I might be in some kind instrumental, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... little limbs became deformed, and had to be put in irons, by means of which they regained that symmetry with which nature had at first endowed them. Three years afterwards, in March, 1794, John Kemble was acting Macbeth at Drury Lane; and, in the "cauldron scene," he engaged some children to personate the supernatural beings summoned by the witches from that weird vessel. Little Edmund with his irons was the cause of a ridiculous accident, and the attempt to embody the ghostly forms was abruptly abandoned. ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving

... warriors who remained behind was to personate a woman, and, if possible, make the old chief's people think he was Chaf-fa-ly-a. Souk said he knew a pass through the Black Hills that would bring them to his father's country two days sooner than by any other route, and, although the way was somewhat dangerous, they must take ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... that she could act. If the part suited her she could throw herself into it so that she ceased to be awkward, ungainly Priscilla Peel. Out of herself she was no longer awkward, no longer ungainly. She could only personate certain characters; light and airy parts she could not attempt, but where much depended on passion and emotion Priscilla could do splendidly. Every day her friends found fresh points of interest in this ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... able to personate the stupid society woman if you try for ever. But it doesn't matter, after all; you're too fair to look upon for spies to guess your opinions, even though you can't simper and hide behind your ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich

... She obeyed the summons, relying upon the power of her charms to appease the anger of the triumvir. She ascended the Cydnus in a gilded barge, with oars of silver, and sails of purple silk. Beneath awnings wrought of the richest manufactures of the East, the beautiful queen, attired to personate Venus, reclined amidst lovely attendants dressed to represent cupids and nereids. Antony was completely fascinated, as had been the great Caesar before him, by the dazzling beauty of the "Serpent of the Nile." Enslaved by her enchantments, and charmed by her brilliant ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... creature in the world," she said, "and I don't know that I can dispute you. Millie Lundsford has just gone home. She and I have been going through with our old-time play, when, with window curtains wound about us to represent long dresses, and with brooms to personate the brave knights who had rescued us from the merciless Turks, we danced in the castle. And I was just taking a turn with a duke when you came. What a knight you would ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... man who, despite vague suspicions, did not know his own identity. Here was a man over whom hung an inevitable punishment. Hugh Ritson smiled at the daring idea he had conceived of making this man personate himself. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... those who love adventure, and I do not think that he can come to any harm. Let him play out his game. It was his own idea to personate you, and the ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

... dead. Mercy knew the place in which she had lived—the place called Port Logan—as well as she had known it herself. Mercy had only to read the manuscript journal to be able to answer any questions relating to the visit to Rome and to Colonel Roseberry's death. She had no accomplished lady to personate: Grace had spoken herself—her father's letter spoke also in the plainest terms—of her neglected education. Everything, literally everything, was in the lost woman's favor. The people with whom she had been connected in the ambulance had gone, to return no more. Her own clothes were on Miss ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins

... II. He was, however, an attendant at court, and one of his majesty's companions in his gay hours. On one such occasion, a stranger came with an important suit for an office of great value, just vacant. The king, by way of joke, desired the earl to personate him, and ordered the petitioner to be admitted. The gentleman, addressing himself to the supposed monarch, enumerated his services to the royal family, and hoped the grant of the place would not be deemed too great a reward. "By no means," answered ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... speakin' more ironicler as my fear died away, leavin' in its void a great madness and tiredness, "if you'd brung your scythe along you might personate Old Father Time." ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... us who had seen a play during the vacation at home told the others the plot. The whole was divided into scenes, and each character was assigned to some representative who was left to personate it according to his own conception, choosing the words and gestures which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... xii. 1009. An absurd rumor had existed that Barbara Blomberg had only been employed to personate Don John's mother. She died at an estate called Arronjo de Molinos, four leagues from Madrid, some years after the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... sold, and they allow you a portion of such commission; the second, by selling you, often at a large reduction, the return ticket of another, who on arrival has found it unnecessary, and sold it for what he could get. As such tickets are not transferable, you have, after buying such, to personate on the return journey the original possessor, and sign his name. But the Yankees think nothing of this. Thank goodness, ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money

... occurred to Paul that if, even for an hour, he could personate the prince, and so draw off pursuit from him, his point might be gained. He had not forgotten the episode of the first adventure they had shared as children; and as we all know, history repeats itself in more ways ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green

... soon prove it to be truth," rejoined Judith. "Your retainer and unscrupulous agent, Major Pillichody, applied to Chowles to find some one to personate a clergyman in a mock marriage, which your lordship wished to have performed, and promised a handsome reward for the service. Chowles mentioned the subject to me, and we speedily contrived a plan to outwit your lordship, and turn the ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... rather bachelor, and that Oxford and Cambridge were almost the only universities where Scots were not—their place being taken by multitudinous Irish; yet not only were all universities alike in essentials, but he had seen and heard enough of that at Paris to be able to personate a clerk from thence. ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... it is an ass's head, and nothing more; certainly a very strange costume for a gentleman to appear in. Fancy cannot be embodied any more than a simile can be painted; and it is as idle to attempt it as to personate Wall or Moonshine. Fairies are not incredible, but fairies six feet high are so. Monsters are not shocking, if they are seen at a proper distance. When ghosts appear at mid-day, when apparitions ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... the wretched Vinson from suicide, Fandor had made him promise to leave France and await developments, whilst Fandor, posing as Vinson, studied at close quarters the spies who had drawn the miserable corporal into their net. Fandor could personate Vinson with every chance of success, because the 257th of the line had never ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... poet hurries on to describe the sacrifices in progress. The persons selected to personate the departed were necessarily inferior in rank to the principal sacrificer, yet for the time they were superior to him. This circumstance, it was supposed, would make them feel uncomfortable; and therefore, as soon as they appeared in the temple, the director of the ceremonies ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... Fortune to be thron'd. The Base o'th' Mount Is rank'd with all deserts, all kinde of Natures That labour on the bosome of this Sphere, To propagate their states; among'st them all, Whose eyes are on this Soueraigne Lady fixt, One do I personate of Lord Timons frame, Whom Fortune with her Iuory hand wafts to her, Whose present grace, to present slaues ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... I thought I could manufacture a story which would hold water sufficiently to satisfy the functionary referred to, the thought flashing into my mind that I could personate the lad whom we had found in charge of the "Mouette" on the eventful evening of ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... when you found that the lodging-house-keeper had gone away and died, and that nobody else in the street had any definite ideas as to your wife's personal appearance, and came and proposed the arrangement we carried out—that I should personate her. Your taking all this trouble shows that something more serious than love had to ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... possibility of some sort of communication with his wife. Singularly and fortunately he did not have recourse to the fruitless idiocy of spiritualism, nor engage in that humiliating intercourse with illiterate humbugs who personate the minds of men and women almost too sacred to be even for an instant associated in thought ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... Tuesday evening, December 27, 1853, at the Birmingham Town Hall, where, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, nearly two thousand persons had assembled. The work selected was the Christmas Carol. The high mimetic powers possessed by Mr. Dickens enabled him to personate with remarkable force the various characters of the story, and with admirable skill to pass rapidly from the hard, unbelieving Scrooge, to trusting and thankful Bob Cratchit, and from the genial fulness of Scrooge's nephew, ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... difficulties and puzzling situations in life, this was certainly the worst; for however often my lot had been to personate another, yet hitherto I had had the good fortune to be aware of what and whom I was performing. Now I might be any body from Marshal Soult to Monsieur Scribe; one thing only was certain, I must be a "celebrity." The confounded pains and trouble they were taking to receive me, attested that fact, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... verbal: Transcurramus solertissimas Hugos [Footnote: Travails, labours.] "Let us run over such over-fine fooleries and subtill trifles." There is more wilfulnesse and wrangling among them, than pertains to a sacred profession. But what person a man undertakes to act, he doth ever therewithal! personate his owne. Allthough they say, that in vertue it selfe, the last scope of our aime is voluptuousnes. It pleaseth me to importune their eares still with this word, which so much offends their hearing. And if it imply ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... gloomy forebodings of Amhurst's "Craftsman." About this time the complete metamorphosis of the studious and ingenious John Henley began to branch out into its grotesque figure; and a curiosity in human nature was now about to be opened to public inspection. "The Preacher" was to personate "The Zany." His temper had become brutal, and he had gradually contracted a ferocity and grossness in his manners, which seem by no means to have been indicated in his purer days. His youth was disgraced by ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... to the toast which you have just proposed, and I may say that I consider one of the greatest honours which have befallen me, to be called upon to represent my distinguished friend Mr. Darwin upon this occasion. I say to represent Mr. Darwin, for I cannot hope to personate him, or to say all that would be dictated by a mind conspicuous for its ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... given out to be sung. This objection is pointed out by Barclay in his Apology, where, after stating that "the formal customary way of singing hath no foundation in Scripture, nor any ground in true Christianity," he adds, "all manner of wicked, profane persons take upon them to personate the experiences and conditions of blessed David; which are not only false as to them, but also to some of more sobriety, who utter them forth." "Such singing doth more please the carnal ears of men, than the pure ears of the Lord, who abhors all lying and hypocrisy." (Prop. ...
— On Singing and Music • Society of Friends

... them, as existing separately. In truth, mad persons are frequently more anxious to impress upon others a faith in their visions, than they are themselves confirmed in their reality; as, on the other hand, it is difficult for the most cool-headed impostor long to personate an enthusiast, without in some degree believing what he is so eager to have believed. It was a natural attribute of such a character as the supposed hermit, that he should credit the numerous superstitions with which the minds of ordinary Highlanders are almost ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... line, to those words, it burst on me like a flash of lightning. In an instant I saw it as plainly as I see it now. It is horrible, it is unheard of, it outdares all daring; but, if I can only nerve myself to face one terrible necessity, it is to be done. I may personate the richly provided widow of Allan Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose, if I can count on Allan Armadale's ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... himself into the garden at the fete at Trianon, till he was brought to the King's cabinet when arrested, and interrogated, and confronted with her face to face. The Prince started when he saw her. The comparison of her features with those of the guilty wretch who had dared to personate her in the garden at Versailles completely destroyed his self-possession. Her Majesty's person was become fuller, and her face was much longer than that of the infamous D'Oliva. He could neither speak nor write an intelligible reply ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... manner of the Creole Spanish ladies,—wholly in black. A small black bonnet on her head, covered by a veil thick with embroidery, concealed her face. It had been agreed that, in their escape, she was to personate the character of a Creole lady, and ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... stately, elegant figure was admirably calculated to personate the tragic heroines of opera. Her face at this time was beautiful, her large eyes flashed with intellect, and her classical features were radiant with expression; her grandeur of conception, her tragic dignity, her glowing warmth and abandon rendered her worthy of the ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris

... Thus low to the most worthy and respected Lieger ambassadors, my modesty And womanhood I tender; but withal, So entangled in a curs'd accusation, That my defence, of force, like Perseus, Must personate masculine virtue. To the point. Find me but guilty, sever head from body, We 'll part good friends: I scorn to hold my life At yours, or any man's ...
— The White Devil • John Webster

... spring. But you are not really hungry, except for something which is not food! And you are not waiting for anything except for permission to talk! I give it to you—talk, children! Talk yourselves hoarse! It will do you good! And I will personate supreme wisdom by listening ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... Skinnerstown for the benefit of his church. Illustrations were to be given of "Rebecca at the Well," "The Finding of Moses," "Joseph and his Brethren;" but Rocky Canyon was more particularly excited by the announcement that Polly Harkness would personate "Jephthah's Daughter." On the evening of the performance, however, it was found that this tableau had been withdrawn and another substituted, for reasons not given. Rocky Canyon, naturally indignant at this omission to represent native talent, indulged in a hundred wild surmises. But it was ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... of those who love adventure, and I do not think that he can come to any harm. Let him play out his game. It was his own idea to personate you, and the ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

... King's throne? Do you think that the nobles and the people will enjoy being fooled as you've fooled them? Do you think they'll love a King who was too drunk to be crowned, and sent a servant to personate him?" ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... singing the rhyme again. Then the boys go inside and the girls run round them and sing it. And then hands are taken once more and all go round in the original circle singing it a fourth time. If no boys are playing, the girls should arrange, before the game begins, which shall personate them. ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... the nursery to see my mother. It happened that she wanted something from her own home, which she dispatched the girl to fetch, and desired her to leave me till her return. In her absence she changed our clothes: then keeping me to personate the child she was nursing, she sent away the daughter of sir Edward to be brought up in her own ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... Mercy knew the place in which she had lived—the place called Port Logan—as well as she had known it herself. Mercy had only to read the manuscript journal to be able to answer any questions relating to the visit to Rome and to Colonel Roseberry's death. She had no accomplished lady to personate: Grace had spoken herself—her father's letter spoke also in the plainest terms—of her neglected education. Everything, literally everything, was in the lost woman's favor. The people with whom she had been connected in the ambulance had gone, to ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins

... found that she could act. If the part suited her she could throw herself into it so that she ceased to be awkward, ungainly Priscilla Peel. Out of herself she was no longer awkward, no longer ungainly. She could only personate certain characters; light and airy parts she could not attempt, but where much depended on passion and emotion Priscilla could do splendidly. Every day her friends found fresh points of interest in this queer girl. Nancy Banister was really ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... two equal parties, one of which personate defenders, and take their places in the barn, with the doors and windows open. The other party are the besiegers, and are stationed outside the barn. The fighting is done by means of weeds specially prepared for the purpose. ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... hands of the Realists they fade away into ineffective and colourless forms. The Sir Peter Teazles and Sir Anthony Absolutes of the old comedy require indispensably the resources of the old art, and no thin, water-gruel realism, so-called, can personate them. In avoiding the declamatory Kembletonianism of the old school, our actors are right enough; but they cannot safely disregard the skill which sharpens and chisels, as it were, the sentences; nor forego the care, study, precision and stern ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce

... submission, marrowy spoil. Or perhaps, preferably, a sullen submission, reluctant charms; far more marrowy. Or who can say?—the creature is a rocket of the shot into the fiery garland of stars; she may personate any new marvel, be an unimagined terror, an overwhelming bewitchment: for she carries the unexpected in her bosom. And does it look like such indubitable victory, when the man, the woman's husband, divided from her, toothsome to the sex, acknowledges within ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... nonsense. But he corrected himself by reflecting that he was perhaps as well entertained, and instructed too, by this same modest gauger, as he should have been by such a man as he had thought proper to personate. And surely the fault may more properly be imputed to that rank where the futility is real than where it is feigned: to that rank whose opportunities for nobler accomplishments have only served to rear a fabric of folly which the untutored hand of ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... discovered the plot for the rising. He was interrupted several times when he attempted to abbreviate the story, or to omit some of the details, and there were exclamations of surprise at his proposal to personate a Turkish prisoner, and to share the lot of the slaves in their prison, and on the benches of ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... hostess should not have any conspicuous part assigned them, unless it is urged by all the other performers. Those who are to participate, should not only learn their parts, but endeavor to imbue themselves with the spirit of the character they personate, so as to afford pleasure to all who are invited to witness its performance. When persons have consented to participate in any such entertainment, only sickness or some very grave cause should prevent them from undertaking their part. Supper or refreshments usually follow ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

... Barrington. He had left her niece irritated, but the trace of anger she felt was likely to enhance her interest. The meal, however, was a trial to him, for he had during eight long years lived for the most part apart from all his kind, a lonely toiler, and now was constrained to personate a man known to be almost dangerously skillful with his tongue. At first sight the task appeared almost insuperably difficult, but Winston was a clever man, and felt all the thrill of one playing ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss

... on the stage it is an ass's head, and nothing more; certainly a very strange costume for a gentleman to appear in. Fancy cannot be embodied any more than a simile can be painted; and it is as idle to attempt it as to personate Wall or Moonshine. Fairies are not incredible, but fairies six feet high are so. Monsters are not shocking, if they are seen at a proper distance. When ghosts appear at mid-day, when apparitions stalk along Cheapside, then may ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... aspect of the Moorish infantry against their bloody enemy, delight, satiated at length with thy sport, alas! of too long continuance: or if thou, the winged son of gentle Maia, by changing thy figure, personate a youth upon earth, submitting to be called the avenger of Caesar; late mayest thou return to the skies, and long mayest thou joyously be present to the Roman people; nor may an untimely blast transport thee from us, offended at our crimes. Here mayest thou rather delight in magnificent triumphs, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... we are not Already sacrific' d incarnate. For while we wrangle here, and jar, 1525 W' are grilly'd all at TEMPLE-BAR: Some on the sign-post of an ale-house, Hang in effigy, on the gallows; Made up of rags, to personate Respective Officers of State; 1530 That henceforth they may stand reputed, Proscrib'd in law, and executed; And while the Work is carrying on Be ready listed under DON, That worthy patriot, once the bellows, 1535 And tinder-box, of all his fellows; ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... remembered by Charles II. He was, however, an attendant at court, and one of his majesty's companions in his gay hours. On one such occasion, a stranger came with an importunate suit, for an office of great value, just vacant. The king, by way of joke, comsired the earl to personate him, and demanded the petitioner to be admitted. The gentleman addressing himself to the supposed monarch, enumerated his services to the royal family, and hoped the grant of the place would not be deemed too great a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various

... Spiritualism is the work of the good angels?—We know that it is not, because good angels do not lie. They never would come to men, professing to be the spirits of their dead friends, and imitate and personate them to deceive, knowing that the mediums did not know, and could not ascertain that they were altogether another and different order of beings. But the evil angels, led by the father of lies, and cradled, and drilled, and skilled, and polished, in the ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith

... voice shrill with passion, while Agnes uttered a loud shriek; 'By St. Barbara, young Lady, you have an excellent invention! You must personate the Bleeding Nun, truly? What impiety! What incredulity! Marry, I have a good mind to let you pursue your plan: When the real Ghost met you, I warrant, you would be in a pretty condition! Don Alphonso, ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... these material blessings may be given. "It is an almost universal idea of primitive man," says Fewkes, "that prayers should be addressed to personations of the beings worshipped. In the carrying out of this conception men personate the katchinas, wearing masks, and dressing in the costumes characteristic of these beings. These personations represent to the Hopi mind their idea of the appearance of these katchinas or clan ancients. The spirit ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... violence: his love is calm and active; his rejection is implied, rather than pronounced; meek and gentle, though we see that it is thorough, and never to be revoked. The noblest and the basest he not only seems to comprehend, but to personate and body forth in their most secret lineaments: hence actions and opinions appear to him as they are, with all the circumstances which extenuate or endear them to the hearts where they originated and are entertained. This also is the spirit ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... Wa-ka-ra—not far off, as the man informed them—they had despatched him to the Utah chief, with a request that the latter would furnish them with a guide, and two or three of his best hunters. Before Marian had ended her explanation, I had divined the scheme. We were to personate the guide and hunters. That was the suggestion ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... allow you a portion of such commission; the second, by selling you, often at a large reduction, the return ticket of another, who on arrival has found it unnecessary, and sold it for what he could get. As such tickets are not transferable, you have, after buying such, to personate on the return journey the original possessor, and sign his name. But the Yankees think nothing of this. Thank goodness, ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money

... tall, stately, elegant figure was admirably calculated to personate the tragic heroines of opera. Her face at this time was beautiful, her large eyes flashed with intellect, and her classical features were radiant with expression; her grandeur of conception, her tragic dignity, her glowing warmth and abandon rendered ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris

... they were in a low state, reduced under the Roman yoke; and as they never wanted a deliverer more, so the eagerness of this hope, as it happens to weak minds, turned into a firm expectation that he would soon come. This proved a temptation to some bold, and to some cunning men, to personate the prince so much expected. And "nothing is more natural and common to promote rebellions, than to ground them on new prophecies, or new interpretations of old ones; prophecies being suited to the vulgar superstition, and ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock

... act a particular part, however, is a very different thing, and a very difficult thing as well. The actor's aim is, or should be, to convert his own accidental personality into the real and essential personality of the character he is called upon to personate, whatever that character may be; or perhaps I should say that there are two schools of action—the school of those who attain their effect by exaggeration of personality, and the school of those who attain it by suppression. It would be too long to discuss these schools, ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... rehearsing for the coming ceremony. The second day all go for wood, bringing it home on their backs, for so the ancients did when beasts of burden were unknown to them. The third day is also spent in gathering wood, and the fourth day likewise. On the same day the ten men who are to personate the K[o]-y[e]-m[e]-shi, in company with the [t]S[i]-[t]s[i]-[t]ki (great-grandfather of the K[o]-y[e]-m[e]-shi), pass through the village, inquiring for the boys who are to be initiated; before such houses as have boys ready for this ceremonial these men assemble; one of them enters the ...
— The Religious Life of the Zuni Child - Bureau of American Ethnology • (Mrs.) Tilly E. (Matilda Coxe Evans) Stevenson

... said Nat, "and I have no doubt that many persons have been ruined by going; but they did not go for the same object that we go. I am not going just for the pleasure of witnessing the play, by any means; I want to see how the actors personate the different characters. To read Shakspeare well, it must be read just ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer

... entertainments at the house served also to beguile her time. On one occasion the young people were arranging a series of tableaux, and she was asked to personate Jephtha's daughter. When the curtain rose on her lovely face and large, dark eyes, the Hebrew maiden and her pathetic history grew into vivid reality against the ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... undulating step which was Leam's birthright. Was he mad? Was he dreaming? What was this mocking trick of eyesight that was perplexing him? Surely it was madness; and yet—no, it could be no one else. Supreme, beloved, who else could personate her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... out a pot of black ointment, "thou must suffer me to disguise thy face with this ointment: to-night thou must personate a black slave." ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... about my adventures presently—and you have no idea what difficulty I had in cutting it, for the knife was so blunt that I had to cut and pull at it a whole afternoon. But it had to be done, for I meant to personate a boy—having stolen a boy's hunting dress for that purpose. Wasn't it fun to rob the robbers? And then— ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... of French bonne, and afterwards of governess, came to the rescue. She told her story, which was rather a strange one, to the Colonel, and they made an arrangement with her to come and take care of the child. It was planned between them that Percy (her name is Amy Percival) should personate the only child of a deceased brother of the Colonel, and be adopted by him as his own daughter. Thenceforward the poor pale Madame Guyot took up her abode with them, like Amram's wife at the Egyptian court. I remember how sad and silent she always was, and how much her French speech separated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... act them. Where Scribe and Sardou and the manufacturers of the "well-made play" give the performers only effective parts, to be presented as skilfully as might be, Ibsen has proffered to them genuine characters to get inside of as best they could,—characters not easy to personate, indeed, often obscure and dangerous. Because of this danger and this doubt, they are all the more tempting to the true artist, who is ever on the alert for a tussle with technical difficulty. The men and women who people Ibsen's plays are never what the slang ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... character than either of them, as existing separately. In truth, mad persons are frequently more anxious to impress upon others a faith in their visions, than they are themselves confirmed in their reality; as, on the other hand, it is difficult for the most cool-headed impostor long to personate an enthusiast, without in some degree believing what he is so eager to have believed. It was a natural attribute of such a character as the supposed hermit, that he should credit the numerous superstitions with which the minds of ordinary Highlanders are almost always ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... Jerusalem was Solomon; was Solomon the author of this book? This is the apparent claim; the question is whether we have not here, as in the case of Daniel, a book put forth pseudonymously; whether the author does not personate Solomon, and speak his message through Solomon's lips. That this is the fact modern scholars almost unanimously maintain. Their reasons for their opinion ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... seldom in public, and then only under such circumstances as should not expose him to any close observation on the part of the spectators. His figure, air, and manner, and the general cast of his countenance, were very much like those of the prince whom he was attempting to personate. There was one mark, however, by which he thought that there was danger that he might be betrayed, and that was, his ears had been cut off. This had been done many years before, by command of Cyrus, on account ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who, leaving Europe in 1620 because not permitted to sing psalms through his nose, followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... faithful and attached of all his followers, and who bore that amount of resemblance to Garibaldi which could be imparted by hair, mustache, and beard of the same yellowish-red colour, and eyes somewhat closely set. To put the doctor in bed, and make him personate the General, was the plan—a plan which, as it was meant to save his chief some annoyance, he would have acceded to were it to cost him far more ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... wife to the Guru or preceptor as the acme of self-sacrifice. The guru calls the disciple by a female name of one of the milkmaids of Brindaban to indicate that the disciple regards Krishna with the same devotion as they did. Sometimes the guru and a woman personate Krishna and Radha, but reverse the names, the guru calling himself Radha and the woman Krishna. The other disciples wait upon and serve them, and they perform an immoral act in public. Parmarthi women sometimes have the mantra or text, 'O Hari, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... of tableaux; and in this list there should be a variety of designs, comprising the grave, the comic, and the beautiful. A manuscript should be used in which to write the names of the tableaux, directions for forming each, the names of the performers, the parts which they personate, the styles of the costumes, and the quantity and kind of scenery and furniture used ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head

... been selected by the Duchess of Cambridge to personate Louis XII., in the French Quadrille, of which Her Royal Highness was the leader, His Grace appeared in one of the most splendid dresses handed down by Monfaucon, in his Monarchie Francaise. The dress consisted of rich blue ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... I here intend to personate the bashful Author, and out of a point of Honour undervalue my Comedy. I should very unseasonably disoblige all the People of Paris, should I accuse them of having applauded a foolish Thing: as the Public is absolute Judge of such sort of Works, it would be Impertinence in me to contradict ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere

... say of it, it is a gallant and a susceptible age, and all men bow to loveliness, and all women recognize a talent for clothes. We do not say that there is not such a thing as dramatic art, and that there are not persons who need as severe training before they attempt to personate nature in art as the painter must undergo who attempts to transfer its features to his canvas. But the taste of the age must be taken into account. The public does not demand that an actor shall come in at a private door and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... great, industrious, insinuating, and artful, and his character was so supple that he could become as many different men as he had occasion to personate. But he was shortsighted even in his grandest projects; and, unlike his predecessor, whose mind was bold but his temperature timid, Mazarin was bolder in temper than in conception. A pretended ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... tell Sala that, ten years later (whether after 1429 or after 1431, the date of the Maid's death, is uncertain), a pretended Pucelle, 'very like the first,' was brought to the King. He was in a garden, and bade one of his gentlemen personate him. The impostor was not deceived, for she knew that Charles, having hurt his foot, then wore a soft boot. She passed the gentleman, and walked straight to the King, 'whereat he was astonished, and knew not what to say, but, gently saluting her, exclaimed, "Pucelle, my dear, you are right welcome ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang

... enough to Christy that the remarkable attempt of one or the other of the officers on board as passengers to personate the other had been explained to those on the quarter-deck, for he observed that they all regarded him with curiosity, and were interested in the matter. As the surgeon passed near him ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... famous for practical jokes; which were, however, always played in a gentlemanly way. Before landing at St. Andero's, with some other officers who had been on leave in England, he agreed to personate the Duke of York, and make the Spaniards believe that his Royal Highness was amongst them. On nearing the shore, a royal standard was hoisted at the masthead, and Mackinnon disembarked, wearing the star of his shako on his left breast, and accompanied by his friends, who agreed ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow

... that a large snake (Python) still lingered in Eastern Europe. Huge tame snakes were kept as sacred by the Macedonian women; and one of them (according to Lucian) Peregrinus Proteus, the Cagliostro of his time, fitted with a linen mask, and made it personate the god AEsculapius. In the "Historia Lausiaca," cap. lii. is an account by an eye-witness of a large snake in the Thebaid, whose track was "as if a beam had been dragged along the sand." It terrifies ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... not unlike the portrait of my father, and is a slim man,' said Edward. 'He will readily go with me. I will personate my mother. I am confident the papers are not destroyed, for I have often seen him when he little dreamed an eye was upon him, examining some papers he keeps in a small casket on his toilet, and one in particular, a document of some length, which he has often seemed to me about to tear, ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite

... throve finely, and so did Utah. One of the last things which Brigham Young had done before leaving Iowa, was to appear in the pulpit dressed to personate the worshipped and lamented prophet Smith, and confer the prophetic succession, with all its dignities, emoluments and authorities, upon "President Brigham Young!" The people accepted the pious fraud ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... answer, that the first step towards becoming a great actor is to fling aside that knowledge and hand yourself over the willing victim of a delusion. You must not act but live your part: persuade yourself that you are the character you personate: surrender your heart to be torn by real passions ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan

... their dirges to the dead; and the female voices were mingled with those of boys, whose tender years made still more striking the contrast of life and death—the fresh leaf and the withered one. But the players, the buffoons, the archimimus (whose duty it was to personate the dead)—these, the customary attendants at ordinary funerals, were banished from a funeral attended with ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... your weak condition will excuse you from any disturbance or intrusion here. The mulatto woman you have sometimes personated may be still in this house; I will appoint her to attend you. I suppose you can trust her, for you must personate her again, and escape in her clothes, while she takes your place in this room ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... now obliged to creep from under the tarpaulins and personate the disheveled ladies ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... Scotland, Wallace shall be declared its bravest friend. We will go together—as brothers, if you will!" continued he. "I am already considered by the French nobility as Thomas de Longueville; you may personate the Red Reaver; Scotland does not yet know that he was slain; and the reputation of his valor and a certain nobleness in his wild warfare having placed him, in the estimation of our shores, rather in the light of one of their own island sea-kings than in that ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... back-broken over an arm-chair by the good-natured but only too athletic Earl of Hillsborough in a wine-party frolic; that Knighton, early an enthusiast for art, used to draw his own left hand in divers attitudes with his right every day for weeks; and that some not quite unknown cotemporary used to personate me at times for his own benefit. As he has been long dead, I may now state that he was believed to be Lord Douglas of Hamilton. Here is the true story. One day the Dean requested my presence, and thus addressed me: ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... of England have been said to take their religion from Milton, and their history from Shakspeare:' and as far as they draw the character of the last royal Plantagenet from the bloody ogre which every grand tragedian has delighted to personate, they set up invention on the pedestal of fact, and prefer slander to truth. Even from the opening soliloquy, Shakspeare traduces, misrepresents, vilifies the man he had interested motives in making infamous; while at the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... over such over-fine fooleries and subtill trifles." There is more wilfulnesse and wrangling among them, than pertains to a sacred profession. But what person a man undertakes to act, he doth ever therewithal! personate his owne. Allthough they say, that in vertue it selfe, the last scope of our aime is voluptuousnes. It pleaseth me to importune their eares still with this word, which so much offends their hearing. And if it imply any chief pleasure or exceeding contentments, it is rather due to the ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... possession from before his uncle's death, and that he had now been driven by his fears to surrender it? Was there one who would not believe that he had hidden it with his own hands? How now could he personate that magnanimity which would have been so easy had he brought forth the book and handed it with its enclosure to Mr Apjohn when the lawyer ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... to be thron'd: the base o' the mount Is rank'd with all deserts, all kind of natures That labour on the bosom of this sphere To propagate their states: amongst them all, Whose eyes are on this sovereign lady fix'd One do I personate of Lord Timon's frame, Whom Fortune with her ivory hand wafts to her; Whose present grace to present slaves and servants Translates ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]

... you, friend Hamad," he began, for Haroun and Giafer were known to him only by their assumed names of Hamad and Yussuf—"I must first tell you how it came about that I was induced to personate our sovereign lord, Haroun Alraschid, whom may Allah preserve, and from whose ears may the story of my presumption be hidden ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin

... the outside of the building), about some runaway cattle, and the old trapper thought all the while that he was talking to his chum, Dick Lewis. Now Archie had a new subject to practice upon. He laid himself out to personate Arthur Vane; and he not only successfully imitated that young gentleman's pompous style of talking, and his dignified manner of riding and walking, but even the tone of his voice. He criticised Frank and Johnny continually, and made ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon

... low to the most worthy and respected Lieger ambassadors, my modesty And womanhood I tender; but withal, So entangled in a curs'd accusation, That my defence, of force, like Perseus, Must personate masculine virtue. To the point. Find me but guilty, sever head from body, We 'll part good friends: I scorn to hold my life At yours, ...
— The White Devil • John Webster

... Socrates,[12] Of Danube's banks a certain peasant, Whose portrait drawn to life, one sees, By Marc Aurelius, if you please. The first are well known, far and near: I briefly sketch the other here. The crop upon his fertile chin Was anything but soft or thin; Indeed, his person, clothed in hair, Might personate an unlick'd bear. Beneath his matted brow there lay An eye that squinted every way; A crooked nose and monstrous lips he bore, And goat-skin round his trunk he wore, With bulrush belt. And such a man as this is Was delegate ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... with that which had no real existence, I was perfectly calm and self-possessed, knowing the whole thing to be but a pleasing illusion. I did not in the least fear these figures of the brain, but on the contrary found them pleasant company. Not always, however, did they personate the same characters. Occasionally they would change to the old feudal knights, sometimes on horseback, sometimes on foot, but always ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger

... Hall, where, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, nearly two thousand persons had assembled. The work selected was the Christmas Carol. The high mimetic powers possessed by Mr. Dickens enabled him to personate with remarkable force the various characters of the story, and with admirable skill to pass rapidly from the hard, unbelieving Scrooge, to trusting and thankful Bob Cratchit, and from the genial fulness of Scrooge's nephew, to the hideous mirth ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... fire burned in the lodge, and shortly after dark the invalid appeared and sat upon a blanket, which was placed in front of the song-priest. Previously, however, three men had prepared themselves to personate the gods—Hasjelti, Hostjoghon, and Hostjobokon—and one to personate the goddess, Hostjoboard. They left the lodge, carrying their masks in their hands, went a short distance away and put on their masks. Then Hasjelti and Hostjoghon returned to the lodge, and Hasjelti, amid hoots, "hu-hoo-hu-huh!" ...
— Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis and Mythical Sand Painting of the - Navajo Indians • James Stevenson

... Joseph, as overcome now with his affections, and no longer able to personate an angry man, commanded all that were present to depart, that he might make himself known to his brethren when they were alone; and when the rest were gone out, he made himself known to his brethren; and said, "I commend ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... charm or enchantment lies in the word: you saw, I durst not venture upon any device in our presentment, but was content to be no other then a simple page. Your arrows' properties, (to keep decorum,) Cupid, are suited, it should seem, to the nature of him you personate. ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... until I came up to a little cottage, the door of which opened just as I was passing it. An old woman came out and began to take down the shutters. Now, as I came along the road I had made up my mind to personate a deaf and dumb person, which would preclude the necessity of my speaking. I felt I could do this well and successfully. I determined to try the experiment upon this old lady. I walked quietly up to her, took the shutters out of her hands and laid them in their ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... me like a flash of lightning. In an instant I saw it as plainly as I see it now. It is horrible, it is unheard of, it outdares all daring; but, if I can only nerve myself to face one terrible necessity, it is to be done. I may personate the richly provided widow of Allan Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose, if I can count on Allan Armadale's death in a ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... sole interest in theatricals lay in the consideration of his costume and the sound of his own voice in the ears of the audience. With such an unobjectionable person to enact the part of lover, the prominent character of leading young lady or heroine, which Paula was to personate, was really the most satisfactory in the whole list for her. For although she was to be wooed hard, there was just as much love-making among the remaining personages; while, as Somerset had understood the play, there could occur no flingings of her person upon her lover's ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... and Salim Sardar were both accomplices of Jogesh, who had rented an office on the Strand for one month at Rs. 300 which was never paid. He had also engaged twenty or thirty loafers at 4 annas (4d.) a head to personate coolies for a couple of hours. This part of the inquiry was satisfactory enough—for the police; not so the efforts they made to trace Jogesh and his accomplices. From that day to this nothing has been heard ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... diversion in which two boys personate a Centaur, a creature of Greek mythology, half man and half horse. One of the players stands erect and the other behind him in a stooping position with his hands upon the first player's hips, as shown in ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... withdrew in wrath to his tent, where he consoled himself with music and singing, and refused to take any further part in the war. During his absence the Greeks were hard pressed, and at last he so far relaxed his anger as to allow his friend Patroclus to personate him, lending him his chariot and armour. The slaying of Patroclus by the Trojan hero Hector roused Achilles from his indifference; eager to avenge his beloved comrade, he sallied forth, equipped with new armour fashioned by Hephaestus, slew Hector, and, after dragging his body ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... disturbing Henry's government, by raising a pretender to his crown, and for that purpose he cast his eyes on Lambert Simnel, a youth of fifteen years of age, who was son of a baker, and who, being endowed with understanding above his years, and address above his condition, seemed well fitted to personate a prince of royal extraction. A report had been spread among the people, and received, with great avidity, that Richard, duke of York, second son of Edward IV., had, by a secret escape, saved himself from the cruelty of his uncle, and lay somewhere concealed in England. Simon, taking advantage ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... witness the rehearsals, and otherwise examine into the economy of the stage in general. I also made myself, without any evil intent at the time, entirely conversant with the localities of the place. To draw a full house, Mr. Betty, once the Young Roscius, had been engaged to personate the Earl of Warwick, and admirably he sustained it, too. During the performance, I had crept from the gallery—here always appropriated to the Etonians—through a door which had been purposely made not to appear such, into a place immediately over the stage. Across this space stretch ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.

... be given out to be sung. This objection is pointed out by Barclay in his Apology, where, after stating that "the formal customary way of singing hath no foundation in Scripture, nor any ground in true Christianity," he adds, "all manner of wicked, profane persons take upon them to personate the experiences and conditions of blessed David; which are not only false as to them, but also to some of more sobriety, who utter them forth." "Such singing doth more please the carnal ears of men, than the pure ears of the Lord, who abhors all lying and ...
— On Singing and Music • Society of Friends

... waves of a summer calm and brightness,—now while she meditates, with the eggs under her wings, of a fast-approaching time when she shall teach her song to the little flock that's coming,—let us also dream. The thing that hath been shall be. Contentment, peace, and love! Fairy folk shall not personate this blessedness for us. Who is your next-door neighbor? One face shines serenely before me, and says, "The world is redeemed!" One voice, sounding clear through all discords, has an echo, fine, true, and eternal, in the midst ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... rare gift often sought indeed yet sought in vain not only by dramatists who have very [Footnote 1 Deflexit jam aliquantul im] seldom attained it but by authors of a very great diversity of type and culture. One who undertakes to personate a character belonging to an age not his own hardly ever fails of manifest anachronisms. The author finds it utterly impossible to fit the antique mask so closely as not now and then to show through its chinks his own more modern features, while this form of internal evidence never ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis

... He is like our painting gentlewomen, seldom in his own face, seldomer in his cloaths; and he pleases, the better he counterfeits, except only when he is disguised with straw for gold lace. He does not only personate on the stage, but sometimes in the street, for he is masked still in the habit of a gentleman. His parts find him oaths and good words, which he keeps for his use and discourse, and makes shew with them of a fashionable companion. He is tragical ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... it, against the majesty of justice as represented by the Wittleworths. It was alleged that the defendant had his daughter in court—and a beautiful young lady she was; but Mr. Wittleworth insisted that this person—elegant and richly dressed as she appeared—was an impostor, employed to personate the deceased child of his powerful rival, and thus enable him to retain the block of stores and ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic

... in making her do, and I declare the sprite drove her about like a slave—"Grandmamma, fetch me this," "grandmamma, you must do that," till at last she brought my poor mother down on her knees, stooping under the table to personate an old cow ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... most part tubulated, or reminding one of a paper hood (cucullum papyraceum); and, secondly, that its pistil ripens into a fruit consisting of four seeds, which ripen in the calyx itself, as if in their own seed-vessel, by which a labiate flower is distinguished from a personate one, whose pistil becomes a capsule far divided from the calyx (a calyce longo divisam). And a labiate flower differs from rotate, or bell-shaped flowers, which have four seeds, in that the lips of a labiate flower have a gape like the ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... had died without making a will, whereupon his nephew suborned Gianni Schicchi to personate the dead man in bed, and to dictate a will in his favor. This Gianni did, but with a clause leaving to himself a favorite mare of Buoso's, the best in ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... usually Europe. Profession, former maker of wax figures to the Musee Grevin. Age, what he chooses. Employs his knowledge to mould his own nose and cheeks, with wax additions, to the character he desires to personate. Aquiline this time, you say. Hein! Anything like ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... to wrestle with her, disguising him in his own armour. Sygurd flung her down, and won her for his friend, though he loved her himself. I shall not use a similar deceit, nor employ Jasper Petulengro to personate me—so get up, Belle, and I will do my ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... show him to the people, and keep him out of harm's way. The Christino government and generals had at first affected to disbelieve the arrival of Don Carlos, and had spread reports that a person who resembled him had been chosen by the Carlist leaders to personate the prince, and deceive the people. Soon, however, the fact was placed beyond a doubt; and Rodil, sending several of his generals to find Zumalacarregui, set out with twelve thousand men in pursuit of Don Carlos, who was then ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... of provisions during the greater part of the year 1796. I presume it is only to be ascribed to the intolerable license with which the newspapers break not only the rules of decorum in real life, but even the dramatic decorum, when they personate great men, and, like bad poets, make the heroes of the piece talk more like us Grub-Street scribblers than in a style consonant to persons of gravity and importance in the state. It was easy to demonstrate the cause, and the sole cause, of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... far, when a large plantation became visible, the white mansion gleaming through the trees. Wright recognizing the place, suggested that Glazier might procure a good supper, and something for the haversack, if he would boldly call and personate a rebel officer, trusting to his face and ready wit to carry him through. He had heard from some negroes that the only occupant was a Mrs. Keyton and some young children, the wife and family of the planter, who was an officer in the rebel army; and further that ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... seemingly issuing from the element whose deity he aspired to personate. Mops, dripping with brine, supplied the place of hoary locks; gulf-weed, of which acres were floating within a league of the ship, composed a sort of negligent mantle; and in his hand he bore a ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... Paul that if, even for an hour, he could personate the prince, and so draw off pursuit from him, his point might be gained. He had not forgotten the episode of the first adventure they had shared as children; and as we all know, history repeats itself in more ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green

... waiting to spring. But you are not really hungry, except for something which is not food! And you are not waiting for anything except for permission to talk! I give it to you—talk, children! Talk yourselves hoarse! It will do you good! And I will personate supreme wisdom by listening ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... bolts with which every door and hatchway was secured. Their appearance produced rather an uncomfortable sensation in him; so much so, that when the jailer asked him his name, he thought it more prudent, in consequence of a touch of conscience he had, to personate Art for the present, inasmuch as he felt it impossible to assume any name more safe than that of ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... plenty of pretty English damsels, I was introduced now to a Turkish sultana, now to a Swiss peasant; one day to a captain in the British army, another day to an Indian rajah. One young lady liked to make her dolls personate celebrated characters; and when she visited us, most distinguished guests graced my table. I have had the honor of receiving the Queen and Prince Albert themselves; the Duke of Wellington, Sir Walter Scott, and Miss Edgeworth, ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown

... mocking bird, mime; copyist, copycat; plagiarist, pirate. V. imitate, copy, mirror, reflect, reproduce, repeat; do like, echo, reecho, catch; transcribe; match, parallel. mock, take off, mimic, ape, simulate, impersonate, personate; act &c. (drama) 599; represent &c. 554; counterfeit, parody, travesty, caricature, lampoon, burlesque. follow in the steps of, tread in the steps, follow in the footsteps of, follow in the wake of; take pattern by; follow suit, follow the example of; walk in the shoes of, take a leaf ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... ever knew whom he would choose to personate, for he never spoke in his own character. Now he rose slowly, put one hand in his bosom, and fixing his eye sternly on Grif, who was doing something suspicious with a pin, gave them a touch of Sergeant Buzfuz, from the Pickwick trial, thinking ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... interested and as penetrating as the legitimate wife; had also accepted him as her former lover? Surely here was a mass of evidence sufficient to cast light on the case. Imagine an impostor arriving for the first time in a place where all the inhabitants are unknown to him, and attempting to personate a man who had dwelt there, who would have connections of all kinds, who would have played his part in a thousand different scenes, who would have confided his secrets, his opinions, to relations, friends, acquaintances, to all sorts of people; who had also a wife—that ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... in a box of suitable dimensions, should be conveyed on board as merchandise. Nothing was to be said of the lady's decease; and, as it was well understood that Mr. Wyatt had engaged passage for his wife, it became necessary that some person should personate her during the voyage. This the deceased's lady's maid was easily prevailed on to do. The extra state-room, originally engaged for this girl during her mistress' life, was now merely retained. In this state-room the pseudo-wife slept, of course, every ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie

... (2 Cor 5:1). We have then, a house for our soul in this world, and this house is the body, for the apostle can mean nothing else; therefore he calls it an earthly house. 'If our earthly house'—our house. But who doth he personate if he says, This is a house for the soul; for the body is part of him that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... word, Atlee saw that he was to personate the character of a most unsuspecting, confiding young gentleman, who possessed a certain natural aptitude for affairs of importance, and that amount of discretion such as suited him to be employed confidentially; and to perform this part he ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... communicate to him some messages of which he was to be the bearer to this Spaniard. A thought flashed upon me—Montreuil's letter mentioned, accidentally, that the Spaniard had never hitherto seen Barnard: could I not personate the latter, deliver the messages myself, and thus win that introduction to the daughter which I so burningly desired, and which, from the close reserve of the father's habits, I might not otherwise effect? The plan was ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... pleader against some person, than an advocate for some person. We represent a person who has lost his children, or has been shipwrecked, or is in danger of losing his life, but of what significance is it to personate such characters, unless we also assume their real sentiments. This nature, and these properties of the passions, I thought it incumbent on me not to conceal from the reader, for I, myself, such as I am, or have been (for I flatter myself that I have acquired some reputation at the bar), ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser

... hush. Then, one by one, the men who had been named shook their heads. They did not know the convict. Indeed, he was terribly altered. The ordeal of the past two years had plowed strange lines in his face. At that moment he was less like himself than was the impostor who came there to personate him. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... best to personate the last agony, writhing and rolling his eyes, and clutching at the air with palsied hands. In despair of soothing one in that condition, she changed mood swiftly and ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... presume thou wilt be very inquisitive to know what antic or personate actor this is, that so insolently intrudes upon this common theatre, to the world's view, arrogating another man's name; whence he is, why he doth it, and what he hath to say; although, as [7]he said, Primum si noluero, non respondebo, quis coacturus est? I am a free man born, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... Zaandam, say, by way of Amsterdam. That's about twenty miles. Meanwhile Argyle shall come aboard here. The schooner shall take him up to Egmont; he'll get there this afternoon. He must come aboard disguised though. At Zaandam, we three will separate, Jermyn will personate me, remaining in Zaandam. The boy shall carry letters in a hurry to Hoorn; dummy letters, of course. While I shall creep off to meet Argyle—somewhere else. If we start in a hurry they won't have time to organize a pursuit. There are ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... have seen in our own time how even an Arthur Orton could find sensible and good people to believe the tale with which he sought to enforce claim upon the Tichborne baronetcy. Savage had literary skill, and he could personate the manners of a gentleman in days when there were still gentlemen of fashion who drank, lied, and swaggered into midnight brawls. I have no doubt whatever that he was the son of the nurse with ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson

... fascinated him, he buried himself in the indulgence of the thought of the possibility of some sort of communication with his wife. Singularly and fortunately he did not have recourse to the fruitless idiocy of spiritualism, nor engage in that humiliating intercourse with illiterate humbugs who personate the minds of men and women almost too sacred to be even for an instant associated ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... maestro, and down first. Come down first not last:—first. Let the other one come down after you; and you come down first. Leave her behind, la Lazzeruola; and here, 'Luigi displayed a black veil, the common head-dress of the Milanese women, and twisted his fingers round and round on his forehead to personate the horns of the veil; 'take it, signorina; you know how to wear it. Luigi and the saints watch over you.' Vittoria found herself left in possession of the veil and a packet ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... explained in a moment. It was simply a swindling transaction between the squatter on the one hand and some wretched fellow on the other, often a labourer in the employment of the squatter, in which the former for a consideration induced the latter to personate the character of a free selector, to acquire from the State, for the purpose of transferring to himself, the land he most coveted out of that thrown open for selection adjoining his ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... can I come before him at all? I would be better pleased you to personate me and to stand up ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory

... way of being an amateur actor, a low comedy man; but he was not sincere enough to personate any character, or be anything either on the stage or off it but his own small inartistic self; and no amount of bawling could make him an actor, though he bawled himself hoarse as a rule, mistaking sound for the science of expression. Still, it was the fashion to consider him funny. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... was the more daring of the two whom I the goddess had deputed to protect Sam-Chung, at length cried out with flashing eyes, "I will personate the boy, Chu shall act the girl, and together we will fight the Demon and overthrow and kill him, and so deliver the people from ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan

... north of our supposed position and near the shoals which extend in a southerly direction off Cape Lookout. It would be more perilous to run out to sea than to continue on our course, for we had passed through the off shore line of blockaders, and the sky had become perfectly clear. I determined to personate a transport bound to Beaufort, which was in the possession of the United States forces, and the coaling station of the fleet blockading Wilmington. The risk of detection was not very great, for many ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson

... the island, and entertains a laudable hatred for Signor Zappa; and he undertook to pilot us here, either in the Ione, or in any way I proposed; but strongly urged me to employ stratagem to recover you. I accordingly resolved to pretend to be a Maltese seaman, as the character I could best personate, and to be unfortunately wrecked on the island. Once here, I felt sure I should find means to communicate with you; and I then proposed to cut out a boat from the harbour, and to carry you off in her. I directed our pinnace and jollyboat to wait every night just ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... the Wood of Error, the knight and Lady Una encounter a venerable hermit, and are led into his hermitage. This is Archimago, a vile magician thus disguised, and in his retreat foul spirits personate both knight and lady, and present these false doubles to each. Each sees what seems to be the other's fall from virtue, and, horrified by the sight, the real persons leave the hermitage by separate ways, and wander, in inextricable mazes lost, until fortune and faery bring them together ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... rule was to be more constitutional, less absolute than it had been. The public were no longer to be confined to Drury Lane and Covent Garden in the winter, and the Haymarket in the summer. Actors were enabled, managers and public consenting, to personate Hamlet or Macbeth, or other heroes of the poetic stage, at Lambeth, Clerkenwell, or Shoreditch, anywhere indeed, without risk of committal to gaol. It was no longer necessary to call a play a "burletta," or to touch a note upon the piano, now and then, in the course of a performance, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... said to be assumed by the son of Louis XVI.? but that unhappy child is indisputably no more. Then my neighbour must be one of those unlucky adventurers who have undertaken to bring him to life again. Not a few had already taken upon themselves to personate this Louis XVII., and were proved to be impostors; how is my new acquaintance entitled to greater credit ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico

... Caller. Blue, white and rosy scarfs for as many dancers as will personate the three Flowers that respond to the call: Violets, Wild-roses and Daisies. A twisted rope of green to link the dancing Flowers ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher

... violet in the grass, and stooped to pick it. The horse lashed out with its heels, and struck him in the back of the neck and killed him.... Then the idea came to David to exchange clothes with the dead man, and to take his papers, and personate him. Thus, he could escape from the individuality which was his curse, and find his true self, as it were, in another person. He said, too, that his greatest hope had been to win my love and make me his wife; but he found that he could not bring himself ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... of arguments comprehends such as relate, to what may be called the manner of the drama. The Quakers object to the manner of the drama, or to its fictitious nature, in consequence of which men personate characters, that are not their own. This personification they hold to be injurious to the man, who is compelled to practise it. Not that he will partake of the bad passions, which he personates, but that the trick and trade of representing what he does not feel, must make ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... command of vessels there lying-to. Direct attack of a force so very much superior to that of the Chilian fleet seemed out of the question. Therefore Lord Cochrane bethought him of a subterfuge. Learning that two North American war-ships were expected at Callao, he determined to personate them with the O'Higgins and Lautaro, and so enter the port under alien colours. It was then carnival-time, and on the 21st of February, deeming that the Spaniards were more likely to be off their guard, he proposed ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... himself and becomes an accomplished scholar, a skillful musician, a poet, and an artist. He pours forth his worship in a poem, but his suit is rejected and he is subjected to violent insult. Stung to remorse he enters into a plot to personate a prince, woo her in that guise, and take her as a bride to his mother's cottage on their wedding night. And, in the faint hope of winning her as a prince and keeping her love as an untitled man after he has revealed his identity, Melnotte ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... on the green. A ring is formed, and a tallow candle is stuck in a cut potato, and placed at intervals round the circle; and within this not very brilliant illumination, the cadets dance with each other to the excellent music of the band. Those who personate ladies, take hold of their little bob-tailed jackets, and prink and mince, and take fine airs upon themselves, and look so precisely like fine ladies, that the real fine ladies looking at them, want to give them ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... hustings to themselves, where they polled every beggar from the streets. The question is not of title to vote in most cases, but of identity; most families being at this season out of town, a rascal was found to personate every absentee. The suborners of perjury not regularly conferring, very many instances occur of an absentee being represented by four or five, all admitted to vote ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... unconscious. His parlours are made with French windows; they are open, and invite the bailiff-hunted Brown into the house. What so natural as that he should find out the state of family affairs from a loquacious Abigail, and should personate the expected nephew? Mr. Tidmarsh (the property old gentleman of the farce-writers) is in ecstacics. Mrs. T. sees in the supposed Selbourne a son-in-law for her daughter, whose vision is directed to the same prospects. Happy, domestic circle! unequalled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various

... who is great only in stature, quitted the rank of serjeant in the Gardes Francaises to become a bad player. In the character of kings, he scarcely now appears but to personate tyrants. He is very cold, and speaks through his nose like a Capuchin friar, which has gained him the appellation of ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... like—if we its hopes may personate— Fall'n Marius, 'mid the ruins, when he stood And pondered darkly o'er his desperate fate, Alone, in th' o'erthrown City's solitude. Oh! we may build a fairy home for love— But, when 'tis blasted, how can we remove? How from the ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas

... the evil spirit the wild flowers, the rice, and the flesh, which have been prepared as the pidaneys or offerings to be made at sunset, at midnight, and the morning; and in the intervals the dancers perform their incantations, habited in masks and disguises to represent the demon which they personate, as the immediate author of the patient's suffering. In the frenzy of these orgies, the Kattadia having feigned the access of inspiration from the spirit he invokes, is consulted by the friends of the afflicted, and declares the nature of his disease, and the probability of its favourable ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... "goes everywhere." Moreover, he has this artistic excellence, that very often you don't know him from an embodied person. He counterfeits mortality so cleverly that he (the ghost) has been known to personate a candidate for honours, and pass an examination for him. A pleasing example of this kind, illustrating the limitations of ghosts, is told in Mr. Giles's book. A gentleman of Huai Shang named Chou-t'ien-i had arrived at the age of fifty, but his family consisted ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang

... me. But the Lear of Shakespeare cannot be acted. The contemptible machinery by which they mimic the storm which he goes out in, is not more inadequate to represent the horrors of the real elements, than any actor can be to represent Lear: they might more easily propose to personate the Satan of Milton upon a stage, or one of Michael Angelo's terrible figures. The greatness of Lear is not in corporal dimension but in intellectual: the explosions of his passions are terrible as a volcano; they ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold

... Albany, pretending to be in love with a damsel in the service of Ginevra, Princess of Scotland, but desiring to marry the princess herself, and not being able to compass his design by reason of her being in love with a gentleman from Italy named Ariodante, persuades the damsel, in his revenge, to personate Ginevra in a balcony at night, and so make her lover believe that she is false. Ariodante, deceived, disappears from court. News is brought of his death; and his brother Lurcanio publicly denounces Ginevra, who, according to the laws of Scotland, is sentenced ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... Sixth Book of Homer's Iliad To Miss * * * * on her Playing upon a Harpsichord in a Room hung with Flower-Pieces of her own Painting Evening: an Ode. To Stella To the Same To a Friend To a Young Lady, on her Birthday Epilogue intended to have been Spoken by a Lady who was to personate 'The Ghost of Hermione' The Young Author Friendship: an Ode. Printed in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1743 Imitation of the Style of ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... in the year 1840; the veteran Braham was to appear as Henry Bertram. A Meg Merrilies had to be improvised. The obscure "utility" actress was called upon to take Mrs. Chippendale's place. She might read the part if she could not commit it to memory but personate Meg Merrilies after some sort she must. She had never especially noticed the part; but as she stood at the side scene, book in hand, awaiting her moment of entrance, her ear caught the dialogue going on upon the stage between two of the gypsies, "conveying ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... personate the stupid society woman if you try for ever. But it doesn't matter, after all; you're too fair to look upon for spies to guess your opinions, even though you can't simper and hide behind ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich

... "I personate Josceline, son of Lord De Aldithely, and so draw pursuit from him. When I am come to Lord De Aldithely in France, then I shall make myself known, if ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger

... a meeting at the Carolina Coffee-House for the next day. On the Tuesday Vinn met him. Mr. Vinn speaks French very well, and Mr. M'Rae explained the business on which he wished to converse with him; the funds were then in a critical situation, it would be a very good thing if he would but personate a French officer, and bring some good news to Town, and that a hundred pounds were at his service. Mr. Vinn felt a little indignant at this proposal being made to him, saying that he hoped what Mr. M'Rae knew of him would have given him a different opinion of him; but Mr. M'Rae would not ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney

... mouth may signify vengeance upon his enemies; his eyes as a flame of fire, superior intelligence and penetrating vision, etc.—but he distinctly announces himself to be the Christ of God. There is no creature in the universe that could personate "him that liveth, and was dead, but is ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... winning and even graceful manner—"that shall be my columbine," said he:—and she was so. A young lad of a sturdy form, and sluggish movement, is converted into a clown: a slim youth is made to personate harlequin—and thus he forms and puts into action the different characters of his entertainment... absolutely and exclusively out of the very lowest orders ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... a high and pleasant hill Feign'd Fortune to be thron'd. The Base o'th' Mount Is rank'd with all deserts, all kinde of Natures That labour on the bosome of this Sphere, To propagate their states; among'st them all, Whose eyes are on this Soueraigne Lady fixt, One do I personate of Lord Timons frame, Whom Fortune with her Iuory hand wafts to her, Whose present grace, to present slaues ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... it," cried Patty with a merry laugh. "Order up gray Bess, and dress him to personate thee. He can put on a mask and drop his shoulders. Thy plaided camlet cape will do well. And put Moppet on a pillion behind. Someone else must go. Ah, Madam Kent! who will enjoy it mightily and sit up like a ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... course, in conscious art, which, though it be derived from play, is itself an abstract, impersonal thing, and depends largely upon philosophical interests beyond the scope of childhood. It is when we make castles in the air and personate the leading character in our own romances, that we return to the spirit of our first years. Only, there are several reasons why the spirit is no longer so agreeable to indulge. Nowadays, when we admit this personal element into our divagations, we are apt to stir up uncomfortable ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... ladies and gentlemen, if the ladies predominate they must personate gentlemen, and vice versa. The gentlemen then proceed to choose lady partners. One of the players next undertakes to question the couples. The fun consists of the questions being put to the lady and the gentleman answering for her. "Do you like your ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain

... adapted to small properties, where labour is abundant. They alone of the peoples of western Europe have preserved specimens of almost every class of dance known to primitive races. These are (1) animal (or possibly totem) dances, in which men personate animals, the bear, the fox, the horse, &c.; (2) dances to represent agriculture and the vintage performed with wine-skins; (3) the simple arts, such as weaving, where the dancers, each holding a long coloured ribbon, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... exordium when people came into the tavern to hear him sing without paying their share of the reckoning—'if a maun, or ony maun, or ony other maun,' &c. &c.; you have both the same redundant eloquence. But why should you think any body would personate you? Nobody would dream of such a prank who ever read your compositions, and perhaps not many who have heard your conversation. But I have been inoculated with a little of your prolixity. The fact is, my dear R——ts, that somebody has tried to make a fool of you, and what he ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... in the great drama of deception, Satan himself will personate Christ. The church has long professed to look to the Saviour's advent as the consummation of her hopes. Now the great deceiver will make it appear that Christ has come. In different parts of the earth, Satan will manifest himself among men ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... Mr. Leek was so anxious to let Anderbury-on-the-Mount to the rich Baron Stolmuyer, of Saltzburgh, that he got a friend of his to come and personate Sir John Westlake, while he, the baron, was looking at the premises, in order to drive him at once to a conclusion upon the matter; so that what made Sir John so very anxious that he should not be called forward in ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... acted upon perhaps unconsciously, have been one of the main causes why epitaphs so often personate the deceased, and represent him as speaking from his own tomb-stone. The departed Mortal is introduced telling you himself that his pains are gone; that a state of rest is come; and he conjures you to weep for him no longer. He admonishes with the voice of one experienced ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... to the great admiration of children and the amusement of older people, but it was very seldom this favor was granted, without earnest and reiterated entreaties. It was the first time she had ever spontaneously offered to personate the Sibyl, whose oracles she uttered, and it was a proof that an unusual fit of inspiration was ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... wrath to his tent, where he consoled himself with music and singing, and refused to take any further part in the war. During his absence the Greeks were hard pressed, and at last he so far relaxed his anger as to allow his friend Patroclus to personate him, lending him his chariot and armour. The slaying of Patroclus by the Trojan hero Hector roused Achilles from his indifference; eager to avenge his beloved comrade, he sallied forth, equipped with new armour fashioned by Hephaestus, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the warriors who remained behind was to personate a woman, and, if possible, make the old chief's people think he was Chaf-fa-ly-a. Souk said he knew a pass through the Black Hills that would bring them to his father's country two days sooner than by any other ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... He stood and watched her coming along with that slow, graceful, undulating step which was Leam's birthright. Was he mad? Was he dreaming? What was this mocking trick of eyesight that was perplexing him? Surely it was madness; and yet—no, it could be no one else. Supreme, beloved, who else could personate her so ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... endeavor to suit each one. The host or hostess should not have any conspicuous part assigned them, unless it is urged by all the other performers. Those who are to participate, should not only learn their parts, but endeavor to imbue themselves with the spirit of the character they personate, so as to afford pleasure to all who are invited to witness its performance. When persons have consented to participate in any such entertainment, only sickness or some very grave cause should prevent them from undertaking their part. Supper or ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young

... of Louis XVI.? but that unhappy child is indisputably no more. Then my neighbour must be one of those unlucky adventurers who have undertaken to bring him to life again. Not a few had already taken upon themselves to personate this Louis XVII., and were proved to be impostors; how is my new acquaintance entitled to ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico

... effect on him. He summed it up coolly so far. "She compared me disadvantageously with Nugent; and she allowed Nugent to personate me in speaking to you, without interfering to stop it. In both these cases, her temper excuses and accounts for her conduct. Very good. We may, or may not, differ so far. Before we go farther, let us—if we can—agree on one unanswerable fact. Which of us two brothers was ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... cuckoo|, parrot, ape, monkey, mocking bird, mime; copyist, copycat; plagiarist, pirate. V. imitate, copy, mirror, reflect, reproduce, repeat; do like, echo, reecho, catch; transcribe; match, parallel. mock, take off, mimic, ape, simulate, impersonate, personate; act &c. (drama) 599; represent &c. 554; counterfeit, parody, travesty, caricature, lampoon, burlesque. follow in the steps of, tread in the steps, follow in the footsteps of, follow in the wake of; take pattern by; follow suit, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... knew the place in which she had lived—the place called Port Logan—as well as she had known it herself. Mercy had only to read the manuscript journal to be able to answer any questions relating to the visit to Rome and to Colonel Roseberry's death. She had no accomplished lady to personate: Grace had spoken herself—her father's letter spoke also in the plainest terms—of her neglected education. Everything, literally everything, was in the lost woman's favor. The people with whom she had been connected ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins

... use that might be made of previous events. Some good genius would appear to you to have interposed to save you from injury intended by me. Why, I said, since I must sink in her opinion, should I not cherish this belief? Why not personate an enemy, and pretend that celestial interference has frustrated my schemes? I must fly, but let me leave wonder and fear behind me. Elucidation of the mystery will always be practicable. I shall do no ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... stay to inquire whether the "seven small children," in whose name he implores thy assistance, have a veritable existence. Rake not into the bowels of unwelcome truth, to save a halfpenny. It is good to believe him. If he be not all that he pretendeth, give, and under a personate father of a family, think (if thou pleasest) that thou hast relieved an indigent bachelor. When they come with their counterfeit looks, and mumping tones, think them players. You pay your money to see a comedian feign these things, which, concerning these poor people, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... at me with a flash of intelligence, "HE can personate him, and say it. Can you?" he turned ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte

... the fact,' said Rollo, 'that Wych Hazel could not conveniently personate a pine tree or ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... indignation at having sat with patience to hear such a fellow speak nonsense. But he corrected himself by reflecting that he was perhaps as well entertained, and instructed too, by this same modest gauger, as he should have been by such a man as he had thought proper to personate. And surely the fault may more properly be imputed to that rank where the futility is real than where it is feigned: to that rank whose opportunities for nobler accomplishments have only served to rear a fabric of folly which the untutored hand of affectation, ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... plain enough to Christy that the remarkable attempt of one or the other of the officers on board as passengers to personate the other had been explained to those on the quarter-deck, for he observed that they all regarded him with curiosity, and were interested in the matter. As the surgeon passed near him ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... permitted to enter. Yet I learnt afterwards all that happened. Marie, my maid, who was slowly dying of consumption, was moved into the principal bedchamber; and when Martin arrived, she was made to personate me. It was the priest who gained her consent; the priest who confessed her and gave her absolution. His share of the spoil was to be the De Vaux estates, handed over to the Church if ever they carried out their plot successfully. Martin came, and, as ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... away on the 10th by a noble-hearted Wallachian woman, Princess Cantacuzene, who undertook to conduct him to the frontier, and who kept her word. It was a troublesome task. Quinet had a foreign passport in the name of Grubesko, he was to personate a Wallachian, and it was arranged that he should not know how to speak French, he who writes it as a master. The journey was perilous. They ask for passports along all the line, beginning at the terminus. At Amiens they were particularly suspicious. But at Lille the danger ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... shall then look thoroughly into the affair. Of course there is only one feasible explanation. You have been brought there to personate someone, and the real person is imprisoned in this chamber. That is obvious. As to who this prisoner is, I have no doubt that it is the daughter, Miss Alice Rucastle, if I remember right, who was said to have gone to America. You were ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... the base, the bitter disposition of Beatrice, that puts the world into her person] That is, It is the disposition of Beatrice, who takes upon her to personate the world, and therefore represents the world as saying what she only ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... a work as is seen in Spiritualism. But how do we know, some one may ask, but that Spiritualism is the work of the good angels?—We know that it is not, because good angels do not lie. They never would come to men, professing to be the spirits of their dead friends, and imitate and personate them to deceive, knowing that the mediums did not know, and could not ascertain that they were altogether another and different order of beings. But the evil angels, led by the father of lies, and cradled, and drilled, and skilled, and ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith

... where, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, nearly two thousand persons had assembled. The work selected was the Christmas Carol. The high mimetic powers possessed by Mr. Dickens enabled him to personate with remarkable force the various characters of the story, and with admirable skill to pass rapidly from the hard, unbelieving Scrooge, to trusting and thankful Bob Cratchit, and from the genial fulness of ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... moment. It was simply a swindling transaction between the squatter on the one hand and some wretched fellow on the other, often a labourer in the employment of the squatter, in which the former for a consideration induced the latter to personate the character of a free selector, to acquire from the State, for the purpose of transferring to himself, the land he most coveted out of that thrown open for selection ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... pidaneys or offerings to be made at sunset, at midnight, and the morning; and in the intervals the dancers perform their incantations, habited in masks and disguises to represent the demon which they personate, as the immediate author of the patient's suffering. In the frenzy of these orgies, the Kattadia having feigned the access of inspiration from the spirit he invokes, is consulted by the friends of the afflicted, and declares the nature ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... himself told him; but such a magnificent spectacle as the pioneers had never yet witnessed. Pete had received orders to prepare dinner for fifty guests and whiskey for twice as many. There was to be a grand rally early in the morning at the home of Tom Caldwell, who was to personate the great Protestant monarch, and at high noon a triumphal march up over the hills and down into the Glen to the feast,—with fifes and drums and a greater display in crossing the Oro than King William himself had had in crossing the ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... at once, but at last he said firmly: "Either the dead, or some class of intermediate spirits who personate the human dead. Yes, Varick, that is ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

... Manston, and when you found that the lodging-house-keeper had gone away and died, and that nobody else in the street had any definite ideas as to your wife's personal appearance, and came and proposed the arrangement we carried out—that I should personate her. Your taking all this trouble shows that something more serious than love had to do ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... could act. If the part suited her she could throw herself into it so that she ceased to be awkward, ungainly Priscilla Peel. Out of herself she was no longer awkward, no longer ungainly. She could only personate certain characters; light and airy parts she could not attempt, but where much depended on passion and emotion Priscilla could do splendidly. Every day her friends found fresh points of interest in this queer girl. Nancy Banister was ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... yesterday to see what she would succeed in making her do, and I declare the sprite drove her about like a slave—"Grandmamma, fetch me this," "grandmamma, you must do that," till at last she brought my poor mother down on her knees, stooping under the table to personate an old ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... industrious, insinuating, and artful, and his character was so supple that he could become as many different men as he had occasion to personate. But he was shortsighted even in his grandest projects; and, unlike his predecessor, whose mind was bold but his temperature timid, Mazarin was bolder in temper than in conception. A pretended moderation veiled his ambition and his avarice; ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... the manner of the Creole Spanish ladies,—wholly in black. A small black bonnet on her head, covered by a veil thick with embroidery, concealed her face. It had been agreed that, in their escape, she was to personate the character of a Creole lady, and ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... "Let us run over such over-fine fooleries and subtill trifles." There is more wilfulnesse and wrangling among them, than pertains to a sacred profession. But what person a man undertakes to act, he doth ever therewithal! personate his owne. Allthough they say, that in vertue it selfe, the last scope of our aime is voluptuousnes. It pleaseth me to importune their eares still with this word, which so much offends their hearing. And if it imply any chief pleasure or exceeding contentments, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... overcome now with his affections, and no longer able to personate an angry man, commanded all that were present to depart, that he might make himself known to his brethren when they were alone; and when the rest were gone out, he made himself known to his brethren; and said, "I commend you for your virtue, and your kindness to our brother: I find you better ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... prove it to be truth," rejoined Judith. "Your retainer and unscrupulous agent, Major Pillichody, applied to Chowles to find some one to personate a clergyman in a mock marriage, which your lordship wished to have performed, and promised a handsome reward for the service. Chowles mentioned the subject to me, and we speedily contrived a plan to outwit your lordship, and turn the affair to ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Cliff, don't yo' personate me! Counting from de little finger back to de thumb—yo' start anythin', ...
— Three Plays - Lawing and Jawing; Forty Yards; Woofing • Zora Neale Hurston

... cases of religion; so it is a thing monstrous to put it into the hands of the common people. Let that be left unto the Anabaptists, and other furies. It was great blasphemy, when the devil said, I will ascend, and be like the highest; but it is greater blasphemy, to personate God, and bring him in saying, I will descend, and be like the prince of darkness; and what is it better, to make the cause of religion to descend, to the cruel and execrable actions of murthering princes, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... Bellamys, the Yeates, and the Siddonses; that under a father so well qualified to instruct her, her talents were brought forth in the very bud, by constant exercise, and that while yet a child she had learned to personate the heroine. What then will the reader's surprise be, when he is informed that she had seen very few plays; perhaps fewer than the general run of citizens' daughters—and that the stage was never even for an instant contemplated as a profession for her till a very short ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... greater part of the year 1796. I presume it is only to be ascribed to the intolerable license with which the newspapers break not only the rules of decorum in real life, but even the dramatic decorum, when they personate great men, and, like bad poets, make the heroes of the piece talk more like us Grub-Street scribblers than in a style consonant to persons of gravity and importance in the state. It was easy to demonstrate the cause, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... from suicide, Fandor had made him promise to leave France and await developments, whilst Fandor, posing as Vinson, studied at close quarters the spies who had drawn the miserable corporal into their net. Fandor could personate Vinson with every chance of success, because the 257th of the line had never set eyes ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... man, who is great only in stature, quitted the rank of serjeant in the Gardes Francaises to become a bad player. In the character of kings, he scarcely now appears but to personate tyrants. He is very cold, and speaks through his nose like a Capuchin friar, which has gained him the appellation of the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... benefit of his church. Illustrations were to be given of "Rebecca at the Well," "The Finding of Moses," "Joseph and his Brethren;" but Rocky Canyon was more particularly excited by the announcement that Polly Harkness would personate "Jephthah's Daughter." On the evening of the performance, however, it was found that this tableau had been withdrawn and another substituted, for reasons not given. Rocky Canyon, naturally indignant at this omission to represent native ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... marriage with Yolande, daughter of the Count de Dreux; and a splendid bridal took place at Jedburgh, with every kind of amusements, especially mumming and masquing. In the midst, some reckless reveller glided in arrayed in ghastly vestments, so as to personate death, and after making fearful gestures, vanished away, leaving an impression of terror among the guests that they did not quickly shake off—the jest ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... audacious letter, and proclaim you to be an impostor, worthy of the severest punishment for attempting to personate a son of my late brother. However, for the sake of my friendship for Mr. Kennedy, your father, I give you twenty-four hours to leave the country, before laying any information against you, both as an impostor and as a rebel who ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty

... the garden at the fete at Trianon, till he was brought to the King's cabinet when arrested, and interrogated, and confronted with her face to face. The Prince started when he saw her. The comparison of her features with those of the guilty wretch who had dared to personate her in the garden at Versailles completely destroyed his self-possession. Her Majesty's person was become fuller, and her face was much longer than that of the infamous D'Oliva. He could neither speak nor write an intelligible reply to the questions put ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... he might do most of the talking, and shape his course by whatever might occur, Nick had decided to personate the interpreter. ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter

... his cousin, was there one who would not think that it had been in his possession from before his uncle's death, and that he had now been driven by his fears to surrender it? Was there one who would not believe that he had hidden it with his own hands? How now could he personate that magnanimity which would have been so easy had he brought forth the book and handed it with its enclosure to Mr Apjohn when the lawyer came ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... opinions they impugned were simply a mistaken view of true Christianity. The author of 'Deism fairly stated,' &c.—a work which excited much attention at its publication in 1746—had said, 'That a perfectly innocent Being, of the highest order among intelligent natures, should personate the offender and suffer in his place and stead, in order to take down the wrath and resentment of the Deity against the criminal, and dispose God to show mercy to him—the Deist conceives to be both unnatural and improper, and therefore not to be ascribed ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... or shall we not rather believe that the person who then assumed the name of Richard Savage was an impostor, being in reality the son of the shoemaker, under whose wife's care[501] Lady Macclesfield's child was placed; that after the death of the real Richard Savage, he attempted to personate him; and that the fraud being known to Lady Macclesfield, he was therefore repulsed ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... had one, think you I could have been so wicked as to personate her? Susan, I know not what I am saying, but you know who it is that has turned me ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie

... here, either in the Ione, or in any way I proposed; but strongly urged me to employ stratagem to recover you. I accordingly resolved to pretend to be a Maltese seaman, as the character I could best personate, and to be unfortunately wrecked on the island. Once here, I felt sure I should find means to communicate with you; and I then proposed to cut out a boat from the harbour, and to carry you off in her. I directed ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... Bottom's head in the play is a fantastic illusion, produced by magic spells: on the stage it is an ass's head, and nothing more; certainly a very strange costume for a gentleman to appear in. Fancy cannot be embodied any more than a simile can be painted; and it is as idle to attempt it as to personate Wall or Moonshine. Fairies are not incredible, but fairies six feet high are so. Monsters are not shocking, if they are seen at a proper distance. When ghosts appear at mid-day, when apparitions stalk along Cheapside, then may the MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM be represented without injury ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... should find difficult, and might very likely do it wrong. He is acquainted with all the places and people that Angus is; we are not. And remember, it is not only the getting Angus out of the place that is of consequence: whoever takes his place must personate Angus for some hours, till he can get safely away. [Note 3.] Only Keith can do this with any chance of success. As to sacrifice, why, soldiers sacrifice themselves every day, and he is a soldier. I can assure you, it seems to him a natural, commonplace affair. ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... which the great benefactor of the West, St. Benedict, was laying the foundations of the coenobitic life. In the first instance, Totila tried to deceive the Saint. He dressed up a high officer as king, and sent him, with three of his chief counts in attendance, to personate himself. When Benedict saw the Gothic train approaching he was seated, and as soon as they were within earshot, he cried out to the warrior pretending to be king: "Son, lay aside that dress which is not thine". The Goth fell to the ground in dismay, and returned to report his ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... of his numerous sons,— Morpheus,—the most expert in counterfeiting forms, and in imitating the walk, the countenance, and mode of speaking, even the clothes and attitudes most characteristic of each. But he only imitates men, leaving it to another to personate birds, beasts, and serpents. Him they call Icelos; and Phantasos is a third, who turns himself into rocks, waters, woods, and other things without life. These wait upon kings and great personages in their sleeping hours, while others move among the common people. Somnus ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... his warlike stores and prisoners, and, leaving them under a strong guard, proceed with two of his prows loaded to the gunwale with merchandise, to the port. The merchant-boats which he had previously sunk, and whose crews he had murdered, provided him with "port-clearances," which enabled him to personate the trader and regularly enter and clear the customs at Singapore, so as to cause no suspicion; then, returning to his place of rendezvous with a fresh supply of guns, ammunition, etcetera, he divided his ill-gotten gains and recommenced his ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne

... inquiries; and all that could be recollected from him of his brother Will in that station was the faint, general, and almost lost ideas he had of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein being present to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company who were eating, and one ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater

... A traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who, leaving Europe in 1620 because not permitted to sing psalms through his nose, followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... was dozing over a newspaper in the Turk's Head in that town, when a policeman entered, and, mistaking him for Elliot, took him into custody. How their route had been discovered, Rhimeson knew not; but he was possessed of sufficient presence of mind to personate his friend, and offer to accompany the police officer instantly back to Edinburgh, leaving a letter and a considerable sum of money for Elliot. In a few minutes, the generous fellow leaped into the post-chaise, with a heart as ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... who is an absolute stranger in England comes to take up an inheritance, having on him no doubt, the necessary proofs of identification. He's met by one person only—his agent. He dies next day. The agent buries him, under a false name, takes his effects and papers, gets some accomplice to personate him, introduces that accomplice to everybody as the real man—and there you are! Oh, Chatfield knew what he was doing! Who on earth, wandering in this cemetery, would ever connect Mark Grey ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher

... scene for two strings, the 'E' and 'G,' the first was to personate the lady, the second himself. It commenced with a species of dialogue, intending to represent her indifference and his passion; now sportive, now sad; laughter on her part and tears from him, ending in an apotheosis of loving reconciliation. It affected the lady to that degree that ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa

... where he took the name he now bears, without for twelve years ever having discovered any traces of this Alberto, or of his son Horatio. This is the substance of the story, which I have repeated so that you may better remember the groundwork of the plot. Now, you are to personate an Armenian merchant, who has seen them both safe and sound in Turkey. If I have invented this scheme, in preference to any other, of bringing them to life again according to his dream, it is because it is very common in adventures for people to be taken at sea by ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere

... represented: "Now must Adam rise all naked and look round with an air of admiration and wonder."[796] Beholders doubtless returned his wonder and admiration. In the Chester Mysteries a practical recommendation is made to the actors who personate the first couple: "Adam and Eve shall stande nakede, and shall not be ashamed."[797] The proper time to be ashamed will come a little later. The serpent steals "out of a hole"; man falls: "Now must Adam cover himself and feign to be ashamed. ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... left her niece irritated, but the trace of anger she felt was likely to enhance her interest. The meal, however, was a trial to him, for he had during eight long years lived for the most part apart from all his kind, a lonely toiler, and now was constrained to personate a man known to be almost dangerously skillful with his tongue. At first sight the task appeared almost insuperably difficult, but Winston was a clever man, and felt all the thrill of one playing a risky game just then. Perhaps it was due to excitement ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss

... down first not last:—first. Let the other one come down after you; and you come down first. Leave her behind, la Lazzeruola; and here, 'Luigi displayed a black veil, the common head-dress of the Milanese women, and twisted his fingers round and round on his forehead to personate the horns of the veil; 'take it, signorina; you know how to wear it. Luigi and the saints watch over you.' Vittoria found herself left in possession of the veil and a packet ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... formed, and a tallow candle is stuck in a cut potato, and placed at intervals round the circle; and within this not very brilliant illumination, the cadets dance with each other to the excellent music of the band. Those who personate ladies, take hold of their little bob-tailed jackets, and prink and mince, and take fine airs upon themselves, and look so precisely like fine ladies, that the real fine ladies looking at them, want to give them a ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... propositions, and an equal number of repetitions, Dr. Hoadley's bustling drama was fixed upon. Vivian was to act Ranger, Augustus Etherege was to personate Clarinda, because he was a fair boy and always blushing; and the rest of the characters found able representatives. Every half-holiday was devoted to rehearsals, and nothing could exceed the amusement and thorough fun which all the preparations elicited. All ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... bread With both cream and honey spread; Then, with many a challenge-call, We will romp from house and hall, Gypsying with the birds and bees Of the green-tress'd garden trees. In a bower of leaf and vine Thou shalt be a lady fine Held in duress by the great Giant I shall personate. Next, when many mimics more Like to ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley

... then, a house for our soul in this world, and this house is the body, for the apostle can mean nothing else; therefore he calls it an earthly house. 'If our earthly house'—our house. But who doth he personate if he says, This is a house for the soul; for the body is part of him that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... gift often sought indeed yet sought in vain not only by dramatists who have very [Footnote 1 Deflexit jam aliquantul im] seldom attained it but by authors of a very great diversity of type and culture. One who undertakes to personate a character belonging to an age not his own hardly ever fails of manifest anachronisms. The author finds it utterly impossible to fit the antique mask so closely as not now and then to show through its chinks his own more modern features, ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis

... after the murder the plan was formed by which this woman was to personate the other. The striking similarity in the hair, which was the most conspicuous beauty of each, ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter

... of Warwick had escaped from the Tower gave an opportunity for an imposter, Lambert Simnel, to personate the earl. In order to satisfy the Londoners that the rumour of Warwick's escape was a fabrication, Henry caused his prisoner to be paraded through the streets of the city, and exposed to public view at St. Paul's. After ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... the balcony we were glad of the hint. Sigismund was with me when you came, and admired Helen immensely, so he was wild to have a part in the frolic. I let him begin, and followed you unseen to Heidelberg, meaning to personate an artist. Meeting you at the castle, I made a good beginning with the vaults and the ring, and meant to follow it up by acting the baron, you were so bent on finding him, but Sigismund forbade it. Turning over a trunk of things left there the year before, I ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... come before him at all? I would be better pleased you to personate me and to stand up ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory

... a day set apart in his honor. He was born in. Palara, a city of Lycia, and but very little is known of his life except that he was made Bishop of Myra and died in the year 343. It was once the custom to send a man around to personate St. Nicholas on St. Nicholas Eve, and to inquire how the children had behaved through the year, who were deserving of gifts, and who needed a touch of the birch rods that he carried with him into every ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann

... it went quite through his Heart, yet thank God was not Mortal. He was not a little rejoyc'd at his good Fortune in getting so early a Favour from his Mistress, and notwithstanding the violence he did himself to personate a sick Man, he could not forbear giving some Symptoms of an extraordinary content; and telling her that he did not doubt to receive a considerable Proportion of ease from the Application of what had so often ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve

... theatricals lay in the consideration of his costume and the sound of his own voice in the ears of the audience. With such an unobjectionable person to enact the part of lover, the prominent character of leading young lady or heroine, which Paula was to personate, was really the most satisfactory in the whole list for her. For although she was to be wooed hard, there was just as much love-making among the remaining personages; while, as Somerset had understood the play, there could occur no flingings of her person upon her lover's neck, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... necessarily, in point of personal feeling, have been infinitely superior to all those unworthy littlenesses which were conspicuous in the multitude around him; and as he was acting for the moment, to answer an important purpose, in an assumed character, we cannot be surprised that he should personate a Jew elated with self-conscious superiority, by saying, "it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs." We are reminded of Joseph, an eminent antitype of Christ, who, though he knew his brethren, and was overflowing with fraternal ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... that the modern actors who personate the ghost, pay a proper attention to the text. It is evident from the above passage, that the ghost in crossing between the speakers and the audience, should give a jump, taking special care to avoid both traps and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... to be dressed in every known costume. Besides plenty of pretty English damsels, I was introduced now to a Turkish sultana, now to a Swiss peasant; one day to a captain in the British army, another day to an Indian rajah. One young lady liked to make her dolls personate celebrated characters; and when she visited us, most distinguished guests graced my table. I have had the honor of receiving the Queen and Prince Albert themselves; the Duke of Wellington, Sir Walter Scott, and Miss Edgeworth, have all dined with me on the same day, and Robinson Crusoe ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown

... who was to personate the Queen, in an interview with the Cardinal, was not at all like Marie Antoinette. Her short, round, buxom face bears no resemblance to the long and noble outlines of the features of the Queen. But ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... scholar, or rather bachelor, and that Oxford and Cambridge were almost the only universities where Scots were not—their place being taken by multitudinous Irish; yet not only were all universities alike in essentials, but he had seen and heard enough of that at Paris to be able to personate a clerk from thence. ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... supernatural stories of the gossiping variety found vent in 'A History of Apparitions,' and his 'System of Magic.' The position which he takes up is a kind of modified rationalism. He believes that there are genuine apparitions which personate our dead friends, and give us excellent pieces of advice on occasion; but he refuses to believe that the spirits can appear themselves, on account 'of the many strange inconveniences and ill consequences ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... that if, even for an hour, he could personate the prince, and so draw off pursuit from him, his point might be gained. He had not forgotten the episode of the first adventure they had shared as children; and as we all know, history repeats itself in ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green

... which Heaven has been pleased to grant you. I have given you this advice out of friendship, and for your good; you are now at liberty to do as you please. At all events, I will send you some one to-night to personate the Dominican, and he will only have to return ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... presence of the agent, who gave a certificate, which, when countersigned by the President, authorized the purchaser to demand protection from the national arms, if molested. All this was well enough; but it was soon discovered that the speculators would hire miscreants and drunken Indians to personate the real possessors of lands, and, having paid them the money, would take it back as soon as the purchase was completed, give the Indian a jug of whiskey, or a small bag of silver, for the fraud, and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... frequently more anxious to impress upon others a faith in their visions, than they are themselves confirmed in their reality; as, on the other hand, it is difficult for the most cool-headed impostor long to personate an enthusiast, without in some degree believing what he is so eager to have believed. It was a natural attribute of such a character as the supposed hermit, that he should credit the numerous superstitions ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... large snake (Python) still lingered in Eastern Europe. Huge tame snakes were kept as sacred by the Macedonian women; and one of them (according to Lucian) Peregrinus Proteus, the Cagliostro of his time, fitted with a linen mask, and made it personate the god AEsculapius. In the "Historia Lausiaca," cap. lii. is an account by an eye-witness of a large snake in the Thebaid, whose track was "as if a beam had been dragged along the sand." It terrifies the Syrian monks: but the Egyptian monk sets to work to kill ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... Lambert Simnel. This lad, who was the son of a baker, and, according to Lord Bacon, was possessed of "very pregnant parts," was selected to disturb the usurper's government, by appearing as a pretender to his crown. At first it was the intention of the conspirators that he should personate Richard, duke of York, the second son of Edward IV., who was supposed to have escaped from the assassins of the Tower, and to be concealed somewhere in England. Accordingly, the monk Simon, who was the tool ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... vessels there lying-to. Direct attack of a force so very much superior to that of the Chilian fleet seemed out of the question. Therefore Lord Cochrane bethought him of a subterfuge. Learning that two North American war-ships were expected at Callao, he determined to personate them with the O'Higgins and Lautaro, and so enter the port under alien colours. It was then carnival-time, and on the 21st of February, deeming that the Spaniards were more likely to be off their guard, he proposed "to make a feint of sending a boat ashore with despatches, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... originated cannot now be ascertained; but we may easily imagine several ways in which it might have originated; nor is it at all necessary to suppose, with Julius Frontinus, that two young men were dressed up by the Dictator to personate the sons of Leda. It is probable that Livy is correct when he says that the Roman general, in the hour of peril, vowed a temple to Castor. If so, nothing could be more natural than that the multitude should ascribe the victory to the favor of the Twin Gods. When ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... look of contempt on the Moor, who, thoroughly prepared for his part, most efficaciously assumed the appearance of the mercenary he was then undertaking to personate. ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... when the animal is about to be killed by the Got who represents Bhairavi. The shrine, in which the images of the gods are kept, is always shut, and no person is allowed to enter but the priest (Pujari) and the Gots, who personate in masks these deities. Once in twelve years the Raja offers a solemn sacrifice. It consists of two men, of such a rank that they wear a thread; of two buffaloes, two goats, two rams, two cocks, ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... large quantity of salt, in a box of suitable dimensions, should be conveyed on board as merchandise. Nothing was to be said of the lady's decease; and, as it was well understood that Mr. Wyatt had engaged passage for his wife, it became necessary that some person should personate her during the voyage. This the deceased lady's-maid was easily prevailed on to do. The extra state-room, originally engaged for this girl during her mistress' life, was now merely retained. In this state-room the pseudo-wife, slept, of course, every night. In the daytime ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... public, and then only under such circumstances as should not expose him to any close observation on the part of the spectators. His figure, air, and manner, and the general cast of his countenance, were very much like those of the prince whom he was attempting to personate. There was one mark, however, by which he thought that there was danger that he might be betrayed, and that was, his ears had been cut off. This had been done many years before, by command of Cyrus, on account of some offense of which he had been guilty. The marks of the mutilation ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... already detected the officer's plan. He had determined to assume the man's clothes, personate him, and risk the chances of an escape. It was a perilous undertaking, but the officer had been taking perilous ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"

... pleasant hill Feign'd Fortune to be thron'd: the base o' the mount Is rank'd with all deserts, all kind of natures That labour on the bosom of this sphere To propagate their states: amongst them all, Whose eyes are on this sovereign lady fix'd One do I personate of Lord Timon's frame, Whom Fortune with her ivory hand wafts to her; Whose present grace to present slaves and servants ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]

... monstrous; she is often seen in the same scene with him, but neither on stilts nor crutches; and for his voice, 'tis not lower than the prompter, nor louder than the foil or target. By his action he fortifies moral precepts with examples, for what we see him personate we think truly done before us: a man of a deep thought might apprehend the ghost of our ancient heroes walked again, and take him at several times for many of them. He is much affected to painting, and 'tis a question whether that make ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... determined to ruin you; and, because he despairs of any other way, he will pretend great love and kindness to you, and that he will marry you. You may expect a parson, for this purpose, in a few days; but it is a sly artful fellow, of a broken attorney, that he has hired to personate a minister. The man has a broad face, pitted much with the small-pox, and is a very great companion. So take care of yourself. Doubt not this advice. Perhaps you'll have had but too much reason already to confirm you in the truth of it. From ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... that none of the girls was willing to represent the elderly bridegroom so unflatteringly described as "a laggard in love and a dastard in war." It was not an ingratiating character, and Nancy and Barbara flatly refused to personate it. Susan could do it, she was the smallest, and would best look the part. For two minutes on end Susan stoutly refused to do anything of the kind, and then placidly consented, being of a peace-at-any-price disposition, which found it easier to submit than to preserve a determined opposition. ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... I remember of reading somewhere in the same book from which you get your Agrippa story, that Paul, whom you seem to desire to personate, admonished all servants (slaves) to be obedient to them that are their masters according to the flesh, in fear ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... on the shore, now passing the children, and assailed with a volley of cries and entreaties to look at this one's castle and that one's ditch, now leaving them behind, with what in its ungraduated flatness might well enough personate an endless desert of sand between, over the expanse of which I could imagine them disappearing on a far horizon, whence however a faint occasional cry of excitement and pleasure would reach my ears. ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... by the good-natured but only too athletic Earl of Hillsborough in a wine-party frolic; that Knighton, early an enthusiast for art, used to draw his own left hand in divers attitudes with his right every day for weeks; and that some not quite unknown cotemporary used to personate me at times for his own benefit. As he has been long dead, I may now state that he was believed to be Lord Douglas of Hamilton. Here is the true story. One day the Dean requested my presence, and thus addressed me: "I have long overlooked ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... your opinions. An actor, like a king, should only appear on state occasions. He loses popularity by too much publicity; or, according to the proverb, familiarity breeds contempt. Both characters personate a certain abstract idea, are seen in a fictitious costume, and when they have 'shuffled off this more than mortal coil,' they had better keep out of the way—the acts and sentiments emanating from themselves will not carry on the illusion of our prepossessions. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... that I thought I could manufacture a story which would hold water sufficiently to satisfy the functionary referred to, the thought flashing into my mind that I could personate the lad whom we had found in charge of the "Mouette" on the eventful evening ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... acquainted with the secret reason which conceals from the eyes of the world my sex and family. You know that I was brought into this house, where I have passed my infancy, in order to preserve an inheritance which, on the death of young Ascanio (whom I personate), should have fallen to others; that is why I dare to unbosom myself to you with perfect confidence. But before we begin this conversation, Frosine, clear up a doubt which continually besets me. Can it be possible that Albert should ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere

... following deception: I whitened my face, that they might not know me, and this had its desired effect. He did not go out of his house that night, and next morning I contrived a well plotted stratagem notwithstanding he had a gentleman in his house to personate him. My direction to the tipstaff, who got admittance into the house, was to conduct him to a judge, according to the writ. When he came there, his plea was, that he had not the body in custody, on which he was admitted to bail. I proceeded immediately to that philanthropist, Granville ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano

... or more strings to her bow, she had got up a flirtation with the leader of the band, a most respectable man by the way, and of considerable talent. After giving the affair all due consideration, we decided upon a mock-duel, in which I was to personate one of the heroes, my rival being the aforesaid leader. We carefully and ostentatiously avoided all appearance of communication, and in such a way that it always reached her knowledge. Thus by gentle innuendoes she discovered that something serious was in contemplation, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... that I am the silliest creature in the world," she said, "and I don't know that I can dispute you. Millie Lundsford has just gone home. She and I have been going through with our old-time play, when, with window curtains wound about us to represent long dresses, and with brooms to personate the brave knights who had rescued us from the merciless Turks, we danced in the castle. And I was just taking a turn with a duke when you came. What a knight ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... Scotland under a cloud, so will I. At the moment Bruce is proclaimed King of Scotland, Wallace shall be declared its bravest friend. We will go together—as brothers, if you will!" continued he. "I am already considered by the French nobility as Thomas de Longueville; you may personate the Red Reaver; Scotland does not yet know that he was slain; and the reputation of his valor and a certain nobleness in his wild warfare having placed him, in the estimation of our shores, rather in the light of one ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... although loved by the Duke of Albany, this lady prefers the knight Ariolant. She thereby so enrages her noble suitor that he finally bribes her maid to personate her and admit him by night to her chamber by means of a rope ladder. With fiendish cunning he has advised Ariolant to watch Ginevra, so this true lover, witnessing what he considers irrefutable proof of his lady-love's unchastity, departs in despair to commit suicide. ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... outside of the building), about some runaway cattle, and the old trapper thought all the while that he was talking to his chum, Dick Lewis. Now Archie had a new subject to practice upon. He laid himself out to personate Arthur Vane; and he not only successfully imitated that young gentleman's pompous style of talking, and his dignified manner of riding and walking, but even the tone of his voice. He criticised Frank and Johnny continually, and made them laugh, till their jaws ached, by recounting ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon

... scarf for the Caller. Blue, white and rosy scarfs for as many dancers as will personate the three Flowers that respond to the call: Violets, Wild-roses and Daisies. A twisted rope of green to link the dancing Flowers together in the ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher

... to act a part in the new tragedy called 'The Distressed Mother.' It is the celebrated grief of Orestes which I am to personate; but I shall not act it as I ought, for I shall feel it too intimately to be able to utter it. I was last night repeating a paragraph to myself, which I took to be an expression of rage, and in the middle of the sentence there was a stroke of self-pity ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... have been said to take their religion from Milton, and their history from Shakspeare:' and as far as they draw the character of the last royal Plantagenet from the bloody ogre which every grand tragedian has delighted to personate, they set up invention on the pedestal of fact, and prefer slander to truth. Even from the opening soliloquy, Shakspeare traduces, misrepresents, vilifies the man he had interested motives in making infamous; while at ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... with a damsel in the service of Ginevra, Princess of Scotland, but desiring to marry the princess herself, and not being able to compass his design by reason of her being in love with a gentleman from Italy named Ariodante, persuades the damsel, in his revenge, to personate Ginevra in a balcony at night, and so make her lover believe that she is false. Ariodante, deceived, disappears from court. News is brought of his death; and his brother Lurcanio publicly denounces Ginevra, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... immediately formed, and proceeded to put in execution, a plan for the torment and vexation of his antagonist of the yard-stick. He promised the sable handmaid of his Mary a half dollar, if she would personate her mistress for a few minutes, which he imagined easily enough done in the dark, and instructing her "to behave prim and lady-like," went in quest of the boy Jim, whom he stationed in the entry to open the door for Mr. Millinet, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... lover? Surely here was a mass of evidence sufficient to cast light on the case. Imagine an impostor arriving for the first time in a place where all the inhabitants are unknown to him, and attempting to personate a man who had dwelt there, who would have connections of all kinds, who would have played his part in a thousand different scenes, who would have confided his secrets, his opinions, to relations, friends, acquaintances, to all sorts of people; who had also a wife—that is to say, a person under ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... of the magicians; I commonly reside in another house, which I have in the city, and come here sometimes to have the more liberty with my friends. You have made this lady believe you have a slave, though you have none; I will personate that slave, and that this may not make you uneasy, and to prevent your excuses, I repeat again, that I will positively have it to be so; you will soon know my reason. Go to your place, and continue to divert yourself. When I return again, and come to you in a slave's ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous









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