"Anecdote" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... itself alive and quick, not the dead sign of a meaning that has fled. It would have been a poor compliment to a Greek sculptor to say that his work was life-like; he might answer with the classically disposed visitor of the Elgin marbles in Haydon's anecdote,—"Like life! Well, what of that?" He meant it for something much better. But during the Middle Ages this is constantly the highest encomium. Amid the utmost rudeness of conception and of execution, we see the first trace of awakening Art in the unmistakable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... his anecdote a resplendent butterfly of enormous size rose from the bushes, and Mark, to whom it was quite a new specimen, bounded after it, but failed to effect ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... anecdote is told in connection with the travels and cooeperation of Mlle. de Scudery and her brother; once, on the way to Paris, while stopping over night at Lyons, they were discussing the fate of one of their heroes, one proposing death and ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... anecdote a sudden misgiving chilled me—had I told them about this Goat before? And then as I talked there gaped upon me—abyss opening beneath abyss—a darker speculation: when goats are mentioned, do I automatically and always tell this story about the ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... district. I then prevailed on my two companions to forego their visit to the Abbey that night. We therefore had in old Davidson, the landlord of the Inn, and my companions submitted him to an interrogatory of three long hours' duration. One little anecdote of fresh occurrence struck me as possessing some interest. I will record it. About a month before, a poor maniac presented herself at the gates of Abbotsford. She desired to see Sir Walter. The servant denied her admittance, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... at Lambeth Palace I had a good deal of conversation with Colonel Gurwood about the Duke of Wellington and about Canada. He told me an anecdote of Lord Seaton which throws light upon his peculiar reserve, and shows it to be a modesty of character, combined no doubt with military habits and notions. When Captain Colborne, and senior officer of his rank in the 21st foot, he [Lord Seaton] was military secretary to General ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... rest of the people on their lunch and made all feel at their ease, turned on his journalistic tap for the benefit of the Bishop, and plied the old gentleman with such a judicious mixture of flattery and amusing anecdote that, by the time the repast was over, his Lordship was solemnly assuring his son, much to that young gentleman's disgust, that he was indeed fortunate in possessing such a delightful friend, and that he might invite Mr. Marchmont to the palace if ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... never shone in drill or discipline, stood near the head of the regiment for coolness and courage,—the defect of discipline showing itself only in their extreme unwillingness to halt when once let loose. It was at this time that the small comedy of the Goose occurred,—an anecdote which Wendell Phillips ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... action. The reply of the English officer was characteristic; he told the Emperor that half the distance, or even less, would suit much better. Speaking of Sir Sidney Smith, Bonaparte repeated the anecdote connected with his quarrel at St. Jean d'Acre with that officer, which has already been related in one of the notes earlier in these volumes. Patting Captain Maitland on the shoulder, he observed, that had it not been for the English navy he would have been Emperor of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Affection.—Napoleon used to relate an anecdote shewing the conjugal affection of some women who accompanied his troops when he was at Col de Tende. To enter this mountainous and difficult country, it was necessary for the soldiers to pass over a narrow bridge, and, as the enterprise ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... not authorities at hand to correct it. Had Marx sent to the Library for Disjouval's "Arachnologie," the work which he gives as his authority, he would have found, that, not Beethoven, but the French violinist Berthaume, was the hero of the anecdote,—as, indeed, is also related in Schilling's Encyclopaedia, not many pages after Marx's own article on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in which Bruce resented the popular scepticism is illustrated by the following anecdote told by Sir Francis Head, his biographer. A gentleman once observed, at a country house where Bruce was staying, that it was not possible that the natives of Abyssinia could eat raw meat! "Bruce said not a word, but leaving the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... deepest passion in him, even as defeating the hopes of the Vaufontaines was more than a religion with the Duke. By no trickery, but by a persistent good-nature, alertness of speech, avoidance of dangerous topics, and aptness in anecdote, he had hourly made his position stronger, himself more honoured at the Castle Bercy. He had also tactfully declined an offer of money from the Prince—none the less decidedly because he was nearly penniless. The Duke's hospitality he was ready to accept, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... anecdote of this period deserves mention. In a letter to Hippel, dated "Plock, 3rd October, 1803," Hoffmann writes, "My uncle in Berlin will never do much more to recommend me, for he has become 'a grave man,' as Mercutio says in Shakespeare;[7] he died on the night of 24-25th September ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... tho it is not his duty. The duty lies entirely with a host or hostess. At any time through the dinner a guest can help to make conversation general: If some one has just told in a low voice, to a right-hand or left-hand neighbor alone, some clever impersonal thing, or a good anecdote, or some interesting happening suitable to general table-talk, the guest can get the attention of all present by addressing some one at the furthest point of the table from him: "Mr. Snow, Miss Frost has just ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... which there is to rear. Friedrich, having settled the positions, rides out reconnoitring; hither, thither, over the Heights of Trettin. "The day being still hot, he suffers considerably from thirst [it is our one Anecdote] in that arid tract: at last a Peasant does bring him, direct from the fountain, a jug of pure cold water; whom, lucky man, the King rewarded with a thaler; and not only so, but, the man being intelligent of the localities, took with him to answer questions." Readers too may desire to gain ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Balderson became an irrigation king. It is certain that he raised half a million dollars in New York for his dam and ditches. He built the "Look Out Opera House," and decorated it in gilded stucco and with red plush two inches deep. Morrison contributed this anecdote to the office Legend of Balderson: "He was in Florida in his private car when they finished the opera house. When he came back and saw a plaster bust of Shakespeare over the proscenium arch, he waved his cane pompously and exclaimed: 'Take her down! Bill Shakespeare ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... friend of our friend's here. We discovered this morning that our friend was connected with the theatre in this place, though he is not desirous to have it generally known, and this gentleman is a member of the same profession. He was about to favour us with a little anecdote connected with ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... reeled about with a crown 'coronet' on a cushion, to the great scandal of his brethren. His method of composing was somewhat singular. He had a number of small parchment bags inscribed with the names of the persons whose lives he intended to write; into these bags he put every circumstance and anecdote he could collect, and from thence drew up his history. By his excesses he was kept poor, so that he was frequently in distress; and at his death, which happened about five on Wednesday morning, April 15th, 1761, he left little more than was sufficient to bury him. Dr. Taylor, the oculist, son of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... nothing. His reticence was in such marked contrast to the volubility about him that he finally attracted universal attention, and more than one of the merry-makers near him asked if he had not some anecdote to add to the rest. But though he replied with sufficient politeness, it was evident that he had no intention of dropping his reserve, and it was not till the party had broken up and the room was nearly cleared that he deigned to address any one. ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... per cent, of the value of any stone which a workman may find is given to him if he brings it himself to the overseer, and the value of the stones on which this ten per cent, is paid is estimated at L400,000 in each year. Nevertheless, a certain number of thefts occur. I heard from a missionary an anecdote of a Basuto who, after his return from Kimberley, was describing how, on one occasion, his eye fell on a valuable diamond in the clay he was breaking into fragments. While he was endeavouring to pick it up he perceived the overseer approaching, and, ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... excellent walker and mountain-climber. He once walked up to London from Cambridge; I have climbed mountains with him, and he was very agile, quick, surefooted, and entirely intrepid. Let me interpolate a little anecdote of an accident at Pontresina, which might have been serious. Hugh and I, with a practised Alpine climber, Dr. Leith, left Pontresina early one morning to climb a rock-peak. We were in a light carriage with a guide and porter. The young horse ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... relinquish the theory of subconscious perceptions? Do we know and can the author of the anecdote, whose good faith is not in question, tell us that certain unperceived circumstances, such as the grating of the wheel or the swaying of the carriage, did not give him the first alarm? After all, we know how easily stories of this kind involuntarily take a dramatic ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Mrs Bright entertain her visitor with comment and anecdote about Billy until she felt at last constrained to leave without having recovered courage to broach again the subject which had brought her to ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... refer them particularly to Messrs. W. and R. Chambers' comprehensive and popularly written work on "Railways, Steamer, and Telegraphs;" Money's "Rambles on Railways," which bristles with figures and swarms with anecdote; "Stokers and Pokers," by Sir Francis Head, a capital and very full work, though somewhat old; W.B. Adams' "Roads and Rails," and ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... nature it is, as the Barrister may find in the arguments of the Pagan philosophers against Christianity, who attributed a large portion of its success to its holding out an expiation, which no other religion did. Read but that most affecting and instructive anecdote selected from the Hindostan Missionary Account by the Quarterly Review. [4] Again let me say I am not giving my own opinion on this very difficult point; but of one thing I am convinced, that the 'I am sorry for it, that's enough'—men ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... immediately preceding it."—Weld's Gram., 2d Edition, p. 181. "There are irregular expressions occasionally to be met with, which usage or custom rather than analogy, sanction."—Ib., p. 143. "He added an anecdote of Quinn's relieving Thomson from prison."—Ib., p. 150. "The daily labor of her hands procure for her all that is necessary."—Ib., p. 182. "Its being me, need make no change in your determination."—Hart's Gram., p. 128. "The classification of words into what is called the Parts of Speech."—Weld's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... shoulders of his, and said, 'We've got Sunday Closing, and we go in the back way: if we have Prohibition the drink'll go in the back way—same principle, my dear Chief Justice'": and that High Officer finished his anecdote with a laugh. ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... us an anecdote about a boatman who wears a fur coat. Well, boatmen do, no doubt, now and then wear such coats. There is nothing ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... There is an anecdote contained in the Fioretti, reflecting the great superiority and lucidity of his mind. On a cold winter's day he and Brother Leo were tramping through the deep snow. "Brother Leo," said St. Francis, "if we could ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... observe, that we have historical authority for the excessive violence of Cleopatra's temper. Witness the story of her boxing the ears of her treasurer, in presence of Octavius, as related by Plutarch. Shakspeare has made a fine use of this anecdote also towards the conclusion of the drama, but it is not equal in power to ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... [Sir Philip Francis, the reputed author of the 'Letters of Junius.' This anecdote has since been verified with great minuteness by Mr. Twisleton in his researches on the authorship of 'Junius.' The copy of verses and the envelope in a feigned hand are still in existence. I have seen them. The feigned hand appears to be ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Another anecdote from Morny also amused him. This was Cavaignac's anger on entering his cell at Mazas. There is an aperture at the door of each cell, called the "spy-hole," through which the prisoners are played the spy upon unknown to themselves. The jailers had watched Cavaignac. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... regulation story,—in this instance, the famous anecdote of the cup-and-ball which all the world knows by heart, concerning a celebrated minister of Louis XVI. According to the sacred formula delivered by the "Debats" from 1810 to 1814, in praise of these glorious words, Gourdon's ode "borrowed ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... slim, delicate, and anemic, they resembled a "ward full of convalescent consumptives," as the doctor commented under his breath. Not one of them would ever give a joke-smith material for a fat-man anecdote; at the same time there was nothing feverish, nervous, or broken down in their appearance. "A pretty lot of invalids," as Billie added to ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... she came to know by anecdote: a prairie village where the wind blew all day long, and the mud was two feet thick in spring, and in summer the flying sand scarred new-painted houses and dust covered the few flowers set out in pots. New England mill-towns with the hands living in rows of cottages like blocks of lava. A rich farming-center ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... horticultural show, the incomparable white strawberries, famous throughout the neighborhood, and a magnificent Angola cat, were the delights of my out-of-door life; and perfect kindness and various conversation, fed by an inexhaustible fund of anecdote, an immense knowledge of books, and a long and interesting acquaintance with society, made the indoor hours passed with these quiet old lady governesses some of the most delightful I have ever known. The two younger sisters died first; the eldest, surviving ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... anecdote is instructive, if perhaps not strictly authentic. It shows that in burning alive one of a bewitched flock or herd what you really do is to burn the witch, who is either actually incarnate in the animal or perhaps more probably stands in a relation of sympathy with it so close as almost ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... hallucinations? Name the German servant girl who, in a fever, talked several learned languages, which she had heard her former master, a scholar, declaim! Where did she live? Who vouches for her, who heard her, who understood her? There is, you know, no evidence at all; the anecdote is told by Coleridge: the phenomena are said by him to have been observed "in a Roman Catholic town in Germany, a year or two before my arrival at Goettingen.... Many eminent physiologists and psychologists visited the town." Why ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... the people at large may be acquainted with the contents, and of the favorable disposition of Great Britain towards the American Colonies." I will not attempt to lead your judgment upon these proceedings of our enemies. I will only add one anecdote of their late conduct, nearly allied to that of counterfeiting our Continental currency. They have published, in all our forms, a forged Resolve of Congress, purporting a consignment of power to General ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... word, meaning polite, or well mannered, was once in better repute than it is now, and its noun, gentility, is still not infrequently found in the work of good writers. Genteel is most often used by those who write, as the Scotchman of the anecdote joked—wi' deeficulty. ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... (Vol. ii., p. 413.).—Ray's anecdote concerning the proverb, "Bate me an ace, quoth Bolton," is perhaps more correctly told in the Witty Aunsweres and Saiengs of Englishmen (Cotton MS. Jul. ...
— Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 - A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, - Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. • Various
... only part of the anecdote, for at the same time Kitty was telling an uproariously funny joke on Ranald, and all the rest were laughing. But she heard enough to make her take a second look at Lieutenant Logan. He was leaning forward in his chair, ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the Queen, having read no further than the preliminary anecdote; "well, you shouldn't do such things!" Then she came upon commentary and surmise, with dates, chapter, and verse. It did not amount to very much, but such facts as there were to go upon were insidiously underlined, and the ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... the true life of the party; a little despotic, perhaps, determined to be chief in mirth, as well as in labour, yet from moment to moment proving indisputably his right of leadership. His was the wittiest word, the pleasantest anecdote, the frankest laugh. Restlessly active, after his manner, he multiplied himself to wait on all; but oh! I saw which was his favourite. I saw at whose feet he lay on the turf, I saw whom he folded carefully from the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... met from time to time, gradually grew in intensity in the third volume, until later on it lost all trace of the old carelessness, and developed, on the contrary, into a profound sadness. Tchekoff unconsciously gave up the "genre" of pleasant anecdote in order to concentrate all his attention on facts. This practice made him sad. Russia was, at this time, going through a period of prostration as a result of the last Russo-Turkish war. This war, which, at the cost of enormous sacrifices, ended in the liberation of the Bulgarian people, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... not a man to sit silent and see another man badly treated without raising hand or voice in his defence. Proof of this is found in an instructive story related by Mr. J. Ewing Ritchie in his chatty "East Anglian Reminiscences." "One good anecdote I heard about George Borrow," writes Mr. Ritchie. "My informant was an Independent minister, at the time supplying the pulpit at Lowestoft and staying at Oulton Hall, then inhabited by a worthy dissenting tenant. One night a meeting of the Bible Society was held at Mutford ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... majesty of this anecdote can gain nothing from any comment which we might offer upon it. The crew of a common English ship organising, of their own free motion, on that wild shore, a judgment hall more grand and awful than any most elaborate ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... play,—and in thoughts of that we pay scant heed to the political satire and even to the pathos of the desertion of a leader by almost all he expected to follow him, and the reduction of his life, as he puts it bitterly, "to an anecdote—a thing to be told stories about." And in the end that is the fate he will meet. Time and a wife that he wronged have broken him. As he staggers off at the end of the play, a stricken man and older than his forty-five years, this is ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... man of the world, who is incomparably better informed than the mass of his congeners. Mr Browning is the readiest, the blithest, and the most forcible of talkers. Like the Monsignore in Lothair he can 'sparkle with anecdote and blaze with repartee,' and when he deals in criticism the edge of his sword is mercilessly whetted against pretension and vanity. The inflection of his voice, the flash of his eye, the pose of his head, the action of his hand, all lend their special emphasis to the condemnation." ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... indebted to you for several Letters which I have not acknowledged. The Anecdote you gave me in one of them relating to a Mr Mercer & Colo Griffin in Virginia was very diverting to me. The People in this part of the Continent would never have fixed upon the Names of La Le or ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... an anecdote and its commentary, perhaps jotted down for use in that latter part of the Memoirs which was never written, or which has been lost. Here is a single sheet, dated 'this 2nd ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... smilingly tell, under provocation, of his peculiar attitude on one occasion or another. Partially from himself, from those who saw it, and the judge presiding in the case, was the following characteristic anecdote gathered. ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... Johnson the author is dead, and that our great hero only lives as a brilliant conversationalist in the pages of Boswell and others. Boswell's Life of Johnson is the greatest biography in the English language; we all admit that. It is crowded with incident and anecdote. Neither Walter Scott nor Rousseau, each of whom has had an equal number of pages devoted to his personality, lives so distinctly for future ages as does Johnson in the pages of Boswell. Understanding all this, we are entitled to ask ourselves what we should have thought of Dr. Johnson ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... whole family, father, brothers, and sisters, helping themselves with one hand, and holding a book in the other. We are surprised at the prose style of Robert; that of Gilbert need surprise us no less; even William writes a remarkable letter for a young man of such slender opportunities. One anecdote marks the taste of the family. Murdoch brought "Titus Andronicus," and, with such dominie elocution as we may suppose, began to read it aloud before this rustic audience; but when he had reached the passage where Tamora ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the MIRROR a brief history of the game of chess, perhaps the following anecdote will not be found unacceptable to your readers:—When the game of chess was first invented, the emperor of China sent for the inventor, and desired him to teach it him. The emperor was so delighted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... expression not very flattering either to the future prospects of Italy as resulting from her alliance with Prussia, or to the fidelity of the latter in carrying out the terms of it. I do not know whether this gentleman intended his anecdote to be taken cum grano salis, but I certainly understood him to say that he had deplored to the minister the want of vigour and the absence of success accompanying the operations of the Italian allies ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... human existence in the lives of (and which is generally distinguished by some uncommon traits of character) people of genius—save that she had for a school companion and playfellow the late Lord Brougham, the distinguished statesman; she was remarkable also for her power of mimicry. An amusing anecdote of this rather dangerous gift is the following: Her brothers and sisters returned home from a ball, very hungry, and entered her room, where they supposed she lay asleep, and, while discussing the events of the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... is extremely destructive to fish, and particularly so to salmon, many circumstances would prove. They are constantly discovered watching the fords in the spawning season, and are seen to seize and carry off the fish. One curious anecdote I heard from my friend the priest. Some years since a herdsman, on a very sultry day in July, while looking for a missing sheep, observed an eagle posted on a bank that overhung a pool. Presently the bird stooped and seized a salmon, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... a dull line in it. Detail, anecdote, comment, and criticism are so nicely adjusted that the story ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... One anecdote told of him displays a reckless and whimsical humor. Having need of money, Carlos asked of a merchant, named Grimaldo, a loan of fifteen hundred ducats. The money-lender readily consented, thanked the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... with this, Augustin relates with candid freedom an anecdote which to-day needs the indulgence of the reader to make it acceptable. As it gives light upon that half-pagan, half-Christian way of life which was still Augustin's, I will repeat it in ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... questions. Garain affirmed that in his sessions, only too famous, Napoleon, under pretext of taking snuff, asked the councillors to pass to him their gold boxes ornamented with miniatures and decked with diamonds, which they never saw again. The anecdote was told to him by ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... d'Azeglio, partly out of hatred to the Countess, who was rather severe and acrimonious upon his youthful free-and-easiness, partly out of a desire to amuse his readers, has introduced into his autobiography an anecdote told him by Mme. de Prie (the niece of Alfieri's famous Turin mistress, and the lady who took it upon herself to send him a priest without consulting the Countess), to the effect that she had watched Fabre making ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... letting off the fume of long-unuttered disapprovals. One perfectly neat, benevolent old fellow, however, who had kept his hat on, and had a single vice—that of coming to the Board-room with a brown paper parcel tied up with string—murmured: "We must make all allowances," and started an anecdote about his youth. He was gently called to order by his secretary. Scorrier was asked for his opinion. He looked at Hemmings. "My importance is concerned," was written all over the secretary's face. Moved by an impulse of loyalty to Pippin, Scorrier answered, as if it were all settled: "Well, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... One more anecdote I will give, serving to introduce the narrative of the following chapter, and helping to show the character of the boy. He was so unlike most boys, that one must know all he may about him, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... an admirable guide-book for the tourist, and is so beautifully printed as to be worthy of a place on any drawing-room table, although the price is modestly fixed at 7s. 6d. only. Mr. Randall sketches landscapes with artistic taste, lingers here and there for anecdote, drops in at the wayside hostelry, and picks up pleasant chit- chat on angling and other subjects. He is evidently a lover of nature, and possesses a pleasing style of demonstrating his ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... only that their favourite singers were taking part. Very often in that classic period the performers themselves knew nothing and cared less about the dramatic meaning of the works in which they appeared, and a venerable anecdote is current concerning a certain supper party, the guests at which had all identified themselves with one or other of the principal parts in 'Il Trovatore'. A question being asked as to the plot of the then popular piece, it was found that not one of the company had the vaguest notion ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... really take the imagination of boys captive. How constantly did worthy preachers at Eton tell the story of how Bishop Selwyn, as a boy, rose and left the room at a boat-supper because an improper song was sung! That anecdote was regarded with undisguised amusement, and it was simply thought to be a piece of priggishness. I cannot imagine that any boy ever heard the story and went away with a glowing desire to do likewise. The incident really belongs to the domain of manners rather ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... families, who had lived together for many years, even occurred to the owner. Yet I will pledge myself, that in humanity and good feeling he was superior to the common run of men. It may be said there exists no limit to the blindness of interest and selfish habit. I may mention one very trifling anecdote, which at the time struck me more forcibly than any story of cruelty. I was crossing a ferry with a negro who was uncommonly stupid. In endeavouring to make him understand, I talked loud, and made signs, in doing which I passed ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... being introduced to the pretty widow. He handed the ladies to a seat, and then commenced conversing upon various subjects, which at the same time possessed great novelty. His lordship talked about France, and described its ports; told now and then a good anecdote; pointed out the different headlands, bays, towns, and villages, which they were passing rapidly, and always had some little story connected with each. Before the ladies had been two hours on deck they found ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat
... say this, you miserable writers! Remain for ever without humanity and without feeling; steel your hard hearts in your vile propriety, make yourselves contemptible through your high-mightiness. But as for you, dear youth, when you read this anecdote, when you are touched by all the kindliness displayed even on the impulse of the moment, read also the littleness of this great man when it was a question of his name and birth. Remember it was this very Turenne who always ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Supreme Court, the next night. He had a varied and useful audience of important politicians and their wives and daughters, the latter specially fitted to act as mediums of transmission to other audiences. He told the anecdote well. It was a good picture, that of the room on Miss Burford's upper floor, the large claimant smiling like a benign Jove, and the handsome youngster bending his head to kiss the girlish hand as if he were ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... influence of constant seclusion and the unremitting use of cosmetics and the bath, would in time attain a pitch of delicacy and sensitiveness such as would in some measure justify the seemingly extravagant statements of their poetical admirers, of which the following anecdote (quoted by Ibn Khellikan from the historian Et Teberi) is a fair specimen. Ardeshir ibn Babek (Artaxerxes I.), the first Sassanian King of Persia (A.D. 226-242), having long unsuccessfully besieged El Hedr, a strong city of Mesopotamia belonging to the petty King Es Satiroun, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... Galantes contains an anecdote which is very similar in character to this tale: "I have heard speak," he writes, "of a very beautiful and honourable lady, who gave her lover an assignation to sleep with her, on the condition that he should not touch her... and he actually obeyed her, remaining in a state ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... friendship which even the coarse and slanderous Tallement respected so much that he refrained from casting a single sneer at it. The story of Pelisson's imprisonment in the Bastile is known to the whole world by the anecdote ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... of Delium on the Boeotian coast opposite Chalcis, carrying off from it an image of Apollo plated with gold.[14295] The superstition of Datis deprived them of this valuable booty; but we may safely conclude from the anecdote that, while rendering service to Persia, the keen-witted mariners took care not to neglect their ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... and circumstances of Marcus Aurelius, beyond these notices which he has himself supplied, there are few of much interest and importance. There is the fine anecdote of his speech when he heard of the assassination of the revolted Avidius Cassius,[213] against whom he was marching; he was sorry, he said, to be deprived of the pleasure of pardoning him. And there are one or two more anecdotes of him which show the same spirit. But ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... signify talking, but I verily believe, that he could wheedle the birds off the trees with that sweet voice of his, and his good-natured look. I would rather be put off by Barry, than paid by Mossop." In this simple anecdote, which is a fact, the private characters of Barry and Mossop are clearly ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... in old pictures the sitters are always represented with half-closed eyes and tightly shut lips, as signs of modesty, and how some Spaniards still honour this expression in life, while German art prefers lips pouting as for a kiss. His lively sense of anecdote, to which he gives the rein in all his writings, ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... sorry figure, as the reluctant victim of a lady of Ingolstadt, whose advances he refused, trembling lest his haughty Sarah should hear of it and give him a sound rating on his return to England. The anecdote was broad, to say the least, and sure it did not lose in the telling. 'A great captain, but sorely afraid of his lady!' finished ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... Wakefield, as we know, was no hurried piece of work. Indeed, Goldsmith went about it in so leisurely a fashion as to leave it neglected in a drawer of his desk, till Johnson rescued it, according to the proverbial anecdote; and even then its publisher, Newbery, was in no hurry, for he kept it by him another two years before giving it to the printer and to immortality. It was certainly one of those fruits "brought forth ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... minister, accompanied by a shake of his huge wig, the Antiquary proceeded to detail the intrigue which had given rise to the fame of the abbot's apple with more slyness and circumstantiality than was at all necessary. His jest (as may readily be conceived) missed fire, for this anecdote of conventual gallantry failed to produce the slightest smile on the visage of the Earl. Oldbuck then took up the subject of Ossian, Macpherson, and Mac-Cribb; but Lord Glenallan had never so much as heard of ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... sacrificium novo modorum genere decorandum, and that he had performed his task with indefatigable pains and industry (Baini, op. cit. vol. i. p. 280). But it is noteworthy that of the three Masses furnished for the approval of the congregation, the first was entitled Illumina oculos meos, and that an anecdote referring to this title relates Palestrina's earnest prayers for grace and inspiration during the execution of the work ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... affinity to this anecdote may appear in the first aspect of another transaction, which I shall proceed to relate, and of which it is more immediately my ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that was required for the annual festival of the 19th March and was consequently a standing office. Laying aside, as we necessarily must, the account of Pomponius, which has evidently arisen solely out of the anecdote of Brutus dressed up with ever-increasing ignorance as history, we reach the simple result that the -tribuni celerum- entirely correspond in number and character to the -tribuni militum-, and that they were the leaders-of-division ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... accident. Certain it is, when the Austrians returned after their expulsion, in order to retake the city, the engineer, being questioned by the general, declared he would take the place in fifteen days, on pain of losing his head; and in four days after this declaration the Austrians retired. This anecdote I learned from a worthy gentleman of this country, who had it from the engineer's own mouth. Perhaps it was the will of heaven. You see how favourably, providence has interposed in behalf of the reigning empress of Russia, first in removing ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... all within hearing, thought that the Duchess had intended to allude to the servile nature of their position; and Mr. Boffin, who heard it, rejoiced within himself, comforting himself with the reflection that his withers were unwrung, and thinking with what pleasure he might carry the anecdote into the farthest corners of the clubs. Poor Duchess! 'Tis pitiful to think that after such Herculean labours she should injure the cause by one slight unconsidered word, more, perhaps, than she had advanced it ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Pictures representing a mother and child, a pair of lovers, a family group, festival, tavern scene, or battle charge are illustrations. In Dutch painting the social life of Holland in the seventeenth century found its record; yet there is little or no anecdote. The genre, the representation of a group of people united by some common interest and with an appropriate background, has the same legitimacy, if not the same eminence, as the portrait. It does not possess the rank ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... this. The order of precedence was appointed by lot, and one of the gentlemen made the beginning with a merry student's anecdote, which he declared he had experienced himself. Then it was the turn of some young girls, who preferred to pay forfeits, and then he himself ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... anecdote and parable, won many followers. She pointed out that the doctrine of the Humanist in abolishing world competition hit at the fundamental principle that made for initiative and made man utilise thought ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... delighted with this anecdote, but, for my own part, I felt feverish to the tips of my claws, as I thought of the miserable creature who had usurped the place I wished to fill, and who might be the means of my having to fall back after all ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... August Aunt commanded that a writer among the palace attendants should, with brush and ink, be summoned to transcribe the wisdom of the ladies. She requested that each would give three days to thought, relating the following anecdote. "There was a man who, taking a piece of ivory, carved it into a mulberry leaf, spending three years on the task. When finished it could not be told from the original, and was a gift suitable for the Brother of the Sun and ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... meeting with whom Gertrude had not even allowed her little sister to witness, and the stories grew and grew on that foundation, till every picnic or tennis party that Gertrude had attended that summer, was transformed into a separate flirtation or supplied an anecdote to Gertrude's disadvantage. ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... ballet sits on a painted throne, flashing her eyes from one to the other, wheeling about to dash off an air from some unknown opera—unknown to those who listened— laying her lighted cigarette on the music-rack as she played, and whirling back again to tell some anecdote of the composer who wrote it, or some incident connected with its production in Vienna or Warsaw or St. Petersburg—the club echoing her ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... establishment at the Tuileries rather resembled that of a very rich gentleman, than the court of a monarch. Junot, one of his aids, was married to Mademoiselle Permon, the young lady whose name will be remembered in connection with the anecdote of "Puss in Boots." Her mother was one of the most haughty of the ancient nobility, who affected to look upon Napoleon with contempt as not of royal blood. The evening after her marriage Madame Junot was to be presented to ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... colors, and cared for like the remainder of the establishment; the inhabitants carrying their love of cleanliness so far as to compel those who entered to take off their shoes, and replace them with slippers, which stood at the door for this singular purpose. I am reminded on this subject of an anecdote relating to the Emperor Joseph the Second. That prince, having presented himself in boots at the door of a house in Broek, and being requested to remove them before entering, exclaimed, "I am the Emperor!" —"Even if you were the burgomaster of Amsterdam, you should not enter in ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger
... the antique vigour of Villehardouin. Joinville is something of a gossip, and though he evidently writes with a definite literary purpose, is not master of very great argumentative powers. But for this same reason he abounds in anecdote, and in the personal detail which, though it may easily be overdone, is undoubtedly now and then precious for the purpose of enabling us to conjure up the things and men of old time more fully and correctly. And there is a Pepysian garrulity as well as a Pepysian ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... cited. The pretended merchant's objecting to eat meat cooked with salt, which fortunately aroused Morgiana's suspicions of his real character for robber and murderer as he was, he would not be "false to his salt''[FN410]—recalls an anecdote related by D'Herbelot, which may find a place here, in conclusion: The famous robber Yacub bin Layth, afterwards the founder of a dynasty of Persian monarchs called Soffarides, in one of his expeditions broke into the royal palace and having collected ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... here is the effect the Freeman anecdote had on me, which was that when I went back to continue my insect-watching and rested at noon at Dead Man's Plack, the old legend would keep intruding itself on my mind, until, wishing to have done with it, I said and I swore that it was true—that the tradition preserved ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... Methodist minister, who, just after a declaration of his that he was not afraid to die, ran away from a furious bull that attacked him,—"that, though not fearing death, he did not like to be torn in pieces by a mad bull." I related this anecdote to Craig, and, as he testified on the trial, expressed my preference to be taken on the deck of the steamer and shot at once, rather than to be given up to a Washington mob to be baited and murdered. I talked pretty freely with Orme and Craig about myself, the circumstances under which I had ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... occasions. All this I mention to take away any appearance of a vulgar attempt to create omens; but still, in the very act of confessing the simple truth, and thus weakening the marvellous character of the anecdote, I must notice it as a strange instance of the 'Sortes Miltonianae,'—that precisely at such a moment as this I should find thrown in my way, should feel tempted to take up, and should open, a volume containing such a passage as the following: and observe, moreover, that although the volume, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... believer, is a character nowhere to be found."—Tract cor. "Copying whatever is peculiar in the talk of all those whose birth or fortune entitles them to imitation."—Johnson cor. "Where love, hatred, fear, or contempt, is often of decisive influence."—Duncan cor. "A lucky anecdote, or an enlivening tale, relieves the folio page."—D'Israeli cor. "For outward matter or event fashions not the character within." Or: (according to the antique style of this modern book of proverbs:)—"fashioneth ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of peasants of his native region; he loved them as if they were his children, and they would follow him anywhere. The little company, almost to a man, was wiped out in the battles round Verdun. In a letter I received from this officer, a few days before his death, he related this anecdote. His company was waiting, in a new trench in a new region, for the Germans to attack. Suddenly the tension was relieved by a fierce little discussion carried on entirely in whispers. His soldiers appeared to be studying the earth of the trench. "What's the trouble about?" he asked. ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... morning and arranging a meeting of this kind in some corner or other of Paris. He always arrives in the highest spirits, rejoicing in life, unaffectedly and good-humouredly, and always has some surprising anecdote to tell me, some memory, the story of some adventure that I have not ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... heads turned, and are taught to consider nothing a sin that used to be sins. Many gentlemen, who come to our shop, have found out that Victoire is very handsome, and tell her so; but she is so modest and prudent that I am not afraid for her. I could tell you, madame, a good anecdote on this subject, but my paper will not allow, and, besides, my ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... of the foregoing quotation occurs an anecdote of Rabbi Elisha ben Abuyah which is too racy to let pass, and too characteristic to need note or comment. One day Elisha ben Abuyah was privileged to pry into Paradise, where he saw the recording angel Metatron on a seat registering the merits of the holy of Israel. ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... met Brady and his companions once more, who again fired; but the bullet, instead of entering the skull, glanced round it. He fell senseless to the ground, and was thrown into a dry creek; he, however, recovered, and long survived these adventures.[171] The high authority on which this anecdote rests, is quite necessary to suppress ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... think we are more deeply indebted to him than to all the ancient writers. Each of his "Lives" is a refutation to the despondency and cowardice of our religious and political theorists. A wild courage, a Stoicism[331] not of the schools, but of the blood, shines in every anecdote, and has given that ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... it was the king himself who told Dumas the story of "The Black Tulip," and mentioned that none of the author's romances were concerned with the Dutch. Dumas, however, never gave any credit to this anecdote, and others have alleged that Paul Lacroix, the bibliophile, who was assisting Dumas with his novels at that time, is responsible for the plot. The question can never be answered, for who can disentangle the work of Dumas from that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... lightest words. The boy had the gift of being irresistibly amusing when he chose to exert himself in that direction, and after a long series of moody or jangling meal-sittings he would break forth into a torrential flow of small talk, scandal and malicious anecdote, true or more generally invented, to which Francesca listened with a relish and appreciation, that was all the more flattering ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... hold salons, like the French ladies. There was Rhodopis, for instance, who married the brother of Sappho. I wonder if Colonel Corkran could have told you that the story of Cinderella comes from an anecdote of Rhodopis? I hardly think that he's been able to spare enough time from bridge to study Strabo, who was the Baedeker of Egypt for tourists six hundred years before Christ. An eagle saw Rhodopis bathing, and stealing one of her sandals flew with it to Memphis, where he dropped it ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... du Chatelet was no less renowned. She was predestined to her career, if the following anecdote be credible. Gabrielle-Emilie de Breteuil, born in 1706 (who, in 1725, was to marry the Marquis du Chatelet, becoming, in 1733, the most celebrated friend of Voltaire), was four or five years old when she was given an old compass, dressed up as a doll, ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... and upon the handles of the doors. He worked on undisturbed. At table he was talkative, told idiotic stories, which she knew by heart, interminable as the process of crumbling with his knife his favourite cheese. Piece after piece of cheese he took, and still one anecdote followed another. And when the time came for going to the Institute, where the Dictionary Committee was to sit before the regular meeting, how long he took to start! and in spite of her eagerness to get him off quick, what an age he spent over every ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... of this anecdote is no mystery. Our clickmitoadist had never seen watches, knew nothing about watches, and hearing as well as seeing one for the first time, naturally judged it must be an animal. Readers who may feel inclined to laugh at his simplicity, should ask themselves whether, if ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... A curious anecdote is related in connection with these military reforms. When Babek, the new paymaster, was about to hold his first review, he issued an order that all persons belonging to the army then present in the capital ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... this conversation, which had been carried on apart, was suddenly broken into by the tall doctor, who wanted to know whether his lordship had ever heard the anecdote about Lord Thurlow and the late king. The anecdote was as long as the doctor himself; and when it was over, the gentlemen adjourned to the drawing-room, and all conversation was immediately drowned by "Row, brothers, row," ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... True reminiscences are naturally somewhat cloudy in outline, hanging loose together with gaps and interruptions; whereas these are all coherent, clear-cut, and written in a style that gives superior polish and setting to every scene and anecdote. That they are compiled upon a solid substratum of truth need not be questioned; nevertheless some of them seem to differ only in degree from the realistic novel of the very latest type, such as Zola's Debacle, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... upon the history of his life, he gives us incidentally an anecdote which merits our attention, as tending strongly to illustrate the credulity of man at the periods of which ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... has an immense fund of humour. Her imitations of people make me almost die with laughter. You remember Mrs. Calfsfoot's habit of twitching her nose and twirling her thumbs when she is beginning an anecdote about somebody one never saw, and never cared to see. Well, Carrie stopped in the middle of our rambles in the forest, and imitated her squeaky voice and absurd gestures to the life. The anecdote, concocted impromptu, ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... "Simple little anecdote of war. Dale, you remember, was a brother officer of mine. He was shot in a raid and left hanging on the German wire. In the night when he was dying another chap in our regiment, that had been lying up all day between ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... ruined: that in less than three years she would be murdered, and the fires would blaze again in Smithfield. This prelate lived to see his prognostic disappointed; therefore he might have suppressed this anecdote of his own conduct. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Dickert's book is that it presents the gay and bright, as well as the grave side of the Confederate soldier's experience. It is full of anecdote and incident and repartee. Such quips and jests kept the heart light and the blood warm ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... in other respects of most kindly and liberal heart, showed the aversion that the white man soon learns to feel for the Indian on whom he encroaches, the aversion of the injurer for him he has degraded. After telling the anecdote of his seeing the Indian gazing at the seat ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... those artless and heartfelt prayers. And he seems to have received and deserved the fond attachment of the other members of his family. It is not a little touching to read in Spence of the enthusiastic admiration with which his half-sister regarded him, and the simple anecdote by which she illustrates her love. "I think no man was ever so little fond of money." Mrs. Rackett says about her brother, "I think my brother when he was young read more books than any man in the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to give Fontenelle credit for this bon mot. Voltaire died at eighty-four. Fontenelle lived to be nearly a hundred years. Of his cheerfulness at an advanced age an anecdote is related. In conversation, one day, a lady a few years younger than Fontenelle playfully remarked, "Monsieur, you and I stay here so long, methinks Death has forgotten us." "Hush! Speak in a whisper, madame," replied Fontenelle, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... classes of Englishmen, gentlemen and yeomen, peasants and burgesses, had so signally displayed in the great crisis of 1588. But we had also reason to be thankful that, with all their spirit, they were not brought face to face with the Spanish battalions. Somers related an anecdote, well worthy to be remembered, which had been preserved by tradition in the noble house of De Vere. One of the most illustrious men of that house, a captain who had acquired much experience and much fame in the Netherlands, had, in the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... This anecdote was treated sceptically at the time by some critics. But besides that it has since been confirmed by other experiences essentially the same, reported by other parties in the same circumstances who had never heard of each ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... true, as a writer in the February Gossip says, that "it is what Mr. Mill has omitted to tell us in his Autobiography, quite as much as what he has there told us, that excites popular curiosity," the following anecdote told by John Neal, one of Jeremy Bentham's secretaries, may be found interesting. The father of John Stuart Mill, it seems, was in the habit of borrowing books of Bentham, and was even allowed the privilege of carrying them away without asking permission—a courtesy so well utilized that from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... for the truth of this anecdote, which he merely records as given in a letter published in the press. But the source from which it was taken, together with many of the preceding details of the condition of Stanley during the period of tension, has proved so ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... that she was jarred. When she called to Bruno he checked his flow of anecdote, and said to her ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this affair are pure inventions, entitled to about as much credit as the story of Aladdin's lamp; and yet, in a case of this kind, as in the case of the discoveries in California, it is clear that the truth may be stranger than fiction. The following anecdote, at least, is so well authenticated, that we may receive ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... think,' he remarked, with calm severity, to the intending purchaser, 'that any considerations of vile dross will induce me to part with this rare and precious little volume, you are very much mistaken. It is like your impudence. Be off with you!' A not altogether dissimilar anecdote is related by Lord Lytton in that curious novel 'Zanoni,' in which one of the characters is an old bookseller who, after years of toil, succeeded in forming an almost perfect library of works on occult philosophy. Poor in everything but a genuine love for the mute companions of his old age, he was ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... This anecdote was followed by several others. Those were pleasant hours I spent on board the old Indiaman. My visits to her were indeed an agreeable change from the sea-life routine of my own ship. I was amused by the progress in intimacy made among themselves ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... other in one-line sentences. He has the traditional love of the fine speech such as we find it in the ancient poets and historians and dramatists and satirists. He loves a monologue that passes from mockery to regret, that gathers up by the way anecdote and history and essay and foolery, that is half a narrative of things seen and half an irresponsible imagination. He can describe a runaway horse with the farcical realism of the authors of Some Experiences of an Irish ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... suggested by the recollection of an anecdote in Madame de Genlis, which seemed to lend itself to eighteenth-century treatment. It was therefore somewhat depressing, not long after they were written, to find that the subject had already been annexed in the Tatler by an actual eighteenth-century writer, who, moreover, claimed to ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... facts, true to the manners, and (for once in my works) rendered pleasing by the presence of a heroine who is pretty. Miss Uma is pretty; a fact. All my other women have been as ugly as sin, and like Falconet's horse (I have just been reading the anecdote in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of settlement. Beyond his experiment with the "Louisiana plan" Mr. Lincoln had never given the slightest indication either by word or deed as to the specific course he would adopt in the rehabilitation of the insurrectionary States. His characteristic anecdote of the young preacher who was exhorted "not to cross 'Big Muddy' until he reached it" was a perfect illustration of the painstaking, watchful habit in which he dealt with all public questions. He invariably declined to anticipate an issue or settle a question ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... He was like a complete volume with illustrations on everything pertaining to the East, could answer all manner of unheard-of questions about things that everybody else had forgotten, and had always ready an appropriate anecdote or story just to the point. His very dress was characteristic. It consisted of loose trousers of gray linen, and an old-fashioned white hunting-coat with Quaker collar, and huge pockets that would have answered very well for the saddle-bags of an itinerant ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... gone." A positive sturdy refusal, not without hints that if the patron repents his benefactions or demands sacrifice of freedom in exchange for them, he had better take them back: yet a remonstrance so disarming, infused with such a blend of respect and playfulness, such wealth of witty anecdote and classical allusion, that we imagine the fretfulness of the appeased protector evaporating in admiration as he reads, the answer of affectionate apology and acceptance dictated in his ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... circulation of the Scriptures I will now relate an anecdote not altogether divested of singularity. I have already spoken of the water-mill by the bridge of Azeca. I had formed acquaintance with the tenant of this mill, who was known in the neighbourhood by the name of Don Antero. One day, taking me into a retired ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Stradivarius, which was worth at least five hundred guineas, at a Jew broker's in Tottenham Court Road for fifty-five shillings. This led him to Paganini, and we sat for an hour over a bottle of claret while he told me anecdote after anecdote of that extraordinary man. The afternoon was far advanced and the hot glare had softened into a mellow glow before we found ourselves at the police-station. Lestrade was waiting for us ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... his correspondence with Voltaire, relates the following anecdote of the Czar Peter, as illustrative of Russian despotism:—"I knew Printz, the great marshal of the court of Prussia, who had been ambassador to the Czar Peter, in the reign of the late king. The commission with which he was charged proving very acceptable, the prince was desirous of giving him ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... amusing anecdote it will make after a while, Guy,—how, with all your worldly goods tied up in a red bandanna, and your wife on your arm instead of her father's doorstep, you set out to make your fortune, and to live meanwhile in ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... trying to explain to the schoolteacher's wife that "stars were the forget-me-nots of heaven." The young commissary sergeant had secured an alcove for the "Arizona babe," and "Foxy grandpa," taking a nip of something when his good wife's back was turned, was telling his best anecdote of the southwest, "Ichabod Crane," the big-boned Kansan—who had got the better of us all that afternoon in argument—swinging his arms, and with his head thrown back, was trying to herd the people into an old-fashioned reel. Grabbing the little daughter of the regiment ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... contradictions in their statements that he could not get at the truth. Whereupon, it occurred to him as a vain thing to undertake to describe what had occurred on the vast theater of the world, when he could not ascertain the truth about an event occurring within a bow-shot. The anecdote simply illustrates, however, the difficulty of getting at the exact truth respecting details,—a difficulty constantly exemplified in courts of justice. The fact of the conflict in the court of the Tower, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... do I owe my life?" "If you consider it an obligation, sir, to me," answered the lieutenant. Mathews saw the uniform was British, and furiously replied, "Well, sir, I want you to know that I scorn a life saved by a d——d Briton." The writer had the anecdote from a distinguished citizen of Georgia, who was himself lying near by, severely wounded, and who in one of his sons has given to ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... blanket. The men were not in the mood for humorous dirt. The songs had carried them to their homes, and in spirit they sat by those far hearthstones, and saw faces and heard voices other than those that were about them. And so this disposition to drag in an old indecent anecdote got no welcome; nobody answered. The poor man hadn't wit enough to see that he had blundered, but asked his question again. Again there was no response. It was embarrassing for him. In his confusion he chose the wrong course, did the wrong thing—began the anecdote. Began ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in this period we meet with eccentrics by profession, who with deliberate intention play, as the actors say, a "charged" character-part. Their freaks and gambols were considered worthy to be handed on to posterity in memoirs and books of anecdote, and whoever wanted to be a gentleman was obliged, in some particulars at least, to be a fool. The romantic adventures of the Middle Ages returned again in a new costume, in less fantastic but far more humorous ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... drink, but by J—-s to drink as much as they had a mind to." It must be observed, that this individual I had seen but once, in the streets of Harmony, and then he was in a state of inebriation. Another anecdote, of a similar character, was related to me by an Englishman relative to his own election to the post of brigadier-general. The candidate opposed to him had served in the late war, and in his address to the electors boasted not a little of the ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... have been more than smoke in the cause of the rapid flight of John Simson and Meg Johnston from their own houses to that of Wat Webster; and more than the roses in the cheeks of the fair Marion, or Wat Webster's pith of anecdote, that produced the congregation of individuals round his "blazing ingle," at the approach of the eerie hour of twelve, when it was probable the mysterious stranger would again appear. Be all this as it may—and we have no wish to overstate a case in which it ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... is used, it must be a growing system; it must be kept up to date by the addition of new material, picked up in the course of the day's work. Much material is gathered and saved that is never used, but the wise correspondent does not pass by an anecdote, a good simile, a clever appeal or forcible argument simply because he does not see at the moment how he can ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... reminding one of those Italian nobles of the sixteenth century of whom we lead in the novels of Giraldo Cinthio and Fiorentino—uomini illustri, e di civil costumi. His greeting is cordial and his conversation delightful, full of anecdote and marked with enthusiasm for his art. When I first became acquainted with him I was of opinion that his interpretation of Hamlet was based only upon the translated text, but in the course of a very long conversation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... friend, Mr. Erskine, will take into his critical consideration. In Sir J. Sinclair's statistical volumes are two claims, one I think, from Aberdeenshire, and the other from Ayrshire, for the honour of this song. The following anecdote, which I had from the present Sir William Cunningham, of Robertland, who had it of the late John, Earl of Loudon, I can on ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... From this anecdote, the general truth of which is indubitable, the principal fault of Charles Edward's temper is sufficiently obvious. It was a high sense of his own importance, and an obstinate adherence to what he had once determined ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Princess proposed to Auber to give his arm to Jenny Lind, and to put her at his right hand, la place d'honneur, adding, with her most ironical smile, "le genie avant la beaute." Auber made a charming host, telling one funny anecdote after the other in his quiet and typical manner. Gounod, in his low and drawly voice, said: "Vous nous donnez, mon cher Auber, des choses par trop ennuyeuses aux concerts du Conservatoire. A la pensee des 'Quatre saisons' de Haydn je m'endors. Pourquoi ne s'est-il pas contente d'une ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... character was his fighting spirit. Then it developed that Hume made a boast of having come by this naturally enough. He claimed descent from one of Washington's officers. Tobin could not recall the officer's name; but he related an anecdote of him that was unmistakable. The officer was ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... inoculated you with fears about the east wind; I did not feel the last blast so severely as I have often done. My sympathies were much awakened by the touching anecdote. Did you salute your boy-messenger with a box on the ear the next time he came across you? I think I should have been strongly tempted to have done as much. Mr. Nicholls is not yet returned. I am sorry to say that many of the parishioners express a desire that he ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... This anecdote pleasingly illustrates the habits of the confirmed reader. Nor let the worldling sneer. Happy is the man who, in the hours of solitude and depression, can read a history of Birmingham. How terrible is the story Welbore Ellis told of Robert Walpole in his magnificent ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... pour the inexhaustible stream of his acquired eloquence. I was delighted to listen to beautiful passages from the classic as well as modern poets, dramatists, philosophers, and orators, and recalled the anecdote of the man sitting under a fluent divine, who could not refrain from muttering, "That is Jeremy Taylor; that, South; that, Barrow," etc. It was difficult to suppress the thought, while Mr. Sumner was talking, "That is Burke, or ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... Emerson called him 'the most ideal of men, for he wanted to put all his ideas into action.' His absolute superiority to all selfish aims and narrowing pride of opinion touched an answering chord in the self-devotion of Mr. Stearns. A little anecdote illustrates the modest estimate of the work he had in hand. After several efforts to bring together certain friends to meet Captain Brown at his home in Medford, he found that Sunday was the only day that would serve their several ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... conversation has a little resemblance to a common-place book; his habitual deportment to a piece of clock-work. He is not remarkable either as a reasoner or an observer: but he is quick, unaffected, replete with anecdote, various and retentive in his reading, and exceedingly happy in his play upon words, as most scholars are who give their minds this sportive turn. We have chiefly seen Mr. Southey in company where few people appear to advantage, we mean ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... wife to enable him to fly from his creditors, escaped to France. His absence must have been a relief; but his death is said to have so affected the unhappy lady, that her shrieks disturbed the neighbourhood. The circumstance recalls an anecdote of a similar outburst—attested by Sir W. Scott, who was present on the occasion—before her marriage. Being present at a representation, in Edinburgh, of the Fatal Marriage, when Mrs. Siddons was personating Isabella, Miss Gordon was seized with a fit, and carried out of ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... punishment, for we make it our business to get such a person removed from his employment, even within his year,"—a system of temporal penalties affixed to spiritual laches not unknown elsewhere. The following anecdote will show the style of reproof. Father Benedict da Belvedere, a Neapolitan who had preached at Rome and was likewise confessor to the nuns, heard the chief elector, one of the principal nobles, asking the heretical question, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... him. He desired to live conformably to his high station, but he naturally abhorred waste and extravagance, and insisted that his household should be conducted with due regard to economy and usefulness. An illustrative anecdote is given. The first shad of the season was bought by Fraunces for the table of Washington, who was very fond of fish. It was served for breakfast in the best style, and set before the president, who asked the steward, "What kind of fish is this?"—"A ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... explanation, he said, that if a lion sprang at an animal, and missed it by leaping short, he would always go back to where he sprang from, and practise the leap so as to be successful on another occasion; and he then related to me the following anecdote, stating that he was an ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat |
