"Antic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out a transformer by some careless and exuberant antic; hence the mutual doghouse. Scolding was wasted effort, so Denver merely sighed and ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... horror, the land instantly after its disappearance becoming a fair field, in which arts, sciences, and all the amiable virtues flourished, instead of being a pestilent marsh where swine-like ignorance wallowed, and artful hypocrites, like so many wills-o'-the-wisp, played antic gambols about, around and above ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... But the most forward and tormenting of them all is my quondam friend, the Count; who is half a lunatic, but of so diverting a kind that, ere a man has time to be angry, he either cuts a caper, utters an absurdity, or acts some mad antic or other, that sets gravity ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... the mind of men, and wailing went the weather, Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together. Science announced nonentity and art admired decay; The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay; Round us in antic order their crippled vices came— Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame. Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom, Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume. Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; The world was very ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... refuting her, He sits, the antic-pawed, the proven friend, The whimsical, the grave and reverend— Wilhelm the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... name, in these parts, of the Merry Men. I have heard it said that they run fifty feet high; but that must be the green water only, for the spray runs twice as high as that. Whether they got the name from their movements, which are swift and antic, or from the shouting they make about the turn of the tide, so that all Aros shakes with it, is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Father Antic the Law as lavish a letter of recommendation as the Legal Profession ever received, and he gave it for the very natural reason that he had no use ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... She was anxious that he should know her to be not that stupid statue of Constancy in a corner doating on the antic Deception. Reminiscences of the interview overnight made it oppressive to her to hear herself praised for always pointing like the needle. Her newly enfranchised individuality pressed to assert its existence. Vernon, however, not seeing this novelty, continued, to her excessive discomfort, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... answered his look with a winking and blinking of its great bright eye, that seemed to say, "Well, Uncle Juvinell, what shall we do for the entertainment or instruction of these little people to-night? Shall we tell them of that crew of antic goblins we wot of, who are wont to meet by moonlight, to play at football with the hanged man's head, among the tombstones of an old graveyard? Or may be that dreadful ogre, with the one fiery eye in the middle of his forehead, who was in the ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... stitches on her needles, the big shadow of her cap-ruffles bobbing on the daubed and chinked log walls in antic mimicry, while down Ethelinda's pink cheeks the slow tears coursed at the prospect ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Pixy, and quaint Puck the Antic, Brought Robin Goodfellow, that merry swain; And stealthy Mab, queen of old realms romantic, Came too, from distance, in her tiny wain, Fresh dripping from a cloud—some bloomy rain, Then circling the bright Moon, had wash'd her car, And still bedew'd it with a various ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... resolved to decide the issue by single combat, in the course of which explanations ensue which lead to a general recognition and reconciliation. The pastoral element is represented by old Antimon an antic shepherd, a clown his son, his daughter a careless shepherdess and her despised lover, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... for I never knew, led me only a courant, and then asked me if I had a mind to dance an antic—that is to say, whether I would dance the antic as they had danced in masquerade, or anything by myself. I told him anything else rather, if he pleased; so we danced only two French dances, and he led ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... there or fear—great ceremonies Equal for none save great antagonists? The grave indifference of his heart before them Was moved by laughter innocent of hate, Chastising clean of spite, that moulded them Into the antic likeness of his toad Bidding for laughter ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... truth, yet doubtless in the conviction that such an exhibition showed the superiority of anointed kings even over death—he ordered his servants to place a golden crown. And thus, during the whole of his long illness, the Antic held his state, while the poor mortal representative of absolute power lay living still, but slowly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... me where I had bought it, and I told him like a dutiful son—"Tom Carrodus's in Church Green." He summoned my mother and asked: "Mally, what dos'ta think o' this lot?" She—good woman—said it was only another antic of her boy's, and "let him have his own way." But my father, on the contrary, got rather nasty about the matter, remarking that if I didn't take the thing away he would put it into the fire. He said he was sure ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... an arm and can hardly tell what he has to say because it's so funny he has to laugh when he thinks of it. They go up an alley where they won't be overheard, and Herman at last manages to keep his laughter down long enough to tell it. It's a comical antic he wants Manuel ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... knew Dr. Johnson must have observed that the moment he was left out of the conversation, whether from his deafness or from whatever cause, but a few minutes without speaking or listening, his mind appeared to be preparing itself. He fell into a reverie accompanied with strange antic gestures; but this he never did when his mind was engaged by the conversation. These were therefore improperly called convulsions, which imply involuntary contortions; whereas, a word addressed to him, his attention was recovered. Sometimes, indeed, it would be near a minute ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... dance, obey, Temper'd to thy warbled lay. O'er Idalia's velvet-green The rosy-crowned Loves are seen On Cytherea's day, With antic Sport, and blue-eyed Pleasures, Frisking light in frolic measures; Now pursuing, now retreating, Now in circling troops they meet: To brisk notes in cadence beating Glance their many-twinkling feet. Slow-melting strains their Queen's approach ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... by my own average experience,—that besides these gloomy associations, the name of Venice will conjure up scenes of brilliant and wanton gayety, and that in the foreground of the brightest picture will be the Carnival of Venice, full of antic delight, romantic adventure, and lawless prank. But the carnival, with all the old merry- making life of the city, is now utterly obsolete, and, in this way, the conventional, masquerading, pleasure-loving ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... broken vow Deceit with her pied garters must rejoin, And with her stamp thou countenances must coin; Coyness, and pure[88] deceits, for purities, And still a maid wilt seem in cozen'd eyes, And have an antic face to laugh within, While thy smooth looks make men digest thy sin. But since thy lips (least thought forsworn) forswore, Be never virgin's vow worth trusting more!" When Beauty's dearest did her goddess hear 260 Breathe such rebukes 'gainst that she could ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... blow loud! At leisure, thence, through tracts of thin resort, And sights and sounds that come at intervals, We take our way. A raree-show is here, With children gathered round; another street 175 Presents a company of dancing dogs, Or dromedary, with an antic pair Of monkeys on his back; a minstrel band Of Savoyards; or, single and alone, An English ballad-singer. Private courts, 180 Gloomy as coffins, and unsightly lanes Thrilled by some female vendor's scream, belike The very shrillest of all London cries, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... shall I first lament My own afflictions, or my aged sire's, Whom here I find a castaway, with you, In a strange land, an ancient beggar clad In antic tatters, marring all his frame, While o'er the sightless orbs his unkept locks Float in the breeze; and, as it were to match, He bears a wallet against hunger's pinch. All this too late I learn, wretch that I am, Alas! I own it, and am proved most vile In my neglect of thee: I scorn ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... at the windows, while groans—such was the dark fancy of the author—issued from a windy tower. But there was one supreme chapter in which the hero was locked in a haunted room and saw a candle at a chink of the wall. It belonged to the villain, who nightly played there a ghostly antic to frighten honest ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... in this primitive Eden When I study some antic that hints At the physical fitness of Sweden, The speed of American sprints, I dream of the wreaths and the ribbons Their prowess would certainly win, If there weren't any war, and my ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... cave to me—for I had been milking my goats which I had in the enclosure just by; when he espied me he came running to me, laying himself down again upon the ground, with all the possible signs of an humble, thankful disposition, making a great many antic gestures to show it. At last he lays his head flat upon the ground, close to my foot, and sets my other foot upon his head, as he had done before; and after this made all the signs to me of subjection, servitude, and submission imaginable, to let me know how he ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... significance—this would seem to be the aim and end of Mr. Meredith's ambition. Of simplicity in his own person he appears incapable. The texture of his expression must be stiff with allusion, or he deems it ill spun; there must be something of antic in his speech, or he cannot believe he is addressing himself to the Immortals; he has praised with perfect understanding the lucidity, the elegance, the ease, of Moliere, and yet his aim in art (it would appear) is to be Moliere's antipodes, and to vanquish by congestion, clottedness, ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... They maintain their dignity; they get obeyed; they are good and charitable to their dependants. But they have no notion of PLAY of mind: no conception that the charm of society depends upon it. They think cleverness an antic, and have a constant though needless horror of being thought to have any of it. So much does this stiff dignity give the tone, that the few Englishmen capable of social brilliancy mostly secrete it. They reserve it for persons whom they can trust, ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... invade, With so much furious vigour, as if it Had lived o'er each of them, and each had quit, Yet with such happy sleight and careless skill, As, like the serpent, doth with laughter kill, So that although his noble leaves appear Antic and Gottish, and dull souls forbear To turn them o'er, lest they should only find Nothing but savage monsters of a mind,— No shapen beauteous thoughts; yet when the wise Seriously strip him of his wild disguise, Melt down his dross, refine his massy ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Fairies, blithe and antic, Of dimensions not gigantic, Though the moonshine mostly keep us, Oft in orchards frisk ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... admittance for a stranger, who came on purpose to have the honour of attending on his highness. This was immediately granted, and we all three entered the gate of the palace between two rows of guards, armed and dressed after a very antic manner, and with something in their countenances that made my flesh creep with a horror I cannot express. We passed through several apartments, between servants of the same sort, ranked on each side as before, till we came to the chamber of presence; where, after three profound obeisances, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... I never yet saw man, How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur'd, But she would spell him backward: if fair-fac'd, She would swear the gentleman should be her sister; If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antic, Made a foul blot: if tall, a lance ill-headed; If low, an agate very vilely cut; If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds; If silent, why, a block moved with none. So turns she every man the wrong side out; And never gives ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... practice of these medical gentlemen of the forest: "He approaches his patient with a variety of contortions and gestures, and performs by his side, and over him, all the antic tricks that his imagination can suggest. He breathes on him, blows in his mouth, and often makes an external application of the medicines which he has prepared, by throwing them over in his face, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... sinking salaries of his actors. In December, 1709, the Lord Chamberlain ordered that no new representations were to be brought upon the stage which were not necessary to the better performance of comedy or opera, "such as ladder-dancing, antic postures," &c., without his leave.—(Lord Chamberlain's Records, Warrant ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... unlucky mortals who bear the blame of everything wrong they witness; and having, in tender infancy, been suddenly seized upon in Sunday school by the superintendent, and placed in a conspicuous situation of disgrace for looking at a companion who was performing some strange antic, but who possessed one of those india-rubber faces that, after twisting themselves into all possible, or rather impossible shapes, immediately become straight the moment any one observes them—having, I say, met with this mortifying exposure, it ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... can make a noise makes it at intervals at one end of the room. They all look as if they waiting for something, but nothing in particular happens. Sometimes, after the mountain has labored awhile, some little mouse of a boy and girl will get up, execute an antic or two and sit down again, when everything relapses into its original solemnity. At very long intervals somebody walks across the floor. There is a moderate fluttering of fans and an occasional whisper. Expectation interspersed with gimcracks seems to be the programme. The greater part ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... actually children's toys, for what they contain, but not the less do they buzz at our understandings and insist that they break or we, and, in either case, to show a mere foolish idle rattle in hollowness. Nor have the antic bobbings— ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... Bursley was offended, why did it not mark its sense of Josiah's failure to read the future by electing another Mayor? The answer is, that while all were agreed that his antic was inexcusable, all were equally agreed to pretend that it was a mere trifle of no importance; you cannot deprive a man of his prescriptive right for a mere trifle of no importance. Besides, nobody could be so foolish as to imagine ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... snicker, crow, cheer, chuckle, shout; horse laugh, , belly laugh, hearty laugh; guffaw; burst of laughter, fit of laughter, shout of laughter, roar of laughter, peal of laughter; cachinnation[obs3]; Kentish fire; tiger. play; game, game at romps; gambol, romp, prank, antic, rig, lark, spree, skylarking, vagary, monkey trick, gambade, fredaine[obs3], escapade, echappee[Fr], bout, espieglerie[Fr]; practical joke &c. (ridicule) 856. dance; hop, reel, rigadoon[obs3], saraband[obs3], hornpipe, bolero, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... pleasant conceited Comedie," published in 1595, is a dramatized old wife's story told to three erring fancies, Frolic, Antic and Fantastic, quite in the style of a fairy tale, "always wavering in the peculiar twilight, between profound sense and nonsense, between childish play and matured humor." Two brothers who have lost their sisters appear, and then an insolent giant, swaggering ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... together, keeping exact time to the music; while one, whimsically crowned with a fox's skin, the tail of which flaunted down his back, kept capering round the skirts of the dance, and rattling a Christmas-box with many antic gesticulations. ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... she by the pavement linger Under the rooms where once she played, Who from the feast would rise to fling her One poor sou for her serenade? One short laugh for the antic finger Thrumming ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... activity, attended by an old fiddler, by "Bessy," in the grotesque habit of an old woman, and by the fool, almost covered with skins, a hairy cap on his head, and the tail of a fox hanging from his head. These led the festive throng, and diverted the crowd with their droll antic buffoonery. The office of one of these characters was to go about rattling a box, and soliciting money from door to door to defray the expenses of a feast, and ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... kept it in his swollen belly Distent with honeysuckle jelly. Rose liquor and the sweet-pea wine Had fill' d his soul with song divine; Deep had he drunk the warm night through, His hairy thighs were wet with dew. Full many an antic he had play'd While the world went round through sleep and shade. Oft had he lit with thirsty lip Some flower-cup's nectar'd sweets to sip, When on smooth petals he would slip, Or over tangled stamens trip, And headlong in the pollen roll'd, Crawl out quite dusted o'er with gold; ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... is, you see; she ain't plaster—she's marble, a genuine antic of Venus, and worth thousands. The beggars who broke in knew that, and took nothing else. They'd made all arrangements to get away with her abroad, and pass her off on some foreign collection before it got blown upon; and they'd have done it too if we hadn't been beforehand with ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... being managed. There was a widow in the East, acknowledged his niece, who had been angling for poor Peter for years. And Peter was still free, Susie suspected, because in the presence of that widow he emulated Hamlet and always put an antic disposition on. Did the most absurd things, and appeared to be little more than half-witted. The widow in question had even spoken to Susie about her uncle's eccentricities and intimated that his segregative manner of life might in the ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... paid for admission to the theatre, little thinking of provision for the night. Yet Munden, in later life, was a prudent, parsimonious man. At the close of the performance he fell in with a person who had been a butcher's apprentice in Brooks's Market, and who remembering young Joseph's antic tricks, gave him good cheer, and money for his return to London. On the road, necessity overtook him, when meeting a Warwickshire militia-man, who was marching to the town at which he was billeted, Munden prevailed on the soldier to represent him as a comrade. The trick told: he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... no wild, no rude, no antic sport, But tender passions, motions soft and grave, The still spectator ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... palely across Emarine's face and was gone. "Maybe if you'd go up in the antic you could see better," she ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... . . . And lo! A flickering snatch of memory that floats Upon the face of a pool of darkness five And thirty dead years deep, Antic in girlish broideries And skirts and silly shoes with straps And a broad-ribanded leghorn, he walks Plain in the shadow of a church (St. Michael's: in whose brazen call To curfew his first wails of wrath were whelmed), Sedate for all his haste To be at home; and, nestled in his arm, Inciting still ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... the words and the richness of the packed thought thoughtfully. The complex play of action and motive—the purpose blunted by overmuch thinking, the spurs to dull revenge, the self-contempt, the assumed antic disposition, at times the real mental disturbance—all this was set before us with a fine skill and resource. The "To be or not to be" soliloquy was masterly in its sincerity and restraint; the two broken love passages ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... this airy, fantastic idea of irregular grace and bewildered melancholy any one can play Hamlet, as we have seen it played, with strut, and stare, and antic right-angled sharp-pointed gestures, it is difficult to say, unless it be that Hamlet is not bound, by the prompter's cue, to study the part of Ophelia. The account ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... is clear, if his crest and gorgeous splashes of tints and shades are fresh and shining with the gloss of health, then the feathered lover may hope, indeed, that the little brown mate may look with favour upon dance, song, or antic—and the home is become a reality. In some instances this home is for only one short season, when the two part, probably forever; but in other cases the ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... escaped her notice that since dinner her mental processes had undergone some subtle change. For one thing, her sense of humor had quickened. Joe had often maintained she had none. If Joe could see her now! No; that was not her meaning precisely; but at any rate, it had quickened. How every antic of the comedians appealed to her! The excessively tall and the excessively short Germans who talked into one another's teeth; the young person who sang coon songs in a fashion not negro, but all her own; the giant with a boutonniere which a midget mounted a step-ladder to spray; ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... Meerschaum Extravagant Travel Alley Concur Travail Fee Attention Apprehend Superb Magnanimity Lewd Adroit Altruism Instigation Quite Benevolence Complexion Urchin Charity Bishop Thoroughfare Unction Starve Naughty Speed Cunning Moral Success Decent Antic Crafty Handsome Savage Usury Solemn Uncouth Costume Parlor Window Presumption Bombastic Colleague Petty Vixen Alderman ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... which Roosevelt had called "Ben Butler" was not so easily subdued. It was "Ben Butler's" special antic to fall over backward. He was a sullen, evil-eyed brute, with a curve in his nose and a droop in his nostrils, which gave him a ridiculous resemblance to the presidential candidate of the Anti-Monopoly Party. He was a great man-killing bronco, with a treacherous ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... poetry is his delight; Therefore I'll have Italian masks by night, Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows; And in the day, when he shall walk abroad, Like sylvan nymphs my pages shall be clad; My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns, Shall with their goat-feet dance the antic hay; Sometime a lovely boy in Dian's shape, With hair that gilds the water as it glides Crownets of pearl about his naked arms, And in his sportful hands an olive-tree, To hide those parts which men delight to see, Shall bathe him in a spring; and there, ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... houses and gardens, and even into the temples. I soon found my way down to the sea-shore, and used to pretend to be busy in picking up shells, and in stringing them together into necklaces and bracelets for my own adornment. Then I made others, which I presented, with many a strange antic, to anybody I met. Day after day did I continue this employment, my eye wandering anxiously over the blue sea in ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp; Allowing him a breath, a little scene To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks; Infusing him with self and vain conceit, As if this flesh which walls about our life Were brass impregnable; and humored thus, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... milking my goats, which I had in the enclosure just by: when he espied me, he came running to me, laying himself down again upon the ground, with all the possible signs of an humble thankful disposition, making many, antic gestures to shew it. At last he lays his head flat upon the ground, close to my foot, and sets my other foot upon his head, as he had done before; and after this, made all the signs to me of subjection, servitude, and submission imaginable, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... whose sake I plod through miry ways Of antic wit, and quibbling mazes drear, Let not thy shade malignant censure fear, If aught of inward mirth my search betrays. Long slept that mirth in dust of ancient days, Erewhile to Guise or wanton Valois ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... Fontenelle asleep;[214] Let them with Browne contrive, to vulgar trick, To cure the dead, and make the living sick;[215] Let them in charity to Murphy give Some old French piece, that he may steal and live; Let them with antic Foote subscriptions get, And advertise a Summer-house of Wit. Thus, or in any better way they please, With these great men, or with great men like these, Let them their appetite for laughter feed; I ...
— English Satires • Various
... by a complexion naturally adust, mounted into an occiput already prepared to kindle by long seclusion and the fervor of strict Calvinistic notions. In the glooms of Charnwood he was assailed by illusions similar in kind to those which are related of the famous Anthony of Padua. Wild antic faces would ever and anon protrude themselves upon his sensorium. Whether he shut his eyes or kept them open, the same illusions operated. The darker and more profound were his cogitations, the droller and more whimsical became the apparitions. They buzzed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... the grave; thereupon he folds his arms, closes his eyes, and smiles a pathetic smile. This by far is the masterpiece of all his feats. And one evening, when he was repeating this strange and weird antic, which in Khalid's strange mind might be made to symbolise something stranger than both, he saw, as he lay in the grave, a star in the sky. It was the first time he saw a star; and he jumped out of his sand-grave exulting in the discovery he had made. He ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... most versatile negro minstrel. He cuts as many capers in a lifetime as there are stars in heaven or grains of sand in a barrel of sugar. Everything is fish that comes to his net. If a discovery in science is announced, he will execute you an antic upon it before it gets fairly cold. Is a new theory advanced-ten to one while you are trying to get it through your head he will stand on his own and make mouths at it. A great invention provokes him into a whirlwind of flip-flaps absolutely bewildering to the secular ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... every clime and weather, thoughts bearing the mark of every age and nation, silly thoughts and wise thoughts, thoughts of people, of things, and of nothing, good thoughts, impish thoughts, and large, gracious thoughts. There they went swinging hand-in-hand in corkscrew fashion. An antic jester in green and gold led the dance. The guests followed no order or precedent. No two thoughts were related to each other even by the fortieth cousinship. There was not so much as an international alliance between them. Each thought behaved like a ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... network of gnarled and knotted roots. The black limbs grapple with each other; here one has dragged his neighbour over, and he lies with arms outstretched, writhen into antic twists and curves, as if he had died in torment; there, in singular contrast, are two friends,—oaks, were they once?—who have fallen into one another's arms, and, dead, seem still to embrace ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... might have been the speaker, but whom I could in nowise identify. It was so much the mode with many of us that were young in Florence to come—and sometimes to come unbidden—to such galas as this of Messer Folco's in antic habits and to hide our features with vizards, that there was nothing in this costume to single out the youth whom I believed to be the utterer of that call for Dante. There were many other masked and muffled figures within the walls of Messer Folco's house that night ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... variety would appear, in a short succession of moments, in one and the same person. A man that we saw this minute dumb, and, as it were, stupid and confounded, would the next minute be dancing and hallooing like an antic; and the next moment be tearing his hair, or pulling his clothes to pieces, and stamping them under his feet like a madman; in a few moments after that we would have him all in tears, then sick, swooning, and, had ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... turned sharply aside, and for some moments neither spoke. Cornelia was seeing, as in a picture, the lonely ranch, with the solitary figure, sitting with his face towards the East, thinking, thinking. ... Guest was reflecting with amaze on the strange antic of fate, which ordained that it should be in the eyes of this Yankee stranger that he should see the first woman's tears shed on his behalf! She cried like a child; simply, involuntarily, without thought of appearance; the tears rising from a pure well ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... myself! (My love, he's poking peas into his ear!) Thou merry, laughing sprite! With spirits feather-light, Untouch'd by sorrow, and unsoil'd by sin— (Good heavens! the child is swallowing a pin!) Thou little tricksy Puck! With antic toys so funnily bestuck, Light as the singing bird that wings the air— (The door! the door! he'll tumble down the stair!) Thou darling of thy sire! (Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore a-fire!) Thou imp of mirth and joy! In Love's dear chain so strong and ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... church in Rome, I think, and I suppose it is, for a cold splendor, unequalled anywhere. Somehow, from its form and from the great propriety of its decoration, it far surpasses St. Peter's. The antic touch of the baroque is scarcely present in it, for, being newly rebuilt after the fire which destroyed the fourth-century basilica in 1823, its faults are not those of sixteenth-century excess. It would be a very bold or a very young connoisseur who should venture ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... liquor—from two or three who had to be hauled over the float and up to the bunkhouse like sacks of bran, to others who were so happily under the influence of John Barleycorn that every move was some silly antic. She retreated in disgust. When Charlie reached the cabin, he himself proved to be fairly mellow, in the best of spirits—speaking truly ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of alleys, courts, and passages in the Butcher Row in Whitechappel,—I say, what could be more affecting than to see this poor man come out into the open street, run dancing and singing and making a thousand antic gestures, with five or six women and children running after him, crying and calling upon him for the Lord's sake to come back, and entreating the help of others to bring him back, but all in vain, nobody daring to lay a hand upon him or ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... "Light of my eyes," said the husband, "didst thou meet with any thing amusing to-day in thy visit to the bath? and if so, divert me with an account of it." "I did, indeed," said the lady, "for I met with four antic creatures, whom" (at hearing this the unfortunate lovers gave themselves over for lost) "I had a great inclination to bring home with me" (here they recovered a little from their alarm) "to divert us, but fearful of your displeasure I did not; however, if ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... Another antic those naughty nerves often indulged in, was nervous headache; when anything specially annoying took place, they met in convention in the top of the poor head, and held an indignation meeting; at such times Mrs. Murray was obliged to retreat to her own room. The ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... within a mile of the shore, ten natives were counted, half of whom were probably women, from their keeping behind the others. The men made many antic gestures to our people. One had a green branch in his hand, which he waved to and fro at the extent of his arm, from the ground on one side of him to that on the other; and some of them would run into the water occasionally, and beat the surf with sticks. They appeared to be friendly, using nearly ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... Barbarous rain and thunder maker— Unconscionable money taker— Travelling about both near and far, Toll to exact at every bar— What brings thee here again, To desecrate old Drury's fane? Egregious attitudiniser! Antic fifer! com'st to advise her 'Gainst intellect and sense to close her walls? To raze her benches, That Gallic wenches Might play their brazen antics at masked balls? Ci-devant waiter Of a quarante-sous traiteur, Why did you leave ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... and having accurately surveyed him, turned their faces to each other, and set up a loud, yelling laugh, which resounded in his ears. The sound was so ghastly that Sir Kenneth started at hearing it, and hastily demanded, in the name of God, who they were who profaned that holy place with such antic gestures and elritch exclamations. ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... Some haunted by the ghosts they dispossess'd; Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kili'd; All murder'd:—for within the hollow crown, That rounds the mortal temples of a king, Keeps death his court: and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp! Allowing him a breath, a little scene To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks; Infusing him with self and vain conceit— As if this flesh, which walls about our ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... the grass, Heavy with gold, and Time itself doth drowse; The little stream, too indolent to pass, Loiters below the cloudy willow boughs, That build amid the glare a shadowy house, And with a Paradisal freshness brims Amid cool-rooted reeds with glossy blade; The antic water-fly above it skims, And cows stand shadow-like in the green shade, Or knee-deep ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... panic was not needed to prove this to the Master. His every wild antic showed it. But that same terror-stricken screech was required to set forth the true situation to the one member of the trio who had learned from birth to judge by sound and by scent, ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... prove a kind master and a lasting friend. He had not, I think, slept above an hour when he awakened again, and while I was milking my goats hard by, out he runs from the cave towards me in my inclosure, and laying himself down on the ground, in the lowest prostration, made all the antic gestures imaginable, to express his thankfulness to me for being his deliverer. I confess though the manner of his behaviour seemed to be ludicrous enough to occasion, laughter, yet I was very much moved at his affection, so that my heart melted within me, fearing ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... replied Sidney; 'methought that it betokens disease in the mind of a nation when their festive revelry is thus ghastly, rendering the most awful secrets made known by our God in order to warm man from sin into a mere antic laughing-stock. Laughter should be moved by what is fair and laughter-worthy—even like such sports as our own "Midsummer Night's Dream." I have read that the bloody temper of Rome fed itself in gladiator shows, and ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Miss Mathewson could or could not dance the "Irish Washerwoman," or any other antic dance improvised to that live air; she had only to yield herself to Red Pepper Burns's hands and steps, and let him disport himself around her. A most startlingly hilarious performance was immediately and effectively ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... of this trying day Clark had kept up the spirits of his men in every way he could. In telling about it later, he said: "I received much help from a little antic drummer, a boy with such a fun-loving spirit that he made the men laugh, in spite of their weariness, at his ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... consists of a number of sword-dancers dragging a plough with music, was anciently observed in the North of England, not only at Christmas time, but also in the beginning of Lent. Wallis thinks that the Sword Dance is the antic dance, or chorus armatus of the Romans. Brand supposes that it is a composition made up of the gleaning of several obsolete customs anciently followed in England and other countries. The Germans still practise the Sword Dance at Christmas ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... Dancing on the chamber wall, While I sit beside the hearthstone Where the red flames rise and fall. Caps and nightgowns, caps and nightgowns, My three antic shadows wear; And no sound they make in playing, For the six ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... thrown forth—for so the very hills, Dashing them back against the hills, kept on With their reverberations. And these spots The neighbouring country-side doth feign to be Haunts of the goat-foot satyrs and the nymphs; And tells ye there be fauns, by whose night noise And antic revels yonder they declare The voiceless silences are broken oft, And tones of strings are made and wailings sweet Which the pipe, beat by players' finger-tips, Pours out; and far and wide the farmer-race Begins to hear, when, shaking the garmentings Of pine upon his half-beast head, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... as if they were painted; and across the circle of smooth lawn in front of the piazza the name of the hotel was printed in alleged ornamental plants letters two feet long, immensely ugly. Hose had been elevated to the office of postmaster, and lived in a Queen Antic cottage on the main street. Little Billy Ransom had grown up into a very interesting young man, with a decided musical genius, and a tenor voice, which being discovered by an enterprising patron of genius, from Boston, Billy was sent away to Paris to learn to sing. Some day you ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... start. The hare and tortoise are my witnesses. Said tortoise to the swiftest thing that is, 'I'll bet that you'll not reach, so soon as I The tree on yonder hill we spy.' 'So soon! Why, madam, are you frantic?' Replied the creature, with an antic; 'Pray take, your senses to restore, A grain or two of hellebore.'[13] 'Say,' said the tortoise, 'what you will; I dare you to the wager still.' 'Twas done; the stakes were paid, And near the goal tree laid— Of what, is not a question for this place, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... the matter that he now felt imperatively called upon to act, and he therefore sent General Whitesides to demand from the "Journal" the name of its contributor. Mr. Francis, the editor, was in a quandary. Lincoln had written the first letter, and the antic fury of Shields had induced two young ladies who took a lively interest in Illinois politics—and with good reason, for one was to be the wife of a Senator and the other of a President—to follow up the game with attacks ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... the tents had been pitched, the Indians came forward with their formal salutations. In front advanced, with antic dancings, the "medicine man," bearing in each hand a spread fan of white feathers fastened to a rod hung from top to bottom with little bells; marching behind this jingling symbol of peace and friendship, came the King and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... hours, therefore, not of furnishing instruction to the hungry and inquiring mind—ah, no!—but of a desperately sustained struggle in which, with every faculty on the alert to discover the truest expedients, with every nerve strained to the utmost, I strove for the mastery over this antic, untamed animal, until I could throw the reins loose at night, and drop my head down on my desk in the deserted school-room, tired, ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... cave of cut-throat thoughts and villainous dreams, Hag-rid and crying with cold and dirt and wet, The afflicted city, prone from mark to mark In shameful occultation, seems A nightmare labyrinthine, dim and drifting, With wavering gulfs and antic heights and shifting Rent in the stuff of a material dark Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale, Shows like the leper's living blotch of bale: Uncoiling monstrous into street on street Paven with perils, teeming with mischance, ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... more quiet, placed herself beside him, stroked his face with caressing fondness, whispered something smilingly in his ear, and in this manner smoothed the wrinkles that were gathering on his brow. But the moment after, some wild whim would make her resume her antic movements; and all went worse ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... good day's journey from his master's house he sat down, and being weary he fell asleep. No sooner had slumber taken full possession of him, and closed his long-opened eyelids, but he thought he saw many goodly proper personages in antic measures tripping about him, and withal he heard such music as he thought that Orpheus, that famous Greek fiddler (had he been alive), compared to one of these, had been as infamous as a Welsh harper that plays for cheese and onions. As delights commonly last not long, ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... boys had remained quiet spectators at a distance, but by accident the monkey, who used to be perched upon the head of the bear, and was shaken off when the beast broke loose, came running that way, playing a thousand antic grimaces as he passed. Tommy, who was determined not to be outdone by Mr Barlow, ran very resolutely up, and seized a string which was tied round the loins of the animal; but he, not choosing to be taken prisoner, instantly snapped at Tommy's ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... and renew His loved vaulting Unhalting, His whirling, And curling, And twirling, And swirling, And his ways, on the whole So unsteady! 'Pon my soul, Having gazed Quite amazed, On each wonderful antic And summersault frantic, For just a bare minute, My head, it feels whizzy; My eyesight's grown dizzy; And both legs, unstable As a ghost's tipping table, Seem ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... I suppose you have heard, long ago, How the snakes, in a manner quite antic, He marched from the County Mayo And trundled them into the Atlantic. So not to use water for drink, The people of Ireland determined. And for a mighty good reason, I think, Since St. Patrick has filled it with vermin And vipers and other ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... look about me, far and wide, the man I would have wished to have called mine, rather than him. But he is so important about trifles; so nimble, yet so slow: he is so sensible of his own intention to please, and has so many antic motions in his obligingness; that I cannot forbear laughing at the very time that I ought perhaps to reward him with a ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... deep for mirth! O posturing apes that rant, and dare This antic attitude! O Earth, With your wild jest of ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... "wanken" and "schweben" are not easily translated. The English words, by which we attempt to render them, are either vulgar or antic, or not of sufficiently general application. So "der Wolken Zug"—The Draft, the Procession of Clouds. The Masses of the Clouds sweep onward in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... squirrel, turtles' eggs, or wild strawberries. It depicted moonlight rides to dance with Shenandoah girls; the playing of camp charades; and the singing of war, home, and love songs around the late camp fire, timed to the antic banjo or the sentimental guitar. Drolly, yet with tenderness for others, it portrayed mountain storm, valley freshet, and heart-breaking night marches beside tottering guns in the straining, sucking, leaden-heavy, red clay, and then, raptly, the glories of sunrise and sunset over the contours ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... and crafty, ever encouraged and urged me in my antic course that brought Kim's favour, not alone to me, but through me to Hendrik Hamel and all our company. I here mention Hendrik Hamel as my adviser, for it has a bearing on much that followed at Keijo in the winning of Yunsan's ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... teaching them in his own tongue from apparently vague recollections of the manual of arms. I do not insist that we profited by the occasion; I only say that life likes a motley wear, and that he who rejects the antic aspects it so often inappropriately puts on is ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... a ditch. The yams and plantains are mostly on the higher grounds. As soon as we had finished our dinner we returned towards the ship. I was much delighted in this walk with the number of children that I saw in every part of the country: they are very handsome and sprightly and full of antic tricks. They have many diversions that are common with the boys in England such as flying kites, cats cradle, swinging, dancing or jumping in a rope, walking ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... in his safe return, Whose wanted presence I can only mourn; Your common gift shall two large goblets be Of silver, wrought with curious imagery, And high emboss'd, which, when old Priam reign'd, My conqu'ring sire at sack'd Arisba gain'd; And more, two tripods cast in antic mold, With two great talents of the finest gold; Beside a costly bowl, ingrav'd with art, Which Dido gave, when first she gave her heart. But, if in conquer'd Italy we reign, When spoils by lot the victor shall obtain- Thou saw'st the courser by proud Turnus ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... centuries ago, wisely characterized mnemonic systems as "barren and useless." He wrote, "For immediately to repeat a multitude of names or words once repeated before, I esteem no more than rope-dancing, antic postures, and feats of activity; and, indeed, they are nearly the same thing, the one being the abuse of the bodily, as the other is of mental powers; and though they may cause admiration, they cannot be ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... things going at the same time—the antic madness, the sanity, the sense of the theatre. The last was to all that he imagined and thought what, in the New Testament, charity is said to be to all ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... eyes, and saw a man kneeling above me, rubbing me all over with his hands, and pushing my belly up under my ribs, and blowing into my mouth, and tickling my nostrils with a feather, and performing a great variety of such antic manoeuvres ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... white, and her brow was ornamented with a sparkling Diadem. After her appeared St. Genevieve, surrounded by a number of Imps, who putting themselves into grotesque attitudes, drawing her by the robe, and sporting round her with antic gestures, endeavoured to distract her attention from the Book, on which her eyes were constantly fixed. These merry Devils greatly entertained the Spectators, who testified their pleasure by repeated bursts ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... again in the antic whirl I have a special exhibit to show you outside the ballroom. ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... thro' the greenwood eaves, Like mirthful eyes that laugh upon the leaves; Where every bush and tree in all the scene, In wind-kiss'd wavings shake their wings of green, And all the objects round about dispense Reviving freshness to the awakened sense; The golden corslet of the humble bee, The antic kid that frolics round the lea; Or purple lance-flies circling round the place, On their light shards of green, an airy race; Or squirrel glancing from the nut-wood shade An arch black eye, half pleas'd and half afraid; Or bird quick darting through ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... ornamented, embattled, and having turrets at the four corners. These gatehouses were of stone, as was the lower story of the palace itself; but the upper one was of wood, "richly adorned and set forth and garnished with variety of statues, pictures, and other antic forms of excellent art and workmanship, and of no small cost:" all which ornaments, it seems, were made of rye dough. In modern language the "pictures" would probably be called basso-relievos. From the eastern and western angles of the inner court rose two slender turrets five stories ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... almost be said, "keeps death his antic court." It comprises biographies of celebrated persons, who have died within the year, as well as a General Biographical List of others lower in the roll of fame. The biographies are 31 in number: among them are memoirs of Henry ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... it hard not to laugh in the fool's face for his antic assumption of the regal carriage, but her mind seemed instantly illuminated with knowledge. Now she understood the presence of the fool in her palace. This was Robert's ugliest revenge. He had sent this hideous thing to prey upon Perpetua, and Lycabetta applauded. What degradation ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... to this chaos of crossing, buffeting waves. I sense this rhythm, although I cannot solve it. But Mr. Pike knows it. Again and again, as we paced up and down this afternoon, when to me nothing unusually antic seemed impending, he would seize my arm as I lost balance, and as the Elsinore smashed down on her side and heeled over and over with a colossal roll that seemed never to end, and that always ended with an abrupt, snap-of-the-whip effect as she began the corresponding ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... that in life's late day, With tottering step, and locks of gray, Essay'st each trick of antic glee, Oh! my heart bleeds ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... Brun, the Swiss observed, that it was un beau morceau, and Mr. Pallet replied,—"Yes, yes, one may see with half an eye, that it can be the production of no other; for Bomorso's style both in colouring and drapery, is altogether peculiar: then his design is tame, and his expression antic and unnatural. Doctor, you have seen my judgment of Solomon; I think I may, without presumption—but, I don't choose to make comparisons; I leave that odious task to other people, and let my works speak for themselves. France, to be sure, is rich in the arts; but what is the reason? The king encourages ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... forth from those searching eyes, making of no account the incongruities of the sallow features. Straight red hair, a nose thrust out like a wedge, and a chin falling back from an affectionate sort of mouth, made, by an antic of nature, the almost grotesque setting of those twin furnaces of daring resolve, which, in the end, fulfilled the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... same, it did not appear as if the huge walrus realised the danger approaching so steadily, for every now and then, while performing some antic, the bear continued to lessen the distance between it and its prey, while simulating the greatest innocence and assuming to be thinking of anything but making an attack. So playful a creature, enjoying itself thoroughly in the sunshine, could never have ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... smoke-grimed, cobwebbed, and having the look of a cold-storage plant or a car barn fallen into disuse; dusty, neglected, almost eerie. Yet within it lurks Romance, and her sombre sister Tragedy, and their antic brother Comedy, the cut-up. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... out for my lady's amusement!" said the stranger, smiling; "you make rare sport with your antic tricks, at the fort yonder, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... reason for hoping, antic-ipation. 5. Breast'ed (pro. brest'ed), opposed courageously. 6. Numb, without the power of feeling or motion. Re-laxed', loosened. 12. E-mo'tion, excited ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... in the centre of a knot of men who began eagerly to press me for further particulars of the Amalgamated subscriptions. We all know the story of the comedian informed in the midst of a performance of his beloved wife's death, who yet must laugh and antic to the end of the play. I appreciated the heavy-hearted actor's plight as I surveyed the little throng so vitally interested in their dollar affairs. I longed to mount a chair and tell them how they had been duped, but my role called for different lines. It was my part ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... I'm asthounded at yer ignorance of gogerfy! Thim little fish grow in the Atla-antic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Injun Ocean, the Airctic Ocean, an'—oh, in all them oceans. An' the big fish, such as the whale, the halleybut, the shairk, an' all o' thim, they live off'n ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... hearts are made dark with infidelity, care not what antic distortions they make in interpreting Scripture, so they bring it to any show of compliance with ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... put my old Spad through every antic we two had ever done together. The observers in the balloons must have thought me crazy, a pilot running amuck from aerial shell shock. I had discovered a new meaning for that "grand and glorious feeling" which is so often ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... most of the company made the best of it. Mlle. Frahender grew pale and ill, and her hair flew about in the most comic disarray. Cosily ensconced in a corner, Maurice sketched the various attitudes his companions assumed with every antic of the lightly-laden, wave-tossed Soulacroup. Hunched up on the seat, Esperance clung to the rigging. Genevieve clutched at her when a wave pitched the boat too far over. The others, well muffled up, waited in silence. Jean Perliez sighted the shore continually with his glasses, ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... impossible to restrain laughter when one saw the mother, with great gravity, sitting nursing the little elf, with her hand behind it, and the older children skipping up and down the walls, and playing all sorts of antic tricks with one another. They made their escape with the utmost rapidity, leaping over rocks and precipices with great agility, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... was the darling of my aunt, the tenderly-beloved of my father, the pet and plaything of the old domestics, the "young master" of the farm-labourers, before whom I played many a lordly antic, assuming a sort of authority which sat oddly enough, I doubt not, on such a baby as ...
— The Half-Brothers • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of these antic spirits (approaching them always from the naturalistic side), Maxwell deduces certain helpful rules: 'Use a small room,' he says, 'and have it warm. Medium and sitters must not have cold ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... And what avails reviling? Such pitch without defiling Can "Prince" or "Patriot" touch? This quicksand unromantic Closes on him, the Antic, Whose hands with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... found the subject too absorbing to allow of his giving much attention to old Father Antic the Law. At any rate, he was never called to the Bar, and posterity cannot be too thankful that his great mind was not lost in 'the abyss of legal eminence' which has received so many men who might have adorned their country. ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... value me the more when he found me again. I have wondered that some of my comrades did not recognize in me the stray sheep that was cried; but they were all, no doubt, occupied by their own concerns. They were all laboring seriously in their antic vocations, for folly was a mere trade with the most of them, and they often grinned and capered with heavy hearts. With me, on the contrary, it was all real. I acted con amore, and rattled and laughed from the irrepressible ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... do something to express my exultation, so I walked over to a bronze statue of Bacchus, about my size—that is, height—put my hat—which I had been carrying under my arm—on his head, cut a few capers in an entirely new and equally antic step, and then drew back and knocked that Bacchus down. Jane thought I had gone stark mad, and her eyes grew big with wonder, but I walked proudly back to her after my victory over Bacchus, and reassured her—with a ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... Dream, His faith new-stablished would stand, and be No longer vext of this infirmity. And so that night, ere lying down to sleep, There came on him, half making him to weep And half to laugh that such a thing should be, A mad conceit and antic fantasy (And yet more sad than merry was the whim) To crave this boon of Sleep, beseeching him To send the dream of dreams most coveted. And ere he lay him down upon his bed, A soft sweet song was ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... as background, and a showman to talk for all the characters. Still better puppets are doll heads and arms of various sorts, dressed in flowing robes and provided with holes for two fingers and a thumb of the operator, who moves them from below. They can be made to dance and antic as you like on a stage above the showman's head, as Punch and Judy have always done. The more elaborate marionettes are worked with strings from above, so that they can open and close their mouths and otherwise act most realistically; these ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... This was an antic fellow, half pedlar and half mountebank, who travelled about the country on foot to vend hones, strops, razors, washballs, harness-paste, medicine for dogs and horses, cheap perfumery, cosmetics, and such-like wares, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... example, were not to be resisted. A man made of putty must have danced, and even Dudgeon showed himself to be a human being. Higher and higher were the capers that we cut; the moon repeated in shadow our antic footsteps and gestures; and it came over my mind of a sudden—really like balm—what appearance of man I was dancing with, what a long bilious countenance he had shown under his shaven pate, and what a world of trouble the rascal had given ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with tearful pleasantness. "If you'll do as I say, I'll do as you say; and that will be final proof to you that I believe you're"—she fell back a step, laughingly—"'the clean sand!'" She thought the man would have perpetrated some small antic; but he did not. He did not even smile, but lifted the rein a little till the horse stepped forward, and, putting out his ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... my lord Sharif al-Din here for nine hundred and fifty gold pieces?" She looked at him and, seeing him to be an old man with a dyed beard, said to the broker, "Art thou silly, that thou wouldst sell me to this worn out Father Antic? Am I cotton refuse or threadbare rags that thou marchest me about from greybeard to greybeard, each like a wall ready to fall or an Ifrit smitten down of a fire-ball? As for the first, the poet had him in mind when he ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... Tom Dowdle, the ragman, and I'm for any man that insults me! log-leg or leather-breeches, green-shirt or blanket-coat, land-trotter or river-roller,—I'm the man for a massacree!" Then giving himself a twirl upon his foot that would have done credit to a dancing-master, he proceeded to other antic demonstrations of hostility, which when performed in after years on the banks of the Lower Mississippi, by himself and his worthy imitators, were, we suspect, the cause of their receiving the name of the mighty alligator. It is said, by naturalists, of this monstrous ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... Lohengrin, Salome, Pan, Perseus enchant, their plastic yet metallic prose denotes the unique artist; above all they are modern, they graze the hem of the contemporaneous. From the sublime to the arabesque is but a semitone in his antic mind. Undulating in his desire to escape the automatic, doubting even his own scepticism, Jules Laforgue is a Hamlet a rebours. ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... the Old Antic, seems utterly frantic, absurdly romantic and maundering; And Cool Common Sense has gone dotty and dense, in dim deserts of Sentiment wandering. Now Reason and Right, hydrocephalous quite, are both Della-Cruscan and drivelling, Life (barring the fun) like "The Mulberry One," seems a mixture of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... left, whence flowed the hemorrhage that made him die, has been broken by a shell; it is twisted into a circle, dislocated, slack, invertebrate. A mournful irony has invested the last writhe of his agony with the appearance of a clown's antic. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... the two kinds of kittens, but what difference always puzzled her. She would clean up a kitten and comb it slick, then turn to one of the squirrels and wash it, but rarely, if ever, completing the work because of some disconcerting un-catlike antic. As the squirrels grew older they also grew friskier, and soon took the washing as the signal for a frolic. As well try to wash a bubble. They were bundles of live springs, twisting out of her ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... admiration and amazement of beholders. At first, they made no charges against any person, but confined themselves to strange actions, exclamations, and contortions. They would creep into holes, and under benches and chairs, put themselves into odd and unnatural postures, make wild and antic gestures, and utter incoherent and unintelligible sounds. They would be seized with spasms, drop insensible to the floor, or writhe in agony, suffering dreadful tortures, and uttering loud and piercing outcries. The attention of the families in which they held their meetings was called to their ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... CIP: antic'ipate; eman'cipate (Lat. n. ma'nus, hand), literally, to take away from the hand of an owner, to free; incip'ient; munic'ipal (Lat. n. municip'ium, a free town; mu'nia, official duties, and cap'ere, to take); partic'ipate (Lat. n. pars, par'tis, a part); par'ticiple; prince ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... vain joys in which their wills consume Such powers of wit and soul as are of force To raise their beings to eternity, May be converted on works fitting men; And for the practice of a forced look, An antic gesture, or a fustian phrase, Study the native frame of a true heart, An inward comeliness of bounty, knowledge, And spirit that may conform them actually To God's high figures, which they ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... "It has been conjectured that the actors of the Mysteries of Religion were mummers, a word signifying one who makes and disguises himself to play the fool without speaking. They were dressed in an antic manner, dancing, mimicking, and showing postures." Mr. Wright also observes (in his work on the Mystery Plays of Chester, published by the Shakespearean Society) that the "chief effect seems to have been caused by ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent |
