"Harlequin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... (glancing at DOCTOR). I would it were the wand of Harlequin, To change his temper ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... sausages, or a slice of agnello, and enjoy the delicious air that breathes from the mountains. The old cardinals descend from their gilded carriages, and, accompanied by one of their household and followed by their ever-present lackeys in harlequin liveries, totter along on foot with swollen ankles, lifting their broad red hats to the passers-by who salute them, and pausing constantly in their discourse to enforce a phrase or take a pinch of snuff. Files of scholars from the Propaganda ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... interested motive by others of the tribe. A subsequent correspondent of Mr. Hone, however, points out the antiquity of the custom, and shows that it could be traced back long before the year 1782, when it was introduced into a pantomime called Harlequin Teague; or, the Giant's Causeway, which was performed at the Haymarket on Saturday, August 17, 1782. One of the scenes was Highgate, where, in the 'parlour' of a public house, the ceremony was performed. ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... renegade Mnyamwezi, gave ear to the business. With most of the Wagogo chiefs lives a Mnyamwezi, as their right-hand man, prime minister, counsellor, executioner, ready man at all things save the general good; a sort of harlequin Unyamwezi, who is such an intriguing, restless, unsatisfied person, that as soon as one hears that this kind of man forms one of and the chief of a Mgogo sultan's council, one feels very much tempted to do damage to his ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... good conduct, I can say, like Harlequin, that 'tis just as it is with you; and the Turkish ladies don't commit one sin the less for not being Christians. Now I am a little acquainted with their ways, I cannot forbear admiring either the exemplary discretion or extreme stupidity of all the writers that have given accounts ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... the climbing-perch. I heard the narrative of a siluris tossed out of a volcano, and talked with a haddock which produced at a birth more young than there are men upon the globe. I have noted the harlequin-angler, which lived three weeks in Amsterdam, hopping about on his fins like a toad; the sucking-fish which adhered to Marc Antony's galley and held it fast; the horned-fish (fil en dos) which the savages discard from their nets in terror and ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... gay company is gone who have made her sides split with their laughter. Here is Harlequin's dress, lying in one of the wardrooms, but there is nobody to dance Harlequin's dances. "Here is a lovely clear day,—surely to-day they will come on deck and take a meridian!" No, nobody comes. The sun grows hot on the decks; but it is ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... of female beauty, but their worship was by no means Platonic; it pursued quite material ends. And these material ends were pursued by those also with whom Christian mysticism, coupled with natural sensuousness, made a unique combination. Even that harlequin among the worshippers of "lovely women," Ulrich von Lichtenstein, of laughable memory, remained Platonic only so long as he had to. At bottom the "Minnedienst" was the apotheosis of the best beloved—at the expense of the own ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... I fear you will find too long, harlequinades would seem rather to be derived from the wanton pranks of sprites than the coarse gambols of buffoons; and this derivation would certainly best agree with the accepted character of the modern harlequin. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... were a white rose Columbine And I were a Harlequin, I'd leap and sway on my spangled hips And blow you a kiss with my finger tips To woo a smile to your petal lips At ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... are who never smile; Their foreheads still unsmooth'd the while, Some lambent flame of mirth will play, That wins the easy heart away; Such only choose in prose or rhyme A bristling pomp,—they call sublime! I blush not to like Harlequin, Would he but talk,—and all his kin. Yes, there are times, and there are places, When flams and old wives' tales ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... passed, and for the same reasons, to the vaudeville, and did her regular "stunts" along with the singers, the dancers, the harlequin's, acrobats, and the burnt cork humorists. The writer of this has seen her in one of these performances, and considers it entirely unique ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... bright, Who was blest as bird could be, 65 Feeding in the apple-tree; Made such wanton spoil and rout, Turning blossoms inside out; Hung—head pointing towards the ground—[7] Fluttered, perched, into a round 70 Bound himself, and then unbound; Lithest, gaudiest Harlequin! Prettiest tumbler ever seen! Light of heart and light of limb; What is now become of Him? 75 Lambs, that through the mountains went Frisking, bleating merriment, When the year was in its prime, They are sobered by this time. If you look to vale or [8] hill, 80 If you listen, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... a frequent figure in Gillray's political caricatures; but perhaps he was never more happily treated than when he enters as Harlequin, armed with a goose quill, and assisted by John Kemble and the famous Mrs. Siddons, in "Blowing up the Pic Nics." To the same class and subject of satire belongs the "Pic Nic Orchestra" and "Dilettante Theatre"—this last a Green-room scene which seems reminiscent of Hogarth's print of a ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... Woden in Scandinavia; and when his worship as a god dies out Odin survives (as Dr. Dasent has proved) in the Wild Huntsman of the Hartz, and in the Robin Hood (Oodin) of popular legend. The Hellequin of France becomes the Harlequin of our pantomimes. William Tell never existed; he is a myth; a survival of the sun-god Apollo, Indra, who was worshipped on the altars ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... million—a mate who cheered and inspired. Every bit of that! She would presently see the real values of things; Charlie Menocal's monkey tricks would no longer amuse her, and she would perceive what a shallow harlequin he was, while she would comprehend Gretzinger's vicious, unprincipled sophistry and turn in disgust from the man. She was inexperienced, ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... compare him with a medley host of personages: "within nine years," as he playfully records, "to Rousseau, Goethe, Young, Aretino, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, Satan, Shakespeare, Buonaparte, Tiberius, AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Harlequin, Henry VIII., Mirabeau, Michael Angelo, Diogenes, Milton, Alfieri, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... Venice the last summer, and taking Bergamo in my way homeward to England, it was my hap, sojourning there some four or five days, to light in fellowship with that famous Francattip Harlequin, who, perceiving me to be an Englishman by my habit and speech, asked me many particulars of the order and manner of our plays, which he termed by the name of representations. Amongst other talk he enquired of me if I knew any such Parabolano here in London as Signior Chiarlatano Kempino. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... with which the fireplaces were decorated; wherein sundry passages of Scripture were piously portrayed. Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage; Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet; and Jonah appeared most manfully leaping from the whale's mouth, like Harlequin through ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... hear this tragical genius complaining of the great mischief Andromache had done him. What was that? Why, she made him laugh. The poor gentleman's sufferings put me in mind of Harlequin's case, who was tickled to death. He tells us soon after, through a small mistake of sorrow for rage, that during the whole action he was so very sorry, that he thinks he could have attacked half a ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... seized Packy, or some stage in the game made such action desirable, he would leap the barrier, and jumping up and down like a harlequin in front of the bleacher benches, start his cohort into a combined school yell that must make the hot blood leap through the veins of everyone who called Chester his ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... things about her! I know how she appears—she likes admiration. But the admiration in the world which she would most delight in just now would be yours. She plays with Captain Lovelock as a child does with a wooden harlequin, she pulls a string and he throws up his arms and legs. She has about as much intention of eloping with him as a little girl might have of eloping with a pasteboard Jim Crow. If you were to have a frank explanation with her, Blanche would very soon throw Jim Crow out of the window. I very humbly ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... me sigh for mine own cost, Nor count its loss, for mine annoy, Nor say my stubbornness hath lost A paradise of dainty joy: I'll not believe thee, till I know That reason turns thy pampered ape, And acts thy harlequin, to show That care's in ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... I have no vacancy in my own company at present; but would you be willing to take a part in my Christmas pantomime? I may say that I myself began life as harlequin." ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... more than his part? The rest is vanity and vexation of spirit. We look with jealous and grudging eyes at all those qualifications which are not essential; first, because they are superfluous, and next, because we suspect they will be prejudicial. Why does Mr. Kean play all those harlequin tricks of singing, dancing, fencing, etc.? They say, 'It is for his benefit.' It is not for his reputation. Garrick indeed shone equally in comedy and tragedy. But he was first, not second-rate in both. There is not a greater impertinence ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... humour. The intrigue of Willmore and La Nuche, together with the jocantries of the inimitable Blunt, Nick Fetherfool, and the antique Petronella Elenora, are all alive with the genius of Astrea, although it may be possibly objected that some of the episodes with the two Monsters and the pranks of Harlequin are apt to trench a little too nearly on the realm ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... cruel! Who'd be Prime Minister? to starve and toil, And fret and fume in an eternal coil. But yet, I would not, for a hundred dollar Have missed the sight of her rampagious choler; I was rejoiced my turn had come to grin, Just as folks do at me when Harlequin Before my nose runs off with Columbine, ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... halls," which are all paint and canvas; and the "dazzling splendours," which are gas and oil; and the "magic transformations," which are done with ropes and pulleys; and the "brilliant elves," who are poor little children out of the next foul alley; and the harlequin and clown, who through all their fun are thinking wearily over the old debts which they must pay, and the hungry mouths at home which they must feed: and so, having thought it all wondrously glorious, ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... inexhaustible wit and vivacity that lights his clear and subtle intellect. "He is a treasure on rainy days," says Diderot. "If they made him at the toy shops everybody would want one for the country." "He was the nicest little harlequin that Italy has produced," says Marmontel, "but upon the shoulders of this harlequin was the head of a Machiavelli. Epicurean in his philosophy and with a melancholy soul, seeing everything on the ridiculous ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... Cabbage with Sausages Cabbages, Harlequin Cake, Mocha Calf's Liver a la Bourgeoise Carbonade, Flemish Carbonade of Flanders Carbonades done with Beer Carrots, Belgian " Brussels " Flemish " Stuffed Carrots and Eggs Cauliflower a la Reine Elizabeth Cauliflower and Shrimps Cauliflower, ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various
... have perhaps the first germ of the Commedia dell' arte, the improvisatory farce with standing masks. A striking affinity between the latter and the Atellanae consists in the employment of dialects to produce a ludicrous effect. But how would Harlequin and Pulcinello be astonished were they to be told that they descended in a direct line from the buffoons of the ancient Romans, and even from the Oscans!—With what drollery would they requite the labours of the antiquarian ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... of summer. In the open spaces on the slope, beyond the farthest shadow-reach of the manzanita, poised the mariposa lilies, like so many flights of jewelled moths suddenly arrested and on the verge of trembling into flight again. Here and there that woods harlequin, the madrone, permitting itself to be caught in the act of changing its pea-green trunk to madder-red, breathed its fragrance into the air from great clusters of waxen bells. Creamy white were these bells, shaped like lilies-of-the-valley, with the sweetness of perfume ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... town at Christmas-time, And braves its icy breath, To play in that favourite pantomime, Harlequin Life and Death. ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... things ready for our outing." But afterwards—when the boy had gone and he was alone in the room—he walked back to the potted rose bush and touched its buds lovingly, and stood leaning over it and saying nothing for a long time. And though the necktie that hung on its branches was a harlequin thing of red and green and violent purple, when he came to dress for that promised outing he put it on and adjusted it as tenderly, wore it as proudly as ever knight of old wore the colours ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... to remain with her over Christmas. I longed to see the pantomime, having heard much from my cousins and from Leo of its delights—and of the harlequin, columbine, and clown. But my father wanted to be at home again, and he took me and Rubens and Nurse Bundle with him at ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... length on the sweet-scented grass and gasping in company with my first salmon caught, played and landed on an eight-ounce rod. My hands were cut and bleeding, I was dripping with sweat, spangled like a harlequin with scales, water from my waist down, nose peeled by the sun, but utterly, supremely, and ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... his followers; an officer and two soldiers in Roman attire; the three Magi, in Oriental garb, a child, and "two comical figures—the paiata (the clown) and the mosul, or old man, the former in harlequin accoutrement, the latter with a mask on his face, a long beard, a hunch on his back, and dressed in a sheepskin with the wool on the outside. The plot of the play is quite simple. The officer brings the news that three strange men have been caught, ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... was a clown, who clever was found. D was a dunce, and Harlequin bound, E was soon formed with the aid of a child, F in a ...
— Funny Alphabet - Uncle Franks' Series • Edward P. Cogger
... the amputated limbs yet quivering, to the fever, and the revel of death. Has he the enigma of modern times to solve, Napoleon I? In Napoleon, who in the sphere of action is to Modern History what Shakespeare is in the sphere of art, Tolstoi sees no more than the clerical harlequin, Abbe de Pradt, sees, a stage conqueror, a charlatan devoured by vanity, without greatness, dignity, without genius for war yet impatient of peace, shallow of intellect, tricking and tricked by all around him, dooming myriads to death for the amusement ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... but do not wish to confirm it. There, Minha, you can take your choice between the gray mosquito, the hairy mosquito, the white-clawed mosquito, the dwarf mosquito, the trumpeter, the little fifer, the urtiquis, the harlequin, the big black, and the red of the woods; or rather they make take their choice of you for a little repast, and you will come back hardly recognizable! I fancy these bloodthirsty diptera guard the Brazilian frontier considerably ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... eyes, amongst whom were several gumbie—men and flute—players, and John Canoes, as the negro Jack Pudding is called; the latter distinguishable by wearing white false faces, and enormous shocks of horsehair, fastened on to their woolly pates. Their character hovers somewhere between that of a harlequin and a clown, as they dance about, and thread through the negro groups, quizzing the women and slapping the men; and at Christmas time, the grand negro carnival, they don't confine their practical jokes to their own colour, but take all manner of comical liberties with ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... violence for she was almost thrown into a corner of the back seat. Dorrimore followed, turned, shut the door and almost immediately the carriage moved. The coachman must have sprung to his box with the quickness of a harlequin. The whip cracked and the horses broke ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... in each politer Age, Triumphant, rear'd the Trophies of the Stage: But only Farce, and Shew, will now go down, And Harlequin's ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... that night a harlequin tangle, and, above all, meaningless—yes, dispiritedly without sense. John, somehow, seemed displeased with her, as if she were responsible for Dickie's breaks. She laughed again as she thought of the sow story, and the way the ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... home from over the lines new reports of fantastic creations encountered amid the clouds. The gayest feathered songsters that came north with the Spring did not rival the variegated hues of the harlequin birds that rose daily from the German airdromes. The coming of this fantastic order of things in the air was first heralded by a squadron of scarlet German planes. It then was noticed that some of the enemy machines were striped about the ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... those parodies of which he is such an admitted master. It seems only decent to defer, in this place, to the author's own feeling in the matter. Mr. Squire is the author of The Birds and Other Poems and Poems: Second Series. My present choice is the beginning and the close of the poem, "Harlequin"—which is in ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... see here, behind the ostensible scenery, all the crooked working of the machinery developed and laid open to the world. You now see by what secret movement the master of the mechanism has conducted the great Indian opera,—an opera of fraud, deceptions, and harlequin tricks. You have it all laid open before you. The ostensible scene is drawn aside; it has vanished from your sight. All the strutting signors, and all the soft signoras are gone; and instead of a brilliant spectacle of descending chariots, gods, goddesses, sun, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... vast puppet-show; and the noisy gaiety of the crowded streets almost stunned me. One of the first objects we encountered was a barouche full of Turks and Sultanas, driven by an old woman in a tawdry court dress as coachman; while a merry-andrew and a harlequin capered behind as footmen. Owing to the immense size of the city, and the difficulty of making our way through the motley throng of masks, beggars, lazzaroni, eating-stalls, carts and carriages, we were nearly three hours traversing ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... braggart and fool, most valiant in words, but constantly being drubbed by Harlequin. Scaramouch is a common character in Italian farce, originally meant in ridicule of the Spanish don, and therefore dressed in Spanish costume. Our clown is an imbecile old idiot, and wholly unlike the dashing poltroon of Italian pantomime. The best "Scaramouches" that ever lived ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... married the Lady Henrietta, daughter of James, Earl of Waldegrave, and widow of Lord Edward Herbert, second son of the Marquis of Powis. In 1759 he took as his second wife Charlotte, daughter of John Rich, the harlequin."—Rockstro. ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... consecrated ground, yet I own I was not a little scandalized at the introduction of theatrical airs and gestures into a place set apart to remind us of the saddest realities. Going nearer, I found inscribed under this harlequin ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... "he takes life so strangely; at times tremendously seriously; at others as if it meant nothing at all. Now he plays the solemn and mysterious, and again he assumes the role of the irresponsible harlequin. I don't think ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... the black figure of the old gentleman coming after him with long, swinging strides like a man winning a mile race. But the head upon that bounding body was still pale, grave and professional, like the head of a lecturer upon the body of a harlequin. ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... of trite twaddle and trapessing tittle-tattle.... Like everything that falls from her pen, it is pert, shallow, and conceited, a farrago of ignorance, indecency, and blasphemy, a tag-rag and bob-tail style of writing—like a harlequin's jacket.' ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... to colour, on the principle that, like a good horse, a good Great Dane cannot be a bad colour. The English clubs, however, have now in this particular also adopted the German standard. The orthodox colours are brindle, fawn, blue, black, and harlequin. In the brindle dogs the ground colour should be any shade from light yellow to dark red-yellow on which the brindle appears in darker stripes. The harlequins have on a pure white ground fairly large black patches, which must be of irregular shape, broken up ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... know it. In the catalogue it is labeled "Actress"—just "Actress." A young woman in the costume of a harlequin, over which she has draped a Greek toga, while at her feet lie a confused heap of masks. With her staring glance turned toward the spectators, she stands there all alone on an empty, dusky stage, surrounded by odd pieces of ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... inspiration, rapid of march, nervous of phrase, apt of metaphor, and moving in effect, he would be delightful to the general, and that without sacrificing on the vile and filthy altar of popularity. Here he is successfully himself, and what more is there to say? You clap for Harlequin, and you kneel to Apollo. Mr. Meredith doubles the parts, and is irresistible in both. Such fire, such vision, such energy on the one hand and on the other such agility and athletic grace are not often found ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... good and bad, were scarce during the whole time I was up, and I was not altogether surprised when Fred chose me to play in the Seniors' Match. In that game I succeeded in getting a few wickets, and soon afterwards I got my Harlequin cap, which pleased me hugely. I am sure that had I not been such an outrageously bad batsman, Fred would have liked to try me for the 'Varsity, but there happened to be another man who did not bowl any worse than I did and who batted much better. So I was left to bowl for the ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... with one harlequin bound leaped out of its century backwards into the region of quagmires and fogs and mirages, from which true medical science was painfully emerging. All the trumpery of exploded pharmacopoeias was revived ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... of literature, no other sort of book admits of such variety of topics, style, and treatment as the novel. As diverse in talent and quality as the story-teller himself,—now harlequin, now gossip, now threnodist,—with weird ghostliness, moping melancholy, uncouth laughter, or gentle serious smile,—now relating the story, with childlike interest in it, now with a good heart and now with a bad heart ridiculing ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... humourists of the past age, it is of the men and of their lives, rather than of their books, that I ask permission to speak to you; and in doing so, you are aware that I cannot hope to entertain you with a merely humourous or facetious story. Harlequin without his mask is known to present a very sober countenance, and was himself, the story goes, the melancholy patient whom the Doctor advised to go and see Harlequin—a man full of cares and perplexities like the rest of us, whose Self must always ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... light- handed and adroit. The nature of an American car is no doubt known to all men. It looks as far removed from all bed-room accommodation as the baker's barrow does from the steam engine into which it is to be converted by Harlequin's wand. But the negro goes to work much more quietly than the Harlequin; and for every four seats in the railway car he builds up four beds almost as quickly as the hero of the pantomime goes through his performance. The great glory of the Americans is in their wondrous contrivances— ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... Grasshopper was performing antics which made him not easily distinguishable from the Frog, and the Spider was actually descending by a rope from the balusters, while his mother, standing somewhat aghast, breathed a hope that 'poor Harlequin's' fall was not part of the programme. But she did not interfere, having trust in the gymnastics that were studied at school by Jasper, who had been beguiled into the game ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fairy," said Columbine to Pierrot. Pierrot only stared in the sky and laughed inanely. "If you persist in slighting me like this," she whispered in his ear, in a whisper which was like a hiss, "I will abandon you for ever. I will give my heart to Harlequin, and you shall never see me again." But Pierrot continued to stare at the sky, and laughed once more inanely. Then Columbine got up, her eyes flashing with rage; taking Harlequin by the arm she dragged him swiftly away. They danced across the grass ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... found, hoisted into one of those empty niches of the old Hotel de Ville, sketching the scene to the life, but with a kind of grace—a marvellous tact of omission, as my father pointed out to us, in dealing with the vulgar reality seen from one's own window—which has made trite old Harlequin, Clown, and Columbine, seem like people in some fairyland; or like infinitely clever tragic actors, who, for the humour of the thing, have put on motley for once, and are able to throw a world of serious ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... and other decorations, he exhibited a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses, or some other fabulous writer. Between the pauses, or acts, of this serious, representation he interwove a comic fable; consisting chiefly of the courtship of Harlequin and Columbine, with a variety of surprizing adventures and tricks, which were produced by the magic wand of Harlequin; such as the sudden transformation of palaces and temples to huts and cottages, of men and women into wheelbarrows and joint stools, ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... in a harlequin jacket, with a bone, or what the painter denominates a baton, in the right hand, is generally considered designed for Mrs. Mapp, a masculine woman, daughter to one Wallin, a bone-setter at Hindon, in Wiltshire. ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... weakness of their nature. But why may not nature show itself in tragedy, as well as in comedy or farce? We see persons not ashamed to laugh loudly at the humour of a Falstaff,—or the tricks of a harlequin; and why should not the tear be equally allowed to flow for the misfortunes of a Juliet, or the forlornness of an Ophelia?" Sir Richard Steele records on this subject a saying of Mr. Wilks the actor, as just as it was polite. Being told in the green-room that there was a general ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... police, and say: "Would you like to go back to Italy? Here is a steamer ticket. A boat sails for Genoa tomorrow. And here is a thousand dollars. It will buy you a vineyard in Sicily. Go home and bid the signora get ready." And then to disappear once more, like Harlequin, to flash your wand in some other corner of the human multitude. Oh, there would be fun for one's money, something worth while having ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... upon the little platform that represented a stage bounded a sort of anomalous being, supple and charming, in the traditional dress of Pierrot, whom the English vulgarize and call Harlequin. He had white camellias instead of buttons on his loose white jacket, and the bright eyes of Wanda shone out from his red-and-white face. He held a mandolin, and imitated the most charming of serenades, before a make-believe window, which, being opened by a white, round ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... their gambling lords, their black-leg baronets, their insolvent honourables, and the seedy set of Chevaliers Diddlerowski and Counts Scaramouchi, who caper on the platform outside for their living? The populace would pelt these harlequin horse-jockeys of fashionable life off their stage, if there was nothing better to be seen inside; but it fortunately happens that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... have that long string," said W, "but he breaks down badly here and there. Where's his six-foot-six left-handed bowler and bat? He hasn't got one. I have, though, in WOOLLEY. And where's his master of the game, practical and theoretical, in a harlequin cap? The wisest captain any county ever had and the most enthusiastic and stimulating? In short, where is H's P.F. WARNER, whom we're all so sorry to lose, but who had such a glorious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... said the lazzarone at last, placing his hand upon the side of the barouche, and jumping out as lightly as a harlequin. 'Pardon me, Eccellenza, but I must ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... again. Devil take it, you have an awkward way of playing harlequin when you're not wanted! Now to come blundering in upon a lady and her friend is— Well, not the best of form. Better drop it before it becomes a ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... contrary to Tait's discreet, usual habit, had been left open. He vanished through it with harlequin-like agility as a terrible, white-faced black figure seemed ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... was looking up at a window, with a couple of sooty scarlet geraniums in it. This was the court where Dame Dutton dwelt. He glided up her narrow stair and let himself in by the latch; and with his cane made a smacking like a harlequin's sword upon the old woman's deal table, crying: 'Mrs. Dutton; Mrs. Dutton. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Foreign Office, again, one still less knows. Seizures of Sapienza, and the like sudden appearances of Britain in the character of Hercules-Harlequin, waving, with big bully-voice, her huge sword-of-sharpness over field-mice, and in the air making horrid circles (horrid catherine-wheels and death-disks of metallic terror from said huge sword), to see how they will ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... in my veins. Oh! for a Richard's voice to catch the theme: 'Give me another horse! bind up my wounds! — soft — 'twas but a dream.' Aye, 'twas but a dream, for now there's no retreating: 25 If I cease Harlequin, I cease from eating. 'Twas thus that Aesop's stag, a creature blameless, Yet something vain, like one that shall be nameless, Once on the margin of a fountain stood, And cavill'd at his image in the flood. 30 'The ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... scorching glance of the two darkest eyes it ever was my fortune to behold, as the beauteous Selina looked up from the perusal of her handkerchief hem. It was a pity that the other features were not corresponding; for the nose was flat, and the mouth of such dimensions, that a Harlequin might have jumped down it with impunity—but the eyes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... that though not apparently belonging to the Yens, but to the smaller race, he held several other offices in conjunction with this—those of cook and chamberlain, for example: his talent, however, seemed most to incline to that of court-fool or harlequin. ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... exhibition of art, and too regardless of the object, to which art should be made subservient. Dancing should never be considered as a mere display of agility and muscular power. It is then degraded to a level with Harlequin's tricks, wrestling, tumbling, or such other fashionable entertainments. The main object of the art unquestionably is, to display in full perfection the beauty and grace of the human form and movements. In so ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... indulge his tastes. It was de rigueur to conduct in either a frock or an evening coat, but if he had his own way he would vary his garb for every composer. For example, he would like to wear a harlequin's dress for STRAUSS, a full-bottomed wig and ruffles for BACH, HAYDN and GLUCK, a red tie and a cap of Liberty for SCHOeNBERG, and the uniform of a Cossack of the Ukraine for TCHAIKOVSKY. Instead of which the utmost liberty that he was allowed was a butterfly tie. He thought that members of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... and a "lord baron of Strabane" needed almost the alacrity in turning his coat of a harlequin or a modern politician! It is a comfort to know that at last, on the 16th of June 1655, he found rest, dying at Ballyfathen, "a Roman Catholic and a papist recusant." As we came back into the gardens and grounds, Lord Ernest showed me, imbedded in the earth, a huge ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... are very dull though very various. You may smoke, you may doze, you may go to the Italian comedy, as good an amusement as either of the former. This entertainment always brings in Harlequin, who is generally a magician, and in consequence of his diabolical art performs a thousand tricks on the rest of the persons of the drama, who are all fools. I have seen the pit in a roar of laughter at this humour, when with his sword he touches the glass ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... Timberlake, a romantic-minded girl of twenty with flaxen hair, imagined she could act. Mrs. Timberlake, a fat, indulgent mother, rather agreed with her. The whole idea, after a few discursive performances of Milton's "The Masque of Comus," "Pyramus and Thisbe," and an improved Harlequin and Columbine, written by one of the members, was transferred to the realm of the studios, then quartered in the New Arts Building. An artist by the name of Lane Cross, a portrait-painter, who was much less ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... "be screwed to its sticking place," when we think upon the wonderous genius of the aforesaid Thomas Britton; who, in the midst of his coal cellars, could practise upon "fiddle and flute," or collate his curious volumes; and throwing away, with the agility of a harlequin, his sombre suit of business-cloths, could put on his velvet coat and bag-wig, and receive his concert visitors, at the stair-head, with the politeness of a ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... a few minutes had been a very attentive spectator, suddenly came forward, and exclaiming, "I'll cross him though he blast me!" rushed upon the fiend, and grasping one of his horns, called out to a Harlequin who stood near him, "Harlequin! do you ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... upon the plastering with colored chalk; others were designed upon paper, and pasted on the wall. In the centre of the room sat an indescribable human figure, with its face buried in its hands. It wore an anomalous garment, slashed with various colors, like a harlequin's coat. Upon one shoulder was sewed the semblance of a door cut out of blue cloth; on the other, a crescent cut out of green. Upon the head was set a tinsel crown, amid tangles of disordered hair. Above was a huge ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... dishes which form a Provencal bill of fare; in short, if our national sirloin obtained knighthood, such a good lenten substitute as the tunny deserves canonization.[39] I cannot say so much for the dish, common enough among Frenchmen, which a well-dressed man, the harlequin to a troop of comedians, was eating in the salle-a-manger when we entered; viz. a raw artichoke with oil and vinegar. Sterne, it appears, little knew the extent of the ass's good taste, when he deprived him of this article in the Tabella ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... harlequin, fat boy, jester, funny rustic, vied with each other in mirth-provoking antics so aptly described by the circus press agent as a "merry-hodgepodge of fun-provoking, acrobatic idiosyncrasies ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... It was a harlequin crowd at Maxim's—a noisier, tenser, more hectic crowd than at the Riche. The room was gray with smoke, and everywhere she looked were gold-tipped wine bottles. Though it was still early, there was ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... natural curiosities and anatomical figures; and the proprietor put Sir Isaac Newton's head over the door for a sign. Among other prodigies was the skeleton of a whale more than seventy feet long. Donovan, a naturalist, succeeded Rackstrow (who died in 1772) with his London museum. Then, by a harlequin change, No. 197 became the office of the Albion newspaper. Charles Lamb was turned over to this journal from the Morning Post. The editor, John Fenwick, the "Bigot" of Lamb's "Essay," was a needy, sanguine man, who had purchased the paper of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... with hopes, so much the more airily magnificent as they have the less of solid matter within their grasp whereof to mould any judicious and moderate expectation of good. Thus, all the while Hepzibah was perfecting the scheme of her little shop, she had cherished an unacknowledged idea that some harlequin trick of fortune would intervene in her favor. For example, an uncle—who had sailed for India fifty years before, and never been heard of since—might yet return, and adopt her to be the comfort of his very extreme and decrepit age, and adorn her with ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... singular to find an harlequin at the court of Attila? Yet such is the origin of these buffoons. The colour of the black slaves, the strangeness of their face and manners, caused them to be sought after as excellent ministers of mirth; to complete ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... this picture is transformed—suddenly as by the shifting of a panoramic view; or, as upon the stage, the Harlequin and brilliant Columbine emerge from the sober disguisement of their dominoes. If in winter the scene might be termed rude or commonplace, it now no longer merits such titles. Nature has girded on her robe of green, and by the touch of her magical wand, has toned down ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... with suchlike warmint. At last—out of the tunnel! and now, I presume, in the caves. Here someone, gradually assuming a palpable form, emerges from somewhere out of a dark corner, and hands to each of us a long piece of wood about the length of a harlequin's bat (note, pantomime again), only that this is an inch or so thick and quite two inches wide at one end, where presently a candle is fixed by an attendant sprite,—the slave of the tallow candle,—and the wand, so to speak, tapers off towards the handle. A propos of "tapers ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... sallying into the moonlight; wherein with uncouth antics and inviting pose, they disported towards a group of trees, encircling which, and in the chequered beams beneath their boughs, he beheld them in Harlequin and Columbine-like appeals of passion, or already mated and forming for the meditated measure; appearing the very gang of Circe;—and in their midst he now observed his son, the brutish looking, cunning, and sensual Narcisse, wine-flushed ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... Pollux, and sturdy Ben Jonson enacted more wonders than when a volunteer with the army in Flanders. As to the dapper little compiler of farragos mentioned some time since, he had arrayed himself in as many patches and colors as harlequin, and there was as fierce a contention of claimants about him, as about the dead body of Patroclus. I was grieved to see many men, to whom I had been accustomed to look up with awe and reverence, fain to steal off with scarce a rag to cover their nakedness. ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... blue willow pattern." The practice, however, of using for the dessert-service plates of Worcester china painted by hand, and the execution of many of which as works of art call for our admiration as much as any enamel, created a taste for forming what are called harlequin sets, among which, if a few plates ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... forcible presentation of grave issues. The essential type of the man was presented to public gaze about two years ago, when he stood on the City Hall steps dressed from head to foot in a suit of green to review a St. Patrick's procession. He is a harlequin with the literary ambition of a Richelieu. He affects an intimacy with the stage, and has done something in the way of producing plays. He can write clearly and concisely when he will, but prefers to provoke with odd quips and far-fetched conceits. He patronizes journalists and magazine ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... were of a bright copper colour, so different from black that one had painted his thighs with black chequered lines which made his skin very much resemble the dress of a harlequin. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... a stone's-throw of the house, and he jumps like a harlequin out of my cab into another; he must be mad—that boy's got madness in him!—and carries off all the boxes—my dinner-pills, too! and keeps away the whole of the day, though he promised to go to the doctor, and had a dozen engagements with me," said Hippias, venting an enraged ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... gently, "I regret to say that another change has overtaken us. Have you ever heard of 'harlequin fate'? 'Tis a very buffoon of mischief and irony that is often permitted to dog our earthly footsteps and prevent us from becoming too content with our lot. For a time you and I, little maid, good comrades though we ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... out came the Spider, with finger so fine, To show his dexterity on the tight line. From one branch to another his Cobwebs he slung, Then quick as an arrow he darted along; But just in the middle,—Oh! shocking to tell, From his rope in an instant poor Harlequin fell. Yet he touch'd not the ground, but with talons outspread Hung suspended in air, at the end of a thread. Then the Grasshopper came with a jerk and a spring; Very long was his Leg, though but short was his Wing: He took but three leaps, and was soon out of sight, ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... yet in vain) the most ludicrous images were mixed with the most awful personations; and whatever the subject might be, however sublime, however pathetic, yet the Vice and the Devil, who are the genuine antecessors of Harlequin and the Clown, were necessary component parts. I have myself a piece of this kind, which I transcribed a few years ago at Helmstadt, in Germany, on the education of Eve's children, in which after the fall and ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... search of employment. Three years later he was sent by Prince Potemkin to superintend a great industrial establishment at Kritchev on a tributary of the Dnieper. There he was to be 'Jack-of-all-trades—building ships, like Harlequin, of odds and ends—a rope-maker, a sail-maker, a distiller, brewer, malster, tanner, glass-man, glass-grinder, potter, hemp-spinner, smith, and coppersmith.'[251] He was, that is, to transplant a fragment of ready-made ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... the pose of the most plaintive of the pastels that Lord Dungory had commissioned his favourite artist to execute in imitation of the Lady Hamilton portraits. And now, his finger on his lip, like harlequin glancing after columbine, the old gentleman, who had entered on ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... But the little harlequin is as wary a bird as he was a thorn! No sooner do we touch his head with our finger than with an audible "click" he is off on a most agile jump, which he extends with buzzing wings, and is even now perhaps aping a thorn among ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... it for a baby harlequin, this cap? Made of gray stuff, with peaks of green and black fustian, and a bedtick lining!" This description of the cap was received with shouts ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... Harlequin Circle.—An original, very entertaining, and instructive pastime, with a book giving 64 colored illustrations of the "Harlequin Circle." Put up in handsome box. ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... Here are shepherdesses with dresses looped up in paniers and garlands of roses, and shepherds in satin suits with knots of ribbons on their shepherd's crooks. Dear me, what pretty white sheep such shepherds must have in their flocks! And here are Alexander and Zarius, Pyerhus and Merope, Mahomet, Harlequin, Scapin, Blaise and Babette. They have come from everywhere, from Greece and Rome and blue distant countries, to dance with one another. It's a fine thing, a fancy dress ball, and very agreeable for an hour or two to be a great king or an illustrious princess. It has no inconveniences. ...
— Our Children - Scenes from the Country and the Town • Anatole France
... and there stood up, white and ghost- like, the stumps of old trees, the last remnants of the forests, which were slowly retreating before the axe of the settler. These fields, which had rather a harlequin aspect with their varied colours, all melted together in the far distance into an indescribable neutral tint, and ended in the dark haze of the bush, which grew over all the undulating hills. On the horizon, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... superficial observers saw only the mocking man of the world. When suddenly observed, his face always had a sad, grave aspect, and it was often hard for him to throw off this seriousness and to put on his harlequin's mask. Upon religious matters he was always reticent, but reverent. Only upon rare occasions would he discuss serious subjects at all, and only with a chosen few. In one letter which has been published he departs from his usual ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... DOMINICO, the harlequin, going to see Louis XIV. at supper, which was served in gold, fixed his eyes on a dish of partridges. The king, of whom he was a favourite, said, "Give that dish to Dominico." "And the partridges too, Sire?" said the actor. The king repeated, ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... fee what a Clock it is by one of the Dials in the Moon, as if it were no farther off than Windsor-Castle; and had he liv'd to finish the Speaking-trumpet which he had contriv'd to convey Sound thither, Harlequin's Mock-Trumpet had been a Fool to it; and it had no doubt been an admirable Experiment, to have given us a general Advantage from all their acquir'd Knowledge in those Regions, where no doubt several useful Discoveries are daily made by the Men of Thought for the Improvement ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... of the great dangers of that common foible, vanity! And yet it is the light feather that wings many a poisoned dart; it is the harlequin leader of a vile crew of evils. Generally, vanity is looked upon as merely a harmless weakness, whose only penalty is ridicule; but examine its true character, and you will find it to be one of the most dangerous, and at the same time one of ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... from a tree. Then out came the Spider, with finger so fine, To show his dexterity on the tight line. From one branch to another his cobwebs he slung, Then quick as an arrow he darted along. But just in the middle, oh, shocking to tell! From his rope in an instant poor Harlequin fell. Yet he touched not the ground, but with talons outspread, Hung suspended in air at the end of a thread. Then the Grasshopper came with a jerk and a spring; Very long was his leg, though but short was his wing; He took but three leaps, and was soon out of sight, Then chirped his own ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... very early predilection for Music; Mozart, we know, did. They say Holmes has published a very good life of M. Only think of the poor fellow not being able to sell his music latterly, getting out of fashion, so taking to drink . . . and enact Harlequin at Masquerades! When I heard Handel's Alexander's Feast at Norwich this Autumn I wondered; but when directly afterward they played Mozart's G minor Symphony, it seemed as if I had passed out of a land of savages into ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... pictures there figured, in a series of many wonderful harlequin attitudes, a certain Signor Lambetti. Very foreign was the curl of his hair and the waxen ends of his moustache; very magnificent was his physique; he wore the finest of silken tights and crimson small clothes, and medals were depicted hanging ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... determinately below its functions. But Lord John Russell is individually superior to his party. He is a man of sense, of information, and of known official experience. Now, if he, so notoriously the wise man of "her Majesty's Opposition," is capable of descending to harlequin caprices of this extreme order, the nation sees with pain, that a constitutional function of control is extinct in our present senate, and that her Majesty's Ministers must now be looked to as their own controllers. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... tragic known (Though his best part long since was done), Still on the stage desires to tarry; And he who played the Harlequin, After the jest still loads the scene, Unwilling ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... into the hall a rout of wildly gay and dancing maskers: Harlequin, Columbine, a Pig, Pantaloon, an enormously tall Ghost, Clowns, a Skeleton, Ballet-girls, Oriental Princesses, Monks, Courtiers, Turks and Jew Pedlers. The first few attempt to draw back on seeing the chairs and the four ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... and white tiles with which the fireplaces were decorated, whereon sundry passages of Scripture were piously portrayed: Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage; Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet; and Jonah appeared most manfully bouncing out of the whale, like Harlequin through a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... open country, but he calculated the danger of turning his back to the maddened horse and rider and gave it up. A sense of outrage, deeper than his anger, began to grow in him as he considered the spectacle of being forced to hop about like a harlequin, at the mercy of a stranger, and on his own land. The instinct of the landowner with his two feet planted upon his own soil welled up in him, and he whisked up the long-handed digger and took ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... Then they lay a board between two boats, and on this two of the youngest and spryest wrestle till one falls into the water.... But all the fun's gone now. When I was young, there was different sport going. That was a sight! the corporation procession with the banners and the harlequin atop, and at Shrovetide, when the butchers led about an ox decked with ribbons and carnival twigs, with a boy on his back with wings and a little shirt.... All that's past now, people are got so fine. St. Knud's Fair is not ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... there was a sudden stir and crash at the other end of the room. Fenn had upset one chair and the noise had nearly deafened him. Now chairs seemed to be falling in dozens. Bang! Bang! Crash!! (two that time). And then somebody shot through the window like a harlequin and dashed away across the lawn. Fenn could hear his footsteps thudding on the soft turf. And at the same moment other footsteps ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... of the stage are benches. The curtain is composed of two tapestries which can be drawn aside. Above a harlequin's mantle are the royal arms. There are broad steps from the stage to the hall; on either side of these steps are the ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... a story which is substantially the foundation of the slender plot of most modern scenic pantomimes preliminary to the bursting forth from their chrysalides of Harlequin, Columbine, Pantaloon, and company. A young girl, with the consent of her parents, has for some time promised her hand to an honest youth. The old mother, in despite of her word, has taken a caprice to give her daughter to another suitor. The father, though much under the sway of his spouse, ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... Augustus. It is a large circular structure somewhat after the plan of that of Hadrian, but on a much smaller scale. The interior has been cleared out, seats erected around the walls, and the whole is now a summer theatre, for the amusement of the peasantry and tradesmen. What a commentary on greatness! Harlequin playing his pranks in the tomb of an Emperor, and the spot which nations approached with reverence, resounding with the mirth of ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... with a black footman, or boatswain, or some such thing; but the world's so censorious. There's old Doctor Hoskins of Bath, who attended poor dear Drum in the quinsy; and poor dear old Fred Hoskins, the gouty General: I remember him as thin as a lath in the year '84, and as active as a harlequin, and in love with me—oh, how he was in love ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... This is the most primitive as well as most comprehensive, of all. It is the earliest, as it is the most intuitive—the smiles and frowns of the mother being the first signs understood by the infant. Indeed, if we consider for a moment that all existence is but a Pantomime, of which Time is the harlequin, changing to-day into yesterday, summer into winter, youth into old age, and life into death, and we but the clowns who bear the kicks and buffets of the scene, we cannot fail to desire the general cultivation of an art ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... short, black curls a mouth shaped like a bud reluctant to open, blew him a kiss. Then came a cue of music like an avalanche, and quicker than Harlequin's ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... stage Harlequin and Punch were as usual quarrelling with each other and threatening every ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... said the Jack, solemnly,—"I think it's going to be a patchwork quilt," but just as he was finishing this remark a sort of wriggle passed through him, and, to Dorothy's amazement, he turned into a slender Harlequin all made up of spangles ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... portly man who had passed the maturity of manhood, but active as Harlequin. He had a well-favoured countenance; fair, good-humoured, but very sly. He was dressed like the head butler of the London Tavern, and was particular as to his white waistcoats and black silk stockings, punctilious as to his knee-buckles, proud of his diamond pin; that is to say ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... from Le Pedant Joue, Act ii, 4, of Cyrano de Bergerac (1654). What is practically a translation of Les Fourberies de Scapin by Otway, was produced at the Duke's Theatre in 1677, and in the same year Ravenscroft included a great part of it in his Scaramouch a Philosopher, Harlequin a ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... company with a danseuse, how could they help being friends? If des Lupeaulx had not been a general-secretary he would certainly have been a journalist. Thus, in that fifteen years' struggle in which the harlequin sabre of epigram opened a breach by which insurrection entered the citadel, des Lupeaulx never received so ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... California had taken my place in the shallows, his fish hard held. I was up on the bank lying full length on the sweet-scented grass, gasping in company with my first salmon caught, played, and landed on an eight-ounce rod. My hands were cut and bleeding. I was dripping with sweat, spangled like harlequin with scales, wet from the waist down, nose peeled by the sun, but utterly, supremely, and consummately happy. He, the beauty, the daisy, the darling, my Salmon Bahadur, weighed twelve pounds, and I had been ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... thanks that you could, in a day like yesterday, find the moment to think of your Friends, and to employ yourself for them. [Seidlitz's attack was brisk, quite sudden, with an effect like Harlequin's sword in Pantomimes; and Gotha in every corner, especially in the Schloss below and above stairs,—dinner cooked for A, and eaten by B, in that manner,—must have been the most agitated of little Cities.] I will neglect nothing ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... lively little fellow, with a good nose for the scent of a rabbit or a hare, and, when in fit condition, is able to follow, follow, follow, if needed, from earliest dawn till the coming of night. The chase being ended, he with his companions, Harlequin and Columbine, and all the stragglers of the panting pack, will surround the tired hare, and will wait, bellowing lustily, but without molesting the quarry, till the Master appears and calls ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... in her now restored villa on Lake Como, celebrating her return by lavish charities to her poor neighbours, and by popular fetes and balls, in one of which "she danced as Columbine, wearing her lover's ear-rings, whilst Pergami, dressed as harlequin and wearing her ear-rings, ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... the Ullaloo in Ireland. In a comic theatrical entertainment, represented not long since on the Dublin stage, a chorus of old women was introduced, who set up the Irish howl round the relics of a physician, who is supposed to have fallen under the wooden sword of Harlequin. After the old women have continued their Ullaloo for a decent time, with all the necessary accompaniments of wringing their hands, wiping or rubbing their eyes with the corners of their gowns or aprons, &c. one of the mourners suddenly ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... of sweetmeats; little boys so happy, and shop-people so polite, the music at the booths, and the bustle and eagerness of the people outside, made my heart quite jump. There was Richardson, with a clown and harlequin, and such beautiful women, dressed in clothes all over gold spangles, dancing reels and waltzes, and looking so happy! There was Flint and Gyngell, with fellows tumbling over head and heels, playing such tricks—eating fire, and drawing yards of tape ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... shirt embroidered with pink boa-constrictors. 'What is it that gives travelling Snobs such a marvellous propensity to rush into a costume? Why should a man not travel in a coat, &c.? but think proper to dress himself like a harlequin in mourning? See, even young Aldermanbury, the tallow-merchant, who has just stepped on board, has got a travelling-dress gaping all over with pockets; and little Tom Tapeworm, the lawyer's clerk out ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... compelled to follow his quondam clerk, his present debtor, from court to court; had found his just claims met with well-invented but unfounded counter-claims, had seen his party shift his character of pursuer or defender, as often as Harlequin effects his transformations, till, in a chase so varied and so long, the unhappy litigant had lost substance, reputation, and almost the use of reason itself, and came before their lordships an object of thoughtless derision to the unreflecting, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Jack's fame that a pantomime entertainment, called "Harlequin Jack Sheppard," was devised by one Thurmond, and brought out with great success at Drury Lane Theatre. All the scenes were painted from nature, including the public-house that the robber frequented in Claremarket, and the condemned ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... sometimes vehemently; but with that strong sincerity which administers eloquence to even the most untaught orders of mankind, and without which the most decorated eloquence is only the wooden sword and mask of harlequin. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... dangerous career on which they had entered. 'Not so bad!' cried Blondy, when I had finished my lecture, 'not so bad.' 'But can you, in the mean time, point out to us any apartment that we can ransack? We are, you see, like Harlequin, and have more need of cash than advice;' and they left me, laughing deridingly at me. I called them back, to profess my attachment to them, and begged them not to call again at my house. 'If that is all,' said Deluc, 'we ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... in touch with some smart journalists, made free of a few newspaper offices, and welcomed in the pleasure haunts of pressmen. This life, whose dreary superficiality is covered by the glitter of universal blague, like the stupid clowning of a harlequin by the spangles of a motley costume, induced in him a Frenchified—but most un-French—cosmopolitanism, in reality a mere barren indifferentism posing as intellectual superiority. Of his own country he used to say to his French associates: "Imagine an atmosphere of opera-bouffe ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... said I, 'to have the girl called in: if you, Madam, are diverted with her, that's enough. To be sure, Pamela is a better companion for a lady, than a monkey or a harlequin: but I fear you'll set her above herself, and make her vain and pert; and that, at last, in order to support her pride, she may fall into temptations which may be fatal to herself, and ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... devotion almost converted me into a worshipper. I was awe-struck, and believed those significations to be something more than elemental fires. It was all enchantment and a dream. No such pleasure has since visited me but in dreams.—Harlequin's Invasion followed; where, I remember, the transformation of the magistrates into reverend beldams seemed to me a piece of grave historic justice, and the tailor carrying his own head to be as sober a verity as ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... seemed to favour the turkey folk against the fox. But he was no novice in the laying of sieges, and had recourse to his bag of rascally tricks. He pretended to climb the tree; stood upon his hind legs; counterfeited death; then came to life again. Harlequin himself could not have acted so many parts. He reared his tail and made it gleam in the moonshine, and practised a hundred other pleasantries, during which no turkey could have dared to go to sleep. The enemy ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine |
