"Hilarity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seeing his guests happy and jovial, and rising with exhilarated spirits from the mixed pleasures—intellectual and liberally sensual— of his Platonic banquets. Chiefly, perhaps, with a view to the sustaining of this tone of genial hilarity, he showed himself somewhat of an artist in the composition of his dinner parties. Two rules there were which he obviously observed, and I may say invariably: the first was, that the company should be miscellaneous; this for the sake of securing sufficient variety to the conversation: ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... him, and in fact there was a good deal of hilarity and some romping before the actors in the tableau could be settled in ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... that faculty of an honest laugh with him wherever he goes,—why shouldn't he? The "order of things," as he calls it, from which hilarity was excluded, would be crippled and one-sided enough. I don't believe the human gamut will be cheated of a single note after men have done breathing this fatal atmospheric mixture and die ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... space; and he thought with delight of the hour of vengeance, because he was very sure of laying his hands upon Decoud. On his left hand, Gamacho, big and hot, wiping his hairy wet face, uncovered a set of yellow fangs in a grin of stupid hilarity. On his right, Senor Fuentes, small and lean, looked on with compressed lips. The crowd stared literally open-mouthed, lost in eager stillness, as though they had expected the great guerrillero, the famous Pedrito, to begin scattering at once some sort of visible largesse. What he began ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... up for the matches, and was afraid I should frighten the servants overhead with my explosions. When the gas was lit I found the room empty, of course, and the door locked as usual. Then I half dressed and went out on to the landing, my hilarity better under control, and proceeded to go downstairs. I wished to record my sensations. I stuffed a handkerchief into my mouth so as not to scream aloud and communicate my hysterics ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... of Christmas. That day three of Benton's men had gone in the Chickamin to Roaring Springs for supplies. They had returned in mid-afternoon, and Stella guessed by the new note of hilarity in the bunkhouse that part of the supplies had been liquid. This had happened more than once since the big snow closed in. She remembered Charlie's fury at the logger who started Matt the cook on his spree, and ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... to the Rat Hole: knowing that Skipper Tommy would by that time be in from the Hook-an'-Line grounds; for the wind was blowing fair from that quarter. I found the twins pitching the catch into the stage, with great hilarity—a joyous, frolicsome pair: in happy ignorance of what impended. They gave me jolly greeting: whereupon, feeling woefully guilty, I sought the skipper in the house, where he had gone (they said) to get out of ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... and turned it around to see what was stamped on the other side. Then he almost dropped the bag in a wild fit of hilarity. ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... the American zoologist whose book has apparently aroused a great deal of hilarity in Galactic circles, admitted today that both Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History have accepted his resignation. The recent statement by a University spokesman that Professor McLeod had "besmirched the honor of Earthmen ...
— A World by the Tale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... loss to account for their excess of hilarity to-night. Though fond of drink, and meeting often in a crowd, they were few of them of a class—using his own phrase—"to give so much tongue over their liquors." The old toper and vagabond is usually a silent drinker. His amusements, when in a circle, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... unceasing and vociferous hilarity, as they were bowling along at twelve miles an hour, which Grace would have made twenty if the engine hadn't worked so queerly, she felt the sharp dig of a finger against her back, and one of the young men cried out: "Say, young chafer, ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... countenance, in which he vainly tried to recognize the features of the friend of his youth. True, the same outlines and contours were still there, but the whole face was an entirely different one. No traces of the carelessness, of the harmless hilarity of former days, were left in these features. His complexion was pale almost to sickliness; his figure, which did not rise above the middle height, was slender and bony. Upon looking at him, you seemed at first to behold a young man entirely ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... pronounced success, marked by much suppressed hilarity among the younger members of the party. Uncle James ate very heartily and seemed to enjoy everything, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... cards or fiddling and dancing. We were on one occasion engaged in the latter amusement en pleine midi—our Deputy Bourgeois being one of the party, and all of us in the highest possible glee, when lo! in the midst of our hilarity, the hall door flew open and the great man stood sternly before us. The hand-writing on the wall could scarcely have produced a more startling effect on the convivial party of old, than did this unexpected ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... waitress with the easiest politeness it was ever my lot to see. Ragged as a beggar of Murillo's, courteous as a hidalgo by Velasquez, he added a grace and an epicurism completely French. I thought him the best possible figure-head for that opulent spot, cradle of the hilarity of the world. I gave him ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... the guests agreed with Hugh, and climbed into the decorated chariot with great hilarity. Even the fastidious Miss Chase was pleased to be amused with the idea, and quietly secured the seat nearest the driver, which gentle manoeuvre having been observed by Bessie, that wilful young lady took the very last seat at the extreme end of the wagon, and devoted her entire attention ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... street. The impression which Naples actually makes, is of a city where noise and turmoil and confusion are at their very height. Carried one step further, "chaos would come again." There is the same incessant toil for gain as in London itself—as little of repose, as little of hilarity. Here is the spirit of trade without the order and method which trade should introduce. It is commerce bewildered, and passionate after pence. There are some parts of London more thickly stocked perhaps with carts ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... each night. Delighted that they had found work so quickly, they took the position in good faith. During the very first performance, however, they became frightened by the conduct of the girls who preceded them on the program and by the hilarity of the audience. They managed to escape from the dressing-room, where they were waiting their turn, and on the street appealed to the first policeman, who brought them to the Juvenile Protective Association. They were detained for several days ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... chattering,—then that long, loud call, taken up by first one, then another, as they sat about upon the naked limbs,—anon, a sort of wild, rollicking laughter, intermingled with various cries, yelps, and squeals, as if some incident had excited their mirth and ridicule. Whether this social hilarity and boisterousness is in celebration of the pairing or mating ceremony, or whether it is only a sort of annual "house-warming" common among high-holes on resuming their summer quarters, is a question upon which I reserve ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... with a merry group who were pelting one another with comfits and candied almonds. The stately Elizabeth beckoned to her maidens; but they merely curtsied to their royal mistress, without discontinuing their boisterous hilarity. Indeed, the mumming hitherto had been more in dress than manners, so little restraint had their outward disguise occasioned, or their behaviour been altered thereby. The two late comers, however, produced a change. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... little station of a rather remote market town in the west, accompanied by a light suitcase and a lively brother. It must not be supposed, however, that the brother's cheerful tone consisted entirely of chaff. He supported the new candidate with hope as well as hilarity; and at the back of his boisterous partnership there was an increasing sympathy and encouragement. Harry Fisher had always had an affection for his more quiet and eccentric brother, and was now coming more and more to have ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... she cried, with a kind of haggard hilarity, "where's my head? Me never offering you a cup of tea, and you looking so ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... dignity, we perceive the spirits of Horace greatly elevated; probably as much from the pleasure he knew Maecenas would take in the promotion of his Brother-in-law, as from the attachment himself bore to Licinius. A peculiar air of hilarity shines out in the Ode addressed to Telephus, written the evening on which this Licinius, then newly chosen Augur, gave his first supper to his Friends. The Reader will find it somewhat lavishly paraphrased in the course of this Selection. By the above Ode the ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... usual mirth and ready wit never failed him; and he kept the bar and listening by-standers in constant hilarity. He made an excellent hit during the trial of Sir George Bingham, for assault, during the tithe agitation. The General's Aide-de-Camp, Captain Berners, of the Royal Artillery, was under examination. A junior counsel asked the witness, "What is the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... the wedding festivities continued, etiquette requiring the parties to visit all who attended the dinner. On the third day the hilarity ceased, and the happy couples were left to enjoy the honeymoon with its promise of matrimonial bliss. May they have many ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... so tickled him, that he commenced to laugh, and, finding it inconvenient to do so on his legs, he sat down to indulge his humour freely. A laughing jackass perched on the fence at the side of the road heard Mr Villiers' hilarity, and, being of a convivial turn of mind itself, went off into fits of laughter also. On hearing this echo Mr Villiers tried to get up, in order to punish the man who mocked him, but, though his intentions were good, his legs were unsteady, and after one or two ineffectual ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... was prohibited without a pass signed by a justice of the peace. Travelers were held up over "holy time." Attempts were made to prevent the young people from gathering in companies on Sunday evenings after the Sabbath was legally over. Too much hilarity, though innocent, was condemned. Such restrictions were extremely distasteful to a large minority in the state, and seemed to many citizens only repeated proofs of how closely the government and the Presbyterian-Congregational church were banded together. Accordingly the Republicans began ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... moment, Miss Lavinia, who cannot distinguish a face three feet away without her lorgnette, thought she was speaking to father. Under cover of our mutual hilarity, I led her back to a seat in the study, so that Martin might recover his wits, coat, and slippers at the same time, for Miss Lavinia had stumbled over the latter and sent them coasting ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... arguments, which he supported with great ingenuity. We returned to our college on a Sunday afternoon: the peasants were dancing, and every one we met appeared gay and happy. My own spirits were high, and I bounded along with feelings of unbridled joy and hilarity. ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... looked much more distressed than rejoiced as he lumbered from his table to grasp the outstretched hand of a classmate. The opera-hat of this Mr. Richard Giddings was cocked at a rakish angle, his blue eye twinkled good cheer and youthful hilarity, and his aspect was ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... perfectly proper, and quite in the nature of things, and the dinner-table became vile and obscene. When she was forbidden to enter the church, she approved the arrangement, and the church became a scene of hilarity and bacchanalian revel. When she was forbidden to take part in literature, she thought it was not her sphere, and disdained the alphabet, and the consequence was that literature became unspeakably impure, so ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... barracks, I stated to the officer to whom I generally reported, that I was going to try and escape. He first seemed somewhat surprised, but soon broke into a laugh. Turning, he spoke laughingly to another officer, who joined in the hilarity. ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... conflagration fall, collapse uproot, eradicate skin, excoriate hate, abominate work, labor bright, brilliant hungry, famished eat, devour twisted, contorted thin, emaciated sad, lugubrious mirth, hilarity ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... art in the stable, rising from thence to the parlor) has rubbed him into comparative sleekness, cleaned his mane and tail of the accumulated burrs of many autumns, and made quite a gay nag of him. The wagon, too, in which at least two generations of boys and girls have ridden in noisy hilarity whenever they encountered it on their way to school, has been so smartly painted and varnished, that if its former owner could look down from the hill-slope where he lies, he would scarcely know his once familiar vehicle as it whirls glittering along the main road to the village. For ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Annie's crowd took little exercise except for bending their elbows now and again, and since the majority of them had been in the place fully half the day, by ten in the evening sounds of hilarity began to rise from the saloon. Solemn-faced men who had remained in their places for hour after hour, industriously putting away the red-eye, now showed symptoms of life. Some of them discovered hitherto hidden talents as singers, and they would rise from their places, remove their hats, ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... was entertaining from morning to night; and if his tone had been a little sharp when he declared that Ola was kicking up the dust, it was really because of his annoyance at being unable, by any means, to screw his brother up to the same pitch of hilarity. ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... Roseton was carried out; and the heir of Pont-Noir, having seen the remains properly bestowed in a place of safety, and a special inquest held, finished the night with the counsellors in the enjoyment of a tempered hilarity, and rose next morning the possessor of wealth so boundless, so unspeakable, that my brain reels as I endeavor to grasp at even ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to death before they awakened. The third was compelled to give the password, then bayoneted in turn. The Canadian raiders might have come to the very midst of the American army if it had not been for the jubilant hilarity of some young officers, who, capturing a cannon, uttered a wild huzza. On the instant, bugles sounded alarm; drums beat a crazy tattoo, and every man leaped from his place in the grass, hand on pistol. The next second the blackness ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... eloquence when Estenega talked; and he had come to Fort Ross only to have a conversation with his one-time enemy. As he listened to Estenega, shorn, for the time-being, of his air of dictator and watchful ambition, a man of the world taking an enthusiastic part in the hilarity of the hour, but never sacrificing his dignity by assuming the role of chief entertainer, there grew within him a dull sense of inferiority: he felt, rather than knew, that neither the city of Mexico nor gratified ambitions would give him that assured ease, that perfection ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... cannot afford to throw my good temper into the bargain. To endure with a grave face this perfectly unreasonable universe wherein destiny has locked me is undoubtedly meritorious; but to bustle about it like a caged canary, and not ever to falter in your hilarity, is heroic. Let us, by all means, not consider the obdurate if gilded barriers, but rather the lettuce and the cuttle-bone. I have my choice between becoming a corpse or a convict—a convict? ah, undoubtedly a convict, sentenced to serve out a life-term ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... reached a secluded spot, and, seating ourselves on an old fallen tree trunk, I told of my success, even to the using of his horse. Never before or since did I see Uncle Lance give way to such a fit of hilarity as he indulged in over the perfect working out of our plans. With his hat he whipped me, the ground, the log on which we sat, while his peals of laughter rang out like the reports of a rifle. In his fit of ecstasy, tears of joy ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... with shouts of laughter. The blue eyes of the Professor's daughters were swimming over with laughter-tears, their clear cheeks were flushed crimson with mirth, their father broke out in the most astonishing peals of hilarity, the students bowed their heads on their knees in excess of joy. Ursula looked round amazed, the laughter was bubbling out of her involuntarily. She looked at Gudrun. Gudrun looked at her, and the two sisters burst out ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... tumbler—altogether a genial, kindly, honest nature. Sometimes, when two or three of them happened to meet elsewhere, they would fall to wondering why the silent man sought their company, seeing he both contributed so little to the hilarity of the evening, and seemed to derive so little enjoyment from it. But I believe their company was necessary as well as the drink to enable him to elude his conscience and feast with his imagination. Was ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... of humor among the green men of Mars are widely at variance with our conceptions of incitants to merriment. The death agonies of a fellow being are, to these strange creatures provocative of the wildest hilarity, while their chief form of commonest amusement is to inflict death on their prisoners of war in ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... ended amid general hilarity, and afterward Grandma took Marjorie up to her own room, and they had ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... railroad and its future. The city by night swarmed with revelling thousands; the bands were playing, the crowds were singing, and mobs were drinking and carousing in the lower end. The cold, drizzling rain that began to blow across the city at ten o'clock did little toward checking the hilarity of the revellers. Honest citizens went to bed early, leaving the streets to the strangers from the hills and the river-lands. Not one dreamed of the ugly tragedy that was drawing to a climax as he slept the sleep of the just, the secure, ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the man who sold him his horse? Should I not hear these, and scores of such anecdotes, that show the simple life of the district, and yet have more hearty merriment in them than much finer stories in much finer places? Hard times and hard measures may have, quenched some of the ancient hilarity of the English peasant, and struck a silence into lungs that were wont to "crow like chanticleer;" yet I will not believe but that, in many a sweet and picturesque district, on many a brown moor-land, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... sounds of manifest hilarity floated down the stairs. And then dinner was announced, and he looked so good-tempered when he returned and gave Lena his arm that her spirits were again lifted up. She had never before been escorted to a meal as though it ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... at the table was without a trace of hilarity, and included only the most dignified subjects. The ladies ate mincingly, with their little fingers sticking out straight, or curved in what they considered a most ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... joy, many indeed believing Sir Nigel had requested the truce for the purpose. Sir Christopher, too, though pale and gaunt, and compelled to use the support of a cane in walking, was observed to look upon his youthful charge with all his former hilarity of mien, chastened by a kindly tenderness, which seemed indeed that of the father whom he personated; and Lady Seaton had donned a richer garb than was her wont, and stood encouragingly beside the bride. About ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... the summit level around her. But no Rand appeared. Presently she began to laugh quietly to herself. This occurred several times during her occupation, which was somewhat prolonged. The result of this meditative hilarity was summed up in a somewhat grave and thoughtful deduction as she walked slowly back to the cabin: "I do believe I'm the first woman that that ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of hilarity, and explained that the house in which his brother-in-law lived was a large wooden structure, but that he manufactured and sold india-rubber ...
— The American • Henry James
... hotel lobby where they had been accustomed to meet, each bent on displaying his note and commiserating his unsuccessful rivals, only to discover that each had a contract for all he could do, and that each had been actually bidding against nobody but himself. Great was the hilarity which covered their chagrin when they met and compared notes and looked into each others' faces. However, all were happy and satisfied. But it may be said in passing that these amiable gentlemen all united subsequently in one company, which ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... "Cut out the hilarity. This is serious business, Cappy. I can show you where you and I can waltz into the Chicago Pit, make a killing on December wheat, and escape with a sizable wad before ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... the subdued hilarity of the people on the sidewalks, Sammy managed at last to turn Scalawag's head and drive him up Buchan Terrace, and out of hearing of the droning of the band when the funeral procession started again. But it certainly was ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... through me. One said to the Ghadamsee people, "Tell the Christian to repeat, 'There's one God,'" &c. I was determined to risk an abrupt answer. I said, "This saying is prohibited to Christians." At this stop-mouth answer they burst out into a fit of hilarity. But one fellow, who wished to show some zeal, growled out, "Be off, be off." My good-natured young Touarghee quickly got up from the circle, where he had taken his seat, and smiling, took me by the arm, whispering in my ear, "Come along, Yâkob, these are brutish people." ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the midst of the general hilarity produced throughout the house by my friend's speech, I myself have been greatly solemnized by being made (as you have witnessed) the public custodian of his New Testament. (Laughter). At first I shared in your gratification at seeing ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... was invited, and nobody thought of declining that invitation. Master and men met together as equals, and the tables were heaped with good cheer. No slow and solemn feasts were those of the harvest homes. Laughter, loud and long, was heard continually, and the hilarity became somewhat tumultuous as the evening advanced. Mr. Herbert's granary was taken possession of, and the party adjourned there for a dance. The two best fiddlers of the neighbourhood were engaged for the occasion, and they struck up a lively reel The young people were quite ready ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... poem was evidently written by Wither before the Civil War troubles of the reign of Charles the First had interfered to damp the national hilarity, or check the rejoicings at ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... ten days floating down the Rhone on a raft, from Lake Bourget, and a most curious and darling kind of a trip it has been. You ought to have been along—I could have made room for you easily—and you would have found that a pedestrian tour in Europe doesn't begin with a raft-voyage for hilarity and mild adventure, and intimate contact with the unvisited native of the back settlements, and extinction from the world and newspapers, and a conscience in a state of coma, and lazy comfort, and solid happiness. In fact ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Robbins, and was occasioned by the following circumstances. During the session of 1837-8, Mr. Webster entertained a large party of friends at dinner, among them the venerable senator we have named. The evening passed off with much hilarity, enlivened with wit and sentiment, but, during the greater part of the time, Mr. Robbins maintained that grave but placid silence which was his habit. While thus apparently abstracted, someone suddenly called on him for a toast, which ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... was borne back to the village on a grass bier and the women of his house decked themselves with green leaves and arm in arm staggered and stamped through the village street in their death dance, there was a suspicion of hilarity in their song, and a more cheery step in their dance than the ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... very singular mishap. One morning, being in clumsy-fingered haste to get to a train, I summarily dropped my bonnet into the wash-bowl. This was not a very dry joke, but having mopped up the article as well as possible, I put it on and departed with usual hilarity,—still remembering what it was to have the kindest fortune in the world, and that one should not expect so rare a life as mine without ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... there was a maddening whirl, an immense and incredible hilarity, a wild fling of unleashed, burly men, an honest drunken spree. But there was also the hideous, red-eyed drunkenness that did not spring from drink; the unveiled passion, the brazen lure, the raw, corrupt, and terrible presence of bad ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... the spirit and good-humour of our friend, Monsieur Odeluc, than myself: no one more enjoys being animated by the hilarity of his temper, and carried away by the hopeful enthusiasm which makes him the dispenser of happiness that he is. But I cannot always sympathise in his bright anticipations. I own I cannot to-day. He may be right. God grant he be so! But I cannot take Monsieur Odeluc's ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... booming of wheels and the creaking of reels, the loud banter, the peals of laughter, the sweet Irish songs that filled up the pauses of the louder mirth, and the strains of the fiddle that ever and anon added to the enlivening spirit of the scene, all constituted such a full and general chorus of hilarity ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... sat, scandalized, then shouted in spite of ourselves. In the midst of our confused hilarity, the table began to oscillate; it rose slowly several inches, then moved off, rattling, toward the sitting-room door! Our jolly visitor had it on his back and was crawling ponderously but carefully away with it on his hands and knees;—and the rest ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... you wish for a tune," cried the orphan, with much hilarity, as he put the flute to his lips ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... about to ensue; all these signs, however, lessened as I neared the front, and there the contrast was complete—perfect order, men and horses—full of confidence, and it was not unusual for general hilarity, laughing, and cheering. Although cannon might be firing, the musketry clattering, and the enemy's shot hitting close, there reigned a general feeling of strength and security that bore a marked contrast to the bloody signs that had drifted rapidly to the rear; therefore, for comfort ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... England. The profession which he had graced sat easily on him. Its external marks and signs were as pleasing to his friends as were its internal comforts to himself. He was a man of much quiet mirth, full of polished wit, and on some rare occasions he could descend to the more noisy hilarity of a joke. Loved by his friends he loved all the world. He had known no care and seen no sorrow. Always intended for holy orders he had entered them without a scruple, and remained within their pale without a regret. At twenty-four he had been a deacon, at twenty- seven a priest, at thirty a rector, ...
— The Relics of General Chasse • Anthony Trollope
... of thanks, had quite the same joys and sorrows as I have come through. I have often laughed (good-naturedly, I hope) at what came under my notice, but I am not so conceited as to suppose that the hilarity ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... acknowledgments which she made, and the period when they were first disclosed. "A death-bed," says the Poet, "is a detector of the heart." Now it is certain, that the appalling facts which she states, were not primarily made in a season of hilarity, or with any design to "make money" by them, or with any expectation that they would be known to any other person than Mr. Hilliker, Mr. Tappan, and a few others at Bellevue; but when there was no anticipation that her life would be prolonged, ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... her!" said the Gutter Pup ecstatically, after they had allowed the pent-up hilarity to die out behind the sheltering hedge. "Skippy, old top, when that last bunch arrived, I thought she certainly was ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... much wealth added to the conviction, to which Philip had now arrived, that there had been no supernatural appearance, as supposed by his mother, naturally revived and composed his spirits; and he felt a reaction which amounted almost to hilarity. Seating himself on the couch, he was soon in a reverie, and as before, reverted to the lovely daughter of Mynheer Poots, indulging in various castle-buildings, all ending, as usual, when we choose for ourselves, in competence and felicity. In this pleasing occupation ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... iron-featured, weather-beaten figure, with long grey hair, and a rude suit of wolf-skin clothing, cap and moccasins. He held in his long arms a large rifle, a knife in his belt, and a powder horn slung over his side. He seemed the very patriarch of the woods, but good humored, and with his rough hilarity soon explained his ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Cathcart and Georgie; young Bradford carrying his banjo, his wonderful raiment and his air of vast leisure; Welton, the lumberman, red-faced, jolly, popular and ungrammatical. The women guarded baskets. All greeted the Ordes with various degrees of hilarity. When the noise had died down, a massive and impressive lady, heretofore unnamed, stepped forward. She held a jewelled arm straight before her, the hand drooping slightly, so that, although she was in reality of but medium stature, she gave the ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... his duty to the joke, but the Rev. Doctor, though he wore the paternal smile of a man that has begotten hilarity, was not perfectly propitiated, and pursued: "Nor to my apprehension is 'the man's laugh the comment on his wit' unchallengeably new: instances of cousinship germane to the phrase will recur to you. But it has to be noted that it was a phrase of assault; it was ostentatiously ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... When this hilarity had somewhat subsided, Princess Stephanie returned to the charge, saying, "It really is a pity that your Majesty does not know how to waltz, for the Germans are wild over waltzing, and the Empress ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... girl of four. They were merry and happy as the birds were, and with an arm of each around the waist of the other, they went hopping and skipping up and down the walks, stopping now and then to waltz, to swing round and round, and then darting away again with their hop and skip, too full of hilarity, too instinct with vitality, to be for a moment still. The flush of health was on their cheeks, and the warm light of affection in their eyes. They were confiding, affectionate, loving little children, and my heart warmed towards them, as I saw them waltzing and dancing and skipping about ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... dollars he had gone to Laredo for his regular "blowout." The duel in Valdos's had cut short his season of hilarity, but it had left him with nearly $200 for aid in the flight ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... way the windows of the cabin at times sprang into light, making a somewhat confusing beacon for the somewhat confused Arthur Wayne, who was returning from a visit to Angel's, and who had fallen into that slightly morose and irritated state which follows excessive hilarity, and is also apt ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... distinguished men partook of the entertainment, that this was their last repast, and but the prelude to a violent death. But when the cloth was removed, and the fruits, the wines, and the flowers alone remained, the conversation became animated, gay, and at times rose to hilarity. Several of the youngest men of the party, in sallies of wit and outbursts of laughter, endeavored to repel the gloom which darkened their spirits in view of death on the morrow. It was unnatural gayety, unreal, unworthy ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... had been hoped that Ali's avarice would hesitate at this high price, but he was not so easily discouraged. He give a banquet for the Lord High Commissioner, which degenerated into a shameless orgy. In the midst of this drunken hilarity the Turk and the Englishman disposed of the territory of Parga; agreeing that a fresh estimate should be made on the spot by experts chosen by both English and Turks. The result of this valuation was that the indemnity granted to the Christians was reduced by the English to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... aware that this is a sacred spot, devoted for generations past to the Black Monks of Asia, whose home this building was before it became a roadhouse for stage coaches? Never invade this spot again with your hilarity. And now we will permit you to go, marching out single file, without looking back. But first, through your leader you must give your word never to mention this meeting to anyone. If you refuse this promise ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... Clammer. If he had taken it right the incident might have passed without undue hilarity. But Clammer became absolutely wild with rage. It was well known that he was unmarried. Equally well was it seen that Gilbat had executed one of his famous tricks. Ball players were inclined to be dignified about the ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... to utter a word, the duchess, abandoning herself more and more to her hilarity, pulled down her veil, and between two renewed bursts of laughter, said to the notary, who was almost blind with rage, hatred, and fury, "I prefer, upon the whole, to ask this favor openly of the duke." She then went out, continuing ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... tree to screen it from the cutting wind; but how were we to get at it from the churchyard we could not see! There was an old man in the churchyard, brooding like a Ghoul over the graves, with a sort of grim hilarity on his face. I thought he looked hardly human; however, he was human enough to tell us the way; and presently we found ourselves in the little bare parlour. Presently the door opened, and in came a superannuated mastiff, followed by an old gentleman very like Miss Bronte, who shook ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a long time coming, so that I had an hour with Mr. Ruskin, whom I called just now a light litterateur because in these little Mornings in Florence he is for ever making his readers laugh. I remembered of course where I was, and in spite of my latent hilarity felt I had rarely got such a snubbing. I had really been enjoying the good old city of Florence, but I now learned from Mr. Ruskin that this was a scandalous waste of charity. I should have gone ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... sat down in a sort of clearing under a clump of oaks, whose shadows were lengthening in the setting sun. The men, lighting matches on the seats of their trousers, began to smoke. The women chattered and laughed and threw themselves backward in paroxysms of inane hilarity and noisy outbursts of delight. Germinie alone did not speak or laugh. She did not listen or look. Her eyes, beneath their lowered lids, were fixed upon the toes of her boots. So engrossed in thought was she that you would have said she was totally oblivious to time ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... twenty per cent. interest, and having acquired this habit, it became a principle, and such principles as these are clung to in Boston with the zeal of a miser for his hoard or of a martyr to his faith. Looking back over the years, I still recall with chagrin the quiescent hilarity of the scion of a Back Bay family whose good father had been one of the most successful and most brutal of all the "East India traders," when I suggested to him that he was fortunate in obtaining twenty per cent. ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... me—nothing but a little harmless hilarity! It was two o'clock in the morning. I wished the dance would end so I could sleep undisturbed. I envied the two children asleep on the floor. But the dance went on. The fiddle whined, its player shouted, heavy shoes clumped tirelessly on the plank floor. There ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... of them were stiff and a little "creaky in the joints," but this only added to the general hilarity, and at one o'clock the fun was still ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... leading Indian chieftains and queens of Tidewater and their retinues were invited, and attended in ceremonial regalia. That there was not only formal recognition of the important day, but much firing of arms, drinking and hilarity on the ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... shouts and shrieks of laughter, and Peters, hurriedly feeling, and finding his own tie far out of place, threw the chalk to the floor and dashed back to his seat amid a perfect bedlam of hilarity. ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... want penetration to discover, that no charm was more generally irresistible than that of easy facetiousness and flowing hilarity. He saw that diversion was more frequently welcome than improvement; that authority and seriousness were rather feared than loved; and that the grave scholar was a kind of imperious ally, hastily dismissed when his assistance was no longer necessary. He came to a sudden resolution of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... necessary, and which may cease at any moment to become mere airy trifling, and turn into something intensely and desperately serious, having a vital bearing upon the entire future lives of people; and there were deeply solemn moments, in spite of all the surface hilarity and gaiety, in many of these little out of way nooks kindly provided by beneficent ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... little drawbacks we were not a very jovial crowd forrard or aft. Not that hilarity was ever particularly noticeable among us, but just now there was a very decided sense of wrong-doing over us all, and a general fear that each of us was about to pay the penalty due to some other delinquent. But fortunately there was work to be done. Oh, blessed work! ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... or, at least, so to dominate the State that to all intents and purposes, other than their own, it did not exist. When Bakounin wrote his startling and now famous decree abolishing the State, he created no end of hilarity among the Marxists, but had Bakounin been Napoleon with his mighty army, or Morgan and Rockefeller with their great wealth, he could no doubt in some measure have carried out his wish. Without, however, either wealth or numbers behind him, Bakounin preached a polity that, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... iniquity than to execute these modern gyrations in my home," had responded Harriet's mother, Mrs. Sproul, as she finished the hundredth round on the shawl she was knitting. Harriet's report of the conversation had been received with great hilarity that evening ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... came to a little building in a corner, on entering which, we found the two statues of Tam and Sutor Wat,—ponderous stone-work enough, yet permeated in a remarkable degree with living warmth and jovial hilarity. From this part of the garden, too, we again beheld the old Brigg of Doon, over which Tam galloped in such imminent and awful peril. It is a beautiful object in the landscape, with one high, graceful arch, ivy-grown, and shadowed all over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... language a long tale of an alleged adventure of his with my father, which, inasmuch as there was no point to it, need not be rehearsed here; but I noticed that Bennoch was for some reason hugely diverted by it, and found difficulty in keeping his hilarity within due bounds of decorum, Hall's tone being all the while of the most earnest gravity. Later I took occasion to ask Bennoch the secret of his mirth; was the tale a fiction? "Not a bit of it," Bennoch replied; "it's every word of it true; but what tickled me was that it was myself and not Hall ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... Into a virgin barrel for you, drink! Tut! Tut! Just hear him! Married! Who, and when? Married, and out on business. Clever Spark! Which lie's the likeliest? Come, Max, do think." Swollen with fury, struggling with these men, Max cursed hilarity which must needs ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... and Prigs Of Britain play up some preposterous rigs, And tax e'en cosmopolite charity. But here is a business that's not to be borne; Its mead is the flail and the vial of scorn, Not chaffing or Christmas hilarity. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... at a bargain, and utterly without scruples; with a sort of hilarious, animal good nature that was in a state of constant ebullition. He was, as Richard Baxter said of a better man, "always in that state of hilarity that another would be in when he hath ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... this reply, and Monsieur D'A——, rising to depart, said, "Well, well, milord, your countrymen are great generalizers in philosophy; they reduce human actions to two grand touchstones. All hilarity, they consider the sign of a shallow mind; and all kindness, the token ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... recent serious discomposure. I am well persuaded, however, that he had not forgotten it, as that the cause of it was known among the negroes; I thought I observed evidences of it in their looks and deportment, even amid the general hilarity. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... folks takes holt to put anything through. I've got some recreations an' pastimes that ain't condoned by the pious. I gamble, an' swear, an' smoke, an' lie, an' drink. But I gamble square, swear decent an' hearty, lie for fun, but never in earnest, an' drink to a reasonable degree of hilarity. My word is good with every man, woman, an' child in the cow country. I never yet went back on a friend, nor let up on an enemy. I never took underhand advantage of man or woman, an' I know the cow business. For the rest of it, I'll go to the old man an' offer to ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... pretty large for a slim man like you.'—Great God, Stuart, if I hadn't been quick-sighted we might have stayed here all night!" He immediately fell into another fit of laughter, and so did his friend. They exchanged coats with great hilarity, and those who had gone out of the door lumbered back to learn the cause of it. The story went round from one to the other, "Why, Stuart had Jacobs's coat, and Jacobs had Stuart's coat!" Everybody went into convulsions, and the president drew out his ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... far from feeling any inclination towards displaying the hilarity which an outdoor meal is supposed to provoke. He was obliged to collect sticks, and put a senseless round-bottomed kettle on a damp reluctant fire; to himself he used much stronger adjectives in describing both; he relieved his feelings slightly ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... not believe that he was serious in his decision to cater to women's needs when he knew so little about them. His friends, too, were intensely amused, and took no pains to hide their amusement from him. They knew him to be the very opposite of "a lady's man," and when they were not convulsed with hilarity they were incredulous ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... as well as my patient. No need to tell you men, who knew him, why I was fond of him. I don't suppose any one ever came in contact with that fantastic and smiling humanity of his without loving him for it. "Immortal hilarity!" The phrase might have been coined ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... can stop behind an' help keep Garstang's temper sweet." In his hilarity he smacked the sinister-faced ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... the tricks and arts of buffoonery for which his corpulence, his age, and situation, furnish such excellent materials. This compleats the Dramatic character of Falstaff, and gives him that appearance of perfect good-nature, pleasantry, mellowness, and hilarity of mind, for which we admire and almost love him, tho' we feel certain reserves which forbid our going that length; the true reason of which is, that there will be always found a difference between mere appearances and reality: ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... into one of the gardens, and give yourself over to one band. And so it was possible to have delightful music, and see the honest Germans drink beer, and gossip in friendly fellowship and with occasional hilarity. But music we had, early and late. We expected quiet in our present quarters. The first morning, at six o'clock, we were startled by the resonant notes of a military band, that set the echoes flying between the houses, and a regiment of cavalry went clanking ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Henry Rooter loudly shouted with applausive hilarity; whereupon Herbert, rather surprised at his own effectiveness, ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... right—come in quick's you can!" So the new arrivals swoop down, spreading out their tails like fans, and dangling their feet under them, and settling in the centre of the crowd amid general hilarity. ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... the time they stopped work until after the New Year. Persons who at other times did not use strong drink thought it quite the proper thing to indulge in it rather freely during the Christmas week. There was a widespread hilarity, and a free use of guns, pistols, and gunpowder generally. The sacredness of the season seemed to have been ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... after sunset, little groups of girls began to collect round an open green space in the glade. They came quietly and with a certain sense of discipline. A stranger would have noticed that if any loud tone or undue hilarity made itself heard, it was instantly and firmly repressed by one or two who seemed in authority. That the meeting was more in the nature of a convention than a mere pleasure-gathering was evident both from the demeanour of ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... its original freshness and point. If we entered a foreign town and found a pillar like the Nelson Column, we should be surprised to learn that the hero on the top of it had been famous for his politeness and hilarity during a chronic toothache. If a procession came down the street with a brass band and a hero on a white horse, we should think it odd to be told that he had been very patient with a half-witted maiden aunt. Yet some such ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... in it, and there was a cheery, vacuous, smiling expression on his round face as he industriously smoked a cheroot and made small jokes to the friends who had come to see him off. One of them was a young woman, not very good looking perhaps, who did not join in the general hilarity; and it occurred to Lavender that the jovial man with the cheroot was perhaps cracking his little jokes to keep up her spirits. At all events, he called her "my good lass" from time to time, and patted her on the shoulder, and was very kind to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... forever!" said Joel, disappearing within the bedroom door. Luckily for the secret, Phronsie just then ran a pin sticking up on the arm of the old chair, into her finger; and Polly, while comforting her, forgot to question Joel. And then the mother came in, and though she had ill-concealed hilarity in her voice, she kept chattering and bustling around with Polly's supper to such an extent that there was no chance for a word ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... pictures, equally homely as to environment, are by no means scenes of hilarity, but rather of frugal contentment. Two similar works bear the title of Le Menage du Menuisier—the Carpenter's Home. In both, the scene is the interior of a common room devoted to work and household purposes. Joseph is seen in the rear at his bench, ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... made the coffee, Amherst threw himself down on the wonderful moss, the like of which he had never seen before and looked out over the water. An unmistakeable constraint had taken the place of the unaffected hilarity of the first ten minutes. A reaction had set in. Amherst could of course only answer to me in telling this for himself, but he divined at the time a change in his companion's ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... inmates. And we can well imagine that when all were at home, an Indian lodge was anything else than a house of silence. Of a winter evening, for instance, with the fires blazing brightly, there was a vast deal of boisterous hilarity, in which the deep guttural tones of the men and the shrill voices of the squaws were intermingled. Around the fires there were endless gossiping, story-telling, and jesting. Jokes, by no means delicate and decidedly personal, ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... dominoes, that delightfully harmless game; and down on the main deck, "for'rard" —for'rard of the chicken-coops and the cattle—we had what was called "horse billiards." Horse billiards is a fine game. It affords good, active exercise, hilarity, and consuming excitement. It is a mixture of "hop-scotch" and shuffleboard played with a crutch. A large hop-scotch diagram is marked out on the deck with chalk, and each compartment numbered. You stand off three or four ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... explain that his hilarity was not intended as a slight on the follower of the Prophet. Yet dignity demanded he should not remain dumb, so he pointed ahead, and vociferated, with a fairly accurate assumption of ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... all restraint, and laughed and laughed. After the emperor had laughed hilarity was permissible. Her ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... are going to begin, and the first herrings are shot upon the floor. The whole town to its farthest corner is now on the alert; lights shine in the small windows, and innumerable coffee-pots are set by the fires. Bustle and hilarity prevail; the herring has arrived, the herring that all have been expecting, and from which ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... is not convenient for them to go into the sea or the rivers in winter, as we used to do on the Coral Island; but then I knew from experience that a large washing-tub and a sponge do form a most pleasant substitute. The feelings of freshness, of cleanliness, of vigour, and extreme hilarity, that always followed my bathes in the sea, and even, when in England, my ablutions in the wash-tub, were so delightful that I would sooner have gone without my breakfast than without my bathe in cold water. My ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... Beam fell upon these two, who stood plainly visible in the moonlight, while he and Mrs. Petter were in shadow, his trouble was dissipated by a mischievous hilarity. ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... would have been thought quite improper. As our time was usually taken up with school through the day, and with such chores as feeding cattle and bringing wood in for the fire when we returned at night, we would sally out after supper, on moonlight nights, and, full of life and hilarity, fly over the ice, singing and shouting, and making the night ring with our merriment. There was plenty of room on the bay, and early in the season there were miles of ice, smooth as glass and clear as crystal, reflecting the stars which sparkled and glittered beneath ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... of the older girls, carrying their musical instruments, came in laughing. Laughter and talk began to make the big house hum, the nuns ruling the confusion, gathering girls into groups, suppressing the hilarity that would break out over and over again, and anxious to clear a corner and begin the actual work. A tall girl, leaning on the piano, scribbled a crude programme, murmuring to the alert-faced nun beside her ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... to convey the expression of the wish that on the 25th of December and proximate days you, and those not distantly connected with you by family ties, may have enjoyed a season of Wholesome Hilarity, and that the new period of twelve months, upon which we are about to enter, may be Suffused ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... are gleams of hilarity too; little snatches of encouragement granted even to a Governor. 'Once my Lord Abbot and I, coming down from London through the Forest, I inquired of an old woman whom we came up to, Whose wood this was, and of what manor; who the master, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... a wild hilarity I flew. Gradually, a dizziness, a lunacy, had seized upon me, till finally, up-buoyed on air, and dancing mad, I sped, I spun, with grinning teeth that chattered and gibbered, and eyeballs of distraction: for a Fear, too—most cold and dreadful—had ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... to go to the barn his head sank on his breast, his steps lagged. He wore again the expression of gloomy thought. A new fear arose in Carlen's breast. Was he mad? Had the wild hilarity of his speech and demeanor in the evening been merely a new phase of disorder in an unsettled brain? Even in this was a strange, sad comfort to Carlen. She would rather have him mad, with alternations of insane joy and gloom, ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... could not help smiling at the ingenuousness of the "permanent's" point of view. Seeing Mavis smile, the woman laughed also, but her hilarity ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... life work without having reached a play interest in it." Sully[21] deplores the increase of "agolasts" or "non-laughers" in our times in merry old England[22] every one played games; and laughter, their natural accompaniment, abounded. Queen Elizabeth's maids of honor played tag with hilarity, but the spirit of play with full abandon seems taking its departure from our overworked, serious, and tons, age. To requote Stevenson with variation, as laborari, [To labor] so ludere, et joculari orare sunt. [To play and to jest are to pray] Laughter itself, as Kuehne long ago showed, is one ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... reasonably honest too, as the world goes; a nice man to have to do with, the world went so easy with his affairs that you were sure he would make no unnecessary rubs in your own. He came now fresh and brisk to the side of the wagon, with that uncommon hilarity which people sometimes assume when they have a disagreeable matter on hand that ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... byplay; a momentary swinging of their mood to pleasantry, because they were a temperamentally cheerful lot, and laughter came to them easily, as it always does to youth and perfect mental and physical health. Their brief hilarity over Slim's misfortune did not swerve them from their purpose, nor soften the mood of them toward their adversaries. They were unsmiling and unfriendly when they reached the man from Wyoming; and, if they ever behaved like boys let out of school, they ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... with his own joy of life, set all the household in a whirl. There was nothing but cooking, festivity, dancing, hilarity, so long as he remained ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... pace grew faster. There were fun and fighting galore, and Jimmy was in his element again. Occasional qualms there were, no doubt, when he had a moment to remember how Kitty would feel about it all. But this was his day of joy—mad, rollicking, bacchanalian joy—and all the pent-up, unhallowed hilarity of the bygone months found vent in deeds more wild than had ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... guardian of the honor and dignity of the Carter family was at all disturbed by what he had heard, there was nothing in his face to indicate it. On the contrary, every wrinkle was twisted into curls and curves of hilarity. He even went so far during dinner as to correct his master in so slight a detail as to where Captain Loynes was hit in the famous duel between the colonel's ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... straight in the face, he burst out into a prolonged fit of nervous laughter, which shook him from head to foot. The young man, on his part, laughed likewise, with more or less of an effort, however, at sight of which Porphyrius's hilarity increased to such an extent that his face grew nearly crimson. At this Raskolnikoff experienced more or less aversion, which led him to forget all caution; he ceased laughing, knitting his brows, and, whilst Porphyrius gave way to his hilarity, which seemed a somewhat feigned ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... of his bliss, and surrounded by bands of immortals, the news runs through the electric wire that his earth-wife is deceased, and has come in search of him. The consternation and fear of the poor man furnishes ample occasion for amusement, hilarity, ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... day in London with Dr. Priestly. The Doctor bears glowing testimony to his admirable character. Many thought Dr. Franklin heartless, since, in view of all the horrors of a civil war, his hilarity was never interrupted. Priestly, alluding to this charge against Franklin, says, that they spent the day looking over the American papers, and extracting from them passages to be published in England. "In reading them," he writes, "Franklin was frequently ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... fire. There was water by the window in a milk-pail. He poured some in a basin, washed his face and hands and found the water cold enough to hurt his face. Still his excitement kept him keyed to a pitch of singular and optimistic hilarity. Through the kitchen window came the pale glimmer of snow. He hoped Hughie wouldn't hear him harnessing Nellie, and shoot at the barn. The possibility sent him to the kitchen stairway. It wound upward in an old-fashioned ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... should more properly designate it as mistaken piety—is another peculiar manifestation of the effects of this vicious practice. The victim is observed to become transformed, by degrees, from a romping, laughing child, full of hilarity and frolic, to a sober and very sedate little—Christian, the friends think, and they are highly gratified with the piety of the child. Little do they suspect the real cause of the solemn face; not the slightest suspicion have they ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... and the handy man bowed with a sweep of his hat naming her aloud for the whole stage to hear. If a look could have blasted Mr. Bat Brydges, he would have been dissolved in gaseous matter from the expression that passed over the face under the sailor hat. She heard the hilarity break bounds inside as she mounted the driver's seat; and felt very much as you have felt when you have come out of the clatter of the orchestra pit where you have chanced to sit next ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut |
