"Frolic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... clusters had As made us nobly wild, not mad, And yet each verse of thine Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine." ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... a polite invitation. There the villanous passion for violating Lucretia by force seizes Sextus Tarquin; both her beauty, and her approved purity, act as incentives. And then, after this youthful frolic of the night, they return ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... in studies of perhaps less intrinsic importance. The neglect of these latter had no tendency to recommend him to the regard of those in authority. Positive faults were in course of time added to negative. A frolic in which he was engaged during his third year was attended by consequences more serious than disfavor. It led to his dismissal. The father took the boy's side, and the usual struggle followed between the parents and those who, according to a pretty well worn-out educational ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... After the frolic of the largesse was over, the king and queen rose to depart. The evening was now coming on, and a great number of torches were brought in to illuminate the hall. By the light of these torches, the company, after their majesties had retired, gradually withdrew, and the ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... with which she entered it was not shared by Charley, who was never ripe for anything but frolic. Had not Stephen been influenced by a desire to do good, and possibly by another feeling too embryonic for detection, he would never have dreamed of making an errand boy of a will-o'-the-wisp. As such, however, he was installed, and from that moment an anxiety unknown ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... sexton when I came up. It seems the grass didn't grow about the little fellow's—bed. The man admitted that his own little folks were accustomed to play there—the lot is shady and close to the house—they bring their toys and frolic there till the grass is quite worn away. You should have seen his face when the man told him that. 'Let them come,' he said; 'don't stop them; the grass doesn't matter.' 'The boy won't be so lonely,' said ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... over Green Knoll Camp for the evening. The girls who had been swamped went to bed and were dosed with hot drinks brewed over the campfire by Mrs. Havel. And when the boys came over in their fleet for an evening sing and frolic, they were sent back again to ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... flaxen head. "We are always so happy; we never quarrel; therefore we are ever young, and what thou callest five hundred years are as nothing to us. Ah! we are well cared for here, and the Piper teaches us, and we him; and we play and frolic and sometimes travel, ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... sweeps across a field of grass it makes little ripples in it like a lake; in a field of corn it makes great waves like the sea itself: this is the wind's frolic. Then listen to the stories it tells; it sings them aloud, one kind of song among the trees of the forest, and a very different one when it is pent up within walls with all their cracks and crannies. Do you see how the wind chases the white fleecy clouds as if they ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... were near enough to any group of farmhouses to have visitors, the last afternoon and evening in camp was made a country frolic. Great sled-loads of girls came out to taste the new sugar, to drop it into the snow to candy, and to have ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... withheld her arm, And kindly stopp'd the unfinish'd charm. But though not changed to owl or bat, Or something more indelicate; Yet, as your tongue has run too fast, Your boasted beauty must not last. No more shall frolic Cupid lie In ambuscade in either eye, From thence to aim his keenest dart To captivate each youthful heart: No more shall envious misses pine At charms now flown, that once were thine: No more, since you so ill behave, Shall injured ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... he returned to his native town, still stands in the little Piazza Monte Vecchio, and its whole facade retains the frescoes, mouldy and decaying, with which he decorated it. The design is in four horizontal bands. First comes a frieze of children in every attitude of fun and frolic. Then follows a long range of animals—horses, oxen, and deer. Musical instruments and flowers make a border, with allegorical representations of the arts and crafts filling the spaces between the windows. The principal band is decorated with Scriptural subjects, most of which are ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... occupied in restraining a sudden tendency on the part of the pony to frolic a little as they neared home, replied somewhat abstractedly. He was a good whip, and under his quiet handling the cob soon steadied down to a more reasonable gait and finally pulled up decorously at a green-painted gateway. A diminutive and hugely self-important young ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... Reddy appeared and a merry frolic ensued. It was after ten o'clock before the little party of young folks ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... time to divest her of her dripping garments, and array her in some of mine, which Sally said "fitted her to a T," though I fancied she looked sadly out of place in my linen pantalets and long-sleeved dress. She was a great lover of fun and frolic, and in less than half an hour had "ridden to Boston" on Joe's rocking-horse, turned the little wheel faster than even I dared to turn it, tried on grandma's stays, and then, as a crowning feat, tried the rather dangerous experiment of riding down the garret stairs on a board! The clatter ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... been brought up in a solemn school—had learned to take life as a serious and lovely and imperative thing. Not the less, upon occasions of merry-making, would they frolic like young colts even yet, and that without the least reaction or sense of folly afterwards. At the same time, although Ian had in the village from childhood the character, especially in the workshops of the carpenter, weaver, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... opened on a small area of parked wood. In this pleasant place stood a square block of a house. From a tall staff fluttered the Union Jack. As Thompson came near this the door opened and a group of youngsters tumbled out pell-mell and began to frolic. Thompson looked at his watch. He had stumbled on a school in ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... fun and frolic it was a wonder if young Jack Billington did not play some prank on the Indians. He was the boy who fired off his father's gun one day, close to a keg of gunpowder, in the ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... High March if it were so," said the other, "and we with a man at the top. I never knew a greater-hearted lord. He is voiced like a peal of bells in a frolic." ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... was hushed in earnest, for none of them saw more than a frolic coming from such a small craft as the schooner. The girl went on to tell them of the big ship that Milo had seen, and she painted it a rich West Indiaman, loaded to the hatches with rum and powder, gold and jewels, delicate meats and—with emphasis which she carefully cloaked yet ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... came along, And leaned across the gate— A plan that promised lots of fun And frolic to relate. "The boys are waiting for us now, So hurry up!" he cried; My little whistler shook his head, And ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... they look contemptuously upon my desire for information on the subject. The monotony will come to an end to-morrow, for Chalmers offers to be my guide over the mountains to Estes Park, and has persuaded his wife "for once to go for a frolic"; and with much reluctance, many growls at the waste of time, and many apprehensions of danger and loss, she has consented to accompany him. My life has grown less dull from their having become more interesting to me, and as I have "made myself agreeable," we are on fairly ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... thirteen, and already as tall as her mother, was a bright, lively girl, full of fun and frolic. She was not a beauty, but had a clear complexion and fine dark eyes, and good humor and intelligence lent a charm to her face that made ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... could see them as they were at this very moment, the wife probably just beginning to prepare the evening meal, and the children setting the cups and saucers and other things on the kitchen table—a noisy work, enlivened with many a frolic and childish dispute. Even the two-year-old baby insisted on helping, although she always put everything in the wrong place and made all sorts of funny mistakes. They had all been so happy lately because they knew that he had work that would last till nearly ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... reckoned upon; and now he began to set up a great shout, making all the noise he could. 'Will you be easy?' said the wolf; 'you'll awaken everybody in the house if you make such a clatter.' 'What's that to me?' said the little man; 'you have had your frolic, now I've a mind to be merry myself'; and he began, singing and shouting as ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... at the base of them: length of Horse-shoe, from heel to toe, or from west to east, is perhaps a mile; breadth, from heel to heel, perhaps half as much. Having arrived at his old distance to west, Moldau, like a repentant prodigal, and as if ashamed of his frolic, just over against the old point he swerved from, takes straight to northward again. Straight northward; and quarries out that fine narrow valley, or Quasi-Highland Strath, with its pleasant busy villages, where he turns the overshot machinery, and where ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... night at the Temple, for Chaffing Jack means to shut up, it does not pay any longer; and we want a lark. I'll stand treat; I'll put my earrings up the spout—they must go at last, and I would sooner at any time go to my uncle's for frolic than woe." ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... down-heartedly? As well seek wine in a milk-pail as love in that girl's heart! Be done with this, and be a man. After the league of the lions, let us have a conspiracy of mice, and pull this piece of machinery to ground. You were brisk enough last night when nothing was at stake and all was frolic. Well, here is better sport; here is ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in New York think of bespattered boots, of horses falling down, of dirty piles, more black than white, lining the streets like igloos till the tip-carts come and carry them off. "The frolic architecture" of the snow is a thing of memory, not of present fact. Like Whittier, we recall the hooded well-sweep or fantastic pump, and the great drifts by the pasture wall. Yet, once again, it is the seeing eye we lack, nor do we need even to enter the Park to discover ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... with fire and fury! Hark! the whistle shrilly shrieks! Speed—but mark! we don't insure ye 'Gainst the boiler's frolic freaks. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... it that evening. After the babies came in from their outing they were washed, undressed, and a nice warm wrapper put over their nightgown, and then fed. Afterward laid in their crib. They didn't go to sleep at once but kicked and laughed and chatted in a regular frolic. Phlegmatic babies can be easily trained. Then Marilla came down and waited on the table as Bridget sent various things up on the lift. She was a really ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... Antony also went in servant's disguise, and from these expeditions he often came home very scurvily answered, and sometimes even beaten severely, though most people guessed who it was. However, the Alexandrians in general liked it all well enough, and joined good humoredly and kindly in his frolic and play, saying they were much obliged to Antony for acting his tragic parts at Rome, and keeping his comedy for them. It would be trifling without end to be particular in his follies, but his fishing must not be forgotten. He went out one day to angle with Cleopatra, and, being so unfortunate ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... been previously destroyed, tend to fix and preserve it. Rains will drown and wash it away, and so will drizzle; while the moon by her heat (8)—especially a full moon—will dull its edge; in fact the trail is rarest—most irregular (9)—at such times, for the hares in their joy at the light with frolic and gambol (10) literally throw themselves high into the air and set long intervals between one footfall and another. Or again, the trail will become confused and misleading when crossed by ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... debouching through a glen. Of course there was water, and a channel filled with reeds, down which the current ran in never-failing streams. This spot was another of those charming gems which exist in such numbers in this chain. This was another of those "secret nooks in a pleasant land, by the frolic fairies planned." I called the place Glen Watson*. From a hill near I discovered that this chain had now become broken, and though it continues to run on still farther west, it seemed as though it would shortly ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... for a thing of so difficult access, and with such a frowning, grim, and formidable aspect. Who is it that has disguised it thus, with this false, pale, and ghostly countenance? There is nothing more airy, more gay, more frolic, and I had like to have said, more wanton. She preaches nothing but feasting and jollity; a melancholic anxious look shows that she does not inhabit there. Demetrius the grammarian finding in the temple of Delphos a knot of philosophers ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... his pursuer both boarded the eight o'clock train at the Pennsylvania Station, but in very different moods. To Roger, this expedition was a frolic, pure and simple. He had been tied down to the bookshop so long that a day's excursion seemed too good to be true. He bought two cigars—an unusual luxury—and let the morning paper lie unheeded in his lap as the train drummed over the Hackensack ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... burlesque mourning for the death of the Carnival: candles being indispensable to Catholic grief. But whether it be so, or be a remnant of the ancient Saturnalia, or an incorporation of both, or have its origin in anything else, I shall always remember it, and the frolic, as a brilliant and most captivating sight: no less remarkable for the unbroken good-humour of all concerned, down to the very lowest (and among those who scaled the carriages, were many of the commonest men and boys), than for ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... Hither at the wonted hour Come away, Come away, With the wanton holiday, Where the revel uproar leads To the mystic holy meads, Where the frolic votaries fly, With a tipsy shout and cry; Flourishing the Thyrsus high, Flinging forth, alert and airy, To the sacred old vagary, The tumultuous dance and song, Sacred from the vulgar throng; Mystic orgies that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to Baree that the pond was alive with beavers. Heads and bodies appeared and disappeared, rushing this way and that through the water in a manner that amazed and puzzled him. It was the colony's evening frolic. Tails hit the water like flat boards. Odd whistlings rose above the splashing—and then as suddenly as it had begun, the play came to an end. There were probably twenty beavers, not counting the young, and as if guided by a common signal—something which Baree ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... blind fiddler, while he attended him as his man. Thus accoutred they set out, and were received by the jovial crew with great acclamation. They had plenty of good cheer, and never was a more joyous wedding seen. All was mirth and frolic; the beggars told stories, played tricks, cracked jokes, sung and danced, in a manner which afforded high amusement to the fiddler and his man, who were well rewarded when they departed, which was not till late in the evening. The next day the Dean and Sheridan ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... yachting with smuggling. I have dressed your male companions as smugglers, and have sent them in the smuggling vessel to Cherbourg, where they will be safely landed; and I have dressed myself, and the only person whom I could join with me in this frolic, as gentlemen, in their places. My object is twofold: one is, to land my cargo, which I have now on board, and which is very valuable; the other is, to retaliate upon your father and his companions for their attempt upon me, by stepping into their shoes, and enjoying, for a day ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... to his heart, was highly diverted with this intended frolic of his master, and ran to seek the flower; and while Oberon was waiting the return of Puck he observed Demetrius and Helena enter the wood: he overheard Demetrius reproaching Helena for following him, and after many unkind words on his part, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... given herself or who had been taken, who had sold herself or who had been purchased, a young girl who remained so in features, gracefulness and the virgin charms that clothed her courtesan's body—her smile a virgin's, her glance full of frolic—Marianne was now within a few feet of him whom she expected, wishing for him as ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... slightly. He hadn't a very precise recollection of what had happened on that night of frolic and revelry. Like the rest he had had his bottle or two. The full blooded handsome woman whom nothing abashed, who could take her liquor like a man, whose beauty fired the souls of the gallants hovering about her wrangling ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... 'was the green spot on which he stood apart from the commonplaces of a mere bread-winning, bread-bestowing existence.' That wife is described as a fair and flower-like nature, bound by one law with the blue sky, the dew, and the frolic birds. 'Of all persons whom I have known, she had in her most of the angelic—of that spontaneous love for every living thing, for man, and beast, and tree, which restores the Golden Age.'[2] Mr Fuller, in undertaking ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... Quaint elves and frolic flower-sprites we see, And fairies weaving rings of gossamer, And angels floating ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... evening call, and was answered by his mate from the top of the bank under the mistletoe oak. A pair of gray squirrels crept down the gray trunks of the trees and slipped around the granite boulder to drink at the spring; then scampered away again—half in frolic, half in fright—as they caught sight of the man and the maid. As the squirrels disappeared, the girl laughed—a low laugh of fellowship with the creatures of the wilderness—in complete understanding of their humor. Then—as though following the path of a sunbeam—two gorgeously ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... and rousing the half-animate occupants of the floor and benches. "Come! get up here! Prize money ahead! Fine fun for a week. Prize money ahead! wake up, ye jolly sleepers, loyal citizens, independent voters-wake up, I say. Here's fun and frolic, plenty of whiskey, and two hundred dollars reward for every mother's son of ye what wants to hunt a nigger; and he's a preachin nigger at that! Come; whose in for the frolic, ye hard-faced democracy that love to vote for your country's good and a good cause?" After exerting himself for ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... this thoroughness in regard to work went, as we have intimated, a love of frolic and games and every species of fun that the mind of a healthy and spirited boy could devise; and with all, permeating all, was a lovability that won its way to every heart. Rarely has such a perfect combination ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... and write shoes, whom he could never let alone—not that she cared; it was not the great world, the world of Cocker's and Ladle's and Thrupp's, but it offered an endless field to his faculties of memory, philosophy, and frolic. She had never accepted him so much, never arranged so successfully for making him chatter while she carried on secret conversations. This separate commerce was with herself; and if they both practised ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... case of Jacquelina, who had grown up to be the most enchanting sprite that ever bewitched the hearts, or turned the heads of men. She was petite, slight, agile, graceful; clustering curls of shining gold encircled a round, white forehead, laughing in light; springs under springs of fun and frolic sparkled up from the bright, blue eyes, whose flashing light flew bird-like everywhere, but rested nowhere. She seemed even less human and irresponsible than when a child—verily a being of the air, a ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... white bosom, who ogled significantly, who danced voluptuously, who excelled in pert repartee, who was not ashamed to romp with Lords of the Bedchamber and Captains of the Guards, to sing sly verses with sly expression, or to put on a page's dress for a frolic, was more likely to be followed and admired, more likely to be honoured with royal attentions, more likely to win a rich and noble husband than Jane Grey or Lucy Hutchinson would have been. In such circumstances the standard of female attainments was necessarily low; and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... doorway, Prince Charles sprang to his side and cried, valiantly: "Nay then, if he goes so do I! 'Twas surely but a Christmas joke and of my own devising. Spoil not our revel, my gracious liege and father, on this of all the year's red-letter days, by turning my thoughtless frolic into such bitter threatening. I did but seek to test the worth of Master Sandy's lucky raisin by asking for as wildly great a boon as might be thought upon. Brother Hal too, did but give me his advising in joke even as I did seek it. None here, my royal father, would ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... Alberich. "But I have come up to frolic in the sunshine with you"; and he held out his ugly, misshapen little hands to take the ...
— Opera Stories from Wagner • Florence Akin
... Sophie kept up her frolic, and as often as the Prince thought he had caught her she flew off again like a butterfly. Finally, at the extreme end of the hall, he held her fast, and now, laughingly and tenderly, she flung ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... time Jerry sat by their clothes and watched the frolic. Then the drifting shadow of a huge butterfly attracted his attention, and soon he was nosing through the jungle on the trail of a wood-rat. It was not a very fresh trail. He knew that well enough; but in the deeps of him were all his instincts of ancient training—instincts ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... parlance about hills and dales. None listen to thy scenes of boyish frolic. Fond dotard! with such tickled ears as thou dost Come ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... answered he: 'it was more from a frolic, and to know the world. That is my study, Mr. Trevor. But can you tell me why players, by following their profession, act in some places contrary to all law, and are called strollers, vagabonds, and vagrants, and in others are protected ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... blowing out the contents of several hundred eggs and filling the hollowed shells with cologne, flour, tinsel, bright scraps of paper. Each egg-was then sealed with white wax, and ready for the cascaron frolic of the evening. ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... at the prospect of his gigantic volume of waters being suddenly absorbed by one mightier than he? In their progress it was with great difficulty that the travellers could keep their bark free from those enormous rafts of trees which the Mississippi seemed to toss about in mad frolic. A poet would have thought that the great river, when departing from the altitude of its birthplace, and as it rushed down to the sea through three thousand miles, had, in anticipation of a contest which threatened the continuation of its existence, flung its broad arms right and left across ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... rich in such a manner that his name was a sufficient warrant for the raising of any sum which he might desire; while his unbounded generosity to the poor or unprotected, joined to an innate love of fun and frolic—for he was a very Eulenspiegel—made him the darling of the people. His chosen dwelling-place was in the almost inaccessible cave situated near Llandovery, at the junction of the Tywi and the Dethia (the Toothy of Drayton), ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... begin to frolic like big boys. Benten plays the guitar, and Bishamon lies down on the floor resting with his elbows to hear it. Hotei drinks wine out of a shallow red cup as wide as a dinner plate. Daikoku and Fukuroku Jin begin to wrestle, and ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... in and ask Dinah to help you look for the straps," directed Freddie to his little sister, "and I'll catch Snap. Here, Snap! Snap!" he called to the dog who had come back into the yard after a romp and frolic with his ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope
... played the Fisher's Hornpipe. What a romp of merry music filled the house! I had never heard the like and was soon smiling at him as he played. His bow and fingers flew in the wild frolic of the Devil's Dream. It led me out of my sadness into a world all new ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... the wild river, laughing, laves its banks— A babbler—like a happy-hearted girl, Dancing along with free and frolic pranks; The leaves, o'erhanging, tremble like the curl That plays upon her forehead as she goes— While 'mid the branches, free from human woes, The wild bird carols to its happy mate, Glad in the present hour, nor ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... saw nothing to remind me of it, except the ruins of an old church. There has been no priest since the death of one who was drowned, a few years ago, near Bird Island, a large rock, at the mouth of the harbor. At the time of this fatal mishap, the reverend father was on a drunken frolic, in company with some ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... swimming with letters, saying of an uneducated man, "Nec literas didicit nec natare." He had neither learned to read nor to swim. The sea is the book of the South Sea Islanders. They swim as they walk, beginning as babies to dive and to frolic in the water. Their mothers place them on the river bank at a day old, and in a few months they are swimming in shallow water. At two and three years they play in the surf, swimming with the easy motion of a frog. They have no fear of the water to overcome, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... which, as their name denotes, were born again, like butterflies to frolic for a day of gay enjoyment, are purely decorative. Their generally charming, graceful forms group together to cover empty spaces with every regard to the rules of design and composition, but without any inner meaning. If we take these arabesques ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... sonatas still appear on concert programmes. In a collection of thirty sonatas he explained his purpose in these words: "Amateur, or professor, whoever thou art, seek not in these compositions for any profound feeling. They are only a frolic of art, meant to increase thy ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... pelting fiercely with rain, flapping and tearing at Theodora's cloak, like the wind in the fable, trying to whirl her off her feet, and making vehement efforts to wrench the umbrella out of Percy's hand. A buffet with wind and weather was a frolic which she particularly enjoyed, running on before the blast, then turning round to walk backwards and recover breath to laugh at him toiling with the umbrella. Never had she looked brighter, her dark eyes, lately ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... face in his hands. He knew not what pitying little face was looking down upon him from the hemlock shadows, what brave little heart was determined to save him. He was in one of those great crises of agony that boys pass through when they first awake from the fun and frolic of unlawful enterprises to find themselves sold under sin, and feel the terrible logic of evil which constrains them to pass from the less to greater crime. He felt that he was in the power of bad, unprincipled, heartless men, who, if he refused to do their bidding, had the power to expose ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... perhaps we 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 of the foul orgies practiced by the little sinner. By ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... in. And there, on the hot sunny afternoons, beautifully shut in by green waving trees, and with the water when we came to bathe so clear that you could see every stone on the gravelly bottom, we boys used to collect for a regular water frolic. But, as you may suppose, the water was not so clean when we had done, the paddling of the little fellows in the shallows discolouring ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... virtues," said Burke, "are almost too costly for humanity." Who wishes to be severe? Who wishes to resist the eminent and polite, in behalf of the poor and low and impolite? and who that dares do it can keep his temper sweet, his frolic spirits? The high virtues are not debonair, but have their redress in being illustrious at last. What forests of laurel we bring, and the tears of mankind, to those who stood firm against the opinion of their contemporaries! The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... severely reprimanded by the Princess for my frolic, though she enjoyed it of all things, and ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... years later before the truth about that night's frolic came to light. Theodora did it. She could not bear to have the old folks beaten and humiliated by us, for whom they were doing so much. After we had robbed their hoarding-places, she sallied forth again and took all of ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... mice that chased each other through the chambers, And up and down the stair, And rioted among the ashen embers, And left their frolic footprints everywhere,— ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... vent in the ludicrous. Occasionally an adversary or adverse dogma is demolished with excellent logic, and then comes a dismal grin or chuckle at the feat, which hardly reminds us of the sly, shy smile of Addison, or the frolic intelligence which laughs in the victorious eyes of Pascal. Still, with all abatements, "The Greyson Letters" make a book well worthy of being read, contain much admirable matter and suggestive thought, and might be allowed to pass muster among good books of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... have been dining with the Teutonic wine-skin!" said the monarch. "And what frolic has he found out to cause all this disturbance? Truly, Sir Conrade, I have still held you so good a reveller that I wonder at your quitting ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... John," answered his wife, as she "dished" some of the steaming potatoes—leaving a goodly number in the pot for the little folk—"that's true enough; but you know this is a day of extra frolic for the children. They're having such fun, likely, they've no notion how the time is passing. As for the horn, who could expect mortal ears to hear that—with Bessie and Big Tom laughing and singing, and Rudolph screaming with fun—as I know he is; and little Kit, bless her! ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge
... folk hereabouts," retorted Jean. "We've played the dirty game o' the White Squaw for you' clear out. Davi's most as dead sick of it as me, but wher' she went into it fer a frolic an' to please you, I had my notions, I guess. I come clear away down from Peace River nigh on two summers ago jest fer to see that you acted squar' by that misguided girl. An' that's why I done all your dirty work in this White Squaw racket. Now we've got the boodle you're goin' to hitch ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... yield to the gentle influence of delirium tremens and begin to overturn chairs under the delusion that Hammerstein was pursuing them with a five-hundred-dollar-a-week contract. Then the gent at the window across the air-shaft would get out his flute; the nightly gas leak would steal forth to frolic in the highways; the dumbwaiter would slip off its trolley; the janitor would drive Mrs. Zanowitski's five children once more across the Yalu, the lady with the champagne shoes and the Skye terrier would trip downstairs and paste her Thursday name over ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... dreadful way! I don't believe He will suffer us to be turned homeless and naked on the world! "Something will turn up" before we are attacked, and we will be spared, I am certain. We can't look forward more than an hour at a time now, sometimes not a minute ahead (witness the shelling frolic), so I must resume my old habit of laying a clean dress on my bed before going to sleep, which I did every night for six weeks before the shelling of Baton Rouge, in order to run respectably, as muslin cross-bar nightgowns are not suitable ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... was ploughing a purple furrow across the sky, and toward the south a single golden cloud hung over some thin stretches of pine. The ghost of a moon, pale and watery, was riding low, after a night of high frolic, and as the young dawn grew stronger, I watched her melt gradually away like a face that one sees through smoke. The October wind, blowing with a biting edge over the broomsedge, bent the blood-red tops of the sumach like pointed flames ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... we wanted Goya, and more and more Goya, who is as Spanish and as unlike Velasquez as can very well be. There was not enough Goya abovestairs to satisfy us, but in the Goya room in the basement there was a series of scenes from Spanish life, mostly frolic campestral things, which he did as patterns for tapestries and which came near being enough in their way: the way of that reality which is so far from the reality of Velasquez. There, striving with their strangeness, we found a young American husband and wife who said they were going to Egypt, ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... red in the fury of the moment. With their winnings gone, their festivity cut short, their credit exhausted, and their self-control, never very strong, further weakened by the frolic of the night before, there would have been a short shrift for any of the four men had they been captured. But four mounted men, with their wits about them, and with several hours' start, were more than a match for ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... her head slowly, although her eyes gleamed appreciatively at the plan. If only Rosslyn and Janie were older! How she would enjoy such a frolic as Susie's ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... themselves, had killed the miserable creature; others, asserting that the scamp was desperately poor, hinted at suicide induced by sheer despair; but the most generally accepted opinion was that Jentham had been killed in some drunken frolic by one or more Irish harvesters. The Beorminster reporters visited the police station and endeavoured to learn what Inspector Tinkler thought. He had seen the body, he had viewed the spot where it had been found, he had examined the carter, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... single-minded man could find all the duties he craved. Toward the close of the war, on the formation of a new typhoid hospital, Sommers was put in charge. There one day in the heat of the fight with disease and corruption he discovered Parker Hitchcock, who had enlisted, partly as a frolic, an excuse for throwing off the ennui of business, and partly because his set were all going to Cuba. Young Hitchcock had come down with typhoid while waiting in Tampa for a transport, and had been left in Sommers's camp. He greeted the familiar face of the doctor with a welcome he had ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... refreshed and rested but actually tired again. Then they ate a plentiful supper, spread their blankets around the treasure wagons and soon slept the sleep of exhaustion. Even the watch slept, for he, too, had borne the burden of the day and worn himself with the frolic of the evening. He felt no need of special caution for they were now ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... says of the Duke of Buckingham:—Pleasure, frolic, or extravagant diversion was all that he laid to heart. He was true to nothing, for he was not true to himself.—Swift. No consequence. Burnet. He had no steadiness nor conduct: He could keep no secret, nor execute any ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... lady's heart than any other sorrow: the flesh will war against the spirit. Had he died in honourable combat at Marston or at Naseby, when first it was given him to raise his arm in the Lord's cause!—but to fall in a drunken frolic, not befitting a holy Christian to engage in—it was far more than ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... your's to manage. You know my opinion of sailing, and you won't grieve me, I hope, by going.' I might have told him, but I did not, that I did not like the lads he was going with, but I knew that would only make him angry, and do no good just as his heart was set upon a frolic with them, so I said nought of that, but I tried to win him, (that's my way with the young ones,) though I failed this time; go he would, and he would have gone, let me have been as angry as you please. But I have this comfort, that no sharp words passed my lips that day, and no bitter ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... treated with marked deference. Certain well-known names which Pascal overheard surprised him greatly. "What! these men here?" he said to himself; "and I—I regarded my visit as a sort of clandestine frolic." ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... imagination; and in the retirement of his own village, feeling no longer the restraint of stolid gravity,—assumed in the haunts of the white man, less to play the part of a hero than to cover the nakedness of his own inferiority,—he can give himself up to wild indulgence, the sport of whim and frolic; and, when the fire-water is the soul of the feast, the feast only ends with the ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... little rascal of our acquaintance, and as stupid as a post, was married to a pretty girl with a fortune of thirty thousand. Another, and one of the best of us—Charley White—who united the business habits of a man with the frolic of a schoolboy, and who ought to have been added to the roll of the College benefactors, as having been the founder of the Cricket and the Whist Club, and restored to its old place on the river, at much cost and pains, the boat which had been withdrawn for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... Susy and Flossy, when they were having a frolic in "Prudy's sitting-room," up stairs, "What happy little things! You don't know what trouble is, and never will, ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... aprons and began keeping account books until a monetary system could be devised. A medical exchange that also happened to sell spaceburgers and Martian water was dubbed the "Space Dump" and crowds of teen-agers were already flocking in to dance and frolic. A pattern of living began to take form out of the dead dust of the star satellite. Several of the colonists who had lost everything aboard the crashed ships were made civilian officials in charge of the water, sanitation, and ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... man. He was a small farmer in Ohio with no definite political principles, but had gained some military eclat in the War of 1812. The presidential campaign of 1840 is well described by Carl Schurz as "a popular frolic," with its "monster mass-meetings," with log-cabins, raccoons, hard cider, with "huge picnics," and ridiculous "doggerel about 'Tippecanoe and Tyler too.'" The reason why it called out so great enthusiasm was frivolous enough in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... The frolic of Shakspeare in deer-stealing was the cause of his Hegira; and his connection with players in London was the cause of his writing plays. Had he remained in his native town, his ambition had never been excited ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... by that dim flame, The patient quilt spread on her knees, Hears from her heirloom quilting-frame The frolic of ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... massive, of extraordinary compass, and yet full of all the graceful ease, the audacious frolic, of perfect physical health, and strength, and beauty; had there been a trace of effort in it, it might have been accused of "bravura:" but there was no need of effort where nature had bestowed already an all but perfect organ, and all that was left for science ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... forgotten that Lamb's vocation was his life. Literature was but his byplay, his avocation in the true sense of that much-abused word. He was not a fisherman, but an angler in the lake of letters; an author by chance and on the sly. He had a right to disport himself on paper, to play the frolic with his own fancies, to give the decalogue the slip, whose life was made up of the sternest stuff, of self-sacrifice, devotion, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... a frolic was a high delight, A frolic he would hunt for, day and night, Careless how prudence on the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... like the mischief," Mr. Roberts said on this same evening, as he closed the door with a bang, and a shrug of his shoulders. "Very few people will venture out this evening. Tode, if you want an hour or two for a frolic, now is your time to take it. After you have been up with the mail you can go where you like until the ...
— Three People • Pansy
... they are!' Janet cried, as they began to jump and frolic about her and about Kate, in eager expectation of ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... was usually ready for a frolic in the water he did not seem to be so just now. He ran back and forth, down to the edge of the stream and back again, getting his paws ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... all was life and hilarity. Fun and frolic were the order of the day. There were several horse fanciers on board, with whom he was acquainted, and he got into a conversation with them, his spirits rising higher ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... company!" Miss Sparre, who desired nothing so much as the fun of seeing a duel,—a thing which, though she is fifteen, she has never been so lucky to see,—took due pains to make Lord March resent this; but he, who is very lively and agreeable, laughed her out of this charming frolic with a great deal of humour. Here we picked up Lord Granby, arrived very drunk from Jenny's Whim;(151) where, instead of going to old Strafford's(152) catacombs to make honourable love, he had dined with ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Station at which the exiles intended lodging was scarce twenty miles distant), and above all, promising, if he remained, to escort him thither with a band of his young men, to whom the excursion would be but an agreeable frolic, the soldier changed his mind, and, in an evil hour, as it afterwards appeared, consented to remain until Brown Briareus was brought in,—provided this should happen before mid-day; at which time, if the ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... and she said that it was not good for calves to be closely penned after they got to be a few weeks old. They were better for getting out and having a frolic. She stood beside Miss Laura for a long time, watching the calves, and laughing a great deal at their awkward gambols. They wanted to play, but they did not seem to know how to use ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... T—— then said to him, 'I have not a penny with me to-day, but I have one at home.' Having returned to his house some time after, he heard a noise at the door, which was opened by the servant, when in sprang Dandie to receive his penny. In a frolic Mr. T—— gave him a bad one, which he, as usual, carried to the baker, but was refused his bread, as the money was bad. He immediately returned to Mr. T——'s, knocked at the door, and when the servant opened it, laid ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... helping himself also the mellow date-plums, "his legs are so sound now that he is able to go to every frolic in the country for miles around, and dance all night. He's going to the Quartermaster's now, to get a horse to ride to a dance and candy-pulling at that double log-house four miles down the Harrodsburg Pike. I heard him talking to some other fellows about it when I went up with ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... are the "Four Gordons," and the story relates their experiences at home and school during the absence of their parents for a winter in Italy. There is plenty of fun and frolic, with skating, coasting, dancing, and a jolly Christmas visit. The conversation is bright and natural, the book presents no improbable situations, its atmosphere is one of refinement, and it ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... near the door was filled this morning by half a dozen dirty, ragged, barefooted boys; their teacher's seat was vacant, and those boys looked, every one, as though they had come thither just to have a grand frolic. ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... seem to make much impression on him—nothing seemed to make much impression on Barty Josselin when he was very young. He was just a lively, irresponsible, irrepressible human animal—always in perfect health and exuberant spirits, with an immense appetite for food and fun and frolic; like a squirrel, a collie ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... were afterwards of opinion that Henry never again did such good work as these nonsense rhymes, written thus for a frolic,—and one hundred and fifty pounds,—and as copies of the "Bon Marche Ballads" are now exceedingly scarce, it may possibly be of interest to quote two or three more of its preposterous numbers. This is a lyric illustrative of cheese, for ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... drill; and these clubs were often, later in the campaign, gathered into imposing torch-light processions, miles in length, on occasions of important party meetings and speech-making. It was the revived spirit of the Harrison campaign of twenty years before; but now, shorn of its fun and frolic, it was strengthened by the power of organization and the tremendous impetus of earnest devotion to ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... then one little intermission of the heart's pulsations a proof that I have lost Fiesco? Go, malicious slanderer! Come no more into my presence! 'Twas an innocent frolic—perhaps a mere piece of gallantry. Say, my gentle Arabella, was ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... laughing and singing its innocent life out in less than five minutes as if it were breathing an atmosphere of pure oxygen. It romps; it does not reflect or feel. Motion is its business, not emotion. It has no concern with the deep and gentle feelings of the play, but only with its frolic. The spirit of playful torment, the disposition of a pretty tease, speaks out ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... come, thou Goddess fair and free, In heaven yclept Euphrosyne, And by men, heart-easing Mirth, Whom lovely Venus at a birth With two sister Graces more To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore: Or whether (as some sager sing) The frolic wind that breathes the spring Zephyr, with Aurora playing, As he met her once a-Maying— There, on beds of violets blue And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew Fill'd her with thee, a daughter fair, So buxom, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... hill the whippowil sends piping forth his flute-like notes, And clear and shrill the answers trill from leafy isles and silver throats. The twinkling light on cape and height; the hum of voices on the shores; The merry laughter on the night; the dip and plash of frolic oars,— These tell the tale. On hill and dale the cities pour their gay and fair; Along the sapphire lake they sail, and quaff like wine the ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... timigi. Frightful terura. Frigid glaciiga. Fringe frangxo. Frisk salteti. Fritter fritajxo. Frivolity vaneteco. [Error in book: vanetco] Frivolous malserioza. Friz (curl) frizi. Frock-coat frako. Frog rano. Frolic petoleco. Frolicsome petolema. Front antauxa flanko. Frontier landlimo. Frost frosto. Froth sxauxmo. Froward malvirta. Frown sulkigi. Fructify fruktodoni. Frugal sxparema. Fruit frukto. Fruitery ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... into trowsers the day after the ceremony, and then he entered into the frolic with all his heart. On the whole, he was relieved from being a bride's-maid,—a sufficiently pleasant thing,—but having got along so well with Lucy, he volunteered to act in the same capacity to Chloe. The offer was refused, however, in ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... days of Illinois the making of mock Masons, or pseudo Sons of Malta, was a popular form of frolic, now almost forgotten. Young people formed mock lodges or secret societies, for the purpose of initiating new members by a series of tricks, which became the jokes of ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... very slow and dignified movement the music suddenly broke into the quickest time that ever any tune was played. The result was fatal to the hopper. A bath in the fountain followed. The prize was not won that night. And so the frolic ran on till the ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... from dullness last evening; I was hoping to have a bit of a frolic. And I found a young gentleman who asked no impertinent questions, who was very gracious, and who was a delight in the dance. It was all very ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... childhood is all mirth: We frolic to and fro As free and blithe, as if on earth Were ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... question. It was a rainy day, and the boys were all at home. Jerry began to read "Hamlet" aloud; it proved a treasure that brought them into a new world of delight. Sometimes they took different characters for representation, and the evening ended in a frolic; for good-natured ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... pleasant, rattling, truth-like volumes, by an Irish J.P., who appears to possess in perfection the fun, frolic, shrewdness, and adaptability to circumstances so remarkable among the better specimens of his countrymen.... The second volume is entirely devoted to the best description of California and its 'diggings,' its physical features, its agriculture, and the social condition of its motley population, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various |
