"Melodramatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it.'' I saw that there was a story involved, and asked, "How is that?'' He answered, "That picture was painted on the order of the Duke of Ratibor, who owns the castle. When it was finished he came to see it, but clearly thought it too quiet. What he wanted was evidently something in the big, melodramatic style. I said nothing; but meeting me a few days afterward, he said, 'Why don't you send me my picture?' 'No,' I said; 'Serene Highness, that picture is mine.' 'No, said he; 'you painted it for me; it is mine.' 'No,' said I; 'I shall ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... twirling a cap like a raised pie, in his hand; Melanie buried in a cap with deep frills and accompanied by a dog like a paper-weight—all in bronze. Finally the same Person, once more alone, standing on tip-toe, her eyes raised to heaven with a melodramatic expression. ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... active cell subsided, that of the others was aroused. Somnambulism ceased. The entire brain awoke. But the truth had not yet fully permeated all the cerebral convolutions and the fact that it had not, manifested itself in the melodramatic phrase which, a week previous, Lennox had uttered, which all have uttered, all at least before whom the unforseen ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... wandering monster. Lantenac decorates him with the cross of Saint Lewis for his gallantry, and instantly afterwards has him shot for his carelessness. He burns homesteads and villages, fusillades men and women, and makes the war a war without quarter or grace. Yet he is no swashbuckler of the melodramatic stage. There is a fine reserve, a brief gravity, in the delineation of him, his clear will, his quickness, his intrepidity, his relentlessness, which make of him the incarnation of aristocratic coldness, hatred, and pride. You might guillotine Lantenac with exquisite satisfaction, and yet he ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... seem to see, because you keep your eyes fixed on one spot. If Lady Diana's engaged to Major Vandyke, then he'd have no incentive to strike at another man who was gone on her. It would be the other way round. The chap who had lost her would be the one, if any, to be up to melodramatic stunts. It might be said about March that he risked trouble for himself, for the pleasure of having a smack at Vandyke; putting the blame on him for a mad order to fire off guns at the good little Mexicans, for instance, do ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... people in the court-room were beginning to believe in this new witness. They were amused by his melodramatic action in thus fixing the hour; but they seemed to have confidence in the outcome. As for the President, it looked as if he also had made up his mind to take the young man in the same way. He had certainly ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... "Melodramatic, isn't it?" laughed Mrs. Carnarvon. "So he's off. How furious Martha Fortescue and Ellen will be. But they'll go in pursuit, and they'll get him. A man is never so susceptible as when he's broken-hearted. Well, I must go. Good-night, dear. Don't ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... to-day; you are hurting me. This melodramatic pose approaches the ludicrous, and I have really no patience with your folly. A little period of calm reflection may prove beneficial, and I will leave you to it. ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... more, but till he sees it without being in any doubt about it, he must not put it. There is no such sure way of corrupting one's colour sense as the habitual practice of putting down colour which one does not see; this and the neglecting to look for it are equal faults. The first error leads to melodramatic vulgarity, the other to torpid dullness, and it is hard to say which ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... all, the character of Robespierre was made far too melodramatic, and was utterly unworthy of Irving, whom, in all his other pieces, I have vastly admired. He completely misconceives his hero. Instead of representing him as, from first to last, a shallow Rousseau sentimentalist, with the proper mixture ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... being administered from Madrid, and that they themselves were being told, not what it was expedient to do, but what they MUST do. Another factor in the situation was the Committee's friendliness for their impulsive, unsalaried servant Lieut. Graydon, who was certainly a picturesque, almost melodramatic figure. In any case the letter from Mr Brandram that accompanied the Resolutions was couched in a strain of fair play to Graydon that became a thinly disguised partizanship. At the meeting of the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... white teeth. "Even under a microscope," she muttered, "no perceptible reaction for fortyeight hours. Laboratory conditions? Or my own idiocy? But I approximated ..." Her voice trailed off and for a full minute the absolute silence of the kitchen was broken only by the melodramatic ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... any melodramatic nonsense with straws, or bits of wood of different lengths. We'll go down to the gateway to-morrow between one and two, when there's scarcely a creature about, and one shall look up the street, and the other down. Whoever can count twenty human beings first ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... been astounded to see how many thousands and tens of thousands in the Southern States felt the crushing burden and the awful responsibility of the institution which we were supposed to be defending with the melodramatic ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... The old melodramatic stage ghost—the spectre of "The Castle Spectre" school of plays—the phantom in a white sheet with a dab of red paint upon its breast, that rose from behind a tomb when a blow was struck upon a gong and a teaspoonful of blue fire was lighted in the wings, probably found its last ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... they were dragged, tied to the tails of horses, to the open square, each of them bearing upon his breast a white placard with this inscription, in black letters: "Guilty of high treason." Then the wretched General shivered from head to foot. Every detail of the melodramatic execution seemed burned into his brain as with a red-hot iron. He fancied he could see the procession and the three gibbets, painted black; beside each gibbet was an open ditch and a black coffin covered with a dark gray pall. He saw, in the hollow square formed by a battalion ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... as necessaries, ancient and fixed as the universe, he entered the village fair, and was a little disappointed at his first glimpse of the village-green. Certainly his expectations had not been very exalted; but there had run through them a hope of something melodramatic, dreams of May-pole dancing and athletic games, somewhat of village-belle rivalry, of the Corin and Sylvia school; or, failing that, a few Touchstones and Audreys, some genial earnest buffo humour here and there. But there did not seem much likelihood of it. Two or three apple ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... 'Minister of Justice' were employing Maillard the 'hero of the Bastile' and his salaried cut-throats to promote public economy and private liberty by emptying the prisons of Paris, certain agents of Marat made a notable effort in behalf of the 'moral unity of France.' To this effort the melodramatic historians of the French Revolution have done scant justice. Mr. Carlyle, for example, alludes to it only in a casual half-disdainful way, which would be almost comical were the theme less ghastly. 'At ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... you it was like a movie in five reels. Never before did I believe such things happened outside a Yonkers studio. But they do, Naia. And I've learned that the world is full of more excitingly melodramatic possibilities than any novel ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... Hamlyn,' where the fate of the heroine, threatened with worse than death from the bush-rangers, hangs upon the horse's speed, seems to us, as we lie abed, one of the finest episodes in fiction. 'Tom Cringle's Log,' too, becomes a great favourite, not more from its buoyancy and freshness than from the melodramatic scenes with which it ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... was of exceedingly picturesque, and even melodramatic aspect. He was clad in a voluminous cloak, that seemed to be made of a buffalo's hide, and a pair of those goat-skin breeches, with the hair outward, which are still commonly worn by the peasants of the Roman ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for a minute looking at the other curiously, with something of a melodramatic pose. Rainham had his face turned rather away, and was gazing at the pale reflection of the moonlight in one ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... modest, it will unite all foreigners—those prisoners of themselves. It will mow down the hateful complexity of judicial procedure, with its booty for the somebodies, and its lawyers as well, who intrude the tricks of diplomacy and the melodramatic usages of eloquence into the plain and simple machinery of justice. The righteous man must go so far as to say that clemency has not its place in justice; the logical majesty of the sentence which condemns the guilty one in order to frighten possible evil-doers (and never for another reason) ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... critical instinct, and was, in effect, her affianced husband. Yet it was so hard to wait for luck, for place, for power, for the environment where she could do great things, could fill that radiant place which her cynical and melodramatic but powerful and sympathetic grandfather had prefigured for her. She had been the apple of that old man's eye, and he had filled her brain—purposely—with ambitious ideas. He had done it when she was very young, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... intrigues to suppress the spread of reform in the papal communion. We think it one of the best, if not the best, novels we have met with upon such topics. It is thoroughly well written, not exaggerated, not melodramatic, and the characters admirably drawn and finely discriminated.... Apart from its great interest and exceptional cleverness as a novel, this book ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... worth of highly coloured sensationalism. Those readers who want a good melodramatic story smartly told, Mr Golsworthy's latest effort will suit down to ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... tragedy and are not absent from Sophocles' own earlier work there is not a trace. The odes are relevant, the Chorus is indispensable; in short, Sophocles has shown Euripides that he can beat him even on his own terms. Melodramatic the play may be, but it wins for its author our affection by the sheer beauty of a boyish nature as noble as Deianeira's; the return of Neoptolemus upon his own baseness is one of the many compliments Sophocles has paid ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... convulsions, but by the still small voice, which treats with him as a dependent entitled to know the meaning of his existence, and if there was anything wrong in his adjustment to the moral and spiritual conditions of the world around him to have full allowance made for it. No melodramatic display of warring elements, such as the white-robed Second Adventist imagines, can meet the need of the human heart. The thunders and lightnings of Sinai terrified and impressed the more timid souls of the idolatrous and rebellious ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... "archdeacon" in "Notre Dame" to the moment when Quasimodo watches him fall from the parapet, are just what one might expect to enjoy in some old-fashioned melodramatic theatre designed for such among the pure in heart as have a penchant for ghastliness. But one forgets all this in a moment when some extraordinary touch of illuminating imagination gets hold of one ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... flocks. Certain shepherds came also and drove the girls away, when Moses, true to his nature, took the part of the young ladies, to the chagrin and embarrassment of the male rustics who had left their manners at home. The story forms a melodramatic stage-setting which the mummers have not been slow to use, representing the seven daughters as a ballet, the shepherds as a male chorus, and Moses as basso-profundo and hero. We are told that the girls went home and told their father of the chivalrous stranger they had met, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... a quiet and self-controlled young man. Conformity to the discipline of a small society had become almost his second nature. It was deeply distasteful to him to do anything melodramatic and conspicuous, anything Mr. van der Luyden would have deprecated and the club box condemned as bad form. But he had become suddenly unconscious of the club box, of Mr. van der Luyden, of all that had so long enclosed him in the ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... you would be a little bit melodramatic—this is deadly uninteresting. I would have loved to write ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... have seen me was when I sat down to Harry Miller's lecture. He was a facetious dog, this Harry Miller; he had a gallant way of skirting the indecent which (in my case) produced physical nausea; and he could be sentimental and even melodramatic about grisettes and starving genius. I found he had enjoyed the benefit of my correspondence with Pinkerton: adventures of my own were here and there horridly misrepresented, sentiments of my own echoed and exaggerated till I blushed to recognise ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... cabs and chloroform. Do they pull off stunts like that nowadays—in Toronto? It sounds too melodramatic, Miss Lawson." ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... these works to Mr. Anstruther is the Gentleman's Magazine for September, 1837, p. 283. In the review of Doveton the writer says, "There is in it a good deal to amuse, and something to instruct, but the whole narrative of Mr. Anstruther is too melodramatic," &c. However, as he declines the compliment, perhaps some of our readers will be able to find the right head to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... over his handsome face. Van Ness had a fastidious taste. Her melodramatic poses had been familiar to him for years: they always had annoyed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... the matter, my dear?" said Madame d'Espard, coming to look for her. "What has Monsieur Nathan been saying to you? He has just left us in a most melodramatic way. Perhaps you are too reasonable or too ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... every statement made by Iago. But it is not necessary to do so in public, and I proceed to the question what impression he made on his friends and acquaintances. In the main there is here no room for doubt. Nothing could be less like Iago than the melodramatic villain so often substituted for him on the stage, a person whom everyone in the theatre knows for a scoundrel at the first glance. Iago, we gather, was a Venetian[108] soldier, eight-and-twenty years of age, who had seen a good deal ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... to keep within bounds, and not steal more than three per minute! and how unconscious they endeavoured to look the intervening seconds! and what windows were the demure complacent visages they thought they were making shutters of! Innocent love has at least this advantage over melodramatic, that it can extract exquisite sweetness out of so small a thing. These sweethearts were not alone, could not open their hearts, must not even gaze too long; yet to be in the same room even on such terms was ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... divination in detecting it. Never before had he pieced together so broken a chain. He could not resist the unique opportunity of setting a sensational scheme in a sensational frame-work. The dramatic instinct was strong in him; he felt like a playwright who has constructed a strong melodramatic plot, and has the Drury Lane stage suddenly offered him to present it on. It would be folly to deny himself the luxury, though the presence of Mr. Gladstone and the nature of the ceremony should perhaps have given him pause. Yet, on the other hand, these were the ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... leave him out of that statement, as I would leave him out of everything concerning me nearly, if I could. I believe that none of us know him, or what is in his mind. But sometimes there's a look in his eyes if one glances up suddenly, which would almost frighten one, if it were not silly and melodramatic. That is the only way in which he has troubled me since the horrid little incident at Juliet's tomb—with these occasional, strange looks; and as he wrote me a note of apology for his bad conduct then, I ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... that, 'tis said, we do not like to open our mouths very wide. But neither can the Southerner in the United States, nor the Irish, compare with the lively inhabitant of the South of Europe. The traveller in Sicily needs no gayer melodramatic exhibition than the table d'hote of his inn will afford him, in the conversation of the joyous guests. They mimic the voice and manner of the person they describe; they crow, squeal, hiss, cackle, bark, and scream ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the exhibition, till modern comedy began, under the younger Dumas and Augier, had for its counterpart but the terrible dead weight, or at least the prodigious prolixity and absurdity, of much, not to say of most, of the romantic and melodramatic "output." It paid apparently, in the golden age of acting, to sit through interminable evenings in impossible places—since to assume that the age was in that particular respect golden (for which we have in fact a good deal of evidence) alone explains the patience of the public. ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... quarrel with a prosperous theatre for the sake of the Panorama-Dramatique, whose existence was, to say the least, problematical. The management at this moment, however, was counting on the success of a new melodramatic comedy by M. du Bruel, a young author who, after working in collaboration with divers celebrities, had now produced a piece professedly entirely his own. It had been specially composed for the leading lady, a young actress who began her stage ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... and she went home, a little amused by her melodramatic conduct, but much comforted by the fact that Charles, though ignorant of his part, was with her in this conspiracy. She was ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... Burr, to be sure, it is so hard to make a historical personage fulfill the conditions demanded by the novel of every-day life. He is almost sure either to fall below our traditional conception of him, or to rise above the natural and easy level of character, into the vague or the melodramatic. Moreover, we do not want a novel of society from Mrs. Stowe; she is quite too good to be wasted in that way, and her tread is much more firm on the turf of the "door-yard" or the pasture, and the sanded floor of the farmhouse, than on the velvet of the ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... drew a long and expressive breath, and, with melodramatic movements of the shoulders, he sighed. "I have not seen you since. Oh, I had terrible scenes with the father. They had a house up the river. I followed them, and put up at the Angler's Hotel. She told her father ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... both sexes, though this is not the rule, as we will readily agree, thinking over the great portrait painters of character. To state a single illustrative case: Hall Caine must be allowed to have framed some mighty men, tragic, or melodramatic sometimes, somber always, but men of bulk and character. Pete, in "The Manxman," is a creation sufficient to make the artist conceiving him immortal; and Red Jason is no less real, manly, mighty, self-mastering, self-surrendering. Caine's men are giants; but his women do not satisfy and seldom ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... delighted to have the opportunity of meeting you, Mr. Cleek," he said. "At first I thought Mr. Narkom's insistence upon my making the journey here blindfolded singularly melodramatic and absurd. I can now realize, since you are so little similar to one's preconceived idea of a police detective, that you may well wish to keep everything connected with your residence and your official capacity an inviolable secret. One does not have to be told that you ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... without any decoration. Here and there are several pale marks, indicating the places of objects that had been removed. In one part is painted on the plaster a false door partially open, behind which is seen the figure of Tasso about to enter; but every person of good taste must condemn the melodramatic exhibition, and wish that he could obliterate it with a daub of whitewash. The custode directed my attention to it with an air of great admiration, and could not understand the scowl with which I turned away my face. There are several most interesting ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... suppose I have as much vanity as most girls, but you make me blush. You are indeed dazed, for you appear to take me for a melodramatic heroine." ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... don't be melodramatic! I only wanted to tell you that—that I am sorry I was rude to you the day ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... latest vicious trick of the capitalist. The conductor in her becoming uniform was most reprehensible, and her evident satisfaction in her job suggested to her critics that she merely was trying to play a melodramatic part "as a war hero." In any case, the conductor's occupation was one no woman should be in, "crowded and pushed about as she is." It was puzzling to know why it was regarded as right for a woman to pay five cents and be pushed, and unbecoming for another woman to be ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... treading fast on the heels of his own melodramatic and written views concerning their property, nettled him greatly. Each downright syllable was a sting to his conscience, but of this Iris was blissfully unaware, else she would not have applied caustic to the rankling wound caused by his ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... unsophisticated feeling, in a luxurious and effeminate society. It was like the burst of admiration with which the picture of the human heart was at the same time hailed in France, drawn by the magic hand of Rousseau; or, in the next age, the fierce passions of the melodramatic corsairs of Byron were received in the artificial circles of London society. Nature was something new; they had never heard ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... a portentous frown. "'Tis well. Marchioness!—but no matter. Some wine there. Ho!" He illustrated these melodramatic morsels by handing the tankard to himself with great humility, receiving it haughtily, drinking from it thirstily, and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... would be nearly impossible for any one of the three men interested in that venture to ascertain exactly who was its author,—his mind misgave him. He knew my father's necessities and his childish capacities for business. With a keen sense of the power displayed in "Don Juan," and even in more melodramatic works, Shelley had acquired a full knowledge of the singularly licentious training from which Byron had then scarcely emerged, and of the vacillating caprice which enfeebled all his actions. His own ability ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... question of knowing how to be, and how not to be, for we must fulfil both. Enrico Persevalli was detestable with his 'Essere, o non essere'. He whispered it in a hoarse whisper as if it were some melodramatic murder he was about to commit. As a matter of fact, he knows quite well, and has known all his life, that his pagan Infinite, his transport of the flesh and the supremacy of the male in fatherhood, is all unsatisfactory. All his life he has really cringed before the northern ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... his head, lifted off his beaver-skin cap, rolled his eyes about, and by his melodramatic movements claimed the attention of all. He, however, found, time to shoot a quick glance at the sun. Those almanac people were wonderfully accurate, but he must hurry up, for in another minute the eclipse would begin. In a loud voice ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... Nature in one of Nursey's sketches as in the Rubenses and Claudes here: and if that is evident, and serves to cherish and rekindle one's own sympathy with the world about one, the great end is accomplished. I do not know very much of Salvator: is he not rather a melodramatic painter? No doubt, very fine in his way. But Claude and the two Poussins are the great ideal painters of Landscape. Nature looks more stedfast in them than in other painters: all is wrought up into a quietude and harmony that seem eternal. This is also one of the mysterious charms in the ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... however, acknowledge that they expect it twice in three deals, and there are generally from twenty-nine to thirty-two coups in each deal. The odds in favour of winning several times are about the same as in the game of Pharaon, and are as delusive. 'He who goes to Hombourg and expects to see any melodramatic manifestation of rage, disappointment, and despair in the losing players, reckons without his host. Winners or losers seldom speak above a whisper; and the only sound that is heard above the suppressed buzz of conversation, the muffled ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... hopelessly were it not for the antique. Genius and science are of no avail; the position of Christ in baptism in the paintings of Verrocchio and Ghirlandajo is mean and servile; the movements of the "Thunderstricken" in Signorelli's lunettes is an inconceivable mixture of the brutish, the melodramatic, and the comic; the magnificently drawn youth at the door of the prison in Filippino's "Liberation of St. Peter" is gradually going to sleep and collapsing in a fashion which is ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... urged Diantha. "She wouldn't believe anything except that the girl 'led him on'—you know that. But I have an idea that we could convince her—if you're willing to do something rather melodramatic—and I think we'd better ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... it is the subject of their pictures. They paint portraits of the weather. The weather sat to Constable; the weather posed for Turner—and the deuce of a pose it was. In the English painters the climate is the hero; in the case of Turner a swaggering and fighting hero, melodramatic but magnificent. The tall and terrible protagonist robed in rain, thunder, and sunlight fills the whole canvas and the whole foreground. Rich colours actually look more luminous on a grey day, because they are seen aganst a dark background, and seem to be burning with a lustre of their own. ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... something wrong about the last earl. We have come here to find out whether he really lived here, whether he really died here, whether that red-haired scarecrow who did his burying had anything to do with his dying. But suppose the worst in all this, the most lurid or melodramatic solution you like. Suppose the servant really killed the master, or suppose the master isn't really dead, or suppose the master is dressed up as the servant, or suppose the servant is buried for the master; invent what Wilkie Collins' tragedy you like, and you still have not explained ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... ci-devant noble, and the ne'er-do-well barrister, out of the great pure love he bears to Darnay's wife, succeeds in dying for him. That is the tale's bare outline; and if any one says of the book that it is in parts melodramatic, one may fitly answer that never was any portion of the world's history such a thorough piece of melodrama as ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... romanticism of painting comes from this sort of theatrical pathos. Of the other he writes "It was the picture at the Louvre which shocked me with its violent declamation and its forced blows that never hit anything. But here at Munich a mystery so profound broods over the drama that the melodramatic element disappears. The scene becomes tragic, lamentable, hopelessly sad. The great artist with a brush that trembles in his aged hands paints but the sentiment of it, to exhale from his work like a plaintive sigh. The veil of death descends and spreads ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... were sure to bring a more degrading exposure tomorrow; and the whole ended at last in a suicide whose tragic pang is deadened to us by the feeling that so much of the mixed motive that drove him to it as was not cowardice was a hankering after melodramatic effect, the last throb of a passion for making his name the theme of public talk, and his fate the centre of a London day's sensation. Chatterton makes us lenient to a life of fraud by the dogged and cynical uncomplainingness of the despair that drove him to cut it short; but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... he declared. "This is unworthy of you. It is positively melodramatic. It reminds me of the plays of my Fatherland, and of your own Adelphi Theatre. We should be men of the world, you and I. You must take your defeats with your victories. I can assure you that the welfare of the Countess Lucille shall ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sank down into a chair, loosing my hand swiftly. I was going to say that she loosed my hand as if it had been the tail of a snake that she had picked up in mistake for something else. But that would leave the impression that her gesture was melodramatic, which it was not. Only there was in her demeanor a touch of the bizarre, ever so slight; yes, so slight that I could not be sure that ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... and striking subjects, and have the patience to collect such information as may be necessary to work the subjects out, you may fairly rely upon gaining entrance sooner or later to the columns of these papers, however elementary your technique. Here is also a busy market for short melodramatic stories—stories for which "action" and a certain ingenuity of plot are the only essentials. Do not imagine that the editors of this sort of periodical are easily pleased. Although they care nothing for the graces of style, ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... a fearful and melodramatic scene, in which she revealed everything before a public tribunal. She saw her husband's face darken against her, her lover's lighten as she saved him. She saw her slender figure standing alone, bearing the whole shock, serene, unshaken. The ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... is dangling on the gallows. This was the demand of Panna's passionate heart, but also of her peasant-logic, which could comprehend the causal relation between sin and expiation clearly and palpably, only when both were united in a single melodramatic effect. Why was nothing heard of a final trial, of a condemnation? For what were the legal gentlemen waiting? Surely the case was as clear as sunlight, with no complication whatever, the criminal had acknowledged everything. ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... said nothing. The old sadness was in her eyes, but it certainly had become more natural—more human, as it were—and the melodramatic gloom in which she had hitherto ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... the astonishment of all save one, picked up a rubber dagger, one of those with which children play, which was lying in the miscellaneous pile on the table. I had not noticed it, but some one's keen eye had, and evidently it had suggested a melodramatic request. ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... surpass Mr. Wm. Le Queux in the art of making a frankly and formidably melodramatic story go with alluring lightness in ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... had developed with melodramatic suddenness. Casting off the steamer's tow-ropes, the Belles Soeurs swung alongside the wharf much more easily and quickly than did the friendly vessel by whose aid she had ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... in it on returning to Chalons, which, if it had seemed packed on our previous visit, was now quivering and cracking with fresh crowds. The stir about the fountain, in the square before the Haute Mere-Dieu, was more melodramatic than ever. Every one was in a hurry, every one booted and mudsplashed, and spurred or sworded or despatch-bagged, or somehow labelled as a member of the huge military beehive. The privilege of telephoning and telegraphing being denied to ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... it's only a clever counterfeit. And who doesn't know that all writings in pencil resemble each other more or less? Besides, it's certain that Marguerite, who is simplicity itself, would not have made use of such pretentious melodramatic phrases. How could I have been so stupid as to believe that she ever thought or wrote this: 'One cannot break a promise made to the dying; I shall keep mine even though my heart break.' And again: 'Forget, therefore, the girl who has loved ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... serenely insolent," said Hawker, "I would think that you felt sorry for me. I don't wish you to feel sorry for me. And I don't wish to be melodramatic. I know it is all commonplace enough, and I didn't mean to act like a ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... he was a boy. He was quite ready to help me, and told me there were two companies in the town, one of large puppets, about as high as my umbrella, the others, to which he went every evening, being rather smaller. Accordingly, at about a quarter to eight, he called for me, wrapped in his melodramatic cloak, and hurried me through the wet and windy streets to the teatrino. He kept me on his right hand because he was the host and I the guest, and if, owing to obstructions, he found me accidentally on his left he was round in a moment and I was in the place of honour ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... apt to be rather melodramatic. Wonderful passions work wonderfully. Eyes flash, lips are set, cheeks grow pale, quite often. Great coolness, vast powers, are continually displayed; yet they are well displayed, after the fashion of gentlemen, not of bravoes or villains or highwaymen. He handles thunder ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... interruption in the waveless ruddy lake below. Our black boat was the only dark spot in this sphere of splendour. We seemed to hang suspended; and such as this, I fancied, must be the feeling of an insect caught in the heart of a fiery-petalled rose. Yet not these melodramatic sunsets alone are beautiful. Even more exquisite, perhaps, are the lagoons, painted in monochrome of greys, with just one touch of pink upon a western cloud, scattered in ripples here and there on the waves below, reminding us that day has passed and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... to my house immediately," M. Roussillon ordered, as soon as they were restored to consciousness; and he shook himself, as a big wet animal sometimes does, covering everybody near him with muddy water. Then he led the way with melodramatic strides. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... from poor Mrs. Malone, who was looking very old and sad, and insisted on inspecting his cabin and as much as was possible of the ship. When the bell rang and the moment of parting arrived, she burst into wild unrestrained sobs, and clung, in the best melodramatic style, to her unresisting kinsman, who was compelled to accept her kisses and tears. In fact, as her brother rudely stated, "she made a shameless show of herself, slobbering over Douglas before all the passengers, and he was sorry for the poor chap, who ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... am becoming quite tragic in my remarks," went on Sylvie, resuming her usual gaiety, "Melodramatic, as they say! If I go on in this manner I shall qualify to be the next 'leading lady' to Miraudin! Quelle honneur! Good-bye Angela;—I will not tell you where I am going lest Fontenelle should ask you,—and then you would have to commit yourself ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... a touch of the melodramatic in my pose and voice, for Maud smiled. Her appreciation of the ridiculous was keen, and in all things she unerringly saw and felt, where it existed, the touch of sham, the overshading, the overtone. It was this which had given poise and penetration to her own work ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... first of those characteristic scenes of the fainting Virgin which was, probably from its dramatic element, so favourite a subject with Signorelli. Sincerely and naturally felt, it in no way trenches on the melodramatic, as one or two of the later groups tend to do, and the solitary figure of Christ, raised high above the sorrowing women, is for once, among his Crucifixions, of dignity and real pathos. The solemnity of the mood given, is enhanced by the fine idea of the soldier on the left, who, ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... than a month, during which Mr. Ross diverted himself by making appointments, postponing them, forgetting them, telephoning, telegraphing, sending special-delivery letters, being paged at hotels, and doing all the useless melodramatic things he could think of, except using an aeroplane or a submarine, he decided to make her his secretary at twenty dollars a week. Two days later it occurred to him to test her in regard to speed in dictation and typing, and a few other minor ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... favour half the fortune of which the whole was, in his opinion, his by right, was naturally exasperated in the highest degree by the terms of the indiscreet testament, and on the day of the funeral he parted from the son of his step-mother, swearing, in a somewhat melodramatic manner, that he would be revenged. Hugo was then twenty-one, and for twenty-five years he had waited in vain for ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... not care to argue this, Miss Windsor," he said, turning his face away, pained to the heart. "I am in such a position that I may not; but I wished, while I had a chance, to tell you that I loved you. Good-by, Maggie, good-by. I do not wish to be melodramatic; but you ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... battle in the disorderly and incoherent force which the frantic appeals and reckless promises of the governor had assembled; they were beaten already, and could not be induced to make a sortie. Desertions began, and all the objurgations, supplications and melodramatic extravaganzas of Berkeley were impotent to stop them; the more shrilly he shrieked, the faster did his sorry aggregation melt away. When it became evident that there would soon be none left save himself and the sailors, he ceased his blustering, and scuttled ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... had had from the beginning anything upon which to base suspicion. Given the premises of an abnormal girl with a passion for himself which humiliated him, an abnormal woman like Miss Farrel with a similar passion, albeit under better control, the melodramatic phases of the candy, and sudden death, and traces of arsenical poison, what ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... round the piano and stood just opposite Panshin. He sang it again, increasing the melodramatic tremor in his voice. Varvara Pavlovna stared steadily at him, leaning her elbows on the piano and holding her white hands on a level with her lips. ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... for collaboration with Belasco, Daniel Frohman was house-manager and Charles Frohman was out on the road, trying his abilities as advance-man for Wallack and Madison Square successes. Winter's life is orderly and matter-of-fact; Belasco's real life has always been melodramatic and colourful. ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... as were all his movements; his sharp actor's face, with the long rather dirty black hair, the hooked nose, the long dirty fingers which moved in and out as though they worked of themselves—all these things were false and unmoving. But behind his harsh voice, gross accent and melodramatic tone there was some power, the power of a man ambitious, ruthless, scornful, self-confident. He did not care a snap of his fingers for his congregation, he laughed at their beliefs, he ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... are so bad that it is difficult to believe that they brought her a fortune. But no doubt it was their faults that made them popular—their sentimentalities, their melodramatic absurdities, their strangely false and high-pitched moral tone. They are written in a jargon which resembles, if it resembles anything, an execrable prose translation from very flat French verse. "Ah, Manuel!" exclaims one of her heroines, "I ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... impersonate you, when you leave, so that this man tries to send me after the other three. Don't interrupt, let me finish—You will say that it is impossible to deceive any one at close range. Surely, it does sound melodramatic, like a lurid tale of a paper back novel. But I have studied the photographs of your friends. You and I bear the closest resemblance of any in the group. Your weight is about the same as mine—your shoulders are ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... exercise all my self-control to keep from laughing in his face. He was such a poseur, his simulation of emotion was so melodramatic that I wondered if he really imagined I would be ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... the United Kingdom, and in his two visits to America. It is not surprising, either, to learn that upon the stage his preference was for melodrama and farce. His own serious writing was always dangerously close to the melodramatic, and his humor to the farcical. There is much false art, bad taste, and even vulgarity in Dickens. He was never quite a gentleman, and never succeeded well in drawing gentlemen or ladies. In the region of low comedy he is easily the most ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... seemed to be sparring for time, as he smiled. "In private! You've a strange method of securing privacy, haven't you? A bit melodramatic, isn't it? Perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... 1817, there came to Weimar from Vienna a gifted dog, who assisted his master in the presentation of a play of the melodramatic order, entitled "The Dog of Aubri de Mont-Didier." The director of the Grand Ducal Theater at the time was one Wolfgang von Goethe. To him the dog's manager applied for the privilege of producing his edifying piece. Goethe refused permission, and there ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... to test you. If you, too, had failed me, it would have crushed me. Perhaps all this sounds absurd and melodramatic, ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... wrenches my personal instincts in quite as violent a way. It falsifies the simple objectivity of their deliverance. It makes the goose-flesh the murder excites in me a sufficient reason for the perpetration of the crime. It transforms life from a tragic reality into an insincere melodramatic exhibition, as foul or as tawdry as any one's diseased curiosity pleases to carry it out. And with its consecration of the 'roman naturaliste' state of mind, and its enthronement of the baser crew of Parisian litterateurs ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... out to her on the palm of my hand. It was melodramatic, probably; but I was very young, and by that time wildly in love with her. I thought, for a moment, that she would take it; but she only drew a deep breath and pushed ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... down on the bottom step to wait for his return. The clock in the dining-room struck twelve. It came over her with a clap that but half a day had passed since she had run out into the dawn. For an instant she had the naive, melodramatic instinct of youth to deck out its little events in the guise of crises. She began to tell herself with gusto that she had passed some important turning-point in her life; when, as was not infrequent ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... properties of the poet were but few: the tomb, an occasional raven or screech-owl, and the pale moon, with skeletons and grinning ghosts. . . One thing that the poets were never tired of, was the tomb. . . It was the dramatic—can one say the melodramatic?—view of the grave, as an inspirer of pleasing gloom, that was preparing ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... and to her poisoned imagination the act did not appear so revolting after all. She had been made familiar with it in her favorite novels. She had often seen it simulated with applause on the stage, with all the melodramatic accessories with which it is produce mere effect. Indeed, from her education, she might also think self-destruction was the only dignified and high-spirited thing ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... tears which I have poured out be estimated at the value of the water of the ditch or the moisture which exudes from rotten dung. But I murmur not, and hope I shall at all times be willing to bow to the dispensations of the Almighty." {128d} He exulted in melodramatic nature, in the sublime of Salvator Rosa, in the desperate, wild, and strange. His very prayers, as reported by himself to the Secretary, distressed the Society because they were "passionate." True, he could sometimes, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... the Sacred Veil,"—he said gayly, addressing himself to the King—"Your Majesty considers this venerable gentleman with too much gravity! I recognize in him one of my craft,—a poet, tragic and taciturn of humor, and with a taste for melodramatic simile, . . marked you not the mixing of his word-colors in the picture he drew of Al-Kyris, foundering like a wrecked ship in a blood-red sea, whilst overhead trembled a white sky set thick with blackening stars? As I live, 'twas not ill-devised for a madman's brain! ... and so solemn a ranter should ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... a-huntin' of me, too, Mr. Sneed,—ye that war 'quainted with me in the old times on Tomahawk Creek?" Peters reiterated his demand in a plaintive, melodramatic tone, which titillated his fancy, somehow, and, like virtue, was its own exceeding great reward; for both he and Persimmon Sneed knew right well that their acquaintance amounted only to a mere facial recognition when they had chanced to pass on the country road or the village street, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... population are generally of a melodramatic order. The temperament of the nation is eminently theatrical; and the multitude of minor theatres scattered through France, naturally sustain this original tendency. A villain in the south of France, lately constructed a sort ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... melodramatic; you should have been an actress instead of a singer. But you waste your talent out here on me. Do you imagine I fear either you, or your precious brother? Why, I ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... gain which countervails its own loss of immediate intensity: the least touch of color shows strongly against that subdued background. A very slight catastrophe among those orderly scenes of peaceful life has more effect than the noisier incidents and contrived convulsions of more melodramatic novels. Thus, in 'Mansfield Park' the result of private theatricals, including many rehearsals of stage love-making, among a group of young people who show no very strong principles or firmness of character, appears in a couple of elopements which ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... have been reduced this afternoon. Tell me, is there happiness in being associated with any science or any form of knowledge the study of which upsets you so completely? There are better things in life. Forget this wretched little man, and his melodramatic talk." ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... small, but the audience if not select are enthusiastic; the stage is narrow, but affords room for a deal of strutting and striding about on the part of an overpowering actor in the inevitable belt and boots of the melodramatic highwayman. The play represents certain startling passages in the career of one Claude Duval, formerly a running footman, afterwards—strange anomaly!—a robber on horseback, distinguished for polite manners ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... daily, to the disgust of the serious-minded, the mystification of the incredulous, the delight of sensation-mongers, and the baffled fury of Grandier. So far the play, if melodramatic, had not approached the tragic. Sometimes it degenerated to the broadest farce comedy. Thus, on one occasion when the devil was being read out of the mother superior, a crashing sound was heard and a huge black cat tumbled down the chimney and scampered about the room. At once the ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... think the Rhine rather overdoes it. You can't help feeling, you know, that it's somewhat melodramatic and—common. Have ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... admirari school, whose reluctance to trust themselves to their emotions proceeds in great part from the absence of this instinct, he is proof against the approaches of the charlatan, and has never debased the word "art" by applying it to a mere melodramatic mechanism. But he rightly considers the office of the detector as insignificant in comparison with that of the discoverer, and his glow of satisfaction is reserved for the nobler employment. The points on which he insists are the obligation of honestly desiring ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... road then. I swear to you, Dick, I never had thought of evil till that cursed day which made me reckless and indifferent to everything. And this is the end—a wasted life, a felon's doom! Quite melodramatic, isn't it, Richard? Well, we'll play out the last act with spirit. "Enter first robber," ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... towards the stranger. We alone had witnessed this incident, and were watching him breathlessly. Yet what bade fair a moment ago to be a tragedy, seemed now to halt grotesquely. For Tournelli, throwing open his linen jacket with a melodramatic gesture, tapped his breast, and with flashing eyes and suppressed accents said, "Sare; you wantah me? Look—I ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... for the fall. It cost no such struggle to return to the world as it had taken to leave it, for the poet had overgrown the philosopher, and the open mystery of the common day was already exercising an appeal beyond that of any melodramatic 'arcana.' Of course the period left its mark upon him, but it is most ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... the melodramatic tones of a whimsical boy, that the schoolmaster had drawn at that well scores of times on a morning like this, and would never draw there any more. "I've seen him look down into it, when he was tired with his drawing, just as I do now, and when he rested a bit before carrying the buckets home! ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... with them go deep-seated habits of thought and feeling. The repression of people's accustomed ways of doing things may bring with it a sense of frustration almost as complete and painful as if these obstructed activities were instinctive. This is not true merely in the melodramatic instances of drug addicts and drunkards. It is true in the case of social habits which have become established in a large group. Any Utopian that dreams of revolutionizing society overnight fails to take into account the enormous control of habits over groups which have acquired ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... incidents, contemptible inventions; the plainest statistical information, a deliberate act of theft; the sublimest conceptions of human character, a fudge; the details of human history for three hundred years, a melodramatic, incredible fiction; and what cannot now be found anywhere else recorded, a dream; accidental coincidence he speaks of as detected dishonesty; imaginary resemblance, as guilty adaptation; a style suitable to the subject, as plagiarism; ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... the pen of one unaccustomed to dramatic composition, yet familiar with stage effect," added the journalist. "And yet, without the least claptrap, with but little melodramatic power, against strong opposition and bitter prejudices, and without claqueurs, its own native force and the popularity of the principles it supports have carried it triumphantly through the ordeal of two representations. It will, ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... (1886) can hardly be described as a typical product of George Gissing's mind and art. In it he subdued himself rather to the level of such popular producers as Besant and Rice, and went out of his way to procure melodramatic suspense, an ingredient far from congenial to his normal artistic temper. But the end justified the means. The novel found favour in the eyes of the author of The Lost Sir Massingberd, and Gissing for the first time in ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... first entrance, where he would pass his weapon to 'Eva' and 'Uncle Tom,' and this bisexual individual would discharge it in the wings at the imaginary pursuer, while 'Harris' would put on a wire beard, slouch hat, black melodramatic cape, and, rushing behind the flat, enter ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... by himself; he is the head and representative of a whole class of Irish novelists, among whom John Banim is the best known name. All of them were peasants who aimed at depicting scenes of peasant life from their own experience. What one may call the melodramatic Irish story, in which Lever was so brilliantly successful, has its first famous example in The Collegians of Gerald Griffin. The novel has no concern with college life, and is far better described by its stage-title, The Colleen Bawn. Here at least ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... thank me," he said quickly. "Remember I owe him everything. All I am. All I have I would gladly—gladly—I sound melodramatic, don't I. But I don't often inflict this on you. You know what I mean. If ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... sight "Othello" reminds one of a picture by Titian or Veronese; it is a romantic conception; the personages are all in gala dress; the struggle between Iago and the Moor is melodramatic; the whole picture aglow with a superb richness of colour. It is Shakespeare's finest play, his supreme achievement as a playwright. It is impossible to read "Othello" without admiring the art of it. The beginning is so easy: the introduction of the chief characters so measured ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... was sorely tried, for, more mature than Theodora, and, by stress of circumstances, far more at home in the world of books, he realized all the unconscious humor of some of the overdrawn scenes and melodramatic conversations. Still, his loyalty to Theodora would not let him waver, and, in spite of its crudeness, he was honestly surprised at some of the really telling ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... Hervey's rage was melodramatic. But the girl, even in the depths of her misery and distraught feelings, was impressed. Her heart cried out for her lover, and proclaimed his innocence in terms which would not be silenced. His image rose before her mind's eye, and she looked upon that kindly, strong face, the vigorous bearing ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... make me say some melodramatic thing about having the shackles forged and snapping them upon the gubernatorial wrists, don't you? It will be prosaic enough from this on. I fancy we shall have no difficulty now in convincing his Excellency of the justice of our proceedings ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... we turn in our search for the next step in the progress of art. Here we find the artists making melodramatic efforts to attract the attention and fascinate the mind with weird and incongruous shapes of ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... A melodramatic burst of indignation frightened her nearly out of her senses, and happily brought Jane down. He was going the next day, but he returned once more to the charge, very dolorous and ill-used; but Charlotte had collected herself and ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge |
