"Drollery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to-night revolving, as she was wont, the scenes of the day, her lips often curling with amusement at the oddities to which her fancy added fresh drollery: people were so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else's were transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone were rosy. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... A—men that carries him quarter way 'round the track 'fore he c'n pull up." They all laughed except Miss Verjoos, whose gravity was unbroken, save that behind the dusky windows of her eyes, as she looked at John, there was for an instant a gleam of mischievous drollery. ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... the most sympathy are those in which I had the largest opportunity of listening to the informal talk of the faculty and its wife. I heard some mighty talking upon occasion—and in particular I sat willing at the feet of a president who could mingle limericks and other drollery, the humanities, science, modern linguistics, and economics in a manner which must surely ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... constantly shifting. And then the rolling and tossing of the cargoes and packages on the backs of the animals, and the streaming out of curtains, scarfs, shawls, and loose draperies of every shape and color, lent touches of drollery and bright contrasts to the scene. One instant the spectator on the hill was disposed to laugh, then to admire, then to shiver at the immensity of a danger; over and over again amidst his quick variation of feeling, he repeated ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... it to her pocket, and there had grasped a letter, which she still carried; but when Alice said those last cold words, "Pray do not ask me," she released the grasp, and left the letter where it was. "I suppose he won't bite me, at any rate," she said, and she assumed that look of childish drollery which she would sometimes put on, almost with a grimace, but still with so much prettiness that no one who saw ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... nothing to do but wait, and I used to loiter for hours along the delightful banks of the canal that runs parallel with the River Manzanares, listening to the prattle of the narangero, or man who sold oranges and water. He was a fellow of infinite drollery; his knowledge of individuals was curious and extensive, few people passing his stall with whose names, character, and history he was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... "Biglow Papers," his eyes twinkling with the fun which none enjoyed more than he. On another evening, after reading from Longfellow's "The Poet's Tale," "Lady Wentworth," and other poems, Carleton, before retiring, wrote a "Sequel to Lady Wentworth." It is full of drollery, suggesting also what might possibly have ensued if "the judge" had married "Maud Mueller." Carleton's poem tells of the risks and dangers to marital happiness which the old magistrate runs who weds a ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... the sport, and laughing at the drollery of it, all at once I heard a stamping on the other side of the wagon, and, stepping quickly around the horses' heads, I saw the old doe, and a buck and doe ...
— The Nursery, No. 106, October, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... Shirley! Methinks I could help you to the man, if so be as you will deem him worth the finding," he added, suddenly turning upside down, and looking at them standing on the palms of his hands, with an indescribable leer of drollery, which in a moment dashed all the hopes with which they had turned to him. "Should you know this nunks of ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... head of Emanuel College, Cambridge, Prebendary of Canterbury, and afterwards of St. Paul's, or Westminster, used to frequent a club in London, to which I belonged. He was at first reserved and silent: but his forte was humour and drollery. At Cambridge he neglected forms and ceremonies in his college too much: and was in all his glory when in dishabille in his study, with his cat by his side, and his Shakspeare tracts about him. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... their complexion, got an ague or two, and seldom held it above half a year, or a year at most; "And then," said he, "we go to the uplands again and fetch another;" so that marrying of wives was reckoned a kind of good farm to them. It is true the fellow told this in a kind of drollery and mirth; but the fact, for all that, is certainly true; and that they have abundance of wives by that very means. Nor is it less true that the inhabitants in these places do not hold it out, as in other ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... still room for excitement and drollery in the perennial question of the seats. Mr. Chamberlain is not a man to whom people are inclined to make concessions; he is so little inclined to give up anything himself; and, accordingly, there arose a very serious question as to the first seat on the ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... Nancy's greeting to Annie vain and perfunctory, was a three-year-old with a frivolity of manner that ill became his senescent phiz. Upon its grizzled expanse there would pass in amazing succession the whole range of canine passion, rage, love, urbanity, shame, drollery, ennui, and, most frequent of all, curiosity. At present all his energy was devoted to expressing unmitigated pleasure, the dignity of which exhibition was continually being marred by sliding rugs. But it is almost certain that he didn't care a rap for his lost dignity. His mistress ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... passed, and the spirit moved no one to open his mouth. I judged at last that the horses had been baited sufficiently, silently showed my watch to the postilions, who, with ourselves, got up and went away without a word having been said to mar the quaint drollery of ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... was borrowed. In a copy of verses, entitled the Time Poets, preserved in a miscellany called Choice Drollery, 1656, are these lines: Sent by Ben Jonson, as some authors say, Broom went before, and kindly ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... Bradshaw must of necessity cover a scheming heart. It may, however, be noticed that a good many members of the Bradshaw family possess a keen and rather sinister sense of the humorous, inherited doubtless from their great ancestor, the dry wag who wrote that monument of quiet drollery, Bradshaw's Railway Guide. So with the hero ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... plain cabriolet, when I remarked the boy, who was singing, and otherwise exercising his animal spirits by hopping, dancing, and running along the road by the side of the vehicle. I was much diverted by his drollery, and finally invited him to take a drive with me. He jumped in—without awaiting a second invitation, stared wonderfully at me with his great brown eyes, and in high satisfaction kicked his feet against the dash-board, and watched the motion of the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... medium of intercourse with the world, serves but to admit additional vexations. Every few moments the steps of the passengers are heard to pause, and some well-known face appears in the free sunshine behind the iron bars, brimful of mirth and drollery, the owner whereof stands on tiptoe to tickle poor Dr. Bullivant with a stinging sarcasm. Then laugh the little boys around the prison door, and the wag goes chuckling away. The apothecary would fain retaliate, but all his quips and repartees, and sharp and facetious fancies, once so abundant, ...
— Dr. Bullivant - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... drollery concluded with his announcement of place and date of his lecture, with still further gaiety at the end. Nothing short of a seismic cataclysm—an earthquake, in fact—could deter a San Francisco audience after that. Mark Twain's farewell address, given ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... which grew in thick curls all over her head and stood out like a mop round her shoulders. She was a plain girl, with small, very black eyes, a turned-up nose, and a wide mouth; but there was an irresistible expression of drollery in her face, and when she laughed, showing her milk-white teeth, there were people who even thought her attractive. Nora really loved her, although the two, standing side by side, were, as far as appearances were ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... with a bamboo-cane, driving his herd to the spiritual pasture. He seemed himself to be conscious of the burlesque attaching to his office,—at least he behaved very absurdly in it, and many a stroke fell rather in jest than in earnest. The drollery of the driver did not, however, enliven the ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... admitted it in his diction only; which, as it is the dress of poetry, doth, like the dress of men, establish characters (the one of the whole poem, and the other of the whole man), in vulgar opinion, beyond any of their greater excellences: but surely, a certain drollery in stile, where characters and sentiments are perfectly natural, no more constitutes the burlesque, than an empty pomp and dignity of words, where everything else is mean and low, can entitle any performance to the appellation of the ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... distinguished double bass), and Vaughan. In "Bombastes Furioso," King Artaxomines was personated by Mr. Richmond; Fusbos by Mr. Clay; General Bombastes by Mr. J. H. Parr, who elicited shouts of laughter by his drollery and admirable acting. Miss Grant, of the Theatre Royal Company, played Distaffina. The house was crowded in every part, the whole town seemed to take an interest in the matter, and every nerve was strained to command success. In fact so well did those who ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... a certain apish drollery and humour which exhibited itself in the lad, and a liking for some of the old man's pursuits, the first of the twins was the grandfather's favourite and companion, and would laugh and talk out all ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... by her sharp tone, gave a long whispered whistle, and pretended to hide under the table. He had a certain gift of drollery which made it difficult not to laugh even at his most foolish antics, and Marian was giving way in spite of herself when she found Douglas bending over her and saying, ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... created a clatter with basin and hot water can. Millicent, forcing herself to eat quickly, continued to gaze after the pair. The description of Stampa's employer interested her. His drollery evidently consisted in hiring a ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... the character of the people to whom we were now opposed, and which, as at the time it had something in it truly comical, I cannot resist the inclination of repeating, though aware that its title to drollery must in a great measure be lost in the relation. Having been informed that in a certain part of the forest a company of riflemen had passed the night, I took with me a party of soldiers, and proceeded in the direction ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... in collusion with the other player in distinctive costume, whose business it is to let him know by a series of bells and signals when the players are not looking, and can be easily thrown down. A sharp fall of this sort gives rise to no end of banter and good-natured drollery, directed against the ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... of Leonard's words was a thing she prized beyond count. It made Mrs. Morris nervous, drained her mind's treasury, and sent her conversational powers borrowing and begging; Isabel it awed; Arthur it tantalized; to Godfrey it was an appetizing drollery; but to Ruth it was dearer and clearer than ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... opposite end: Then the crowd push'd me out. What was left me to do? I tried for the tragedy... que voulez-vous? Every place for the tragedy book'd!... mon ami. The farce was close by:... at the farce me voici. The piece is a new one: and Grassot plays well: There is drollery, too, in that fellow Ravel: And Hyacinth's nose is superb:... yet I meant My evening elsewhere, and not thus to have spent. Fate orders these things by her will, not by ours! Sir, mankind is ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... the drollery of these madcaps to the attentions of our courtiers?" said Francis, more gently. "Certes are ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... all frequently taken to the new Zoological Garden, where we were especially delighted with the drollery of the monkeys. Even then I felt a certain pity for the deer and does in confinement, and for the wild beasts in their cages, and this so grew upon me that many a visit to a zoological garden has been spoiled by it. Once in Keilhau ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... or interests in common with the settled Anglo-Saxon citizen, he cannot fail to appear at times to the latter as a near relation to Mephistopheles. But his "mockery" is as accidental and naif as that of Jewish Young Germany is keen and deliberate; and the former differs from the latter as the drollery of Abraham a Santa Clara differs from the brilliant ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... circumstance which an imaginative boy of ten, named John Milton, was not to forget. "Pan's Anniversary," late in the reign of James, proclaimed that Jonson had not yet forgotten how to write exquisite lyrics, and "The Gipsies Metamorphosed" displayed the old drollery and broad humorous stroke still unimpaired and unmatchable. These, too, and the earlier years of Charles were the days of the Apollo Room of the Devil Tavern where Jonson presided, the absolute monarch of English literary ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... scandal was sore against us on that score. I remember Lacy, who was an old play-actor, and a lieutenant in ours, made drollery on it in a play which was sometimes acted at Oxford, when our hearts were something up, called, I ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... friend, Captain Gordon, had got a ship, and hoped to be able to take him, and this might lead to Harry's going with him. Then Norman applied himself to the capture of cray-fish, and Larkins grew so full of fun and drollery, that the hours of recreation passed off less gloomily ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... authors were quite unconscious of their existence."[120] There are, however, some places in which one is moved to doubt whether the extravagance is the product of pure simplicity, and without the least tinge of drollery. ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... with 'Little Prudy.' Compared with her, all other book-children are cold creations of literature; she alone is the real thing. All the quaintness of children, its originality, its tenderness and its teasing, its infinite uncommon drollery, the serious earnestness of its fun, the fun of its seriousness, the naturalness of its plays, and the delicious oddity of its progress, all these united for dear Little Prudy ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... whole-hog system." Under this perfect assumption there appeared a series of really familiar epistles, either remonstrating with or speaking of the "Gineral," or, as the Major latterly styled the President, "the Govermint;" no less admirable for the political acumen they display than for a caustic drollery, which is enforced with shrewd Yankee humour, and in the singular phraseology current amongst 'Uncle Sam's' kindred. These letters have been collected, and are published both in America and in England; and although neither the purity of the politics or the dialect of ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... novel, and gives it its peculiar and exquisite charm, is the execution of certain detached passages. We have never seen the drollery of a genuine Yankee to more advantage than in "Say and Seal." An occasional ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... author was present, they could not have more civilly accepted the toast; it was a bold kind of drollery in Mr. Burney, for I was fain to drink my own health in a bumper, which he filled for me, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... peasant poet of the South of France—the Burns of Limousin, Provence, and Languedoc. His songs are in the mouths of all who sing in the fields and by the cottage firesides. Their subjects are always rural, naive, and full of rustic pathos and rustic drollery. To use his words to me, he sings what the hearts of the people say, and he can no more help it than can the birds in the trees. Translations into French of his main poems have appeared; and compositions more full of natural and thoroughly unsophisticated ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... who have been invalided home were asked whether this humor in the trenches is the real thing, or only an affected drollery to conceal the emotions the men feel in the face of death; but they all declare that it is quite spontaneous. One old soldier, well accustomed to being under fire, freely admitted that he had never been with such a cheery and courageous ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... thee, lad," said Ezra, "it's scarcely to be touched upon as a laughing matter. Drollery of a sort theer is in it, to be sure; but what Sennacherib Eld says he sticks to. When he bites he holds. He was ever ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... what he thought of Lincoln. "He is a beast." This was all he would say of him. I knew, of course, that he meant bete in the French sense, and not in the offensive English sense of the word. The truth was, that Gurowski had little relish for humor, and the drollery which formed so prominent a part of Lincoln's external character was unintelligible and offensive to him. At a later period, as I judge from his Diary, he understood the President better, and did full justice ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... took, as was his habit, the whole conversation upon himself, and Susie was obliged to confess that he was at his best. There was a grotesque drollery about him that was very diverting, and it was almost impossible to resist him. He ate and drank with tremendous appetite. Susie thanked her stars at that moment that she was a woman who knew by long practice how to conceal her feelings, for Arthur, overcome with dismay at ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... each generous instinct with a laughing drollery. Why did you hum when you cooked his supper and called to him through ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... which the hair was all dragged back and stowed away under a small and close-fitting cap, which surrounding her face increased the effect of full-blown rotundity. But the grey eye and even the little snub nose were full of drollery and humour, and the lines about the generally somewhat closely shut mouth indicated unmistakable intellectual power. There is a singular resemblance between her handwriting and that of my mother. Very numerous letters must have passed between them. But of all ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... told me some stories of George Selwyn, whom he had known in his younger days, and many of whose good sayings he remembers. He describes him as a man of great gravity and deliberation in speaking, and, after exciting extraordinary mirth by his wit and drollery, gently smiling and saying, 'I am glad you are pleased.' The old Lord Foley (father of the last) was much discontented with his father's will, who, knowing that he was in debt and a spendthrift, had strictly tied up the property: he tried ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... for laughter became apparent. Never did a General and his Chief-of-Staff, in a more unseemly state of cachinnation, ride along a picket-line. At every new phase of the subject it presented new features of the ludicrous; and though the reply at this late date may have lost much of the drollery which then it wore, it is a serio-comic document of as much vital importance in the moral history of our late contest as any that can be found in the archives under the care of Gen. E. D. Townsend. It was received late Sunday evening, and was answered ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... witnessed. And yet," continued he, "if it were not for his cruelty to the men, he is the most amusing liar I ever heard. I am often more inclined to laugh than to be angry at him; he has a vein of wit and rich humour that runs through his composition, and never quits him. There is drollery even in his malice, and, if we cannot get clear of him, we must make ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... people as had landed with him, without manifesting the least sign of fear or distrust. It was remarkable, that one of the Indians was conspicuously deformed; nor was he more distinguished by the hump upon his back, than by the drollery of his gestures, and the humour of his speeches, which had the appearance of being intended for the entertainment of our voyagers. Unfortunately, the language in which he spake to them was wholly unintelligible. To each of the present group the captain ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... much presumption; upon which he called to him in a loud tone, 'What is it you are contending for, if you be contending?' And afterwards imagining that the gentleman retorted upon him with a kind of smart drollery, he said, 'Mr. ——, it does not become you to talk so to me. Besides, ridicule is not your talent; you have there neither intuition nor sagacity.' The gentleman protested that he had intended no improper freedom, but had the greatest respect for Dr. Johnson. After ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... I most required; upon which the learned doctor observed, with proper gravity, that brandy would probably be the most efficacious remedy, as he had often heard that English soldiers lived entirely on exciting drinks. Ill as I was, I could scarcely refrain from laughing at the drollery of the idea. ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... been razeed to Mesty. Mesty in other points was an eccentric character; at one moment, when he remembered his lineage, he was proud to excess, at others he was grave and almost sullen—but when nothing either in daily occurrences or in his mind ran contrary, he exhibited the drollery so often found in his nation, with a spice of Irish humour, as if he had caught up the latter with his ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... told you that we almost never hear war talk. We did hear some while our local clown was home, but how much was true and how much his imagination I don't know. Anyway, his drollery made us all laugh. His mother-in-law had died since he left, and when his wife wept on his shoulder, he patted her on the back, and winked over his shoulder at his admiring friends, as he said: "Chut, ma fille, if you are going to cry in these days because someone dies, ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... who were invited in for examination. Members were always examined for admission. The strangest questions were asked by the venerable board, and often strange answers elicited,—no matter how remote from the purpose, provided there was wit or drollery. Sometimes a singularly slow person would be invited, on purpose to puzzle and tease him with questions that he could make nothing of; and he would stand in helpless imbecility, without being able to cover his retreat with even the faintest suspicion of a joke. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... of "The Rivals" for me. The reception-room where we sat served for a stage. He and his son seated themselves at the big table, and Bob Acres wrote his challenge. I followed all his movements with my hands, and caught the drollery of his blunders and gestures in a way that would have been impossible had it all been spelled to me. Then they rose to fight the duel, and I followed the swift thrusts and parries of the swords and the waverings of poor Bob as his courage oozed out at his finger ends. Then the great actor ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... for her ladyship was in one of her jocose humours when I went to speak to her on the subject; and it was so far from my power to make a proper impression on her of the enormity that had been committed, that she made me laugh, in spite of my reason, at the fantastical drollery of her malicious ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... necessary to fill up the harmony of life. As a general thing, the Irish servants are perhaps more honest, and dull as they seem, have more head; but the negro has more heart. His nature is irrepressible and joyous; he is full of comicality and drollery, of fun, jeers, jokes, yah-yas, and merriment; and this element will be needed in our midst to temper our puritan and national seriousness. He loves music whether sad, burlesque, or gay; is devoted to those who treat him worthily, his affections being easily won; and there is something ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... inhuman; but he venerated nothing. Neither in the masterpieces of art nor in the purest examples of virtue, neither in the Great First Cause nor in the awful enigma of the grave, could he see anything but subjects for drollery. The more solemn and august the theme, the more monkey-like was his grimacing and chattering. The mirth of Swift is the mirth of Mephistopheles; the mirth of Voltaire is the mirth of Puck. If, as Soame ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the vague of that far-off time another face and figure, as essentially New En&land as this, and yet so different, relieve themselves. Charles F. Browne, whose drollery wafted his pseudonym as far as the English speech could carry laughter, was a Westernized Yankee. He added an Ohio way of talking to the Maine way of thinking, and he so became a literary product of a rarer and stranger ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a very emphatic little man, but his emphasis only roused the idea of drollery in the minds of those whom he addressed, and ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... His drollery appeared to Marcia the finest that ever was; she laughed and laughed again; when he made fun of the conjecturable toughness of the elderly aristocrat, she implored him to stop if he did not want to kill her. Marcia was not in the state in which woman best convinces her enemies of her fitness ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... was but seldom she was able to speak at all. David's sudden departure, and the anxiety attending it, had been too much for her. Besides, she missed Mary Ellen. That little country-girl had, besides her innocence and her good looks, a vein of drollery, which made her a very entertaining companion. And then, being so quick-witted, and so kind-hearted, she thought of various little things to do for Emily's comfort, which never would have occurred to her mother or Miss Joey. Emily wanted her back again. She had got over that feeling ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Colley Cibber says of this performance "That when he (Penkethman) first played Harlequin in 'The Emperor of the Moon' several gentlemen (who inadvertently judged by the rules of nature) fancied that a great deal of the drollery, and spirit of his grimace was lost by his wearing that useless, unmeaning mask, therefore insisted that the next time of his acting that part he should play without it. Their desire was accordingly complied with, but alas! in vain—Penkethman ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... careless, desultory way. His tone was loud yet not declamatory, at first in a grumbling, grandfatherly, half-humorous, querulous accent that riveted every ear instantly. A sort of drollery of a contagious kind haunted it. Here and there a member tittered in expectation of a ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... "Waife, Waife!" Yes, the Bandit, who appeared but in the last scene, and even then uttered not a word, was the once great actor on that itinerant Thespian stage, known through many a fair for his exuberant humour, his impromptu jokes, his arch eye, his redundant life of drollery, and the strange pathos or dignity with which he could suddenly exalt a jester's part, and call forth tears in the startled hush of laughter; he whom the Cobbler had rightly said, "might have made a fortune ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of merriment, half of disappointment. I was inclined to think the old gentleman had really an afterpart of his story in reserve; but he sipped his wine and said nothing more; and there was an odd expression about his dilapidated countenance that left me in doubt whether he were in drollery ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... where the drums come in with a tremendous bang at the end of the andante movement. He is said to have invented this part in order to arouse the attention of the audience and make the ladies scream. Again, in the 'Toy Symphony,' he shows a child-like appreciation of drollery in producing genuine music out of such toy instruments as tin whistles, jew's-harps, toy trumpets, etc. The 'Toy Symphony' was composed at Eisenstadt, where, having visited a village fair and purchased a number of toy instruments, ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... distinguished professor of that science in the university at Aberdeen. The ambassador set out for that place, preceded by a letter from the King with instructions to make the best of him. There was in the town one Geordy, a butcher, blind of one eye, a fellow of much wit and drollery. Geordy is told to play the part of a professor, with the warning not to speak a word; is gowned, wigged, and placed in a chair of state, when the ambassador is shown in and they are left alone together. Presently the nobleman came out greatly pleased ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... face, and powdered hair, his raised and clasped hands,—rushing out of the lockup-house scene in all the fervid extasy of a father rejoicing at the escape of his son from destruction. In Crack, Dozey, Nipperkin, and other drunken characters, his drollery was irresistible. His intoxication displayed as much discrimination as his pathetic performances. Who can forget his stare in being detected in his fuddling as Dozey, and his plea for drinking to "wa-ash ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... Stowe covered a period of fifty years and was a conspicuously happy one. Prof. Stowe, who seemed so much like a myth to the general public, was a man of great learning and keen intelligence, unimaginative as he says himself, but richly endowed with "a certain broad humor and drollery." His son tells us that he was "an inimitable mimic and story-teller. No small proportion of Mrs. Stowe's success as a literary woman is to be attributed to him." The Sam Lawson stories are said to be a little more his than hers, being "told as they came ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... became embodied in the chaff that passed to and fro between the two corps; of which one saying, "The two most useless things in a ship were the captain of marines and the mizzen-royal," deserves for its drollery to be committed to writing, now that mizzen-royals have ceased to be. May it be long before the like extinction awaits the captains of marines! Our own, however, an eccentric man, who had accomplished the then rare feat of working his way up from the ranks, used to claim that marines ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... and in pleasant company. He was a thorough boy among boys—Matson, Willoughby, Tom Dale and the rest. He joined in their pranks, and contributed to their amusement with his ready good-humour and unflagging drollery. ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... overlooks the sea, a most romantic and salutary situation. One other flash broke from him in this retirement. His novel, called the Expedition of Humphry Clinker, which he sent to England to be printed in 1770, though abounding in portraitures of exquisite drollery, and in situations highly comical, has not the full zest and flavour of his earlier works. The story does not move on with the same impetuosity. The characters have more the appearance of being broad caricatures from real life, than the creatures of a rich and teeming ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... claim of the absurd fiscal system of the Ancien regime upon the grateful remembrance of the world. A scheme of taxation which exacted posting-charges from a traveller who proposed to continue his journey by water, possesses a natural ingredient of drollery infused into its mere vexatiousness; but a whole volume of satire could hardly put its essential absurdity in a stronger light than is thrown upon it in the short conversation between the astonished Tristram and the officer of the fisc, who had just handed him a little bill for six ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... for the best piece of Raphael. For many a happy thought I am indebted to that picture—it is my principal source of inspiration; when my imagination flags, as of course it occasionally does, I stare upon those features, and forthwith strange ideas of fun and drollery begin to flow into my mind; these I round, amplify, or combine into goodly creations, and bring forth as I find an opportunity. It is true that I am occasionally tormented by the thought that, by doing this, I am committing plagiarism; though in that case, all thoughts must be plagiarisms, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... hand of time which turns the kaleidoscope of human affairs appeared to move slowly for a few weeks, as far as the characters of my story are concerned. The two little bakers worked together daily, one abounding in mirth and drollery, and the other cheered, or rather beguiled from melancholy in spite of herself. Business grew apace, not only because two girls who evoked general sympathy were the principals of the firm, but also for the reason ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... you wou'd not descend to such a jakes." These thoughts not a little disturb'd her; but I was asham'd of nothing more, than that Eumolpus, suspecting the occasion, shou'd in his next verses make our suppos'd quarrel the subject of his drollery; and lest my care to avoid it shou'd prove ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... enough, this Knox has a vein of drollery in him; which I like much, in combination with his other qualities. He has a true eye for the ridiculous. His History, with its rough earnestness, is curiously enlivened with this. When the two Prelates, entering Glasgow Cathedral, quarrel about precedence; march rapidly ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... there," said Toogood. "They tell me he's always either in one shop or the other. I'll slip in and bring him out." Mr Toogood had assumed a comfortable air, as though the day's work was to be good pastime, and even made occasional attempts at drollery. He had had his jokes about Dan Stringer, and had attempted to describe the absurdities of Mr Crawley's visit to Bedford Row. All this would have angered the major, had he not seen that it was assumed to cover something below of which Mr Toogood ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... endeavoured to teach others to bear it lightly? His blithe humour ought surely to have been an example to Nellie! And as for the episode of the funeral march on the Pianisto, really, really, the tiresome little thing ought to have better appreciated his whimsical drollery! ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... of another of Barnum's greatest hits must be told in his own words: "In December, 1861," he related, "I was visited at the Museum by a most remarkable dwarf, who was a sharp, intelligent little fellow, with a deal of drollery and wit. He had a splendid head, was perfectly formed, and was very attractive, and, in short, for a 'showman,' he was a perfect treasure. His name, he told me, was George Washington Morrison Nutt, and his father was Major ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... with a broad drollery in his eye; "un professeur d'occasion!" It was a ruined music-teacher, engaged now in selling balloons from Madeira Place, ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... serious writing, and to the oddity of the contrast between that and the flashy passages with which it is interlarded. From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step. You laugh and are surprised that any one should turn round and travestie himself: the drollery is in the utter discontinuity of ideas and feelings. He makes virtue serve as a foil to vice; dandyism is (for want of any other) a variety of genius. A classical intoxication is followed by the splashing of soda-water, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... "I am convinced the world will get tired (at least I hope so) of this eternal guffaw about all things. After all, life has something serious in it. It cannot be all a comic history of humanity. Some men would, I believe, write a Comic Sermon on the Mount. Think of a Comic History of England, the drollery of Alfred, the fun of Sir Thomas More, the farce of his daughter begging the dead head and clasping it in her coffin on her bosom. Surely the world will be sick of this blasphemy." John Sterling, in a like spirit, said:- "Periodicals and novels are to all in this generation, but more especially to ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... the onely drinking: and for thy walles a pretty slight Drollery, or the Storie of the Prodigall, or the Germane hunting in Waterworke, is worth a thousand of these Bed-hangings, and these Flybitten Tapistries. Let it be tenne pound (if thou canst.) Come, if it were not for thy humors, there is not a better Wench in England. Go, wash thy face, and draw thy ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... sports; he subsequently found his chief entertainment in literary avocations. As a poet, he had been better known if his efforts had been of a less fragmentary character. The general tendency of his Muse was drollery, but some of his lyrics are ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... reputation only, began with every other Moral quality to lose its hold on him in his old age; that is, at the time of life in which he is represented to us; a period, as it should seem, approaching to seventy.—The truth is that he had drollery enough to support himself in credit without the point of honour, and had address enough to make even the preservation of his life a point of drollery. The reader knows I allude, tho' something prematurely, to his fictitious death in the battle of Shrewsbury. This incident is generally construed ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... vanished and she was full of animated talk. Her conversation abounded in bright, pointed sayings, in fine little touches of humor, in amusing anecdotes and incidents of her own experience, which she related with astonishing ease and fluency, sometimes also in downright girlish fun and drollery; and all was rendered doubly attractive by her low, sweet woman's voice and her merry, fitful laugh. Yet these things were but the sparkle of a very deep and serious nature. Even then her religious character was to me wonderful. She seemed ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... bachelor. His nose was shaped like the bill of a parrot; his face slightly pitted with the small-pox, with a dry perpetual bloom on it, like a frostbitten leaf in autumn. He had an eye of great quickness and vivacity, with a drollery and lurking waggery of expression that was irresistible. He was evidently the wit of the family, dealing very much in sly jokes and innuendoes with the ladies, and making infinite merriment by harping upon old themes, which, unfortunately, my ignorance ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... of a certain apish drollery and humor which exhibited itself in the lad, and a liking for some of the old man's pursuits, the first of the twins was the grandfather's favorite and companion, and would laugh and talk out all his infantine heart to the old gentleman, to ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... can neither be bitter nor rhetorical, he is apt to drop into mere mechanical flatness. But nobody has described more vigorously all the meaner forms of selfishness, stupidity, and sycophancy engendered under 'that fatal drollery,' as Tancred describes it, 'called a parliamentary government.' The pompous dulness which affects philosophical gravity, the appetite for the mere dry husks and bran of musty constitutional platitude which takes the airs of political wisdom, the pettifogging ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... distinguuntur. The fellows argument was that usual one, quae separantur distinguuntur et haec, etc.; the Lad answered by a distinction, quae separantur per se verum: per accidens, falsum; and so they went on. The lad chanced to transmit a proposition one tyme: the fellow in a drollery replied, si tu transmittas ego—revocabo. Thus have we dwelt enough on Orleans, its hy tyme ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... ask him to allow me to tell him all about it, and this was his reply. 'Our Lord made that promise long before the discovery of America and the establishment of the peculiar institutions of this country. If he had lived at this day, I reckon,' he continued with a look of drollery, 'he would have said "Ask and ye shall receive—if you aint a nigger." I can't take you into my school because you are black, but I'll send you down to the American Missionary school at Chattanooga. You can ask and receive there whether you are ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 3, March 1888 • Various
... originality and drollery of all kinds, was apparently very fond of this old man, and rang the bell for more tea to stop his coughing. It was now half-past ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... less on drollery of incident and indulged more in play upon words than Lever, but the humor of both is essentially of the same kind and drawn from the same source. Compared with much of our American humor, it has a spontaneousness, and above ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... other language is well-nigh an impossibility. There is a natural gravity and a sonorous stateliness about Spanish, be it ever so colloquial, that make an absurdity doubly absurd, and give plausibility to the most preposterous statement. This is what makes Sancho Panza's drollery the despair of the conscientious translator. Sancho's curt comments can never fall flat, but they lose half their flavour when transferred from their native Castilian into any other medium. But if foreigners have ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... solidity and dignity, of good stature and proportions; has nothing of affectation in manners or insincerity in speech; is a hearty, stirring, serious man, whose intensity is softened by steady purposes and calm forces, and moderated by the play of a sense of humor, that is not drollery or levity, but has a pleasing greeting for a clever word, and yields return with a flash in it and an ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... man's inventive faculties, and are named, not too subtly, the Armstrong gate. This, indeed, is the American beauty of ranch humour, a flower of imperishable fragrance handed to the visitor—who does the lifting with guarded drollery or triumphant snicker, as may be. Buck Devine or Sandy Sawtelle will achieve the mot with an aloof austerity that abates no jot unto the hundredth repetition; while Lew Wee, Chinese cook of the Arrowhead, fails not to brighten it with a nervous giggle, impairing its vocal ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Such a store was that of Denton Offutt. Lincoln could hardly have chosen surroundings more favorable to the highest development of the art of story-telling, and he had not been there long before his reputation for drollery was established. ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... end and she raised her knife. Die or not, the thing was too incredible a farce to leave me unmoved. Yes, I laughed out of sheer delight. The drollery of this phantom hacking at Mallare with a non-existent dagger ... a mad ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... found. For Stead and Ben were alike in feeling the bright, merry, capricious, laughing, teasing Emlyn the charm and delight of home. In trouble, or for real aid, they went to Patience, but who was like Emlyn for drollery and diversion? Who ever made Stead laugh as she could, or who so played with Ben, and never, like Rusha, tried to be maidenly, ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she would have spoken to him as to a brother of the nature of her quarrel with Mrs. Houghton, only that, even to a brother, she would not have mentioned her husband's folly. When he spoke of her crying, or laughing, or sneezing, she liked the little attempt at drollery. She liked to know that he had found her charming. Where is the woman who does not wish to charm, and is not proud to think that she has succeeded with those whom she most likes? She could not rebuke him. She could not even avoid letting him see that ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... had no desire whatever to be ejected from this snug nest into the welter of the wet and friendless world, puffed at his cigar, and looked at his host with the irresistible drollery of his eyes. ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... His forced drollery was more obnoxious than his ill-humor, and, awakening her impatience, restored in a measure her courage. He was but a pitiful object, after all, with his flame-colored visage, and short, crouching figure; and, as her thoughts passed from the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Musselburgh for a twelvemonth, till she was eleven years old. After this prolonged and elaborate education, she was recalled to Burntisland, and the results of the process she had undergone are detailed in her "Recollections" with much drollery.] ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... complete. His legs were encased in Hessian boots; his shooting-jacket was somewhat the worse for wear; and his hat, which had been eminently respectable at first starting, had acquired a sort of brigandish air; and to add to the drollery of his general appearance, the excellent little Servian horse he rode was not high enough for ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... trinkebla. Drip guteti. Drive away (expel) forpeli. Drive (in carriage) veturi. Drive back (repel) repeli, repusxi. Drivel (to slaver) kracxeti. Driver (car, etc.) veturisto. Droll ridinda, sxerca. Drollery sxerco—ado. Dromedary unugxiba kamelo. Drone burdo. Droop (pine) malfortigxi. Drop guto. Dropsy akvosxvelo. Dross metala sxauxmo. Drought senpluveco. Drove (cattle) bestaro, brutaro. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... date when this drollery was penned there happened at the Bear an incident which might have furnished the water-drinkers with an effective retort on their satirist. The Earl of Buccleugh, just returned from military service abroad, on his way ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... the recipient of one of the most amusing and yet most virulent attacks which even that controversial age produced. "The whole pamphlet," Mr. Collins truly says, "is inimitable. Its irony, its humour, its drollery, are delicious." ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... Shakespear appears as unnecessary, as the attempt would be vain; for whoever has any taste for what is great, terrible, or tender, may meet with the amplest gratification in Shakespear; as may those also have a taste for drollery and true humour. His genius was almost boundless, and he succeeded alike in every part of writing. I cannot forbear giving the character of Shakespear in the words of a great genius, in a prologue spoken by Mr. Garrick when he first ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... sincerely," said the Green Mountain lad, a broad smile playing over his fine face, as he regarded the drollery of his new acquaintance. "I shall need many suggestions, no doubt, for I feel almost lost in this great city. I had no idea it was so large. I was never here before, and do not know where to go for a ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... to explain the cause of this remarkable apparition, we think it justifiable to state to the reader, in confidence, that young Master Corrie was deeply in love with the fair Alice. With all his reckless drollery of disposition, the boy was intensely romantic and enthusiastic; and, feeling that the unsettled condition of the times endangered the welfare of his lady-love, he resolved, like a true knight, to arm himself and guard the threshold of her ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... after which she said: 'He's younger than me, too.' I know not what drollery there was in this but it was unexpected and it made me laugh. Neither do I know whether Miss Mavis took offence at my laughter, though I remember thinking at the moment with compunction that it had brought a certain colour to her cheek. At all events she got up, gathering her shawl and her books ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... about him I also presented some article or other. There were great numbers of children and, as I took notice of the little ones that were in arms and gave them beads, both small and great, but with much drollery and good humour, endeavoured to benefit by the occasion. Boys of ten and twelve years old were caught up in arms and brought to me, which created much laughter; so that in a short time I got rid of all I had ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... seem as if there were a certain drollery of art which leads men who think they are doing one thing to do another and very different one. Thus, men have set up in their painted church-windows the symbolisms of virtues and graces, and the images of saints, and even of Divinity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... specimens of old Scottish humour have come down to us in ballad form, some of them made more familiar to our ears in modernised versions or paraphrases in which, along with the roughnesses, much of the force and quaint drollery of the originals has been smoothed away. Of such is The Wyf of Auchtermuchty, a Fife ballad, full of local colour and character, the production of 'Sir John Moffat,' a sixteenth century priest, who loved ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... of the most delightful bits of character work ever seen on the Casino stage," observed the stage critic of the "Sun." "It is a bit of quiet, unassuming drollery which warms like good wine. Evidently the part was not intended to take precedence, as Miss Madenda is not often on the stage, but the audience, with the characteristic perversity of such bodies, selected for itself. The little Quakeress was marked for a favourite ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... besides Mrs. Martin made herself very agreeable by her quantity of anecdotes, and her knowledge of the people with whom she had lived in her youth, of whom she could, with great ability and admirable composed drollery, ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... at times, John had always an indefinable drollery about him that made him agreeable company to his friends, at least; and such an admiring friend he had constantly at hand in the person of Bert Haines. Both were Bohemians in natural tendency, and, though ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... expressed his delight in the prospect, and kissed the Prioress's hand, but the heavy door was already being opened, and with an expressive look of drollery and resignation, the good lady withdrew her hand, hastily brought her Benedictine hood and veil closely over her face, and rode into the court, followed by her suite. Anne had time to let her hand ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... made jellies and soups, the little larder at Mayfield Villas was filled to overflowing. Mrs. Broderick took it all gratefully, and gave her nurses no trouble. "I am under orders," she would say, with a pitiful attempt at her old drollery; but only Olivia, who loved and understood her, ever guessed at the sadness of those ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... with Napoleon, if Napoleon would have accepted terms of peace. The manifesto was not, however, intended to meet a scientific criticism. In the English Foreign Office it was correctly described as a piece of drollery; and Metternich was too familiar with the language of principles himself to attach much meaning to it in the mouth of anyone else. Talleyrand, however, kept a grave countenance. With inimitable composure ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... in the Shakspeare Gallery), overflows with elvish fun and imaginative drollery. It professes to embody that portion of the first scene in the fourth act where the spell-blinded queen caresses Bottom the weaver, on whose shoulders Oberon's transforming wand has placed an ass' head. Titania, a gay and alluring being, attended by her ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... duchess made answer, "that worthy Sancho is droll I consider a very good thing, because it is a sign that he is shrewd; for drollery and sprightliness, Senor Don Quixote, as you very well know, do not take up their abode with dull wits; and as good Sancho is droll and sprightly I here ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... comedy still reigned; and Goldsmith's comedies were not sentimental. The "Goodnatured Man" had been too funny to succeed; yet the mirth of the "Goodnatured Man" was sober when compared with the rich drollery of "She Stoops to Conquer," which is, in truth, an incomparable farce in five acts. On this occasion, however, genius triumphed. Pit, boxes, and galleries, were in a constant roar of laughter. If any bigoted admirer ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... for him—dangled, naturally, with no small vividness, before the wistful gentlewomen, to whom, if he had but had the initiative, he might have made the most princely presents. Such was the oddity, not to say the rather tragic drollery, of the situation: that Henry's idea of a present was ten cents' worth of popcorn, or some similar homely trifle; and that when one had created for him a world of these proportions there was no honest way of inspiring him to write cheques for hundreds; all congruous though these would ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... and would entertain them most hospitably, and with increasing frequency, as his means became rapidly more ample. He was also fond of the theatres, taking special delight in comedies and farces, however broad, and even pantomimes. With what solemn drollery he would afterwards dwell on the feats of Clown and Pantaloon! I am here, however, speaking of several years ago; for latterly he said, "It was a very hard thing to find any thing to laugh at in a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... effective criticism we can pass upon a nation is to deny it this valuable quality. American critics have written the most charming things about the keenness of American speech, the breadth and insight of American drollery, the electric current in American veins; and we, reading these pleasant felicitations, are wont to thank God with greater fervour than the occasion demands that we are more merry and wise than our neighbours. Mr. Brander Matthews, for example, ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... of drollery and defiance appears in the justly celebrated "Address to the Deil," which, mainly whimsical, is relieved by touches oan in the conception of such a being straying in lonely places and loitering among trees, or in the familiarity with which the poet lectures so awful a personage,"—we ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Mr. Battersby; and we falling into a discourse of a new book of drollery in verse called Hudebras,[33] I would needs go find it out, and met with it at the Temple: ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... the fifteen or twenty people eating indifferent food about a table covered with a not very fresh cloth. Before the meal was over he had made himself agreeable to an elderly woman on his left, ventured some drollery to a pretty high-school teacher of mathematics opposite him, and given a man at the end of the table the score. When Eleanor rose, Maurice had to rise, too, though his dessert was not quite devoured; and as the couple left the room there was ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... therefore, the earliest of the extant pieces of Aristophanes, and the only one of those which he brought out under a borrowed name, that has come down to us.] appears to me to possess a much higher excellence than Peace, on account of the continual progress of the story, and the increasing drollery, which at last ends in a downright Bacchanalian uproar. Dikaiopolis, the honest citizen, enraged at the base artifices by which the people are deluded, and by which they are induced to reject all proposals ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... "That's the drollery, to deliver droll extravagance with an earnest air—knaves munching up fools as horses oats.—Faith, very droll, indeed, ha, ha, ha! Yes, I think I understand you now, sir. How silly I was to have taken you seriously, in your droll conceits, too, about having no confidence in nature. ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... it, the story, told very simply and tersely, but with inimitable drollery, ran that a certain honest old farmer, visiting the capital for the first time, was taken by the member of Congress for his 'deestrict,' to some large gathering or entertainment. He went in order to see the President. Unfortunately, Mr. Lincoln did not appear; and the ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... pleasant country-houses, where his zeal for country sports, his knowledge of and fondness for horses, his capital equestrianism, and inexhaustible fund of humor, made him as popular with the men as his sweet, genial temper, good breeding, musical accomplishments, and infinite drollery did ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... 'tis as full of drollery as ever it can hold; 'tis like an orange stuck with Cloves as for conceipt."—The Rehearsal, ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... guests looked at each other with a growing drollery on either face, and presently broke ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... illustrations are full of point and drollery. They certainly lack that round, full touch so distinctive of George Cruikshank, and which he learned from Gillray; but such a touch can be given only when the shadows as well as the outlines of a plate are etched; and the intent of an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... of drollery always put him in a good humour. He noticed it also tickled the Chinamen, who thought "Misty Zeekee" one of the ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... spout.—I don't expect applause for a little thing like that. I wish you could have heard that speech—however. If Cicero—he's dead now—he has gone from us—but if old Ciss (Here again no description can adequately inform the reader of the drollery which characterized the lecturer. His reference to Cicero was made in the most lugubrious manner, as if he really deplored his death and valued him as a schoolfellow loved and lost.) could have heard that effort it would have given him the ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... enveloped themselves from head to foot in leaves and looked like walking bushes. In this costume they crept from one visitor to another. Such a boy covered with leaves and his head adorned with twigs is called a "Pfingstkonig" [Whitsuntide-King]. This drollery is ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... and cajolery, Waiterdom's wiles, Deacondom's pomp of port; Rustic simplicity, domestic drollery, The freaks of Service ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... conception and brilliancy of execution. The marriage of that delightful, profane old sea-dog Jacob Worse, with the pious Sara Torvested, and the attempts of his mother-in-law to convert him, are described, not with the merely superficial drollery to which the subject invites, but with a sweet and delicate humor, which trembles ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... about our village worthies, making him laugh heartily at their sayings passed into tradition and fable among us boys; for our one-eyed shoemaker and our corpulent grocer, like many other country wits to fortune and to fame unknown, surpassed either Douglas Jerrold or Sydney Smith in quip and drollery. And I did not omit George Lenox, for all Belfield except his wife was in the secret of his affairs, and they were our crowning joke, in which poor George himself joined merrily, although the story ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... umbrellas; their name is Legion; their mother is Mystery, and their uncle is Old Tom,—not of Virginia, but of Gin. Once, in the old town of Canterbury, I stood in the street, under the Old Woman with the Clock, one of the quaintest pieces of drollery ever imagined during the Middle Ages. And by me was a tinker, and as his wheel went siz-'z-'z-'z, uz-uz-uz-z-z! I talked with him, and there joined us a fat, little, elderly, spectacled, shabby-genteel, but well-to-do-looking sort of a punchy, small tradesman. And, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... so famous for his drollery was entering the office doors at half-past ten in the morning, or exactly sixty minutes past the appointed time. By an unfortunate chance his principal met him, as, alas! he had too often done, at the same tardy hour. "Late again," said the great man, consulting his watch. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... degrees as he grew stronger and sturdier he evinced much curiosity, playfulness and drollery, and to these characteristics would have to be added, when he became partly grown, a kind of bear sense of humor which was ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... window of their hotel [in Lisle] to see a company of soldiers in the Square, the beauty of the sisters Horneck drew such marked admiration, that Goldsmith, heightening his drollery with that air of solemnity so generally a point in his humour and so often more solemnly misinterpreted, turned off from the window with the remark that elsewhere he too could have his admirers. The Jessamy Bride, Mrs. Gwyn, was asked about the occurrence not many years ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... domestic; she came at stated hours. Obviously a widow, she had a poor, loose-hung, trailing little body, which no nourishment could plump or fortify. Her visage was habitually doleful, but contracted itself at moments into a grin of quaint drollery, which betrayed her for something of ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing |
